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      Republican Presidential Candidates Attend Iowa Roast and Ride

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      Eight presidential hopefuls, with Donald Trump absent, spoke at an annual political rally in Des Moines to highlight their conservative bona fides.As the politicians and Republican Party officials tossed out the red meat on Saturday at an event at the Iowa State Fairgrounds, Wayne Johnson, a 70-year-old farmer and financial consultant from Forest City, Iowa, had some quieter thoughts about the next president he would like to see.The violence in American schools and public places, the tribalism in politics, the negativity of the nation’s elected officials — “If a leader can take us in a positive direction, people will follow,” Mr. Johnson said.His wife, Gloria, jumped in. “I really don’t care about people’s sexual habits and I don’t want to hear about it all the time,” she said with exasperation about her party’s focus on social issues like transgender care and L.G.B.T.Q. rights. “Politicians are taking positions on ‘woke’ that have more to do with sex than promoting our country in a positive way.”The event, called “Roast and Ride” — an annual motorcycle and barbecue-infused political rally sponsored by Iowa’s junior Republican senator, Joni Ernst — laid bare divisions in the party, with some attendees focusing on pocketbook issues and tone and others looking for a candidate who will take on Democrats on a social and cultural front.Saturday’s gathering featured eight presidential hopefuls, prominent and obscure, declared and undeclared. Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor; Mike Pence, the former vice president who will formally announce his run on Wednesday; Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina; and Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and United Nations ambassador, were there, along with hundreds of Iowa Republicans who will cast the first ballots of the Republican nomination season in February.Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina at the event in Des Moines on Saturday.Jordan Gale for The New York TimesThe politicians had their pitches, waltzing across a stage festooned with flags and stacked with hay bales to rail against “deep state” bureaucrats, “woke” corporations, and liberals indoctrinating and confusing America’s children. Their biggest target, unsurprisingly, was President Biden, for all manner of failings, from Afghanistan and the southern border to transgender athletes competing in women’s sports.For the presidential hopefuls, winning over Iowa Republicans — with their strong religious bent and tradition of political engagement — is the imperative first step toward wresting the G.O.P. from the front-runner for the nomination, Donald J. Trump, the one major candidate who did not make the trip on Saturday.The candidates in attendance tried to differentiate themselves from one another.The next president, Mr. Pence assured, will “hear from heaven, and he’ll heal this land.”Ms. Haley agreed, “We’ve got to leave the baggage and the negativity behind.”Mr. DeSantis chose a culture-war analogy, evoking Winston Churchill, who once vowed to fight Nazi Germany on the beaches, on the landing grounds, in the fields and in the streets. Mr. DeSantis promised on Saturday to fight “woke ideology” in the halls of Congress and in the boardrooms, saying, “We will never surrender.”Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida at the event on Saturday.Jordan Gale for The New York TimesIowa has moved more decisively from swing state to deep red than perhaps any other state, voting for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, only to shift firmly to Mr. Trump in 2016 and 2020. Mr. Trump’s eight-percentage-point victory there in 2020 nearly matched Mr. Obama’s nine-point margin 12 years before.But voters in the audience did not all have the same priorities, interests or solutions. A Republican presidential beauty pageant eight months before the Iowa caucuses will attract only the most ardent partisans, and candidates understand they are reaching out to the edges of their party, not the center.Many voters expressed concern about the economy, especially inflation, a subject most of the presidential candidates barely touched. Ron Greiner, a health insurance salesman from Omaha, was incensed that none of the candidates mentioned the Affordable Care Act — once a reliable target of Republican attacks — or health care at all.Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, at the event on Saturday.Jordan Gale for The New York TimesAnd while Ms. Johnson might be tired of all the talk of transgender issues, others leaped to their feet when Ms. Haley called transgender women competing in women’s sports “the biggest women’s issue of our day.”Jackson Cox, a 17-year-old who will vote for the first time in 2024, drove from Albert Lea, Minn., to hear the candidates he will choose from. Top of mind for him are the taxpayer dollars he said were being wasted before they reach American troops fighting for freedom in Ukraine — never mind that no U.S. troops are fighting in Ukraine. Contrary to the conservative consensus, he argued that the United States should be doing more, not less, for Ukraine.Diane Bebb, 66, of New London, Iowa, fretted over inflation, gas and food prices, and the “help wanted signs” for jobs that seemingly could not be filled.“We could start producing oil again, to help the economy and get prices down,” she said, though she wasn’t sure how more oil exploration would fill all those job openings.Her twin sister, Dione Cornelius of Bagley, Iowa, jumped in to reject the idea of backfilling the labor force with more immigrants.“They’re taking all the benefits, free health care and all that kind of stuff,” Ms. Cornelius protested.Mike Clark, 74, a semiretired acoustics consultant, worried that “the rule of law is disappearing,” not so much because of crime in the nation’s streets but because of an out-of-control F.B.I. and Justice Department pursuing Mr. Trump.“Big push for the one-world government, that’s what worries me most,” Mr. Clark said, referring to a common subject of conspiracy theories. He recommended the book “The Creature From Jekyll Island,” which pushes conspiracy theories about the founding of the Federal Reserve.Amid that cornucopia of concerns, the one issue that seemed to be most broadly felt was the porous border with Mexico. “What are we going to do with all these people?” asked Karen Clark, 81, of Des Moines.Beyond that, Iowa conservatives seemed torn. They conceded that unemployment was so low that jobs in the state weren’t being filled, but asserted that the economy was a wreck.Bill Dunton, 68, said he had been coming from his home in Toledo, Iowa, to Ms. Ernst’s Roast and Ride on his Harley-Davidson for six years. His credit card debt was just about paid off, he said with relief. He was particularly proud of the Chevy Silverado High Country diesel pickup truck he bought in 2021, which “was made for pulling.”But, he said with conviction, “the economy has gone” to pieces, using an expletive to describe it.Mr. Dunton also spoke of his ordeal with Covid-19, hospitalized for 28 days on huge tanks of supplemental oxygen, which he was still tethered to a month and a half after his discharge. Yet, he added, “I think we way overreacted” to the pandemic.Responding to the multiplicity of maladies on Iowans’ minds will present a challenge for the presidential hopefuls. But after the program, Mr. Johnson said he was impressed with his choices, and he will have time to watch the race unfold.“It’s a long run,” he noted. “Time has a way of revealing truth.” More

