January 25 - 2024 campaign updates

Former President Donald Trump and GOP rival Nikki Haley are feuding on the campaign trail as the race for the Republican presidential nomination continues.

Meantime, officials with President Joe Biden’s campaign are privately cheering on Haley’s decision to stay in the race, prolonging the Republican contests and forcing the Trump campaign to use its resources and time to attack the former South Carolina governor. 

Still, Trump, Haley and Biden alike have all ramped up ad spending in South Carolina ahead of the primary election there.

Here’s where things stand:

President Joe Biden speaks at the United Auto Workers conference in Washington, DC, on Wednesday.

President Joe Biden was working a photo line backstage on Wednesday after receiving the United Autoworkers’ coveted political endorsement at their annual conference in Washington, DC, when a small group of union members supporting a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war approached him.

Biden briefly spoke with the members about their concerns, in an exchange that multiple people — including Michigan Rep. Debbie Dingell, who was present — described as “respectful” and “cordial.” The president also shook hands with the group and posed for photos, according to one source familiar with the matter.

Dingell declined to share other details with CNN, saying private conversations should remain precisely that.

Before this interaction, Biden’s remarks to the union members were interrupted by protesters, including one who unfurled a Palestinian flag and shouted: “Call for a humanitarian ceasefire!” The group was quickly led out of the room as Biden paused his speech.

Even as Biden remains staunchly supportive of Israel in its campaign against Hamas, aides say he is acutely aware of the anger and passion the war has generated, particularly among young progressives. The outcry would be hard for him to miss: protests have now sprung up during private fundraisers, at a Christmas tree lighting, outside the White House and ever near his secluded home in Delaware.

Biden’s conversation with the UAW members backstage after the speech interruption came the day after a campaign rally in northern Virginia that was paused more than a dozen times, including by people unfurling a banner reading “Genocide Joe.”

Former President Donald Trump said Thursday the Republican National Committee should not move forward with a draft resolution circulating among members that would formally declare Trump the Republican Party’s 2024 presumptive nominee.

Allies of the former president were worried the resolution was premature and could backfire, a source close to Trump told CNN. 

The campaign had initially approved going forward with the resolution — and Trump himself was also on board until backlash began, a source familiar with the situation told CNN.

What Trump said: Trump wrote on Truth Social that, while he appreciated the sentiment, he opposed the plan for the sake of party unity, and wanted to “finish the process off AT THE BALLOT BOX.”

“I feel, for the sake of PARTY UNITY, that they should NOT go forward with this plan, but that I should do it the ‘Old Fashioned’ way,” the post read.

Haley is fundraising off the reports: Trump’s last GOP rival standing, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, is taking a familiar approach to efforts intended to drive her from the presidential race: Turn it into a fundraising opportunity.

She has asked supporters to donate money to her campaign in protest of the RNC’s potential move.

“The RNC is leveraging the establishment to try and crown Trump the presumptive nominee,” Haley wrote in a new fundraising appeal. “Well I have news for them: I’m in this to win it and I’m not going anywhere.”

Donald Trump testifies as he takes the stand on Thursday in New York, in this courtroom sketch.

Two days after dominating the New Hampshire GOP’s presidential primary, Donald Trump took the stand Thursday for what was ultimately less than five minutes in a Manhattan federal courthouse where he was seeking to avoid a multimillion-dollar jury verdict against him in the civil defamation trial.

The trial centers on Trump’s 2019 comments about E. Jean Carroll, the writer who last year won a civil verdict over her claim Trump sexually assaulted her in the mid-1990s and then defamed her when she first publicly accused him. Carroll is seeking at least $10 million.

Closing arguments are scheduled for Friday morning and the jury of nine could have the case by lunchtime.

Here’s what to know from Thursday:

Catch up on the key takeaways from Trump’s time in court.

The post was updated with details of the Trump fundraising text to supporters.

A prominent Democratic donor has no plans to continue donating to GOP contender Nikki Haley’s presidential campaign after she lost the New Hampshire primary, his adviser said.

Reid Hoffman, the co-founder of LinkedIn, had told Haley’s campaign before the New Hampshire primary that “investment was based on winning” the Granite State, his adviser Dmitri Mehlhorn told CNN. They have not spoken with Haley’s team since, he said.

Hoffman initially donated $250,000 to the pro-Haley super PAC, SFA Fund Inc.

“Maybe the idea is that she pokes him until he gets baited into debating her, and then there is a ‘hive collapse’ moment where people see how much he’s lost it? No one had made that clear case to me, and right now I don’t see it,” Mehlhorn said.

GOP donor also drops Haley: Metals magnate Andy Sabin is also no longer contributing to Haley’s campaign, saying Thursday he strongly believes she should exit the Republican primary race to preserve her reputation and future political prospects.

“I don’t want her to continue and humiliate herself in South Carolina by losing by 31 points,” he said.

Sabin said he did not donate much to Haley’s campaign because he only started supporting her relatively recently, when Sen. Tim Scott exited the presidential field. He said he hopes to support Haley in 2028.

