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It was definitely not a good night for Donald Trump, Mike Madrid, a California GOP strategist and co-founder of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project, said.

By most metrics, the path to [stopping Trump] has become much clearer, Madrid said. The anti-Trump lane is discernible. Its palpable. Its big. Its something that we can work with in a real, meaningful way.

On the surface, the results from Iowa and New Hampshire look just plain bad for the anti-Trump movement. A former president facing 91 criminal charges and splitting his time between the courtroom and the campaign trail won over 50 percent of the vote in both states. In New Hampshire, where the GOP field quickly shrunk to two, independent voters, whose exit polls showed broke overwhelmingly for Haley, were trumped by Trumps GOP base.

The next two contests offer even less hope for impeding Trumps march toward the nomination. Haley is not competing for delegates in Nevada. And Trump leads her by double digits in polls of her home state of South Carolina.

Leaders of the effort to warn voters about a second Trump term say that focusing on the primary is a lost cause. They argue that Trumps nomination is inevitable and that the focus should shift now to trying to defeat him in the general election.

Its all doom and gloom in the primary, said Charlie Sykes, a conservative Wisconsin political commentator. But this has been predictable for a long time now.

Trumps detractors point to data from Iowa and New Hampshire that show some warning signs for Trump, particularly among independents and more moderate Republicans. In New Hampshire, 64 percent of undeclared voters sided with Haley, according to exit polls.

Exit polls showed four out of 10 people who cast a ballot for Nikki Haley in New Hampshire said they did so out of distaste for Donald Trump. | Jamie Kelter Davis for POLITICO

A pre-caucus NBC News/Des Moines Register/Mediacom poll of voters in Iowa found that 43 percent of Haley supporters said they would back President Joe Biden over Trump.

And in New Hampshire, 46 percent of GOP primary voters said they would be dissatisfied if Trump became the GOP nominee, and 35 percent said they would not vote for him in November.

Exit polls also showed four out of 10 people who cast a ballot for Haley in New Hampshire said they did so out of distaste for Trump. And 94 percent of Haleys voters said they would be dissatisfied if Trump won the nomination.

Fully half of Iowas Republican caucusgoers said they did not identify as part of Trumps Make America Great Again movement. Even more 63 percent said the same in New Hampshire.

That significant chunks of voters from two disparate (though still overwhelmingly white) electorates showed similar resistance to Trump is encouraging to both Sykes and Madrid.

Looking at these numbers and Trumps general approval [ratings] amongst Republicans and also election results from the last three elections, they are all pointing in a direction of getting worse for Trump not better, Madrid said.

Fergus Cullen, a Never Trump Republican and former New Hampshire Republican Party chair who voted for Haley on Tuesday, called those statistics the best result from yesterday.

Citing the 35 percent of voters who said they wouldnt vote for Trump in the general election, Cullen said, Imagine if 35 percent of GOP elected officials said the same thing. Those of us who oppose Trump may not be able to prevent his renomination, but we should be able to prevent him from winning a general.

Still, Trump has defied political gravity before, and many Trump critics after he left office once believed he was unlikely to win renomination. Cullen said Trump does have some ability to find new voters and expand the electorate.

Even though Biden and Trump have declared the general election effectively underway, Haley has not. The former South Carolina governor has vowed to continue through Super Tuesday, where her campaign argues a slate of open and semi-open primaries will give her a fighting chance.

And some Never Trumpers arent ready to look ahead to the general election yet. They want her to keep going.

Theres tons and tons of ammunition for her to make the case that [Trump] is unfit to be president, said Gordon Humphrey, a former U.S. senator from New Hampshire who left the party after Trump won the nomination in 2016 and supported Haley in Tuesdays primary.

Yet Sean Van Anglen, a New Hampshire political consultant who was an early supporter of Trump in 2016 but voted for Haley this time, is already moving on. Van Anglen, who said hed consider leaving the presidential line blank on his November ballot rather than vote for Trump or Biden, is looking to put together an effort to aid down-ballot Republicans who he believes could suffer with Trump again at the top of the ticket.

We need to let the toddler run his temper tantrum out, Van Anglen said. Then let the adults come back into the room and take back control of our party and our country.

