This concludes the Washington Examiner’s live coverage of the fourth GOP primary debate.

Click here to follow along with the latest updates related to our debate coverage and other 2024 election stories.

Vivek Ramaswamy got the most airtime during the fourth GOP debate on Wednesday, speaking for more than 22 minutes compared to his three challengers, according to a time tracker by CNN.

Ron DeSantis came in a close second, speaking for 21 minutes and eight seconds. Nikki Haley trailed behind at just 17 minutes and 28 seconds, and Chris Christie got the least air time at 16 minutes and 52 seconds.

The four Republican presidential candidates onstage during the fourth GOP primary debate argued heatedly over transgender issues Wednesday night.

Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) and former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, in particular, battled over a transgender bathroom bill in South Carolina, which the Florida governor accused Haley of “killing.”

“As a parent, you do not have the right to abuse your kids,” DeSantis said during the debate against allowing transgender surgeries among minors. “I signed legislation in Florida banning the mutilation of minors because it is wrong. We cannot allow this to happen in this country.

Click here to read more.

We all understand that Chris Christie detests Donald Trump. He’s made that perfectly clear for years and in all the debates. He’s made some valid points in his criticisms.

However, he is running for the Republican nomination for president. It would have been preferred if he spent maybe even half the amount of time he spent criticizing Trump on criticizing Biden and Democrats. Biden is the current president who is responsible for a lot of the problems the country faces. It would have been wise if Christie set aside his vendetta and remembered that.

Unlike last month’s snoozefest on NBC News, the all-star panel of Megyn Kelly, Eliana Johnson, and Elizabeth Vargas have managed to hit the final four, sans Trump, where it hits.

However, like Fox News’s debate between Ron DeSantis and Gavin Newsom, the public response appears to be muted. The betting markets have barely moved with regard to the status of the GOP primary. Trump still maintains a nearly 79% share, Nikki Haley a nearly 13%, and DeSantis at not quite 5%.

The fourth GOP debate in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, has concluded, bringing an end to the two-hour event that saw several tense exchanges from the four candidates seeking to make what could be a final impression on stage before the Iowa caucuses in six weeks.

Chris Christie was booed by the debate audience during his closing statement after saying former President Donald Trump won’t be able to vote in 2024 “because he will be convicted of felonies before then and his right to vote will be taken away.”

“Boo all you want,” he said. “But if we deny reality as a party, we’re gonna have four more years of Joe Biden.”

Christie then criticized his opponents, once again pointing back to the first GOP debate during which his challengers raised their hands to say they would still support Trump as the GOP nominee even if he is convicted. Trump faces more than 90 criminal charges across four federal indictments, but the former president has not been convicted in any case.

“If you’re too timid to take on Trump, believe me, others will tell we’ll see that timidity,” he said. “We need to get back to the old American idea that every person is responsible for their own conduct — even a president.”

Nikki Haley said that a study indicated that just half an hour of using TikTok made a user 17% more antisemitic. The study in question by polling firm Generation Lab, polled 1,323 people younger than 30.

The study found that those who used the Chinese app for more than half an hour per day had more than a 1-in-5 chance of being antisemitic versus a 6% chance for Instagram users and a 2% chance for Twitter users.

Vivek Ramaswamy nailed it with the Biden administration’s weakness with China.

He made an excellent point on China and the spy balloon. He was absolutely right in saying that the country would have addressed the situation much sooner if the balloon had been from Russia instead of China. The same thing with Cuba.

The Biden administration must be held accountable for its impotency on China, and any Republican president must take a firmer approach.

Chris Christie hit out against former President Donald Trump’s former trade policies as they relate to China, arguing his decisions as president merely raised prices for U.S. consumers during his time in office.

“You want to know what has contributed to inflation in this country?” Christie said. “Yes, it’s more government spending. Yes, it’s the fact that we’re printing too much money — absolutely. But it is also the increase in prices that were driven by Donald Trump’s tariffs.”

Christie’s comments come as a direct response to an answer given earlier in the debate by Nikki Haley, who lauded Trump as being strong on trade. Instead, Christie challenged that claim by saying Trump “didn’t change one Chinese policy” while in office.

