DeSantis, Ron

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      Ron DeSantis Pauses Political Bomb-Throwing as Hurricane Ian Hits

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      WASHINGTON — As a powerful hurricane hammers Florida’s Gulf Coast, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida is confronting a vastly different calculus in his dealings with President Biden and the federal government.Mr. DeSantis, a Republican widely seen as holding White House ambitions, is one of his party’s foremost political provocateurs, often appearing on national television to rail against an administration in Washington he denounces as overbearing. As recently as February, Mr. DeSantis dismissed Mr. Biden as someone who “hates Florida,” saying baselessly that he “stiffs” storm victims of relief for political reasons.But now, as Hurricane Ian threatens to inflict significant damage across Florida, Mr. DeSantis must rely on assistance from the same federal government whose public health guidance he has ridiculed during the pandemic. Beyond that, he must work with the very president he has castigated and may soon run to replace.“We all need to work together, regardless of party lines,” Mr. DeSantis said on Fox News on Tuesday night, adding that he was “thankful” for the Biden administration’s assistance. “The administration wants to help,” he said. “They realize this is a really significant storm.”At a briefing early Wednesday evening, Mr. DeSantis noted that he had spoken with the president the day before. “He said all hands on deck, that he wants to be helpful,” Mr. DeSantis said. “He said whatever you need, ask us. He was inviting us to request support.” Earlier, he praised help Florida had received from several federal agencies.The disaster-driven pause in partisanship is a notable shift for Mr. DeSantis, a politician who came to power during a highly polarized social media era and won his 2018 primary thanks to an endorsement from Donald J. Trump that he earned after defending Mr. Trump scores of times on Fox News.The governor’s tenure has been characterized by a series of fights appealing to the Trump-aligned Republican base, particularly on social issues and the pandemic response. One question that immediately arose as the storm bore down on Florida was for how long Mr. DeSantis, who is seeking re-election in November against Representative Charlie Crist, a Democratic former governor, would put politics aside.Mr. Biden, in contrast to Mr. DeSantis, has for decades sold himself as an across-the-aisle deal maker.St. Petersburg residents worked on Tuesday to fortify their home.Johnny Milano for The New York TimesOn Wednesday morning, the president made a point to announce that he had been in touch with Mr. DeSantis. “My team has been in constant contact with him from the very beginning,” he said at a White House conference on hunger. .css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-ok2gjs{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-ok2gjs a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.Mr. Biden, who also spoke with several Florida mayors, said that he had told Mr. DeSantis that the federal government was “alert and in action” and that he had approved every request from Florida for federal help.“I made it clear to the governor and the mayors that the federal government is ready to help in every single way possible,” Mr. Biden said.The White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, also emphasized the temporary unity.“There’s no politics in this, when we talk about extreme weather,” she said. “This is about the people of Florida, this is about two people who wanted to have a conversation on how we can be partners to the governor and his constituents and make sure that we are delivering for the people of Florida.”Ms. Jean-Pierre declined to say how long Mr. Biden and Mr. DeSantis spoke for on Tuesday.Hurricane Ian is the first major storm to strike Florida since Mr. DeSantis took office in early 2019. He is operating with a storm playbook long honed by governors of Florida, where the state’s response to Hurricane Andrew in 1992 was widely criticized as too slow and ineffective.When he ran for president in 2016, Jeb Bush, a two-term governor, frequently highlighted Florida’s hurricane preparedness and rebuilding efforts under his leadership. Mr. DeSantis’s immediate predecessor, Rick Scott, burnished a somewhat awkward public persona while shepherding Florida through a series of hurricanes during his tenure.Mr. DeSantis is unlikely to follow the path of Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, whose warm greeting for President Barack Obama during an October 2012 visit to inspect damage from Hurricane Sandy drew scorn from fellow Republicans during his subsequent presidential campaign.Mr. Christie said in an interview on Wednesday that, 10 years later, “I wouldn’t change a thing.” He went on, “To me it always was that the job that I’ve been elected to do was the most important thing and the politics at the time was secondary.”He added: “I didn’t think there was anything else to it at all. That’s a decision that Governor DeSantis is going to have to make.”Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey greeted President Barack Obama after Hurricane Sandy in 2012.Doug Mills/The New York TimesAt the Conservative Political Action Conference in February, Mr. DeSantis said Mr. Biden “hates Florida” and “stiffs” storm victims because of politics. (There is no evidence that Mr. Biden has withheld federal emergency relief for political purposes, though Mr. Trump often threatened to use a similar tactic when he was in the White House.)Mr. DeSantis also spent months assailing federal public health guidance about the pandemic. In August, he denigrated Dr. Anthony S. Fauci days after the doctor announced that he would retire as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.“Someone needs to grab that little elf and chuck him across the Potomac,” Mr. DeSantis said at a rally in Orlando.And two weeks ago, Mr. DeSantis flew two planes filled with undocumented Venezuelan immigrants from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard, Mass., in an attempt to highlight his opposition to Mr. Biden’s immigration policy.“The biggest stunt was Biden coming in as president and reversing Trump’s policies,” Mr. DeSantis told reporters in Florida days later. He also suggested that the next plane of immigrants might land in Delaware, near the president’s weekend home.Democrats were infuriated. Mr. Biden said Mr. DeSantis was “playing politics with human beings, using them as props,” adding: “What they’re doing is simply wrong. It’s un-American. It’s reckless.” Asked days later what his response was to Mr. DeSantis’s threat to send the next plane to Delaware, Mr. Biden replied: “He should come visit. We have a beautiful shoreline.”Michael D. Shear More

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      Ron DeSantis’s Race Problem

