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      Biden Ad Shows Woman Forced to Leave Texas to End Dangerous Pregnancy

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      President Biden’s campaign is releasing a new advertisement featuring the testimonial of a woman who was forced to leave Texas to end a planned pregnancy that put her life at risk.In the 60-second spot, Dr. Austin Dennard, an OB-GYN and a mother of three from Texas, says she became pregnant with a baby that she “desperately wanted.” When she was 11 weeks pregnant, her fetus was diagnosed with anencephaly, a fatal condition in which a baby is born without parts of a brain and skull.“In Texas, you are forced to carry that pregnancy, and that is because of Donald Trump overturning Roe v. Wade,” she says, speaking directly to the camera. “It’s every woman’s worst nightmare, and it was absolutely unbearable.”The ad is part of an effort by the Biden team to orient its campaign around abortion rights, which has mobilized voters since the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade in June 2022.Mr. Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and top campaign surrogates have planned a frenzy of events next week calling for the protection of abortion rights, pegged to the anniversary of Roe on Monday. Abortion access, Democrats argue, is one of many personal rights and freedoms that will be taken away if Mr. Trump wins the White House this fall.The ad, which will run for a week, is aimed at suburban women and younger voters. It is scheduled to be broadcast during the season premiere of “The Bachelor” and on channels known to attract female viewers, including HGTV, TLC, Bravo, Hallmark, the Food Network and Oxygen. The ad will also be shown during the N.F.L. conference championship games next Sunday.Dr. Dennard, a professor at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School in Dallas, is one of more than a dozen women suing the State of Texas to clarify the “medical emergency” exception to the state’s abortion ban.In July, she testified that because she was not “critically ill,” she did not believe she would qualify for an abortion under the “extremely nebulous and confusing” law. Separately, she also met with Jill Biden as part of an effort to raise awareness about abortion bans.“Even prayed-for, planned pregnancies can end in abortion,” she told the first lady. “The state of Texas should not be making these decisions for me or for anybody else.” More

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      New Haley Ad to Play Up Her Foreign Policy Expertise, and Subtly Hit Trump

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      A 3-minute commercial set to run on Monday features a mother whose son died just after his release from North Korea. It may remind voters of Donald Trump’s friendliness toward the country’s dictator.Nikki Haley’s closing argument to New Hampshire primary voters will include a three-minute ad featuring the emotional story of the mother of a college student who died shortly after North Korea released him from captivity in 2017, and whose cause Ms. Haley championed as United Nations ambassador.The ad, which the Haley campaign said would run across the state on Monday, is narrated by Cynthia Warmbier, the mother of Otto Warmbier, a University of Virginia honors student from Cincinnati who was imprisoned in North Korea after visiting the country on an organized tour.“He was taken hostage, tortured and murdered by the government of North Korea,” Ms. Warmbier, who spoke at Ms. Haley’s campaign kickoff event last year, is shown telling the crowd there. “When we were begging the Obama administration for help, they told us to be quiet and be patient. Nikki told us the opposite. She told me it’s OK to be afraid, like I am now, but I had to push through the fear.”Ms. Warmbier describes Ms. Haley as a fighter on the world stage and a leader with strength and compassion.The ad appears geared toward attracting, among other voters, the suburban women who have left the Republican Party in recent years and are a key constituency in New Hampshire and beyond.In portraying North Korea as evil and responsible for the young man’s death, the ad may also remind voters of former President Donald J. Trump’s frequent boasts about his friendly relationship with Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader.Ms. Haley has portrayed Mr. Trump as a destabilizing force in international relations who cozied up to dictators and terrorists.Ms. Warmbier and her son’s story played a recurring bit part in the Trump administration.During Mr. Trump’s 2018 State of the Union address, Ms. Warmbier and her husband, Fred, stood and wept as Mr. Trump described the “menace” of North Korea and paid tribute to Otto.It was later reported that North Korea had billed the United States $2 million for Otto’s medical treatment before releasing him, though Mr. Trump denied paying the country anything.The Warmbiers later released a blistering statement after Mr. Trump met with the North Korean leader and said he believed Mr. Kim’s claim that he did not know what happened to Mr. Warmbier while he was in captivity.“Some really bad things happened to Otto — some really, really bad things. But he tells me that he didn’t know about it, and I will take him at his word,” Mr. Trump said.But Ms. Haley said otherwise: “Americans know the cruelty that was placed on Otto Warmbier by the North Korean regime,” she wrote on social media. More

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      Do Political Ads Even Matter Anymore?

