Elections

The twice-indicted former president leads across nearly every category and region, as primary voters wave off concerns about his escalating legal jeopardy.Former President Donald J. Trump is dominating his rivals for the Republican presidential nomination, leading his nearest challenger, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, by a landslide 37 percentage points nationally among the likely Republican primary electorate, according to the first New York Times/Siena College poll of the 2024 campaign.Mr. Trump held decisive advantages across almost every demographic group and region and in every ideological wing of the party, the survey found, as Republican voters waved away concerns about his escalating legal jeopardy. He led by wide margins among men and women, younger and older voters, moderates and conservatives, those who went to college and those who didn’t, and in cities, suburbs and rural areas.The poll shows that some of Mr. DeSantis’s central campaign arguments — that he is more electable than Mr. Trump, and that he would govern more effectively — have so far failed to break through. Even Republicans motivated by the type of issues that have fueled Mr. DeSantis’s rise, such as fighting “radical woke ideology,” favored the former president.Overall, Mr. Trump led Mr. DeSantis 54 percent to 17 percent. No other candidate topped 3 percent support in the poll.Below those lopsided top-line figures were other ominous signs for Mr. DeSantis. He performed his weakest among some of the Republican Party’s biggest and most influential constituencies. He earned only 9 percent support among voters at least 65 years old and 13 percent of those without a college degree. Republicans who described themselves as “very conservative” favored Mr. Trump by a 50-point margin, 65 percent to 15 percent.Republican voters are apparently not concerned about Donald J. Trump’s increasing legal peril.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesStill, no other serious Trump challenger has emerged besides Mr. DeSantis. Former Vice President Mike Pence, the former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley and Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina each scored 3 percent support. Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor, and Vivek Ramaswamy, an entrepreneur, each received support from just 2 percent of those polled.Yet even if all those candidates disappeared and Mr. DeSantis got a hypothetical one-on-one race against Mr. Trump, he would still lose by a two-to-one margin, 62 percent to 31 percent, the poll found. That is a stark reminder that, for all the fretting among anti-Trump forces that the party would divide itself in a repeat of 2016, Mr. Trump is poised to trounce even a unified opposition.The survey comes less than six months before the first 2024 primary contest and before a single debate. In an era of American politics defined by its volatility, Mr. Trump’s legal troubles — his trials threaten to overlap with primary season — pose an especially unpredictable wild card.For now, though, Mr. Trump appears to match both the surly mood of the Republican electorate, 89 percent of whom see the nation as headed in the wrong direction, and Republicans’ desire to take the fight to the Democrats.“He might say mean things and make all the men cry because all the men are wearing your wife’s underpants and you can’t be a man anymore,” David Green, 69, a retail manager in Somersworth, N.H., said of Mr. Trump. “You got to be a little sissy and cry about everything. But at the end of the day, you want results. Donald Trump’s my guy. He’s proved it on a national level.”Both Mr. Trump and Mr. DeSantis maintain strong overall favorable ratings from Republicans, 76 percent and 66 percent. That Mr. DeSantis is still so well liked after a drumbeat of news coverage questioning his ability to connect with voters, and more than $20 million in attack ads from a Trump super PAC, demonstrates a certain resiliency. His political team has argued that his overall positive image with G.O.P. voters provides a solid foundation on which to build.But the intensity of the former president’s support is a key difference as 43 percent of Republicans have a “very favorable” opinion of Mr. Trump — a cohort that he carries by an overwhelming 92 percent to 7 percent margin in a one-on-one race with Mr. DeSantis.By contrast, Mr. DeSantis is stuck in an effective tie with Mr. Trump, edging him 49 percent to 48 percent, among the smaller share of primary voters (25 percent) who view the Florida governor very favorably.In interviews with poll respondents, a recurring theme emerged. They like Mr. DeSantis; they love Mr. Trump.“DeSantis, I have high hopes. But as long as Trump’s there, Trump’s the man,” said Daniel Brown, 58, a retired technician at a nuclear plant from Bumpass, Va.Stanton Strohmenger, 48, a maintenance technician, said he was supporting Mr. Trump.Maddie McGarvey for The New York Times“If he wasn’t running against Trump, DeSantis would be my very next choice,” said Stanton Strohmenger, 48, a maintenance technician in Washington Township, Ohio.A number of respondents interviewed drew a distinction between Mr. DeSantis’s accomplishments in Tallahassee and Mr. Trump’s in the White House.“Trump has proven his clout,” said Mallory Butler, 39, of Polk County, Fla. “And DeSantis has, but in a much smaller arena.”The truly anti-Trump faction of the Republican electorate appears to hover near one in four G.O.P. voters, hardly enough to dethrone him. Only 19 percent of the electorate said Mr. Trump’s behavior after his 2020 defeat threatened American democracy. And only 17 percent see the former president as having committed any serious federal crimes, despite his indictment by a federal grand jury on charges of mishandling classified documents and his receipt of a so-called target letter in the separate election interference case being brought by the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith.“I think Donald Trump is going to carry a lot of baggage to the election with him,” said Hilda Bulla, 68, of Davidson County, N.C., who supports Mr. DeSantis.Yet Mr. Trump’s grip on the Republican Party is so strong, the Times/Siena poll found, that in a head-to-head contest with Mr. DeSantis, Mr. Trump still received 22 percent among voters who believe he has committed serious federal crimes — a greater share than the 17 percent that Mr. DeSantis earned from the entire G.O.P. electorate.Mr. DeSantis has made taking on “woke” institutions a centerpiece of his political identity. But when given a choice between a hypothetical candidate who prioritized “defeating radical woke ideology” or one who was focused on “law and order in our streets and at the border,” only 24 percent said they would be more likely to support the candidate focused on fighting “woke” issues.Equally problematic for Mr. DeSantis is that those “woke”-focused voters still preferred Mr. Trump, 61 percent to 36 percent.G.O.P. Primary Voters See Trump as Stronger, More Electable Than DeSantisTell me if you think this word or phrase better describes Donald Trump or Ron DeSantis:

