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Column: How the Vietnam War, political protests and a mimeograph machine birthed today's Iowa caucuses

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Column: How the Vietnam War, political protests and a mimeograph machine birthed today's Iowa caucuses

When Iowa’s brave and hardy Republicans venture Monday night into the arctic cold to cast the first presidential ballots of 2024, Richard Bender will be watching with special interest and a twinge of regret.

Bender, 78, has been called the godfather of the Iowa caucuses, in recognition of his role more than 50 years ago in creating one of the most closely watched and idiosyncratic events in American politics.

He was a young Iowa Democratic Party staffer at the time, an ardent foe of the Vietnam War and an architect seeking to build bridges between the party’s old guard and anti-establishment wings.

Today, Bender is retired from a career on Capitol Hill, living in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., and sorry to see his party shun Iowa — at President Biden’s behest — in favor of later contests in South Carolina and Nevada.

It was good for my state,” Bender said of the caucuses that both major parties relied on for decades to begin choosing their presidential nominees. “I think we really did have an impact on national politics. I suspect Jimmy Carter and [Barack] Obama” — who used strong Iowa showings to launch themselves to the White House — “would agree with me on that.”

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“And frankly, I had a personal pride in it,” Bender said. “So I wasn’t very happy to see it go by the wayside.”

As Bender is the first to attest, no one imagined the caucuses would turn into today’s internationally watched spectacle and crucial early test of political strength. Their timing, as the first event on the presidential calendar, began as pure coincidence.

Iowa had long chosen its delegates in a series of gatherings beginning at the precinct level — those are the caucuses being held Monday night — and concluding at a statewide convention. But those meetings, typically held in the spring, were largely the province of party bosses and political insiders who anointed their chosen candidates.

After the maelstrom of the 1968 Democratic National Convention, when party chiefs picked the presidential nominee and blood ran in the streets of Chicago, there was a strong push to overhaul the process and give voters more say.

In Iowa, the party was headed by Clif Larson, who’d backed Eugene McCarthy’s 1968 antiwar candidacy. He tasked Bender with leading an effort to devise a new, more open system for choosing the state’s presidential delegates.

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Among the changes were the elimination of the winner-take-all rule, allowing candidates to receive a portion of delegates based on their grassroots support, and a requirement for public notification before each step of the nominating process.

The party’s straitened circumstances led to Iowa’s serendipitous place at the head of the political calendar.

Democrats were essentially broke ahead of the 1972 campaign and dependent on an old mimeograph machine. Counting back from the state convention on May 20, and allowing for printing and mailing materials out before each of four rounds, the party came up with Jan. 24 for the initial, precinct-level balloting — making it the first vote in the country.

Thus was born an institution.

A modest contingent of national political reporters showed up in Iowa to chronicle that first January caucus. Four years later, interest exploded when Carter, a little-known former Georgia governor, surged from nowhere and outpolled a field of Democratic heavyweights to catalyze his underdog campaign.

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(Carter actually finished second in the caucuses, behind “uncommitted,” but his 28% showing exceeded expectations, which has become the measure of success.)

By 1976, Republicans were on board with the early vote, and for years Iowa and its rituals — kaffeeklatsches, state fairs, pandering to farmers and agricultural interests — were an indelible part of presidential politics.

Mindful of their privileged role, “Iowans really started to care and feel responsible,” said Bender, in a corned-beef-thick accent he retains from his native New York. (He moved to Iowa in 1967 to study biochemistry at Iowa State.)

“They became a very sophisticated, careful electorate,” Bender said. “Knowledgeable. Thoughtful.”

Richard Bender has been called the godfather of the Iowa caucuses.

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(Courtesy of Richard Bender)

But as Iowa’s clout grew, so did resentment.

Politicians in big states like California griped about Iowa’s outsized influence. Others complained the state was too white and too rural, making Iowa unrepresentative of the country at large and the Democratic Party in particular.

When Iowa Democrats bungled the 2020 caucuses — taking days to declare a winner — it provided all the more reason to strip the state of its prime spot. (It also didn’t help that Biden, who was twice a candidate in Iowa, never finished better than fourth in the caucuses.)

