ANOTHER MAJOR SETBACK FOR HALEY
After an embarrassing 20-point loss in her home state of South Carolina, former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley says she’s staying in the race through Super Tuesday.
But yesterday her campaign received a major blow when one of its biggest backers pulled their financial support.
In a memo sent to staff, leaders at Americans for Prosperity, the powerful conservative group backed by the Koch network, said they’ve decided to discontinue funding Haley’s campaign because “we don’t believe any outside group can make a material difference to widen her path to victory.”
The group, however, still “stands firm” behind its endorsement of Haley, the memo read.
The organization endorsed Haley in November and has spent $31 million boosting her campaign, according to OpenSecrets.org. Before that, the group spent months funding a campaign to get Republicans to vote for someone other than Trump in the primaries. It spent almost $10 million on that effort.
Former President Donald Trump quickly seized on this news to taunt his rival.
“Americans for No Prosperity just announced that they are no longer supporting Nikki ”Braindead“ (Birdbrain?) Haley,” he wrote on Truth Social.
“Charles Koch and his group got played for suckers right from the beginning,” he continued, referring to the billionaire backer of AFP.
Before this post, Trump had largely ignored Haley in speeches over the weekend in an apparent shift in campaign strategy: Haley was being cast as irrelevant, with the GOP frontrunner focusing on a general election rematch with President Joe Biden.
Haley, for her part, did not mention the AFP decision at an event in Detroit, Michigan, on Sunday evening. Michigan is holding its GOP primary on Tuesday, which will award a part of the state’s delegates. The remainder will be awarded in a Republican caucus held on Saturday.
The former governor has been uncowed by Republicans’ consistent double-digit rejection of her presidential bid across five contests. She insists she needs to stay in the race to give people a viable alternative to Trump and Biden.
“I’m not giving up this fight when a majority of Americans disapprove of Donald Trump and Joe Biden,” Haley said in a Saturday night speech after her loss in South Carolina.
Looking ahead, Trump is leading in every race that polling is available for leading up to and on Super Tuesday by double-digit margins.
With these factors in mind, the delegate math just isn’t there for her: at the current rate, Trump appears on track to clinch the GOP nomination by mid-March.
Haley has sought to portray her defeats as actually a troubling sign for her opponent.
“Today we’re getting 40 percent of the vote,” Haley said on Saturday night. “I know 40 percent isn’t 50 percent. I also know 40 percent is not some tiny group. There are a huge number of voters in our Republican primary who want an alternative.”
Despite this 40 percent, the fact remains that polls and election results show that the bulk of Republicans still want Trump, and only Trump.
Haley’s biggest supporter in Congress admitted this much himself.
“The people spoke for Trump,” Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) told The Epoch Times after Haley’s defeat on Saturday.
“What she will have to do … is make a decision,” he said, regarding her next steps.
“At the end of the day, everybody will come together, whether it’s [for] Nikki Haley or Donald Trump,” Norman predicted.
—Joseph Lord and Nathan Worcester
ANOTHER LOOMING SHUTDOWN
Congress will return this week with a lengthy to-do list.
First, and most importantly, the federal government is once again staring down the specter of a government shutdown.
Last year, lawmakers passed a two-piece stopgap funding bill, known as a continuing resolution, that extended the funding deadline to March 1 and March 8. With that deadline fast approaching, lawmakers are no closer to finishing fiscal year 2024 funding than they were months ago when they passed the extension.
House Republican leadership has yet to announce how they’re going to handle the funding deadline this time around, but they only have a few options.
The first and easiest, they could simply pass another CR to push the funding deadline even deeper into 2024. However, many Republicans oppose further CRs, preferring instead that the House pass spending bills one by one.
Leadership’s second option, and the option many House Republicans prefer, would be a marathon session of crafting and voting on individual spending bills ahead of the deadline. While this option appeals most to Republicans, it would also be incredibly difficult, bordering impossible, to pull off in so little time.
Finally, leadership could call votes on several spending packages at once, known as a “minibus” spending package. According to a report by The Hill, that’s the plan right now, though that hasn’t yet been publicly confirmed. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) reportedly warned his caucus not to expect a “grand slam” out of the minibus package.
But with the House deeply divided among partisan and ideological lines, it’s unclear whether Johnson will be able to force through a minibus.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) in a Sunday “Dear Colleague” letter called for some kind of solution on spending from the House, saying a shutdown would be “harmful and unnecessary.”
“It is my sincere hope that in the face of a disruptive shutdown that would hurt our economy and make American families less safe, Speaker Johnson will step up to once again buck the extremists in his caucus and do the right thing,” Schumer added.
He also called on Republicans to take up aid for Israel and Ukraine, an issue which has been paralyzed in Congress for months.
“Putin is closely watching and cheering on the dysfunction in Congress,” Schumer said.
Additionally, Republicans will also hold a closed-door deposition of first son Hunter Biden on Wednesday.
It’ll be Republicans’ first opportunity to speak with President Joe Biden’s embattled son about his business dealings—but it comes at a fraught time for the probe.
For months, Republicans have been investigating the first family, seeking evidence of influence peddling in Hunter Biden’s business dealings.
But earlier this month, an ex-FBI informant who contributed key evidence to the probe, Alexander Smirnov, was charged with peddling false information about an alleged bribery scheme run by the Bidens.
Republicans leading the probe have downplayed the significance of it, but many observers say it means the impeachment inquiry into Biden is effectively dead. Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), former Freedom Caucus chair, acknowledged last week that an impeachment vote was unlikely given the GOP’s razor-thin majority.
Later this month, lawmakers will also need to address Federal Aviation Administration reauthorization and reauthorization of a controversial spying authority, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
—Joseph Lord
WHAT’S HAPPENING
- The Senate returns from the Presidents Day state work period.
- President Joe Biden travels to New York.
- The Supreme Court hears First Amendment cases dealing with social media moderation laws enacted in Texas and Florida.
During a weekend straw poll at the Conservative Political Action Conference near Washington, attendees selected their picks for Trump’s running mate. The Epoch Times’ Samantha Flom and Joseph Lord reported on the results of the poll, in which South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem and biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy tied for first place. Former U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard came in third, while Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) and Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) tied for fourth.
Biden took office with a commitment to overturn the previous administration’s immigration policies, calling them “cruel and reckless.” The Epoch Times’ Emel Akan and Lawrence Wilson explored how he did just that, and how his policy changes transformed America’s border.
It took the intervention of a U.S. congressman for the CDC to respond to a reported Chinese biolab operating in northern California. Now, The Epoch Times’ Steve Ispas and Lear Zhou report, outrage is growing as the CDC continues to drag its feet on the issue.
Trump has finally won the elusive endorsement of the no. 2 Republican in the Senate, Minority Whip John Thune (R-S.D.), Fox News reports. Thune previously shied away from giving the former president his endorsement, finally relenting after his victory in the South Carolina primary.
