Elections

The Florida governor had an impressive quarter, but the fund-raising numbers also raised questions about his ability to keep pace over the course of the Republican primary.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida raised $20 million in the first six weeks of his presidential run, his campaign said Thursday, a substantial sum that solidifies his place as the leading rival to former President Donald J. Trump.While the number falls short of the $35 million that Mr. Trump’s campaign said the former president raised in the three months ending June 30, Mr. DeSantis had only half the time to bring in campaign funds after officially entering the race in mid-May.In addition to the $20 million the DeSantis campaign said it had raised, a super PAC backing Mr. DeSantis, Never Back Down, said Thursday that it had collected $130 million since March. But nearly two-thirds of that sum was transferred to the group from a state committee that had supported Mr. DeSantis’s re-election bid last year.The totals supplied by the campaigns — more detailed numbers don’t have to be filed with the Federal Election Commission until July 15 — provide the first glimpse into the fund-raising battle between the leading candidates for the Republican presidential nomination, a race that could set records for spending.The $20 million raised by Mr. DeSantis includes $8.2 million that his campaign said it had taken in on its first full day of fund-raising in late May, suggesting that the pace of its fund-raising tapered off significantly thereafter.Excluding the transfer from Mr. DeSantis’s state committee, the latest numbers also show that Never Back Down raised more money in its first three weeks than it did over roughly the last three months.The fund-raising slowdown comes after a bumpy campaign rollout that has brought about questions from donors and supporters about its direction.But Kristin Davison, chief operating officer of Never Back Down, said that the money raised “shows an unparalleled, unprecedented and massively successful fund-raising operation no other candidate in this race has.”Mr. Trump has raised most of his campaign’s cash through his leadership PAC, Save America. In recent months, The New York Times reported, Mr. Trump has diverted a greater portion of donations he receives to the PAC, which he has used to pay his personal legal fees.Mr. Trump’s campaign said on Wednesday that it had raised a total of $35 million between April and June — nearly double what the committee had raised in the first quarter of the year, reflecting hefty fund-raising bumps in the wake of his two indictments, in New York City and Florida.Shane Goldmacher More

I’ve shared this fact with readers before: I live in Tennessee outside Nashville, a very deep-red part of America. According to a New York Times tool that calculates the political composition of a community, only 15 percent of my neighbors are Democrats. I’ve been living here in the heart of MAGA country since Donald Trump came down the escalator. This is the world of my friends, my neighbors and many members of my family. That is perhaps why, when I’m asked what things are like now, eight years into the Trump era, I have a ready answer: Everything is normal until, suddenly, it’s not. And unless we can understand what’s normal and what’s not, we can’t truly understand why Trumpism endures.It’s hard to encapsulate a culture in 22 seconds, but this July 4 video tweet from Representative Andy Ogles accomplishes the nearly impossible. For those who don’t want to click through, the tweet features Ogles, a cheerful freshman Republican from Tennessee, wishing his followers a happy Fourth of July. The text of the greeting is remarkable only if you don’t live in MAGA-land:Hey guys, Congressman Andy Ogles here, wishing you a happy and blessed Fourth of July. Hey, remember our Founding Fathers. It’s we the people that are in charge of this country, not a leftist minority. Look, the left is trying to destroy our country and our family, and they’re coming after you. Have a blessed Fourth of July. Be safe. Have fun. God bless America.Can something be cheerful and dark at the same time? Can a holiday message be both normal and so very strange? If so, then Ogles pulled it off. This is a man smiling in a field as a dog sniffs happily behind him. The left may be “coming after you,” as he warns, but the vibe isn’t catastrophic or even worried, rather a kind of friendly, generic patriotism. They’re coming for your family! Have a great day!It’s not just Ogles. It’s no coincidence that one of the most enduring cultural symbols of Trump’s 2020 campaign was the boat parade. To form battle lines behind Trump, the one man they believe can save America from total destruction, thousands of supporters in several states got in their MasterCrafts and had giant open-air water parties.Or take the Trump rally, the signature event of this political era. If you follow the rallies via Twitter or mainstream newscasts, you see the anger, but you miss the fun. When I was writing for The Dispatch, one of the best pieces we published was a report by Andrew Egger in 2020 about the “Front Row Joes,” the Trump superfans who follow Trump from rally to rally the way some people used to follow the Grateful Dead. Egger described the Trump rally perfectly: “For enthusiasts, Trump rallies aren’t just a way to see a favorite politician up close. They are major life events: festive opportunities to get together with like-minded folks and just go crazy about America and all the winning the Trump administration’s doing.”Or go to a Southeastern Conference football game. The “Let’s Go Brandon” (or sometimes, just “[expletive] Joe Biden”) chant that arises from the student section isn’t delivered with clenched fists and furious anger, but rather through smiles and laughs. The frat bros are having a great time. The consistent message from Trumpland of all ages is something like this: “They’re the worst, and we’re awesome. Let’s party, and let’s fight.”Why do none of your arguments against Trump penetrate this mind-set? The Trumpists have an easy answer: You’re horrible, and no one should listen to horrible people. Why were Trumpists so vulnerable to insane stolen-election theories? Because they know that you’re horrible and that horrible people are capable of anything, including stealing an election.At the same time, their own joy and camaraderie insulate them against external critiques that focus on their anger and cruelty. Such charges ring hollow to Trump supporters, who can see firsthand the internal friendliness and good cheer that they experience when they get together with one another. They don’t feel angry — at least not most of the time. They are good, likable people who’ve just been provoked by a distant and alien “left” that many of them have never meaningfully encountered firsthand.Indeed, while countless gallons of ink have been spilled analyzing the MAGA movement’s rage, far too little has been spilled discussing its joy.Once you understand both dynamics, however, so much about the present moment makes clearer sense, including the dynamics of the Republican primary. Ron DeSantis, for example, channels all the rage of Trumpism and none of the joy. With relentless, grim determination he fights the left with every tool of government at his disposal. But can he lead stadiums full of people in an awkward dance to “Y.M.C.A.” by the Village People? Will he be the subject of countless over-the-top memes and posters celebrating him as some kind of godlike, muscular superhero?Trump’s opponents miss the joy because they experience