Haley fights on

The campaign

Haley, facing a likely loss in her home state, refuses to quit

GREENVILLE, S.C. — Nikki Haley has all but conceded that she won’t win the Republican presidential primary in her home state Saturday — but she is going to extraordinary lengths to make clear that she’ll fight on regardless.

Haley is headed to Michigan, where she’s already running ads, on Sunday after South Carolina votes. She has scheduled rallies next week in Minnesota, Colorado, Utah, Virginia, North Carolina, Massachusetts and Washington, D.C., all of which vote next month.

She acknowledged in a speech in Greenville on Tuesday that she had heard the calls for her to drop out after losing in Iowa and New Hampshire to former president Donald Trump but said she would “keep fighting until the American people close the door.”

• “I refuse to quit,” Haley said. “South Carolina will vote on Saturday. But on Sunday, I’ll still be running for president. I’m not going anywhere.”

Haley is the last candidate standing between Trump and the Republican nomination, which Trump’s campaign predicted Tuesday he would clinch by March 19 at the latest.

But Haley’s odds in South Carolina — which elected her governor in 2010 and reelected her in 2014 — don’t look good. A Suffolk University/USA Today poll released Tuesday found Trump leading her 63 percent to 35 percent in the state.

Trump held a Fox News town hall in Greenville on Tuesday, during which he compared the legal cases against him to the plight of Alexei Navalny, a Russian political dissident whose death last week in prison sparked fresh outrage at Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Home state test

It’s rare for a presidential candidate to lose his or her home state in the primary.

Most candidates either win their home states — as Ohio Gov. John Kasich and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) did when they ran against Trump for the Republican nomination in 2016 — or drop out before their home states vote.

When Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) lost the Florida primary in 2016, he dropped out the same night.

The candidates who soldier on despite losing their home states in the primary tend to be long shots with more niche appeal, such as Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) in 2004 and Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex.) in 2008. (One exception was in 1980, when George H.W. Bush, Phil Crane and John Anderson kept running for the GOP nominations after Ronald Reagan won their home states.)

Neither Haley nor her surrogates have predicted victory in South Carolina — but Haley has set herself a bar to clear.

“What I do think I need to do is I need to show that I’m building momentum,” Haley said last month on “Meet the Press.” “I need to show that I’m stronger in South Carolina than New Hampshire,” Haley answered. “Does that have to be a win? I don’t think that necessarily has to be a win. But it certainly has to be better than what I did in New Hampshire, and it certainly has to be close.”

‘We just think Trump is unhinged’

Trump won all but two counties in South Carolina in the 2016 primary: Charleston County (home to most of Charleston, the state’s most populous city) and Richland County (which includes most of Columbia, the state capital).

But Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), the only member of Congress who has endorsed Haley, predicted last week that she would do well in Greenville, too.

The city has grown rapidly in recent years, luring transplants from across the country. A Haley rally in nearby Greer on Monday night drew nearly 300 people — a mix of Republican-leaning voters who have voted for Trump in the past and would support him again if he wins the nomination, Republicans who despise Trump and a handful of Democratic-leaning voters.

David Johnston, 73, a mental health counselor who lives in Greer, and his wife, Barbara Johnston, 70, who is retired, voted for Trump in 2016 and in 2020 because they viewed him as “the lesser of two evils,” as Barbara Johnston put it.

Now, “we just think Trump is unhinged,” she said.

Barbara supported Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) in the Republican primary, while David backed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — but they converged on Haley as their top choices dropped out.

Still, neither of them is optimistic that Haley will manage to win South Carolina.

“It would take a miracle,” Barbara said. “I’m praying that there will be a miracle.”

Voters are voting

Haley supporters were not hard to find at an early-voting site in Greenville on Tuesday. Several cited Trump’s attack on Haley’s husband as one of the factors propelling their decisions — but almost none of them believed she could win.

“I would like to think so, but I’m afraid not,” said Karen Crawford, 75, a retiree who lives in Greenville. “Our state has become too red.”

And while Greenville might be a bright spot for Haley, you don’t have to drive far outside the city to see a different picture.

Rep. William Timmons (R-S.C.), who has endorsed Trump, represents a district that includes Greenville, Greer and Spartanburg and voted for Trump by more than 18 points in 2020. When he went door-knocking in Greer on Saturday, he hit about 30 doors and didn’t encounter a single Haley supporter.

Timmons said Haley might do relatively well in Greenville but predicted Trump would win the state by at least 30 points.

• “I just don’t know how you lose your home state that you were a governor for by that margin and continue on,” Timmons said.

Bob Inglis, a Republican who represented the district before losing his primary in 2010 to a tea party challenger, said he is supporting Haley — but he is realistic about her chances of winning on Saturday.

“It’d be the upset of the century,” Inglis said.

What we're watching

On the Hill

Impeachment inquiry continues: President Biden’s brother James Biden will sit for closed-door depositions starting today before the House Oversight and Judiciary committees as part of their impeachment inquiry into the president. 

Republicans have presented no evidence connecting the president to business ventures of his brother and son Hunter Biden. In a major blow to their investigation, their key witness, Alexander Smirnov, was charged with lying to the FBI about the Biden family. 

From the courts

The Supreme Court is expected to announce at least one decision this morning. We’re watching to see whether the justices issue a ruling on the blockbuster election case: Trump v. Anderson.

The court will also hear oral arguments for Ohio v. EPA, a case that asks the justices to review the Environmental Protection Agency’s “good neighbor” rule, the federal initiative that aims to cut emissions from power plants and factories to reduce pollution that blows into neighboring states. 

