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      Nikki Haley was swatted in December, records review shows

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      Newly reviewed records show that presidential hopeful Nikki Haley was the target of a swatting incident in late December when an anonymous person called 911 claiming to have killed his girlfriend at Haley’s South Carolina home.Authorities responded to a call on 30 December from a person who said he had shot his girlfriend and was threatening to harm himself, giving Haley’s address to the operator. It was shortly deemed a fake emergency, Reuters reported. Haley and her son were not at home during the time of the call; her husband was overseas.“The incident is being investigated by all involved,” Craig Harris, the director of public safety at Kiawah Island, where Haley’s home is located. South Carolina state police, the FBI and Haley’s security team were informed of the event.Representatives for Haley have not responded to the incident publicly or responded to the Guardian’s request for comment.The report comes after a surge in swatting – when anonymous people use the addresses of public figures when calling 911 to report fake violent incidents, like shootings – against public officials in recent months. Some experts have noted that swatting has become a prolific tool of political intimidation in recent years as people respond to inflammatory rhetoric.Earlier this month, special counsel Jack Smith and DC district court judge Tanya Chutkan, both key figures in the federal case against Donald Trump for attempts to overturn the election, were targets of swatting. Shenna Bellows, Maine’s secretary of state who barred Trump from the state’s Republican primary ballot, was also singled out in an incident last year.Gabriel Sterling, a top official in the Georgia secretary of state’s office, said that 14 police cars, a firetruck and an ambulance appeared at his home when someone called 911 about a hoax shooting.“Now I bolt my doors every night,” he told Reuters. “That’s the reality I’m living in.”Jen Easterly, the head of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the federal agency that is tasked with bolstering election security, was also a target of a hoax December 30, NBC News reported earlier this week.“One of the most troubling trends we have seen in recent years has been the harassment of public officials across the political spectrum, including extreme incidents involving swatting and direct personal threats,” Easterly told NBC News. “These incidents pose a serious risk to the individuals, their families and, in the case of swatting, to the law enforcement officers responding to the situation. While my own experience was certainly harrowing, it was unfortunately not unique.”Some officials have also been targets of more direct threats. On the morning of closing arguments in Trump’s New York fraud trial, a bomb squad responded to a threat directed toward the Long Island home of judge Arthur Engoron, who is overseeing the case. More

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      Trump’s ‘achilles heel’? Haley’s refusal to drop out infuriates ex-president

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      It was a moment for Donald Trump to be gracious, magnanimous, perhaps even presidential. Instead he lashed out at his opponent’s clothes. “When I watched her in the fancy dress that probably wasn’t so fancy, I said, ‘What’s she doing? We won,’” he said of rival Nikki Haley in New Hampshire on Tuesday night.Trump had just won the first primary election of 2024 and all but clinched the Republican nomination for US president. Party leaders and campaign surrogates are now eager to banish Haley to irrelevance, move on from the primary and unify against Democrats. They want Trump to pivot to an almost inevitable rematch with Democrat Joe Biden in November.Yet the 77-year-old remains consumed with rage over Haley’s unwillingness to quit the race. His petulance offers a reminder of the unhinged behaviour that turned off independent voters in New Hampshire and could prove to be a liability in a head-to-head contest with Biden. It is also at odds with what is an unusually professional and disciplined campaign operation.Wendy Schiller, a political scientist at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, said: “Donald Trump wants the race to be over and we see evidence of why that’s important for the Trump campaign from his speech, which was essentially a train wreck and exhibited all the worst tendencies of Donald Trump. It was an undisciplined Trump and this is what turns off independent voters.”She added: “This is the achilles heel for the Trump campaign and they know it. The sooner this gets wrapped up then he doesn’t have any more of those impromptu late night speeches. Their worry is not that they’re not going to win the nomination; their worry is the damage that Trump having to respond to Haley will do in the general election with independent voters.”Trump’s investment of emotion and energy in attacking Haley is wildly out of proportion for the minimal threat that Haley poses. He won the Iowa caucuses in a landslide – she was third – and beat her by double digits in New Hampshire. No other Republican candidate in history who won the first two contests has failed to clinch his party’s nomination. His dominance looks set to render the next five months of primaries irrelevant.Newt Gingrich, a former House of Representatives speaker and ex-presidential candidate, said: “Trump’s best strategy is to assume he is the nominee and go straight at Biden and ignore Haley, let her flounder around until she either runs out of money or realises that there is no future. She’ll presently disappear.”Republicans have coalesced around the former president, putting pressure on Haley to step aside. She is not competing in next month’s Nevada caucuses. Trump has racked up endorsements from most of South Carolina’s leading Republicans and opinion polls show him with a big lead in the state, which has a strong base of Christian evangelicals, ahead of the primary on 24 February.View image in fullscreenYet Haley, 52, a former South Carolina governor and US ambassador to the UN, is soldiering on. She tweeted on Thursday: “Underestimate me, that’s always fun.” Next week she is scheduled for a fundraising tour that includes stops in New York, Florida, California, Texas and South Carolina. She is expected to continue to draw donor support as Never Trumpers within the party make a last stand and hope he could yet be derailed by the 91 criminal charges against him.Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, said: “I do know some of her donors and my guess is they want her staying in to put Trump through his paces. They don’t put it on the record but they think there’s a reasonable chance that something will happen to Trump, either health-wise or conviction to the extent that he can no longer be the nominee.”Haley describes herself as “scrappy”, continues to hold rallies and is becoming more aggressive in her denunciations of Trump. On Wednesday she launched a $4m advertising campaign in South Carolina describing the prospect of a Biden v Trump election as “a rematch no one wants”. Its narrator says: “Biden – too old. Trump – too much chaos. There’s a better choice for a better America.”How long can she last? Michael Steele, a Trump critic and former chairman of the Republican National Committee, said: “My bet is two weeks. You really want to go into that race in your home state and lose by 30 or 40 points? Where is the political viability after that? We’ve seen candidates who run actual general election presidential campaigns and they lose their home state and we never heard from them again.”Haley’s tenacity has enraged Trump. He has branded her “birdbrain”. He has threatened to blacklist anyone who donates to her campaign. He has railed against her frequently on social media, writing: “Could somebody please explain to Nikki that she lost – and lost really badly. She also lost Iowa, BIG, last week. They were, as certain non-fake media say, ‘CRUSHING DEFEATS.’”The insults and outbursts are a reminder of why Trump alienated moderate voters in the past. While his win in New Hampshire was historic, it also exposed general election vulnerabilities, showing him to be highly popular with Republicans but highly unpopular with independents, who were allowed to take part in the Republican primary under the state’s rules.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThere has never been such a wide gap between the Republican vote and the independent vote in a New Hampshire Republican primary. According to CNN’s exit polls, Trump won Republican voters by 74% to 25%, but Haley won independents 58% to 39%.Forty-two per cent of voters said they would not consider Trump to be fit for office if he were convicted of a crime. An analysis by Fox News found that 35% of voters in New Hampshire would be so dissatisfied with a Trump nomination that they would not vote for him in November.Steele, a host on the MSNBC cable news network, added: “There’s 91 indictments hanging over this guy. Of course he’s vulnerable but everyone wants to keep puffing him up like he’s some tiger or some lion. It’s just ridiculous.“I just wish people would get honest about what’s in front of them. This guy is vulnerable as hell. He’s weak as hell. But in reality TV land, he’s the guy that fires people: he’s rough, he’s tough, he’s single-minded. No, he’s a petulant little boy who shows that petulance when he’s challenged.”Biden’s campaign is working on the premise that Trump will be the nominee. He has delivered two major speeches about the threat that Trump poses to democracy and the dangerous rise of white supremacy. This week he held a joint event with his vice-president, Kamala Harris, in Virginia to promote reproductive freedom, highlighting Trump’s role in the supreme court’s Dobbs decision that overturned the constitutional right to abortion.Simon Rosenberg, a Democratic strategist, said: “The Dobbs decision basically became this before-and-after moment in American politics where there just became this sense that the Republican party had become too ugly, too extreme, too dangerous, and it has struggled mightily in election after election since the spring of 2022.”He added: “You’re starting to see, even in the early going here, there is a lot more weakness than strength coming out of the Republican party in the last couple of weeks. It’s because Maga [Make America great again] has become unattractive even to Republican voters. Fear and opposition to Maga is the most powerful force in American politics. It’s why Republicans keep losing, and Republicans have chosen a candidate who is ultra-Maga to be their nominee in 2024.” More

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      He’s beaten his Republican rivals and is ahead in the polls. But Trump is vulnerable | Jonathan Freedland

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      You’d think a week spent in the snow and ice of New Hampshire, watching Donald Trump stroll to a double-digit victory over his last remaining Republican rival, would have left me filled with angst about the presidential election in November. Sure enough, given that a second Trump presidency would have a truly disastrous impact on the US and the world, the fact that the now near-certain rematch of Trump and Joe Biden remains a “coin flip”, in the private assessment of one of America’s foremost electoral analysts, still makes my palms go clammy.But to my surprise, I left the frozen American north-east not hopeful, exactly, but lifted by the thought that Trump is weaker, and Biden stronger, than this week’s headlines – or the latest polls showing the current president six points behind the previous one – might suggest. Now when I hear the words “coin flip”, I react like Jim Carrey’s character in Dumb and Dumber, when told that the odds of him winning over