Elections

Also, Russia claims that it captured Bakhmut.President Volodymyr Zelensky during a speech at the G7. Richard A. Brooks/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesG7 wraps with support for UkraineThe G7 summit concluded yesterday in Japan with leaders of the world’s major economies welcoming President Volodymyr Zelensky as an honored guest and reaffirming their support of Ukraine. But Russia claimed victory in Bakhmut, even though Ukraine says that it still holds a few blocks of the ruined city.Even though Moscow is trumpeting a “Mission Accomplished” moment, Ukraine still sees an opening to seize the initiative from the city’s outskirts if Russian forces are no longer pressing forward inside the city’s center.Russia’s capture of Bakhmut would be a powerful symbolic success. But controlling it would not necessarily help Russia toward its larger stated goal of conquering the eastern Donbas region. In fact, some analysts say that Russia’s ability to hold off a broader counteroffensive could be compromised if it continued to send reinforcements to defend Bakhmut.Comparison: Zelensky acknowledged there was little left of Bakhmut. He said he saw echoes of Ukraine’s pain in images of the 1945 devastation in Hiroshima, where the summit was held.Other updates from the G7:F-16s: President Biden reversed course, agreeing to let Ukrainians be trained on the American-made jets. He told allies that he is prepared to approve other countries’ transferring the jets to Ukraine.China: The G7 countries said they would focus on “de-risking, not decoupling” from Beijing. Japan: Critics say the U.S. ambassador to Tokyo, Rahm Emanuel, is pushing too hard for gay rights.Pita Limjaroenrat, 42, greeted supporters during a parade last week.Lauren DeCicca for The New York TimesA political fight looms in ThailandPita Limjaroenrat recently stunned Thailand’s political establishment by leading his progressive Move Forward Party to a momentous victory in last week’s elections. He seems poised to become the next prime minister — unless the military blocks him.Pita needs 376 votes from the 500-member House of Representatives to overcome the military-appointed Senate. So far, he only has 314.Several senators have said they would not support a candidate like Pita, who threatens the status quo. Now, Thais are waiting to see if their choice will be allowed to lead or if he will be blocked, an outcome that could plunge the country into political chaos.Pita’s policies: He has promised to undo the military’s grip on Thai politics and revise a law that criminalizes criticism of the monarchy. He is pressing for a return to democracy after nine years of military rule that was preceded by a coup. He also wants to take a strong foreign policy stance.A complaint: The Election Commission said Pita failed to disclose that he owned shares of a now-defunct media company that he inherited from his father. Pita said he reported the shares.An Afghan migrant who collapsed in the Darién Gap.Federico Rios for The New York TimesThe Afghans at the U.S. borderFor thousands of Afghans, the U.S. withdrawal from Kabul was just the beginning of a long search for safety. Many fled to South America — joining the vast human tide of desperation pressing toward the U.S. — to try to enter a nation that they feel left them behind.Some had partnered with the West for years. They were lawyers, human rights advocates or members of the Afghan government. During their journeys to the U.S., nearly all of them are robbed or extorted, while some are kidnapped or jailed. “I helped these Americans,” a former Afghan Air Force intelligence officer said from a detention center in Texas, sometimes near tears. “I am not understanding why they are not helping me.”A dangerous journey: Since the beginning of 2022, some 3,600 Afghans have crossed the treacherous Darién Gap, which connects North and South America, according to data from Panama.Reporting: My colleagues traveled with a group of 54 Afghans through the Darién Gap.THE LATEST NEWSAsia PacificJoint Typhoon Warning CenterTyphoon Mawar could hit Guam as soon as Wednesday.Police in Australia are investigating why an officer used a Taser on a 95-year-old woman with dementia last week.Late last year, a couple in New York sheltered a South Korean tour group who got stuck in a blizzard in Buffalo. They recently reunited in Seoul.Around the WorldWarring groups in Sudan agreed to a seven-day cease-fire to begin today, the first truce to be signed by both sides.Greece’s governing party leads in the election. But initial results show that it does not have a majority, setting the stage for another vote within weeks.A stampede at a soccer stadium in El Salvador killed at least 12 people.U.S. NewsKevin McCarthy sounded more sanguine yesterday than before about the prospects for a deal.Patrick Semansky/Associated PressPresident Biden and Speaker Kevin McCarthy are planning to meet today to try to avert a looming debt default.Two Republicans are expected to enter the U.S. presidential race this week: Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida and Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina.A Morning ReadMany are drawn to Zibo for the crowds, a relief after Covid lockdowns.Qilai Shen for The New York TimesZibo, a once-obscure city in China’s Shandong Province, is suddenly overrun with tourists. They arrived after hearing about its distinctive barbecue style on social media.Lives lived: Martin Amis’s bleakly comic novels changed British fiction. He died at 73.SPOTLIGHT ON AFRICAA sketch from Sechaba Maape at the Architecture Biennale. Sechaba MaapeAfrican architecture on the cutting edgeThe Architecture Biennale that opened Saturday in Venice explores how cultures from Africa can shape the buildings of the future.For the first time, the exhibition will have a curator of African descent, Lesley Lokko, and more than half of the Biennale’s 89 participants are from Africa or the African diaspora.The work of Sechaba Maape, which is inspired by South Africa’s first nations and their connection to nature, is being shown in that country’s national pavilion. Globally, architecture has begun to trend toward biomimicry, in which the built environment emulates the natural one. African design, says Maape, has always done this through pattern and form. The response in Venice and on social media has been overwhelming, he said.“Architecture should be the thing that instead of separating us from our home, the Earth, should help us feel more mediated, more connected,” Maape told Lynsey Chutel, our Briefings writer in Johannesburg.PLAY, WATCH, EATWhat to CookChris Simpson for The New York Times. Food stylist: Maggie Ruggiero. Prop stylist: Sophia Pappas.A Rob Roy, which swaps out the rye for Scotch, is a muskier take on a classic manhattan.What to WatchIn “White Building,” a richly observed coming-of-age story from Cambodia, the tale of an apartment complex mirrors the country’s fraught recent history.What to Listen toHear new tracks by Bad Bunny, Sparks, Anohni and others in our weekly playlist.Where to GoSpend 36 hours in Buenos Aires.The News QuizTest your memory of last week’s headlines.Now Time to PlayPlay the Mini Crossword, and a clue: Furry aquatic mammal (five letters).Here are the Wordle and the Spelling Bee.You can find all our puzzles here.That’s it for today’s briefing. Lynsey Chutel wrote today’s Spotlight on Africa. See you tomorrow. — AmeliaP.S. Our sister newsletter, The Australia Letter, wants to hear from its readers.“The Daily” is about the darker side of James Webb, for whom a famous telescope is named.I’m always available at [email protected]. More

