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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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      House G.O.P., Divided Over Immigration, Advances Border Crackdown Plan

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      Republicans are eyeing a vote next month on legislation that would reinstate Trump-era policies, after feuding that led leaders to drop some of the plan’s most extreme provisions.WASHINGTON — House Republicans on Thursday pushed ahead with a sweeping immigration crackdown that would codify several stringent border policies imposed by the Trump administration, after months of internal feuding that led G.O.P. leaders to drop some of the plan’s most extreme provisions.The House Judiciary and Homeland Security Committees in recent days approved their pieces of the plan, which has little chance of being considered in the Democratic-led Senate but sets up a pivotal test of whether Republican leaders can deliver on their campaign promise to clamp down on record migrant inflows.For Republicans, who have repeatedly attacked President Biden on his immigration policies and embarked on an effort to impeach his homeland security secretary, the measure is a chance to lay out an alternative vision on an issue that galvanizes its right-wing base.The legislation, now expected on the floor next month, would direct the Biden administration to resume constructing the border wall that was former President Donald J. Trump’s signature project. It would also mandate that employers check workers’ legal status through an electronic system known as E-Verify and reinstate the “Remain in Mexico” policy, forcing asylum applicants to wait in detention facilities or outside the United States before their claims are heard.The plan “will force the administration to enforce the law, secure the border, and reduce illegal immigration once again,” Representative Mark E. Green, Republican of Tennessee and the Homeland Security Committee’s chairman, said during the panel’s debate on Wednesday.Democrats have derided the package as misguided and draconian, accusing Republicans of seeking to invigorate their core supporters in advance of the 2024 election by reviving some of Mr. Trump’s most severe border policies. They made vocal objections to provisions that would ban the use of the phone-based app known as “C.B.P. One” to streamline processing migrants at ports of entry, expedite the deportation of unaccompanied minors, and criminalize visa overstays of more than 10 days.Republicans “want to appeal to their extreme MAGA friends more than they want progress,” Representative Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, the top Democrat on the Homeland Security Committee, said Wednesday, calling the Republican legislation a “profoundly immoral” piece of legislation that would “sow chaos at the border.”Still, the package represents a compromise of sorts between hard-right Republicans and more mainstream G.O.P. lawmakers, including a mostly Latino group from border states that balked at proposals that threatened to gut the nation’s asylum system.The party’s immigration plan — which top Republicans had hoped to pass as one of their first bills of their new House majority — has been stalled for months. A faction led by Representative Tony Gonzales, Republican of Texas, has raised concerns about the asylum changes, threatening to withhold votes that Speaker Kevin McCarthy, Republican of California, cannot afford to lose given his slim majority.Over the last week, G.O.P. leaders have quietly made a series of concessions to win over the skeptics. Republicans on the Judiciary Committee agreed to drop a provision that would have effectively stopped the intake of asylum seekers if the government failed to detain or deport all migrants seeking to enter the country without permission. But the measure still contains a number of new asylum restrictions.“It’s in a good spot,” Mr. Gonzales said of the legislation on Thursday, saying that the changes made to the asylum provision had satisfied his concerns. “As long as nobody does any funny business — you’ve got to watch it till the very end.”G.O.P. leaders predicted on Thursday that they would be able to draw a majority for the legislation when it comes to the House in mid-May, a timeline selected to coincide with the expected expiration of a Covid-era policy allowing officials to swiftly expel migrants at the border. The termination of the program, known as Title 42, is expected to inspire a new surge of attempted border crossings and supercharge the already bitter partisan debate over immigration policy.But it was unclear whether Republicans who had objected to the E-Verify requirement would be on board.Representative Thomas Massie, Republican of Kentucky withheld his support for the Judiciary Committee’s bill because of the work authorization mandate, arguing that people “shouldn’t have to go through an E-Verify database to exercise your basic human right to trade labor for sustenance.”Such databases “always get turned against us, and they’re never used for the purpose they were intended for,” added Mr. Massie, a conservative libertarian.Representative Dan Newhouse, a Republican farmer in Washington State, has expressed concern that the E-Verify mandate could create labor shocks in the agricultural sector, which relies heavily on undocumented immigrant labor. Though the legislation delays the requirement for farmers for three years, Mr. Newhouse has argued that any such change should be paired with legislation creating more legal pathways for people to work in the United States.With the expected floor vote just weeks away, G.O.P. leaders have been treading carefully, even making last-minute concessions to Democrats in hopes of bolstering support for the legislation.During the wee hours on Thursday morning, as the Homeland Security Committee debated its bill, Republicans pared back language barring nongovernmental organizations that assist undocumented migrants from receiving funding from the Department of Homeland Security. They did so after Democrats pointed out the broadly phrased prohibition could deprive legal migrants and U.S. citizens of critical services as well.Their changes did not go far enough to satisfy Democrats, who unanimously opposed the package on the Judiciary and the Homeland Security panels — and are expected to oppose the combined border security package en masse on the House floor.They have also argued that any measure to enhance border security or enforcement must be paired with expanded legal pathways for immigrants to enter the United States. More

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      A Fake Craigslist Ad Costs a New Hampshire Man His Right to Vote

