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    Trump Picks Burgum for Interior Secretary

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    President-elect Donald J. Trump has tapped Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota to lead the Interior Department, leading the new administration’s plans to open federal lands and waters to oil and gas drilling.Governor Burgum, 68, has longstanding ties to fossil fuel companies and acted as a liaison between the Trump campaign and the oil executives who have donated heavily to it. The governor is particularly close to Harold G. Hamm, the billionaire founder and chairman of Continental Resources, one of the country’s largest independent oil companies, who has hosted fund-raisers and donated nearly $5 million to Mr. Trump since 2023.Mr. Trump made the announcement during a gala for the America First Policy Institute being held at his Mar-a-Lago estate. Mr. Burgum was in attendance.“I won’t tell you his name, it might be something like Burgum,” Mr. Trump said, before telling the crowd, “Actually he’s going to head the Department of Interior, and he’s going to be fantastic.”North Dakota sits over part of the Bakken Formation, which has emerged as a major source of oil in the United States thanks to hydraulic fracturing, a horizontal drilling technique that took off in 2008 and made it possible to extract substantial amounts of oil that had been inaccessible through traditional drilling.Mr. Burgum has been a cheerleader for drilling, a posture that fits in well with the mantra of “Drill, baby, drill,” which Mr. Trump repeatedly uses to describe his energy policy.Scientists have said that the United States and other major economies must stop developing new oil and gas projects to avert the most catastrophic effects of global warming. The burning of oil, gas and coal is the main driver of climate change. The Biden administration has tried to limit some drilling on public lands and in federal waters, particularly in fragile wilderness like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Mr. Trump has said he would end those protections. More

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      Western Governors Give Bipartisanship a Try. At Least for a Few Days.

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      The bipartisan boat ride on Lake Tahoe was scrapped because of scheduling issues. At least three of the participating Republicans were suing the administration of one of the Democrats.At the opening reception, Gov. Mark Gordon of Wyoming, a conservative in cowboy boots, turned to Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, a liberal in sunglasses and a ball cap, and joked, “You and I shouldn’t be seen together.”Not everybody laughed.As the Western Governors’ Association marked its 40th anniversary this week in Olympic Valley, Calif., the organization did its best to maintain a tradition that has long been its hallmark: the increasingly lost art of governing across party lines.Under sunny skies and a snowcapped Sierra Nevada, experts from the private sector to members of the Biden administration presented on disaster management, opioids and carbon capture. Aides rushed between meeting rooms. Eight governors appeared on a panel examining the organization’s longstanding culture of consensus — but seven of them were no longer in office.“We used to have this bumper sticker — ‘Bipartisanship Happens,’” Steve Bullock, the former Democratic governor of Montana, said. “But bipartisanship doesn’t just happen. It takes work.”Mr. Newsom welcomed the 300 or so attendees to the meeting, but he did not stay for the full conference.Jim Wilson/The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Rule 1 to Be Trump’s Running Mate: Defend Him, but Don’t Steal the Show

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      Donald Trump’s search is still in its early stages, but he is said to be leaning toward more experienced options who can help the ticket without seizing his precious spotlight.The cavalry of Republican vice-presidential contenders and other party officials inside the courthouse for Donald J. Trump’s criminal trial was so large one day this week that the group initially had trouble arranging themselves in the two rows set aside for guests of the defense team.Wedged into their seats, they were immediately confronted with testimony accusing their party’s leader — who was trying to inoculate his 2016 presidential campaign from political damage — of writing checks for bogus legal expenses to hide hush-money payments to a porn star.None of the conservatives in the courtroom flinched or raised an eyebrow, including Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota and Representative Byron Donalds of Florida, both of whom are said to be under consideration for Mr. Trump’s running mate.Instead, their stoic, protective presence underscored the biggest political quandary facing ambitious Republicans who want Mr. Trump to pick them for vice president: how to fiercely defend him without stealing any of his precious spotlight.The prize for puzzling out the best approach could be a spot near the top of every ballot in the country this fall.“He always wants killers out there fighting for him,” said Barry Bennett, a Republican strategist who advised Mr. Trump’s first presidential campaign. “But he also needs someone with experience and skills who can help shape his message, massage it and make it stronger.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How Rich Candidates Burned Cash on Running for Office

