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      Biden Will Make Rare Visit to Southern Border on Same Day as Trump

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      President Biden is planning to make a rare visit to the southern border on Thursday, according to two people briefed on the plans, traveling to Brownsville, Texas, on the same day that former President Donald J. Trump has already scheduled a border trip.The plans underscore the urgency now propelling the Biden team on immigration, which has become one of his most serious political liabilities. Under the Biden administration, record numbers of migrants have crossed the southern border — a fact that Mr. Trump and Republicans have wielded aggressively against Mr. Biden.A majority of Americans disapprove of Mr. Biden’s job performance, and polls show that the president’s detractors cite immigration more than any other policy issue when assessing him.On his Thursday trip to Brownsville, Mr. Biden plans to meet with Border Patrol, law enforcement and local officials, according to a person briefed on the matter.Mr. Trump will visit Eagle Pass in Texas on Thursday. CNN was the first to report his planned trip last week. On the trip, Mr. Trump plans to deliver remarks from the border to highlight the immigration crisis and lay blame at the feet of Mr. Biden, according to a person close to Mr. Trump who was not authorized to discuss the plans publicly.Mr. Trump is expected to highlight crimes committed by migrants in New York and in other cities, as well as the arrest of a Venezuelan undocumented immigrant in the recent high-profile killing of a 22-year-old nursing student in Georgia, the person added. More

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      Months After Backing Haley, Koch Network Suspends Support for Her Campaign

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      The group’s chief executive wrote in an email to staff on Sunday that it would now focus on House and Senate races.The political network created by the billionaire industrialist Koch brothers announced on Sunday that it was suspending its support for Nikki Haley in the presidential primary after her latest defeat in South Carolina.The group, Americans for Prosperity Action, had spent tens of millions of dollars trying to elevate Ms. Haley and prevent the renomination of Donald J. Trump, but it had already slowed its spending in the G.O.P. race dramatically after Ms. Haley fell short in the New Hampshire primary last month. The organization made its decision official on Sunday.“Given the challenges in the primary states ahead, we don’t believe any outside group can make a material difference to widen her path to victory,” Emily Seidel, the chief executive of Americans for Prosperity Action, wrote in an email to the staff. The email was first reported by Politico.Ms. Seidel wrote that the group would now focus on House and Senate races, adding that the conservative organization remained concerned about the political aftershocks of Mr. Trump winning the G.O.P. nomination.“If Donald Trump is at the top of the Republican ticket, the risk of one-party rule by a Democratic Party captured by the progressive left is severe,” she wrote.Ms. Seidel described how the last three elections had shown “what we can expect from voters who consistently rejected Donald Trump and his impact on the Republican party brand.”Ms. Haley’s campaign had announced that it had raised $1 million in the less than 24 hours since polls closed in South Carolina on Saturday and she lost her home state. She has vowed to stay in the race through Super Tuesday, on March 5.In a statement, the Haley campaign praised Americans for Prosperity Action as an ally.“We thank them for their tremendous help in this race,” the statement read. “Our fight continues, and with more than $1 million coming in from grass-roots conservatives in just the last 24 hours, we have plenty of fuel to keep going. We have a country to save.”The endorsement from the group, which was announced in November, was crucial for Ms. Haley. It came as she was trying to gain traction against Mr. Trump, particularly given how small her team was at the time. It gave her access to a direct-mail operation, field workers to knock on doors and people to make phone calls to prospective voters in Iowa and other states.Still, despite those efforts, Ms. Haley came in a distant third to Mr. Trump in Iowa. One person close to the network said that it had focused on grass-roots voter outreach in the final stretch leading up to South Carolina, as opposed to advertising.After word of the group’s pullback became public, Mr. Trump posted on his social media website that Charles Koch “and his group got played for suckers right from the beginning!” More

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      The 2024 Election May Be Decided By Nonvoters. If They Vote.

