It’s Thursday, welcome to the best time of the campaign cycle. I traveled to my home state of New Hampshire last night, and I’ll be bringing you on the campaign trail with me! Expect lots of inside tidbits, polling and what I’m hearing ahead of the primary. I don’t do well in the cold (despite being from here), so this may be very entertaining for you. 😬 Anyway, here’s what’s happening today:

• GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley is holding a few events today — and is participating in a CNN town hall tonight — but it’s a surprisingly quiet day on the campaign trail. That’s pretty unusual for five days before the primary.
• Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) is spending this weekend in South Carolina, not New Hampshire. That makes sense given his polling, but it also shows how he’s shifting his resources.
• Green Day and Jimmy Fallon wore disguises and performed a surprise show in a New York City subway station(!) The videos are AWESOME.

I’m Cate Martel with a quick recap of the morning and what’s coming up. Send tips, commentary, feedback and cookie recipes to cmartel@digital-stage.thehill.com. Did someone forward this newsletter to you? Sign up here.  

©  The Hill, Cate Martel

The New Hampshire presidential primary is just five days away. I’ve covered every primary since 2008, and this time feels a little different. The GOP field has already been whittled down to three candidates — and winning the nomination is already a longshot for two of those three. The incumbent Democrat, President Biden, isn’t even competing in the state after national Democrats tried removing New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation status. 

The two scheduled Republican primary debates this week have been canceled after former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley pulled out because former President Trump wouldn’t participate. Instead of tonight’s axed ABC News-WMUR debate, Haley is participating in a CNN town hall.

What’s happening today?: Haley is holding a handful of meet-and-greet events hovering around the southern epicenter of the state.

NBC News reports that New Hampshire Republicans are “disappointed” that Haley isn’t “fighting harder” in the state. State Republicans are questioning her relatively light campaign schedule at a time when candidates generally blitz the Granite State — and are disappointed about her decision not to debate.

To be fair: Haley’s campaign disputes that her schedule is light. “She landed at 4 a.m. the morning after Iowa and had a full day of local press, retail stops, meetings with voters, and a rally in the North Country,” Haley campaign spokesperson Olivia Perez-Cubas said, adding that she briefly stopped in South Carolina to see her family.

What about Ron DeSantis?: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) isn’t even in New Hampshire today. He left Wednesday evening and is returning Friday for a few events. CBS News reports that DeSantis will then spend Saturday and Sunday in South Carolina. DeSantis isn’t making a big play in New Hampshire considering he is running a much more conservative campaign than New Hampshire’s moderate libertarian leanings and is polling at just 5.7 percent in the state. DeSantis has pushed back on the idea that he’s skipping the Granite State.

And Trump has never blitzed the Granite State: Since Trump’s first presidential campaign in 2015, he has written his own playbook for campaigning. Instead of participating in New Hampshire’s traditional, retail-style politics — diner stops, library visits, intimate town halls — he is opting for a limited number of large rallies and speeches. He has no public events scheduled today, according to NECN’s candidate tracker, but will be holding a handful of events starting Friday, including one prime-time speech or rally a day until Tuesday.

And while he may not be holding as many campaign events, Trump has remained in center-focus in the GOP field this week. He appeared in court Wednesday as part of his ongoing legal battles and has been airing attack ads against Haley in New Hampshire. 

New Hampshire Democrats are ‘pissed’ at Biden: Biden backed a plan to remove New Hampshire’s century-old, first-in-the-nation primary tradition and hand it to South Carolina. That plan didn’t work, but Biden didn’t even put his name on the ballot. NBC News reports that state Democrats are “still pissed” but are trying to get supporters to write in Biden’s name on Election Day.

Meanwhile — candidates that *are* blitzing the campaign trail: Long-shot Democratic presidential candidates Marianne Williamson and Rep. Dean Phillips (Minn.).

More coverage:

• ‘Inside the “weird” write-in campaign needed to help Biden win New Hampshire’
• WMUR explainer on how the write-in votes will be counted

Former President Trump has a 9.7 percentage point lead in New Hampshire, according to The Hill/Decision Desk HQ’s polling average.