only the rage. I’m a member of a multiethnic church in Nashville. It’s a refuge from the MAGA Christianity that’s all too present where I live, just south of the city, in Franklin. This past Sunday, Walter Simmons, a Franklin-based Black pastor who founded the Franklin Justice and Equity Coalition, spoke to our church, and he referred to a common experience for those who dissent publicly in MAGA America. “If you ain’t ready for death threats, don’t live in Franklin,” he said.He was referring to the experience of racial justice activists in deep-red spaces. They feel the rage of the MAGA mob. If you’re deemed to be one of those people who is trying to “destroy our country and our family,” then you don’t see joy, only fury.Trump’s fans, by contrast, don’t understand the effects of that fury because they mainly experience the joy. For them, the MAGA community is kind and welcoming. For them, supporting Trump is fun. Moreover, the MAGA movement is heavily clustered in the South, and Southerners see themselves as the nicest people in America. It feels false to them to be called “mean” or “cruel.” Cruel? No chance. In their minds, they’re the same people they’ve always been — it’s just that they finally understand how bad you are. And by “you,” again, they often mean the caricatures of people they’ve never met.In fact, they often don’t even know about the excesses of the Trump movement. Many of them will never know that their progressive neighbors have faced threats and intimidation. And even when they do see the movement at its worst, they can’t quite believe it. So Jan. 6 was a false flag. Or it was a “fedsurrection.” It couldn’t have really been a violent attempt to overthrow the elected government, because they know these people, or people like them, and they’re mostly good folks. It had to be a mistake, or an exaggeration, or a trick or a few bad apples. The real crime was the stolen election.It’s the combination of anger and joy that makes the MAGA enthusiasm so hard to break but also limits its breadth. If you’re part of the movement’s ever-widening circle of enemies, Trump holds no appeal for you. You experience his movement as an attack on your life, your choices, your home and even your identity. If you’re part of the core MAGA community, however, not even the ruthlessly efficient Ron DeSantis can come close to replicating the true Trump experience. Again, the boat parade is a perfect example. It’s one part Battle for the Future of Civilization and one part booze cruise.The battle and the booze cruise both give MAGA devotees a sense of belonging. They see a country that’s changing around them and they are uncertain about their place in it. But they know they have a place at a Trump rally, surrounded by others — overwhelmingly white, many evangelical — who feel the same way they do.Evangelicals are a particularly illustrative case. About half of self-identified evangelicals now attend church monthly or less often. They have religious zeal, but they lack religious community. So they find their band of brothers and sisters in the Trump movement. Even among actual churchgoing evangelicals, political alignment is often so important that it’s hard to feel a true sense of belonging unless you’re ideologically united with the people in the pews around you.During the Trump years, I’ve received countless email messages from distraught readers that echo a similar theme: My father (or mother or uncle or cousin) is lost to MAGA. They can seem normal, but they’re not, at least not any longer. It’s hard for me to know what to say in response, but one thing is clear: You can’t replace something with nothing. And until we fully understand what that “something” is — and that it includes not only passionate anger but also very real joy and a deep sense of belonging — then our efforts to persuade are doomed to fail. More

Mr. Wood wrote that the Georgia State Bar had “agreed to drop the disciplinary cases” against him if he retired from the profession.L. Lin Wood, one of the key lawyers who sought to overturn former President Donald J. Trump’s 2020 election loss and faced potential disciplinary action in Georgia as a result, opted to give up his law license in the state.Mr. Wood officially requested that the State Bar of Georgia transfer his attorney status to “retired” on July 4, according to a letter he posted on the messaging platform Telegram. The request was approved, and two pending disciplinary charges against him were dropped, according to a letter from Georgia’s Office of the General Counsel that Mr. Wood also posted to Telegram.Mr. Wood, a former libel lawyer who became an ardent supporter of Mr. Trump, has faced his own series of legal troubles since he joined Mr. Trump’s crusade to use the court system to overturn the 2020 results, echoing falsehoods that there was widespread voter fraud.The Georgia State Bar wrote in documents filed with the state’s Supreme Court that Mr. Wood’s retirement had “achieved the goals of disciplinary action, including protecting the public and the integrity of the judicial system and the legal profession.”Mr. Wood wrote on Telegram that the bar had “agreed to drop the disciplinary cases” if he retired from the profession. In an interview with The Times, he said that he had wanted to retire sooner, but that legal proceedings from cases filed around the 2020 election prevented him from doing so.“I wish I had been able to do it two years ago,” he said. “I was tired of practicing law. I’d had enough.”The letters Mr. Wood posted on Telegram specified that his request was “unqualified, irrevocable and permanent” and that Mr. Wood could not practice law in any state. He is, however, allowed to represent himself in future cases so long as he does not present himself as a lawyer.Mr. Wood had been a licensed attorney in Georgia since 1977. His status is now listed as “retired” on the State Bar website, with no public discipline on record.Mr. Wood brought a federal lawsuit seeking to halt Georgia’s certification of the election in November 2020, which was blocked by a federal judge that year. His name subsequently appeared in lawsuits challenging election results in various other states.The State Bar opened an investigation into Mr. Wood for disciplinary action in 2021 and held a disciplinary trial earlier this year. Mr. Wood sued the association after it sought to obtain a mental health exam as part of its investigation, but he lost in a federal appeals court.He was one of several attorneys who faced $175,000 in sanctions and a recommendation for possible suspension or disbarment in Michigan for filing a lawsuit that a judge determined in 2021 “threatened to undermine the results of a legitimately conducted national election.”Mr. Wood claimed that he was not involved in that lawsuit but that another lawyer had added his name to documents filed in that case and several others.Last year, Mr. Wood was asked to testify in the Fulton County district attorney’s investigation into Mr. Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia. There have been signals that charges related to that inquiry could be issued in August. More