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      By violating the state’s election laws, a man who included a candidate’s phone number in a false Election Day ad has lost his right to vote.On the day of a special election in New Hampshire in April 2021, Michael Drouin posted a fake advertisement on Craigslist offering a free trailer and listed the phone number of Bill Boyd, a candidate for a state House seat.Mr. Drouin thought he was playing a harmless practical joke, but it was no laughing matter to Mr. Boyd, a Republican, who told the police that he received dozens of texts and phone calls in under an hour on the morning of April 13, 2021, before he shut off his phone.Mr. Drouin was indicted in November 2022 on a felony charge of interference with election communications. On Monday, Mr. Drouin, 30, of Merrimack, N.H., pleaded guilty to the reduced charge of creating a false document, an election law offense, admitting that he knowingly interfered with Mr. Boyd’s ability to use his cellphone on Election Day.The charge is a misdemeanor, not a felony, but it still cost him his right to vote in the state. People who are convicted of a willful violation of the state’s election laws lose their right to vote under the New Hampshire Constitution.Mr. Drouin told investigators in October 2021 that the false advertisement “was a joke” and that he “meant no harm,” according to a police affidavit in support of an arrest warrant. He also denied that it had anything to do with the special election, calling it “bad timing” and claiming to be a Republican like Mr. Boyd.Mr. Drouin was a registered Democrat when he spoke to the police, but investigators noted that he switched his party affiliation to Republican in February 2022.The state attorney general’s office said the stunt could have interfered with Mr. Boyd’s success in the election, which he went on to win, and which was held to fill the seat of the Republican House speaker, Richard Hinch, who died in December 2020 of complications related to Covid-19.Mr. Drouin would have faced a maximum penalty of seven years in prison and a fine of up to $2,000 if he had been convicted of the felony charge. After he pleaded guilty to the misdemeanor, he was ordered to pay a $250 fine and complete 250 hours of community service, the New Hampshire Department of Justice said in a news release. He was also given a 90-day jail sentence that was suspended for two years, allowing him to walk free on the condition of his good behavior.Matthew Conley, an assistant state attorney general, said in an email that Mr. Drouin has the right to petition the state to request that his voting rights be restored.Mr. Drouin initially denied that he created the ad. He later acknowledged having posted it, but told investigators that it was meant as a joke and that he did not think it was a “big deal at the time,” according to the affidavit. He told the police that he ultimately realized he had made a mistake and that he would invite Mr. Boyd out to dinner and did not want to “get hooked in the court system.”Mr. Boyd, who was elected to a full term in November, said he “experienced distress with my phone going on and off” on the day of the 2021 special election, WMUR-TV reported. He said he needed access to his phone to help get voters get rides to the polls, and to be in touch with his father in an assisted living facility and his sister, who he said had health problems.“I have not received a verbal apology at any point during this particular process,” Mr. Boyd said in court, according to WMUR, nor had he heard anything from Mr. Drouin that “would indicate any level of remorse.”Mr. Boyd told investigators that he received a message from Mr. Drouin on Facebook in October 2021. In it, Mr. Drouin wrote that “it was terrible timing with the election, and it’s been bothering me ever since.”“I should have had more consideration,” he added.In court on Monday, WMUR reported, Mr. Drouin said his lawyers had advised him against further contact with Mr. Boyd. More

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      Is a 6-Week Abortion Ban a Disaster for DeSantis? Two Theories.

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      There were plenty of midterm elections where Republicans didn’t seem to pay a price over new abortion restrictions.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida. Will the abortion issue define him?Eze Amos for The New York TimesAfter the liberal triumph in this month’s Wisconsin Supreme Court race, you probably don’t need much convincing that abortion rights can be a big political winner for Democrats.But after Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida signed a law last week banning abortion after six weeks of pregnancy, it is worth considering another set of races: the elections where Republicans didn’t seem to pay a stiff political price for new abortion restrictions.Surprisingly, Republicans tended to fare just as well in the midterms in the states where abortion was recently banned as they did in the states where abortion remained legal.This is a little perplexing. There isn’t a definitive explanation, but I’ll offer two basic theories. Depending on your preferred answer, Mr. DeSantis’s anti-abortion stance may be an electoral death wish — or abortion simply may not be quite as helpful to Democrats as it seems based on the highest-profile elections, like the recent Wisconsin Supreme Court race.Oddly enough, Wisconsin offers a stark example of how abortion may not always help Democrats. Abortion was banned there after the Dobbs decision, but in the midterms Republican candidates for U.S. House still won more votes than Democrats in a state Joe Biden carried in 2020. The Republican senator Ron Johnson won re-election as well. The Democratic governor, Tony Evers, won re-election by three percentage points — a fine performance, but not a Democratic romp.It’s worth noting the unusual circumstances of Wisconsin’s abortion ban. The law banning abortion was originally enacted in 1849 — not by today’s Republicans — and went info effect after Roe v. Wade was overturned, giving the G.O.P. some maneuvering room. The Republican state Legislature argued for adding exceptions; Mr. Johnson pushed for an abortion referendum. Perhaps Republicans in the state just weren’t seen as responsible for the ban.But Wisconsin isn’t alone. A similar story played out in Texas, Ohio, Iowa, Indiana, Missouri and Georgia. In some of these states, Republican governors enacted bans or other major restrictions that went into effect after the Dobbs decision. In others, Republican bans were blocked by the courts. But in all of them, Republicans nonetheless posted average to above-average midterm results.In fact, there was only one state — West Virginia — where abortion was banned and where Democrats posted well above-average results in House races. Overall, Republican House candidates outran Donald J. Trump by a typical or above average amount (six points or more) in 10 of the 13 states where abortion was banned after Roe.What makes sense of this pattern? Of the two basic possibilities, one would augur well for Democrats; the other would bode better for Mr. DeSantis.Theory No. 1: It’s about demographics.Abortion is relatively unpopular in states where today’s Republicans successfully banned abortion, like Texas or Georgia. These states tend to be relatively religious states in the South. There aren’t many of the secular, white, college-educated liberal Democrats who could bring about a “Roevember” backlash.There seems to be a lot to this theory. Not only does it explain many of the cases in question, but it also fits a broader pattern from last November: Democratic strength in the House vote was somewhat correlated with support for abortion (though big Democratic failures in New York and California stand out as obvious exceptions).But this theory doesn’t quite explain