US election live: Candidates prep for Nevada with Haley and Trump to appear on separate ballots – 2024 updates

President Joe Biden told a group of donors to his re-election bid on Sunday that the mere thought of his predecessor’s callous attitude towards the nation’s military veterans and honoured war dead forces him to expend extra energy to keep his anger in check.

Speaking to guests who’d assembled to hear him speak at a Henderson, Nevada fundraiser, Mr Biden was working through what has become a standard recitation of his record since taking office in 2021 when he turned to the matter of former president Donald Trump’s attitude towards men and women who’ve made the ultimate sacrifice in service of the United States.

He told attendees: “I have to hold my Irish temper” when it comes to that subject.

The matter that so evokes Mr Biden’s anger is a series of comments first reported by The Atlantic regarding Mr Trump’s attitude towards American war dead.

Andrew Feinberg reports from Washington, DC:

As if election season weren’t complicated enough already, Nevada Republicans are holding both a primary and a caucus this year – effectively giving registered conservative voters two chances to declare their preferred candidate for the party’s presidential nomination.

The situation is the result of a dispute between the state and the local branch of the Republican party over a bipartisan bill passed by Nevada’s state legislature in 2021.

The bill stipulated that the Silver State must hold political primaries if more than one candidate is in contention for a given race, doing away with the old party-run caucus system traditionally employed.

As a result, a mandatory state-run Republican primary will be held on Tuesday 6 February.

However, the state Republican party pushed back on this plan and organised that caucuses will also take place on Thursday 8 February.

Under the Nevada Republican party’s rules, candidates are barred from running in both the primary and in the caucuses.

Republican senator JD Vance – who is reportedly being considered for Donald Trump’s potential administration – repeated baseless claims about the 2020 presidential election and falsely asserted that Mr Trump as president could defy the US Supreme Court.

The Ohio senator told ABC News on Sunday that unlike then-vice-president Mike Pence, he would not have certified the results of the 2020 election, which he falsely claimed is the “legitimate way” to handle contested results from states that Mr Trump lost.

There is no provision in the US Constitution to do so, nor is there any evidence of widespread election fraud that manipulated 2020’s outcome against Mr Trump.

Alex Woodward has the story:

Here’s Jon Sopel on how Trump’s race to the Republican nomination could yet be thwarted by the courts.

Donald Trump has given the names of two possible candidates to be his running mate in the event that he beats Nikki Haley to become the Republican Party’s nominee for president, as it is widely expected he will.

Interviewed by Maria Bartiromo for her Fox show Sunday Morning Futures, Trump was asked when qualities he was looking for in a prospective vice president and said: “It’s got to be who would [be] able to be a good president. I mean, you always have to think that because you know, a civil emergency… Things happen right? No matter who you are, things happen. It’s got to be number one. Who’s your enemy?”

He said that there were “a lot of good people” in contention for the role and said he would make an announcement on the matter “in a little while”.

Pressed for names, he mentioned South Carolina senator Tim Scott and South Dakota governor Kristi Noem.

Trump said that Scott, who was briefly a rival for the GOP nomination, had been “very low-key” as a candidate but had since impressed him stumping on his behalf while Noem had likewise proven herself an “incredible” campaigner.

For much of his time in the White House, Joe Biden has faced low approval ratings. In addition, a steady stream of polls last year showed him losing to Donald Trump in a hypothetical rematch.

Progressives warned that Biden’s handling of the Israel-Gaza war, in particular, would risk him losing support among young people. Rising cost of living prices in 2021 and 2022 also caused his approval to take a hit — as well as the US exit from Afghanistan, which led to the deaths of 13 US servicemembers. More than a few surveys have shown that Biden’s age also remains a problem for him, despite the fact Trump is only a few years younger.

Yet, with the exception of Republican primary voters, most voters did not believe that the United States would undertake another Trump-Biden election. We moved from denial that it could ever happen; to anger at the realisation that no other candidates would challenge Biden; to bargaining (what if we could convince a Democratic Biden challenger? What if Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis or someone else could beat Trump in a primary?) It was a very American progression through the classic stages of grief.

Now, it appears that we are moving from depression to acceptance. Trump’s overwhelming victories have made it clear that there’s really no other option — and make no mistake: regardless of how pundits spin it, Trump still has an iron grip on a large portion of the GOP.

Here’s more from Eric Garcia.

The president unsurprisingly won the South Carolina Democratic primary on Saturday, taking a majority of the votes and delegates in the Democratic Party’s first official primary of the 2024 election season.

Biden was running against two lesser-known candidates: Minnesota representative Dean Phillips and self-help author Marianne Williamson, neither of whom have been given much media attention or appear to stand any realistic chance of making a mark on his bid for a second term in the White House.

Here’s more from Ariana Baio.