Jessica Piper and Steve Shepard contributed to this report.

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Why Trump's critics see his New Hampshire win as a positive sign for 2024 - POLITICO - POLITICO

When David Cameron, Britains foreign secretary and onetime prime minister, visited Washington last month, he took time out to press the case for backing Ukraine with Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, the far-right Georgia Republican who stridently opposes further American military aid to the country.

Last week, Boris Johnson, another former prime minister, argued that the re-election of Donald J. Trump to the White House would not be such a bad thing, so long as Mr. Trump comes around on helping Ukraine. I simply cannot believe that Trump will ditch the Ukrainians, Mr. Johnson wrote in a Daily Mail column that read like a personal appeal to the candidate.

If the special relationship between Britain and the United States has taken on an air of special pleading in recent weeks, it is because Britain, rock solid in its support for Ukraine, now views its role as bucking up an ally for whom aid to the embattled country has become a political obstacle course.

British diplomats said Mr. Cameron and other senior officials had made it a priority to reach out to Republicans who were hostile to further aid. For reasons of history and geography, Britain recognized that support is not as instinctive for Americans as it for the British, according to a senior diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the diplomatic sensitivity of the matter.

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'No Time to Go Wobbly': Why Britain Is Lobbying U.S. Republicans on Ukraine - The New York Times

Ranking member Roger Wicker of Mississippi followed, faulting Dalton for taking months to respond to a letter from committee Republicans on the sale of border material after Biden canceled the Trump administrations wall.

I just find your performance in your previous role so unsatisfactory that I have real doubts that its going to get better in an enhanced role, Wicker said.

The rocky outing signals trouble ahead for the Biden administration and Senate Democrats as they begin to fill civilian Pentagon jobs in the new year, a process that was blocked for several months last year as Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) protested the Pentagons abortion travel policy.

Wicker argued Dalton failed to provide accurate and timely information to Congress, noting her response said a decision would be made on the leftover materials when it was already transferred to a third party for sale.

Dalton said her response was based on the best available information that we had at the time from several DOD agencies. Still, Wicker said the border fight and her role in advising Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin over the incursion of the Chinese spy balloon one year ago gives me pause on her nomination.

Dalton was first nominated for the Air Force job in September, but the White House was forced to renominate her this month when the Senate didnt act before the end of the year. She was previously confirmed by the Senate in 2022 for her current job as assistant secretary for homeland defense and hemispheric affairs.

In addition to the border crisis, Senate Republicans have accused Dalton of sidestepping their questions about the Pentagons actions on the spy balloon before it was shot down in February.

Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) pressed Dalton on whether she recommended to Austin that the spy balloon not be shot down over U.S. territory. She said senior military leaders made that recommendation. In order to avoid civilian harm, the balloon was shot down once it crossed over the ocean.

Between now and the time that a vote is held on your nomination, I think youve got some work to do to regain the confidence of a lot of the members on this committee, Rounds warned, noting their disagreements over the border and the balloon episode.

But the border crisis loomed large in the session, as it does in broader U.S. politics. Border security and immigration will likely play a large role in the upcoming election as Donald Trump and other Republicans rip Bidens handling of the border.

Senate Democrats and Republicans, meanwhile, are inching closer to an agreement that could tighten border policy and unlock a deal for more than $100 billion in aid for Ukraine, Taiwan and Israel. The House could still reject that deal, however, and is careening toward impeaching Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas over the flow of migrants across the southern border.

Some Republicans referenced the larger border issue, despite the fact that the Pentagon merely supports DHS in its role and the disposition of border barriers does not fall under Daltons portfolio.

Did you ever tell Secretary Mayorkas he was doing a crappy job? asked Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.). Dalton said she did not. She defended her job performance, noting that shes visited the border several times and that the Pentagon has authorized continued assistance to DHS, including a National Guard presence.

I provide options to the secretary of Defense on pathways that are legal, that are appropriate and do not negatively impact training and readiness, Dalton said.

I have attended many meetings internal to the department, in the interagency, focused on what is happening at the southwest border. I have routinely visited there, Dalton said. I have taken this incredibly seriously in my role. There are limits to what I can do per statute from the Department of Defense on border security.

