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      Today’s Top News: Trump Gets a Trial Date, and More

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      The New York Times Audio app is home to journalism and storytelling, and provides news, depth and serendipity. If you haven’t already, download it here — available to Times news subscribers on iOS — and sign up for our weekly newsletter.The Headlines brings you the biggest stories of the day from the Times journalists who are covering them, all in about 10 minutes. Hosted by Annie Correal, the new morning show features three top stories from reporters across the newsroom and around the world, so you always have a sense of what’s happening, even if you only have a few minutes to spare.Former President Donald J. Trump faces federal and state investigations in New York, Georgia and Washington.Doug Mills/The New York TimesOn Today’s Episode:An Update on Tropical Storm IdaliaJudge Sets Trial Date in March for Trump’s Federal Election Case, with Glenn ThrushA.I. Comes to the U.S. Air Force, with Eric LiptonEli Cohen More

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      State attorney says DeSantis fired her because she was ‘prosecuting their cops’

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      An elected Democratic prosecutor whose removal Ron DeSantis boasted about during the first Republican presidential debate said the hard-right Florida governor and his allies ousted her because she was “prosecuting their cops”.Law enforcement agencies in central Florida were “all working against me”, Monique Worrell told the Daily Beast, “because I was prosecuting their cops, the ones who used to do things and get away with them”.She added: “They thought that I was overly critical of law enforcement and didn’t do anything against ‘real criminals’. Apparently there’s a difference between citizens who commit crimes and cops who commit crimes.”DeSantis has long polled second to Donald Trump in national and key state surveys of the Republican primary but he remains far behind, most observers saying his campaign is stalling.In Florida, he has removed two elected Democratic prosecutors: Andrew Warren of Hillsborough county in August 2022 and Worrell earlier this month.Warren said he would not enforce an abortion ban signed by the governor. The prosecutor sued to regain his job but has so far failed, even though a judge found DeSantis to be in the wrong.Worrell previously responded to her removal by calling DeSantis a “weak dictator” seeking to create a “smokescreen for [a] failing and disastrous presidential campaign”.In his debate-stage boast in Wisconsin last week, DeSantis blamed “hollowed-out cities … a symptom of America’s decline” on “radical leftwing district attorneys [who] say they’re not going to prosecute crimes they disagree with”.“There’s one guy in this entire country that’s ever done anything about that,” he said. “Me, when we had two of these district attorneys in Florida … who said they wouldn’t do their job, I removed them from their post. They are gone and as president we are going to go after all of these people.”Speaking to the Beast, in a report published on Monday, Worrell said an “ambush” by the governor’s law enforcement allies preceded the decision to fire her, including a recorded call in which the Orlando county sheriff complained about a failure to jail a known gang member who was caught with a gun.Worrell told the site: “They took him into custody – without a warrant. Went into his pants pocket – without a warrant. Clicked key fob – without warrant. Went in [to his car] – without warrant.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“There’s this little thing called ‘unreasonable search and seizure’ and you can’t get evidence without a warrant. We were unable to go forward with charges because it was an illegal search and seizure. And we had lots of communication with the sheriff’s office about this case, trying to salvage the case.“As the state attorney, we’re not here to rubber-stamp what the sheriff’s office does. We can’t condone that.”Worrell also told the Beast that at the time she was fired, for what DeSantis called “neglect of duty and incompetence”, her team was uncovering “all sorts of illegal activity” in an investigation of the Osceola county sheriff.Saying she would soon decide whether to sue to get her job back, Worrell also said she was planning to run for re-election next year – a race which would likely pit her against DeSantis’s hand-picked replacement. More

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      DeSantis Confronts Jacksonville Shooting and Storm Idalia in Florida

