Haley, Trump vie for GOP delegates as Biden goes for sweeping Democratic wins

The polling location at the California Museum in Sacramento will feature not just VIP drop-ins from Gov. Gavin Newsom and the mayor, Darrell Steinberg, but the election inspector of this location, Eben Burgoon, is a cartoonist. He has done election day-themed drawings that are posted throughout the polling location. The cartoon atop the ballot box reads, “Slide your ballot into blue box … like a pizza into the loving warm oven of Democracy.”

Burgoon tells me that voting should be fun.

You’ll hear a lot today about open and closed contests, either primaries or caucuses. What exactly does that mean?

• Open: Voters may choose which primary to vote in regardless of their registration (in many cases, these states also don’t ask voters to register by party). Among the Republican contests today, Alabama, Arkansas, Minnesota, Texas, Virginia and Vermont are holding open primaries.
•  Partially open: These contests are typically restricted to members of the party, as well as unaffiliated voters. In some cases, voters are considered to be registered with a party if they cast their ballots in that primary, at least for the rest of the election cycle. The Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, North Carolina and Tennessee** primaries are partially open. (We’ll get back to Tennessee.)
• Closed: Voters must be registered with a party to vote in its primary or caucus. The contests in Alaska, California, Oklahoma and Utah fall into this category on the GOP side.

What’s the deal with Tennessee? Well, the state doesn’t register voters by party, so technically people can vote in either primary. But a state law enacted last year requires polling places to inform voters that it’s illegal to vote in a primary without being a “bona fide member” of that party, which has caused confusion and spurred litigation. 

During an interview with Dallas radio station K104’s “DeDe in the Morning” that aired today, Biden highlighted the initiatives his administration has taken to help Black communities.

He spotlighted, for example, the administration’s providing more than $7 billion in funding for historically Black colleges and universities, as well as debt relief for college students.

Biden also mentioned that he nominated the first Black woman to serve on the Supreme Court, Ketanji Brown Jackson.

“There’s so much at stake, democracy, freedom, economic opportunity,” Biden said. “Think about the alternative, folks. If we lose this election, you’re going to be back with Donald Trump.”

Speaking briefly about Trump, Biden added, “The way he talks about, the way he acted, the way he dealt with the African American community I think has been shameful.” Biden didn’t refer to a specific action by the former president as the focus of his criticism.

The U.S. has seen no threat to the elections this morning, a senior official at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said.

“We do not have any specific or credible threats to today’s election operations,” the official, who requested to not be named, said in a press call.

“We continue to provide around-the-clock support to election infrastructure partners across the country, and we stand ready to assist with any security related issues that may arise,” she said.

The official did note that the agency was aware of the ongoing outage at Meta, but said there was no indication that was the result of malicious cyber activity.

SALT LAKE CITY, Utah — Speaking to NBC News, Davis Green, a 35-year-old financial analyst based in Salt Lake City who plans to vote for Trump in the 2024 election, said he believes the 2020 election results were legitimate, but Biden can’t legitimately win in November.

People “are fed up with being gaslighted” on the economy, global politics, the war in Ukraine and the southern border during the Biden administration, he said.

As an example, Davis cited the bipartisan border bill that Senate Republicans killed hours after its text was released last month, which included foreign aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan.

“I think the vast majority that you’ve looked at in the details of it, a lot of it was the money was going to other places, not the border itself. So it’s like 60% of the money allocated was going towards other countries, Ukraine and Israel, I think was the two of them that I can think of, and it wasn’t really solving the problem,” he said. “And Biden has this quote where he says, ‘if it’s not passed, it’s because Republicans fault,’ and I think that’s really disingenuous, and I think most people who would look at that bill, honestly would see that we’re being gaslit.”

David added that he thinks “it’s suicidal not trying to fix the border” during an election year and that Biden’s “mental acuity” is a “serious question.”

Steve Kornacki joined “Morning Joe” to discuss Super Tuesday, which shows Trump with a big delegate lead over Haley in the GOP presidential race.

Today is the most consequential day in the race for both parties’ presidential nominations — a day political junkies have come to call “Super Tuesday.”

Sixteen states and one U.S. territory are holding presidential nominating contests today in some form. For both Republicans and Democrats, they will award more than one-third of the total delegates available throughout the entire nominating contest, all on one day.

Here’s a guide to what to expect as voters cast their ballots across the country.

Meta is experiencing a significant disruption this morning.

Experts at two organizations that monitor internet traffic, Kentik and NetBlocks, confirmed that Meta’s various companies — Facebook, Instagram, Threads and Messenger — are experiencing a major drop in traffic.

The outages are related to how users log in and spans multiple countries, NetBlocks said.

Some of those services, especially Facebook, are major political campaign tools.

Intermittent disruptions of even major websites are often a configuration issue and usually are quickly solved. It wasn’t immediately clear what Meta’s issue was or the timetable for it to be fixed.

Meta spokesperson Andy Stone wrote on X, “We’re aware people are having trouble accessing our services. We are working on this now.”

Trump was asked in an interview on Fox News this morning about his plan for lowering inflation, including grocery and gas prices, in his first 100 days in a new term.

The former president provided little in the way of a substantive policy answer, mentioning drilling for oil and gas as a way to reduce prices across the country.

“We’re going to drill baby drill and we’re going to get prices down. Energy is going to bring it all down,” Trump said.

Trump previously has floated the idea of a 10% tariff on imports, which economists have warned could disrupt and discourage economic activity globally.

Trump dodged on whether there was an amicable pathway forward for Haley following the primary, saying his attention is solely on the general election, speaking this morning during an interview on Fox News.

“Well, my focus is really at this point, it’s on Biden. We should win almost every state today, I think every state,” Trump said.

When asked about Haley’s frequent claim that she beats Biden by wider margins in hypothetical general election polls, Trump said it is false.

 “She knows it’s a lie. Look, I have beaten Biden in every poll taken for the last three months. She loses to Biden in the polls,” Trump said.

Haley did beat Biden by a wider margin in a Wall Street Journal poll in December and a recent Marquette poll, two that she frequently cites on the campaign trail.

After a somewhat meandering answer, Trump ultimately said he wants the Republican Party to unify and wishes the best for Haley “even though there is no path forward for her.”