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This year, Democrats have officially bypassed both Iowa and New Hampshire, which has long hosted the nation’s first primary and also been criticized as too white and rural. The party will begin awarding it delegates Feb. 3 in South Carolina.

Republicans have had their own Iowa foul-ups.

On caucus night in 2012, Mitt Romney was declared the winner by a mere 8 votes. The state GOP then backed off that call, and more than a week later announced that former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum had, in fact, finished first. By then the campaign had long since moved on.

Even so, with no incumbent dictating the 2024 presidential calendar, Republicans kept Iowa first.

Watching from afar, Bender acknowledged that the caucuses are considerably removed from their humble origin. Thousands of journalists now descend on the state to chronicle its presidential campaigns, which have turned into multiyear extravaganzas fueling a multimillion-dollar industry.

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The time has seemingly passed when a candidate can win Carter-style by slogging from small town to small town, bunking with local families and spending years meeting voters a handful at a time.

Trump, who made a splash in 2015 giving kiddie rides on his helicopter, has shown up relatively few times this election cycle — and is still the heavy favorite to win.

“He was an extreme example of what’s been happening for a long time,” Bender said, as TV, radio and, more recently, social media have come to matter more than the one-on-one campaigning that gave the caucuses their intimacy and charm.

Still, Bender holds out hope — optimistically? naively? — that once Biden departs, Iowa may regain its prominence in Democratic politics.

It remains a place where voters can approach most presidential hopefuls and get a question or two across. “And I think that’s really useful,” Bender said, “as opposed to [candidates] creating five 30-second ads to represent what they are.”

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It’s also still relatively easy and inexpensive to campaign across Iowa, where plenty of people are willing to give a political unknown a careful listen.

“It’d be the Jimmy Carter situation,” Bender said, envisioning a Democratic caucus renaissance.

He built it. He hopes his party will come, again.

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Before-and-after satellite imagery offers a rare look at damage inside Iran

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Before-and-after satellite imagery offers a rare look at damage inside Iran

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Fresh satellite images give a rare aerial view of the damage across Iran after U.S.-Israeli strikes and what Tehran’s retaliation left behind across the region.

Planet Labs satellite imagery captured burning ships and damaged facilities at the Konarak base in southern Iran, as well as significant destruction at Iran’s naval headquarters in Bandar Abbas on the Persian Gulf, reflecting the scale of the strikes on military infrastructure.

Satellite imagery from Planet Labs shows damage at Konarak naval base in southern Iran, left, and Iran’s Bandar Abbas naval headquarters in the Persian Gulf, right. (Planet Labs PBC)

Imagery from Vantor shows damage to facilities and vessels located in Iran’s Bushehr port in the Persian Gulf.

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In addition to naval assets, satellite photos show a bunker at Bushehr air base hit by a strike, leaving a large crater and destroying several nearby small buildings.

More strikes targeted the Choqa Balk drone facility in western Iran.

Radar systems at the Zahedan air base in eastern Iran — near the country’s borders with Pakistan and Afghanistan — were also struck.

The two facilities are about 800 to 900 miles apart, underscoring the broad reach of the coordinated strikes.

Satellite imagery also reveals damage to aircraft on the tarmac at Shiraz air base, including scorch marks and debris around several parking areas.

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Side-by-side photos showing damage to aircraft at Shiraz air base in Shiraz, Iran on March 6, 2026. (Vantor/Maxar/Getty Images)

Satellite imagery from Planet Labs shows thick smoke plumes rising above Tehran, signaling explosions and fires inside the Iranian capital.

The smoke underscores how the conflict has moved beyond isolated military sites and into the heart of Iran’s political center.

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A satellite image from Planet Labs shows a plume of smoke above Tehran, Iran, on March 1, 2026. (Planet Labs PBC)

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Iran has since responded with missile and drone strikes of its own, expanding the conflict across the region. 

Satellite images reveal damage to the port city of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates. Sharjah is the third most populous after Dubai and Abu Dhabi.

