DeSantis, Ron

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      DeSantis Is Set to Enter 2024 Presidential Race Next Week

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      The Florida governor is expected to file paperwork declaring his candidacy on May 25, with a video likely to coincide with his official entrance.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida is expected to officially enter the presidential race next week, allowing him to raise the vast amounts of cash he will need to challenge former President Donald J. Trump, according to two people familiar with his intentions.Mr. DeSantis is expected to file paperwork declaring his candidacy with the Federal Election Commission ahead of a major fund-raising meeting with donors in Miami on May 25 that is meant to act as a show of his financial force. He must formally enter the race before he can solicit donations for his presidential campaign.He is also likely to release a video to coincide with his official entrance into the race, and a blitz of events in the early nominating states will follow in the weeks ahead, according to one of the people. The Wall Street Journal first reported that Mr. DeSantis would file the paperwork next week.Mr. Trump is running roughly 30 percentage points ahead of Mr. DeSantis in national polling averages, but the Florida governor would be the most credible Republican challenger to join the field so far.He is likely to start with more money in an outside group than any Republican primary candidate in history. He has more than $80 million expected to be transferred from his state account to his super PAC, Never Back Down, which has also raised more than $30 million, in addition to having tens of millions more in donor commitments, according to people familiar with the fund-raising.Mr. DeSantis also has a long series of conservative policy accomplishments that he shepherded through Florida’s Republican-dominated Legislature after his landslide re-election last year. And he has gathered a large number of endorsements from state legislators in Iowa and New Hampshire, who can be influential in primary elections, as well as from those in his own state.Still, taking on Mr. Trump, whom Republicans rallied behind after he was indicted in New York, is a tall order. While the former president savages him daily, Mr. DeSantis needs to engage in a delicate dance.To win, he must appeal to the large numbers of Republican primary voters who like Mr. Trump but may be ready to move on from a candidate who lost in 2020 and continues to repeat false claims about that election. Doing so requires Mr. DeSantis to differentiate himself from Mr. Trump without criticizing him so aggressively that he risks offending those Trump-friendly voters.Mr. DeSantis did seem to walk that line successfully during a weekend trip to Iowa, part of a monthslong string of political events he has attended around the country in the run-up to his announcement.On Saturday, a grinning Mr. DeSantis showed up Mr. Trump by making an unexpected appearance in Des Moines, not far from where the former president had canceled a rally that night because of potential bad weather. “It’s a beautiful night,” the governor said in an apparent jab at the absence of storms.It is still unclear where or when Mr. DeSantis plans to hold a formal rally announcing his candidacy. More

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      The G.O.P. Primary: ‘City on a Hill’ or ‘American Carnage’?

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      Michelle Cottle, Ross Douthat, Carlos Lozada and Listen to and follow ‘Matter of Opinion’Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon MusicIt’s 77 weeks before Election Day and over half a dozen people have already thrown their hats into the G.O.P race. On our new podcast, “Matter of Opinion,” Michelle Cottle, Ross Douthat, Carlos Lozada and Lydia Polgreen take a tour of the 2024 Republican primary field to understand what it takes to survive in the present-day Republican ecosystem — and maybe even beat the Trump in the room.(A full transcript of the episode will be available midday on the Times website.)Photograph by Scott Olson/GettyThoughts? Email us at matterofopinion@nytimes.com or leave us a voice mail message at (212) 556-7440. We may use excerpts from your message in a future episode.By leaving us a message, you are agreeing to be governed by our reader submission terms and agreeing that we may use and allow others to use your name, voice and message.Follow our hosts on Twitter: Michelle Cottle (@mcottle), Ross Douthat (@DouthatNYT), Carlos Lozada (@CarlosNYT) and Lydia Polgreen (@lpolgreen).“Matter of Opinion” was produced this week by Phoebe Lett, Sophia Alvarez Boyd and Derek Arthur. It was edited by Stephanie Joyce and Annie-Rose Strasser. Mixing by Pat McCusker. Original music by Pat McCusker, Sonia Herrero, Isaac Jones and Carole Sabouraud. Fact-checking by Mary Marge Locker. Special thanks to Shannon Busta and Kristina Samulewski. More

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      Remember When Trump and DeSantis Loved Each Other? Neither Do They.