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      A confluence of political forces and changing media behavior are testing their efficacy in the Trump era.In a presidential election year, no glowing rectangle in Iowa or New Hampshire is safe from an endless deluge of political ads.Campaign ads are inescapable on the nightly news, “Wheel of Fortune” and YouTube. Even the high-dollar, high-visibility ad blocks of professional and college football games have become increasingly saturated.It’s a deeply entrenched multimillion-dollar industry, and one of the largest expenses of every presidential campaign. But a confluence of political forces and changing media behavior may be testing the efficacy of political advertising in the Trump era.Nikki Haley and her allied super PAC spent roughly $28 million on broadcast ads in Iowa, according to AdImpact, an ad-tracking firm. Gov. Ron DeSantis and his allies spent $25 million. Trump and his super PAC spent only $15 million — and won by more than 30 points.As my colleagues Michael Bender and Katie Glueck reported, that result showed a new depth to the Republican Party’s devotion to Trump. But it also suggests that a smaller universe of persuadable voters and a wholesale shift in viewing habits may have significantly undercut the impact of political advertising.According to Cross Screen Media, an ad analytics firm, only 63 percent of Iowa Republicans are reachable with traditional or “linear” TV ads, as viewers switch to streaming and social media. In 2016, that percentage was still in the 90s. At most, Republican campaigns this year reached 42 percent of likely caucus voters.“I don’t think that people have caught up with where the media consumption is,” said Michael Beach, chief executive of Cross Screen Media.The pivot to streaming is potentially deadly for political ad buyers. Beach estimates that almost 40 percent of the time viewers spend on television is on streaming, but streaming offers far fewer opportunities to show ads to viewers than traditional programming.Granite State mediaNew Hampshire’s presidential race is much closer than Iowa’s was, with polls showing Haley trailing Trump by single digits. And Trump faces a similar advertising deficit, with Haley and her allies spending more than twice as much as Trump’s campaign and its allied super PAC.But the tone of advertising in New Hampshire has taken a sharply negative turn on the former president. Ten times as many negative ads attacking Trump have run in New Hampshire over the past 30 days as ran in Iowa, according to data from AdImpact. The biggest such spender is the SFA Fund, the super PAC supporting Haley, which is portraying Trump as a liar prone to temper tantrums.Trump and his allies have responded, spending $1.4 million on a single ad attacking Haley over immigration, and $2.7 million on one targeting her support for raising the gas tax when she was governor of South Carolina in 2015 (she also called for a corresponding income tax cut).30-second issuesThe New Hampshire ads reveal the key issues that each campaign is hoping will boost their support in the final days. The Trump campaign and MAGA Inc., the super PAC supporting his campaign, have spent more in New Hampshire on ads regarding immigration than any other issue, according to AdImpact.Haley’s campaign has almost exclusively run ads portraying her as representing a “new generation” and castigating Trump and President Biden as too old for the presidency. The SFA Fund has made taxes core to its ad campaign, with nearly half its ad spending over the past month promoting Haley’s pledge to cut taxes for the middle class or defending her record on taxes.(DeSantis, who is far behind Trump and Haley in New Hampshire, had not broadcast any ads in the state in over a month when DeSantis and his super PAC announced Wednesday that they would be leaving the state to focus on South Carolina.)But there may be slightly more of an opportunity for Haley to close the gap. According to Cross Screen Media, 80 percent of New Hampshire Republican voters are reachable by traditional television advertising.Speaker Mike Johnson will most likely need to rely on Democrats to avoid a shutdown.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesThe House G.O.P.’s incredible shrinking majorityThanks to a combination of coincidence, scandal, health issues and political turmoil, the Republican majority in the House of Representatives keeps getting smaller.This week, with lawmakers absent for medical reasons and the recent not-so-voluntary departures of the ousted former speaker Kevin McCarthy and the expelled George Santos, the best G.O.P. attendance that Speaker Mike Johnson can muster as he tries to avoid a government shutdown is the bare-minimum 218 votes. That is before factoring in the impact of rough winter weather across the nation.Another Republican, Representative Bill Johnson of Ohio, is resigning as of Sunday to take a job as a university president, lowering the number to 217 if Representative Harold Rogers of Kentucky, the 86-year-old dean of the House, is unable to quickly return from recuperating from a car accident. Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the No. 2 Republican, is out until at least next month while undergoing cancer treatment.As a result, the G.O.P. could soon be able to afford just a single defection on any matter if Democrats remain united and have no absences of their own.Republicans are in a real numerical bind. At a time when House Republicans regularly face internal rebellion from hard-line conservatives, Johnson has absolutely no cushion if he chooses to rely strictly on the votes of his own party, which is part of the reason he cut a deal with Democrats on spending to avoid a shutdown later this week, further angering the hard right.Democrats say the recurring scenario of leaning on them for must-pass bills is proof that even though Republicans are the majority party on the tally sheet, they don’t have a working majority because of their diminished forces and constant internal squabbling.“When anything hits the fan, they don’t have 218,” said Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the former longtime Democratic majority leader, referring to the number that represents a basic majority in the 435-member House. “They are not the majority party in this House.”Johnson, the novice speaker, said it was a problem he could handle.“I’m undaunted by this,” he said recently on CBS. “We deal with the numbers that we have.” — Carl HulseRead the full story here.More politics news and analysisBacking down: The super PAC supporting Ron DeSantis began laying off staff.Disorder in the court: A judge threatened to throw Donald Trump out of his defamation trial.No-shows: CNN canceled its Republican debate in New Hampshire for lack of participation.History lesson: Haley and DeSantis were asked about race in America, and it got awkward.You would cry too: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wants to create his own party to get on the ballot.Read past editions of the newsletter here.If you’re enjoying what you’re reading, please consider recommending it to others. They can sign up here. Browse all of our subscriber-only newsletters here.Have feedback? Ideas for coverage? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More