In three elections, she was a “first,” becoming one of the leading Latina politicians in California and the country.Gloria Molina, a groundbreaking Chicana politician at the city, county and state levels in California who was a fierce advocate for the communities she represented, even though that often meant defying entrenched political structures, died on May 14 at her home in the Mount Washington neighborhood of Los Angeles. She was 74.Her family announced her death, from cancer, on her Facebook page.Since she announced she had terminal cancer in March, colleagues, constituents and the California news media had been praising her achievements in articles and on social media. The Los Angeles Metro’s board of directors voted to name a train station in East Los Angeles after her. Casa 0101, a performing arts organization in the Boyle Heights section of Los Angeles, designated its main stage theater as the Gloria Molina Auditorium. Grand Park, in downtown Los Angeles, which she helped bring into being in 2012, is now Gloria Molina Grand Park.“She championed for years to increase access to parks and green spaces,” the park’s overseeing body said in announcing the renaming, “as well as recreational opportunities that engage culture, support well-being and improve the quality of life for everyone in Los Angeles.”The accolades reflected her legacy as one of the leading Latina politicians in the country, with much of her more than three-decade career encompassing a time when few Latinas were in important positions.In 1982, after working on other politicians’ campaigns, including that of Assemblywoman Maxine Waters, who would later be elected to Congress, Ms. Molina became the first Latina elected to the California Assembly. She ran for that seat even though the political leadership of the Eastside area of Los Angeles County had already selected another candidate, Richard Polanco. She beat him in the Democratic primary and easily defeated a Republican opponent in the general election.A similar thing happened in 1987 when she ran for a seat on the Los Angeles City Council that had been created by redistricting. The political leadership had chosen Larry Gonzalez for the post, but she beat him and a third candidate to become the first Latina council member.Ms. Molina in 1984 campaigning with Walter Mondale, center, who was running for president, and Art Torres, a California state senator.Wally Fong/Associated PressIn 1991, she scored a political hat trick of sorts, becoming the first woman to be elected to the powerful Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. (In 1979, Yvonne Brathwaite Burke became the first woman on the board when she was appointed to fill out the term of a retiring member.) Some 1,000 supporters attended her swearing in.“We must look forward to a time when a person’s ethnic background or gender is no longer a historical footnote,” Ms. Molina said at the time. “And this election is another step in that positive path to the American promise.”Ms. Molina, who served on the board until term limits ended her tenure in 2014, was right that her victory was no token; today, all five supervisors are women.Roz Wyman, a groundbreaker herself — in 1953, at 22, she became the youngest person ever elected to the Los Angeles City Council — once reflected on Ms. Molina’s “firsts.”“We had a saying in those days: ‘Can a woman break the glass ceiling?’” she said. “Not only did she break it, she busted it in every way that you could possibly bust a glass ceiling.”Gloria Molina was born on May 31, 1948, in Montebello, a Los Angeles suburb. Her father, Leonardo, was a construction worker who was born in Los Angeles but raised in Casas Grandes, Mexico, and her mother, Concepción, was a homemaker from Mexico. The couple immigrated in the 1940s, and Gloria was the oldest of 10 children.“She was almost like a second mom in the family,” Ms. Molina’s daughter, Valentina Martinez, said in a video about her mother made in 2020 for the Mexican-American Cultural Education Foundation. “She did everything. She would tell me that she would come home from school every day and make tortillas for her brothers and sisters. She didn’t get to have fun or go to after-school programs. She was always kind of doing the hard work, making sure everyone was taken care of, changing diapers, cooking, doing all of that. So she was a tough lady from the very beginning.”She was, Ms. Molina said, “brought up in a very traditionally Chicano family.”“The expectations were that you were going to get married and have children,” she said in an oral history recorded in 1990 for the Online Archive of California. “You weren’t going to go on to be anything other than maybe what your mom was.”But she told her mother that she didn’t want to get married young; she wanted to travel and work and get her own place.“She thought I was sort of nuts,” Ms. Molina said.She studied fashion design at Rio Hondo College, in Whittier, Calif., and took courses at East Los Angeles College and California State University, Los Angeles, though she did not get a degree because for most of that period she was also working full time to support herself, including as a legal secretary for five years. She joined in the student activism of the 1960s and early ’70s, demonstrating against the Vietnam War and for Chicano rights.One thing she realized, she said in the Cultural Education Foundation video, was that those activism movements were generally led by men and “really didn’t allow the women to have any role whatsoever.” She banded with other Chicana women try to change that culture.“We were Chicana feminists when there weren’t any around,” she said.She was drawn into politics, working for several prominent figures and, in 1982, deciding to seek the assembly seat over the objections of the male political hierarchy. She and her Chicana supporters knew it would be a difficult battle.“We wanted to destroy everything that they had said I could not do,” she recalled in the oral history. “Like I said, we always accepted the fact that we needed to work twice as hard; we really physically went out and did that.”In her career in the State Assembly, she told The Los Angeles Times in 1987, she prided herself on “being a fighter, one who doesn’t just go along with the program because that’s how the pressure is being applied.” That was certainly true for her signature issue during her assembly years — her opposition to a proposal to build a prison in her Eastside district, a plan whose proponents included Gov. George Deukmejian.She won that battle, a significant one.“She stopped the 100-year pattern of dumping negative land-use developments on the Eastside,” Fernando Guerra, the director of the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University, said in a phone interview.In the process, she earned a reputation for being tough and uncompromising that stuck with her throughout her political career.“Just listen to her talk,” Sergio Munoz, then the executive editor of the Spanish language daily La Opinion, told The New York Times in 1991, shortly after Ms. Molina won election to the Board of Supervisors. “Listen to her answer questions. You are going to get a direct answer, whether it affects other interests or compromises someone else.”Ms. Molina’s last elected position was on the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, where she served for more than two decades.Reed Saxon/Associated PressAfter leaving the Board of Supervisors, Ms. Molina made one more bid for political office, challenging José Huizar, an incumbent, for his Los Angeles City Council seat in 2015. She lost. Mr. Huizar later pleaded guilty to corruption charges.Though no longer in office, Ms. Molina remained active in various causes. In 2018, she was among a group protesting outside an Academy Awards luncheon in Beverly Hills, denouncing the scarcity of Hispanic characters in films.“The movie industry should be ashamed of itself,” she said then.In addition to her daughter, Ms. Molina is survived by her husband, Ron Martinez; her siblings, Gracie Molina, Irma Molina, Domingo Molina, Bertha Molina Mejia, Mario Molina, Sergio Molina, Danny Molina, Olga Molina Palacios and Lisa Molina Banuelos; and a grandson.Professor Guerra noted that Ms. Molina, in her various elections, faced the task of convincing voters to choose her over another Latino candidate.“What she had to show was, of the other Latinos that were running, she was the one who was going to represent them better,” he said. “Her secret sauce was that she came across as incredibly authentic, and she was a populist.”“Her only interest, and it came across,” he added, “was the community.” More

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has taken a tough line on migrants as he turns around the country’s economy. It’s a trade-off that voters and the European Union seem more than willing to abide.Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis of Greece has been accused of illegally pushing asylum seekers back at sea. He has acknowledged that the state’s intelligence service wiretapped an opposition leader. He has consolidated media control as press freedom in Greece has dropped to the lowest in Europe.It is the sort of thing that the guardians of European Union values often scorn in right-wing populist leaders, whether it be Giorgia Meloni of Italy or Viktor Orban of Hungary. But with Greece holding national elections on Sunday, Brussels has instead lauded Mr. Mitsotakis, a pro-Europe conservative, for bringing stability to the Greek economy, for sending military aid to Ukraine and for providing regional stability in a time of potential upheaval in Turkey.Above all, European Union leaders appear to have cut Mr. Mitsotakis slack for doing the continent’s unpleasant work of keeping migrants at bay, a development that shows just how much Europe has shifted, with crackdowns formerly associated with the right wing drifting into the mainstream.