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      It is a time-honored tradition in U.S. politics: wealthy people burning through their fortunes to ultimately lose an election.The costly realm of campaign politics has claimed its share of the fortunes of yet another business magnate with aspirations to higher office.Representative David Trone, Democrat of Maryland who co-owns the largest wine retailer in the country, poured more than $60 million of his personal fortune into his Senate campaign in Maryland, according to campaign finance reports filed to the Federal Election Commission. He lost the Democratic primary this week to Angela Alsobrooks, a county executive whose campaign had spent about a tenth of that amount.A day after Mr. Trone’s loss, Nicole Shanahan, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s running mate and a Silicon Valley investor who recently divorced the Google co-founder Sergey Brin, announced that she was doubling her stake in Mr. Kennedy’s independent presidential campaign. Her donation of another $8 million brings her total contributions to nearly $15 million, despite the fact that no third-party or independent candidate has come close to winning a presidential election in modern U.S. history.Mr. Kennedy’s campaign is so far only about half as expensive as the costliest self-funded presidential campaign this cycle: Vivek Ramaswamy, the Republican entrepreneur, spent more than $30 million of his own wealth on his failed candidacy, dropping out in January after spending $3,500 per vote won in the Iowa caucuses. Doug Burgum, the governor of North Dakota who sold his software company to Microsoft for $1 billion, didn’t even get that far: He dropped out before a single vote was cast after having spent nearly $14 million on his presidential campaign.It is a time-honored tradition in U.S. politics: wealthy people burning dizzying sums of money to fuel their political ambitions through long-shot candidacies, or — as in Mr. Trone’s case — campaigns with good odds that simply don’t end up working out.A self-funded campaign is not always a recipe for disaster. Mr. Trone, for example, was successfully elected to Congress after spending a combined $31.3 million of his fortune to run in two House races. He lost to Jamie Raskin in the 2016 Democratic primary, but he won the 2018 primary to succeed Representative John Delaney, another wealthy Democrat. Jon S. Corzine, a liberal Wall Street executive, spent about $60 million, or $108 million adjusted for inflation, to win a Senate seat in New Jersey in 2000.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Fund-Raiser Rakes In More Than $50.5 Million, Campaign Says

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      For several hours on Saturday evening, drivers on a typically scenic stretch of Palm Beach, Fla., had their views of the coast obscured by a line of luxury vehicles whose owners were mingling inside a mansion across the road.The shoreline-blocking Range Rovers, Aston Martins and Bentleys hinted at the deep-pocketed donors attending a fund-raising dinner for former President Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign, which it and the Republican National Committee said had raised more than $50.5 million.The event, hosted by the billionaire John Paulson at his home, followed a concerted push by the Trump campaign to address a longstanding financial disparity with President Biden and Democrats as both parties gear up for the general election.The reported total, which cannot be independently verified ahead of campaign finance filings in the coming months, is nearly double the $26 million that President Biden’s campaign said it raised last month at a celebrity-studded event at Radio City Music Hall in New York City.Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita, senior advisers to the former president who are effectively his campaign managers, said in a statement that the total made it “clearer than ever that we have the message, the operation and the money to propel President Trump to victory on November 5.”Mr. Trump’s event, just down the road from his home at Mar-a-Lago, was in some ways a less flashy affair than its Democratic antecedent, one that traded Hollywood star power and New York City energy for a warmer clime, an abundance of palm trees and the manicured lawns typical of an island refuge for the moneyed elite.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Eyeing Super Tuesday, Trump Is Eager to Dispatch Rivals Sooner Than Later