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      Republican Presidential Primary: 7 Numbers That Tell the Story

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      There’s $46,499,124.63. There’s 3 percent. Here are five other figures that shed light on the dynamics at play before Monday’s caucuses.The only numbers that will truly matter in the Iowa caucuses on Monday will be the number of votes tallied for Donald J. Trump, Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy.But there are a number of, well, numbers that help explain the Republican nominating contest. In most polls, Mr. Trump holds a solid lead, while Ms. Haley and Mr. DeSantis are battling it out far behind in a fight for second place.Here are seven numbers that show how we got here — and what comes next.28 percentage pointsMr. Trump’s lead in the Iowa Poll The bar has been set.In the Iowa Poll released on Saturday evening by The Des Moines Register, NBC News and Mediacom, Mr. Trump was winning 48 percent of likely caucusgoers. It’s a dominant showing that’s more than the total support measured for Ms. Haley (20 percent) and Mr. DeSantis (16 percent) combined.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      Trump’s Dominance and Snowy Weather Put Iowa’s Caucus Economy on Ice

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      Even before a snowstorm brought Des Moines to a near standstill on Friday, the city felt decidedly more subdued than it usually does around the Iowa caucuses: quiet restaurants, empty streets, bartenders with little to do.The numbers confirm it: The 2024 caucuses are expected to bring less than 40 percent of the direct economic impact to the capital that the 2020 contest provided — an estimated $4.2 million, down from $11.3 million four years ago. Direct economic impact measures what visitors do, like sleeping, driving, eating and drinking.It is a striking decline that reflects, among other things, diminished media engagement in a presidential race that is less competitive than in past years, when the state has been inundated by presidential hopefuls, their campaigns and teams of journalists in hot pursuit.“Media is way down,” said Greg Edwards, the chief executive of the Greater Des Moines Convention and Visitors Bureau, which provided the numbers. “The major networks aren’t sending their major anchors like they have in the past.”The $4.2 million figure does not represent the caucuses’ total economic boom to Iowa. Tens of millions of dollars have flowed into the state in recent months, culminating this week in a frenzy of events. The campaigns and their supporting super PACs have spent $119.6 million on television advertising in Iowa, according to an analysis by AdImpact, a media-tracking firm.Downtown Des Moines on Friday, when presidential candidates canceled several events.Hilary Swift for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      Christie Says in a New Ad That He Was Wrong to Support Trump in 2016

