Daily Archives: January 25, 2024

WASHINGTON Inside a special closed-door Republican meeting on Wednesday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., cast doubt on an emerging deal to tighten immigration laws, citing GOP opposition to its provisions and telling senators that linking the two measures could also sink Ukraine aid.

It represents a marked shift for the top Senate Republican, who has been pushing hard for a bipartisan deal to pass the border legislation and foreign aid bill together through the Democratic-led Senate and the Republican-led House.

When we started this, the border united us and Ukraine divided us, McConnell told his fellow Republicans, according to a source familiar with his remarks. The politics on this have changed.

The shift comes as Donald Trump, who has pushed congressional GOP members to kill the deal, marches to the Republican presidential nomination and as hard-right Senate Republicans have grown increasingly pointed in their criticism of McConnell.

Trumps desire to wield chaos at the border as a political weapon against President Joe Biden in a general election campaign is a factor in the ongoing congressional negotiations, with McConnell telling Republicans: We dont want to do anything to undermine him.

Were in a quandary," McConnell said, according to the source. The remarks were first reported by Punchbowl.

A second source with knowledge of the meeting confirmed that McConnell told the senators that Trump's position could make it difficult for Republicans to support an immigration deal.

A person familiar with the Senate Republican deliberations says there is growing concern that a significant number of GOP members arent interested in striking a deal when it comes to immigration, leading to questions if it is worth it to continue to link any border deal to Ukraine funding. Senate leadership is looking for concrete evidence of interest in a border deal and considering whether to decouple the two issues and move forward, this person said.

But decoupling the measures could hasten the death of both. The demand to link Ukraine aid with immigration restrictions came from House Republican leaders, who have been wary of passing Ukraine aid for months with or without a border security package. While the Senate may find the votes to pass a Ukraine and Israel aid bill, it is unlikely to secure a path to passage in the GOP-led House.

Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., said that McConnell even quoted Trump during his comments to Republicans.

He also laid out the quandary were in, Cramer said of McConnell. He never made a suggestion, actually, or picked a position I think we all know his position but rather just outlining the historical quandary. And he did a good job of quoting Donald Trump from 2018, you know, saying that well never get a Democrat to vote for this stuff.

The meeting came on the same day that a group of Senate conservatives held a news conference and torched the emerging bipartisan deal to impose tougher asylum and parole laws, complaining that it doesn't go far enough and taking aim at McConnell for endorsing the negotiations.

The bill is not designed to fix this problem. ... The chances of this bill passing the House are 0.000%. It aint gonna pass, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, told reporters. This bill represents Senate Republican leadership waging war on House Republican leadership.

Cruz recalled that at a Senate GOP meeting Tuesday, he spoke up and told senators the legislation would give Democrats political cover to say they addressed the border situation. Why on earth would you be teeing up a vote with every Democrat and 10 or 12 Republicans that has no chance of passing the House? he said.

He tore into McConnell. Chuck Schumers enemies in Congress are conservatives in the Senate and are House Republican leadership, Cruz said. And sadly, Mitch McConnells enemies are conservatives in the Senate and House Republican leadership.

Cruz was joined by Sens. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., Rick Scott, R-Fla., Mike Lee, R-Utah, and others who complained that they still havent seen the legislation and demanding that they have enough time to review the text. The deal has not been finalized as appropriators are examining its provisions to check the funding levels.

The problem is our leader," Johnson said. "Leader McConnell is really the stage manager of this negotiation.

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., an author of earlier immigration bills that were more liberal than the pending deal, also said it would be a bad political move to strike an immigration pact with Democrats.

A proponent of the emerging deal, Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., said he believes at least half of the 49 GOP senators must support the immigration measure for it to have a chance of passage.

We need at least 25 voting for this or its a waste of time, in my opinion, Tillis said, adding that theres a path to getting there but its not assured.

Frank Thorp V is a producer and off-air reporter covering Congress for NBC News, managing coverage of the Senate.

Sahil Kapur is a senior national political reporter for NBC News.

Syedah Asghar, Brennan Leach and Kate Santaliz contributed.

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McConnell casts doubt on border and Ukraine aid deal as GOP fury threatens both - NBC News

President Biden on Wednesday vetoed a Republican-led effort that could have thwarted the administrations plans to invest $7.5 billion to build electric vehicle charging stations across the country.

In issuing the veto, Mr. Biden argued that the congressional resolution would have hurt domestic manufacturing as well as the clean energy transition.

If enacted, this resolution would undermine the hundreds of millions of dollars that the private sector has already invested in domestic E.V. charging manufacturing, and chill further domestic investment in this critical market, Mr. Biden said in a statement.

The move comes amid a growing political divide over electric vehicles. The Biden administration is aggressively promoting them as an important part of the fight to slow global warming. The landmark climate law signed in 2022 by Mr. Biden, the Inflation Reduction Act, offers incentives to consumers to buy electric vehicles and to manufacturers to build them in the United States.

Republicans, including former President Donald J. Trump, Mr. Bidens likely challenger in the 2024 election, have attacked electric vehicles as unreliable, inconvenient and ceding Americas auto manufacturing to China, which dominates the supply chain for electric vehicles.

Republicans, with some Democrats, voted to repeal a waiver issued by the Biden administration that allows federally funded electric vehicle chargers to be made from imported iron and steel, as long as they are assembled in the United States.

The buy American requirement of the 2021 infrastructure law says that iron and steel produced in the United States must be used for projects funded by the Federal Highway Administration Act. The law includes $7.5 billion to build a national network for recharging electric vehicles.

Installing electric vehicle charging stations is a top priority of the administration because surveys show that many motorists who are interested in buying E.V.s are hesitant to do so because of a lack of convenient charging stations.

Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, introduced the effort to kill the waiver. It hurts American companies and empowers foreign adversaries, like China, to control our energy infrastructure, he said in July. We should never use American dollars to subsidize Chinese-made products.

