DeSantis, Ron

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      Trump v. DeSantis: Does the Florida Governor Really Have a Shot?

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      In early 2016, as Jeb Bush floundered, the Republican establishment began to throw its support behind a different politician from Florida who seemed as if he could defeat the upstart Donald Trump. Senator Marco Rubio was 44 and handsome, and had put together a somewhat impressive legislative record during his five years in office. National Review called Rubio a “Republican dream” and hedge fund managers were donating millions to his campaign. Trump led comfortably in the polls, but it was still early, as G.O.P. insiders reminded us, and they still hadn’t put their thumbs fully on the scale. We all know how the story ends: Rubio wasn’t able to mount any sort of credible challenge to Trump and withdrew after just a few months.Today, we are hearing about yet another Florida politician in his early 40s — Gov. Ron DeSantis — who, according to many of those same establishment figures, will collect a vast majority of support from donors. And he is already the subject of plenty of positive media coverage. The headlines about DeSantis are eerily similar to those about Rubio in 2016: “The Rise of Ron DeSantis,” “Why Never-Trumpers Should Bet on DeSantis Now” and “Looks Like Ron DeSantis Could Turn Into Trump’s Personal Nightmare.” If DeSantis runs for president, his job won’t be so much to win the presidency on his own merits, but rather to stop Donald Trump.How seriously should we take DeSantis’s chances?Trump holds sizable margins in pretty much every poll you can find, but some of the numbers are tightening. Last week, the polling firm Echelon Insights published a raft of data on the Florida governor. It found that Trump’s lead over DeSantis among G.O.P. voters, which, according to its own poll, was 62 percent to 22 percent of respondents in October, had shrunk to 57 percent to 32 percent as of late January. Perhaps the most compelling bit of information Echelon found was that while 54 percent of Republicans thought “Trump was a great president and should remain the leader of the Republican Party,” 22 percent said Trump “was a great president but it is time for the Republican Party to find a new leader” and 18 percent said Trump “was not a great president and the Republican Party would be better off without his influence.” Which means that 40 percent of G.O.P. voters are at least open to the possibility of someone new.So things, perhaps, aren’t quite as locked up as they might appear, Kristen Soltis Anderson, a co-founder of Echelon Insights, told me. When asked whether Trump should run again, many of the respondents to her poll showed “a shocking level of ambivalence” to that question, she said. These people were not never-Trumpers or center-of-right Republicans; they were people who had thought Trump had done a good job but also now believed that it might be time for a fresh voice.These polls, of course, measure sentiment at a fixed moment in time. Given that, it’s difficult to know exactly what to make of a seeming growing hesitancy among Republican voters about Trump, or, for that matter, what it says about DeSantis’s shot.What’s clearer is that Trump has some built-in advantages that are unlikely to change.When the election machine truly kicks in, Trump will no doubt garner a vast majority of the media attention once again. He obviously enjoys unrivaled name recognition. And Trump’s absence from office this term could give him an edge because he has not had to take the blame for what now feels like an endless pandemic. That burden has mostly been shouldered by Joe Biden and can explain, in large part, the president’s tanking approval numbers.Plus, a December University of Massachusetts Amherst poll found that only 21 percent of Republicans thought that Joe Biden won a legitimate victory in 2020, a number that hasn’t budged much over time. There’s also some evidence that shows that G.O.P. voters who think the election was illegitimate appear more likely to vote.When all these things are considered, DeSantis, then, should be seen more as a primary challenger to a popular incumbent. Nobody since the advent of the modern-day presidential primary has successfully unseated an incumbent for the nomination.There’s also a question of timing at play here. DeSantis’s recent rise to national prominence has come from his handling of the pandemic — he has become the loudest anti-lockdown voice in the national conversation and can point to his repeated refusal to shut down his state. This might be a popular stance in 2022, but it’s hard to imagine how it will play in two years. If Covid is shutting down schools and businesses in two years, we will most likely be looking at a vastly different country. If we have returned to some semblance of normalcy, it’s quite possible that nobody will really care how DeSantis handled the pandemic.Anderson believes that DeSantis’s success comes in large part from his willingness to fight, a trait that Trump, of course, also possesses. While she thinks that DeSantis has a chance, she also pointed to the former Wisconsin governor and presidential candidate Scott Walker as a cautionary tale. “Walker is an interesting example of someone who captured the conservative imagination because he was fighting with the teachers unions, and he was standing strong against those Democratic legislators,” Anderson said. “And yet, when push came to shove, that effort fizzled out. And so if you’re DeSantis, you want to avoid that path of being someone who gets a lot of attention and a lot of interest because, hey, you were fighting the right fights at the right time against the right people.” This approach works to a certain extent, Anderson said, but there are also times when things just don’t translate onto the national stage.DeSantis’s stances on Covid have garnered him a reasonable amount of national name recognition. Last month, a Reuters poll found that 80 percent of Republican voters had at least heard of him. If this were a normal Republican election run-up, DeSantis would probably be leading right now: An Echelon Insights poll from December that did not include Trump found that DeSantis comfortably led all other potential G.O.P. nominees. But Trump’s path to power is littered with the campaigns of other upstart Republican candidates who checked off all the right boxes and got along well with the establishment. Is it really reasonable to think DeSantis’s fate will be any different?Have feedback? Send a note to kang-newsletter@nytimes.com.Jay Caspian Kang (@jaycaspiankang), a writer for Opinion and The New York Times Magazine, is the author of “The Loneliest Americans.” More

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      What America Would Look Like in 2025 Under Trump

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      What will happen if the political tables are turned, and the Republican Party wins the White House in 2024 and the House and Senate along the way?One clue is that Donald Trump is an Orban worshiper — that’s Viktor Orban, the prime minister of Hungary, a case study in the aggressive pursuit of a right-wing populist agenda.In his Jan. 3 announcement of support for Orban’s re-election, Trump declared: “He is a strong leader and respected by all. He has my Complete support and Endorsement for re-election as Prime Minister!”What is it about Hungary under Orban that appeals so powerfully to Trump?“Call it ‘soft fascism,’ ” Zach Beauchamp of Vox.com, wrote on Sept. 13, 2018:a political system that aims to stamp out dissent and seize control of every major aspect of a country’s political and social life, without needing to resort to “hard” measures like banning elections and building up a police state. One of the most disconcerting parts of observing Hungarian soft fascism up close is that it’s easy to imagine the model being exported. While the Orban regime grew out of Hungary’s unique history and political culture, its playbook for subtle repression could in theory be run in any democratic country whose leaders have had enough of the political opposition.In “How the American Right Fell in Love With Hungary,” in The New York Times Magazine, Elizabeth Zerofsky quotes Rod Dreher, the combative conservative blogger, on Orban’s immigration policies — building a fence on the border to keep Muslims out, for example. “If you could wind back the clock 50 years, and show the French, the Belgian and the German people what mass immigration from the Muslim world would do to their countries by 2021, they never, ever would have accepted it” Dreher remarked.In contrast to conservatism as practiced in the United States, Zerofsky writes about Hungary under Orban: “Here was this other, European tradition of Catholic conservatism, that was afraid neither of a strong state, nor of using it to promote a conservative vision of life.”In the current issue of Foreign Affairs, Alexander Cooley and Daniel H. Nexon, political scientists at Barnard and Georgetown, argue that Orban has “emerged as a media darling of the American right,” receiving high praise from Tucker Carlson, “arguably the single most influential conservative media personality in the United States.”The Conservative Political Action Conference, “a major forum of the American right, plans to hold its 2022 annual meeting in Hungary,” Cooley and Nexon write. What has Orban done to deserve this attention?The two authors briefly summarize Orban’s record: “Orban consolidated power through tactics that were procedurally legal but, in substance, undercut the rule of law. He stacked