“He failed on it,” he said.

Despite six weeks more until the Iowa caucuses, the moderators of the fourth official Republican primary debate have unequivocally declared that Wednesday’s NewsNation debate is the fourth and last of the primary.

While one of the hosts, broadcast legend Megyn Kelly, teased on her podcast earlier this week that this debate could be the final of the primary, the RNC likely gave the guidance in anticipation that it will embrace dominant front-runner Donald Trump as the de facto nominee while icing out the second-place Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis.

“If this had been the KKK on college campuses, all of these presidents would have been up in arms,” Nikki Haley said.

This was such a crucial point that needed to be said. Haley exposed the inconsistency and hypocrisy of the academic elitist Left. Mentioning she would take colleges’ tax-exempt status away was just icing on the cake to a phenomenal response.

In 2016, Chris Christie memorably nailed Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) for delivering canned lines about then-President Barack Obama in a debate ahead of the New Hampshire primary. It didn’t do much for Christie’s campaign, but it did hurt Rubio. The Florida senator sank to fifth place in the Granite State after finishing a strong third in Iowa, never really recovering.

Tonight Christie seems to be interested in doing the same to another Floridian. He has more than once gone after Ron DeSantis while defending Nikki Haley. The most Rubio-esque attack came when Christie hammered DeSantis on whether Donald Trump is fit to serve as president in his late 70s. DeSantis said Trump’s age was a problem but declined to give an emphatic “no.”

Obviously, DeSantis doesn’t want to have Christie-like poll numbers. Also, unlike Christie, DeSantis will surely endorse Trump for president if the former president is the GOP’s 2024 nominee. But in a debate where DeSantis has been more sure-footed than in the first three and Haley has been on the defensive at times, every little bit matters.

The polls show he has little, if any, chance of winning the nomination, but Chris Christie is making a lot of sense tonight.

First, he called out Ron DeSantis for his refusal to say whether Donald Trump is fit for office. Regardless of one’s opinion on the matter of Trump being fit, DeSantis did avoid the question entirely. Then, Christie brought up parents’ rights and keeping the government out of raising children.

Christie started off slow but has come on strong in the last 30 minutes.

Entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy has entered his fourth debate with a more aggressive posture toward his opponents, with his strategy for the night specifically targeting Nikki Haley, according to a photo circulated on social media.

In a photo shared on X by reporter Grayson Everett, Ramaswamy has a simple strategy laid out in his debate notes: “Nikki = Corrupt.”

Ramaswamy later displayed those notes to the crowd as he accused Haley of having “a corruption problem,” claiming she would be controlled by big-money donors when it comes to domestic and foreign policy issues rather than voters.

When asked if she wanted to respond to his accusations, Haley declined.

“It’s not worth my time to respond to him,” she said.

Ramaswamy has spent much of the night hitting out against Haley, accusing the former United Nations ambassador of lacking foreign policy knowledge and criticizing several of her policy stances.

Ron DeSantis sidestepped a question on whether he believes Donald Trump is “mentally fit” to be reelected, eliciting criticism from Chris Christie, who has repeatedly accused his opponents of being too afraid to attack the former president.

“Answer the question,” Christie said. “The question was very direct. Is he fit to be president or isn’t it? The rest of the speech is interesting but completely nonresponsive.”

“This is the problem with my three colleagues,” he added. “They’re afraid to offend Donald Trump.”

Chris Christie tore into Donald Trump on the debate stage, arguing the former president’s only goal to be reelected is to “exact retribution” against those who voted against him or disagreed with his policies.

“This is an angry, bitter man who now wants to be back as president because he wants to exact retribution on anyone who disagreed with him,” Christie said. “Every one of these policies that he’s talking about are about pursuing the plan of retribution.”

Christie then accused his GOP opponents of failing to hold Trump accountable, pointing to the first GOP debate during which his challengers said they would still support the GOP candidate if Trump secures the nomination and is convicted of a federal crime.

Finally, someone puts an emphasis on holding colleges accountable for the student debt crisis.

