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      Trump faces more charges in classified documents case as second aide named

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      Federal prosecutors on Thursday expanded the indictment against Donald Trump for retaining national security documents and obstructing the government’s efforts to retrieve them, unveiling new charges against him and an employee over an attempt to destroy surveillance footage.The new charges – filed by the special counsel Jack Smith in Florida – were outlined in a superseding indictment that named Mar-a-Lago club maintenance worker Carlos De Oliveira as the third co-defendant in the case. Trump’s valet Walt Nauta was previously indicted for obstruction with the former president last month.Trump’s legal exposure in the classified documents case grew after he was accused of attempting to destroy evidence and inducing someone else to destroy evidence, as well as an additional count under the Espionage Act for retaining a classified document about US plans to attack Iran that he discussed on tape at his Bedminster club in New Jersey.The expanded indictment added a new section titled “The Attempt to Delete Security Camera Footage” that alleged in detail how Trump engaged in a scheme with Nauta and De Oliveira to wipe a server containing surveillance footage that prosecutors subpoenaed which showed boxes of classified documents being removed from the storage room.According to the indictment, Trump seemingly instructed Nauta to unexpectedly travel to Mar-a-Lago to have the tapes destroyed. Nauta then enlisted the help of De Oliveira, and they walked to a security booth where the camera angles were displayed on monitors before walking down to the cameras and pointing them out with flashlights.The following week, De Oliveira asked the director of IT at Mar-a-Lago, described as “Trump Employee 4” but understood to be Yuscil Taveras, how long surveillance footage was stored for and then told him “the boss” wanted the server deleted.When the director of IT replied that he did not know how to delete the server and suggested De Oliveira ask the security supervisor at the Trump Organization, De Olivera again insisted that “the boss” wanted the server deleted, the indictment said.De Oliveira’s lawyer did not immediately respond to a request for comment.For months, prosecutors in the office of the special counsel have viewed the surveillance footage at Mar-a-Lago as key to the case because it showed Nauta removing boxes of classified documents out of the storage room just before Trump’s lawyer was scheduled to search for any classified documents after receiving a subpoena.The close detail about the scheme to delete the server added to the evidence of Trump’s alleged efforts to obstruct the criminal investigation by concealing classified documents from that Trump lawyer, Evan Corcoran.Trump asked Corcoran something to the effect of “What happens if we just don’t respond at all?” and “Wouldn’t it be better if we just told them we don’t have anything here?”, according to Corcoran’s notes that prosecutors obtained during the investigation.Ordinarily off limits to prosecutors, the notes came before the Washington grand jury hearing evidence in the case after a US appeals court pierced the attorney-client privilege Trump would otherwise have and ordered Corcoran to turn them over.Corcoran then told Trump that he would return on 2 June 2022 to look in the Mar-a-Lago storage room for documents. In the intervening period, the indictment said, Trump instructed Nauta to remove boxes containing classified documents from where Corcoran intended to search.Corcoran recounted in his notes that Trump also made a “funny motion” when they were discussing whether Corcoran should take the 38 documents back with him to his hotel. As Corcoran described it, Trump seemed to indicate he should “pluck” any documents that were “bad”, without saying it explicitly.The former president faces more than three dozen total charges in the case, including more than 30 violations of the Espionage Act. His trial is set for May 2024, at the end of the Republican presidential primary contest in which Trump is currently the frontrunner.A Trump spokesperson said the new charges were “nothing more than a continued desperate and flailing attempt” by the Biden administration “to harass President Trump and those around him”.The case is one of many compounding legal troubles that Trump faces as he vies for the Oval Office again. He faces possible additional indictments in Washington over his role in the January 6 insurrection and in Georgia over his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. In April, he was charged with 34 felony counts related to a hush-money scheme involving the adult film star Stormy Daniels. In May, a jury found Trump liable for sexually abusing and defaming writer E Jean Carroll.In Fulton county, Georgia, a decision is expected shortly from prosecutor Fani Willis on whether to charge Trump over a phone call in which he attempted to push Georgia’s secretary of state to “find” him enough votes to win the 2020 election. More

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      DeSantis’s Campaign Reboot Faces Donor Skepticism and Deepening Divisions