If you missed the previous newsletter, you can read it here.The version of most politicians that we need to worry about is the one that they don’t want us to see. That’s why campaign reporters dog them; they’re waiting for the veil to slip.But the version of Ron DeSantis that we need to worry about is the one that he proudly shows us. He embraces his meanness. He luxuriates in his darkness. Let other politicians peddle the pablum of inspiration. He prefers to ooze the toxin of contempt.That’s one of the morals of a provocative anti-gay, anti-trans video that the DeSantis campaign shared late last week. The campaign’s promotion of it prompted accusations of homophobia even from some Republicans, and justly so: In an attempt to smear Donald Trump, the video doesn’t just accuse him of coddling L.G.B.T.Q. Americans. It revels in DeSantis’s vilification of them.Initially distributed by a Twitter account called Proud Elephant, it presents a bizarre montage that’s superficially an anti-woke battle cry, pitting a truculent DeSantis against a scourge of degenerates. But while his viciousness comes through precisely as planned, so does something unintended: an undercurrent of homoerotic kink. Up pops a shirtless hunk with a ripped chest. Here’s a glowering Brad Pitt in his “Troy” drag. Are honchos with a Homer fetish some new thing? I need to get out more.But the perversely purposed beefcake is less striking than the way in which the video exultantly spotlights DeSantis’s biggest critics and celebrates their harshest criticism, treating the words with which they’ve described him and his initiatives as the best measures of his mettle. “Most extreme” becomes a trophy, “horrifying” a crown and “evil” a sash.The Florida governor is running one freaky and unsettling presidential campaign. He’s more focused on putting certain Americans in their places than on lifting others to new heights. He’s defined by the scores he pledges to settle instead of the victories he promises to achieve. He casts himself as someone to fear rather than revere. That video actually flashes an image of Christian Bale in “American Psycho” as a flattering DeSantis analogue.Vote DeSantis: He’s a monster, but he’s your monster.How does someone with that pitch possibly bring together and lead an entire diverse country, if he gets that chance, and what does it say about the United States today that he has come this far? Have we put tolerance, grand ideals and optimism so fully to rest? I remember “morning in America.” I guess it’s now midnight.To read deeply and widely about DeSantis is to learn that his cruel politics match a cold personality. He seems to trust almost no one other than his wife, who’s his twin in unalloyed ambition. He’s a collector of slights. He gets an A+ in grudge holding and an F in humility, and he’s taking etiquette pass/fail. He has resting disdain face.When I find pictures of him laughing, his expression is a bad stage actor’s — it’s a labored and spurious guffaw — as if a campaign aide intent on warming him up had just pulled hard on some string embedded in DeSantis’s back. Only his rants have a genuine air. He looked perfectly comfortable on Fox News recently saying that anyone who cut through a border wall between Mexico and the United States to traffic fentanyl would “end up stone cold dead.” He’s out to out-Trump Trump, who reportedly wondered aloud about a water-filled border trench stocked with snakes and alligators. I’m counting the minutes until DeSantis’s proposal for a moat stocked with great white sharks.Raising questions about illegal immigration and border security is necessary and just. But what’s served by doing so with such bloodthirstiness?Establishing guidelines for the age at which it’s appropriate for children in public schools to discuss sexual orientation and gender identity is legitimate. But what’s gained by inviting the word “groomers” into the conversation and casting yourself as a pulchritudinous gladiator who will teach them a pitiless lesson?DeSantis mistakes spite for spiritedness, bullying for strength. I hope voters don’t do likewise.Forward this newsletter to friends …… and they can sign up for themselves here. It’s published every Thursday.For the Love of SentencesErin Schaff/The New York TimesThe Supremes sure made lots of news lately, so let’s start with them. In Slate, Dahlia Lithwick parsed the generosity from billionaires that Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas have so richly enjoyed: “A #protip that will no doubt make those justices who have been lured away to elaborate bear hunts and deer hunts and rabbit hunts and salmon hunts by wealthy oligarchs feel a bit sad: If your close personal friends who only just met you after you came onto the courts are memorializing your time together for posterity, there’s a decent chance you are, in fact, the thing being hunted.” (Thanks to Robert E. Gordon of Sarasota, Fla., for nominating this.)In The Washington Post, Alexandra Petri mined that material by mimicking the famous opening line of “Pride and Prejudice” by Jane Austen: “It is a truth universally acknowledged that an American billionaire, in possession of sufficient fortune, must be in want of a Supreme Court justice.” (Nicole Seligman, Sag Harbor, N.Y.)And in The Times, Tyler Austin Harper contextualized the battle over affirmative action: “Civil rights leaders did not endure the dogs and the cold baptism of the fire hoses in the hopes that one day their children’s children could become Ivy-minted venture capitalists and management consultants.” (Adam Fix, Minneapolis)Also in The Times, Farhad Manjoo discussed the futility of debating Robert Kennedy Jr.: “He starts with a few sprinkles of truth — Ohio’s vote was run by a partisan official, some vaccines have serious side effects — and then swirls them up with enough exaggerations, omissions and leaps of logic to create a veritable McFlurry of doubt.” (James Brockardt, Pennington, N.J.)Kim Severson noted how buffets struggled to emerge from the pandemic: “A model of eating based on shared serving spoons and food seasoned with the breath of strangers seemed like a goner.” (Elise Magers, Chicago)Alex Halberstadt introduced readers to the Oregon winemaker Maggie Harrison: “Warm, funny and observant in person, she cultivates a persona of a curmudgeon, the way an octopus might disguise itself as a rock to throw off sand sharks.” (Michael T. Reagan, Ottawa, Ill.) Also, of a tasting room of Harrison’s with an unappealing entrance: “The scene was so hushed and civilized-looking, after the dinginess of the exterior, that it was like entering a chapel through the back of an airport Cinnabon.” (Robert Mugford, Scottsdale, Ariz., and Tricia Chatary, Middlebury, Vt., among others)And Ligaya Mishan described a magical dessert from her Hawaiian childhood made by a frozen-treat wizard named Kon Ping Young: “He’d sneak in one of the whole plums, which he’d cover with more slush. I’d find it buried deep, a shriveled prize, so tangy that when I sucked on it, the world condensed to that one flavor, a tiny neutron star of sweet-sour-salt.” (Cindy Kissin, New Haven, Conn.)In The Washington Post, T.A. Frank traced the arc of Mike Pence: “When he was a radio host, Pence liked to call himself ‘Rush Limbaugh on decaf,’ a mild concoction even then, to say nothing of an era when even Limbaugh on meth would be too laid back for some of today’s partisans.” John Hitzeroth, Wilmington, Ohio, and Doug Sterner, Fort Lauderdale, Fla.)In The Ringer, Roger Sherman imagined how hard it was for N.B.A. teams to decide which of the 6-foot-6, identical Thompsons, Amen and Ausar, to draft first: “Normally, you can identify the evil twin by looking for the one with the handlebar mustache, but neither had one, making this a tough assignment for scouts.” (Marshall Sikowitz, Bassano del Grappa, Italy)And in The Boston Globe, Odie Henderson was rattled by moments in “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” when a digitally de-aged Harrison Ford didn’t look quite right: “For the love of Ponce de León, stop using this technology until it’s