Ron DeSantis gave a great response, even if he veered off a lot from the original question. Yes, truck drivers shouldn’t pay for a college student’s degree in gender studies.

But more importantly, DeSantis vowed that colleges would back student loans, not governments. This is significant because it’s been colleges exploiting the nation’s families with out-of-control student tuition.

Good to see a candidate start to put the blame where it belongs. For far too long, universities and colleges have escaped blame.

Nikki Haley correctly laments the fact that the average homeowner is 49 years old, fewer than two decades younger than the same Social Security retirement age for the past near-century.

But supply, as the former ambassador to the United Nations said, is only part of the problem. The problem is not that mortgages have been brought too high for the moment by the Federal Reserve but rather that the Fed kept interest rates too artificially low for too long from the end of the Great Recession until 2022.

This is the first debate where the race between Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley, the two top-polling candidates on the stage, has been front and center.

Chris Christie has tried at times to shift the conversation to competing with former President Donald Trump, the overwhelming front-runner. But Vivek Ramaswamy succeeded in drawing some of Christie’s fire away and drawing negative attention to himself.

Will this move the needle for anyone onstage or make the debate participants look like they are running for second place?

Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) criticized Nikki Haley as being “very weak on China,” pointing to her relationships with Chinese officials while she was governor of South Carolina.

DeSantis also accused Haley of being soft on China due to campaign contributions she has received from “Wall Street liberal donors,” arguing it would hinder her from being “tough on China.

“She will cave to the donor. She will not stand up for you,” DeSantis said.

Haley shot back, brushing off DeSantis’s attack as the Florida governor just being “mad because those Wall Street donors used to support him and now they support me.”

Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) gave a great response on the border wall and illegal immigration. Anyone paying attention knows the border crisis has been out of control, and it is an urgent problem.

But all Republicans must stop with the “Mexico paying for it” routine. It didn’t work when former President Donald Trump said it, and it won’t work for any Republican candidate. Let’s focus more on strong border security and stopping illegal entries and less on baseless declarations about Mexico funding the wall.

Chris Christie hit out against Vivek Ramaswamy on the debate stage, criticizing the entrepreneur and political newcomer for attacking his opponents on the stage.

Ramaswamy has spent much of the debate so far criticizing Nikki Haley on a slew of topics, accusing the former United Nations ambassador of lacking foreign policy knowledge despite her experience in the Trump administration.

Christie shot back at Ramaswamy, scolding him for “insult[ing] Nikki Haley’s basic intelligence” and decrying him as “the most obnoxious blowhard in America.”

“This is a smart, accomplished woman. You should stop insulting her,” Christie said.

Ramaswamy and Christie have shared a number of tense back-and-forths onstage, with the pair yelling over each other at different points.

Vivek Ramaswamy hit out against Nikki Haley’s foreign policy experience as a former ambassador to the United Nations, accusing her of lacking knowledge on the issues that make up focal points of her campaign.

“Foreign policy experience is the not the same as foreign policy wisdom,” Ramaswamy said.

The comment is an apparent callback to one of the first clashes between Ramaswamy and Haley on the debate stage in September when the former South Carolina governor criticized the entrepreneur for having “no foreign policy experience and it shows.”

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is the first candidate to bring former President Donald Trump into the conversation, alluding to the party’s front-runner who has once again opted not to participate in the primary debate.

Christie criticized his opponents for fighting with one another onstage, accusing them of “acting as if the race is between the four of us” and ignoring Trump altogether, “the fifth guy who doesn’t have the guts to show up and stand here,”

“I’ve got these three guys who are all seemingly to compete with Voldemort, he who shall not be named,” he added, referring to Trump as a “dictator” and “bully.” “They don’t want to talk about it.”

Presidential candidate Nikki Haley has emerged as the top target among her Republican opponents on Wednesday, with both Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy using their opening questions to hit the former South Carolina governor on a slew of issues.

DeSantis used his first answer to accuse Haley of caving to the Left on policies such as gender mutilation, with Ramaswamy hitting her over her ties to corporate America and Boeing.