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      As the Florida governor reboots in Iowa, tensions still plague the highest levels of his operation and a supportive super PAC.On the day his presidential campaign said it had laid off more than a third of its staff to address worries about unsustainable spending, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida began his morning by boarding a private jet to Chattanooga, Tenn.The choice was a routine one — Mr. DeSantis and his wife, Casey, haven’t regularly flown commercial for years — but also symbolic to close observers of his struggling presidential campaign. As Mr. DeSantis promises a reset, setting out on Thursday on a bus tour in Iowa to show off a leaner, hungrier operation, several donors and allies remained skeptical about whether the governor could right the ship.Their bleak outlook reflects a deep mistrust plaguing the highest levels of the DeSantis campaign, as well as its supporters and the well-funded super PAC, Never Back Down, bolstering his presidential ambitions.Publicly, the parties are projecting a stoic sunniness about Mr. DeSantis, even as he has sunk dangerously close to third place in some recent polls. They have said they are moving into an “insurgent” phase in which the candidate will be everywhere — on national and local media, and especially in Iowa.But privately, the situation is starkly different.Major Republican donors, including the hedge fund billionaire Kenneth Griffin, have remained on the sidelines because they are disappointed in his performance and his campaign, according to two people familiar with their thinking.DeSantis donors have specifically raised concerns about the campaign’s finances, which appear both troubling and persistently opaque. Some prominent vendors did not show up on the first Federal Election Commission report, raising questions about how much of the spending has been deferred and whether the campaign’s total reported cash on hand for the primary — $9.2 million — was even close to accurate.The campaign’s concerning financial situation prompted an all-hands review of the budget in recent weeks. This review extended to James Uthmeier, the chief of staff in the governor’s office and a longtime trusted aide. Mr. Uthmeier recently received a personal briefing on the campaign’s finances from an official, Ethan Eilon, with the blessing of campaign manager Generra Peck, and then delivered an assessment to the governor, according to two people briefed on the conversations.Asked about the briefing, Mr. Uthmeier responded by email to express strong confidence in Ms. Peck, who he said had “welcomed” him to help the campaign as a volunteer. He added that Mr. DeSantis “continues to receive support from tens of thousands” of donors and that he has “full confidence” in Mr. DeSantis’s “vision to beat Joe Biden and restore sanity.”In an attempt to assuage donors’ anxieties, Mr. DeSantis’s allies have promised a campaign pivot that includes a more open press strategy, humbler travel conditions and smaller events. Advisers say the governor will be promoting his vision for a “Great American Comeback” — a phrase they hope will also apply to his spiraling campaign. Mr. DeSantis, a big-state governor with little love for glad-handing, will have to prove he is up for the challenges.On Thursday, Mr. DeSantis began a two-day bus tour across central Iowa that is being organized almost entirely by the super PAC, Never Back Down. Announcements for the three meet-and-greet stops scheduled describe Mr. DeSantis as the “special guest.”In talking points provided to donors on the day of the layoffs, the campaign described the operation as “leaning into the reset.”“We will embrace being the underdog and use the media’s ongoing narrative about the campaign to fuel momentum on the ground with voters,” said the guidance.On Tuesday, the campaign confirmed it had fired 38 campaign officials this month in an attempt to shrink its payroll. It remains unclear how many of those are leaving the DeSantis orbit. Some have discussed joining nonprofit groups with close ties to Mr. DeSantis’s political operation, including one linked to Phil Cox, who was an adviser on the governor’s 2022 campaign.Among the known DeSantis vendors that did not show up on his first campaign filing are some companies — Ascent Media and Public Opinion Strategies — that are part of a consultancy umbrella group called GP3, in which Mr. Cox is a key financial partner. Mr. Cox, who has worked closely with some of the 2024 campaign leadership in the past and also spent a brief stint advising the super PAC, is now back informally involved with the DeSantis campaign and raising money.But Mr. DeSantis himself has yet to adopt his campaign’s newfound frugality. On Tuesday, he flew multiple trips on private planes to fund-raisers around Tennessee. The private flights help explain part of how the campaign has burned through cash in its first six weeks. His campaign’s first report showed that he had spent $179,000 in chartered plane costs, as well as $483,000 to a limited liability company for “travel.”On Thursday outside a small meat-processing facility in Lamoni, Iowa, Mr. DeSantis briefly addressed his use of private planes in response to a question from a reporter.