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      Germany’s Far Right AfD Party Stages a Comeback

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      With Germans facing an era of political and economic turbulence, the Alternative for Germany is resurgent. Mainstream politicians are struggling to respond.The tables were packed at the Waldhaus, a restaurant on the wooded outskirts of an east German town, as the regulars — workers shaking calloused hands, retirees clutching purses in their lap — settled in for a pub gathering of the far-right Alternative for Germany.But the die-hards worry Germany’s political leadership less than people like Ina Radzheit. An insurance agent in a flowered blouse, she squeezed in among platters of schnitzel and frothy beers for her first visit to the AfD, the German initials by which the party is known.“What’s wrong?” she said. “Where do I start?” She feels unsafe with migration rising. She is uncomfortable with Germany providing weapons to Ukraine. She is exasperated by government squabbling over climate plans she fears will cost citizens like her their modest but comfortable way of life.“I can’t say now if I would ever vote for the AfD,” she said. “But I am listening.”As anxieties over Germany’s future rise, so too, it seems, does the AfD.The AfD has reached a polling high in Germany’s formerly Communist eastern states, where it is now the leading party, drawing around a third of voters. It is edging up in the wealthier west. Nationally, it is polling neck and neck with Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats.If the trend lasts, the AfD could present its most serious threat to Germany’s political establishment since 2017, when it became the first far-right party to enter Parliament since World War II.The turnabout is surprising for a party whose political obituaries filled the German media a year ago, after it had sunk in national elections. And it reflects the unease of a country at a crossroads.Locals arriving for an AfD meeting at the Waldhaus restaurant in Gera, Germany.Lena Mucha for The New York TimesAfter decades of postwar prosperity, Germany is struggling to transform its 20th-century industrial exporting model into a digitized economy that can withstand climate change and competition from powers like China.“We are living in a world of global upheaval,” said Rene Springer, the national AfD lawmaker speaking at the Waldhaus in Gera. “Our responsibility to our children is to one day leave them better off than we are. That’s no longer to be expected.”When it was elected in 2021, Mr. Scholz’s three-party coalition vowed to lead Germany through a painful but necessary transformation. Instead, the country was plunged into deeper uncertainty by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.At first, the coalition seemed to beat the odds: Allies praised its pledge to overwrite postwar pacifism with military revitalization. It found alternatives to cheap Russian gas — nearly 50 percent of its supply — with unexpected speed.But then the country dipped into recession. Migration numbers reached all-time highs, mostly driven by Ukrainian refugees. And the coalition began fighting among itself over how to return to the course it set for Germany before the war.The AfD, a party that mostly drew support by criticizing migration, found new appeal as defender of Germany’s economically precarious class.“With migration, the AfD offered a cultural narrative and identity to those anxious about their future,” said Johannes Hillje, a German political scientist who studies the AfD. “Now, the cultural threat is coming not just from the outside, but within — that is, the transformation policy of the government.”An AfD demonstration on energy security and inflation, outside of the Reichstag in Berlin in October.Christoph Soeder/DPA, via Associated PressThe AfD has resurged despite domestic intelligence classifying it a “suspected” right-wing extremist organization, allowing it to be put under surveillance. Its branch in Thuringia, where the Waldhaus gathering was held, is classified as “confirmed” extremist.A month earlier, its national youth wing was also classified confirmed extremist, though that label was recently lifted as a case regarding its status is settled in the courts.In April, the domestic intelligence agency head, Thomas Haldenwang, said in the agency’s yearly report that of 28,500 AfD members, around 10,000 are believed to be extremists.Yet a full third of Germans now view it as a “normal democratic party,” Mr. Hillje said. “The paradox is that, at the same time, it has become more and more clear that this is really a radical party, if not an extremist party.”In previous years, the party seemed ready to sideline extreme figures. No longer. This April, co-leader Alice Weidel spoke alongside Björn Höcke, party leader in Thuringia and seen as one of the AfD’s most radical politicians.Mr. Höcke was recently charged by state prosecutors for using the phrase “everything for Germany” at a rally — a Nazi Storm Trooper slogan.None of that dampened the enthusiasm at the Waldhaus in Gera, a town of about 93,000 in eastern Thuringia, where the AfD is the most popular party.Anke Wettengel, a schoolteacher, called such labels the equivalent of focusing on hooligan fans of a soccer team — not a reflection of normal supporters, like her.Nor did she see a problem with Mr. Höcke’s language.