Based on a New York Times/Siena College poll of the likely electorate in the Republican primary, conducted July 23-27, 2023. Figures are rounded.By Christine ZhangThe ability to defeat Mr. Biden and to enact a conservative agenda is at the core of Mr. DeSantis’s appeal to Republicans. He has warned that Mr. Trump has saddled the party with a “culture of losing” in the Trump years and has held up his resounding 2022 re-election in the once purple state of Florida as a model for the G.O.P. As governor, he has pushed through a sweeping set of conservative priorities that have sharply reoriented the state and promised he would bring the same policymaking zeal to the White House.Yet these arguments do not appear to be working. A strong majority of Republicans surveyed, 58 percent, said it was Mr. Trump, not Mr. DeSantis, who was best described by the phrase “able to beat Joe Biden.” And again, it was Mr. Trump, by a lopsided 67 percent to 22 percent margin, who was seen more as the one to “get things done.”Mr. DeSantis narrowly edged Mr. Trump on being seen as “likable” and “moral.” Interestingly, the share of Republicans who said Mr. Trump was more “fun” than Mr. DeSantis (54 percent to 16 percent) almost perfectly mirrored the overall horse race.“He does not come across with humor,” Sandra Reher, 75, a retired teacher in Farmingdale, N.J., said of Mr. DeSantis. “He comes across as a — a good Christian man, wonderful family man. But he doesn’t have that fire, if you will, that Trump has.”Sandra Reher of New Jersey plans to support Donald Trump over Ron DeSantis. Of Mr. DeSantis, she said, “he doesn’t have that fire, if you will, that Trump has.”Kriston Jae Bethel for The New York TimesIncreasingly on the trail, Mr. DeSantis is calling attention to his “blue-collar” roots and his decision to serve in the military as reasons voters should support him as he runs against a self-professed billionaire. But the poll showed Mr. Trump lapping Mr. DeSantis among likely Republican primary voters earning less than $50,000, 65 percent to 9 percent.As of now, Mr. DeSantis’s few demographic refuges — places where he is losing by smaller margins — are more upscale pockets of the electorate. He trailed Mr. Trump by a less daunting 12 points among white voters with college degrees, 37 to 25 percent. Among those earning more than $100,000, Mr. DeSantis was behind by 23 points, half the deficit he faced among the lowest earners.The fractured field appears to be preventing Mr. DeSantis from consolidating the support of such voters: In the hypothetical one-on-one race, Mr. DeSantis was statistically tied with Mr. Trump among white college-educated voters.On a range of issues, the poll suggests it will be difficult for Mr. DeSantis to break through against Mr. Trump on policy arguments alone.In the head-to-head matchup, Mr. Trump was far ahead of Mr. DeSantis among Republicans who accept transgender people as the gender they identify with, and among those who do not; among those who want to fight corporations that “promote woke left ideology,” and among those who prefer to stay out of what businesses do; among those who want to send more military and economic aid to Ukraine, and among those who do not; among those who want to keep Social Security and Medicare benefits as they are, and among those who want to take steps to reduce the budget deficit.Mr. Trump leads Mr. DeSantis among Republicans who believe abortion should always be legal, and among those who believe it should always be illegal.Mr. DeSantis signed a strict six-week abortion ban that Mr. Trump has criticized as “too harsh.” Yet Mr. Trump enjoyed the support of 70 percent of Republicans who said they strongly supported such a measure.Marcel Paba, a 22-year-old server in Miami, said he liked what Mr. DeSantis had done for his state but didn’t think the governor could overcome the enthusiasm for Mr. Trump.“There are just more die-hard fans of Trump than there are of Ron DeSantis. Even in Florida,” Mr. Paba said. “I don’t see people wearing a Ron DeSantis hat anywhere, you know?”Camille Baker More

The New York Times Audio app is home to journalism and storytelling, and provides news, depth and serendipity. If you haven’t already, download it here — available to Times news subscribers on iOS — and sign up for our weekly newsletter.The Headlines brings you the biggest stories of the day from the Times journalists who are covering them, all in about 10 minutes. Hosted by Annie Correal, the new morning show features three top stories from reporters across the newsroom and around the world, so you always have a sense of what’s happening, even if you only have a few minutes to spare.Former President Donald J. Trump is leading across nearly every category and region, as primary voters wave off concerns about his escalating legal jeopardy, according to a New York Times/Siena College poll.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesOn Today’s Episode:Trump Crushing DeSantis and G.O.P. Rivals, Times/Siena Poll Finds, with Shane GoldmacherAt Least 43 Killed in Blast at Political Rally in Pakistan, with Christina GoldbaumHeat Is Costing the U.S. Economy Billions in Lost Productivity, with Coral DavenportEli Cohen More

