Nikki Haley loses backing of influential Koch network as she vows to stay in race to Super Tuesday: Live

House Republicans increasingly believe there is little chance of any impeachment vote resulting from the investigations into Joe Biden, according to reporting by Axios.

After a year of looking into the Biden family, little has been revealed regarding the alleged bribery and corruption of which the president, his son Hunter Biden and his brother Jim Biden have been accused.

“I don’t see it going anywhere substantive,” said one House Republican, adding that there “aren’t close to enough” GOP votes to impeach the president.

The lawmaker said there were “easily 40-50” Republicans who would likely vote against an impeachment of President Biden.

Here’s Oliver O’Connell’s report.

The official X account for the just-concluded Republican convention has responded angrily to this NBC News report declaring that fascists “mingle openly” at the event, only to be hit by a community note pointing back to NBC’s highly credible reporting on the issue.

Meanwhile, the reporter responsible, Ben Goggin, has helpfully presented his own video evidence to support his story, about which, he says, CPAC has been rather less keen to comment.

Nikki Haley’s campaign for the presidency chugs along.

The former governor of South Carolina vowed to stay in the race on Saturday evening after a defeat in her home state, addressing a pumped-up crowd of supporters in Charleston.

Pointing to her speech earlier in the week wherein she promised to keep fighting Donald Trump through Super Tuesday and beyond, Haley declared after her latest loss to Trump: “I’m a woman of my word.”

Her campaign insists that there remains a path forward, not just to provide a rhetorical alternative to Trump, but to win the contest outright.

Polls indicate otherwise, although they notably failed to register her momentum in either South Carolina or New Hampshire, the last two competitive primary states.

Both Haley and her supporters appeared to be fired up after her performance on Saturday.

While the campaign obviously failed to win, with most votes counted Haley remained near the 40 per cent mark — a clear loss, but a better performance than was predicted.

As the governor took the stage, she made two things clear: One, she’s not leaving. And secondly, she doesn’t think Trump can win a general election.

John Bowden reports from Charleston.

Republican challenger Nikki Haley has lost the support of Americans for Prosperity Action (AFP Action), the political wing of the conservative donor network led by billionaire Charles Koch, which announced it would no longer be supporting her campaign after her defeat in the South Carolina GOP primary on Saturday.

AFP Action’s senior adviser Emily Seidel reacted in a memo on Sunday: “With the South Carolina presidential primary this weekend and the Senate engagement really heating up, it’s time to take stock of where we are and – as we always do – make sure we’re optimising our resources for maximum impact towards our goals.”

Donald Trump particularly relished the news, writing on Truth Social that “Charles Koch and his group got played for suckers right from the beginning” and demoting Haley from “Birdbrain” to “Braindead”.

Before all that, Trump gave his customary headline address at to CPAC on Saturday, in which he delivered a taste of his likely attack lines against Joe Biden

Here’s Eric Garcia’s review.

Here’s John Bowden’s analysis on what Saturday’s result means for Trump’s dogged opponent, who is down but still not definitively out.

The former South Carolina governor vowed to fight on to Super Tuesday on 5 March, as she has consistently done, but things really are starting to look beyond hopeless for her now, particularly with high-profile donors beginning to desert.

You can see more from her latest concession speech below.

President Joe Biden will meet with the top four congressional leaders on Monday for talks on agreeing a spending bill to avert a looming partial government shutdown that would leave a number of government departments without funding from 1 March, including Agriculture, Energy, House and Urban Development, Transportation and Veterans Affairs.

Funding for the departments of Defence, State and Justice will expire a week later on 8 March.

Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer warned in a letter to colleagues ahead of the meeting: “We are mere days away from a partial government shutdown on 1 March. Unless Republicans get serious, the extreme Republican shutdown will endanger our economy, raise costs, lower safety, and exact untold pain on the American people.”

House speaker Mike Johnson hit back at Schumer over the weekend, accusing him of engaging in “petty politics”.

“Despite the counterproductive rhetoric in Leader Schumer’s letter, the House has worked nonstop, and is continuing to work in good faith, to reach agreement with the Senate on compromise government funding bills in advance of the deadline,” Mr Johnson said in a statement of his own.

“At a time of divided government, Senate Democrats are attempting at this late stage to spend on priorities that are farther left than what their chamber agreed upon.”

Let’s recap another big weekend in Trumpworld.

The GOP front-runner delivered a rambling victory speech after sewing up his fourth straight primary win in South Carolina on Saturday night, deliberately neglecting to even mention rival Nikku Haley as he turned his sights on Joe Biden instead.

“We’re going to be up here on 5 November, and we’re going to look at Joe Biden,” Mr Trump told his audience.

“He’s destroying our country and we’re gonna say ‘Joe, you’re fired. Get out. Get out, Joe. You’re fired.’”

Here he is, courtesy of IndyTV.

A number of prominent Democrats have begun stepping up to make the positive case for Joe Biden’s re-election in November after Donald Trump took another step towards securing the Republican presidential nomination on Saturday night when he picked up a fourth-straight primary win in South Carolina, with rival Nikki Haley unable to make an impact even on her own turf.

Speaking on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, California governor Gavin Newsom, widely tipped as a future Democratic presidential candidate himself, said of President Biden, “I revere his record… It’s because of his age that he’s been so successful,” batting aside concerns about the incumbent’s advanced years, as well as a question about his own belated candidacy.

On CNN’s State of the Union, Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer told viewers: “It’s important not to lose sight of the fact that any vote that’s not cast for Joe Biden supports a second Trump term.”

Meanwhile on MSNBC, President Biden’s former White House press secretary Jen Psaki, now a media pundit, warned that her old boss was the only person standing between the Oval Office and a candidate who “echoes Hitler and idolises Putin”.