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      Trump takes aim at Haley in combative New Hampshire primary victory speech

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      Donald Trump has won the New Hampshire primary, likely cementing his place as the Republican presidential nominee.The win over Nikki Haley, who had briefly threatened to rein in the former president, suggests there will be a smooth path to the GOP nomination for Trump, who also won easily in the Iowa caucuses last week. Addressing supporters in Nashua, Trump took a victory lap with a combative speech that included sharp criticism of Haley.“She had a very bad night,” Trump said. “She came in third [in Iowa], and she’s still hanging around.”The Associated Press called the race just as the last remaining polling places in New Hampshire closed at 8pm ET, following a contentious primary that saw groups backing both candidates spending millions of dollars in increasingly vicious TV advertising.Haley, who branded Trump a “chaos” candidate, promised a more palatable version of the rightwing fire and brimstone that has come to characterize the Republican party. She surged in the polls in New Hampshire in mid-December, but could not capitalize on that momentum on Tuesday night.Despite her disappointing performance in New Hampshire, Haley insisted she would continue on to her home state of South Carolina, which will hold its Republican primary next month. As she spoke to supporters in Concord on Tuesday, Haley congratulated Trump on his victory in the first primary state, but emphasized the importance of upcoming races.“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 polls show Trump maintaining a significant lead in South Carolina, so it is unclear how that primary might reshape the dynamics of the race. New Hampshire appeared to represent the last significant threat to what seems set to become a Trump coronation. In a purple state that voted for Joe Biden over Trump in 2020, Haley presented herself as a centrist Republican, while Trump continued to proffer rightwing populism in a series of rallies in recent days. Haley was Trump’s only serious contender in New Hampshire, after Ron DeSantis dropped out of the race on Sunday.As he addressed supporters, Trump derided Haley’s efforts to downplay her loss in New Hampshire, saying: “Let’s not have somebody take a victory when she had a very bad night.”New Hampshire primary: read more
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      Trump’s team similarly ridiculed Haley’s decision to stay in the race after two decisive losses, with one of the former president’s strategists mocking her as “delusional”. Appearing undaunted, Haley stuck to her campaign message that Trump was incapable of leading the Republican party into a more promising future, referencing the former president’s numerous legal battles. Trump has now been charged with 91 felony counts across four criminal cases, and he spent much of the past week in court for a defamation case.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“With Donald Trump, you have one bout of chaos after another – this court case, that controversy, this tweet, that senior moment,” Haley said on Tuesday night. “You can’t fix Joe Biden’s chaos with Republican chaos.”But Trump’s routine continues to appeal. Tina Lorenz, who said she had supported Donald Trump since 2016, was among those who voted for the former president on Tuesday.“He is representing the American people. He is not out for himself. He’s not out for political gain. He’s not out for financial reasons. He doesn’t need money, he doesn’t need fame and fortune. He already has all of that,” Lorenz, 63, said.“He is out there for the average person. And that’s what’s happening, we’ve become so polarized, that there’s nobody out there for just regular people.”The result in New Hampshire suggests Trump will become his party’s presidential candidate for the third election in a row, and will likely face Biden in November. After Trump’s wins in Iowa and New Hampshire, more and more Republican lawmakers are lining up to endorse him. Speaking at Trump’s victory party on Tuesday, former presidential candidate Tim Scott, who dropped out of the primary race in November and endorsed the former president last week, called on Republicans to unify.“It is time for the Republican party to coalesce around our nominee and the next president of United States: Donald Trump. Let’s get that party started tonight,” Scott said.Despite Haley’s claims to the contrary, Democrats also clearly believe the Republican presidential primary is effectively over, and they are already turning their attention to the general election.“Tonight’s results confirm Donald Trump has all but locked up the GOP nomination, and the election denying, anti-freedom Maga movement has completed its takeover of the Republican party,” said Julie Chavez Rodriguez, Biden’s campaign manager. “While we work toward November 2024, one thing is increasingly clear today: Donald Trump is headed straight into a general election matchup where he’ll face the only person to have ever beaten him at the ballot box: Joe Biden.” More

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      The primaries are mere formalities. Trump is Republicans’ once and future king | Lloyd Green

