Iowa Republicans have scheduled the party's presidential nominating caucuses for Jan. 15, 2024, putting the first votes of the next election a little more than six months away.The Iowa Republican Party's state central committee voted unanimously Saturday to hold the leadoff contests on the third Monday in January — on the Martin Luther King Jr. Day federal holiday.Though Republican presidential candidates have been campaigning in Iowa since last winter, there has been some uncertainty about when the traditional leadoff contests would be held. That is partly due to the Democratic National Committee's reshuffling of its calendar and dropping Iowa as its first contest.The GOP date is earlier by several weeks than the past three Iowa caucuses, though not as early as 2008, when they were held just three days into the new year.Caucuses, unlike primary elections, are contests planned, financed and carried out by the parties, not state election officials. The Iowa announcement Saturday allows New Hampshire, which has not set a primary election date yet, to protect its first-in-the-nation status, which is codified in state law that requires that contest to be held at least seven days ahead of any other primary.Last month, South Carolina Republicans adopted Feb. 24 as the date for the traditional first Southern primary, leaving plenty of time for Nevada to schedule its Republican caucuses without crowding New Hampshire."We remain committed to maintaining Iowa's cherished first-in-the-nation caucuses, and look forward to holding a historic caucus in the coming months and defeating Joe Biden come November 2024," Iowa Republican Party Chairman Jeff Kaufmann said in a statement.Saturday's decision could have implications for both parties because Iowa Democrats had been waiting on the state's Republican Party to set its caucus date as they try to adjust to new DNC rules on the order of the 2024 presidential primary.Iowa Democrats have proposed holding a caucus on the same day as the state's Republicans and allowing participants to vote for president via mail-in ballot. But Iowa Democrats have said they may not immediately release the results.That could allow the state party to still hold the first-in-the-nation caucus without defying a new primary calendar endorsed by President Joe Biden and approved by the DNC that calls for South Carolina to replace Iowa in the leadoff spot and kick off primary voting on Feb. 3.

The Associated Press is fact-checking remarks from President Joe Biden's first address to a joint session of Congress and the Republican response. A look at some of the claims we’ve examined:“If you believe in a pathway to citizenship, pass (immigration legislation) so over 11 million undocumented folks, the vast majority who are here overstaying visas, pass it,” Biden said.THE FACTS: He's making an unsubstantiated claim. There is no official count of how many people entered the country legally and overstayed visas. The government estimates that 11.4 million were living in the country illegally as of January 2018 but doesn’t distinguish between how many entered legally and stayed after their visas expired and how many arrived illegally.Robert Warren of the Center for Migration Studies of New York, a former director of the Immigration and Naturalization Service’s statistics division who has studied visa overstays for decades, has done the most recent work on the issue. He estimated that, as of 2018, 46% of people in the country illegally overstayed visas — not a majority, let alone a “vast majority.”___Biden, on his economic proposals: “There’s a broad consensus of economists — left, right, center — and they agree that what I’m proposing will help create millions of jobs and generate historic economic growth.”THE FACTS: He’s glossing over the naysayers. Some economists, also bridging the ideological spectrum, say he’s spending too much or in the wrong way. Biden’s pandemic relief plan did enjoy some bipartisan support, even getting a general seal of approval from Kevin Hassett, who was Trump’s chief economist. But his policies have also drawn bipartisan criticism.For one, Larry Summers, who was Barack Obama’s top economist and Bill Clinton’s treasury secretary, warned that Biden’s relief package risks rates of inflation not seen in a generation. Biden’s latest proposals on infrastructure and families would require substantial tax increases on corporations and wealthy investors — leading to criticism by many CEOs and more conservative economists that growth could be compromised. Biden’s economics team says the resulting programs and infrastructure would boost growth.The plan to increase capital gains taxes drew the scorn of Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former director of the Congressional Budget Office and Republican adviser. He said the White House is wrong to focus on the sliver of people being taxed and what matters is how much of the economy would be taxed.“The wealth taxes are a draconian tax on the annual return to that capital,” he said. “What matters is the amount of economic activity that is taxed, not the number of people.”