“We do things based on R.O.I. and that’s on everything you do,” Mr. DeSantis said, using the acronym for “return on investment,” a business term. “If it’s not a good R.O.I., then we try something else.” He did not answer later when asked what return he was getting on flying private instead of commercial, as other candidates in the race are doing.Some of Mr. DeSantis’s rivals have been eager to point out their cost-saving measures. On Wednesday, Nikki Haley tweeted a photo with her flight attendant under the hashtag #WeFlyCommercial.What’s more, Mr. DeSantis and other parts of his operation showed little sign of a message shift.In an interview with the radio host Clay Travis that aired Wednesday, Mr. DeSantis said that he would consider picking Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a conspiracy theorist and anti-vaccine candidate running as a Democrat, to work at the F.D.A. or the C.D.C. The stunning remark prompted criticism from some prominent conservative writers, including at The National Review, where staff had once sounded bullish on a DeSantis candidacy.Later in the day, Mr. DeSantis’s campaign aide Christina Pushaw, who is known for fighting with reporters online, attacked the popular Republican Florida Representative Byron Donalds, who is Black, for criticizing his state’s new required teachings on slavery. By night’s end, the feud over Mr. Donalds devolved to the point where another DeSantis aide, Jeremy Redfern, got into a fight with a random Twitter user and posted her photo prominently in a tweet.At a donor retreat over the weekend — at a luxury ski resort in Park City, Utah, hired out for $87,000 — donors and allies, including Representative Chip Roy of Texas, had tough conversations with both the governor and his wife, a close adviser, about the structure and management of the campaign, according to two people who attended the retreat.Asked whether the congressman voiced concerns to Mr. DeSantis, Mr. Roy issued a statement saying only, “It’s not the campaign that needs to change; it’s the direction of our country. Governor DeSantis and his whole team are committed to doing just that.” His spokesman did not respond to a follow-up question.Much of the rancor stems from the strained but increasingly intertwined relationship between Mr. DeSantis’s campaign and his super PAC. Having raised $130 million, the super PAC has vastly more money than the campaign and has taken over basic campaign functions, including its voter contact operation — a highly unusual extent of involvement.The two entities — essentially a traditional campaign and a shadow one — are prohibited from coordinating strategy in private, but the campaign has aired its differences through a leaked memo. Ms. Peck, the campaign manager who has a close relationship with the governor and his wife, recently sent a memo to donors that appeared to call into question the super PAC’s decision to save money by staying off the airwaves in New Hampshire. The super PAC has since reserved airtime in the state, with advertising set to begin next week.Ms. Peck also has harshly criticized Never Back Down in private, according to a person with direct knowledge of her remarks.In response to questions about the distrust across the DeSantis orbit, the campaign’s communications director, Andrew Romeo, dismissed “palace intrigue.”“Our campaign is laser-focused on electing Ron DeSantis president, and we are nothing but grateful for groups like Never Back Down that are also working to support this mission,” he said.Erin Perrine, a spokeswoman for Never Back Down, declined to comment.On Tuesday night, only hours after the announcement of the layoffs, Mr. DeSantis returned to Tallahassee on a private plane.Back at his campaign headquarters, some staff members who hadn’t been fired brought in cases of beer to rally spirits after yet another dispiriting day. One staffer sarcastically described the evening to a friend as “the survivors party.”Nicholas Nehamas More