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      A racially motivated shooting and an impending storm provide the most serious tests of Mr. DeSantis’s leadership since he began running for president in May.For the first time since declaring his bid for the Republican nomination, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida is facing a crisis in his home state.Well, not one crisis, but two.On Saturday, a gunman motivated by racial hatred killed three people at a Dollar General store in Jacksonville. All the victims were Black. The shooter was white. And on Wednesday, a major storm is projected to strike somewhere along Florida’s Gulf coast, the first to hit the state during the 2023 hurricane season.After the shooting, Mr. DeSantis flew back to Tallahassee from a campaign trip to Iowa. He then canceled a visit to South Carolina scheduled for Monday, citing the storm and sending his wife, Casey DeSantis, in his place. He has said he will stay in Florida for the storm’s duration and aftermath.“This is going to be our sole focus,” Mr. DeSantis said on Monday at a news conference at the state’s emergency operation center in Tallahassee.The twin crises provide the most serious tests of Mr. DeSantis’s leadership since he began running for president in May. On the stump, he often cites his track record as governor as his biggest advantage over his rivals, almost none of whom hold executive office. He has also criticized President Biden for his response to the wildfires that devastated Maui.But the emergencies have pulled Mr. DeSantis off the trail at a time when his campaign had seemed to stabilize after weeks of layoffs and upheaval among his staff, as well as a debate performance that drew strong reviews from many Republican voters.Both the shooting and the storm could further spotlight criticisms that rival candidates have made of Mr. DeSantis’s stewardship of Florida since being elected as governor in 2018. After clashes on a number of race-related issues, including the way African American history is taught in schools, his relationship with Florida’s Black community is so strained that he was loudly booed when he appeared at a vigil for the shooting victims in Jacksonville on Sunday.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida was booed and heckled when he spoke at a vigil for three people killed in an attack where officials say a white gunman targeted Black people inside a Jacksonville, Fla., store.John Raoux/Associated PressMr. DeSantis has also struggled with the state’s property insurance market, a long-running problem that the governor has repeatedly tried to address with legislation. The market has been so battered by high costs that Mr. DeSantis said in July that he would “knock on wood” for no big storm to hit Florida this year.Mr. DeSantis’s opponents, including former President Donald J. Trump and Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, have used the issues to criticize him.A spokesman for the DeSantis campaign said the governor’s response to the shooting and the storm demonstrated “the strong leadership in times of crisis that Americans can expect from a President DeSantis.”“In the face of the tragedy in Jacksonville and the impending major hurricane, Ron DeSantis is focused on leading his state through these challenging moments,” Bryan Griffin, the campaign’s press secretary, said in a statement. “He’s now at the helm of Florida’s hurricane response and is working with local officials across the state to do everything necessary to ensure Florida is fully prepared.”Mr. DeSantis said in an afternoon news conference that he had spoken to Mr. Biden and the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.Partly because of extreme weather, Florida homeowners have seen their property insurance costs rise more than those in any other state since 2015. Some major insurers have pulled out of the market, although smaller ones have entered. Last year, Mr. DeSantis called a special legislative session to address property insurance. But he has warned that fixing the troubled market will take time.Last month, Mr. Trump urged the governor to leave the campaign trail and “get home and take care of insurance.”Hurricanes traditionally provide an opportunity for Florida governors to demonstrate their strength and leadership. Mr. DeSantis has faced several major storms, as well as the fatal collapse of a condominium in Surfside, since taking office.Last year, Hurricane Ian killed 150 people in Florida, making it the state’s most deadly hurricane in decades and raising questions about why local officials had not issued evacuation orders earlier. On the trail, Mr. DeSantis frequently talks about his efforts to rebuild the state after the storm, including quickly repairing bridges and causeways to islands that had been cut off.On Sunday, Mr. DeSantis received a starkly negative reception when he attended a vigil for the victims of the shooting in Jacksonville, which has a large African American population.His administration has come under repeated fire for rejecting the curriculum of an Advanced Placement African American studies class and rewriting African American history courses, something that Mr. Scott, who is Black, has criticized.After the crowd in Jacksonville booed Mr. DeSantis when he tried to speak, a city councilwoman stepped in and asked people to listen. He was booed again when he finished.On Monday, Mr. DeSantis announced that he would award $1 million through the Volunteer Florida Foundation to bolster campus security at Edward Waters University, the historically Black university near the Dollar General store that the gunman attacked. He also said that the foundation, a tax-exempt state commission focused on community service projects, would donate $100,000 to the families of the victims.State Representative Angie Nixon, who represents Jacksonville, called the shooting “a stark reminder of the dangerous consequences of unchecked racism” and criticized Mr. DeSantis for “empty gestures” and “publicity stunts.”“Our historically Black institutions have faced an uphill battle for decades, and I invite DeSantis to go back through unfilled budget requests and line-item vetoes to begin to provide the funding they’ve needed for years. For it to take murder for him to dig in his overflowing coffers for support is appalling,” she said.In April, Mr. DeSantis was faulted for not visiting Fort Lauderdale, which strongly leans Democratic, after damaging flooding there. Since officially announcing his 2024 bid in May, Mr. DeSantis has spent several days per week out of Florida, usually meeting voters in the early nominating states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, or attending closed-door fund-raisers with donors.Mr. DeSantis’s campaign has seemed to steady in recent days thanks in part to his performance in the first Republican primary debate last week in Milwaukee that Mr. Trump, the front-runner who is leading Mr. DeSantis by double digits, did not attend. The DeSantis campaign said it raised more than $1 million the next day and a snap poll of Republican voters by the Washington Post, FiveThirtyEight and Ipsos declared him the winner.On his weekend bus tour through northwest Iowa, many Republican voters said they had been impressed, particularly by how Mr. DeSantis talked about his record as governor.“DeSantis was the one who broke through,” said Cody Hoefert, a former co-chair of the Republican Party of Iowa who endorsed the governor immediately after the debate. “I want somebody who is going to lead and deliver results.” More

