| | | | |  | | By Ryan Lizza, Rachael Bade and Eugene Daniels | | | With help from Eli Okun, Garrett Ross and Bethany Irvine
| | | |  | DRIVING THE DAY | | | YOUR MOMENT OF WONDER — “A U.S.-Built Spacecraft Lands on the Moon for the First Time Since 1972,” by NYT’s Kenneth Chang THE HARD RIGHT’S NEW POWER COUPLE — “Erin Hawley Might Just Be More Influential Than Her Senator Husband,” by Kathy Gilsinan: “This lawyer helped overturn Roe v. Wade. Now she’s taking the abortion pill fight to the Supreme Court.”’
|  Despite an expected drubbing in her home state, Nikki Haley says she’s staying in the race. | Jamie Kelter Davis for POLITICO | SOUTH CAROLINA PREVIEW — The GOP South Carolina Republican presidential primary is tomorrow. DONALD TRUMP leads NIKKI HALEY by 30.5 points in FiveThirtyEight’s polling average. Despite the expected drubbing, Haley says she’s staying in the race — a reminder of how the dynamics have changed from past presidential primary cycles, when a campaign that lost four states in a row would die from lack of funds. But Haley is well-financed. (She has a Republican voter problem, not a Republican donor problem.) So Haley can keep soldiering on in an attempt to pick up some delegates and/or serve as an insurance policy in case some meteor strikes and/or Republican voters suddenly zero in on the fact that Haley has a 5-point average lead over President JOE BIDEN while Trump has a 2-point lead. Natalie Allison this morning dissects one of the under-told stories of Haley’s weakness against Trump in the state: the fact that the former South Carolina governor, who rode the Tea Party wave into office in 2010, long ago lost touch with the state’s grassroots activist base. “We didn’t abandon her,” the former head of a local Tea Party group who once backed Haley tells Natalie. “She abandoned us.” Jonathan Martin, reporting from horse country in Camden, writes a long lament for how Trump “has laid waste” to the once-great South Carolina primary. The former president has done “the bare minimum of campaigning.” Haley “has run a conventional campaign” when that was obviously never going to work against Trump. The media “has largely checked out of the race.” The reason it’s become such “a snoozer,” Jmart writes, is the demographic math of the Trumpified GOP: “Haley performs best with the most educated and wealthy Republicans, as well as independents and Democrats eager to block Trump’s return, while the former president has majority support thanks to his grip on the working-class base that now dominates the GOP coalition.” The latter group is a lot bigger and so “[e]xternal events, gaffes, a home-state advantage and issue differences matter little.” (If you’re going to be there anyway, JMart recommends The Wreck on Shem Creek for seafood and Rodney Scott’s for BBQ.) Contra JMart, we refuse to concede that South Carolina has been sucked dry of all drama. So yesterday, we turned to the one South Carolina politician we knew who could spice things up …
|  Facing a new primary threat, Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) has returned fully to the Trump fold. | Andrew Harnik/AP Photo | THE PLAYBOOK INTERVIEW: NANCY MACE — The first time Ryan met Nancy Mace was in 2015 at a Trump event in South Carolina. She had already been famous once, when she became the first woman to graduate from the Citadel in 1999, but she was struggling politically. She was out of her RON PAUL phase (2012) and feeling humbled after her 6% showing in an ill-fated primary challenge to Sen. LINDSEY GRAHAM (2014). She managed to find presidential campaign work for the guy from “The Apprentice” when few were taking him seriously. But ever since then, the former PR consultant has, as CHARLAMAGNE THA GOD, Mace’s former neighbor and high school friend, might say, “main character energy.” (Mace dropped out of their high school and Charlamagne