perfected, Hollywood!” (Pat Isgro, Greenwich, N.Y.)To nominate favorite bits of recent writing from The Times or other publications to be mentioned in “For the Love of Sentences,” please email me here and include your name and place of residence.What I’m Watching, Reading and Listening ToSarah Lancashire in “Happy Valley.”James Stack/Lookout Point/AMCI wish I could say that I loved the third (and, apparently, final) season of the British crime drama “Happy Valley” as much as I loved the first one nine years ago, but this great series did what many great series do: It fell a bit too much in love with its main characters and the superb actors who played them. I refer to Sarah Lancashire as a grief-haunted police sergeant and James Norton as the perversely charismatic thug who had a heavy hand in her grief. The latest season, whose American airing wrapped up a little more than a week ago, seems intent on giving them tricky or intensely emotional scenes in which to show their acting chops, and they deliver and then some. But the trade-off is a sometimes sluggish pace and lugubrious air. Regardless, if you never found your way to “Happy Valley,” correct that. The whole of it is undeniably worth watching. (It’s streaming on AMC+ and Acorn TV; you can also purchase episodes or seasons, as I did, through Apple TV+. There’s more information here.)The Gay Pride month of June this year seemed to yield a particular bounty of reflections on what it means to be gay or queer, possibly because of a backlash in the United States right now against L.G.B.T.Q. people. The essay that most intrigued and delighted me appeared here in Times Opinion. It was Richard Morgan’s “As a Gay Man, I’ll Never Be Normal,” whose standout passages could have filled the entire For the Love of Sentences section this week. (Joan Vohl Hamilton, South Hadley, Mass., and Sarah Patrick, Carbondale, Ill., among others, nominated sentences from the essay.)Another recent article in The Times that I especially loved was Elisabeth Egan’s 25-years-later look at the phenomenon — and impact — of “Bridget Jones’s Diary.” It, too, is a gold mine of spirited prose, along with acute observations.Sally Jenkins of The Washington Post is a treasure (and appears frequently in For the Love of Sentences), and this recent article of hers about the friendship of the former tennis rivals Martina Navratilova and Chris Evert is a gem, also with sterling sentences galore about two women who “exemplify, perhaps more than any champions in the annals of their sport, the deep internal mutual grace called sportsmanship.” (Rebecca Howey, Detroit, and Tom Fortner, Point Clear, Ala., among others)I’ve retired the occasional newsletter feature that delved into great songs and song lyrics but will mention popular music randomly and occasionally in this space. A Pandora station of mine just introduced me to the young singer-songwriter Ilsey and “No California,” a relatively new single of hers. She has an album due in October, according to this article in Variety, which also embeds the song, so you can listen. Despite its love-lost subject matter, it’s buoyant, summery and very, very catchy.On a Personal Note (Odd Neighborhood Names)Errol Flynn in the 1938 film “The Adventures of Robin Hood.”Everett CollectionYou’ve been excellent about sending me examples of strangely or strikingly named streets, neighborhoods and towns, a subject that I first wrote about in January and revisited in this newsletter, this one and this one. Today’s Odd Neighborhood Names installment will be the last — we’ll find other fun topics to commune over — and I apologize to the many of you who have submitted unused material. Thanks to your generosity. I’ve had more options than space for them.Almost all have fallen into one of three categories. I think of the first as “let’s pretend we’re somewhere we’re not.” Jane Houssiere of Boulder, Colo., wrote: “I live on the interface where the Rocky Mountains meet the semiarid high plains. We are nowhere near any ocean.” But, she added, “developers must have been homesick for the coast.” Behold, in this mountainous interior, Barnacle Street, Starboard Drive, Driftwood Place, Sandpiper Circle, Beachcomber Court, Outrigger Court, Jib Court and more. It’s a high tide of nautical nomenclature.The second category is the motif-a-palooza, whereby the namers of streets work a theme as aggressively as my Regan does her favorite bones. Rob Boas of Atlanta alerted me to that city’s “Sherwood Forest” neighborhood, where the streets include Robin Hood Road, Friar Tuck Road, Lady Marian Lane, Nottingham Way and Little John Trail.John FX Keane of New Providence, N.J., noted that his childhood home of Binghamton, N.Y., has byways that pay homage to classical composers: Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Mozart, Schubert, Wagner and more.The motifs can be … unexpected. Mary Beth Norton noted that Ithaca, N.Y., has a grouping of streets seemingly named for cigarette and cigar brands: Winston Court, Salem Drive, Tareyton Drive and Muriel Street. Lest that seem eccentric, Barbara Lerner wrote that in the Gibson section of Valley Stream, N.Y., where she used to live, there is a profusion of roads with cigarette- or liquor-related appellations: Marlboro, Munro (an English gin), Carstairs (a blended whiskey), Gordon (gin), Dubonnet (vermouth). The Gibson, of course, is the martini’s cousin, garnished with a pickled onion rather than an olive.The third category: utter failures of imagination. Into this group falls what was probably your most nominated street name, Toronto’s soul-crushingly prosaic, spectacularly redundant Avenue Road. But Sheila Gerstenzang of Las Vegas wrote in with another fine example: Overthere Lane in North Las Vegas.Beyond those categories are street, neighborhood and town names that just don’t seem like such names at all. In Ipswich, Mass., there’s Labor in Vain Road, as a former Ipswich resident, Douglas Atkins, and a current one, Tamsin Venn, pointed out.And the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador is known for its amusing place names, including Dildo, Witless Bay, Blow Me Down, Tickle Harbour, Tickle Cove, Come by Chance and Heart’s Content. Thanks to Patricia Maher of Vancouver, B.C., for drawing attention to those. More

Guatemala’s democracy is under assault. Over the past four years, a group of powerful elites tied to organized crime, known as the “pact of the corrupt,” has been steadily dismantling Guatemala’s democratic guardrails by co-opting judicial institutions and arresting and exiling prosecutors, judges, journalists and pro-democracy activists. Now, in their next step to consolidate power, they are trying to manipulate the national elections that are underway.In anticipation of the 2023 elections, President Alejandro Giammattei packed the courts and the electoral tribunal with loyalists. The ruling regime and its allies then enlisted these entities to distort the Constitution and tamper with election procedures to tilt the political playing field in their favor. The judicial sector delivered — overruling a constitutional ban to permit the daughter of a former dictator to run, certifying the candidacies of regime allies charged and convicted of crimes and disqualifying rivals based on manufactured charges of malfeasance.That’s why not even the most seasoned observers of Guatemalan politics could have predicted that Bernardo Arévalo, a moderate reformist championing an anti-corruption platform and polling at just 3 percent before the vote, would be one of the two top finishers in the June 25 general elections, securing 12 percent of the