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      The Steep Cost of Ron DeSantis’s Vaccine Turnabout

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      On a Saturday in September 2020, with Covid-19 killing more than 600 Americans daily and hundreds of thousands of deaths still to come, Dr. Deborah L. Birx, a member of the White House coronavirus task force, heard her cellphone ring. It was Dr. Scott Rivkees, the Florida surgeon general. He was distraught.“‘You won’t believe what happened,’” she said he told her. Months before Covid vaccines would become available, Gov. Ron DeSantis had decided that the worst was over for Florida, he said. Mr. DeSantis had begun listening to doctors who believed the virus’s threat was overstated, and he no longer supported preventive measures like limiting indoor dining.Mr. DeSantis was going his own way on Covid.Nearly three years later, the governor now presents his Covid strategy not only as his biggest accomplishment, but as the foundation for his presidential campaign. Mr. DeSantis argues that “Florida got it right” because he was willing to stand up for the rights of individuals despite pressure from health “bureaucrats.” On the campaign trail, he says liberal bastions like New York and California needlessly traded away freedoms while Florida preserved jobs, in-person schooling and quality of life.But a close review by The New York Times of Florida’s pandemic response, including a new analysis of the data on deaths, hospitalizations and vaccination rates in the state, suggests that Mr. DeSantis’s account of his record leaves much out.As he notes at most campaign stops, he moved quickly to get students back in the classroom, even as many of the nation’s school districts were still in remote learning. National research has suggested there was less learning loss in school districts with more in-person instruction.Some other policies remain a matter of intense debate. Mr. DeSantis’s push to swiftly reopen businesses helped employment rebound, but also likely contributed to the spread of infections.But on the single factor that those experts say mattered most in fighting Covid — widespread vaccinations — Mr. DeSantis’s approach proved deeply flawed. While the governor personally crusaded for Floridians 65 and older to get shots, he laid off once younger age groups became eligible.Tapping into suspicion of public health authorities, which the Republican right was fanning, he effectively stopped preaching the virtues of Covid vaccines. Instead, he emphasized his opposition to requiring anyone to get shots, from hospital workers to cruise ship guests.Vaccination Rates From January to July 2021 More