the woman of his dreams are one in a million: “So you’re telling me there’s a chance.”Of course, the causes for gloom have not gone away. Biden’s age remains the biggest single obstacle to his re-election: even Democrats worry that he might just be too old to serve a second term, which would see him leave his Oval Office desk at the age of 86. Inflation has hurt him: a pair of 18-year-olds at Bedford High School told me they had cast their first vote for “Donald J Trump”, as they reverentially put it, in part because of high petrol prices. And too many voters blame Biden for the fact that “the world is on fire”, to quote Trump’s challenger, Nikki Haley. They see wars in Ukraine and in Gaza, hear Trump boast that there was no such trouble when he was in charge, and blame Biden.That aversion to overseas conflict, and fear of the US getting sucked in, is now loud in the once hawkish Republican party, but anti-war sentiment among Democrats poses its own danger to Biden. He is struggling to hold his party together. The left, and younger voters especially, are appalled by his support for Israel in its fight against Hamas – a sentiment that will only harden after the international court of justice’s ruling on Friday demanding that Israel ensures acts of genocide are not committed in Gaza. Young voters were a bedrock for Biden in 2020, but he can rely on them no longer. Those teenagers for Trump I met in Bedford were not the only ones.And yet, there are encouraging signs. In New Hampshire, Trump’s win over Haley was assured by his three-to-one lead among registered Republicans. His overall margin narrowed because she beat him convincingly among undeclared or independent voters, who under New Hampshire’s rules are allowed to take part in a party primary. I spoke to dozens of them, and few were motivated by admiration for the former US ambassador to the UN. On the contrary, their driving purpose was to stop “that man”, many expressing plain disgust for Trump.In the race for his party’s nomination, those views were easily swept aside by the Maga, or Make America Great Again, majority. But in a general election, independents can make the difference between victory and defeat. That they so heavily rejected Trump – 58% backing Haley – spells trouble for the former president. Those are voters Biden should be able to win over, but there are seams to mine among dissident Republicans too. In New Hampshire, about 25% of them could not stomach voting for Trump. Even if most Republicans eventually fall in line, it would take only a small slice to defect to Biden or stay home to deny Trump a second term.That may not be so hard to achieve. For the presumptive nominee remains as repellent as ever. His victory speech on Tuesday was a reminder of his talent for obnoxiousness. He humiliated one-time rivals who now back him and, as if setting out to alienate the suburban female voters who often form a decisive swing bloc in US elections, nodded along as the crowd chanted the nickname he’s given Haley – “birdbrain” – while he mocked the outfit she had worn at her own event earlier that evening: “I watched her in the fancy dress that probably wasn’t so fancy.”The macho boor stuff works well inside the Maga bubble, where the devotees love it, but it will do Trump no favours over the course of an exceptionally long general election campaign, which began, in effect, this week and will stretch to November. Paradoxically, Trump may have benefited from his post-6 January spell of enforced exile from most social media platforms, limiting how much Americans saw him. Now the spotlight is back on – and it is rarely flattering.That is especially true of his multiple and continuing court cases. Among the Republican base, the 91 felony charges against him are a badge of honour, proof that he’s a victim of the liberal deep state; among the wider US electorate, they don’t play so well. Note that even among those who voted for Trump in New Hampshire, 13% believe that, were he convicted of a crime, he would not be fit to be president. A verdict may not come in time for 5 November, but it’s further proof of Trump’s vulnerability.What of Biden’s strength? There was no real Democratic primary in New Hampshire, but there was a challenger, a perfectly competent congressman called Dean Phillips. Even though the president was not on the ballot, he crushed Phillips, thanks to a drive to get Democrats to “write in” Biden’s name. That suggests organisational muscle.And he can press at least two issues that have a proven record of winning elections for Democrats. The first is abortion, following the Supreme Court’s decision in the 2022 Dobbs case to end the constitutional protection of abortion rights. Trump brags that he’s “proud” of that, because it was he who appointed three rightwing judges to the court. But it’s not a popular position. On the contrary, Republicans have repeatedly lost at the ballot box since the court’s ruling, whether in elections or state-level referendums. “Dobbs may have broken the Republican party,” says the Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg, who accurately predicted his party’s success in the 2022 midterms and is bullish about Biden’s chances now.The second issue is the core anti-Trump argument: that the man who tried to overturn the 2020 election is a would-be dictator who poses a threat to democracy. Add to that some healthy economic numbers and rising consumer confidence, and you can see the outline of a winning message.To be sure, the messenger remains flawed, though the veteran Republican consultant Mike Murphy thinks there’s a line Biden could use to deal with the age issue, one that would draw the contrast with his opponent: “We’re both old – but he’s old and crazy.” There’s peril, too, in third-party candidacies who would split the anti-Trump vote. The point is, no one could possibly be complacent about a Biden victory and Trump defeat in 2024. Like the man said, it’s a coin flip – but the evidence is telling us there’s a chance.
      Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist More

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      Biden attacks Trump after securing UAW endorsement; union says Trump is ‘against everything we stand for’ – as it happened

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      “We have more work to do but our plan is delivering to the American people, building an economy from the bottom up, not the top down,” said Biden.“If I’m going to be in a fight, I want to be in a fight with you, UAW. We have a big fight in front of us. We’re fundamentally changing the economy of this country, taking it from the economy that takes care of those at the top… All anyone wants is just a fair shot, an even shot,” he added.”“You’re the heroes of this story,” he continued.Biden also condemned Donald Trump’s policies, saying, “He’s the only president other than Herbert Hoover who lost jobs when he was president.”“He cut taxes for the very wealthy and the biggest corporations. He shipped good paying jobs overseas because labor was cheaper… It hollowed out entire communities, closing factories, I’m not making this up, you know this to be true,” Biden added.Here is a wrap-up of the day’s key events:
      The United Auto Workers union has endorsed Joe Biden for re-election as president. Addressing the union, UAW president Shawn Fain said: “This November, we can stand up and elect someone who stands with us and supports our cause, or we can elect someone who will divide us, and fight us every step of the way.”
      Joe Biden addressed the UAW at its conference in Washington DC and was met with repeated applause and cheers following the union’s endorsement of him. “I’ve always fought for a strong auto industry… You deserve to benefit when these companies thrive… Record profits mean record contracts,” said Biden, adding, “We build in America, we buy in America.”
      Joe Biden also condemned Donald Trump’s policies, saying, “He’s the only president other than Herbert Hoover who lost jobs when he was president.” “He cut taxes for the very wealthy and the biggest corporations. He shipped good paying jobs overseas because labor was cheaper… It hollowed out entire communities, closing factories, I’m not making this up, you know this to be true,” Biden added.
      Joe Biden’s re-election campaign expressed confidence in the president’s ability to again defeat Donald Trump in November, even as polls show the two men running neck and neck. Biden also made some changes to his campaign team, bringing in reinforcements from the White House.
      Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel called on Nikki Haley to drop her 2024 presidential bid, the day after Trump beat her in the New Hampshire primary. “Looking at the math and the path going forward…I don’t see it for Nikki Haley,” said McDaniel.
      Nikki Haley vowed to carry on her campaign despite losing the New Hampshire primary by a significant margin. She immediately headed to her home state of South Carolina, which holds its Republican primary on 23 February.
      Donald Trump comfortably won the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday evening, beating his only remaining credible contender, Haley, into second place. It was not a crushing victory but it was solid.
      Ryan Binkley, a Texas pastor and co-founder of a financial services firm, remains committed to becoming the US’s next president. Binkley, who received 0.1% of the votes – or 284 votes – in the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday, has his eyes now set on Nevada. “Please keep spreading the word about http://Binkley2024.com as I move forward to Nevada,” he wrote on X.
      That’s it from me, Maya Yang, as we wrap up the blog for today. Thank you for following along.Ryan Binkley, a Texas pastor and co-founder of a financial services firm, remains committed to becoming the US’s next president.Binkley, who received 0.1% of the votes – or 284 votes – in the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday, has his eyes now set on Nevada.In a post on X, Binkley thanked New Hampshire residents, saying:
      “New Hampshire: Thank you for a great few days. I enjoyed the time and conversation around issues that matter to all Americans. Thank you for being #FITN [’first in the nation’]. Please keep spreading the word about http://Binkley2024.com as I move forward to Nevada.”