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      On Tuesday night, Donald Trump emerged as the winner of New Hampshire’s Republican primary and presumptive Republican presidential nominee, handily defeating Nikki Haley. He is the first non-incumbent Republican to win both Iowa and New Hampshire. South Carolina’s contest is next month and those that follow are formalities on the road to coronation.The Republican party belongs to him. “It has to be Trump as long as … he can fog a mirror,” Steve Bannon told Jonathan Karl of ABC News. Haley has pledged to remain in the race, but the fall campaign has begun. As the polls closed in New Hampshire, the Biden White House announced a campaign shake-up. This is not a well-oiled machine.For the third time, Trump is his party’s standard bearer. Maybe this run will be a charm, so to speak. Maybe for the first time he will garner a plurality, if not outright majority, of the popular vote, a feat that has previously eluded him.By those metrics, Hillary Clinton bested him in 2016 and Joe Biden did the same four years later. To put a point on it, no non-incumbent Republican since George HW Bush in 1988 has garnered that level of national support. Rather, like George W Bush in 2000, Trump owes his initial win to the mechanics of the electoral college.Election day 2024, however, may be different. The Democrats had best be prepared for that possibility and for the day after. At the moment, Biden lags Trump in trial heats. Among independents, the president trails by as many as 10 points. Beyond that, Biden, 81, exudes frailty. His speeches are dull affairs, often more closely watched for signs of infirmity, as opposed to policy.His mantra of democracy being on the line in 2024 is true. Yet it repeatedly falls flat. In too many instances, he discounts prevailing public sentiment. Popularism, the notion that politicians ought to follow the polls and do what’s electorally expedient, is honored more often than not in the breach. Triangulation, as mastered by Bill Clinton, is a thing of the past.To illustrate, Biden continues to double down on porous borders, poking a stick in the eye of public opinion. His win on Monday before the supreme court on Texas and its razor-wire barriers may eventually prove politically self-injurious. The justice department may have scored a victory for federal supremacy and executive power at the expense of Biden’s own standing.Beyond that, no Republican sits in the cabinet, breaking a tradition upheld by re-election-minded Democrats. Barack Obama placed Republicans Robert Gates at the Pentagon and Ray LaHood, a former Illinois congressman, at transportation. Appointing Arizona’s Cindy McCain, wife of the late Republican nominee and Trump nemesis, and Jeff Flake, a former Arizona senator, as ambassadors doesn’t quite make the cut. Out of country, out of mind.In case Biden needs further reminding, he didn’t win in a landslide. Obama’s vice-president never was and never will be the second coming of FDR, much as he attempts to convince himself that he is “transformative”.Meanwhile, Trump praises authoritarians. He vows to act as a dictator on day one, at least for a few hours anyway. Take him seriously on that and wonder if he means it literally or not.What dictator can push himself away from the table of dictatorship after just one day? Just before the New Hampshire voting, he mused about 12 more years in office and let the word “fascist” slip from his tongue.America ought to be frightened, but less than a majority actually fears the prospect of Trump as American Caesar. The rest is open to arguments that Biden is over his head and that Kamala Harris should have starred in Veep, the HBO sitcom, rather than be a heartbeat from the Oval Office.Trump is the strongman his base yearned for. Back in 2016, Paul LePage, then governor of Maine, made it explicit: “We need a Donald Trump to show some authoritarian power in our country.” So much for 1776, the declaration of independence and the US constitution.As in Iowa, Haley’s candidacy served as a magnet for high-end suburbanites, a constituency whose clout diminishes daily within the Republican party. Looking back, she never had a chance.Haley mulled cuts to social security and raising the age for retirement. These days, Americans live medically challenged lives. Chronic illness supplants death on life’s back nine. Her pitch might have been designed for her donors, and there are too few of them to matter.Under Trump, the party of Lincoln has been transformed into a mixed martial arts octagon. The ex-president channels his core supporters’ resentments better than anyone. Theirs is a symbiotic relationship. Gladiator, the Oscar-winning Ridley Scott film about Commodus, the debauched and unhinged Roman emperor, remains the movie for our time.
      Lloyd Green is an attorney in New York and served in the US Department of Justice from 1990 to 1992 More

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      Long-shot Democratic candidates seek upset in New Hampshire primary

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      As New Hampshire voters head to the polls on Tuesday, much attention will be paid to the Republican presidential primary, but another race could provide additional clues about the general election in November.New Hampshire Democrats are moving forward with holding their presidential primary on Tuesday, despite warnings from the national party. The Democratic National Committee decided last year to make South Carolina the first voting state, a move that upended a century-old tradition of New Hampshire hosting the first primary.Outraged over the voting calendar change, New Hampshire officials have chosen to hold an unsanctioned Democratic primary on Tuesday, although the DNC has said it will not award delegates based on the results. Joe Biden’s name will not appear on the ballot, but his allies have launched a vigorous write-in campaign in support of his re-election.Other long-shot candidates, namely the Minnesota congressman Dean Phillips and self-help author Marianne Williamson, hope to capitalize on Biden’s absence and pull off an upset in New Hampshire. The two candidates have held events across the state to make their pitch that the Democratic party needs to move in a new direction.“We believe it is time to segregate the far-left and the far-right and give voice to the exhausted majority of America. Are you ready for that?” Phillips told a crowd in Nashua on Saturday.In total, the names of 21 candidates will appear on New Hampshire’s Democratic primary ballot. Some voters outraged over the war in Gaza are also expected to write in “ceasefire” to criticize US support for Israel’s military. Given the large number of expected write-in votes, it may take longer than usual for New Hampshire officials to count Democratic primary ballots after polls start closing at 7pm ET.Even without a formal campaign presence in New Hampshire, Biden is expected to receive the most votes by a wide margin. An Emerson College/WHDH poll conducted last week showed Biden winning the support of 61% of likely Democratic primary voters, compared to 16% for Phillips and 5% for Williamson.But a disappointing performance could point to decreased enthusiasm among the Democratic base, which would be a worrisome sign for Biden heading into the general election. Polls already show Biden running neck and neck with Donald Trump, who is widely expected to win the Republican presidential nomination.In an indication of Biden’s potential vulnerabilities, some of the president’s prominent allies, including Congressman Ro Khanna of California, have spent time campaigning on his behalf in New Hampshire. Speaking at a house party in support of the write-in campaign on Saturday, Khanna predicted a “decisive win” for Biden in New Hampshire.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“That’s going to propel him to have a big win in November,” Khanna said. “At the end of the day, I am a believer that Americans love this country and love our democracy.”
      Adam Gabbatt contributed reporting from New Hampshire More

