Election 2024 live updates: Haley sharpens focus on Trump before New Hampshire, says DeSantis 'invisible' in South Carolina – NBC News
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A Washington judge on Thursday dismissed an effort to remove Trump’s name from the state’s primary ballot.
In a ruling Thursday, Thurston County Superior Court Judge Mary Sue Wilson said that Secretary of State Steve Hobbs had “acted consistent with his duties” when he included Trump’s name on the ballot.
“An order directing the secretary of state to take different action, an order from this court, is simply not supported by the statutes and not supported by the affidavit of the electors,” Wilson wrote.
Hobbs said in a statement that his office would “continue working with our partners in county elections offices to get all the necessary materials for this election to every Washington voter.”
Washington state is set to hold its primary on March 12.
Trump attended the funeral today of his mother-in-law, Amalija Knavs, who died this month at age 78.
“Her nurturing spirit had no limits, creating a legacy that will last for generations,” Melania Trump said in the eulogy for her mother.
“She embodied the best mother, wife, grandmother, mother-in-law. A true beacon of love and luxury in our lives,” she said.
Earlier on Thursday, Trump referred to Knavs on Truth Social as a “great woman.”
Trump’s presence at the funeral meant that he was off the campaign trail for the day. It also meant that he was not in New York at the damages trial in E. Jean Carroll’s defamation case against him, which was a point of contention at yesterday’s proceedings.
HOOKSETT, N.H. — Haley’s campaign says she will have conducted approximately 30 stops here in New Hampshire between Tuesday and the state’s first-in-the-nation primary the following week — easily surpassing the total set to be held by Trump and DeSantis.
After some New Hampshire Republicans told NBC News they felt she was not fighting as hard as she could in the final week of an election that is most critical to her primary bid, criticizing her for not debating DeSantis or taking voter questions, her campaign has posted more of her events publicly to dispel the notion that she is not sufficiently traversing the state. Additionally, Haley on Thursday took questions from voters and the traveling press for the first time in more than a week.
At an early-morning meet-and-greet in Hollis, she took questions from town hall attendees for the first time since Dec. 28. and gaggled with the traveling press for the first time since Jan. 6. Her afternoon stop in Hooksett was brief and did not feature the same Q&A.
Voters in Hollis asked her about entitlements and foreign affairs. She had not taken questions during her events since failing to identify slavery as a cause of the Civil War last month.
Speaking with the press after, Haley pushed back on criticism over refusing to debate DeSantis here, saying the person who prevented a debate from taking place was Trump, who refused to take the stage. Haley has said she would only debate at this point if Trump participated. Both Trump and Haley are far ahead of DeSantis in New Hampshire polling.
“The second he says he’s going to get on the stage, I’m ready,” she said, adding, “He threw a temper tantrum last night. He’s doing other things to attack me, but he won’t get in front of me and answer the questions.”
In introducing Haley in Hooksett, New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, who has been alongside Haley at her appearances in the Granite State, said he and Haley would be “crisscrossing the state” together over the next few days.
“Get everybody out and to the polls on Tuesday,” Haley told supporters in Hooksett. “We’re going to do this in a way that makes you proud.”
A majority of the House Republican conference has endorsed Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, with at least 114 lawmakers backing the former president.
Trump captured endorsements from a majority of GOP senators (25) on Tuesday, when Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, announced he was endorsing the former president.
Trump has been gaining momentum in the endorsements race ever since his decisive Iowa caucuses victory on Monday. Some elected officials acknowledged the momentum shift in announcing their support for Trump, with Nevada GOP Gov. Joe Lombardo saying that he’s now backing Trump because “the race is over.”
Rep. Dean Phillips, joined by former 2020 presidential candidate and New York mayoral candidate Andrew Yang, held a small campaign event in Manchester, New Hampshire, today, where he touted his age and bipartisan record while arguing he would be better positioned than Biden to handle issues like artificial intelligence.
Phillips during the event furthered a core theme of his candidacy: that his age makes him better positioned than Biden and Trump to “prepare for the future.”
Phillips did not spend too much time discussing specific policy stances beyond AI, which he argued should be better regulated in Washington while proposing the creation of the “Department of Artificial Intelligence.”
“Men in their 80s frankly, even good men, good women, are not in a position to anticipate and prepare us for the future,” he said. “We had 100 years to prepare for climate change. We knew 100 years ago what would happen by burning fossil fuels, and what did we do? Nothing. AI, my friends, we don’t have 100 years. We have months, if not just a couple years at the most. I anticipate it. I’m prepared for it. And I will be our first AI president.”
Haley is sharpening her attacks on Trump, saying he is now her main target after the Iowa caucuses.
“It’s Trump in New Hampshire and Trump in South Carolina,” she told a group of reporters in Hollis, New Hampshire, with Gov. Chris Sununu by her side.