“It adds up to the fact that you are corrupt,” Ramaswamy said.

Haley defended her ties to the company, noting she “did serve on the board of Boeing. I did a lot of work with Boeing when I was governor.”

“I love Boeing. They build good commercial airplanes,” she said.

She added, “In terms of these donors that are supporting me, they’re just jealous.”

Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) came out swinging in his opening question on the stage after moderator Megyn Kelly sought to press the Florida governor on his stagnant growth in the polls against former President Donald Trump.

Kelly opened the debate by asking candidates about their chances of electability against front-runner Trump, specifically asking DeSantis about his initial expectations as “the candidate most likely to consolidate the non-Trump field.”

“But here we are a month out from the first real votes, and you haven’t managed to do it,” Kelly said.

“In America, the voters actually make these decisions, not pundits or pollsters,” DeSantis responded. “I’m sick of hearing about these polls.”

The candidates are taking the stage at the fourth Republican primary debate at the University of Alabama.

Four candidates are participating in the Wednesday night debate, marking the smallest stage thus far in the primary cycle. The candidates on stage include Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.

The debate is being moderated by NewsNation’s Elizabeth Vargas, former Fox News host Megyn Kelly, and Eliana Johnson of the Washington Free Beacon.

The fourth Republican presidential debate is set to begin in the next few minutes, when four candidates will meet on stage just six weeks ahead of the Iowa caucuses.

Click here to watch the debate live.

The Biden campaign released a list of questions for the four candidates facing off in the fourth primary debate on Wednesday night, mocking the event as only being watched by “six or seven Americans.”

In an email sent to supporters, the Biden campaign accused each of the candidates of wanting to spread “conspiracy theories” to their supporters. The campaign outlined a number of questions criticizing the GOP candidates’ platforms, urging them to clarify their support for the former president and his policies.

“Do you support Donald Trump’s plans to be a dictator on day 1?” one of the questions reads, referring to Trump’s comments earlier this week to Sean Hannity that he would not be a dictator “except on” the first day of his presidency.

“Do you or do you not support a national abortion ban? Yes or no.” another reads, hinting at one of the biggest policy issues Democrats hope to amplify ahead of the 2024 cycle.

The email contained other questions as well, including “Do you agree with Donald Trump’s repeated attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act?” and “If you do not like the Affordable Care Act and plan to get rid of it, what is your plan to protect millions of Americans — like the 135 million with preexisting conditions — from losing their life-saving coverage?”

Never Back Down, the super PAC supporting Gov. Ron DeSantis‘s (R-FL) presidential campaign, has poached at least two people affiliated with Americans for Prosperity Action after the group endorsed former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley late last month.

Two grassroots directors in Iowa working for AFP Action, a network connected to conservative billionaire Charles Koch, defected to Never Back Down due to their disapproval of the Haley endorsement, a source familiar with the situation confirmed to the Washington Examiner. They are now working for the super PAC’s Iowa political team.

“Never Back Down is happy to welcome these newest members of our growing team, and we look forward to welcoming others who see Nikki Haley as the establishment rubber stamp she is and want to support a real conservative leader — Governor Ron DeSantis,” Noah Jennings, Never Back Down’s Iowa political director, said in a statement.

Click here to read the full story.

(Willy Sanjuan/Invision/AP)

Republican presidential candidate Chris Christie hit out against Donald Trump ahead of the fourth primary debate on Wednesday, accusing the former president of vowing to be a “dictator” if reelected.

“I think [Trump] intends on being a dictator for all the days of his presidency,” Christie told NBC News. “Trump can’t help himself. Every once in a while, he makes a big mistake: He tells the truth — doesn’t happen all the time.”

Christie’s comments come in response to Trump’s comment when he told Fox News on Tuesday that he would not be a dictator if he returns to the White House “except on Day One.”

“I love this guy,” Trump said, referring to Fox News host Sean Hannity. “He says, ‘You’re not going to be a dictator, are you?’ I said: ‘No, no, no — other than Day One.’ We’re closing the border, and we’re drilling, drilling, drilling. After that, I’m not a dictator.”