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      Ron DeSantis failed because Trump’s base wants the man himself, not an imitation | Andrew Gawthorpe

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      So long, Ron. After a poor showing in the Iowa caucuses, Ron DeSantis has dropped out of the Republican presidential primary and endorsed Donald Trump. This outcome has looked inevitable ever since the campaign’s botched launch announcement on Twitter, but it was surprising how quickly and totally DeSantis surrendered after losing just a single contest. Many people had heralded DeSantis as the man who could take down Trump, but it was not to be. His campaign began with a whimper – then ended with one too.The political flaws of DeSantis and his campaign have been so numerous that it’s amazing the Florida governor ever generated so much buzz. He looked politically impressive operating in the safely conservative state of Florida, but he was completely unprepared for the intensity of competitive national politics. He lacked the empathy and personal warmth necessary to connect with voters and donors alike. He proved a poor administrator. He tried to run on his management of the Covid-19 pandemic when voters had moved on. Worst of all, he could offer no plausible reason why Trump voters should opt for him rather than for the real thing.Despite all of this, DeSantis found huge success among a certain class of Republican pundits and donors. At one point he was hailed by the Murdoch press as “DeFuture”, and conservative writers fell over one another to praise him as the Trump who “gets things done”. When someone so flawed has so many boosters, it’s worth asking about the motivation of the boosters.In this case, the DeSantis campaign was promoted by a set of conservative elites who saw the opportunity for a kind of “Trumpism without Trump”. DeSantis drew support from people who were happy with the broad direction of the Republican party under Trump, but had doubts about the former president’s competence. Since his victory in 2016, Trump has been a serial loser of elections who invests little time in trying to implement policies, preferring to focus instead on the melodrama of his own political and legal struggles. DeSantis, by contrast, exudes the kind of grim, thuggish determination of Viktor Orbán, the Hungarian prime minister whose policies have made him a hero of the American nationalist right.As an electoral proposition, this vision was flawed from the get-go. The idea of “Trumpism without Trump” was to take Maga content and present it in some more palatable form. But this ignores the fact that for many grassroots Republicans, Trump’s form is his content. They support him not because of the concrete policies he will implement but because of who he is and what he represents. The unhinged style of communication, the self-pitying beefs with “the establishment”, the unfiltered racism and bigotry – these are the essence of Trumpism, not paraphernalia which can be discarded.For decades, Republican elites have believed they could channel and control the populism and bigotry of their party’s base. A video from the 2008 election which periodically goes viral of John McCain defending Barack Obama in the face of a racist question from a voter, represents the exception in this history rather than the norm. As a rule, Republican donors and politicians have winked at or actively encouraged the worst instincts of their base, believing they could be harnessed and ridden to victory. The DeSantis candidacy was just the latest example of this. But now the base is in the saddle, and what it wants is Trumpism red in tooth and claw – not some bloodless imitation.However doomed it was at the polls, there might have been some redemptive quality in the DeSantis project if it had offered a challenge to the yawning ethical chasm at the heart of the Republican party. But rather than denouncing the cruelty towards immigrants, women and trans people that pervades the modern conservative movement, DeSantis merely promised to pursue it with more ruthless efficiency. He showed indifference to the suffering of the people who got in his way, such as the migrants he transported to Martha’s Vineyard and then abandoned for the purposes of a political stunt. The experience made them feel, one said, “like cattle” – yet DeSantis defends the action to this day.The fact that supporters of the DeSantis project were not actually trying to challenge the core premises and practices of Trumpism will make it easier for them to take the next step: reverting to support for Trump. After he dropped out, DeSantis endorsed Trump with unseemly speed and it may take some of his backers a little longer to come around. But just as in 2016, Republican politicians and media figures will inevitably follow their base and resume backing the former president, even as he engages in Hitlerian rhetoric about migrants “poisoning the blood” of America and promises to be a dictator “on day one”.As John McCain showed in 2008, there is an alternative course available to former DeSantis backers, if they wanted to take it. They could say publicly what many of them know privately – that while Trump poses a unique danger to the republic, Joe Biden is a decent, patriotic man with whom they happen to have some policy disagreements. They could lament the grip that a racist and authoritarian figure has on such a large segment of their party, and even try to challenge it. But they will not, because that’s never what the DeSantis candidacy was really about it. Instead, they’ll get in line behind Trump – and march themselves and everyone else closer and closer to disaster.
      Andrew Gawthorpe is a historian of the United States at Leiden University and the creator of America Explained, a podcast and newsletter More

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      Time to back Trump: Republican donors accept the inevitable

