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      DeSantis Attempts to Woo Young Evangelicals at Liberty University

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      The Florida governor pitched himself as a defender of traditional values to students at Liberty University, an important stage for Republican presidential hopefuls.The morning after signing one of the nation’s most stringent abortion bills into law, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida pitched himself to thousands of evangelical college students as a defender of truth, common sense and morality in the public square.“Yes, the truth will set you free,” Mr. DeSantis said, invoking the words of Christ. “Because woke represents a war on truth, we must wage a war on woke.”Mr. DeSantis spoke to about 10,000 students at Liberty University’s twice-weekly convocation service, which the school bills as “the world’s largest gathering of Christian students.”He was introduced by pastor Jonathan Falwell, recently named the school’s chancellor, who drew sustained applause when he mentioned Mr. DeSantis’s signing of the abortion law on Thursday night. The law prohibits the procedure past six weeks.Mr. DeSantis did not explicitly mention the abortion law. He opened his speech on a personal note, thanking the audience for their prayers after his wife’s cancer diagnosis in 2021.“The prayers have been answered,” he said. He went on to tout his record in Florida on an array of issues including new restrictions on gender-affirming medical treatments.“We chose facts over fear, we chose education over indoctrination, we chose law and order over rioting and disorder,” Mr. DeSantis said. “We did not back down.”Students listened to a band playing Christian worship music before Mr. DeSantis’s speech. Eze Amos for The New York TimesThe visit was part of Mr. DeSantis’s national tour of centers of conservative influence as he builds momentum for his widely anticipated entry into the 2024 presidential campaign. More than that, it was a crucial opportunity to gauge, and perhaps advance, his relationship status with evangelical Christians — a voting bloc that helped vault Donald J. Trump to the presidency and appears to be open to new presidential suitors.Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va., has long been an important stop for Republican politicians and conservative celebrities eager to reach the campus’s undergraduates.It is the stage where Senator Ted Cruz of Texas announced his candidacy in 2015. It is also where Mr. Trump introduced himself to a wider evangelical audience, pitching himself as the defender of a Christianity under attack — and famously referred to “Two Corinthians” in a fumbled attempt to speak the same language as his listeners.Ultimately, Mr. Trump did not need to “speak evangelical” to win them over. He won an even higher share of the white evangelical vote in 2020 than he did in 2016. Though some evangelical leaders have signaled they would consider supporting another Republican candidate, many remain loyal to Mr. Trump and have so far shown few signs of abandoning him en masse over his recent indictment.For Mr. DeSantis, the question is whether he can loosen that extraordinary bond.Jesse Hughes, a junior at Liberty, had been hoping to hear Mr. DeSantis offer a more intimate account of how his faith influenced his approach to governing and helped him navigate challenges like his wife’s cancer diagnosis. Instead, he said he mostly heard material he recognized from Mr. DeSantis’s other speeches.Still, he is impressed with Mr. DeSantis’s record in Florida, including his approach to abortion legislation, education, and “how he’s willing to take bold stances and not cave to media pressure.” Under Mr. DeSantis, the state has banned discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity in some elementary school grades. Mr. Hughes read Mr. DeSantis’s recent memoir, “The Courage to Be Free,” but said he found little to help him understand the governor’s personal spiritual life. “There are references to his faith, but he doesn’t go into much detail on anything,” he said.Jesse Hughes, a student at Liberty University, is impressed with Mr. DeSantis’s record but said he was hoping to hear the governor talk about how his faith helped him navigate challenges.Eze Amos for The New York Times Mr. Hughes brushed off the indictment against Mr. Trump as “political persecution.” But he also said that many of his fellow students are ready to move past Mr. Trump.Mr. Hughes, 21, is the president of the campus’s College Republicans club, which is conducting a small informal poll of student preferences in the primary. Hours before the poll closed on Friday, Mr. DeSantis had 53 percent of the vote to Mr. Trump’s 31 percent, with former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley at 13 percent.“What I’m seeing is definite interest in DeSantis, but not a rejection of Trump” among white evangelicals, said Kristin Kobes Du Mez, a historian at evangelical Calvin University in Michigan and the author of “Jesus and John Wayne.”Ms. Du Mez sees Mr. DeSantis making a similar appeal to conservative evangelicals as Mr. Trump did, positioning himself as a combative culture warrior who is “protecting the vulnerable Christians.” He may appeal to voters who are drawn to Mr. Trump but exhausted by the chaos that follows him, or doubtful of his chances to win in a general election, she said.But there is a trade-off. “What you gain in terms of stability in turning to DeSantis,” Ms. Du Mez said, “you lose in terms of charisma.”She said that most conservative evangelicals at this early stage seem genuinely open to either of the leading candidates. Among voters, at least, “it’s a friendly competition.”Mr. DeSantis spoke to about 10,000 students at Liberty University’s twice-weekly convocation service. Eze Amos for The New York TimesMr. DeSantis was raised in a Catholic family in Florida. “Growing up as a kid, it was nonnegotiable that I