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Republicans rap DOD nominee over border, spy balloon - POLITICO

OK, the joke's just lying there, waiting. Somebody has to pick it up.

Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce you to...The Confederacy Of Dunces.

Governor Greg Abbott is sucking around to be the Orval Faubus, Ross Barnett, and George Wallace of the 21st Century and most of the Republican governors around the country are joining in on his little Jeff Davis Memorial Project down at the southern border. So far, Kevin Stitt (Oklahoma), Jeff Landry (Louisiana), Brian Kemp (Georgia) Kristi Noem (South Dakota), Greg Gianforte (Montana), and Ron DeSantis (Florida) have joined Abbott in the Articles of Confederation Defense Fund. And now, with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's

The president should nationalize the Texas National Guard yesterday and put a stop to this before it truly gets out of hand. (Tentherism is another one of those loopy rightist ideas that modern conservatism has entertained for decades, long before the former president* turned all those existing ideas loose.) My major concern is that both the Texas Guard and the Border Patrol may be so seriously compromised by MAGA sympathizers that actual brawls may break out all along the borderline.

And I was just musing that we seem to be on the brink of an actual federal-state crack-up, and over an issue that may well damage this country's alliances with a huge chunk of North America, and over an issue that, in Washington, the issue is also threatening collaterally to kill off aid to Ukraine, so I was musing what element of this tangled and volatile situation Vladimir Putin wouldn't enjoy.

Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976. He lives near Boston and has three children.

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Republicans Are Caving to Trump's Demands to Kill a Hard-Won Border Deal - Esquire

Former President Donald J. Trump paved a path to the presidency in 2016 by calling for a big, beautiful wall along the United States border with Mexico.

His 2024 rivals in the Republican primary election, scrapping for every advantage against him, looked north.

Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, has frequently told voters that its not just the southern border that needs stepped-up enforcement its the northern border, too.

I think we do whatever it takes to keep people out, she told reporters on Saturday when asked if her comments meant she supported building a wall. If thats what it takes to keep them out, we will do a wall, we will do any sort of border patrol that we need to have.

Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who ended his bid and endorsed Mr. Trump on Sunday after battling with Ms. Haley for second place behind the former president, had recently suggested building a wall along some trouble spots of the U.S.-Canada frontier. Vivek Ramaswamy, a tech entrepreneur, dropped out of the race last week, but not before trekking up to Pittsburg, N.H., a tiny town that sits just below the jagged, 5,500-mile line that divides the United States and Canada, with a camera crew in tow. He later drew criticism from Canadian journalists and pundits when he proclaimed that the United States should not just build one wall, but two.

In Pittsburg, where residents like Beverly Martin, 79, and Chip Jones, 74, sat at the bar in an eclectic, barnlike restaurant on a recent snowy afternoon, the idea of a border wall along New Hampshires northernmost boundary, an isolated, forested region, was anathema.

Then you have this armed national army that can be used against you and your rights, Mr. Jones, a Republican and retired fire chief from Massachusetts who winters in the town, said in an interview at Full Send Bar and Grill off Route 3. He paused, mulling it over: A border wall in Pittsburg does it just not feel right?

It doesnt, replied Ms. Martin, who is also a Republican and taught home economics for 18 years at the Pittsburg School down the road. A lot of people in Pittsburg have relatives on either side of the border, and people from the border towns in Canada come here to work.

Mr. Trump does not talk about that northern dividing line himself. But he has promised to revive some of his most criticized immigration policies and has escalated his rhetoric, echoing the racial hatreds of Adolf Hitler when he said undocumented immigrants were poisoning the blood of our country.

The nations southern border has loomed large in the psyche of the American electorate. The issue has contributed to President Bidens low approval numbers and threatened his foreign policy platform. It has also entangled Congress and burdened mayors and local leaders grappling with packed shelters and strained social services as more and more migrant families have been bused to cities around the country.

The now-dwindled G.O.P. field united behind calls to end sanctuary policies and advocated for militarized crackdowns on drug cartels and mass deportations of millions of people who have entered the United States under the Biden administration.

Republican warnings of terrorists, criminals and traffickers have drawn a national spotlight to places like New Hampshires northern edge, frustrating some of the people who live along it. Unlike the largely Latino communities along the U.S.-Mexico border, they are not used to being such a prominent part of the national immigration debate.