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      The former president is looking to lock up the nomination by Super Tuesday on March 5, but Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis insist they plan to compete deep into March.With five days left until the New Hampshire primary, Donald J. Trump and his allies are stepping up their efforts to muscle Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis out of the Republican presidential race by casting Mr. Trump’s nomination as inevitable.The strategy reflects an urgent desire to end the race quickly and avoid an extended and expensive battle for delegates heading into Super Tuesday on March 5.Mr. Trump is facing 91 criminal charges in four jurisdictions, as well as two costly civil trials, where he has used voluntary appearances at New York courthouses this month as public relations and fund-raising vehicles. But February offers him few such opportunities, meaning he would need to rely on his political strength alone to generate momentum for Super Tuesday, when voters in 16 states and territories will cast ballots for the nomination.In New Hampshire, Mr. Trump began attacking Ms. Haley with paid advertising weeks ago, and intensified the onslaught more recently with sharper personal criticisms and campaign statements portraying her as a China-loving globalist. On Tuesday, he went after Ms. Haley, the daughter of immigrants from India, on his social media website, using her birth name — Nimarata, which he misspelled as “Nimrada” — as a dog whistle, much like his exaggerated enunciation of former President Barack Obama’s middle name, “Hussein.”And he has grown more aggressive on the campaign trail. In Portsmouth, N.H., on Wednesday night, he said of Ms. Haley, “I don’t know that she’s a Democrat, but she’s very close. She’s far too close for you.”Mr. Trump is facing 91 criminal charges in four jurisdictions, as well as two costly civil trials, which he has turned into public relations and fund-raising vehicles.Doug Mills/The New York TimesBut his team is looking ahead to the South Carolina primary on Feb. 24 as a “Waterloo” for his primary rivals, according to one Trump adviser, likening the state to the battlefield where Napoleon met his final defeat. Their aim is to humiliate her in her home state.“South Carolina is where Nikki Haley’s dreams go to die,” another senior Trump adviser, Chris LaCivita, said in a brief interview.Mr. Trump has been privately courting Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, hoping to win his endorsement before the primary. Trump allies who have relationships with Mr. Scott, including Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, have been assisting the effort.Republicans across the country, including senators who were previously skeptical of Mr. Trump, are assisting his strategy by consolidating their support, rushing to declare the race over, rolling out endorsements and demanding that his rivals quit immediately to “unify” the party against President Biden.Their efforts are being aided by the conservative news media, which has turned sharply against Mr. DeSantis after giving his candidacy favorable coverage early on.The inevitability strategy also appears to be bearing fruit within the business community. On Wednesday morning, one of Wall Street’s most powerful chief executives, Jamie Dimon, the head of JPMorgan Chase — who as recently as November urged donors to “help Nikki Haley” — praised aspects of Mr. Trump’s record and scolded Democrats for vilifying the former president’s Make America Great Again movement.Ms. Haley and Mr. DeSantis both insist their campaigns are alive and well, with plans to compete deep into March. But the reality is that a comeback victory would represent one of the greatest upsets in modern American political history. That would be especially true if Mr. Trump wins New Hampshire, since no Republican who has won two of the first three traditional early states — Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina — has ever lost the party’s nomination.Ms. Haley finished a disappointing third in Monday’s Iowa caucuses but is facing what polls suggest is more favorable terrain in New Hampshire, where unaffiliated voters can cast ballots in the primary and where her allies argue even a close second could provide a rationale to stay in the race. Even there, however, she needs a large turnout of unaffiliated voters to overcome Mr. Trump’s overwhelming backing from Republicans.“She basically has to turn the Republican primary into the unaffiliated primary,” Mr. LaCivita, the senior Trump adviser, said of the state.Nikki Haley campaigned on Wednesday night in Rochester, N.H. She is expected to fare better in New Hampshire than she did in Iowa.Sophie Park for The New York TimesMs. Haley’s path to a competitive race seems more visible than Mr. DeSantis’s, but only barely: She must win the New Hampshire primary next Tuesday or come in a very close second, and ride a wave of media momentum for a month before tackling Mr. Trump head-on in the state she used to govern, South Carolina, where he has a huge lead and endorsements from powerful politicians there, including the governor.In New Hampshire, the Trump campaign is trying to engage what one adviser called a “pincer” — squeezing Ms. Haley