The former South Carolina governor said that while she viewed DeSantis as a serious rival in Iowa, “We’re no longer focused on him” in the other early-voting states.
“He’s closer to zero than he is to me. I mean, he’s invisible in New Hampshire. He’s invisible in South Carolina,” she said. “We’re focused on Trump. That’s the key.”
Haley said that Americans don’t believe everything Trump says and blamed him for Republicans losing the House, Senate and White House in recent elections.
When NBC News asked whether Trump would be qualified to be president if he were convicted of a felony, Haley dodged.
“I trust the American people,” she said. “Do you think the American people are gonna vote for someone who’s been convicted?”
“I’m going to beat him, so we don’t have to ever deal with, ‘Are we going to elect a convicted felon?'” she added.
While Trump has maintained a sizable lead in New Hampshire, recent polling shows Haley continuing to close the gap.
Former Rep. Justin Amash, a Republican-turned-independent who voted to impeach Trump in 2019, is considering running for Senate this year in Michigan’s already jumbled GOP field.
“I’ve been humbled in recent weeks by the many people who have urged me to run for Senate in Michigan and to do so by joining the Republican primary,” Amash wrote in a post on X. “They see what I see: contenders for the seat who are uninspired, unserious, and unprepared to tackle the chief impediment to liberty and economic prosperity—an overgrown and abusive government that strives to centralize power and snuff out individualism. The people of Michigan and our country deserve better.”
Amash added in the post that he is forming an exploratory committee as he weighs a bid. The seat will be open with the retirement of longtime Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow.
Amash would join fellow former Reps. Peter Meijer and Mike Rogers, along with businessman Sandy Pensler and former Detroit Police Chief James Craig on the GOP side. The primary — scheduled for August — has early on been marked by Craig’s and Pensler’s professed loyalty to Trump and by Rogers’ and Meijer’s efforts to neutralize their past criticism of the former president.
Meijer, who succeeded Amash in Congress, voted to impeach Trump in 2020. He now says he will vote for whoever the Republican presidential nominee is in 2024, meaning he is prepared to vote for Trump.
On the Democratic side, Rep. Elissa Slotkin is ahead in polls in a primary that also includes actor Hill Harper.
Nevada GOP Gov. Joe Lombardo told The Nevada Independent that he plans to caucus for Trump, saying in part that Trump “has the ability to move us out of the doldrums associated with President [Joe] Biden.”
Trump had endorsed Lombardo’s 2022 campaign, but Lombardo had previously said he would stay out of the GOP presidential race. However, Lombardo told The Nevada Independent that he is now publicly backing Trump because “the race is over.”
The Nevada GOP caucus is set for Feb. 8.
Lombardo’s endorsement gives Trump support from leaders of the next two primary states after New Hampshire’s contest next week, with South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster endorsing Trump last year.
Ten governors have endorsed Trump so far, while just one, Chris Sununu of New Hampshire, has endorsed Haley. Two governors have endorsed DeSantis: Iowa’s Kim Reynolds and Oklahoma’s Kevin Stitt.
Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., said he is endorsing Democratic Rep. Andy Kim’s primary campaign against New Jersey Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez.
In his statement, Fetterman called the three-term congressman “a man of integrity and deep honor,” citing Kim’s service in former President Barack Obama’s administration and his work to clean up the Capitol Rotunda after the Jan. 6, 2021, riot. He also took a swipe at Menendez, who Fetterman has said should resign after he was indicted on bribery and corruption charges.
“I am incredibly proud to endorse Andy Kim for Senate,” Fetterman said. Referencing Menendez’s indictment, Fetterman added, “And I feel very secure knowing that he has no gold bars underneath his mattress and won’t ever be accused of being a foreign agent for Egypt or Qatar.”
Kim announced a campaign against Menendez after the senator, who has served in the Senate since 2006, was indicted in September on bribery and corruption charges. Menendez has denied any wrongdoing.
Menendez has not said whether he is running for re-election, telling reporters at the Capitol last week, “I haven’t decided yet. Last time I ran, I declared in March, so I have some time.”
A coalition of reproductive and civil rights groups formally launched an effort Thursday to advance an amendment that would enshrine abortion rights in the Missouri Constitution.
Missourians for Constitutional Freedom began collecting signatures throughout the state after they selected one proposed constitutional amendment to attempt to place on the 2024 ballot from an original field of 11 possible options.
The campaign makes Missouri the latest state where abortion-rights groups have sought to place a constitutional amendment on the ballot after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022. In the 19 months since that ruling, abortion-rights advocates have won every race in which the issue has appeared directly on the ballot.
The proposed amendment in Missouri would enshrine language in the state constitution that protects abortion rights, as well as other reproductive rights up until fetal viability, or around the 24th week of pregnancy, with exceptions after that point for the life and health of the woman.