On Wednesday, learning of Mr. Bidens veto, Mr. Rubio wrote on the social media platform X, Why is he sending American taxpayer dollars to Chinese companies?

The White House argued that by repealing the waiver, lawmakers were actually blocking made-in-America requirements.

Thats because a repeal would have caused a return to a 1983 policy that waives domestic requirements for many manufactured products. That would have made it more likely that federal funds would be spent on chargers made in competitor nations like the Peoples Republic of China, Mr. Biden said in his veto statement.

The Senate voted, 50-48, in November to repeal the wavier, with the Democrats Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Jon Tester of Montana joining Republicans to remove the exemption. Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky was the only Republican to oppose the measure.

The House voted, 209 to 198, in January for the repeal. Two Democrats, Jared Golden of Maine and Donald Davis of North Carolina, voted with Republicans in favor of the measure. Two Republicans, Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania and Tom McClintock of California, opposed it.

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Biden Vetoes Republican Measure to Block Electric Vehicle Charging Stations - The New York Times

Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump speaks at a primary election night party after his win in the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday. Matt Rourke/AP hide caption

Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump speaks at a primary election night party after his win in the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday.

Nikki Haley is continuing to lean hard into one particular argument in her stump speech: electability.

"Republicans have lost the last seven out of eight popular votes for president. That's nothing to be proud of," the former U.N. ambassador has told crowds in Iowa, New Hampshire and now South Carolina, before boasting of a December Wall Street Journal poll that found her 17 points ahead of Joe Biden in a head-to-head matchup.

The argument failed in the first two voting contests, now that Haley has lost to Trump by more than 30 points in Iowa and, a smaller margin, but still double-digits in New Hampshire.

Moreover, polls show that voters just don't care that much about electability. Entrance polls showed that only 14% of Iowa GOP caucusgoers said a candidate's ability to defeat Biden was their top factor in choosing. Meanwhile, 41% chose someone who "shared their values."

Similarly, in New Hampshire exit polls, the same percentage of Republican primary voters, 14%, ranked the ability to defeat Joe Biden as their top priority. Choosing a candidate who "fights for people like me" garnered the top choice of 31% of those voters, while shared values was most important to another 30%.

All of this might surprise anyone who paid attention to the last presidential election. In 2020, Democratic voters badly wanted Trump out of office and were therefore obsessed with nominating a presidential candidate who was electable someone who could defeat Trump.

This year, Republican voters also badly want to defeat Joe Biden, but many say electability isn't a big factor for them. And the reasons for that are complicated.

Concerns about electability vary greatly by election. For example, voters who want to move on from a two-term presidency in the opposing party as with Democrats in 2008 might about something other than electability (in the case of 2008 Democrats, that something was "change").

Similarly, voting a sitting president out of office can raise the salience of electability. In 2012, when Republicans were eager to vote Obama out of office, a plurality of both Iowa Republican caucusgoers and New Hampshire Republican primary voters said electability was their top concern.

Still, the parties generally have different attitudes toward electability, says Matt Grossmann, a political scientist at Michigan State University.

"Republicans do not perceive a tradeoff between rallying the base and winning a general election, whereas Democrats do perceive that tradeoff," he said.

One possible reason why, Grossmann said, is that Republicans correctly perceive America's conservative bent more Americans consider themselves conservative than liberal.

But Grossmann adds that the cause and effect of electability is complicated.

"The candidate that you support influences who you think is electable. So most people will choose their candidate and then say that candidate is more electable."

Similarly, a candidate who works hard to bill themselves as electable will attract voters who care about that quality.

Republican presidential candidate former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley speaks at a New Hampshire primary night rally, in Concord, N.H., on Tuesday. Steven Senne/AP hide caption

Republican presidential candidate former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley speaks at a New Hampshire primary night rally, in Concord, N.H., on Tuesday.

Barbara Grieb is one of those voters. She went to see Haley last week in Rochester, N.H.

"I think that even Democrats, women Democrats, are ready for a woman in the White House," she said. She added: "A win is important. And I think that's why I am eliminating President Trump because. I just don't think he's got the likability, obviously, from Democrats."

One complicating factor this year is that many Republicans see Joe Biden as a particularly weak candidate, so they don't need to worry about electability.

It is true that Biden is unpopular his net approval is at around negative 16 points. But he's not at all sure to lose.

Many head-to-head polls show Trump and Biden about even with each other, or Trump with a slight advantage. Head-to-head polls between Haley and Biden also don't show either with a clear lead.

Which reveals another important point: neither Haley nor Trump appears to have a clear electability advantage right now.

Trump introduces two potential other confounding factors to the electability equation this year. One is that as the last Republican president, he's essentially running as a Republican incumbent.

And along with that, he brings his feverishly devoted followers. And even if some of them briefly glanced at other candidates, many came home to Trump in the end. Peggy Hutchison is one she went to a Trump rally the day before the Iowa caucuses in bitterly cold weather. She was wearing a Trump t-shirt more specifically, a shirt emblazoned with the Punisher logo wearing Trump's distinctive yellow coif. She said she had been to eight Trump rallies. And also...

"I was at January sixth also. But I didn't go in [to the Capitol]. I was there," she said.

"I left when I could tell it was getting out of hand," she added with a laugh.

Hutchison had gone to events for two other Republican candidates Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy. But she explained why she decided on Trump.

"His platform," she said. "I haven't heard anything that he stands for that I don't stand for."

I asked her specifically about electability. She said that while she thinks Trump will defeat Biden, that didn't play into her decision at all. She simply has liked Trump since 2015.

In addition, Trump's lie that he won the 2020 election also plays into how Trump voters think about electability this year. Pat McGee went out to see Trump in Portsmouth. Why did she plan to vote for him?

"He knows what to do and he knows who to do it to," she said. "He knows which people to trust and which people are RINOs which people to pick that would be in his cabinet and support."

