Happening this Friday: We’re now four days from the New Hampshire primary… Donald Trump speaks in Concord, N.H… Nikki Haley crisscrosses the Granite State, hitting Hampton, Manchester, Amherst and Milford… Ron DeSantis stumps in Goffstown, Nashua and Dover… Dean Phillips is in Salem and Concord… And President Biden, at the White House, meets with the nation’s mayors visiting DC.
But FIRST… Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley and her allies are already trying to lower expectations for the upcoming New Hampshire primary.
“A strong second [place] is going to be great, that’s wonderful,” New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu has said about Haley, whom Sununu has endorsed.
Haley herself told CNN Thursday night that her personal goal in New Hampshire “is to make sure we do better than we did in Iowa” — where she finished third behind former President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Let’s be real, however: If Haley can’t beat Trump in New Hampshire — with all of its famed independent voters — she isn’t going to beat Trump anywhere.
(And even if she tops him in the Granite State, her coalition isn’t built to beat Trump in a delegate race, but that’s a story for another day.)
Second place isn’t going to cut it for Haley if the goal is to win the GOP presidential nomination.
As the immortal Ricky Bobby put it in “Talladega Nights,” per our colleague Chuck Todd, “If you ain’t first, you’re last.”
Especially if the objective is to defeat your party’s ex-president for the 2024 presidential nomination.
Headline of the day
The number of the day is … 42
That’s the number of days left for Congress to avert a partial government shutdown, a deadline that Congress extended Thursday to March 1.
Before the vote, several parts of the federal government were set to shut down on Friday night, with the rest slated to shut down on Feb. 2. Now, the two deadlines have been extended to March 1 and March 8.
This is the third stopgap spending bill Congress has passed since September, NBC’s Frank Thorp V, Rebecca Kaplan, Sahil Kapur and Kyle Stewart report.
The bill passed both chambers with mostly Democratic votes, passing the Senate with 77 votes in favor and 18 votes against and passing the House by a vote of 314-108.
Eyes on November: Haley hits the trail — and targets Trump
Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley is crisscrossing New Hampshire ahead of Tuesday’s primary, with her campaign pushing back on criticisms that she is not as active in the final stretch.
NBC’s Allan Smith and Sarah Dean report from the Granite State that Haley’s campaign estimated she will make 30 appearances in the final week of the race, and on Thursday Haley also took questions from voters and the media for the first time in several days.
Dean also reports that Haley has stepped up her criticisms of former President Donald Trump after focusing much of her ire in Iowa on Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, blaming the former president for recent GOP losses. Haley dodged a question on whether Trump would be qualified to lead the country if he is a convicted felon, saying, “I’m going to beat him, so we don’t have to ever deal with, ‘Are we going to elect a convicted felon?’”
But one of Haley’s challenges as she takes on Trump in New Hampshire is her reliance on independent voters, as voters not registered with any party can participate in whichever primary they choose. The New York Times explores Haley’s challenge with those voters, writing that they “come in all shapes and stripes, and many of them aren’t open to her.”
In other campaign news …
Betting on Trump: After initially signaling he would not take sides in the presidential race, Nevada Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo told the Nevada Independent he would be caucusing for Trump. Lombardo said he was making his choice known because “the race is over.”
Making his case: Trump’s attorneys filed a brief with the Supreme Court on Thursday making his case to remain on Colorado’s primary ballot, per NBC’s Lawrence Hurley. Nearly 180 Republicans, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, signed an amicus brief supporting Trump’s case to the high court, the Washington Post reports.
More Trump trials: Trump himself wrote in a social media post on Thursday that presidents “must have complete and total presidential immunity.” And writer E. Jean Carroll took the stand on Thursday to testify in her defamation case against Trump, whom a separate jury last year found liable for sexually abusing and defaming her.
Staying in: Asked if he has the resources to stay in the race after Super Tuesday, DeSantis told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt, “yes on that, 100%,” per NBC’s Alec Hernández.
Joining the Yang gang: Former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang on Thursday endorsed Minnesota Rep. Dean Phillip’s presidential bid, per NBC’s Nnamdi Egwuonwu.
Seeking an investigation: No Labels, a non-profit group considering running a third-party presidential ticket if the two major-party nominees are Biden and Trump, announced Thursday that it sent a letter to the Department of Justice alleging a racketeering conspiracy among Democratic groups seeking to stop its 2024 campaign.
He’s back: Former Rep. Justin Amash, who is best known for leaving the Republican party to become an independent and voting to impeach Trump in 2019, said Thursday that he’s considering running for Senate as a Republican in Michigan’s open seat.
Abortion on the ballot: A coalition of groups in Missouri began collecting signatures on Thursday with an aim to place an amendment on the ballot later this year to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution, NBC’s Adam Edelman reports.
ICYMI: What ELSE is happening in the world:
The Department of Justice on Thursday called the law enforcement response to a 2022 mass shooting at Robb Elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, a “failure” in a new report.
The Biden administration announced on Friday that $5 billion in student debt for 74,000 borrowers has been canceled for many who have worked in the public sector for over a decade.
U.S. Capitol Police on Thursday said they investigated over 8,000 threats against lawmakers in 2023 — an increase from the number of threats investigated in 2022.