vote and a spot in the runoff next month. His rival, Sandra Torres of the National Unity of Hope party, who garnered nearly 16 percent of the vote, is a former first lady and three-time presidential contender and is aligned with the “pact of the corrupt.” In 2019, she was indicted on a charge of illicit campaign financing, and her party has been linked to organized crime.On July 1, the Constitutional Court ordered electoral authorities’ ballots from the first-round presidential election to be reviewed after Ms. Torres’s party and allies challenged the results — even though other candidates have already conceded and international and domestic observer missions deemed the elections clean. Many fear the ruling could pave the way for additional spurious challenges that could eventually overturn the results, delay the second round or exclude Mr. Arévalo from competing altogether. The cries of fraud echo those in the United States after President Biden’s 2020 victory, although, with the entire judicial system on their side, Guatemala’s election deniers stand a better chance of pulling it off.The situation has fueled political uncertainty, but Guatemalans have shown that they aren’t willing to let their democracy die without a fight. Though the country’s autocrats have now deployed the full force of the state to steal the elections, they are not the only people mobilizing. Ordinary citizens are raising their voices in defense of their sacred right to vote. If they triumph, they will have shown that it is possible to resist rising authoritarianism. This could be Guatemalans’ moment — and one that reverberates in other parts of the world where democracy is under threat.Mr. Arévalo, a former diplomat, sociologist and current representative in the national legislature, emerged from the middle of the crowded presidential field. He beat the next closest challenger, Mr. Giammattei’s Vamos party candidate, by over 200,000 votes. Mr. Arévalo is a member of the centrist Movimiento Semilla, or “seed movement,” party, which skews young and is made up largely of university students, professors, engineers and small-business owners.Bernardo Arévalo of the Semilla party celebrating the election results with supporters in Guatemala City on June 26.Moises Castillo/Associated PressSandra Torres of the National Unity of Hope party in Guatemala City on June 25.Luis Acosta/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThough relatively unknown, he is also the son of the beloved former president Juan José Arévalo, who in the 1940s initiated Guatemala’s decade of reformist government known as the Democratic Spring. A 1954 C.I.A.-backed coup abruptly ended that experiment and ushered in four decades of war and repressive dictatorial rule.Given his father’s political legacy, Mr. Arévalo’s and Semilla’s surge of popularity at this moment, while surprising, is fitting. The party formed in the wake of corruption scandals that convulsed Guatemala in 2015. As a movement, it channeled popular discontent, seeking to build a broad consensus among those disillusioned with predatory politicians and desperate for a different political future. After transitioning to a political party in 2018, Semilla has remained true to its mission, aiming to combat impunity and strengthen democracy.Last month, it proved to be a welcome alternative for frustrated voters. Though the ruling party tried to sideline outsider candidates and preserve the political status quo, its anti-democratic maneuvering backfired. Many expected abstention rates to be higher than usual, but in the end 60 percent of Guatemalans turned out to vote. Nearly a quarter of those who voted cast a blank or voided ballot to register their anger at what they perceived as a rigged system. This, combined with those who chose to vote for the last reformist candidate standing, propelled Mr. Arévalo into the runoff round.Semilla’s success and the subsequent backlash have galvanized a citizen-led movement that is now working to ensure that the will of the people is heard. These citizens have started a social media campaign, posting the handwritten, precinct-level vote registries challenging claims of fraud. Volunteers are observing the court-mandated auditing of vote tallies. Indigenous organizations have vowed to stage peaceful, countrywide demonstrations if the courts attempts to manipulate the election. Even stalwart members of the historically conservative business community have endorsed the pro-democracy movement, urging respect for the electoral results and demanding that the runoff proceeds on Aug. 20 according to plan.Citizens protested in front of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal against the measure to suspend the results of the general election, in Guatemala City on Monday.Esteban Biba/EPA, via ShutterstockThe international community is rallying behind them. The European Union, the Organization of American States and even the United States, which has been reluctant to publicly clash with the Giammattei government, have affirmed the legitimacy of the results and denounced electoral interference. Fellow democrats in Central America are also rooting for Guatemala’s emergent civic movement, which could provide a blueprint for efforts to resist their own increasingly autocratic leaders.Guatemala faces profound political hurdles in the weeks ahead. Even if the court declares the results to be valid, Mr. Arévalo will have to consolidate a broad alliance before the runoff that can unite around a shared political project — no easy feat in a country long divided along ethnic, socioeconomic and ideological lines. But it has surmounted these obstacles before. The 2015 anti-corruption protests marshaled a diverse popular movement that toppled a sitting president and vice president. Though the eight years since then have brought steep autocratic regressions, the patience and persistence of opposition leaders laid the foundations for this new democratic moment.Even if the electoral timetable proceeds according to schedule and Mr. Arévalo is allowed to run, the disinformation campaign to vilify him and stoke fear will only intensify. And if he can pull off a second-round victory, his minority congressional delegation and the entrenched institutional power of the corrupt elite will hinder his efforts to govern effectively.But the messy work of democratic governance is for another day. For now, the political stakes could not be higher. If the election deniers succeed, Guatemala will have lost the battle for democracy. But if its defenders prevail, democratic backsliding will have been dealt a powerful blow in a country where not long ago, the autocratic momentum seemed irreversible.Anita Isaacs is a professor of political science at Haverford College. Rachel A. Schwartz is professor of international and area studies at the University of Oklahoma. She is the author of “Undermining the State From Within: The Institutional Legacies of Civil War in Central America.” Álvaro Montenegro is a Guatemalan journalist.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