would have my rear end in church every Sunday morning,” he wrote in his memoir. He has an aunt who is a nun and an uncle who is a priest, both in Ohio. (Both declined to comment on their nephew’s religious upbringing.)Until now, he has deployed mentions of his personal faith fairly cautiously, while positioning himself as a defender of “God-fearing” people. In speeches, he often refers to putting on “the full armor of God” — a biblical reference and an evangelical touchstone — telling audiences to “stand firm against the left’s schemes.”He closed his speech at Liberty with another scripture reference, telling the crowd that “I will fight the good fight, I will finish the race, and I will keep the faith,” paraphrasing the apostle Paul in the book of 2 Timothy.Liberty University has long been an important stop for Republican presidential hopefuls.Eze Amos for The New York TimesDaniel Hostetter, the student body president, said his initial impression of Mr. DeSantis’s address was that it felt less personal than what he had heard from other politicians on Liberty’s stage, including former Vice President Mike Pence and Glenn Youngkin, the governor of Virginia.“I feel like I just don’t know as much about DeSantis as I’d like,” he said. In a candidate, he is looking for someone “who looks like Christ” — someone who is kind and “full of mercy” but will stand by his convictions.He noted that one of the biggest applause lines of the morning did not even come from Mr. DeSantis, but from Mr. Falwell, when he mentioned Florida’s new six-week abortion ban. He speculated that Mr. DeSantis may be waiting to see how the ban is received nationally.Abortion has become a thorny issue for Republicans in the wake of the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022. A portion of its base will settle for nothing less than the strongest restrictions, putting them out of step with the electorate as a whole and raising concerns about how any candidate who could win the Republican primary on the issue could then go on to win the general election. Sixty-four percent of Americans believe abortion should be legal in most cases, according to a poll this year from the Public Religion Research Institute.Daniel Griffith, a graduate student who leads a youth ministry at Liberty, said he was disappointed by some of Mr. DeSantis’s more aggressive rhetoric. He noted that the governor’s lines about “wokeness” got more applause than his recitation of his economic achievements in Florida. “I have friends who he would probably consider woke,” he said. “It gets the cheers, it gets the noise, which kind of stinks.”Mr. Griffith said he is leaning toward supporting Mr. DeSantis over Mr. Trump.“We chose facts over fear, we chose education over indoctrination, we chose law and order over rioting and disorder,” Mr. DeSantis said in his speech, referring to his record in Florida.Eze Amos for The New York Times“People are sick of the controversies and sick of the scandal,” he said. “Even at Liberty, we’ve had our own mess and we’re sick of that,” he added, comparing Mr. Trump’s outbursts and legal entanglements with the problems of a former president of the school, Jerry Falwell Jr.Mr. Falwell, a former president of Liberty, was one of Mr. Trump’s first prominent evangelical supporters. He endorsed Mr. Trump in January of 2016, about a week after the candidate spoke at Liberty’s convocation, and became one of his most vocal allies.Mr. Falwell resigned as president in 2020 in a haze of tawdry controversies and is currently suing the school over his retirement payments. The school named a new president in March, Dondi Costin, a former Air Force chaplain who was most recently the president of Charleston Southern University.Out of power and without a platform, Mr. Falwell is an observer in this election cycle, not an influencer. Reached at home on Wednesday, he said he no longer has Mr. Trump’s phone number.But his political instincts have not changed.“I’ve got nothing against DeSantis at all, I just don’t think he’s ready for prime time yet,” Mr. Falwell said, remarking that the governor “looks like a little boy.”He added, “I’m still 100 percent a Trump man.” More

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      Seeking Evangelicals’ Support Again, Trump Confronts a Changed Religious Landscape

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      Evangelicals were wooed by Donald Trump’s promise of an anti-abortion Supreme Court. Now, they’re back playing the field.On a recent Sunday morning at Elmbrook Church, a nondenominational evangelical megachurch in Brookfield, Wis., Jerry Wilson considered the far-off matter of his vote in 2024.“It’s going to be a Republican,” he said, “but I don’t know who.”In 2016 and 2020 he had voted for Donald J. Trump. “He did accomplish a lot for Christians, for evangelicals,” Mr. Wilson, 64, said. But “he’s got a lot of negative attributes, and they make you pause and think, you know? I’d like to see what the other candidates have to offer.”White evangelical voters were central to Mr. Trump’s first election, and he remains overwhelmingly popular among them. But a Monmouth University poll in late January and early February found Ron DeSantis, the Republican governor of Florida who has not declared his candidacy for president but appears to be Mr. Trump’s most formidable early rival, leading Mr. Trump by 7 percentage points among self-identified evangelical Republican voters in a head-to-head contest.It was an early sign that as he makes a bid for a return to office, Mr. Trump must reckon with a base that has changed since his election in 2016 — and because of it.Some of the changes clearly benefit Mr. Trump, but others may have weakened his hold on evangelical voters and the prominent evangelical pastors who are often seen as power brokers in Republican politics.The Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision in June, which overturned the constitutional right to an abortion, has shifted much of the fight to further roll back abortion rights — the near-singular political aim of conservative evangelicals for more than four decades — to the state level. Last year, Mr. Trump disparaged Republican candidates for focusing too much on the “abortion issue,” a statement that was viewed as a betrayal by some evangelicals on the right and an invitation to seek other options.Conservative evangelical politics have both expanded and moved sharply rightward, animated by a new slate of issues like opposition to race and history curriculums in schools and L.G.B.T.Q. rights, and shaped by the Covid-19 lockdowns of 2020 and 2021, which some pastors rallied against as a grave affront to religious freedom. These are areas where Mr. DeSantis has aggressively staked his claim.Who’s Running for President in 2024?Card 1 of 7The race begins. More