was kicked out.) In 2019, as a state legislator, she made national headlines when she forced Republicans to add exceptions for rape and incest to a bill restricting abortion acccess. In 2021, some 100 hours into her first term in Congress, she took an unequivocal stand against Trump’s actions on Jan. 6, 2021. “His entire legacy was wiped out,” she told CNN. “We’ve got to start over.” Last year, she helped overthrow Speaker KEVIN McCARTHY. The former speaker didn’t take it well. He encouraged a primary challenger to try and take Mace out. (Speaking of revenge plots, Mace’s own former chief of staff has also filed to run against her, but his campaign hasn’t shown many signs of life yet.) Facing this new primary threat, Mace has returned fully to the Trump fold. She declined to support the presidential campaigns of Sen. TIM SCOTT, who attends the same church as her, or Haley, who backed Mace in her congressional primary in 2022, when Trump opposed her. As she campaigns around South Carolina for the former president, she’s hoping he will return the favor with his own endorsement of her, even as McCarthy hovers in the background trying to turn MAGA against Mace. But Mace seems to have the upper hand in this Mace vs. McCarthy war for Trump’s affection in the coastal district. “The former president likes her,” a person close to Trump tells Playbook. “She’s done a good job and been very helpful.” CATHERINE TEMPLETON, the candidate McCarthy lured into the race, is trying to turn Mace’s main character energy against her. “We need a consistent conservative who doesn’t flip-flop for fame,” she said this month announcing her candidacy. But Mace was a lot more animated about McCarthy than about Templeton. When things got rocky between them last year, she said McCarthy “didn't have the balls” or “the courage or the manhood to call me and talk to me about it.” Ryan spoke to Mace for an hour yesterday and they dug into all of this. You can listen to the full interview on this week’s episode of “Playbook Deep Dive” on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. What follows are some key excerpts.
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| On McCarthy: “The former speaker needs to get a job. I think that’s the problem: He’s bored and doesn’t know what to do with himself. And you know what? … He’s a complete loser. He couldn’t keep his job as speaker, and he quit on the Republican Party. He quit his job. He put our majority at risk.” On Speaker MIKE JOHNSON: “I don’t agree with Mike Johnson, for example, on everything — particularly social issues. But he’s a trustworthy guy; when he says he’s going to do something, I believe he’s going to do it, and he’s honest and he’ll talk to you.” On nostalgia for McCarthy’s speakership: “It was chaotic before Kevin was ousted as speaker. … It was more behind closed doors, but it was equally chaotic. There was yelling, there was cursing, you know, damn near fights happening.” On her public image: “I’ve been criticized for over-sharing. Yeah, I over-share: I tell you too much. But I come from a very honest place, and I want people to know why I do what I do. … I try not to live with regret. Life is tough enough.” On her reputation for focusing on media attention instead of legislation: “The irony is men can do it. But the minute I, a fiscally conservative woman, does it, somehow it’s not the same. … I do media interviews like a lot of my male colleagues, but they’re not getting attacked. I don’t see Tim Scott or Lindsey Graham getting attacked the way that I do. And they’re on TV more than I am.”
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Together, Nippon Steel and U. S. Steel are focused on increasing the competitiveness of the American steel industry on the global stage, safeguarding American jobs, and delivering the highest quality products to American customers.
