Nikki Haley Lost Before She Started

In today’s newsletter, home-field disadvantage, and then:
•The collapse of the Biden impeachment case
•Half of a Coen brothers movie
•Anna Holmes on an all-consuming affair

In her home state, Haley came to power as an outsider and never won over the good ol’ boys of the local Republican establishment. Now they’re supporting Trump.

In some other political reality,this Saturday’s South Carolina Republican primary would be where Nikki Haley, buoyed by her home-state appeal, would ignite her Presidential campaign against Donald Trump. Unfortunately for Haley, this current reality has her behind by more than thirty points in the polls, and with the entire political establishment of the state lined up against her.Antonia Hitchens joined Haleyas she campaigned across the state, and met the kinds of Trump-averse voters who might have sparked a challenge to the former President. “It’s all a sea of bullshit,” one man says. “Most people are still cleaving to Trump like Tiberian bats in a cave. I’d rather vote for Genghis Khan than Donald Trump. I’m a moderate person.” Such sentiments, while memorable, are nonetheless rare—and Haley’s own political history in the state left her with more enemies than friends.

SupportThe New Yorker’saward-winning journalism.Subscribe today »

For months,Republicans pursuing the impeachment of Joe Biden have pointed to a “sensational and very much unconfirmed bribery claim” made by an F.B.I. informant named Alexander Smirnov as evidence of Presidential malfeasance, Susan B. Glasser writes in her latest column. This week, that claim was revealed to be a lie, and Smirnov has been linked to Russian intelligence. Will the G.O.P. fold up its flimsy impeachment tent?Read or listen to this story »

P.S. “For those of uswho still retreat to the cinema’s womb, our most joyful agony is not to encounter movies that are foolish or horrible or broken-backed,” Anthony Lane writes, in what was hisfinal film columnbefore he moves to other beats for the magazine. “It is to imagine, eyes wide shut, all the movies that we shall never see.”