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      In July, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida appointed Jeffery Moore, a former tax law specialist with the Florida Department of Revenue, to be a county commissioner in Gadsden, the blackest county in the state.On Friday, Moore resigned after a picture emerged that appeared to show him dressed in Ku Klux Klan regalia.Neither Moore nor DeSantis have confirmed that Moore is in fact the man in the picture. When Politico reached out to Desantis’s office for comment, his communication director responded, “We are in the middle of hurricane prep, I’m not aware of the photo you sent but Jeff did submit his resignation last week.” This is not the first, shall I say, “awkward” racial issue DeSantis had encountered. But throughout, he has had much the same response: Instead of addressing the issue directly, he — or his office — claims to be oblivious. That’s the DeSantis M.O.In a 2018 gubernatorial debate, the moderator asked DeSantis why he had spoken at several conferences hosted by David Horowitz, a conservative writer who the Southern Poverty Law Center says is a “driving force of the anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant and anti-Black movements.” Horowitz once said that President Barack Obama was an “evil man” who “will send emissaries to Ferguson for a street thug who got himself killed attempting to disarm a police officer, resisting arrest.”There, too, DeSantis claimed obliviousness, responding, “How the hell am I supposed to know every single statement someone makes?”It was in that debate that his Democratic opponent, Andrew Gillum said, “Now, I’m not calling Mr. DeSantis a racist, I’m simply saying the racists believe he’s a racist.”The problem, of course, is that DeSantis’s unfortunate associations keep stacking up.In 2018, he appointed Michael Ertel, then a county elections supervisor, to be his secretary of state. The following year, Ertel resigned after a picture emerged of him in blackface wearing a T-shirt that read “Katrina Victim.” He appeared to be mocking Black women in particular, because he wore fake breasts, a scarf wrapped around his head and large gold earrings.Hurricane Katrina killed more than a thousand people, a slight majority of whom were Black.DeSantis responded to the controversy by saying: “It’s unfortunate. I think he’s done a lot of good work.” He continued, “I don’t want to get mired into kind of side controversies, and so I felt it was best to just accept the resignation and move on.” Not a word of condemnation for the act or sympathy for the victims of the storm. Also, not a word of his own personal regret for appointing him.Now, maybe the pool of possible Republican appointees in Florida is hopelessly polluted with white men who like to dress in racist costumes. That’s damning, if true. Maybe DeSantis is simply doomed by appalling options. That could well be the harvest of the Republican Party sowing hatred. Or maybe DeSantis is just too dense to do his homework. That may well be true, although I have no sympathy for it.This is a man who championed and signed Florida’s ridiculous “Stop WOKE Act,” restricting how race can be discussed in the state’s schools and workplaces. You can’t live in the dark on race and then try to drag your whole state into the darkness with you.I have always thought of DeSantis as reading the rules of villainy from a coloring book and acting them out. Nothing about him says clever and tactical. He seems to me the kind of man who must conjure confidence, who is fragile and feisty because of it, a beta male trying desperately to convince the world that he’s an alpha.But there is a way in which race policy reaches far beyond being merely racist-adjacent. DeSantis, for instance, has actually tried to strip Black Floridians of their power and voice.In 2010, Florida voters, by a strong majority, approved a constitutional amendment rejecting gerrymandering. The amendment made clear that “districts shall not be drawn with the intent or result of denying or abridging the equal opportunity of racial or language minorities to participate in the political process or to diminish their ability to elect representatives of their choice.”Yet Florida’s Republican-led Legislature produced a gerrymandered map anyway. In 2015, the state Supreme Court struck down much of the Legislature’s proposed map, and demanded that eight House districts be redrawn. Among them was the Fifth District, which at the time snaked up the state from Orlando to Jacksonville. The redrawn map allowed Black voters to elect four Black representatives.In the decade between 2010 and 2020, there was a 14.6 percent increase in the population of the state, nearly twice the rate of growth of the country — and enough to earn Florida a 28th congressional district.But when the Legislature drew its map this cycle, it didn’t increase the number of minority districts, even though minorities had driven 90 percent of the population growth in the state — growth that had earned Florida its new district. (Most of that growth was among Hispanics.)As the staff director of the Florida Senate’s Committee on Reapportionment told The Tampa Bay Times, state legislators initially set out to keep the number of Black- and Hispanic-majority districts the same as they had been for the past few years.That wouldn’t have been fair, but at least the number of minority seats wouldn’t be cut. That wasn’t enough for DeSantis. He submitted his own redistricting map that cut the number of Black-controlled districts in half, taking them from four to two. The legislature went along and approved DeSantis’s map.DeSantis may pretend to be oblivious to the racial acts and statements of the people he associates with and appoints, but eliminating Black power and representation was a conscious act.Now, I’m not calling Mr. DeSantis a racist, I’m simply saying this: He has targeted Black people, Black power and Black history.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 and Twitter (@NYTopinion), and Instagram. More

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      Which Midterm Polls Should We Be Taking With a Grain of Salt?