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      Our topic for today is — who’s worse, Donald Trump or Ron DeSantis?Nonononofair! There is no way I’m ever going to vote for either one of them! Why should I care?Hey, knowledge of public affairs is always important.DeSantis made headlines this weekend when he showed up to campaign in Iowa while Trump canceled a rally because of bad weather.“Iowa is the Florida of the Midwest,” the governor of Florida claimed at one point in his burger-flipping, speech-giving trek. Now this was clearly intended as a compliment, but Iowans, do you actually want to be the Florida of the Midwest? The weather is certainly great in January, but there’s plenty of downside. Do your Midwestern neighbors ever mutter, “What our state needs is a heck of a lot more floods and sinkholes …”?DeSantis and his wife/political adviser, Casey, have three small children, who once starred in a gubernatorial election ad in which he demonstrated his devotion to President Donald Trump by showing one of his daughters how to build a toy wall and reading his son “The Art of the Deal.” (“Then Mr. Trump said, ‘You’re fired.’ I love that part.”)You may be seeing a lot more of little Madison, Mason and Mamie DeSantis in the months to come. But no one’s going to be reading from Trump’s collected works.Trump has five children counting Ivanka, who’s sorta cut herself off from the clan. And Tiffany, who everybody, including her father, seemed to have forgotten for a very long stretch. And Eric, whom we mainly hear about during riffs from the late-night comics. And Barron, the youngest at 17, who lives quietly with his mom.Donald Jr. is truly his dad’s kid. He’s off this summer to Australia for a speaking tour blasting “woke identity politics.” Ranting against “woke” is sort of a DeSantis thing, but give Junior a break. He’s spent his entire life trying to please a father who was absent for most of his childhood and who is said to have resisted having his firstborn named after him, in case the kid turned into a “loser.”Now Don Jr. has five children too! And he’s not shy about putting them in the news either. A while back he posted an Instagram photo of the kids publicizing a Trump-branded leash. (“You can get yours at the Trump Store too.”) Before that, Dad once tweeted that he planned to confiscate half of his then-3-year-old daughter’s Halloween candy “to teach her about socialism.”Hard to imagine the Trump and DeSantis families getting together for a cookout. But the gap between the two men grows much wider when you look at personal behavior. Only one of them just lost a $5 million verdict from a jury that found he sexually abused a woman in a department store dressing room.Trump has been trying to insinuate that DeSantis had some shady doings with high school girls in his far, far distant past. And running an ad reminding the world that his probable Republican opponent has a history of eating pudding with his fingers.But what about the issues? Sorta hard to pin down since Trump is given to, um, free-associating on this stuff. But he certainly has been running to DeSantis’s left, accusing the Florida governor of wanting to slash Social Security and Medicare benefits.When he was in Congress, DeSantis did vote for Republican proposals along that line. He’s on the no-changes-no-how bandwagon now. But let’s look at abortion — much easier to pin down. DeSantis, as governor, just signed a bill he supported that will bar abortions in Florida after six weeks. By which time many, many women — particularly the very young, very poor, very traumatized — have no idea they’re pregnant.DeSantis has at least been consistent. A devout Catholic, he’s had the same position for his entire political career. Trump, on the other hand, um, adapts.Trump made a huge impact by appointing three anti-choice judges to the Supreme Court. But now he’s noticed that voters are coming down very strong in favor of abortion rights, and he’s switched right around. He claims “many people within the pro-life movement” found the new Florida law “too harsh.”Our bottom line here, people, is that you have two top candidates for the Republican presidential nomination. DeSantis adheres to a strong, faith-based social conservatism. He’s pro-gun, opposed to diversity and inclusion programs in public colleges. And currently having a big fight with Disney, one of Florida’s top employers, over a comment from a Disney C.E.O. that criticized a DeSantis bill to prohibit classroom discussions of sexual orientation in the early grades.Hard to imagine a Gov. Donald Trump taking the same road.Unless it would somehow win him an election. Trump’s politics are deeply, deeply pragmatic. If an angel appeared promising him another term in the White House if he killed every puppy in America, those doggies would be toast.(That is an imperfect example since The Donald hates dogs anyway, but bear with me.)The bottom line: Would you rather see the Republicans nominate a candidate who had an exemplary family life and an agenda based on longstanding, extremely conservative beliefs? Or a guy with a sleazy personal history who’d probably go anywhere the votes were?Some days it pays to be a Democrat.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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      DeSantis Signs Tall Stack of Right-Wing Bills as 2024 Entrance Nears