Pittsburg, which registered a population of 830 people in the most recent Census Bureau report, is the largest township by area in New England, and is known as a destination for snowmobile and ATV enthusiasts, hunters and fly fishers. Longtime border residents can remember when the dividing line up north was, as their counterparts far down south like to say, but a line in the sand or the snow. As in the border towns of states like Texas and Arizona before any barriers were put up, it was not uncommon, some Pittsburg inhabitants said, to see what appeared to be migrants walking or wading across the border.

And like those southern border towns, Pittsburg sits on land that was once fiercely contested first between the French and British and the Abenaki, who used its wilderness to the north as their hunting grounds, and later between the British and the Americans. The Treaty of Paris, which was signed in 1783 and ended the American Revolution, left the dividing line between what is now Quebec and New Hampshire ill-defined. Frustrated over the disagreement, the residents caught between two nations established their own government, the Indian Stream Republic.

In October, Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire, who has endorsed Ms. Haley and has been stumping with her across the state in recent weeks, and other state officials announced a tenfold increase in patrols along the northern line. The vast majority of border crossings come from the southern border, but the majority of border crossings of folks on the terrorist watch list come from the northern border, Mr. Sununu said in an interview.

The latest statistics from U.S. Customs and Border Protection showed that last years apprehensions of people entering illegally in the sector that covers New Hampshire, Vermont and parts of upstate New York had reached the highest levels in at least 16 years. Between October 2022 and September 2023, agents intercepted 6,925 people crossing illegally, an increase from 1,065 in that time span one year earlier.

Around the stores and shops that line Route 3, several clerks said they had noticed a few people passing through who did not appear to be locals or the typical winter tourists. But for many, the crossings elicit a shrug. People have always been coming through Canada, said Carolyn Therrien, who was ringing up customers at Youngs General Store. I dont think the residents are really worried.

Inside Pittsburgs town government office on Main Street, a long, wood-paneled building with a pitched roof that also houses its police department, Linda Clogston, the tax collector and treasurer of the local historical association, has worked with community leaders and officials on both sides of the border to set up markers commemorating the Indian Stream Republic and other historical sites. Across the street, the Pittsburg Historical Society Museum houses canoes, drag saws, spiked boots and other artifacts from times when people flowed more easily through the wilderness of the border.

On a recent afternoon, she said Pittsburg residents seemed more concerned with rising property prices than with who was coming across the border.

Around town, there is anecdotal evidence of the Trumpian wave that has hit other rural parts of New Hampshire and the United States. Pro-Trump flags and signs hang from the walls of some homes and stick out of yards. On the side of the road, a Build the Wall sign was tacked to an evergreen tree. With the primary coming up, immigration was cited by several voters as a top election concern but they were usually referring to the southern border.

Wayne Dorman, 71, a conservative Democrat and owner of a concrete business, said he was not opposed to the government stepping up resources along the northern border. But he contended that the harsh wilderness was enough to keep people out. I mean, were not Texas, he said.

In New Hampshire, the issue of immigration has gripped the Republican electorate since Patrick J. Buchanan, a conservative commentator, clinched an upset victory in the primary in 1996. Mr. Trump won in 2016 with views on the issue that tapped into the partys base of white working-class voters who felt alienated from the political system. A recent Boston Globe/USA Today/Suffolk University poll found that a majority of the states Republican voters said it was the most important issue facing the country.

It could be the single largest issue in front of us in this election, rivaled only by the economy, said Chris Ager, the chairman of the New Hampshire Republican Party.

But nearly two-thirds of those surveyed were not concerned about the states northern border with Canada.

Ever since state polls showed Ms. Haley cutting into Mr. Trumps lead in New Hampshire, he and his allies have been on the attack in particular, going after her record on immigration as governor. Ms. Haley, asked Saturday at a campaign stop in Peterborough, N.H., if she would support a wall along the Canadian border, was noncommittal.

Whatever it takes to keep people out that are illegal from coming in well do it, she said.

Nicholas Nehamas contributed reporting from Manchester, N.H.

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A Border Wall to the North? Republicans Want to Discuss. - The New York Times