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      ‘Nikki Haley Will Not Be the Next President’: Our Columnists Weigh In

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      With candidates entering the 2024 presidential race, Times columnists and Opinion writers are starting a scorecard assessing their strengths and weaknesses. We rate the candidates on a scale of 1 to 10: 1 means the candidate will probably drop out before any actual caucus or primary voting; 10 means the candidate has a very strong chance of accepting the party’s nomination next summer. We begin with Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina and United Nations ambassador in the Trump administration, who announced her bid for the Republican nomination on Tuesday.How seriously should we take Nikki Haley’s candidacy?David Brooks In a normal party, she would have to be taken seriously. She’s politically skilled, has never lost an election, has domestic and foreign policy experience, has been a popular governor, is about as conservative as the median G.O.P. voter and is running on an implicit platform: Let’s end the chaos and be populist but sensible. The question is, is the G.O.P. becoming once again a normal party?Jane Coaston To borrow a phrase, we should take it extremely literally but not seriously. She is indeed running for president. But Nikki Haley will not be the next president of the United States of America.Ross Douthat Much less seriously than the likely front-running candidacies of Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis, and somewhat less seriously than the likely also-ran candidacy of Mike Pence. Which means that barring a scenario where at least two of those three men don’t catch fire, not particularly seriously at all.David French The Republican race is best summed up as two individuals (Trump and DeSantis) and a field. Maybe a third candidate can emerge from the field, and maybe that person can be Haley — a decent reason to take her seriously — but we need to see evidence of independent traction.Michelle Goldberg Not very. I can’t imagine who she thinks her constituency is. A video teasing her candidacy starts with a spiel by the neocon Reagan official Jeane Kirkpatrick. Talk about nailing the zeitgeist!Rosie Gray Haley handled the Trump years more deftly than most. She never allowed herself to be dragged into anything too embarrassing or scandalous and didn’t fall victim to vicious Trump world back-stabbing. But she probably isn’t the kind of candidate who can get through a Republican presidential primary. Shrewd as she has been, she can’t plausibly reinvent herself as a 2023 outrage merchant.Liz Mair She could be the next vice president. That’s the reason to take her seriously.Mike Madrid I don’t see Haley as a serious candidate for the presidency or the vice presidency. She brings nothing demographically or ideologically to the G.O.P. that it doesn’t already have. But it is a serious attempt to maintain her relevance in the Republican hierarchy as a nonwhite woman willing to take a cabinet position or appointment to reassure primary voters that they aren’t actually a bunch of monolithic white people.Daniel McCarthy The interventionist foreign policy that Ambassador Haley has made her signature theme in recent years is unlikely to resonate in an America First party.Bret Stephens Seriously. Last month, Haley gave a speech to an association of auto dealers — the kind of audience any G.O.P. candidate needs to win over. Someone who was in attendance told me she got three thunderous standing ovations. It’s said of Ron DeSantis that the closer you get to him, the less you like him. Haley is the opposite. She still has work to do to win over other core Republican constituencies (above all, evangelicals and Trump sympathizers), but nobody should underestimate her appeal. She looks like a winner to a party that’s desperate to win.What matters most about her as a presidential candidate?Brooks If Trump and DeSantis compete in the Trumpy lane, there will be room for a normie candidate to oppose them. She’s more charismatic than Pence or Mike Pompeo, more conservative than Larry Hogan or Chris Sununu. Her problem is South Carolina. She’ll get no credit for winning that early primary, and it will be devastating to her campaign if she loses.Coaston Haley ought to be an interesting candidate — daughter of immigrants, former governor of a state experiencing big population shifts, a U.N. ambassador — but she seems to have no real basis to run for office. She’s not a populist, and she’s not a culture warrior.Douthat Her possible ability to split off a (small) piece of the non-Trump vote in early primaries, helping him to the nomination if those primaries are extremely close.French She’s a conventional Republican. If no one like her can gain traction, it will be a decisive signal that the Republican base has fundamentally transformed and traditional ideological conservatives are at best an imperfect fit for the G.O.P.Goldberg It will be interesting to see if Trump tries to destroy her right away as a warning to others, or holds off since he’s likely to fare best in a fractured field, with Haley pulling enough votes away from DeSantis to give the nomination to Trump. The more candidates there are, the more likely Trump is to win with a plurality.Gray Not so long ago, the Republican National Committee was predicting continued electoral doom unless the party expanded beyond its mostly white base. So Marco Rubio threw himself into the failed Gang of Eight immigration bill; Paul Ryan went on a listening tour of poor urban communities; and Haley had the Confederate flag removed from the State Capitol grounds. For a time, Trump seemed to upend any hope that these savvy rising stars had of one day reaching the White House. Haley’s candidacy will test that assumption, and that’s why she matters. Did Trump stamp out the ambitions of her generation for good, putting an end to the dream of a friendlier, more moderate Republican Party? Or did he merely put those ambitions on hold?Madrid Over 70 percent of Republican primary voters are white, so her candidacy will test the viability of a nonwhite candidate.Mair She has foreign policy and national security experience, which DeSantis does not. Trump can claim to have that kind of experience, but for many people, all it amounts to is keeping classified documents he shouldn’t have had, coddling up to dictators and autocrats, being softer on China than a lot of Republicans would like and other national security failures. Less substantively, she’s a woman of color, and Republican primary voters would love a chance to show that there are indeed nonwhite people and women who think just like they do (this is something a lot of primary voters are a bit neurotic about, and Haley knows it).McCarthy She’s the running mate they wish John McCain had in 2008, the kind of Republican the party thought it needed to appeal to a less white, more educated and firmly feminist America. But Trump changed the dream of the G.O.P.’s destiny: appealing to the working class, rather than to a