“That was a very normal sentence,” she said. “We should be allowed to be proud of our country today without immediately being accused of being extremists.”From the stage, Mr. Springer railed against not only immigrant labor reforms, calling them a “traitorous system against native citizens,” but also criticized new climate measures.The audience thumped their tables in approval.A question-and-answer session for AfD supporters and locals at the Waldhaus in Gera. The town in eastern Thuringia is one of many seeing a rise in support of the party across the country.Lena Mucha for The New York TimesStefan Brandner, Gera’s AfD representative, shared statistics that he said overwhelmingly linked foreigners to murders and food handouts, eliciting gasps from the crowd.Many guests said it is such “real facts” that drew them to AfD events. (The federal government wrote in a document providing statistics to the AfD that the data was not substantial enough for such conclusions.)Political analysts say Germany’s main parties share the blame for the AfD’s rise. Mr. Scholz’s coalition failed to convincingly communicate its transformation plans — and instead appeared locked in internal battles over how to carry them out.Their mainstream conservative opponents, including the Christian Democrats of former Chancellor Angela Merkel, are edging closer to AfD positions, hoping to regain voters themselves.They are adopting the AfD’s antagonism to gender-neutral language, as well as tougher stances on migration. Some Christian Democratic leaders are even calling to remove asylum rights in Germany’s constitution.AfD supporters have noticed their views becoming normalized even as rivals try to marginalize the party — and that makes it more difficult for mainstream parties to regain their trust.“They are getting hardened,” said Julia Reuschenbach, a political scientist at the Free University of Berlin. “No group of core voters is as unreachable as those of the AfD.”Björn Höcke, a party leader in Thuringia and one of the AfD’s most radical politicians, marching at a rally in Thuringia last month. Martin Schutt/Picture Alliance, via Getty ImagesLast week, the German Institute for Human Rights, a state-funded organization, released a study arguing that the language and tactics used by the AfD “to achieve its racist and right-wing extremist goals” could meet conditions for banning the party as a “danger to the free democratic order.”Yet such proposals create another dilemma for democratic society: The tools Germany has for fighting the party it sees as a threat are the same that reinforce sentiments among AfD supporters that their country is not actually democratic.“How can it be that an organization funded by the state can stand up and try to stigmatize a significant part of its voters?” Mr. Springer asked in an interview.It is a question to which those in the crowd, like Ms. Wettengel, have found unsettling answers.“Mainstream politics are against the people,” she said. “Not for the people.”The real test of AfD support won’t come until next year, when several east German states hold elections and it has a chance at taking the largest share of the vote.In the meantime, every week, AfD politicians fan out across the country, hosting information booths, pub nights and citizen dialogues, as if it already were campaign season.Outside the train station of Hennigsdorf, a Berlin suburb, the state AfD lawmaker Andreas Galau handed out pamphlets to visitors with an unwavering smile. Some passers-by shouted insults. Others were curious.“Many come here just to get their frustrations off their chest,” he said with a chuckle. “They come and tell us what is on their minds — we’re a bit of a therapy group.”More and more people, he said, no longer feel ashamed to show interest in the AfD. It is this sense that the political establishment is not listening to ordinary people that may be helping fill out the AfD’s ranks.In Gera, Mr. Springer’s address to the crowd seemed an exercise in catharsis and validation.“They think we are stupid,” he said. “They’ll think again when the next elections come.” More

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      Why Robert Kennedy Jr.’s 2024 Bid Is a Headache for Biden