Donald Trump openly flatters foreign autocrats such as Vladimir V. Putin and Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and in many ways Mr. Trump governed as authoritarians do around the globe: enriching himself, stoking ethnic hatreds, seeking personal control over the courts and the military, clinging to power at all costs. So it is especially fitting that he has been notified that he may soon be indicted on charges tied to alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election by an American prosecutor who is deeply versed in investigating the world’s worst tyrants and war criminals.Jack Smith, the Justice Department special counsel — who has already indicted Mr. Trump on charges of illegally retaining secret documents and obstructing justice — has a formidable record as a career federal prosecutor in Tennessee, New York and Washington. Yet he also has distinctive expertise from two high-stakes tours of duty as an international war crimes prosecutor: first at the International Criminal Court and then at a special legal institution investigating war crimes in Kosovo. For several momentous years in The Hague, he oversaw investigations of foreign government officials and militia members who stood accused of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.There are two competing visions of national and international justice at play in Mr. Smith’s investigation of Mr. Trump. One is the lofty principle that even presidents and prime ministers must answer to the law. The other is the reality that such powerful leaders can try to secure their own impunity by decrying justice as a sham and rallying their followers, threatening instability and violent backlash. These tensions have defined the history of international war crimes prosecutions; they marked Mr. Smith’s achievements in court; they are already at play in Mr. Trump’s attempts to thwart the rule of law.Start with the ideals. The United States championed two international military tribunals held at Nuremberg and Tokyo after World War II, which put senior German and Japanese leaders on trial for aggression, war crimes and crimes against humanity. Henry L. Stimson, the U.S. secretary of war, privately exhorted Franklin Delano Roosevelt that even Nazi war criminals should be given a “well-defined procedure” including “at least the rudimentary aspects of the Bill of Rights.”Both the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials convicted senior leaders for atrocities committed while in government, treating their deeds not as acts of state but as personal crimes punishable by law. After the Cold War, these principles of legal punishment for the world’s worst criminals were revived with United Nations tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, as well as special courts for East Timor, Sierra Leone and elsewhere.Mr. Smith hewed to the ideal of individual criminal responsibility as the prosecutor for the Kosovo Specialist Chambers, which was created under U.S. and European pressure to investigate war crimes and crimes against humanity from 1998 to 2000 related to Kosovo’s struggle for independence from Serbia. Although part of Kosovo’s legal system, the institution is headquartered in The Hague and staffed by international judges and personnel — which is how Mr. Smith, a U.S. citizen, wound up serving as its specialist prosecutor.In June 2020, his office revealed that it was seeking to indict Hashim Thaci, then Kosovo’s popular president, who was on his way to the White House for a summit with Serbia convened by the Trump administration. Mr. Thaci, a former Kosovo Liberation Army guerrilla leader, returned home, later resigning as president and being detained in The Hague in order to face several counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity in an ongoing trial that could last for years.It is always difficult and risky to prosecute national leaders with some popularity among their people. Savvy dictators will often secure a promise of amnesty as the price for a transition of power, which is why a furtive impunity — such as that promulgated in Chile by Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s military government in 1978 — is more common than spectacular trials such as Nuremberg or Tokyo. In order to impose justice on Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, the Allies had to commit to a devastating policy of unconditional surrender, which meant that German and Japanese war criminals could not negotiate for their own necks. Even so, the Truman administration quietly undercut that pledge of unconditional surrender for Emperor Hirohito, fearing that the Japanese might fight on if he was prosecuted as a war criminal. The Truman administration left the emperor securely in the Imperial Palace while his prime ministers and generals were tried and convicted by an Allied international military tribunal in Tokyo.At an earlier point in his career, from 2008 to 2010, Mr. Smith worked as the investigation coordinator in the prosecutor’s office at the International Criminal Court, the permanent international war crimes tribunal based in The Hague. Although 123 countries from Afghanistan to Zambia have joined the I.C.C., the tribunal was a bugbear for the Trump administration; Mr. Trump’s national security adviser, John Bolton, vowed to let it “die on its own,” while his secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, reviled it as a “renegade, unlawful, so-called court.”Anyone working at the I.C.C. must understand how constrained and weak the court actually is. In 2009 and 2010, the I.C.C. issued arrest warrants for Sudan’s president, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, charging him with war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide in the Darfur region; he is still at large, even after being overthrown. When a prominent Kenyan politician, Uhuru Kenyatta, was charged with crimes against humanity after ethnic violence in the wake of his country’s 2007 presidential election, he decried the I.C.C. as a neocolonial violation of Kenya’s sovereignty. In 2013 he was narrowly elected president of Kenya. In 2014, the I.C.C. prosecutor dropped the charges against Mr. Kenyatta, fuming that Kenya’s government had obstructed evidence and intimidated witnesses.From Kenya to Kosovo, Mr. Smith presumably knows all too well how an indicted politician can mobilize his loyalists to defy and obstruct a prosecution. When Mr. Thaci’s trial started in The Hague in April, some Kosovars rallied in support of a leader seen by them as a heroic guerrilla fighter against Serbian oppression. Mr. Smith’s office has complained that Mr. Thaci and other suspects were trying to obstruct and undercut the work of prosecutors, as well as convicting two backers of the Kosovo Liberation Army for disseminating files stolen from the office.Mr. Trump is already instinctively following a similar playbook of bluster and intimidation — even though he is not facing an international tribunal, but the laws of the United States. He has compared the F.B.I. agents investigating him to the Gestapo and smeared Mr. Smith as “deranged,” while crudely warning an Iowa radio show that it would be “very dangerous” to jail him since he has “a tremendously passionate group of voters.”Yet Mr. Trump will find that Mr. Smith has dealt with the likes of him — and worse — before. The American prosecutor is well equipped to pursue the vision of a predecessor Robert H. Jackson, the eloquent Supreme Court justice who served as the U.S. chief prosecutor at Nuremberg, who declared in his opening address there: “Civilization asks whether law is so laggard as to be utterly helpless to deal with crimes of this magnitude by criminals of this order of importance.”Gary J. Bass is the author of “The Blood Telegram” and the forthcoming “Judgment at Tokyo: World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern Asia.”The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: [email protected] The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