wider ethnic profile within the class of educated professionals, is what Republicans voters now expect. Haley is too representative of the party elite’s desires to be seen as a plausible tribune of the working class.Stephens If the subtext of a DeSantis candidacy is that he is Trump shorn of the former president’s personal flaws, the subtext of Haley’s is that she is the Republican Party shorn of the former president. A woman, a minority, an immigrant background, a self-made person: Without having to say a word, she embodies everything Trump’s vision of America isn’t. She also would be less vulnerable to Democratic attack lines about Republican bigotry.What do you find most inspiring — or unsettling — about her vision for America?Brooks Her immigrant story is a good one, her decision to get rid of the Confederate flag showed common decency. On the other hand, there was an awful lot of complicity and silence when she served under Trump.Coaston I would ask … what vision for America? What exactly is Haley offering that is distinctly different from the Generic Republican that Donald Trump (whom she reportedly asked first before deciding to announce her candidacy) became? She is selling the idea that she is somehow both distinct enough to separate herself from the former president she continues to support and similar enough to win the nomination with this Republican Party. I don’t buy it.Douthat She has generally offered herself as the candidate of Reaganite bromides and as a potential vehicle for members of the Republican gentry who wish the Trump era had never happened but don’t particularly want to have any unpleasant fights about it. That’s a vision that’s neither inspiring nor unsettling; it’s just dull and useless and unlikely to take her anywhere.French Haley is right about the most important issues facing the free world. The United States should aggressively support Ukraine, and it should aggressively compete with China and deter Chinese aggression. What’s unsettling about her is that, like many Republicans, she never seemed to figure out quite how to handle Trump and constantly flipped and flopped between confrontation and accommodation. Yet her vacillation may be the key to her potential viability. Her back-and-forth on Trump mirrors the back-and-forth of many rank-and-file Republicans. They could perhaps see themselves in her.Goldberg She’s such a hollow figure that it’s impossible to say what her vision is. “What I’ve heard again and again is that Haley’s raw skills obscure an absence of core beliefs and a lack of tactical thinking,” Tim Alberta wrote in a great profile of her in 2021. She’d most likely pursue a hawkish foreign policy, though, so she could be the candidate of those nostalgic for the George W. Bush administration.Gray Haley might be the last person in American politics still quoting Sheryl Sandberg. “We are leaning in,” Haley told Sean Hannity last month. “It is time for a new generation. It is time for more leadership.” But at 51, she’s part of a political generation that can hardly be considered “new.” Her candidacy feels trapped in the post-Tea Party, mid-Obama administration era when she rose to prominence.Madrid Haley will be the first of many candidates trying to connect with Trump’s populist base while also resurrecting the establishment infrastructure that capitulated to him. If she can explain that she was against him before she was for him and now is against him again in a way that wins over voters and reassures party leaders, it may be inspiring for the sliver of Republicans who still maintain the party can return to the Reagan-Bush days, and unsettling for everyone else.Mair It’s not clear to me what her vision is for America. She has alternated between praising and defending Trump and Trumpism and critiquing him and it.McCarthy What’s unsettling is that her vision is a prepackaged failure. She was a moderately conservative governor and something of a soft libertarian at a time when an aggressive neoconservatism was dominant in the G.O.P. But when she took to the national stage she proved unable to distinguish between the tough realism of Jeane Kirkpatrick and the tough-sounding but inept idealism of the George W. Bush administration. She imbibed Robert Kagan when she should have studied George Kennan.Stephens There are two dueling G.O.P. visions for America: the “Fortress America” vision, of a nation besieged by undesirable immigrants and undermined by undesirable globalists, and a “City on a Hill” vision, of a nation whose powers of attraction are its greatest strength. Haley strikes me as leaning much closer to the second vision, at least within the broader parameters of conservative thinking.Imagine you’re a G.O.P. operative or campaign manager. What’s your elevator pitch for a Haley candidacy?Brooks Every wing of the party would accept her, at least as its second choice, if the top choice falters. It’s not an inspiring strategy, but it has worked for others — not the least of which a certain A. Lincoln.Coaston Remember when Republicans seemed hinged? Nikki Haley remembers.Douthat A charismatic female candidate with a vague platform and banal record is all we need to take a time machine back to the politics of 1988.Goldberg She’s canny, poised and doesn’t come off as crazy, so could be formidable in the general election.French She can beat Joe Biden!Gray Haley has already been out there making her own elevator pitch for her candidacy: “We have lost the last seven out of eight popular votes for president,” she told Sean Hannity last month. “It is time that we get a Republican in there that can lead and that can win a general election.”Madrid Nikki Haley has the establishment experience to beat the establishment.Mair No one should underestimate the appeal of a nonwhite, female conservative candidate to old, conservative, white, die-hard G.O.P. primary voters, and she’s not another white conservative dude.McCarthy Did you ever wish Hillary Clinton was a Republican? Now she is!Stephens If she can win the nomination, she will win the general election.On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rank Nikki Haley’s potential as a presidential candidate? Share your ranking — and your reasoning for it — in the comments. (1 means she will drop out early; 10 means she has a strong chance of accepting the nomination.)David Brooks, Ross Douthat, David French, Michelle Goldberg and Bret Stephens are Times columnists.Jane Coaston is a Times Opinion writer.Rosie Gray (@RosieGray) has covered the conservative movement for more than a decade as a political reporter for BuzzFeed News and The Atlantic.Mike Madrid is a Republican political consultant and a co-founder of the Lincoln Project.Liz Mair (@LizMair) has served as a campaign strategist for Scott Walker, Roy Blunt, Rand Paul, Carly Fiorina and Rick Perry. She is the founder and president of Mair Strategies.Daniel McCarthy is the editor of “Modern Age: A Conservative Review.”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

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      Which Republicans Are Eyeing a 2024 Run?