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      DeSantis Relied Heavily on Big Donors In Initial Money Haul

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      The NewsGov. Ron DeSantis of Florida made a splash when he announced that he had raised a record $8.2 million in his first 24 hours as a presidential candidate. New figures disclosed by the campaign reveal that he relied heavily on larger contributors to set that record.The DeSantis campaign said it had around 40,000 donors in May as “we raised over” $8.2 million, according to text messages and emails to supporters asking for more donations. That works out to an average of more than $200 per donor — a figure far higher than is typical for a campaign heavily funded by grass-roots support. By comparison, Senator Bernie Sanders, who was a Democratic online fund-raising powerhouse, raised $5.9 million in his first 24 hours in 2019 — but from 223,000 donors, for an average donation of around $26.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesWhy It Matters: Small donors help sustain a campaign and show grass-roots support.How a campaign raises money matters. Because of strict campaign contribution limits of $3,300 per person for the primary, campaigns that raise money chiefly from bigger contributors cannot return to those same donors again and again for support.Small contributors are particularly valuable because they can give $30 more than 100 times before bumping up against contribution caps.Tim Tagaris, a Democratic digital strategist who oversaw the Sanders fund-raising operation in 2020, called the number of DeSantis donors surprisingly small.Mr. Tagaris said that 40,000 “donations in a week for a leading presidential campaign is either a sign that they didn’t prepare well enough heading into the launch or there isn’t the kind of grass-roots support from regular people they had probably hoped for.” He added, “That’s a donor number you expect from top-tier Senate campaigns, not a leading presidential.”But Eric Wilson, who has worked as a Republican digital strategist, called the number of donors a “good start” for a candidate who had not previously sought federal office.“That is what someone needs to take on Trump, because he obviously had one of the best donor files,” said Mr. Wilson, who is now the director of the Center for Campaign Innovation, a conservative nonprofit.One previous presidential candidate with a similar starting number of total donors was Kamala Harris, who had 38,000 in her first day in 2019. She raised $1.5 million that day — which indicates just how many bigger checks Mr. DeSantis received.Mr. Wilson cautioned against comparing Republican and Democratic campaigns because Republican donors are more than a decade behind on “building an online grass-roots donor culture.”The DeSantis campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.In Context: DeSantis’s haul is impressive, but worth watching.The $8.2 million opening total that Mr. DeSantis has claimed remains impressive. It exceeded the Sanders figure and broke the kickoff record set by President Biden in his 2020 campaign.It is not clear what portion of the $8.2 million is from funds earmarked for the general election. The campaign has said it was collecting up to $3,300 in general election contributions, which Mr. DeSantis can’t spend during the primary and would have to return if he doesn’t win the nomination.Overall, money is expected to be a DeSantis strength, especially because his allied super PAC has said it expects to have at least a $200 million budget.But online funds have become increasingly scarce for Republicans since last summer, including for Mr. Trump — until his recent indictment at least temporarily turbocharged his fund-raising.What’s Next: The money primary begins.The 40,000 donors that Mr. DeSantis had in his first week also happens to be the threshold that the Republican National Committee just set for candidates to qualify for the first debate stage.That figure was never expected to be a problem for Mr. DeSantis. But the fact that the candidate polling second to former President Donald J. Trump in almost every poll hit that mark during his kickoff week is a sign of just how onerous that figure is likely to be for smaller campaigns.The DeSantis team made no secret that it was soliciting big money to coincide with his kickoff. The campaign had gathered major donors at the Four Seasons in Miami for an event they called Ron-O-Rama. Officials in the DeSantis administration were also soliciting donations from Florida lobbyists, which gave some the impression that the governor’s office was tracking their donations at a time when the state budget — and Mr. DeSantis’s veto pen — hung in the balance. More

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      Can Kevin McCarthy and Joe Biden Fix Washington?