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      DeSantis pledges $1m to boost security at historically Black college after racist shooting

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      The Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, has announced $1m for heightened security at a historically Black college, a day after he was booed at a memorial gathering for victims of a deadly racist shooting in his state.DeSantis said his administration would give $1m to Edward Waters University to enhance its security after the gunman in this weekend’s racist killings at a Dollar General store in Jacksonville tried to enter the historically Black college but was denied entry.DeSantis said that an additional $100,000 would be given to a charity for the victims’ families.“As I’ve said for the last couple of days, we are not going to allow our HBCUs to be targeted by these people,” DeSantis said. “We’re going to provide security help with them.”DeSantis’s funding measure comes as he faces criticism for limiting Black history education in Florida, a move that many have condemned as racist.DeSantis has also come under renewed scrutiny for his support of expanded gun access in his state. The Florida governor signed legislation in April that allows resident to carry concealed guns without a permit.On Sunday, he was jeered while speaking at a memorial that drew a crowd of nearly 200 to remember the victims of the Dollar General shooting.“He don’t care,” an attendee shouted as DeSantis was being introduced, the Hill reported.At one point, a council member came to DeSantis’s defense and attempted to quiet the crowd, but the booing continued.“It ain’t about parties today,” said Jacksonville city councilwoman Ju’Coby Pittman. “A bullet don’t know a party.”DeSantis referred to the shooter as a “major-league scumbag” in his remarks, adding that Florida opposed racist violence.“What he did is totally unacceptable in the state of Florida,” DeSantis said. “We are not going to let people be targeted based on their race.”The 21-year-old gunman left behind several manifestos that invoked racist slurs, police confirmed. The rifle used in the attacks also had Nazi symbols painted on, police added.The US justice department announced Sunday that the shooting would be investigated as a hate crime.Police have confirmed that the gunman bought the weapons legally, despite being involuntarily held for a previous mental health crisis and being involved in a domestic violence case that provoked a law enforcement response, the Washington Post reported.Because neither case resulted in criminal convictions, the gunman was legally able to buy the weapons this year, sometime between April and July.“There was no criminal arrest history. There is nothing we could have done to stop him from owning a rifle or a handgun,” Jacksonville’s sheriff, TK Waters, said during a Sunday news conference.“There were no red flags.”The Jacksonville shooting is the latest act of public, racist violence against Black people after 10 were killed in a shooting at a Buffalo grocery store last year.The killer in the Buffalo case has since been given a sentence of life imprisonment. More

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      Florida shooting: ‘White supremacy has no place in US,’ Biden says after killings