the courts with partisans and pressured, captured, or shut down independent media.”Cooley and Nexon demonstrate a parallel between what has taken place in Hungary and current developments in the United States: “Orban’s open assault on academic freedom — including banning gender studies and evicting the Central European University from Hungary — finds analogies in current right-wing efforts in Republican-controlled states to ban the teaching of critical race theory and target liberal and left-wing academics.”In an email, Nexon elaborated:There is definitely a transmission belt of ideas between the U.S. and European right; for various stripes of conservatives — reactionary populists, integrationists, ethnonationalists — Hungary is becoming what Denmark is for the left: part real-life model, part idealized dreamscape.Trump and Orban, Nexon continued,are both opportunists who’ve figured out the political usefulness of reactionary populism. And Trump will push the United States in a broadly similar direction: toward neo-patrimonial governance. During his first term, Trump treated the presidency as his own personal property — something that was his to use to punish enemies, reward loyalists and enhance his family’s wealth. If he wins in 2024, we’re likely to see this on steroidsTrump, in Nexon’s view, will be unable to match Orban — by, for example, installing a crony “as president of Harvard” or forcing “Yale to decamp for Canada” — butIt’s pretty clear that he’ll be better at installing absolute loyalists at the Department of Justice and the Department of Defense. So, if Trump succeeds, we’ll be able to find a lot of similar parts, but it won’t be the same model. I suspect it will be worse. The U.S. is a large federation with a lot of capacity for private violence, a major international footprint, and a multi-trillion-dollar economy. Hungary is a minor player in a confederation dominated by democratic regimes.Cooley stressed in an email the “active networking among right-wing political associations and groups with Orban,” citing the Jan. 24 endorsement of Orban’s re-election by the New York Young Republican Club:Today, both the United States of America and countries in Europe like Hungary face an existential crisis. The ruling elite and political establishment’s failed leadership and ideology have eroded the meaning and purpose of citizenship. For those against this ideology and for the preservation of Western civilization for all countries in the West, it is imperative that we stand in support of one another as national communities.Orban’s appeal to the right flank of the Republican Party, in Cooley’s view, lies in anideology — which rests on redefining the meaning of “the West” away from liberal principles and toward ethnonational ideals and conservative values — and his strategy for consolidating power is to close or take over media, stack the courts, divide and stigmatize the opposition, reject commitments to constraining liberal ideals and institutions, and publicly target the most vulnerable groups in society — e.g. refugees.Orban has described Hungary under his rule as an “illiberal democracy.” In 2019, Freedom House downgraded Hungary from “free” to “partly free,” making it “the first country in the European Union that is not currently classified” as “free,” according to the Budapest Business Journal.I asked a number of European scholars about the agenda Trump and a Republican-controlled Congress would be most likely to push in 2025.In a March 2021 paper “Authoritarian Values and the Welfare State: The Social Policy Preferences of Radical Right Voters,” Philip Rathgeb, a professor of social policy at the University of Edinburgh, Marius R. Busemeyer and Alexander H. J. Sahm, both of the University of Konstanz, surveyed voters in eight Western European countries to determine “what kind of welfare state do voters of populist radical right parties want and how do their preferences differ from voters of mainstream left- and right-wing parties.”Rathgeb and his co-authors found that populist European voterswant a particularistic-authoritarian welfare state, displaying moderate support only for “deserving” benefit recipients (e.g., the elderly), while revealing strong support for a workfare approach and little support for social investment.Rathgeb wrote in an email:From an ideological perspective, it wouldn’t surprise me if Trump prioritized Medicare over Medicaid, given that the former is targeted at the “deserving” poor, i.e., the elderly and disabled. A pro-elderly outlook is very typical of the radical right in Europe too, because the beneficiaries of schemes like Medicare are typically native (white) citizens who have demonstrated their willingness to “work hard” over their lifetime, thus being deserving of welfare support. By contrast, I expect little support, perhaps even cuts, for Medicaid.Rathgeb noted that populist parties oppose social investment policies because such programs are often based onprogressive gender values and a commitment to “lifelong learning.” For example, public provision of childcare helps working women to reconcile work-family life (vs. the male breadwinner model), while training and education foster social mobility in the “knowledge economy” (e.g., high-end services). These ideological considerations are reinforced by material interests, as the main target groups of social investment policies (i.e., the new middle classes, including women and the young with high levels of education) are distant from the typical radical right voter, who usually displays lower levels of formal education.In an email, Busemeyer described some of the differences and similarities between Trumpism and European populism:In Europe, the welfare state and social policy more generally are much ingrained in people’s minds. This means that in the U.S., Trumpism goes along with criticism about the welfare state in general (see the attempts of the Trump administration to get rid of Obamacare), whereas in Europe, it’s really more about “welfare chauvinism,” i.e., protecting the good old welfare state for “deserving” people, namely hard-working natives.In addition, Busemeyer wrote, “there is a strong ‘corporatist’ element in the Trump movement (i.e., business elites), whereas in European right-wing populism that’s typically not the case.”The right-wing populist movements on both continents, he continued,are similar in their rejection of a liberal attitude toward globalization, both regarding the economic side as well as the identity part of globalization. Also, they both subscribe to a traditional role model in the family and traditional gender roles.Cécile Alduy, a professor at Stanford who studies French politics and the far right, wrote in an email:If in 2024 Trump or a Ron DeSantis wins the presidency and Republicans control both the House and Senate, the general agenda would be a backlash against any anti-discrimination, against inclusive policies implemented by the Biden administration, for an attempt to shift further the Supreme Court pendulum toward anti-abortion, for Originalist constitutionalists, for implementing voter suppression policies and for federal funding limitations on some forms of speech (critical race theory, the teaching or research of segregation, anti-Semitism or racism in the States) as well for as a return to extremely restrictive anti-immigration policies (rebuilding the Wall; for curbing down further visa and green cards, and for increasing deportations).The Republican agenda, Alduy argues,would be fueled by increased moral panic about white America’s decline, a professed sense of having been spoliated and ‘stolen the election,’ and a renewed sentiment of impunity for his most extreme backers from the Jan. 6 insurrection. My bet is that there is an active plan to reshape the political system so that elections are not winnable by Democrats, and the State be run without the foundation of a democracy.Trump has made it clear that he is a Viktor Orban superfan.Photo Illustration by The New York Times; Photographs by Attila Kisbenedek/AFP,Attila Kisbenedek/AFP via Getty Images, Cooper Neill for The New York TimesTrump signaled his intentions at a rally last week in Conroe, Texas, declaring that in the case of the Jan. 6 insurrectionists, “If it requires pardons, then we will give them pardons because they are being treated so unfairly.”Trump went on: “If these radical, vicious, racist prosecutors do anything wrong or illegal, I hope we are going to have in this country the biggest protests we have ever had in Washington, D.C., in New York, in Atlanta and elsewhere.”Or take Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, who may challenge Trump for the Republican presidential nomination. On April 10, 2021, DeSantis signed the Combating Public Disorder Act into law, which his office described as “a robust approach to uphold the rule of law, to stand with those serving in law enforcement and enforce Florida’s zero tolerance policy for violent and disorderly assemblies.”On Sept. 9, 2021, U.S. District Judge Mark Walker, issued a 90-page opinion declaring that the law’s “vagueness permits those in power to weaponize its enforcement against any group who wishes to express any message that the government disapproves of” and that “the lawless actions of a few rogue individuals could effectively criminalize the protected speech of hundreds, if not thousands, of law-abiding Floridians.”On Dec. 15 DeSantis proposed the “Stop the Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees (W.O.K.E.) Act,” which would give parents the right to sue school systems if they believe their children are being taught “critical race theory” with a provision granting parents the right to collect attorneys’ fees if they win.The enactment of laws encouraging citizens to become private enforcers of anti-liberal policies has become increasingly popular in Republican-controlled states. Glenn Youngkin, the newly elected governor of Virginia, has created a “tip line” that parents can used to report teachers whose classes cover “inherently divisive concepts, including Critical Race Theory.”Youngkin told an interviewer:We have set up a particular email address, called helpeducation@governor.virginia.gov, for parents to send us any instances where they feel that their fundamental rights are being violated, where their children are not being respected, where there are inherently divisive practices in their schools. We’re asking for input right from parents to make sure we can go right to the source as we continue to work to make sure that Virginia’s education system is on the path to reestablish excellence.