from both ends of the ideological spectrum. An advertising campaign began lacing into her on immigration (hitting her from the right) before criticizing her for wanting to raise the retirement age for Social Security (hitting her from the left).Ms. Haley is trying to portray Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden as two of the same: Disliked elderly politicians who are exacerbating chaos and division in America. It’s a message tailored for independent voters who have tired of Mr. Trump, but the message will most likely have far less purchase among Republican voters.While Ms. Haley is courting independent voters in New Hampshire, it’s harder to see how a Republican candidate can win a Republican nomination without much stronger support from Republicans.On Wednesday, Ms. Haley’s campaign manager, Betsy Ankney, rejected the notion that Ms. Haley’s strategy was to rely on independent and crossover Democratic voters to make up for softer support among Republicans.Ms. Ankney said the strategy has always been to do well in New Hampshire, roll out with momentum into South Carolina and then go head-to-head against Mr. Trump on Super Tuesday, when independents have historically made a difference in open or semi-open primaries, including in 2016 for Mr. Trump.Polls showing Mr. Trump far ahead in Texas and other Super Tuesday states should not be taken seriously, Ms. Ankney insisted, because “people have not started to pay attention” in those states and “there has been zero advertising.” The Haley campaign is optimistic that she can perform especially strongly in March states that have larger populations of college-educated voters, including Virginia.Mr. Trump’s team is far less worried about Mr. DeSantis, who finished in second place in Iowa just two points ahead of Ms. Haley, but who is far behind in New Hampshire. The Trump team suspects Mr. DeSantis will struggle to keep his candidacy financially afloat long enough to compete seriously on Super Tuesday.Ron DeSantis at a campaign event in Hampton, N.H., on Wednesday. He is largely leaving the state to focus on South Carolina.John Tully for The New York TimesThe DeSantis path beyond February is murky — a fact reflected by the pro-DeSantis super PAC’s decision on Wednesday to lay off staff in some of its March 5 states. But the DeSantis team insists the candidate has no plans to drop out before South Carolina.“There is no mathematical pathway for Nikki Haley to win the nomination,” said David Polyansky, the DeSantis deputy campaign manager. “And even if she makes it to South Carolina, no amount of Wall Street money will bail her out from losing her home state, and then it will be a two-person race between Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump.”A majority of Mr. DeSantis’s staff is moving to South Carolina, and he will mostly stop campaigning in New Hampshire after his events on Wednesday, according to a person familiar with his plans, who insisted on anonymity.The fact that South Carolina was his first stop after Iowa was described as an intentional signal about his electoral calculations.On a staff call after Iowa, Mr. DeSantis’s campaign manager, James Uthmeier, described Mr. DeSantis’s view: The caucuses showed that Mr. Trump doesn’t have the standing he once did after getting just over 50 percent, and that Republicans want an alternative, according to people familiar with what was said.Mr. DeSantis’s advisers remain furious at the Haley camp’s decision to spend more than $20 million attacking Mr. DeSantis on television ads before Iowa, which a top aide publicly described as “greed” ahead of the caucuses and insisted was meant to help Mr. Trump. The DeSantis team has openly accused Ms. Haley of campaigning to become Mr. Trump’s running mate and not to win, a claim that she has denied.In a late November phone call, days before the political network founded by the billionaire Koch brothers endorsed Ms. Haley, Mr. DeSantis had warned a Koch network operative that any money they spent aiding Ms. Haley and attacking Mr. DeSantis would only help Mr. Trump, according to two people familiar with the conversation. That’s because many DeSantis voters still liked the former president and would sooner peel off and support him than back Ms. Haley, who is viewed as more moderate. Mr. DeSantis told the operative that the money should be spent going after Mr. Trump, the people familiar with the call said.The Koch network went ahead with its endorsement of Ms. Haley and put its expensive ground operation into her service, sweeping out across Iowa and New Hampshire in a last-minute sprint of door knocking.Another element of Mr. Trump’s inevitability messaging is his growing discussion of possible personnel for a second term. Mr. Trump, who out of superstition has long avoided discussing who might serve in his administration, has begun indulging discussions of who might serve alongside him.At his Iowa victory party on Monday night, Mr. Trump brought onstage Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota, who had ended his own presidential campaign and endorsed the front-runner. Mr. Trump told the audience that he had Mr. Burgum pegged for an important role in his administration.A Trump supporter near his rally in Portsmouth, N.H., on Wednesday.Doug Mills/The New York TimesAnother former rival, Vivek Ramaswamy, immediately dropped out after the caucuses, endorsed Mr. Trump and urged all other candidates to do the same. As he appeared onstage with Mr. Trump at a rally in Atkinson, N.H., on Tuesday night, Mr. Trump grinned broadly as the crowd chanted, “V.P., V.P., V.P.”