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Today’s installment of campaign-related news items from across the country.
* The process isn’t officially over just yet, but members of the Democratic National Committee voted Saturday on a new presidential nominating calendar, bumping Iowa and New Hampshire from their vaunted position. Now, South Carolina is poised to go first.
* In a bit of a surprise, Rep. Victoria Spartz announced late last week that she won’t be a candidate for elected office next year. The Indiana Republican, currently in her second term, had been eyeing the state’s open U.S. Senate seat, before party officials rallied behind Rep. Jim Banks.
* As recently as 2020, billionaire Charles Koch expressed some regret after positioning himself as a Republican partisan. Nevertheless, ahead of the 2024 elections, the political operation Koch helped create is reengaging in GOP politics, hoping to deny Donald Trump his party’s presidential nomination.
* Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, fresh off his narrow re-election campaign victory, is using China’s surveillance balloon as the basis for a new fundraising appeal.
* As she eyes Arizona’s U.S. Senate race next year, failed Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake continues to describe herself as her state’s “duly elected governor.”
* In case anyone was inclined to take the scuttlebutt seriously, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg told CNN’s Jake Tapper that he will not be a U.S. Senate candidate next year in his adopted home state of Michigan.
* How did someone steal $700,000 from Republican Sen. Jerry Moran’s re-election campaign in Kansas? The Kansas City Star took a closer look.
* And while Trump remains a fierce opponent of early voting, the former president now supports putting absentee ballot drop boxes in churches, calling this the “best idea” he’s heard “in a long time.” In a message published on his social media platform, he added, “RNC, EVERY REPUBLICAN, GET TO WORK ON THIS NOW!!!”
President Joe Biden will deliver his second State of the Union address on Tuesday at 9 p.m. ET. Follow msnbc.com/sotu for live updates and analysis from experts and insiders.