TUSCALOOSA, Alabama — President Joe Biden‘s 2024 campaign pushed back on questions Wednesday over the president’s recent comment that he may not be running for reelection if former President Donald Trump weren’t also running.

At a press conference ahead of the Republican National Committee’s fourth primary debate in Alabama, Biden’s principal deputy campaign manager Quentin Fulks and campaign surrogate Doug Jones, a former Alabama senator, brushed off the president’s Tuesday comment.

Jones told reporters Wednesday he and the campaign are “perplexed as to why that’s really a news story.”

“It’s nothing new,” Fulks agreed, adding that Biden similarly emphasized the threat Trump presented when he took him on in 2020.

Click here to read the full story.

EXCLUSIVE — The super PAC supporting Gov. Ron DeSantis‘s (R-FL) presidential campaign, Never Back Down, will highlight former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley’s stance on transgender youth policy in a new video ad hours before the fourth Republican National Committee debate in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

The 60-second video, premiering on digital platforms before the debate, features instances when Haley was asked about children dealing with gender dysphoria. “Let’s get them the help — the therapy, whatever they need so that they can feel better and not be suicidal,” she said of transgender youth in one clip.

“Nikki Haley (she/her) doesn’t fight the left’s agenda because she’s being bankrolled by woke billionaires and Wall Street Democrats,” Never Back Down said in a statement to the Washington Examiner. “As governor, she killed a bill to keep men out of girls’ bathrooms and this year she sided with Disney and opposed the law that Ron DeSantis passed to protect children from being subjected to chemical castration, anti-puberty drugs, double mastectomies, and genital mutilation surgeries. Only Ron DeSantis has a proven record of standing against the left’s transgender ideology, and winning.”

Click here to read the full story.

Evan Agostini/Evan Agostini/Invision/AP

NBC host Megyn Kelly will return as a moderator during the fourth RNC debate on Wednesday, marking the first time the host will appear on the debate stage since her high-profile clash with then-candidate Donald Trump in 2016.

Kelly made headlines roughly eight years ago after the then-Fox News host pressed Trump over his treatment of women, resulting in a tense back-and-forth between the pair that garnered national attention. The two later reunited for an interview in September 2023, during which Trump told her it was “a bad question.”

“It was a great question!” Kelly responded.

“You know it was a nasty question!” Trump shot back.

Kelly alluded to that moment ahead of Wednesday’s night debate, hinting that some candidates could receive the same treatment.

“I have a certain style with these candidates, and I think you’ll see the same style from me that you’ve always seen, which is no punches will be pulled,” she told the Wall Street Journal. “They want George Washington’s job, and they should have to earn it.”

The fourth debate on Wednesday night comes at a crucial time for the Republican presidential hopefuls as it comes less than six weeks before Iowa will hold its presidential caucuses, marking the official start of the 2024 primary cycle.

Iowa will host its caucuses on Jan. 15, marking the first event on the Republican primary calendar. The caucuses will offer a major opportunity for the Republican presidential candidates to try and chip away at front-runner Donald Trump’s support and provide voters a chance to see who is his strongest opponent.

The Iowa caucuses will set the primary calendar into high gear, with the New Hampshire primaries being held just a week later on Jan. 23. After that, a slew of states will hold their primaries and caucuses in February, including the South Carolina Democratic primary (Feb. 3), the Nevada Democratic primary (Feb. 6), the Nevada Republican caucuses (Feb. 8), the South Carolina Republican primary (Feb. 24), and the Michigan Democratic primary (Feb. 27).

As Republican presidential candidates gather at the University of Alabama for their fourth primary debate, the Democratic National Committee has launched its own countermessage attacking Republicans’ so-called extreme agenda on healthcare around.

The DNC has rolled out a billboard campaign throughout Tuscaloosa, Alabama, where the debate is being held, highlighting the different candidates’ stances on healthcare reform, particularly on Medicare and Social Security reform as well as abortion.