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      DeSantis Faces Swell of Criticism Over Florida’s New Standards for Black History

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      In one benchmark, middle schoolers would learn that enslaved Americans developed skills that “could be applied for their personal benefit.”After an overhaul to Florida’s African American history standards, Gov. Ron DeSantis, the state’s firebrand governor campaigning for the Republican presidential nomination, is facing a barrage of criticism this week from politicians, educators and historians, who called the state’s guidelines a sanitized version of history.For instance, the standards say that middle schoolers should be instructed that “slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit” — a portrayal that drew wide rebuke.In a sign of the divisive battle around education that could infect the 2024 presidential race, Vice President Kamala Harris directed her staffers to immediately plan a trip to Florida to respond, according to one White House official.“How is it that anyone could suggest that in the midst of these atrocities that there was any benefit to being subjected to this level of dehumanization?” Ms. Harris, the first African American and first Asian American to serve as vice president, said in a speech in Jacksonville on Friday afternoon.Ahead of her speech, Mr. DeSantis released a statement accusing the Biden administration of mischaracterizing the new standards and being “obsessed with Florida.”Florida’s new standards land in the middle of a national tug of war on how race and gender should be taught in schools. There have been local skirmishes over banning books, what can be said about race in classrooms and debates over renaming schools that have honored Confederate generals.Mr. DeSantis has made fighting a “woke” agenda in education a signature part of his national brand. He overhauled New College of Florida, a public liberal arts college, and rejected the College Board’s A.P. course on African American studies. And his administration updated the state’s math and social studies textbooks, scrubbing them for “prohibited topics” like social-emotional learning, which helps students develop positive mind-sets, and critical race theory, which looks at the systemic role of racism in society.With Mr. DeSantis and Mr. Biden now both official candidates in the 2024 campaign, each side quickly accused the other of pushing propaganda onto children.Florida’s rewrite of its African American history standards comes in response to a 2022 law signed by Mr. DeSantis, known as the “Stop W.O.K.E. Act,” which prohibits instruction that could prompt students to feel discomfort about a historical event because of their race, sex or national origin.The new standards seem to emphasize the positive contributions of Black Americans throughout history, from Booker T. Washington to Zora Neale Hurston.Fifth graders are expected to learn about the “resiliency” of African Americans, including how the formerly enslaved helped others escape as part of the Underground Railroad, and about the contributions of African Americans during westward expansion.The teaching of positive history is important, said Albert S. Broussard, a professor of African American studies at Texas A&M University who has helped write history textbooks for McGraw Hill. “Black history is not just one long story of tragedy and sadness and brutality,” he said.But he saw some of Florida’s adjustments as going too far, de-emphasizing the violence and inhumanity endured by Black Americans and resulting in only a “partial history.”“It’s the kind of sanitizing students are going to pick up,” he said. “Students are going to ask questions and they are going to demand answers.”The Florida Department of Education said the new standards were the result of a “rigorous process,” describing them as “in-depth and comprehensive.”“They incorporate all components of African American History: the good, the bad and the ugly,” said Alex Lanfranconi, the department’s director of communications.One contested standard states that high school students should learn about “violence perpetrated against and by African Americans” during race massacres of the early 20th century, such as the Tulsa Race Massacre. In that massacre, white rioters destroyed a prosperous Black neighborhood in Tulsa, Okla., and as many as 300 people were killed.By saying that violence was perpetrated not just against but “by African Americans,” the standards seem to grasp at teaching “both sides” of history, said LaGarrett King, the director of the Center for K-12 Black History and Racial Literacy Education at the University at Buffalo.But historically, he said, “it’s just not accurate.”By and large, historians say, race massacres during the early 1900s were led by white groups, often to stop Black residents from voting.That was the case in the Ocoee Massacre of 1920, in which a white crowd, incensed by a Black man’s attempt to vote, burned Black homes and churches to the ground and killed an unknown number of Black residents in a small Florida town.Geraldine Thompson, a Democratic state senator who pushed to require Florida schools to teach the massacre, said she was not consulted in the formation of the new standards, though she holds a nonvoting role on the Commissioner of Education’s African American History Task Force.She said she would have objected to the standards as “slanted” and “incomplete.” She questioned, for instance, why more emphasis was not placed on the history of African people before colonization and enslavement.“Our history doesn’t begin with slavery,” she said in an interview. “It begins with some of the greatest civilizations in the world.”The Florida standards were created by a 13-member “work group,” with input from the African American history task force, according to the Florida Department of Education.Two members of the work group, William Allen and Frances Presley Rice, released a statement responding to critiques of one of the most dissected standards, depicting enslaved African Americans as personally benefiting from their skills.“The intent of this particular benchmark clarification is to show that some slaves developed highly specialized trades from which they benefited,” they said, citing blacksmithing, shoemaking and fishing as examples.“Any attempt to reduce slaves to just victims of oppression fails to recognize their strength, courage and resiliency during a difficult time in American history,” they said. “Florida students deserve to learn how slaves took advantage of whatever circumstances they were in to benefit themselves and the community of African descendants.”Florida is one of about a dozen states that require the teaching of African American history.Other states with such mandates include South Carolina, Tennessee, New York and New Jersey.The state mandates date back decades — Florida’s was passed in 1994 — and often came in response to demands from Black residents and educators, said Dr. King, at the University at Buffalo.“There is a legacy of Black people fighting for their history,” he said.But for as long as Black history has been taught, he said, there has been debate about which aspects to emphasize. At times, certain historical figures and story lines have emerged as more palatable to a white audience, Dr. King said.“There is Black history,” he said. “But the question has always been, well, what Black history are we going to teach?”Zolan Kanno-Youngs More