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      Caroline Brehman/EPA, via ShutterstockHaley, 51, who served as United Nations ambassador under Trump, is expected to announce her bid on Wednesday, then visit New Hampshire and Iowa. She has called for “generational change” in the party, after three disappointing elections in a row in the Trump era. But in early surveys of the potential Republican field, she is polling in single digits. More

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      Will Trump and Biden Gang Up on DeSantis?

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      If President Biden sometimes sounded a lot like Donald Trump during his State of the Union address, boasting about a record of economic nationalism, the imitation may soon run the other way. Biden’s attacks on congressional Republicans for being allegedly eager to cut Medicare and Social Security were a clear preview of how he hopes to run against the G.O.P. in 2024. But they were also a possible preview of how Trump may try to reclaim his own party’s nomination — by reprising his 2016 campaign’s rejection of Tea Party austerity and attacking potential rivals (which means, primarily, Ron DeSantis) as libertarian dogmatists who don’t care about the middle class.That strategy was previewed a bit recently by Joseph Zeballos-Roig and Shelby Talcott in Semafor. Their subject was the so-called Fair Tax, a longstanding fascination for certain right-wing activists that proposes to replace the U.S. tax code with a sales tax. This would yield certain advantages in economic efficiency; it would also result in a dramatic tax increase on the middle class.In the heyday of the Tea Party, when implausible policy proposals were all the rage, the Fair Tax was endorsed by many of today’s 2024 hopefuls: by Nikki Haley, Mike Pence and Mike Pompeo and, yes, by DeSantis himself. Which gives Trump a license to accuse all these potential rivals of supporting a middle-class tax hike — and the Semafor writers quote a Trumpworld source basically promising an attack along those lines, to force Trump’s rivals to “answer for what they supported and what they’ve advocated in the past.”That same quote could easily apply to the proposed entitlement changes that many Republicans (again, including DeSantis) embraced in the same era, under the influence of Paul Ryan’s budget blueprints. Those proposals were serious rather than crankish, if ill-timed for a moment when there was more fiscal space than deficit hawks believed. But they were also seriously unpopular, and Trump’s discarding of them was crucial to his success in 2016. And having discarded them then, he’s well positioned to go after DeSantis and others now — in imitation of not only his prior campaign but also, as National Review’s Philip Klein points out, the strategy pursued by Mitt Romney in the 2012 primaries, when he sank Rick Perry’s candidacy in part by blasting Perry for calling Social Security a “Ponzi scheme.”This means that the non-Trump G.O.P. can expect to spend the looming presidential race facing similar attacks from the Biden White House and the Trump campaign. Making the similarity too obvious could backfire on Trump. But the peril for the G.O.P. is that even if Trump can’t beat DeSantis by harping on his past positions, he will still be reinforcing for swing voters the liberal narrative that (non-Trump) Republicans care only about the rich.In one sense that narrative shouldn’t be too hard for DeSantis to counteract, since his record as governor of Florida is more moderate than libertarian — with increases in teacher pay, support for environmental protection and so on — and it’s not clear that voters care that much about long-ago votes if they aren’t tied to specific policy proposals now.But the question is what exactly DeSantis’s more of-the-moment policy proposals would be, in a fiscal landscape constrained by inflation for the first time in decades. There’s certainly a scenario in which he abjures austerity and embraces pro-family and industrial-policy spending, maybe even finds a few modest tax increases that own the professional-class liberals, and thereby evades the Trump-Biden pincer.But it won’t be easy to pull off. Especially because part of Trump’s strength has always been that he doesn’t need the Republican Party’s donor class in the way that normal politicians do, while DeSantis will need to rally that class if he’s going to dethrone the former president. And the price of their support will be, most likely, something that isn’t particularly popular: not an idea from the fringes like Fair Tax or a big entitlement overhaul proposal, necessarily, but at the very least a budget-eating tax cut that probably won’t be populist in any way.Again, 2012 is an interesting precedent. Part of what killed Romney in that general election was that even though he championed Social Security against Perry and declined to embrace any crankish tax proposals, he still ended up saddled with a tax overhaul plan that donors and activists liked but that was easy for the Democrats to attack.It’s not hard to imagine a DeSantis candidacy that rallies the establishment and defeats Trump only to end up in a similar general‌-‌election position. Which suggests one way in which Trump’s populist attacks on other Republicans could actually be helpful to the party’s chances. They’ll leave no doubt, for DeSantis or any other figure, about the political weaknesses of traditional right-wing policymaking. And they might force an early adaptation that otherwise could come, like Romney’s attempted pivots in 2012, as too little and too late.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

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      Koch Network, Aiming to ‘Turn the Page’ on Trump, Will Play in the G.O.P. Primaries