“I’m helping Europe on numerous fronts,” Mr. Mitsotakis said in a brief interview on Tuesday in the port city of Piraeus, where, in his trademark blue dress shirt and slacks, the 55-year-old rallied adoring voters on crowded streets. “It’s bought us reasonable good will.”With Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, calling Greece’s border enforcement Europe’s “shield,” Mr. Mitsotakis argued that after the arrival of more than a million migrants and asylum seekers destabilized the continent’s politics by entering through Greece during the refugee crisis of 2015 and 2016, Europe had come around to Greece’s tougher approach.Migrants on a dinghy accompanied by a Frontex vessel at the village of Skala Sikaminias, on the Greek island of Lesbos, after crossing the Aegean Sea from Turkey in 2020.Michael Varaklas/Associated Press“We’ve been able to sort of change, I think, the European approach vis-à-vis migration,” said Mr. Mitsotakis, a self-described progressive, disputing the notion that the policy — which critics say includes illegally pushing asylum seekers back — was hard-right.“Right-wing or a central policy,” said Mr. Mitsotakis, the leader of the nominally center-right New Democracy party, “I don’t know what it is, but I have to protect my borders.”In turn, Europe seems to have protected Mr. Mitsotakis.“It’s the Mitsotakis exception,” said Alberto Alemanno, a professor of European Union law at the HEC Paris business school. Mr. Mitsotakis’ special treatment has derived from his political closeness to Ms. von der Leyen, Mr. Alemanno said, and his willingness to build — with funding from the bloc — a vast network of migrant centers that have proved politically popular in Greece.Mr. Mitsotakis argued that some “leftist Illuminati in Brussels” failed to see that he was saving lives with his policy, something that he said Europe’s leaders appreciated.“We’re no longer sort of the poster child for problems in Europe,” he said, adding that what he had done “offers a lot of people relief.”Greeks included. Before Sunday’s elections, Mr. Mitsotakis held a comfortable lead in the polls against his main rival, Alexis Tsipras, of the left-wing Syriza party, even if the prime minister still appeared to lack enough support to win outright. A second round of elections looks probable in July.Alexis Tsipras, left, and Mr. Mitsotakis taking part in a televised debate at the headquarters of the state broadcaster ERT this month.Alexandros Avramidis/ReutersAround the neighborhood where Mr. Mitsotakis campaigned, people talked about how he had made their native Greek islands that were once overrun with migrants livable again, how he had been the first Greek prime minister invited to speak to a joint session of Congress in Washington, and how he had stood up to Turkey’s strongman president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who himself faces an election runoff next weekend.Greeks around the country appreciate how Mr. Mitsotakis has cut taxes and debt and increased digitization, minimum wages and pensions.For a decade, Greece was Europe’s thumping migraine. The country’s catastrophic 2010 debt crisis nearly sank the European Union. Humiliating bailouts followed, and a decade of stark austerity policies — directed by Germany — cut pensions and public services, shrank economic output by a quarter, inflated unemployment and prompted thousands of young and professional Greeks to flee.In 2015, under the leadership of Mr. Tsipras, Greeks voted to reject Europe’s many-strings-attached aid package, and the country was nearly ejected from the eurozone. Social unrest and talk of “Grexit” mounted, but Mr. Tsipras ended up carrying out the required overhauls and moderated in the following years, arguing that Greece had started on the road to recovery.But in 2019 he lost to Mr. Mitsotakis — the son of a former prime minister, trained at Harvard and Stanford, at ease in Washington — who seemed the personification of the establishment. He promised to right the Greek ship.“This was always my bet,” Mr. Mitsotakis said. “And I think that we delivered.”His government has spurred growth at twice the eurozone average. Big multinational corporations and start-ups have invested. Tourism is skyrocketing.Tourists visiting the Acropolis in Athens in October.Petros Giannakouris/Associated PressThe country is paying back creditors ahead of schedule, and Mr. Mitsotakis expects, if he wins, international rating agencies to lift Greece’s bonds out of junk status. The number of migrant arrivals has dropped off 90 percent since the crisis in 2015, but also significantly since Mr. Mitsotakis took office four years ago.“A European success story,” The Economist called Greece under Mr. Mitsotakis.But he argues that he needs another four years to finish the job. Greece, which still has the European Union’s highest national debt, is also the bloc’s second-poorest nation, after Bulgaria. Tax evasion is still common, and the country’s judicial system is so slow that it scares off investors.Critics of Mr. Mitsotakis say that, apart from the economy, he represents a danger to Greece’s values, and that Europe is diverting its eyes as it focuses on the financials and the declining number of migrants.Humanitarian groups have accused Mr. Mitsotakis of illegally pushing back migrants by land and sea. He has hardly run away from the issue, recently visiting Lesbos, the Greek island that became synonymous with the abominable conditions of its Moria camp, which was crammed with 20,000 refugees before burning down.“Moria is no more,” Mr. Mitsotakis said in the interview. “It simply doesn’t exist. I mean, you have olive groves and we have an ultramodern reception facility that’s been built with European money.” Critics have denounced the new camp’s prisonlike conditions, but Greeks overwhelmingly support his tough line.Mr. Mitsotakis during a campaign event on the island of Lesbos last week.Elias Marcou/ReutersEurope is “less on top of Greece for doing pushbacks and all the sort of things,” said Camino Mortera-Martinez, who heads the Brussels office for the Center for European Reform, a think tank.The latitude given Greece, she said, was in part recognition that the country had lived through a decade of brutal austerity. But it also reflected that Europe as a whole is “basically unable to help” Greece and other nations at the front line of the migration crisis, and therefore lets “these governments do what they do.”Migration aside, there are other more immediate concerns at home. In February, a train crash killed 57 people, exposing Greece’s rickety infrastructure and the limits of Mr. Mitsotakis’ talk of modernization. Reporters Without Borders deemed Greece the worst country in the European Union for press freedom in its 2023 index.Destroyed train cars at the site of a crash where two trains collided near the Greek city of Larissa in March.Angelos Tzortzinis for The New York TimesOver the summer, Mr. Mitsotakis’ top intelligence official got caught wiretapping journalists and politicians, including Nikos Androulakis, the leader of the opposition Pasok party and member of European Parliament. Mr. Mitsotakis denied, to the incredulity of many, knowing anything about it. Some of the people his intelligence services listened in on were also found to have illegal malware on their devices. The government has denied putting it there.But Mr. Mitsotakis, in a televised debate this month, conceded that Mr. Androulakis should not have been wiretapped. The spying was an especially bad idea, it turns out, because Mr. Androulakis’s support may prove pivotal to the election’s ultimate outcome.Yet the scandal is way down on voters’ list of priorities, as is Mr. Mitsotakis’ treatment of migrants.John Vrakas, 66, who was handing out fliers for Mr. Tsipras across from the square where Mr. Mitsotakis was due to speak, shrugged that Europe didn’t seem particularly bothered as long as the prime minister assuaged their concerns on the economy and Ukraine. “It’s a kind of trade,” he said.It is one that Greek voters seem happy to make.As Mr. Mitsotakis walked the streets, a bus driver reached out the window and clasped his hand. “Supporters until the end,” chanted a group of men in front of a cafe. “We trust you,” a woman shouted from her jewelry shop.What “resonates in Europe,” Mr. Mitsotakis said, was that his was an “anti-populist government” that had brought much-appreciated stability back to Greece in a rough region.He got up from the interview in a small and otherwise empty restaurant, and shook more hands on the way to the square, where he launched into a short stump speech interrupted by chiming church bells.“I’m not sure who they are tolling for,” Mr. Mitsotakis exclaimed, “but not for us.”In Athens this month.Orestis Panagiotou/EPA, via ShutterstockNiki Kitsantonis More

