Washington:

Indian American Republican leader Nikki Haley on Tuesday released the several dozen delegates she had won during the party’s presidential primaries early this year for the presumptive nominee, Donald Trump.

The move by Haley comes ahead of the Republican National Convention (RNC) in Milwaukee, Wisconsin wherein Trump would formally be nominated as the party’s presidential candidate for the November 5 general election.

“The nominating convention is a time for Republican unity. Joe Biden is not competent to serve a second term and Kamala Harris would be a disaster for America. We need a president who will hold our enemies to account, secure our border, cut our debt and get our economy back on track. I encourage my delegates to support Donald Trump next week in Milwaukee,” Haley said in a statement.

The nominating convention is a time for Republican unity. Joe Biden is not competent to serve a second term and Kamala Harris would be a disaster for America. We need a president who will hold our enemies to account, secure our border, cut our debt, and get our economy back on…

— Nikki Haley (@NikkiHaley) July 9, 2024

Haley had won 97 delegates, as against Biden’s 2,265. A candidate needs 1,215 delegates to win the GOP’s presidential nomination. She had suspended her campaign in March.

The former US ambassador to the United Nations and South Carolina governor is not attending the RNC.

“She was not invited and she is fine with that. Trump deserves the convention he wants. She has made it clear she is voting for him and wishes him the best,” Haley’s spokesperson Chaney Denton said. 

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Hollywood star Chris Evans, better known as Captain America, has finally broken his silence on the controversy surrounding an old picture of him signing what initially appeared to be an Israeli bomb. 

The picture in question features the actor and a US Air Force officer. Mr Evans is seen signing an object. Now, the actor has called it “misinformation”. 

In a now-disappeared Instagram Stories, Mr Evans revealed that the photo was clicked eight years ago during a USO tour.

Chris Evans wrote, “There’s a lot of misinformation surrounding this picture. Some clarification: This image was taken during a USO tour in 2016. I went with a group of actors, athletes and musicians to show our appreciation for our service members. The object I was asked to sign was not a bomb, or a missile, or a weapon of any kind. It’s an inert object used for training or display purposes only. You can read the quote from the Air Force in the next story.”

In the next slide, the actor added a screenshot of a report by the news agency AFP. Mr Evan has highlighted the quote by an Air Force spokesperson. It read, “The object Chris Evans is signing in the USO tour photo from 2016 is an explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) inert training aid. The object is meant to model an artillery shell and is for display and training purposes only.”

Mr Evan’s Instagram Stories were later shared by a user on Reddit. 

Posts from the fauxmoi
community on Reddit

This comes days after a picture of former US presidential hopeful Nikki Haley writing “Finish Them” on an Israeli shell surfaced online.

The pic was shared by former UN Ambassador Danny Danon, who was accompanying Ms Haley on her visit, on X (formerly Twitter) on May 28.

In his post, Mr Danny said, “‘Finish Them’. This is what my friend the former ambassador Nikki Haley wrote.”

Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley. File
| Photo Credit: AP

Nikki Haley said on May 22 that she would vote for Donald Trump in the general election, encouraging the presumptive GOP nominee to work hard to win support from those who backed her in the primary.

“I will be voting for Trump,” Ms. Haley, Trump’s former U.N. ambassador, said during an event at the Hudson Institute in Washington.

But she also made it clear that she feels Mr. Trump has to work to win over voters who supported her during her primary campaign and continue to cast votes for her in ongoing primary contests.

“Having said that, I stand by what I said in my suspension speech,” Ms. Haley added. “Trump would be smart to reach out to the millions of people who voted for me and continue to support me and not assume that they’re just going to be with him. And I genuinely hope he does that.”

Haley shuttered her bid for the GOP nomination two months ago but did not immediately endorse Mr. Trump. Both candidates were sharply critical of each other during the primary.

Washington:

Former presidential hopeful Nikki Haley said Wednesday she will vote for Donald Trump in November’s US election, ending months of silence after quitting the contest to choose a Republican to face Joe Biden.

The former South Carolina governor, 52, abandoned her White House ambitions in March but had not previously indicated whether she would support the man who referred to her repeatedly as “birdbrain.”

Yet she continued to scoop a significant chunk of votes in presidential primary contests — underlining a persistent refusal among a sizable bloc of Republicans to get behind Trump.