“We’re seeing dozens of G.O.P. proposals to bar whole concepts from classrooms outright,” the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent wrote earlier this week:The Republican governor of Virginia has debuted a mechanism for parents to rat out teachers. Bills threatening punishment of them are proliferating. Book-banning efforts are outpacing anything in recent memory.In a parallel strategy focused on abortion, Texas Republicans enacted “The Texas Heartbeat Act” in May, legislation that not only bans abortions as soon as a fetal heartbeat is detected but also turns private citizens into enforcers of the law by giving them the power to sue abortion providers and any person whoknowingly engages in conduct that aids or abets the performance or inducement of an abortion, including paying for or reimbursing the costs of an abortion through insurance or otherwise, if the abortion is performed or induced in violation of this subchapter, regardless of whether the person knew or should have known that the abortion would be performed or induced in violation of this subchapter.Winners of such suits would receive a minimum of $10,000 plus court costs and other fees.Not to be outdone, Republican members of the New Hampshire legislature are pushing forward legislation that proclaims thatNo teacher shall advocate any doctrine or theory promoting a negative account or representation of the founding and history of the United States of America in New Hampshire public schools which does not include the worldwide context of now outdated and discouraged practices. Such prohibition includes but is not limited to teaching that the United States was founded on racism.The use of citizens as informants to enforce intrusions of this sort is, to put it mildly, inconsistent with democratic norms — reminiscent of East Germany, where the Stasi made use of an estimated 189,000 citizen informers.One of the early goals of a Trump White House backed by Republican congressional majorities, in the view of Harry Holzer, a professor of public policy at Georgetown, would be the immediate rollback of legislation and executive orders put in place by the Biden administration:The first priority of a Trump or DeSantis presidency would be to undo any major changes Biden had implemented through executive orders. That would include a vaccination/testing mandate for health care workers, environmental regs, bolstering A.C.A. and anything Biden had done on race relations or immigration.A critical issue for both Senate Republicans and a second Trump administration would be whether to eliminate the filibuster to prevent Democratic Senators from blocking their wilder legislative plans.Holzer remarked that he is “sure” thatthey would love to pass laws outlawing mask mandates in schools, the teaching of Critical Race Theory or liberal voting rules, but they won’t have 60 votes in the Senate for that unless they also manage to kill or limit the filibuster. If they kill the filibuster, they might try to outlaw abortion, although Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski and others would balk at that.Herbert P. Kitschelt, a political scientist at Duke, emailed a selection of likely Republican initiatives:The new government will use regulatory measures to support the sectors and industries that support it most in terms of electoral votes and party funding: carbon industries, the construction sector, domestic manufacturing.The Republican regime will exit from all participation in efforts to stop global warming.The politics of a populist Republican administration will aim at undermining American democracy and changing the “level playing field” in favor of a party-penetrated state apparatus.Kitschelt cites Orban as a model for Trump in achieving the goals ofUndermining the professionalism and neutrality of the judiciary, starting the with Attorney General’s office.Undermining the nonpartisanship of the military, using the military for domestic purposes to repress civil liberties and liberal opposition to the erosion of American democracy.Redeploying the national domestic security apparatus — above all the F.B.I. — for partisan purposes.Passing libel legislation to harass and undercut the liberal media and journalists with the objective to drive them economically out of business, while simultaneously consolidating conservative media empires and social websites.The politics of cultural polarization, Kitschelt argues, “will intensify to re-establish the U.S. as a white Christian-Evangelical country,” although simultaneouslyefforts will be made to attract culturally traditionalist strands in the Hispanic community. The agenda of the culture war may shift to gender relations, emphasizing the “traditional” family with male authority. At the margin, this may appeal to males, including minorities.Kitschelt’s last point touches on what is sure to be a major motivating force for a Republican Party given an extended lease on life under Trump: the need to make use of every available tool — from manipulation of election results, to enactment of favorable voting laws to appeals to minority voters in the working class to instilling fear of a liberal state run amok — to maintain the viability of a fragile coalition in which the core constituency of white “non-college” voters is steadily declining as a share of the electorate. It is an uphill fight requiring leaders, at least in their minds, to consider every alternative in order to retain power, whether it’s democratic or authoritarian, ethical or unethical, legal or illegal.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 and the Media: (Not) a Love Story

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      The Florida governor and the mainstream press have had a rocky relationship that he has often worked to his advantage.If Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida somehow becomes the Republican Party’s presidential nominee in 2024, two factors will help explain why: his mastery of his party’s hostile relationship with the mainstream media, and his relentless courtship of Fox News.An exchange in August 2021 is a typical example of how DeSantis interacts with the press — with a combination of bluster and grievance modeled on Donald Trump, his political mentor and potential rival.The Delta variant of the coronavirus had just arrived, and a question about the rising number of Covid-19 cases in the state set him off. There was plenty of room in Florida’s hospitals, he explained.Then, with a jerky, almost robotic forward-chopping motion, he gestured at the reporters gathered in front of him. “I think it’s important to point out because obviously media does hysteria,” he said. “You try to fearmonger. You try to do this stuff.”Awkward and ineloquent as the moment was, it was vintage DeSantis — a frequently underestimated politician who has made the media his focal point and foil throughout his rapid rise. The clash, not the case numbers, which averaged nearly 25,000 a day in Florida at the peak of the Delta surge, led that day’s headlines.“It’s the undercurrent of his operation,” said Peter Schorsch, the publisher of FloridaPolitics.com. “Trolling the media.”Former aides say that DeSantis views the press as just another extension of the political process — a tool to weaponize or use for his own benefit. During a recent interview on “Ruthless,” a conservative podcast, he expounded on his philosophy.“Too long, for many of these Republicans, they would always defer to the corporate media,” DeSantis said. “They would try to impress the corporate media. Don’t work with them. You’ve got to beat them. You’ve got to fight back against them.”He’s proven remarkably deft at fighting back.The day after a “60 Minutes” report suggesting that Florida’s vaccine program had been influenced by political donors, DeSantis gave a 26-minute news conference — complete with a PowerPoint presentation — to decry CBS’s reporting as “malicious smears” and “a big lie.” Media critics agreed the segment was flawed.“I think you need that approach,” said Dave Vasquez, his former press secretary. “Some outlets are out to land a big punch on him, so he goes into it thinking, ‘I’m going to fight really hard.’”How Donald J. Trump Still LoomsGrip on G.O.P.: Mr. Trump remains the most powerful figure in the Republican Party. However, there are signs his control is loosening.Trump vs. DeSantis: Tensions between the ex-president and Florida governor show the challenge confronting the G.O.P. in 2022.Midterms Effect: Mr. Trump has become a party kingmaker, but his involvement in state races worries many Republicans.Just the Beginning: For many Trump supporters who marched on Jan. 6, the day was not a disgraced insurrection but the start of a movement.The incident with “60 Minutes” earned him the sympathy of the right-wing media ecosphere, which cheered DeSantis as he pounded CBS for deceptive editing and misleading innuendo.