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      The move by the alliance of conservative donors could provide an enormous boost to a Republican alternative to the former president.The donor network created by the billionaire industrialist brothers Charles G. and David H. Koch is preparing to get involved in the presidential primaries in 2024, with the aim of turning “the page on the past” in a thinly veiled rebuke of former President Donald J. Trump, according to an internal memo.The network, which consists of an array of political and advocacy groups backed by hundreds of ultrawealthy conservatives, has been among the most influential forces in American politics over the past 15 years, spending nearly $500 million supporting Republican candidates and conservative policies in the 2020 election cycle alone. But it has never before supported candidates in presidential primaries.The potential move against Mr. Trump could motivate donors to line up behind another prospective candidate. Thus far, only the former president has entered the race.The memo is set to go out to the affiliated activists and donors after a weekend conference in Palm Springs, Calif., where the network’s leaders laid out their goals for the next presidential election cycle. At various sessions, they made clear they planned to get involved in primaries for various offices, and early.“The Republican Party is nominating bad candidates who are advocating for things that go against core American principles,” the memo declares. “And the American people are rejecting them.” It asserts that Democrats are responding with “policies that also go against our core American principles.”The memo’s author is Emily Seidel, chief executive of the lead nonprofit group in the network, Americans for Prosperity, and an adviser to an affiliated super PAC. But the principles sketched out in the memo are expected to apply to some other groups in the network, which is now known as “Stand Together.”Americans for Prosperity’s super PAC spent nearly $80 million during the 2022 midterm elections, but that is likely just a fraction of the network’s overall spending, much of which was undertaken by nonprofit groups that will not be required to reveal their finances until this fall.One of the lessons learned from primary campaigns in the 2022 midterm election cycle, the memo says, in boldface, “is that the loudest voice in each political party sets the tone for the entire election. In a presidential year, that’s the presidential candidate.”The decision to get involved in the Republican presidential primaries is being viewed as a rebuke to Donald Trump.Doug Mills/The New York TimesIt continues, “And to write a new chapter for our country, we need to turn the page on the past. So the best thing for the country would be to have a president in 2025 who represents a new chapter. The American people have shown that they’re ready to move on, and so A.F.P. will help them do that.”Though the memo did not mention Mr. Trump’s name, leaving open the possibility that the network could fall in behind him if he won the Republican nomination, its references to a “new chapter” and leaving the past behind were unmistakable.The Run-Up to the 2024 ElectionThe jockeying for the next presidential race is already underway.G.O.P. Field: Nikki Haley is expected to join the contest for the Republican Party’s nomination soon, but other contenders are taking a wait-and-see approach before challenging former President Donald J. Trump.Trump’s Slow Start: In the first weeks of his third presidential campaign, Mr. Trump notched a less-than-stellar fund-raising haul, yet another signal that his hold on some conservatives may be loosening.Democrats’ Primary Calendar: Upending decades of political tradition, members of the Democratic National Committee voted to approve a sweeping overhaul of the party’s primary process.A Looming Issue: As Mr. Biden sharpens his economic message ahead of a likely re-election bid, the case over his handling of classified documents has thrust him into an uncomfortable position.Mr. Trump’s early entry into the race, in November, has largely frozen the field. The only other candidate expected to get into the race soon is Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, whose allies, despite her work as the U.N. ambassador under Mr. Trump, have cast her as a change from the past.The Koch network publicly opposed some of Mr. Trump’s policies, including tariffs he imposed as president, though it worked with his administration on an overhaul of the criminal justice system that slashed some sentences..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.If the network were to unite behind an alternative to Mr. Trump, it could give that candidate a tremendous boost, given the resources at its disposal, which at times have rivaled — and even surpassed — those of the Republican National Committee.It would also be a dramatic departure for the Koch network, which was launched by the Koch brothers during former President George W. Bush’s administration as an effort to reorient the Republican Party and American politics around their libertarian-infused conservatism.And it comes at a moment when a number of the party’s most prolific donors have remained on the sidelines, with a Republican primary field that has yet to take shape.The network has had ties to former Vice President Mike Pence, who is taking steps that could lead to a presidential campaign. And some major donors have expressed interest in Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who is also weighing a potential campaign. But if Mr. DeSantis enters the race, he is likely months away from doing so, according to people familiar with his thinking.“It looks like the Democrats have already chosen their path for the presidential — so there’s no opportunity to have a positive impact there,” the memo says. Americans for Prosperity’s super PAC “is prepared to support a candidate in the Republican presidential primary who can lead our country forward, and who can win.”A number of big donors who backed Mr. Trump in 2016 and 2020 have yet to say they will do so again. Other groups of donors, such as those belonging to the hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer’s American Opportunity Alliance, which overlaps with the Koch network, are also largely on the sidelines so far.It may be easier for the Koch network to decide to oppose Mr. Trump than to agree on an alternative.In past election cycles, the ideological diversity of the network’s donors, as well as the Kochs’ commitment to their own ideology, have been impediments to uniting behind a single presidential candidate.While Charles Koch is the most prominent figure in the network — his brother David began stepping back from it before his death in 2019 — it draws its influence partly from its ability to pool resources from an array of major donors who represent sometimes divergent wings of the Republican Party, including noninterventionists, foreign policy hawks and religious conservatives.Perhaps the closest the network came to wading into a Republican presidential nominating context was in 2016, when it was pressured by some donors and operatives to back an opponent of Mr. Trump, who was seen as anathema to the Kochs’ limited government, free-trade instincts.But the network wavered. And one of its top operatives, Marc Short, decamped for the presidential campaign of Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, who was viewed by many Koch-aligned donors as having the best chance to defeat Mr. Trump, but whose hawkish instincts ran afoul of the Kochs.The network remained largely on the sidelines of the 2016 presidential race after Mr. Trump won the Republican nomination: Charles Koch at one point compared having to decide whether to support Mr. Trump or Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee, to being asked to choose between cancer or a heart attack.It continued to sit out presidential politics in 2020, when Mr. Koch expressed regret over the network’s financial backing of Republicans and proclaimed that it had “abandoned partisanship” in favor of bipartisan efforts like overhauling the criminal justice system.The network rejects the idea that it retreated from politics altogether, however, noting in the memo that Americans for Prosperity engaged in more primary elections last year — about 200 at the state and federal level — than ever before, and that the candidates it supported won in more than 80 percent of those races. More

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      Republicans Under Pressure as Anti-Abortion Activists Call for a National Ban