“Tomorrow’s debate is a reminder of the choice facing voters next November: President Biden’s plan to protect Americans’ health care and their fundamental freedoms, or the extreme MAGA agenda that would rip away health care coverage, jack up families’ health care costs, and ban abortion across the country,” DNC national press secretary Sarafina Chitika said in a statement.

“Let’s be clear: If Donald Trump and the other 2024 Republicans had their way, they’d implement an extreme, unpopular agenda to end the ACA’s protections for preexisting conditions, kick young people off their parents’ health insurance, and strip reproductive freedom away from as many women as possible,” Chitika continued.

Tonight, four Republican candidates — Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, Vivek Ramaswamy, and Chris Christie — will gather for the fourth GOP presidential debate. Here’s a weird fact. Two of those candidates, Haley and Christie, have received substantial donations from a Democratic tech billionaire named Reid Hoffman, who made the contributions in hopes of defeating former President Donald Trump in the primaries and reelecting President Joe Biden in the general election.

Hoffman co-founded LinkedIn and has been involved in several successful tech ventures. In recent months, he was in the news for bankrolling writer E. Jean Carroll’s defamation and sexual abuse lawsuit against Trump. His anti-Trump efforts go back before that. Three years ago, the liberal publication Vox reported that Hoffman had “built a big-money machine to oust Trump.”

Fast forward to 2023. In April, Hoffman gave $700,000 to the Biden Victory Fund, a super PAC supporting the president’s reelection. In January and June of this year, he gave a total of $4 million to a Never Trump group called the Republican Accountability PAC. Hoffman’s contribution was the majority of the money the PAC has received this year. The group, and another anti-Trump organization called Defending Democracy Together, are under the leadership of the Democratic activist and fundraiser Bill Kristol.

Click here to read Byron York’s full column.

Former President Donald Trump will once again be absent from the debate stage on Wednesday and is instead expected to attend a fundraiser in Hallandale Beach, Florida, to raise money for his MAGA Inc., super PAC, a source familiar confirmed to the Washington Examiner.

This is the fourth primary debate hosted by the Republican National Committee this year and the fourth debate Trump has opted not to participate in, citing his dominance in the polls over his challengers. The former president’s campaign has even gone so far as to urge the RNC to cancel its future debates.

Trump has cemented himself as the front-runner to clinch the party’s presidential nomination even as the former president faces more than 90 criminal counts across four indictments. Because of his substantial lead, Trump has repeatedly brushed off the debates as being insignificant.

Instead, the former president engaged in counterprogramming for the first three debates: sitting with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson for an interview during the first, hosting an event for autoworkers in Detroit during the second, and hosting a rally in Miami during the third.

Charles Krupa/AP

Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley has garnered momentum through the first three Republican debates and has built that into strong polling performances in New Hampshire and South Carolina.

The former South Carolina governor has begun to challenge the long-standing belief that Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) was the main alternative to former President Donald Trump in the Republican field, and she has built up several key endorsements and donors.

Another strong debate performance could move Haley ahead of DeSantis and begin to challenge the former president for the nomination, but a poor performance in Wednesday’s debate could cause her to sink weeks ahead of the first primary contests.

A Monmouth University poll found former President Donald Trump continues to rise in the polls despite the winnowing of the field.

The poll of 540 GOP and GOP-leaning voters, conducted from Nov. 30 to Dec. 4, found a majority of Republicans wants the former president to win the GOP nomination for the third time.

Trump’s support in the poll is at 58%. Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) is at 18%, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley is at 12%, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy is at 4%, and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is polling at 2%.

Most Republican voters continue to say Trump would be their party’s strongest nominee, with 54% saying he would be the strongest candidate against Biden in 2024. The percentage is up from 48% in September and 45% in July.

Trump’s 58% is up 4 percentage points from July. Desantis’s support fell from 22% in the same month. Haley has improved by 9 points since July.

“We can parse these numbers until the cows come home, but the results don’t look good for any candidate not named Trump. Certainly, there is always an outside chance of an upset in an early primary shaking things up, but most Republicans seem to anticipate an inevitable outcome,” said Patrick Murray, director of the independent Monmouth University Polling Institute.

