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      Nikki Haley Looks to Home Turf to Challenge Trump

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      Nikki Haley, facing growing doubts and pressure to drop out, has winnowed the race to a one-on-one contest and is looking to make her case in South Carolina.A combative Nikki Haley brought her presidential campaign back to South Carolina on Wednesday after a disappointing defeat the night before in New Hampshire, and told a boisterous crowd in a cavernous ballroom in North Charleston that she would fight Donald J. Trump for the Republican nomination.“The political elites in this state and around the country say we just need to let Donald Trump have this,” she told her supporters, who were jeering at the idea. “Listen. We’ve only had two states that have voted. We’ve got 48 more.”Nowhere is more immediately important than South Carolina, where she served two terms as governor before being tapped to serve as Mr. Trump’s first ambassador to the United Nations. But just because it’s her home state does not mean it is friendly territory. As Ms. Haley looked to reinvigorate her campaign here on the ground, Republicans, as varied as local party officials and the chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, stepped up the pressure on her to drop out. As she made her case for pressing on, the former president significantly consolidated his support.While she spoke, the Trump campaign blasted out a fresh list of endorsements in South Carolina that now includes the state’s two senators, most of its House members, its governor and lieutenant governor, and much of its State House — more than 150 names in all.“Welcome home to Trump Country, Nikki,” Austin McCubbin, Mr. Trump’s South Carolina director, taunted.Some of Ms. Haley’s closest allies and confidants on Wednesday continued to insist that Ms. Haley had met her own expectations: She had winnowed the field and was now in the two-person contest she wanted, with time enough until the primary on Feb. 24 to spread her message to a broader electorate and draw contrasts between herself and Mr. Trump.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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      Boeing Reinstalled Panel That Later Blew Out of 737 Max Jet

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      Employees at its Washington State factory are said to have removed the door plug for further work before the plane was delivered to Alaska Airlines.Nearly three weeks after a hole blew open on a Boeing 737 Max 9 during an Alaska Airlines flight, terrifying passengers, new details about the jet’s production are intensifying scrutiny of Boeing’s quality-control practices.About a month before the Max 9 was delivered to Alaska Airlines in October, workers at Boeing’s factory in Renton, Wash., opened and later reinstalled the panel that would blow off the plane’s body, according to a person familiar with the matter.The employees opened the panel, known as a door plug, because work needed to be done to its rivets — which are often used to join and secure parts on planes — said the person, who asked for anonymity because the person isn’t authorized to speak publicly while the National Transportation Safety Board conducts an investigation.The request to open the plug came from employees of Spirit AeroSystems, a supplier that makes the body for the 737 Max in Wichita, Kan. After Boeing employees complied, Spirit employees who are based at Boeing’s Renton factory repaired the rivets. Boeing employees then reinstalled the door.An internal system that tracks maintenance work at the facility, which assembles 737s, shows the request for maintenance but does not contain information about whether the door plug was inspected after it was replaced, the person said.The details could begin to answer a crucial question about why the door plug detached from Flight 1282 at 16,000 feet, forcing the pilots to make an emergency landing at Portland International Airport in Oregon minutes after taking off on Jan. 5. The door plug is placed where an emergency exit door would be if a jet had more seats. To stay in place, the plug relies primarily on a pair of bolts at the top and another pair at the bottom, as well as metal pins and pads on the sides.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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      After New Hamphire, Business Braces for a Trump Nomination

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      Donald Trump cruised to victory in the state’s Republican primary, leaving anti-Trump donors and others to grapple with the reality of a near-certain nomination.Donald Trump cruised to victory in the New Hampshire Republican primary on Tuesday night.Doug Mills/The New York TimesTrump marches on As widely expected, Donald Trump handily won the New Hampshire Republican primary, defeating Nikki Haley by double digits.That has left anti-Trump donors and the broader business community glimpsing an increasingly likely future: The former president will become the Republican nominee, and stands a good shot of winning in November.Haley said she would fight on, arguing last night that “this race is far from over.” But the former South Carolina governor will head to her home state — she’s skipping the Nevada caucuses on Feb. 8 — badly trailing Trump in polls there, with many of her Palmetto State colleagues having endorsed her opponent.A growing number of Republicans are now suggesting that she should drop out: Senator John Cornyn of Texas, a senior G.O.P. lawmaker, said that his party needed “to unite around a single candidate.”Donors may start falling in line, too. A number of Haley supporters are reportedly heading to the exits: An unnamed Republican fund-raiser told CNBC’s Brian Schwartz that one of her donors was done with her campaign, declaring it over.Meanwhile, Puck’s Teddy Schleifer wrote on the social media platform X that the casino magnate Steve Wynn and the financier John Paulson attended Trump’s New Hampshire victory party last night. And Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, who appeared at the event, told Schleifer that he expected the Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, his biggest backer before Scott dropped out of the primary race, to support Trump as well.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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      Why the G.O.P. Nomination Fight Is Now (All But) Over