The proposed amendment states that the government “shall not deny or infringe upon a person’s fundamental right to reproductive freedom” — which is defined as all decisions related to reproductive health care (explicitly including “birth control,” “abortion care” and “miscarriage care”) — up until fetal viability.
The proposal would also deem any “denial, interference, delay or restriction” of such care as “invalid.”
After that point, the government would be able to restrict abortion, except in cases when treating health care professionals have decided that abortions would “protect the life or physical or mental health” of the woman.
Read the full story here.
DeSantis, back in Florida for the day, told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt “yes on that, 100%” when asked whether he has the money and staff to compete through the end of March, past Super Tuesday.
The governor, who said in the weeks leading up to Iowa that he is focused on accruing delegates, reiterated that he is not running for president in the hopes of securing a Cabinet position or a vice presidential offer in a future administration.
“Look, my goal is to win the nomination. If we’d won Iowa, we would have been in a great spot. You know, coming in second gives us the ticket to continue,” said DeSantis, who finished second in the Iowa caucuses on Monday, NBC News projected.
But, he acknowledged, if the path to the nomination is “not working out for you, I recognize that this isn’t a vanity thing for me.”
DeSantis also told Hewitt that he regrets not opening his campaign up more to press earlier on during his run.
“I should have just been blanketing,” he said, adding that he missed an “opportunity, I think, to come out of the gate and do that and reach a much broader folk.”
“Now, I’m everywhere. I mean, I’ll show up wherever,” he said, adding that he’s “the only one that’s willing to debate.”
DeSantis was slated to debate Haley in New Hampshire on Thursday, but ABC News canceled the debate after Haley said she wouldn’t attend without Trump. Trump has declined to participate in any debate of the 2024 cycle.
Hours before participating in a series of meet-and-greet events with Haley in New Hampshire, state Gov. Chris Sununu defended her recent comments asserting that the U.S. has “never been a racist country” in an interview with CNN this morning.
Appearing on CNN on Thursday morning, Sununu argued that she was “trying to say we have to find those elements of racism.”
“We have to be vigilant on them, we have to put spotlights on them, we have to learn from them and we have to be better about it. And it’s all about moving forward in the future,” he said.
Sununu noted that Haley, whose parents are immigrants from India, is one of the first women of color to serve as a governor in the U.S. as “a strong tea party conservative candidate in conservative South Carolina” and therefore “carries great conservative credentials.”
Haley came under scrutiny for her comments about race during an interview on “Fox and Friends” on Tuesday morning, a day after placing third in the Iowa caucuses.
“Are you a racist party? Are you involved in a racist party?” “Fox and Friends” host Brian Kilmeade asked Haley. She replied: “No, we’re not a racist country, Brian. We’ve never been a racist country.”
“I know I faced racism when I was growing up, but I can tell you that today is a lot better than it was then,” she added.
Haley also came under fire last month for declining to say slavery was a cause of the Civil War, instead arguing during a New Hampshire town hall that it came down to “the role of government.” She later backpedaled, saying that “of course, the Civil War was about slavery” and that her comments reflect what it “means to us today.”
Sununu on Thursday dismissed the backlash over Haley’s remarks on the Civil War when asked what he would say to voters who are skeptical about her comments and blamed the media for fueling the backlash against her.
“It’s not affecting the voters,” he said. “She acknowledged, you know, when it comes to the question she took a couple of weeks ago, she said, ‘Well, of course slavery was at the crux of it.’ That’s obvious to everybody. I mean, she acknowledged that right away.”
“So again, I know the media likes to make try to make — she’s used this word and that phrase and all this at the end of the day, her numbers just go up,” he added. “It doesn’t affect the vote.”
Two campaign officials told NBC News that Trump’s bloody hand seen in photographs in New York yesterday was the result of a small cut — possibly a paper cut — that he failed to wipe off properly.
By the time he arrived for his rally in Portsmouth, N.H., last night, he had no visible injury to speak of.
No Labels, the nonprofit group seeking ballot access for a potential third-party presidential ticket, sent a letter to the Department of Justice calling efforts to stop its 2024 campaign an alleged racketeering conspiracy and asking for an investigation.
The complaint stems, in part, from meetings Democratic-aligned groups and individuals have had to try to organize opposition to No Labels’ 2024 efforts, which they argue would boost Trump over Biden.
“There is a group of activists and artists and party officials who are participated in alleged illegal conspiracy to use intimidation, harassment and fear against representatives and No Labels, its donors, and as potential candidates,” No Labels volunteer Dan Webb said during a press conference.
No Labels currently has ballot access in 14 states, but there has been no announcement of a potential candidate yet. Former Sen. Joe Lieberman, a founding chair of No Labels, said the group is currently talking to potential candidates and looking at April as a time to roll out a ticket. He added that No Labels would give Haley “serious consideration” if she were interested.