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy have both lost ground in recent months and are struggling to garner traction going into Wednesday’s debate and the primary contests.

Christie has sunk most of his hopes in the New Hampshire primary, has given Iowa the cold shoulder, and remains in third place in the Granite State, according to the RealClearPolitics polling average. His polling outside of New Hampshire has left questions about his candidacy, with the former New Jersey governor only barely qualifying for this debate.

Ramaswamy has said his campaign will “overperform expectations” in early primary states, but since his peak in late summer, the entrepreneur has fallen in the polls for the GOP nomination.

Click here to read more.

Sen. Katie Britt (R-AL) endorsed former President Donald Trump as his GOP rivals are slated to face off in the fourth primary debate in her home state on Wednesday.

Trump now has the endorsement of the entire Alabama congressional delegation, including the backing of both senators and all six Republican House members.

“One candidate has already proven he’s more than up for the job — because he’s done the job successfully. There is one candidate I know will secure the border — because he’s done it. There is one candidate I know will achieve peace through strength — because he’s done it,” Britt wrote in an op-ed in Yellowhammer News.

“And that’s why President Donald Trump has my endorsement to be our 47th President,” she added.

In addition, the Alabama senator pointed to the Trump administration’s tax cuts and reduced regulations and said he secured the border and fought for fair trade.

“That’s why President Trump is dominating in the polls and why his insurmountable lead only continues to grow as primary dates draw closer,” she said.

Trump also secured an endorsement from Sen. John Hoeven (R-ND) on Wednesday.

J. Scott Applewhite/AP

Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) said he won’t be endorsing any candidates in the 2024 GOP primary “any time soon” during a television appearance on Wednesday.

Scott ended his candidacy for the 2024 GOP nomination about a month ago.

“I said when I withdrew from the presidential race that I would not be endorsing anytime soon,” Scott said during an appearance on CNBC‘s Squawk Box. “It certainly won’t happen this year, if I do it at all.”

As former President Donald Trump continues to lead in the polls, Scott expressed doubt that any of his former 2024 opponents could be able to catch up.

“You look at what the former president has done from the beginning of the campaign to where we are now. He has led not only double digits but sometimes 50-plus points,” he said. “So I got out of the race because I came to the conclusion that the American people, particularly Republican primary voters, are angry and they’re looking for a candidate who will be just as angry as they are.”

EXCLUSIVE — Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley‘s campaign is pushing out a new digital ad ahead of the fourth Republican National Committee debate targeting Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), specifically for his declining poll numbers and internal disputes within his campaign and super PAC.

In a two-minute clip previewed exclusively to the Washington Examiner, several pundits and anchors across various channels and networks are cut together talking about the developments with DeSantis’s super PAC Never Back Down, which has lost a number of senior staff members in the last two weeks, as well as his weakening position as the top alternative to former President Donald Trump.

Click here to read more.

The fourth Republican debate, happening Wednesday in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, will see upstart cable news network NewsNation be the leading broadcast partner for the first time.

NewsNation will be airing the debate in its entirety live from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. on cable. To find what channel NewsNation is on your cable provider, check the channel guide or visit NewsNation’s website to find the channel number.

The network will be airing special coverage leading into and after the debate.

Click here to read more.

At the last presidential debate, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley criticized Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), labeling him as “liberal on the environment” for his stance against fracking in Everglades National Park. The fourth debate, hosted in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, presents an opportunity for candidates to assert that environmental stewardship is, in fact, an inherently conservative value.

On Wednesday night, the four qualifying candidates will address myriad issues, with the economy and inflation understandably at the forefront of voters’ minds. Recent polling, however, indicates that environmental protection is gaining ground in voters’ priorities. A survey by the Economist and YouGov revealed that climate change is the third most important issue among all voters, trailing only inflation and healthcare.

Click here to read more.

(AP Photo)

Republican presidential candidates have another shot before the Iowa caucuses to convince GOP voters they are best suited for the nomination during Wednesday’s fourth primary debate in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

For Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) and former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, the top two candidates behind former President Donald Trump, the chance to face off in front of a national stage could spark fireworks.

Click here to read more.