“I view it as positive feedback,” he later boasted. “If the corporate press nationally isn’t attacking me, then I’m probably not doing my job.”The candidate from FoxDeSantis has shrewdly cultivated the right-wing media — and Fox News above all.It began in 2012, when DeSantis was an unknown candidate for a U.S. House seat in Florida. Somehow, he managed to score an appearance on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show, where the nervous-looking, 33-year-old Iraq veteran spoke about then-President Barack Obama and his supposed lack of support for Israel.DeSantis won that race, and the relationship blossomed over the ensuing years. When DeSantis ran for governor in 2018, he appeared regularly on Fox in what former aides acknowledged was a strategy aimed at securing the primary endorsement of the network’s No. 1 fan. Sure enough, Trump endorsed him, and DeSantis went on to defeat Andrew Gillum, the Democratic nominee, by fewer than 33,000 votes.Lately, it often seems like Fox News is promoting another campaign: DeSantis’s thinly disguised bid for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024.Last year, The Tampa Bay Times revealed that various Fox shows requested the Florida governor appear on the network 113 times between November 2020 and the end of February 2021 — almost once a day. The Times quoted emails from Fox staffers gushing about DeSantis, with one producer calling him “the future of the party.”In response to the Tampa Bay paper, Fox said it “works to secure interviews daily with headliners across the political spectrum, which is a basic journalism practice at all news organizations.”Last March, DeSantis invited Brian Kilmeade of “Fox and Friends” to the governor’s mansion in Tallahassee for a fawning feature on his family.“I’m just so proud that he’s been able to be there for the people of Florida,” his wife, Casey, says in the segment. “I mean, it’s not every day you can say that you’re married to your hero.”A ‘sandpapery’ relationshipThe mainstream press, which DeSantis invariably describes with epithets like “the corporate media” or “the Acela media,” tends to get brass-knuckle treatment — when it gets access to him at all.Former advisers say DeSantis was often dismissive of the Florida press corps in particular, which he saw as biased and irrelevant. “I don’t think anybody reads them,” he told one aide.In a March 2021 profile, Michael Kruse, a senior writer for Politico Magazine, described the governor’s relationship with the media as “sandpapery at best.” Aminda Marqués Gonzalez, the publisher of The Miami Herald, in 2020 accused the governor’s office of pressuring the newspaper not to file a public-records lawsuit seeking information on how elder-care facilities were handling the pandemic. His spokesperson denied the allegation.After The Associated Press ran a story implying that DeSantis was helping a top donor by promoting Regeneron, a biotechnology company selling a coronavirus treatment, Twitter briefly suspended the combative account of his press secretary, Christina Pushaw, for what the social media company said was abusive behavior.In one tweet aimed at The A.P. that she has since deleted, Pushaw wrote: “Drag them.” In another, she wrote, “Light. Them. Up.”In a letter to DeSantis, Daisy Veerasingham, A.P.’s chief executive, asked him to stop Pushaw’s “harassing behavior.” The A.P. reporter later described receiving death threats, and took his account private.In an interview, Pushaw said she was merely asking her followers to criticize The A.P.’s coverage. “Frankly,” she said, “they deserved that criticism.”Journalists in Florida privately describe a climate of fear since the arrival of Pushaw, who often engages in late-night Twitter battles with her foes. On Sunday night, she suggested that Democratic operatives posed as Nazi sympathizers at a rally in Orlando. She deleted the tweet after an outcry, acknowledging it was “flippant.”“There’s nothing in there that could be interpreted as giving cover to neo-Nazis,” Pushaw said. “It’s despicable what they’re doing. I would never condone that in any way.”As for the criticism that she is too combative with the press, Pushaw is unapologetic. “I think the press has been combative with the governor, and I call that out,” she said.Asked about DeSantis’s relationship with the media, she said, “The governor is willing to work with any reporter who covers him fairly.”His former aides as well as his critics describe his approach to the media as methodical and ruthless, in contrast to Trump’s haphazard, seat-of-the-pants approach.“He has studied what has worked and left behind what doesn’t,” said David Jolly, a former Republican congressman who has contemplated running against him for governor. “He’s very good at maximizing the Trump benefit without bringing along the liabilities.”Conservative writers have celebrated DeSantis for regularly coming out ahead in his battles with the press. Dan McLaughlin, a columnist for National Review, compared the governor to the Road Runner for his ability to keep “escaping with his head high while his pursuers’ plans detonate in their faces.”‘Will you stay strong, or will you fold?’When Rush Limbaugh, the right-wing radio host, died in February of last year, DeSantis ordered flags in Florida lowered to half-staff — an honor usually bestowed on public officials or law enforcement heroes.Announcing the move, DeSantis hailed Limbaugh for connecting with “the hardworking, God-fearing and patriotic Americans who were and are the subject of ridicule by the legacy media.”The flag order provoked an uproar in Florida, but DeSantis made sure to mention it days later in his speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference.The question facing conservatives, he told the audience, was this: “When the klieg lights get hot, when the left comes after you, will you stay strong, or will you fold?”What to read Trump’s grip on the Republican Party faces new strains, Shane Goldmacher reports, though the former president remains the party’s dominant figure. At a rally Saturday in Texas, Trump said he would consider pardons for the Jan. 6 defendants if he won the presidency again.Jennifer Medina, Nick Corasaniti and Reid J. Epstein dive deep into the previously obscure office of secretary of state, which has become a major point of contention between the parties ahead of the 2022 midterm elections.Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, a leading contender to replace Justice Stephen G. Breyer on the Supreme Court, was shaped by her uncle’s cocaine conviction, according to a new profile by Patricia Mazzei and Charlie Savage.Justice Breyer, who is retiring from the Supreme Court, brought his own musings to cases during oral arguments.Sarahbeth Maney/The New York TimesOne more thing …Justice Stephen G. Breyer, who announced his retirement last week, is famous for spinning long-winded, hypothetical scenarios during Supreme Court arguments.In his column today, our colleague Adam Liptak recounts an episode from October, in a case involving a dispute over water rights between Tennessee and several other states:“San Francisco has beautiful fog,” Breyer said during oral arguments. “Suppose somebody came by in an airplane and took some of that beautiful fog and flew it to Colorado, which has its own beautiful air.”“And somebody took it and flew it to Massachusetts or some other place,” he continued. “I mean, do you understand how I’m suddenly seeing this and I’m totally at sea? It’s that the water runs around. And whose water is it? I don’t know. So you have a lot to explain to me, unfortunately, and I will forgive you if you don’t.”Is there anything you think we’re missing? Anything you want to see more of? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More

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      Trump’s Grip on G.O.P. Faces New Strains

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      Shifts in polls of Republicans, disagreements on endorsements and jeers over vaccines hint at daylight between the former president and the right-wing movement he spawned.About halfway into his Texas rally on Saturday evening, Donald J. Trump pivoted toward the teleprompter and away from a meandering set of grievances to rattle off a tightly prepared list of President Biden’s failings and his own achievements.“Let’s simply compare the records,” Mr. Trump said, as supporters in “Trump 2024” shirts cheered behind him, framed perfectly in the television shot.Mr. Trump, who later went on to talk about “that beautiful, beautiful house that happens to be white,” has left increasingly little doubt about his intentions, plotting an influential role in the 2022 midterm elections and another potential White House run. But a fresh round of skirmishes over his endorsements, fissures with the Republican base over vaccines — a word Mr. Trump conspicuously left unsaid at Saturday’s rally — and new polling all show how his longstanding vise grip on the Republican Party is facing growing strains.In Texas, some grass-roots conservatives are vocally frustrated with Mr. Trump’s backing of Gov. Greg Abbott, even booing Mr. Abbott when he took the stage. In North Carolina, Mr. Trump’s behind-the-scenes efforts to shrink the Republican field to help his preferred Senate candidate failed last week. And in Tennessee, a recent Trump endorsement set off an unusually public backlash, even among his most loyal allies, both in Congress and in conservative media.The Tennessee episode, in particular, showed how the Make America Great Again movement that Mr. Trump birthed is maturing to the point where it can, at times, exist separate and apart from — and even at odds with — Mr. Trump himself.Mr. Trump remains, overwhelmingly, the most popular and powerful figure in the Republican Party. He is the polling front-runner in 2024, an unmatched fund-raising force and still able to fill fairgrounds with huge crowds. But after issuing roughly 100 endorsements in races nationwide, Mr. Trump will face a gantlet of proxy tests of his political strength in the coming months, just as public polls show his sway over the G.O.P. electorate is not what it once was.