| | | | |  | | By Charlie Mahtesian | | | |  Then-Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump with former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie on Feb. 26, 2016, in Fort Worth, Texas. Christie gave Trump his endorsement at the event. | Tom Pennington/Getty Images | CHANGE OF HEART — When Chris Christie launches his second presidential campaign tonight in New Hampshire, he’ll enter the GOP primary as a longshot, buried in the polls and seemingly without a path to the nomination. Among other obstacles, recent polling suggests the former New Jersey governor is deeply unpopular with Republican voters. He has the highest unfavorable ratings of any candidate in the field. Sixty percent say they would not support him under any circumstances. No other contender has numbers even close to that bad. To become a serious contender, Christie needs to meet the threshold necessary to appear in the August GOP debate, showcase his formidable debating skills that evening and then gain traction in the early state where the political terrain figures to be the most favorable to him — New Hampshire. It’s a tall order, in part because Christie fell flat in New Hampshire in his unsuccessful 2016 bid, despite holding more than 100 town halls in the state and getting more local endorsements than any other candidate. But that’s not the core of Christie’s problem. His main obstacle will be explaining what he did after his disappointing sixth place finish. First, Christie dropped out of the race. Then, two weeks later, he delivered an endorsement that will live in infamy. Just days before a pivotal Super Tuesday, with Donald Trump on the defensive against Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, Christie unexpectedly appeared by Trump’s side at a Texas rally and delivered his blessing. Even by the standards of the unpredictable 2016 GOP primary, Christie’s endorsement was a stunner. After spending the campaign referring to Trump as a “carnival barker,” belittling his readiness for the White House and talking about the importance of governance, the New Jersey governor suddenly provided Trump with critical validation from a respected member of the Republican establishment. “I just don’t think that he’s suited to be president of the United States,” Christie had said of the billionaire mogul a few months earlier. “I don’t think his temperament is suited for that and I don’t think his experience is.” Until that moment, Trump didn’t have a single endorsement from a Republican governor or senator. He had just two endorsements from House members — both of whom would later be indicted and resign from Congress. (Trump would also later pardon the two congressmen.) And Christie was no ordinary endorser. His star might have been tarnished by the infamous Bridgegate scandal and his own presidential bid might have gone nowhere, but his imprimatur still mattered a great deal. Just a few years earlier, in 2011, a planeload of Iowa activists and donors made a pilgrimage to New Jersey to urge Christie to run for president in 2012. In the earliest stages of the 2016 presidential race, Christie topped the polls as the frontrunner. The shock of Christie’s endorsement — and the nakedly opportunistic vibe it conveyed — proved costly. Christie faced withering criticism within his own party. The Union Leader, which has a storied history in Republican presidential primary politics, immediately rescinded its earlier endorsement of Christie. "Boy, were we wrong,” publisher Joseph W. McQuaid wrote. “Watching Christie kiss the Donald’s ring this weekend — and make excuses for the man Christie himself had said was unfit for the presidency — demonstrated how wrong we were. Rather than standing up to the bully, Christie bent his knee. In doing so, he rejected the very principles of his campaign that attracted our support.” By the time Christie left office in 2018, he ranked in the polls as the most unpopular governor in state history. Democrats captured the governorship upon his departure. At the time of the endorsement, Christie explained that Trump offered the best chance of defeating Hillary Clinton. He later said he wanted to make Trump “a better candidate.” Now, Christie appears set to embark on something akin to a mea culpa tour, running almost explicitly to stop Trump, or at least to deliver the kind of bracing attacks the top contenders are afraid to unleash. To get anywhere, however, criticism of the former president isn’t going to be enough. Christie will likely need a more fulsome explanation of why he bent the knee, what he thinks of his decision seven years later and why voters should believe him. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com. Or contact tonight’s author at cmahtesian@politico.com or on Twitter at @PoliticoCharlie.
| | A message from Citi: Doing business abroad can be complicated and costly, especially at the beginning, so it's worth taking a look at how some key players are doing it. Citi, for example, is well-positioned to take advantage of evolving global trends with an extensive, worldwide network that's paired with local expertise in 95 markets. With that kind of network available, Citi can help connect today's ideas with tomorrow's opportunities. Learn More. | | | | | — PGA Tour to merge with LIV Golf: In a titanic shock to the golf world, the upstart Saudi-financed league LIV Golf is merging with the decades-old PGA Tour, the organizations announced today, bringing years of bitter legal fights between the rival groups to an end. The deal also involves the DP World Tour, also known as the PGA European Tour. — SEC sues Coinbase, alleging securities law violations: The SEC today sued Coinbase, the largest cryptocurrency trading platform in the U.S., setting up a head-on battle that could shape the future of the $1 trillion digital asset market. Less than 24 hours after filing more than a dozen charges against Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, the SEC alleged that Coinbase has made billions of dollars while illegally running a national securities exchange, broker and clearing agency, among other charges. The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. — Merck sues HHS over drug negotiation: Pharmaceutical giant Merck sued the federal government today to block Medicare drug price negotiations, calling the program unconstitutional. The complaint, filed against the Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, argued that Medicare’s efforts to negotiate certain drug prices is “political Kabuki theater” that is “tantamount to extortion.”