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      Activists are pushing for tougher abortion restrictions, while politicians fear turning off swing voters who don’t support strict limits like a national ban.For decades, opposition to abortion was a crucial but relatively clear-cut litmus test for Republican candidates: support overturning a constitutional right to an abortion, back anti-abortion judges and vote against taxpayer funding for the procedure.But now, six months after the Supreme Court overturned federal abortion rights, the test has grown a whole lot harder — and potentially more politically treacherous.Even after a backlash in support of abortion rights cost Republicans key seats in the midterm elections, a restive socially conservative wing is pushing the party’s lawmakers to embrace deeper restrictions. That effort is likely to be on stark display on Friday in Washington, when anti-abortion activists gather for what is expected to be a lower-key version of their annual march. Historically, the event attracted top Republicans, including former President Donald J. Trump, former Vice President Mike Pence and former Speaker Paul Ryan. This year, the list of speakers circulated in advance included two lawmakers: Representative Steve Scalise, the Republican majority leader, and Representative Chris Smith, one of the leaders of the Congressional Pro-Life Caucus.These activists and their allies are pressuring potential Republican presidential contenders to call for a national ban. Raising the stakes nearly two years before the 2024 contest, Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, one of the most powerful anti-abortion groups, said that any candidate who does not support federal restrictions should be “disqualified” from winning the party’s nomination.But some Republican strategists worry that such a position could repel general-election swing voters, who polls show are turned off by the idea of a national ban.Other conservative activists are pushing for a new series of litmus tests that include restrictions on medication abortion, protections for so-called crisis pregnancy centers that discourage women from having abortions, and promises of fiercely anti-abortion appointees to run the Justice Department and the Food and Drug Administration.For Republican politicians, these activists are forcing the question of what, exactly, it means to be “pro-life” in a post-Roe v. Wade era.In Grand Rapids, Mich., last November, opponents rallied against Proposition 3, a ballot measure that sought to protect abortion rights. Democratic candidates, who supported Proposition 3, did well in the election.Brittany Greeson for The New York Times“This is coming. The pro-life movement is not going to be happy or thanking a candidate simply for saying they are pro-life,” said Kristan Hawkins, the president of Students for Life of America, an anti-abortion group. “We’re in a position where we’re going to get down to the various candidates on how far they are going to go to protect women and children.”Some Republican officials and strategists argue that pitched debates over abortion rights in the midterms — and the party’s inability to quickly adopt a unified message on the issue — contributed to the G.O.P.’s weaker-than-expected performance in battleground states including Michigan, Pennsylvania and Arizona.More on Abortion Issues in AmericaAt a Crossroads: As the 50th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade ruling approaches, anti-abortion activists who fought to have the decision overturned are split about what they should focus on next.In Congress: Republicans used their new power in the House to push through legislation that could subject doctors who perform abortions to criminal penalties.Morning-After Pills: The Food and Drug Administration revised its guidance on the most commonly used emergency contraceptives, making clear they are not abortion pills.Abortion Pills: In a move that could significantly expand access to medication abortions, the F.D.A. moved to allow retail pharmacies to offer abortion pills in the United States.This view is shared by former President Donald J. Trump, who distanced himself this month from a social conservative wing that has been a pillar of his base when he blamed the “abortion issue” for the party’s loss of “large numbers of voters” in November.The comments set off an instant backlash from loyal supporters who once lauded him as the most anti-abortion president in history. Ms. Hawkins described Mr. Trump as “listening to swamp consultants.” The remarks also prompted ridicule from some Republican strategists who noted that Mr. Trump was often a liability in major races last year.Some potential 2024 candidates have begun tussling over the issue as they try to position themselves as the conservative movement’s next standard-bearer. Mr. Trump’s comments drew a rebuke from his former vice president, Mike Pence, who retweeted a statement from Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America urging the former president and his possible rivals to embrace an “ambitious consensus pro-life position.”“Well said,” added Mr. Pence, who has cast himself as a true champion of the cause as he promotes the Supreme Court’s ruling in appearances at “crisis pregnancy centers” and movement galas.A spokesman for Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota has accused Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida of “hiding” behind his state’s ban on abortion past 15 weeks of pregnancy, while Ms. Noem has promoted her “aggressive” record on abortion restrictions.“Talking about situations and making statements is incredibly important, but also taking action and governing and bringing policies that protect life are even more important,” she said recently on CBS News..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.And Mr. DeSantis, who shied away from addressing abortion for most of the fall campaign, has said he is “willing to sign great life legislation” and has not ruled out support for a six-week ban.