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      G.O.P. Targets Researchers Who Study Disinformation Ahead of 2024 Election

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      A legal campaign against universities and think tanks seeks to undermine the fight against false claims about elections, vaccines and other hot political topics.On Capitol Hill and in the courts, Republican lawmakers and activists are mounting a sweeping legal campaign against universities, think tanks and private companies that study the spread of disinformation, accusing them of colluding with the government to suppress conservative speech online.The effort has encumbered its targets with expansive requests for information and, in some cases, subpoenas — demanding notes, emails and other information related to social media companies and the government dating back to 2015. Complying has consumed time and resources and already affected the groups’ ability to do research and raise money, according to several people involved.They and others warned that the campaign undermined the fight against disinformation in American society when the problem is, by most accounts, on the rise — and when another presidential election is around the corner. Many of those behind the Republican effort had also joined former President Donald J. Trump in falsely challenging the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.“I think it’s quite obviously a cynical — and I would say wildly partisan — attempt to chill research,” said Jameel Jaffer, the executive director of Columbia University’s Knight First Amendment Institute, an organization that works to safeguard freedom of speech and the press.The House Judiciary Committee, which in January came under Republican majority control, has sent scores of letters and subpoenas to the researchers — only some of which have been made public. It has threatened legal action against those who have not responded quickly or fully enough.A conservative advocacy group led by Stephen Miller, the former adviser to Mr. Trump, filed a class-action lawsuit last month in U.S. District Court in Louisiana that echoes many of the committee’s accusations and focuses on some of the same defendants.Targets include Stanford, Clemson and New York Universities and the University of Washington; the Atlantic Council, the German Marshall Fund and the National Conference on Citizenship, all nonpartisan, nongovernmental organizations in Washington; the Wikimedia Foundation in San Francisco; and Graphika, a company that researches disinformation online.In a related line of inquiry, the committee has also issued a subpoena to the World Federation of Advertisers, a trade association, and the Global Alliance for Responsible Media it created. The committee’s Republican leaders have accused the groups of violating antitrust laws by conspiring to cut off advertising revenue for content researchers and tech companies found to be harmful.A House subcommittee was created to scrutinize what Republicans have charged is a government effort to silence conservatives. Kenny Holston/The New York TimesThe committee’s chairman, Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, a close ally of Mr. Trump, has accused the organizations of “censorship of disfavored speech” involving issues that have galvanized the Republican Party: the policies around the Covid-19 pandemic and the integrity of the American political system, including the outcome of the 2020 election.Much of the disinformation surrounding both issues has come from the right. Many Republicans are convinced that researchers who study disinformation have pressed social media platforms to discriminate against conservative voices.Those complaints have been fueled by Twitter’s decision under its new owner, Elon Musk, to release selected internal communications between government officials and Twitter employees. The communications show government officials urging Twitter to take action against accounts spreading disinformation but stopping short of ordering them to do, as some critics claimed.Patrick L. Warren, an associate professor at Clemson University, said researchers at the school have provided documents to the committee, and given some staff members a short presentation. “I think most of this has been spurred by our appearance in the Twitter files, which left people with a pretty distorted sense of our mission and work,” he said.Last year, the Republican attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana sued the Biden administration in U.S. District Court in Louisiana, arguing that government officials effectively cajoled or coerced Twitter, Facebook and other social media platforms by threatening legislative changes. The judge, Terry A. Doughty, rejected a defense motion to dismiss the lawsuit in March.The current campaign’s focus is not government officials but rather private individuals working for universities or nongovernmental organizations. They have their own First Amendment guarantees of free speech, including their interactions with the social medial companies.The group behind the class action, America First Legal, named as defendants two researchers at the Stanford Internet Observatory, Alex Stamos and Renée DiResta; a professor at the University of Washington, Kate Starbird; an executive of Graphika, Camille François; and the senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, Graham Brookie.Renée DiResta, a researcher at the Stanford Internet Observatory, is among the defendants named in a lawsuit filed by America First Legal, a conservative group. Manuel Balce Ceneta/Associated PressIf the lawsuit proceeds, they could face trial and, potentially, civil damages if the accusations are upheld.Mr. Miller, the president of America First Legal, did not respond to a request for comment. In a statement last month, he said the lawsuit was “striking at the heart of the censorship-industrial complex.”Stephen Miller, a former adviser to former President Donald J. Trump, leads America First Legal. Kevin Dietsch/Getty ImagesThe researchers, who have been asked by the House committee to submit emails and other records, are also defendants in the lawsuit brought by the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana. The plaintiffs include Jill Hines, a director of Health Freedom Louisiana, an organization that has been accused of disinformation, and Jim Hoft, the founder of the Gateway Pundit, a right-wing news site. The court in the Western District of Louisiana has, under Judge Doughty, become a favored venue for legal challenges against the Biden administration.The attacks use “the same argument that starts with some false premises,” said Jeff Hancock, the founding director of the Stanford Social Media Lab, which is not a party to any of the legal action. “We see it in the media, in the congressional committees and in lawsuits, and it is the same core argument, with a false premise about the government giving some type of direction to the research we do.”The House Judiciary Committee has focused much of its questioning on two collaborative projects. One was the Election Integrity Partnership, which Stanford and the University of Washington formed before the 2020 election to identify attempts “to suppress voting, reduce participation, confuse voters or delegitimize election results without evidence.” The other, also organized by Stanford, was called the Virality Project and focused on the spread of disinformation about Covid-19 vaccines.Both subjects have become political lightning rods, exposing the researchers to partisan attacks online that have become ominously personal at times.In the case of the Stanford Internet Observatory, the requests for information — including all emails — have even extended to students who volunteered to work as interns for the Election Integrity Partnership.A central premise of the committee’s investigation — and the other complaints about censorship — is that the researchers or government officials had the power or ability to shut down accounts on social media. They did not, according to former employees at Twitter and Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, who said the decision to punish users who violated platform rules belonged solely to the companies.No evidence has emerged that government officials coerced the companies to take action against accounts, even when the groups flagged problematic content.“We have not only academic freedom as researchers to conduct this research but freedom of speech to tell Twitter or any other company to look at tweets we might think violate rules,” Mr. Hancock said.The universities and research organizations have sought to comply with the committee’s requests, though the collection of years of emails has been a time-consuming task complicated by issues of privacy. They face mounting legal costs and questions from directors and donors about the risks raised by studying disinformation. Online attacks have also taken a toll on morale and, in some cases, scared away students.In May, Mr. Jordan, the committee’s chairman, threatened Stanford with unspecified legal action for not complying with a previously issued subpoena, even though the university’s lawyers have been negotiating with the committee’s lawyers over how to shield students’ privacy. (Several of the students who volunteered are identified in the America First Legal lawsuit.)The committee declined to discuss details of the investigation, including how many requests or subpoenas it has filed in total. Nor has it disclosed how it expects the inquiry to unfold — whether it would prepare a final report or make criminal referrals and, if so, when. In its statements, though, it appears to have already reached a broad conclusion.“The Twitter files and information from private litigation show how the federal government worked with social media companies and other entities to silence disfavored speech online,” a spokesman, Russell Dye, said in a statement. “The committee is working hard to get to the bottom of this censorship to protect First Amendment rights for all Americans.”The partisan controversy is having an effect on not only the researchers but also the social media giants.Twitter, under Mr. Musk, has made a point of lifting restrictions and restoring accounts that had been suspended, including the Gateway Pundit’s. YouTube recently announced that it would no longer ban videos that advanced “false claims that widespread fraud, errors or glitches occurred in the 2020 and other past U.S. presidential elections.” More