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      The Florida governor is making a grab for national attention ahead of his expected presidential campaign rollout.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, an all-but-declared presidential candidate, has stepped up his headline-hunting travel and events ahead of an official announcement, traversing the state and trying to hoover up national attention as he signs the sharply conservative legislation he believes can propel him to the Republican Party’s nomination.On Wednesday, Mr. DeSantis signed a slew of measures that hit all the culture-clash notes his base has rewarded him for, including bills banning gender-transition care for minors, preventing children from attending “adult live performances” like drag shows and restricting the use of preferred pronouns in schools.“We need to let our kids just be kids,” Mr. DeSantis said at a Christian school in Tampa. “What we’ve said in Florida is we are going to remain a refuge of sanity and a citadel of normalcy.”It was his third consecutive day of holding public bill-signing ceremonies across the state. The ceremonies, which he hosts in his official capacity as governor, allow Mr. DeSantis to promote his political message in settings that he carefully stage-manages as a veritable M.C., calling up additional speakers and then thanking them for their contributions. These events sometimes take on the feel of political rallies.Such a platform gives Mr. DeSantis an advantage over his potential rivals for the presidency — many of whom are either out of office or hold legislative roles — as he sprints toward declaring his candidacy, which is likely to happen by the end of the month.On Monday, his signing of a bill defunding diversity and equity programs at public colleges and universities drew a robust round of news coverage — as well as loud protesters. He and other Republicans who shared the stage mocked the demonstrators, many of them students at New College of Florida, a public liberal arts school in Sarasota that the governor has sought to transform into a conservative bastion.The signing of bills aimed at the L.G.B.T.Q. community on Wednesday was “an all-out attack on freedom,” Joe Saunders, the senior political director of Equality Florida, an advocacy organization, said in a virtual news conference. He noted that Mr. DeSantis had already signed a six-week abortion ban as well as bills that allowed physicians to decline to provide care based on moral or religious grounds.Mr. DeSantis sees freedom “as a campaign slogan in his bid for the White House,” Mr. Saunders said. “The nation should be on high alert, because, today, we are all Floridians.”Some centrist Republicans say the way Mr. DeSantis has pushed Florida to the right on social issues is a potential weakness in a general election. Representatives for Mr. DeSantis did not immediately respond to requests for comment.As he travels the state, the lines between Mr. DeSantis’s roles as governor and potential presidential candidate can sometimes seem blurred.On Tuesday, after he signed several bills near Fort Lauderdale aimed at curbing human trafficking, an issue that the right has tried to weaponize in national politics, Mr. DeSantis received a boost from Florida’s two top Republican legislative leaders, Kathleen Passidomo, the Senate president, and Paul Renner, the House speaker.After the signing concluded, Ms. Passidomo and Mr. Renner stepped up to a lectern — embossed with Florida’s state seal, rather than the “Stop Human Trafficking” sign that the governor had used moments earlier — to endorse Mr. DeSantis for president, an office he is not yet formally seeking.Katie Betta, a spokeswoman for Ms. Passidomo, said that the endorsement was a matter of convenience because the governor and legislative leaders had not been together since the lawmaking session ended on May 5. “It was a good opportunity to answer a question they have both been getting from the press since the day they were sworn in last November,” Ms. Betta wrote in an email, referring to Ms. Passidomo and Mr. Renner.On Wednesday, the main super PAC backing Mr. DeSantis unveiled endorsements from nearly 100 state lawmakers. Behind the scenes, the governor’s allies and political operatives have been jostling with former President Donald J. Trump’s team to secure those pledges. At the federal level, members of Florida’s congressional delegation have swung heavily for Mr. Trump.Mr. DeSantis has now held an official event on every weekday this month. He spends his weekends on political travel, including to the crucial early-voting state of Iowa last Saturday.Since winning re-election in a rout in November, Mr. DeSantis has regularly faced questions at state events about his national political ambitions. For months, he usually fended them off with quips about how he was not interested in petty infighting and how it was too soon to be talking about future campaigns with the annual lawmaking session pending.No more. On Tuesday, Mr. DeSantis jumped at the chance to call out Mr. Trump for dodging a question about abortion. The former president had criticized Florida’s six-week ban as too harsh while remaining noncommittal about what restrictions he might support.“I signed the bill. I was proud to do it,” Mr. DeSantis told reporters. “He won’t answer whether he would sign it or not.”This time, it was the swipe at Mr. Trump that made headlines. More