___“We kept our commitment," Biden said, "Democrats and Republicans, sending $1,400 rescue checks to 85% of all American households.”THE FACTS: That’s incorrect.Republicans in both the U.S. Senate and House opposed the bill containing the $1,400 stimulus checks, known as the American Rescue Plan, portraying it as too big and too bloated.All but one Democrat supported the legislation.While no Republicans voted for this year’s coronavirus bill, they supported sending checks to Americans in previous rounds of relief legislation. A relief law passed with overwhelming bipartisan support in December, when Donald Trump was still president, provided $600 checks to many Americans.Some Republicans have touted programs created by the coronavirus bill despite voting against it.___Biden: "When I was vice president, the president asked me to focus on providing help needed to address the root causes of migration. And it helped keep people in their own countries instead of being forced to leave. The plan was working, but the last administration decided it was not worth it. I’m restoring the program and I asked Vice President Harris to lead our diplomatic effort to take care of this.”THE FACTS: That's wrong. Biden led Obama’s efforts to address a spike in migration from Central America, but poverty and violence have been endemic for decades. Hundreds of millions of dollars of U.S. aid have gone to Central America annually, even during Donald Trump’s presidency, but migration from Mexico and Central America has continued unabated with periodic spikes. In March, the number of unaccompanied children encountered by U.S. border authorities reached nearly 19,000, the highest number on record in the third major surge of families and children from Central America since 2014 under both Democratic and Republican administrations. Biden has proposed $861 million in Central American aid next year as a first installment on a $4 billion plan, compared with annual outlays of between $506 million and $750 million over the previous six years.___Biden argued that Congress should authorize Medicare to negotiate prescription drug prices. “And by the way, that won’t just help people on Medicare — it will lower prescription drug costs for everyone.” THE FACTS: There may be a bit of wishful thinking in there. Under House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s bill, private insurers that cover working-age Americans and their families would indeed be able to get the same discounts as Medicare. But while Pelosi should be able to drive her legislation through the House, the situation in the Senate is different. If just a few Democratic senators have qualms about her expansive approach, Biden may have to settle for less. So there’s no guarantee that a final bill would lower prescription drug costs for everyone.___GOP makes rebuttalSouth Carolina Sen. Tim Scott delivered a rebuttal on behalf of the GOP to Joe Biden's first address to Congress as president on Wednesday, seeking to highlight the different vision for America's future within his own party.Here is a look at his claims, and the truthfulness of them:During his rebuttal, Scott said public schools should have reopened months ago. "Science has shown for months that schools are safe."THE FACTS: According to PolitiFact, data reports have shown that children are less likely to contract and spread COVID-19 in schools. However, this comes with a caveat: that mitigation efforts must be adhered to. Scott also said, “This administration inherited a tide that had already turned. The coronavirus is on the run! Thanks to Operation Warp Speed and the Trump administration, our country is flooded with safe and effective vaccines.”THE FACTS: That’s a real stretch. Biden took over in the midst of the winter wave of COVID-19, the worst to hit the nation. It’s true that cases and deaths had begun to decline from their peak in the second week of January, but the tide had far from turned. Daily cases were averaging more than three times higher than they are now. And while the Trump administration shepherded the delivery of two highly effective vaccines, the supply of doses was short of meeting demand and several state governors were complaining about jumbled signals from Trump's team. Trump was focused on his campaign to overturn the election results and did not devote much public attention to the pandemic as his term came to an end.___Scott: “Just before COVID, we had the most inclusive economy in my lifetime. The lowest unemployment rates ever recorded for African Americans, Hispanics and Asians. And a 70-year low nearly for women. Wages were growing faster at the bottom than at the top — the bottom 25% saw their wages go up faster than the top 25%. That happened because Republicans focused on expanding opportunity for all Americans.”THE FACTS: His statistics are selectively misleading. Nothing is false on its face in terms of numbers. Yet the gains reflected the longest expansion in U.S. history — something that started during Obama’s administration and simply continued under Trump without much change in growth patterns. The labor force participation for women was below its 2001 peak, so the unemployment rate claims by Scott tell an incomplete story. The Black and Hispanic unemployment rates were lower because the total unemployment rate was lower. Yet both still lagged those of white workers by a large degree.Scott also neglects to credit the Federal Reserve, which kept interest rates near historic lows to support growth and keep the recovery from the Great Recession going. ___Associated Press writers Josh Boak, Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar, Elliot Spagat, David Klepper, Calvin Woodward and Hope Yen contributed to this report.