• Three Republican-led states — Ohio, Indiana and West Virginia — and several industry groups have asked the court to block the EPA regulation from taking effect as the case works its way through the lower courts. “In an unusual move, the justices went a step further than that request, agreeing not only to decide whether to suspend the EPA regulation, but also to consider whether it is reasonable before a lower court has ruled on that question,” our colleagues Anna Phillips and Ann Marimow write. 

At the White House

Trump and allies plot militarized mass deportations, detention camps

Our colleagues Isaac Arnsdorf, Nick Miroff and Josh Dawsey take us inside Trump’s immigration plan should he be elected for a second term in office: “the largest domestic deportation operation in American history.” Here’s an excerpt: 

“As a model, he points to an Eisenhower-era program known as ‘Operation Wetback,’ using a derogatory slur for Mexican migrants,” our colleagues write. “The operation used military tactics to round up and remove migrant workers, sometimes transporting them in dangerous conditions that led to some deaths. Former administration officials and policy experts said staging an even larger operation today would face a bottleneck in detention space — a problem that Trump adviser Stephen Miller and other allies have proposed addressing by building mass deportation camps.”

• “Americans can expect that immediately upon President Trump’s return to the Oval Office, he will restore all of his prior policies, implement brand new crackdowns that will send shock waves to all the world’s criminal smugglers, and marshal every federal and state power necessary to institute the largest deportation operation in American history,” Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said in a statement addressed to our colleagues. She added that undocumented immigrants “should not get comfortable because very soon they will be going home.”
• But Trump’s “deportation proposal is one part of his emerging platform that experts, current and former government officials and others described as especially alarming, impractical and prone to significant legal and logistical hurdles.”

The campaign

Trump and Haley burned through cash in January, reports show

Trump’s presidential campaign and the Save America leadership PAC, which has been shouldering the Republican front-runner’s legal bills, burned through cash in January ― with the committee spending nearly $3 million on legal expenses during the month amid intensifying court battles, according to Tuesday’s FEC filings. 

Meanwhile, “small-dollar donors to [Haley’s] campaign as well as big-check writers to her super PAC have allowed her to keep going in the Republican race as she has taken an increasingly defiant tone toward Trump and warned that his unpredictable legal troubles could hamper his efforts to defeat Biden in November,” our colleagues Maeve Reston and Clara Ence Morse report. 

Here are some additional takeaways from the latest FEC disclosures:

Trump campaign burns through cash: “The Trump campaign had $30 million in cash on hand at the end of January. He raised almost $9 million and spent $11.4 million during the month of January,” Maeve and Clara report. Save America — “which he has been using to pay many of his own legal bills, as well as those of some of his aides and associates — only had about $6 million in cash on hand at the end of January. … During January, Save America spent nearly $4 million — much of it on legal expenses — and reported about $1.9 million in unpaid bills, which also appeared to mostly be debts for legal consulting.”

Major Haley super PAC donors kept her afloat: “Haley’s campaign raised more than $11.5 million during the first month of the year — spending more than $13 million over the same period — and had nearly $13 million in cash on hand at the end of the month. SFA Fund Inc., the super PAC allied with her campaign, continued to show a high burn rate, spending nearly $13.7 million in January and ending the month with about $2 million in cash on hand.”

The RNC is still low on cash: “The Republican National Committee continued to show signs of financial strain when compared with the war chest of the Democratic National Committee, reporting just $8.7 million in cash on hand to the DNC’s $24 million. The committee raised more than $11.5 million during January but spent more than $10.8 million during the same period.”

On the Hill

Cherokee Nation to Speaker Johnson: Don’t let the government shut down

Funding is set to run out for 20 percent of the government in 10 days. While appropriators are working on funding bills, there is still no clear plan on how to avoid a government shutdown. The House and Senate are out of town until next week.

The Cherokee Nation is sounding the alarm on the dire consequences a government shutdown would have on all tribal nations. 

In a letter to Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) obtained by The Early, Chuck Hoskin Jr., the Cherokee Nation principal chief, wrote that education programs, the Indian Health Service, public safety programs and other critical work would be “severely curtailed” if the government shuts down. 

More than 140,000 Cherokee Nation citizens won’t receive groceries, nearly 13,000 could lose access to diabetes and cancer treatments, and 85,000 could be released from detention, the letter says. 

“I implore you, as Speaker of the House, to consider the broader implications of a government shutdown on Indian Country,” Hoskin writes. 

The annual National Congress of American Indians conference took place last week in Washington. 

The Media

Must reads

From The Post: 

• Tax records reveal the lucrative world of covid misinformation. By Lauren Weber.
• Senate report blasts high-end life insurance plans as $40B ‘tax dodge.’ By Julie Zauzmer Weil. 
• Biden administration cancels $1.2B in student loans with new repayment plan. By Danielle Douglas-Gabriel. 
• Shock, anger, confusion grip Alabama after court ruling on embryos. By Tim Craig and Sabrina Malhi.
• U.S. vetoes U.N. proposal for immediate Gaza cease-fire, drawing ire. By Karen DeYoung.

From across the web: 

• House Democrat floats Mike Johnson protection measure. By Axios’s Andrew Solender.
• Conservative group launches a quiet effort to drive Black voters away from Biden. By NBC News’s Ben Kamisar.
• A negative tabloid story and full-court press pushback: Eric Adams tussles with The Post. By Politico’s Jeff Coltin, Sally Goldenberg and Joe Anuta.

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