everything. In particular, it doesn’t work outside the South, including in places like Ohio or Wisconsin, where we know the right to abortion is popular. That’s where it’s important to notice my qualifier: where today’s Republicans successfully banned abortion. If demographics are the predominant explanation, then the Republican resilience in the North must be because voters simply didn’t hold them responsible for banning abortion. Democrats could hope Republicans will pay a greater political cost when they unequivocally restrict abortion, like what Mr. DeSantis is doing now in Florida.Theory No. 2: When abortion is the most important issue.This is what I’ll call the salience theory: It takes a special set of circumstances for Democrats to make abortion the most important issue to voters, like a Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate who promises to represent the decisive vote to legalize abortion when an abortion case is pending before the court, or a Michigan referendum that explicitly decides the future of abortion in a state.As with the demographics theory, the salience theory is also consistent with polling and the general story of the 2022 midterms. Only a sliver of voters said abortion was the most important issue, not because abortion rights wasn’t important to them but because there were lots of other genuinely important issues at stake — the economy and inflation, crime, guns, democracy, immigration, and so on. With so many other issues, it makes sense that abortion plays only a marginal role in vote choice unless a distinct set of circumstances focuses the electorate on abortion alone.The salience theory also fits one of the patterns of the election: the highly localized results. There were states where Democrats excelled, like Michigan or Pennsylvania, even as they struggled in California or New York. Where Democrats did well, they had the fodder to focus voters on one of their best issues, like attacking stop-the-steal candidates. Where they struggled, Republicans managed to focus the electorate on an issue like crime (democracy or abortion seemed less important).It’s worth emphasizing that the salience theory doesn’t mean that abortion as an issue didn’t help Democrats in 2022. If Roe hadn’t been overturned, abortion would have been less salient everywhere and perhaps Democrats would have fared a bit worse across the board. But it would mean that Republican support for an abortion ban is not, on its own, sufficient to make abortion the predominant issue and bring stiff political costs to conservatives.While this theory offers better news for Mr. DeSantis, it would nonetheless contain a lesson for Democrats: It seems they would be wise to find creative ways to keep the electorate focused on abortion. State referendums might be one option, much as Republicans put same-sex marriage on the ballot in 2004. A campaign to pass federal abortion legislation might be another path as well. More

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      How a Campaign Against Transgender Rights Mobilized Conservatives

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      When the Supreme Court declared a constitutional right to same-sex marriage nearly eight years ago, social conservatives were set adrift.The ruling stripped them of an issue they had used to galvanize rank-and-file supporters and big donors. And it left them searching for a cause that — like opposing gay marriage — would rally the base and raise the movement’s profile on the national stage.“We knew we needed to find an issue that the candidates were comfortable talking about,” said Terry Schilling, the president of American Principles Project, a social conservative advocacy group. “And we threw everything at the wall.”What has stuck, somewhat unexpectedly, is the issue of transgender identity, particularly among young people. Today, the effort to restrict transgender rights has supplanted same-sex marriage as an animating issue for social conservatives at a pace that has stunned political leaders across the spectrum. It has reinvigorated a network of conservative groups, increased fund-raising and set the agenda in school boards and state legislatures.The campaign has been both organic and deliberate, and has even gained speed since Donald J. Trump, an ideological ally, left the White House. Since then, at least 20 states, all controlled by Republicans, have enacted laws that reach well beyond the initial debates over access to bathrooms and into medical treatments, participation in sports and policies on discussing gender in schools.“We knew we needed to find an issue that the candidates were comfortable talking about,” said Terry Schilling, the president of American Principles Project, a social conservative advocacy group. “And we threw everything at the wall.”Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesAbout 1.3 million adults and 300,000 children in the United States identify as transgender. These efforts have thrust them, at a moment of increased visibility and vulnerability, into the center of the nation’s latest battle over cultural issues.“It’s a strange world to live in,” said Ari Drennen, the L.G.B.T.Q. program director for Media Matters, a liberal media monitoring group that tracks the legislation. As a transgender woman, she said, she feels unwelcome in whole swaths of the country where states have attacked her right “just to exist in public.”The effort started with a smattering of Republican lawmakers advancing legislation focused on transgender girls’ participation in school sports. And it was accelerated by a few influential Republican governors who seized on the issue early.But it was also the result of careful planning by national conservative organizations to harness the emotion around gender politics. With gender norms shifting and a sharp rise in the number of young people identifying as transgender, conservative groups spotted an opening in a debate that was gaining attention.“It’s a sense of urgency,” said Matt Sharp, the senior counsel with the Alliance Defending Freedom, an organization that has provided strategic and legal counsel to state lawmakers as they push through legislation on transgender rights. The issue, he argued, is “what can we do to protect the children?”Mr. Schilling said the issue had driven in thousands of new donors to the American Principles Project, most of them making small contributions.The appeal played on the same resentments and cultural schisms that have animated Mr. Trump’s political movement: invocations against so-called “wokeness,” skepticism about science, parental discontent with public schools after the Covid-19 pandemic shutdowns and anti-elitism.Nadine Smith, the executive director of Equality Florida, a group that fights discrimination against L.G.B.T.Q. people, said there was a direct line from the right’s focus on transgender children to other issues it has seized on in the name of “parents’ rights” — such as banning books and curriculums that teach about racism.