A longtime vaccine skeptic, Mr. Kennedy is leaning heavily on misinformation as he mounts a long-shot 2024 campaign.He has promoted a conspiracy theory that coronavirus vaccines were developed to control people via microchips. He has endorsed the false notion that antidepressants are linked to school shootings. And he has pushed the decades-old theory that the C.I.A. killed his uncle, former President John F. Kennedy.Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an environmental lawyer, is a leading vaccine skeptic and purveyor of conspiracy theories who has leaned heavily on misinformation as he mounts his long-shot 2024 campaign for the Democratic nomination.But as voters express discontentment at a likely rematch between President Biden and former President Donald J. Trump, Mr. Kennedy has garnered as much as 20 percent of the vote in recent Democratic primary polling.Mr. Biden and the Democratic National Committee have not publicly acknowledged Mr. Kennedy’s candidacy and have declined to comment on his campaign. Nevertheless, the public scrutiny that accompanies a White House bid has highlighted other questionable beliefs and statements Mr. Kennedy has elevated over the years.Here are five of the many baseless claims Mr. Kennedy has peddled on the campaign trail and beyond.He has falsely linked vaccines to various medical conditions.Mr. Kennedy has promoted many false, specious or unproven claims that center on public health and the pharmaceutical industry — most notably, the scientifically discredited belief that childhood vaccines cause autism.That notion has been rejected by more than a dozen peer-reviewed scientific studies across multiple countries. The National Academy of Medicine reviewed eight vaccines for children and adults and found that with rare exceptions, the vaccines are very safe, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.Seen by many as the face of the vaccine resistance movement, Mr. Kennedy has asserted that he is “not anti-vaccine” and seeks to make vaccines more safe. But he has advertised misleading information about vaccine ingredients and circulated retracted studies linking vaccines to various medical conditions. At a rally in Washington last year, he compared the vaccination records some called “vaccine passports” to life in Germany during the Holocaust, a statement he later apologized for. And he falsely told Louisiana lawmakers in 2021 that the coronavirus vaccine was the “deadliest vaccine ever made.”Children’s Health Defense, an organization Mr. Kennedy originally founded as the World Mercury Project, has frequently campaigned against vaccines. Facebook and Instagram removed the group’s accounts last year for espousing vaccine misinformation, and Mr. Kennedy has often lamented the perils of “censorship” in campaign speeches since.Mr. Kennedy, who many see as a prominent representative for the vaccine resistance movement, attended the New York Rally for Vaccine Injury and Vaccine Rights in Albany in 2019.Desiree Rios for The New York TimesHe has made baseless claims about a connection between gender dysphoria and chemical exposure.In an interview last month with Jordan Peterson, a conservative Canadian psychologist and public speaker, Mr. Kennedy falsely linked chemicals present in water sources to transgender identity.“A lot of the problems we see in kids, particularly boys, it’s probably underappreciated how much of that is coming from chemical exposures, including a lot of sexual dysphoria that we’re seeing,” he said. He referred to research on an herbicide, atrazine, in which scientists found that it “induces complete feminization and chemical castration” in certain frogs.But no evidence exists to indicate that the chemical, typically used on farms to kill weeds, causes the same effects in humans, let alone gender dysphoria. And according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Most people are not exposed to atrazine on a regular basis.”He has falsely linked antidepressants to school shootings.Drawing on longstanding dubious claims, Mr. Kennedy has repeatedly endorsed the idea that mass shootings have increased because of heightened use of antidepressants.“Kids always had access to guns, and there was no time in American history or human history where kids were going to schools and shooting their classmates,” he told the comedian Bill Maher on a recent episode of the podcast, “Club Random With Bill Maher.” “It really started happening conterminous with the introduction of these drugs, with Prozac and the other drugs.”While both antidepressant use and mass shooting occurrences have increased in the last several decades, the scientific community has found “no biological plausibility” to back a link between the two, according to Ragy Girgis, an associate professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University.Antidepressants often have warnings that reference suicidal thoughts, Mr. Girgis said. But those warnings refer to the possibility that people who already experience suicidal ideation might share pre-existing beliefs aloud once they take the medicine as part of their treatment.Mr. Kennedy, however, has pointed to such warnings as evidence of the false notion that the drugs might induce “homicidal tendencies.”Several high-profile figures, including Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, have amplified similar claims following recent mass shootings.Most school shooters were not prescribed with psychotropic medications before committing acts of violence, a 2019 study found. And even when they were, researchers wrote, “no direct or causal association was found.”He has bolstered a conspiracy theory that the C.I.A. assassinated his uncle.Former President John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Kennedy, the former first lady, are shown in the back of a car minutes before Mr. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963.Bettmann, Getty ImagesMr. Kennedy has long promoted a conspiracy theory that the C.I.A. killed his uncle, President John F. Kennedy.He claimed, without evidence, during a Fox News interview with Sean Hannity in May that Allen W. Dulles, a C.I.A. director fired by President Kennedy, helped cover up evidence of the organization’s involvement when he served on the Warren Commission, convened in 1963 to investigate the Kennedy assassination.Referencing a House committee inquiry in 1976, he said: “Most of the people in that investigation believed it was the C.I.A. that was behind it because the evidence was so overwhelming to them.”But even that investigation, which found that President Kennedy was “probably” the victim of a conspiracy of some kind, flatly concluded that the C.I.A. was “not involved.”The Warren Commission found that the killer, Lee Harvey Oswald, acted alone and was not connected to any governmental agency.And he has said that Republicans stole the 2004 presidential election.Mr. Kennedy told The Washington Post in June that he still believed that John Kerry, the Democratic candidate, had won the 2004 presidential election.Mr. Kennedy first promoted that idea in a 2006 article in Rolling Stone, asserting that Republicans had “mounted a massive, coordinated campaign to subvert the will of the people” and assure the re-election of President George W. Bush. He claimed that their efforts “prevented more than 350,000 voters in Ohio from casting ballots or having their votes counted.”But it is one thing to complain of vote suppression; it is another thing to demonstrate that Mr. Kerry won more of the votes cast.Mr. Bush defeated Mr. Kerry by a margin of 35 electoral college votes nationally; he carried Ohio and its 20 electoral votes by more than 118,000 ballots.The Times reported in 2004 that a glitch in an electronic Ohio voting machine added 3,893 votes to Mr. Bush’s tally. That error was caught in preliminary vote counts, officials said. But the event, alongside other voting controversies nationwide, spurred widespread questions about election integrity that caught traction with people like Mr. Kennedy.Mr. Kerry, however, conceded the race a day after the election. More