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      Frank Bruni, a contributing Opinion writer, hosted a written online conversation with Amy Walter of The Cook Political Report and Patrick Ruffini, a Republican pollster, to discuss the state of polling and of Democratic anxiety about polls ahead of the midterms.Frank Bruni: Amy, Patrick, as if the people over at Politico knew that the three of us would be huddling to discuss polling, it just published a long article about the midterms with the gloomy, spooky headline “Pollsters Fear They’re Blowing It Again in 2022.”Do you two fear that pollsters are blowing it again in 2022?Patrick Ruffini: It’s certainly possible that they could. The best evidence we have so far that something might be afoot comes from The Times’s own Nate Cohn, who finds that some of the Democratic overperformances seem to be coming in states that saw large polling errors in 2016 and 2020.Amy Walter: I do worry that we are asking more from polling than it is able to provide. Many competitive Senate races are in states — like Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — that Joe Biden won by supernarrow margins in 2020. The reality is that they are going to be very close again. And so an error of just three to four points is the difference between Democratic and Republican control of the Senate.Ruffini: This also doesn’t mean we can predict that polls will miss in any given direction. But it does suggest taking polls in states like Ohio, which Donald Trump won comfortably but where the Republican J.D. Vance is tied or slightly behind, with a grain of salt.Bruni: So what would you say specifically to Democrats? Are they getting their hopes up — again — in a reckless fashion?Walter: Democrats are definitely suffering from political PTSD. After 2016 and 2020, I don’t think Democrats are getting their hopes up. In fact, the ones I talk with are hoping for the best but not expecting such.Ruffini: In any election, you have the polls themselves, and then you have the polls as filtered through the partisan media environment. Those aren’t necessarily the same thing. On Twitter, there’s a huge incentive to hype individual polling results that are good for your side while ignoring the average. I don’t expect this to let up, because maintaining this hype is important for low-dollar fund-raising. But I do think this has led to a perhaps exaggerated sense of Democratic optimism.Bruni: Great point, Patrick — in these fractured and hyperpartisan times of information curation, polls aren’t so much sets of numbers as they are Rorschachs.But I want to pick up on something else that you said — “polls will miss in any given direction” — to ask why the worry seems only to be about overstatement of Democratic support and prospects. Is it possible that the error could be in the other direction and we are understating Republican problems and worries?Ruffini: In politics, we always tend to fight the last war. Historically, polling misses have been pretty random, happening about equally on both sides. But the last big example of them missing in a pro-Republican direction was 2012. The more recent examples stick in our minds, 2020 specifically, which was actually worse in percentage terms than 2016.Walter: Patrick’s point about the last war is so important. This is especially true when we are living in a time when we have little overlap with people from different political tribes. The two sides have very little appreciation for what motivates, interests or worries the other side, so the two sides over- or underestimate each other a lot.As our politics continue to break along educational attainment — those who have a college degree are increasingly more Democratic-leaning, those with less education increasingly more Republican-leaning — polls are likely to overstate the Democratic advantage, since we know that there’s a really clear connection between civic voting behavior and education levels.Ruffini: And we may be missing a certain kind of Trump voter, who may not be answering polls out of a distrust for the media, polling and institutions generally.Bruni: Regarding 2016 and 2020, Trump was on the ballot both of those years. He’s not — um, technically — this time around. So is there a greater possibility of accuracy, of a repeat of 2018, when polling came closer to the mark?Ruffini: The frustrating thing about all of this is that we just don’t have a very good sample size to answer this. In polls, that’s called an n size, like n = 1,000 registered voters. There have been n = 2 elections where Trump has been on the ballot and n = 1 midterm election in the Trump era. That’s not a lot.Bruni: We’ve mentioned 2016 and 2020 versus 2018. Are there reasons to believe that none of those points of reference are all that illuminating — that 2022 is entirely its own cat, with its own inimitable wrinkles? There are cats that have wrinkles, right? I’m a dog guy, but I feel certain that I’ve seen shar-pei-style cats in pictures.Walter: First, let’s be clear. Dogs are the best. So let’s change this to “Is this an entirely different breed?”I’m a big believer in the aphorism that history doesn’t repeat, but it does rhyme.Ruffini: Right. Every election is different, and seeing each new election through the lens of the previous election is usually a bad analytical strategy.Walter: But there are important fundamentals that can’t be dismissed. Midterms are about the party in charge. It is hard to make a midterm election about the out-party — the party not in charge — especially when Democrats control not just the White House but the House and Senate as well.However, the combination of overturning Roe v. Wade plus the ubiquitous presence of Trump has indeed made the out-party — the G.O.P. — a key element of this election. To me, the question is whether that focus on the stuff the Republicans are doing and have done is enough to counter frustration with the Democrats.Ruffini: 2022 is unique in that it’s a midterm cycle where both sides have reasons to be energized — Republicans by running against an unpopular president in a time of high economic uncertainty and Democrats by the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision overturning Roe. It’s really unique in the sweep of midterm elections historically. To the extent there is still an energized Republican base, polls could miss if they aren’t capturing this new kind of non-college, low-turnout voter that Trump brought into the process.Bruni: Patrick, this one’s for you, as you’re the one among us who’s actually in the polling business. In the context of Amy’s terrific observation about education levels and the Democratic Party and who’s more readily responsive to pollsters, what are you and what is your firm doing to make sure you reach and sample enough Republican and Trump-inclined voters?Ruffini: That’s a great question. Nearly all of our polls are off the voter file, which means we have a much larger set of variables — like voting history and partisan primary participation — to weight on than you might typically see in a media poll (with the exception of the Times/Siena polls, which do a great job in this regard). We’ve developed targets for the right number of college or non-college voters among likely voters in each congressional district. We’re also making sure that our samples have the right proportions of people who have registered with either party or have participated in a specific party’s primary before.But none of this is a silver bullet. After 2016, pollsters figured out we needed to weight on education. In 2020 we weighted on education — and we got a worse polling error. All the correct weighting decisions won’t matter if the non-college or low-turnout voter you’re getting to take surveys isn’t representative of those people who will actually show up to vote.Bruni: Does the taking of polls and the reporting on polls and the consciousness of polls inevitably queer what would have happened in their absence? I will go to my grave believing that if so many voters hadn’t thought that Hillary Clinton had victory in the bag, she would have won. Some 77,000 votes in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin — the margin of her Electoral College loss — are easily accounted for by overconfident, complacent Clinton supporters.Walter: In 2016, there were two key groups of people that determined the election. Those who never liked Clinton and those who disliked Trump and Clinton equally. At the end, those who disliked both equally broke overwhelmingly for Trump. And, those Democratic-leaning voters who didn’t like her at all were never fully convinced that she was a worthy candidate.Ruffini: I don’t worry about this too much since the people most likely to be paying attention to the daily movement of the polls are people who are 100 percent sure to vote. It can also work in the other direction. If the polls are showing a race in a red or blue state is close, that can motivate a majority of the party’s voters to get out and vote, and that might be why close races in those states usually resolve to the state fundamentals.Bruni: Evaluate the news media in all of this, and be brutal if you like. For as long as I’ve been a reporter, I’ve listened to news leaders say our political coverage should be less attentive to polls. It remains plenty attentive to polls. Should we reform? Is there any hope of that? Does it matter?Ruffini: I don’t think there’s any hope of this getting better, and that’s not the media’s fault. It’s the fault of readers (sorry, readers!) who have an insatiable appetite for staring at the scoreboard.Walter: We do pay too much attention to polls, but polls are the tool we have to capture the opinions of an incredibly diverse society. A reporter could go knock on 3,000 doors and miss a lot because they weren’t able to get the kind of cross-section of voters a poll does.Ruffini: Where I do hope the media gets better is in conducting more polls the way campaigns conduct them, which are not mostly about who is winning but showing a candidate how to win.In those polls, we test the impact of messages on the electorate and show how their standing moved as a result. It’s possible to do this in a balanced way, and it would be illuminating for readers to see, starting with “Here’s where the race stands today, but here’s the impact of this Democratic attack or this Republican response,” etc.Bruni: Let’s finish with a lightning round. Please answer these quickly and in a sentence or less, starting with this: Which issue will ultimately have greater effect, even if just by a bit, in the outcome of the midterms — abortion or gas prices?Walter: Abortion. Only because gas prices are linked to overall economic worries.Ruffini: Gas prices, because they’re a microcosm about concerns about inflation. When we asked voters a head-to-head about what’s more important to their vote, reducing inflation comes out ahead of protecting abortion rights by 67 to 29 percent.Bruni: Which of the competitive Senate races will have an outcome that’s most tightly tethered to — and thus most indicative of — the country’s mood and leanings right now?Walter: Arizona and Georgia were the two closest races for Senate and president in 2020. They should both be indicative. But Georgia is much closer because the G.O.P. candidate, Herschel Walker, while he’s still got some problems, has much less baggage and much better name recognition than the G.O.P. candidate in Arizona, Blake Masters.Ruffini: If Republicans are going to flip the Senate, Georgia is most likely to be the tipping-point state.Bruni: If there’s a Senate upset, which race is it? Who’s the unpredicted victor?Walter: For Republicans, it would be Don Bolduc in New Hampshire. They’ve argued that the incumbent, Senator Maggie Hassan, has low approval ratings and is very weak. It would be an upset because Bolduc is a flawed candidate with very little money or history of strong fund-raising.Ruffini: I’d agree about New Hampshire. The polling has shown a single-digit race. Republicans are also hoping they can execute a bit of a sneak attack in Colorado with Joe O’Dea, though the state fundamentals look more challenging.Bruni: You (hypothetically) have to place a bet with serious money on the line. Is the Republican presidential nominee in 2024 Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis or “other”?Walter: It’s always a safer bet to pick “other.” One of the most difficult things to do in politics is what DeSantis is trying to do: not just to upend someone like Trump but to remain a front-runner for another year-plus.Ruffini: I’d place some money on DeSantis and some on “other.” DeSantis is in a strong position right now, relative to the other non-Trumps, but he hasn’t taken many punches. And Trump’s position is soft for a former president who’s supposedly loved by the base and who has remained in the fray. Time has not been his friend. About as many Republicans in the ABC/Washington Post poll this weekend said they didn’t want him to run as did.Bruni: Same deal with the Democratic presidential nominee — but don’t be safe. Live large. To the daredevil go the spoils. Joe Biden, Kamala Harris or “other”?Walter: History tells us that Biden will run. If he doesn’t, history tells us that it will be Harris. But I feel very uncomfortable with either answer right now.Ruffini: “Other.” Our own polling shows Biden in a weaker position for renomination than Trump and Democrats less sure about who the alternative would be if he doesn’t run. I also think we’re underestimating the possibility that he doesn’t run at the age of 81.Bruni: OK, final question. Name a politician, on either side of the aisle, who has not yet been mentioned in our conversation but whose future is much brighter than most people realize.Walter: If you talk to Republicans, Representative Patrick McHenry is someone they see as perhaps the next leader for the party. There’s a lot of focus on Kevin McCarthy now, but many people see McHenry as a speaker in waiting.Ruffini: He’s stayed out of the presidential conversation (probably wisely until Trump has passed from the scene), but I think Dan Crenshaw remains an enormously compelling future leader for the G.O.P. Also in Texas, should we see Republicans capitalize on their gains with Hispanic voters and take at least one seat in the Rio Grande Valley, one of those candidates — Mayra Flores, Monica De La Cruz or Cassy Garcia — will easily be in the conversation for statewide office.Bruni: Thank you, both. I just took a poll, and 90 percent of respondents said they’d want to read your thoughts at twice this length. Then again, the margin of error was plus or minus 50 percent, and I’m not sure I sampled enough rural voters in the West.Frank Bruni (@FrankBruni) is a professor of public policy and journalism at Duke, the author of the book “The Beauty of Dusk” and a contributing Opinion writer. He writes a weekly email newsletter and can be found on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. Patrick Ruffini (@PatrickRuffini) is a co-founder of the Republican research firm Echelon Insights. Amy Walter (@amyewalter) is the publisher and editor in chief of The Cook Political Report.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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      Does It Matter That Investigators Are Closing In on Trump?