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      Vivek Ramaswamy urged the crowd to end the primary right here. Doug Burgum told them to think of safety and prosperity. Tim Scott posed a series of questions that culminated with: “How many y’all want me to stop talking so you can hear from your next president, Donald J Trump?”As the three failed US presidential candidates turned endorsers stood alongside Trump on stage in Laconia, New Hampshire, on Monday, the crowd chanted “Four more years!” and the message to Republicans was clear: join us now or be cast into the political wilderness.The show of unity exemplified the breakneck speed with which elected officials, rightwing media and megadonors are consolidating around Trump as their seemingly inevitable nominee in 2024. Trump told the rally: “Now is the time for the Republican party to come together. We have to unify … We’re all in the same team, 100% focused on [Joe] Biden and beating him in November.”Buoyed by a record win in last week’s Iowa caucuses and the exit of the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, Trump heads into Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary election with only one opponent standing in his way: Nikki Haley, a former US ambassador to the UN. If the former president wins convincingly, as opinion polls suggest, Haley will face renewed pressure to end the anti-Trump resistance.Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center thinktank in Washington DC, said: “The two-thirds of the party that’s Maga-friendly has largely coalesced around Trump, and is continuing to do so. It would take a miracle for Haley to even make it a race at this point. Miracles happen, but you don’t predict them.”He added: “Anyone who wants to remain viable in today’s Republican party will either fall into line publicly, or be quiet in not falling into line. And that’s what you will see among the donor class.”It is a striking contrast from the 2016 primary season, when multiple candidates continued to battle Trump into May. It is also very different mood music from a year ago when, in the wake of disappointing midterm elections, there were rumblings of discontent in the Republican party and a desire to turn the page.The shift was evident in the donor class. Club For Growth, an anti-tax group, and Americans For Prosperity, founded by the billionaire industrialist Koch brothers, poured millions of dollars into an effort to stop Trump. Last May, for example, Club For Growth released a golf-themed ad attacking him over his plan for social security. Americans for Prosperity endorsed Haley and by December had spent $4m to boost her.But just as in 2016, when Jeb Bush was the establishment choice, the primary has demonstrated that money is no substitute for having the right candidate at the right time. Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina received backing from high-profile donors but was outshone in debates, and never gained traction in the polls. He withdrew and endorsed Trump.As DeSantis’s profile soared, he enjoyed an influx of cash, only to burn it through it rapidly with over-hiring, staff shakeups and frequent “resets”. Last November Robert Bigelow, one of DeSantis’s most prominent funders, announced that he was switching allegiance to Trump. By some estimates, DeSantis and an allied Super Pac spent at least $53m in Iowa – a return of roughly $2,262 per vote as he lost by nearly 30 percentage points.Meanwhile, Trump proved more resilient that expected. He weaponised a series of criminal indictments and court appearances to rally his base and raise funds. Polls showed him beating Biden in a hypothetical match-up, undercutting the electability argument. As a former president and reality TV star, he enjoyed the kind of celebrity that money can’t buy.Olsen said: “Money has always been an overrated feature of politics. Money helps when it’s delivering a message that resonates. What the big money in the Republican party has been doing for the last decade or more has been getting behind candidates whose message does not resonate.”The Trump campaign has relished the failure of big-money groups trying to tear him down. Speaking from Charleston, South Carolina, the Trump fundraiser Ed McMullen said: “One of the great stories of this primary cycle is that the hundreds of millions of dollars spent against Donald Trump have only fuelled the support for him.“People don’t want oligarchs in the United States determining who the president’s gonna be. They are absolutely turning to the president, despite hundreds of millions of dollars in negative TV ads.”McMullen, a former ambassador to Switzerland who was at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos last week, claims that dozens of DeSantis and Haley donors have been calling him since the Iowa caucuses, wanting to back Trump instead.“The fact that Iowa happened to be so strong for the president sent a pretty strong shockwaves throughout the little town of Davos, where many business leaders intentionally sought me out to find ways that they could be engaged and support the president and get on board,” he said.Not all of Haley’s donors are buckling. Along with Americans for Prosperity, they include Reid Hoffman, the founder of LinkedIn, and Stanley Druckenmiller, a hedge fund billionaire who will co-host a fundraiser for her on 30 January.But some speak of being pressured to abandon Haley and come into the fold. Fred Zeidman, a longtime Haley fundraiser from Texas, told Reuters: “I get calls all the time.”He summed up what Trump’s allies tell him: “We’re going to win. You’re going to lose. Don’t you want to be on the right team?”Those calls are likely to intensify if Trump wins big on Tuesday night. Having realised which way the wind was blowing, hesitant Republicans are rushing to get back in his good graces. It would be no surprise if a procession of senators, representatives, governors and former cabinet officials, along with donors, make a pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago in Florida to pledge allegiance.Ed Rogers, a veteran of several national campaigns, said: “I would not have guessed this would happen a year ago. But for the last two or three months it’s been clear that none of the other campaigns were going to beat the Trump campaign.”“The only thing that’s gonna keep Trump from being the Republican nominee is for him to step on a banana peel or some act-of-God lightning strike.” More

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      Of course Trump is dominating the primaries. That doesn’t mean he’ll beat Biden | Robert Reich