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      Former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey said in a new ad released Thursday that he had been wrong to endorse Donald J. Trump in 2016.“I have an admission to make,” Mr. Christie said directly to the camera in the 60-second ad, part of a series his campaign is running in New Hampshire, where he has staked his campaign on a strong showing. “Eight years ago, when I decided to endorse Donald Trump for president, I did it because he was winning, and I did it because I thought I could make him a better candidate and a better president. Well, I was wrong. I made a mistake.”Mr. Christie endorsed Mr. Trump in 2016 after ending his own presidential campaign, and he went on to be a powerful surrogate. His campaign argues that, while several Republicans who previously supported Mr. Trump are now running against him for the party’s nomination, Mr. Christie is the only one willing to say he erred by supporting Mr. Trump in the first place. He suggested in the ad that this was evidence of his “character.”“Now, we’re confronted with the very same choice again,” he said in the ad, which was first reported by Axios. “Donald Trump is ahead in the polls, so everyone says, ‘Anyone who’s behind him should drop out, and we should make our choice Donald Trump versus Joe Biden.’ Well, Joe Biden has had the wrong policies, and Donald Trump would sell the soul of this country. Neither choice is acceptable to me, and it shouldn’t be acceptable to you.”Over the past few weeks, an increasing number of Republicans — most prominently Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire — have called on Mr. Christie to end his campaign. Their argument is not for a rematch between Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden, but rather for narrowing the field of Mr. Trump’s primary opponents to a single candidate who can defeat him and prevent such a rematch.Mr. Sununu and many Republican donors and strategists think that candidate should be Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor.Mr. Christie is polling better in New Hampshire than in other early-voting states — he is averaging about 11 percent there, good enough for third place ahead of Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida — but he is still far behind Ms. Haley, who is herself far behind Mr. Trump. Mr. Christie says Ms. Haley is not sufficiently distinguishing herself from the former president.Mr. Sununu’s endorsement of Ms. Haley last month was a blow to the Christie campaign. He followed it a couple of weeks later by declaring Mr. Christie’s bid to be “at an absolute dead end” and suggesting that his continued presence in the race would only help Mr. Trump. More

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      Vivek Ramaswamy Stops TV Ad Spending

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      The campaign’s abrupt shift, focusing on other voter outreach efforts, reflects a significant change in strategy less than three weeks before the Iowa caucuses.Vivek Ramaswamy, the wealthy entrepreneur seeking the Republican Party’s presidential nomination, has stopped spending money on cable television ads, a campaign representative said on Tuesday.With just weeks to go until the Iowa caucuses kick off the voting for the nomination, Mr. Ramaswamy’s campaign is maintaining its total advertising outlays, Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the campaign, said. However, it is shifting away from traditional television toward other methods of voter outreach for a “higher return on investment,” she added. NBC News first reported the campaign’s halt in TV ad spending.“We’re just following the data,” Ms. McLaughlin said in a statement, adding that “we are focused on bringing out the voters we’ve identified — best way to reach them is using addressable advertising, mail, text, live calls and doors to communicate with our voters.”She pointed out the huge sums that have already been sunk into the presidential campaign, saying that “$190 million in traditional advertising has been spent in this race nationally. Polls have barely changed.”It is nevertheless an abrupt shift in strategy for Mr. Ramaswamy’s campaign, which has spent millions on advertising. The Ramaswamy campaign reserved about $1 million in television ads in Iowa last month — nearly double what his campaign and an allied super PAC spent in the prior month.But Mr. Ramaswamy has struggled to make headway in Iowa, despite the intense spending and a packed schedule of campaign appearances. He estimated to reporters last month that he had spent around $20 million on his run to that point.He maintains a distant fourth place in state polls, with less than 10 percent support. His approval ratings among Republicans nationally have also steadily declined since September, and his disapproval ratings among all Americans hit a new peak in national polls.He has recently pushed right-wing conspiracy theories in campaign appearances. He has called the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol an “inside job,” claimed that the 2020 election was stolen by “big tech” and suggested that the “great replacement theory” was Democratic policy.Ms. McLaughlin noted that the Ramaswamy campaign would continue to field some ads through digital television providers — for example, YouTube TV. More

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      New DeSantis Super PAC Revives Old Casey DeSantis Ad