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      Gail Collins: Bret, which do you think is more of a threat to Trump’s political future, the classified document drama at Mar-a-Lago or the legal challenge to his businesses in New York?Bret Stephens: Gail, I suspect the most serious threats to Trump’s future, political or otherwise, are Big Macs and KFC buckets. Otherwise, I fear the various efforts to put the 45th president out of business or in prison make it considerably more likely that he’ll wind up in the White House as the 47th president. How about you?Gail: Sigh. You’re probably right but I’m still sorta hoping New York’s attorney general can hit him in the pocketbook. He’s super vulnerable when it comes to his shady finances — I’m even surprised he can find lawyers who have confidence they’ll keep being paid.Bret: No doubt the Trump Organization was run with the kind of fierce moral and financial rectitude you’d expect if Elizabeth Holmes had been put in charge of Enron. But the essential currency of Trumpism is drama, and what the New York and U.S. attorneys general have done is inject a whole lot more of it into Trump’s accounts.Gail: I don’t think the news that Letitia James accused him of fudging his financial statements will upset the base — they’ve always known this is a guy who responded to the World Trade Center terror attack by bragging that his tower was now the highest building in Lower Manhattan.Bret: A graceless building, by the way, far surpassed by the Chrysler Building, for those who care about architectural rivalries.Gail: Maybe I need to stop obsessing about this and take a look at the rest of the public world. Anything got your attention in particular?Bret: Am I allowed a rant?Gail: Bret, rants are … what we do.Bret: The investigation of Matt Gaetz, Republican of Florida, which looks like it’s about to fall apart, is an F.B.I. disgrace for the ages. It should force heads to roll. And Congress needs to appoint a Church-style committee or commission to reform the bureau. After the Ted Stevens fiasco, James Comey’s disastrous interventions with Hillary Clinton’s emails, and the bureau misrepresenting facts to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court as part of its investigation of Trump and Russia, something dramatic has to change to save the F.B.I. from continuing to lose public trust.Gail: Are you upset by the investigation or the fact that the investigation is failing?Bret: I’m upset by a longstanding pattern of incompetence tinged by what feels like political bias. I don’t like Gaetz’s politics or persona any more than you do. But what we seem to have here is a high-profile politician being convicted in the court of public opinion of some of the most heinous behavior imaginable — trafficking a minor for sex — until the Justice Department realizes two years late that its case has fallen apart. We have a presumption of innocence in this country because we tend to err the most when we assume the worst about the people we like the least.Gail: Nothing nobler than ranting about a basic moral principle on behalf of a deeply unattractive victim.Bret: He’s the yang to Lauren Boebert’s yin. But no American deserves to be smeared this way.Gail: While we’re on the general subject of crime let’s talk bail reform. Specifically, New York’s new system, under which a judge basically lets out arrestees not accused of violent felonies. New info suggests this may be increasing crime. But I’m sticking with my support for the concept. Suspects who haven’t yet been tried shouldn’t get different treatment based on their ability to come up with bail.Your turn …Bret: New York’s bail reform laws are egregious because we’re now the only state that forbids judges from considering the potential danger of a given suspect. It leads to crazy outcomes, like the guy who tried to stab Representative Lee Zeldin at a campaign stop in July and was released hours later.Another problem is that too many cities effectively decriminalized misdemeanors like shoplifting and have given up prosecuting a lot of felonies, which tends to encourage an anything-goes mentality among the criminally minded. We really need a new approach to crime, of the kind that Joe Biden and Bill Clinton pushed back in the early 1990s, when the Democrats finally determined to be a law-and-order party again.Gail: Biden’s generally held to a middle course that doesn’t drive anybody totally crazy. That’s why he got elected, after all. How would you say he’s doing these days?Bret: I’m giving him full marks on supporting Ukraine. And I know Democrats have this whole “Dark Brandon” thing given Biden’s legislative victories, along with the chance that Democrats might hold the Senate thanks to bad Republican candidates. But I still don’t see things going well. Food prices keep going up-up-up and we’re heading for a bad-bad-bad recession.You?Gail: Going for Not At All Bad. Otherwise known as N.A.A.B.Bret: I’m approaching the point of T.O.T.W.I. T.: The Only Thing Worse Is Trump.Gail: You’re way off.Biden may not have mobilized Congress the way we hoped, but he’s gotten quite a bit done — from funding the ever-popular infrastructure programs to reducing health care costs for the working and middle classes to finally, finally giving the Internal Revenue Service some funds to do its work more efficiently.But he lost you after infrastructure, right?Bret: He’s governed so much further to the left than I would have liked. Change of subject: What governor’s races are you following?Gail: It’s always a lot harder to focus on other states’ governors than the senators but I gotta admit this year I’m hooked on …Well, let’s start with one we’re going to disagree about. I’m guessing there’s no way you could be rooting for Beto O’Rourke in Texas, right?Bret: Ah, no, except as a performance artist. When are Texas Democrats going to nominate a centrist who stands a modest chance of winning a statewide race?What about the New York race? I don’t suppose you could have warm feelings for Lee Zeldin, could you?Gail: Well, to get Zeldin as their gubernatorial nominee, New York Republicans passed up a bid by Rudy’s son Andrew Giuliani, so I’d definitely put Zeldin in the Could Be Worse category.Bret: Hochul’s main achievement to date has been to get taxpayers to put up $850 million for a new Bills stadium in Buffalo. That makes her perfect for Albany, which I don’t mean as a compliment.Gail: Yeah, her Buffalo obsession is pretty irritating. But about Texas — Abbott is one of those Make Everything Worse Republicans, who most recently made the headlines by shipping busloads of migrants to northern cities. A move that did nothing to solve anything, but did help expose what a jerk he is.Really, nothing Beto has ever done is that awful.Bret: That’s because Beto has never done anything.One Democrat I am excited about is Maryland’s Wes Moore, whom I know slightly and impresses me greatly. His book, “The Other Wes Moore,” will soon be required reading the way Barack Obama’s “Dreams From My Father” used to be. And, just to be clear, that’s me saying that Moore could one day be president.Who else?Gail: Your bipartisanship is making me feel guilty. But about the governors — one other guy who fills me with rancor is my ongoing obsession, Ron DeSantis of Florida, who’s terrible in all the ways Abbott is terrible but much worse since he’s already a serious presidential candidate.Bret: And an effective governor who knows how to drive liberals crazy and whose state is attracting thousands of exiles from New York, California and other poorly governed, highly taxed blue states.Gail: Sorry but having empty space to develop and few social services to support doesn’t make you effective, just well positioned.But go on ….Bret: Speaking of DeSantis, how do you think he’d fare in a theoretical matchup against California’s Gavin Newsom?Gail: Oh boy, that’s pretty theoretical. DeSantis worries me because his policies are terrible — cruel and terrible. But he’s an obsessive campaigner with a smart pitch.Have to admit I don’t have much of a feel for Newsom — in general it’s hard to be a national candidate if you’re running as a Democrat from a state that’s very liberal. Liberal for good and historic reasons, but hard to sell to folks in Kansas or North Carolina.Here’s another Republican governor I’ve been mulling — what about Brian Kemp in Georgia?Bret: I’m generally not a fan of Southern Republicans. But Kemp did stand his ground against three election deniers: David Perdue in 2022, Donald Trump in 2020 and Stacey Abrams in 2018.Gail: Kemp is one of those Republicans — like Mike Pence and Liz Cheney — who I admire for their principled stands while realizing I would never vote for them. His abortion position, for instance, is appalling. So he goes in my Honorable But Wrong list.We’re cruising toward the final stage of the Senate campaigns, too, Bret. Let me leave you with the thought that Arizona is looking great for my side and Ohio maybe conceivably possible.Bret: And who’da thunk I’d be rooting for Democrats in both races?Gail: Wow. To be continued.Bret: In the meantime, Gail, I recommend reading Richard Sandomir’s beautiful obituary for two Jewish sisters who survived the Holocaust and passed away a few weeks ago in Alabama, 11 days apart. It’s a nice reminder of how much we all have to live for — and to wish all of our readers, Jewish or otherwise, a good and sweet new year.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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      The Megastate G.O.P. Rivalry Between Abbott and DeSantis