The South Carolina senator’s bid for the White House — as the sole Black Republican in the Senate — could raise not only his profile, but those of Black conservatives across the country.Senator Tim Scott, Republican of South Carolina, addressed the Charleston County Republican Party at a dinner in February, offering a stirring message of unity and American redemption that has become the center of his stump speech. The next day, he called the chairman of the county party to ask for his support.Mr. Scott told the chairman that he was considering a presidential run. The chairman, who had planned to endorse former President Donald J. Trump, told the senator he would switch allegiances and back him instead.The exchange was, in some ways, traditional party politicking as Mr. Scott works to build support in his home county and in his home state. But it also underscored a subtle change shaping G.O.P. politics — both men are Black Republicans.“I’m pretty locked in helping Senator Scott in every way that I possibly can,” said the former county party leader, Maurice Washington, who stepped down from his role as chairman in April. It was Mr. Washington, Charleston County’s first Black Republican chairman and a longtime ally of Mr. Scott’s, who first encouraged him to run for a county council seat nearly 30 years ago.Mr. Scott, who plans to formally announce his presidential campaign on Monday, will become one of a handful of Black conservatives to run for president in recent years. Herman Cain made a bid for the White House in 2011 and Ben Carson did so in 2016, but neither garnered widespread support. Mr. Scott will be the second Black conservative to enter the 2024 race: Larry Elder, a talk radio host who ran unsuccessfully for governor in California’s 2021 recall election, announced his long-shot campaign last month.Mr. Scott has been popular among Republicans — and has a sizable campaign fund — but his campaign is seen as a long shot.Patrick Semansky/Associated PressAs a U.S. senator and a former member of the House of Representatives with roughly $22 million in campaign funds, Mr. Scott will begin as more of a contender than most of his predecessors, and he will be one of the best-funded candidates in the 2024 presidential primary. His support is currently in the low single digits, according to public polling. But his candidacy could raise not only his profile, but those of Black conservatives across the country.Black Republicans are a small group of voters and politicians who say they often feel caught in the middle — ignored and subtly discriminated against by some Republicans, ridiculed and ostracized by many Democrats. Those elected to office have expressed frustration that they are viewed not simply as conservatives but as Black conservatives, and they often decry what they describe as the Democratic obsession with identity politics.“I think the commonality of virtually all Black conservatives is that we don’t think we’re victims,” said Mr. Elder, who has emphasized his roots in both California and the segregated South. “We don’t believe we’re oppressed. We don’t believe that we’re owed anything.” He and Mr. Scott share a belief in “hard work and education and self-improvement,” Mr. Elder added. “So it would not surprise me that he and I are saying the same things, if not in different ways.”Other Black Republicans have won state races and primaries since the 2022 midterms. On Tuesday, Daniel Cameron defeated a well-funded opponent in Kentucky’s Republican primary for governor. Mr. Cameron, the first Black man to be elected attorney general in Kentucky, is the Trump-endorsed protégé of Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader. Last year, a record number of Black Republican candidates ran for state offices. With Mr. Scott in the Senate and four Republicans in the House, there are now five Black Republicans in Congress — the most in more than a century.“I’m pretty locked in helping Senator Scott in every way that I possibly can,” said Maurice Washington, Charleston County’s first Black Republican chairman, who stepped down in April.Travis Dove for The New York TimesStill, the number of Black Republicans who won seats last year is a fraction of the total number who ran for state and local office under the G.O.P. — more than 80. And the Republican Party’s inroads with Black candidates have yet to overcome enduring feelings of distrust among Black voters toward the party. The ascension of Black Republicans such as Mr. Scott and Mr. Cameron comes against the backdrop of a Republican Party that has largely stood by as some of its members have employed overtly racist rhetoric and behavior.Shermichael Singleton, a Black Republican strategist and a former senior adviser to Mr. Carson, said that he spent a lot of time in 2016 determining how Mr. Carson’s hyper-conservative campaign message could remain in step with the party line without alienating critical voting groups. The challenge was twofold: overcoming Black voters’ negative perceptions about Republicans while building a winning coalition that could include some of them.“It’s just more unique and more challenging if you’re a Black person because of our unique experiences politically and the distrust that most of us have for both parties, but the overwhelming distrust that we have is for Republicans,” Mr. Singleton said. “Because they are perceived as being anti-progressive on race.”Much of the party’s base and its presidential contenders have become focused on opposing all things “woke,” using the term as a catchall pejorative for the broader push for equity and social justice. In the party’s embrace of being anti-woke, several Republican-led state legislatures have aimed to ban books written by Black authors and limit conversations about slavery, the civil rights movement and systemic racism in the classroom and elsewhere.For many in the Republican Party, its members of color are proof of its inclusivity. The success of a candidate like Mr. Scott — the first Black Republican to represent South Carolina in the U.S. Senate since Reconstruction — helps in part to rebut claims that the G.O.P. is inherently racist or, more broadly, that systemic racism remains an issue in America, Republicans say.In speeches, Mr. Scott has criticized the “victim mentality” he believes exists in American culture, and has blamed the left for using racial issues as a means of further dividing the electorate. Mr. Elder said racism “has never been a less important factor in American life than today.”Daniel Cameron, the first Black attorney general of Kentucky, won the primary race for governor on Tuesday. He will face Andy Beshear, a popular Democrat who is seeking re-election in a typically deep-red state.Jon Cherry for The New York Times“What Black Republicans have to do is they either have to lean all in and just be an unapologetic, uncritical supporter for where the Republican Party is now, or they have to find a way to walk that tightrope of not alienating the party, but also not alienating their community,” said Leah Wright Rigueur, an associate professor of history at Johns Hopkins University. “Somebody like Scott has to find a space to navigate those worlds.”J.C. Watts, who was the first Black Republican to represent Oklahoma in Congress, said he believed Mr. Scott could be “a great asset” to the party’s presidential primary, based on his personal experiences. “Whether or not the party listens,” he added, “that’s something else.”“He will have some that will try to force him to be ‘the Black Republican,’” Mr. Watts continued. “While I don’t think you should run from being Black, or run from being conservative, some will try to force him to play that role.”Nathan Brand, Mr. Scott’s spokesman, pointed to the senator’s remarks at the dinner in Charleston in February, in which he acknowledged “the devastation brought upon African Americans” before extolling America as “defined by our redemption” — themes that have formed the base of his campaign message. The campaign declined to comment further.Like many Black Republicans, Mr. Scott has been reluctant to discuss race as it relates to his party, preferring to focus on policy matters. In recent years, however, he has been called on to weigh in further. In 2020, he was the lead Republican in negotiations on failed police reform legislation.The senator was also a leading conservative voice against Mr. Trump’s comments about a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017, when the president said there were people to blame on “both sides.” Mr. Scott’s criticisms later spurred Mr. Trump to invite him to the White House.After a series of police killings in the summer of 2016, Mr. Scott gave a detailed speech on the Senate floor about instances when he was racially profiled by law enforcement, including by U.S. Capitol Police. These were moments, he said, when he “felt the pressure applied by the scales of justice when they are slanted.”Now, as he becomes a presidential candidate and the nation’s highest-ranking Black Republican, Mr. Scott will likely have to answer questions about how he and the rest of his party navigate a tenuous relationship with Black voters.