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      Among the various reassessments of Kevin McCarthy following his successful debt ceiling negotiations, the one with the widest implications belongs to Matthew Continetti, who writes in The Washington Free Beacon that “McCarthy’s superpower is his desire to be speaker. He likes and wants his job.”If you hadn’t followed American politics across the last few decades, this would seem like a peculiar statement: What kind of House speaker wouldn’t want the job?But part of what’s gone wrong with American institutions lately is the failure of important figures to regard their positions as ends unto themselves. Congress, especially, has been overtaken by what Yuval Levin of the American Enterprise Institute describes as a “platform” mentality, where ambitious House members and senators treat their offices as places to stand and be seen — as talking heads, movement leaders, future presidents — rather than as roles to inhabit and opportunities to serve.On the Republican side, this tendency has taken several forms, from Newt Gingrich’s yearning to be a Great Man of History, to Ted Cruz’s ambitious grandstanding in the Obama years, to the emergence of Trump-era performance artists like Marjorie Taylor Greene. And the party’s congressional institutionalists, from dealmakers like John Boehner to policy mavens like Paul Ryan, have often been miserable-seeming prisoners of the talking heads, celebrity brands and would-be presidents.This dynamic seemed likely to imprison McCarthy as well, but he’s found a different way of dealing with it: He’s invited some of the bomb throwers into the legislative process, trying to turn them from platform-seekers into legislators by giving them a stake in governance, and so far he’s been rewarded with crucial support from figures like Greene and Thomas Massie, the quirky Kentucky libertarian. And it’s clear that part of what makes this possible is McCarthy’s enthusiasm for the actual vote-counting, handholding work required of his position, and his lack of both Gingrichian egomania and get-me-out-of-here impatience.But McCarthy isn’t operating in a vacuum. The Biden era has been good for institutionalism generally, because the president himself seems to understand and appreciate the nature of his office more than Barack Obama ever did. As my colleague Carlos Lozada noted on our podcast this week, in both the Senate and the White House, Obama was filled with palpable impatience at all the limitations on his actions. This showed up constantly in his negotiation strategy, where he had a tendency to use his own office as a pundit’s platform, lecturing the G.O.P. on what they should support and thereby alienating Republicans from compromise in advance.Whereas Biden, who actually liked being a senator, is clearly comfortable with quiet negotiation on any reasonable grounds, which is crucial to keeping the other side invested in a deal. And he’s comfortable, as well, with letting the spin machine run on both sides of the aisle, rather than constantly imposing his own rhetorical narrative on whatever bargain Republicans might strike.The other crucial element in the healthier environment is the absence of what Cruz brought to the debt-ceiling negotiations under Obama — the kind of sweeping maximalism, designed to build a presidential brand, that turns normal horse-trading into an existential fight.Expectating that kind of maximalism from Republicans, some liberals kept urging intransigence on Biden long after it became clear that what McCarthy wanted was more in line with previous debt-ceiling bargains. But McCarthy’s reasonability was sustainable because of the absence of a leading Republican senator playing Cruz’s absolutist part. Instead, the most notable populist Republican elected in 2022, J.D. Vance, has been busy looking for deals with populist Democrats on issues like railroad safety and bank-executive compensation, or adding a constructive amendment to the debt-ceiling bill even though he voted against it — as though he, no less than McCarthy, actually likes and wants his current job.One reason for the diminishment of Cruz-like grandstanders is the continued presence of Donald Trump as the G.O.P.’s personality-in-chief, to whose eminence no senator can reasonably aspire. At least through 2024, it’s clear the only way that Trump might be unseated is through the counterprogramming offered by Ron DeSantis, who is selling himself — we’ll see with what success — as the candidate of governance and competence; no bigger celebrity or demagogue is walking through that door.So for now there’s more benefit to legislative normalcy for ambitious Republicans, and less temptation toward the platform mentality, than there would be if Trump’s part were open for the taking.Whatever happens, it will be years until that role comes open. In which case Kevin McCarthy could be happy in his job for much longer than might have been expected by anyone watching his tortuous ascent.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTOpinion) and Instagram. More

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      5 Takeaways From Ron DeSantis’s First Campaign Trip