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The Jebel Ali Port, the region’s largest maritime hub, was also targeted, underscoring how the retaliation extended beyond military sites to key infrastructure.

The new satellite imagery comes on the heels of U.S.-Israeli strikes that killed Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and several top members of the regime, triggering a succession crisis.

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President Donald Trump warned on Sunday that Iran’s new leader is “not going to last long” without U.S. approval as Operation Epic Fury marches into a third week. 

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Khamenei’s son is selected as Iran’s supreme leader; 7th U.S. service member killed

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Khamenei’s son is selected as Iran’s supreme leader; 7th U.S. service member killed

The U.S. and Israeli war against Iran entered its ninth day Sunday with no clear path toward de-escalation, as the U.S. announced a seventh American service member had been killed and Iranian state TV reported the selection of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s son as his successor.

Meanwhile, the price of oil surpassed $100 a barrel for the first time in 3½ years.

President Trump said deploying American ground troops to the Middle East remains under consideration and Iran’s foreign minister rejected calls for a ceasefire.

Trump said last week that Mojtaba Khamenei would be an “unacceptable” choice to replace his father, the 86-year-old leader who was killed on the first day of U.S. and Israeli attacks. The clerical body in charge of choosing Iran’s next supreme leader selected him anyway, state TV reported Sunday.

The younger Khamenei, a 56-year-old Shiite cleric, has never held government office, but has long been a quiet force within his father’s inner circle. As supreme leader, he will play a central role in deciding Iran’s war strategy moving forward, with the powerful paramilitary Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps answering to him.

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The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on his selection.

Speaking to reporters on Air Force One on Saturday, Trump declined to rule out the possibility of sending U.S. forces inside Iran, saying it could “possibly happen” as the conflict intensifies.

“There would have to be a very good reason,” Trump said. “I would say if we ever did that they would be so decimated that they wouldn’t be able to fight at the ground level.”

His remarks came ahead of another relentless day of bombings in Iran, and as desalination plants critical to civilian water supplies in the arid region came under attack on both sides of the conflict.

The United States military on Sunday announced that an American service member died Saturday night of injuries sustained March 1 in Saudi Arabia during Iran’s “initial attacks” on U.S. allies and facilities across the region, in response to U.S. and Israeli strikes. The service member was not immediately identified, pending notification of family.

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In addition to the seven U.S. service members killed in the war, a National Guard soldier died Friday of a “health-related incident” in Kuwait, where he had been deployed, the military said. The cause of death was under review.

Other deaths were also reported in the region. Israel reported two of its soldiers were killed in fighting in southern Lebanon — its first military deaths of the war — while Saudi Arabia reported two people were killed and 12 wounded by a military projectile that fell in a residential area of Al Kharj.

The death toll in Iran has been difficult to nail down, but Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations on Friday put the number at more than 1,300.

Iran has said it is prepared to continue fighting the war despite sustaining heavy losses and would be ready to fight American ground troops if they set foot in the country.

“We have very brave soldiers who are waiting for any enemy who enters into our soil to fight with them, and to kill them and destroy them,” Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said in an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday.

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Araghchi added that Iran is not considering a ceasefire at this time. He said the United States and Israel would first need to explain “why they started this aggression and then guarantee there would be a permanent end of the war.”

“Unless we get to that, I think we need to continue fighting for the sake of our people and our security,” he said.

Araghchi also pushed back on Trump’s demand last week that the president be involved in determining Iran’s future leadership as a condition to ending the conflict.

“We allow nobody to interfere in our domestic affairs. This is up to the Iranian people to elect their new leader,” Araghchi said. “It’s only the business of the Iranian people, and nobody else’s business.”

In addition to mounting deaths and widespread destruction, the economic toll of the war has also continued to rise, particularly in energy markets — with oil prices jumping above $100 a barrel on Sunday.

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“If the war continues like this, there will be neither a way to sell oil nor have the ability to produce it,” Iran’s parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said in a social media post Sunday. He added that the war would affect not just the U.S., but also the rest of the world “due to [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s delusions.”

