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      DeSantis Steps Up Attacks on Trump, Hitting Him on Crime and Covid

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      Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida vowed to repeal the First Step Act, a Trump-era criminal justice law, if elected president. He called it “basically a jailbreak bill.”Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida escalated his hostilities with former President Donald J. Trump on Friday, arguing that his Republican presidential rival was weak on crime and immigration, and accusing him of ceding critical decision-making during the coronavirus pandemic to Dr. Anthony S. Fauci.In an appearance with the conservative commentator Ben Shapiro, Mr. DeSantis accused Mr. Trump, the G.O.P. front-runner, of “moving left” on criminal justice and immigration issues after winning over the party’s base in 2015 and 2016.He pledged that he would repeal what is known as the First Step Act, a bipartisan criminal justice measure signed into law by Mr. Trump in 2018 that expanded early-release programs and modified sentencing laws, including mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent drug offenders.“He enacted a bill, basically a jailbreak bill,” Mr. DeSantis said. “It has allowed dangerous people out of prison who have now reoffended and really, really hurt a number of people.”This year, The New York Times reported that Mr. DeSantis and his allies saw the criminal justice bill, which Mr. Trump signed at the urging of his son-in-law Jared Kushner — and instantly regretted — as an area of political weakness, and that Mr. DeSantis had signaled he would use it in the nomination fight. The bill is unpopular with parts of Mr. Trump’s hard-core base.But for Mr. DeSantis, assailing Mr. Trump over the First Step Act is potentially complicated. Mr. DeSantis himself voted for the first version of the bill when he was in Congress, and Trump allies have sought to highlight that fact.“So now Swampy Politician Ron DeSanctimonious is claiming he voted for it before he voted against it,” Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Mr. Trump, said in a statement. “He sounds just like John Kerry. What a phony! He can’t run away from his disastrous, embarrassing, and low-energy campaign announcement. Rookie mistakes and unforced errors — that’s who he is.”(Mr. DeSantis’s allies note that the version of the bill he voted for looked significantly different, and that the final version passed when he was no longer in the House.)When Mr. Shapiro asked Mr. DeSantis about Mr. Trump’s recent criticism that crime had risen on his watch in Florida, the former president’s adopted state, Mr. DeSantis bristled and said Mr. Trump’s policies had undermined law and order.Mr. DeSantis stepped up his attacks on his onetime ally, whom he had avoided criticizing directly for months, less than 48 hours after he entered the race in a bumpy Twitter event.And as Mr. DeSantis seems to veer to the right on issues like crime, some of his campaign’s internal strategy is coming to light.At a fund-raising meeting in Miami on Thursday, donors peppered Mr. DeSantis’s top campaign staff members with questions about his policy positions and how they should be presented to other Republicans, according to a leaked audio recording posted online by the website Florida Politics.One donor raised a question about the rightward shift, to which a campaign official eventually responded, “We just got to win a primary in order to be in a general.”The donors and officials also discussed how to talk to Republicans who support abortion rights. (Mr. DeSantis last month signed a six-week abortion ban in Florida, which contains limited exceptions, while Mr. Trump has been hesitant to support a federal ban.)A staff member offered one possible answer.“Abortion is safe, legal and rare in Florida,” he said, parroting a phrase coined by former President Bill Clinton, a Democrat. “It has not been banned,” he added. “It is limited.”In his interview with Mr. Shapiro on Friday, Mr. DeSantis sought to cast himself as unwavering on illegal immigration, saying that Mr. Trump had attacked him for opposing amnesty legislation while in Congress.He also faulted Mr. Trump for his administration’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak in 2020, especially the level of influence exerted by Dr. Fauci, the longtime top infectious disease expert and face of the federal government’s pandemic response.Dr. Fauci, who retired in January, has been a frequent target of Republican attacks over issues like remote learning, stay-at-home orders and vaccine mandates.“He responded by elevating Anthony Fauci and really turning the reins over to Dr. Fauci, and I think to terrible consequences for the United States,” Mr. DeSantis said. “I was the leader in this country in fighting back against Fauci. We bucked him every step of the way.”He said that Dr. Fauci should have been fired, but Mr. Trump had honored him.“I think the fact that Donald Trump gave Anthony Fauci a presidential commendation on Trump’s last day in office, that was a gut punch to millions of people around this country who were harmed by Fauci’s lockdowns,” Mr. DeSantis said.A day earlier, in a post by Mr. Trump on his Truth Social platform, the former president slammed Mr. DeSantis over Florida’s response to the pandemic. He said that even former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York had done a better job limiting the loss of lives to the virus than Mr. DeSantis had.Mr. DeSantis described Mr. Trump’s claim as “very bizarre,” and said that it suggested he would double down on his actions if there were another pandemic. More

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      Will DeSantis Need to Resign as Florida Governor to Run for President?