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      Two Evangelical Leaders, Jim Wallis and Kyle Meyaard-Schaap, on ‘Radical Faith,’ Climate Change and More

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      For the Taking the Lead series, we asked leaders in various fields to share insights on what they’ve learned and what lies ahead.When Kyle Meyaard-Schaap was in high school, a quote from the Rev. Jim Wallis was emblazoned on the wall of his English classroom: “God is not a Republican or a Democrat.” Today, the two men are leaders in the movement to expand the political imaginations of American evangelicals. Though evangelicals are known for their strong support of former President Donald J. Trump — most polls showed around 80 percent of white evangelicals voted for him in 2020 — and an array of conservative causes, a vocal cohort includes many who find their faith directing them elsewhere.Mr. Wallis, now 74, was raised in what he described as a “very evangelical” family in Detroit, where his parents were lay leaders in a Plymouth Brethren church. He attended an evangelical seminary outside Chicago but was drawn to the radical student politics of his era, and quickly became one of the leading figures in an energetic politically progressive wing of American evangelicalism. That movement — anchored by Sojourners, the organization he founded and led for 50 years, before leaving in 2021 — enjoyed a heady decade until the rise of the Moral Majority and the election of President Ronald Reagan in 1980, when evangelicals became a reliably conservative voting bloc, which they remain today.That forced Mr. Wallis into the role of opposition leader, a perch from which he has tried to turn the American church’s attention to issues including racism, poverty and, more recently, voting rights. He has written 12 books, has been arrested 25 times for civil disobedience, and was one of a small group of pastors President Barack Obama turned to for prayer and counsel in the early years of his presidency.Mr. Meyaard-Schaap, 33, was ordained as a pastor in the Christian Reformed Church in North America and serves as the vice president of the Evangelical Environmental Network, a ministry that seeks to mobilize evangelicals around environmental issues. He was previously the national organizer and spokesman for Young Evangelicals for Climate Action, another group devoted to mobilizing young evangelicals on climate issues. His book, “Following Jesus in a Warming World: A Christian Call to Climate Action,” will be published by the evangelical InterVarsity Press this month.The two leaders came together for a conversation, conducted in November over a video call, about collaborating with secular leaders, talking to Christians about climate change and capitalizing on being, as Mr. Wallis put it, a “critical minority.”Mr. Wallis was speaking from his office in Washington, D.C., where he is the founding director of the Center on Faith and Justice at Georgetown University, where he is also the chair of faith and justice at the McCourt School of Public Policy. Mr. Meyaard-Schaap joined the call from Grand Rapids, Mich., where lives with his wife and two young sons.This conversation has been condensed and edited.Rachelle BakerHow did you settle on the issues you’ve devoted your careers to?JIM WALLIS For years I was a student activist but not a religious person. We organized, marched in Washington, marched to the Capitol there in Lansing and then were attacked by right-wing groups and all of that. I guess I never quite got shed of Jesus, even though I left the church and they left me. I was studying — like everybody else those days — Marxism, anarchism. My conversion text was the 25th chapter of Matthew, called the “It Was Me” text. “It was me,” Jesus says. “I was hungry, it was me. I was thirsty, I was naked, a stranger, sick, in prison. How you treat them, the least of these, is how you treat me.”That was more radical than Karl Marx and Che Guevara. And so I signed up.KYLE MEYAARD-SCHAAP I grew up in a pretty conservative Christian home. I never really remember calling ourselves evangelicals. But I do remember this overwhelming assumption of ideological and political sameness. When I was in the fifth grade, it was during the 2000 election between Bush and Gore, and we did a mock election at the school where everybody wrote down their choice for president. All day, none of us could pay attention to any of the lessons. The vote came out to like 96, 97 percent Bush, 3 percent Gore. And everybody said, Who the heck voted for Al Gore? It was just inconceivable that a Christian could vote for Al Gore.RUTH GRAHAM Was it you?MEYAARD-SCHAAP No, it certainly wasn’t!You know, we recycled. But if the truck didn’t pick it up at the curb, I don’t know if we would have done that either. I don’t remember derision, necessarily, around climate change or environmentalism. Growing up, what I mostly remember was silence.Key Insights From ‘Taking the Lead’Card 1 of 7Conversations about leadership. More

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      Can Trump Count on Evangelicals in 2024? Some Leaders Are Wavering.

