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The restraint from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue signals the White House is still hopeful that a deal could be struck.

On the Hill, negotiators spent a frantic day trying to salvage talks after it was reported on late Wednesday that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was bowing to Trumps desires to dissolve a border deal.

The following day, McConnell clarified he still supports pursuing border security linked to Ukraine funding, though he and other top Republicans werent able to entirely assuage murmurs that a deal is on its deathbed.

Late Thursday, Trump released a statement saying the nation is better off not making a deal unless its perfect, and he called the current Senate effort meaningless.

A border deal now would be another gift to the radical left Democrats. They need it politically, but dont care about our border, he said.

Democrats were quick to accuse Trump of trying to perpetuate a crisis at the border for political gain in the election. Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison earlier Thursday slammed Trump and Republicans for sabotaging efforts to address issues at the border. The Democratic Senate Campaign Committee said Senate Republicans are tanking a border deal for political reasons.

But the White House didnt join the chorus.

Privately, officials said they felt it was too early and would be imprudent to jump into the fray. They closely followed the trickle of reports about what exactly McConnell said inside the room. Still hopeful for a deal in the Senate, officials felt that any political response from them would be leveraged by Republicans to scuttle whatever possibility was left to forge an agreement.

We believe that there needs to be action on the border. That we need to come together on common sense compromise on border measures and border policy and border resources, Dalton said. And we still are hopeful that that can happen.

The monthslong border talks have been a headache for the White House. The administration has tried to find a middle ground between Republicans and Democrats, all while the border faces record pressure and cities across the country struggle to manage an influx of migrants.

The election year timing only complicates the matter, with Trump now looking like a surefire GOP nominee. And for that reason, other Democrats have not been so quiet as the former president grows more public in his desire to see a more conservative final bill or nothing at all.

This is a party that is a complete mess to the point where the party leadership is explicitly saying in ways that are designed to leak that their presumptive nominee is trying to essentially prevent the Senate and the House from solving problems so that he can have more problems to run on, said Pat Dennis, president of American Bridge 21st Century, in an interview.

While the White House so far engaged Senate Republicans on border talks, it has not been shy in attacking House GOP leadership, which has stressed its own opposition to a bipartisan deal.

Biden aides know a Senate deal is likely dead on arrival in the House, according to two people familiar with the White Houses thinking, granted anonymity to speak privately about conversations with administration officials. Not only will border legislation face opposition from the GOP caucus, but progressives have also threatened to vote against sweeping changes to asylum law.

And so, administration officials are moving to put blame for inaction on that chamber.

They have been laser focused on getting a deal through the Senate, which they believe will demonstrate Bidens ability to reach bipartisan agreement and his eagerness to address the border problem. After that, the presidents team plans to rail against House Republicans for dragging their feet.

They want to get a deal out of the Senate, one of the people said, even though they know its dead so they can pick a fight with House Republicans.

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White House stays the course on border talks despite Trump's interference - POLITICO

It was definitely not a good night for Donald Trump, Mike Madrid, a California GOP strategist and co-founder of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project, said.

By most metrics, the path to [stopping Trump] has become much clearer, Madrid said. The anti-Trump lane is discernible. Its palpable. Its big. Its something that we can work with in a real, meaningful way.

On the surface, the results from Iowa and New Hampshire look just plain bad for the anti-Trump movement. A former president facing 91 criminal charges and splitting his time between the courtroom and the campaign trail won over 50 percent of the vote in both states. In New Hampshire, where the GOP field quickly shrunk to two, independent voters, whose exit polls showed broke overwhelmingly for Haley, were trumped by Trumps GOP base.

The next two contests offer even less hope for impeding Trumps march toward the nomination. Haley is not competing for delegates in Nevada. And Trump leads her by double digits in polls of her home state of South Carolina.

Leaders of the effort to warn voters about a second Trump term say that focusing on the primary is a lost cause. They argue that Trumps nomination is inevitable and that the focus should shift now to trying to defeat him in the general election.

Its all doom and gloom in the primary, said Charlie Sykes, a conservative Wisconsin political commentator. But this has been predictable for a long time now.

Trumps detractors point to data from Iowa and New Hampshire that show some warning signs for Trump, particularly among independents and more moderate Republicans. In New Hampshire, 64 percent of undeclared voters sided with Haley, according to exit polls.