This post has been updated with comments from Sabin.

The first two Republican primary contests of the year have now taken place —the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary.

Here’s a look at the key upcoming primary dates:

February:

March:

Access the full 2024 election calendar.

Former President Donald Trump arrives for a campaign event in Manchester, New Hampshire, on Saturday, January 20.

Donald Trump’s New Hampshire triumph puts him on a GOP primary tier few, if any, Republicans have reached. Unofficial returns at time of publication have the former president at about 55% of the vote.

He’s only the second nonincumbent Republican to win a majority of the GOP primary vote in New Hampshire in the modern era. The only other was Ronald Reagan in 1980, and Trump’s 55% surpasses Reagan’s 50.2%. He is also just the second nonincumbent Republican to win the New Hampshire primary twice in the modern era. The other Republican was John McCain.

The fact that Trump was able to win both Iowa and New Hampshire is quite unusual. No other nonincumbent Republican has ever done it. Mitt Romney in 2012 came the closest (winning New Hampshire but losing Iowa by 24 votes) – and he took less than 40% in New Hampshire and under 25% of the vote in Iowa.

Trump’s ability to win Iowa and New Hampshire with such ease tells you how strong his candidacy is among Republicans. He appeals to different parts of the party, as evidenced by the fact that he succeeded in two very different contests in two fairly different states:

Put another way, New Hampshire should have been a far worse state for Trump. His biggest backers look a lot more like the Iowa electorate than New Hampshire voters: conservatives, religious Republicans and Republicans of more modest financial means.

But none of that stopped Trump from pulling in the largest share of the vote for an non-incumbent in New Hampshire GOP primary history. It seems quite plausible at this point that Trump may pull off the ultimate historic GOP primary win: becoming the first non-incumbent Republican to go undefeated in all 50 states during the primary season.

President Joe Biden speaks about funding for the I-535 Blatnik Bridge at Earth Rider Brewery on January 25, in Superior, Wisconsin.

President Joe Biden needled former President Donald Trump while heralding a major infrastructure investment during a visit to the critical battleground state of Wisconsin on Thursday.

Biden said the $1 billion from the bipartisan infrastructure law for the decrepit Blatnik Bridge connecting Wisconsin to Minnesota would “make a huge difference” in the everyday lives of local residents. 

“Less traffic, fewer car accidents, faster commutes to your jobs and schools. Quicker response times from fire trucks and first responders when every minute counts. Goods are going to get shipped quicker and commerce will flow more freely instead of having to detour,” he said, pointing to the thousands of union construction jobs the bridge project will create. 

As he made a general election argument, Biden sought to draw a contrast with Trump, whom he did not name. 

The president also used the announcement to highlight what he said were the broader impacts of his “Bidenomics” agenda, citing job growth, lower unemployment rates, record new small business applications, and 3.1% 2023 US economic growth.

A draft resolution circulating among the Republican National Committee (RNC) would formally declare Donald Trump the Republican Party’s 2024 presumptive nominee. 

While Trump would still need to reach the delegate requirements necessary to win the nomination, if the resolution is approved, Trump would then have access to the RNC’s data operation, benefit from fundraising with the RNC, and have the support of all of the committee’s ground operations.

It would also mean the committee supports Trump and effectively opposes former Gov. Nikki Haley’s campaign for president going forward — an unprecedented break from the party’s past approach to the nominating process.

The resolution, which is being reviewed by the RNC, was proposed by David Bossie, an RNC committeeman from Maryland who recently endorsed Trump. 

The Haley campaign brushed off the resolution and said GOP Chair Ronna McDaniel should organize a debate ahead of the South Carolina primary at the end of February. 

More context: The resolution comes just a few days after Trump defeated Haley in New Hampshire by more than 30,000 votes, following a decisive win in the Iowa caucuses. Those victories have led many prominent figures in the Republican Party to coalesce around Trump and call on Haley to exit the race. Earlier this week, McDaniel told Fox News, “We need to unite around our eventual nominee, which is Donald Trump.”

The resolution was first reported by The Dispatch on Thursday. A draft copy of the resolution was obtained independently by CNN. 

Republican presidential hopeful and former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley holds a rally on January 24, 2024 in North Charleston, South Carolina.  

SFA Fund, the lead super PAC supporting Nikki Haley’s presidential campaign, announced Thursday that it had raised $50.1 million between July and December 2023, outpacing the amount — more than $46 million — that MAGA Inc., the lead super PAC supporting former President Donald Trump, said it raised over the same period.

But after powering a flood of pro-Haley advertising ahead of the first nominating contests, the group did not say how much money it has left in the bank. 

Including its fundraising from the first half of 2023, the group raised a total of nearly $70 million last year – but data from Ad Impact shows that SFA Fund has already spent heavily on advertising, over $50 million, and so far the super PAC has not booked any advertising time in South Carolina, despite pledges to stay in the race for the “long haul.”