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      Fact-Checking Nikki Haley on the Campaign Trail

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      The Republican presidential candidate has made inaccurate or misleading claims about abortion, trans youth, foreign policy and domestic issues.Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, was the first prominent candidate to announce a challenge to former President Donald J. Trump’s bid for the Republican presidential nomination.Since entering the race in February, Ms. Haley has weighed in on social issues and tapped into her experience as a former United Nations ambassador under Mr. Trump to criticize current U.S. foreign policy.Here’s a fact check of her recent remarks on the campaign trial.Sex and gender issuesWhat Ms. Haley SAID“Roe v. Wade came in and threw out 46 state laws and suddenly said abortion any time, anywhere, for any reason.”— in a CNN town hall in JuneThis is exaggerated. Ms. Haley is overstating the scope of the landmark ruling Roe v. Wade, which established a constitutional right to abortion. The 1973 decision also ensured that states could not bar abortions before fetal viability, or when a fetus cannot survive outside the womb. That is not the same as “any time,” as Ms. Haley said. That moment was around 28 weeks after conception at the time of the decision and now, because of advances in medicine, stands at around 23 or 24 weeks.Before the Supreme Court overturned Roe in June 2022, most states had laws banning the procedure at some point, with 22 banning abortions between 13 and 24 weeks and 20 states barring abortion at viability. A spokesman for Ms. Haley noted that six states and Washington, D.C., had no restrictions when Roe was overturned.What Ms. Haley SAID“How are we supposed to get our girls used to the fact that biological boys are in their locker rooms? And then we wonder why a third of our teenage girls seriously contemplated suicide last year.”— in the CNN town hallThis lacks evidence. In February, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported record levels of sadness and suicidal ideation among teen girls. And depression among teenagers, particularly girls, has been increasing for over a decade. The causes are debated, but experts said no research points to the presence of trans youth athletes in locker rooms, or increased awareness of L.G.B.T.Q. issues in general, as a causal or even contributing factor.“I can say unequivocally that there is absolutely no research evidence to support that statement,” said Dr. Kimberly Hoagwood, a child psychologist and professor at New York University. “The reasons for the increased prevalence of depression and suicide among teenage girls are complex, but have been researched extensively.”Dr. David Brent, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh, noted that teen depression rates have been increasing since the 2000s while widespread discussion and awareness of gender issues are a more recent development.“It could be stressful for some people, for the trans kids as well,” he said. “But to try to say that this is the cause, well, it just can’t be because this is a public health crisis has been going on for 15 years.”Possible factors in rising rates of teen depression include economic stress, the rise of social media, lower age of puberty, increased rates of opioid use and depression among adult caretakers, Dr. Brent said. There is also the general decrease in play and peer-related time, decreases in social skills, and other social problems, Dr. Elizabeth Englander, a child psychologist and professor at Bridgewater State University, wrote in an email. L.G.B.T.Q. youth also have a higher risk for mental health issues, according to the C.D.C.“Even if someone has found an association between being around trans or L.G.B.T.Q. youth and increased depression in heterosexual youth (which, to my knowledge, no one has), it seems incredibly unlikely that such contact is an important cause of the current crisis in mental health that we see in youth,” Dr. Englander added, calling Ms. Haley’s theory “outrageous.”Ms. Haley has weighed in issues of identity and abortion and tapped into her experience as former United Nations ambassador.John Tully for The New York TimesForeign policyWhat Ms. Haley SAID“If we want to really fix the environment, then let’s start having serious conversations with India and China. They are our polluters. They’re the ones that are causing the problem.”— in the CNN town hallThis needs context. Ms. Haley has a point that China is the top emitter of greenhouse gasses and India is the third-largest emitter, according to the latest data from the European Commission. But the United States is the second-largest emitting country.Moreover, India and China are the most populous countries in the world and release less emissions per capita than many wealthier nations. In 2021, China emitted 8.7 metric tons of carbon dioxide per capita and India 1.9 metric tons, compared to the 14.24 metric tons of the United States.Ms. Haley’s spokesman noted that emissions from China and India have increased in recent years, compared with the United States’ downward trend, and are the top two producers of coal.Still, the two developing countries bear less historical responsibility than wealthier nations. The United States is responsible for about 24.6 percent of historical emissions, China 13.9 percent and India 3.2 percent.What Ms. Haley SAID“Last year, we gave over $50 billion in foreign aid. Do you know who we gave it to? We gave it to Pakistan that harbored terrorists that try to kill our soldiers. We gave it to Iraq that has Iranian influence, that says ‘death to America.’ We gave it to Zimbabwe that’s the most anti-American African country out there. We gave it to Belarus who’s holding hands with Russia as they invade Ukraine. We gave money to communist Cuba, who we named a state sponsor of terrorism. And yes, the most unthinkable, we give money to China.”— in a June fund-raiser in IowaThis is misleading. In the 2022 fiscal year, which ended in September, the United States gave out $50 billion in foreign aid. But the six countries Ms. Haley singled out received about $835 million total in aid or 1.7 percent of the total. Moreover, most foreign aid — about 77 percent, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service — is channeled through an American company or nonprofit, international charity or federal agency to carry out projects, and not handed directly to foreign governments.Zimbabwe received $399 million, Iraq $248 million, Pakistan $147 million, Belarus $32.8 million, Cuba $6.8 million and China $1.7 million.The biggest single contracts to aid Zimbabwe and Pakistan were $30 million and $16.5 million to the World Food Program to provide meals and alleviate hunger. In Iraq, the largest contract of $29 million was awarded to a United Nations agency. And in Cuba, the third-largest contract was carried out by the International Republican Institute — a pro-democracy nonprofit whose board includes Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa, the host of the fund-raiser Ms. Haley was speaking at.In comparison, the country that received the most foreign aid, at about $10.5 billion or a fifth of the total amount, was Ukraine, followed by Ethiopia ($2.1 billion), Yemen ($1.4 billion), Afghanistan ($1.3 billion) and Nigeria ($1.1 billion).Another $12 billion was spent on global aid efforts in general, including about $4 billion in grants to the Global Fund, an international group that finances campaigns against H.I.V., tuberculosis and malaria.Domestic policyWhat Ms. Haley SAID“We will stop giving the hundreds of billions of dollars of handouts to illegal immigrants.”— in the CNN town hallThis is disputed. Unauthorized immigrants are barred from benefiting from most federal social safety net programs like Medicaid and food stamps. But the spokesman for Ms. Haley gave examples of recent payments made by local governments that allowed unauthorized immigrants to participate in benefit programs: $2.1 billion worth of one-time payments of up to $15,600 to immigrants in New York who lost work during Covid-19 pandemic, totaling $2.1 billion; $1 million for payments to families in Boston during the pandemic; permitting unauthorized immigrants to participate in California’s health care program for low-income residents, which could cost $2.2 billion annually.These, however, do not add up to “hundreds of billions.” That figure is in line with an estimate from an anti-immigration group that other researchers have heavily criticized for its methodological flaws.The group, the Federation for American Immigration Reform, estimated in March that illegal immigration costs the United States and local governments $135.2 billion each year in spending on education, health care and welfare, as well as another $46.9 billion in law enforcement.But the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, has found that an earlier but similar version of the estimate overcounted welfare benefits that undocumented immigrants receive, and undercounted the taxes that they pay. The net cost, according to Cato, is actually $3.3 billion to $15.6 billion.The American Immigration Council similarly concluded that education and health care account for more than half of the costs, and that the benefits were afforded to many American-citizen children of undocumented immigrants.The estimated 11 million unauthorized immigrants living in the United States are barred from the vast majority of the federal government’s safety net programs. In 2017, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine found that immigration, illegal and legal, benefited the economy.What Ms. Haley SAID“Let’s start by clawing back the $500 billion of unspent Covid dollars that are out there.”— in the CNN town hallThis is exaggerated. Ms. Haley overstated the amount of unspent coronavirus emergency funding. In reality, the amount is estimated to be much smaller, roughly $60 billion. What is more, a budget deal between President Biden and Speaker Kevin McCarthy that was signed into law a day before Ms. Haley spoke rescinded about $30 billion of that leftover money.Lawmakers passed trillions of dollars in economic stimulus and public health funding, most of which has already been spent. The federal government’s official spending website estimates that Congress has passed about $4.65 trillion in response to Covid-19 (referred to as “budgetary resources”) and, as of April 30, paid out $4.23 trillion (or “outlays”), suggesting that about $423 billion has not gone out the door. But that calculation fails to consider the promises of payment (or “obligations”) that have been made, about $4.52 trillion. That is a difference of about $130 billion, but some of initially approved funding that was unspent and not yet promised has already expired.In April, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that rescinding unobligated funding from six laws between 2020 and 2023 — the four coronavirus packages, President Donald J. Trump’s last spending measure, and President Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus package — would amount to about $56 billion. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonpartisan group that supports reduced government spending, estimated about $55.5 billion in unspent funds. More