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      He swung back at Donald Trump. He vowed to vanquish the “woke mob” and turn the country into mega-Florida. He had normal encounters with voters that didn’t become memes.After his unusual, buzzy and ill-fated presidential debut on Twitter last week, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida carried out a far more traditional campaign tour this week, barnstorming Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina to sell himself as the strongest Republican alternative to former President Donald J. Trump.Along the way, he drew sizable, enthusiastic crowds of DeSantis-curious voters. He held babies. He got testy with a reporter. He threw some punches at Mr. Trump. He warned of a “malignant ideology” being pressed by liberals and vowed to “impose our will” to stop it.Here are five takeaways.He won’t cower against Trump — but how hard he’ll counterattack is unclear.For months, Mr. DeSantis held his fire against Mr. Trump. Those days are clearly over.“Petty,” he labeled Mr. Trump’s taunts. “Juvenile.” The former president’s criticisms of him? “Bizarre” and “ridiculous.”But Mr. DeSantis made those remarks not from the stage, in front of Republican voters, but behind the scenes in comments to reporters, suggesting that he is not quite ready to attack Mr. Trump head-on. Instead, his most direct shots were saved for President Biden (“We’re going to take all that Biden nonsense and rip it out by the roots”). When it comes to Mr. Trump, the governor has said he is simply defending himself from a man with whom he avoided public disagreements for years.“Well, now he’s attacking me,” a seemingly aggrieved Mr. DeSantis said outside Des Moines.There are risks to bashing Mr. Trump. For some voters, part of Mr. DeSantis’s appeal has been his willingness to avoid warring with a fellow Republican.“DeSantis has Trump policies, without all the name-calling,” said Monica Schieb, an Iowa voter who supported Mr. Trump in 2016 but now plans to back Mr. DeSantis.Mr. DeSantis drew healthy crowds on the trip, as he did in Gilbert. He often sought to highlight his relative youthfulness at age 44, in contrast to Donald J. Trump and President Biden. Nicole Craine for The New York TimesA key message: He’s young and energetic and can serve two terms.Mr. DeSantis packed his schedule with three or four rallies per day, covering hundreds of miles in each state and addressing a total of more than 7,000 people, his campaign said.The events did not quite have the MAGA-Woodstock energy of Mr. Trump’s arena rallies, but they were lively and well-attended. Tightly orchestrated, too: There was no chowing of hoagies or cozying up to bikers at diners. Up-tempo country music and occasionally cheesy rock (“Chicken Fried” by the Zac Brown Band and “Eye of the Tiger” by Survivor) preceded him onstage.The message behind the rigorous schedule?Turning the country into a mega-Florida takes a “disciplined, energetic president,” in his words.It’s a phrase we’re likely to hear more of, given that it takes aim at both of the major obstacles in Mr. DeSantis’s path to the White House: Mr. Trump and President Biden.At nearly every event, Mr. DeSantis, 44, used comments about his energy level as an indirect swipe at his much older opponents. Mr. Trump is 76; Mr. Biden is 80. And Mr. DeSantis regularly noted that unlike his main Republican rival, Mr. Trump, he would be able to serve two terms.The messaging allowed Mr. DeSantis to set a clear contrast with the former president without necessarily angering Mr. Trump’s loyal supporters.Two terms, the governor says, would give him more time to appoint conservative Supreme Court justices and unwind the “deep state.” (Mr. Trump responded angrily to the new line of attack, saying in Iowa on Thursday that “you don’t need eight years, you need six months,” adding, “Who the hell wants to wait eight years?”)The case Mr. DeSantis is making, however, sometimes seems to be undercut by his own delivery. Even supporters acknowledge that he is not a natural orator, and on the stump he sometimes calls himself an “energetic executive” in a neutral monotone.Mr. DeSantis kicked off the tour with an event on Tuesday at an evangelical church in Clive, Iowa. Rachel Mummey for The New York TimesHumbly, he compares himself to Churchill, fighting ‘the woke mob’ on the beaches.If Mr. DeSantis had to summarize what he believes is wrong with America in one word, his three-state tour suggests the answer might be “woke,” a term that many Republican politicians find easy to use but hard to define. The governor frequently rails against “wokeness,” which he describes as a “war on the truth,” in distinctly martial terms.At several events, Mr. DeSantis, a military veteran, seemed to borrow from Winston Churchill’s famous “We shall fight on the beaches” speech, given to exhort the citizens of Britain in their existential struggle against Nazi Germany.“We will fight the woke in education,” Mr. DeSantis said in New Hampshire. “We will fight the woke in corporations. And we will fight the woke in the halls of Congress. We will never surrender to the woke mob.”(Mr. Trump seemed to take a shot at his rival’s use of the word, saying on Thursday, “I don’t like the term ‘woke,’ because I hear ‘woke, woke, woke.’” He added: “It’s just a term they use. Half the people can’t even define it. They don’t know what it is.”)Earlier, at his kickoff rally outside Des Moines on Tuesday night, Mr. DeSantis seemed to put the various building blocks of his stump speech together into a coherent vision, one that portrayed the United States as a nation being assaulted from the inside by unseen liberal forces bent on reshaping every aspect of American life.“They are imposing their agenda on us, via the federal government, via corporate America, via our own education system,” he said. “All for their benefit and all to our detriment.”In turn, Mr. DeSantis promised to aggressively wield the power of the presidency in order to resculpt the nation according to conservative principles, much as he says he has done in Florida, where he has often pushed the boundaries of executive office.“It does not have to be this way,” he continued in his Iowa kickoff speech. “We must choose a path that will lead to a revival of American greatness.” The line drew cheers.Mr. DeSantis on Thursday in Manchester, N.H. Apart from a few contentious exchanges with reporters, he avoided awkward moments on the trip. David Degner for The New York TimesHis interactions: Pretty normal, overall.Both detractors and supporters were watching closely for how Mr. DeSantis, who sometimes appears uncomfortable with the basics of retail politics, interacted with voters. Democrats and Trump allies have made a legion of memes out of his uncomfortable facial expressions or clumsy responses to voters in casual conversations. (An emphatic “OK!” is often his answer to learning a person’s name or a child’s age.)But apart from a pugnacious exchange or two with the news media — episodes that are, of course, cheered by the Republican base — Mr. DeSantis avoided obvious awkward moments. He tried to make himself relatable, playing up his dad credentials. He told stories about taking his family out for fast food and contending with a 3-year-old who needed to use the “little potty.”After his speeches, he worked the rope line, talked with voters, snapped pictures and signed autographs. He always reacted enthusiastically when voters told him they lived part-time in Florida. “What part?” was his standard follow-up, before discussing how badly those areas had been hit by Hurricane Ian.While this all might be a low bar, it was set, in part, by Mr. Trump’s relentless mockery of Mr. DeSantis’s personality.Frank Ehrenberger, 73, a retired engineer who attended a DeSantis event in Iowa on Wednesday, said the governor had struck him as “genuine.”Still, Mr. DeSantis may need to do more. At events in Iowa and New Hampshire on Wednesday and Thursday, he did not take audience questions from the stage, leading to some criticism. Instead, at one stop in New Hampshire, Mr. DeSantis tossed baseball caps to the crowd.The early nominating states require a set of political skills different from the one that works in Florida, where politicians rely heavily on television advertising to get their messages across.By Friday, during his visit to South Carolina, he had seemed to shift his strategy, electing to answer voters’ questions from the stage alongside his wife, Casey DeSantis.Casey DeSantis has given remarks in the middle of Mr. DeSantis’s stump speeches at events, talking about both their family life and what she casts as her husband’s ability to clean up “the swamp” in Washington.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesYou’ll be seeing a lot more of Casey DeSantis.At his events, Mr. DeSantis has paused his stump speech to invite Ms. DeSantis onto the stage to deliver her own remarks. As she speaks, he usually stands smiling behind her before returning to the lectern to close out his speech. At one stop in New Hampshire, he kissed her temple after she had finished.These intermissions — not unprecedented, but unusual as a routine at presidential campaign events — underscore the high-profile role Ms. DeSantis is expected to play her in husband’s bid, after acting as an important adviser in his political rise.If this first tour is anything to go by, she is likely to be one of the most prominent and politically active spouses of a major presidential candidate in several election cycles, perhaps since Bill Clinton in 2008.Onstage, Ms. DeSantis tells the usual marital stories meant to humanize candidates and illustrate their family life — including an oft-repeated bit about the time one of their three children wielded permanent markers to decorate the dining room table in the governor’s mansion.But she is far from light entertainment. Much of her roughly five-minute speech is meant to portray her husband, whom she often refers to as “the governor,” as an authoritative, decisive leader, one capable of cleaning up “the swamp” in Washington.“Through all of the history, all the attacks from the corporate media and the left, he never changes,” Ms. DeSantis said Thursday in New Hampshire. “He never backs down, he never cowers. He never takes the path of least resistance.”Ann Klein More

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      RNC Rules for First Debate Pose Challenge for Underfunded Candidates