Please read important information. | | | On the fact her office has some of the highest turnover rates on Capitol Hill: “A lot of offices have high staff turnover. It’s not just me. And the lie that the media told was that I got rid of my entire staff. And I didn’t actually: All the staff in two of my three offices remained with me. All my South Carolina staff are still with me. It was just the D.C. office. … I have really high standards. I want to measure all the work that we do. … And there are some people that don’t want to be held accountable for their work product or show you their work.” On IVF and the Alabama Supreme Court ruling: “We need to make sure we protect IVF for every woman across the country. I am really passionate about women’s issues. I think that sometimes our side gets it wrong: We don’t show compassion to women. In fact, we attack women like myself when I talk about rape, or when I talk about access to birth control, those kinds of things. And this is going to be an issue in ’24.” On what she’d say if Trump offered her his VP spot: “Anybody would say yes. But I — you know, when was the last time a House member became vice president? I mean, it just doesn’t happen. … I do understand women’s issues are going to be a topic in ’24. And I see an opportunity for me to be able to do that.” On her prediction for Saturday’s GOP South Carolina primary: “[Trump is] going to win by a huge margin. I’m going to say 25-28 [points], somewhere in there.” Happy Friday. Thanks for reading Playbook. Drop us a line with your reviews of Rodney Scott’s: Rachael Bade, Eugene Daniels, Ryan Lizza. SCHUMER IN KYIV — “Visiting Ukraine, Schumer Aims to Pressure G.O.P. to Take Up Aid Bill,” by NYT’s Karoun Demirjian: “The trip … amounts to something of a victory lap for [CHUCK] SCHUMER, the New York Democrat who managed to maneuver the aid bill through the Senate this month with a resoundingly bipartisan vote that came after months of partisan wrangling. But it is also a last-ditch bid to salvage the legislation in the House.” STRANGE MAGIC — Text messages, call logs and Venmo transactions record how a Democratic consultant who worked for a rival presidential campaign paid a New Orleans magician to use artificial intelligence to impersonate Biden for a robocall that is now at the center of a multistate law enforcement investigation, NBC’s Alex Seitz-Wald scoops this morning.
| | | | A message from Nippon Steel and U.S. Steel: Nippon Steel and U. S. Steel will drive greater innovation, digitization, and decarbonization by increasing investment across the company and introducing new cutting-edge advanced production technology – benefitting customers across the entire U.S. supply chain, including the automotive and construction industries.
Please read important information. | | | | | WHAT'S HAPPENING TODAY | | On the Hill The Senate and the House are out. What we’re watching … The war of words between Biden and Johnson is heating up at an inopportune moment. After Biden said Wednesday that congressional Republicans were worse than STROM THURMOND and “do not believe in basic democratic principles,” Johnson shot back that Biden was “so desperate and so underwater in the polls he’s playing the race card from the bottom of the deck.” And when word emerged this week that Biden is pondering immigration-related executive orders, Johnson immediately dismissed them as “election year gimmicks” (never mind that he insisted Biden take such action earlier this month). Good thing there isn’t a big appropriations deadline coming up in a week, right? … Speaking of that, per a source familiar with the bicameral talks, negotiators “hope to be able to announce something Sunday night.” At the White House Biden, first lady JILL BIDEN and VP KAMALA HARRIS will welcome the nation’s governors to the White House and deliver remarks this morning during the National Governors Association winter meeting. Later, Harris will join Biden to receive the President’s Daily Briefing.
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The Alabama Supreme Court's IVF ruling has quickly turned into political fodder for Democrats. | Kim Chandler/AP | IVF DECISION BACKLASH — The Alabama Supreme Court’s ruling declaring that embryos are children is developing into a political crisis for the GOP, as the decision’s far-reaching consequences come into view. One poignant example: IVF clinics in the state are stopping their fertility work with would-be parents. The Biden campaign “sees as a freighter-size political opening to pin much of the blame squarely on Donald Trump,” Natalie Allison reports. Meanwhile, Republicans across the country are “scrambling to stake out positions on a procedure that is broadly popular with Americans.” Sen. TOMMY TUBERVILLE (R-Ala.), asked by NBC’s Dasha Burns whether he supported the ruling, said, “Yeah, I was all for it,” reasoning that “we need to have more kids. We need to have an opportunity to do that, and I thought this was the right thing to do.” “Pressed by NBC News about whether he was concerned