“In many ways, the trans sports ban was the test balloon in terms of how they can frame these things,” she said. “Once they opened that parents’ rights frame, they began to use it everywhere.”For now, the legislation has advanced almost exclusively in Republican-controlled states: Those same policies have drawn strong opposition from Democrats who have applauded the increased visibility of transgender people — in government, corporations and Hollywood — and policies protecting transgender youths.The 2024 presidential election appears poised to provide a national test of the reach of this issue. The two leading Republican presidential contenders, Mr. Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who has not officially declared a bid, have aggressively supported measures curtailing transgender rights.“The trans sports ban was the test balloon in terms of how they can frame these things,” Nadine Smith, the executive director of Equality Florida, said. “Once they opened that parents’ rights frame, they began to use it everywhere.” Octavio Jones for The New York TimesIt may prove easier for Republicans like Mr. Trump and Mr. DeSantis to talk about transgender issues than about abortion, an issue that has been a mainstay of the conservative movement. The Supreme Court decision overturning the constitutional right to abortion created a backlash among Democrats and independents that has left many Republicans unsure of how — or whether — to address the issue.Polling suggests that the public is less likely to support transgender rights than same-sex marriage and abortion rights. In a poll conducted in 2022, the Public Policy Research Institute, a nonpartisan research group, found that 68 percent of respondents favored allowing same-sex couples to marry, including 49 percent of Republicans.By contrast, a poll by the Pew Research Center found that 58 percent of Americans supported requiring that transgender athletes compete on teams that match the sex they were assigned at birth; 85 percent of Republicans held that view.“For many religious and political conservatives, the same-sex marriage issue has been largely decided — and for the American public, absolutely,” said Kelsy Burke, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Nebraska—Lincoln. “That’s not true when it comes to these transgender issues. Americans are much more divided, and this is an issue that can gain a lot more traction.”The singer Anita Bryant championed the “Save Our Children” campaign in 1977 to repeal a local ordinance in Dade-Miami County that prohibited discrimination based on sexual orientation, a historic setback for the modern gay rights movements.Bettmann/Getty ImagesThe focus on perceived threats to impressionable children has a long history in American sexual politics. It has its roots in the “Save Our Children” campaign championed in 1977 by Anita Bryant, the singer known for her orange juice commercials, to repeal a local ordinance in Dade-Miami County that prohibited discrimination based on sexual orientation, a historic setback for the modern gay rights movements.The initial efforts by the conservative movement to deploy transgender issues did not go well. In 2016, North Carolina legislators voted to bar transgender people from using the bathroom of their preference. It created a backlash so harsh — from corporations, sports teams and even Bruce Springsteen — that lawmakers eventually rescinded the bill.As a result, conservatives went looking for a new approach to the issue. Mr. Schilling’s organization, for instance, conducted polling to determine whether curbing transgender rights had resonance with voters — and, if they did, the best way for candidates to talk about it. In 2019, the group’s research found that voters were significantly more likely to support a Republican candidate who favored a ban on transgender girls participating in school sports — particularly when framed as a question of whether “to allow men and boys to compete against women and girls” — than a candidate pushing for a ban on transgender people using a bathroom of their choosing.With that evidence in hand, and transgender athletes gaining attention, particularly in right-wing media, conservatives decided to focus on two main fronts: legislation that addressed participation in sports and laws curtailing the access of minors to medical transition treatments.In March 2020, Idaho became the first state to bar transgender girls from participating in girls’ and women’s sports, with a bill supporters in the Republican-controlled legislature called the “Fairness in Women’s Sports Act.”A burst of state legislation began the next year after Democrats took control of Congress and the White House, ending four years in which social conservatives successfully pushed the Trump administration to enact restrictions through executive orders.In the spring of 2021, the Republican-controlled legislature in Arkansas overrode a veto by Gov. Asa Hutchinson, a Republican, to enact legislation that made it illegal for minors to receive transition medication or surgery.It was the first such ban in the country — and it was quickly embraced by national groups and circulated to lawmakers in other statehouses as a road map for their own legislation. The effort capitalized on an existing disagreement in the medical profession over when to offer medical transition care to minors. Despite that debate, leading medical groups in the United States, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, say the care should be available to minors and oppose legislative bans.Later that spring, Mr. DeSantis, the Florida governor, traveled to a private Christian school in Jacksonville to sign a bill barring transgender girls from playing K-12 sports. With his approval, Florida became the largest state to date to enact such restrictions, and Mr. DeSantis signaled how important this issue was to his political aspirations.“In Florida, girls are going to play girls’ sports and boys are going to play boys’ sports,” he said, winning applause from conservatives he would need to defeat Mr. Trump.To some extent, this surge of legislation was spontaneous. Ms. Drennen, of Media Matters, said state lawmakers appeared to be acting out of a “general animus” toward transgender people, as well as a fear of political reprisals. “They are worried about this coming up in a primary,” she said.But for several years, conservative Christian legal groups like the Alliance Defending Freedom and the Liberty Counsel have been shifting their resources.For now, the legislation has advanced almost exclusively in Republican-controlled states: Those same policies have drawn strong opposition from Democrats.Joseph Prezioso/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe 2024 presidential election appears poised to provide a national test of Americans’ support for transgender rights.Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIn 2018, Kristen Waggoner, then the general counsel of the Alliance Defending Freedom, was the lead counsel in the Supreme Court defending a Colorado baker who, citing religious beliefs, refused to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple. The court ruled narrowly in favor of the baker.The next year, the Alliance took on a case involving a group of high school girls in Connecticut who challenged the state and five school boards for permitting transgender students to participate in women’s sports. Their lawsuit was rejected by a federal appeals court.Mathew D. Staver, the founder and chairman of the Liberty Counsel, which was a major force behind a 2008 voter initiative in California that banned same-sex marriage, said the group is now fighting gender policies in the courts. It has challenged laws, often enacted in states controlled by Democrats, that restrict counseling services designed to change a person’s gender identity or sexual orientation, often referred to as conversion therapy.