I asked her: is she confident that if he's the nominee, Trump can defeat Biden?

"He will. Yeah," she said.

I pointed out that Trump lost to Biden in 2020. McGee made a skeptical face.

"He didn't lose."

To the degree that Trump voters think he's electable, that perception is fueled by Trump's lie about the 2020 election. Convince voters you've never lost, and you might sound like the most electable candidate around.

Continued here:

Electability is all Democrats discussed in 2020. In 2024, Republicans don't care - NPR

Is the Republican presidential primary over already?

Not quite, but its a reasonable question after New Hampshires first-in-the-nation primary delivered a clear victory for Donald J. Trump on Tuesday night. And if your definition of over is whether Mr. Trump is now on track to win without a serious contest, the answer is probably yes.

With nearly all the counting done, he won 55 percent of the vote. His only remaining rival, Nikki Haley, won 44 percent.

Mr. Trumps 11-point margin of victory is not extraordinarily impressive in its own right. In fact, he won by a smaller margin than many pre-election polls suggested.

What makes Mr. Trumps victory so important and what raises the question about whether the race is over is that New Hampshire was Ms. Haleys very best opportunity to change the trajectory of the race. It was arguably her very best opportunity to win a state, period.

If she couldnt win here, she might not be able to win anywhere not even in her home state of South Carolina, where the race turns next. And even if she did win her home state, she would still face a daunting path forward.

Mr. Trump leads the national polls by more than 50 percentage points with just six weeks to go until Super Tuesday, when nearly half of all the delegates to the Republican convention will be awarded. Without an enormous shift, he would secure the nomination in mid-March.

Why was New Hampshire such an excellent opportunity for her?

The polls. New Hampshire was the only state where the polls showed her within striking distance. She trailed by a mere 15 points in the state, compared with her 50-plus-point deficit nationwide. She isnt within 30 points in any other state, including her home state of South Carolina.

History. The state has a long track record of backing moderate and mainstream Republican candidates, including John McCain and Mitt Romney. Mr. Trump won the state with 35 percent of the vote in 2016, but mostly because the moderate vote was divided.

The electorate. Ms. Haley fares best among college graduates and moderates, and the New Hampshire electorate is full of those voters. The state ranks eighth in the college-educated share of the population, and unlike in many states, unaffiliated voters are allowed to participate in the Republican primary.

The endorsements. In contrast with most states, New Hampshires political elite did not coalesce behind Mr. Trump. Ms. Haley even had the support of the states popular Republican governor, Chris Sununu.

The media. New Hampshires first-in-the-nation primary receives far more media attention than later contests. It offered the possibility if only a faint one that a win could change her fortunes elsewhere. A later victory in a similar state like Vermont whose Republicans also tend to be more moderate could be drowned out by other primary results that day and dismissed as too-little-too-late.

Ms. Haley made good on all of these advantages Tuesday. She won 74 percent of moderates, according to the exit polls, along with 58 percent of college graduates and 66 percent of voters who werent registered Republicans.

But it wasnt close to enough. Ms. Haley lost Republicans by a staggering 74 percent to 25 percent a group of no small import in a Republican primary, especially in the states where only registered Republicans can vote. Conservatives gave Mr. Trump a full 70 percent of the vote. Voters without a college degree backed Mr. Trump by 2 to 1.

In other Republican primaries, numbers like these will yield a rout. Conservatives, Republicans and voters without a degree will represent a far greater share of the electorate. There is no credible path for her to win the nomination of a conservative, working-class party while falling this short among conservative, working-class voters.

Worse, Ms. Haleys strength among independents and Democrats will make it even harder for her to expand her appeal, as Mr. Trump and other Republicans will depict her campaign as a liberal Trojan horse.

If Ms. Haley had won New Hampshire, the possibility of riding the momentum into later states and broadening her appeal would have remained. Not anymore. Instead, its Mr. Trump who has the momentum. He has gained nationwide in polls taken since the Iowa caucuses. Even skeptical Republican officials who were seen as Ms. Haleys likeliest allies, like Tim Scott or Marco Rubio, have gotten behind the former president in recent days.

Whether the race is over or not, the New Hampshire result puts Mr. Trump on a comfortable path to the nomination. The Republican Partys rules for awarding delegates, which allow states to award all of their delegates to the winner, could let him clinch the nomination in early March. Mr. Trumps legal challenges add an extra twist if hes convicted of a crime, perhaps hell lose the nomination at the convention. But by the usual rules of primary elections, theres just not much time for the race to change. If it doesnt, Mr. Trump could easily sweep all 50 states.

Excerpt from:

It's Fair to Ask: Is the Republican Race Over? - The New York Times

When David Cameron, Britains foreign secretary and onetime prime minister, visited Washington last month, he took time out to press the case for backing Ukraine with Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, the far-right Georgia Republican who stridently opposes further American military aid to the country.

Last week, Boris Johnson, another former prime minister, argued that the re-election of Donald J. Trump to the White House would not be such a bad thing, so long as Mr. Trump comes around on helping Ukraine. I simply cannot believe that Trump will ditch the Ukrainians, Mr. Johnson wrote in a Daily Mail column that read like a personal appeal to the candidate.

If the special relationship between Britain and the United States has taken on an air of special pleading in recent weeks, it is because Britain, rock solid in its support for Ukraine, now views its role as bucking up an ally for whom aid to the embattled country has become a political obstacle course.

British diplomats said Mr. Cameron and other senior officials had made it a priority to reach out to Republicans who were hostile to further aid. For reasons of history and geography, Britain recognized that support is not as instinctive for Americans as it for the British, according to a senior diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the diplomatic sensitivity of the matter.

Unlike in the United States, where Ukraine has gotten tied up in a dispute with Republicans over President Bidens border policy and come under the shadow of a dismissive Mr. Trump, support for Kyiv in Britain has stayed resolute, undiminished, and nonpartisan in the two years since Russias invasion.