Exit polls showed four out of 10 people who cast a ballot for Nikki Haley in New Hampshire said they did so out of distaste for Donald Trump. | Jamie Kelter Davis for POLITICO

A pre-caucus NBC News/Des Moines Register/Mediacom poll of voters in Iowa found that 43 percent of Haley supporters said they would back President Joe Biden over Trump.

And in New Hampshire, 46 percent of GOP primary voters said they would be dissatisfied if Trump became the GOP nominee, and 35 percent said they would not vote for him in November.

Exit polls also showed four out of 10 people who cast a ballot for Haley in New Hampshire said they did so out of distaste for Trump. And 94 percent of Haleys voters said they would be dissatisfied if Trump won the nomination.

Fully half of Iowas Republican caucusgoers said they did not identify as part of Trumps Make America Great Again movement. Even more 63 percent said the same in New Hampshire.

That significant chunks of voters from two disparate (though still overwhelmingly white) electorates showed similar resistance to Trump is encouraging to both Sykes and Madrid.

Looking at these numbers and Trumps general approval [ratings] amongst Republicans and also election results from the last three elections, they are all pointing in a direction of getting worse for Trump not better, Madrid said.

Fergus Cullen, a Never Trump Republican and former New Hampshire Republican Party chair who voted for Haley on Tuesday, called those statistics the best result from yesterday.

Citing the 35 percent of voters who said they wouldnt vote for Trump in the general election, Cullen said, Imagine if 35 percent of GOP elected officials said the same thing. Those of us who oppose Trump may not be able to prevent his renomination, but we should be able to prevent him from winning a general.

Still, Trump has defied political gravity before, and many Trump critics after he left office once believed he was unlikely to win renomination. Cullen said Trump does have some ability to find new voters and expand the electorate.

Even though Biden and Trump have declared the general election effectively underway, Haley has not. The former South Carolina governor has vowed to continue through Super Tuesday, where her campaign argues a slate of open and semi-open primaries will give her a fighting chance.

And some Never Trumpers arent ready to look ahead to the general election yet. They want her to keep going.

Theres tons and tons of ammunition for her to make the case that [Trump] is unfit to be president, said Gordon Humphrey, a former U.S. senator from New Hampshire who left the party after Trump won the nomination in 2016 and supported Haley in Tuesdays primary.

Yet Sean Van Anglen, a New Hampshire political consultant who was an early supporter of Trump in 2016 but voted for Haley this time, is already moving on. Van Anglen, who said hed consider leaving the presidential line blank on his November ballot rather than vote for Trump or Biden, is looking to put together an effort to aid down-ballot Republicans who he believes could suffer with Trump again at the top of the ticket.

We need to let the toddler run his temper tantrum out, Van Anglen said. Then let the adults come back into the room and take back control of our party and our country.

Jessica Piper and Steve Shepard contributed to this report.

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Why Trump's critics see his New Hampshire win as a positive sign for 2024 - POLITICO - POLITICO

When David Cameron, Britains foreign secretary and onetime prime minister, visited Washington last month, he took time out to press the case for backing Ukraine with Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, the far-right Georgia Republican who stridently opposes further American military aid to the country.

Last week, Boris Johnson, another former prime minister, argued that the re-election of Donald J. Trump to the White House would not be such a bad thing, so long as Mr. Trump comes around on helping Ukraine. I simply cannot believe that Trump will ditch the Ukrainians, Mr. Johnson wrote in a Daily Mail column that read like a personal appeal to the candidate.

If the special relationship between Britain and the United States has taken on an air of special pleading in recent weeks, it is because Britain, rock solid in its support for Ukraine, now views its role as bucking up an ally for whom aid to the embattled country has become a political obstacle course.

British diplomats said Mr. Cameron and other senior officials had made it a priority to reach out to Republicans who were hostile to further aid. For reasons of history and geography, Britain recognized that support is not as instinctive for Americans as it for the British, according to a senior diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the diplomatic sensitivity of the matter.

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'No Time to Go Wobbly': Why Britain Is Lobbying U.S. Republicans on Ukraine - The New York Times

Ranking member Roger Wicker of Mississippi followed, faulting Dalton for taking months to respond to a letter from committee Republicans on the sale of border material after Biden canceled the Trump administrations wall.