“Those counseling bans violate first-amendment speech, because they only allow one point of view on the subject of sexuality,” he said.In March 2021, Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota declined to sign a bill that would have banned transgender girls from sports teams. She later reversed course. Cooper Neill for The New York TimesThough some on the left are still uncertain about how to best navigate the fraught politics of transgender issues, there’s an emerging consensus on the right. The case of what happened to Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota, a rising star in the Republican Party, is instructive.In March 2021, Ms. Noem declined to sign a bill passed by her state’s Republican-controlled legislature that would have banned transgender girls from sports teams from kindergarten through college. Conservative groups accused her of bowing to “socially left-wing factions.” Tucker Carlson of Fox News, in a tense interview with Ms. Noem, implied she was bowing to “big business” in refusing to sign the bill.“There’s a real political effort now that will extract a punishment from you if you betray the social conservatives,” said Frank Cannon, a founder of the American Principles Project. He said the episode with Ms. Noem “sent a signal to every other governor in the country.”Eleven months later, the governor appeared to have received the message, signing a similar version of the bill in the interest, she said that day, of “fairness.” More

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      Republican 2024 Hopefuls Flock to N.R.A. Meeting in the Wake of Mass Shootings

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      The current and potential 2024 presidential candidates are expected to show support for gun owners’ rights — a core issue for the party’s base, but one that can be a tougher sell in a general election.INDIANAPOLIS — In 2018, prominent Republicans affirmed their strong support for gun owners’ rights at the annual gathering of the National Rifle Association, three months after a gunman had murdered 17 people in Parkland, Fla.In 2022, they descended on the N.R.A.’s event a few days after a gunman had killed 21 in Uvalde, Texas.And on Friday, some of the most talked about current and potential Republican presidential candidates will address the N.R.A.’s convention in Indianapolis, even as Nashville and Louisville are still mourning the latest massacres in the nation’s gun violence epidemic.The pattern — a devastating mass shooting, followed by Republican displays of fealty to a group that rejects even many modest efforts to curb gun violence — underscores a central and deepening tension in the broader American culture wars.Despite a relentless drumbeat of gun violence that has outraged the public, galvanized a youth movement and spurred Democrats and some Republicans to action, conservative activists and organizations like the N.R.A. still often demand unwavering and virtually unlimited allegiance to the rights of gun owners, complicating any effort by candidates to meet the alarmed mood of the nation without alienating the base.“I would hope that presidential candidates would acknowledge that there is tremendous fear in the country of mass shootings,” former Representative Susan W. Brooks, an Indiana Republican, said in urging the candidates to press for bipartisan negotiations on confronting the issue. That is something she pursued in Congress, though there is now little appetite for that among Republicans in Washington.“They’re happening at much greater frequency than they used to,” she added of the shootings. “They are impacting, I think, our children and the next generation.”Expected speakers on Friday, according to the N.R.A.’s lobbying arm, include former President Donald J. Trump, former Vice President Mike Pence, Governors Chris Sununu of New Hampshire and Kristi Noem of South Dakota, former Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas and Vivek Ramaswamy, an entrepreneur, author and “anti-woke” activist.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who recently signed a bill allowing Florida residents to carry concealed guns without a permit; Nikki Haley, a former ambassador to the United Nations; and Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina are scheduled to send video messages.“They are all going because there’s a competitive presidential primary,” said Robert Blizzard, a Republican pollster. “In states like Iowa and New Hampshire, which are really the only states that matter on the calendar for the time being, most Republican primary voters are gun owners and strong supporters of the N.R.A.”The N.R.A. meeting was on the books well before the most recent shootings, though according to the latest schedule, the violence did not appear to prompt high-profile skipping of the event, in contrast to the actions of some Republicans who did so after the Uvalde shooting.Some of those current and would-be candidates are also expected in Nashville this weekend for a Republican donor retreat — a site that has left some in the grieving city on edge.Following the mass shootings at a bank this week in Louisville, Ky., and at a Nashville school last month, presidential hopefuls, expressing varying degrees of outrage, have emphasized mental health issues and school security, seemed to focus on the gender identity of the Nashville shooter, or managed to keep largely quiet on the matter of combating gun violence.But the issue, which inspires great zeal among many Republican primary voters — as evidenced by how many Republicans featured guns in their primary ad campaigns last year — gets far more complex in general elections, especially for any candidate who would theoretically be inclined to endorse even narrow changes to the nation’s gun laws.Voters rarely cite guns as their most important issue in general elections. But public sentiment is clear: A recent Morning Consult poll found that 67 percent of voters support stricter gun control laws, including nearly half of Republicans surveyed. And Democrats have used Republican inaction on the issue as part of their broader argument that the G.O.P. is outside the American mainstream.“One of the challenges that Republicans face in suburban areas across the country is they are being viewed, in light of Trump, in light of abortion, and to some extent on guns,” Mr. Blizzard said, “as being a little bit too extreme on their positions.”He stressed that the gun issue had not been as politically potent in general elections as strong feelings about Mr. Trump or abortion rights, and that the defense of Second Amendment rights “is part of the Republican Party’s DNA.”The political impact of mass shootings has not been lost on Republican leaders, however. Senator Mitch McConnell, the minority leader, said as much last year as the Senate approved bipartisan legislation intended to curb gun violence. Mr. McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, said he hoped “it will be viewed favorably by voters in the suburbs we need.”In a briefing with the news media on Thursday organized by the Democratic National Committee, Senator Christopher Murphy of Connecticut, a Democrat who has been heavily involved in efforts to combat gun violence, said that Republicans were courting electoral disaster with their approach to guns.He noted that in Nashville, it was young people who were especially involved in protesting for stricter gun control, including amid the expulsions of two Black lawmakers who led a gun control protest on the state House floor. (The lawmakers have since been reinstated.)