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      Asthaa Chaturvedi, Alex Stern and Rachel Quester and Marion Lozano and Listen and follow The DailyApple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon MusicOn Tuesday, Donald J. Trump beat Nikki Haley in New Hampshire. His win accelerated a push for the party to coalesce behind him and deepened questions about the path forward for Ms. Haley, his lone remaining rival.Jonathan Weisman, a political correspondent for The Times, discusses the real meaning of the former president’s victory.On today’s episodeJonathan Weisman, a political correspondent for The New York Times.The former president’s victories in Iowa last week and in New Hampshire on Tuesday leave his main Republican rival, Nikki Haley, with an uphill battle.Doug Mills/The New York TimesBackground readingDonald Trump’s win in New Hampshire added to an air of inevitability, even as Nikki Haley sharpened the edge of her rhetoric.Here are five takeaways from the New Hampshire primary.There are a lot of ways to listen to The Daily. Here’s how.We aim to make transcripts available the next workday after an episode’s publication. You can find them at the top of the page.The Daily is made by Rachel Quester, Lynsea Garrison, Clare Toeniskoetter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon Johnson, Brad Fisher, Chris Wood, Jessica Cheung, Stella Tan, Alexandra Leigh Young, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Marc Georges, Luke Vander Ploeg, M.J. Davis Lin, Dan Powell, Sydney Harper, Mike Benoist, Liz O. Baylen, Asthaa Chaturvedi, Rachelle Bonja, Diana Nguyen, Marion Lozano, Corey Schreppel, Rob Szypko, Elisheba Ittoop, Mooj Zadie, Patricia Willens, Rowan Niemisto, Jody Becker, Rikki Novetsky, John Ketchum, Nina Feldman, Will Reid, Carlos Prieto, Ben Calhoun, Susan Lee, Lexie Diao, Mary Wilson, Alex Stern, Dan Farrell, Sophia Lanman, Shannon Lin, Diane Wong, Devon Taylor, Alyssa Moxley, Summer Thomad, Olivia Natt, Daniel Ramirez and Brendan Klinkenberg.Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly. Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Paula Szuchman, Lisa Tobin, Larissa Anderson, Julia Simon, Sofia Milan, Mahima Chablani, Elizabeth Davis-Moorer, Jeffrey Miranda, Renan Borelli, Maddy Masiello, Isabella Anderson and Nina Lassam. More

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      Nikki Haley Vows to Fight On Against Trump After New Hampshire Loss