In her stump speech, the former governor calls for common sense and experience in the White House, leaving crowds wanting more.Nikki Haley is not as loud or fiery as some of her pulpit-pounding rivals for the Republican presidential nomination. But her pleas for common sense and experience in the White House often leave crowds wanting more.Ms. Haley, 51, the former South Carolina governor and United Nations ambassador, has been on the campaign trail in Iowa and New Hampshire as she seeks to challenge Donald J. Trump, the front-runner.Her stump speeches often stick to core Republican themes. Here are five of her most reliable applause lines in recent appearances.“When I’m president, we will no longer give foreign aid to countries that hate America. That’s a promise.”Ms. Haley, the only Republican woman running in the presidential race, has sought to lean into hawkish stances on China and her foreign policy credentials in an attempt to break out of a crowded field. A favorite anecdote on the stump tells of her tenure under Mr. Trump when she compiled a book revealing that the United States was giving money to countries that often did not support its interests. The story’s function is twofold, positioning her as a tough-talking envoy willing to break from the Washington establishment and someone not afraid to tell Mr. Trump harsh truths.“Instead of 87,000 I.R.S. agents, we’ll put 25,000 Border Patrol and ICE agents on the ground, and we will let them do their job.”The promise — and its reception — underscore the fixation of the Republican base with the nation’s Southwestern border. She also echoes misleading claims from Republican lawmakers that Democrats are seeking to hire an army of tax auditors under the Internal Revenue Service to scrutinize the financial filings of middle-class families. Like many of the other Republican candidates, Ms. Haley sides with Mr. Trump on border and immigration policy, pledging to build a wall, defund sanctuary cities and bring back a Trump-era program requiring asylum seekers to wait out their cases in Mexico. “Because guess what? Nobody wants to remain in Mexico,” she adds, sometimes garnering laughs.“We will make sure that every member of Congress has to get their health care through the V.A. You watch how fast it gets fixed.”Perhaps no other line in Ms. Haley’s stump speech draws a more passionate response from audiences than this one. She has pledged to tackle veteran homelessness and high suicide rates and to improve veterans’ access to health care. The issues are personal for Ms. Haley, whose husband, Michael, is a major in the South Carolina Army National Guard and served in Afghanistan in 2013. This summer, Ms. Haley joined other military spouses in seeing their partners off, as they deployed to Africa with the Army National Guard. The military tour is expected to last a year and for most of the G.O.P. primary race.“Don’t you think it’s time we have term limits in Congress? We have to do it. We have to have term limits in Congress, and I think we need to have mental health competency tests for anyone over the age of 75.”Ms. Haley, who has couched her campaign message in a call for “a new generation of leaders,” long sought to distinguish herself from competitors by taking an early stance on the issue of age limits among political leaders. Her shots are most directly aimed at President Biden, 80, whose age is cited as a top concern, as he seeks re-election. In an interview with Fox News, she suggested that Mr. Biden, would not live until the end of his second term if re-elected. On the stump, she often suggests that a vote for Mr. Biden is a vote for Vice President Kamala Harris.“No more gender pronoun classes in the military. It is demoralizing to make them do that.”Ms. Haley has faced blowback from Democrats, women’s rights groups and transgender rights activists for proposing that transgender girls playing in school sports is the “women’s issue of our time,” and for appearing to suggest that allowing “biological boys” in girls’ locker rooms was connected with the high rate of teenage girls who have considered suicide. She has since modified her statements so as not to link the two separate issues, but she has not dropped her focus on gender issues and implications that women are being erased. “Johns Hopkins recently came out and defined what a woman was,” she said in Hollis, referring to the research university. “Did you see it? A ‘nonman.’” More

With investigations and legal fees piling up, a fund is planned to help witnesses and defendants. The former president’s legal bills are not expected to be included, however.Former President Donald J. Trump’s team is creating a legal-defense fund to handle some of the crush of legal bills stemming from the investigations and criminal indictments involving him and a number of employees and associates, according to two people with knowledge of the matter.The fund, which is expected to be called the Patriot Legal Defense Fund Inc., will be led by Michael Glassner, a longtime Trump political adviser, according to the people familiar with the planning, who were not authorized to discuss it publicly. Another Trump aide who worked at the Trump Organization and then in Mr. Trump’s administration, Lynne Patton, will also be involved, the people said.It is unclear how broad a group of people the legal-defense fund will cover, but one person said it was not expected to cover Mr. Trump’s own legal bills. In recent months Mr. Trump’s political action committee has paid legal bills for him and several witnesses, spending over $40 million on lawyers in the first half of 2023.But a wide swath of people have become entangled in the various Trump-related criminal investigations, both as witnesses — of which