      He went on to include several hashtags including “#WhoIsRyanBinkley.”Binkley, who launched his presidential bid nine months ago, has spent more than $8m of his own money on his campaign.Explaining his decision to run, Binkley said, “God spoke to me.”Here is video of United Auto Workers president Shawn Fain announcing UAW’s endorsement of Joe Biden: Fain said:
      “We need to know who is going to stand up with us and this choice is clear. “Joe Biden bet on the American worker, while Donald Trump blamed the American worker! We need to know who’s going to sit in the most powerful seat in the world and help us win as a united working class. So if our endorsements must be earned, Joe Biden has earned it!”
      Biden concluded his speech to a room full of applause, saying, “It’s never ever ever been a good bet to bet against the American people.”“I’ve never been more optimistic about America’s future… There’s nothing beyond our capacity when we work together,” he added.“We have more work to do but our plan is delivering to the American people, building an economy from the bottom up, not the top down,” said Biden.“If I’m going to be in a fight, I want to be in a fight with you, UAW. We have a big fight in front of us. We’re fundamentally changing the economy of this country, taking it from the economy that takes care of those at the top… All anyone wants is just a fair shot, an even shot,” he added.”“You’re the heroes of this story,” he continued.Biden also condemned Donald Trump’s policies, saying, “He’s the only president other than Herbert Hoover who lost jobs when he was president.”“He cut taxes for the very wealthy and the biggest corporations. He shipped good paying jobs overseas because labor was cheaper… It hollowed out entire communities, closing factories, I’m not making this up, you know this to be true,” Biden added.“I strongly believe a company’s transition to new technology should…include every hire in the same factories in the same communities with comparable wages,” said Biden.“Existing union workers should have the first shot at these jobs,” he added.“I don’t believe any company should be using threats or tactics to stand in the way of workers’ righst to organize. Period,” he continued.The crowd descended into a united chant of “UAW!” as Biden looked on.“We build in America, we buy in America,” said Biden. “Because of you, Toyota, Volkswagen, Nissan…all gave their workers double digit raises. Because of you!” he said.“I’ve always fought for a strong auto industry… You deserve to benefit when these companies thrive… Record profits mean record contracts,” Joe Biden told a cheering crowd.“I’m tired of jobs going overseas… But not anymore. We’re building products here and shipping overseas!” he added.The influence of the union, a symbol of America’s working class, cannot be understated.The endorsement secures a major win for Biden, who hoped to win the group’s favor after appearing on a picket line with striking auto workers last fall – a first for a sitting president. Biden said it was his goal to “be the most pro-union president ever.”A grateful Biden has now taken the stage after receiving UAW’s endorsement.“This November, we can stand up and elect someone who stands with us and supports our cause, or we can elect someone who will divide us, and fight us every step of the way,” UAW president Shawn Fain said.“That’s what this choice is about. The question is, who do we want in that office to give us the best shot of winning?”“Biden!” someone could be heard shouting from the crowd.The endorsement of UAW is likely to send a message that Biden is on the side of working-class Americans – a group the Trump campaign has tried to court in the past.Addressing the union, UAW president Shawn Fain spoke of unity and putting fear in the hearts of the billionaire class.“They try to weaken us by dividing us,” Fain said, referring to large corporations that take the lion’s share of profits. “The wealthy divide the masses as the rich walk away with all the money.”Biden is about to address the United Automobile Workers union at their conference held in Washington. The powerful labor group is expected to endorse the president for a second term, AP reports. It’s good news for Biden who needs to make gains in key swing states like Michigan and Wisconsin, where auto-manufacturing is major industry.UAW also endorsed Biden in 2020.Joe Biden is about to address the annual conference of the United Auto Workers union, in Washington, DC, and reports are multiplying that the union intends to endorse him for re-election as US president.The Democrat from working class Scranton has frequently called himself the most pro-union US president and he became the first sitting president to appear on a picket line when he supported the auto workers in their industrial action against the big three makers of Ford, General Motors and Chrysler vehicles last fall.Outlets including NBC, CNN and the New York Times are among those citing sources that the UAW will endorse Biden this afternoon. Reuters cited the NYT in its report.Biden told striking workers last September in Michigan that they deserved a big pay rise, after years of wage scrimping while their corporations did well. The workers ended up getting deals and resolving the strikes.The Senate this afternoon is expected to confirm Jacquelyn Austin to become a US district judge South Carolina and Cristal Brisco to become a US district judge in the northern district of Indiana.The two women will bring the total number of Black women appointed to lifetime seats on the federal bench in Joe Biden’s presidency to 35.Judge Brisco will be the first Black judge and first woman of color to serve as a lifetime judge on the northern district of Indiana. Judge Austin will be the third Black woman to serve as a lifetime judge on the district of South Carolina and the only Black woman who will be currently serving, the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights noted in a statement earlier today.