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      Former Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina on Tuesday defied calls to drop out of the race for the Republican nomination, vowing to fight on after a second straight defeat at the hands of former President Donald J. Trump.In rousing remarks, Ms. Haley looked ahead to the coming primary contest in South Carolina, where she is lagging far behind Mr. Trump in polls despite a home-state advantage.“New Hampshire is first in the nation. It is not the last in the nation. This race is far from over,” Ms. Haley said, adding, “We’re going home to South Carolina.”Borrowing signature lines from her stump speeches, Ms. Haley noted how far she had come since the race first opened, when she was polling at just over 2 percent, declaring herself “a fighter.”“And I’m scrappy. And now we’re the last ones standing next to Donald Trump,” she added.Ms. Haley also turned up the heat on Mr. Trump, the dominant front-runner in the Republican race who is fighting 91 felony charges, criticizing him as equally bad for the country as another four years of President Biden. She also took another dig at Mr. Trump’s mental fitness and his 77 years of age.“With Donald Trump you have one bout of chaos after another,” she said. “This court case, that controversy, this tweet, that senior moment. You can’t fix Joe Biden’s chaos with Republican chaos.”In her final Granite State appearances before polls closed, Ms. Haley had rejected claims that Republican voters had already solidly united behind the former president, and pledged not to end her bid no matter the result.“I didn’t get here because of luck,” she said at a polling site in Hampton, N.H., while flanked by supporters, including Gov. Chris Sununu, her top surrogate in the state. “I got here because I outworked and outsmarted all the rest of those fellas. So I’m running against Donald Trump, and I’m not going to talk about an obituary.”Mr. Trump, speaking to supporters at his victory party, mocked Ms. Haley for speaking “like she won.” But “she didn’t win — she lost,” he added.On Wednesday morning, Ms. Haley is expected to speak during a Republican State Committee meeting in the Virgin Islands, which holds its contest on Feb. 8. She is then anticipated at a homecoming rally in Charleston, S.C.A number of people close to Ms. Haley are encouraging her to keep going, many who are deeply opposed to Mr. Trump’s becoming the nominee again.Betsy Ankney, her campaign manager, released a memo early Tuesday morning shooting down suggestions that Mr. Trump’s path to the nomination was inevitable. She pointed to the 11 of the 16 states that vote on Super Tuesday that have “open or semi-open primaries” that can include independent voters and are “fertile ground for Nikki.”Nevada will host a Republican caucus on Feb. 8, but Ms. Haley is not competing in that contest, instead participating in a Republican primary in the state two days earlier that awards no delegates.Her campaign has bought over $1 million in television advertising from Tuesday through Feb. 6, according to AdImpact, a media-tracking firm.And officials at her allied super PAC, Stand for America, said they, too, planned to forge ahead.Mark Harris, the lead strategist for the PAC, said it was prepping television, mail and digital advertising in a get-out-the-vote effort that would look similar to the programs it took on in Iowa and New Hampshire, though as of Tuesday it had not yet made those investments.“We’re running the outsider candidacy, so this was never going to happen all magically in one day, and so we’re going to keep pushing ahead,” Mr. Harris said.Since the summer, Ms. Haley has predicted that the Republican nominating contest would result in a showdown between herself and Mr. Trump in her home state. Her outward confidence in that scenario has not faltered — not after she failed to place second in Iowa, not after her top rival for No. 2, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, dropped out and endorsed Mr. Trump, not after a slate of South Carolina legislators this week joined Mr. Trump on the stump in the final days of the New Hampshire race.Her message to his allies and the news media: She has been here before.“I won South Carolina twice as governor,” she told reporters Friday at a retro diner in Amherst. “I think I know what favorable territory is in South Carolina.”Maggie Haberman More

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      Did No One Tell Ron DeSantis That Trump Was Running, Too?

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      Despite the early enthusiasm for his policies and political persona in various corners of the conservative media, it was easy to see from the start that Ron DeSantis would not — and clearly does not — have the juice to defeat or supplant Donald Trump in a Republican presidential primary.Part of this was the Florida governor’s soft skills or rather lack thereof. He is not a people person. He does not excel at the task of retail politics. He is not, to put it gently, strong on the stump, and he has a bad habit of speaking in the esoteric and jargon-filled language of online conservatives.Consider his first major performance in Iowa last year, in front of an audience of likely Republican caucusgoers. “We say very clearly in the state of Florida that we will fight the woke in the Legislature,” DeSantis said, as he tried to rouse the crowd to applause. “We will fight the woke in education, we will fight the woke in the businesses, we will never ever surrender to the woke mob. Our state is where woke goes to die.”There is a relatively small group of people for whom this is a resonant message. For everyone else, it is basically static. It doesn’t speak to the animating concerns of the blue-collar voters who will make or break a campaign in the Republican primary. DeSantis’s inability to craft a compelling message, however, may not have been fatal to his campaign if he had been able to distance or distinguish himself from Trump in any meaningful way. The opportunities were there. DeSantis could have used the multiple criminal indictments against the former president to make the practical case that Trump would not win if he was in jail.But DeSantis chose to run as Trump’s heir apparent and treated him as though he wasn’t actually in the race. He could not turn on the former president without undermining the premise of his own campaign. And so DeSantis sat silent or even defended Trump against legal accountability for his actions in office. “Washington, D.C. is a ‘swamp’ and it is unfair to have to stand trial before a jury that is reflective of the swamp mentality,” DeSantis wrote on the website formerly known as Twitter after Trump was charged with four felony counts by a federal grand jury in connection with his effort to overturn the 2020 election. “One of the reasons our country is in decline is the politicization of the rule of law. No more excuses — I will end the weaponization of the federal government.”To the extent that DeSantis tried to differentiate himself from the former president, it was by running to Trump’s political right. The Florida governor in this view would be a more competent Trump — the Trump who gets things done. It was a good pitch for the conservative intellectuals who wanted to support a Trump-like figure without embracing Trump himself. But it was a terrible pitch to the Republican electorate, which did not nominate Trump in 2016 — or turn out in 2020 — because of Trump’s ability to clear a checklist of agenda items.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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      Nikki Haley Memo Ahead of New Hampshire: ‘We Aren’t Going Anywhere’