“Things feel like they’ve been shifting,” said Patrick Ruffini, a Republican pollster who regularly surveys Mr. Trump’s standing in the party. “It’s a strong attachment. It’s one that very likely would win a Republican primary today. But is it the same ironclad, monolithic, Soviet-like attachment that we saw when Donald Trump was the incumbent president? No, it is not.”Monica Trobaugh from Coldspring, Texas, poses for a photo.Meridith Kohut for The New York TimesTrump supporters wait for the former president to arrive.Meridith Kohut for The New York TimesIn a recent Associated Press survey, 44 percent of Republicans said they did not want Mr. Trump to run for president again, while a potential G.O.P. rival in 2024, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, has narrowed the gap in other way-too-early snapshots of a hypothetical primary — new signs of potential vulnerability for the former president. In a reversal from Mr. Trump’s White House days, an NBC News poll in late January found that 56 percent of Republicans now define themselves more as supporters of the Republican Party, compared to 36 percent who said they are supporters of Mr. Trump first.The Trump-first faction had accounted for 54 percent of Republican voters in October 2020. The erosion since then spanned every demographic: men and women, moderates and conservatives, people of every age.Among the biggest swings was in a group widely seen as Mr. Trump’s most loyal constituency: white Republicans without college degrees, who went from 62 percent identifying first with Mr. Trump to 36 percent.Frank Luntz, a prominent G.O.P. pollster, said Republican support for the former president is moving in complex ways — simultaneously both intensifying and diminishing.“The Trump group is smaller today than it has been in five years, but it is even more intense, more passionate and more unforgiving of his critics,” Mr. Luntz said. “As people slowly drift away — which they are — those who are still with him are even stronger in their support.”Mr. Trump said that if he were elected to a new term as president, he would consider pardoning those prosecuted for attacking the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.Meridith Kohut for The New York TimesMr. Trump faces further complications to a comeback, including an ongoing investigation in Georgia over his attempt to pressure state officials to overturn the election and an inquiry in New York into his business practices.Betting against Mr. Trump’s hold on the G.O.P. has been a losing proposition, both for pundits and Republican rivals, for the better part of a decade, and he retains broad support in the party apparatus itself. As the Republican National Committee holds its winter meeting in the coming days in Salt Lake City, the party’s executive committee is expected to discuss behind closed doors whether to continue paying some of the former president’s personal legal bills.Even some Trump-skeptical Republican strategists note that any softening of support has come after a year in which Mr. Trump did not seek to command public attention as thoroughly as he can.He was back in the spotlight at Saturday’s Texas rally, an event that had the feel of a music festival, with anti-Biden chants of “Let’s go Brandon!” breaking out spontaneously. Amid the “Trump Won” flags, however, some conservative activists grumbled about the endorsement of Mr. Abbott, criticizing the governor’s early Covid-19 lockdowns and management of the border.On stage, Mr. Abbott himself faced shouts of “RINO” — for “Republican in name only” — and some boos, which he overwhelmed by leading the crowd in a chant of “Let’s go Trump!” As Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas greeted the crowd, one attendee gave him a thumbs-down sign.Meridith Kohut for The New York TimesDon Huffines, a former state senator who is challenging Mr. Abbott in the Republican primary, courted Trump supporters.Meridith Kohut for The New York TimesIn his remarks, Mr. Trump seemed to be guarding his far-right flank when he declared that, “if I run and I win,” he would consider pardoning people who participated in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol last year.One key split that has emerged between Mr. Trump and his base is over vaccines. He has been jeered at past appearances — both when urging supporters to get vaccinated and after he said he got a booster shot himself — and he now focuses on opposing federal mandates, while simultaneously trying to take credit for the speed of the vaccines’ arrival.Mr. Trump notably avoided the word “vaccine” on Saturday, referring only to “Operation Warp Speed” — his administration’s effort to produce a vaccine.Jennifer Winterbauer, who has “We the People” tattooed on her forearm, got to the Trump rally — her sixth — days in advance, sleeping in her truck to be among the first in line. She said she believed Mr. Trump was “sent by God to save this country.” Still, she disagrees with him on the vaccine.Jennifer Winterbauer arrived days before the rally began and secured a spot among the very first in line so she could be up front when Mr. Trump began his speech. Meridith Kohut for The New York Times“I don’t think he should be promoting it at all,” she said. “I’ve had Covid and I’ve had the flu, and the flu was much worse.”Vaccine and Covid policies have also been the subject of simmering tensions with Mr. DeSantis, who has declined to say if he received a vaccine booster. Mr. Trump said “gutless” politicians dodge such questions.Mr. Ruffini polled Mr. Trump vs. Mr. DeSantis last October and again this month. Then, Mr. Trump led by 40 percentage points; now, the margin is 25. But among Republicans familiar with both men, the gap was just 16 points, and narrower still, only nine points, among those who liked them both.“His voters are looking at alternatives,” Mr. Ruffini said of Mr. Trump. While there is scant evidence of any desire for an anti-Trump Republican, Mr. Ruffini said, there is openness to what he called a “next-generation Trump candidate.”At the Texas rally, David Merritt, a 56-year-old private contractor in a cowboy hat, described himself as “more of a Trump guy” than a Republican. But if he were not to run in 2024?David Merritt, a 56-year-old private contractor, described himself as “more of a Trump guy” than a devoted Republican.Meridith Kohut for The New York Times“Probably Ron DeSantis would be my next choice,” Mr. Merritt said. Because he was the most like Mr. Trump of the Republican candidates.In Washington, Republican congressional leaders have diverged sharply in their approaches to Mr. Trump.Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the House minority leader, has been solicitous, huddling with Mr. Trump for roughly an hour last Tuesday at Mar-a-Lago to talk over House races and the political landscape, according to people familiar with the meeting. Mr. McCarthy is seen as keeping Mr. Trump close as he seeks to win the majority for his party this fall and the speakership for himself.In the Senate, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, is not on speaking terms with Mr. Trump, and his allies continue to court Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland, an outspoken anti-Trump Republican, to run for Senate.Beyond polling, Mr. Trump has repeatedly held up his “almost unblemished record” of primary endorsements as a barometer of his power. When Lou Dobbs, the pro-Trump media personality, asked Mr. Trump last week if the G.O.P. was still united behind him, he replied, “Well, I think so. Everybody I endorse just about wins.”In North Carolina, Mr. Trump has promoted the Senate candidate he endorsed, Representative Ted Budd, by trying to convince Representative Mark Walker to abandon the primary and run for the House again. Mr. Walker threatens to divide the pro-Trump vote and help a third candidate, former Gov. Pat McCrory, a more traditional Republican.On Thursday, Mr. Walker announced he was staying in the Senate race anyway.Though Mr. Trump’s endorsements have sometimes been haphazard, despite ongoing efforts to formalize the process, few have drawn pushback more swiftly than his backing of Morgan Ortagus, who was an aide to former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and was once floated as a possible White House press secretary.Saturday’s rally was in deep-red Montgomery County, Texas. Meridith Kohut for The New York TimesMs. Ortagus, with her family in tow, met with Mr. Trump at Mar-a-Lago last Monday and discussed a Tennessee House seat for which she is not even an official candidate yet, according to three people familiar with the meeting; by the next evening, Mr. Trump had endorsed her unannounced run.“Trump has this completely wrong,” Candace Owens, a prominent figure in pro-Trump media, wrote on Twitter.Ms. Owens threw her support to Robby Starbuck, a rival candidate with ties to the Trump activist movement. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia quickly endorsed Mr. Starbuck, too, and Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida, typically a staunch Trump ally, promoted one of Mr. Starbuck’s videos.Gavin Wax, an outspoken pro-Trump activist and president of the New York Young Republican Club, who criticized the Ortagus and Abbott endorsements, said the political environment now made it possible to air such grievances. “It’s a lot easier to have these divisions begin to brew when he’s out of office,” Mr. Wax said of Mr. Trump.“He still remains the top dog by a long shot, but who knows,” Mr. Wax said. “It’s one of those things where, a million cuts — it will eventually start to do damage.”J. David Goodman More