| | | | GET READY FOR GLOBAL TECH DAY: Join POLITICO Live as we launch our first Global Tech Day alongside London Tech Week on Thursday, June 15. Register now for continuing updates and to be a part of this momentous and program-packed day! From the blockchain, to AI, and autonomous vehicles, technology is changing how power is exercised around the world, so who will write the rules? REGISTER HERE. | | | | | | | | | ‘NON-WHITE NATIONALIST’ — In an attempt to differentiate himself from his fellow GOP candidates, specifically Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Vivek Ramaswamy gave himself a new label, POLITICO’s Brakkton Booker reports. “I think of myself as more of the unapologetic nationalist in this race,” Ramaswamy said during his opening remarks for an on-the-record conversation with more than a dozen editors and reporters at POLITICO’s Rosslyn, Va., headquarters late Monday morning. “Call me a non-white nationalist, if you want.” The 37-year-old Indian American is among a handful of candidates of color – including former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley and South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott – who are attempting to win over a predominately white Republican primary voter base. These candidates of color have all made attacking “woke” ideologies and policies central parts of their campaigns. However, none of them are polling above 5 percent, with Ramaswamy hovering at 2.6 percent. “I think we need to move and graduate beyond where I feel like we’ve been mired for the last 10 to 20 years celebrating and sometimes fighting and obsessing either way over our skin-deep diversity and differences,” he said. NO COMMENT — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis remained silent on whether or not he was responsible for the recent charter flights transporting migrants from Texas to Sacramento, Nicholas Nehamas writes for The New York Times. During a news conference today – his first public appearance since California officials made the accusations – DeSantis avoided the topic altogether. He instead signed a bill giving consumers increased control over their online presence, and did not take questions from reporters. The allegations concern the three dozen migrants who arrived in Sacramento, one flight landing on Friday and the other on Monday. California Gov. Gavin Newsom threatened DeSantis with criminal charges in a tweet Monday and California officials have blamed DeSantis for the flights. DeSantis typically takes questions from the media following the press conference, but he was uncharacteristically silent on the matter. And given the recent start of his 2024 campaign, the choice is an unusual one.
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An aerial view of a deforested area in the municipality of Melgaco, Para State, Brazil, in 2020. | Tarso Sarraf/AFP via Getty Images | DEFYING DEFORESTATION — Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva unveiled a plan this week to end illegal deforestation in the Amazon, a major campaign pledge that is a critical step in addressing the country’s significant carbon emissions from the region, according to reporting from The Associated Press. This strategy, set to be implemented over four years, provides a roadmap to achieve the ambitious goal of halting illegal deforestation by 2030. Lula’s term ends Jan. 1, 2027, so full implementation would depend on the willingness of whoever comes after him to continue the work. On Monday, Lula’s administration also pledged to achieve net zero deforestation, that is, replanting as much as is cut down, by restoring native vegetation stocks as compensation for legal vegetation removal. Brazil is the world’s fifth-largest emitter of greenhouse gasses, with almost three percent of global emissions, according to Climate Watch, an online platform managed by World Resources Institute. Almost half of Brazil’s carbon emissions come from deforestation. Lula announced his government would readjust Brazil’s international commitments to cut emissions, called Nationally Determined Contributions, or NDCs, back to what was promised in 2015 during the Paris Agreement. Brazil committed to reduce carbon emission by 37 percent by 2025 and 43 percent by 2030. Lula’s predecessor, far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, had scaled back the commitments.
| | | | DON’T MISS POLITICO’S HEALTH CARE SUMMIT: The Covid-19 pandemic helped spur innovation in health care, from the wide adoption of telemedicine, health apps and online pharmacies to mRNA vaccines. But what will the next health care innovations look like? Join POLITICO on Wednesday June 7 for our Health Care Summit to explore how tech and innovation are transforming care and the challenges ahead for access and delivery in the United States. REGISTER NOW. | | | | | | | | | | 2.1 percent The percentage that the global economy will expand in 2023, according to new estimates from the World Bank. That level of growth would be a sharp slowdown from 2022, when the international economy grew at 3.1 percent. Growth this year has been hobbled thus far by a continued rise in interest rates and the economic repercussions of the war in Ukraine. Speaking to reporters today, Indermit Gill, the World Bank’s chief economist, called the latest findings “another gloomy report.” | | | | GET OFF MY LAWN — Vigilantism in America is on the rise. There are more people complaining about their neighbors via NextDoor accounts and more people getting hurt because they turned into the wrong driveway or encountered the wrong person. Researchers in proxemics — the space that we have between one another — have a theory on this rise: our idea of what “personal space” is has grown. This has all kinds of broader societal implications, from how much Americans interact with others in their neighborhood to where people want to live. Eleanor Cummings reports for The New Republic.
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On this date in 1944: American soldiers and supplies arrive on the shore of the French coast of German-occupied Normandy during the Allied D-Day invasion in World War II. | AP Photo | Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up here.
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