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      Hours after filing federal paperwork declaring that he was running for president — and shortly before his plan for a Twitter livestream to launch his campaign went haywire — Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a Florida elections bill that cleared a potential hurdle.Florida’s so-called resign-to-run statute could have compelled Mr. DeSantis to resign after he sought the presidency, even though the legal questions surrounding the rule have never been fully settled.But state lawmakers clarified the law’s language late last month so that it no longer applies to elected officials running for president or vice president. Democrats accused Republicans in Tallahassee of doing a favor for the governor, though with Republican supermajorities controlling both chambers, there was little they could do to stop the measure. Republicans said the old law was vague, and legal experts were divided about whether it would have applied to Mr. DeSantis.The change to the resign-to-run statute was included in a broader elections bill. It also contains provisions restricting how third-party groups can register voters.Voting rights groups have criticized the bill. The American Civil Liberties Union of Florida said it would hurt voter-registration organizations “by dramatically increasing fines, implementing shorter deadlines on voter registration forms, and restricting who can assist with voter registration drives,” with a particular effect on efforts to sign up voters of color.Reflecting his now dual roles as presidential candidate and governor, Mr. DeSantis spent the morning in Tallahassee hearing clemency requests from people convicted of felonies. At 6 p.m. Eastern, he is expected to go on Twitter and join Elon Musk, the platform’s billionaire owner, to discuss his candidacy. More

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      How Ron DeSantis Maximized the Might of the Florida Governor’s Office