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      Joe Biden declared on Sunday that “white supremacy has no place in America” after three people were killed in a racist shooting in Florida and it emerged that the gunman had been turned away from a historically Black college or university (HBCU) campus moments before opening fire at a discount store.Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, on Sunday called the gunman in the attack a “hateful lunatic” and said “we will not allow HBCUs to be targeted”.The FBI is investigating Saturday’s shooting as a hate crime after officials said the attack at a Dollar General store in Jacksonville, Florida, was racially motivated, and community leaders also expressed horror.A white man, armed with a high-powered rifle and a handgun and wearing a tactical vest and mask, entered the store just before 2pm on Saturday and shot and killed two men and one woman, before fatally shooting himself. All three victims were Black.Waters on Sunday afternoon named the victims, saying that the gunman was caught on video shooting Angela Michelle Carr, a 52-year-old woman, in her car outside the Dollar General. He then entered the store where he shot and killed 19-year-old Anolt Joseph “AJ” Laguerre Jr and Jerrald De’Shaun Gallion, 29.Sherri Onks, special agent in charge of the Jacksonville FBI office, said federal officials had opened a civil rights investigation and would pursue the incident as a hate crime.“Hate crimes are always and will always remain a top priority for the FBI because they are not only an attack on a victim, they’re also meant to threaten and intimidate an entire community,” Onks said.Waters, also on Sunday, named the gunman as Ryan Christopher Palmeter, 21, who bought his guns legally and had no criminal history. He lived with his parents in a suburb of Jacksonville and left a suicide note.Palmeter legally purchased his guns despite having been involuntarily committed for a mental health examination in 2017, the Associated Press reported.According to Waters, Palmeter purchased the weapons in April and June, and the dealer had followed all necessary laws and procedures including background checks.Because Palmeter was released after his mental health examination, it would not have appeared on his background check.Waters had already stated on Saturday that the shooter “hated Black people” and left behind “several manifestos” detailing such hatred.“The manifesto is, quite frankly, the diary of a mad man,” Waters said. “He was just completely irrational. But with irrational thoughts, he knew what he was doing. He was 100% lucid.”It emerged that Palmeter had been noticed on Saturday at a private, historically Black college, Edward Waters University (EWU), in Jacksonville, near the library. He was questioned by security there after refusing to identify himself, and turned away, EWU said in a public release. The man drove away and the university said the encounter was then reported to the Jacksonville sheriff’s office.“He had an opportunity to do violence at [Edward Waters] and did not. There were people in very close proximity,” the Associated Press reports Waters saying.EWU announced it would hold a prayer vigil on Sunday evening for the college community “particularly our students, faculty, staff, alumni, and all those impacted by yesterday’s heinous act of racial violence”.The US president, who is a moderate Democrat, issued a statement from the White House on Sunday saying that while many details about the crime were still unknown: “Even as we continue searching for answers, we must say clearly and forcefully that white supremacy has no place in America.”It continued: “We must refuse to live in a country where Black families going to the store or Black students going to school live in fear of being gunned down because of the color of their skin. Hate must have no safe harbor. Silence is complicity and we must not remain silent.”Biden also noted that the shooting had occurred on the same day as a huge demonstration in Washington DC that marked the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr’s I Have A Dream speech, which the president called “a seminal moment in our history and in our work towards equal opportunity for all Americans”.He added of Saturday: “But this day of remembrance and commemoration ended with yet another American community wounded by an act of gun violence, reportedly fueled by hate-filled animus and carried out with two firearms.”DeSantis, a candidate for president in the 2024 election on Saturday, called the shooter a “scumbag” and denounced his racist motivation, also calling him a coward for killing himself “rather than face the music”.Speaking at a press conference in Tallahassee on Sunday, DeSantis also said that he promised EWU’s president that the the state will ensure that the school has adequate security.“Perpetrating violence of this kind is unacceptable, and targeting people due to their race has no place in the state of Florida,” DeSantis added.On Sunday, the US attorney general, Merrick Garland, said that the justice department is “investigating this attack as a hate crime and an act of racially motivated violent extremism”.Speaking to CNN on Sunday morning, Arndrea Waters King, president of the progressive thinktank Drum Major Institute and the wife of Martin Luther King III, said: “Yesterday, the same day when we had almost 200,000 people gathering together to stand for democracy in our country, we saw what happens with hate.”She added: “And for a lot of people that question of why are we coming back together and how different are things from 1963, it unfortunately gave the demonstration of the work and why we are, and where we are, in 2023 compared to 1963, which is not far at all.” More

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      ‘Fighting to not be angry’: Jacksonville mourns victims killed by racist gunman