“He’ll be working with us for a long time,” said Mr. Trump. It was a whiplash reversal that’s typical of Mr. Trump. Two days earlier, he had attacked Mr. Ramaswamy as “not MAGA.”Such rapid consolidation of the party behind Mr. Trump has visibly frustrated Mr. DeSantis and his allies, given that less than a year ago there was a moment when it seemed as if Republicans might be ready to move on and coalesce around the Florida governor.No defection was more emblematic of the shift than that of Senator Mike Lee of Utah. Mr. Lee was an early booster of Mr. DeSantis’s presidential run and had met with the governor to discuss policy, according to a person with direct knowledge, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private meetings.Mr. Lee did not give Mr. DeSantis a heads up before he announced that he was endorsing Mr. Trump just three days before the Iowa caucuses, that person said. The DeSantis team saw the timing as a knife in the back.Dan Hauser, a campaign adviser to Mr. Lee, said in a statement that the senator didn’t call any candidate in the race before he endorsed Mr. Trump.In another personal twist, Mr. Lee’s wife, Sharon, had worked for the DeSantis super PAC, Never Back Down. She left the group “a couple of months ago on her own terms,” according to Mr. Hauser.Michael Gold More

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      Doug Burgum, Wealthy North Dakota Governor, Ends White House Run

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      The little-known former software executive had hoped his business acumen and relentless focus on the economy, energy and foreign policy would lift his campaign. It didn’t.Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota, the wealthy former software executive who entered the presidential campaign in June hoping a back-to-basics appeal on the economy would propel him forward, dropped out of the race for the Republican nomination on Monday.Though his personal fortune could have kept his campaign afloat, Mr. Burgum’s mild demeanor and resolute focus on three issues, the economy, energy and foreign policy, never caught on with a G.O.P. electorate steeped in the pugilistic flash of Donald J. Trump and the more visceral appeal of social issues.Mr. Burgum claimed on Monday that he had shifted the conversation on the campaign trail from divisive social issues to energy and foreign policy. He blamed media inattention and Republican Party rules for his poor showing.“Our decision to run for president came from a place of caring deeply about every American and a mission to re-establish trust in America’s leadership and our institutions of democracy,” he said in a statement announcing he was suspending his campaign. “While this primary process has shaken my trust in many media organizations and political party institutions, it has only strengthened my trust in America.”Mr. Burgum’s base in tiny, remote North Dakota and a short political résumé had given him almost no name recognition when he began the campaign, leaving even his home-state constituents wondering how he might rise in a crowded field laboring in the shadow of the former president and prohibitive front-runner, Mr. Trump.But Mr. Burgum believed there was a market for his business acumen — he sold his software company to Microsoft for $1 billion — and a kitchen-table focus that resolutely avoided confrontation with Mr. Trump or anybody else in the field.He was wrong, never polling above the low single digits. But he may have made an impression on Mr. Trump. Advisers in the former president’s orbit have put out word that Mr. Burgum’s looks and money made him “central casting” for a second Trump term.Mr. Burgum’s departure technically narrows the field of Republican hopefuls, as Mr. Trump’s critics, such as Senator Mitt Romney of Utah and the commentator George F. Will, issue calls for candidates not named Trump to consolidate around a single alternative. Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, former Vice President Mike Pence, the former Texas congressman Will Hurd and Larry Elder, a conservative talk radio host, have also left the race.That pressure is now on Chris Christie, the former governor of New Jersey, who has shown no sign of traction with Republican voters nationally but whose relatively strong polling in New Hampshire is preventing Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor, or Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida from consolidating the anti-Trump vote.Mr. Burgum’s short-lived presidential run did make some impact in Republican circles, even if it didn’t with Republican voters. To muster the 40,000 individual donors he needed to qualify for the first debate in August, he offered $20 gift cards to the first 50,000 people who donated at least $1 to his campaign.Just before that debate, he tore his Achilles’ tendon and had to sit during commercial breaks. In the second debate, he largely faded into the background. When he made his presence known, it was to plead with the moderators to let him answer any of the questions that he could make about energy, ostensibly a strong suit in oil-rich North Dakota. More