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      The group emerged as Mr. DeSantis’s original super PAC began canceling its planned TV advertisements in Iowa and New Hampshire.A new super PAC that popped up in support of Gov. Ron DeSantis this week is preparing to air an ad that features Casey DeSantis, his wife, talking about her experience with cancer. The ad is nearly identical to one that was broadcast during his re-election campaign for governor last year, a video of the new spot shows. The group, Good Fight, was formed on Wednesday and soon began shipping copies of the ad to television stations. The Times obtained the ad from a person who received a copy of it, but who requested anonymity in order to share it. The narration of the ad is virtually the same as in the 2022 ad, but the new version features some new images and clips — of his children playing at the Field of Dreams in Iowa, for example — briefly spliced into the middle.Such a move could be considered “republication” of an ad, which the Federal Election Commission has regulations against. For instance, the super PAC supporting the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, later paid a fine related to republishing an ad from Mr. Romney’s 2008 presidential campaign. It is unclear whether those regulations would apply here, since the original spot is from a state campaign and not a federal one. The DeSantis ad features Ms. DeSantis trying to humanize her husband — who is often described as stiff on the campaign trail — as a father and a supportive husband when she faced breast cancer. The version that aired in 2022 had a logo that read “Ron DeSantis Florida Governor” in the upper-right corner; that logo is blurred out in the new spot sent to stations, which ends with a disclaimer that it was paid for by Good Fight.Craig Mareno, an accountant with Crosby Ottenhoff, a firm based in Birmingham, Ala., is listed on documents creating the group that were filed with the F.E.C. Reached by phone, Mr. Mareno declined to answer questions about the group or the ad, and asked for an email that he could forward to another official he said could answer questions. The DeSantis campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Adav Noti of Campaign Legal Center said it was unclear how the F.E.C. would view the use of the old DeSantis ad, since Mr. DeSantis was not a federal candidate at the time. “The entire DeSantis operation, including the campaign and all of the super PACs, have been pushing the legal envelope since the beginning, and this use of prior campaign material to put out presidential campaign ads is another example,” said Mr. Noti, whose group has already filed an F.E.C. complaint accusing Mr. DeSantis’s presidential campaign of coordinating illegally with the original DeSantis super PAC, Never Back Down.Good Fight emerged as Never Back Down, a deep-pocketed but embattled organization, began canceling $2.5 million in planned television advertisements in the early nominating states of Iowa and New Hampshire, according to AdImpact, a media tracking company.Campaigns are not allowed to coordinate directly with super PACs, but the move appears to align with the strategy suggested by the DeSantis campaign in a memo in late November.James Uthmeier, Mr. DeSantis’s campaign manager, wrote in the memo that a new super PAC formed to aid the governor, Fight Right, would air television ads, and Never Back Down would focus on its “field operation and ground game.”Never Back Down has poured millions into an ambitious door-knocking operation in early states, especially in Iowa. But that ground game has sputtered, with Mr. DeSantis’s poll numbers stagnating as former President Donald J. Trump remains far ahead both in Iowa and nationally. And the super PAC itself has been embroiled in turmoil, with a series of top executives and strategists departing over the past month.Fight Right, formed by people with ties to Mr. DeSantis, originated amid internal disagreements over strategy at Never Back Down, which struggled to meld veteran political strategists from a consulting firm with DeSantis loyalists. Mr. DeSantis had also been troubled by the group’s advertising strategy, as The Times previously reported. Fight Right began airing ads in late November attacking former Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina.In a statement, Scott Wagner, the chairman of Never Back Down, said the group was “laser focused on its core mission — running the most advanced grass-roots and political caucus operation in this race and helping deliver the G.O.P. nomination for Governor DeSantis.”“We are thrilled to have Fight Right and others covering the air for Governor DeSantis while we work the ground game in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and beyond,” Mr. Wagner added.Taryn Fenske, a spokeswoman for Fight Right, said the group was placing an advertising buy of more than $2.5 million starting Sunday, with $1.3 million behind an anti-Haley ad that is slated to start running in Iowa that day.Never Back Down previously transferred $1 million to Fight Right, which helped precipitate a major leadership shake-up at the original super PAC, where some officials questioned the move. Officials with Never Back Down and Fight Right would not directly answer questions about whether the canceled $2.5 million was being used to fund the new Fight Right ads. Both Fight Right and Good Fight are using the same firm, Digital Media Placement Services, to purchase airtime, according to AdImpact’s records. More