about how the ruling could impact people who are trying to have kids through IVF, Tuberville sidestepped the question. ‘Well, that’s, that’s for another conversation.’” Scott “appeared uncomfortable with a question about IVF on Thursday as he spoke to reporters outside a polling site in Hanahan, South Carolina,” Natalie writes, and dodged a question about whether embryos are children. “I haven’t studied the issue,” he said. A smattering of House Republicans from Biden-won districts — including New York Reps. NICK LaLOTA, ANTHONY D’ESPOSITO and MARC MOLINARO — have already slammed the ruling’s implications for IVF, Axios’ Andrew Solender notes, suggesting that frontline Republicans realize just how devastating this story could be to Republicans in suburbs and swing seats. Harris was in one such swing area yesterday: Grand Rapids, Michigan, where she joined a roundtable with Sen. DEBBIE STABENOW, freshman Rep. HILLARY SCHOLTEN and Gov. GRETCHEN WHITMER, who has loudly been calling for the campaign to make its case on abortion rights more forcefully, and debuted an attack line about Republicans that you’re going to hear a lot more in the days and weeks ahead: “On the one hand, the proponents are saying that an individual doesn’t have a right to end an unwanted pregnancy and, on the other hand, the individual does not have the right to start a family,” Harris said. WAR IN UKRAINE
|  Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy invited both President Joe Biden and Donald Trump to visit Ukraine and view “this tragedy.” | AP | UKRAINE-RUSSIA LATEST — In an interview last night with Fox News’ Bret Baier, Ukrainian President VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY pilloried TUCKER CARLSON’s recent interview with Russian President VLADIMIR PUTIN. “I don’t have time to hear more than two hours of bullshit about us, about the world, about the United States, about our relations and this interview with a killer,” Zelenskyy said. Speaking from Kharkiv, Zelenskyy invited Biden and Trump to visit Ukraine and view “this tragedy.” He also suggested that the war will end once the world understands “that Putin has broken all the red lines, he’s an inadequate person that is a threat to the whole world, that he will destroy NATO — that’s his goal. So when the world will understand that, OK, that’s it.” More top reads:
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|  Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) estimates there are about 20 House Republicans who oppose impeaching President Joe Biden. | AP | IMPEACHMENT LATEST — Some Republicans are admitting it’s almost certain that they lack the votes to impeach Biden, Jordain Carney reports this morning. Rep. DON BACON (R-Neb.), counting the votes (or lack thereof): “I happen to know there are like 20 Republicans who are not in favor of a Biden impeachment. Mainly because it smells bad what he did, it looks bad, but when you ask them what crime is committed — they can’t tell you.” The gist: “Private briefings to update members on the investigation haven’t swayed those holdouts, and Republicans know it only gets politically riskier to try to impeach Biden as they head deeper into an election year — possibly giving the president a polling boost even if they succeed,” Jordain writes. And in the latest twist in the ALEXANDER SMIRNOV saga, the former FBI informant accused of lying about the Bidens was re-arrested yesterday in Las Vegas just two days after a judge released him, Kyle Cheney reports. BATTLE FOR THE HOUSE — “Mike Johnson visits New York, where ‘fate of the country’ will be decided,” by Jason Beeferman in Binghamton: “The remarks, captured by POLITICO, were part of the speaker’s trip to two upstate New York swing districts — a visit that underscored the pressure on Johnson to at least keep, if not grow, his party’s razor-thin majority in the House.” MEDIAWATCH ALARMING STUFF — “Journalist indicted after accessing Tucker Carlson video footage,” by WaPo’s Will Sommers: “[I]n an indictment laying out 14 counts against [TIM] BURKE that include conspiracy and wiretapping, prosecutors allege that the journalist went too far by tapping into a streaming feed site where he acquired unbroadcast video clips of former Fox News star Tucker Carlson and other personalities.” ANOTHER ONE GONE — “Vice’s New Owners Prepare to Slash What’s Left of Its Work Force,” by NYT’s Benjamin Mullin TV TONIGHT — PBS’ “Washington Week”: Anne Applebaum, David Ignatius and Lara Seligman. SUNDAY SO FAR … ABC “This Week”: Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) … Doug Lute. Panel: Donna Brazile, Reince Priebus, Asma Khalid and Rachael Bade. NBC “Meet the Press”: California Gov. Gavin Newsom. Panel: Yamiche Alcindor, Lanhee Chen, Stephanie Cutter and Chuck Todd. MSNBC “The Sunday Show”: Asa Hutchinson … Oklahoma state Rep. Mauree Turner … Mini Timmaraju. FOX “Fox News Sunday”: Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt … Colorado Gov. Jared Polis. Panel: Susan Page, Juan Williams, Tiffany Smiley and Josh Holmes.