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      Ron DeSantis methodically expanded his powers and pushed legal boundaries to enact his policies. He suggests he would do the same as president.Few knew what to expect from Ron DeSantis when he was first elected Florida governor in 2018 as a little-known congressman. He had barely eked out a victory. He had almost no ties to the State Capitol. His policy agenda seemed unclear.But he knew, at least, how he wanted to govern: He directed his general counsel to figure out just how far a governor could push his authority. He pored over a binder enumerating his varied powers: appointing Florida Supreme Court justices, removing local elected officials and wielding line-item vetoes against state lawmakers.Then he systematically deployed each one.Four years later, Mr. DeSantis is entering the 2024 Republican presidential primary race with a promise to make the country more conservative — just as he did Florida, using nearly every means necessary to muscle through his right-wing vision.“We proved it can be done. We chose facts over fear, education over indoctrination, law and order over rioting and disorder,” Mr. DeSantis said on Wednesday, as he announced his candidacy in a repeatedly delayed and awkwardly glitchy livestream on Twitter, with its owner, Elon Musk. “We also understand governing is not entertainment. It’s not about building a brand or virtue-signaling. It is about delivering results.”Mr. DeSantis’s willingness to exert that power in extraordinary ways has led him to barrel through norms, challenge the legal limits of his office and threaten political retribution against those who cross him. Unlike former President Donald J. Trump, the 2024 Republican front-runner who considers the governor his top rival, Mr. DeSantis is a keen student of American government who has expanded his influence tactically and methodically, using detailed knowledge of the pliable confines of his office to his advantage.“What I was able to bring to the governor’s office was an understanding of how a constitutional form of government operates, the various pressure points that exist, and the best way to leverage authority to achieve substantive policy victories,” Mr. DeSantis, a Harvard-educated lawyer, wrote in his recent book, “The Courage to Be Free,” which described his systematic approach to using executive power.Jeff Brandes, a former state senator and a rare Republican who has raised concerns about Mr. DeSantis’s use of power, called Mr. DeSantis “the most powerful governor Florida has ever seen. Democrats have been scathing in their assessment, describing the governor with words usually reserved for foreign demagogues.“Americans want to live in a democracy with freedoms,” Nikki Fried, the chairwoman of the Florida Democratic Party, wrote this week on Twitter, “and not under an authoritarian regime.”Jeremy T. Redfern, the press secretary for the governor’s office, rejected the assertion that governor has pushed the boundaries of his authority, calling it “nonsense” and a “leftist talking point.”Removing elected officialsMr. DeSantis was elected by a mere 32,463 votes in 2018 — a margin so narrow that it required a recount and could have prompted him to not “rock the boat,” the governor wrote in his book. Instead, three days after being sworn into office in January 2019, he suspended the elected Democratic sheriff of Broward County over his handling of the Parkland high school shooting a year earlier.That moment put the state on notice that Mr. DeSantis did not intend to govern like his predecessors, who typically suspended elected officials only if they had been charged with crimes.Mr. DeSantis removed from office the Democratic elections supervisor of Palm Beach County for her handling of the 2018 recount.Scott McIntyre for The New York Times“I earned 50 percent of the vote,” Mr. DeSantis told Republicans at a dinner this month, “but that entitled me to wield 100 percent of the executive power.”Mr. DeSantis has continued targeting local, elected officials. In 2019, he removed from office the Democratic elections supervisor of Palm Beach County for her handling of the 2018 recount. Mr. DeSantis called the suspensions necessary for accountability.Last August, Mr. DeSantis suspended four members of the Broward County school board — citing a special grand jury investigation on school security failures that he had requested from the Republican-majority state Supreme Court. All four of those ousted were Democrats who had been elected since the shooting; Mr. DeSantis replaced them with Republicans.That same month he suspended Andrew H. Warren, the top prosecutor in Tampa, after Mr. Warren, a Democrat, vowed not to criminalize abortion. The governor did not cite any specific case that Mr. Warren had failed to prosecute, and records showed that the removal had been fueled by politics.A federal judge ruled that while Mr. DeSantis went too far in suspending Mr. Warren, the court had no authority to reinstate him. Mr. Warren has appealed.Amassing power during a pandemicWhile Mr. DeSantis showed an early interest in consolidating power in his office, the Covid pandemic allowed him to centralize and expand his authority. During the declared emergency in 2020, the governor had the authority — and used it — to spend $5 billion in federal aid without legislative approval.He went beyond that, prohibiting local mask and vaccine mandates, calling the Legislature into special session to write those bans into law, and threatening to withhold pay for administrators of public school districts that tried to defy him.His hard line helped him build a larger national profile and appeared to propel Mr. DeSantis to govern more assertively, especially when it came to heated cultural issues popular with his political base. He reached deep into his administration to compel obscure agencies and boards to enact his policies.The governor filled state boards for hospitals and colleges with like-minded appointees, eventually orchestrating a takeover of New College of Florida, a public liberal arts school in Sarasota that he and his allies hope to turn into a conservative bastion. Two state medical boards whose members were appointed by the governor prohibited gender-transition care for minors and education regulators expanded a prohibition on classroom instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity.More recently, he has used the Department of Business and Professional Regulation to try to take away the liquor licenses from a Miami restaurant, a Miami hotel and an Orlando theater because children have attended drag shows at the venues.