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      The mainstream media is flabbergasted at Trump’s success in sweeping the Iowa caucuses, dominating the polls and destroying all his rivals but Nikki Haley before Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary.CNN is awestruck, calling Trump’s “landslide victory in Iowa” a “stunning show of strength”.The New York Times is dumbfounded, talking of an “expected Trump coronation” and also the “power of his political machine”.Time magazine marvels at his “commanding position” to secure the Republican nomination, and that “nothing has slowed him down”.The Washington Post’s Dan Balz writes that “the end of any real competition could come very soon”.Headline after headline offers the same breathless, spellbound story: “Trump is dominating.” “Disciplined”. “Ruthless”. “Hugely effective”. “Remarkable”.Earth to the mainstream media: this is dangerous nonsense.Why should Trump’s dominance be surprising? He’s dominated the Republican party since 2016. He dominates by ridiculing opponents, blasting anyone who stands in his way, bullying, browbeating and bellowing. The media eats it up. He’s outrageous and entertaining.Trump’s success in last week’s Iowa caucuses wasn’t a “stunning show of strength”. It was a display of remarkable weakness. He got just 56,260 votes. There are 2,083,979 registered voters in Iowa. Fewer than 3% of Iowans voted for him.According to an entrance poll, only 46% of the Republican caucus-goers considered themselves part of the Maga movement. Nearly 50% said they were not. Three-quarters of these non-Maga Republican voters opposed Trump.Over 30% said they would not consider Trump fit to be president if he were convicted of a crime.His performance in New Hampshire will probably reveal similar weaknesses.What seems to be lost on the media is that Trump was president for four years. In effect, he’s the incumbent Republican president.That’s not because he says he won the 2020 election. It’s because he was in fact president.Former presidents have a huge advantage in their party’s primaries because they control their party apparatus. Presidents who have served just one term and seek the nomination for another are always re-nominated by their party, as was Trump in 2020 – and presumably will be again in 2024.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionOf course Trump will be the Republican nominee. Trump was the party’s presumptive nominee before he even announced he was running again.What’s remarkable is that he nonetheless attracted so many competitors for the nomination, who raised a lot of money for their primary runs. Tim Scott, Niki Haley, and Ron DeSantis finished September with a total of $26.7m available for use in the primary. That’s no small change.It’s also easy to forget that Trump began his third bid for the White House just days after Republicans took a beating in the midterms. That was the third straight national election in which Trump was a drag on his party. Across the country, his hand-picked candidates, who embraced his big lie that the 2020 election was stolen, lost critical races.The danger in the mainstream media’s awestruck coverage of Trump right now – making a big deal out of his winning the Iowa caucuses, dominating the polls, pushing out all rivals except Haley, and almost surely winning today’s New Hampshire primary – is that it creates a false impression that Trump is unstoppable, all the way through the general election.But no one should confuse Trump’s performance in the Republican primaries for success in the presidential election.When Americans actually focus on the presidential election and the stark reality of choosing between Biden and Trump, I expect they will once again choose Biden.Even if Trump is not yet criminally convicted, I doubt that a majority of Americans will want for their president a man who has 91 criminal charges against him, who has been impeached twice, who has orchestrated an attempted coup, who has profited financially while president, who has stolen top-secret documents and who has been judged to be a rapist.
      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His newest book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com More

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      Biden campaign calls for investigation of New Hampshire robocalls impersonating US president – as it happened