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      Democrat Donna Deegan Wins Jacksonville’s Mayor Race in Florida Upset

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      Donna Deegan is only the second Democrat to be elected mayor of Florida’s biggest city in the past three decades.MIAMI — Donna Deegan, a Democrat, was elected mayor of Jacksonville on Tuesday, shaking up the politics of Florida’s largest city, where Republican mayors have been in power for all but four of the last 30 years.Ms. Deegan, a former television news anchor, defeated Daniel Davis, a Republican endorsed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, who had been seen as the likely favorite in the traditionally Republican stronghold. In recent years, Jacksonville had been the most populous city in the country with a Republican mayor, Lenny Curry, who is term-limited; that distinction now goes to Fort Worth, Texas.Ms. Deegan’s victory is a rare bright spot for Florida Democrats, whose losses have mounted in recent elections to the point that the party has little sway in the State Capitol and a thin candidate bench.But while Florida has become decidedly more Republican — and while many have viewed Mr. DeSantis, a likely 2024 presidential contender, as all-powerful in state politics — Jacksonville has emerged as a swingy corner of the state. A majority of voters in Duval County, which shares a consolidated government with the city of Jacksonville, voted for the Democratic nominee for governor in 2018, for the Republican mayor in 2019, for President Biden in 2020, for Mr. DeSantis last year, and now for Ms. Deegan, who will be the city’s first female mayor.“We made history tonight,” Ms. Deegan told cheering supporters Tuesday night after Mr. Davis conceded.Mr. Davis, the chief executive of the local chamber of commerce, out-raised Ms. Deegan by a margin of four to one and seemed like the sort of business-friendly Republican that has long dominated elections in Jacksonville.Corey Perrine/The Florida Times-Union, via Associated PressMs. Deegan campaigned as a change candidate, leaning into the relationships she had made in the community as she overcame breast cancer three times while working on television and as she later created the Donna Foundation, a nonprofit organization that helps people diagnosed with breast cancer.“I made a decision when we got into this race that, no matter what happened, no matter what the landscape was like, we were going to lead with love over fear,” Ms. Deegan said Tuesday night. “We would not go with division. We would go with unity.”Mr. Davis, the chief executive of the local chamber of commerce, out-raised Ms. Deegan by a margin of four to one and seemed like the sort of business-friendly Republican that has long dominated elections in Jacksonville, a Navy and shipping town. Mr. Curry, the outgoing mayor, was previously the chairman of the Republican Party of Florida.Mr. Davis was known as more of a moderate when he was a state lawmaker, and as the leader of JAX Chamber he supported positions such as protections for the L.G.B.T.Q. community. But as a mayoral candidate, he campaigned from the political right, promising to promote causes espoused by the conservative group Moms for Liberty, which is closely aligned with Mr. DeSantis. He also pledged to be tough on crime in a city that has struggled with stubbornly high crime rates for years, including under Republican leadership.In advertisements, Mr. Davis and other Republicans cast Ms. Deegan as “radical” for backing demonstrators after the murder of George Floyd in 2020 — though Mr. Curry and other local Republicans also supported the protests at the time.On Tuesday night, Mr. Davis said he would be willing to help Ms. Deegan for the good of the city. “I’m going to do everything I can to make sure Mayor-elect Deegan is successful in making Jacksonville the best Jacksonville it can be,” he said. The city has a strong-mayor form of government, giving the mayor broad administrative powers.Mr. DeSantis, who won Duval County by an 11 percentage-point margin in November, did not endorse Mr. Davis until late March — after Mr. Davis had already been forced into Tuesday’s runoff against Ms. Deegan.Beyond his lukewarm endorsement, which took place via Twitter on a Friday afternoon, Mr. DeSantis offered Mr. Davis little support. The governor did not visit Jacksonville to campaign, unlike one of Florida’s other top