“What is scary in Florida is that we’re seeing the governor’s continued efforts to consolidate power under himself so that there are not any checks and balances for what he does,” said Kara Gross, the legislative director and senior policy counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida.Political paybackMr. DeSantis has also relied on raw political power and threats of retribution — often aimed at allies.He has intervened in legislative races, where his endorsements have helped him stack the Legislature with loyal Republicans and sent a clear message to lawmakers to get in line or possibly face a primary challenge. Last fall, he turned to school board races, working with Moms for Liberty, a right-wing group, to publish a list of endorsements for seats that are technically nonpartisan.During redistricting last year, when senators drew a congressional map not to Mr. DeSantis’s liking, he vetoed it and forced the lawmakers to adopt a map that he had put forward — the first time anyone in the State Capitol could remember a governor taking such a brash step.The Senate initially resisted Mr. DeSantis’s map, which eliminated a majority Black district in North Florida and effectively gave Republicans four more seats in Congress. But lawmakers knew that Mr. DeSantis could use endorsements and primaries as a cudgel. In fact, he did not back the Senate president’s campaign for state agriculture commissioner until after the chamber gave the governor his map. (The map still faces a court challenge.)Yet the episode that most crystallized the Legislature’s deference to Mr. DeSantis involved a foe that Florida Republicans would have previously been loath to take on: the Walt Disney Company, one of Florida’s largest taxpayers.Last year, when Disney’s chief executive at the time opposed legislation restricting classroom instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity, Mr. DeSantis did not hesitate to push back. Joe Raedle/Getty ImagesWhen Disney’s chief executive at the time opposed legislation last year restricting classroom instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity, Mr. DeSantis did not hesitate to push back. He called on lawmakers to strip Disney’s special tax district from many of its powers, pitting traditionally business-friendly lawmakers against Florida’s most famous corporate giant.The standoff has spilled over into this year, with Disney making moves to limit the state’s new oversight board and the state countering to undo Disney’s plans. Disney recently sued Florida in federal court and canceled a $1 billion development near Orlando.It’s far from clear Mr. DeSantis will win his battle with Disney. Still, he sees political upside in boasting that he did not bow to corporate pressure.After the sugar industry backed his opponent in the 2018 Republican primary, Mr. DeSantis, in his first week in office, signed an executive order on water quality that took aim at some of the industry’s polluting practices.“While Big Sugar did not like it,” Mr. DeSantis wrote in his book, “most people across the political spectrum in Florida were thrilled.”Legal ‘cleanup’Legislators have been so quick to do Mr. DeSantis’s bidding that they have had to repeatedly return to the State Capitol to retroactively give the governor authority for actions already taken.“We had a recent seventh special session — which is supposed to be an extraordinary measure — basically to clean up all of the outstanding issues,” State Senator Jason W.B. Pizzo, a Democrat, said earlier this year. “A colleague referred to it as ‘cleanup on aisle five’ for the governor.”During that session, held in February, lawmakers passed legislation detailing their authority over Disney’s special tax district. But they also amended laws passed last year that had mired the DeSantis administration in court.Mr. DeSantis created an office of election crimes in 2022 that brought fraud charges against people who may have inappropriately cast ballots. But judges threw out case after case, saying that statewide prosecutors lacked the authority to bring those charges. Lawmakers changed the law this year to explicitly empower the prosecutors.Mr. DeSantis announced last year that the Office of Election Crimes and Security was arresting 20 people for voter fraud. After some of the cases were dismissed, the Legislature changed the law to empower prosecutors.Joe Raedle/Getty ImagesLegislators also did away with language that had complicated the governor’s legal justification for flying Venezuelan migrants from San Antonio to Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts last summer. The original language adopted in 2022 gave the DeSantis administration the authority to transport migrants “from this state” — not from Texas, Mr. Pizzo argued in a lawsuit after the Martha’s Vineyard stunt. In the special February session, lawmakers scrapped that phrase and expanded Mr. DeSantis’s authority to transport migrants from anywhere in the country.“He completely controls the Legislature,” Mr. Pizzo said.Last week, Mr. DeSantis used his influence to line up endorsements for his presidential campaign. His political team announced the backing of 99 of the state’s 113 Republican legislators, even as some said privately that they felt pressured to support Mr. DeSantis for fear that he might otherwise veto their bills or spending projects.Were Mr. DeSantis to win the White House, he would likely face tougher opposition in Washington than he has in Tallahassee. There have already been signs of division: Last month, 11 of 20 Republican representatives in Florida’s congressional delegation endorsed Mr. Trump over Mr. DeSantis.Alexandra Berzon More