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      Republican presidential candidates hoping to join the first G.O.P. primary debate on Aug. 23 must have a minimum of 40,000 unique donors to their campaign.The Republican National Committee on Friday laid out its criteria for candidates to qualify for the first Republican presidential primary debate, establishing a key fund-raising threshold and requiring candidates to pledge to support the eventual party nominee.The criteria for the debate, scheduled for Aug. 23 in Milwaukee, come as the Republican presidential primary field grows more crowded, with several contenders expected to join the race in the coming days and weeks. A second debate could be held on Aug. 24 if enough candidates qualify, the R.N.C. said in a statement.To qualify for the stage, candidates must garner support of at least 1 percent in multiple national polls recognized by the committee, and some polling from the early-voting states will count as well. The candidates must also have a minimum of 40,000 unique donors to their campaign, with at least 200 unique donors per state or territory, in 20 states and territories, according to the committee.The 40,000-donor debate threshold is likely to prove a consequential and costly barrier to some underfunded candidates. Republican campaigns had already been told informally about the criteria, and some were racing to ensure they had enough donors. Some super PACs are spending money for online ads to drive small donations to the campaigns.In 2020, even some well-known Democratic candidates struggled to achieve the 65,000-donor threshold that the Democratic Party had set for early debates and diverted money to running ads online to find contributors. The 40,000 minimum could prove a challenge for lesser-known Republicans and those who have yet to begin their campaigns.Former Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas, who has struggled to gain traction in the polls, insisted that he intended to make the debate stage in a statement on Friday, even as he expressed a range of concerns about the criteria.“The 40,000 donor threshold will keep some candidates from being on the debate stage and benefits candidates who generate online donations through extreme rhetoric and scare tactics,” he said in the statement. “It also deprives the voters in Iowa and other early states of an opportunity to evaluate the entire field of candidates.”And Larry Elder, a conservative commentator who also faces an uphill battle in the presidential race, said in an interview that while he expected to meet the polling threshold, the 40,000-donor rule was “onerous.”“It’s hard to get 40,000 individual donors,” Mr. Elder said, declining to specify how many donors he had so far. “We’re working hard. I’ve got a professional team to do it, but I think it’s hard, and I know that other campaigns have complained about it as well.”Still, some campaigns — and would-be campaigns — were quick to sound notes of confidence on Friday afternoon.“Looking forward to being there!” said Nachama Soloveichik, a spokeswoman for Nikki Haley, the former United Nations ambassador and former governor of South Carolina. Former Vice President Mike Pence is expected to soon jump into the race as well, and his team hit a similar theme.“There isn’t a better communicator in the Republican Party than Mike Pence, so we are looking forward to being on stage,” said Devin O’Malley, an adviser to Mr. Pence.And Tricia McLaughlin, a senior adviser to Vivek Ramaswamy, the entrepreneur, author and “anti-woke” activist, said the campaign already had “north of 43,000” individual donors. The next campaign finance filing deadline is later this summer. This is not the first time there have been efforts to cull the Republican debate stage participants. In 2016, lower-polling candidates were relegated to undercard debates.The criteria for the additional Republican debates for this campaign cycle have not been announced. One person briefed on the discussions said there could be an escalation of the donor threshold for later debates, or for the polling averages required.Two Republicans familiar with the discussions said Gov. Ron DeSantis’s team had wanted a higher threshold than 1 percent, which would have been likely to thin out the stage, giving him a more direct interaction with former President Donald J. Trump, the current Republican front-runner.Mr. Trump, for his part, has already suggested that he may skip primary debates, claiming that it was not worth his time to debate his rivals because of his polling advantage. Candidates hoping to debate in the August matchup are also expected to promise not to participate in any debate not approved by the party committee for the rest of the election cycle, and to pledge to support the eventual Republican nominee.“I have always supported the party nominee, but I have never supported a party loyalty oath,” said Mr. Hutchinson, who has been critical of Mr. Trump. “The pledge should simply be that you will not run as a third party candidate.”Those who make it onstage will be grouped according to polling, with the highest-polling candidate in the center, the committee said.Fox News is slated to host the first debate in Milwaukee.Shane Goldmacher More

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      ‘The View’ Has Narrowed