A painful ruling from the court can sometimes free a party from an unpopular stance.A recent Supreme Court decision won’t necessarily hurt Democrats politically. J. Scott Applewhite/Associated PressWhen I returned from a trip to China almost exactly eight years ago, I found my inbox full of requests from editors to write about two huge stories that unfolded while I was gone: the Supreme Court’s decision to legalize same-sex marriage and the emergence of a surprising candidate who entered the race after my departure, Donald J. Trump.Needless to say, my inbox this week after a couple of weeks off in the Pacific Northwest does not have nearly as many requests as it did in the wake of the Obergefell decision and Mr. Trump’s trip down the escalator. But the requests I do have nonetheless center on a similar set of topics: a major Supreme Court decision, this time to end affirmative action programs, and two upstart candidates who weren’t receiving a lot of attention before I left, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Chris Christie.Court gives Democrats some coverAs I wrote at the time, the Supreme Court’s decision to make same-sex marriage a fundamental right was probably politically advantageous for Republicans. Yes, the court decision was popular and the Republican position on same-sex marriage was increasingly unpopular, but that’s precisely why that decision did them a favor: It all but removed the issue from political discourse, freeing Republicans from an issue that might have otherwise hobbled them.In theory, something similar can be said for the court’s affirmative action ruling, but this time with the decision helping Democrats. Here again, the court is taking a popular position that potentially frees a political party — this time the Democrats — from an issue that could hurt it, including with the fast-growing group of Asian American voters.It’s worth noting that this would be nothing like how the court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade helped Democrats. Then, the court ruling sparked a backlash that energized liberals and gave Democrats a new campaign issue with appeal to the base and moderates alike. If the most recent case were to help Democrats, it would do so in nearly the opposite manner: To take advantage of the ruling politically, Democrats might need to stop talking about it.It was fairly easy for Republican elites to stop talking about same-sex marriage in 2015, as many were already keen to move on from a losing political fight. It is not as obvious that Democratic elites are keen to move away from the fight over affirmative action or whether they even can, given their base’s passion for racial equality.About those other candidatesObviously, any analogy between the first few weeks of Mr. Trump’s campaign and the slow emergence of Mr. Kennedy and Mr. Christie will be much more strained. For one, Mr. Christie and Mr. Kennedy were already making ripples in the race when I left, and I did think I might need to write about them at some point. In contrast, Mr. Trump couldn’t have been further from my mind in mid-June 2015. Upon hearing about his bid on my return, I thought he might fade so quickly that I would never even have to write about him. Whatever you think about Mr. Kennedy and Mr. Christie, there’s not much reason to think they simply might go “pop.”Mr. Kennedy and Mr. Christie don’t have much in common — other than their unequivocally low chance of actually winning — but they have, in their own ways, become factors in the race simply by being the best or even only vessel for expressing explicit opposition to their party’s front-runners, Joe Biden and Mr. Trump.Chris Christie has been direct in his criticism of Donald Trump.John Tully for The New York TimesUsually, willingness to oppose a front-runner isn’t enough to distinguish an aspiring candidate. This year, it is. No current or former elected official has challenged the incumbent president thus far in the Democratic primary. And while many prominent Republicans appear willing to enter the race against Mr. Trump, few appear willing to directly, forcefully and consistently attack him. When they do attack him — as Ron DeSantis recently did for supporting L.G.B.T.Q. people a decade ago — it’s often from the right, and not on the issues that animate the base of any hypothetical not-Trump coalition: relatively moderate, highly educated Republicans.Of the two, Mr. Christie is probably the one who is most effectively fulfilling this demand for direct opposition to the front-runner. There may not be a large constituency for anti-Trump campaigning, but it exists and Mr. Christie is feeding it what it wants. Just as important, directly attacking Mr. Trump ensures a steady diet of media coverage.All of this makes Mr. Christie a classic factional candidate, the kind that doesn’t usually win presidential nominations but can nonetheless play an important role in the outcome of the campaign. If he gains the allegiance of those outright opposed to Mr. Trump, he’ll deny an essential not-Trump voting bloc to another Republican who might have broader appeal throughout the party — say, Mr. DeSantis. This is most likely to play out in New Hampshire, where fragmentary survey data (often from Republican-aligned firms) shows Mr. Christie creeping up into the mid-to-high single digits.Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has long been a critic of vaccination.Ryan David Brown for The New York TimesMr. Kennedy is a more complicated case. With the help of a famous family name, he’s nudged ahead of Marianne Williamson for the minor distinction of being Mr. Biden’s top rival in Democratic primary polls. On average, Mr. Kennedy polls in the mid-teens, with some surveys still showing him in the single digits and one poll showing him above 20 percent. That’s more than Mr. Christie can say.But unlike Mr. Christie, Mr. Kennedy is not exactly feeding Biden skeptics what they want. Instead, he’s advancing conspiracy theories, appearing on right-wing media and earning praise from conservative figures. And unlike Mr. Trump, whose most ardent opposition is probably toward the center, Mr. Biden is probably most vulnerable to a challenge from the ideological left. This is not what Mr. Kennedy is offering, and it’s reflected in the polls. While Times/Siena polling last summer showed Mr. Biden most vulnerable among “very liberal” voters and on progressive issues, Mr. Kennedy actually fares much better among self-described moderates than liberals. He doesn’t clearly fare better among younger Democrats than older ones, despite Mr. Biden’s longstanding weakness among the younger group.It’s too early to say whether Mr. Kennedy’s modest foothold among moderate and conservative Democrats reflects a constituency for anti-modernist, anti-establishment liberalism, or whether Mr. Kennedy’s family name is simply getting him farther among less engaged Democrats, who are likelier to identify as moderate. Either way, his ability to play an important role in the race is limited by embracing conservatives and conspiratorial positions, even if he may continue to earn modest support in the race because of the absence of another prominent not-Biden option. More