“It could be a little bit of a problem to me down the road,” said Cornelius Huff, the Republican mayor of Inman, S.C., who is Black. “You have to have somebody in the family that calls it what it is and straightens those things out.”At a recent town hall in New Hampshire, Mr. Scott told a mostly white audience of supporters that he saw an opportunity to increase the party’s gains with voters of color, particularly men. Despite winning re-election by more than 25 points in 2022, Mr. Scott lost to or narrowly defeated his Democratic challenger in nearly all of South Carolina’s predominantly Black counties. Policy conversations about school choice and economic empowerment, he said, could create an opening with men of color, a group that polling shows has been more open to supporting the Republican Party in recent election cycles.“When we go where we’re not invited, we have conversations with people who may not vote for us,” Mr. Scott said at the event. “We earn their respect. If we earn their respect long enough, we earn their vote. What is disrespectful is to show up 90 days before an election and say, ‘We want your vote.’”The senator appeared to be speaking to a common grievance among Black voters that Democrats often count on and court their votes before major elections, and then fail to deliver on their policy promises. Yet, even as some Black voters bemoan what they see as Democrats’ empty promises on the issues they care most about, they remain the party’s most loyal constituency. More than 90 percent of Black voters voted for President Biden in 2020.Mr. Washington, 62, the former Charleston County Republican chairman, helped found South Carolina State University’s Republican Club while in school there nearly four decades ago. Though he has run for office as a Democrat before, Mr. Washington says his values, and those of many in Black communities, are more conservative and thus more aligned with Republican values. The weeks after Mr. Scott starts his campaign will amount to a waiting game, he added.“Let’s see what happens,” Mr. Washington said. “We’ll know sooner rather than later whether or not that message of unity, of working hard towards rebuilding trust in our nation — in America and its citizenry and in its race relations — is going to be one that is embraced or rejected.” More

The Florida governor is reluctant to talk about the restrictive law he signed as he seeks to attract support from across the Republican Party.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida could not have asked for a friendlier venue to highlight the sweeping six-week abortion ban he signed last month: an annual gala hosted by a deeply conservative Christian group that welcomed him with a sustained standing ovation and provided a bagpiper in full Highland regalia playing “Amazing Grace.”But instead of taking a victory lap on Saturday, Mr. DeSantis breezed through his remarks on Florida’s abortion law, one of the most restrictive in the nation. His rhetoric was far less soaring than that of other speakers, including one who compared abortion to slavery, suggesting it was an evil that should be totally eliminated.“We believe that everybody counts, everybody is special, and our Heartbeat Protection Act shows that we say what we mean and we mean what we say,” said Mr. DeSantis, referring to the law, which he was initially slow to back.He then pivoted to familiar talking points, including his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, his opposition to defunding the police and his signing of a law prohibiting gender-transition care for minors.During the primary, Mr. DeSantis will need to court conservative voters without alienating centrists — all while fending off allegations from Republican rivals who could argue he is too extreme on abortion. Cristobal Herrera-Ulashkevich/EPA, via ShutterstockMr. DeSantis’s brief comments on abortion underscore his general hesitancy to speak about the issue in visits to key states ahead of his upcoming presidential run. On the trail, his remarks about the ban are usually limited to a single line in his roughly 45-minute stump speech, placed alongside a laundry list of his other legislative accomplishments.The reluctance to highlight abortion — even when speaking on his home turf to grateful Christian conservatives — reflects a careful calibration that could be crucial to his campaign for the Republican nomination.Although many evangelicals and hard-core party activists favor abortion bans like the one he signed in Florida, moderate Republicans are less inclined to support them. During the primary, Mr. DeSantis will need to court those conservative voters without alienating centrists — all while fending off allegations from Republican rivals who could argue he is too extreme on abortion. He will also need to avoid delivering any sound bites to Democrats that could become fodder for attack ads in a general election. Other Republican contenders for president, including Nikki Haley and Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, have offered less strident views on abortion. Ms. Haley has declined to support a federal abortion ban at a specific number of weeks of pregnancy. And Mr. Scott, who is expected to declare his candidacy on Monday, has said he would back a 20-week federal ban. Former President Donald J. Trump, who is fighting to retain the backing of the anti-abortion movement, has criticized Florida’s six-week law without saying what restrictions he might support, leading Mr. DeSantis to punch back over his reluctance to take a position. The comments, one of his most direct public challenges to the former president so far, demonstrated how Mr. DeSantis could use his record, which anti-abortion activists praise, to distinguish himself.“He’s giving us action, and that’s what I’m interested in,” said John Stemberger, president of the Florida Family Policy Council, the nonprofit group that hosted Mr. DeSantis’s speech on Saturday. “He’s been stellar and historic.”Democrats ran heavily on abortion rights in last year’s midterms with unexpected success. That has left some Republicans unsure of how to address the issue in 2024.As Mr. DeSantis is hitting the trail and visiting early nominating states, he is talking little about his abortion legislation. When he does, he does not explicitly tell audiences that the law prohibits the procedure after six weeks.“We enacted the Heartbeat Protection Act to promote life,” Mr. DeSantis said without elaborating as he addressed a crowd of voters in Iowa earlier this month. He sandwiched his comment between brief statements on his tax relief efforts and a law that allows Floridians to carry concealed weapons without training or permits. Speaking at Liberty University, another friendly setting, the day after he signed the ban, Mr. DeSantis almost entirely avoided the subject.And during a discussion with state lawmakers in New Hampshire on Friday, the governor did not mention abortion at all. Privately, lawmakers from the moderate state, which limits abortions after 24 weeks of pregnancy, said they thought Mr. DeSantis’s abortion law was too extreme for voters in New Hampshire. Many women do not realize they are pregnant at six weeks.Last spring, Mr. DeSantis and Republican lawmakers in Florida limited access to the procedure after 15 weeks, with exceptions for fatal fetal abnormalities or to save the life of the woman. That legislation is being challenged in front of the Florida Supreme Court.The six-week ban, which includes additional exceptions for rape and incest, is not yet in effect and will hinge, in part, on the court’s decision over the existing law. Women in Florida have suffered serious complications from dangerous pregnancies since the 15-week ban was passed, according to news reports. The state previously prohibited abortions after 24 weeks of pregnancy.For many conservatives, the governor is fulfilling a mandate from voters after a nearly 20-point re-election in November.“His leadership helped push that through,” Chris Jessee, a Florida pastor who came to Orlando to hear Mr. DeSantis address the Florida Family Policy Council, said of the six-week ban.Still, Mr. Jessee noticed that the governor did not seem to adjust his usual script much for the event, even though the group’s annual gala was its first since Roe v. Wade was overturned.“I really felt like I’d heard that speech before,” he said.Bret Hayworth contributed reporting from Sioux Center, Iowa. More