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      Joe Biden’s re-election campaign has called on New Hampshire authorities to investigate a spate of robocalls to voters in which a voice that sounds like the president encourages them not to participate in Tuesday’s primary.Biden’s name is not appearing on the primary ballot, since Democrats have decided to hold their first nominating contest in South Carolina next month. But some in the party are encouraging their voters to write in the president’s name, both as a show of support and to pressure the Democratic National Committee to give New Hampshire, which has historically been the second state to vote, a more prominent role in the nominating process.In a statement, Biden-Harris campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez said:
      This matter has already been referred to the New Hampshire Attorney General, and the campaign is actively discussing additional actions to take immediately. Spreading disinformation to suppress voting and deliberately undermine free and fair elections will not stand, and fighting back against any attempt to undermine our democracy will continue to be a top priority for this campaign.
      Nikki Haley made the most of the hours remaining before tomorrow’s primary in New Hampshire, crisscrossing the Granite state alongside governor Chris Sununu in a bid to lure votes away from Donald Trump. But polls continue to show the former president with a big lead, underscoring the difficulty Haley will have in overcoming his status as the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination.Trump is expected in New Hampshire later today, after appearing this morning in a New York City courtroom for a hearing in author E Jean Carroll’s defamation lawsuit against him, where he was set to testify. The session was unexpectedly adjourned after a juror felt ill, and one of Trump’s lawyers was exposed to Covid-19.Here’s what else happened today:
      Kamala Harris assailed Trump for his role in overturning Roe v Wade on the 51st anniversary of the supreme court decision that allowed abortion access nationwide.
      Nikki Haley has avoided talking much about abortion, even though she has signalled she would be fine with restricting the procedure federally. Some voters who support abortion rights are fine with that.
      Judge Judy delivered her verdict on the presidential race by stumping for Haley in New Hampshire.
      Elise Stefanik, who is seen as potential running mate for Trump, said the adjournment of his defamation trial was “blatant election interference”. In reality, it was requested by the former president’s legal team.
      Someone is making robocalls to New Hampshire voters that sound like Joe Biden and encourage them not to vote in Tuesday’s primary, prompting the president’s re-election campaign to call for an investigation.
      As she blitzes the state, Nikki Haley talks about keeping taxes low, the military strong and the border secure. One issue she does not mention: abortion.On the 51st anniversary of Roe v Wade, Joe Biden and Democrats across the country are railing against Republicans, calling them “anti-abortion extremists” who would impose a federal ban on the procedure if they win back power this fall.Haley calls herself “pro-life” but has promised to seek consensus as president. In Iowa, where evangelical Christians dominate the caucuses, Haley signaled her willingness, if elected, to sign any restrictions that reached her desk.But in comparatively moderate New Hampshire, she has mostly shut down inquiries about what kind of federal limit she would support, insisting that any legislation is purely theoretical without 60 votes in the Senate – as she told one curious onlooker at a stop in Epping on Sunday.Across the state, several pro-choice independent voters said the risk of a Trump presidency worried them more than Haley’s views on abortion.“I’ve long ago accepted that I can’t agree with a candidate on everything,” said Carole Alfano, an independent who met Haley at the campaign stop in the town of Epping. “We’ll part ways on that.”Alfano backed Biden in 2020, but plans to support Haley in Tuesday’s primary.In Derry, Marie Mulroy is ecstatic about the prospect of a Haley nomination even though she believes abortion should remain legal.“We’ll agree to disagree on that,” she said.Can Nikki Haley pull a shock win in New Hampshire out of the bag?She’s the last candidate standing against Donald Trump, after Florida governor Ron DeSantis exited the race and endorsed the former president on Sunday. Host of the Guardian’s Politics Weekly America podcast Jonathan Freedland headed out on the campaign trail in the Granite state to find out the answer:Joe Biden’s re-election campaign marked Roe v Wade’s 51st anniversary by debuting an advertisement in which Texas obstetrician-gynecologist Austin Dennard discusses how she had to leave the state to get an abortion after finding out that her fetus would not survive.Who’s to blame? Donald Trump, as Dennard makes clear. Expect to see tons of this sort of messaging coming from the campaigns of the president and other Democrats over the coming months:On the 51st anniversary of the supreme court’s Roe v Wade decision, Kamala Harris attacked Donald Trump for his role in appointing justices who overturned the precedent and allowed states to ban abortion.The vice-president spoke during a visit today to Wisconsin, a battleground state that will be crucial to deciding the outcome of the November election. Democrats plan to campaign on restoring access to abortion, after the 2022 decision in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization that curtailed abortion access in many states.Harris did not hold back from assailing the former president, citing his comments that he was “proud” of his role in getting three justices confirmed to the court, all of whom voted to overturn Roe. Here’s what she had to say:Joe Biden’s re-election campaign has called on New Hampshire authorities to investigate a spate of robocalls to voters in which a voice that sounds like the president encourages them not to participate in Tuesday’s primary.Biden’s name is not appearing on the primary ballot, since Democrats have decided to hold their first nominating contest in South Carolina next month. But some in the party are encouraging their voters to write in the president’s name, both as a show of support and to pressure the Democratic National Committee to give New Hampshire, which has historically been the second state to vote, a more prominent role in the nominating process.In a statement, Biden-Harris campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez said:
      This matter has already been referred to the New Hampshire Attorney General, and the campaign is actively discussing additional actions to take immediately. Spreading disinformation to suppress voting and deliberately undermine free and fair elections will not stand, and fighting back against any attempt to undermine our democracy will continue to be a top priority for this campaign.
      David Scanlan, the New Hampshire secretary of state, predicted Republican voter participation in the primaries will reach 322,000, eclipsing 2016’s total, when Republicans set a record of 287,652 votes. In 2020, it was Democrats who saw record turnout for their competitive primary, with 300,368 votes cast.Before a deadline in October, as many as 4,000 registered Democrats changed their party affiliation to “undeclared,” suggesting some plan to vote in the Republican primary.A Monmouth University Poll-Washington Post poll released today found that the number of registered New Hampshire independents who plan to vote in the Republican primary increased from 52% in November to 63%.More than a third of these voters said they voted for Biden in 2020, suggesting there could be a “measurable influx of Democratic-leaning independents” who will participate in Tuesday’s primary.In a conversation on Friday, Fergus Cullen, a former New Hampshire GOP chairman and prominent Trump opponent, said he did not see evidence that Haley had “lit a spark” among these voters in the way that might foretell “some kind of surge coming her way.”