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      Why Ron DeSantis Is Limping to the Starting Line

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      In November, Representative Byron Donalds scored a coveted speaking slot: introducing Gov. Ron DeSantis after a landslide re-election turned the swing state of Florida deep red. Standing onstage at a victory party for Mr. DeSantis in Tampa, Mr. Donalds praised him as “America’s governor.”By April, Mr. Donalds was seated at a table next to another Florida Republican: Donald J. Trump. He was at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s private club, for a multicourse dinner with nine other House Republicans from Florida who had spurned their home-state governor to endorse the former president’s 2024 run. Red “Make America Great Again” hats decorated their place settings.In six short months from November to May, Mr. DeSantis’s 2024 run has faltered before it has even begun.Allies have abandoned him. Tales of his icy interpersonal touch have spread. Donors have groused. And a legislative session in Tallahassee designed to burnish his conservative credentials has instead coincided with a drop in the polls.His decision not to begin any formal campaign until after the Florida legislative session — allowing him to cast himself as a conservative fighter who not only won but actually delivered results — instead opened a window of opportunity for Mr. Trump. The former president filled the void with personal attacks and a heavy rotation of negative advertising from his super PAC. Combined with Mr. DeSantis’s cocooning himself in the right-wing media and the Trump team’s success in outflanking him on several fronts, the governor has lost control of his own national narrative.Now, as Mr. DeSantis’s Tallahassee-based operation pivots to formally entering the race in the coming weeks, Mr. DeSantis and his allies are retooling for a more aggressive new phase. His staunchest supporters privately acknowledge that Mr. DeSantis needs to recalibrate a political outreach and media strategy that has allowed Mr. Trump to define the race.Mr. DeSantis, on his book tour in Iowa in March, has made a series of missteps that has cost him the support of some donors and lawmakers.Jordan Gale for The New York TimesChanges are afoot. Mr. DeSantis is building a strong Iowa operation. He has been calling influential Republicans in Iowa and is rolling out a large slate of state legislator endorsements before a weekend trip there.“He definitely indicated that if he gets in, he will work exceptionally hard — nothing will be below him,” said Bob Vander Plaats, an influential Iowa evangelical leader whom Mr. DeSantis hosted recently for a meal at the governor’s mansion. “I think he understands — I emphasized that Iowa’s a retail politics state. You need to shake people’s hands, look them in the eye.”Still, his central electability pitch — MAGA without the mess — has been badly bruised.A book tour that was supposed to have introduced him nationally was marked by missteps that deepened concerns about his readiness for the biggest stage. He took positions on two pressing domestic and international issues — abortion and the war in Ukraine — that generated second-guessing and backlash among some allies and would-be benefactors. And the moves he has made to appeal to the hard right — escalating his feud with Disney, signing a strict six-week abortion ban — have unnerved donors who are worried about the general election.“I was in the DeSantis camp,” said Andrew Sabin, a metals magnate who gave the Florida governor $50,000 last year. “But he started opening his mouth, and a lot of big donors said his views aren’t tolerable.” He specifically cited abortion and Ukraine.Three billionaires who are major G.O.P. donors — Steve Wynn, Ike Perlmutter and Thomas Peterffy, a past DeSantis patron who has publicly soured on him — dined recently with Vivek Ramaswamy, the 37-year-old long-shot Republican.The early months of 2023 have exposed a central challenge for Mr. DeSantis. He needs to stitch together an unwieldy ideological coalition bridging both anti-Trump Republicans and Trump supporters who are nonetheless considering turning the page on the past president. Hitting and hugging Mr. Trump at the same time has bedeviled rivals since Senator Ted Cruz tried to do so in 2016, and Cruz veterans fill key roles in Mr. DeSantis’s campaign and his super PAC.Allies of both leading Republicans caution that it’s still early.“The Murdochs encapsulated him in a bubble and force-fed him to a conservative audience,” Steve Bannon said of Mr. DeSantis. Rebecca Noble for The New York TimesMr. DeSantis has more than $100 million stored across various pro-DeSantis accounts. He is building good will with state party leaders by headlining fund-raisers. He remains, in public polls, the most serious rival to Mr. Trump. And a supportive super PAC called Never Back Down is staffing up across more than a dozen states, has already spent more than $10 million on television ads and has peppered early states with direct mail.DeSantis supporters point to polls showing that the governor remains well-liked by Republicans.“The hits aren’t working,” said Kristin Davison, chief operating officer of Never Back Down. “His favorability has not changed.”The DeSantis team declined to provide any comment for this story.Six months ago, as Republicans were blaming Mr. Trump for the party’s 2022 midterm underperformance, a high-flying Mr. DeSantis made the traditional political decision that he would govern first in early 2023 and campaign second. The rush of conservative priorities that Mr. DeSantis has turned into law in Florida — on guns, immigration, abortion, school vouchers, opposing China — is expected to form the backbone of his campaign.“Now, the governor can create momentum by spending time publicly touting his endless accomplishments, calling supporters and engaging more publicly to push back on the false narratives his potential competitors are spewing,” said Nick Iarossi, a lobbyist in Florida and a longtime DeSantis supporter.A turning point this year for Mr. Trump was his Manhattan indictment, which Mr. DeSantis waffled on responding to as the G.O.P. base rallied to Mr. Trump’s defense.Yet Mr. Trump’s compounding legal woes and potential future indictments could eventually have the opposite effect — exhausting voters, which is Mr. DeSantis’s hope. A jury found Mr. Trump liable this week for sexual abuse and defamation. “When you get all these lawsuits coming at you,” Mr. DeSantis told one associate recently, “it’s just distracting.”