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      The unexpected polling strength of an anti-vaccine activist with a celebrated Democratic lineage points to the president’s weaknesses, which his team is aiming to shore up.President Biden might seem to be on cruise control until the heat of the 2024 general election. Nearly all of the nation’s top Democrats have lined up behind him, and the Republican nomination fight seems set to revolve around Donald J. Trump’s legal problems.But he is nevertheless facing his own version of a primary: a campaign to shore up support among skeptical Democratic voters.As much as the president wants to turn to his looming fight against a Republican — he has signaled he is itching for a rematch with Mr. Trump — his Democratic allies warn he has significant work to do with voters in his own party. He still has to find ways to promote his accomplishments, assuage voters wary of his age and dismiss the Democratic challengers he does have without any drama.Those upstart rivals include Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the anti-vaccine activist with a celebrated Democratic lineage who has emerged with unexpected strength in early polls even as he spreads conspiracy theories and consorts with right-wing figures and billionaire donors. Mr. Kennedy’s support from Democrats, as high as 20 percent in some surveys, serves as a bracing reminder of left-leaning voters’ healthy appetite for a Biden alternative, and as a glaring symbol of the president’s weaknesses.“It’s clear there is a softness that perhaps is born out of a worry about electability in 2024,” said Julián Castro, the former housing secretary who ran for president against Mr. Biden in 2020. “While he’s accomplished a lot, there have been areas where I think people feel like he hasn’t quite delivered what was promised on voting rights, immigration reform, police reform and some aspect of climate.”The White House is taking steps to strengthen Mr. Biden’s political hand, planning a summer of events promoting his legislative achievements. This week, he is making his first overnight campaign trip since announcing his re-election bid, a fund-raising swing through Northern California. Last week, he accepted endorsements from the country’s biggest environmental and labor organizations, which his campaign says will help him coalesce Democratic support.This month, his campaign began running online advertisements highlighting his record. The Biden team even paid for a billboard truck to circle the Capitol and park in front of the Republican National Committee headquarters.Yet some of Mr. Biden’s allies say they worry that the president’s still-nascent campaign does not fully grasp the depth of its problems with Democratic voters, who have consistently told pollsters they would prefer that Mr. Biden not seek re-election. Voters remain uneasy about inflation and his stewardship of the economy.President Biden with Mayor Paige Cognetti of Scranton, Pa., in 2021. Ms. Cognetti has recently promoted projects in Pennsylvania funded by the Biden administration.Doug Mills/The New York TimesSome allies have even decided not to wait for the president’s team, kicking off freelance voter outreach campaigns meant to increase his support in key places.This month, Mayor Paige Cognetti of Scranton, Pa., and three other Pennsylvania mayors hopped in a rented van for a road trip across the state to promote projects funded by the Biden administration because they were concerned voters didn’t know about them.They met in Harrisburg with Lt. Gov. Austin Davis, a Democrat who won office last year. Mr. Davis said Mr. Biden had done “some tremendous things” but worried that voters were unaware. He recalled campaigning in Black barbershops in Philadelphia and hearing that voters felt the country was better off under Mr. Trump.“They’ve done a pretty bad job of telling the American people and Pennsylvanians what they have done,” Mr. Davis said.Mr. Kennedy’s popularity in polls is largely because of his family, which has included three Democratic senators, one president and a host of other high-profile figures. A CNN poll late last month that showed Mr. Kennedy with 20 percent support against Mr. Biden found that the main reason voters liked him was because of the Kennedy name.Surveys have suggested that large numbers of Democratic voters are willing to tell pollsters they would take anyone over Mr. Biden. A poll from a Baltimore TV station last week found that 41 percent of Maryland Democrats preferred their governor, Wes Moore, over Mr. Biden, even though Mr. Moore is backing the president’s re-election.Yet if Mr. Kennedy manages to maintain this level of support, he could cause Mr. Biden embarrassment in the primaries.“Could Bobby Kennedy catch a spark? Maybe,” said Michael Novogratz, a billionaire Democratic donor who supported Mr. Biden in 2020 but has pledged not to back any candidate older than 72. “He’s alienated himself because of some of the anti-vax positions, but he is a bright man, articulate, eloquent, connected, has the Kennedy name and would pull a lot of the Trump voters.”Cheering at Mr. Kennedy’s campaign announcement. Some Democrats say his relative strength in polls points to weaknesses in Mr. Biden’s candidacy.Sophie Park for The New York TimesThe place Mr. Kennedy might prove the biggest nuisance is New Hampshire, where the president has alienated core supporters by shuffling the Democratic presidential nominating calendar to put South Carolina’s primary first, ahead of the Granite State.New Hampshire Democrats worry that Mr. Biden may skip their primary, which is likely to come before the slot allocated to the state by the Democratic National Committee. They also worry that if Mr. Biden does participate, enough independent voters angry with him for trying to elevate South Carolina may cast a protest vote for Mr. Kennedy to deal the president an early but cosmetic primary defeat.