In New Hampshire, independent/undeclared voters make up 39% of the total electorate — more than registered Democrats (30%) and registered Republicans (31%).
And in their TV ads and campaign messaging, both Haley and Rep. Dean Phillips, D-Minn., have been fighting over these same independent/undeclared voters, who can choose either a Republican presidential primary ballot or a Democratic one.
Here’s Haley on the campaign trail: “Seventy-five percent of Americans don’t want a Trump-Biden rematch. The majority of Americans don’t want either one of them. I mean, are we really at the point that we’re going to put two 80-year-olds as our options?”
Here’s Phillips: “But I can tell you this: The two leading candidates right now — on both the left and the right for the U.S. presidency — are absolutely not in positions to understand it, prepare us for it, anticipate it and lead us into the next century.”
Here’s Haley in one of her TV ads in New Hampshire: “The two most disliked politicians in America? Trump and Biden. Both are consumed by chaos, negativity and grievances of the past.”
And here’s a pro-Phillips TV ad in the Granite State: “Democrats, independents — wake up. At a critical moment in history, [Biden vs. Trump] is a choice no one wants, with Trump poised to win.”
With Phillips barely registering the polls — and with the Democratic Party not even officially recognizing the New Hampshire Democratic primary — this competition over the same independent/undeclared voters could end up hurting Haley more.
After all, Phillips winning just 2% to 3% of these voters could doom Haley, who is already trailing Trump in the New Hampshire polls.
But there’s maybe an even bigger story behind this Haley-Phillips messaging in New Hampshire: If the 2024 general election is indeed going to be a rematch between Biden and Trump, someone else next summer and fall — Robert Kennedy Jr., No Labels, the Green and Libertarian parties — is going to repeat it.
They’ll be making the case to the public how unappealing another Biden vs. Trump election could be.
The latest Suffolk University/NBC10 Boston/Boston Globe tracking poll of the New Hampshire Republican primary shows Trump leading Haley 50% to 36% among likely voters, with DeSantis at 6%.
The poll of 500 likely New Hampshire GOP primary voters was conducted Jan. 16-17 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.4 percentage points.
Those numbers are essentially unchanged from Wednesday’s tracking poll (conducted Jan. 15-16), which had Trump at 50%, Haley at 34% and DeSantis at 5%.
Former Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, filed paperwork yesterday to run as an independent against Rep. Max Miller, R-Ohio.
Kucinich, who represented an area in Ohio similar to Miller’s current district from from 1997 to 2013, missed the deadline last month to run in the Democratic primary. The deadline to file as an independent candidate is in March.
Kucinich, who served as Cleveland’s mayor in the 1970s, ran unsuccessful Democratic campaigns for president in 2004 and 2008. He also lost his bids for Ohio governor in 2018 and Cleveland mayor in 2021.
Kucinich previously managed Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Democratic presidential campaign, but left after Kennedy switched to running as an independent candidate.
The Brennan Center for Justice is out with a new report this morning analyzing the new restrictions facing Americans heading to the polls this year.
Voters in at least 18 states, including Texas, Florida and North Carolina, will face new voting restrictions in the 2024 election, according to the center, which advocates against such restrictions.
Nearly all of the states are controlled by Republican legislatures, and many of the restrictions include changes to the mail voting process, such as requiring additional information on ballot applications.
The 2020 election, and Trump’s relentless and false claims of voter fraud, triggered an avalanche of restrictions on elections. Some of these restrictions were implemented during the 2022 midterms. In total, voters in at least 27 states will be met by restrictions that were not in place in 2020.
These numbers could grow, too: 25 states are considering legislation this year that would make it harder to vote, the Brennan Center said.
E. Jean Carroll will be back on the witness stand Thursday to testify in her damages trial as part of her defamation case against Trump, but the former president won’t be in attendance this time.
Trump, who was admonished by the judge Wednesday for his commentary on Carroll’s testimony, instead will be attending the funeral of his mother-in-law, Amalija Knavs, in Florida.
Cross-examination of Carroll by Trump attorney Alina Habba will continue Thursday. Trump was previously found liable for defaming Carroll after she accused him of sexually abusing her in 2019.
“I am here because Donald Trump assaulted me, and when I wrote about it he lied and he shattered my reputation,” Carroll, 80, told the jury Wednesday.
Read the full story here.
Haley is holding three events with New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu in the Granite State ahead of a televised town hall tonight on CNN.
Her two main GOP primary opponents are off the campaign trail today. Trump is attending the funeral of his mother-in-law, Amalija Knavs, in Florida. DeSantis is also in his home state of Florida today.
Biden will be in the battleground state of North Carolina for a White House event promoting “Bidenomics.”
Meanwhile, Rep. Dean Phillips, D-Minn., will appear with 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang in Hanover, N.H., today.
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