‘So God Made a Fighter’The DeSantis team seemed to buy its own hype.Days before the midterms, the DeSantis campaign released a video that cast his rise as ordained from on high. “On the eighth day, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, ‘I need a protector,’” a narrator booms as Mr. DeSantis appears onscreen. “So God made a fighter.”For years, the self-confident Mr. DeSantis has relied on his own instincts and the counsel of his wife, Casey DeSantis, who posted the video, to set his political course, according to past aides and current associates. Mr. DeSantis has been written off before — in his first primary for governor; in his first congressional primary — so both he and his wife have gotten used to tuning out critics.Today, allies say there are few people around who are willing to tell Mr. DeSantis he’s wrong, even in private.In late 2022, the thinking was that a decision on 2024 could wait, and Mr. Trump’s midterm hangover would linger. Mr. DeSantis published a book — “I was, you know, kind of a hot commodity,” he said of writing it — that became a best seller. And Mr. DeSantis was on the offensive, tweaking Mr. Trump with a February donor retreat held only miles from Mar-a-Lago that drew Trump contributors.But it has been Mr. Trump who has consistently one-upped Mr. DeSantis, flying into East Palestine, Ohio, after the rail disaster there, appearing with a larger crowd in the same Iowa city days after Mr. DeSantis and swiping Florida congressional endorsements while Mr. DeSantis traveled to Washington.Representative Byron Donalds, a Florida Republican, praised Mr. DeSantis as “America’s governor” in November 2022. Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesOne Trump endorser, Representative Lance Gooden of Texas, backed the former president only hours after attending a private group meeting with Mr. DeSantis. In an interview, Mr. Gooden likened Mr. DeSantis’s decision to delay entry until after a legislative session to the example of a past Texas governor, Rick Perry, who did the same a decade ago — and quickly flamed out of the 2012 contest.“He’s relied, much like Rick Perry did, on local political experts in his home state that just don’t know the presidential landscape,” Mr. Gooden said.‘I’ve Said Enough’Mr. Trump has insinuated, without providing evidence, that Mr. DeSantis had inappropriate relationships with high school girls during a stint as a teacher in the early 2000s and that Mr. DeSantis might be gay.His team has portrayed Mr. DeSantis as socially inept, and a pro-Trump super PAC distributed a video — dubbed “Pudding Fingers” — playing off news articles about Mr. DeSantis’s uncouth eating habits.People close to Mr. Trump have been blunt in private discussions that the hits so far are just the start: If Mr. DeSantis ever appears poised to capture the nomination, the former president will do everything he can to tear him apart.Beginning with his response to the coronavirus outbreak, Mr. DeSantis’s national rise has been uniquely powered by his ability to make the right enemies: in academia, in the news media, among liberal activists and at the White House. But Mr. Trump’s broadsides and some of his own actions have put Mr. DeSantis crosswise with the right for the first time. It has been a disorienting experience for the DeSantis operation, according to allies.For the past three years, Mr. DeSantis has had the luxury of completely shutting out what he pejoratively brands the “national regime media” or “the corporate media” — though Rupert Murdoch’s Fox Corporation does not, in his view, count as corporate media.This strategy served Mr. DeSantis well in Florida. But avoiding sit-down interviews with skeptical journalists has left him out of practice as he prepares for the most intense scrutiny of his career.“The Murdochs encapsulated him in a bubble and force-fed him to a conservative audience,” said Steve Bannon, a former strategist for Mr. Trump. “He hasn’t been scuffed up. He hasn’t had these questions put in his grill.”Even in friendly settings, Mr. DeSantis has stumbled. In a February interview with The Times of London, a Murdoch property, Mr. DeSantis cut off questions after the reporter pushed him on how he thought President Biden should handle Ukraine differently.The former Fox News host Tucker Carlson was so irked by Mr. DeSantis’s evasion that he sent a detailed questionnaire to potential Republican presidential candidates to force them to state their positions on the war, according to two people familiar with his decision.In a written response, Mr. DeSantis characterized Russia’s invasion as a “territorial dispute.” Republican hawks and some of Mr. DeSantis’s top donors were troubled. In public, the governor soon cleaned up his statement to say Russia had not had “a right” to invade. In private, Mr. DeSantis tried to calm supporters by noting that his statement had not taken a position against aid to Ukraine.While Mr. DeSantis has stuck to his preferred way of doing things, Mr. Trump has given seats on his plane to reporters from outlets that have published harsh stories about him. And despite having spent years calling CNN “fake news,” Mr. Trump recently attended a CNN town hall.DeSantis allies said the governor would begrudgingly bring in some of the “national regime media.” Some early proof: The governor’s tight-lipped team invited a Politico columnist to Tallahassee and supplied rare on-the-record access.‘I Was a Bit Insulted’Not long after Mr. DeSantis had won in a landslide last fall, the incoming freshman Representative Cory Mills, a Florida Republican, called the governor’s team to try to thank him for his support. Mr. Mills had campaigned on the eve of the election with Casey DeSantis and had appeared with the governor, too. “I called to show my appreciation and never even got a call back,” Mr. Mills said in an interview. “To be honest with you, I was a bit insulted by it.”The lack of relationships on Capitol Hill became a public headache in April when Mr. Trump rolled out what eventually became 10 Florida House Republican endorsements during Mr. DeSantis’s trip to Washington.People who have recently met with Mr. DeSantis say he has been far more engaged, a sign that he is responding to criticism.Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesDonors who contributed to Mr. DeSantis’s previous campaigns tell stories of meetings in which the candidate looked as though he would rather be anywhere else. He fiddled with his phone, showed no interest in his hosts and escaped as quickly as possible. But people who have recently met with Mr. DeSantis say he has been far more engaged. At recent Wisconsin and New Hampshire events, the governor worked the room as he had rarely done before.The governor and his team have had internal conversations acknowledging the need for him to engage in the basics of political courtship: small talk, handshaking, eye contact.For his part, Mr. Trump recently relished hosting the Florida House Republicans who had endorsed him.On one side of him was Mr. Mills. On the other was Mr. Donalds, who had introduced Mr. DeSantis on election night and who had been in Mr. DeSantis’s orbit since helping with debate prep during Mr. DeSantis’s 2018 run for governor.Mr. Donalds declined an interview. But footage of those private debate-prep sessions, first reported by ABC News, show Mr. DeSantis trying to formulate an answer to a question that will define his imminent 2024 run: how to disagree with Mr. Trump without appearing disagreeable to Trump supporters.“I have to frame it in a way,” Mr. DeSantis said then, “that’s not going to piss off all his voters.” More