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      Publicly, Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas has not criticized the migrant flights from his state by Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida. Privately, the Florida governor’s stunt stung the Texas governor’s team.AUSTIN, Texas — Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida wanted to irritate a set of wealthy, liberal elites when he flew migrants to Martha’s Vineyard from Texas, delivering them a slice of the humanitarian crisis simmering along the nation’s southern border.But Mr. DeSantis’s stunt also annoyed an entirely different group — fellow Republicans in Austin, including some of the allies and aides of Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas.Publicly, Mr. Abbott has not criticized Mr. DeSantis’s migrant flights from his state. “Every state that wants to help, I’m happy for it,” said Dave Carney, Mr. Abbott’s top campaign strategist.But privately, the Florida governor’s gambit stung Mr. Abbott’s team. No one in the Texas governor’s office was given a heads-up that Mr. DeSantis planned to round up migrants in San Antonio, according to people familiar with the matter.Mr. Abbott had spent months — and millions of state tax dollars — methodically orchestrating a relocation program that, since April, had bused 11,000 migrants to Washington, New York and Chicago. Mr. DeSantis’s adaptation was considerably smaller.But it immediately put the national spotlight on Mr. DeSantis, garnering headlines and earning him praise from Republicans and condemnation from Democrats. It also led to an investigation by the sheriff in San Antonio and a lawsuit from migrants who said they had been lured onto the planes under false pretenses. Mr. DeSantis grabbed the attention of right-wing America, using Mr. Abbott’s tactic, on Mr. Abbott’s turf, to bigger and more dramatic effect.Members of the media gathering in Edgartown, Mass., after the arrival of migrants from San Antonio.Matt Cosby for The New York TimesMr. DeSantis’s instinct for political theater has helped him quickly turn into Republicans’ leading alternative to former President Donald J. Trump. Even Texas Republicans tell pollsters that they prefer Mr. DeSantis over Mr. Abbott for president in 2024.The two Republican governors have been locked in an increasingly high-stakes contest of one-upmanship, wielding their own unique brands of conservatism and pushing boundaries by using desperate migrants for political gain. In Florida, Mr. DeSantis mused to donors last year about Mr. Abbott’s good political fortune to share 1,254 miles of border with Mexico and complained that he didn’t have the same to use as a backdrop, according to one person familiar with the conversation.For all the bluster, the war between Austin and Tallahassee is decidedly more cold than hot. Yet, the two governors’ policy moves antagonizing the Biden administration and the Democratic Party as a whole have been unfolding as an interstate call and response, with national repercussions.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.Rushing to Raise Money: Their fund-raising dwarfed by their Democratic rivals, Senate Republican nominees are taking precious time from the campaign trail to gather cash from lobbyists in Washington.Inflation Concerns Persist: Several issues have come to the forefront during the six-month primary season that has just ended. But nothing has dislodged inflation and the economy from the top of voters’ minds.Election Deniers Pivot: “Stop the Steal” G.O.P. candidates are shifting to appeal to the swing voters they need to win in November. The question now: Can they get away with it?Toxic Narratives: Misleading and divisive posts about the midterm elections have flooded social media. Here are some prevalent themes.In August 2020, Mr. Abbott proposed legislation to punish cities in Texas that took funding away from police departments by preventing them from raising more property tax revenue. The following month, Mr. DeSantis went further, saying he would seek to cut state funding from municipalities that defunded the police.In February of this year, Mr. Abbott ordered state officials to open child-abuse investigations into medically accepted treatments for transgender youth, including hormones and puberty-suppressing drugs. Last month, Mr. DeSantis said doctors who “disfigure” young people with gender-affirming care should be sued.In June 2021, on the first day of Pride Month, Mr. DeSantis signed a bill into law that barred transgender girls from playing on female sports teams at public schools. Mr. Abbott followed suit with a similar measure that October.The competition between Mr. DeSantis and Mr. Abbott has more to do with their job descriptions than any personal animosity. Governors elected to lead megastates like Florida and Texas — two of America’s three largest states that accounted for 15 percent of the Republican presidential vote in 2020 — are automatically injected into the national political arena, where they are sized up and watched closely for signs of White House ambitions.“Love Florida. Love Texas. Love Florida more,” Jeb Bush, a former Florida governor with deep familial ties to Texas, said when asked about the rivalry between the two states.When Rick Scott was the governor of Florida and Rick Perry was the governor of Texas, the two Ricks shared a bromance even as both eyed the White House. From Florida, Mr. Scott spoke glowingly of his counterpart’s record of luring businesses. In Texas, Mr. Perry admired his rival’s refusal to accept federal stimulus money for railroads or to expand Medicaid.Mr. DeSantis and Mr. Abbott have lacked such camaraderie. Their brinkmanship has played out against the backdrop of their re-election bids. Both men are seeking additional four-year terms while facing challenges by well-known Democrats in contests that could help determine their presidential aspirations and the direction of the Republican Party for years to come.“No one has ever been elected governor of even a small state who didn’t, somewhere deep in their heart, start dreaming about being president,” said Chris Wilson, a pollster who has worked for both men. “So it’s not shocking to see both Abbott and DeSantis jockeying at least a little toward 2024 or beyond.”Mr. Abbott is the more institutional politician.He faced no opposition in his first primary election for attorney general in 2002, and was effectively unopposed inside the party when he ran to succeed Mr. Perry as governor in 2014. He has worked to maintain ties with business groups, social conservatives and fellow Republican governors. A former Texas Supreme Court justice, he is a rather lawyerly governor.Mr. DeSantis is more instinctual.He emerged from a six-way Republican primary in his first race for the House of Representatives in 2012. He was viewed as an underdog in the 2018 governor’s primary until he became separated from the pack, thanks to an endorsement — and constant promotion — from Mr. Trump. A former lawyer for the Navy at Guantánamo Bay, he is more pugilistic than judicial.Both Mr. DeSantis and Mr. Abbott are running for re-election this year and face challenges by well-known Democrats. Doug Mills/The New York TimesStill, Mr. DeSantis has positioned himself as something of a political loner.He has eschewed events coordinated by the tight-knit Republican Governors Association. Instead of joining a group of current and former Republican governors on the campaign trail this year to support fellow incumbents, Mr. DeSantis embarked on his own victory lap, promoting the migrant flights during campaign stops with Republican candidates for governor in Kansas and Wisconsin. Those events were organized not by the Republican Governors Association, but by Turning Point USA, a group of younger and more provocative conservative activists close to Mr. Trump and his family.In Tallahassee, the migrant flights had been discussed for more than a year and had, at one point, centered on relocating the migrants to the Hamptons, the popular Long Island destination for wealthy New Yorkers, according to people familiar with the talks. Initially, the proposal caused some division within Mr. DeSantis’s team.The contrasting styles of Mr. Abbott and Mr. DeSantis were on clear display last year in their handling of high-profile election bills.When Mr. Abbott signed a new round of voting restrictions, he traveled to Tyler, the hometown of one of the bill’s chief proponents, and was surrounded by Republican lawmakers, supporters and reporters. When Mr. DeSantis signed his state’s voting restrictions, he, too, was surrounded by fellow Florida Republicans, but the only network that was allowed to cover the event was Fox News, which aired the footage live on its program “Fox & Friends.”Mr. Abbott in Tyler, Texas, after signing an election bill last year that restricts voting.LM Otero/Associated PressThe coronavirus pandemic has been a defining moment for both governors.Mr. DeSantis burnished his conservative bona fides by challenging Covid safety guidelines from public health officials. He lifted pandemic restrictions on businesses in Florida in September 2020, earlier than most governors.By contrast, Mr. Abbott found himself clashing with conservatives over the business restrictions and mask mandate that he had ordered. Some donors confronted Mr. Abbott, expressing their disappointment that he was not following Mr. DeSantis’s lead and suggesting that he could lose re-election if he did not move quicker to reopen businesses and return the state to normalcy, according to two Republicans who participated in the meeting.Mr. Abbott eventually lifted restrictions on businesses in March 2021, months after Mr. DeSantis did.“Governor Abbott and Governor DeSantis have a solid working relationship, having worked together on various initiatives through Republican governors organizations,” Renae Eze, Mr. Abbott’s press secretary, said.A spokeswoman for Mr. DeSantis did not respond to requests for comment about his relationship with Mr. Abbott and his remark about the border to donors last year.Last year, after the start of the Biden administration and as migrants arrived at the border in increasing numbers, Mr. Abbott and Gov. Doug Ducey of Arizona sought assistance from other states to help police the border.Florida sent a large contingent of officers and equipment, including low-water boats that could be used along the Rio Grande in Texas.Soon after, Mr. DeSantis planned a trip to visit the Florida officers stationed at the border. When members of Mr. Abbott’s office learned about the Florida governor’s trip, they timed a news conference to Mr. DeSantis’s arrival and invited him, according to a person familiar with the plans.On the day of the news conference in July 2021, in an airplane hangar in Del Rio, Texas, Mr. DeSantis arrived long before Mr. Abbott. He met with Florida officers and officers from Texas, and then spent an extended period of time sitting on a couch in the hangar waiting for Mr. Abbott, who arrived about 10 minutes before the briefing.The two men were dressed in similar black button-down shirts with their respective state seals embossed over the left breast pocket (long sleeves for Mr. DeSantis, short sleeves for Mr. Abbott). They took their positions at a table set up in front of a boat, a plane and a helicopter that had been used to patrol the border. Then they proceeded to stumble over one another at the start of the news conference.“I think we’re ready to go,” Mr. Abbott began.“OK,” Mr. DeSantis said, looking into the cameras.“Good,” Mr. Abbott added.“Well,” Mr. DeSantis said, his right elbow pointing toward the Texas governor seated next to him.“So,” said Mr. Abbott, looking back at Mr. DeSantis. “Oh. Help kick it off?”“I just want to thank ——” Mr. DeSantis said.“Sure,” Mr. Abbott said.“Thank you, Greg, for hosting us,” Mr. DeSantis said, turning back to the cameras.Mr. Abbott invited fellow Republican governors to another news conference at the border that October. Ten showed up.Mr. DeSantis was not among them.Leida, Kevin and their young daughter, Victoria, fled Venezuela, crossing seven countries to reach Texas. That’s when they were pulled into a political fight between Republican governors and the White House.Nicole Salazar/The New York Times More