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida signed a bill last year for a ban on abortions after 15 weeks, and he has said he would consider a six-week ban.John Raoux/Associated PressStill, it remains unclear what, exactly, is the new standard for being anti-abortion — even among those pushing for more restrictions. Is it enough to seek to ban abortions after 15 weeks? Or should the bar be roughly six weeks, like the measure that Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia signed into law? Should Republicans support exceptions for rape, incest and health of the mother — which Mr. Trump backs — or none at all? And how do you define health anyhow? Do psychiatric crises count?As some Republican-dominated statehouses prepare to further limit abortion, future presidential candidates are also likely to be asked about restrictive measures being proposed, including prosecuting those seeking abortion care in states where it is banned, targeting allies who help women travel across state lines for the procedure, criminalizing the mailing of abortion medication, and granting fetuses the same legal rights as people through fetal personhood bills.“Conservatives will not allow a Republican to be elected as their candidate that’s not pro-life,” said Penny Nance, the chief executive of Concerned Women for America, a group that argues that life begins at conception.Asked how conservatives now defined “pro-life” credentials — in terms of embracing abortion restrictions after a certain pregnancy threshold, simply looking for candidates who seemed to be fighters on the issue, or something else — Ms. Nance replied, “I think we’ll grapple with that.”Several activists have suggested that they expect this grappling to unfold in the context of a presidential primary campaign, as possible candidates race to demonstrate their anti-abortion bona fides.Democrats are avidly watching from the sidelines, keeping close tabs on the abortion stances of potential 2024 rivals. Their hope is that Republicans adopt positions that might be popular with their base but that will cost them the moderate suburbanites who are critical in the general election. Polling conducted by some Democratic strategists during the midterms found that voters strongly rejected any discussion of a national abortion ban.“They’re going to go for a national ban,” Celinda Lake, a longtime Democratic strategist and pollster, said in an interview around Election Day. “That is the most mobilizing statement, the most persuasive.”She added, “And their candidate is going to be pushed into saying it.”Still, after the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, it remains an open question whether social conservatives hold the same king-making power in the primary as they did in 2016, or if they may be forced to accept a candidate who doesn’t go as far on their top issues as they would prefer.Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota has promoted her “aggressive” record on abortion restrictions.Phelan M. Ebenhack/Associated PressThe party remains divided over whether to support any national restrictions. In the House, the new Republican majority opened the session with a package of abortion legislation that did not include a national ban. Because Democrats control the Senate, none of the measures are expected to become law.“A great many Republicans still think the victory in Dobbs was pushing this down to the states,” Scott Jennings, a Republican strategist and longtime adviser to Senator Mitch McConnell, said when asked for his thoughts on the relatively limited action on Capitol Hill. “It is contradictory to simultaneously believe that and then push for a national regime on it.”Mr. Jennings said he thought restricting abortion access after 15 weeks of pregnancy, with some exceptions, was smart politics, a proposal that candidates could endorse for the states.But when Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina put forward that position in the form of a federal ban before the midterms, the proposal earned a backlash among some Republicans who viewed it, and its timing, as politically foolhardy.Still, in the final weeks of the midterms, many Republicans embraced a central message: a 15-week limit with exceptions for rape, incest and life of the mother. They sought to push Democrats to define their own limits on gestational age — and falsely accused them of supporting “abortion until birth” if they refused. Nearly all Democrats support federal legislation that would reinstate a version of the standard set by Roe: permitting abortion until fetal viability, roughly 23 weeks, and after that point only if the pregnancy poses a risk to the mother’s health.Robert Blizzard, a veteran Republican pollster, noted that several Republican candidates who generally opposed abortion rights won major statewide races in places including Florida, Georgia and Iowa. But elsewhere, for candidates without clearly defined personal brands, he said, “voters can use the abortion issue as a test of how compassionate they are, and how pragmatic they are, in order to solve problems and get things done.”“There were some candidates we had running, specifically in statewide races, that just could never get past the favorability” issue with independent voters, he added.Mr. Blizzard emphasized that it was impossible to know what issues would motivate voters in the 2024 general election. But there is little doubt, he said, that Democrats will continue to use the abortion issue against Republicans — and that in the midterms they often did so effectively.“Every metric you would look at indicates that that energizes the left and energizes the Democratic base, which it certainly did,” he said. “In some cases, where we made the fight over other issues — whether the economy, inflation, the border, whatever else was going on in a particular state or district — we did, I think, well. But in places where we were not able to change the narrative of a race, we didn’t do well.”“In terms of going forward,” he went on, describing the political uncertainties surrounding the issue, “I don’t think anyone has a really solid answer for it.” More