“As the Republican Party continues to give the middle finger to kids,” he said, “they are just asking for an electoral tidal wave. I don’t want that. I want Republicans to join with the rest of us and work to build a bipartisan majority behind common-sense gun laws. But it appears that they’re not ready for that.”Representatives for the N.R.A. and the Republican National Committee did not respond to requests for comment.For now, much of the activity is happening through executive actions, at the federal and state levels. Gov. Bill Lee of Tennessee, a Republican whose wife lost a close friend in the Nashville shooting, signed an executive order this week focused on toughening background checks, and he urged state lawmakers to take broader action, though that may face a difficult road.And in Michigan on Thursday, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, signed anti-gun-violence measures into law following a recent shooting at Michigan State University. Minnesota Democrats are moving to do the same.Mayor Tim Kelly of Chattanooga, Tenn., who said he is not affiliated with a political party but has contributed to both Republicans and to Democrats including Mr. Biden, has been a vocal advocate for stricter gun measures. He said he was encouraged by Mr. Lee’s actions.“To see him change his views on it — frankly, I do have hope that perhaps we’re reaching a tipping point,” said Mr. Kelly, who said he is himself a gun owner. “People have just had enough.” More

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      Facing Tough Senate Race, Montana G.O.P. Looks to Change the Rules

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      An election bill moving through the Republican-led Legislature would rewrite the rules for a single race: the looming battle against Senator Jon Tester, a Democrat.HELENA, Mont. — Republicans typically cry foul when accused of rewriting election laws to benefit their candidates. But as the Montana Legislature debates a new voting bill, even some G.O.P. lawmakers concede that this one appears designed to help them win elections — more precisely, one very important election.The bill would rewrite the rules for the state’s next U.S. Senate race and only that race. The 2024 fight to oust Senator Jon Tester, a Democrat, is expected to be one of the tightest in the country.The legislation would shift the contest from a traditional election into a “top two” primary system, making it exceedingly difficult for third parties to reach a general election ballot. Some believe the system would keep the state’s vibrant Libertarian Party from siphoning votes from the Republican nominee.The 2024 fight to oust Jon Tester, a Democratic senator from Montana, is expected to be one of the tightest in the country.Sarah Silbiger/ReutersWhile supporters of the bill say it makes elections fairer, both Republican and Democratic lawmakers in Helena have claimed that the bill reeks of political interference. Some have chafed at the involvement of Washington operatives, especially allies of Senator Steve Daines. A Montana Republican and head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, Mr. Daines is leading the party’s campaign to win control of the Senate in 2024.Brad Molnar, a Republican state senator who opposes the bill, criticized Washington meddling in Montana politics, saying that if national Republicans get involved, “we will lose.” He predicted that the bill would backfire on Republicans if angry Libertarians flock to Democrats. “They will be angry. Why wouldn’t they be? I’m not a libertarian, and I’m angry.”The bill’s sponsor, State Senator Greg Hertz, said he was trying to ensure that Montana’s senator would win with more than 50 percent of the vote and to also tamp down on parties’ interference with third-party candidates.Mr. Hertz said he had designed the bill to apply only to the upcoming Senate race because he saw it as a test run. He expected the Legislature to examine expanding the system to congressional, state legislative and other statewide races in the future.The system would mirror California’s primaries, where all the candidates from all the parties appear on the same ballot, and the top two vote-getters face off in the general election.The bill passed the Montana Senate last week by a narrow margin, with seven Republican senators voting against it. A House committee will hold a hearing on the bill on Friday.State Senator Greg Hertz, the bill’s sponsor, says he was trying to tamp down on parties’ interference with third-party candidates.Janie Osborne for The New York TimesMultiple former Republican officials are expected to testify against it. The Libertarian Party has also been organizing opposition to the bill. The state’s Republican governor has not weighed in.But the forces crafting the bill and pushing it through are powerful.Chuck Denowh, a lobbyist who worked for Mr. Daines’s 2020 campaign and has ties to the Montana Republican Party, has been working closely with Mr. Hertz. At one point he suggested critical changes that focused the bill on Mr. Tester’s race, according to emails reviewed by The New York Times.“We would like it to apply only to United States Senate races,” Mr. Denowh said in an email sent on March 26 to multiple lawmakers, including Mr. Hertz. “We’d like a sunset in 2025,” he added. It was not clear whom “we” was referring to, and Mr. Denowh declined to answer questions.Mr. Hertz quickly agreed with the changes and asked State Senator Steven J. Fitzpatrick, the House majority leader, who was copied on the email chain, to make the newly reworked proposal “a priority bill.”The sudden changes and swift reintroduction after an initial failure in committee caught Republican lawmakers by surprise.In a text message chain among eight Republican senators, Mr. Fitzpatrick answered lawmakers’ concerns by telling them the bill “came from Daines” and that it was the “brainchild of the Jason Thielman,” according to screenshots of the texts obtained by The New York Times. Mr. Thielman is a longtime Daines aide who is now the executive director of the N.R.S.C.“No wonder I don’t like it,” responded Senator Dan Salomon, a Republican state senator who voted against the bill.When asked about the text messages, Mr. Fitzpatrick said that he had never spoken directly with Mr. Daines about the bill, but that he believed the effort originated with national Republicans.Mr. Daines has not weighed in publicly. Rachel Dumke, a spokeswoman for Mr. Daines’s office, declined to comment.At least two Republican lawmakers in Montana said they had been pressured by Mr. Daines’s office to support the bill. And one Republican state senator received a text message from state Republican Party officials explicitly saying the bill was needed to defeat Mr. Tester. The lawmakers asked for anonymity to disclose private discussions.In an interview, Mr. Hertz said he had been working on election issues since last September, initially exploring adding a runoff election. But he acknowledged that his efforts seemed to gain national interest when he zeroed in on the Senate race.