For politicians, discussing climate change in a province enriched by oil money is fraught.When I arrived in Alberta recently to report an upcoming political story, there was no shortage of people wanting to talk about politics and the provincial election on May 29. But, even as wildfires flared earlier than usual and raged across an unusually wide swath of forest, discussions about climate change were largely absent.Destruction left behind by wildfires in Drayton Valley, Alberta.Jen Osborne for The New York TimesThe smoke that enveloped Calgary this week briefly gave the city one of the worst air-quality ratings in the world, as the fires to the north and west led to the evacuation of roughly 29,000 people across the province.[Read: A ‘Canadian Armageddon’ Sets Parts of Western Canada on Fire][Read: Canada’s Wildfires Have Been Disrupting Lives. Now, Oil and Gas Take a Hit.][Read from Opinion: There’s No Escape From Wildfire Smoke][Read: 12 Million People Are Under a Heat Advisory in the Pacific Northwest]Smoke from wildfires has blotted out the sun in Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver several times in recent years and kept runners, cyclists and walkers indoors. Charred forests, already burned in previous wildfire seasons, lined the roads I drove in Alberta’s mountains.I had been to Alberta in 2016 to cover the fires sweeping through Fort McMurray, but that blaze, almost miraculously, took no lives except in a traffic accident. But fires in Alberta, British Columbia and Saskatchewan have become bigger and stronger, and research suggests that heat and drought associated with global warming are major reasons. When the town of Lytton, British Columbia, was consumed by wildfires in 2021, temperatures reached a staggering 49.6 degrees Celsius.Poll after poll has shown that Albertans are more or less in line with other Canadians on the need to take steps to reduce carbon emissions. But the candidates aren’t talking much about it.During Thursday’s debate between Danielle Smith, the premier and leader of the United Conservative Party, and Rachel Notley, the former premier and leader of the New Democratic Party, the subject of climate came up only in an economic context.Ms. Smith repeatedly accused Ms. Notley of springing a “surprise” carbon tax on the province, and warned that any attempt to cap emissions would inevitably lead to reduced oil production and reduced revenues for the province, (an assessment not universally shared by experts).A layer of dense smoke spread through much of Alberta this week.Jen Osborne for The New York TimesI asked Feodor Snagovsky, a professor of political science at the University of Alberta, about this apparent disconnect in Alberta between public opinion about climate change and campaign discourse.“It’s very tough to talk about oil and gas in Alberta because it’s sort of the goose that lays the golden egg,” he said. “It’s the source of a remarkable level of prosperity that the province has enjoyed for a long time.”This year oil and gas revenues will account for about 36 percent of all the money the province takes in. And during the oil embargo of the late 1970s, those revenues were more than 70 percent of the province’s budget. Among other things, that has allowed Alberta to be the only province without a sales tax and it has kept income and corporate taxes generally low relative to other provinces.But oil and gas production account for 28 percent of Canada’s carbon emissions, the country’s largest source. While the amount of carbon that’s released for each barrel produced has been reduced, increases in total production have more than offset those gains.The energy industry is also an important source of high-paying jobs, though. So the suggestion that production might have to be limited in order for Canada to meet its climate targets raises alarms.“People hear that and they think: my job’s going to go away,” Professor Snagovsky said. “It hits people really close to home.”He told me that he had lived in Australia in 2020 when that country was plagued by extreme heat and wildfires. At the time, Professor Snagovsky said, not only was there very little discussion there about climate change, but politicians and others argued that it was not an appropriate time for such talks.Professor Snagovsky said he hoped that the fires and smoke will prompt Albertans to start thinking about the climate effects that caused them, but he’s not confident that will happen.“I think it’s unlikely, but you can always hope,” he said.Trans CanadaImages made from the scan of the Titanic wreck clearly show small details.Atlantic/Magellan, via Associated PressA hyper detailed 3-D scan of the Titanic’s wreckage off Canada’s coastline has produced evocative images of the doomed steamship.A dilapidated farmhouse near Palmyra, Ontario, which is a favorite of photographers, may face demolition.Canadian Tire is among the companies picking over the ruins of Bed Bath & Beyond.A native of Windsor, Ontario, Ian Austen was educated in Toronto, lives in Ottawa and has reported about Canada for The New York Times for the past 16 years. Follow him on Twitter at @ianrausten.How are we doing?We’re eager to have your thoughts about this newsletter and events in Canada in general. Please send them to [email protected] this email?Forward it to your friends, and let them know they can sign up here. More

The New York mayor has loudly blamed President Biden for an influx of migrants, amplifying concerns many Democrats share but irritating Mr. Biden’s aides and weakening his political position.The Democratic Party is following a standard strategy as President Biden seeks re-election: Do not criticize him publicly under any circumstances, lest it help Donald J. Trump or one of his acolytes take back the White House for Republicans.The one Democrat who appears to have missed the memo is Mayor Eric Adams of New York City.Mr. Adams has taken nearly every opportunity in recent weeks to publicly blame Mr. Biden or his administration for the influx of migrants to New York from border states, many of them on buses dispatched by Republican governors.His eagerness to point a finger at the White House has infuriated top Biden aides, who note the issue’s global complexity. At the same time, the mayor is using his platform to amplify concerns many Democrats share but will not articulate publicly because they don’t want to hurt the president.The recent schism comes as Republicans make Mr. Biden’s immigration policy central to their efforts to dislodge him in 2024. After many Democratic candidates last year successfully used abortion rights against their Republican opponents, Mr. Biden’s nascent campaign would prefer that his allies stay on message — something Mr. Adams has shown scant willingness to do, despite once calling himself “the Biden of Brooklyn.”Migrants in California waiting to be processed by U.S. Customs and Border Protection. New York and other major cities have had an influx of migrants from the southern border.Mark Abramson for The New York TimesOfficials in New York and Washington insist that the ideologically aligned president and mayor have no personal animus toward each other. But as Mr. Adams has struggled to manage the waves of migrants being sent to New York, he has been more vocal than other mayors in the same situation — and more willing to blame Mr. Biden.Mr. Adams said on Wednesday that it was “baffling” that Washington officials “are not understanding what this is doing to New York City.” He expressed similar sentiments last month, saying, “The president and the White House have failed New York City on this issue.”Mr. Adams and his allies say the White House has ignored many of their entreaties, including their request that the federal government give more asylum seekers access to work permits and develop a plan to more broadly distribute migrants across the nation.“We have reached out to the White House on a number of occasions and stated clearly the things we need,” Mr. Adams said Wednesday. “Allow people to work, which I believe that’s one of the No. 1 things we can do. Allow people to work. And do a decompression strategy at the border. We got 108,000 cities and towns and villages. Why aren’t we spreading this out throughout the entire country?”Since becoming mayor 17 months ago on a platform of taming disorder on city streets, Mr. Adams has repeatedly broken ranks with the Democratic Party. Last year, his language on crime mirrored attacks by New York Republicans as they helped flip the House and mounted a strong challenge to Gov. Kathy Hochul.Now, some Democrats worry that Mr. Adams’s messaging on migrants will again undercut Mr. Biden, placing the president at odds with a high-profile ally and seeming to strengthen the arguments of Republican governors like Greg Abbott of Texas and Ron DeSantis of Florida that he is weak on border security.