Good morning and welcome to the new week. Here’s what you need to know to start your day.
A mild, gray Monday. Most of the state will be cloudy all day, with a slight chance of freezing drizzle in the west. Twin Cities highs in the lower 30s with nighttime lows around 19. Statewide, lows range from 16 to 24 during the day. More on Updraft. | Forecast
The Iowa presidential caucus is just a week away, and there’s still no front-runner. The latest polling aggregates show Joe Biden with a slight lead over Bernie Sanders, followed by Pete Buttigieg and Elizabeth Warren. Amy Klobuchar trails with 8 percent in fifth place — 8 points separate the Minnesota senator and fourth-place Warren; there are 5 points between Warren and Biden. And for more pre-caucus studying ... check out the Des Moines Register’s analysis of three crucial counties to watch on caucus night.
“When we arrived we could smell something really horrible. And that's when they were burning the bodies.” That’s one of Judy Baron’s memories of arriving at Auschwitz in 1944 as a teenager. She and Eva Gross had similar experiences they shared with MPR News reporter Tim Nelson on the 75th anniversary of the camp’s liberation.
If you logged off for the weekend, you missed plenty of national politics. President Trump’s impeachment trial legal team made the case that he did “nothing wrong” in its opening arguments. Proceedings pick back up at noon Monday . And Secretary of State Mike Pompeo accused veteran NPR reporter and host Mary Louise Kelly of lying to him, without offering an explanation or evidence.
— Cody Nelson, MPR News | 