there are many who work for Mr. Trump personally or did in the White House — as well as defendants.A spokesman for Mr. Trump, Steven Cheung, said that the Justice Department had “targeted innocent Americans associated with President Trump,” and that “to combat these heinous actions” and “protect these innocent people from financial ruin and prevent their lives from being completely destroyed, a new legal defense fund will help pay for their legal fees to ensure they have representation against unlawful harassment.”Mr. Trump’s PAC, Save America, has been a focus of one of the investigations by the special counsel Jack Smith, who has had at least two grand juries looking at Mr. Trump and his allies and advisers. Mr. Smith’s team has questioned why some lawyers for specific witnesses are being paid, as well as whether aides to Mr. Trump and Republicans knew Mr. Trump had lost the election but continued to raise money off his debunked claims.The creation of the legal-defense fund could ease some of the financial pressure on Save America, which was severe enough that it requested a refund of the $60 million it had transferred to a pro-Trump super PAC late last year. Michael Glassner, a longtime Trump political adviser, will lead what is expected to be called the Patriot Legal Defense Fund Inc.Andrew Harnik/Associated PressMr. Trump now has two co-defendants, Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, in the federal investigation into his retention of reams of presidential material and classified documents after he left office. Both men work for Mr. Trump; Mr. Nauta works for the Trump campaign, and Mr. De Oliveira is the property manager at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s private club.Last month, Mr. Trump appeared at a fund-raiser at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J., for a group that assists those arrested in connection with the Jan. 6 riot and their families. “I’m going to make a contribution,” Mr. Trump told them, according to a video of his remarks. That group’s name, the Patriot Freedom Project, echoes the new name of Mr. Trump’s legal fund.Mr. Trump had long resisted such an entity. For years, he told people that only guilty people have legal-defense funds.Mr. Trump, a wealthy businessman, has been using money parked in Save America to pay legal bills for himself and a number of witnesses in the four criminal investigations into his actions in and out of office. Save America was created to house the more than $100 million that Mr. Trump raised shortly after the November 2020 election, as he claimed he needed his supporters’ help to combat widespread voter fraud.No such widespread fraud was ever proved, but Mr. Trump had tens of millions of dollars at his disposal. He cannot spend the money directly on his 2024 presidential candidacy, but has been using it for legal bills. Last year, he made the $60 million transfer to the super PAC that is backing him, well before the refund request was made.In 2021 and 2022, Save America paid for Mr. Trump’s political operation while he was out of office and not an official candidate, paying for staff members and rallies. It also picked up $16 million in legal fees. Mr. Trump’s rivals have been using the Save America legal payments as an attack on him. And he appears to have recognized it as a potential weak point: On Saturday evening, at a rally in Erie, Pa., he said he would put whatever money he needs to put into his campaign, if it comes to that. More

Ron DeSantis’s remarks to a voter in New Hampshire suggest he may step up his attacks against the man who leads him in national polls by a wide margin.Two days after former President Donald J. Trump used a demeaning nickname to describe Ron DeSantis to a packed hall of Iowa Republican activists, Mr. DeSantis pointedly invoked the federal indictment against his chief rival, saying that if Mr. Trump had “drained the swamp like he promised,” then he probably “wouldn’t be in the mess that he’s in right now.”Speaking to reporters on Sunday after a campaign event in New Hampshire, Mr. DeSantis, the governor of Florida, added that Mr. Trump’s use of “juvenile insults” served as a reminder of “why there are so many millions of voters who will never vote for him going forward.”Mr. DeSantis has generally not used Mr. Trump’s legal troubles against him, and has instead focused on criticizing the Biden administration for what he terms the “weaponization” of federal law enforcement.But as Mr. DeSantis seeks to reset his ailing campaign by cutting staff and organizing more informal events in the face of a fund-raising shortfall, his comments suggest he may be taking a less timid approach against the man who leads him in national polls by a wide margin. Even allies have said that his campaign has lacked a coherent message about why voters should choose him over Mr. Trump.Part of the shift may also be a result of how Mr. DeSantis has changed his campaign tactics in the past week. Whereas he previously engaged with voters in more controlled environments, and kept the press at arm’s length, he is now regularly taking questions from both everyday Americans and reporters — meaning that he will be asked more often about Mr. Trump, who is dominating the Republican primary race.Mr. DeSantis’s campaign reboot took him on a bus tour through rural Iowa last week. On Friday, he and a dozen other Republican presidential candidates, including the former president, took turns addressing a dinner hosted by the Republican Party of Iowa. With Mr. DeSantis ensconced in a hospitality suite not far from the main stage, Mr. Trump mockingly referred to his rival as “DeSanctis” (short for “DeSanctimonious”) and bragged about his lead in the polls.On Sunday, Mr. DeSantis appeared at a barbecue in Rye, N.H., co-hosted by former Senator Scott Brown of Massachusetts, who served as an ambassador in the Trump administration. Mr. Brown, who is staying neutral in the race for now, is hosting similar events for several Republican candidates, although Mr. Trump’s camp has not yet reached out about attending, Mr. Brown said.As is his normal practice, Mr. DeSantis did not mention Mr. Trump in his stump speech. But in a question-and-answer session afterward, one voter asked the governor, “Given Trump’s stronghold on what seems to be a majority of the party, what’s your strategy to show Trump supporters that you’re a better alternative?”Mr. DeSantis responded by saying he believed many Republicans were open to nominating someone other than Mr. Trump.