Even in an election year, when the Conservative government and its Labour Party opponents are clashing over almost everything, there is not a glimmer of daylight between them on Ukraine, the biggest foreign policy challenge facing the country.

When Prime Minister Rishi Sunak recently announced 2.5 billion pounds ($3.2 billion) of additional aid for Ukraine, the Labour leader, Keir Starmer, instantly lent his support. Britain, the third-largest supplier of weapons after the United States and Germany, was the first major power to commit to new aid in 2024.

We will remain united across our political parties in defense of Ukraine against that aggression from Putin, Mr. Starmer said. On a visit to British troops deployed in Estonia, near the Russian border just before Christmas, he warned of the problems that fester when politics goes soft on Putin.

That political consensus mirrors public opinion in Britain. Some 68 percent of people favor military assistance to Ukraine, and 53 percent say that aid should flow there for as long as it takes, according to a British Foreign Policy Group survey in July.

Many Britons view the war in Ukraine just over three hours away by plane as almost on their doorstep, and their support reflects a fear that a Russian victory would pose an existential threat to the security of Europe and Britain. Addressing the Ukrainian Parliament earlier this month, Mr. Sunak described military aid as an investment in our collective security and said, if Putin wins in Ukraine, he will not stop here.

Britains army chief, Gen. Patrick Sanders, warned in a speech on Wednesday that Britons were now a prewar generation, who could be pressed into service to confront a military threat to Europe from an emboldened Russia. Downing Street later clarified that General Sanders was not opening the door to peacetime conscription.

There is ample precedent for Britain trying to steady a wavering United States in international conflicts. In 1990, when President George H.W. Bush was struggling to build a United Nations coalition to oppose Iraq after it invaded Kuwait, Margaret Thatcher famously told him, Remember, George, this is no time to go wobbly.

At other moments, Britain plays the role of Americas ready wingman. On Monday, it joined the United States in a second round of airstrikes against Houthi militants in Yemen, just hours after a phone call between Mr. Sunak and Mr. Biden, in which they agreed on the need to combat Houthi attempts to block commercial shipping in international sea lanes.

Malcolm Chalmers, the deputy director general of the Royal United Services Institute, a London think tank, said the British American cooperation on Yemen, and Britains prodding of Washington on Ukraine, captured the push-pull dynamic that has characterized the trans-Atlantic relationship for decades.

People sometimes mischaracterize U.K. security policy as being a poodle of the U.S., he said. The U.K. puts a very close value on its relations with the U.S., but that doesnt mean we wont push the U.S. if we feel it is not in the right place.

The contrast between the allies on Ukraine has been especially stark, in part because both are entering election cycles in which such policies are easily held captive to broader political debates. Brexit-era populist figures like Nigel Farage still roam restlessly on the fringe. Mr. Farage, a conspicuous ally of Mr. Trump who shares his softer views of President Vladimir V. Putin, is backing a new anti-immigration party, Reform U.K., which some Tory lawmakers fear will siphon votes from them.

But the Conservatives, unlike the Republicans, do not have a pro-Putinist wing in their party, said Lawrence Freedman, emeritus professor of war studies at Kings College London. To the extent that any British leader might have sought an accommodation with Russia, he said, it would more likely have been the last Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn.

Mr. Corbyn, after all, once said he would like to see NATO ultimately disband. Comments like that saddled Labour with the reputation for lacking in patriotism, something that Mr. Starmer has worked methodically to root out, along with the anti-Semitism that once contaminated its far-left ranks.

Banishing that history may be another reason Ukraine has not become a contentious issue. While Britains election is likely to be driven by economic rather than national security concerns, analysts said Mr. Starmer needed to inoculate Labour against charges that it is insufficiently patriotic. Security is one of the few issues on which polls show that voters still trust Labour less than the Tories.

There is a thread in Labour history of being very patriotic, said Jonathan Powell, a former chief of staff to a Labour prime minister, Tony Blair, who famously stuck with President George W. Bush through the Iraq War. But Labour has had a problem convincing people again of its patriotism.

Mr. Powell pointed out that traditional Labour strongholds, including Mr. Blairs old district in northern England, had long been fertile recruiting grounds for the military. But in 2019, propelled by Mr. Johnsons promise to get Brexit done, the Conservatives picked off many of these seats.

In a column last fall in the pro-Tory Daily Telegraph, Labours shadow defense secretary, John Healey, and shadow foreign secretary, David Lammy, argued that Britains nuclear-weapons deterrent, as well as its membership in NATO, were legacies of the post-World War II Labour government of Clement Attlee.

The Labour lawmakers accused successive Conservative-led governments of bleeding Britains armed forces through years of budget cuts imposed by fiscal austerity. Over the last 13 years, Mr. Lammy and Mr. Healey wrote, our army has been cut to the smallest size since the days of Napoleon.

Much of Britains support for Ukraine, of course, is rooted in cultural and national identity, which runs deeper than party politics. As Mr. Powell put it, the notion of a plucky nation plugging away by itself is something we get.

Britain has taken a hard line against Russia ever since Winston Churchill warned of an Iron Curtain after World War II. Its cynicism about Russian motives deepened in 2018, after the Kremlin was accused of poisoning a former Russian intelligence agent and his daughter in Salisbury, England, with a nerve agent. Britain blamed the operation on Russias military intelligence and expelled its diplomats.

But a succession of Conservative prime ministers has also discovered that backing Ukraine is an appealing strategy for a country groping for a post-Brexit role on the global stage. Without having to commit its own troops, or even to make a financial commitment beyond this year, Britain can look like a world leader at relatively modest cost.

Its not a great strain on the U.K. to take on this policy, Professor Freedman said. And if youre the first mover, as the U.K. has been on a number of occasions, and now with security guarantees, you get credit for it.