“If people feel hurt or slighted, that goes a long way with people in New Hampshire,” said Lou D’Allesandro, a Democratic state senator and longtime Biden ally who warned that the president’s spurning of his state could lead to a Kennedy victory there.A lawyer who rose to prominence in the 1990s as an environmental activist in New York, Mr. Kennedy, 69, has received a boost from conservative figures like Elon Musk, the Twitter owner who recently hosted him on a two-hour online audio chat, and David Sacks, a venture capitalist and supporter of Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida who held a Kennedy fund-raiser last week in California.Mr. Kennedy has adopted positions that put him opposite virtually all Democratic voters. He has opposed an assault weapons ban, spread pro-Russian talking points about the war in Ukraine and suggested American presidential campaigns are rigged. He has also long trafficked in conspiracy theories about vaccines.The Biden campaign is planning a summer effort to promote the administration’s accomplishments.Pete Marovich for The New York TimesA super PAC supporting Mr. Kennedy has raised at least $5.7 million, according to John Gilmore, its executive director. The Kennedy campaign is being led by Dennis Kucinich, the former left-wing congressman and Cleveland mayor, who cast Mr. Kennedy’s cornucopia of right-wing views as evidence that he is better positioned to win a general election than Mr. Biden — who won in 2020 with significant support from Trump-skeptical moderate Republicans.“Mr. Kennedy is the one person who has the qualities that can bring about the unity that most Americans are hungering for,” Mr. Kucinich said. “He speaks a language of conciliation and compassion.”Besides fund-raising efforts, the Biden campaign has not had much of a public presence since its formal rollout in April. Top officials have spent time in recent days in Wilmington, Del., shopping for office space for a campaign headquarters that is expected to open in July, according to two people familiar with the discussions. The campaign, which has just a few employees on its payroll, is expected to add more staff members once its offices open.White House officials are planning a summer tour branded “investing in America” in which Mr. Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, their spouses and cabinet members will travel the country to promote the results of legislation Mr. Biden has signed to fund infrastructure and climate projects across the country.They believe those trips will generate positive local news coverage that will be the first step — certain to be followed by hundreds of millions of dollars in advertising from the Biden campaign and its allies — toward educating Biden-skeptical Democrats and wayward independent voters that Mr. Biden deserves a second term.“The more Americans learn about the president’s investing in America agenda, the more they support it,” said Ben LaBolt, the White House communications director. “That’s a huge opportunity for us.”It’s not unprecedented for an incumbent president to face dissension in his party before being renominated. In late 2010, Gallup found Hillary Clinton with 37 percent support in a hypothetical 2012 primary against President Barack Obama — though that was months before he announced his re-election bid.The Kennedy campaign is being led by Dennis Kucinich, the former left-wing congressman and Cleveland mayor.Josh Reynolds/Associated PressDuring the 2012 Democratic presidential primaries, a felon took 41 percent of the Democratic vote in West Virginia, and a little-known lawyer took 42 percent in Arkansas. Neither result cost Mr. Obama on the way to winning the nomination and re-election.The White House, the Democratic National Committee and Mr. Biden’s re-election campaign have all declined to talk about Mr. Kennedy on the record — a coordinated effort to avoid giving him oxygen.Mr. Biden’s allies, though are less reticent.“That campaign is a joke,” said Representative Robert Garcia of California, a Democrat whom Mr. Biden named to his campaign’s national advisory board last month. “He’s running in the wrong primary and has zero chance of gaining any sort of support.”Mr. Garcia added, “His views and worldview are dangerous.”Still, Mr. Kennedy’s early strength highlights Biden weaknesses Republicans are eager to exploit.Polling conducted in May for Way to Win, a Democratic-aligned group, found that only 22 percent of Latino voters and 33 percent of Black voters were aware of “any specific thing” Mr. Biden had done in office to improve their lives.“There’s no single sentence that everybody can repeat that is sticking,” said Tory Gavito, the president of Way to Win. “What’s happening is the G.O.P. is flooding the airwaves with a narrative of economic failure, and it’s starting to resonate.”Rebecca Davis O’Brien More

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      As Trump Battles Charges, Biden Focuses on the Business of Governing