Republicans, Senator Rick Scott, who spent last weekend knocking on voters’ doors.In 2020, Ms. Deegan lost a congressional race by 22 percentage points. On Wednesday morning, unofficial results showed she had won about 52 percent of the vote, compared with Mr. Davis’s 48 percent, a difference of about 9,000 votes. Turnout was about 33 percent.Though 39 percent of Duval County voters are registered Democrats, compared with 35 percent registered Republicans and 24 percent registered without party affiliation, Republican voters outnumbered Democratic ones by about 3.5 percentage points on Tuesday — meaning that Ms. Deegan won independents and crossover Republican votes.Five other Jacksonville Democrats were elected on Tuesday, one as property appraiser and four to the City Council.Ashley Walker, a political consultant for Ms. Deegan, said that campaigning on local issues and with a candidate who connected well with voters were key to flipping Jacksonville from red to blue.“Democrats in Florida have to eat the elephant piece by piece,” she said. “We have to go win in these local areas that are purple and get down to the base of some local campaigns to have any chance of coming back statewide.”Nicholas Nehamas More

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      DeSantis’s Candidate for Kentucky Governor Loses to Trump-Backed Rival

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      The 2024 hopeful made a dramatic, election-eve show of support in the Kentucky governor’s race, only for his chosen candidate to get clobbered. Another favored candidate in Jacksonville, Fla., lost, too.On Monday, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida went out on a limb. On Tuesday, it snapped.A day after he swooped into the Republican primary for Kentucky governor with a last-minute endorsement — a move that turned the race into an obvious proxy fight between himself and former President Donald J. Trump — Mr. DeSantis watched his chosen candidate lose in a landslide to the Trump-backed rival.To make matters worse for Mr. DeSantis, a Republican he had endorsed conceded to a Democratic opponent in the mayor’s race in Jacksonville, the largest city in his state.Mr. DeSantis’s preparations to enter the 2024 primary are intensifying. He has held a series of private dinners in Tallahassee with top donors, and on Tuesday he took a direct shot at Mr. Trump over his dodging whether he would sign a six-week abortion ban.But on Monday, Mr. DeSantis made a last-minute endorsement and robocall for Kelly Craft, a former United Nations ambassador under Mr. Trump and a member of a Republican megadonor family.The move confounded Kentucky Republicans and those working for her rivals: While Ms. Craft spent heavily on the race, polls had suggested she was headed for defeat to Daniel Cameron, the state’s attorney general, an ally of Senator Mitch McConnell who had garnered Mr. Trump’s endorsement in June 2022. Representatives for Mr. DeSantis declined to comment.“Kelly shares the same vision we do in Florida,” Mr. DeSantis said in a recording that was sent to Republican voters on the eve of the primary.It ended up being far from close. With nearly 90 percent of ballots counted, she was in a distant third, earning just 17 percent of the vote to Mr. Cameron’s 47 percent.“Let me just say,” Mr. Cameron said in his victory speech, “the Trump culture of winning is alive and well in Kentucky!”His choice of words was telling: As Mr. DeSantis nears the announcement of a presidential campaign, his stump speech has often called on the Republican Party to end its “culture of losing” during the Trump era. On Monday, the phrase was splashed across the front page of The Des Moines Register after the governor campaigned in Iowa over the weekend.The Trump team cheered Mr. Cameron’s line. In fact, one of Mr. Trump’s top advisers, Chris LaCivita, had presaged it less than an hour before Mr. Cameron spoke. When the race was called, Mr. LaCivita wrote on Twitter, “so much for the #alwaysbackdown culture of winning.”Never Back Down is the name of the main super PAC backing Mr. DeSantis. One of that super PAC’s top strategists is Jeff Roe, whose consulting firm also worked for Ms. Craft.The unsuccessful election-eve endorsement of Ms. Craft was similar to the last-minute backing that Mr. DeSantis gave to Harmeet Dhillon in the race to lead the Republican National Committee in January.Mr. DeSantis called for “new blood” the day before that vote. The incumbent, Ronna McDaniel, won easily the next day.Meanwhile, Mr. DeSantis’s night did not get better in Jacksonville, where Daniel Davis, the Republican endorsed by the governor, lost to Donna Deegan, a Democrat, for an open seat. Mr. DeSantis had provided little support to Mr. Davis beyond his endorsement, not visiting the city to campaign. Early results showed Ms. Deegan leading Mr. Davis with roughly 52 percent of the vote.Jacksonville has had Republican mayors for most of the last 30 years. More

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      Whose Version of Christian Nationalism Will Win in 2024?

