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Trump continues to lead the GOP charge
Trump continues to lead GOP's charge | Ian Bremmer | Quick Take

Trump continues to lead the GOP charge

Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi, everybody. Ian Bremmer here and a Quick Take to kick off your week. Thought I'd talk about the US election. I try not to do that every week because it would get really boring.

It is, of course, the longest and most expensive and most dysfunctional of any major democracy. And would we have it any other way in the United States? Trump, of course, is getting closer and closer to the nomination on the Republican side. It is all over except for the fact that Nikki Haley does not want to drop out. She is still in it. Her arguments are that everybody should get a chance to vote and that she would be much more likely to win in the general election against Joe Biden.

All of those things are true. But as we all know, that's not the way the US electoral system works. She can't win a single state. She can't come close. South Carolina, her home state, where not just Republicans that are registered, but others can actually vote. So an open primary and she still lost by 20 points, could have lost by more. It was a respectable showing, considering just how popular Trump is. But she's got no shot. And she lost her funding just now from the Koch network, which is a big deal. When they stood up and said that they wanted to give a lot of money to Haley, they understand that they're not going to throw good money after bad.

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Activists rallied against Premier Danielle Smith's proposed LGBTQ2S+ regulations and legislation that impacts transgender and non-binary youth, on Feb. 03, 2024, in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.

Artur Widak/NurPhoto via Reuters

Culture wars target transgender rights

Conservative politicians on both sides of the border are bracing for the progressive response to legislation critics say discriminates against members of the transgender community.

In Alberta, populist United Conservative Premier Danielle Smith has introduced a series of measures she says boost parental rights and protect children. All reassignment surgeries for minors will be prohibited; puberty blockers and hormone therapies will be barred for those 15 and under, and limited for “mature teens;” parents must consent to children 15 and under altering their name or pronouns in school; while athletes assigned male sex at birth will not be able to compete in women's sports.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called Smith’s plan “the most anti-LGBT policies anywhere in the country.”

Meanwhile, in Iowa, Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds has introduced legislation that excludes transgender people from “sex-segregated spaces” and requires that they list their sex at birth on their birth certificate. A similar move to require that their sex at birth be listed on driver's licenses was defeated.

Transgender activists in Iowa compared the proposed legislation to requiring gay people to wear a pink triangle during the Holocaust. Others have pointed out that the birth certificate provision is a violation of privacy in a state that bars governments from disclosing medical information on IDs, including COVID-19 vaccination status.

Democratic Rep. Sharon Stechman, in Iowa’s General Assembly, summed it up well: “I can think of a million other things we should be doing besides going after 0.29% of our population.”

Jess Frampton

Dem bias in Ottawa has Trudeau targeting Trump

The most intense debate in the Canadian House of Commons of late has been about a humdrum trade deal update between Canada and Ukraine. It is being disputed by the opposition Conservatives because it contains reference to a carbon tax.

Since Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre has made “axing the tax” in Canada his number one priority, he has removed his party’s support from the deal, even though Ukraine has had a carbon tax since 2011.

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Paige Fusco

Tucker Carlson, Liberator?

Tucker Carlson visited Canada this week to “liberate” it from … from what exactly?

Well, that’s what thousands of people – including the premier of Alberta – came to Calgary and Edmonton to hear in packed arenas.

Tucker’s two-day liberation tour from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s “authoritarian dictatorship” is timed perfectly around two political pieces of populist kindling: Trump’s march to victory in the US presidential primaries and a Canadian judge’s ruling that the Liberal government’s invocation of the Emergencies Act during the Trucker pandemic protest was “unreasonable” and unconstitutional.

It all sent a message: The populist forces are gathering and ready to take down Trudeau (and Biden) and save Canada from “disgusting decline.”

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US election: The GOP falls in line behind Trump
US election: The GOP falls in line behind Trump | Ian Bremmer | Quick Take

US election: The GOP falls in line behind Trump

Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi everybody. Ian Bremmer here and back in New York City for a Quick Take to kick off your week. Plenty happening around the world, but it is the United States election narrative that seems most important to me this week. Why?

Well, first, Tim Scott endorsed Donald Trump. Ron DeSantis dropped out, endorsed Donald Trump. It is absolutely looking like the GOP is once again Donald Trump's party. The primary season, of course, is not over. Nikki Haley from South Carolina is still in it, but it is hard for me to see how she takes a state. I look at the polls, I don't see what's available to her. She's making a lot of money and certainly there are lots of people that would like to see someone other than Trump, especially because Trump's track record over the last three elections have been so poor and the coattails are challenging, the primaries. You can beat centrists from the GOP, but then when you're actually up in a campaign itself, they've underperformed. So for all of those reasons, there are plenty of people that don't want to see Trump in the presidential race against Biden that Nikki Haley, or just about anybody else would probably beat Biden much more easily.

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Trump's new rival, Vivek Ramaswamy
Trump's new rival, Vivek Ramaswamy | Quick Take | GZERO Media

Trump's new rival, Vivek Ramaswamy

Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi, everybody. Ian Bremmer here, and a happy Monday to you. Want to turn to US domestic politics for this week's Quick Take in part because there's been a surge in the GOP among the candidates. We've had Trump way out in front, and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis as the major challenger pretty much for the last several months until this last week, with an outsider Vivek Ramaswamy in a couple of polls showing up as number two. Certainly enjoying a surge. So thought it was worth taking a little bit of a look at him.

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Is the GOP still a MAGA party? Or just Trump's party?
Is The GOP Still a MAGA Party? Or Just Trump's Party? | GZERO World

Is the GOP still a MAGA party? Or just Trump's party?

There's a lot of hand-wringing going on right now within Republican ranks after the GOP's worse than expected midterm results.

The big question is: Is the Republican party still the party of Trump? NPR White House correspondent Tamara Keith tells Ian Bremmer that there may be no going back to what the party used to be.

"There's just a lot of people in the Republican party who don't see themselves going back to the nice, polite Mitch McConnell, Bob Dole Republican Party," Keith says in this week's episode of GZERO World.

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Biden attacks 'MAGA Republicans' at the nation's peril

Biden attacks 'MAGA Republicans' at the nation's peril

Joe Biden ran for president in 2020 as the unifier of a broken nation.

After four years of partisan rancor and chaos under Donald Trump, Americans elected him to lower the temperature and heal rifts inside what has become the most politically divided and dysfunctional of all major economies. In his inaugural speech, President Biden vowed to put an end to “the uncivil war that pits red versus blue.”

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