“I put my priorities on a president who’s going to have the backs of our allies and hold our enemies to account, who would secure the border — no more excuses — a president who would support capitalism and freedom, a president who understands we need less debt not more debt,” she said.

“Trump hasn’t been perfect on these policies. I’ve made that clear, many, many times. But Biden has been a catastrophe. So I will be voting for Trump.”

– ‘Zombie campaign’ –

The tenacity of the Haley vote had prompted US media to refer to her ongoing presence on the primary stage, long after the curtain came down, as a “zombie campaign.”

Trump, 77, has failed to make inroads with Haley’s moderate support, and will see her public show of support as a huge boon ahead of the Republican nominating convention in July.

The primaries laid bare Trump’s key shortcoming — his lack of appeal among the moderates, independents and voters with college degrees he will need to prevail against Biden.

Haley said, speaking Wednesday at an event for the Washington-based Hudson Institute conservative think tank, added that she was standing by her remarks urging Trump to make nice with her support base.

“Trump would be smart to reach out to the millions of people who voted for me and continue to support me and not assume that they’re just going to be with him. And I genuinely hope he does that,” she said.

The Biden campaign had been reaching across the aisle, hoping to attract Haley voters.

It released a TV spot in April targeting the suburban battlegrounds with the message: “If you voted for Nikki Haley, Donald Trump doesn’t want your vote.”

Trump — who is considering several Republicans to be his running mate in November — indicated earlier in May that he is not considering Haley for vice president.

The 77-year-old real estate tycoon has everyone guessing about whom he will pick as his running mate in the November vote.

“Nikki Haley is not under consideration for the V.P. slot, but I wish her well!” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Nikki Haley was South Carolina’s governor from 2011 to 2017 and served under the Trump administration as the country’s ambassador. File
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Former Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley is under active consideration by Donald Trump’s campaign to be his running mate, news site Axios reported on May 11, citing unidentified people familiar with the situation.

Mr. Trump could pick Ms. Haley if he were convinced she could help him win the presidency, avoid a potential prison sentence and cover tens of millions in legal bills if he loses, the report said.

Ms. Haley ended her log-shot challenge to Republican presidential frontrunner Mr. Trump in March. She said it was likely Mr. Trump — who repeatedly belittled her candidacy — would be the Republican nominee but did not endorse him.

Ms. Haley was South Carolina’s governor from 2011 to 2017 and served under the Trump administration as the country’s ambassador to the United Nations from January 2017 to December 2018.

Now that Nikki Haley has ended her U.S. presidential campaign, one person who voted for her refuses to back former President Donald Trump and plans to reluctantly vote for President Joe Biden. Another Haley primary supporter acknowledges that he was probably always a “closet Trump fan” and will vote for the former president again in November.

The former U.N. ambassador’s base was never big enough to seriously challenge Mr. Trump before he clinched a third straight Republican nomination. But in what’s shaping up to be a tight rematch between Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden, the apparent splintering of Ms. Haley’s voters and donors could hurt Mr. Trump’s general election chances, particularly in battleground states full of suburban voters who remain dubious of a Mr. Trump return to the White House.

ALSO READ | Donald Trump’s $454 million civil fraud judgment fine slashed to $175M by New York appeals court

For now, interviews with Ms. Haley’s supporters suggest they could go in a variety of directions — some backing Mr. Trump, some going to Mr. Biden and others seeking third-party options or avoiding making a decision about the presidential race yet.

Ms. Haley has not spoken publicly since leaving the race and urging Mr. Trump to reach out to all Republicans. She has not endorsed Mr. Trump and suggested she may not at all.

“She said it’s up to him to earn the support of those who supported her, and he’s got to earn it,” said Eric Tanenblatt, a longtime GOP donor who was Ms. Haley’s Georgia campaign’s co-chairman. “Right now, I’m definitely not there. It tells me there are things that are still up in the air among other key Haley donors waiting for a sign.”

The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

Glenn Swanson caucused for Mr. Haley after seeing her campaign in his hometown of Cedar Falls, Iowa. At the time, the retired architect said he was open to a Trump alternative. Now, he’s coming back to the candidate he supported in both 2016 and 2020, despite his concerns about the four felony indictments and other civil cases facing Mr. Trump.