I just find your performance in your previous role so unsatisfactory that I have real doubts that its going to get better in an enhanced role, Wicker said.

The rocky outing signals trouble ahead for the Biden administration and Senate Democrats as they begin to fill civilian Pentagon jobs in the new year, a process that was blocked for several months last year as Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) protested the Pentagons abortion travel policy.

Wicker argued Dalton failed to provide accurate and timely information to Congress, noting her response said a decision would be made on the leftover materials when it was already transferred to a third party for sale.

Dalton said her response was based on the best available information that we had at the time from several DOD agencies. Still, Wicker said the border fight and her role in advising Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin over the incursion of the Chinese spy balloon one year ago gives me pause on her nomination.

Dalton was first nominated for the Air Force job in September, but the White House was forced to renominate her this month when the Senate didnt act before the end of the year. She was previously confirmed by the Senate in 2022 for her current job as assistant secretary for homeland defense and hemispheric affairs.

In addition to the border crisis, Senate Republicans have accused Dalton of sidestepping their questions about the Pentagons actions on the spy balloon before it was shot down in February.

Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) pressed Dalton on whether she recommended to Austin that the spy balloon not be shot down over U.S. territory. She said senior military leaders made that recommendation. In order to avoid civilian harm, the balloon was shot down once it crossed over the ocean.

Between now and the time that a vote is held on your nomination, I think youve got some work to do to regain the confidence of a lot of the members on this committee, Rounds warned, noting their disagreements over the border and the balloon episode.

But the border crisis loomed large in the session, as it does in broader U.S. politics. Border security and immigration will likely play a large role in the upcoming election as Donald Trump and other Republicans rip Bidens handling of the border.

Senate Democrats and Republicans, meanwhile, are inching closer to an agreement that could tighten border policy and unlock a deal for more than $100 billion in aid for Ukraine, Taiwan and Israel. The House could still reject that deal, however, and is careening toward impeaching Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas over the flow of migrants across the southern border.

Some Republicans referenced the larger border issue, despite the fact that the Pentagon merely supports DHS in its role and the disposition of border barriers does not fall under Daltons portfolio.

Did you ever tell Secretary Mayorkas he was doing a crappy job? asked Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.). Dalton said she did not. She defended her job performance, noting that shes visited the border several times and that the Pentagon has authorized continued assistance to DHS, including a National Guard presence.

I provide options to the secretary of Defense on pathways that are legal, that are appropriate and do not negatively impact training and readiness, Dalton said.

I have attended many meetings internal to the department, in the interagency, focused on what is happening at the southwest border. I have routinely visited there, Dalton said. I have taken this incredibly seriously in my role. There are limits to what I can do per statute from the Department of Defense on border security.

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Republicans rap DOD nominee over border, spy balloon - POLITICO

OK, the joke's just lying there, waiting. Somebody has to pick it up.

Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce you to...The Confederacy Of Dunces.

Governor Greg Abbott is sucking around to be the Orval Faubus, Ross Barnett, and George Wallace of the 21st Century and most of the Republican governors around the country are joining in on his little Jeff Davis Memorial Project down at the southern border. So far, Kevin Stitt (Oklahoma), Jeff Landry (Louisiana), Brian Kemp (Georgia) Kristi Noem (South Dakota), Greg Gianforte (Montana), and Ron DeSantis (Florida) have joined Abbott in the Articles of Confederation Defense Fund. And now, with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's

The president should nationalize the Texas National Guard yesterday and put a stop to this before it truly gets out of hand. (Tentherism is another one of those loopy rightist ideas that modern conservatism has entertained for decades, long before the former president* turned all those existing ideas loose.) My major concern is that both the Texas Guard and the Border Patrol may be so seriously compromised by MAGA sympathizers that actual brawls may break out all along the borderline.

And I was just musing that we seem to be on the brink of an actual federal-state crack-up, and over an issue that may well damage this country's alliances with a huge chunk of North America, and over an issue that, in Washington, the issue is also threatening collaterally to kill off aid to Ukraine, so I was musing what element of this tangled and volatile situation Vladimir Putin wouldn't enjoy.

Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976. He lives near Boston and has three children.

Read more:
Republicans Are Caving to Trump's Demands to Kill a Hard-Won Border Deal - Esquire