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      “I wish God gave green noses to undecided voters, because between now and election eve, I’d work only the green noses,” Matt Reese, one of America’s first full-time political consultants, liked to say.Listen to this article, read by Natalia CastellanosOpen this article in the New York Times Audio app on iOS.Decades after Reese helped John F. Kennedy win the 1960 Democratic primary, consultants no longer need to wish for divine intervention. Microtargeting — the kind of selective persuasion efforts that Reese dreamed of — has become a fixture of 21st-century campaigns. Field operatives now target swing voters house by house, carrying computer tablets loaded with polling, registration and market-research data. And everyone understands that in close presidential elections, a few thousand votes in one state or another may decide the winner.But as Americans grow more polarized in their political identities, the number of swing voters diminishes. So a different kind of inconsistent voter grows more important: one who vacillates not so much between parties or candidates but between voting and not voting. Let’s call them the “ambivalent voters.” They’re the ones who often believe that showing up at the polls just isn’t worth the hassle.Elections, historically, are decided not only by those who cast votes but also by those who don’t. President George W. Bush edged out Al Gore in the 2000 election by 537 ballots in Florida. Yet there’s a case to be made that the five million Floridians who were eligible to vote in that election but did not were the ones who really tipped the balance. And nearly half of Americans regularly join the opt-out club. According to the University of Florida Election Lab, 44 percent of citizens who were eligible to vote in 2020 did not. The political scientists Lyn Ragsdale and Jerrold G. Rusk of Rice University have calculated that from 1920 to 2012, the slice of voters who sat out presidential contests averaged 42 percent. But in any given election, those who stay home or tune out may change: Fully 25 percent of the ballots in 2020 were cast by people who didn’t vote in 2016. A “nonvoter” can transform into a voter at any time — and if most of them break in the same direction, their decision to participate can be decisive.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? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      After South Carolina, Trump’s March to the Nomination Quickens

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      The reality has been clear for weeks, since former President Donald J. Trump trounced his opponents across the frozen fields and icy highways of Iowa. But his overwhelming victory on Saturday in South Carolina, where he defeated Nikki Haley in her home state, makes it all but official.The Republican nominating contest isn’t a competition. It’s a coronation.The party primaries this winter represented the best chance for Republicans who were opposed to the former president to oust him from his dominant position in the G.O.P. The stakes were extraordinarily high: Many of his Republican opponents see Mr. Trump as, at best, unelectable and, at worst, a threat to the foundations of American democracy.And yet, as the campaign has moved through the first nominating contests, the race has not revealed Mr. Trump’s weaknesses, but instead the enduring nature of his ironclad grip on the Republican Party. From the backrooms of Capitol Hill to the town hall meetings of New Hampshire to the courtrooms of New York City, Mr. Trump shows no sign of being shaken from his controlling position in the party — not in 2024, and not in the foreseeable future.“I think the party will be done with Trump when Trump is done with the party,” said David Kochel, a longtime Republican strategist who is opposed to Mr. Trump. “That’s the long and short of it.”All of Mr. Trump’s primary rivals, except Ms. Haley, have folded and endorsed his candidacy. He has conquered state parties and the Republican National Committee, installing loyalists in key posts, and collected the backing of vast numbers of Republican elected officials. And what once appeared to be extraordinary political liabilities — the 91 felony counts against him, his increasingly extreme rhetoric, his role in the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol — have only served to bolster his support among the Republican faithful.With his victory on Saturday, Mr. Trump has swept all the early nominating contests — Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, the U.S. Virgin Islands, South Carolina — an unprecedented achievement in a contested primary race. He heads into Super Tuesday on March 5, when a third of all delegates to the G.O.P. convention will be awarded, with “maximum velocity,” said the Republican governor of South Carolina, Henry McMaster, who endorsed Mr. Trump over his predecessor, Ms. Haley.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? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Nikki Haley Vows to Stay in the Race After Losing to Trump in South Carolina

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      Despite another stinging defeat, this time on her home turf in South Carolina, Nikki Haley said on Saturday that she would forge ahead in the Republican primary race regardless of the daunting road ahead.Speaking to several hundred supporters at her watch party in a ballroom in Charleston, S.C., Ms. Haley, the former governor of the state, cast herself as the voice for the “huge numbers” of Americans looking for an alternative to President Biden and former President Donald J. Trump.She argued that Mr. Trump would be a losing candidate in November and that the nation could not afford four more years of his turbulence or what she described as Mr. Biden’s failures.“I know that 40 percent is not 50 percent,” she said to some laughs, nodding to her share of the vote around the time she spoke. “But I also know 40 percent is not some tiny group.”But she struck a more serious and determined tone in her remarks — so much so that as she began, it was difficult to tell whether she would indeed continue her bid, as she had pledged to do for weeks. But she soon put any speculation to rest.“I said earlier this week that no matter what happens in South Carolina, I will continue to run for office,” she said. “I am a woman of my word.”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? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Haley’s Loss to Trump in South Carolina Fuels More Doubts About Her Viability