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'No Time to Go Wobbly': Why Britain Is Lobbying U.S. Republicans on Ukraine - The New York Times

So much for suspense. As soon as the polls closed at 8 P.M. in the first-in-the-nation New Hampshire primary on Tuesday night, the Associated Press called the race for Donald Trump. Sometimes, it turns out, the conventional wisdom is actually right. With a sizable, if not overwhelming, victory over Nikki Haley, Trump has very likely insured that the first competitive primary of 2024 will also be, in effect, the last.

Twenty minutes later, Haley was onstage at her headquarters in Concord, New Hampshire, conceding defeat while insisting that this race is far from over and vowing to fight on in her home states Republican primary in late February. South Carolina voters dont want a coronationthey want an election, and were going to give them one, she promised. But Trump, of course, was having none of it. She didnt win, she lost, Trump said at his own victory party in Nashua. He seemed incensed that Haley had not immediately bent her knee. Who the hell was the imposter that went on the stage before and claimed a victory? She did very poorly, he said. We had one hell of a night tonight.

To underscore the point, he brought to the podium Vivek Ramaswamy, one of the Republican also-rans, who dropped out after Iowa and endorsed Trump. The general election begins tonight, Ramaswamy said, to loud cheers. Later, Trump gave Tim Scott, another of the dropouts, the chance to repeat the homage. Its over, it is time for the Republican Party to coalesce around our nominee and the next President of the United States, Donald Trump, Scott said. Lets get that party started tonight. When Trump pointed out that Haley had appointed Scott to the Senate but that Scott nonetheless now supported him, he suggested, You must really hate her. But Scott cut in. I just love you, he said. The self-abasement of the Republicans now that Trump is once again their presumptive nominee knows no bounds.

What is the proper term for a pre-written postmortem? A pre-postmortem? In the run-up to New Hampshire, it seemed inevitable that this was where Haleys challenge to Trump would find both its best expression and its last stand. Haley had hoped for a head-to-head race against Trump in New Hampshire, banking her campaign on its independent-minded voters. When Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor whose political implosion was one of the cringiest story lines of 2023, dropped out over the weekend, she got what she had wanted. And yet there was as much certainty about the outcome of the race as I can remember in notoriously hard-to-predict New Hampshire, which was remarkable given that anything short of a Haley upset would mean that the 2024 race was effectively over before it had barely begun. Everybodys waiting to write my obituary, Haley complained in an interview with CNNs Dana Bash on Tuesday, hours before the polls closed.

But, in fact, they werent waiting. Some themes: Haley made a mistake by centering her campaign on Trumps unsuitability, while he bashed away at her on favorite issues such as immigration. (Politicos Playbook: How Trump is winning on the issues.) Haley failed to benefit from DeSantis dropping out. (CNNs Ron Brownstein: Why DeSantis departure isnt likely to change the dynamic between Trump and Haley.) Haley had almost no meaningful path forward, regardless of how she fared in New Hampshire. (Pretty much everybody.) The final tracking poll from Suffolk University, NBC-10, and the Boston Globe, released the day before the election, had Trump up sixty per cent to thirty-eight per centseemingly more than enough to justify the capital sentence meted out to Haleys campaign before a single primary voter in a single state had shown up at the polls.

Over on Fox News, Laura Ingraham went big picture before the results were in: Trumps forthcoming New Hampshire victory, she said in her opening monologue, marked the last gasp of the Never Trumpers, a final and official end to the anti-Trump heresy that has persisted inside the Republican Party since his successful takeover of the G.O.P. in 2016. Elise Stefanik, the House Republican Conference chair who has been openly lobbying for Trump to pick her as his Vice-Presidential running mate, released a statement congratulating him on his historic and massive victory soon after 7:30 P.M., before the polls had officially closed. Her Senate colleague John Barrasso, of Wyoming, declared minutes later: Donald J. Trump is our presumptive nominee. He, too, did not bother to wait for the voting to end.

Is it quibbling to point out that the race ended up being closer than the polls had suggested? That Haley has insisted she will not drop out? In her concession speech, Haley offered the defiant but not really dispositive rhetoric of a defeated candidate who is still holding her options open. Does that mean she will actually still be in the running come South Carolina? I would not count on it. For now, though, she bragged of being the last one standing next to Donald Trump and insisted that she is the more electable choice for Republicans in November against Joe Biden, given the negativity and chaos that accompany Trump wherever he goes.

She certainly has a point on that scoreTrumps showing in New Hampshire did not exactly suggest that he was heading for an easy win in November. Haley secured more than forty per cent of the vote in New Hampshire, showing how divided the G.O.P. remains. Many of Haleys voters told exit pollsters that they would be reluctant to vote for Trump in the general electionand that, in fact, opposition to Trump was a main reason that they supported Haley in the first place. Forty-seven per cent of Republican primary voters in a CNN exit poll said that, if Trump is convicted in one of the four criminal cases he currently faces, he would not be fit for the Presidency. Even a small fraction of Republicans refusing to vote for Trump in key battleground states would be more than enough to sink his candidacy, which, of course, is exactly what happened in 2020.

Before the results came in on Tuesday, John McCains daughter Meghan posted on X the famous Time magazine cover of her late father, exulting after his upset in the 2000 New Hampshire primary against the overwhelming favorite, George W. Bush. The McCain Mutiny, the headline read, Inside the campaign that turned the G.O.P. race upside down. Plenty of others remembered the 2008 stunner in New Hampshire, when Hillary Clinton, after a tearful moment with a voter, overcame a large deficit in the polls to beat Barack Obama, who, in the states final primary debate, had famously dismissed her as likable enough.

But the great upsets of years past are also reminders that there are limits to the predictive power of a New Hampshire vote. In both cases, the bounce from a big and unexpected win did not, in the end, change the outcome. Both McCain and Clinton went on to lose. This time, Nikki Haley hoped for a shocker; indeed, her campaign was premised on it. But it was not to be.