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      The former president, who relied on evangelical voters in 2016, has accused Christian leaders of “disloyalty” and blamed them for Republicans’ disappointing midterm performance.On Sunday, the Rev. Robert Jeffress, a longtime supporter of Donald J. Trump who has yet to endorse his 2024 White House bid, shared the stage at his Dallas megachurch with one of the former president’s potential rivals next year: former Vice President Mike Pence.The next day, Mr. Trump lashed out at Pastor Jeffress and other evangelical leaders he spent years courting, accusing them of “disloyalty” and blaming them for the party’s disappointing performance in the 2022 midterm elections.While Pastor Jeffress shrugged off the criticism, others weren’t as eager to let it slide, instead suggesting that it was time for Mr. Trump to move out of the way for a new generation of Republican candidates.The clash highlighted one of the central tensions inside the Republican Party as it lurches toward an uncertain 2024 presidential primary: wavering support for Mr. Trump among the nation’s evangelical leaders, whose congregants have for decades been a key constituency for conservatives and who provided crucial backing to Mr. Trump in his ascent to the White House.If these leaders break with Mr. Trump — and if evangelical voters follow, which is by no means a certainty — the result will be a tectonic shift in Republican politics.“When I saw his statement, I thought, ‘You’re not going to gain any traction by throwing the most loyal base under the bus and shifting blame,’” said Bob Vander Plaats, an influential evangelical activist in Iowa and the chief executive of the Family Leader organization.Mr. Vander Plaats said that while evangelicals were grateful to Mr. Trump for his federal judicial appointments and for moving the United States Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, many thought that his time as leader of the party has passed given how hardened many Americans’ views of him are. Asked whether Mr. Trump would command support among evangelical leaders as he did in the past, Mr. Vander Plaats, who has criticized Mr. Trump in the past, said, “No way.”Indeed, recent polls point to some Trump fatigue among Republican voters. But it is an open question whether evangelical voters will abandon him if prominent Christian ministers support other candidates. And Mr. Trump has previously had an ability to cleave various types of conservative voters from their longtime leaders, as he did during his unexpected Republican primary victory in 2016.In a New York Times/Siena College poll in October, before the midterm elections, nearly half of Republican voters said that they preferred someone other than Mr. Trump to be the party’s 2024 presidential nominee. But the same poll showed that 54 percent of evangelical voters said they planned to support him.President Donald J. Trump in 2017 with Robert Jeffress, an influential evangelical pastor and longtime Trump supporter. Mr. Jeffress has not endorsed Mr. Trump’s candidacy for president in 2024.Pool photo by Olivier DoulieryA spokesman for Mr. Trump declined to comment. Paula White, the televangelist who led Mr. Trump’s evangelical advisory board while he was president, could not be reached for comment.Politics Across the United StatesFrom the halls of government to the campaign trail, here’s a look at the political landscape in America.2023 Races: Governors’ contests in Kentucky, Louisiana and Mississippi and mayoral elections in Chicago and Philadelphia are among the races to watch this year.Democrats’ New Power: After winning trifectas in four state governments in the midterms, Democrats have a level of control in statehouses not seen since 2009.G.O.P. Debates: The Republican National Committee has asked several major TV networks to consider sponsoring debates, an intriguing show of détente toward the mainstream media and an early sign that the party is making plans for a contested 2024 presidential primary.An Important Election: The winner of a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court in April will determine who holds a 4-to-3 majority in a critical presidential battleground state.Since his first campaign, Mr. Trump has considered the evangelical movement a crucial piece of his constituency. He was helped by a relationship that his lawyer and fixer at the time, Michael D. Cohen, had with the Rev. Jerry Falwell Jr., then the president of Liberty University.Mr. Trump tapped Mr. Pence to be his running mate in 2016 in part to assure wary evangelicals that a New York businessman could be trusted to keep his campaign promises.Many evangelicals set aside their skepticism of Mr. Trump’s sometimes scandalous behavior and focused on a long list of policy pledges from the candidate, a thrice-married reality television star. In one memorable moment, Mr. Falwell celebrated his 2016 endorsement of Mr. Trump by posing for a picture with him in front of a Trump Tower office wall that included a framed copy of a 1990 Playboy cover featuring the brash real estate developer.The uneasy alliance between Mr. Trump and evangelical leaders showed signs of strain during an interview he gave with Real America’s Voice, a right-wing streaming and cable network..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-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve 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.Asked about Pastor Jeffress’s neutrality in the 2024 race, Mr. Trump said he did not care, then declared that it was “a sign of disloyalty.” The former president pointed to the Supreme Court ruling last year overturning the federal right to an abortion — a decision led by three of Mr. Trump’s appointees — and said he was “a little disappointed” in some evangelical leaders who “could have fought much harder” during the midterms.“A lot of them didn’t fight or weren’t really around to fight,” Mr. Trump said. “And it did energize the Democrats, but a lot of the people that wanted and fought for years to get it, they sort of — I don’t know — they weren’t there protesting and doing what they could have done.”Mr. Trump’s interviewer, David Brody, who is also a longtime commentator for the Christian Broadcasting Network, appeared to sense the potential effect Mr. Trump’s comments could have on evangelical voters. He told the former president that some anti-abortion activists had taken exception to being blamed for midterm losses.“Do you want to clear that up at all?” Mr. Brody asked.Mr. Trump doubled down.