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      The pastor of a church near the site of the racist fatal shooting of three Black people in Florida told congregants Sunday to follow Jesus Christ’s example and keep their sadness from turning to rage.Jacksonville’s mayor wept. Others at the service focused on Florida’s political rhetoric and said it has fueled such racist attacks.The shooting traumatized an historically Black neighborhood in Jacksonville on Saturday as thousands visited Washington DC, to attend the Rev Al Sharpton’s 60th anniversary commemoration of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, where the Rev Martin Luther King Jr delivered his historic I Have A Dream speech.The latest in a long history of American racist killings was at the forefront of Sunday services at St Paul AME church, about 3 miles from the crime scene.“Our hearts are broken,” the Rev Willie Barnes told about 100 congregants Sunday morning. “If any of you are like me, I’m fighting trying to not be angry.”The attorney general, Merrick Garland, said Sunday that the justice department was “investigating this attack as a hate crime and an act of racially motivated violent extremism”.“No person in this country should have to live in fear of hate-fueled violence and no family should have to grieve the loss of a loved one to bigotry and hate,” he said.The Jacksonville mayor, Donna Deegan, cried as she addressed the congregation.“It feels some days like we’re going backward,” she said.“I’ve heard some people say that some of the rhetoric that we hear doesn’t really represent what’s in people’s hearts, it’s just the game. It’s just the political game,” Deegan said. “Those three people who lost their lives, that’s not a game.”The choir sang Amazing Grace before ministers said prayers for the victims’ families and the broader community. From the pews, congregants with heads bowed answered with “amen”.A masked white man carried out the shooting with at least one weapon bearing a swastika inside a Dollar General store, leaving two men and one woman dead.The shooting happened just before 2pm within a mile of Edward Waters University, a small, historically Black university. In addition to carrying a firearm painted with a symbol of Germany’s Nazi regime of the 1930s and 1940s, the shooter issued racist statements before the shooting. He killed himself at the scene.“He hated Black people,” Jacksonville Sheriff TK Waters said.At the St Paul AME church service, elected officials said racist attacks like Saturday’s have been encouraged by political rhetoric targeting “wokeness” and policies from the Republican-led state government headed by Florida governor Ron DeSantis, including one taking aim at the teaching of Black history in Florida.“We must be clear, it was not just racially motivated, it was racist violence that has been perpetuated by rhetoric and policies designed to attack Black people, period,” said state representative Angie Nixon, a Jacksonville Democrat and one of several elected officials to speak during the church service.“We cannot sit idly by as our history is being erased, as our lives are being devalued, as wokeness is being attacked,” Nixon said. “Because let’s be clear – that is red meat to a base of voters.”Professor David Jamison, who teaches history at Edward Waters, attended St Paul AME Church on Sunday morning with four students from the university. The Rev Barnes acknowledged them from the pulpit.“These young men, they were within feet of their lives being taken,” Barnes told the congregation. “And we’re grateful God spared their lives.”The four students declined to speak with reporters after church. The pastor didn’t elaborate on what happened to them, and Jamison said he didn’t know details.“They’re overwhelmed,” the professor said, “and thankful to be alive.”Rudolph McKissick, a national board member of the Rev Al Sharpton’s National Action Network, Baptist bishop, and senior pastor of the Bethel church in Jacksonville, was in Jacksonville on Saturday when the shooting occurred in the historically Black New Town neighborhood.“Nobody is having honest, candid conversations about the presence of racism,” McKissick said.DeSantis, who spoke with the sheriff by phone from Iowa while campaigning for the Republican presidential nomination, called the shooter a “scumbag”.“This guy killed himself rather than face the music and accept responsibility for his actions. He took the coward’s way out,” DeSantis said.McKissick, the Jacksonville pastor, was one of those saying that DeSantis’s politics were contributing to racial tensions in Florida.“This divide exists because of the ongoing disenfranchisement of Black people and a governor, who is really propelling himself forward through bigoted, racially motivated, misogynistic, xenophobic actions to throw red meat to a Republican base,” McKissick said.Past shootings targeting Black Americans include one at a Buffalo, New York, supermarket in 2022 and a historic African Methodist Episcopal church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015.The Buffalo shooting, which killed 10 people, stands apart as one of the deadliest targeted attacks on Black people by a lone white gunman in US history. The shooter was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. More

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      The Story Behind DeSantis’s Anecdote About an ‘Abortion Survivor’