“For sure I’m going to vote for Mr. Trump,” Mr. Swanson said in an interview. “In a sense I was kind of a closet Mr. Trump fan all along, but I really wanted to see if somebody else would emerge to get away from some of the drama.”

John Wynstra, a database administrator who attended that same event, had been deciding between Mr. Haley and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis before choosing to caucus for her. Mr. Wynstra said he’s strategically supporting Mr. Trump and the party’s platform — as a stance primarily against Biden — although he seemingly left the door open to possibly supporting a third-party candidate like Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

“I will vote against Joe Biden and the Democrats,” Mr. Wynstra said this week. “If Kennedy were viable and if his positions were palatable, I would consider him.”

In Ms. Haley’s home state of South Carolina, high school teacher Michael Burgess said that save an unlikely independent run by Haley or a moderate like former Rep. Liz Cheney, he would be supporting Biden and criticised Mr. Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement.

“I will reluctantly vote Biden,” Mr. Burgess said. “We can survive bad policy, but we cannot survive the destruction of the Constitution at the hands of a morally bankrupt dictator lover in Trump who, supported by his congressional MAGA minions, would do just that.”

Like many who were drawn to Ms. Haley, Mr. Tanenblatt, who was her Georgia campaign’s co-chairman, became disenchanted with Mr. Trump for what he called “inflammatory rhetoric,” chiefly in the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack by his supporters on the Capitol.

But he also says Mr. Trump’s opposition to military aid to Ukraine is a fundamental policy difference. Mr. Tanenblatt has talked individually with former Haley supporters weighing a role with No Labels, the third-party group that is moving forward with attempting a unity ticket of opposing party presidential and vice-presidential nominees.

By and large, Ms. Haley’s donors have paused, with key bundlers noting they have not heard from Mr. Trump’s team as well as their reluctance to make any decisions.

“I really think there’s a period of recalibrating for a number of us who were very involved in Nikki’s campaign. This was a calling, something bigger than any one of us,” said Simone Levinson, a Florida-based Haley fundraiser who hosted events for her in New York and Florida.

Those donors could be helpful to Mr. Trump were they to come to the former president’s side.

For now, Mr. Trump and national Republicans are lagging far behind Mr. Biden and national Democrats in fundraising, with Trump’s campaign and allied groups holding $37 million cash on hand at the end of February compared to the $155 million in Democratic coffers.

In one sign of her influence going forward, Ms. Haley ended last month with $11.5 million, just days before she suspended her campaign. That’s slightly more than the Republican National Committee at $11.3 million.

Charleston, South Carolina:

For much of her 2024 presidential campaign, Nikki Haley spoke fondly of serving under former President Donald Trump for two years as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. 

Trump, she often told voters, was “the right president at the right time.”

But when Haley suddenly found herself in a head-to-head battle with the Republican frontrunner, who hurled a bevy of insults her way, she unleashed a torrent of attacks in return. The 77-year-old Trump, she now said, was too old and too chaotic to send back to the White House for a second four-year term.

Haley’s evolution from a Trump acolyte to arch-rival in the late days of the Republican nominating race left her as the standard-bearer for the party’s dwindling anti-Trump faction. 

Her defiant stand against her former boss won her the support of some independents and moderate Republican voters, along with the backing of donors who poured tens of millions of dollars into her campaign in its final months.

Haley, 52, never seriously challenged Trump in opinion polls, and she was set to suspend her campaign on Wednesday, according to a source familiar with her plans.

By the time she decided to drop out, she had been abandoned by some former allies and left with no clear political future in a party dominated by the man who now will lead its presidential ticket. 

Even so, Haley’s ascent was notable. Stuck in single digits in polls for much of the race and overshadowed by more prominent names in a crowded field, Haley, the only woman in the Republican contest, nonetheless outlasted all other candidates and was Trump’s last remaining rival. Polls on hypothetical general election matchups showed her beating Democratic President Joe Biden.

“She pivoted from nuance to direct assault,” Chip Felkel, a veteran Republican strategist from South Carolina, said in February. 

“I wish she had done it sooner,” he added.

Haley’s political rise began in earnest in 2010, when she was elected governor of South Carolina, becoming the first woman to hold that post in the Southern state and the second person of Indian descent to serve as a U.S. governor. She served from 2011 to 2017.