“People turn out when they are inspired, or they’re pissed off,” said Cullen, who had seen Haley on the campaign trail four times. “What we’re seeing is that people are not inspired, and they’re apathetic. And that means that they don’t show up.”New Hampshire’s secretary of state David Scanlan is predicting record turnout in the Republican primary, while governor Chris Sununu is joking that he is cashing in all of his political capital to ensure balmy weather for voters headed to the polls on Tuesday.That would be a stark contrast from Iowa, where arctic temperatures were blamed for the low turnout last week. Recent polling has shown Trump with a double digit lead in the state. But New Hampshire has a record of unpredictability, thanks to the large number of voters who proudly belong to neither party. They are not a monolith, but analysts believe that the more of them who choose to vote in the Republican primary, the better for Haley.“The only big X factor I see: how big is turnout?” said Dante Scala, a professor of Political Science and International Affairs at the University of New Hampshire.According to Scala, Haley is attempting something novel in New Hampshire. Republican presidential candidates who have pulled off wins in New Hampshire – such as John McCain in 2008 and Mitt Romney in 2012 – managed to appeal to the state’s independents while still pulling in a sizable chunk of the party faithful. (Independents, called “undeclared” voters in New Hampshire, can vote in either party’s primary.)This year, Trump has a lock on Republican base voters. To win, or even to come within striking distance of Trump, Scala said Haley will need to run up the score with these independent voters, some of whom could choose to vote in the sleepy Democratic primary or not at all if they feel the contest is a foregone conclusion.Scala said Haley’s test is whether she “inspired enough people to show up, who don’t normally show up, to get a turnout big enough that it swamps the Trump people and your mainstream Republican in New Hampshire.”Joe Biden spoke to UK prime minister Rishi Sunak on Monday about Gaza, Ukraine, and the Houthi attacks in the Red Sea, White House spokesperson John Kirby said, AFP reported.From White House correspondent for AFP Danny Kemp:Judy Sheindlin, widely known as Judge Judy, told CNN on Monday that she would endorse Nikki Haley if she “were a frog”.During the interview with CNN’s Dana Bash, Judge Judy was asked if the reason she endorsed Haley was because Haley is a woman.“No, I would support her if she were a frog,” said the ever-colorful Sheindlin.“She’s capable. She’s poised,” Sheindlin added.Sheindlin said that neither Trump nor Biden have the “intellectual gravitas” to be US president.According to Sheindlin, she has only endorsed one presidential candidate before –the former New York mayor, Michael Bloomberg, during the 2020 presidential election.Sheindlin has campaigned for Haley ahead of the highly watched New Hampshire primary on Tuesday.Nikki Haley is making the most of the hours remaining before tomorrow’s primary in New Hampshire, crisscrossing the Granite state alongside governor Chris Sununu in a bid to lure votes away from Donald Trump. But polls continue to show the former president with a big lead, underscoring the difficulty Haley will have in overcoming his status as the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination. Trump is expected in New Hampshire later today, after appearing this morning in a New York City courtroom for a hearing in author E Jean Carroll’s defamation lawsuit against him, where he was set to testify. The session was abruptly adjourned after a juror felt ill, and one of Trump’s lawyers was exposed to Covid-19.Here’s what else has happened today so far:
      Judge Judy delivered her verdict on the presidential race by stumping for Haley in New Hampshire.
      Elise Stefanik, who is seen as potential running mate for Trump, said the adjournment of his defamation trial was “blatant election interference”. In reality, it was requested by the former president’s legal team.
      Someone is reportedly making robocalls to New Hampshire voters that sound like Joe Biden and encourage them not to vote in Tuesday’s primary. Supporters of a campaign to write in his name – he is not appearing on the ballot, in line with Democratic National Committee rules – say the calls are meant to undermine them.
      Donald Trump is clearly smarting from the ongoing defamation lawsuit against him by author E Jean Carroll, and a jury’s verdict last year that he sexually abused her. As the Guardian’s Sam Levine reports, his campaign yesterday barred a NBC News reporter who had pressed his ally Elise Stefanik for her thoughts on the verdict:Donald Trump’s presidential campaign reportedly blocked an NBC News journalist from covering campaign events in New Hampshire on Sunday.Sunday’s exclusion of NBC News correspondent Vaughn Hillyard came when he was set to serve as a pool reporter. Instead of having a pack of reporters follow a candidate everywhere, campaigns will often allow television, print, and radio news organizations to send a single pool reporter to travel with them – and those reporters in turn then send a readout to other news outlets.But on Sunday, Hillyard wrote in an email to the pool: “Your pooler was told that if he was the designated pooler by NBC News that the pool would be cut off for the day.”The email, which was subsequently published by several news organizations, added: “After affirming to the campaign that your pooler would attend the events, NBC News was informed at about 2.20pm that the pool would not be allowed to travel with Trump today.”Hillyard a day earlier had pressed New York congresswoman Elise Stefanik – said to be a potential Trump running mate – on whether she believed the ex-president had sexually assaulted E Jean Carroll.NBC News and Steven Cheung, a Trump campaign spokesperson, did not immediately return a request for comment.You don’t have to be Joe Biden for someone to make a robot of your likeness. As the Guardian’s Dan Milmo reports, Democratic congressman and presidential candidate Dean Phillips has his own AI impersonator:OpenAI has removed the account of the developer behind an artificial intelligence-powered bot impersonating the US presidential candidate Dean Phillips, saying it violated company policy.Phillips, who is challenging Joe Biden for the Democratic party candidacy, was impersonated by a ChatGPT-powered bot on the dean.bot site.The bot was backed by Silicon Valley entrepreneurs Matt Krisiloff and Jed Somers, who have started a Super Pac – a body that funds and supports political candidates – named We Deserve Better, supporting Phillips.San Francisco-based OpenAI said it had removed a developer account that violated its policies on political campaigning and impersonation.“We recently removed a developer account that was knowingly violating our API usage policies which disallow political campaigning, or impersonating an individual without consent,” said the company.The Phillips bot, created by AI firm Delphi, is now disabled. Delphi has been contacted for comment.A factor working against Nikki Haley in her quest to win the New Hampshire Republican primary is Donald Trump’s resounding victory in last week’s Iowa caucus.His triumph in the first state to vote in the GOP’s nomination process confirmed his status as the frontrunner for the nomination. But election turnout was low in the Hawkeye state, a fact Haley was keen to remind voters of in New Hampshire:Nikki Haley is spending the final moments before New Hampshire’s make-or-break primary getting out the vote with the state’s popular Republican governor, Chris Sununu by her side.“This is it. Twenty-four hours to go,” Sununu told the crowd at a packed, dimly lit veteran’s hall in Franklin. “All the momentum is at Nikki Haley’s back.”He told the voters not to pay any mind to the polls – unless it’s the ones showing Haley trouncing Joe Biden in a general election – and reminded them of their fiercely guarded reputation as the state that delivers political upsets.“We always buck the trend in New Hampshire,” he said. “It’s going to start tomorrow.”Haley reminded voters of the stakes of tomorrow’s primary – not that they needed any reminding, since some say they’ve received upwards of 10 campaign mailers a day in recent weeks, in addition to the political ads flooding the airwaves.“Don’t complain about what happens in a general election if you don’t play in this primary tomorrow,” she charged. “It matters.” More