“It’s sort of what I explained to you,” he said. “I just didn’t see them fighting during this last election — fighting for victory for people that were on the same side as all of us.” He added, “The only rallies were the rallies I gave.”In reality, Mr. Trump, a former Democrat who once called himself supportive of abortion rights, has often been uncomfortable discussing the issue, going back to his 2016 campaign. He privately viewed the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade as problematic for Republicans, and he rarely spoke about abortion during his 2022 campaign rallies.Mr. Vander Plaats suggested that Republicans’ failure to win control of the Senate in November was due in part to Mr. Trump’s support for candidates like Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania, who did not make abortion a central focus of his candidacy.“Having an instinct to go after a very loyal base that you’re going to need in the Iowa caucuses, in the Republican primary, that’s just a bad instinct or it’s really bad advice,” Mr. Vander Plaats said, adding that “it’s time to turn the page” and put Mr. Trump’s movement behind another candidate.Mr. Trump’s political future may be complicated by multiple investigations into his conduct, both before he was a candidate in 2016 and his efforts to thwart the peaceful transfer of power after he lost in November 2020. Even if those investigations close without actions being taken against him, evangelical leaders and voters may have several other Republican options. One of them is Mr. Pence, a longtime evangelical who has visited churches in various states and has been outspoken in support of the Supreme Court’s abortion ruling. Another is Mike Pompeo, who served as secretary of state and C.I.A. director under Mr. Trump. There is also Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who a number of donors are hoping will enter the race.Marc Short, a top adviser to Mr. Pence and his former chief of staff, suggested that faith leaders recognized that the former vice president “is one of them.” He said that Mr. Trump “confuses their appreciation for what he did” in office with “their commitment to Christ and their congregations, first and foremost.”Ralph Reed, the founder of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, a conservative advocacy group, said Mr. Trump was right to be frustrated about the political response from conservatives after the Supreme Court’s decision in the abortion case, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.Democrats had a plan to attack Republicans over the ruling, Mr. Reed said, while Republicans struggled to mount a political defense.Ralph Reed, the founder of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, said that on abortion, Republicans must “have a plan, get on offense and portray the Democrats as the extremists.”Nicole Craine for The New York Times“Too many Republican candidates tried to stick their heads in the sand, ignore the Dobbs decision and talk singularly about inflation and gas prices, with predictable results,” Mr. Reed said.“Trump is correct that if the party is going to succeed in 2024 and beyond, it has to own this,” he added. “We’ve got to have a plan, get on offense and portray the Democrats as the extremists.”Pastor Jeffress said in an interview that he did not view Mr. Trump’s comments as a personal attack. The pastor of a 16,000-member church, Pastor Jeffress was one of the few political veterans who anticipated the sea change in conservative politics six years ago and was one of Mr. Trump’s early, prominent endorsers.But, even now, he is hedging his bets in his neutrality.After telling Newsweek in November that he was withholding an endorsement because “the Republican Party is headed toward a civil war that I have no desire or need to be part of,” Pastor Jeffress said on Wednesday that he had not endorsed a 2024 candidate in part because Mr. Trump had not asked.Pastor Jeffress predicted that evangelicals would eventually coalesce around Mr. Trump, who, he said, “is most likely going to be the 2024 nominee.”“I just don’t see the need for an endorsement right now — not because of any lack of enthusiasm for President Trump, but I think keeping my powder dry might be the best thing for the president,” Pastor Jeffress said. “Timing is everything, and I think it might be a little early to do that.” More

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      ¿Trump o DeSantis? Los evangélicos hispanos entre dos opciones

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      Aunque Donald Trump es el único republicano que ha anunciado su candidatura a la presidencia, el gobernador de Florida también es un contendiente posible. Un enfrentamiento entre los dos podría hacer que los evangélicos latinos emitan un voto determinante.MIAMI — El gobernador de Florida, Ron DeSantis, todavía no ha anunciado que contenderá a la presidencia. Pero entre los bloques de electores de derecha que lo apoyan para que participe en las elecciones primarias de 2024 se encuentran algunos de sus más grandes seguidores: los cristianos evangélicos hispanos.No es que se opongan al expresidente Donald Trump, el único republicano que ya se ha declarado candidato. Pero un enfrentamiento entre los dos titanes de la derecha podría hacer que los evangélicos latinos emitan un voto pendular determinante en Florida, lo cual potenciaría su influencia y centraría una enorme atención nacional en sus iglesias, su política y sus valores.“Si hay elecciones primarias, no hay duda de que habrá fragmentación en el movimiento conservador y de que eso será cierto también para los evangélicos hispanos”, dijo el reverendo Samuel Rodriguez, pastor en Sacramento, California, y presidente de la Conferencia Nacional de Liderazgo Cristiano Hispano. “Conocemos los valores que mantenemos y las políticas que queremos. La pregunta que surge es: ¿quién los reflejará de verdad?”.El grupo de Rodriguez celebró una reunión el mes pasado en Tampa, Florida, con cientos de pastores de todo Estados Unidos, donde los asistentes dijeron que entre cada sesión se hablaba más de política que de las Escrituras.La conversación se resumía a una elección: ¿Trump o DeSantis?Son pocos quienes ya tienen una respuesta, lo que no es sorprendente, dado que falta más de un año para las primeras votaciones de la campaña de 2024. Pero hablar de 2024 (de Trump, quien pasó años cortejando a los evangélicos, y de DeSantis, quien se ha inclinado por las batallas culturales que atraen a muchos cristianos conservadores) mostró tanto las mayores expectativas entre los líderes evangélicos hispanos en Florida como su deseo de demostrar la fuerza de su cristianismo, ahora abiertamente politizado.