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      Why Doug Burgum Is Staying in a Race He Can Afford to Lose

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      With a substantial personal fortune, the North Dakota governor is insistent on spreading his message despite calls to drop out.Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota knows that many people, including powerful voices in his own party, think he should quit the Republican presidential primary, abandoning his quixotic bid so that momentum can gather behind a challenger to Donald J. Trump, and ultimately President Biden.“This seems like they’re trying to do the job of the voters,” he said in an interview on Saturday. But Mr. Burgum is committed to staying on the ballot in Iowa and New Hampshire, where he says he regularly meets people who are eager to vote for him. “They are the ones that are going to decide how the field gets narrowed, not some other group,” he said.Mr. Burgum, 67, was sitting in a stately conference room, somewhere in the carpeted labyrinth of a convention center in Las Vegas, which was hosting a major gathering of Jewish donors. Less than an hour earlier, in a ballroom upstairs, former Vice President Mike Pence had dropped out of the race, yielding to the reality that he was short on votes and running out of money.Mr. Burgum’s reality is different in at least one critical respect: Though he is barely cracking 1 percent in Iowa polls, his net worth is in the hundreds of millions. He has largely self-financed his campaign, lending it more than $12 million — a further $3 million has come in from donations, according to the campaign’s most recent filing.He can afford to be quixotic. As of the end of September, his campaign had spent $12.9 million — more than the campaigns of Nikki Haley, Chris Christie and Mr. Pence combined. About a third of that was spent on television advertising time.He is a testament to the power of private wealth to sustain a campaign, and to elevate a largely unknown, business-minded conservative from a largely rural U.S. state to the national stage — or, at least, the edge of the stage.“I think he does bring perspective and experience that resonate with a lot of voters,” said Miles D. White, the former chairman and chief executive of Abbott Laboratories and a longtime friend of Mr. Burgum. “I think the early process doesn’t give a lot of opportunity to demonstrate that.”Mr. White, who gave $2 million to a super PAC backing Mr. Burgum, said Mr. Burgum’s financial resources meant he could stay in and raise awareness of himself as a potential alternative to Mr. Trump, outside the confines of the debate stage.“His biggest challenge is being known, nationwide, and getting known, which takes a lot of time, a lot of ads, which in turn takes a lot of funding,” Mr. White said.Mike Murphy, a longtime Republican strategist, said that most candidates, at this point, were merely helping Mr. Trump. On Monday, in an editorial in The Bulwark, he called for all of them except Ms. Haley, the former United Nations ambassador and South Carolina governor, to drop out.“I like Burgum,” Mr. Murphy said in an interview. “He is in a desperate battle with the margin of error in the polling. Because the stakes with Trump are so high, he’s got to step back.”He added, “When your argument is, ‘Let me flame out in Iowa, where I’ll do collateral damage to others,’ you don’t have an argument.”Mr. Burgum said he first sought the governor’s seat in 2015 because he felt he could have more of an impact on North Dakota from Bismarck than he could from his perch of private enterprise. The same thing motivated him to seek the presidency — but first he had to persuade his 25-year-old son, he said, who was concerned about the attention it might bring to his family.Finally, his son told him, “You should run, because my friends would have somebody they can vote for, instead of voting against.” Telling the story, Mr. Burgum began to cry.Friends from the business community have also jumped in with support. The super PAC backing him, called Best of America, had taken in more than $11 million as of the end of June from about two dozen wealthy supporters, including people with links to his business world.“Anybody who’s donated significantly so far is someone who’s known us for a long time,” Mr. Burgum said. “Because they’re like, OK, this is the real deal.”Mr. Burgum entered the race in June on a platform that focused on his economic acumen and business record as a software executive, as well as his conservative record as governor.