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      DeSantis’s Migrant Flights Aim to Jolt Midterms, and Lay Groundwork for 2024

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      The Florida governor’s move sending migrants to Martha’s Vineyard from Texas brought liberals’ condemnation, and more such flights may follow.For months, Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas and Gov. Doug Ducey of Arizona have been busing migrants across the country, using immigrants as political props as they try to score points in the midterm elections and bolster their conservative bona fides.But last week, Ron DeSantis, Florida’s Republican governor, supercharged the tactic, flying two chartered planeloads of undocumented migrants out of Texas — about 700 miles from the Florida state line — to Martha’s Vineyard, the moneyed Massachusetts vacation spot frequented by liberal celebrities and former Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.The migrants had not set foot in Florida and said they were misled about their destination. The island was unprepared to handle the influx. But Mr. DeSantis got exactly the reaction he wanted.Liberal condemnation. Conservative applause. And national attention.Days after the migrants got off their planes, Mr. DeSantis flew across the country himself — to events for Republican candidates for governor in Wisconsin and Kansas where he promoted his stunt. He received standing ovations.“They were homeless,” he said about the migrants, at an event on Sunday in Green Bay, Wis. “They were hungry. And they hit the jackpot to be able to be in the wealthiest sanctuary city in the world.”The ambitious governor is betting that the tactic will not hurt his re-election race in Florida, long the nation’s largest political battleground, and will reinject the issue of border security into the midterm contest. As voters remain focused on economic uncertainty and abortion rights, it remains unclear whether immigration will gain a major foothold in the final weeks before the election in November.Yet the move signals that Mr. DeSantis could be eyeing a future beyond Florida and aiming to secure his place in the conversation of potential presidential candidates. Polls show that former President Donald J. Trump is the party’s overwhelming pick in 2024, with Mr. DeSantis as the clear second choice.“This is a sign of someone who is acting with political impunity because he believes he has political impunity in Florida,” said Fernand R. Amandi, a Democratic pollster in Miami. “I don’t think he makes this move if he didn’t already anticipate it was not a roadblock to him winning re-election.”Long considered to harbor presidential ambitions, Mr. DeSantis ripped this move directly from the playbook of Mr. Trump, whose rhetoric and political style he has adopted.The idea of transporting migrants to Democratic strongholds was considered by the Trump administration. Stephen Miller, the former president’s policy adviser, and others in the Trump White House pushed the move as a way to strike back against sanctuary cities that refused to fully cooperate with federal immigration authorities. The plan was rejected by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials over liability and budgetary concerns.Migrants being transported from Martha’s Vineyard on the ferry headed to the mainland on Friday.Matt Cosby for The New York TimesMr. DeSantis secured $12 million in the state budget to transport unauthorized immigrants planning to come to Florida, an amount that suggested more flights are to come. He said the migrants had to sign a release form and had been given an informational packet that included a map of Martha’s Vineyard.But Mr. DeSantis has also been clear that the effort was part of a political strategy intended to lift his party in the midterms. Republican strategists say he and the other governors are simply pointing out the hypocrisy of Democratic Party leaders, who they see as far removed from the surge of migrants and their impact on local communities..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-ok2gjs{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-ok2gjs a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.A spokeswoman for Mr. DeSantis declined to comment for this article.The public investigations of Mr. Trump and the fight over the fate of legal abortion heightened Democratic hopes for the midterms over the summer, leaving Republicans scrambling to return the race to issues that break more in their favor — high inflation, economic uncertainty, public safety, immigration.Polling shows that a majority of voters — 51 percent — say they agree more with the Republican Party than the Democrats on illegal immigration, according to a new poll by The New York Times and Siena College. On the issue of legal immigration, they are evenly split.“This border is now an issue in these elections,” Mr. DeSantis said on Sunday, at the event in Wisconsin. “And I think it’s something that our candidates need to take.”Democrats moved quickly to cast Mr. DeSantis as heartless and “un-American.”“Instead of working with us on solutions, Republicans are playing politics with human beings, using them as props,” President Biden said on Thursday at the Hispanic Caucus Institute Gala in Washington. “What they’re doing is simply wrong. It’s un-American, it’s reckless and we have a process in place to manage migrants at the border.”The Democrat who is Mr. DeSantis’s opponent in the Florida governor’s race, former Representative Charlie Crist, released a digital ad calling the migrant flights “a cruel political stunt to appeal to his base.”“My faith teaches me that we’re all children of God,” Mr. Crist said in the ad. “That is lost on Ron DeSantis. For him, it’s always putting politics over peoples’ lives.”Democrats see an opportunity in part because the migrants he sent to Martha’s Vineyard were overwhelmingly from Venezuela. Florida is home to the largest population of Venezuelan immigrants in the country. And Venezuelan voters are an important demographic in the perennial swing state that helped cement Mr. Trump’s victory in the state in the 2020 election.But Mr. DeSantis’s move suggests that he believes his re-election effort is operating from such a position of strength that he can afford to potentially repel some moderates in his state, a longtime destination for immigrants.Some strategists say the governor may not be focused on swing voters in his home state at all.“My guess is that it seems pretty favorable, at least in terms of the one audience he has right now, which is Republican voters,” said Ed Goeas, a longtime Republican strategist. More