During Tuesdays interview in Manchester, Bash asked Haley if she thought that Trump was fit for office. If I did, I wouldnt be running, Haley replied.

And yet, when Bash asked perhaps the most important question remaining about Haley in 2024, the answer was just the same as it had been before: she, like all the other Republicans who ran against Trump without ever really challenging him, would nonetheless bow down before the ex-President and vote for him again in November. Why? I dont ever want to see a President Kamala Harris, Haley said. That should send a chill up everyones spine. Welcome to the general election. Its going to be a long one.

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The 2024 Republican Primary Was Over Before It Began - The New Yorker

Former President Donald Trumps support from Republicans on Capitol Hill grew after he won the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday, with some House members facing tough reelections this fall saying the win clarified that Trump would be the partys 2024 nominee.

Democrats, meanwhile, breathed a sigh of relief that President Joe Bidens decision not to campaign in the Granite State, after the Democratic Party reordered the calendar and stripped the state of its convention delegates for not complying, didnt prevent him from winning Tuesday through a coordinated write-in campaign.

While former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley said she plans to stay in the race, Republican and Democratic officials and operatives began to look ahead to a November rematch of the 2020 presidential election.

President Trump will be the Republican nominee for president, New York Rep. Brandon Williams said on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, after the New Hampshire race was called. Our country is under immense pressure inflation, chaos at the border, sanctuary cities, fentanyl, cashless bail, crime, energy costs we cant endure 4 more years of Progressive fantasies, we need a Republican in the White House.

Williams, a freshman who represents a district that Biden would have won by 7 points in 2020, said he always said our nominee will have my full support to turn this country around. He joined fellow New York freshman Rep. Nick LaLota, who endorsed Trump last weekend.

Other so-called Biden district Republicans have also suggested to reporters recently that they would support Trump if hes the nominee.California Rep. John Duarte told Axios he expects to endorse Trump and will strongly support the Republican candidate. Nebraska Rep. Don Bacon told The Washington Post that he would support the nominee.

Senators who are not in danger in November but had held off on endorsing Trump also jumped on the bandwagon.

Texas Sen. John Cornyn, one of three Republicans considered potential successors to Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, endorsed Trump on Tuesday night, as did Nebraska Sen. Deb Fischer, who is up for reelection in November.

To beat Biden, Republicans need to unite around a single candidate, and its clear that President Trump is Republican voters choice, Cornyn said. Four more years of failed domestic policies like the Biden Border Crisis and record-high inflation, and failed foreign policies that have emboldened our adversaries and made the world a more dangerous place, must be stopped.

Cornyn had previously suggested he was skeptical that Trump would win another general election.

House Speaker Mike Johnson said in a statement that its time for the Republican Party to unite around President Trump so we can focus on ending the disastrous Biden presidency and growing our majority in Congress. His statement followed one issued over the weekend from National Republican Congressional Committee Chair Richard Hudson, R-N.C., calling Trump the presumptive nominee.

David Bergstein, the communications director for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, said in a statement that Republican candidates will spend the next months answering for every word that comes out of Trumps mouth.

Trump is all but certain to lead the GOP ticket, and thats the worst possible outcome for Republican Senate candidates, he said. He energizes Democrats, alienates independent voters, and will make the infighting in GOP primaries even worse.

Biden, despite not actually being on the ballot, won 55 percent of the vote in New Hampshires Democratic primary, according to unofficial tallies Wednesday afternoon.

While we work toward November 2024, one thing is increasingly clear today: Donald Trump is headed straight into a general election matchup where hell face the only person to have ever beaten him at the ballot box: Joe Biden, Julie Chaez Rodriguez, Bidens campaign manager, said in a statement.

Minnesota Rep. Dean Phillips, who in October looked at Bidens cratering popularity and said Democrats needed an alternative, took less than 20 percent. He said Wednesday on Fox News that after campaigning in New Hampshire for just 10 weeks, that result was a success.

As I said for many weeks before this, I respect Joe Biden. But even those numbers last night [were] not those of a strong incumbent, Phillips said. Im trying to wake up my party to what is an independent disaster.

Still, its not clear where Phillips campaign goes beyond the Granite State. Biden will be on the ballot early next month in South Carolina, the state that propelled him to the nomination four years ago.

South Carolina Rep. James E. Clyburn, whose 2020 endorsement was critical for Biden, has said he has concerns about Democrats ability to break through and communicate the Biden administrations achievements to voters.

I have no problem with the Biden administration and what it has done. My problem is we have not been able to break through that MAGA wall in order to get to people exactly what this president has done, Clyburn said on CNN earlier this month.

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More GOP holdouts backing Trump as leaders seek unity - Roll Call

By the time the polls closed in New Hampshire the conventional wisdom had solidified former President Donald Trump will win the Republican nomination and have the long-anticipated rematch against Biden. The conventional wisdom is based on a set of hard facts. Not only did Haley not win New Hampshire she didnt come within 10 points of Trump. Her next stop is South Carolina a state created by the late Republican strategist Lee Atwater to be a firewall for Ronald Reagan or for any conservative who gets sidetracked by the Republicans up north. Also, this is Haleys home state, and she is running about 30 points behind Trump. Losing is bad. Losing in your home state is worse.

After South Carolina comes Super Tuesday and its large number of delegates. Seven of the primaries that day about half are closed primaries; meaning that only Republicans can vote in them depriving Haley of the independents who made up more than half of her New Hampshire vote. In addition, the Republican party allows states to adopt winner take all type rules. On Super Tuesday two states, Alaska and Colorado, allocate delegates to candidates proportionally the remaining states use some sort of winner take all or winner take most system. For instance, in delegate rich California, if a candidate wins 50% of the vote, they get all the delegates. If not, the delegates are awarded proportionally. In a two-person race Trump is likely to win many delegates.

Against these odds the big question is why is Nikki Haley staying in?