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      Judge to consider Trump request to delay classified documents trial

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      The federal judge presiding over Donald Trump’s classified documents case was scheduled on Tuesday afternoon to hear arguments from prosecutors and the former president’s lawyers about whether to delay the criminal trial until 2024 in Fort Pierce, Florida.The pre-trial conference before US district court judge Aileen Cannon is also expected to address the protective order outlining the release of classified documents to the Trump legal team in discovery that prosecutors want to use at trial.Prosecutors in the office of special counsel Jack Smith, who is overseeing the documents case and the investigation into Trump’s efforts to obstruct the transfer of power, asked Cannon in court filings last week to reject Trump’s request to indefinitely delay scheduling a trial date.The dueling requests from Trump and the justice department present an early test for Cannon, a Trump appointee who is under scrutiny after previously issuing favorable rulings to the former president during the criminal investigation before her decisions were overturned on appeal.The consequences of such a delay could be far-reaching. If the case is not adjudicated until after the 2024 election, in which Trump is the frontrunner for the Republican nomination and is re-elected, he could try to pardon himself or direct the attorney general to have prosecutors drop the case.Trump was charged last month with retaining national defense information, including US nuclear secrets and plans for US retaliation in the event of an attack, which means his case will be tried under the rules laid out in the Classified Information Procedures Act, or Cipa.The statute was passed in the 1980s to protect the government against the “graymail” problem in national security cases, a tactic where the defense threatens to reveal classified information at trial, betting that the government would prefer to drop the charges rather than risk disclosure.While Cipa established a mechanism through which the government can safely charge cases involving classified documents, the series of steps that have to be followed means it takes longer to get to trial compared with regular criminal cases without national security implications.Trump and his co-defendant, his valet Walt Nauta, have pleaded not guilty.The first step is the section 2 hearing scheduled for 2pm. According to the Justice Manual, the informal handbook for prosecutors, the judge is required to set a timetable for the classified discovery and deadlines for the defense to announce what classified materials they want to use.Ahead of the pre-trial conference, Trump’s lawyers Todd Blanche and Chris Kise argued in court filings that Cannon should not bother setting a tentative trial date until the major pre-trial motions were finished because they could not know how long classified discovery might take.The Trump legal team also claimed that going to trial before the 2024 presidential election – prosecutors have outlined a schedule for a trial date in December – would be unrealistic because of supposed challenges in selecting an impartial jury.In their reply last week, prosecutors took aim at Trump’s arguments for an indefinite delay, rejecting the claims that the charges touched on novel legal issues or that the discovery process was uniquely complex“The defendants are, of course, free to make whatever arguments they like for dismissal,” the prosecutors wrote. “But they should not be permitted to gesture at a baseless legal argument, call it ‘novel,’ and then claim the court will require an indefinite continuance.”The filing took particular issue with the Trump lawyers’ suggestion that any trial should be delayed until after the 2024 election because of the supposed difficulty in selecting an impartial jury.“To be sure, the government readily acknowledges that jury selection here may merit additional protocols (such as a questionnaire) that may be more time-consuming than in other cases, but those are reasons to start the process sooner rather than later,” prosecutors wrote. More

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      DeSantis reduces staff as campaign struggles to meet fundraising goals – report