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      Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida has been retelling Miriam Hopper’s 1955 birth story. The details are jarring, highly unusual and unverifiable.Ron DeSantis wanted to dodge a debate question about a six-week federal abortion ban. So the Florida governor pulled out a personal story, one that had recently become part of his pitch to voters on the need for greater regulation of abortion rights.“I know a lady in Florida named Penny,” he said. “She survived multiple abortion attempts. She was left discarded in a pan. Fortunately, her grandmother saved her and brought her to a different hospital.” He then pivoted to attack Democrats for their abortion “extremism.”The jarring anecdote caught the attention of viewers on social media, who speculated that Mr. DeSantis was fabricating the story.But Penny does exist. Mr. DeSantis’s campaign says the governor has met her. She is Miriam Hopper, who goes by Penny and is an anti-abortion activist who lives in Florida and calls herself an “abortion survivor.”The details of Ms. Hopper’s birth in 1955 are impossible to verify. But at least one prominent obstetrician noted that medical advances and practices had changed so dramatically in the nearly seven decades since then that her story had little relevance for the current debate about abortion rights and policy. At the time of her birth, abortion was illegal. Even an attempted abortion could have resulted in fines and imprisonment for a provider.Ms. Hopper did not return a call for comment this week. But she told her story in an online video posted by Protect Life Michigan, an anti-abortion advocacy group. The video, part of a broader campaign, was posted in September 2022 amid a campaign against a ballot initiative that would enshrine abortion rights in Michigan’s Constitution. So-called abortion survivors have been a staple of the anti-abortion movement for years, frequently appearing in campaign ads and testifying on Capitol Hill in favor of federal abortion bans.According to Ms. Hopper, her mother sought medical care at a clinic in central Florida in 1955 because of bleeding and other complications. She was 23 weeks pregnant, right at the outer edge of when a fetus is considered able to survive outside the womb. The doctor who examined Ms. Hopper’s mother said he could not hear a heartbeat. He induced labor, she said.“You do not want this baby to live — if it lives, it will be a burden on you all of your life,” Ms. Hopper says the doctor told her parents before instructing a nurse to discard the baby — “dead or alive.”Ms. Hopper said she had weighed one pound 11 ounces at her birth. The nurse “placed me in a bedpan on the back porch of the clinic,” she said. When her grandmother and aunt arrived, they found Ms. Hopper. Her grandmother called the police. A nurse helped take Ms. Hopper to a hospital in Lakeland, Fla., where she survived several bouts of pneumonia.Ms. Hopper’s mother, aunt, father and grandmother have died. It does not appear that the incident was covered in news reports.After an extended stay, Ms. Hopper went home and had a “great life.” She married her high school sweetheart, had two children of her own and has seven grandchildren. “Life has value, and all lives matter,” she said, at the end of the video.In a 2013 interview with the Florida radio station WFSU, conducted in the middle of a statehouse debate over new abortion restrictions, Ms. Hopper said that her story was based on what she had been told by her family. She said that her father, raised during the Great Depression, did not want another child and that she suspected a botched abortion had sent her mother to the hospital with the complications.Diane Horvath, an obstetrician and gynecologist who performs abortions until 34 weeks at a clinic in Maryland, said it was difficult to parse Ms. Hopper’s account.“There’s a lot of parts of this story that don’t make sense to me,” she said, noting that 68 years ago, physicians had lacked the current-day technologies to keep very premature babies alive.In the 1950s, death was “virtually ensured” when an infant was delivered at or before 24 weeks of gestation, according to a report published in 2017 by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine.By contrast, a study conducted last year by a team of neonatologists found that nearly 56 percent of infants who are born at 23 weeks survive — if they receive aggressive treatment in a neonatal intensive care unit.Even if Ms. Hopper’s story is accurate, it’s not particularly germane to a discussion of current abortion practices or regulations, Dr. Horvath said.“It doesn’t represent the reality of medical practice at this moment,” she said. “It’s not really relevant to what we should be talking about when we talk about access to abortion.”Fewer than 1 percent of abortions occur after 21 weeks’ gestation, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Such procedures are generally difficult to receive, with only a limited number of facilities offering them.The Republican presidential primary debate wasn’t the first time Mr. DeSantis had told a version of this story. He debuted the narrative last weekend at a town hall in Nashua, N.H., amid a shift in his messaging that was meant to evoke a more personal touch.The moment came in response to a question from a voter who described himself as a “traditional Catholic” and asked Mr. DeSantis, who has signed a six-week abortion ban in Florida and has tried to dodge questions on whether he supports a similar ban nationwide, how he would “protect the life of the unborn.”Mr. DeSantis said he had met “Penny” in person in central Florida, and then launching into a similar version of the story he told on Wednesday night, including the details about Ms. Hopper’s grandmother and the pan, and trying to paint Democrats as the extremists on abortion.“You know, that’s a very callous thing to happen,” Mr. DeSantis said. Most Democratic officeholders say the government should not legislate such decisions and should leave them to a woman and her doctor.Ryan Tyson, a top DeSantis campaign adviser, said the governor was making an effort to talk more about the people he had encountered on the trail. His campaign did not provide details about the circumstances of his meeting with Ms. Hopper.“He’s out there — he’s meeting people,” Mr. Tyson said in an interview after the debate. “He’s hearing their stories as he gets across the country. And I think that’s why you saw he had a moment there, because it does take a toll on you.” More