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      Illustration By The New York TimesThe ladies of “The View” were in high spirits. A piece of news they’d been hankering for had broken at last: President Biden, a revered figure around their talk show table, had kicked off his re-election campaign.The show’s hosts — known in “View” parlance as “the ladies” — had been hyping this moment for months. They’d lavished praise on President Biden for leading the country out of the pandemic and overseeing what they described as a thriving U.S. economy. They’d downplayed scandals and investigations involving Mr. Biden and his family members. They’d also taken extraordinary pains to disqualify as “ageist” questions of whether he is simply too old to run again. Mr. Biden would be 86 by the end of a second term, but when the Democratic strategist David Axelrod expressed mild concern, the comedian Joy Behar snapped that he “should keep his mouth shut.”“I’d rather have Joe Biden, drooling, than any Republican,” Ms. Behar said another day.Now the ladies agreed that Mr. Biden’s campaign announcement made them feel hopeful. They were tired of what Sunny Hostin called Republican “fearmongering,” which, in a startlingly casual aside, she noted had “led to the demise of our democracy.” If any of the ladies was perturbed by the irony of decrying scare tactics while calling U.S. democracy dead, she kept it to herself.“You get behind him,” the actress Whoopi Goldberg said of Mr. Biden, seemingly instructing the Democrats at large, “and we won’t have a problem.”This kind of unabashed cheerleading is reserved for Mr. Biden. The panel of “View” hosts has been annoyed and dismissive of other Democrats who might vie for the nomination. (“You start making inroads — maybe this person, maybe this person — we’re done for,” Ms. Goldberg said.) When compelled to discuss the Twitter-hosted presidential campaign announcement of Gov. Ron DeSantis of the Florida — a man they’d decried as “fascist,” “bigot” and “Death Santis” — the ladies used the occasion to mock the platform and its new owner, Elon Musk, for the tech failures that disrupted the event. As for Mr. Trump, forget about it: Ms. Goldberg won’t even utter his name, referring to him instead as “you know who.”The day after Mr. Biden’s announcement, the co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin, a Republican political operative who’d already been silenced by Ms. Goldberg, giggled from her end of the table. Ms. Farah Griffin has said she’d write in another candidate before voting for either Mr. Biden or Mr. Trump, but her counterpoints tend to get interrupted or dismissed by the rest of the panel.Mr. Biden “needs another four years to finish the job,” Ms. Behar said. “You can’t fight fascism in four years only. You need eight years for that.”“He has had a lot of accomplishments,” Ms. Hostin agreed.“He brought us back from the precipice,” Ms. Goldberg said. “Maybe it’s not a perfect country, but it’s better than where we were.”With that, the music came up and the audience applauded. The discussion was done.I’ve been a regular Viewer for years, starting when I was a foreign correspondent salving late-night homesickness via satellite TV. Along the way I’ve amassed an encyclopedic knowledge of the hosts’ marriages and hobbies, and a habit of analyzing the “Hot Topics” discussions as a bellwether of centrist America’s political and cultural trends. I’m hardly alone — “The View” has long inspired pieces of serious analysis that bob along like flotsam on a choppy sea of dressing room gossip, leaks and hate tweets. For me, though, it’s a solitary fixation, for none of my friends or family members have ever shared my interest in “The View.”“Ugh, I can’t watch that show,” they grimace. Or — this most of all — “Aren’t they always arguing?”Which is funny because, if you ask me, the co-hosts don’t argue nearly enough. At least, not substantively. Not anymore. The freewheeling discussions that once evoked a spectrum of American opinion on everything from reproductive rights to foreign policy — those have mostly fallen silent. “The View” has become a chorus of conformity. The title of this show I’ve loved for years used to suggest messy and fearless debate. Lately, it seems like a command.The hosts include centrist Democrats (Ms. Hostin and Ms. Behar), centrist Republicans (Ms. Farah Griffin and Ana Navarro) and one centrist independent (the TV journalist Sara Haines). But, anyway, they agree. They agree (or at least pretend to agree) that Mr. Biden is basically a good president. Even on topics notorious for splitting American opinion — the need for “common-sense gun reform,” protecting L.G.B.T.Q. rights and funding the war in Ukraine — they don’t find much to debate one another about. Even those who privately consider abortion a sin agree that access should be preserved in some cases.We, the people, are split. Our many divisions obstruct coherent governance. But “The View” continues to project a brightly lit illusion of accord.And there is no article of agreement more important — lending the show an intoxicating but oddly irreal flavor — as the ladies’ absolute disdain for Mr. Trump and, increasingly, anyone who belongs to his party.Current events haven’t always anchored “The View.” Since the program’s 1997 debut, celebrity interviews, gossip and relationship advice vied for time against news and politics. In its current iteration, though, “The View” carries itself like an earnest journalistic platform — a must-do interview for establishment politicians and a reliable midmorning destination for nuggets of news analysis. In 2019, The New York Times Magazine dubbed it “the most important political TV show in America.”Which has made its erasure of the country’s most dynamic and least understood political strains all the more frustrating.As the current season got underway last September, Ms. Hostin, a former federal prosecutor, came out with a sweeping justification for shunning Republicans — all Republicans, she specified, not just MAGA loyalists — because polls showed that the majority of Republicans regard Mr. Trump as their figurehead.“So if you are saying that he is a fascist, what are they? If you are saying that he is a white supremacist, what are they?” Ms. Hostin continued. “If you follow someone that has hate in their heart, and I believe that he does, then you are complicit in that, and you don’t have a pass.”I gathered that Ms. Hostin was enshrining the new ground rules of “The View,” updated to reflect our ever more divided age. She has become the show’s dominant voice, although I can’t tell if that’s by design or whether it’s the inevitable result of her indomitable delivery and the clear, unambiguous opinions she’s polished into repeatable bites.Either way, the idea that Republicans could be written off en masse signaled a radical departure in “View” philosophy. The panelists have traditionally taken pains to distinguish between bad politicians and the regular people who vote for them. Barbara Walters, who created the show and presided over it for years, urged the ladies to appeal to an imaginary viewer in Wyoming, according to interviews with current and former panelists for the podcast “The View: Behind the Table.” When Ms. Goldberg and Ms. Behar stormed off the set mid-interview in 2010 to protest anti-Muslim rhetoric from Bill O’Reilly (“Muslims killed us on 9/11”), Ms. Walters was outraged.