“Yeah, I heard from a lot of people in D.C. at that point in time,” Mr. Hertz said. He added that he hadn’t spoken with Mr. Daines personally but had spoken with Mr. Thielman repeatedly about the status of the bill.A spokesman for the N.R.S.C., Mike Berg, declined to comment on Mr. Thielman’s involvement.“The optics of the situation, I felt, were bad … I want to do it across the board,” said Jason Small, a Republican state senator who voted against the bill.Janie Osborne for The New York TimesMr. Hertz said that he thought the changes would help third parties. “This gives them an opportunity in the primary to win more votes. And if you have enough support, you will end up on the general ballot, and that will give you an opportunity to make your case to the voters of Montana.”A spokeswoman for Gov. Greg Gianforte declined to respond to questions, pointing to the governor’s brief statement at a news conference on Thursday.“A number of other states have tried things like this,” Mr. Gianforte said. “I think it’s kind of an interesting idea, but we won’t take a firm position until we actually see the final legislation.”Some Republican lawmakers who were supportive of the idea of a top-two election system balked when they saw that the proposal had been amended to apply only to the 2024 Senate election.“If we’re going to do a top-two primary, I’m all for it. I think it’s wonderful,” said Jason Small, a Republican state senator who voted against the bill. “The optics of the situation, I felt, were bad if we’re going to just single out one particular race and try it there. I want to do it across the board.”Some Republicans in the statehouse noted that the bill might not have much of an impact on the outcome. They cited a recent study by the election website FiveThirtyEight that found that Mr. Tester was likely to have prevailed in all of his elections even if the Libertarian candidate hadn’t run.The Tester campaign accused Montana Republicans of attempting a power grab.Republicans are “trying to change local election laws to look more like California’s in an attempt to gain political power for themselves,” said Shelbi Dantic, a spokeswoman for Mr. Tester’s re-election campaign.So far, no front-runner has emerged to challenge Mr. Tester in November. Republicans in Helena expect Representative Matt Rosendale, a conservative who voted to overturn the 2020 presidential election, to explore a run. Tim Sheehy, a wealthy businessman and military veteran, is being recruited by some Republicans in Washington to run, as first reported by Axios, though he has not made any formal announcement.As news about the bill spread around the state, Republican lawmakers said they were receiving calls and texts from constituents claiming an unease with the bill. Senator Jeff Welborn, a Republican state senator, noted that the complaints weren’t coming from just Democrats.Mr. Welborn said that he had received multiple text messages, including one from a constituent who said the bill amounted to election interference. “This guy also has Republican candidate signs in his yard,” Mr. Welborn said. “He saw this as a really, really bad look on Montana as a state for trying this one on.”Former Republican leaders in the state have also been vocal in their opposition.“It’s a horrible commentary about how you value the votes of your fellow citizens,” said Marc Racicot, a former Republican governor and former chair of the R.N.C. “They didn’t sign up as guinea pigs.”Republicans in favor of the bill said that they believed it would cut down on the interference by major parties with third-party candidates. In the past, Democrats have attempted to promote Libertarian candidates to try and divert votes from Republicans, and Republicans have fought to get Green Party candidates on the ballot to try and draw support away from Democrats.“I think at least with the top-two primary you eliminate some of that nonsense,” Mr. Fitzpatrick said, adding, “It’s dirty politics at its worst.” More

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      Republicans Are Forgetting One Crucial Truth About People and Their Bodies

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      In the homestretch of the epic Wisconsin Supreme Court race that ended last week with a blowout victory for liberals, voters’ cellphones pinged incessantly with text message ads.“Woke trans activists have their candidate,” one text message said, according to Wisconsin Watch, a local nonprofit news site. “Schools across Wisconsin are stripping away parental rights and trans kids behind parents backs. There’s only one candidate for the Supreme Court who will put an end to this. Vote for Judge Daniel Kelly by April 4 and protect your children from trans madness.”For a judicial race that centered on two big issues the Wisconsin Supreme Court is likely to consider soon, abortion and voting, it might seem odd that these ads in support of the conservative candidate chose to focus on an issue nowhere near the top of the agenda on the court’s upcoming docket.For reasons that are now obvious, conservative groups supporting Kelly largely avoided touting his opposition to abortion. That’s a sure loser, as the G.O.P. is rapidly learning. It probably wouldn’t have been a good idea to run on preserving the right-wing gerrymander that gives conservatives a total lock on Wisconsin’s Legislature and congressional delegation either. So some supporters reached for the wedge issue du jour: transphobia.An article of faith has emerged among hard-right conservatives — and has been worried over by some centrist pundits — that parental concerns about health care and social support for transgender children make for a potent wedge issue. After all, it has all the hallmarks of an effective culture war hot button: It involves strange new social and medical practices and unfamiliar ways of life, and children are sometimes concerned. But it’s not working the way conservatives expected.The end of Roe has reversed the tides of the culture war. The right has now lost it by winning the biggest victory of all. State legislatures across the country are enacting draconian abortion bans that are producing predictably tragic outcomes. Americans don’t have to imagine what the right will do with its power over women’s lives because we see it in every headline about women risking death because a doctor is too scared of running afoul of an anti-abortion law to provide a necessary medical procedure. It has become blindingly obvious what happens when Republicans legislate what Americans do with their sex organs. And voters, understandably, don’t like what they see.For years even before the fall of Roe, conservatives have used hard-edge anti-trans messaging in both red and swing state races, only to come up short. They tried it in North Carolina’s 2016 governor’s race, in the aftermath of a controversial bill requiring people to use the bathroom associated with their sex assigned at birth. The Democrat, Roy Cooper, won despite a hail of anti-trans ads. They tried it against Andy Beshear, the Democratic candidate for governor in deep-red Kentucky in 2019, and failed. In 2022, G.O.P. candidates tried to use L.G.B.T. issues as a wedge in races in swing states from the Midwest to the Sunbelt to New England. The data suggest that opposition to trans rights cannot overcome — or possibly even make a dent in — the advantage that comes to Democrats in swing states for supporting abortion rights. It’s not even close.