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      Attack of the Right-Wing Thought Police

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      Americans like to think of their nation as a beacon of freedom. And despite all the ways in which we have failed to live up to our self-image, above all the vast injustices that sprang from the original sin of slavery, freedom — not just free elections, but also freedom of speech and thought — has long been a key element of the American idea.Now, however, freedom is under attack, on more fronts than many people realize. Everyone knows about the Big Lie, the refusal by a large majority of Republicans to accept the legitimacy of a lost election. But there are many other areas in which freedom is not just under assault but in retreat.Let’s talk, in particular, about the attack on education, especially but not only in Florida, which has become one of America’s leading laboratories of democratic erosion.Republicans have made considerable political hay by denouncing the teaching of critical race theory; this strategy has succeeded even though most voters have no idea what that theory is and it isn’t actually being taught in public schools. But the facts in this case don’t matter, because denunciations of C.R.T. are basically a cover for a much bigger agenda: an attempt to stop schools from teaching anything that makes right-wingers uncomfortable.I use that last word advisedly: There’s a bill advancing in the Florida Senate declaring that an individual “should not be made to feel discomfort, guilt, anguish or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race.” That is, the criterion for what can be taught isn’t “Is it true? Is it supported by the scholarly consensus?” but rather “Does it make certain constituencies uncomfortable?”Anyone tempted to place an innocuous interpretation on this provision — maybe it’s just about not assigning collective guilt? — should read the text of the bill. Among other things, it cites as its two prime examples of things that must not happen in schools “denial or minimization of the Holocaust, and the teaching of critical race theory” — because suggesting that “racism is embedded in American society” (the bill’s definition of the theory) is just the same as denying that Hitler killed six million Jews.What’s really striking, however, is the idea that schools should be prohibited from teaching anything that causes “discomfort” among students and their parents. If you imagine that the effects of applying this principle would be limited to teaching about race relations, you’re being utterly naïve.For one thing, racism is far from being the only disturbing topic in American history. I’m sure that some students will find that the story of how we came to invade Iraq — or for that matter how we got involved in Vietnam — makes them uncomfortable. Ban those topics from the curriculum!Then there’s the teaching of science. Most high schools do teach the theory of evolution, but leading Republican politicians are either evasive or actively deny the scientific consensus, presumably reflecting the G.O.P. base’s discomfort with the concept. Once the Florida standard takes hold, how long will teaching of evolution survive?Geology, by the way, has the same problem. I’ve been on nature tours where the guides refuse to talk about the origins of rock formations, saying that they’ve had problems with some religious guests.Oh, and given the growing importance of anti-vaccination posturing as a badge of conservative allegiance, how long before basic epidemiology — maybe even the germ theory of disease — gets the critical race theory treatment?And then there’s economics, which these days is widely taught at the high school level. (Full disclosure: Many high schools use an adapted version of the principles text I co-author.) Given the long history of politically driven attempts to prevent the teaching of Keynesian economics, what do you think the Florida standard would do to teaching in my home field?The point is that the smear campaign against critical race theory is almost certainly the start of an attempt to subject education in general to rule by the right-wing thought police, which will have dire effects far beyond the specific topic of racism.And who will enforce the rules? State-sponsored vigilantes! Last month Ron DeSantis, Florida’s governor, proposed a “Stop Woke Act” that would empower parents to sue school districts they claim teach critical race theory — and collect lawyer fees, a setup modeled on the bounties under Texas’ new anti-abortion law. Even the prospect of such lawsuits would have a chilling effect on teaching.Did I mention that DeSantis also wants to create a special police force to investigate election fraud? Like the attacks on critical race theory, this is obviously an attempt to use a made-up issue — voter fraud is largely nonexistent — as an excuse for intimidation.OK, I’m sure that some people will say that I’m making too much of these issues. But ask yourself: Has there been any point over, say, the past five years when warnings about right-wing extremism have proved overblown and those dismissing those warnings as “alarmist” have been right?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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      Ann Coulter Is Rooting for a Trump-DeSantis Throw-Down. She’s Not Alone.

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      Ann Coulter has a gift for pushing just the right buttons to inflict maximum irritation. She has been a top-tier troll since Donald Trump was little more than a failed casino magnate.Which makes Ms. Coulter’s recent attacks on the former president — her onetime political idol — at once delectable and illuminating. Take her contrarian assessment of Mr. Trump’s chokehold on the Republican Party.“No one wants Trump,” she asserted in a column last week. “He’s fading faster than Sarah Palin did — and she was second place on a losing presidential ticket.”Parsing recent polling data, Ms. Coulter made the case that high approval for Mr. Trump among Republicans is less about his enduring appeal than about the G.O.P. having been boiled down to a Trumpian rump. Increasingly, she contended, “the only people calling themselves ‘Republicans’ these days are the Trump die-hards.”Ms. Coulter’s anti-Trump bile is not entirely new and carries the bitter fury of a disillusioned believer. While an early and enthusiastic MAGA convert — during the 2016 campaign Ms. Coulter cheekily proclaimed herself ready to die for her candidate and penned a cringey hagiography titled “In Trump We Trust: E Pluribus Awesome!” — she began souring on his presidency pretty quickly over his failure to make good on his more draconian immigration promises. (Ann really wanted that border wall.)When Ms. Coulter turns, she does not go gently. Her critiques of Mr. Trump have included calling him “a shallow, lazy ignoramus,” “a complete moron,” “a blithering idiot” and “a lout.” She now considers his entire presidency a flop. “Trump accomplished everything he was ever going to accomplish at 2 a.m.” on election night in 2016, she emailed me last week. “The best thing that could have happened to the Republican Party (and the country) would have been for him to be vaporized at the moment he was announcing his victory. Pence would have been afraid to betray Trump’s supporters. Trump wasn’t!”Of late, Ms. Coulter has begun poking at Mr. Trump from a very specific angle: comparing him — unfavorably — to Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida.Mr. DeSantis is a ticklish topic around Trumpworld. The governor rose to power by becoming a mini-Trump, and the former president still considers Mr. DeSantis his creation. But the governor is clearly eyeing the White House in 2024, and, unlike other potential candidates, he has not pledged to sit things out if Mr. Trump runs. Such disloyalty does not sit well with the former president, and there are rumblings of a brewing feud between the two Florida Men. As the water cooler chatter goes: Mr. Trump sees Mr. DeSantis as an ungrateful upstart, while Mr. DeSantis sees Mr. Trump as expecting too much groveling.Earlier this month, when Mr. Trump called politicians who refuse to reveal their booster status “gutless,” it was seen as a slap at Mr. DeSantis, who has been shifty about his booster situation. A few days later, Mr. DeSantis voiced regret over not aggressively opposing the nationwide lockdown that Mr. Trump ordered early in the pandemic.Republicans are eager to downplay tensions that risk undermining party unity.But Ms. Coulter is eager to fan the flames. “Trump is demanding to know Ron DeSantis’s booster status, and I can now reveal it,” she tweeted about the kerfuffle. “He was a loyal booster when Trump ran in 2016, but then he learned our president was a liar and con man whose grift was permanent.”Ms. Coulter, it seems, has found a shiny new leader