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      ‘Ron DeSoros’? Conspiracy Theorists Target Trump’s Rival.

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      Ron DeSantis, a likely contender for the Republican presidential nomination, must court far-right voters who consider him a tool of the Deep State.To some, he is “Ron DeSoros,” a puppet of the Democratic megadonor George Soros. To others, he is “Ron DeSatan,” a vaccine-supporting evildoer. And to still others, he is “Ron DePLANTis,” a “plant” of the so-called Deep State.As the governor of Florida — real name Ron DeSantis — explores a bid for the Republican presidential nomination, he has made overtures to supporters of former President Donald J. Trump. But he is finding that the conspiracy theories and outlandish attacks that Mr. Trump and his allies have aimed at rivals for years are coming for him as well.The attacks often nod to one of the many unfounded conspiracy theories floating around in far-right circles: election fraud, vaccine dangers, Mr. Soros and even QAnon, the online conspiracy movement that believes, among other things, in the existence of a fictional cult that preys on children.The attacks underscore the power that conspiracy theories continue to hold over Republican politics heading into the 2024 presidential election. To win the party’s nomination, Mr. DeSantis would probably need support from a Republican base that has produced many of the attacks against him. And while Mr. DeSantis enjoys broad support among Republicans, soaring to re-election victory just six months ago, the latest primary polls show Mr. Trump gaining a sizable lead.“It’s a tug of war over who is going to grab the all-important conspiracy constituency,” said Bond Benton, an associate professor at Montclair State University who has studied QAnon.The demeaning nicknames for Mr. DeSantis have spread widely on conservative social media, growing this year as Mr. Trump’s attacks increased. There were more than 12,000 mentions of “DeSoros” on social media and news sites since January, according to Zignal Labs, a media insights company. “DeathSantis,” a term progressives used when the governor began relaxing Florida’s Covid-19 restrictions that has since been adopted by some conservatives, received 1.6 million mentions over the past two years.In recent months, Mr. DeSantis has responded by adopting some themes popular among the conspiratorial set, opposing vaccines he once endorsed and raising doubts about the 2020 election even though Mr. Trump handily won Florida in that year’s vote.Mr. DeSantis’s office did not respond to requests for comment.Mike Lindell, the MyPillow executive and an election denier, said, falsely, that Florida was spared from widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election because Mr. DeSantis had a close relationship with Dominion Voting Systems.Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesThe attacks have come from some of the loudest voices in Mr. Trump’s corner.Mike Lindell, the MyPillow executive and an election denier, quickly found a role for Mr. DeSantis in his elaborate election fraud narrative. Mr. Lindell said, falsely, that Florida was spared from widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election because Mr. DeSantis had a close relationship with Dominion Voting Systems, an election software company targeted by election deniers.“Ron DeSantis is a Trojan horse,” Mr. Lindell said in a recent interview with The New York Times.Mr. Lindell pointed to an appearance Mr. DeSantis had had with a Dominion lawyer shortly after the election as a sign that the governor had conflicting loyalties.The lawyer, Elizabeth Locke, was speaking with Mr. DeSantis on a panel about the dangers of defamation by mainstream media. She has also represented Sarah Palin, the former Republican vice-presidential candidate.There is no evidence of widespread voter fraud anywhere in the 2020 election and no evidence that Mr. DeSantis had any special relationship with Dominion.In an email, Ms. Locke pointed to a podcast appearance where she called the claims “silly” and said that she had known Mr. DeSantis since before he entered politics.Kari Lake, a Republican who lost her campaign for governor of Arizona last year, once praised Mr. DeSantis on the campaign trail. But she turned on him in February, as Mr. Trump’s attacks grew.Rebecca Noble for The New York TimesKari Lake, a Republican who lost her campaign for governor of Arizona last year, once praised Mr. DeSantis on the campaign trail. But in February, as Mr. Trump’s attacks grew, she shared a story claiming Mr. DeSantis was endorsed by Mr. Soros, calling it “the kiss of death.” (Mr. Soros had only said that Mr. DeSantis was likely to become the nominee.)“The broader narrative is that he is connected to the shadowy forces that seek to bring down Trump,” said Mr. Bond, the Montclair professor.Mr. DeSantis was forced to play catch-up, making broad appeals to conspiratorial groups within the Republican Party.Last year, he announced a crackdown on voter fraud, arresting 17 people for charges of casting illegal ballots in 2020. Many of the voters had received voter registration cards from the government.Mr. DeSantis had once endorsed Covid-19 vaccines and celebrated as Floridians were rapidly vaccinated. By late last year, though, he had impaneled a statewide grand jury to investigate vaccine makers for potentially misleading Floridians, reflecting a false belief among Trump supporters that the vaccine is dangerous.Believers of the QAnon conspiracy theory do not seem swayed by Mr. DeSantis’s appeals, said Josephine Lukito, a media professor at the University of Texas who studies the relationship between disinformation and violence. “For them, that is more indicative of what a faker they perceive DeSantis to be.” More

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      Florida Legislature Moves to Shield DeSantis’s Travel Records

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      The NewsThe Florida Legislature passed a bill on Tuesday that would shield the travel records of Gov. Ron DeSantis and other top elected officials from public view, a significant change to the state’s vaunted sunshine laws as Mr. DeSantis explores a potential presidential campaign.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida has faced increasing scrutiny for his use of private chartered flights.Justin Ide/ReutersWhy It Matters: Who’s paying, and who else is flying?Though the law purports to shield Mr. DeSantis’s and other top officials’ travel records under the umbrella of increasing threats and operational security, it also includes a sweeping retroactive clause that would block the release of many records of trips already taken by Mr. DeSantis and other officials, as well as those taken by their families and staff members.Mr. DeSantis has been facing increasing scrutiny for his use of private chartered flights — including questions about who paid for the travel and who flew with him — especially as his presidential ambitions come into clearer focus and he travels the country more extensively.In years past, Florida’s expansive transparency laws have exposed officials’ abuses of state resources: In 2003, for example, Jim King, the president of the State Senate, was found to have used a state plane to fly home on the weekends.What’s Next: A target for other potential Republican contenders.The bill now heads to Mr. DeSantis’s desk. The governor has avoided directly commenting on the bill and has stated that he did not draft the initiative, but many Florida Republicans expect that he will sign it into law.“It’s not necessarily something that I came up with,” Mr. DeSantis said on Monday at an event in Titusville. He added that the legislation was “motivated by a security concern” and that he had been receiving a lot of threats.The Florida Department of Law Enforcement, which is led by a DeSantis appointee, has also expressed support for the bill, stating in April that releasing travel details “represents a risk not only to those we protect, but also F.D.L.E. agents and citizens attending events.”Critics of the bill, however, note that adding the retroactive clause does not fit with a security justification. “How is there a security issue for travel that’s already occurred?” said Barbara Petersen, the executive director of the Florida Center for Government Accountability, after the bill first advanced out of committee in April.The proposed changes have drawn the attention of some of Mr. DeSantis’s potential Republican rivals for president.“In recent months, Governor DeSantis has used taxpayer dollars to travel around the country for his 2024 presidential campaign, including to the early voting states of Iowa and Nevada,” the campaign of Donald J. Trump said in a statement last month. “DeSantis’s gubernatorial office, however, refuses to tell reporters — and the public — how much taxpayer money has been spent to fund these travels, or how much DeSantis’s April globe-trotting will cost.” More

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      Jay Inslee Sees Greener Pastures Ahead