“Milestones like this are important. The Senate’s confirmation of 35 Black women – many of whom have worked to advance civil and human rights throughout their legal careers – to lifetime appointments on our federal courts continues the Biden administration’s historic progress toward building a judiciary that reflects and represents the vast diversity of our nation. We celebrate this progress, including the critical yet underrepresented legal backgrounds that many of these judges bring to the bench,” said Lena Zwarensteyn, senior director of the fair courts program at The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.Asked about the milestone at a media briefing in the west wing earlier, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said that Joe Biden “has been very proud of the women, the women of color, that he has been able to put forward for these positions…It’s important that we have this kind of representation, representation matters.”It’s been a lively morning after the night before in New Hampshire and there’s much afoot in Washington and on the campaign trail, so follow events here as they happen.Here’s where things stand:
      Joe Biden’s re-election campaign expressed confidence in the president’s ability to again defeat Donald Trump in November, even as polls show the two men running neck and neck. Biden also made some changes to his campaign team, bringing in reinforcements from the White House.
      Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel called on Nikki Haley to drop her 2024 presidential bid, the day after Trump beat her in the New Hampshire primary.
      Joe Biden won New Hampshire’s Democratic presidential primary, even though the incumbent refused to campaign in the state and had to rely on a write-in campaign powered by his allies and surrogates to secure a victory.
      Nikki Haley vowed to carry on her campaign despite losing the New Hampshire primary by a significant margin. She immediately headed to her home state of South Carolina, which holds its Republican primary on 23 February.
      Donald Trump comfortably won the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday evening, beating his only remaining credible contender, Haley, into second place. It was not a crushing victory but it was solid.
      Dean Phillips, the Democratic congressman from Minnesota, is pushing on with his 2024 bid for president.On Wednesday, Phillips departed for South Carolina ahead of the state’s primaries next month. According to his campaign, Phillips is set to greet patrons at the Bistreaux by Fleur de Licious, a restaurant in the state capital Columbia, this evening.Speaking to ABC on Tuesday, Phillips vowed to stay in the race, saying,
      “The country would be much happier with a Dean Phillips-Nikki Haley matchup this November. I know she’s hearing that. I’m hearing the same thing.”
      Donald Trump spent his victory night in New Hampshire privately seething to his aides, according to reports.CNN reports that after the polls for the state’s primary closed, Trump “continued to rail against Nikki Haley privately and publicly after she declined to drop out of the race”.The ex-president also reportedly told his aides that he was baffled that Haley remains adamant about staying in the race, and urged his political aides to ramp up their attacks on his former UN ambassador.During his speech last night, Trump issued a warning to Haley, saying: “Just a little note to Nikki. She’s not going to win. But if she did, she would be under investigation by those people in 15 minutes, and I could tell you five reasons why already.”He added: “Not big reasons, little stuff that she doesn’t want to talk about, that she will be under investigation within minutes, and so would Ron [DeSantis] have been, but he decided to get out.Joe Biden’s campaign expressed confidence in the president’s ability to again defeat Donald Trump in November, even as polls show the two men running neck and neck.Quentin Fulks, Biden’s deputy campaign manager, noted that Trump’s 11-point margin of victory in New Hampshire last night was actually narrower than his 20-point win in 2016, when he was running against more opponents.“To put simply, Trump’s party is divided, and now he’s about to face the only politician who has ever beaten him and who did so with more votes than any presidential candidate in history: President Joe Biden,” Fulks said.But reporters pressed campaign officials about Biden’s performance in polls, some of which show Trump pulling ahead in key battleground states.“We don’t govern based on polls, and polls are just a snapshot in time,” said Cedric Richmond, the Biden campaign co-chair. “If I had a dollar for every time somebody counted Joe Biden out based on polls or something else, then I’d be independently wealthy.”He added: “Do we think we’re going to win? Absolutely. Because there’s too much on the line not to for the American people.” More

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      Upbeat Haley vows to press on but prospects against Trump look bleak