“I think with me, you know, I’m the candidate that’s more likely to beat Biden,” he said. “I’m more reliable on policy. I think you’ve seen my record in Florida, and I’m much more likely to actually get all this stuff done.”“We ended the presidency with Fauci running the government,” Mr. DeSantis continued, referring to Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the federal government’s former top infectious disease expert, who is deeply unpopular with Republican voters. “That’s not draining the swamp.”Hank Bivins, the voter who asked the question, said the response left him somewhat underwhelmed.“He has to differentiate himself more,” said Mr. Bivins, 53, who is still undecided. “He’s going to have to fine-tune that answer.”Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Mr. Trump, accused Mr. DeSantis of being “nothing more than an off-brand, bootleg version of America First.”“No matter how much time he spends cosplaying as President Trump, he will never be him or achieve a hundredth of what was achieved during the Trump administration,” Mr. Cheung said in a statement.A recent University of New Hampshire poll showed Mr. Trump leading the field in the state with 37 percent of the vote, followed by Mr. DeSantis with 23 percent.But Mr. Brown said Mr. DeSantis was doing the right things to close the gap, saying that of all the candidates in the race, only field workers representing Mr. DeSantis had knocked on his door so far.And he said that Mr. DeSantis had improved noticeably as a retail politician since he last saw the governor campaign in New Hampshire in June.“I see him today and he’s way better,” Mr. Brown said. “And he’s connecting better.” More

Liberal environmentalists and conservative landowners, led by the former congressman Steve King, are pressuring Republican candidates to oppose three Midwestern pipelines.Emma Schmidt, a lifelong environmental activist in Rockwell City, Iowa, had long searched for potent allies in her fight against a massive carbon dioxide pipeline planned for her state.But she never expected to find herself at former Representative Steve King’s house, making her case as she stared up at a pistol in the paw of a taxidermied raccoon in his home office.That meeting in June between a liberal Democrat and a conservative Republican who lost his seat in Congress in 2020 after incendiary racist comments was the beginning of a left-right alliance that is trying to push the debate of the pipeline to the forefront of the heated G.O.P. presidential caucuses.“We’re putting in a whole lot of money into pipelines that are not necessary, that bulldoze their way through some of the richest farmlands in the world, to sequester CO2,” said an incredulous Mr. King on Tuesday.Steve King, a former member of Congress who lost his seat after a series of racist comments, is an unlikely ally for liberal climate activists in Iowa. Joshua Lott/Getty ImagesThe $4.5 billion Summit, $3 billion Navigator and $630 million Wolf Carbon pipelines may not be front and center next month at the first Republican presidential debate. They probably won’t be featured in super PAC advertising or mentioned during Fox News appearances. But the pipelines capture a national debate with local consequences, and they will give candidates a chance to showcase their understanding of Iowa, the first state to weigh in on the Republican nominating fight — if they can navigate the issue.The Summit, Navigator and Wolf pipelines, fueled by federal tax credits embraced by both parties, would draw carbon dioxide from the factories that turn Iowa corn into ethanol. They would snake through 3,300 miles of farmland in Iowa and other Midwestern states, then pump the planet-warming gas into the bedrock beneath Illinois and North Dakota. And they are pitched as a climate protection measure, though some experts and environmentalists say it is only a partial solution at best.Earlier this month, an Iowa woman seemed to stump the front-runner, former President Donald J. Trump, when she asked how he would “help us in Iowa save our farmland from the CO2 pipelines.”Mr. Trump stammered that he was “working on that” and that he “had a plan to totally, uh, it’s such a ridiculous situation,” before reassuring the crowd, “if we win, that’s going to be taken care of.”The moment has been laughed off as a show of Mr. Trump’s ability to bluster his way through anything, but the issue is tricky: Several of the Republican candidates have cast doubt on the established climate science and would seem disinclined to back a project aimed at reducing carbon emissions. But opposing the pipeline also means opposing Iowa’s all-important ethanol industry.The state’s popular Republican governor, Kim Reynolds, has avoided taking a public position. Opponents believe she supports the deal, which is backed by some of her biggest political contributors, including Bruce Rastetter, founder of the Summit Agricultural Group. Ms. Reynolds’s office did not respond to requests for comment.The state’s popular Republican governor, Kim Reynolds, has avoided taking a public position on the pipeline, which is backed by one of her biggest political contributors. Kelsey Kremer/The Des Moines Register, via Associated PressPowerful figures from both parties have signed with the pipeline companies, including Terry Branstad, Ms. Reynolds’s predecessor, and Jess Vilsack, the son of another former Iowa governor and the current Democratic secretary of agriculture, Tom Vilsack. Agriculture giants like John Deere and A.D.M. have invested in the efforts.Presidential candidates have tried to skirt the issue; most campaigns declined to comment, including Mr. Trump’s. But campaign aides said this week that they knew a time for choosing was coming. The first public hearings on the Summit pipeline will begin on Aug. 22 in Fort Dodge, Iowa.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida is expecting questions later this week in a swing through the state, according to people familiar with the campaign.The left-right alliance is giving voice to Iowa landowners infuriated by the prospect that their land could be seized by eminent domain for the pipelines. Tim Baughman, who farms 330 acres with his sister in Crawford County, Iowa, brought his anti-pipeline sign to a Vivek Ramaswamy event in Dennison, eliciting a promise from the Republican entrepreneur to oppose the projects.