“Tiene que ver con la moral y hay un partido en este momento que refleja nuestra moral”, dijo Dionny Báez, un pastor de Miami que encabeza una red de iglesias. “No podemos tener miedo de recordarle a la gente que tenemos valores por los que los republicanos están dispuestos a luchar. Tengo la responsabilidad de dejar claro en qué creemos. No podemos seguir haciendo de eso un tabú”.Desde hace mucho tiempo, los evangélicos hispanos han tenido una influencia enorme en Florida, donde los latinos conforman casi un 27 por ciento de la población y el 21 por ciento de los ciudadanos que pueden votar. Aunque los superan los hispanos que son católicos romanos, los evangélicos son mucho más proclives a votar por republicanos. En general, los votantes hispanos en el estado favorecieron a los republicanos por primera vez en décadas en las elecciones de medio mandato de noviembre.DeSantis se fue acercando a los evangélicos hispanos a medida que aumentaba su perfil a nivel nacional.Cuando el año pasado promulgó una ley que prohíbe los abortos después de las 15 semanas de gestación, lo hizo en Nación de Fe, una enorme iglesia evangélica hispana en el condado de Osceola. Declaró el 7 de noviembre, un día antes de las elecciones de medio mandato, como el “Día de las Víctimas del Comunismo”, lo cual hacía referencia no solo a los cubanos en el estado, sino a los inmigrantes venezolanos y nicaragüenses, que han contribuido a llenar los bancos de las iglesias evangélicas de Florida. Sus asesores de campaña hablaron en varias ocasiones con pastores hispanos, para cultivar un apoyo que muchos esperan que DeSantis intente capitalizar en una campaña presidencial.Claro que Trump también puede recurrir a sus leales: Rodriguez habló en su toma de posesión en 2017 y otros líderes evangélicos hispanos lo respaldaron.Simpatizantes latinos de Trump en un mitin en Miami en noviembre. Desde el ascenso político del expresidente en 2016, los republicanos han ganado terreno entre los votantes latinos en Florida.Scott McIntyre para The New York TimesPero DeSantis podría complicar la ecuación en las futuras elecciones primarias republicanas en 2024 debido a la concentración y considerable influencia de los evangélicos hispanos en Florida. Muchos ven a DeSantis como un héroe de la pandemia, ya que lo elogian porque no exigió el cierre de las iglesias ni hizo obligatoria la vacunación.Una batalla por las lealtades evangélicas hispanas solo consolidaría aún más su importancia en Florida y más allá, a medida que se organicen y traten de ejercer el poder con mayor eficacia.En Miami y otros lugares, las iglesias evangélicas hispanas abarcan desde pequeños establecimientos comerciales hasta megaiglesias con bandas de seis músicos y cafeterías con todos los servicios. Ciudadanos estadounidenses de segunda y tercera generación rezan junto a inmigrantes recién llegados de Puerto Rico, Venezuela, Cuba y la República Dominicana. Las misas suelen celebrarse en español, aunque muchos fieles son bilingües y desean que sus hijos hablen inglés y español.Muchos no votaron sino hasta la última década y su primer voto fue por Trump en 2016 o 2020. Su estilo político ha servido de modelo para algunos pastores evangélicos latinos que han avivado la ira por las restricciones del coronavirus. Según los pastores, la asistencia a las iglesias aumentó durante la pandemia.En Segadores de Vida, una iglesia evangélica en Southwest Ranches, al oeste de Fort Lauderdale, donde más de 6000 fieles asisten a los servicios dominicales, el reverendo Ruddy Gracia ha subido al púlpito para criticar las restricciones de la pandemia que cerraron iglesias en otros estados y para menospreciar las vacunas contra la COVID-19, exhortando a los congregantes a confiar en la inmunidad divina.En una entrevista, Gracia dijo que sus prédicas sobre política habían atraído a más miembros, muchos de los cuales, añadió, compartían sus dudas sobre el rumbo económico, político y espiritual de Estados Unidos.“Los principios de los liberales en Estados Unidos son malos según las normas bíblicas, no según mis normas —la Biblia—, y eso antes no era así”, dijo Gracia. “Somos ultraconservadores. Así que cada vez que subimos al púlpito o hablamos, en realidad estamos hablando de política”.Gracia, quien emigró de la República Dominicana cuando era joven y ahora tiene 57 años, se describe a sí mismo como “anticuado” en sus ideas sobre el liderazgo, y pasa tiempo leyendo sobre emperadores y generales famosos. Eso influyó en sus opiniones sobre DeSantis y Trump, dijo.“Siempre he sido un gran admirador de las agallas y de ser agresivo, y ambos tienen ese comportamiento de verdadero líder”, dijo, reflexionando en voz alta sobre si los dos rivales republicanos podrían presentarse en una candidatura conjunta. “Veo en estos dos hombres un empuje y una tensión que son extremadamente necesarios en el tipo de mundo en el que vivimos hoy”.Daniel Garza, director ejecutivo de Libre, un grupo conservador centrado en los hispanos, dijo que había asistido a iglesias evangélicas de todo el país y se había dado cuenta de que los pastores hablaban de manera más abierta de política desde el púlpito. “Siempre hemos tenido una familiaridad, pero lo que vemos ahora es una especie de intimidad que no se había visto en el pasado”, dijo.Los evangélicos siguen siendo una minoría entre el electorado latino, pero las encuestas muestran que son mucho más propensos a votar por republicanos que los católicos o aquellos que no tienen una afiliación religiosa, aunque no son un bloque monolítico de votantes.A menudo están más abiertos a relajar algunas normas migratorias que los líderes republicanos e incluso algunos de los que apoyaron a Trump se desanimaron por sus mensajes antiinmigrantes.Báez celebró un bullicioso servicio en la iglesia H2O de Miami. “Tiene que ver con la moral y hay un partido en este momento que refleja nuestra moral”, dijo en una entrevista.Saul Martinez para The New York TimesCuando Trump comenzó su acercamiento a los evangélicos en su campaña de reelección de 2020, lo hizo en el Ministerio Internacional el Rey Jesús, una enorme congregación hispana de Miami. El pastor de la iglesia, Guillermo Maldonado, aseguró a sus miembros, entre los que hay un gran número de inmigrantes indocumentados de Centroamérica y el Caribe, que no tenían que ser ciudadanos estadounidenses para asistir al mitin.Algunos líderes evangélicos hispanos sienten escalofríos ante la idea de que el grupo represente un bloque de voto unificado que favorezca automáticamente a los republicanos. Los evangélicos hispanos son más proclives a elegir a los demócratas que los evangélicos blancos, señalan. Aun así, incluso esos líderes se muestran entusiastas a la hora de describir al grupo como un voto indeciso por excelencia que no está totalmente comprometido con ninguno de los dos partidos.