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      The First Big Stop on the Campaign Trail

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      Republican candidates face off tonight in Milwaukee. Times reporters will be watching and writing.Times Insider explains who we are and what we do and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.The 2024 presidential campaign revs up tonight in Milwaukee, where eight Republican candidates, none of them former President Donald J. Trump, will meet onstage to debate and explain to voters why they believe they should be the party’s standard-bearer.But Nicholas Nehamas has been on the campaign trail since April, when he joined The New York Times as a campaign reporter with a focus on Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida. After spending nine years at The Miami Herald, most recently as an investigative reporter, political reporting is still new to him.“The beat requires being very fast, not only in writing and reporting, but also seeing what’s new,” he said.In a phone interview from Milwaukee, Mr. Nehamas explained how he has prepared to cover his first presidential debate for The Times and why debates are important markers during a long campaign. This conversation has been edited.For voters, a presidential debate is an opportunity to see many of the candidates in one place. For the candidates, it gives them an opportunity to resonate in the public eye. As a reporter, what are you watching for?I think what reporters are looking at is not that dissimilar to what voters are looking at. We’ve all seen these candidates give their stump speech. We’ve seen them interact with voters. We’ve seen them go to the Iowa State Fair. But we haven’t seen them in this pressure cooker environment, where they are dealing with one another and answering tough questions on a national stage. They have to project a kind of strength and confidence and belief in their message while under fire. I think that is really important for someone who wants to be president of the United States.How did you prepare for the debate, and what will you do during it and immediately after?The preparation is in trying to get as best a sense as we can of what the candidates want to accomplish. I cover Ron DeSantis, primarily. So I’ve been talking to his supporters and aides to try and get a sense of what they’re expecting and their strategy.During the debate, I’ll be participating in a live chat with a bunch of colleagues from the Politics team. After, we will take a step back and look at who did well, which questions received interesting answers and which questions people stumbled on. What did voters think?Then I go to Iowa, where Governor DeSantis is doing a bus tour over the next couple of days.You’ve been covering Governor DeSantis’s campaign for The Times, and before that you covered him as a reporter at the Miami Herald. Have you seen any change in his approach to politics since he announced he was running for president?It seemed to me, from having covered the governor in Florida and now on the national stage, that he brought a very Florida approach to the beginning of this campaign. And by that I mean, in Florida, you can win an election with TV advertisements, basically. It’s a huge state. Iowa and New Hampshire aren’t like that. You have to meet voters. You have to take voter questions. You need to talk to the media. When DeSantis started running for president, he really wasn’t doing any of that. He was just traveling around and giving big stump speeches. His campaign said, Well, that’s the way he’s going to introduce himself to the country.I think what the campaign found is that voters in Iowa and New Hampshire wanted to ask him questions. They wanted to get more of an interactive sense of him, to see how he dealt with retail politics. So his campaign has very much shifted to that more traditional approach.You just described the difference in campaign styles required for a national politician. Does reporting on campaign politics have to vary, too?Absolutely. In Florida, people are very familiar with Governor DeSantis, who’s on the local news almost every night. Writing about him for a national audience requires a much broader view. You have to put everything in context, how what he said today differs from what he said a year ago. How a new policy he’s proposing fits into his history. There are people around the country who have seen his name in headlines who don’t know much about him. For a national audience, you have to start with the basics of who he is, where he comes from, what he believes and how he fits into today’s modern Republican Party.Are you ready for life on the campaign trail for at least the next 10 to 12 months?I definitely signed up for an experience, and it’s great. I’m seeing parts of the country that I’ve never been to, talking to people that I never would have met otherwise. I live in South Florida, which I love. I definitely miss spending time there, but I’ve got my routine down pretty well at this point. My carry-on bag is always ready to go with gym shorts, sneakers and snacks. I’m starting to adjust to life on the road.It’s also a reminder of how grueling a presidential campaign is for all the people involved. It’s a way of life. It’s a real commitment, which, of course, it should be. More