Good morning. Have you ever eaten a cookie and thought “Wow, this feels too healthy”? Great news! Starting today, Subway will sell foot-long chocolate chip cookies, Cinnabon churros, and Auntie Anne’s pretzels.

 2024 

🥇 The first primary arrives — without Ron DeSantis

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Iowa voted last week. But that was a caucus. New Hampshire’s storied “First in the Nation” presidential primary goes down tomorrow. But the first votes will be cast tonight.

The itty bitty town of Dixville Notch will continue its tradition of midnight voting. For decades, Dixville Notch's winners went on to win the nominations of both parties. The press loved it. Back then, it was a real contest with 20-30 voters. This year? Dixville's down to six.

Republicans

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis dropped out yesterday afternoon, saying he had “no clear path” to victory. The man who once led New Hampshire polling fell to 6% before calling it quits. He endorsed Trump and called Nikki Haley’s policies “warmed-over corporatism.” Not coincidentally, a Haley presidency would end DeSantis’s shot at the White House. But if Trump wins the nomination — whether he wins the presidency or not — DeSantis can run again in 2028.

With a big Iowa victory, former President Donald Trump is in the driver’s seat in New Hampshire. But former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley is still in the game. With DeSantis out, she has what every Trump opponent since 2016 has wanted: a two-way race.

• Former presidential candidate Sen. Tim Scott endorsed Donald Trump in New Hampshire. The state’s governor, Chris Sununu (a Haley supporter), threw some shade at Scott, saying “If anyone cared about Tim Scott, he'd still be running for president.” Ouch.

• Nikki Haley criticized Trump’s age (he’s 77) and mental fitness after he confused her with former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi multiple times Friday. She also nabbed the once-coveted endorsement of the New Hampshire Union Leader (the state’s largest newspaper).

A poll from Suffolk University puts Trump at 50% to Haley’s 34%. A shock poll from American Research Group puts them tied at 40% each. But all polls weren’t created equal. Thankfully, the data nerds at FiveThirtyEight give pollsters grades. Suffolk gets an A-. ARG gets a C+. When you average the results of every major poll, Trump wins by 15%. We’ll find out who’s right tomorrow.

Something that could help push Haley over the finish line tomorrow: independents can vote in New Hampshire’s Republican primary. And they like Nikki Haley.

Democrats

Due to a fight over the date, President Biden won’t be on New Hampshire’s primary ballot. But Rep. Dean Phillips and author Marianne Williamson (Oprah’s spiritual advisor) will be. And New Hampshire is their best shot at an upset primary victory (it’s always nice when your opponent isn’t on the ballot).

But some states let voters literally write down a name instead of picking off the list of candidates. So Team Biden is running a write-in campaign. Which means the president might still win the New Hampshire primary without even appearing on the ballot. In fact, polls show he’s strongly favored to do so.

 DIPLOMACY 

🏝️ Biden sends delegation to the Marshall Islands

President Biden sent a delegation to the Marshall Islands for the inauguration of President Hilda Heine. The Marshall Islands has a very strange relationship with the United States.

It's a completely independent, sovereign country in the Pacific. But the Marshall Islands and two other nearby countries — Micronesia and Palau — have an agreement with the U.S. called the Compact of Free Association.

• Their citizens have the right to live and work in the U.S.

• They use the U.S. Postal Service, Medicaid, and some other federal services

• They all use the U.S. dollar as their official currencies

• They don't have militaries, so their people serve in the U.S. military (in large numbers, too)

This costs the U.S. billions. In exchange, we get commercial and military access to a huge, strategically important chunk of the Pacific. The whole thing is a remnant of WW2 — the U.S. controlled these islands for a time and conducted quite a bit of unfortunate nuclear testing there.