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      Cheryl Hines Didn’t Expect to Be Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Running Mate

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      The “Curb Your Enthusiasm” actress is beloved in Hollywood. In supporting her husband’s campaign, is she normalizing his often dangerous ideas?On a quiet Thursday in May, there was almost no indication that anyone in Cheryl Hines’s house was running for president. A hockey stick poked out from a bush in front of the Spanish colonial home in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles. Leaning up against a wall outside were several surfboards, caked with wax, at least one of which belonged to her husband, the 69-year-old environmental lawyer and vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who had announced his candidacy for the 2024 Democratic nomination only four weeks earlier. In the foyer, the family’s three dogs wagged their tails near a portrait of Mr. Kennedy’s famous uncle and aunt, John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, by the artist Romero Britto. Over the door hung an even larger portrait, of Ms. Hines and Mr. Kennedy, also by Mr. Britto, a friend of the couple.Ms. Hines, 57, has been in many spotlights during her three decades as a professional actress, most famously for her role as Larry David’s wife on “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” but this new one is different. After a lifetime of not being particularly political, she finds herself not only married to a man from a storied American political family, but also attached to his long-shot campaign for the highest office in the country. (Mr. Kennedy is the son of former United States Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy.) And it seems clear he will need Ms. Hines, who is in the unique position of being more recognizable to some voters than her candidate husband, to help soften his image for those put off by his crusade against vaccines and history of promoting conspiracy theories, such as the false narrative that Bill Gates champions vaccines for financial gain. “I support Bobby and I want to be there for him, and I want him to feel loved and supported by me,” said Ms. Hines, who is a registered Democrat. “And at the same time, I don’t feel the need to go to every political event, because I do have my own career.”Mr. Kennedy, in an interview with The New York Times a few weeks later, said that he sees his wife as crucial to his success. “I think ultimately if I get elected, Cheryl will have played a huge role in that,” he said. “She’s an enormous asset to me, and I don’t think we’ve really unveiled her in her true power yet.” He added: “She has a gift that she’s kind of mesmerizing when she’s on TV and she’s talking, because she’s so spontaneous and she has this what I would call a quick, a fast-twitch reflex when it comes to conversation.”Friends keep checking in on her. Elections can get ugly, and Mr. Kennedy’s campaign, seemingly by design, will put him in contact with many of this country’s more unconventional voters.After a lifetime of not being particularly political, Ms. Hines finds herself not only married to a man from a storied American political family, but also attached to his long-shot campaign for the highest office in the country.Sophie Park for The New York Times“I’m bracing myself for it,” said Ms. Hines of the public scrutiny that comes with campaigning, while sitting in her home office. On the bookshelf, there’s a plaque of her Hollywood Walk of Fame star and a humorous framed photo of Mr. David in a turtleneck and fake mustache, holding a pipe with a note congratulating her. “It is hard not to live in that space of, ‘Oh my gosh, what’s going to happen? And is it going to be as terrible as I think?’”In her first interview since her husband announced his candidacy, Ms. Hines initially appeared at ease. She has done hundreds of interviews throughout her career, and as a seasoned improv actress, is known to be quick on her feet and sharply funny. She cut her teeth in the Groundlings, a Los Angeles-based improv troupe; “Curb” is outlined but unscripted. In some ways, answering questions from a stranger is just another form of: “Yes, and.” With improv, “it’s challenging because you don’t know what’s coming next. You don’t know what the audience is going to shout out,” she said. “‘Where are these two people?’ ‘They’re scooping poop in the lion’s den at the zoo!’ Lights go down. Lights go up.”“You have to commit 100 percent,” she continued, “or it’s not funny or interesting.”But here’s a scenario that would challenge even an improv master: You are beloved by fans and peers, and have managed to steer clear of controversy your entire career, but fall in love with a man who touches it off regularly with his often outlandish claims — a man who was kicked off Instagram along with his anti-vaccine nonprofit, Children’s Health Defense, for spreading misinformation during the pandemic. (Instagram reinstated Mr. Kennedy’s personal account earlier this month, because of his candidacy.) Who last year drew criticism and later apologized when, at a rally against vaccine mandates in Washington, he spoke against 5G technology, surveillance and what he called “technological mechanisms for control” and said, “even in Hitler’s Germany, you could cross the Alps to Switzerland. You could hide in an attic like Anne Frank did.” Who just this week suggested “S.S.R.I.s and benzos and other drugs” might be responsible for America’s school-shooting problem. (Mr. Kennedy told The Times that assault rifles “clearly make the world more dangerous and we should figure out a way to limit that impact,” but added, “there’s something else happening.”)Now, he is running for president, and you — “a genuine ray of light,” says the producer Suzanne Todd, and whom actor Alec Baldwin has said “everybody loves” — are along for the ride. After years of being able to distance yourself from your husband’s most problematic views, you now risk being seen as at least tacitly embracing them by standing by and smiling if he says things on the campaign trail that are demonstrably untrue.A note of congratulations from Larry David for Ms. Hines’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesA plaque for Ms. Hines’s star.Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesIntroduced by Larry DavidMs. Hines was raised in Tallahassee, Fla., a thousand miles away— geographically and culturally — from the Kennedy compound in Hyannis, Mass., where she and Mr. Kennedy wed in 2014. Her father, who worked in construction, and her mother, an assistant at the Department of Revenue, were private about their politics, if they even had any. “If I ever asked my mom who she voted for, she would tell me it’s nobody’s business and it was her own secret,” Ms. Hines said. “I don’t recall my dad ever once talking about politics or current events, so it was not part of my life. Really, the only thing I knew about the Kennedys was what I learned in public school, in history.”After cosmetology school and the University of Central Florida, her first acting job was at Universal Studios, where she performed the shower scene from “Psycho” up to 15 times a day for a live audience. It was a gig that involved standing in a flesh-colored body suit while an audience member stabbed her with a rubber knife. In her 30s — practically of a certain age in Hollywood years — Ms. Hines was still paying her dues: bartending, working as the personal assistant to the filmmaker and actor Rob Reiner and going to improv classes. Her break came in 1999, when she was cast in “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” In 2002, the show won the first of its many Emmys and Golden Globes. Ms. Hines recalled being backstage at the Golden Globe Awards and running into Harrison Ford. When he stopped to congratulate her, she extended her hand and said, “I’m Cheryl Hines. Harrison Ford said, ‘I know who you are,’ and I thought, Oh my God, what?”She and Mr. Kennedy met in 2006 when Mr. David, a longtime friend of Mr. Kennedy’s, introduced them at a ski-weekend fund-raiser in Banff, Canada, for Waterkeeper Alliance, an environmental nonprofit co-founded by Mr. Kennedy. Ms. Hines had no plans to ski, “but the next thing you know, we’re in skis and we’re on a ski lift,” she said. “I was looking at Larry like, ‘What is happening?’ He’s like, ‘Yeah,’ giving an indication like, ‘That’s Bobby.’” Ms. Hines said she was aware of Mr. Kennedy’s work as an environmental lawyer, but “I still didn’t know too much about the politics of it all.”By then, Ms. Hines was well entrenched in her own philanthropic work: for the nonprofit United Cerebral Palsy, after her nephew was diagnosed, and for under-resourced schools. “Cheryl was always reachable and accessible to me,” said Jacqueline Sanderlin, a former principal and district administrator of the Compton Unified School District. “She wasn’t a mercenary person. She wasn’t doing this for herself.”Ms. Hines’s break came in 1999, when she was cast in “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” the HBO show created by Mr. David.Jason Merritt/Getty ImagesMs. Hines and Mr. Kennedy spent time together at another ski event in 2011, when they each were going through a divorce, and eventually began dating long distance. Mr. David never intended for them to connect romantically, Ms. Hines noted. (“Poor Larry,” she said, looking up at the ceiling.) Mr. David told her the relationship was a bad idea, which she said was in jest. “It’s part of the fun of Larry. You just know no matter what you say to him, he’s going to say, ‘Why would you do that? Are you crazy?’”She was attracted to Mr. Kennedy’s wit. “Bobby is very smart and funny, although a lot of people don’t see the funny side,” she said. “He also has this sense of adventure that will catapult me outside of my comfort zone, which I find exciting most of the time.” (How about now, with him running for office? “It seems like, ‘What am I getting myself into?’ Yeah, but, scuba diving.”)Their relationship made headlines when tragedy struck: In May of 2012, Mr. Kennedy’s second wife, Mary Richardson Kennedy, died by suicide at her home in Bedford, N.Y. Ms. Hines stayed on the West Coast while Mr. Kennedy focused on his children. “I gave him the space and time to heal,” she said. “I think grief is very personal.”When Ms. Hines and Mr. Kennedy got married two years later, Mr. Kennedy gave a speech in which he repeatedly called Ms. Hines “unflappable.” “It was to the level where we joked about it afterward,” said Ms. Todd, a close friend of Ms. Hines. “But he’s actually right, because Cheryl is unflappable.”Her career had continued at a clip: “Curb” returned in 2017 after a six-year hiatus. She joined the cast of the film “A Bad Moms Christmas” along with Susan Sarandon and Christine Baranski, guest-starred in a slew of sitcoms and started a podcast about documentaries with the comedian Tig Notaro.Mr. Kennedy had also been busy. In 2016, he founded the World Mercury Project, which became the Children’s Health Defense, a nonprofit that advocates against vaccines for children. He co-wrote a book on vaccines and began posting anti-vaccine propaganda on social media.During the pandemic, Mr. Kennedy became an even louder voice in the anti-vaccine movement, encouraging people to “do your own research,” even as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization deemed the Covid vaccines safe and effective.Mr. Kennedy has long expressed skepticism about vaccines, but his intensity grew with his platform and audience. He published another book, “Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health,” which has blurbs from the former Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson, the director Oliver Stone and the lawyer Alan Dershowitz, among others. Ms. Hines stayed out of the fray for most of the pandemic. On her Instagram, she shared images of herself wearing a mask, as well as posts about her involvement with Waterkeeper Alliance — notably never mentioning Children’s Health Defense — and didn’t comment on her husband’s vaccine rhetoric. But then Mr. Kennedy made his Holocaust remark, and claimed that Dr. Anthony Fauci, the most visible public health leader fighting Covid, was orchestrating “fascism.”“My husband’s opinions are not a reflection of my own. While we love each other, we differ on many current issues,” Ms. Hines wrote on Twitter. The next day, she tweeted again, calling the Holocaust reference “reprehensible.” “The atrocities that millions endured during the Holocaust should never be compared to anyone or anything,” she wrote.Ms. Hines’s first acting job was at Universal Studios, where she performed the shower scene from “Psycho” up to 15 times a day.Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesMr. Kennedy said it was a difficult time for them. “I saw how it was affecting her life and I said to her, ‘We should just announce that we are separated,’ so that you can have some distance from me,” he said. “We wouldn’t really be doing anything, we would just — I felt so desperate about protecting her at a time where my statements and my decisions were impacting her.” He said he even wrote up a news release, though it never went out. Ms. Hines said that was never an option, although she was upset with Mr. Kennedy for his choice of words. “It was also frustrating to hear Bobby say things that could so easily be twisted into snippets that misrepresented his meaning and didn’t represent who he is,” she said.Several months later, Mr. Kennedy approached her to say he was considering running for office. “It was definitely a discussion,” Ms. Hines said, “because he said, ‘If you don’t want me to do it, I won’t.’” She ultimately agreed. On June 5, Ms. Hines was pulled into a Twitter Spaces conversation with Mr. Kennedy and Elon Musk, even though she hadn’t intended to participate. After she gave a measured comment about how she feels about her husband running for office — “It’s been really interesting,” she said, slowly, “and at times exciting” — Mr. Kennedy said that, to cope with the campaign, Ms. Hines had joked she was going to “invent a new kind of margarita that had Xanax in it.”Seeing ‘Both Sides’ on VaccinesMr. Kennedy’s traction has been surprising. A recent CNN poll found that Mr. Kennedy had support from 20 percent of Democratic or Democratic-leaning voters (though not the multiple members of his own family who have publicly said they will support President Biden.) Jack Dorsey, the former chief executive of Twitter, has endorsed him. Steve Bannon has been supportive of Mr. Kennedy’s campaign, floating the idea of a Trump-Kennedy ticket; Alex Jones and other right-wing conspiracy theorists have also expressed enthusiasm. Mr. Kennedy said he has never met Mr. Jones and has “never spoken to Mr. Bannon or Mr. Jones about my presidential campaign.” When asked twice if he would reject an endorsement from Mr. Jones, who lost a $1 billion lawsuit for repeatedly saying the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting that killed 20 first graders and six educators in Newtown, Conn., was a government hoax, Mr. Kennedy did not respond. Mr. Kennedy said that he would “love to go on Steve Bannon’s show, but Cheryl just can’t bear that,” so he has not. Back at her home in Los Angeles, what Ms. Hines seemed most excited to talk about was Hines+Young, the eco-friendly company she recently started with her 19-year-old daughter, Catherine Young. It is mostly skin care and candles, and one scent is called Hyannis Seagrass. This — the skin care, the podcast, the film and TV projects — was her world, not whatever was happening on the campaign trail.Ms. Hines does have issues she cares about, including school safety, and “bodily autonomy,” which she said includes abortion but more broadly is the ability to “make decisions about our body with a doctor, not with a politician.” (She declined to comment on whether that includes vaccines.) She had no canned answers prepared about her husband’s political career, but unlike in her improv, seemed unsure what to say. “Bobby is very smart and funny, although a lot of people don’t see the funny side,” Ms. Hines said about her husband. “He also has this sense of adventure that will catapult me outside of my comfort zone, which I find exciting most of the time.”Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesOn potentially being first lady: “I haven’t really spent time in that space, because we’re not there yet.” On how much she has prepped for the trail: “Every day I learn a lot.” On which current issues, specifically, she was referring to when she tweeted that she and her husband “differ”: “OK. Let me think here.” There was a 49-second pause then, which didn’t resolve in a clear answer. Ms. Hines, who appeared in a 2006 public service announcement encouraging people to get a whooping cough booster vaccine — and who had her own daughter vaccinated when she was young — had not previously commented on Mr. Kennedy’s views. “I see both sides of the vaccine situation,” she said. “There’s one side that feels scared if they don’t get the vaccine, and there’s the side that feels scared if they do get the vaccine, because they’re not sure if the vaccine is safe. And I understand that.”“So if Bobby is standing up and saying, ‘Well, are we sure that they’re safe and every vaccine has been tested properly? That doesn’t seem too much to ask,” she continued. “That seems like the right question to be asking.” Ms. Hines tried to dodge several questions about her views on vaccines, including “Do you think vaccines are dangerous for children?,” eventually answering in a manner that didn’t criticize her husband or reveal much about her own opinion.And Mr. Kennedy has been asking questions about the safety of vaccines for years, his family name and work as an environmental lawyer giving credibility to his skepticism, which he spreads through Children’s Health Defense. In 2019, family members wrote an open letter in which they said, in part, that although they love Mr. Kennedy, “on vaccines he is wrong” and called him “complicit in sowing distrust of the science behind vaccines.” In 2021, the Center for Countering Digital Hate asserted that Mr. Kennedy was one of 12 people responsible for the majority of anti-vaccine content on Facebook. Mr. Kennedy’s campaign website makes no mention of vaccines. Instead, he has positioned himself as a fighter for the middle class and a crusader against corruption, in an effort to appeal to what he has called “all the homeless Republicans and Democrats and Independents who are Americans first.” He wrote in an email to The Times that “the principal villain in the war in Ukraine is Vladimir Putin” but also blamed the war on “State Department and White House Neocons.” In May, he said on Russell Brand’s “Stay Free” podcast that Ukraine is “a victim of U.S. aggression” by way of a “proxy war.” Language included on his campaign website states his intention is to “make America strong again.”Upon learning that an opinion piece in The Washington Post had recently compared her husband to former President Donald J. Trump, Ms. Hines’s eyes widened. She tried to make sense of the observation.“His skin is much thicker than mine, let’s just say that,” she said. Mr. Kennedy’s father was killed while campaigning; his uncle was assassinated in office — a horrific loss for the country, but also for a family. “He doesn’t talk about that,” Ms. Hines said. “He’s not afraid of much. I can’t think of even one thing he’s afraid of.”In an interview with Breitbart News Daily — Mr. Kennedy has appeared frequently on right-wing cable shows and podcasts — he said, in response to a question that involved the phrase “cancel culture,” that Ms. Hines’s career had already suffered because of her support for his candidacy. Ms. Hines clarified: “I haven’t lost any jobs because of my support for his candidacy, but there was a project I’m involved in where there was a pause for discussion about how his candidacy might affect what we are doing but it has been resolved.” Mr. Kennedy added that so far, “I feel a lot of support and love from most of her friends, including Larry.” (In a text, Mr. David clarified: “Yes love and support, but I’m not ‘supporting’ him.”)“It was definitely a discussion,” Ms. Hines said about Mr. Kennedy’s decision to run for president, “because he said, ‘If you don’t want me to do it, I won’t.’”Chantal Anderson for The New York Times“But I’m sure there’s people who just don’t talk to me about it, who feel uncomfortable or, you know, whatever,” Mr. Kennedy continued. Ms. Hines said she was getting used to people wanting to talk to her about “their political feelings and thoughts.” Her strategy is to deflect. She said that she responds with a version of, “This is probably something you should talk about with Bobby, although I’m happy to hear your thoughts.” (The day after Mr. Kennedy announced his candidacy, Mr. Reiner, Ms. Hines’s friend and former boss, tweeted his support for President Biden.) Her industry friends, to her relief, are also consumed with their own affairs. “I went to this poker charity tournament the other night, and I thought everybody was going to be really talking to me about politics,” she said. But instead, “everybody was talking about the writers’ strike.”Ms. Hines isn’t a stiff person. Her personality comes out most in the lighter moments: While talking about a scene she recalled from her time with the Groundlings, Ms. Hines broke out into an impersonation of Cher singing “The Hills Are Alive.” She gushed as she talked about her love for her daughter, and how (not completely unlike her character in “A Bad Moms Christmas,” who sniffs her adult daughter’s hair) one of the reasons she wanted to work with her is to keep her close. Ms. Hines is used to talking about her work, too; her upcoming projects include the 12th season of “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” a new season of the music game show “I Can See Your Voice,” on which she is a judge and the comedic film “Popular Theory.”But when it comes to the campaign, Ms. Hines is more guarded. “This feels different, because it feels like every word is important,” she said. “Before this, really, my world was just about comedy, so I could make light of things. But now I understand people are listening in a different way, and I know that it’s really important to them. ”As the interview wound down, she laid out several Hines+Young body creams on the coffee table to smell. “It’s all about taking care of yourself and relaxing,” she said. “So it’s hilarious that it’s launching right now.”She then walked over to a bookshelf behind the sofa, where white T-shirts with “Kennedy24” printed across the front were rolled up and stacked, like towels at a gym. “I’m going to give you a T-shirt,” she said. “I don’t know who you’re voting for, and you can do whatever you want with it.”She looked around the room again, and then toward the door. “I have all these Kennedy T-shirts.” More