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      Florida governor and 2024 Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis has reduced campaign staff as his campaign has struggled to meet fundraising goals.Fewer than 10 staffers were laid off, according to an anonymous staffer, reported Politico. The staffers were involved in event planning and may be picked up by the pro-DeSantis super Pac Never Back Down. Two senior campaign advisers, Dave Abrams and Tucker Obenshain, left the campaign this past week to assist a pro-DeSantis nonprofit group.Sources within the campaign reported an internal assessment that the campaign hired too many staffers too early.“They never should have brought so many people on; the burn rate was way too high,” said one Republican source familiar with the campaign’s thought process to NBC News. “People warned the campaign manager but she wanted to hear none of it.”More shake-ups within the campaign are expected in the coming weeks after two months on the presidential campaign, with DeSantis still lagging substantially in second place behind former president Donald Trump.Even in DeSantis’s home state of Florida, Trump still has a 20-point lead over the governor, according to a recent Florida Atlantic University poll.“Early state voters are only softly committed to the candidates they select on a ballot question this far out – including many Trump supporters,” read an internal campaign memo obtained by NBC News as the DeSantis campaign is refocusing resources on early primary states. “Our focus group participants in the early states even say they do not plan on making up their mind until they meet the candidates or watch them debate.”The DeSantis campaign raised $20m since launching his presidential campaign, but over one-third of the donations were received during the first 10 days of his campaign, and financial fundraising data shows his campaign has been reliant on wealthy donors who have already reached their maximum permitted individual contributions. His campaign has spent significantly on a payroll of 90 staffers and fundraising efforts, including over $900,000 on merchandise, $883,000 on digital consulting, $867,000 on media placements and $730,000 on direct mail.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionDeSantis faced scrutiny this week following an investigation by the Miami Herald and Tampa Bay Times reported several veterans resigned and reported abuse within Florida’s state guard training, likening training to a militia for the civilian disaster relief force. The governor reactivated the state guard in 2022 after it had been dormant since the end of the second world war.In May, DeSantis signed a bill to expand the state guard and make it permanent, expanding the group from 400 to 1,500 members and expanding its budget from $10m to $107.6m. More

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      Trump Taunts DeSantis Onstage at Turning Point Action Conference

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      Former President Donald J. Trump taunted Gov. Ron DeSantis, his chief Republican rival, for his absence from the conservative Turning Point Action Conference.On the home turf of his chief Republican rival and in his adopted state, former President Donald J. Trump told a sprawling conservative gathering in Florida on Saturday night that it was futile for Gov. Ron DeSantis to keep battling him for the party’s presidential nomination.In a prime-time speech at the Turning Point Action Conference in West Palm Beach, Fla., Mr. Trump claimed that his polling lead over Mr. DeSantis and every other G.O.P. candidate was insurmountable, and suggested that the Florida governor should stand down for the good of the party.Mr. Trump, who leads Mr. DeSantis by roughly 30 percentage points in national polls, dismissed Mr. DeSantis’s early momentum before he officially entered the race in May as a mirage.“He was never that close, by the way,” Mr. Trump told about 6,000 grass-roots activists at the Palm Beach County Convention Center. Turning Point Action is a political arm of Turning Point USA, a pro-Trump grass-roots group focusing on millennial conservatives that was founded by Charlie Kirk.Mr. Trump seized on his rival’s absence from the two-day event, which drew about a third of the Republican presidential field as speakers.“I don’t know why he’s not here,” he said. “He should be here representing himself.”In a statement on Saturday, Bryan Griffin, the campaign press secretary for Mr. DeSantis, shrugged off Mr. Trump’s criticism.“Governor DeSantis spent the day with Iowans and spoke to a packed house at the Tennessee G.O.P. Statesman Dinner later that night,” he said. “This was a day after he delivered the strongest interview at the Family Leadership Summit, which Donald Trump notably skipped. Ron DeSantis is campaigning to win.”Mr. Trump was greeted onstage with pyrotechnics and a nearly three-minute video montage of the former president. While organizers prepared the stage for his entrance, Mr. Trump’s supporters, many in their ubiquitous red caps, watched musical performances of Elvis and Pavarotti on giant screens.Mr. DeSantis declined an invitation to speak at the end of the conference on Sunday, according to organizers, who noted that he had worked closely with Turning Point Action during the midterm elections last year and took part in several rallies that supported Trump-endorsed candidates.Mr. Trump spoke for nearly 100 minutes at the conference, meeting a warm reception from the conservative crowd of about 6,000.Saul Martinez for The New York TimesBut on the same day that Mr. DeSantis announced his campaign in May, the conservative group announced that Mr. Trump would headline its conference in Florida, perhaps miffing the host governor.The lineup of speakers on Saturday may have given Mr. DeSantis further pause. It included three Republican House members from Florida who have endorsed Mr. Trump’s candidacy: Representatives Byron Donalds, Anna Paulina Luna and Matt Gaetz.In succession, each professed their loyalty to the former president, as booming subwoofers and smoke machines added to the theatrical effect.Mr. Gaetz, the provocateur who nominated Mr. Trump for House speaker earlier this year during the G.O.P.’s protracted leadership fight, got a roar from the crowd when he said that Mr. Trump’s allies were unflinching.“Of course, we ride or die with President Donald John Trump,” he said.And when Megyn Kelly, the former Fox News commentator, dared to suggest at the event that the Republican nominating contest was probably a two-candidate race between Mr. Trump and Mr. DeSantis, several thousand activists booed.Ms. Kelly, who famously tangled with Mr. Trump in a G.O.P. debate in 2015, relented.“The vast majority of the Republican Party wants Trump,” she said, adding that Mr. Trump’s indictments had only burnished his stock with conservative voters. “We all know who the best middle-finger candidate is.”In a nearly 100-minute speech, Mr. Trump noted that Mr. DeSantis had once been his ally and had sought his endorsement in his first race for governor in 2018.“I got him elected,” he said. “He was dead. He begged me to endorse him.”Mr. Trump said that he had been taken aback when Mr. DeSantis later declined to say whether he might challenge him for the Republican nomination, using an expletive to refer to the Florida governor.Tucker Carlson, who was fired from Fox News in April, whipped the audience into a frenzy with an appearance immediately before the former president.“I don’t think most unemployed people get a reception like that,” Mr. Carlson said.Mr. Carlson doubled down on his baseless claims that voting machines had been rigged during the 2020 election and expressed sympathy for the Capitol rioters, saying that a country that squashes discussions about the electoral process was not a democracy.Vivek Ramaswamy, the multimillionaire entrepreneur running for the Republican nomination, also spoke on Saturday. Three other long-shot candidates — Asa Hutchinson, the former governor of Arkansas; Francis X. Suarez, the mayor of Miami; and Perry Johnson, a wealthy businessman from Michigan — are scheduled to speak on Sunday.So are Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trump’s onetime chief strategist who was found guilty of contempt of Congress; and Roger J. Stone Jr., the pro-Trump operative who was convicted of obstruction but had his sentence commuted by Mr. Trump. In the convention center’s lobby, Mr. Stone took selfies with Mr. Trump’s supporters.“All the cool people are here,” Mr. Carlson said. More