 POLITICS 

⚪ Pending approval of the state House, voters in Kentucky will decide this fall whether they want to start electing their governors in presidential election years like normal people. They currently do it (plus other statewide offices) in odd years. The current gov was elected in Nov. 2023. Despite Kentucky being a super Republican state, Gov. Beshear is a Democrat. The change is thought to benefit Republicans (they’re the ones pushing it).

🔵 The college football/politics crossover event of the year looks like it’s not happening, after all. West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin (D) says his longtime friend, recently-retired Alabama coach Nick Saban (D?), is not running for U.S. Senate against former (arch-rival) Auburn coach and incumbent Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R).

⚪ New Jersey’s Senate race is getting weirder. First, the current guy was charged with acting as a foreign agent (and taking literal gold bars as payment). Then the governor’s wife — Tammy Murphy — launched a campaign for the Democratic nomination. Now the wife of the guy Murphy’s husband beat in the last election — Melinda Ciattarelli — is running on the Republican side.

🔵 Future Forward, a pro-Biden outside group, raised $208 million last year to support the president's reelection. The official Biden/Harris campaign (that’s subject to tight donation limits) raised $235 million. In the 2020 cycle, Biden raised north of $1 billion.

 TRIVIA 

New Hampshire isn’t a big state. But it isn’t the smallest, either. It ranks #41 in population. Which means nine states have fewer people than New Hampshire.

How many of the nine least populous states can you name?

 BRIEFS 

• RIP TurboTax — this year, the IRS is releasing its own free tax filing app, called Direct File, in twelve states as a pilot program

• New Mexico prosecutors charged Alec Baldwin with involuntary manslaughter (again) for his role in the 2021 on-set shooting death of a cinematographer

• Sports Illustrated is laying off (possibly all) staff after the brand’s owners pulled publishing rights from the current publisher

• The FAA is (yet again) investigating Boeing after a 747’s engine caught fire after takeoff in Miami

• The DOJ and FTC are looking into possible anti-competitive behavior in the Microsoft / OpenAI partnership

• A “Pokémon with guns” game called “Palworld” just sold over 1 million copies in the eight hours after release

• The dumpster fire Michigan Republican Party ousted its elected chairwoman, but she’s not going down quietly and refuses to recognize the coup as legitimate

 WORLD 

🇩🇪 Germany: Some German leaders are debating banning a certain political party that holds some hardcore immigration views that include throwing some people out of the country. This is a touchy subject in Germany (for obvious reasons). And the party is polling at #2 in this year's elections (they're currently #5 in the national legislature). But Germany doesn't mess around with banning anything even sort of maybe kinda loosely reminiscent of Nazism.

🇮🇱 Israel: Iran wants revenge after Israel killed at least five Iranians in Damascus, Syria (just northeast of Israel). Israeli forces bombed a building used by Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard (sick name). This is one of several similar Israeli attacks on Iran since the war began in October.

🇺🇦 Ukraine: A Ukrainian attack on the Russian-controlled city of Donetsk killed at least 27 people. This is part of the big chunk of eastern Ukraine that Russia claims to have annexed in 2022. Ukraine also (allegedly) used drones to blow up a chemical transport terminal near St. Petersburg, Russia.

 GLOSSARY 

sacrificial lamb — noun

Parties don’t like having uncontested races on the ballot. It’s bad for morale and can hurt their chances in other, more winnable races. A sacrificial lamb is someone who takes one for the team and runs a race they know they’re going to lose by an embarrassing margin (think: Republicans in Hawaii or Democrats in South Dakota).

Example: Wheeling, WV mayor Glenn Elliott just signed up to serve as the Democrats’ sacrificial lamb for U.S. Senate...in a state Donald Trump won by 40 points last time around. Good luck with that, Glenn.

 ANSWER 

42. Maine (1.4 million)

43. Montana (1.1 million)

44. Rhode Island (1.1 million)

45. Delaware (1 million)

46. South Dakota (900,000)

47. North Dakota (780,000)

48. Alaska (730,000)

49. Vermont (650,000)

50. Wyoming (580,000)