“I’m fighting this to the end,” vowed Dan Wahl, who grows corn, soybeans and alfalfa on 160 acres near Spirit Lake, Iowa, and recently chased Summit surveyors off his land.The left-right alliance is giving voice to Iowa landowners concerned about the prospect that their land could be seized by eminent domain for the pipelines. Walker Pickering for The New York TimesSupporters — including agribusiness conglomerates and oil and gas tycoons — see the projects as a way to persuade liberal states like California it is possible to both continue ethanol production and fight global warming. If it works, so-called carbon capture and sequestration, the practice of removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, could be expanded to oil and gas, extending the life of the fossil fuel economy.Dean Ferguson, president of the Canada-based Wolf Carbon Solutions’s American subsidiary, said in a statement that he was hopeful that the pipeline planned from Iowa to Illinois would be built through voluntary easements.“Our approach is to build lasting relationships with landowners, so we can work together for years to come,” he said.In a statement, Summit Carbon Solutions said 75 percent of Iowa landowners along the project route had signed voluntary easements “and more are signing every day.”To opponents, the pipelines are dangerous, taxpayer-subsidized boondoggles that will destroy farmland and do nothing to curb global warming. A carbon dioxide pipeline ruptured in tiny Satartia, Miss., in 2020, sending 40 people to the hospital, forcing the evacuation of more than 300 others and releasing more than 31,000 barrels of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.“Climate change money should be spent on things that are proven to actually work,” said Jessica Mazour, the conservation program coordinator of the Sierra Club in Iowa, who is helping to unite environmental activists with conservative farmers who doubt climate change is real.The unusual alliance can be strained. Sherri Webb, 73, who owns 40 acres of farmland in Shelby County, Iowa, said she had her doubts about climate change: “I don’t believe it’s as bad as some people are thinking.” If anything, she added, she worries more about taking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and away from her crops.But it was the threat of eminent domain that got her involved in the fight against the Summit pipeline. Summit Carbon Solutions says the pipeline on her land would be buried four feet deep, covered with top soil and reseeded. But her climate-friendly, no-till farm has been in her family for 123 years and hasn’t had the soil turned in decades. The pipeline digging, she said, will bring heavy diesel-powered equipment onto her property, and may cause erosion and crop loss for years. .Sherri Webb, who owns 40 acres of farmland in Shelby County, Iowa, says it was worries about losing land to eminent domain that got her involved in the fight against the pipeline. Walker Pickering for The New York TimesMs. Schmidt is fine with climate skepticism. “A key tenet for change,” she said, “is to meet people where they’re at.”Mr. King was first ousted from his committee assignments, then defeated in a primary challenge, after a series of racist comments culminated in an interview with The New York Times in which he asked, “White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization — how did that language become offensive?”But Ms. Schmidt said that Mr. King, after 18 years in Congress, remained influential in conservative western Iowa.“I certainly never thought we’d be in a position to have a meeting where you have incredibly liberal socialists teaming with very right-wing QAnon believers,” she continued. “People have to open their minds a little bit, and sometimes they have to shut their mouths.”How Republican presidential candidates respond is, at this point, anyone’s guess. Despite Mr. Trump’s more recent comments, when he was president, his administration said it had no plan to stop the pipelines. In fact, a tax credit created in 2008 to incentivize carbon capture programs like Summit, Navigator and Wolf was expanded by a budget law in 2018 that Mr. Trump signed, and expanded again by a tax bill signed by Mr. Trump in 2020. The credit was expanded yet again by President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act.Mr. Rastetter has donated around $10,000 to Mr. Trump’s campaigns since 2016, along with the hundreds of thousands he has donated to national and state Republican interests over the past 15 years.Officials at Navigator declined to comment.Critics say Mr. Trump has every reason to oppose the pipeline now. He has called climate change a “hoax” devised by China, so the pipelines are billed as a solution to a problem he does not recognize. Even better, he could use his stated opposition to continue a feud with Ms. Reynolds, whom he has blasted for refusing to endorse him, said Jane Kleeb, a Nebraska Democrat and anti-pipeline activist who has been pressing Mr. Trump to get involved.“There’s no downside for him,” she said.When Mr. Ramaswamy, who has called climate activism a cult, was asked about the issue last month in Davenport, Iowa, he dismissed the pipelines as a solution in search of a problem.But in an interview this week, Mr. Ramaswamy did not blame economic and political interests in Iowa. They are merely responding to incentives set by the federal government, large states like California, and even climate-conscious European nations, he said.“The debate in Iowa is just collateral damage,” he said.Other candidates might have a tougher time threading that needle. The companies backing the pipelines frame them as a salvation for ethanol, which Iowa corn farmers depend on, in a world increasingly hostile to internal combustion engines. One candidate, Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota, does not have the luxury of silence. He has already championed the Summit pipeline, which would end in his state, telling The Bismarck Tribune in May that two carbon dioxide pipelines have operated safely in the state for years.“And then now it’s like these are the most dangerous things in the world,” he scoffed. More