When Trump ran for president in 2016, Haley backed two of his rivals before saying she would support Trump if he became the Republican nominee, even though she was “not a fan” of his.

She worked for Trump for two relatively drama-free years at the U.N. and played a key role in withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal, which was signed under Democratic President Barack Obama and had been unpopular among conservatives.

She initially said she would not run for president in 2024 if Trump made a bid. When she changed her mind and decided to launch her campaign in February 2023, she phoned Trump as a courtesy and he later recounted giving her his blessing.

Haley stuck to a policy-focused message on the campaign trail and tried to distinguish herself as the most capable contender on foreign policy. While almost all the Republican candidates staked out a tough position on China, Haley’s unabashed support for Ukraine represented a contrast with Trump, who said the conflict was not central to U.S. national security.

It was not until a series of combative debate performances starting in late August that she gained any real traction.

Several major donors, including hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin and Wall Street investor Stanley Druckenmiller, started looking her way, particularly as the campaign of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, once seen as Republicans’ best shot to move on from Trump, floundered. 

In November, AFP Action, a political advocacy network backed by billionaire Charles Koch, endorsed Haley. The group deployed an army of thousands of on-the-ground door knockers and organizers and blanketed the airwaves on her behalf.

By December, Haley had surpassed DeSantis in most national polls and replaced the former governor in the No. 2 spot, though Trump’s massive lead was never threatened.

Haley had complimented the former president as much as she criticized him during the race, so much so that she often was asked if she was angling to be his running mate – a question she called “highly offensive.”

But as the field narrowed from roughly a dozen major candidates to just Haley and Trump by the end of January, their attacks on each other escalated.

Trump called her a “birdbrain” and “brain-dead,” and mocked the dress she wore at her New Hampshire primary night party. He frequently referred to her, in speeches and on social media, by mispronounced and misspelled versions of her birth name, Nimarata. 

At a campaign event in New Hampshire, he said Haley, the daughter of immigrants from India, was not “presidential timber.”

Haley returned fire, bashing Trump for spending more than $50 million in campaign funds on legal fees and calling him a “grumpy old man.”

She said he was a liar and implied he was going senile. Her campaign team called him a “chicken” for refusing to debate her and even put one of her staff in an inflatable chicken suit at some events to drive the point home.

Haley promised to “make America normal again” – a jab at Trump’s “Make America Great Again,” or MAGA, movement.

Her refusal to bow out after losses in the early voting states of Iowa and New Hampshire incensed the former president, who lined up support from all but one member of South Carolina’s congressional delegation to try to show her lack of popularity in her home state. After she lost there, too, she soldiered on, saying that voters deserved a choice, even as she seemed to accept the race was slipping out of reach.

Haley embraced her status as an outsider in the waning days of the campaign, telling voters she didn’t need the support of other elected officials.

“All those congressional members around him are the same ones that haven’t done anything for us,” she said at one campaign stop in February in South Carolina.

“Trump can have ’em.”

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Nikki Haley will suspend her presidential campaign on March 6 after being soundly defeated across the country on Super Tuesday, according to people familiar with her decision, leaving Donald Trump as the last remaining major candidate for the 2024 Republican nomination.

Three people with direct knowledge, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly, confirmed Ms. Haley’s decision ahead of an announcement by her scheduled for March 6 morning.

Ms. Haley is not planning to endorse Mr. Trump in her announcement, according to the people with knowledge of her plans. Instead, she is expected to encourage him to earn the support of the coalition of moderate Republicans and independent voters who supported her.

Ms. Haley, a former South Carolina governor and U.N. ambassador, was Mr. Trump’s first significant rival when she jumped into the race in February 2023. She spent the final phase of her campaign aggressively warning the GOP against embracing Mr. Trump, whom she argued was too consumed by chaos and personal grievance to defeat President Joe Biden in the general election.

Her departure clears Mr. Trump to focus solely on his likely rematch in November with Mr. Biden. The former President is on track to reach the necessary 1,215 delegates to clinch the Republican nomination later this month.