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      Last week the ReAwaken America Tour, a Christian nationalist roadshow co-founded by the former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn, rolled up to the Trump National Doral Miami resort. Two speakers who’d appeared at other stops on the tour, the online streamers Scott McKay and Charlie Ward, were jettisoned at the last moment because of bad publicity over their praise of Hitler. (“Hitler was actually fighting the same people that we’re trying to take down today,” said McKay, not inaccurately.) But as of this writing, the tour’s website still includes McKay and Ward, along with Eric Trump, as featured speakers at an upcoming extravaganza in Las Vegas.ReAwaken America’s association with anti-Semites did not stop Donald Trump from calling into the rally to offer his support. “It’s a wonderful hotel, but you’re there for an even more important purpose,” he told a shrieking crowd, before promising to bring Flynn back in for a second Trump term. Flynn is exactly the sort of figure we can expect to serve in a future Trump administration — a MAGA die-hard uninterested in restraining Trump. So it’s worth paying attention to how he has changed since he was last on the national stage.Flynn has long been a paranoid Islamophobe, and toward the end of Trump’s presidency, he emerged as a full-fledged authoritarian, calling on Trump to invoke martial law after the 2020 election. Now he’s become, in addition to an anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist and QAnon adherent, one of the country’s most prominent Christian nationalists. “If we are going to have one nation under God, which we must, we have to have one religion,” he said at a 2021 ReAwaken America event. “One nation under God and one religion under God, right?”A major question for Republicans in 2024 is whether this militant version of Christian nationalism — one often rooted in Pentecostalism, with its emphasis on prophecy and revelation — can overcome the qualms of more mainstream evangelicals. The issue isn’t whether the next Republican presidential candidate is going to be a Christian nationalist, meaning someone who rejects the separation of church and state and treats Christianity as the foundation of American identity and law. That’s a foregone conclusion in a party whose state lawmakers are falling over themselves to pass book bans, abortion prohibitions, anti-trans laws, and, in Texas, bills authorizing school prayer and the posting of the Ten Commandments in classrooms.What’s not yet clear, though, is what sort of Christian nationalism will prevail: the elite, doctrinaire variety of candidates like Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, or the violently messianic version embodied by Flynn and Trump.ReAwaken America’s Miami stop had just concluded when Trump ran afoul of some more traditional evangelical leaders in his effort to set himself apart from DeSantis. In a Monday interview with The Messenger, he criticized the six-week abortion ban DeSantis signed in Florida, even as he would not say whether he’d sign a similar one himself. “He signed six weeks, and many people within the pro-life movement feel that that was too harsh,” said Trump.Of course, lots of people believe that the Florida law is too harsh, but they’re not generally members of the anti-abortion movement, where Trump’s statement was poorly received. Rebuking Trump, Bob Vander Plaats, probably the most influential evangelical leader in Iowa, tweeted, “The #IowaCaucus door just flung wide open.” The right-wing Iowa talk show host Steve Deace tweeted that he was “potentially throwing away the Iowa Caucuses on the pro-life issue.”There is an obvious opening for DeSantis here. He is fluent in the language of the religious right, and strives to check all its policy boxes. “Put on the full armor of God. Stand firm against the left’s schemes,” he said at the Christian Hillsdale College last year, substituting the “left’s schemes” for the “devil’s schemes” of Ephesians 6:11. In addition to the abortion ban and his war on “woke” education, he will almost certainly sign a recently passed bill intended to keep trans people from using their preferred bathrooms in government buildings, including schools.But it remains to be seen whether rank-and-file religious conservatives care more about consistency or charisma. For the religious following that Trump has nurtured, he’s less a person who will put in place a specific Christian nationalist agenda than he is the incarnation of that agenda. Amanda Tyler, executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty and the organizer of Christians against Christian Nationalism, attended the ReAwaken America event at Trump Doral. She described a type of Christian nationalist fervor that was “very much tied to the political future of Donald Trump and nothing else.”Tyler didn’t hear any of the ReAwaken speakers talk about abortion. Instead, she said, they spoke about “spiritual warfare.” There was also “a lot of talking about guns, about this sense that you’re put here for this time and this place.”If DeSantis treats Christianity as a moral code he’d like to impose on the rest of us, Trump treats it as an elevated status that should come with special perks. That’s how he can slam DeSantis for being “sanctimonious” even as he wraps his own campaign in biblical raiment. If a Republican wins in 2024, the victor will preside over a Christian nationalist administration. The question is whether that person will champion an orthodoxy or a cult.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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      DeSantis Impresses Voters and Trolls Trump in Iowa Swing

