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GRANITE TRAP — Mark it on your calendar, circle it in red, italicize, bold and underline: Jan. 23, 2024. That’s now the official date of the New Hampshire primary, which is poised to be the most important date in the GOP primary calendar.

The first-in-the-nation primary is not the first contest in the nation. That distinction belongs to Iowa, which will hold its caucuses eight days earlier. New Hampshire doesn’t boast a large share of delegates either. But delegates aren’t the point. The Granite State is critical for momentum purposes. It has a better history of picking winners than Iowa — Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum and Ted Cruz were all recent Iowa winners — and will go a long way toward determining who — and if — a viable alternative to Trump emerges.

The polls suggest no one is close to catching Trump in the early primary states — he’s got wide, double-digit leads in every reputable poll available. But in the race to become the Trump alternative, New Hampshire looms large.

If there’s an early state where he might be bloodied, New Hampshire’s the one. Unlike Iowa, Trump has lost the state twice in the general election. It doesn’t have a large base of evangelical voters. A full 37 percent of GOP primary voters there said that they would be dissatisfied or upset if Trump became the nominee, according to a Washington Post-Monmouth University poll released today. Another poll released today, from the University of New Hampshire/CNN, has the tightest margin of any early state poll in months, though second-place finisher Nikki Haley still trails Trump by 22 points.

Just as important, New Hampshire is an open primary state, meaning it allows independents to vote in the GOP primary. That will inevitably lead to a much higher number of anti-Donald Trump voters than in other early states.

Right now, Haley is winning the battle for number two.

Ron DeSantis, who was mostly polling in second place in New Hampshire through the summer, has dropped to fourth or fifth, depending on the poll. As he throws his chips to the center on Iowa — the Florida governor has already visited nearly every one of the state’s 99 counties and has a new $2 million ad buy featuring his endorsement from Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds — his slipping support in New Hampshire is becoming an increasing problem.

Haley, meanwhile, has done more than 60 events across New Hampshire as she continues to court moderate Gov. Chris Sununu’s support (who also has not ruled out endorsing DeSantis, though he’s been critical of the Florida governor by name in the past). At the beginning of the summer, Haley’s public numbers were in the toilet — she wasn’t breaking five percent in New Hampshire, while DeSantis was regularly polling in the high teens or 20s in the state. But now, if she can supercharge her steady climb in the last two months before the primary, she could throw a spanner into a race that currently looks like a done deal. If it happens, it’ll happen in New Hampshire.

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— Altman ousted from OpenAI: Sam Altman, often considered the face of the new wave of artificial intelligence — and an influential figure in the national AI policy debate — was removed from his role as CEO of OpenAI today. Altman’s departure comes after OpenAI’s board lost confidence in him, according to a blog post from the company. “Mr. Altman’s departure follows a deliberative review process by the board, which concluded that he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities,” according to the post. “The board no longer has confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI.”

— House GOP launches FDIC investigation: House Republicans today said they were beginning an investigation into FDIC Chair Martin Gruenberg and allegations of workplace misconduct at the agency, ramping up political pressure on the top bank regulator. GOP lawmakers led by House Financial Services Chair Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) told Gruenberg in a letter they will use the panel’s “full arsenal” of oversight and investigative tools, including compulsory measures, “to ensure that our banking system remains safe and sound.” The announcement followed Wall Street Journal reports that described a long-running toxic work environment at the FDIC and said Gruenberg and other agency leaders did little to address the behavior.

— Ford UAW members on track to ratify contract, joining GM and Stellantis: United Auto Workers members at Ford had enough votes to ratify their contract today, the third and final automaker to join the fold — effectively ending a strike that drew wide political attention and solidified President Joe Biden’s alignment with organized labor. Union members at General Motors and Stellantis hit the same milestones Thursday and earlier today, respectively, according to vote trackers from the UAW.