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      Robert Kennedy Jr., With Musk, Pushes Right-Wing Ideas and Misinformation

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      Mr. Kennedy, a long-shot Democratic presidential candidate with surprisingly high polling numbers, said he wanted to close the Mexican border and attributed the rise of mass shootings to pharmaceutical drugs.Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a scion of one of the country’s most famous Democratic families, on Monday dived into the full embrace of a host of conservative figures who eagerly promoted his long-shot primary challenge to President Biden.For more than two hours, Mr. Kennedy participated in an online audio chat on Twitter with the platform’s increasingly rightward-leaning chief executive, Elon Musk. They engaged in a friendly back-and-forth with the likes of Tulsi Gabbard, the former Democratic congresswoman turned right-wing commentator; a top donor to Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida; and a professional surfer who became a prominent voice casting doubt on coronavirus vaccines.Mr. Kennedy, who announced his 2024 presidential campaign in April, is himself a leading vaccine skeptic, and has promoted other conspiracy theories. Yet he has consistently hovered around 20 percent in polling of the Democratic primary, which the party has otherwise ceded to Mr. Biden.On Monday, he sounded like a candidate far more at ease in the mushrooming Republican presidential contest.He said he planned to travel to the Mexican border this week to “try to formulate policies that will seal the border permanently,” called for the federal government to consider the war in Ukraine from the perspective of Russians and said pharmaceutical drugs were responsible for the rise of mass shootings in America.“Prior to the introduction of Prozac, we had almost none of these events in our country and we’ve never seen them in human history, where people walk into a schoolroom of children or strangers and start shooting people,” said Mr. Kennedy, who noted that both his father and uncle were killed by guns.Mr. Kennedy said he now had “about 50 people” working for his campaign. Unlike Marianne Williamson, the other announced Democratic challenger to Mr. Biden, he does not appear to be aiming to appeal to Democrats who are ideologically opposed to the moderate president or are otherwise uneasy with renominating him. Instead, he has used his campaign platform — and his famous name — to promote misinformation and ideas that have little traction in his party.Asked during the discussion by David Sacks, a top DeSantis donor who is also close to Mr. Musk, “what happened to the Democratic Party,” Mr. Kennedy spent nine uninterrupted minutes attacking Mr. Biden as a warmonger and claimed that their party was under the control of the pharmaceutical industry.“I think the Democratic Party became the party of war,” Mr. Kennedy said. “I attribute that directly to President Biden.” He added, “He has always been in favor of very bellicose, pugnacious and aggressive foreign policy, and he believes that violence is a legitimate political tool for achieving America’s objectives abroad.”The Democratic National Committee and Mr. Biden’s campaign declined to comment about Mr. Kennedy.The event, which at its peak had more than 60,000 listeners, according to Twitter, at times felt as if Mr. Kennedy were interviewing Mr. Musk about his stewardship of Twitter, a platform that has lost more than half of its advertising revenue since the billionaire acquired it in October. For more than 30 minutes at the event’s start, the presidential candidate interrogated the tech mogul about releasing the so-called Twitter files, self-driving cars and artificial intelligence.“These are really interesting topics for people, but I think a lot of the public would like to hear about your presidential run,” Mr. Musk said to Mr. Kennedy.Mr. Kennedy, 69, is a longtime amplifier and propagator of baseless theories, beginning nearly two decades ago with his skepticism about the result of the 2004 presidential election as well as common childhood vaccines. His audience for such misinformation ballooned during the coronavirus pandemic.On Monday, Mr. Kennedy repeated a host of false statements, among them:He said that after the Affordable Care Act of 2010, “Democrats were getting more money from pharma than Republicans.” An analysis by STAT News found that political action committees with ties to pharmaceutical companies gave more money to Republicans than Democrats in 14 out of 16 election years since 1990.He claimed, without evidence, that “Covid was clearly a bioweapons problem.” American intelligence agencies do not believe there is any evidence indicating that is the case.And as he blamed psychiatric drug use for the rise of gun violence in the United States, he contended that the gun ownership rate in the U.S. was similar to that of Switzerland. The United States had the highest civilian gun ownership rate in the world, at an estimated 120.5 firearms per 100 people, according the latest international Small Arms Survey. That was more than double the rate of the second-highest country, Yemen at 52.8, and much higher than Switzerland’s 27.6. More

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      Trump and Cuomo Agree That DeSantis Mishandled Covid

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      The two combative men from Queens have often been antagonists, but now they both see an opening to attack the Florida governor over his pandemic leadership.For years they overlapped in New York politics, two brash sons of Queens rising through the worlds of real estate and government, as Donald J. Trump donated to Andrew M. Cuomo’s campaigns and made a virtual appearance at his bachelor party.Then they were antagonists, with Mr. Cuomo, a powerful Democratic governor of New York, embracing chances to serve as a foil to the divisive Republican president.Now out of power after Mr. Trump lost the 2020 election and Mr. Cuomo resigned in disgrace, they have found themselves in a moment of alignment, each lacing into Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida over his handling of the coronavirus pandemic.“Even Cuomo did better,” Mr. Trump said in a recent video.“Donald Trump tells the truth, finally,” Mr. Cuomo declared on Twitter on Tuesday, though he distanced himself from the former president’s faint accolades on a new podcast.Assessing the success or failure of each state’s handling of the pandemic is a complex task.New York and Florida, two large and populous states, both had higher death rates per 100,000 people than many other states.According to a New York Times tracker, Florida had a slightly lower death rate than New York did from the beginning of the pandemic to March of this year. Florida had a slightly higher number of total deaths than New York did, about 87,000 versus 80,000 in the same period, though New York was known early on as the “epicenter of the epicenter” of the pandemic.As he campaigns in Iowa and other early nominating states, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida has made his handling of the pandemic central to his presidential bid.Rachel Mummey for The New York TimesBoth governors faced plenty of scrutiny and criticism over their stewardship of the pandemic, with Mr. Cuomo sustaining particular heat over his administration’s handling of nursing home deaths in the pandemic.For his part, Mr. DeSantis, who has emerged as Mr. Trump’s chief Republican rival, has made his pandemic record — including his decision to reopen his state’s economy relatively early, even in the face of coronavirus surges and rising hospitalizations — a focal point of his campaign.He has used the issue as a way to draw his own contrasts with Mr. Trump, who, he suggests, went too far in empowering Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert during the pandemic.“Do you want Cuomo or do you want free Florida?” Mr. DeSantis said in Iowa this week. “If we just decided the caucuses on that, I would be happy with that verdict by Iowa voters.”And in an interview on “Good Morning New Hampshire” on Thursday, Mr. DeSantis defended his record again, saying that “people fled Cuomo’s lockdowns to come to Florida.”“He’s attacking me, siding with Andrew Cuomo in New York, over me,” Mr. DeSantis said. “I think that’s a huge mistake.”Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Mr. Trump, did not respond to requests for comment on Thursday.In New York, former Gov. David A. Paterson, a Democrat, said the relationship between Mr. Trump and Mr. Cuomo had at times been less rancorous than those between Mr. Trump and many other Democrats.“The acrimony that existed between the president and others was far greater than what theirs was,” said Mr. Paterson, who mentioned that he had recently dined with Mr. Cuomo.“The positive interaction now is, it’s a tricky path,” he said, even as he noted that he did not expect it to be a “prelude to a partnership.”In his podcast, Mr. Cuomo made plain that he did not intend to bear-hug Mr. Trump, noting that the former president had been highly critical of Democratic governors at the height of the pandemic, but seemed to be changing his tune — making a “total 180” — as he focused on a primary rival.“Now the politics has shifted for Mr. Trump, who is running against Mr. DeSantis, and now Mr. Trump says, ‘Cuomo did a better job than DeSantis,’” Mr. Cuomo said. “I’m very proud of the way New York handled it.” More

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      Alberta’s Vote Will Test American-Style Far-Right Politics