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      Nikki Haley was surprisingly peppy as she took the stage in New Hampshire on Tuesday, considering she had just suffered her second bruising defeat by Donald Trump. Trump beat Haley by 11 points in New Hampshire, a victory that came on the heels of the former president’s 30-point win in the Iowa caucuses.Undaunted by the reality of her losses, the former UN ambassador pledged that she would continue on in the Republican presidential primary. Haley voiced confidence about her performance in her home state of South Carolina, which will hold its Republican primary on 24 February.“New Hampshire is first in the nation. It is not the last in the nation,” Haley told supporters in Concord. “This race is far from over. There are dozens of states left to go, and the next one is my sweet state of South Carolina.”But everyone not named Nikki Haley appears all too ready to declare the Republican primary over. With Trump winning a historic majority of votes in Iowa and New Hampshire, Haley’s path to the nomination appears increasingly difficult – if not impossible. In his victory speech on Tuesday, Trump belittled her efforts to downplay her losses and mocked her decision to stay in the race.“She had a very bad night,” Trump said. “She came in third [in Iowa], and she’s still hanging around.”In a rare moment of agreement between Trump and Joe Biden, the president made clear that he would turn his attention to the general election in November, effectively writing off any chance of a Haley comeback.“It is now clear that Donald Trump will be the Republican nominee. And my message to the country is the stakes could not be higher,” Biden said in a statement. “I want to say to all those independents and Republicans who share our commitment to core values of our nation our Democracy, our personal freedoms, an economy that gives everyone a fair shot – to join us as Americans.”Despite Haley’s claims to the contrary, her prospects in South Carolina and beyond look bleak. According to the FiveThirtyEight polling average, Trump is running 37 points ahead of Haley in South Carolina, where he has already locked up the endorsements of the state’s governor and senators. If anything, Haley’s losing performance in New Hampshire may represent a high-water mark for her, given her strong support among independent voters who were allowed to participate in the Republican primary.There’s also the question of money. Haley has reportedly planned a major fundraising swing with big donors in the coming weeks. However, if those donors start abandoning her in large numbers, Haley may have no choice but to withdraw .Of course, Haley’s campaign insists she can be competitive in many states that will vote on Super Tuesday, which falls on 5 March. In a campaign memo circulated on Tuesday, Betsy Ankney, Haley’s campaign manager, noted that roughly two-thirds of the 874 delegates up for grabs on Super Tuesday are in states with open or semi-open primaries.“Until then, everyone should take a deep breath. The campaign has not even begun in any of these states yet,” Ankney said. “A month in politics is a lifetime. We’re watching democracy in action. We’re letting the people have a voice. That’s how this is supposed to work.”As Haley looks ahead to South Carolina, her campaign has leaned into the message that she is the most electable Republican candidate. In one of two new ads that the Haley campaign dropped in South Carolina on Wednesday, a narrator highlights Biden and Trump’s unpopularity and makes the pitch for a new era of political leadership.“Biden – too old. Trump – too much chaos,” the narrator in the ad says. “A rematch no one wants. There’s a better choice for a better America.”Some data supports Haley’s electability argument. She performed well with moderate Republican voters in New Hampshire, pointing to a potential vulnerability for Trump in November, and one Wall Street Journal poll frequently cited by Haley’s team showed her beating Biden by 17 points in a general election.The problem is, she has no viable route to that general election.Nevertheless, at the election night watch party in Concord, Haley’s supporters echoed the candidate’s resilience.“I’m not about to have a panic attack after one state,” Marie Mulroy, 76, said moments after Haley spoke. Mulroy is an independent New Hampshire voter who backed Biden in 2020 and remains hopeful she’ll have the opportunity to cast her ballot for the first female president in November.“If it’s like this after Super Tuesday, then you start thinking,” she added.Mary Ann Hanusa was so committed to electing Haley that she flew to New Hampshire to volunteer for her campaign after caucusing for Haley in Iowa, where she lives. Hanusa said she was prepared to go to South Carolina to help.“I think Americans deserve a choice,” she said. “We’ve got 48 states to go.” More

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      Nikki Haley has been running to lead a Republican party that no longer exists | Moira Donegan

