Good morning. Welcome to Exios today. It's Friday, September 1st. I'm Nailibutu.

Today on the show, testing the resilience of our oceans, plus ransomware hackers on the

prowl over Labor Day weekend. But first, new narratives are taking shape for GOP candidates.

Our weekly politics state of play is today's one big thing.

Republican presidential candidates are starting to distinguish themselves in the week following

the first debate. This week, it was all about Vivek Ramaswamy and Nikki Haley.

But Exios co-founder Mike Allen has updates on them and much more. Hey, Mike.

Hey, now, Trump pollster Tony Fabrizio said this week that GOP candidate Nikki Haley is surging

in the polls. What do we know about her campaign and popularity right now?

Well, I wouldn't go with surging the Trump campaign, of course, is trying to troll

the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, by lifting up everyone else. But Nikki Haley, former South

Carolina governor, former US ambassador to the UN, had a fantastic week after the debate

in Milwaukee, where I was on scene. And now, a very clarifying question to ask in politics is,

would you rather be you or would you rather be the other person, the other candidate? And this week,

you absolutely would like to be Nikki Haley, the Republican donors who are calling her campaign,

offering to hold events for her. How often do you get that? And on the other side of the coin,

Nala, Democrats say they're concerned about how strong a candidate she would be if she found a

way to get past Donald Trump, would looks like right now a very unlikely event of him not being

the nominee that she might be tough for President Biden. And so what a concern about that

from Democrats. And she really took on the vague Rama Swami. I got a lot of texts in the moment

when she took them on and said, you have no foreign policy experience. And it shows that

stings when you're the youngest person on the stage. And sure enough, you're the only person

...