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      Republican who said she held Trump accountable for January 6 endorses him

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      The Republican South Carolina congresswoman Nancy Mace faced widespread accusations of hypocrisy after she endorsed Donald Trump – the presidential candidate she previously said she held “accountable” for the January 6 attack on Congress.On Monday, Mace announced her endorsement, a day before the New Hampshire primary, in which Trump enjoys comfortable polling leads over the former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, his only remaining opponent.“I don’t see eye to eye perfectly with any candidate,” Mace said. “And until now I’ve stayed out of it. But the time has come to unite behind our nominee.”Saying “it’s been a complete shit show since [Trump] left the White House”, the congresswoman said the US “needs to reverse all the damage Joe Biden has done”. Trump, she said, would be better on the economy, immigration and national security.“Donald Trump’s record in his first term should tell every American how vital it is he be returned to office,” Mace said.“Good Lord,” said Adam Kinzinger, an Illinois Republican who sat on the House January 6 committee then quit Congress over his opposition to Trump. “Nancy Mace is just the worst.”At present, Trump faces 91 criminal charges (17 for election subversion), attempts to keep him off the ballot for inciting an insurrection and assorted civil trials. Still, he has dominated the Republican primary, winning comfortably in Iowa last week.Observers were quick to point to what Mace made of Trump at the end of that term, in the aftermath of January 6.On that day, supporters Trump told to “fight like hell” to block certification of his defeat by Biden attacked Congress, seeking lawmakers to capture and possibly kill in a riot now linked to nine deaths, more than 1,200 arrests and hundreds of convictions.“Everything that he’s worked for … all of that, his entire legacy, was wiped out yesterday,” Mace told CNN on 7 January 2021. “We’ve got to start over.”On 11 January, Mace said: “We have to hold the president accountable for what happened. The rhetoric leading up to this vote, the lies that were told to the American people – this is what happens, rhetoric has real consequences. And people died.”Trump was impeached a second time for inciting the Capitol attack.On 13 January, Mace said on the House floor she would vote against impeachment but added: “I believe we need to hold the president accountable. I hold him accountable for the events that transpired for the attack on our Capitol last Wednesday.”While 10 House Republicans voted to impeach Trump, he was acquitted at his Senate trial when enough members of his party stayed loyal.Trump turned against Mace, endorsing a primary rival in her district in South Carolina. Mace fought off the challenge – with campaign help from Haley.Also on Monday, Steve Benen, an MSNBC producer, said: “Remember when Trump called Nancy Mace ‘absolutely terrible’ and tried to end her career? And when Nikki Haley scrambled to rescue her? A lot can happen in 18 months.”Mace is not the only senior South Carolina Republican to desert the former governor: the US senator Tim Scott, who Haley appointed in 2012, endorsed Trump on Friday.Jose Pagliery, a politics reporter for the Daily Beast, pointed to another widely remarked irony in Mace’s decision to endorse Trump this week, writing: “Rape survivor Nancy Mace just endorsed Donald Trump in the middle of his second rape trial.”In April last year, on CBS’s Face the Nation, Mace discussed both her work to improve the processing of rape kits by law enforcement and her support for exceptions for victims of rape or incest in abortion bans passed in Republican states.She also said: “I am a victim of rape, I was raped by a classmate at the age of 16. I am very wary and the devil is always in the details, but we’ve got to show more care and concern and compassion for women who’ve been raped.”In August, a New York judge dismissed a counterclaim by Trump in a defamation suit brought by the writer E Jean Carroll over her claim that Trump sexually assaulted her in a department store changing room in the 1990s.Explaining why the jury decided Trump “sexually abused” Carroll but did not endorse Carroll’s claim that he raped her, Lewis A Kaplan discussed the difference, under New York law, between forcible penetration with the penis or with fingers.The jury said Trump did the latter to Carroll. Kaplan, however, wrote: “Mr Trump did in fact ‘rape’ Ms Carroll as that term is commonly used and understood in contexts outside of the New York penal law.”The case has now reached a second trial, though a hearing scheduled for Monday was postponed due to juror illness.A representative for Mace did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Speaking to Fox News, Mace said Haley had been a “great governor” but voters in her South Carolina district were “overwhelmingly with Donald Trump”.“People want the primary to be over,” Mace said, pointing to an eventuality most pundits expect sooner rather than later, given Trump’s leads over Haley in New Hampshire, South Carolina (the third state to vote) and elsewhere.Mace also said that for voters in her district, “women’s issues” including abortion were “gonna be really important in the 2024 cycle”. More