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      Can we stop pretending now? After weeks of speculating by the media that perhaps Nikki Haley might eke out a win in New Hampshire – or at least lose by a percentage small enough to make continuing in the race reasonable – she lost by a wide margin.Before we had been offered various rationales for why, just maybe, this wouldn’t happen. Haley, after all, had recently come into a flush of donor money at the end of 2023, as the field dwindled and she was left alone as the last almost-plausible non-Trump candidate. She’d put much of that money into New Hampshire, a state whose Republicans tend to hew more moderate. (Haley, a rabid conservative but one who does not seem to oppose the rule of law outright, is what passes for “moderate” in today’s Republican party.)There was also the force of history to consider, the fact that primary campaigns of either major party do not usually look like this. When there’s such a big field, as there was in this Republican cycle, normally New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation primary can have quite a bit of sway, helping to advance the strongest contenders and cull the stragglers.But this year there were only two people really running by the time New Hampshire rolled around, and one of them loomed much larger than the other – both in fundraising and in his power to animate the public. It was like watching a race between a whale and a minnow: he lapped her without seeming to try.One word for the 2024 Republican primary contest is “anticlimactic”. But considering how completely Trump has captured the imagination of his party, it is possible that the real story is not about how easily he has trounced his challengers, but that there were so many challengers in the first place.What possessed so many Republicans to run against Trump? Were they delusional? Hopeful? Cynical? Had they missed the memo on what their party had become – a personality cult devoted in total service to one man? Or did they think, somehow, that he was weaker than he was?Perhaps this was the idea of the Trump imitators. Whiny, pleading Ron DeSantis hoped that if he demonstrated enough cruelty in Florida, his home state, Republican voters might admire him as strong, and forget how annoying he is. He was Trump without the charm.Nasally, scheming Vivek Ramaswamy attempted to channel Trump’s snake-oil salesman pitch for nostalgia, punishment of enemies and exaggerated promises; he was Trump without the movement.Chris Christie, the former governor of New Jersey best known for shutting down the George Washington Bridge to punish a mayor who had crossed him, was the only Republican willing to attack Trump, building his campaign around severe, self-serious intonations about the former president’s danger to the nation. But it was impossible to take Christie seriously: he could not convincingly feign honor.Maybe it was fitting, then, that Haley was the last one standing: though she was equally misguided, she was doing something different from her fellow candidates. Haley’s campaign, focused on a revival of a hawkish neoconservative foreign policy and a comparative de-emphasis of social issues, seemed uncannily retro and anachronistic – a 90s-era Republican wearing a 21st-century blazer set.Hers was a campaign that talked about a generational shift and played up Haley’s relative youth (she’s 52), but which also seemed to wish for a return to the political past, attempting to proceed as if Trump had never happened. Who could look at today’s Republican party – animated by racist and misogynist zeal, in thrall to short-sightedness and bigotry, harnessed around petty grievances and functionally largely, for its base, to entertain – and think that what such people wanted was a competent, cool-headed and strategic woman of color? Only the most naive people in the world could think that. Haley, at least, was willing to take their money.In debates, Haley talked about the virtues of foreign military involvement and played up her own discipline and competence. There might be arguments for all this, but they are clearly not arguments that the Republican party base wanted to hear: foreign wars remain unpopular in post-Iraq America. (Trump’s pivot to an “America First” isolationism seems to have returned Republicans to a Lindbergh-esque hostility to the outside world for the foreseeable future.)And things like competence, self-discipline and hard work are qualities that tend to render women into useful, serviceable minor characters – the sort of background figures who can be useful to a man of showmanship and bombast.One of the most plausible explanations for Haley’s campaign has always been that she is actually running for vice-president. This might be the role she is best suited to play: that of a bridge between the old-guard establishment Republicans and the new, permanently Trumpist reality.But it’s unclear how much of a reconciliation is really needed there. After his landslide victory in Iowa, the big donor money has once again flowed to Trump; reporters at Davos issued dispatches detailing how the global rich have made their peace with Trump’s possible return to the White House.The old-school Republicans that Haley represents have never been as far from Trump as it would benefit their egos to pretend. The national war hawks, the corporate rich: these people do not need the democracy that Trump threatens. And in a few days or weeks, when she inevitably drops out of the race and endorses Trump, Nikki Haley will discover that she can live without it, too.
      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More

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      Haley vows to fight on despite Trump win in New Hampshire – podcast

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      Donald Trump has won the first in the nation primary election in New Hampshire, making it almost inevitable that we’re poised for the first rematch in a general election since 1956. Despite coming in second in a two-person race, Nikki Haley celebrated at her election night event in Concord.
      So in our final episode of this special three-part series from New Hampshire, Jonathan Freedland speaks to Lauren Gambino and Semafor’s David Weigel about whether or not Haley actually has reason to be positive. Or is she running on hope rather than reason?

      How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know More