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      The former president canceled a rally in Des Moines, citing a storm warning. The Florida governor made the most of his rival’s absence, as DeSantis allies taunted Mr. Trump.For the first time in months, Gov. Ron DeSantis on Saturday showed the aggressive political instincts that his allies have long insisted he would demonstrate in a contest against former President Donald J. Trump.After headlining two successful political events in Iowa, Mr. DeSantis made an unscheduled stop in Des Moines — a move aimed at highlighting the fact that Mr. Trump had abruptly postponed a planned Saturday evening rally in the area because of reports of possible severe weather.Mr. Trump’s explanation for postponing the event drew skepticism from local Iowa officials and derision from DeSantis allies about the “beautiful” weather. And Mr. DeSantis — who has avoided direct conflict with Mr. Trump — essentially kicked sand in the former president’s face by coming to an area that Mr. Trump claimed to have been told was too dangerous for him to visit.After wrapping up his events on Saturday evening elsewhere in the state, Mr. DeSantis headed to Jethro’s BBQ Southside, where he and his wife, Casey DeSantis, stood on a table outside and spoke to a cheering crowd. The barbecue joint was a short drive from where Mr. Trump had planned to host his own rally.“My better half and I have been able to be all over Iowa today, but before we went back to Florida we wanted to come by and say hi to the people of Des Moines,” a grinning Mr. DeSantis said. “So thank you all for coming out. It’s a beautiful night, it’s been a great day for us.”Mr. DeSantis’s pointed pit stop was a clear rebuke to Mr. Trump, who has tried to torment the Florida governor for months, mocking him for his falling poll numbers and perceived dearth of charisma. Mr. DeSantis’s resistance to hitting back while not a declared candidate as he finished the state’s legislative session, combined with a handful of unforced errors, had allowed the former president to take control of the race for 2024 and frustrated some of Mr. DeSantis’s allies. But as he prepares to take on Mr. Trump, who has dominated every Republican he has campaigned against in the past, Mr. DeSantis moved to show he doesn’t intend to suffer the same result. “If someone’s punching you in the face, you better punch them back,” said Terry Sullivan, who managed the 2016 presidential campaign of Senator Marco Rubio of Florida — a race in which Mr. Rubio was criticized for not fighting back enough against Mr. Trump.Mr. DeSantis has been outflanked by Mr. Trump’s team at various turns until now. Saturday was the first time Mr. DeSantis has taken advantage of an opportunity to show up Mr. Trump over a perceived misstep. Mr. DeSantis needs to string together many more days like Saturday in a campaign that will rely heavily on winning the Iowa caucus early next year. But Republican activists in the state say there is an opening with caucus-goers for someone other than Mr. Trump. And the visit Saturday, where he also traveled to Sioux Center — populated by Christian conservatives whose support he must gain — was seen as a positive development by Republicans who want to defeat Mr. Trump but have been dismayed by Mr. DeSantis’s stumbles as he steps onto the national stage.Casey DeSantis mingled with attendees at the event in Cedar Rapids on Saturday.Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesDespite the unforeseen — albeit indirect — jab at Jethro’s, the governor is unlikely to criticize Mr. Trump directly until after he formally announces his campaign, according to two people familiar with his political operation. And even when he does jump into the race, which is expected to happen imminently, he will largely focus on contrasting his record with Mr. Trump’s — particularly on issues like the coronavirus pandemic — while making the case that he is the candidate better equipped to defeat President Biden in a general election. It’s a strategy that avoids relitigating Mr. Trump’s false claims about the 2020 election, and one the governor is foreshadowing as he barnstorms Republican events around the country. It also positions Mr. DeSantis — who is decades younger than the 76-year-old Mr. Trump, who was recently indicted and faces the possibility of additional ones in other investigations — as interested in the future and not the past.