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      An election in Alberta will be a test of a premier who has said that she models her politics after those of prominent right-wing U.S. politicians.The NewsVoters in Alberta, the epicenter of conservative politics in Canada, will select a new provincial government on Monday. Albertans will vote for local representatives in the provincial legislature and the party that wins the most seats will form the government, with its leader becoming premier. The election pits the United Conservative Party, led by the current premier, Danielle Smith, against a leftist party, the New Democratic Party, led by Rachel Notley, a lawyer. Before the pandemic, the governing United Conservative Party appeared to have a firm hold on power. But last year, large and angry demonstrations against pandemic restrictions and against vaccine mandates helped spark a trucker convoy in the province that eventually spread, paralyzing Ottawa, Canada’s capital, and blocking vital cross-border crossings.A small group of social conservatives within the United Conservatives ousted their leader, Jason Kenney, ending his premiership, after the government refused to lift pandemic measures. The party replaced him with Ms. Smith, a far-right former radio talk show host and newspaper columnist prone to incendiary comments; she compared people who were vaccinated against Covid-19 to supporters of Hitler. Danielle Smith, the leader of the United Conservative Party, while campaigning this month in Calgary.Amber Bracken for The New York TimesThe BackgroundMs. Smith likes to extol right-wing U.S. politicians, for example, calling Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, a Republican running for president, her hero. She also has floated ideas that most Canadians would never support, like charging fees for public health care.Ms. Smith now finds herself, analysts say, far to the right of many conservative loyalists, turning what should been a near-certain victory for her party into a close race that has provided an opening for their opponents, the New Democratic Party, a leftist party.“This would not be a close race if anyone other than Danielle Smith was leading the U.C.P.,” said Janet Brown, who runs a polling firm based in Calgary, Alberta’s largest city. Ms. Notley is seeking to steer the labor-backed New Democrats to a second upset victory in the province in recent years. In 2015, she led the New Democrats to power for the first time in Alberta’s history, thanks in part to a fracturing of the conservative movement into two feuding parties. The stunning win broke a string of conservative governments dating to the Great Depression. But her victory coincided with a collapse in oil prices that cratered the province’s economy. Ms. Notley’s approval ratings plunged and the United Conservatives took over in 2019.Ms. Smith’s support is largely based in the province’s rural areas, surveys show, while Ms. Notley’s path to victory on Tuesday will likely be through Alberta’s urban centers, including its two largest cities, Edmonton and Calgary. Edmonton, the provincial capital and a city with a large union presence, is likely to back the New Democrats. That could make Calgary, which is generally more conservative leaning, a deciding factor. Calgary also has a growing ethnic population, particularly immigrants from South Asia, and Ms. Smith’s is unpopular with many of those voters because of some of her extreme statements.Why It MattersIf Ms. Smith’s brand of conservatism fails to return her party to office in Canada’s most conservative province, the federal Conservative Party of Canada may need to reconsider its strategy as it prepares to take on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his Liberal Party in the next national elections. The federal conservatives also replaced the party’s leader during the pandemic with a combative right-wing politician, Pierre Poilievre, who welcomed truck convoy protesters to Ottawa, the capital, with coffee and doughnuts. Mr. Poilievre shares Ms. Smith’s penchant for promoting provocative positions.Even a narrow victory for Ms. Smith could actually be a loss, if it means fewer conservative seats in the provincial legislature, said Duane Bratt, a political scientist at Mount Royal University in Calgary. In that scenario, Ms. Smith could find her position as premier and party leader tenuous and many of the policies she promotes could be cast aside, he said. “If she loses, she’s gone,” he said. “If she wins, I think she’s still gone.” More

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      DeSantis Steps Up Attacks on Trump, Hitting Him on Crime and Covid

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      Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida vowed to repeal the First Step Act, a Trump-era criminal justice law, if elected president. He called it “basically a jailbreak bill.”Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida escalated his hostilities with former President Donald J. Trump on Friday, arguing that his Republican presidential rival was weak on crime and immigration, and accusing him of ceding critical decision-making during the coronavirus pandemic to Dr. Anthony S. Fauci.In an appearance with the conservative commentator Ben Shapiro, Mr. DeSantis accused Mr. Trump, the G.O.P. front-runner, of “moving left” on criminal justice and immigration issues after winning over the party’s base in 2015 and 2016.He pledged that he would repeal what is known as the First Step Act, a bipartisan criminal justice measure signed into law by Mr. Trump in 2018 that expanded early-release programs and modified sentencing laws, including mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent drug offenders.“He enacted a bill, basically a jailbreak bill,” Mr. DeSantis said. “It has allowed dangerous people out of prison who have now reoffended and really, really hurt a number of people.”This year, The New York Times reported that Mr. DeSantis and his allies saw the criminal justice bill, which Mr. Trump signed at the urging of his son-in-law Jared Kushner — and instantly regretted — as an area of political weakness, and that Mr. DeSantis had signaled he would use it in the nomination fight. The bill is unpopular with parts of Mr. Trump’s hard-core base.But for Mr. DeSantis, assailing Mr. Trump over the First Step Act is potentially complicated. Mr. DeSantis himself voted for the first version of the bill when he was in Congress, and Trump allies have sought to highlight that fact.“So now Swampy Politician Ron DeSanctimonious is claiming he voted for it before he voted against it,” Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Mr. Trump, said in a statement. “He sounds just like John Kerry. What a phony! He can’t run away from his disastrous, embarrassing, and low-energy campaign announcement. Rookie mistakes and unforced errors — that’s who he is.”(Mr. DeSantis’s allies note that the version of the bill he voted for looked significantly different, and that the final version passed when he was no longer in the House.)When Mr. Shapiro asked Mr. DeSantis about Mr. Trump’s recent criticism that crime had risen on his watch in Florida, the former president’s adopted state, Mr. DeSantis bristled and said Mr. Trump’s policies had undermined law and order.Mr. DeSantis stepped up his attacks on his onetime ally, whom he had avoided criticizing directly for months, less than 48 hours after he entered the race in a bumpy Twitter event.And as Mr. DeSantis seems to veer to the right on issues like crime, some of his campaign’s internal strategy is coming to light.At a fund-raising meeting in Miami on Thursday, donors peppered Mr. DeSantis’s top campaign staff members with questions about his policy positions and how they should be presented to other Republicans, according to a leaked audio recording posted online by the website Florida Politics.One donor raised a question about the rightward shift, to which a campaign official eventually responded, “We just got to win a primary in order to be in a general.”The donors and officials also discussed how to talk to Republicans who support abortion rights. (Mr. DeSantis last month signed a six-week abortion ban in Florida, which contains limited exceptions, while Mr. Trump has been hesitant to support a federal ban.)A staff member offered one possible answer.“Abortion is safe, legal and rare in Florida,” he said, parroting a phrase coined by former President Bill Clinton, a Democrat. “It has not been banned,” he added. “It is limited.”In his interview with Mr. Shapiro on Friday, Mr. DeSantis sought to cast himself as unwavering on illegal immigration, saying that Mr. Trump had attacked him for opposing amnesty legislation while in Congress.He also faulted Mr. Trump for his administration’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak in 2020, especially the level of influence exerted by Dr. Fauci, the longtime top infectious disease expert and face of the federal government’s pandemic response.Dr. Fauci, who retired in January, has been a frequent target of Republican attacks over issues like remote learning, stay-at-home orders and vaccine mandates.“He responded by elevating Anthony Fauci and really turning the reins over to Dr. Fauci, and I think to terrible consequences for the United States,” Mr. DeSantis said. “I was the leader in this country in fighting back against Fauci. We bucked him every step of the way.”He said that Dr. Fauci should have been fired, but Mr. Trump had honored him.“I think the fact that Donald Trump gave Anthony Fauci a presidential commendation on Trump’s last day in office, that was a gut punch to millions of people around this country who were harmed by Fauci’s lockdowns,” Mr. DeSantis said.A day earlier, in a post by Mr. Trump on his Truth Social platform, the former president slammed Mr. DeSantis over Florida’s response to the pandemic. He said that even former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York had done a better job limiting the loss of lives to the virus than Mr. DeSantis had.Mr. DeSantis described Mr. Trump’s claim as “very bizarre,” and said that it suggested he would double down on his actions if there were another pandemic. More

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      Alberta Election Tests Conservatives’ Far-Right Shift