The numbers: Trump has 44.6 percent support, Haley has 34.9 percent and DeSantis has roughly 5.7 percent. The polls that calculated this average

Haley hangs around at her events long after they end: The Washington Post’s Dylan Wells pointed out that “[Haley] frequently touts that she is ‘the last person to leave’ her events after ‘taking every picture’ — and tonight stayed around an hour after the [Rochester, N.H.] event ended to do so.” 📸 Haley posing for a photo

OK, he lost me here: In a campaign speech in Portsmouth, N.H., Trump compared corn to “non-liquid gold.” “We came up with a new couple of words for corn,” he said. Cue the “I really love corn” kid. 🌽 Watch the clip

What a steal: Snapchat’s Peter Hamby posted a photo of DeSantis’s book on sale for 50 percent off at Barnes & Noble. 📸 The sale bookshelf

Vivek looks like he had a fun night!: Michael Biundo, a senior adviser to Vivek Ramaswamy’s presidential campaign, posted photos of Ramaswamy at a restaurant with his New Hampshire team after dropping out of the race. 📸 Ramaswamy holding up a ‘VIVEK 2024’ license plate

If you don’t know much about Dean Phillips’s campaign: At a campaign event Wednesday, he gave a quick answer to radio host Eric Jackman on why voters should choose him over President Biden in the Democratic primary. 📹 Watch the clip

• ‘DeSantis faces a bleak path ahead as he shifts resources to South Carolina’: The Washington Post
  ‘Biden may get some help from Republicans against Trump’: The Hill
• ‘Eyeing Super Tuesday, Trump Is Eager to Dispatch Rivals Sooner Than Later’: The New York Times
• ‘Trump warns campaigns: Do not hire ex-DeSantis operative Jeff Roe’: “The admonition is another example of the former president’s penchant for punishing people perceived as disloyal.” Politico

“President Biden and congressional leaders in both parties are ramping up pressure on Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) to accept an expected deal on Ukraine funding and border security, warning national security is at risk without action by Congress,” reports The Hill’s Alexander Bolton.

What else is in the package?: “The looming package also includes funding for Israel and the Indo-Pacific region, two other hot spots where U.S. concerns are rising.”

Where the bill stands: “Senate leaders are feeling increasingly confident about finalizing a Ukraine funding and border security package in the next few days but acknowledge they don’t know whether it can pass the House. … [Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.)] told reporters he expects the national security emergency spending package, which would include border security reforms, to reach the Senate floor next week.”

Read: How this saga could play out

The Hill’s Rebecca Beitsch reports that “Republican efforts to impeach President Biden have taken center stage on the House Oversight Committee, where the partisan battles have highlighted the stark differences between the panel’s top leaders as they wage what is essentially a proxy war in the Biden-Trump rematch.”

‘Who share a name but virtually nothing else’ — lol, TRUE: “The issue has pit House Oversight Chair Jamie Comer (R-Ky.) against ranking member Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), who share a name but virtually nothing else.”

Read: Where the Biden impeachment stands

“The White House argued Thursday that the House GOP’s push to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is unconstitutional, urging lawmakers to drop it and work with President Biden on immigration reform.” (The Hill)

🦆 Celebrate: Today is National Peking Duck Day!

🎤 The coolest news of the week: Green Day and Jimmy Fallon performed a surprise show in a New York City subway station Tuesday. They started performing in disguise, wearing floppy wigs, but then pulled them off. Keep in mind that Green Day is releasing a new album Friday (!)  (Billboard)

• The wigs and full disguises: 📹 Video
• Jimmy Fallon pulled off his disguise for the reveal: 📹 Video
• It turned into a huge party: 📹 Watch Green Day perform ‘American Idiot’
• Basically, the whole crowd performed ‘Basket Case’: 📹 Video

Ⓜ️ Check those metro stats!: The Washington Metro system released its own version of Spotify Wrapped. Check your 2023 metro stats

🥶 How cold snaps are connected to climate change: Nexstar’s Katie Smith wrote a quick explainer of how winter storms are tied into climate change. The gist: Weather patterns have shifted, but there will still be cold snaps and cold weather events. (Nexstar)

The House and Senate are in. President Biden is in North Carolina, and Vice President Harris is in Washington, D.C. (all times Eastern)

• 12:15 p.m.: White House principal deputy press secretary Olivia Dalton and National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby speak with reporters aboard Air Force One. 💻 Livestream
• 2 p.m.: Harris speaks about gun violence prevention at the U.S. Conference of Mayors’ Winter Meeting in Washington, D.C. 💻 Livestream
• 2:15 p.m.: Biden delivers remarks on infrastructure and the economy at an event in Raleigh, N.C. 💻 Livestream
• 4:15 p.m.: First and last House votes. Today’s agenda
• 6:15 p.m.: Biden returns to the White House.

To leave you on a happy note, meet otters Emmett and Potomac, who live at the National Zoo. They loved the snow on Tuesday.