“Ser evangélico no es una denominación política”, dijo Gabriel Salguero, pastor en Orlando que dirige la Coalición Nacional Evangélica Latina y mantiene sus preferencias políticas en privado por una cuestión de principios. “Se trata de nuestra fe en Cristo y nuestro compromiso con el Evangelio. Así que no ponemos nuestra confianza en la política, pero deberíamos participar”.En todo el país, muchos líderes evangélicos hispanos han adoptado hablar más explícitamente de política en sus sermones.Báez, pastor de la red de iglesias, evitó durante años cualquier mención a la política cuando su púlpito estaba en Filadelfia. Consideraba que su papel en aquel momento estaba por encima de la política. Incluso, rara vez votaba.Pero desde que se mudó a Florida en 2019 y comenzó una nueva congregación que se reúne en un antiguo club nocturno en el centro de Miami, casi nunca duda en hablar sobre temas políticos.Báez bautizando a una integrante de la iglesia durante un servicio en H20 Miami. Después de evitar la política durante muchos años, dijo, ahora rara vez duda en hablar del tema.Saul Martinez para The New York TimesBáez ha contado a los feligreses su decisión de dejar de permitir que sus hijos pequeños vean películas de Disney. Dijo que la compañía había ido demasiado lejos en su apoyo a los derechos de las personas trans, y aplaudió la ley aprobada el año pasado por DeSantis y los republicanos del estado que restringe la instrucción en las aulas sobre orientación sexual e identidad de género.Báez también se ha opuesto abiertamente a las escuelas que educan a los niños sobre la identidad de género.“Ningún profesor debería hablar a los niños pequeños sobre la sexualidad; déjame a mí como padre hacer eso”, dijo, y agregó que se dio cuenta por primera vez de la cuestión durante los debates de la llamada ley de los baños hace años. “Nos hemos pasado a las opiniones extremas al respecto. Tenemos que respetar a los padres, no imponer un punto de vista”.Cada domingo, Báez celebra un bullicioso servicio en H2O Miami, como se conoce a la iglesia, con cientos de personas reunidas alrededor de mesas para cantar junto a una banda de rock cristiano, levantando las manos en señal de alabanza. Cuando terminan los servicios, de dos horas de duración, los feligreses se abrazan y se reúnen al borde del escenario para pedir a Báez y a su esposa que pongan sus manos sobre ellos en oración.Al igual que otros líderes evangélicos hispanos, Báez cuenta con un gran número de fieles simpatizantes tanto en Estados Unidos como en América Latina y casi un millón de seguidores en las redes sociales. Aparece con frecuencia en la televisión en español, por lo general centrándose en mensajes optimistas de esperanza en lugar de menciones explícitas a Jesús o a los valores conservadores.“Hay una razón por la que la mayoría de los latinos son liberales: es lo que ven en la televisión”, dijo mientras desayunaba en el jardín de su casa en Miramar, un suburbio a media hora al norte de Miami. “Queremos dar una visión alternativa a eso”.Jennifer Medina es una reportera de política estadounidense y cubre las actitudes políticas y el poder con énfasis en el oeste de Estados Unidos. Originaria del sur de California, ha pasado varios años cubriendo la región para la sección Nacional. @jennymedina More

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      Hispanic Evangelical Leaders Ask: Trump or DeSantis?

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      In Florida, where Hispanic evangelicals carry outsize influence, many of their pastors view the budding 2024 rivalry as a sign of the potency of their unabashedly politicized Christianity.MIAMI — Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida hasn’t announced he’s running for president yet. But among the right-leaning voting blocs that are pulling for him to enter the 2024 primary field are some of his biggest fans: Hispanic evangelical Christians.It’s not that they’re opposed to the one Republican who has already declared himself a candidate, former President Donald J. Trump. But a showdown between the two titans of the right wing could turn Latino evangelicals into a decisive swing vote in Florida — supercharging their influence and focusing enormous national attention on their churches, their politics and their values.“If there is a primary, there’s no doubt there will be fragmentation in the conservative movement, and there’s total certainty that will be true of Hispanic evangelicals as well,” said the Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, a pastor in Sacramento, Calif., and the president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference. “We know the values we keep and the policies we want. The question that arises is, who will really reflect those?”Mr. Rodriguez’s group held a gathering last month in Tampa, Fla., with hundreds of pastors from across the country, where attendees said the hallways buzzed between sessions with more chatter about politics than about Scripture.Much of it, they said, came down to a choice: Trump or DeSantis?Few have settled on an answer yet, not surprisingly given that the first votes of the 2024 campaign are over a year away. But the talk of 2024 — of Mr. Trump, who spent years courting evangelicals, and of Mr. DeSantis, who has leaned into the cultural battles that appeal to many conservative Christians — showed both the heightened expectations among Hispanic evangelical leaders in Florida and their desire to demonstrate the potency of their now unabashedly politicized Christianity.“It is about morals, and there is one party right now that reflects our morals,” said Dionny Báez, a Miami pastor who leads a network of churches. “We cannot be afraid to remind people that we have values that the Republicans are willing to fight for. I have a responsibility to make clear what we believe. We can no longer make that taboo.”Hispanic evangelicals have long had outsize influence in Florida, where Latinos make up roughly 27 percent of the population and 21 percent of eligible voters. Though they are outnumbered among Hispanics by Roman Catholics, evangelicals are far more likely to vote for Republicans. Overall, Hispanic voters in the state favored Republicans for the first time in decades in the midterm elections in November.Mr. DeSantis has courted Hispanic evangelicals assiduously as his national profile has risen.When he signed a law last year banning abortions after 15 weeks, he did so at Nación de Fe, a Hispanic evangelical megachurch in Osceola County. He declared Nov. 7, the day before the midterm election, as “Victims of Communism Day,” appealing not just to Cubans in the state, but also immigrants from Venezuela and Nicaragua, who