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      John Eastman Is Defiant as Trump-Related Investigations Proliferate

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      A legal reckoning awaits a chief architect of Donald Trump’s effort to reverse his election loss. But in Mr. Eastman’s telling, he was far from a criminal.WASHINGTON — John C. Eastman, a legal architect of Donald J. Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss, invoked the Fifth Amendment more than 100 times under questioning by the House Jan. 6 committee.But in recently released testimony from the committee’s investigation, other witnesses had plenty to say about him.Many White House lawyers expressed contempt for Mr. Eastman, portraying him as an academic with little grasp of the real world. Greg Jacob, the legal counsel to former Vice President Mike Pence, characterized Mr. Eastman’s legal advice as “gravely, gravely irresponsible,” calling him the “serpent in the ear” of Mr. Trump. Eric Herschmann, a Trump White House lawyer, recounted “chewing out” Mr. Eastman. Pat A. Cipollone, the chief White House counsel, is described calling Mr. Eastman’s ideas “nutty.”In the coming months, Mr. Eastman will be facing a legal reckoning. He has been drawn into the criminal investigation into election interference in Atlanta, which is nearing a decision on potential indictments. The F.B.I. seized his iPhone. And the Jan. 6 committee, in one of its last acts, asked the Justice Department to investigate Mr. Eastman on a range of criminal charges, including obstructing a congressional proceeding. For good measure, he faces a disciplinary bar proceeding in California.A once-obscure scholar at the right-wing Claremont Institute, Mr. Eastman joined the Trump camp shortly after the election and was soon among a group of lawyers who, with the president’s blessing, largely commandeered decision-making from lawyers at the White House and on the Trump campaign.He championed a two-pronged strategy that the Jan. 6 committee portrayed as a coup plot. The first was enlisting party officials to organize slates of bogus electors in swing states where Mr. Trump lost, even after the results had been certified and recertified, as in Georgia. The second was pressuring Mr. Pence to deviate from the vice president’s traditionally ceremonial role and decline to certify all the electoral votes on Jan. 6.While Mr. Eastman refused to answer most of the committee’s questions, he has hardly been at a loss for words. At the “Stop the Steal” rally on Jan. 6, 2021, held on the Ellipse moments before Trump supporters marched toward the Capitol, he spoke ominously of stolen elections, voting machine chicanery and ballots stuffed in a “secret folder.” Over the last two years he has remained defiant in a string of public appearances and interviews, and painted a picture sharply at odds with other accounts, most notably those of Mr. Pence and two of his aides who cooperated with the House committee.In Mr. Eastman’s telling of the lead-up to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, he was far from a criminal. In fact, in a recent interview — a fuller version of one he gave to The New York Times in the fall of 2021 — he says he was helping to head off a potentially more perilous outcome.Mr. Eastman spoke of voter fraud at the “Stop the Steal” rally on Jan. 6, 2021, just before Trump supporters marched toward the Capitol.Jim Bourg/ReutersHe claims that in an Oval Office meeting on Jan. 4, he helped convince Mr. Trump that Mr. Pence did not have the power to pick whomever he wanted as president. And Mr. Eastman said his advice to the president and vice president was only that Mr. Pence should pause the certification of the election, giving legislatures more time to consider fraud allegations in certain states where Mr. Trump had lost.“I think my greatest contribution to this conversation is to have backed Trump away from the notion that Pence could just simply gavel him as re-elected,” Mr. Eastman said during the interview at his lawyer’s office in Washington, just blocks from the White House. “And, you know, you look at some of his tweets before that Jan. 4 meeting, he’s saying things like that, because that’s what people out there are saying. But if you look at his speech on Jan. 6, after I weigh in at that meeting, he’s saying exactly the opposite.”Understand the Events on Jan. 6Timeline: On Jan. 6, 2021, 64 days after Election Day 2020, a mob of supporters of President Donald J. Trump raided the Capitol. Here is a close look at how the attack unfolded.A Day of Rage: Using thousands of videos and police radio communications, a Times investigation reconstructed in detail what happened — and why.Lost Lives: A bipartisan Senate report found that at least seven people died in connection with the attack.Jan. 6 Attendees: To many of those who attended the Trump rally but never breached the Capitol, that date wasn’t a dark day for the nation. It was a new start.Few in the White House, however, saw him as anything close to a voice of moderation amid the riot that followed. And Mr. Eastman’s account differs in significant ways from those provided by Mr. Pence and his aides.The former vice president refused to cooperate with the Jan. 6 committee but addressed the issue in a recent opinion essay in The Wall Street Journal. Mr. Pence wrote that on Jan. 5, a day after first meeting with Mr. Eastman in the Oval Office, Mr. Trump summoned the vice president for another meeting where “the president’s lawyers, including Mr. Eastman, were now requesting that I simply reject the electors.”.css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.He said that he “later learned that Mr. Eastman had conceded to my general counsel that rejecting electoral votes was a bad idea and any attempt to do so would be quickly overturned by a unanimous Supreme Court. This guy didn’t even believe what he was telling the president.”The crux of Mr. Eastman’s defense is that he was simply a lawyer offering advice, and that he was acting in good faith, since he still believes many of the fraud claims that were made. “I’m not backing down on that,” he said. “I mean, the amount of evidence, even if I’m wrong about it, was certainly enough to have warranted further review.”In an email to Mike Pence’s lawyer on the night of Jan. 6, Mr. Eastman urged that the vice president should not certify the electoral vote.House Select Committee, via Associated PressAsked what he based such claims on, he cited a report issued last year by Michael J. Gableman, a former Wisconsin judge who was hired, and later fired, by the Republican speaker of the Wisconsin State Assembly, Robin Vos. The report endorsed a host of debunked claims. He also cited the deeply flawed documentary “2000 Mules,” directed by Dinesh D’Souza, a conservative activist who once pleaded guilty to felony campaign finance fraud. (He was later pardoned by Mr. Trump.)In recent weeks, Mr. Eastman has continued to assert himself as a far-right stalwart, signing a letter endorsing dissident Republicans’ ultimately failed efforts to block Representative Kevin McCarthy of California from becoming speaker of the House. Among the other signatories to the letter was Virginia Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, for whom Mr. Eastman once clerked. In her own testimony to the Jan. 6 committee, Ms. Thomas referred to Mr. Eastman as “an active participant with the ‘Thomas clique’ clerks” who keep in touch.Perhaps Mr. Eastman’s most immediate potential exposure comes in the criminal investigation into election interference in Fulton County, Ga., which encompasses most of Atlanta. One of Mr. Eastman’s lawyers said last year that his client was “probably a target” in the inquiry, but his lawyers said this month that he had received no notification that he is one.Robert Sinners, the Trump campaign’s state director of Election Day operations in Georgia, testified to the Jan. 6 committee that he later felt “ashamed” at having taken part in the plan orchestrated by Mr. Eastman and Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, to assemble bogus slates of Trump electors in Georgia and other states that Mr. Trump had lost.“I don’t think Rudy Giuliani’s intent was ever about legal challenges,” he said. “It was clear to me that he was working with folks like John Eastman and wanted to put pressure on the vice president to accept these slates of electors just regardless, without any approval from a governor, without any approval from, you know, the voters or a court, or anything like that.”Clark D. Cunningham, a professor at Georgia State University College of Law, said in an email that “if Sinner’s testimony, or similar testimony, is deemed credible, then John Eastman faces considerable risk of prosecution.”“If Eastman was part of a conspiracy to trick Georgia citizens into signing false election documents, neither his role as an attorney nor a personal belief that election results were tainted by fraud could justify such criminal conduct,” he added.In addition to his central role in the electors plan, Mr. Eastman appeared remotely before a Georgia State Senate panel on Dec. 3, 2020, and made several false claims about the election. Among them was the assertion that “the number of underaged individuals who were allowed to register” in the state “amounts allegedly up to approximately 66,000 people.”Asked about the claim during the interview last month, Mr. Eastman said that he had relied on a consultant who made an error that was later corrected, and that the actual number was about 2,000 who “were only 16 when they registered.” The new figure, he said, came from the same consultant. In a statement, the Georgia Secretary of State’s office said that “the system literally does not allow a person to register if they don’t have a birth date that makes them at least 17.5 years old.”A review of the data used by Mr. Eastman showed that he was referring to any Georgians who were recorded as having registered early going back to the 1920s; data entry errors appeared to be a common culprit, with many people’s registration year listed in place of their birth year. A review by The Times found only about a dozen Georgians who were recorded as having registered in 2020 when they were 16, in what appeared most likely to be another data-entry problem. Norman Eisen, special counsel to the House Judiciary Committee during the first Trump impeachment and co-author of a lengthy report on the Fulton County inquiry, said Mr. Eastman “was referred for criminal prosecution by the Jan. 6 committee, with good reason,” adding that if charges are brought in Georgia “it’s hard to imagine that D.A. Fani Willis does not include him.”Jack Begg More