“If we make this election about a referendum on Joe Biden and his failed policies, and we provide a positive alternative to take America in a new direction, I think Republicans will win across the board,” Mr. DeSantis said at a Saturday evening fund-raiser for the Republican Party of Iowa in Cedar Rapids. That event was shown on Fox News during time that Mr. Trump had claimed Fox News was reserving to show his rally. Mr. DeSantis’s message is already appealing to some voters, including Amy Seeger, who traveled from Milwaukee to see him speak earlier in the day at a picnic in Sioux Center.“I would vote for a shoe over Trump,” Ms. Seeger said in an interview. “It is time to move forward. Trump is very wrapped up in 2020 and playing the victim.”Mr. DeSantis also used the Iowa trip to show off the sometimes enigmatic lighter side of his personality, flipping burgers at the picnic and talking about his life as a family man with his wife at the evening fund-raiser in Cedar Rapids.At that second event, Ms. DeSantis joined her husband on stage for an interview conducted by the state Republican Party chair, Jeff Kaufmann, following remarks from the governor. Mr. DeSantis’s stump speech focuses almost exclusively on policy, leaving out the biographical details that politicians are generally expected to supply. His wife seemed to try to fill in those gaps, telling personal stories about Mr. DeSantis’s childhood in Florida, his military service, and their three young children.“When he gets home, don’t think for a second that he goes and goes right to bed,” she said. “I hand three small kids over to him and I go to bed.”The moment resonated with the crowd. “There was a tender side to him, a family side, that I didn’t really have an appreciation for,” said Bob Carlson, a physician from Muscatine who was in the audience.Mr. DeSantis greeted supporters after making an unscheduled visit to the Jethro’s BBQ Southside in Des Moines on Saturday.Bryon Houlgrave/USA Today NetworkAs Mr. DeSantis builds toward an announcement, he is beginning to show other signs of political strength in ways that matter beyond having financial backing. The outing to Iowa — where he is expected to make a return visit fairly soon — came as a super PAC backing his all-but-official presidential campaign announced support from 37 state lawmakers. Local elected officials tend to pay less attention to national polls than members of Congress, who have been slower to endorse the governor.In contrast, Mr. Trump — who had scheduled a rally to try to blot out Mr. DeSantis’s visit by appearing on the same day — abruptly called off his own event in the middle of the afternoon, citing a tornado watch.Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Mr. Trump’s campaign, said the Iowa event was sold out but that “due to the National Weather Service’s Tornado Watch in effect in Polk and surrounding counties, we were unfortunately forced to postpone the event. We will be there at the first available date.”But although it rained heavily at points, it was sunny mid-afternoon and no severe weather such as a tornado materialized, which raised questions among Iowans about whether Mr. Trump was concerned he would fail to draw the crowd he had anticipated. The lack of dangerous storms was noted by local activists who want to see the party move on from Mr. Trump. “We’re all outside on a nice night,” the influential podcast host Steve Deace wrote on Twitter from the scene of Mr. DeSantis’s barbecue victory lap. “Pretty big crowd too. No severe weather in sight. Planes landing and taking off as scheduled.”While Mr. Trump canceled his Iowa appearance, he later called in to an event hosted by the ReAwaken America Tour, a Christian nationalist, far-right movement led by Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, the QAnon promoter and national security adviser who Mr. Trump forced out early in his term. The group, which helps promote conspiracy theories, paid one of Mr. Trump’s clubs in Florida, the Doral, to hold it there. Mr. DeSantis’s hope for a win in the Iowa caucuses involves uniting a careful coalition of social conservatives who backed candidates like Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee in 2016, along with suburban moderates who went for Mr. Rubio.Yet Mr. DeSantis may be poised to pick up support from enough corners of the state to increase his support. For instance, the influential social conservative leader Bob Vander Plaats has met with the governor and has praised him publicly.Mr. DeSantis’s day was also punctuated with appearances with Senator Joni Ernst and Gov. Kim Reynolds, both Iowa Republicans. Those visits don’t necessarily mean endorsements from those officials are in the offing, but they do indicate a willingness in the state to support someone other than Mr. Trump and less concern than once existed about retribution from the former president.Bret Hayworth contributed reporting from Sioux Center, Iowa. More