have helped swell the pews of evangelical churches in Florida. His campaign aides frequently spoke with Hispanic pastors, cultivating support that many expect Mr. DeSantis to try to capitalize on in a presidential campaign.Of course, Mr. Trump, too, can call upon loyalists: Mr. Rodriguez spoke at his inauguration in 2017, and other Hispanic evangelical leaders endorsed him.Latino supporters of Mr. Trump at a rally in Miami in November. Since the former president’s political ascent in 2016, Republicans have made gains among Latino voters in Florida.Scott McIntyre for The New York TimesBut Mr. DeSantis could complicate the equation in a potential 2024 Republican primary because of Hispanic evangelicals’ concentration and considerable sway in Florida. Many view Mr. DeSantis as a hero of the pandemic, praising him for not requiring churches to shut down or instituting vaccine mandates.What to Know About Donald Trump TodayCard 1 of 4Donald J. Trump is running for president again, while also being investigated by a special counsel. And his taxes are an issue again as well. Here’s what to know about some of the latest developments involving the former president:Tax returns. More

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      The Empty Gestures of Disillusioned Evangelicals

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      There have been encouraging signs lately of influential evangelicals inching away from Donald Trump.The Washington Post last month quoted a self-pitying essay by Mike Evans, a former member of Trump’s evangelical advisory board, who wrote: “He used us to win the White House. We had to close our mouths and eyes when he said things that horrified us.” Religion News Service reported that David Lane, the leader of a group devoted to getting conservative Christian pastors into office, recently sent out an email criticizing Trump for subordinating his MAGA vision “to personal grievances and self-importance.” On Monday, Semafor quoted Bob Vander Plaats, a prominent Christian conservative activist in Iowa, saying that evangelicals weren’t sure that Trump could win.Even Robert Jeffress, a Dallas televangelist whom Texas Monthly once described as “Trump’s Apostle,” is holding off on endorsing him again, telling Newsweek that he doesn’t want to be part of a Republican civil war.Because I see the ex-president as a uniquely catastrophic figure — more likely to lose in 2024 than the current elite Republican favorite Ron DeSantis, but also more likely to destroy the country if he prevails — I’ve eagerly followed the fracturing of his evangelical support. But Russell Moore, the editor in chief of Christianity Today, told me he doesn’t yet take evangelical distancing from Trump seriously. After all, he pointed out, we’ve been in a similar place before.At the start of Trump’s first campaign for president, few important evangelical figures backed him. “What changed was an increase in the number of grass-roots evangelical voters who started to support Donald Trump,” Moore said. “It’s not that the leaders embrace a candidate and therefore their followers do. It’s really the reverse.”Moore is the rare evangelical leader who has consistently opposed Trump, a stance that nearly cost him his former job as president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention. (He left the Convention in 2021 over its handling of sexual abuse and white nationalism in the church.) Moore suspects that if the base of the Christian right, which over the last six years has forged a quasi-mystical connection with the profane ex-president, decides to stick with Trump, the qualms of their would-be leaders will evaporate. “I just don’t read a lot into reluctance anymore, because I’ve seen reluctance that immediately bounces back, after ‘Access Hollywood,’ for instance, or after Jan. 6,” said Moore.What matters, then, are the sentiments of ordinary evangelicals. A recent survey by the Public Religion Research Institute found right-leaning white evangelical voters closely divided in their Republican primary preferences: 49 percent want Trump to be the nominee, while 50 percent want someone else. But Moore thinks most rank-and-file evangelicals aren’t focused on presidential politics yet, so it’s too soon to know which direction they’ll go.The last six years, said Moore, has changed the character of conservative evangelicalism, making it at once more militant and more apocalyptic — in other words, more Trump-like. For some people, Trump may even be the impetus for their faith: a Pew survey found that 16 percent of white Trump supporters who didn’t identify as born-again or evangelical in 2016 had adopted those designations by 2020.“I see much more dismissal of Sermon on the Mount characteristics among some Christians than we would have seen before,” Moore said, referring to Jesus’ exhortation to turn the other cheek and love your enemies. There is instead, Moore said, “an idea of kindness as weakness.” Pastors have spoken to Moore about getting blowback from their congregants for preaching biblical ideas about mercy, with people saying, “That doesn’t work anymore, in a culture as hostile as this.”Russell Moore, editor in chief of Christianity Today, says he doesn’t yet take evangelical distancing from Donald Trump seriously.Melissa Golden/ReduxMeanwhile, said Moore, some of those inspired by Jesus’ radical compassion are leaving the church. There have always been evangelicals who become disillusioned, said Moore, often because they “didn’t believe in the supernatural anymore, or couldn’t accept moral teachings of the church anymore.” But now, he said, “I find more and more young evangelicals who think the church itself is immoral.” Speaking of the new, pro-Trump recruits to evangelicalism, Moore said, “If the trade-off is getting more of them and losing some of the really best of our young people because they’re associating Jesus with this, that’s not a good trade.”The trade, of course, is much like the one the Republican Party made in choosing to subordinate itself to Trump. Contrary to Evans’s lament, no one had to close his mouth and eyes. The Republicans chose to because they wanted power, and their critique now is largely about power lost.I spoke to Moore before Trump called for the “termination” of the Constitution but after he’d dined with two of America’s most virulent antisemites. I asked if that meeting had been a turning point for any Christian Trump supporters. It’s landing, he said, only with “people who already had concerns about Trump.” The born-again Trump critics are mostly just worried about whether he can get elected, which is one reason he still can.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