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      Revealed: Florida Republicans target voter registration groups with thousands in fines

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      Florida Republicans have hit dozens of voter registration groups with thousands of dollars of fines, the latest salvo in an alarming crackdown on voting in the state led by Governor Ron DeSantis.At least 26 groups have cumulatively racked up more than $100,000 in fines since September of last year, according to a list that was provided by Florida officials to the Guardian. The groups include both for-profit and nonprofit organizations as well as political parties, including the statewide Republican and Democratic parties of Florida.The fines, which range from $50 to tens of thousands of dollars, were levied by the state’s office of election crimes and security, a first-of-its-kind agency created at the behest of DeSantis in 2022 to investigate voter fraud. Voter fraud is extremely rare, and the office has already come under scrutiny for bringing criminal charges against people who appeared to be confused about their voting eligibility.Election watchdogs worry the new policies could have a chilling effect on engaging voters. There has already been a drop in voter registrations this year compared with 2019 – the last full year leading into a presidential election, according to Daniel Smith, a political science professor at the University of Florida. Through 1 June of this year, 2,430 new registrations had come from third-party voter registration organizations, he said. That’s on pace to be a sharp decrease from the 63,212 new voter registrations third-party groups submitted by the end of 2019.A crackdown on third-party voter registration groups is also likely to disproportionately affect Floridians of color, who are about five times more likely to register with third-party groups than white voters are.“The message is clear, [third-party voter registration organizations] are an endangered species in Florida. And it affects this population disparately,” said Smith, who has been retained by the plaintiffs challenging the voter registration restrictions in federal court.“When you start to ratchet down the ability for groups and their first amendment rights to petition … government by getting people registered to vote, you are going to affect that overall population of registered voters.”A ‘gross misapplication’ of the lawIn mid-May, the non-profit Hispanic Federation received a letter from the office of election crimes and security notifying it that it was being fined $7,500. Fifteen of the applications it collected were submitted to the wrong county – Polk county, in central Florida, when the voters lived elsewhere. Those 15 applications represented a tiny sliver of the more than 16,500 voter registration applications the group collected in 2022 but still resulted in a fine.Through a public records request, the Guardian reviewed several of the applications the Hispanic Federation submitted that were flagged for fines. In nearly all of them, the voter incorrectly wrote on their own applications that they lived in Polk county. In many cases, the address they listed was just over the county line in Osceola county.One voter lived just 300ft from the county line, which cut through his neighborhood. Another lived just 660ft from the county line. At least 10 voters lived within three miles of the county boundary, according to a Guardian analysis.The Hispanic Federation agreed to pay the fine, but wrote a letter to the state saying it “strongly disagreed” with the penalty and called it a “gross misapplication” of the law. The amount of $7,500 could pay the salary of about a dozen canvassers for a week, who could probably register between 350 and 400 people, the group said. The fine essentially meant that mistakes on 15 applications would make it harder to register hundreds of new voters.“Despite our good faith efforts, professionalism, and due diligence, we cannot eliminate some applications from being processed with errors as we have not been given access to an official mechanism to verify the information of each applicant – which is, in any case, not our role,” the group wrote in June.“There is no claim that we intentionally misrepresented, nor is there a claim that we diverted, such registrations from the correct county or that we held on to the registrations beyond the required period in which they were to be delivered.”The Florida department of state, which oversees the office of election crimes and security, did not return a request for comment.Frederick Vélez III Burgos, the Hispanic Federation’s national director of civic engagement, said in an interview that until the recent change in the law, the group would not have been fined. In 2021, the GOP-controlled legislature tweaked state law to require groups to turn in voter registration forms to the county where the prospective voter lived (they previously could turn them in anywhere). The lawmakers imposed steep fines for non-compliance – $500 for each form that was turned in at the wrong place.The change came after election officials complained that voter registration groups were bombarding them with applications for people outside their counties. Though the election officials could register voters regardless of where they lived, it created extra work around elections. “What would happen is [the groups] would kind of bomb different counties with a whole bunch of them. So the workload wasn’t fairly distributed,” said Lori Edwards, who serves as the supervisor of elections in Polk county.While that could cause a headache for election officials, Edwards said, “it is not among the worst offenses that third-party voter registration organizations can do.” Far worse, she said, is when groups wait too long to turn in voter registration applications until after the registration deadline, thus disfranchising the voters.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn 2022, the state legislature raised the maximum amount a group could be fined from $1,000 to $50,000. Earlier this year, it raised the cap again, to $250,000, and shortened the amount of time groups have to turn in the forms after they are filled out from 14 days to 10. Each late application carries a $50 fine. Republicans also banned non-citizens from collecting applications and barred voter registration groups from collecting contact information from people who they register, making it harder to follow up with them later (a federal judge blocked both of these provisions this month).Two groups have accounted for more than $70,000 of the fines. Hard Knocks Strategies LLC – a for-profit election canvassing organization – has been fined $47,600 since last year for turning in forms late and to the wrong county. And Poder Latinx was fined $26,000 for turning in 52 voter registration applications to the wrong county.“We’re a small voter registration organization with a long history of playing by all the rules. We had to pay the penalties in Florida to avoid even costlier litigation, but paid them without admission of wrongdoing,” Hard Knocks Strategies said in a statement.“Are voter registration organizations on the right being targeted as aggressively and frequently in Florida as those seeking to register voters of color and other underrepresented communities? Given Governor DeSantis’ track record, that question may be rhetorical.”‘I would be allowing the system to win’After getting fined, activists in Florida say they are determined not to let the penalties deter them from continuing to sign up voters.Rosemary McCoy, who runs a small non-profit called Harriet Tubman Freedom Fighters, was fined $600 for turning in a dozen applications late. She said her group does quality control on the applications it collects, reviewing the forms to make sure that they are complete and don’t have errors. If there’s a problem it can take a while to track down the applicant.McCoy said she plans to pay the fine, but it’s money that would have otherwise gone to provide stipends or a gas subsidy for volunteers.“That’s a hefty fine,” she said. “The purpose of these fines is to stop us, stop us from registering people … Someone has to get out there and register people and that’s what we do.”Regina Jackson, a Jacksonville pastor, received a notice in May that she was being fined $50 for turning in a voter registration form late. And while she wasn’t fined for it, the letter also said that the application didn’t have a mark noting the group that had collected it and the date printed in triplicate. Jackson said she had inquired about the specific form before she turned it in with the election office and had been advised it was acceptable.Jackson considered stopping registering voters altogether after receiving the letter, but had since reconsidered.“I was like, ‘You know what – I’m not doing this any more,’ she said in May, just after she got the letter. “Then I thought, ‘I would not only be hurting my community but I would be allowing the system to win.’” More