On election night she decided to speak early, concede the race, and give a straight from the heart speech about her plans to go forward. As she reminded the crowd, New Hampshire is the first state not the last. Of course, theres a full month before the next showdown in South Carolina and she might upon reflection change her mind. In the meantime here are some possible reasons for staying in.

We dont know yet how much money Haley has in the bank but in the fall serious deep pocketed Republicans like the Koch brothers got in the race behind her. Super Tuesday is very expensive with big states like California and Texas, but Haley may think she has a sufficient war chest. In the next month she will see if the money keeps coming in or if her backers get cold feet and pull out.

In the months before the convention Trump may be convicted of one or more crimes. Its hard to predict how his loyal base will react. So far Trumps indictments have only made them more loyal and theres no reason to believe that convictions would change their minds. Nonetheless a conviction would certainly play into Haleys critique of him as the chaos candidate. And she may be thinking shed be the last person standing.

This would leave Haley as the I told you so candidate and pave the way for her to be the generational change and the leader of the post-Trump Republican Party setting her up to run in 2028. Running for a major party nomination is a grueling and difficult process. But Haley is only 52 years old and with one campaign under her belt she could be a formidable candidate in 2028.

He could repeat the shambolic presidency of this first term, he could prove to be more organized and efficacious or both. It probably wouldnt matter since the Constitution limits presidents to 2 four-year terms, and he would not be able to run again in any event. Haley could still be a front-runner for 2028.

There is, however, the possibility that staying in could backfire on Haley. Its possible that her New Hampshire showing was her high-water mark and that embarrassing finishes down the road will hurt her future prospects. And/or she could earn the wrath of Trumps supporters who like Trump could get very angry at her for staying in.

Nonetheless, at 52 she has broken into the national stage and has what Donald Trump at 77 does not have time.

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Four reasons why Nikki Haley may be staying in the race for the Republican nomination | Brookings - Brookings Institution

President Biden is greeted by Shawn Fain, President of the United Auto Workers. The union endorsed Biden's reelection bid on Wednesday. Alex Brandon/AP hide caption

President Biden is greeted by Shawn Fain, President of the United Auto Workers. The union endorsed Biden's reelection bid on Wednesday.

The United Auto Workers endorsed President Biden's reelection campaign on Wednesday in a fiery speech from its president, Shawn Fain. Fain said Biden had earned the nod with his pro-union policies and went on to excoriate former President Donald Trump, the frontrunner in the Republican race, for his past actions and statements.

Fain showed a highlight reel of Biden walking the picket line outside a General Motors facility in Wayne, Mich., the first time in modern history that a sitting president had done that.

He contrasted Biden's actions with what Trump did during a 40-day strike in 2019, displaying a blank slide to the ballroom of cheering union members. "He said nothing, he did nothing, not a damn thing, because he doesn't care about the American worker," Fain said.

"Donald Trump is a scab," Fain said. "Donald Trump stands against everything we stand for as a union, as a society."

"So that's a choice we face. It's not about who you like, it's not about your party. It's not this bulls*** about age. It's not about anything but our best shot at taking back power for the working class," he said.

President Biden was the first sitting president in modern history to walk a picket line with striking workers. Evan Vucci/Associated Press hide caption

President Biden was the first sitting president in modern history to walk a picket line with striking workers.

In the 2016 election, Trump won Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, in part with a message to workers hurt by free trade agreements.

But Biden won those key states in 2020, in part because he made gains among white working class voters and won a majority of union households. It's a strategy his campaign is seeking to repeat this year, which makes the UAW endorsement key.

While other major U.S. unions were quick to endorse his campaign last year, the UAW which represents nearly 400,000 members held back. Fain said that the union's endorsements were "going to be earned and not freely given."

Then came the UAW's six-week strike last year with the Big Three automakers, and Biden's full-throated support for the union.

"I was so damn proud to stand on that picket line with you," Biden said on Wednesday. "You made sure the automobile future of the world will be made in America."

Fain also reminded members how Biden supported a UAW push to save a plant in Belvidere, Ill. "Instead of talking trash about our union, Joe Biden stood with us, and supported our historic victory to save Belvidere, and save that community," Fain said, recalling how Trump in 2008 had blamed unions for the crisis in the auto industry.

Aside from a brief protest from a few audience members who disrupted Biden's speech to call for a ceasefire in Gaza, the crowd seemed to largely back the union's endorsement of Biden.

"I think he's the best we have to represent our interests and the working class's interests," said Bob Reynolds, a retiree from Ford's Buffalo Stamping Plant.

While he's concerned about climate change, Reynolds said he is concerned about the speed of the transition to electric vehicles, which the Biden administration has made a top priority. Still, he's optimistic that the cars of the future will be built by UAW workers.

"We're organizing more and more. The union jobs are there if we can organize them," he said.

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The United Auto Workers union endorsed Biden today - NPR

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Georgia Republican and die-hard ally of former President Donald J. Trump, was exasperated with her colleagues as she left the House floor last Thursday evening.

I dont know if its sunk in this place around here, Ms. Greene vented as she headed for the elevators and then for Manchester, N.H., where she was stumping for the former president. Ive been telling everyone that President Trump is the leader of the Republican Party; hes going to be our presidential nominee. Its time for all Republicans to get behind his policies.

If it hadnt sunk in yet, it has now.

After Mr. Trump won the New Hampshire primary by 11 percentage points on Tuesday night following his steamrolling victory in the Iowa caucuses, the small segment of Republicans in Congress who had tried to distance themselves from him, ignore him, cast doubt on his staying power or condemn him have begun swiftly falling into line behind him. And this time, it is happening even faster than it did in 2016, when Mr. Trump first subsumed his party.

In the Senate, at least 29 Republicans more than half the conference have now endorsed Mr. Trump, compared with zero for the lone Republican challenger still standing, former Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina, who vowed on Tuesday night to carry on with her campaign despite outlining no clear path to victory.