Ms. Haley’s defeat marks a painful, if predictable, blow to those voters, donors and Republican Party officials who opposed Mr. Trump and his fiery brand of “Make America Great Again” politics. She was especially popular among moderates and college-educated voters, constituencies that will likely play a pivotal role in the general election. It’s unclear whether Mr. Trump, who recently declared that Ms. Haley donors would be permanently banned from his movement, can ultimately unify a deeply divided party.

Mr. Trump on March 5 night declared that the GOP was united behind him, but in a statement shortly afterward, Ms. Haley spokesperson Olivia Perez-Cubas said, “Unity is not achieved by simply claiming, ‘We’re united.’”

“Today, in state after state, there remains a large block of Republican primary voters who are expressing deep concerns about Donald Trump,” Ms. Perez-Cubas said. “That is not the unity our party needs for success. Addressing those voters’ concerns will make the Republican Party and America better.”

Ms. Haley leaves the 2024 presidential contest having made history as the first woman to win a Republican primary. She beat Trump in the District of Columbia on Sunday and Vermont on Tuesday.

She had insisted she would stay in the race through Super Tuesday and crossed the country campaigning in states holding Republican contests. Ultimately, she was unable to knock Mr. Trump off his glide path to a third straight nomination.

Ms. Haley’s allies note that she exceeded most of the political world’s expectations by making it as far as she did.

She had initially ruled out running against Mr. Trump in 2024. But she changed her mind and ended up launching her bid three months after he did, citing among other things the country’s economic troubles and the need for “generational change.” Ms. Haley, 52, later called for competency tests for politicians over the age of 75 — a knock on both Mr. Trump, who is 77, and President Joe Biden, who is 81.

Her candidacy was slow to attract donors and support, but she ultimately outlasted all of her other GOP rivals, including Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, former Vice President Mike Pence and Sen. Tim Scott, her fellow South Carolinian whom she appointed to the Senate in 2012. And the money flowed in until the very end. Her campaign said it raised more than $12 million in February alone.

She gained popularity with many Republican donors, independent voters and the so-called “Never Trump” crowd, even though she criticized the criminal cases against him as politically motivated and pledged that, if President, she would pardon him if he were convicted in federal court.

As the field consolidated, she and Mr. DeSantis battled it out through the early-voting states for a distant second to Mr. Trump. The two went after each other in debates, ads and interviews, often more directly than they went after Mr. Trump.

The campaign’s focus on foreign policy following Hamas’ surprise attack on Israel in October tilted the campaign into Ms. Haley’s wheelhouse, giving her an opportunity to showcase her experience from the U.N., tying the war to her conservative domestic priorities and arguing that both Israel and the U.S. could be made vulnerable by what she called “distractions.”

Ms. Haley was slow to criticize her former boss directly.

As she campaigned across early states, Ms. Haley often complimented some of Mr. Trump’s foreign policy achievements but gradually inserted more critiques into her campaign speeches. She argued Mr. Trump’s hyperfocus on trade with China led him to ignore security threats posed by a major U.S. rival. She warned that weak support for Ukraine would “only encourage” China to invade Taiwan, a viewpoint shared by several of her GOP rivals, even as many Republican voters questioned whether the U.S. should send aid to Ukraine.

In November, Ms. Haley — an accountant who had consistently touted her lean campaign — won the backing of the political arm of the powerful Koch network. AFP Action blasted early-state voters with mailers and door-knockers, committing its nationwide coalition of activists and virtually unlimited funds to helping Ms. Haley defeat Mr. Trump.

With Mr. Trump refusing to participate in primary debates, Ms. Haley went head-to-head with Mr. DeSantis in a single debate, displaying a combative style that seemed to sit poorly with even those committed to support her in the Iowa caucuses. She would finish third.

Ms. Haley’s name emerged as a possible running mate for Mr. Trump, with the former President reportedly asking allies what they thought of adding her to his possible ticket. As Ms. Haley appeared to gain ground, some of Mr. Trump’s backers worked to tamp down the notion.

While Ms. Haley initially notably declined to rule out the possibility, she said while campaigning in New Hampshire in January that serving as “anybody’s vice president” is “off the table.”

After Mr. DeSantis exited the campaign following Mr. Trump’s record-setting win in the Iowa caucuses, Ms. Haley hoped that New Hampshire voters would feel so strongly about keeping the former President away from the White House that they would turn out to support her in large numbers.