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      Jingle Bell Time Is a Swell Time to Decide About a 2024 Campaign

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      A host of Democrats and Republicans say they’ll discuss running for office with their families, weighing their political futures with eggnog, board games and maybe a wise uncle.For everything in politics, there is a season. A period of primaries to winnow the field. Party conventions in the summertime. The Labor Day kickoff of the general election.To such well-known mileposts of the political calendar, there must be added one more: talking with your family over the holidays about your next big campaign.A Who’s Who of American politics has said recently, when pressed if they would run for federal office in 2024, that they would hash it out with family members during the next two weeks. Democrat or Republican, whether testing a bid for Senate or aspiring to the White House, politicians have deflected, when asked if they’re jumping into a race, by resorting to nearly identical language.“It’ll be a discussion that I have with my family over the holidays,” Senator Jon Tester of Montana told “Meet the Press” when asked if he would seek re-election in 2024 to one of the Democratic Party’s most vulnerable seats.“I will spend the upcoming holidays praying and talking with my wife, family and close friends,” Representative Jim Banks of Indiana, chairman of the Republican Study Committee, said about a possible run for an open Senate seat.And Representative Ruben Gallego of Arizona, when asked on MSNBC if he would mount a 2024 challenge to Senator Kyrsten Sinema, who left the Democratic Party to become an independent, replied, “I’m going to listen to my family over the holidays — I have a big Latino family that’s going to come in over Christmas.”Everyone with a weighty political decision to make, it seems, is waiting for the end of the year to glean the opinions of a spouse, a wise uncle or a quixotic adolescent, solicited over mugs of eggnog or while trimming the tree with carols curated by Alexa. Political family summits are planned during holiday gatherings by President Biden as well as by potential Republican presidential hopefuls including Mike Pence, Nikki Haley and Larry Hogan. So many discussions are to take place that it sounds as if some family get-togethers will turn into mini-Iowa caucuses around the yule log.Republican and Democratic strategists said that candidates who say they’re waiting for the holidays might be dodging questions about campaigns they’ve already decided on but aren’t ready to announce — or might be genuinely seeking buy-in from loved ones.“Campaigns are absolutely grueling and not just for the candidates,” Rebecca Katz, a Democratic strategist, said. “It’s absolutely a real thing to do the gut check with the whole family and make sure everyone knows what they’re signing up for.”Some of the toughest conversations, she added, involve relatives in one particular age group: “Teenagers hate their parents campaigning.”The Aftermath of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6A moment of reflection. More

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      Mike Pence Plays to the G.O.P. Base From a Times Stage

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      Mr. Pence, while promoting his new book at the DealBook Summit, frowned upon the idea of the Justice Department’s taking action against his former boss.Former Vice President Mike Pence said that he hoped Elon Musk would “create a level playing field” on Twitter that doesn’t censor users.Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesNEW YORK — Former Vice President Mike Pence leaned into Republican talking points on Wednesday about Elon Musk and Disney while walking a familiar fine line on his former boss, delivering a message seemingly geared toward conservatives who will decide whether he is a viable presidential contender in 2024.Appearing at The Times’s DealBook Summit in New York, Mr. Pence was repeatedly pressed by Andrew Ross Sorkin, the founder of DealBook, to talk about the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and the character of former President Donald J. Trump. He demurred.Even as he repeated his belief that Mr. Trump is not an antisemite, he again condemned Mr. Trump for hosting Nick Fuentes, an outspoken antisemite and racist, at a recent dinner.“President Trump was wrong to give a white nationalist, a Holocaust denier, a seat at the table,” Mr. Pence said.He defended the role he had played on Jan. 6, when Mr. Trump’s supporters called for his hanging after he had refused to overturn the election of Joseph R. Biden Jr. as president.And he said that he had never seen “evidence of widespread fraud that would change the outcome” of the 2020 presidential election.When asked whether Mr. Trump should face an indictment by the Justice Department, he frowned on the scenario.“I’m not sure that taking bad advice from lawyers is a violation of criminal law,” he said. “We see too many cases in third world countries where the incoming administration prosecutes a prior administration. That is not an image I want to resonate for the United States.”He also doubled down on comments he made earlier in the day during a Fox News appearance about Mr. Musk, saying he had faith in Mr. Musk’s overhaul of Twitter and its content guidelines, which had led the company under its previous ownership to banish Mr. Trump after the Jan. 6 attack.Mr. Pence, who is weighing a run for president, took a swipe at Disney during his remarks as well. He sought to correlate its stock losses and a recent executive shake-up with the company’s criticism of Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill. The measure prohibits classroom instruction about sexual orientation and gender identity in some elementary school grades.“I think Bob Iger’s recent statements, coming into lead Disney again, prove that the antidote to woke America is America,” he said, referring to Mr. Iger’s return as Disney’s chief executive.He also mentioned his new book, “So Help Me God,” no fewer than seven times — enough to make it a punchline.“As you can tell, if I haven’t mentioned, I have a book,” Mr. Pence joked.“We got that,” Mr. Sorkin said. “We are good.”Mr. Pence underlined, as he often had before, that he was proud of the work done by the Trump administration. But, he noted, “It obviously didn’t end well.” More