with whom to antagonize her former hero. “For months now, Trump’s been playing the aging silent film star Norma Desmond in ‘Sunset Boulevard’ to DeSantis’s younger, prettier Betty Schaefer,” she wrote in her column Wednesday, which closed with this punch to the throat: “Give voters a populist conservative who’s not a con man and a liar and they’ll be ‘Republicans’ again. No wonder Trump hates DeSantis.”In her email, Ms. Coulter got even more personal. “DeSantis is better than Trump, for many, many reasons, including: He won’t bring Jared and Ivanka into the White House.” She also expressed confidence that Mr. DeSantis can handle Mr. Trump. “He’s mostly just ignoring the 11-year-old. Unlike Trump, DeSantis has a day job.”Having split with Mr. Trump, Ms. Coulter has an obvious interest in pushing the line that he is a washed-up relic. That said, the gal has a track record for sensing — and exploiting — political vulnerabilities.She is also just one tiny piece of a bigger predicament the G.O.P. is facing. Every whisper of discord between Mr. Trump and other Republican leaders is going to be devoured — and amplified — by a political class still obsessed with the former president and his influence.There are plenty of reasons for this. Many Trump critics are panting to see the ex-president’s acolytes and enablers, like Mr. DeSantis, pay a price for snuggling up to him for so long.Old-school Republicans are hoping that the party’s up-and-comers will start putting some distance between themselves and the chaos of the Trump era, a necessary step toward rescuing the G.O.P. from its MAGA quagmire.As for the political media, it loves a good fight. And any fight featuring the former president promises to be tacky, unhinged and entertaining.Going forward, Ms. Coulter won’t be the only force tweaking Mr. Trump and focusing on any hint of friction. As usual, she’ll simply be more shameless about it than most.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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      Republicans Want New Tool in Elusive Search for Voter Fraud: Election Police

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      Republicans in three states have proposed strike forces against election crimes even though fraud cases remain minuscule.WASHINGTON — Reprising the rigged-election belief that has become a mantra among their supporters, Republican politicians in at least three states are proposing to establish police forces to hunt exclusively for voter fraud and other election crimes, a category of offenses that experts say is tiny at best.The plans are part of a new wave of initiatives that Republicans say are directed at voter fraud. They are being condemned by voting rights advocates and even some local election supervisors, who call them costly and unnecessary appeasement of the Republican base that will select primary-election winners for this November’s midterms and the 2024 presidential race.The next round of voting clashes comes after the apparent demise of Democratic voting rights legislation in Washington on Thursday. It is a reminder that while the Democratic agenda in Washington seems dead, Republican state-level efforts to make voting harder show no sign of slowing down.Supporters say the added enforcement will root out instances of fraud and assure the public that everything possible is being done to make sure that American elections are accurate and legitimate. Critics say the efforts can easily be abused and used as political cudgels or efforts to intimidate people from registering and voting. And Democrats say the main reason Republican voters have lost faith in the electoral system is because of the incessant Republican focus on almost entirely imagined fraud.The most concrete proposal is in Florida, where Gov. Ron DeSantis asked the State Legislature last week for $5.7 million to create a 52-person “election crimes and security” force in the secretary of state’s office. The plan, which Mr. DeSantis has been touting since the fall, would include 20 sworn police officers and field offices statewide.Gov. Ron DeSantis asked the Florida Legislature for $5.7 million to create a 52-person “election crimes and security” force in the secretary of state’s office.Chris O’Meara/Associated PressThat was followed on Thursday by a pledge by David Perdue, the former Georgia senator who is a Republican candidate for governor, to create his own force of election police “to make Georgia elections the safest and securest in the country.” Mr. Perdue, who lost his Senate seat in 2020, claimed that Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican who is seeking re-election, weakened election standards and refused to investigate claims of fraud following President Biden’s narrow win in the state.And in Arizona, a vocal supporter of former President Donald J. Trump’s lies about a stolen election, State Senator Wendy Rogers, has filed legislation to establish a $5 million “bureau of elections” in the governor’s office with the power to subpoena witnesses and impound election equipment.Ms. Rogers’s bill probably faces an uphill road in the Legislature, where Republicans are only narrowly in control and have been battered for their support of a widely ridiculed multimillion-dollar inquiry into 2020 election results. Prospects for the Florida and Georgia proposals are less clear.The proposals are the latest twist in a decades-long crusade by Republicans against election fraud that has grown rapidly since Mr. Trump’s election loss in 2020 and his false claim that victory was stolen from him.Mr. DeSantis took a tough line in November when he unveiled his proposal, saying that the new unit would chase crimes that local election official shrug at. “There’ll be people, if you see someone ballot harvesting, you know, what do you do? If you call into the election office, a lot of times they don’t do anything,” he said at an appearance in West Palm Beach.“I guarantee you this,” he added. “The first person that gets caught, no one is going to want to do it again after that.”None of the three states — and for that matter, none of the other 47 and the District of Columbia — reported any more than a minuscule number of election fraud cases after the 2020 races. Mr. DeSantis said after the 2020 vote that his was “the state that did it right and that other states should emulate.” The only notable hint of irregularity in Florida was the recent arrest on fraud charges of four men in a retirement complex north of Orlando. At least two of them appeared to be winter Floridians accused of casting ballots both there and in more frigid states to the north.Trump supporters gathered outside the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office in downtown Phoenix as ballots were counted in November 2020.Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York TimesBut Mr. DeSantis and Mr. Perdue say their strike forces are still needed to root out other election irregularities and to bolster their constituents’ sagging faith in the honesty of the vote. The same rationale has powered so-called audits of election results and clampdowns on election rules by Republican-run legislatures across the country.Sweeping election-law revisions enacted by Florida and Georgia legislators last spring sharply limit the use of popular drop boxes for submitting absentee ballots, require identification to obtain mail-in ballots, make it harder to conduct voter-registration drives, and restrict or ban interactions — such as handing out snacks or water — with voters waiting in line to cast ballots.Mr. Trump comfortably won Florida by about 370,000 votes in 2020, and his narrow losses in Arizona and Georgia were confirmed by expert audits, recounts and even the notorious Cyber Ninjas inquiry into the vote in Maricopa County.“We don’t need further investigations into elections that are freely and fairly conducted,” said Alex Gulotta, the Arizona director of the advocacy group All Voting Is Local. “We’ve established that again and again and again. This is more pablum to the people who believe in fraud and conspiracy theories and lies that the last election was stolen.”Neither the new laws nor election autopsies appear to have shaken the conviction of many Trump supporters that the election system is suspect. Some scholars say they see the police forces as the latest bid by politicians to scratch that itch.Bids to curb so-called fraud are becoming standard for Republican candidates who want to win over voters, Barry Burden, the director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said in an interview. “Whoever is the nominee in 2024, whether it’s Trump or anyone else, it will likely be part of their platform,” Mr. Burden said.The idea of an election police force is not new, even in the states where they are being proposed. In Georgia, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger already oversees 23 investigators whose purview includes election irregularities, and an assistant state attorney general exclusively prosecutes crimes in elections, the judiciary and local governments. The Arizona attorney general manages a relatively new “election integrity” investigative unit, and Florida election violations are prosecuted by both state and local authorities, as is true in most states. More

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      Who Is King of Florida? Tensions Rise Between Trump and Ron DeSantis