| | | | CONGRESS OVERDRIVE: Since day one, POLITICO has been laser-focused on Capitol Hill, serving up the juiciest Congress coverage. Now, we’re upping our game to ensure you’re up to speed and in the know on every tasty morsel and newsy nugget from inside the Capitol Dome, around the clock. Wake up, read Playbook AM, get up to speed at midday with our Playbook PM halftime report, and fuel your nightly conversations with Inside Congress in the evening. Plus, never miss a beat with buzzy, real-time updates throughout the day via our Inside Congress Live feature. Learn more and subscribe here. | | | | | | | PLAYBOOKERS | | Liz Truss spoke to a CPAC conference room that was less than half full. Jeffrey Katzenberg is attempting to recruit major Nikki Haley donors to support Joe Biden, CNBC reports. Tammy Murphy’s campaign manager, Max Glass, stepped down. The National Zoo is in talks to welcome back giant pandas. OUT AND ABOUT — SPOTTED last night at the opening reception of the National Governors Association winter meeting at the Apple Carnegie Library: Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte, South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster, Idaho Gov. Brad Little, Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey, Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb, Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt and Maine Gov. Janet Mills. — SPOTTED at a fundraiser for the Democratic Governors Association hosted by Josh Wachs and Molly Levinson, Steve Elmendorf, Sarah Min, Peter O’Keefe and Vivian Riefberg at Wachs and Levinson’s home last night: California Gov. Gavin Newsom, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs, Tim Walz, Ben Barnes, Robyn Bash, Trevor Cornwell, Ellen and David Ginsberg, Jeff Forbes, Karin and Tom Freedman, Anthony Harrington, Alex Heckler, Terry McAuliffe, Mark Walsh, Michael Whouley, Phil Munger, Stephanie Cutter, Addie Zamora, Bill Alsup and Meghan Meehan-Draper. TRANSITION — Molly Gannon is joining NLX, a conversational AI platform, to oversee comms and marketing. She previously was senior director of newsgathering PR at CNN, and is a WaPo alum. HAPPY BIRTHDAY: Reps. Jeff Van Drew (R-N.J.), John Rose (R-Tenn.) and Mike Flood (R-Neb.) … Jim Manley … Look Ahead Strategies’ Chris Martin … Lois Romano … Jennifer Epstein … POLITICO’s Katy Murphy and Andrew Briz … Kate Cox … Patrick Svitek … Rebecca Chalif … One Campaign’s Gayle Smith … Marissa Mitrovich … Flynn Chapman … Tommy Mattocks … S.E. Cupp … Arjun Mody … Tom Pino … Gary Karr (62) … Patrick Velliky … Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher’s Nikki McArthur … AT Johnston … Molly Hooper … Shannon Geison of Mondaire for Congress … Leah Clapman … Courtney Matson … Ziya Smallens of New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy’s office … Jill Hudson … Bernie Robinson … former Rep. Kenny Marchant (R-Texas) … Joey Brown of Senate Minority Whip John Thune’s (R-S.D.) office … AP’s Richard Lardner … Erenia Michell Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up here. Send Playbookers tips to playbook@politico.com or text us at 202-556-3307. Playbook couldn’t happen without our editor Mike DeBonis, deputy editor Zack Stanton and Playbook Daily Briefing producer Callan Tansill-Suddath.
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· No existing production or American jobs will shift overseas as a result of the transaction
By delivering the best products and supporting American workers, this is not only an investment in U. S. Steel, but in the broader American steel industry.
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