— White House slams Elon Musk for supporting antisemitic post: The White House condemned Elon Musk today for endorsing an antisemitic post on social media. Musk, a self-proclaimed free speech advocate, on Wednesday wrote that an X post “said the actual truth,” replying to a user who posted an antisemitic claim that Jewish communities have been “pushing the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them.” White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said in a statement posted to X, formerly known as Twitter, that the White House condemns “this abhorrent promotion of Antisemitic and racist hate in the strongest terms.”

VIDEO POLITICS — Look at economic data, and you’d think that young voters would be riding high right now, writes the New York Times. Unemployment remains low. Job opportunities are plentiful. Inequality is down, wage growth is finally beating inflation, and the economy has expanded rapidly this year.

Look at TikTok, and you get a very different impression — one that seems more in line with both consumer confidence data and President Biden’s performance in political polls.

Several of the economy-related trends getting traction on TikTok are downright dire. The term “Silent Depression” recently spawned a spate of viral videos. Clips critical of capitalism are common. On Instagram, jokes about poor housing affordability are a genre unto themselves. Social media reflects — and is potentially fueling — a deep-seated angst about the economy that is showing up in surveys of younger consumers and political polls alike. It suggests that even as the job market booms, people are focusing on long-running issues like housing affordability as they assess the economy.

I’M NOT LEAVING — Chris Christie’s presidential campaign sent a lengthy memo to donors today, arguing that he has a path to the GOP nomination and signaling Christie will stay in the race through the Jan. 23 primary in New Hampshire — and potentially well afterward, reports Axios.

Despite pressure from some GOP leaders for lower-polling candidates like Christie to drop out, narrow the field and boost the chances of someone overtaking frontrunner Donald Trump, Christie argues that he’s the most electable Republican in a one-on-one match-up with Trump.

CLOSING LOOPHOLES — Bulgaria will scrap its exemption to EU sanctions against Russia six months earlier than planned — just days after POLITICO revealed the loophole had allowed the Kremlin to rake in an extra €1 billion for its war effort in Ukraine.

Parties supporting the government’s ruling coalition announced the move today, following a fierce debate sparked by a POLITICO report that found Bulgaria was letting millions of barrels of Moscow’s oil reach a Russian-owned refinery on its territory, which then exported various refined fuels abroad including to EU countries.

The refinery was able to move the Russian oil because Bulgaria had received an exclusive opt-out from the EU’s ban on Russian seaborne crude oil imports — a step ostensibly meant to protect the country from energy shortages. The government said it will now end that exemption on March 1 instead of a previous, self-imposed October 31 deadline.

Aside from the estimated €983 million the loophole raised for Russia via production and export levies, it also generated almost €500 million in profits since February for refinery owner Lukoil, Russia’s largest private oil firm, according to a classified analysis prepared for Bulgaria’s parliament.

SUSPECT CIRCUMSTANCES — Joël Guerriau, a French senator with the centrist Horizons party, has been detained by police in Paris on suspicion that he drugged a female lawmaker in order to assault her, the public prosecutor’s office said today.

Answering a written question from POLITICO, the Paris public prosecutor’s office confirmed that Guerriau had been arrested on Wednesday evening, after an unnamed person filed a complaint against him for “administering to a person, without their knowledge, a substance which may alter their judgment or control over their actions in order to commit rape or sexual assault.”

The French senator is suspected of “administering ecstasy to a [female] guest, without her knowledge,” and ecstasy was found at his residence in a police raid, the prosecutor’s office said.

UNDER THE SEA — Under the ocean are some of the Earth’s largest mountain ranges and waterfalls, so why are there few maps of the Earth’s ocean floor terrain? Little knowledge of the undersea terrain has left a gap in mapping a large portion of the Earth’s surface. This little exploration has led to humans knowing more about the moon’s surface than the bottom of the ocean — a phrase hated by scientists for its unfair comparison. In this article for Nautilus, Laura Tretheway explores why we know so little about the map of Earth’s ocean floor — and why maybe we should.