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      A spat over Covid has exposed friction between the former president and a rising G.O.P. governor unwilling to curb his ambitions.For months, former President Donald J. Trump has been grumbling quietly to friends and visitors to his Palm Beach mansion about a rival Republican power center in another Florida mansion, some 400 miles to the north.Gov. Ron DeSantis, a man Mr. Trump believes he put on the map, has been acting far less like an acolyte and more like a future competitor, Mr. Trump complains. With his stock rising fast in the party, the governor has conspicuously refrained from saying he would stand aside if Mr. Trump runs for the Republican nomination for president in 2024.“The magic words,” Trump has said to several associates and advisers.That long-stewing resentment burst into public view recently in a dispute over a seemingly unrelated topic: Covid policies. After Mr. DeSantis refused to reveal his full Covid vaccination history, the former president publicly acknowledged he had received a booster. Last week, he seemed to swipe at Mr. DeSantis by blasting as “gutless” politicians who dodge the question out of fear of blowback from vaccine skeptics.Mr. DeSantis shot back on Friday, criticizing Mr. Trump’s early handling of the pandemic and saying he regretted not being more vocal in his complaints.The back and forth exposed how far Republicans have shifted to the right on coronavirus politics. The doubts Mr. Trump amplified about public health expertise have only spiraled since he left office. Now his defense of the vaccines — even if often subdued and almost always with the caveat in the same breath that he opposes mandates — has put him uncharacteristically out of step with the hard-line elements of his party’s base and provided an opening for a rival.But that it was Mr. DeSantis — a once-loyal member of the Trump court — wielding the knife made the tension about much more.At its core, the dispute amounts to a stand-in for the broader challenge confronting Republicans at the outset of midterm elections. They are led by a defeated former president who demands total fealty, brooks no criticism and is determined to sniff out, and then snuff out, any threat to his control of the party.That includes the 43-year-old DeSantis, who has told friends he believes Mr. Trump’s expectation that he bend the knee is asking too much. That refusal has set up a generational clash and a test of loyalty in the de facto capital of today’s G.O.P., one watched by Republicans elsewhere who’ve ridden to power on Mr. Trump’s coattails.Already, party figures are attempting to calm matters.“They’re the two most important leaders in the Republican Party,” said Brian Ballard, a longtime Florida lobbyist with connections to both men, predicting Mr. Trump and Mr. DeSantis “will be personal and political friends for the rest of their careers.”Mr. Trump’s aides also have tried to tamp down questions about the former president’s frustrations, so as not to elevate Mr. DeSantis.Still, Mr. Trump has made no secret of his preparations for a third run for the White House. And while Mr. DeSantis, who is up for re-election this year, has not declared his plans, he is widely believed to be eyeing the presidency.Mr. Trump and his aides are mindful of Republicans’ increasingly public fatigue with the drama that trails Mr. Trump. The former president’s false claims about fraud in the 2020 election — which Mr. DeSantis has not challenged — and his role in the events leading to the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol have some Republicans looking for a fresh start.Mr. DeSantis is often the first name Republicans cite as a possible Trump-style contender not named Trump.“DeSantis would be a formidable 2024 candidate in the Trump lane should Trump not run,” said Dan Eberhart, a Republican donor. “He’s Trump but a little smarter, more disciplined and brusque without being too brusque.”Notably, Mr. Trump, a longtime student of charisma and mass appeal, as well as an avid reader of polling, has refrained so far from publicly attacking Mr. DeSantis, who is a distant but potent second to him in polls on the 2024 G.O.P. field. His restraint is a break from the mockery and bullying he often uses to attack Republicans he perceives as vulnerable. Mr. Trump made no reference to the governor at a rally in Arizona on Saturday.Mr. DeSantis has $70 million in the bank for his re-election, a war chest he stocked with help from the Republican rank-and-file and donor class, alike. He has raised his profile in the same spaces Mr. Trump once dominated. The governor is ubiquitous on Fox News, where he is routinely met with the sort of softballs that once arced toward Mr. Trump. And he frequently mixes with the well-tanned Republican donor community near the former president’s winter home in South Florida.It was not always this way.Mr. DeSantis was a little-known Florida congressman in 2017, when Mr. Trump, who was then the president, spotted him on television and took keen interest. Mr. DeSantis, an Ivy League-educated military veteran and smooth-talking defender of the new president, was exactly what Mr. Trump liked in a politician.It wasn’t long before Mr. Trump blessed Mr. DeSantis’s bid for governor and sent in staff to help him, lifting the lawmaker to a victory over a better-known rival for the party’s nomination.Mr. DeSantis survived the general election and has often governed in a style that mirrors his patron, slashing at the left and scrapping with the news media. But that alone doesn’t placate Mr. Trump. As with other Republicans he has endorsed, the former president appears to take a kind of ownership interest in Mr. DeSantis — and to believe that he is owed dividends and deference.“Look, I helped Ron DeSantis at a level that nobody’s ever seen before,” Mr. Trump said in an interview for a forthcoming book, “Insurgency,” on the rightward shift of the Republican Party, by the New York Times reporter Jeremy W. Peters. Mr. Trump said he believed Mr. DeSantis “didn’t have a chance” of winning without his help.The former president’s expectation of deference from Mr. DeSantis is a reminder to other Republicans that a Trump endorsement comes with a price, a demand that could prove particularly consequential should he run again and have a stable of Republican lawmakers in his debt.At times, Mr. Trump has sought to kindle his relationship with Mr. DeSantis. He has suggested the governor would be a strong choice for vice president. Similar courtship has helped win deference from other potential rivals. But Mr. DeSantis has not relented.“I wonder why the guy won’t say he won’t run against me,” Mr. Trump has said to several associates and advisers, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe private conversations.Mr. Trump began the recent contretemps by attacking the governor’s refusal to acknowledge whether he had received a Covid-19 booster shot.“The answer is ‘Yes,’ but they don’t want to say it, because they’re gutless,” Mr. Trump said in a television interview this month, referring only to “politicians” but clearly alluding to Mr. DeSantis. “You got to say it — whether you had it or not, say it.”Mr. DeSantis’s response came on Friday in an interview on the conservative podcast “Ruthless.” Speaking in front of an in-person audience near St. Petersburg, Fla., the governor said one of his biggest regrets was not forcefully opposing Mr. Trump’s calls for lockdowns when the coronavirus first began to spread in the spring of 2020.“Knowing now what I know then, if that was a threat earlier, I would have been much louder,” Mr. DeSantis said. The governor said he had been “telling Trump ‘stop the flights from China’” but argued he never thought in early March 2020 that the virus “would lead to locking down the country.”Mr. DeSantis then moved quickly to place blame on Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, who advised Trump on the country’s Covid response, a much safer target with conservatives.The former president did not immediately respond. Without a Twitter account, his hair-trigger retorts have become less frequent. A spokesman for Mr. Trump also did not respond to requests for comment. An adviser to Mr. DeSantis declined to comment.Mr. DeSantis, however, has touched on a delicate issue, one of the few on which Mr. Trump is to the left of his party’s hard-liners: the efficacy of the vaccine and deference to public health experts’ advice on how to curb the spread of the virus.Mr. Trump has begun blasting warning shots at Mr. DeSantis and other aspiring Republicans, signaling he intends to defend the vaccines his administration helped develop. In an interview with Candace Owens, a right-wing media personality, the former president said “the vaccine worked” and dismissed conspiracy theories. “People aren’t dying when they take the vaccine,” he said.Mr. DeSantis, though, has been much more eager to focus on his resistance to Covid-19 restrictions, past and present, than to make a robust case for vaccination and booster shots.Notably, at his rally on Saturday, Mr. Trump did not promote vaccines and criticized so-called Covid “lockdowns.”Mr. Trump’s loudest antagonists are likely to continue to stoke the tension between the two men. Ann Coulter, the conservative commentator who has fallen out with the former president, delighted in the dust-up this week.“Trump is demanding to know Ron DeSantis’s booster status, and I can now reveal it,” Ms. Coulter wrote on Twitter. “He was a loyal booster when Trump ran in 2016, but then he learned our president was a liar and con man whose grift was permanent.”In an email, Ms. Coulter, herself a part-time Florida resident, put a finer point on what makes Mr. DeSantis’s rise unsettling for the former president. “Trump is done,” she wrote. “You guys should stop obsessing over him.”Jeremy W. Peters More