“People are yearning for leadership, and leadership to them does not mean a life spent as a career politician in North Dakota,” he said. “It means someone who’s got the characteristics of integrity and honesty. Someone you can trust and someone who’s willing to take risks, someone who can take a leap and not know where they’re going to land.”He added, of his competitors, “Just factually, I’ve created more jobs than everybody else on that stage combined, in the private sector.”Since entering the race, Mr. Burgum has spent heavily to introduce himself to voters and to draw support.In the early nominating states, Mr. Burgum’s business bona fides, horseback skills and distinctive eyebrows have been fixtures on television, set against the scenic backdrop of North Dakota — he said he saw his campaign in part as an opportunity to introduce his state to the rest of the country.(As for the eyebrows, Mr. Burgum credits them to his mother’s side of the family, and acknowledges the uncanny likeness to the comedian Eugene Levy. Along with his flowing mane of hair, they get a lot of attention on the campaign trail: “If the only people voting were women over 75 or 80 years old, then we’d have a lock on it,” he said.)Mr. Burgum’s campaign has bought $4.3 million of local and national advertising time, according to an analysis by AdImpact, a media-tracking firm. Since July, the super PAC backing him has bought nearly $13 million in ad time.The PAC’s ads describe him as “the only conservative business leader running for president,” promising that he can bring “small-town common sense back in Washington, D.C.”Advertising spending by the super PAC is the fifth-highest in the race, according to the AdImpact analysis, which also includes outlays for ads in the coming weeks. Never Back Down, a super PAC backing Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, has spent $35.6 million. A super PAC for Mr. Trump has spent $27.6 million; one for Ms. Haley, $22.8 million; and one for Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, $19.8 million.Before the first debate, in late August, Mr. Burgum’s campaign offered $20 gift cards to anyone who donated a dollar to his campaign so that he could meet the threshold of 40,000 individual donors to earn a spot onstage.The gambit worked. Then, the day of the debate, he ruptured his Achilles’ tendon in a game of pickup basketball with his aides. He showed up anyway. Two months later, he still uses a knee scooter to move around.A major hurdle lies ahead: While Mr. Burgum’s campaign has the requisite number of donors, it has not yet met the Republican National Committee’s polling threshold for the third G.O.P. debate, next week in Miami.He described the threshold as an arbitrary bar set by the party leadership. “It might achieve a winnowing, but it may not produce what Iowa or New Hampshire would produce, where people are actually investing time,” he said. More

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      Trump and GOP Candidates Call for Campus Crackdowns Against Anti-Israel Speech

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      The G.O.P. field, including former President Trump, has been wading into the emotional debate among students playing out over the deadly war between Hamas and Israel.As tensions mount on U.S. college campuses over the war in Gaza, several Republican presidential candidates are proposing a crackdown on students and schools that express opposition to Israel, appear to express support for the deadly Hamas attacks or fail to address antisemitism.Former President Donald J. Trump, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida and Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina have called for the federal government to revoke international students’ visas, while others have suggested that universities should lose public funding.After students at George Washington University projected messages on Tuesday onto the side of a campus building — including “Glory to our martyrs,” “Divestment from Zionist genocide now” and “Free Palestine from the river to the sea,” a phrase that encompasses all of Israel as well as Gaza and the West Bank — two candidates argued almost immediately that the students or the universities, or both, should be punished.“If this was done by a foreign national, deport them,” Mr. Scott wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, on Wednesday morning. “If the college coddles them, revoke their taxpayer funding. We must stand up against this evil anti-Semitism everywhere we see it — especially on elite college campuses.”Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota wrote: “Antisemitism cannot be tolerated. Period. The students responsible should be held accountable and if the university fails to do so it should lose any federal funding.” He indicated in another post that he would “fully enforce” a Trump-era executive order to use Title VI of the Civil Rights Act to revoke federal funding for any university that “enables” antisemitism.They and other Republicans are wading into an emotional debate on college campuses over Hamas’s attack on Israel, Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, and the broader Israeli-Palestinian conflict — turning the opinions of individual students and student groups, starting at Harvard and New York University, into national flash points. Days of simultaneous pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel demonstrations have exposed painful divisions, including significant and potentially consequential ideological rifts between donors, students and faculty members.The suggestion of punishing anti-Israel views is part of a broader campaign against liberal-leaning campus environments, which many Republicans claim indoctrinate students. But it is also in tension with other parts of that campaign: In many cases, the same candidates have previously condemned what they described as censorship of students who expressed conservative opinions.Mr. Scott was a co-sponsor of a Senate resolution in 2021 that called on colleges and universities to “facilitate and recommit themselves to protecting the free and open exchange of ideas” and argued that “restrictive speech codes are inherently at odds with the freedom of speech guaranteed by the First Amendment.”Mr. Burgum signed legislation in North Dakota, also in 2021, that forbade universities in the state to discriminate against student organizations or speakers based on their viewpoint.When asked where Mr. Scott drew the line between protected and unprotected speech, his campaign did not comment on the record but cited a previous statement in which he called it a “fine line.” Mr. Burgum’s campaign pointed to the Trump executive order as requiring action.Separately, on Tuesday, the chancellor of the State University System of Florida wrote in a letter to university presidents that he had determined — “in consultation with” Mr. DeSantis — that two campus chapters of the group Students for Justice in Palestine “must be deactivated.”The national Students for Justice in Palestine organization released guidance to campus chapters earlier this month calling for demonstrations “in support of our resistance in Palestine.” The guidance called Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel, which killed more than 1,400 people, “a surprise operation against the Zionist enemy” and “a historic win for the Palestinian resistance.”It added, “This is what it means to Free Palestine: not just slogans and rallies, but armed confrontation with the oppressors.”The letter from the chancellor, Ray Rodrigues, said the chapters had violated a Florida law against providing “material support” to “a designated foreign terrorist organization.”“The State University System will continue working with the Executive Office of the Governor and S.U.S.’s Board of Governors to ensure we are all using all tools at our disposal to crack down on campus demonstrations that delve beyond protected First Amendment speech into harmful support for terrorist groups,” it said. “These measures could include necessary adverse employment actions and suspensions for school officials.”The national Students for Justice in Palestine organization did not immediately respond to a request for comment.The letter came a few days after Mr. DeSantis declared at a campaign event in Iowa that, if elected president, he would revoke the visas of students who supported Hamas. He did not say how he would determine who fell into that category; some public commentary has applied the label “pro-Hamas” to demonstrators expressing broader support for Palestinians or opposition to Israel’s military actions in Gaza, which have killed more than 6,500 people, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza. (Its figures could not be independently verified.)Mr. Trump made the same proposal at his own recent event in Iowa, also not providing details. “Under the Trump administration, we will revoke the student visas of radical anti-American and antisemitic foreigners at our colleges and universities, and we will send them straight back home,” he said.Nikki Haley, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, joined Mr. Scott and Mr. Burgum in saying she would cut federal funding to colleges that did not condemn students who supported Hamas.“No more federal money for colleges and universities that allow antisemitism to flourish on campus,” Ms. Haley wrote on X, arguing that the promotion of certain opinions in relation to the Hamas attack constituted “threatening someone’s life” and was “not freedom of speech.”Only one candidate, Vivek Ramaswamy, publicly rejected efforts to punish schools or individual students for anti-Israel or pro-Palestinian statements.“Colleges are spaces for students to experiment with ideas & sometimes kids join clubs that endorse boneheadedly wrong ideas,” he wrote on X this month in response to an uproar over a letter from student groups at Harvard that held “the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.”He added: “It wasn’t great when people wearing Trump hats were fired from work. It wasn’t great when college graduates couldn’t get hired unless they signed oppressive ‘DEI’ pledges. And it’s not great now if companies refuse to hire kids who were part of student groups that once adopted the wrong view on Israel.” More