Israeli strikes Sunday hit an oil storage facility in Tehran, marking what appears to be the first time a civil industrial facility has been targeted in the war. Black smoke billowed over the Iranian capital, with officials there warning of the hazardous health effects for residents.

“By targeting fuel depots, the aggressors are releasing hazardous materials and toxic substances into the air, poisoning civilians, devastating the environment, and endangering lives on a massive scale,” Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baqaei said on X.

U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright said Sunday that there’s a “fear premium in the marketplace” and sought to assure Americans that the soaring oil prices are a short-term problem.

“We never know exactly the time frame of this,” Wright said in an interview with CNN’s “State of the Union.” “But in the worst case, this is a weeks, this is not a months, thing.”

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White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt echoed the same message in an interview with Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures,” calling the rising gas prices a “short-term disruption.”

“Ultimately taking out the rogue Iranian regime is going to be a good thing for the oil industry,” Leavitt said. “Those prices are going to come back down just like they have over the course of the past year, because of President Trump’s American energy dominance agenda.”

The strike on the oil storage facility came as Netanyahu promised “many surprises” for the next phase of the conflict.

Israel also claimed Sunday to have destroyed the Tehran headquarters of the Revolutionary Guard air force, which it said operated Iran’s “ballistic missile command, unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) array, and other air force units.” It also said it had killed five top commanders in the Revolutionary Guard who were “hiding in a civilian hotel” in central Beirut, Lebanon.

Crucial civilian infrastructure also came under attack, on both sides of the conflict.

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Bahrain denounced what it said was an Iranian attack on one of its desalination plants — facilities that supply water to millions of people in the parched deserts of the Persian Gulf. Araghchi said a U.S. airstrike had damaged an Iranian desalination plan on Qeshm Island first.

“Attacking Iran’s infrastructure is a dangerous move with grave consequences. The U.S. set this precedent, not Iran,” Araghchi wrote on X.

The United States has also come under scrutiny after evidence suggested that an American strike was probably responsible for an explosion at an Iranian elementary school that killed more than 165 people, most of them children.

Trump administration officials have said that the matter is under investigation and that no determination has been made as to who was responsible for the strike. But on Saturday, Trump said Iran was to blame for the explosion.

“It was done by Iran,” he told reporters. “They’re very inaccurate, as you know, with their munitions. They have no accuracy whatsoever. It was done by Iran.”

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Asked Sunday whether Iran had any evidence that the strike was conducted by the Americans, Araghchi said that it had to have been either the U.S. or Israeli military and that Trump’s suggestion that Iran was responsible for the attack was “funny.”

“It is our school, these are our students and our girls, and they are attacked by an American fighter, a jet fighter, and they have been killed. Why [is] Iran responsible?” Araghchi said.

Other world leaders and nations have called for a halt to fighting and added their own estimates to its toll.

Lebanon said more than half a million people have been displaced by the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah.

French President Emmanuel Macron said he had spoken with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian on Sunday, and urged him to stop strikes in the region. Macron is the first Western leader to speak with Pezeshkian since the war began, the Associated Press reported.

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Pope Leo XIV wrote on X on Sunday that reports out of Iran and the wider Middle East “continue to cause deep dismay and raise the fear that the conflict will expand, and that other countries in the region, including dear Lebanon, may once again sink into instability.”

He asked the world to pray “for the roar of bombs to cease, weapons to fall silent, and space to open for dialogue, in which people’s voices may be heard.”

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Trump vows block on signing new laws until SAVE America Act passes Senate

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Trump vows block on signing new laws until SAVE America Act passes Senate

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President Donald Trump is vowing to reject signing any new bills into law until the SAVE America Act is passed by the Senate, a tall order with just 53 Republicans seated and the 60-vote filibuster threshold a high hurdle.

“Great Job by hard working Scott Pressler on Fox & Friends talking about using the Filibuster, or Talking Filibuster, in order to pass THE SAVE AMERICA ACT, an 88% issue with ALL VOTERS,” Trump wrote Sunday morning on Truth Social. “It must be done immediately.”