“You have just seen what should not happen,” Ms. Walters told the audience that day. “We should be able to have discussions without washing our hands” of one another “and screaming and walking offstage,” she said.But that was a different age. Ms. Hostin’s wholesale dismissal of Republicans comes across as a bleak but frank acknowledgment that the show had adopted the coping mechanisms of our time: Ban thoughts we don’t like and carry on as if all the reasonable people agree. It’s been particularly chilling to watch this attitude finally take hold at a mainstream women’s program that has long postured as a nonthreatening place to air whatever opinions were working their way through the land, a make-believe living room where you could disagree about politics but then bond over bratty bridal behavior and unrealistic beauty standards.There is an argument, familiar by now, that denying Mr. Trump and his supporters a platform is the only moral approach to a movement many regard as a historic evil. But trying to smother any serious consideration of his politics has the unfortunate effect of suggesting that we are afraid of letting Americans hear these ideas because — why? They might like them too much?To be fair, the animosity between “The View” and Republicans is mutual, and finding the origin point is something of a chicken-versus-egg conundrum. For example, “The View” invited Mr. DeSantis to appear this season — a fact we only know because his spokesman tweeted out the invitation, along with the governor’s refusal, which cited various slurs and insults the ladies had used to refer to Mr. DeSantis.Even beyond “The View,” many conservatives, especially those in the thrall of Mr. Trump, now avoid mainstream journalists they decry as purveyors of “fake news.”Whatever the reason, one fact is undeniable: “The View” brazened all the way through Mr. Trump’s first campaign and presidency without deigning to hire a Trump supporter.The closest the show came was Meghan McCain, who spent so much time name-checking her father and bickering peevishly that she often drowned out her own points — which amounted to tortured efforts to reconcile her disgust for Mr. Trump with a desire to speak up for his voters.This may not be a popular take on Ms. McCain (who eventually left the show amid mockery of her entitled attitude and embarrassing lapses in decorum), but she had moments of clarity. She raised valid but then-taboo questions about America’s pandemic response and, to the acute annoyance of her co-hosts, analyzed failures and weaknesses of the Democratic Party.In 2020, when the other ladies nitpicked Bernie Sanders (saying, among other things, that he was ineffective, a fake Democrat and backed by Russians), Ms. McCain calmly laid out her repugnance for the Vermont senator’s leftist policies while acknowledging that his runaway popularity could land him the nomination. It was Ms. McCain who frankly discussed the populist sentiment fueling the rise of both Mr. Trump and Mr. Sanders.Ms. McCain’s seat was filled this season by the more cordial — or perhaps more easily cowed — Ms. Farah Griffin, a former spokeswoman for the Trump administration. Ms. Farah Griffin quit her job amid Mr. Trump’s election lies and went on to testify before the House select committee investigating the insurrection of Jan. 6 — insufficient atonement, according to her new colleagues. Her early weeks on the show were full of struggle sessions in which her co-hosts (most notably Ms. Hostin and Ms. Navarro) snubbed and needled her until she coughed up, yet again, a denunciation of Mr. Trump.“I do question you … ’cause you’re a very smart woman,” Ms. Hostin said to her in a typical early exchange. “When you looked at his history … did it give you pause? As a woman who considers herself a brown woman, ‘My God, I’m working for a racist’?”Ms. Farah Griffin repeated the familiar explanation: She believed public service was a higher calling and didn’t think it was acceptable to cede the White House to “the crazies.”“I could spend the rest of my life debating if that was the right choice and, honestly, I spend a lot of time thinking about it,” she said, sounding weary. “But what I worry about is that this man could be president again.”When I first started watching “The View,” I was immersed in the violence and upheaval that followed Sept. 11, 2001. Peering westward through the window of the TV, I’d marvel at how unaffected the ladies seemed, how coifed and manicured, chatting about cheating husbands while the wars ground along. Sometimes I had the sense of watching anesthesia dripping into the veins of the American public.But then, like clouds parting, the ladies would say real things. Looking back now, I’m struck by how layered and blunt those conversations were — especially compared to those of today.In a 2007 episode, for example, the ladies clashed over torture, morality and America’s reputation abroad. Elisabeth Hasselbeck sneered that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed deserved to be tortured for his role in the Sept. 11 attacks. “Why don’t we give him milk and cookies at the same time,” Ms. Hasselbeck said. “And a lawyer, and let him watch ‘American Idol’?”Rosie O’Donnell countered by asking if labeling someone a terrorist nullified that person’s humanity. “They have been treating them like animals, Elisabeth, not like human beings,” she said.The U.S. government was “sanctioning torture,” Ms. O’Donnell went on, “from the president all the way down,” leading to anti-American protests around the world.Ms. Hasselbeck was unmoved. “I’d rather be safe than liked,” she said.Ms. Behar, a compulsive mood lightener with a habit of cracking jokes and steering the discussion back to daily practicalities, sided with Ms. O’Donnell, saying that she wanted to be greeted warmly on vacation in Italy.“I want them to say, ‘Hey, Americana, come,’” Ms. Behar said. “I don’t want them to not like me.”I still loathe what Ms. Hasselbeck said — suggesting torture as a punishment, mocking the right to a lawyer, prizing safety above all else. But it didn’t shock me. Those values had dominated the U.S. government since 2001, and I’d been watching them play out disastrously in Iraq, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen. If anything, it was cathartic to hear the arguments trotted onto TV, to see them falter and collapse under challenge.What strikes me now, though, was how that debate ended. “I think you’re wrong,” Ms. O’Donnell told Ms. Hasselbeck. “I still love you, but I think you’re wrong.”I love you, but you’re wrong. “The View” isn’t like that anymore. I think Americans are, or could be, or want to be — but we certainly don’t see it done on TV.The ladies often seem on the brink of having an honest and textured discussion — somebody will say something intriguing — but the most compelling comments tend to go untouched.I envision behind them the suited figures of the ABC network and the Walt Disney Company, which owns the network, and the companies that buy ads to sell things in the breaks, all of which benefit from predictable centrist leadership and regard eruptions of popular sentiment as an undesirable expense.Ms. Goldberg, seemingly keen to avoid any steep ideological edges, frequently shuts down conversation with a sweeping and vague speech on the uncertainty of politics or the unreliability of polls or some such.One recent morning, Ms. Haines fretted about the insurrection of Jan. 6 and the erosion of public trust.“The media is at its lowest. The Supreme Court is at its lowest,” she said, ticking off on her fingers. “People don’t trust anyone these days, so to completely ——”Ms. Behar interrupted: “They trust us,” she snapped.“Yes!” Ms. Hostin said emphatically, hands folded around her coffee mug, like a teacher’s pet who’s just called the right answer. As the audience exploded in applause, Ms. Haines stammered to regain her thought.Ms. Behar shrugged, and interrupted again. “Sure,” she said curtly.And that was that.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.