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      Nikki Haley’s campaign has a message for all those who are declaring her presidential candidacy all but over should she lose in New Hampshire to Donald J. Trump on Tuesday. “We aren’t going anywhere,” wrote Ms. Haley’s campaign manager, Betsy Ankney, in a memo about the path forward for Ms. Haley, which was provided first to The New York Times.In the memo, Ms. Ankney described how Ms. Haley, the former governor of South Carolina and former United Nations ambassador, outlasted all the other candidates for her one-on-one shot at Mr. Trump and would not be dissuaded from fighting on, even if “members of Congress, the press, and many of the weak-kneed fellas who ran for president are giving up and giving in.”Read the documentIn a memo, Nikki Haley’s campaign manager wrote that “We aren’t going anywhere.”Read DocumentThe memo reads as something of a direct response to the Trump campaign’s ongoing efforts to make her departure from the race feel inevitable, if not immediate.Ms. Haley herself, in an appearance on Tuesday on Fox News, said she was staying in regardless of the outcome.“No, I don’t get out if I lose today,” Ms. Haley said. “Again, I’m going to say this, we’ve had 56,000 people vote for Donald Trump, and you’re going to say that’s what the country wants? That’s not what the country wants.”In the memo, Ms. Ankney attempted to push back on the argument, as she put it, that “New Hampshire is ‘the best it’s going to get’ for Nikki due to independents and unaffiliated voters being able to vote in the Republican primary.”After New Hampshire, where voting is underway, the next major collision for the two candidates would be in South Carolina in a month, on Feb. 24, after a tiny battle for delegates in the U.S. Virgin Islands on Feb. 8.Ms. Ankney noted that in South Carolina there is no party registration, meaning anyone who does not vote in the Democratic primary on Feb. 3 could vote in the Republican one later in the month. More significantly, she pointed out that 11 of the 16 states that vote on Super Tuesday have “open or semi-open primaries” that can include independent voters and are “fertile ground for Nikki.”“Until then, everyone should take a deep breath,” Ms. Ankney wrote. “The campaign has not even begun in any of these states yet. No ads have been aired and candidates aren’t hustling on the ground. 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.”Ms Ankney cited Virginia, Texas, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina and Vermont as Super Tuesday states with “favorable demographics,” and noted that Michigan, which votes after South Carolina, is also an open-primary state.“After Super Tuesday, we will have a very good picture of where this race stands,” she wrote.Of course, all campaigns say they are pushing on — until they aren’t. Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida had scheduled an event in New Hampshire on Sunday that he only canceled after withdrawing from the race in a video recorded in Florida.Ms. Haley has scheduled a number of fund-raisers in the coming weeks in California, Florida, New York and Texas, and has already booked a $4 million television buy in South Carolina.Mr. Trump’s campaign has been ratcheting up the pressure on Ms. Haley to exit the race if she has a poor showing.The Trump campaign’s top two advisers, Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles, put out a memo on Sunday, after Mr. DeSantis ended his campaign, arguing that Ms. Haley “must win New Hampshire” in order to remain viable.If she remains in the race through her home state of South Carolina, they warned, she would be “absolutely DEMOLISHED and EMBARRASSED,” using capital letters for emphasis.Ms. Ankney appeared to respond in her missive, using her own capitals to make one final point about the choice for the G.O.P.: “DO REPUBLICANS WANT TO WIN?”“See y’all in South Carolina,” the memo ends. More

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      What’s a Never-Trump Conservative to Do?

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      David French and Jillian Weinberger and Donald Trump is expected to win decisively in New Hampshire’s primary on Tuesday. For Republican voters who don’t want Trump as their nominee, what alternatives exist?In this audio interview, the deputy Opinion editor, Patrick Healy, talks with Opinion columnist David French about how a probable Trump nomination will “cement a significant change in two directions with the G.O.P.”(A full transcript of this audio essay will be available midday on the Times website.)Illustration by Akshita Chandra/The New York TimesThe Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, X (@NYTOpinion) and Instagram.This episode of “The Opinions” was produced by Jillian Weinberger with help from Vishakha Darbha. It was edited by Alison Bruzek and Annie-Rose Strasser. Mixing by Carole Sabouraud with engineering support from Isaac Jones. Original music by Sonia Herrero. Fact-checking by Kate Sinclair. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski. Source photograph by juliaf/Getty Images. More