“It supersedes everything else,” Trump added. “MUST GO TO THE FRONT OF THE LINE.”

The vow to halt all new law signings is a new one coming from the White House and notable because of the Senate hesitation to follow the urgings of Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, to force the Senate to bring the bill forward through the talking filibuster.

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Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, talks with a guest during an “Only Citizens Vote Bus Tour” rally in Upper Senate Park to urge Congress to pass the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act on Wednesday, Sept. 10, 2025. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

“I, as President, will not sign other Bills until this is passed,” Trump’s post continued, “AND NOT THE WATERED DOWN VERSION – GO FOR THE GOLD: MUST SHOW VOTER I.D. & PROOF OF CITIZENSHIP: NO MAIL-IN BALLOTS EXCEPT FOR MILITARY – ILLNESS, DISABILITY, TRAVEL: NO MEN IN WOMEN’S SPORTS: NO TRANSGENDER MUTILIZATION FOR CHILDREN! DO NOT FAIL!!!”

While Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., has publicly acknowledged a willingness to bring a vote on the SAVE America Act before the upper chamber, there is hesitation within the Republican Party about forcing the talking filibuster under the current Senate rules.

The talking filibuster would force Democrats to speak on the Senate floor to argue against a voter identification position widely supported by Americans, as Trump noted, but it would also force Republicans to sit in attendance with a quorum. That has been rebuked by longtime Senate GOP veterans as something that would “waste time.”

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Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., has promised to bring the SAVE America Act to the Senate floor, but there remains some GOP hesitation on forcing the talking filibuster.  (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

Former Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has been publicly opposed to forcing a talking filibuster because of the time constraints it would force on the Senate GOP, and he remains one of the few Senate Republicans not signing on to support the SAVE America Act.

Another development that clouds the SAVE America Act filibuster is the recent appointment of Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., to serve as the next Department of Homeland Security secretary, perhaps resigning from the Senate by the end of March.

Fox News Digital reached out to Mullin’s office for comment. McConnell’s office declined to comment on Trump’s Truth Social vow to block all new law signings amid the standoff on the DHS funding that has the government in a partial shutdown and the Senate sitting on the House-passed SAVE America Act.

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“We’re going to have a vote on this, but in terms of what the president is willing to sign, Maria, we need to get the Department of Homeland Security funded,” Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso, R-Wy., told Maria Bartiromo on “Sunday Morning Futures.”

“The Democrats have blocked that right now. And the greatest threat to the American people today is terrorism. So I want to make sure that the Democrats work with us to pass and fund the Department of Homeland Security, because I’m worried about the lone wolf, the sleeper cells and the cyber terrorism that’s coming our way because of what Iran is telling people around the world to do to continue this reign of terror,” Barrasso said.

Getting to 60 votes in the Senate is unlikely with just Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., as the lone potential Democrat vote to side with the Senate GOP on the SAVE America Act.

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Senate GOP WHIP John Barrasso, R-Wy., and current Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., have expressed more support for forcing Democrats to filibuster the SAVE America Act than former GOP leader Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. (Getty Images)

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“The Democrats are against so many of the things that I think help this country,” Barrasso added to Bartiromo. “They’d rather stand with illegal immigrant criminals than with the safety and security of the American people. I want to get the Save act to the floor. I want to have a vote.”

“That’s the next step on this need to get the Department of Homeland Security open and funded,” he continued. “The Democrats are bowing to the liberal left: The people that want to eliminate ICE, the people that want open borders again, and the people that really aren’t looking out for the best interest of the American people.

“As the president said in the State of the Union, it is the first duty of the American government to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens. But that’s what not one single Democrat stood up for that when every Republican stood and cheered loudly.”

Barrasso, the Senate GOP member whipping up support, considers the SAVE America Act “common sense.”

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“You want to make sure that only citizens can vote,” he concluded to Bartiromo. “You want to make sure that when people show up, they have a photo ID to prove they are who they say they are. You need a you need a photo ID to buy a beer, to board a plane, all of those things. And it’s 90% popular with the American people. The only people against this are the Democrats because they want to make it easier to cheat.”

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