‘Tension has been growing between the two candidates since the New Hampshire primary, in which trump won 54.3 percent of the vote. But Haley kept it to about an 11-point gap, closer than most polling predicted.

But in the speeches that followed, Haley treated the night like a victory, calling the primary “far from over,” while trump attacked his opponent by mocking her clothing, and saying she had “a very bad night.” trump has been ramping up his personal attacks on Haley, bringing back his “birdbrain” nickname from earlier in the primary and even using an incorrect version of Haley’s first name, “Nimrada.” (Her first name is Nimarata.)

In the days that followed the primary, the back-and-forth between the two has been an increasingly sharp series of barbs — with Haley building on a new strategy of going directly after a candidate she has avoided criticizing too harshly until now….’ (POLITICO)

Related: George Conway tells Nikki Haley how to beat “deteriorating” trump at his own game

‘After George Conway pointed out the obvious on MSNBC — that donald trump “is deteriorating under pressure” — he explained how Nikki Haley could beat him at his own sadistic game.

“Point out the crazy,” the never-trump Republican told host Willie Geist. 

“People like donald trump know that they are not what they pretend to be,” Conway said, after calling trump out for his pathological narcissism. “He talks about being a stable genius because he knows he is neither stable nor a genius, and he’s been doing that for years.”

Conway, one of the founding members of the Lincoln Project, then pinpointed the reasons for trump’s glaring deterioration, being “the pressure of the legal cases” and “his advanced age.”

So if Haley wants to take advantage of trump’s many fears and weaknesses, Conway suggests she continually push his frazzled buttons. “You need to needle him,” he said. “The campaign has to be as much a psychological operation against donald trump’s empty brain as it must be an attempt to persuade voters, because the two go hand in hand.”…’ (Boing Boing)

Related: ‘Not a good night for donald trump’: Why never-trumpers think he’s really losing

‘Polls and exit surveys from Iowa and New Hampshire show swaths of the Republican electorate cast ballots specifically against trump — and would refuse to vote for him in November. Independents who helped hand trump a general election loss in 2020 helped fuel record turnout in New Hampshire’s GOP primary. And trump didn’t make major strides in either state in the highly educated areas where he was weakest in 2016….’ (POLITICO)

‘A controversial Alabama execution took place on Thursday, reigniting scrutiny of the death penalty and highlighting the enduring nature of the practice despite attempts to end it.

Physicians and human rights experts have condemned the execution — which relied on an untested method known as nitrogen hypoxia — due to concerns that it would be painful and inhumane. Alabama ultimately used this method to execute a man named Kenneth Eugene Smith, after the state botched his first scheduled execution in 2022 when it couldn’t find an accessible vein for a lethal injection. Smith was sentenced to the death penalty following a capital murder conviction in 1988….’ (Vox)

‘Stray cats harm wildlife. Should we kill them?…’ (Vox)

‘The American Museum of Natural History will close two major halls exhibiting Native American objects, its leaders said on Friday, in a dramatic response to new federal regulations that require museums to obtain consent from tribes before displaying or performing research on cultural items…

The museum is closing galleries dedicated to the Eastern Woodlands and the Great Plains this weekend, and covering a number of other display cases featuring Native American cultural items as it goes through its enormous collection to make sure it is in compliance with the new federal rules, which took effect this month….’ (New York Times)