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      You Cannot Be Too Cynical About Trump (or His Imitators)

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      Bret Stephens: Hi, Gail. Any plans to hop a flight to Martha’s Vineyard?Gail Collins: Gee, Bret, I think the Vineyard folks have had enough unexpected guests for a while. But I really was impressed by how gracious they were to the immigrant families that Gov. Ron DeSantis shipped there.Bret: It’s a shame for the Venezuelan migrants that they weren’t on the Vineyard for long, because the community there is extraordinarily generous.Gail: As opposed to DeSantis and his slimy attempt to score political points with the right wing.Bret: It was definitely a stunt, but it was a politically effective one.Gail: Are you still open to the idea of him as a possible president?Bret: All depends on the opponent. If you were a Republican primary voter and your choice was between Donald Trump and DeSantis, who would choose? No fair to answer “Canada” or “euthanasia.”Gail: Exactly why I’m never going to be a Republican primary voter. And I don’t believe there’s a Democrat with an infinitesimal possibility of nomination I wouldn’t prefer to DeSantis.Bret: No fair avoiding the question! I’m no longer a registered Republican, but I’d root for DeSantis over Trump in a primary, and I’d vote for DeSantis over, say, Kamala Harris or Gavin Newsom in a general election, though I hope that’s not the choice I would have to make. I’d also love to see a candidate who believes we need more immigrants in this country and is serious about effective border enforcement.Gail: About immigration. The Republicans are clearly planning to make that a big issue — certainly Trump loves to howl about it. But let me begin with one bottom line: The United States has an aging population that can’t possibly fill all the job openings it already has. The hospitality sector has been, on average, half a million people short every month for months; the food services industry alone is around 1.4 million people short.Bret: Total agreement on this one. We don’t just need immigrants to fill jobs — we also need their ambition, entrepreneurialism, work ethic, cultural creativity, strong family values and non-entitled attitudes. Unfortunately the Biden administration is screwing this up by pretending that we aren’t seeing a tidal wave of border migrants, and that it’s not a massive burden on the social services of border states.Mystifying to me why the administration can’t get this one right. Democrats are even losing Hispanic voters over the issue. What gives?Gail: No modern president has been able to get a real grip on the border immigration crisis — don’t even know if you can call it a crisis since it’s been going on for so long.Bret: There’s never been perfect border control, but there’s been better and worse. What we now have is unmistakably worse and a lot of liberals are deluding themselves if they think there’s nothing amiss when U.S. Customs and Border Protection reports a 250 percent increase in migrant encounters around Yuma.Gail: You have waves of folks fleeing from disaster back home — these days, particularly Venezuelans.Bret: Ah yes, Venezuela. Chesa Boudin’s idea of a workers’ paradise. Sorry, go on ….Gail: Many of them have endured terrible treks by foot, sometimes with children. If they present themselves at the border, their claims have to be processed, which can take a lot of time. The procedure is really a mess, and meanwhile there’s the choice between letting them live miserably in makeshift camps or providing them, and especially their children, with the services they need.Like his predecessors, Biden’s has been trying to get the system improved, but the legal issues plus the politics make it almost impossible.If these folks make their way into the country illegally, with luck they’ll get settled and work out their immigration problems later. But of course they can also wind up homeless and drift into crime. The border state residents have to bear most of the burden just because of their location, so you can see why they’d resent that.Bret: We obviously should be compassionate to refugees fleeing persecution, kids especially. But Biden has also turned the United States into a magnet for migration in a way that communities are simply unprepared to handle. Our compassion as a country has to be proportionate to our means, not our wishes.Gail: One thing we clearly need is revised immigration law that takes all this into consideration and provides economic support to the communities where these folks wind up. But I’ve noticed a certain lack of enthusiasm among congressional Republicans for that idea.Bret: There used to be Republicans — Ronald Reagan, both Presidents Bush, and John McCain among them — who were eager to pass comprehensive immigration reform and were stymied by restrictionists on both sides of the aisle, including Bernie Sanders. Now we’ve got an immigration debate in Congress that might as well be described as the heartless against the clueless.Switching subjects, Gail, our colleague David Brooks had a terrific column last week on why all the attempts to defeat Trump thus far have failed. Any theories of your own?Gail: Trump’s recent triumphs have been pretty much within his own party. Let’s see what happens when the candidates he endorsed for Senate, like that crazy guy in Arizona, actually have to run in an election against a non-crazy Democrat like Mark Kelly.Bret: Don’t be shocked if the crazy guy wins. Last poll I checked had him within two points.Gail: But in the bigger picture, we’re living in a new internet-oriented world where old political virtues like making reasonable deals with the other side have been wiped away. Too boring.Bret: Trump intuitively understands entertainment the way no other politician has since maybe Ronald Reagan. But Reagan was a romantic whereas Trump is a cynic, which makes him particularly potent in a cynical age.Gail: It’s scary how well Trump fits into that new world. No real ideas maybe, but he’s colorful, a good ranter and not constrained by any sense of obligation to be rational. Have to admit my greatest hope for the total scuttling of Trump’s political career is the New York attorney general’s attempt to pull the cover off his finances.How about you?Bret: I tend to think that all of these legal attacks on Trump do more to help than hurt him. He’s a Nietzschean figure in that sense: that which does not kill him makes him stronger. Unless he is tried in a courtroom somewhere in the West Village, there is no jury in the United States that is going to hand down a unanimous verdict against him. What these potential prosecutions mainly do is keep him in the spotlight, which is right where he likes to be, with something like the color of martyrdom, at least to his supporters.Gail: My dream has never been Trump in behind bars — you’re right, he’d become a triple martyr — but Trump in bankruptcy court and then sending out Truth Social memes from a motel in New Jersey? That speaks to me.But go on …Bret: Trump is what a friend of mine calls a “rage funnel.” It’s a funnel for a very specific type of rage — the rage of feeling looked down upon. And I don’t think that ends until the culture of liberal condescension that people like Hillary Clinton typified turns into a culture of understanding and empathy for his voters.Gail: Hillary was over-blamed on that front, thanks to one dumb comment. But you’ve got a very important point and from now on when I see The Donald I’m going to see him as a funnel-head.Bret: Coneheads!Gail: On a totally different subject — you’re my trusted interpreter of sane Republicanism. Can you interpret what Lindsey Graham is up to with his bill creating a national ban on abortion? At a time when many of the G.O.P. Senate candidates seem to be scrubbing all abortion references off their websites?Bret: You can’t interpret stupid, Gail.The bill isn’t just dead on arrival with every single Democrat. It’s D.O.A. for many Republicans, too. The whole point of overturning Roe v. Wade was to let the states decide for themselves what limits to set on abortion. So much for federalism. And, as you point out, the proposal just plays into Democratic hands at a time when pro-choice voters are exceptionally motivated to go to the polls.Gail: Yippee!Bret: That being said, it isn’t such a bad thing that the G.O.P. keep fumbling the politics of the midterm, because the last thing the country needs is yet another crop of Trumpy Republicans in Congress. So I say, go Lindsey!Gail: Wow, so you’re hoping for a Democratic-controlled Congress as well as a Democratic-controlled White House?Bret: Which Bolshevik was the one who said “the worse, the better”? That’s kind of my attitude here. It’s not that I relish the idea of continued Democratic control. Far from it. But then I look at the alternative.Gail, we’ve dwelled on a lot of negatives, which I guess is what you get these days when you talk about politics. Can I end with a brief tribute to the greatness of Roger Federer, who announced last week that he was retiring from the professional tennis circuit? There are some athletes who personify everything that’s perfect not just about a sport but about sportsmanship itself: Jesse Owens, Ted Williams, Althea Gibson, Pelé, Larry Bird and Magic Johnson. Roger was that for 24 years on the court and off.Gail: That’s what I’ve come to appreciate about sports. They do bring us all together, even when we’re rooting for different players.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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      in Elections