More from our inbox:How No Labels Can Help Fix U.S. PoliticsRadioactive Fallout From the Trinity TestThe Damage Caused by Climate Deniers Jamie WolfeTo the Editor:Re “The Number of L.G.B.T.Q. People Is Rising. So?,” by Jane Coaston (Opinion, July 24):Ms. Coaston’s report reveals both a fearsome and an exciting new world for the L.G.B.T. community. A world where we are seen and, mostly, accepted. This world could not be more different than most older gay Americans’ experience growing up.I recall the very day and hour, at age 6, that I knew I was gay, although I wouldn’t know what that meant for many years. On my first day of kindergarten, at recess, as I was running around the schoolyard with all the other students in my class, I stopped suddenly and said: “Wow! Boys are cool!”Seeing another gay person, or hearing any speck of validation for gay people, would seemingly never come to me in my more-conservative-than-Mississippi community in South Jersey.But we are a community now with many, many straight allies, and no matter what the Marjorie Taylor Greenes of the world have to say about it, we are never going back to the closet darkness.I will never again be as rare as a five-legged unicorn.We’ve come a long way, baby!Ted GallagherNew YorkTo the Editor:Re “They Checked Out Books to ‘Hide the Pride.’ It Did the Opposite” (news article, July 23):This article, about an anti-L.G.B.T.Q. protest at a San Diego library that backfired, once again emphasizes the difference between “born” and “made.” Reading about the gay “lifestyle” does not make one gay any more than reading about cowboys makes one a cowboy.Little boys as young as 4 know that they are different from their friends. As they grow older, they try to figure out why, and it finally dawns on them as they struggle to find the answer.Once they realize that girls don’t hold the same fascination for them that they do for their buddies, they must then work out what they do with this knowledge. For many it takes a lifetime.Many Americans are finally moving from condemnation to acceptance.Elizabeth KeranenBakersfield, Calif.How No Labels Can Help Fix U.S. Politics Jacquelyn Martin/Associated PressTo the Editor:Re “Joe Manchin Is Dreaming,” by Jamelle Bouie (column, nytimes.com, July 25):I am a longtime supporter of the No Labels mission. The point of No Labels is to support members of Congress who would have the audacity to sit with members of the opposing party and attempt to find common ground, to craft nuanced legislation that can pass, and to find acceptable solutions to the issues that the parties would rather campaign on than solve.The parties have been dominated in recent years by their more extreme members, with the concept of bipartisanship and compromise seen as an evil that must be banished. The Problem Solvers Caucus in the House is an outgrowth of No Labels’ efforts. It is composed of staunch Democrats and Republicans who hold their ideology precious, but realize that in a pluralistic world, a common-sense compromise to move the ball even slightly down the field is better than the vitriolic stagnation we have witnessed over the past decades.No one is pretending that partisanship is not a part of the human condition. Joe Manchin and the rest of us who support No Labels merely see a better way forward. And for that we get pilloried.Bruce GorenLos AngelesTo the Editor:Re “There’s No Escaping Trump,” by Gail Collins and Bret Stephens (The Conversation, July 25):I agree with Ms. Collins about No Labels running a presidential candidate, as any step taken that risks putting Donald Trump back in power is an existential risk for our democracy.However, as a longtime Democrat, I also agree with Mr. Stephens and feel as if I don’t have a political home anymore.I would love to see a socially liberal, economically moderate candidate, and nobody fits that bill these days.I think No Labels needs to do more at the grass-roots level. Put up candidates for county commissioner, school boards, state legislatures, etc., and build long-term support for congressional or presidential candidates.If No Labels plays spoiler in these races, the impacts will not be as catastrophic as electing Donald Trump.John ButlerBroomfield, Colo.Radioactive Fallout From the Trinity Test U.S. Department of DefenseTo the Editor:“Analysis Finds Fallout Spread Much Farther Than Experts Thought” (news article, July 22), about fallout from the test of the first atomic bomb in New Mexico in 1945, is timely and very important. The article describes significant new findings about the extent and severity of the fallout but overlooks a few key issues.A 2019 article in The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists presents evidence of a dramatic increase in infant mortality in areas of New Mexico in the months after the Trinity test, although infant mortality in the state had otherwise declined steadily from 1940 to 1960.My own research documents scores of investigations into the Trinity fallout (perhaps 40 studies) over the decades by various U.S. agencies and groups. Many were classified as secret and others were simply quietly buried and received little acknowledgment, but they document scientists’ concerns about residual radioactivity from the Trinity test in the soil, plants and trees in New Mexico.Let us hope that this renewed publicity will help refocus attention on the long overlooked Trinity downwinders.Janet Farrell BrodiePacific Palisades, Calif.The writer is emerita professor of history at Claremont Graduate University and the author of “The First Atomic Bomb: The Trinity Site in New Mexico.”The Damage Caused by Climate Deniers Damon Winter/The New York TimesTo the Editor:As we all witness the massive destruction to our planet and the hundreds of billions of dollars of damage done each year as a result of climate change, and the regularity of “once in a hundred years” climate disasters, one cannot help but point the finger at those in power who either deny the truth of climate change science, such as Ted Cruz and many others, or who argue that the costs to our economy of taking necessary measures outweigh the benefits (most of the rest of the Republican Party).As to the first group, there are no words other than tell them to look at the science. As to the second group, why don’t you give some thought to the hundreds of billions of dollars of damage that are resulting each year from climate change? That, too, is a “cost” to our economy that should be part of your equation of “costs” and “benefits.”These groups are proving themselves to be little more than lap dogs for right-wing interests, political ideologues who peddle dogma and propaganda over truth, and members of a climate-denying cult who seek to prove their allegiance to the cult by promoting their grotesquely misplaced ideas.These groups are doing more damage to our country, to the world, to citizens of all states (red and blue), races and economic groups than many of the common criminals who spend decades in prison for committing crimes that cause far less damage.David S. ElkindGreenwich, Conn. More