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      After nearly 30 years in elected office, Washington’s governor plans to shift his focus to climate solutions and clean energy, underscoring the need for “a sense of optimism and confidence.”Jay Inslee has been in elected office so long that he served in Congress during the tail end of the George H.W. Bush administration.On Monday Mr. Inslee, 72, announced that he would not seek a fourth term as Washington State’s governor, ending a nearly 30-year career in elected office. He went to Congress as a centrist Democrat and evolved into a fierce critic of the Iraq war and later of President Donald J. Trump. He will leave the State Capitol after the 2024 elections as one of America’s leading climate hawks.Mr. Inslee ran for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination by arguing that the country would have to radically reshape its relationship with fossil fuels and promote renewable energy. While Mr. Inslee’s candidacy never caught fire, his goals later became the blueprint for the climate spending in the Inflation Reduction Act, which President Biden signed into law last year.When I interviewed Mr. Inslee in 2017, he said the only other job he would want was to be the quarterback of his hometown Seattle Seahawks. When I reminded him of this as we spoke Monday afternoon, he replied, “Now I want to be the next goalie for the Seattle Kraken,” the city’s hockey team. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.Why did you make this decision now?There comes a time to pass the torch, and to everything there is a season, and for a variety of reasons, I decided it was the right season. But I’ve got another year and a half to put the pedal to the metal. My dad was a track coach, and he always said run through the tape, so I’ll be running through the tape. Have you spoken with President Biden about your decision?I have not, but he has a few other things on his mind, so I’m happy that he’s up and running in his race. I’m glad he’s in his race.How would you grade him on climate policy?I’ve never liked grades because I always thought it was a bit presumptuous, but I can just tell you I was so delighted at him pulling a rabbit out of the hat to get the Inflation Reduction Act through. Its prospects were so dim. And for him to get that $360 billion in clean energy investment is so pivotal for us to have even a fighting chance to deal with climate.I just came from an unveiling of the world’s largest commercial hydrogen fuel cell plane that represents a potential for sustainable aviation. Last week, I signed a permit for a solar farm in Yakima County. These are the things that his accomplishment is going to accelerate, and I could not be more excited about that. So, you know, there’s always things on siting and permitting that are contentious.You mentioned the siting and permitting. I take it you’re referring to his approving the Willow oil drilling project in Alaska. I imagine you don’t agree with his decisions on that front.I don’t, but he won the presidency, and I did not. So we should point that out.What’s your level of interest in serving in his administration at some point?It isn’t something I’ve thought about. I really am so focused on the next 20 months. I think he’s done a real crackerjack job as president. I’m glad he’s running. I feel good about him winning the next election. I just haven’t thought about what happens after this term of office, except it’s going to be involved in something that will push the climate agenda and the clean energy economic development. I’ll find some way to be productive in that realm.It sounds like you’d listen if the president were to call and talk to you about something.Of course I would listen, but it’s just not something that’s on my agenda to consider at the moment.We talked a lot when you were running for president about the urgency of the climate moment. Do you think the country and the planet are beyond a state of no return?One of the most important things we need to do at this moment is to establish a sense of optimism and confidence in what you might call a can-do attitude when it comes to the development of clean energy. It is necessary to keep people from the despair, which leads to inactivity and passivity. And the antidote for despair is action. It is also just healthy for us from a mental health standpoint.The rate of change is so dramatic that it legitimately should give us optimism in our ability to transform this economy much faster than we believe. In 2007, I said we’re going to be driving electric cars. People thought I was smoking the cheap stuff. Well, now we’re buying them so fast that production can’t even keep up.Obviously, we are going to be suffering some changes that to some degree are baked into the climatic system. But we don’t need to focus on despair, we need to focus on action and a can-do spirit. More

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      Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington, Climate Champion, Won’t Seek Re-Election

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      Mr. Inslee, 72, a former presidential candidate and a leading Democratic proponent of policies to slow climate change, said he would not seek a fourth term.Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington State, the nation’s longest-serving current governor and one of the Democratic Party’s leading climate defenders, will not seek a fourth term in office next year, he announced on Monday.“Serving the people as governor of Washington State has been my greatest honor,” he said. “During a decade of dynamic change, we’ve made Washington a beacon for progress for the nation. I’m ready to pass the torch.”Mr. Inslee, 72, who before becoming governor was elected to Congress eight times, ran for his party’s 2020 presidential nomination on a platform of sharply reducing the country’s reliance on fossil fuels. He dropped out of the race in August 2019 when it became clear he would not meet the Democratic National Committee’s threshold to appear in presidential debates.During President Donald J. Trump’s years in office, Mr. Inslee placed himself on the vanguard of the Democratic opposition to Mr. Trump’s policies. Mr. Inslee and the Washington State attorney general, Bob Ferguson, filed a series of lawsuits against Mr. Trump’s administration, challenging policies on its ban on travel from several predominantly Muslim countries, its separation of migrant children from their parents and its unwinding of climate regulations.Mr. Ferguson, who has long had eyes on succeeding Mr. Inslee, is now considered one of the front-runners in an open-seat race to replace him at the helm of a solidly Democratic state. Though in 2012 Mr. Inslee won his first election for governor by just three percentage points, by 2020 he carried the state by more than 13 points. More