The Florida governor, who has yet to demonstrate himself as a campaigner on a national stage, has been plagued by a series of unforced errors and has yet to make a strong case against Donald Trump.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, looking to shift his run for president into a higher gear after an early series of missteps, spent the last two weeks rolling out an immigration policy and holding town halls with voters. But rather than correcting course, he stumbled again this week, raising questions about where his campaign is heading.First, Mr. DeSantis’s team was forced to battle allegations, including from fellow Republicans, that it had shared a homophobic video on social media. Then, a top spokesman for the main super PAC supporting Mr. DeSantis acknowledged that former President Donald J. Trump was the race’s “runaway front-runner,” while Mr. DeSantis faced an “uphill battle.”“Right now in national polling we are way behind, I’ll be the first to admit that,” the adviser, Steve Cortes, said in a livestream Twitter event on Sunday. It was an admission notably at odds with the confidence that the governor’s advisers usually project in public.To top it off — in a visual representation of his recent troubles — Mr. DeSantis got soaked by a rainstorm as he marched in an Independence Day parade alongside several dozen supporters in New Hampshire — the crucial early nominating state where his super PAC, Never Back Down, stopped running television advertisements in mid-May.Meanwhile, Mr. Trump hosted a rally in South Carolina that attracted thousands of people over the holiday weekend, a reminder of his enduring popularity with Republicans despite losing in 2020 and now facing at least two criminal trials.The race is still in its early days, but Mr. DeSantis’s rough week highlights the challenges his underdog campaign faces as it seeks a coherent strategy to break through against Mr. Trump.So far, Mr. DeSantis has tried to undermine his chief rival by subtly contrasting their ages, temperaments and records on issues like the coronavirus pandemic without saying anything too unkind about the former president, whom he almost never mentions by name. He has also attempted to move to the right of Mr. Trump on issues like abortion and L.G.B.T.Q. rights, at the same time as he argues that he is the Republican candidate best placed to attract swing voters and defeat President Biden.But Mr. DeSantis, who has not shown that he is a natural campaigner, has failed to take off in the polls, and his carefully choreographed public events have offered few headline-generating moments, as his campaign, until recently, has worked to shield him from potentially awkward unscripted interactions with voters and the news media.The wobbly launch of his presidential campaign makes for a stark contrast with the confident way Mr. DeSantis has governed Florida, where he silenced opposition within his own party and crushed Democrats at the polls during the midterm elections. It also has given hope to other primary candidates, several of whom have jumped into the race in recent weeks, that they can replace him as the party’s most plausible alternative to Mr. Trump.“DeSantis’s argument is electability,” said Sarah Longwell, a Republican strategist who holds regular focus groups with G.O.P. voters. “But he is undermining the electability argument by running to Trump’s right. He is alienating college-educated, suburban voters who want to move past Trump,” as well as the independents he would need to beat Mr. Biden in a general election.Ms. Longwell said Mr. DeSantis’s efforts to differentiate himself from Mr. Trump without directly criticizing him risked leaving the Florida governor without a natural constituency in the primaries.“You cannot go around Trump,” she said. “You have to go through him.”National polls show Mr. DeSantis trailing Mr. Trump by roughly 30 points — a gap that has widened significantly since Mr. DeSantis began traveling the country this spring to introduce himself to voters.Yet Mr. DeSantis remains the leading challenger to the former president. He has shown fund-raising prowess, and Never Back Down is training an army of field organizers in early voting states. And in the dog days of summer, before a primary debate scheduled for August has even taken place, it is far too early to predict how Iowans and New Hampshirites will vote next year.Bryan Griffin, a spokesman for the DeSantis campaign, said in an email that Mr. DeSantis had been “underestimated” in every race he has won.“This campaign is a marathon, not a sprint; we will be victorious,” Mr. Griffin wrote.Mr. DeSantis has rolled out his campaign in deliberate phases, first with a series of speeches to introduce the candidate to audiences in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, then a round of town halls where Mr. DeSantis took questions directly from voters, and now gradual announcements of in-depth policy proposals, starting with immigration.His campaign says it has focused its spending on field operations rather than on television advertising, a strategy that may not produce immediate polling bumps but will, his advisers argue, pay off when it comes time to vote.There are precedents for Mr. DeSantis’s slow strategy. At this point in the 2016 cycle, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas was polling at under 10 percent in Iowa. But Mr. Cruz then went on to win the state, thanks in part to a well-drilled get-out-the-vote operation that Never Back Down is seeking to emulate. Mr. DeSantis’s campaign has so far heavily focused on winning Iowa, where polls last month showed him trailing Mr. Trump by roughly 20 points.Mr. Cortes, the spokesman for Never Back Down, said his comments about the difficulties of running against Mr. Trump, first reported by Politico, were simply an acknowledgment of reality. But he added that he believed Mr. DeSantis could win.“Taking on an incumbent or former president in the primary always represents a significant challenge,” Mr. Cortes, who worked on Mr. Trump’s campaigns in 2016 and 2020, said in an email. “I gladly embraced that reality in joining the team. All of us on Team DeSantis remain convinced that the governor has a strong path to the nomination, and the best chance of any Republican to defeat Biden in the general election.”Mr. DeSantis has fumbled as he has tried to contrast himself with Mr. Trump, and some of his grabs for attention have backfired.David Degner for The New York TimesMr. Trump, a gifted showman, is notorious for vacuuming up media coverage and attention, sucking away the oxygen from his rivals and trying to stifle their campaigns before they become larger threats.Mr. DeSantis has also become known as a provocateur, successfully drawing criticism from liberals and using it to gin up support from his base. But a recent attempt that seemed devised to garner such attention — a video that condemned Mr. Trump for expressing support for L.G.B.T.Q. people — appeared to backfire over the weekend, leading to criticism not only from Democrats but also from other Republicans, including the largest group representing gay, lesbian and transgender conservatives.The video, taken from another Twitter user and reposted by Mr. DeSantis’s rapid-response campaign account, relied heavily on obscure conservative memes.Richard Barry, a former New Hampshire state lawmaker who attended a rainy Fourth of July breakfast visited by several presidential candidates, said he was eager to support someone other than Mr. Trump. But Mr. DeSantis has turned him off, he said, citing a criticism some voters have leveled against Mr. Trump — a sign that Mr. DeSantis is not yet differentiating himself from the former president in a meaningful way.“He has a street kid attitude that says, ‘It is my way or the highway,’” Mr. Barry said of Mr. DeSantis. “He doesn’t listen to people.”Jazmine Ulloa contributed reporting from Merrimack, N.H., Jonathan Swan contributed reporting from Washington and Maggie Haberman contributed reporting from New York. More