“Transphobia was, and is, the dog that couldn’t hunt,” wrote the anonymous but eerily prescient polling analyst who writes a Substack newsletter under the name Ettingermentum.Wisconsin was the most recent example of this failure. The American Principles Project, a Virginia organization that is a driving force behind the harsh anti-transgender laws sweeping red states, spent almost $800,000 on ads supporting Kelly in the State Supreme Court race, according to Wisconsin Watch. A video paid for by the organization’s PAC accompanied text messages that described his liberal opponent, Judge Janet Protasiewicz, as “endorsed by all the woke activists that are stripping parents of their rights in Wisconsin schools and forcing transgenderism down our throats,” Wisconsin Watch reported.In one mendacious video advertisement the narrator claims that a 12-year-old was medically transitioned without parental consent. The video shows images of surgical scarring and implies that this child underwent surgery at the behest of school officials. This is absolutely false. The child in question merely changed their name and pronouns.But any hopes that this messaging would drive swing voters seems to have fallen flat. Indeed, the margin of victory in Wisconsin exceeded predictions. Joe Biden won the state by just 20,000 votes in 2020. Protasiewicz won by 200,000.The failure of anti-trans messaging as a wedge issue may seem surprising because the Democratic Party really does seem to have a problem when it comes to parents and schools. Resentment over Democrats’ support for school closures during the pandemic has become a liability for the party among educated suburbanites, as the 2021 governor’s race in Virginia demonstrated.But Republicans seem to be making the grave error of assuming that someone angry about school closures in the fall of 2021 is a potential conscript in their war today against drag queens and trans people. So far there appears to be little appetite among swing-state voters for laws that could — if our worst fears are realized — allow school officials to demand inspections of their child’s genitals before soccer matches and swim meets. Besides, there’s a far more urgent issue when it comes to students’ safety: In a country where child shooting deaths went up 50 percent from 2019 to 2021, who would trust their children to the political party that opposes gun regulation?There is no doubt that attitudes about gender are changing quickly, and changing especially quickly among young people. But it’s hard to draw firm conclusions about how Americans really feel about this. In a Pew poll last June, a large majority of respondents said they favor legal protections for trans people from discrimination in jobs, housing and public spaces. Other findings suggest unease: 43 percent said gender identity norms were changing too quickly. Majorities support requiring athletes to compete as their sex assigned at birth. Depressingly, 46 percent said they supported criminalizing gender-affirming care for minors.But one finding from that same poll stood out to me: 68 percent of respondents aren’t paying close attention to the trans bills popping up across the country, and three-quarters of self-identified moderates said they weren’t following the issue closely. But that doesn’t mean they are interested in restrictive or repressive laws, much less willing to vote on the basis of support for such policies.Of course, this lack of attention can cut both ways. Voters who aren’t paying attention to the issue are unlikely to be drawn to the polls to vote against a transgender care ban, either. In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis, presumed to be a leading candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, has been able to defy post-Roe gravity and increase his support despite prosecuting an aggressive culture war campaign against queer people. It remains to be seen how this would play out in a presidential election, which would run smack into swing states that have recently rejected in statewide elections both anti-abortion and anti-trans candidates.Democrats — and all Americans — should support the rights of all queer people, not just for electoral advantage but as a matter of principle. There is a clear line from the fight over bodily autonomy in reproductive rights to the fight for access to medical care for trans people. It’s a matter of dignity, too. Trans rights, much like abortion, present a profound challenge to the gender binary, which upholds the world’s oldest and most persistent hierarchy. People who don’t want to or cannot fit within their traditionally prescribed roles — mother, father, woman, man, boy, girl — increasingly have the freedom to live their lives beyond those circumscribed identities.The right has responded to this flowering of freedom with a barrage of repression. In states where Republicans have an ironclad grip on power, they have been incredibly successful. There are hundreds of bills passed or pending that vary in their intrusion on personal liberty but share the goal of giving right-wing politicians the power to control the bodies of citizens through law. On Thursday, this frenzy reached cruel new heights when the attorney general of Missouri issued new emergency rules that put up steep barriers to transgender care, not just for children but also for adults. These barriers could amount to a virtual ban on gender-affirming care for most transgender people in the state.In the face of this onslaught, some centrists seem determined to keep flirting with trans skepticism. It is easy to see why trans issues have become the place for certain centrists to try to perform their moderation — queer people have served this purpose for decades. While other forms of open bigotry became taboo, homophobia and the view that queer people’s rights were a marginal concern has persisted. It has happened before. Bill Clinton heavily courted the gay vote to win the presidency in 1992, only to turn around and sign into law two odious policies: Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and the Defense of Marriage Act. Clinton has since rent his garments over his regrets, but the fact remains that he enshrined discrimination against queer people into federal law.Republicans like to say they are the party of common sense. But what they seem to have forgotten is the commonest sense of all: Most people do not want the government making personal decisions for them. People want to control their own bodies. People want the freedom to decide when and how to form families. Suddenly, after years of pointing fingers at the left for so-called cultural totalitarianism, Republicans have now decisively revealed themselves to be the “jackbooted thugs” wanting details on your teenage daughter’s menstrual cycle. It’s hard to imagine a less appealing message to swing voters than that.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More