“Abbott and DeSantis and whoever are getting what they want: They got everybody at each other’s throats,” said the Rev. Al Sharpton, a longtime Adams ally who has tried to serve as a middleman between the mayor and the White House. “On a scale of 1 to 10, it’s a 12 in frustration, and sometimes in frustration it can come off as more adversarial than you would like.”Some Democrats worry that Mr. Adams’s messaging on migrants will be a useful tool for Republicans to weaken Mr. Biden.Doug Mills/The New York TimesMr. Biden’s aides and allies in Washington — a half dozen of whom spoke about their private discussions on the condition of anonymity — are clearly irritated with the mayor. In their view, Mr. Adams is a grandstanding opportunist, aiming to win headlines for himself without regard to the broader political implications for the president and his re-election.Fabien Levy, a spokesman for the mayor, said in a statement that “Mayor Adams has and always will put the interest of New Yorkers first and foremost, and that’s why we’ve been asking for support for a year.” He added, “We desperately need federal and state support more than ever to quickly manage this crisis.”Last year, some White House officials were annoyed when Mr. Adams released a public letter asking for more monkeypox vaccines and calling the White House’s approach “piecemeal” after it had already told Mr. Adams privately that he would receive the vaccine shipments he had requested.When Mr. Abbott began busing migrants to New York from Texas border towns, Mr. Adams and his team asked the White House for federal support to house migrants, expedite their work permits and move some of them to cruise ships in the city’s harbor. The administration would often reply that many of the mayor’s requests required congressional action — which was unlikely, given the gridlock at the Capitol.On multiple occasions, White House officials told the mayor’s staff that they hoped to continue talking about the issues privately and emphasized the need to move forward as a partnership. Instead, Mr. Adams continued to criticize the administration in public.“He should be looking at Republicans who are purposely causing chaos for their political benefit and refusing to take any action to fix the issue,” said Pili Tobar, a former Biden administration deputy communications director who dealt with immigration.Mr. Biden introduced legislation that would overhaul the immigration system, increasing funding for border security and providing citizenship to 11 million undocumented immigrants. But Republicans have uniformly opposed the proposals, and they have gone nowhere.The mayor has his own calculations to make. While New York City has long prided itself on being a haven for migrants, more than 67,000 have traveled there in the past year. The city is also unique among major American cities in its legal requirement to shelter people with nowhere to live. Already facing record homelessness, the city is now housing roughly 42,400 migrants. It has run out of room at its shelters and has begun scouting alternative locations.New York has sent migrants upstate while continuing to pay for their housing and services, temporarily housed migrants in public school gyms and floated ideas like putting tents in Central Park. The Adams administration even asked an owner of the mostly vacant Flatiron Building if there was room there. (He said no.)Homeland Security officials in the Biden administration also privately expressed concerns last year about how cities would handle the influx of migrants from Texas and Florida.Last summer, those officials acknowledged that New York City and Washington were already struggling, even with additional volunteers, to process hundreds of migrants bused to their cities, according to internal emails reviewed by The New York Times.More than 67,000 migrants have come to New York City in the past year.Juan Arredondo for The New York TimesThe Homeland Security Department was considering a plan in which the federal government would coordinate with local officials to fly migrants to cities, rather than releasing them along the border, and leave Mr. Abbott to continue orchestrating the surprise drop-offs.Supporters of such government-funded flights believed they would alleviate overcrowding at the border and allow federal officials to finish the processing of migrants once they landed. But some thought there were not enough federal resources to complete the plan.The administration instead moved ahead with an “Interior Cities Awareness Campaign,” in which the government would educate city leaders on migrants’ rights and immigration processing — but would leave municipalities to handle the drop-offs of migrants. The Biden administration has made $350 million in federal grants available to local governments grappling with the arrival of migrants; New York received $30 million.The Adams administration says that, beyond the organizational difficulties, the migrants’ arrival will blow a $4.3 billion hole in the city budget, which was already threatened by the decline of the commercial real estate market.Frank Carone, Mr. Adams’s former chief of staff, who is expected to lead the mayor’s re-election campaign, said it was “entirely appropriate for colleagues” to disagree on how to handle immigration.“I would contrast that to what goes on in an oligarch state, like in Russia or China or North Korea, where I doubt very much you’re going to see dissent from Putin’s allies,” Mr. Carone said. “The president and his team realize they’re in a humanitarian crisis. And he’s doing the best he can. Unfortunately, it is falling squarely on the shoulders of New York City.”What makes Mr. Adams’s approach so politically noteworthy — and appealing to Republicans — is that, while he is hardly the only Democrat to argue that Mr. Biden is not properly handling immigration, he is the rare one to do so repeatedly in front of television cameras.Mr. Adams’s repeated criticism of the White House has raised his national profile — no small concern for a man whose three predecessors ran for president. His potshots appear regularly on Fox News and in other conservative news outlets, with a clear message: Even the mayor of liberal New York City has had it with Mr. Biden.The mayor’s outspokenness has earned him the enmity of officials in the White House. Last week he was conspicuously absent from the Biden campaign’s list of surrogates, which included the mayors of Cincinnati; Richmond, Va.; and Madison, Wis.How much political benefit Mr. Adams can gain by attacking Mr. Biden is another question.Representative Ritchie Torres, a Bronx Democrat, said the mayor’s “sentiment is understandable and his grievance against the federal government strikes me as legitimate.”He added: “Do I wish he were more careful in his word choice? Sure.” More

As the Florida governor hopscotched the country preparing to run for president, a Michigan nonprofit paid the bills. It won’t say where it got the money.For Ron DeSantis, Sunday, Feb. 19, was the start of another busy week of not officially running for president.That night, he left Tallahassee on a Florida hotelier’s private jet, heading to Newark before a meet-and-greet with police officers on Staten Island on Monday morning. Next, he boarded a twin-jet Bombardier to get to a speech in the Philadelphia suburbs, before flying to a Knights of Columbus hall outside Chicago, and then home to his day job as governor of Florida.The tour and others like it were made possible by the convenience of private air travel — and by the largess of wealthy and in some cases secret donors footing the bill.Ahead of an expected White House bid, Mr. DeSantis has relied heavily on his rich allies to ferry him around the country to test his message and raise his profile. Many of these donors are familiar boosters from Florida, some with business interests before the state, according to a New York Times review of Mr. DeSantis’s travel. Others have been shielded from the public by a new nonprofit, The Times found, in an arrangement that drew criticism from ethics experts.Mr. DeSantis, who is expected to formally announce his candidacy next week, is hardly the first politician to take advantage of the speed and comfort of a Gulfstream jet. Candidates and officeholders in both parties have long accepted the benefits of a donor’s plane as worth the political risk of appearing indebted to special interests or out of touch with voters.But ethics experts said the travel — and specifically the role of the nonprofit — shows how Mr. DeSantis’s prolonged candidate-in-limbo status has allowed him to work around rules intended to keep donors from wielding secret influence. As a declared federal candidate, he would face far stricter requirements for accepting and reporting such donations.Mr. DeSantis