“America does not do coronations,” Ms. Haley said at a VFW hall in Franklin on the eve of the New Hampshire primary. “Let’s show all of the media class and the political class that we’ve got a different plan in mind, and let’s show the country what we can do.”

But she would lose New Hampshire and then refused to participate in Nevada’s caucuses, arguing the State’s rules strongly favoured Mr. Trump. She instead ran in the State’s primary, which didn’t count for any delegates for the nomination. She still finished a distant second to “ none of these candidates,” an option Nevada offers to voters dissatisfied with their choices and used by many Mr. Trump supporters to oppose her.

She had long vowed to win South Carolina but backed off of that pledge as the primary drew nearer. She crisscrossed the state that twice elected her governor on a bus tour, holding smaller events than Mr. Trump’s less frequent rallies and suggesting she was better equipped to beat Mr. Biden than him.

She lost South Carolina by 20 points and Michigan three days later by 40. The Koch brothers’ AFP Action announced after her South Carolina loss that it would stop organizing for her.

But by staying in the campaign, Ms. Haley drew enough support from suburbanites and college-educated voters to highlight Mr. Trump’s apparent weaknesses with those groups.

Ms. Haley has made clear she doesn’t want to serve as Mr. Trump’s Vice President or run on a third-party ticket arranged by the group No Labels. She leaves the race with an elevated national profile that could help her in a future presidential run.

In recent days, she backed off a pledge to endorse the eventual Republican nominee that was required of anyone participating in party debates.

“I think I’ll make what decision I want to make,” she told NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Washington:

Indian-American US presidential candidate Nikki Haley scored a surprising victory over Donald Trump in the Republican primary in the US state of Vermont, her second win in the race for the White House in 2024.

Nikki Haley, 52, leads former president Trump 49.9 per cent to 45.8 per cent with 98 per cent of the vote counted, according to US media outlets.

While Mr Trump, 77, maintains a lead in every other state, charging towards the Republican nomination, Ms Haley’s triumph in Vermont marks her second victory in the primaries and her first in Super Tuesday.

Ms Haley’s campaign said on Tuesday that it was “honoured” by her projected win in Vermont’s Republican presidential primary.

“We’re honoured to have received the support of millions of Americans across the country today, including in Vermont where Nikki became the first Republican woman to win two presidential primary contests,” Ms Haley spokesperson Olivia Perez-Cubas said in a statement. “Unity is not achieved by simply claiming ‘we’re united.'” Ms Haley’s campaign said there remains a “large block of Republican primary voters who are expressing deep concerns” about the former president.

“That is not the unity our party needs for success. Addressing those voters’ concerns will make the Republican Party and America better,” Perez-Cubas said.

Mr Trump has a formidable delegate lead with 893 delegates, while Ms Haley has 66.

To win the presidential nomination of the Republican party, either of the two candidates needs 1,215 delegates.

Political pundits had pointed to Vermont as Ms Haley’s best chance to win a state, especially given its history of favouring moderate Republican candidates. Adding to that advantage, she received a crucial endorsement from Vermont Governor Phil Scott over the weekend.

“Vermont has a history of favouring moderate Republican candidates, and she got the endorsement of Governor Scott over the weekend. I don’t think that makes her a favourite, but she has her best shot,” University of Vermont political science professor Alex Garlick told USA Today.

Vermont’s primary operates on a winner-takes-all basis, offering 17 delegates to the candidate who secures 50 per cent or more of the statewide vote. Otherwise, the delegates will be divided among Ms Haley and Mr Trump.

Just two days prior, Ms Haley made history by winning the Republican primary in Washington DC, becoming the first woman ever to achieve this milestone.
 

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Republican presidential candidate and former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley.
| Photo Credit: REUTERS

Former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley has scored a surprise victory on Super Tuesday, upsetting Donald Trump to win Vermont.

That victory will do little to dent Mr. Trump’s primary dominance, however. The former President won 11 other states on Super Tuesday.

Ms. Haley is the last major rival to Mr. Trump standing in a once-crowded primary field. She has increasingly stepped up her attacks on the former President, arguing that he will lose in November to President Joe Biden if he clinches the party’s nomination.

On the Democratic side, Mr. Biden also ran up the score with wins all around the country against only token primary opposition — all but cementing the long-expected November rematch between him and Mr. Trump.