In the Republican-controlled House, which has acted as Mr. Trumps sword and shield, vulnerable Republicans who represent districts President Biden won in 2020 are speed walking to the Trump bandwagon, where their MAGA-loving colleagues are greeting them with an I told you so.

Two of them, Representatives Brandon Williams and Nick LaLota of New York, said that Mr. Trump was the partys inevitable nominee and that they fully supported the voters choice. Representative John Duarte, a California Republican whose district Mr. Biden won in 2020 by almost 11 points, told Axios that he expected to ultimately endorse Donald Trump for president.

Tim Miller, who worked as a top adviser to former Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida, said it wasnt hard to understand why.

Trump slaughtered Nikki Haley among self-identified Republicans last night, he said. Republicans want Trump. The politicians arent fighting it anymore. Its what their voters want, and they have given up on any pretense of fighting their impulses or trying to lead them a different direction.

The dynamic could have an immediate impact on the agenda in Congress, where Republicans and Democrats have been grasping for an elusive compromise to pair a clampdown on migration at the southern border with an aid package for Ukraine. Mr. Trump has savaged the emerging deal as too weak on immigration, and as lawmakers line up behind his candidacy, they appear more unlikely to defy him on his signature issue particularly in the Republican-controlled House.

And in the Senate, where top Republicans have been split over Mr. Trumps candidacy, resistance is melting away. Perhaps the most surprising lawmaker to join the growing queue of Trump endorsers on Tuesday night was Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, who is one of three lawmakers vying to succeed Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky as the partys leader.

I am proud of our accomplishments in President Trumps first term, Mr. Cornyn wrote in a post on social media that omitted any praise of the candidate himself but called him the Republican voters choice. His endorsement came just months after he told The Houston Chronicle that Trumps time has passed him by, and that a successful general election candidate needed to appeal to voters beyond the MAGA base.

Senator John Thune of South Dakota, the No. 2 Senate Republican who has been an outspoken critic of Mr. Trump, took a similar approach on Wednesday, withholding any accolades for the former president but conceding that he appeared to be marching toward the G.O.P. nomination. Mr. Thune told reporters that Mr. Trump was in a commanding position, and Ive said all along Ill endorse the nominee. So if hes the nominee, Ill do what I can to help the team win the presidency.

Senator John Barrasso, Republican of Wyoming and the No. 3 Senate Republican who is also in the quiet Senate race for party leader, stated plainly earlier this month: We need Donald Trump back in the White House.

Mr. McConnell himself has been silent, telling reporters at a news conference ahead of the New Hampshire primary that everyone was watching New Hampshire with great interest, but saying nothing on Wednesday after Mr. Trump won.

The rush to fall in line, yet again, has a surreal yet inevitable quality this time around. It has been eight years since Mr. Trump first vanquished 16 other candidates in the Republican primary, and was eventually embraced by the very G.O.P. lawmakers who had expressed deep concerns about his ability to serve as commander in chief. It has been three years since the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, when many Republicans who feared for their lives that day initially blamed Mr. Trump for the violence but quickly reversed course and defended him.

I really would have thought that Jan. 6 would have been a clean break and Im surprised that its not, said Senator Tim Kaine, Democrat of Virginia. I dont get it.

Democrats have rushed to capitalize on the dynamic, arguing that voters will punish Republicans who ally themselves with Mr. Trump and cost the party its House majority.

Donald Trump called it when he said that Republicans across the country would all bend the knee and declare their fealty to him no matter how toxic he is, Viet Shelton, a spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said. Now were watching it happen in real time as party leaders are pressuring candidates across the country to fall in line.

But Republicans appear to have concluded, once again, that it is too difficult to forge a viable path in G.O.P. politics that does not include a tight embrace of Mr. Trump.

Representative Nancy Mace, Republican of South Carolina, beat a Trump-backed candidate in 2022 thanks, at least in part, to the backing of Ms. Haley, who campaigned with her. After Jan. 6, Ms. Mace claimed that all of Mr. Trumps accomplishments had been wiped out by his behavior during the mob attack. In response, Mr. Trump called her a grandstanding loser.

As she has tried to plot her own political future, Ms. Mace has wrestled for months with how to deal with the pesky Trump issue. Ill support the nominee thats what I say, she said in April, when discussing how to triangulate around Mr. Trump, whom she did not want to support. And then I shut up.

That was then.

A day before the New Hampshire primary, Ms. Mace said she was backing Mr. Trump for president. On Tuesday night, she showed up with her Havanese dog, Liberty, at the Trump campaign headquarters in Charleston to celebrate what she called the historic New Hampshire win!

Senator Susan Collins of Maine was among the few Republican senators who said that she did not see herself ever endorsing Mr. Trump, going so far as to commend Ms. Haley for staying in the race.

The more people see her, since she appears to be the only alternative to Donald Trump right now, the more impressed they will be, Ms. Collins said on Wednesday. But even she declined to formally endorse Ms. Haley, saying she was personal friends with many of the other Republican presidential candidates who have since dropped out of the race.

On the right, though, Mr. Trump also was quickly coalescing the support of the tiny group of lawmakers who had tried experimenting with an alternative. Representative Bob Good of Virginia, the chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, had endorsed Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida for president. But within minutes of Mr. DeSantiss pulling the plug on his own bid ahead of the New Hampshire primary, Mr. Good rushed to right that wrong.

It is my privilege to provide my complete and total endorsement for Donald J. Trump as the 47th president of the United States, Mr. Good wrote online. President Trump was the greatest president of my lifetime, and we need him to reinstate the policies that were working so well for America.

Representative Chip Roy, Republican of Texas, who campaigned for Mr. DeSantis through the bitter end, was inching his way back into the fold on Tuesday night.

Trump supporters rightly just want their country back and he listens to them, he wrote online. Its his core strength.

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After Early Primary Victories, Republicans in Congress Fall in Line Behind Trump - The New York Times