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      Ron DeSantis Avoids Talking About Florida’s Abortion Ban in New Hampshire

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      As he traversed socially conservative Iowa this week, the 2024 contender highlighted his state’s six-week ban. But now, in more moderate New Hampshire, he is shying from the subject.At a stop on his first trip to New Hampshire as a presidential candidate, Gov. Ron DeSantis mentioned his efforts to provide tax relief for Florida families. He mentioned defunding diversity programs at public colleges. He mentioned his fight with Disney.But what he did not mention was the six-week abortion ban he signed in Florida this year.The ban — which Mr. DeSantis chose to highlight in his speeches to audiences in socially conservative Iowa this week — is a potential lightning rod for voters in more moderate New Hampshire.One New Hampshire Republican, Bob Kroepel, approached Mr. DeSantis after his speech in Rochester as the governor signed baseballs and took selfies with the crowd.“Would you support an abortion policy that would allow choice to a certain point?” Mr. Kroepel, who lost Republican primaries for governor in New Hampshire in 1998 and 2002, asked through the din of the crowd and speakers blaring country music.Mr. DeSantis dodged the thrust of the question, talking instead about his efforts to help parents after they have children, including through health coverage and universal school choice.“So my wife has a fatherhood initiative,” he replied. “We’ve also done a lot of stuff to help new mothers, like we now have a year of postpartum health coverage for poor mothers. Obviously, we have the educational choice and a bunch of stuff that we’ve done.”“So we absolutely have a responsibility to help mothers, that’s without question, one hundred percent,” Mr. DeSantis said before moving on to the next voter.Abortion is likely to be one of the most complicated issues for Mr. DeSantis to discuss, especially if he wins the Republican nomination.Moderates and independents tend to be less supportive of bans as early as six weeks, when many women do not know they are pregnant, and Mr. DeSantis has sometimes avoided talking about abortion even in front of friendly audiences. So far, he has skirted questions about a federal abortion ban, suggesting that the matter should be left largely to the states.Casey DeSantis speaking at a lectern that has a DeSantis campaign sign. Mr. DeSantis is standing behind her.David Degner for The New York Times“I think at the end of the day, fighting for life and protecting life really is a bottom-up movement,” he said in a Fox News interview last week. “I think we’ve been able to have great successes at the local level.”His main rival, former President Donald J. Trump, has also not committed to supporting a federal abortion ban. Mr. DeSantis has used abortion to criticize Mr. Trump, after the former president suggested that Florida’s ban was “too harsh.”Republican leaders in New Hampshire say a six-week ban is too extreme for voters in their state, which has a 24-week limit.Jason Osborne, the state’s House majority leader, who has endorsed Mr. DeSantis, said in an interview that he hoped the governor would state at some point in the campaign that he would not try “to make Florida’s abortion policy countrywide.”A national six-week abortion ban “would go over like a lead balloon” with New Hampshire voters, Mr. Osborne said after Mr. DeSantis’s Rochester event.“People don’t want it,” he added. If Mr. DeSantis were to propose such a ban, he said, “I think you’d see a lot of people jump ship. I would lose a lot of faith in him.”Mr. Osborne said he agreed with the governor’s strategy of not taking a louder stance on abortion.“I think abortion is one of those issues that should not be talked about in a presidential campaign,” he said. Abortion rights supporters protesting outside Mr. DeSantis’s event on Thursday in Manchester, N.H.David Degner for The New York TimesWhile Mr. DeSantis’s stump speech typically varies little from stop to stop, he does appear to be calibrating his message on abortion. In Iowa on Wednesday, he talked about Florida’s six-week ban, known as the Heartbeat Protection Act, during a lengthy recounting of his record as governor. “We have enacted the heartbeat bill,” he told a crowd in Cedar Rapids before being drowned out by cheers and applause.But he did not mention the bill at several stops in New Hampshire on Thursday.Even New Hampshire voters who said they support a six-week ban said they understood why Mr. DeSantis was unlikely to talk much about the issue.“I mean, my gosh, there’s so much blowback, right?” said Jennifer Hilton, 56, an independent who is open to supporting Mr. DeSantis and heard him speak in Rochester. “And it’s so taken out of context, and such an emotional issue, that people can’t hear you.”Sue Collins, an attendee at a DeSantis event in Salem, N.H., said, “I’ll be honest, I’m not strict pro-life, but I was not happy to see the six-week ban.” She added, “I wish it wasn’t that strict, but it would not prevent me from voting for him.”Mr. Kroepel, the Republican who approached Mr. DeSantis, said that “on balance,” he was not satisfied with how the governor had answered his question. Even so, he acknowledged the difficulties of the discussion.“I understand how delicate this whole situation is,” Mr. Kroepel said. “So I give him credit for at least listening to me.”Ann Klein More

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      Ron DeSantis Snaps at a Reporter: ‘Are You Blind?’

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      The Florida governor, who has frequently clashed with the press, was asked about taking questions from voters on the presidential campaign trail.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida was mingling with voters on Thursday after his first campaign stop in New Hampshire as a presidential candidate when a reporter asked him a question: “Governor, how come you’re not taking questions from voters?”Mr. DeSantis sharply disputed the premise of the reporter’s question.“People are coming up to me, talking to me,” he said. “What are you talking about?”But Mr. DeSantis did not leave it there. “Are you blind?” he asked. “Are you blind? OK, so people are coming up to me, talking to me whatever they want to talk to me about.”WATCH: “Are you blind?”: DeSantis snaps at a reporter in New Hampshire after he was asked about his willingness to field voters’ questions. https://t.co/2yQymeHSHx pic.twitter.com/gsU74nLYgX— MSNBC (@MSNBC) June 1, 2023
      The moment seemed to crystallize both Mr. DeSantis’s reputed temper and his adversarial relationship with the mainstream news media: As governor, he has frequently clashed with the press, and he generally prefers to give interviews in the friendlier confines of Fox News and conservative talk radio.It also reflects how carefully Mr. DeSantis and his campaign have orchestrated his interactions with the public — a task that will grow more challenging under the national spotlight, especially in the early nominating states of Iowa and New Hampshire, where voters expect to talk directly with candidates, including from the stage of their stump speeches.On social media, the governor’s supporters were quick to point out that he has been taking questions from voters who approach him for selfies and autographs after his speeches. The main super PAC supporting his campaign tweeted a video of the interaction, framing it as an example of Mr. DeSantis shutting down “fake news.”But Mr. DeSantis, who formally announced his campaign last week, has not yet held a public forum like the CNN town hall event that former President Donald J. Trump joined last month. Nor has he answered voters’ questions from the lectern after delivering his stump speech.Mr. DeSantis is touring New Hampshire, where he sparred on Thursday with the reporter, Steve Peoples of The Associated Press, during a visit to Laconia. Some voters told news outlets covering the Laconia event that they were disappointed that Mr. DeSantis had not taken questions from the audience.While Mr. DeSantis was largely able to stage-manage his media appearances in Florida, he may need to branch out to reach a larger audience as a presidential candidate. On Tuesday in Des Moines, he held a news conference, his first as a 2024 contender, where he called on a few reporters and answered their questions.And so far in New Hampshire, Mr. DeSantis is taking more questions from members of the press — who peppered him with queries as he spoke with voters — than he has on previous campaign trail appearances.At an event in Rochester, N.H., later on Thursday, Mr. DeSantis flashed a hint of truculence after a reporter asked him about Mr. Trump’s claim that he could fix the country’s problems in six months.“Why didn’t he do it his first four years?” he shot back. More