has been traveling the country testing his message. He and his wife, Casey DeSantis, met this month with local Republicans in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times“Voters deserve this information because they have a right to know who is trying to influence their elected officials and whether their leaders are prioritizing public good over the interests of their big-money benefactors,” said Trevor Potter, the president of Campaign Legal Center and a Republican who led the Federal Election Commission. “Governor DeSantis, whether he intends to run for president or not, should be clearly and fully disclosing who is providing support to his political efforts.”Representatives for the governor’s office and for Mr. DeSantis’s political operation declined to comment or provide details about who has arranged and paid for his flights.Mr. DeSantis has aggressively navigated his state’s ethics and campaign finance laws to avoid flying commercial. And he has gone to new lengths to prevent transparency: Last week, he signed a bill making travel records held by law enforcement, dating back to the beginning of his term, exempt from public records requests.Mr. DeSantis is still required to report contributions and expenses in his campaign finance records, but the new law probably prevents law enforcement agencies from releasing more details, such as itineraries, flight information or even lists of visitors to the governor’s mansion. (Mr. DeSantis says he is trying to address a security concern.)In February, Mr. DeSantis traveled to Newark on a jet owned by Jeffrey Soffer, a prominent hotel owner who, according to several lawmakers and lobbyists, has sought a change in state law that would allow him to expand gambling to his Miami Beach resort.The February trip and others were arranged by And To The Republic, a Michigan-based nonprofit, according to Tori Sachs, its executive director. The nonprofit formed in late January as Mr. DeSantis was beginning to test the national waters and quickly became a critical part of his warm-up campaign. It organized nearly a dozen speaking events featuring the governor in at least eight states.Ms. Sachs would not say how much was spent on the flights or who paid for them.Navigating the LoopholesIt is unclear how Mr. DeSantis will account for the trips arranged by the nonprofit without running afoul of state ethics laws. Florida generally bars officeholders from accepting gifts from lobbyists or people, like Mr. Soffer, whose companies employ lobbyists — unless those gifts are considered political contributions.But both Ms. Sachs and a person involved in Mr. DeSantis’s recent travel said they did not consider the trips political contributions or gifts. The person was not authorized to discuss the matter and spoke on condition of anonymity. The group’s practice “is to provide transportation for special guests,” Ms. Sachs said, “in full compliance with the law.”Florida ethics rules, however, give politicians plenty of loopholes. In some circumstances, for example, officeholders can accept paid travel to give speeches as part of their official duties. The state ethics commission has also allowed officeholders to accept gifts from lobbyists if they are channeled through third-party groups.Since taking office in 2019, Mr. DeSantis, who has worked in public service his entire career and reported a net worth of $319,000 last year, has steadily leaned on others to pick up the tab for private flights.His political committee has accepted private air travel from roughly 55 wealthy, mostly Florida-based contributors and companies associated with them, including the heads of oil and gas companies, developers and homebuilders, and health care and insurance executives, a Times analysis of campaign finance records shows.Additional travel donations were routed to the Republican Party of Florida, which Mr. DeSantis often used as a third-party pass-through.A half dozen lobbyists and donors who spoke with The Times said they became accustomed to calls from the governor’s political aides asking for planes — in at least one case, for a last-minute trip home from out of state and, more recently, for a flight to Japan.The Japan trip, which was part of an overseas tour that gave Mr. DeSantis a chance to show off his foreign policy chops, was considered part of the governor’s official duties and was organized in part by Enterprise Florida, a public-private business development group. But Mr. DeSantis’s office would not disclose how it was paid for or how he traveled. Enterprise Florida did not respond to requests for comment.DeSantis supporters at his election-night event last year, as he coasted to re-election.Scott McIntyre for The New York TimesMr. DeSantis’s office rarely releases information about nonofficial events. (In February, when he traveled to four states in one day, his public schedule simply read, “No scheduled events.”) And Mr. DeSantis has brushed off past criticism of his travel. In 2019, The South Florida Sun Sentinel revealed a previous flight to New York on a plane owned by Mr. Soffer. Mr. DeSantis said he had followed proper procedures.“It’s all legal, ethical, no issues there,” he told reporters.A spokeswoman for Mr. Soffer declined to comment.The Warm-Up CampaignSoon after winning re-election in November, the governor turned to building his national profile. He began traveling the country to visit with Republican activists, dine with donors, speak at events and promote a new book, “The Courage to Be Free: Florida’s Blueprint for America’s Revival.”Some of his travel was paid for by Friends of Ron DeSantis, a Florida political committee that supported his campaign for governor and reports its donors. The committee had more than $80 million on hand as recently as last month — money that is expected to be transferred to a federal super PAC supporting his presidential run.Since November, that committee has received 17 contributions for political travel from nine donors. They include Maximo Alvarez, an oil and gas distributor, and Morteza Hosseini, a Florida homebuilder who has frequently lent his plane to the governor and has become a close ally.But trips paid for by the nonprofit group, And To The Republic, do not appear in state records.The group is registered as a social welfare organization under Section 501(c)(4) of the federal tax code, meaning its primary activity cannot be related to political campaigns. Other prospective and official presidential candidates also have relationships to similar organizations, often called dark money groups because they are not required to disclose their donors.The nonprofit’s founder, Ms. Sachs, said it was formed to promote “state policy solutions that are setting the agenda for the country” and described Mr. DeSantis as one of the first elected officials to “partner” with the group. Another of those officials, Gov. Kim Reynolds of Iowa, has appeared at the group’s events in her home state — alongside Mr. DeSantis.And To The Republic has hosted Mr. DeSantis at events in South Carolina, Nevada and Iowa, all key early primary states. Some of those events were promoted as “The Florida Blueprint,” borrowing from Mr. DeSantis’s book title.The arrangement has made tracking Mr. DeSantis’s travel — and its costs — difficult. The Times and other news outlets used public flight trackers to verify the governor’s use of Mr. Soffer’s plane, which was first reported by Politico.Other trips arranged by the group include the Feb. 20 stops outside Philadelphia and Chicago and the return trip to Tallahassee, on which Mr. DeSantis flew on a plane registered to a company run by Charles Whittall, an Orlando developer. Mr. Whittall, who gave $25,000 to Mr. DeSantis’s political committee in 2021, said that he uses a leasing company to rent out his aircraft, and that he did not provide it as a political contribution.In March, he traveled to Cobb County, Ga., on a plane owned by an entity connected to Waffle House, the Georgia-based restaurant chain. The company did not respond to a request for comment.Other potential DeSantis rivals have made headlines for their use of private jets. Both as South Carolina governor and as ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley faced criticism for flying on private planes owned by wealthy South Carolinians.In 2020, The Associated Press reported that donors gave hundreds of thousands of dollars in private air travel to Donald J. Trump’s fund-raising committee. The donors included Ben Pogue, a Texas businessman whose father later received a presidential pardon.Still, Mr. Trump — who owns his own plane — has repeatedly sought to draw attention to Mr. DeSantis’s travel, claiming the private planes were effectively campaign contributions and “Ron DeSantis is a full-time candidate for president.”Shane Goldmacher More