      What the Martha’s Vineyard Stunt Says About the Trump Wannabes

      by

      Ron DeSantis, the Republican governor of Florida, likes to do stunts. It is a key part of how he’s built his reputation as a fighter for conservative causes — a reputation he hopes to ride to the White House.We saw one of those stunts this week when, using a promise of assistance, he lured several dozen Venezuelan asylum seekers onto a pair of planes in Texas and sent them to Martha’s Vineyard. According to NPR, “The migrants said a woman they identified as ‘Perla’ approached them outside the shelter and lured them into boarding the plane, saying they would be flown to Boston where they could get expedited work papers.”The conceit of this dehumanizing bit of political theater was that the liberal denizens of Martha’s Vineyard would reject the migrants out of hypocrisy, thus proving that Democrats aren’t actually interested in welcoming immigrants into their communities. To DeSantis and his amen corner, asylum seekers are disposable, and they believe that liberals will want to dispose of them too.What happened, instead, was that residents of Martha’s Vineyard rallied to provide food, shelter, clothing and services. The asylum seekers are now on their way to Cape Cod, to receive further assistance. The stunt failed to make its intended point.The same was true of a previous stunt, in which DeSantis touted the arrests of 20 former felons for election fraud. The intended message was that Florida, and presumably the entire country, needed to be on constant alert to block fraudulent voters. But in the days and weeks after the arrests, an investigation by The Tampa Bay Times found that the state had actually cleared those residents to vote. As far as they knew, they hadn’t broken the law. If anything, they had been entrapped as part of a scheme to make DeSantis a more attractive candidate for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.With his command of conservative media and his obvious attempts to mimic the style and mannerisms of Donald Trump (right down to the big suits and frequent hand gestures), DeSantis has made himself into something of an heir apparent to the former president, should Trump decline to run in the next election.But I think these failed stunts tell us something important about DeSantis’s ability to succeed on the national stage.In short, he’s not quite ready.Yes, when viewed from the perspective of partisan media, DeSantis looks almost unstoppable. But to a typical person — someone who may have heard about these stunts but doesn’t know much about DeSantis otherwise — he looks a lot like a bully, someone willing to play high-stakes games with people’s lives for the sake of his own ego and advancement.Well, you might say, Donald Trump is a bully, too. Yes, he is. But Donald Trump is also a lifelong celebrity with a public persona that is as much about “The Apprentice” and even “Home Alone 2” as it is about his political career. What’s more, Trump has the skills of a celebrity. He’s funny, he has stage presence, and he has a kind of natural charisma. He can be a bully in part because he can temper his cruelty and egoism with the performance of a clown or a showman. He can persuade an audience that he’s just kidding — that he doesn’t actually mean it.Ron DeSantis cannot. He may be a more competent Trump in terms of his ability to use the levers of state to amass power, but he’s also meaner and more rigid, without the soft edges and eccentricity of the actual Donald Trump. DeSantis might be able to mimic Trump, in parts, but he does not have the temperament or personality to be another Trump.This doesn’t mean that DeSantis cannot win the Republican presidential nomination or even the presidency; of course he can. What I think it means, however, is that his Trump 2.0 act might fail to reach the marginal voters who liked Donald Trump for his persona and performance more than for his positions or policies. It means that on a national stage, DeSantis might flop like one of his stunts.And looking back at the last decade or so of Republican presidential contests, it would not be the first time that a vaunted conservative fighter fell flat on his face when he finally took a swing at prime time.What I WroteMy Tuesday column was a look at the old idea that political democracy requires a certain amount of economic equality.As a nation, the United States is committed to a creed of free market capitalism. But this belies a heritage of egalitarianism and economic equality in American political thought. Among the oldest and most potent strains of American thinking about democracy is the belief that free government cannot exist in tandem with mass immiseration and gross disparities of wealth and status.My Friday column was a look at the seemingly averted railroad strike that drew a connection to an actual railroad strike that occurred 100 years ago.The fact of the matter is that a decade of corporate cost-cutting, including smaller crews for longer trains, has placed railroad workers under incredible pressure. Not only are they unable to take time for emergencies or sudden illnesses, but they are almost always on call, with just a few hours’ notice before they have to take a shift. For them, the tight schedules and stiff punishments translate to strains on their finances, families and health.Now ReadingJared Clemons on inflation for The Forum.Saurav Sarkar on the Starbucks union drive for Dissent magazine.Makani Themba on the Jackson, Miss., water crisis for The Nation magazine.Clare Malone on the American media’s obsession with the British royal family for The New Yorker.Marissa Martinelli on “Star Trek” for Slate magazine.Feedback If you’re enjoying what you’re reading, please consider recommending it to your friends. They can sign up here. If you want to share your thoughts on an item in this week’s newsletter or on the newsletter in general, please email me at jamelle-newsletter@nytimes.com. You can follow me on Twitter (@jbouie), Instagram and TikTok.Photo of the WeekJamelle BouieJust something I saw while walking around Charleston, S.C., earlier in the summer.Now Eating: Beer-Marinated Chicken TacosMy son requested chicken tacos with guacamole for dinner this week, so this is what I whipped up. It is very easy and straightforward. If you want to make it a little more demanding, however, let me recommend that you take the time to make your own corn tortillas. It’s not difficult — you don’t even need a tortilla press — and it’s very rewarding. Any store-bought masa harina will work, but I am a fan of the heirloom masa from Masienda. It’s a little expensive but, I think, worth it. Recipe comes from Serious Eats.Ingredients1 cup dark Mexican beer, such as Negra Modelo2 tablespoons dark sesame oil1 tablespoon finely chopped garlic1 teaspoon dried oregano1 teaspoon kosher salt½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper¼ teaspoon ground cayenne pepper6 boneless skinless chicken thighs2 cups of your favorite guacamole8 to 12 taco-size corn tortillasDirectionsMix all ingredients for marinade together in a small bowl. Place chicken thighs in a large bowl and pour in marinade. Cover and place in refrigerator to marinate for at least 2 hours or as long as overnight.Remove chicken from refrigerator while lighting the fire. Light one chimney full of charcoal. When all the charcoal is lit and covered with gray ash, pour out and spread the coals out evenly over the charcoal grate. Grill chicken until fully cooked and browned on both sides, about 4 to 5 minutes per side. Remove from grill and allow to rest for 5 minutes. Cut chicken into thin strips.While chicken is resting, warm tortillas on grill until pliable, about 30 seconds to 1 minute per side. To assemble, spread a heaping spoonful of guacamole from the middle of each tortilla. Pile with chicken slices and serve. More