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      Read five takeaways from Donald Trump’s big win over Nikki Haley in South Carolina.Former President Donald J. Trump easily defeated Nikki Haley in South Carolina’s Republican primary on Saturday, delivering a crushing blow in her home state and casting grave doubt on her long-term viability.Mr. Trump’s victory, called by The Associated Press, was widely expected, and offers fresh fodder for his contention that the race is effectively over. Ms. Haley pledged to continue her campaign, but the former president has swept the early states and is barreling toward the nomination even as a majority of delegates have yet to be awarded.“This was a little sooner than we anticipated,” he said in Columbia, S.C., minutes after the race was called, adding that he had “never seen the Republican Party so unified as it is right now.”Throughout his victory speech, Mr. Trump made it clear that he was eager to turn his attention to the general election, at one point telling the crowd: “I just wish we could do it quicker. Nine months is a long time.”He also did not mention Ms. Haley by name, alluding to her only twice: once to knock her for a disappointing finish in a Nevada primary contest with no practical value, and once for supporting an opponent of his in 2016.In her election-night speech in Charleston, S.C., Ms. Haley congratulated Mr. Trump on his victory. But she said the results — he was beating her by 60 percent to 39 percent as of late Saturday — demonstrated that “huge numbers of voters” were “saying they want an alternative.”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? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      5 Takeaways From Trump’s Big Win Over Nikki Haley in South Carolina

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      Donald J. Trump lapped Nikki Haley in the Midwest. He beat her in the Northeast. He dominated in the West. And now he has trounced the former two-term governor in her home state of South Carolina.After nearly six weeks of primary contests in geographically, demographically and ideologically diverse states, even Ms. Haley’s most ardent supporters must squint to see the faintest path to the presidential nomination for her in 2024.The race was called the moment the polls closed, and within minutes an ebullient Mr. Trump took the stage, avoiding a mistake he made in New Hampshire when Ms. Haley spoke first and, even in defeat, gave a rousing speech that had irked him.“It’s an early evening,” Mr. Trump beamed.But Ms. Haley, the former United Nations ambassador, is still vowing to plow on, warning her party that sticking with Mr. Trump and the distractions of his four criminal indictments is a pathway to defeat in November.“Today is not the end of our story,” she declared.Here are five takeaways from the South Carolina primary and what comes next:Ms. Haley cast her ballot on Kiawah Island, S.C., with her mother and children.Ruth Fremson/The New York TimesIt was a home-state failure for Haley.She campaigned more aggressively. She spent more on television advertisements. She debuted a shiny new bus to traverse the state, and kept raking in donations.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? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Haley’s Traditional Campaign Was No Match Against Trump in South Carolina

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      Some campaign professionals wonder if playing it safe was ever going to shake up the race.Nikki Haley has proudly called herself the underdog in the Republican presidential nomination fight, telling South Carolina audiences over and over how she defeated, or at least outlasted, 12 other candidates, all of them men, and then adding, “I just have one more fella to catch.”But in her race in South Carolina to catch that fellow, former President Donald J. Trump, she ran an exceptionally conventional campaign, crisscrossing the state in a bus, delivering her stump speech almost word for word, over and over, and seldom taking questions from the audience or the news media in attendance. Her guest speakers were local mayors and prosecutors.As the campaign for her home state came to a close, ending in a swift victory for Mr. Trump on Saturday night, some campaign professionals question how such a cautious effort was ever going to shake up a nominating contest in which Mr. Trump had already won the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary, and held a clear lead in South Carolina.Lis Smith, who helped run the presidential campaign of Pete Buttigieg in 2020, putting a little-known former mayor of South Bend, Ind., on the political map, said that once Ms. Haley got the race down to a two-candidate contest, “there was a huge opportunity to make a splash.”But in the state where she served as governor, Ms. Haley didn’t do much of what a candidate trying to close a yawning gap would do, Ms. Smith said — such as take questions from voters or pull stunts to grab press attention, like showing up at campaign events with surprise guests.“If you are the underdog, if you are trying to drive the narrative, you have to understand what drives the media,” she said, “and you have to be willing to make news, not give set speeches.”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? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More