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      The pandemic took the conservative party in the oil-rich province of Alberta far to the right. An election on Monday will test if voters, traditionally among Canada’s most conservative, will follow.Sitting at a cafe terrace overlooking a park commemorating the birthplace of the vast oil industry in the western Canadian province of Alberta, Audrey Cerkvenac and Ernestine Dumont, wrestled with a political dilemma.In a province long the epicenter of Canada’s conservative politics, the two older women had been unwavering conservative supporters.But now, as Monday’s provincial election approached, they said they had been turned off by the strident right turn the province’s conservative party had taken as it ruled Alberta during the pandemic, fueled by extremist protests against Covid restrictions and baseless claims about vaccines.The hard-right turn of the United Conservative Party has put a province that was once a sure win for Canada’s conservatives up for grabs in Monday’s elections. Beyond a referendum on the ideological shift of the party, the vote could also serve as a gauge of the conservative standing nationwide.Led by someone who compared people vaccinated against Covid-19 to Nazi supporters, Alberta’s conservative party has moved so far right since the pandemic that it has created an opening for the left-leaning New Democratic Party to win control of the province. A conservative loss in Alberta would deal a blow to the political viability of Canada’s far right.“The pandemic has allowed a radical, right wing group to develop” here, said Ms. Cerkvenac, a retired health care administrator, who like Ms. Dumont, said she would probably deface her ballot to void it. “I have to do what I can to try and stop this.’’Anger over pandemic rules, especially vaccine mandates for cross border travel, gave birth to trucker convoys in Alberta that spread east, eventually paralyzing Canada’s capital for nearly a month and closing border crossings.Police officers began to make arrests at a trucker protest in Ottawa, Canada’s capital, in February 2022. The protest had paralyzed the city for nearly a month. Brett Gundlock for The New York TimesThe fury also upended the political landscape, paving the way for a small, socially conservative faction of the United Conservative Party to install the current premier and party leader, Danielle Smith, 52, a far-right former newspaper columnist and radio talk show host.After becoming premier last October, she declared that the unvaccinated were the “most discriminated against group” she’d seen in her lifetime and, in May, a video surfaced of her likening people who chose to be vaccinated to followers of Hitler.In a province with a large and longstanding Ukrainian community, she suggested that some parts of Ukraine may “feel more affinity to Russia” and should separate. One of her first legislative acts was to sign a law she claimed would allow Alberta to ignore federal laws.And Ms. Smith broke ethics laws to intervene on behalf of a prominent protester who was facing prosecution. Last week, the province’s ethics commissioner found that she broke conflict of interest laws when she spoke with her attorney general on behalf of a pastor facing criminal charges for inciting a border blockade as part of the protests.Danielle Smith, the leader of the United Conservative Party, during a campaign event in Calgary.“When you look at public opinion data from pre-Covid, during Covid and whatever this period is now; there is something different in the water in Alberta from a cultural-political perspective,” said Duane Bratt, a political scientist at Mount Royal University in Calgary, the province’s largest city.That difference may also surface during the next federal elections.Canada’s conservatives will challenge Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his Liberal Party in elections that must be held by October 2025.The federal Conservative Party also replaced its leader during the pandemic with a combative right-wing politician, Pierre Poilievre, who welcomed truck convoy protesters to Ottawa, the capital, with coffee and doughnuts and who shares Ms. Smith’s tendency for provocative rhetoric.On Monday, Alberta’s voters have a stark choice between the United Conservatives and the New Democrats, or N.D.P., which held power in Alberta from 2015 to 2019.A pumpjack, farmland and mountains near Longview, Alberta. While Calgary is contested, Alberta’s rural areas are more likely to vote for the United Conservative Party.The N.D.P. gained power then from conservatives, who had run Alberta from 1935 to 2015, by taking advantage of divisions among conservatives to narrowly win a stunning victory. They installed Rachel Notley, a lawyer for labor groups, but her approval ratings sank as oil prices plunged, decimating the province’s budget. The party lost power in 2019.Ms. Notley, 59, is representing the N.D.P. again in this election. During campaign stops, she portrays Ms. Smith as unpredictable and promoting ideas most voters would reject, like selling public hospitals to a for-profit business or making patients pay fees for public hospitals — both considered politically toxic in Canada.“This election is about leadership and it’s about trust,” Ms. Notley said at a campaign rally in Calgary. “Albertans don’t have a high level of trust that they can count on her to protect our health care. ”Ms. Notley said she plans to expand transit lines, and build new schools and hospitals.Rachel Notley, the leader of the New Democrats, speaking at a campaign rally in Calgary.For her part, Ms. Smith warns voters that Ms. Notley’s party is bent on embarking on a spending spree that would inevitably lead to higher taxes.Ms. Smith promises crime reduction and tax cuts. She also looks to the United States to define her conservative values, calling Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who just announced his entry into the Republican presidential primary, “my hero.”During a debate between the two party’s leaders, Ms. Smith sought to focus on Ms. Notley’s performance as premier.“Ms. Notley likes to show grainy videos of things I said while I was on radio and the reason she does that is she doesn’t want to run on her record,” Ms. Smith said. “And the reason she doesn’t want to run on her record is it was an absolute disaster.”Calgary is among the urban areas of Alberta where support for the New Democratic Party is heavily concentrated though it is unclear if it can offset conservative votes in rural regions.To become the premier again, Ms. Notley would need to see her party win the most seats on Monday. Her hopes hinge largely on how well her party will perform in Calgary, which historically has been a fickle base of support for the left, according to Janet Brown, the head of a Calgary-based polling firm. The New Democrats are already solidly ahead in Edmonton, the provincial capital, and one of their traditional bases of support, according to surveys.“I’m not discounting any possible outcome,” she said.One deciding factor, she said, may be the large and rapidly growing ethnic communities in Calgary.At a sprawling community center in a Calgary neighborhood home to many South Asian immigrants, Rishi Nagar, the host of a local Punjabi language morning radio show, said the United Conservatives had already alienated many South Asian voters before Ms. Smith became leader.Rishi Nagar, the host of a radio show, said the United Conservatives have alienated many South Asian voters.Her predecessor, Jason Kenney, appeared on his program and suggested that the high rates of Covid infections in South Asian communities was the result of their failure to abide by public health restrictions, even though Mr. Nagar and other community leaders pointed out that they worked jobs that exposed them to the virus.“We are the people sitting at the cash counters of the grocery stores,’’ he said. “We are the people driving taxis. We are the people driving buses. Don’t you think this is the reason of the spread?”He said many South Asians voters trust Ms. Notley to provide more funding for schools and health care even if her party is further to the left than many of them are. Voters may not embrace her party, “but people like Rachel Notley,” he said. “People do not like Danielle Smith.”Members of the South Asian community at a community center in Calgary. The city’s growing ethnic communities could play a key role in Monday’s election.Ms. Smith still has support in rural regions of Alberta.At a junior high school event on the rodeo grounds in High River, Alberta, Ms. Smith’s hometown, Frank McInenly, a retired auctioneer, said he had little use for public health measures and was only vaccinated so he could vacation in the United States.“The whole Covid thing with these people walking around these masks on, how dumb was that?” he said.While Mr. McInenly will go on at some length about what he views as Ms. Notley’s shortcomings, he’s less than enthusiastic about Ms. Smith.“She’s OK,” he said.More than anything, Mr. McInenly’s vote reflects his desire to keep the New Democrats out of power. “It’s really scary,” he said. “Because if the N.D.P. get back in, we’re done.”Dylan Zakariasen, 3, leading a horse with Colton Zakariasen, 11, as their mother, Robyn Zakariasen, watched at a junior high school rodeo in High River, Alberta, Ms. Smith’s hometown. 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