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      The past week appears to provide a blueprint for the way the White House wants to handle the politically touchy subject of former President Donald J. Trump’s legal troubles.Talk of federal indictments, classified documents and anything related to the president’s predecessor are out. Bridge repair, “junk fees” and prescription drug prices are in.As President Biden ramps up his re-election campaign, his team is focused not on the various investigations into former President Donald J. Trump but rather on spotlighting the ways, however mundane, his administration can assist Americans in their daily lives.Such was the case when Mr. Biden visited Philadelphia, where a fiery crash last weekend caused part of a highway used by the area’s commuters to collapse, and reviewed the recycled glass product that he said was needed to ensure the highway’s speedy repair. Mr. Biden then had one of his more public-facing campaign rallies to celebrate the endorsements of more than a dozen unions.“I’m proud to be the most pro-union president in American history,” Mr. Biden told a crowd of people inside the Philadelphia convention center. “But what I’m really proud about is being re-elected the most pro-union president in American history.”The Pennsylvania visit capped a week that in many ways will serve as a blueprint for the way the White House will proceed as the nation focuses on the various criminal investigations of the former president. While Republican candidates bicker over the case of Mr. Trump, Mr. Biden hopes to showcase his governing. While his opponents attack — or promise to pardon — Mr. Trump, Mr. Biden would rather discuss infrastructure and cracking down on undisclosed fees.“He doesn’t need to muscle into news stories or make a big splash,” said Matt Bennett, executive vice president for public affairs at Third Way, a centrist Democratic advocacy group. “He needs to underscore what voters like about him and chip away at any doubts about him by doing what he did this week — showing that he’s making progress on things they feel in their daily lives.”That’s easier said than done. Polls show many Americans are not satisfied with Mr. Biden and his domestic agenda. Just 33 percent of American adults say they approve of Mr. Biden’s handling of the economy, and just 24 percent say national economic conditions are good, according to a poll conducted in May by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Overall, 40 percent said they approved of the job Mr. Biden was doing.White House officials involved with Mr. Biden’s campaign are betting they can turn the tide not just by hosting traditional rallies, which have been largely absent thus far in his campaign, but also by organizing events showcasing the president’s legislative accomplishments, such as his $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure package and his separate health, climate and tax law. They are also ramping up hiring of staff members for the Biden campaign and eyeing the opening of a campaign headquarters in Delaware this summer, according to a White House official.But it may take time for Americans to feel the effect of those policies, making Mr. Biden’s ability to sell his accomplishments even more important.“I think you’ll see a combination of events like this, supplementing the majority of his work, which will be the more presidential, official-duty side of it,” said Representative Brendan F. Boyle, Democrat of Pennsylvania, who was at the rally. “It is important we’re communicating our story back home, especially in the biggest battleground state in the nation.”Before the Pennsylvania event, Mr. Biden met with the secretary general of NATO to continue to rally the West against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which some in the White House view as Mr. Biden’s primary achievement. He then celebrated the Juneteenth holiday with a reception at the White House before holding a round table to detail efforts to crack down on the additional fees commonly levied by travel and entertainment companies. His advisers also planned meetings with environmental activists as well as business and union leaders to emphasize that he had the support of two factions that in the past have been at odds.And he tried his best to ignore Mr. Trump. The White House is hoping to stay silent on the multiple cases involving the former president to avoid accusations of meddling in Justice Department affairs. But officials within the White House also believe that the best approach is to focus on the daily issues of Americans, in contrast with Republican opponents who are fielding questions about Mr. Trump’s precarious legal situation.Quentin James, a co-founder of the Collective PAC, an organization dedicated to electing Black officials, said the success of that plan would largely hinge on whether Mr. Biden could effectively translate sprawling legislation into digestible solutions.“The challenge isn’t so much cutting through the Trump noise; it’s, will words like investments and federal funding actually hit the pockets and pocketbooks of working families,” Mr. James said. “Will these investments mean anything tangible in people’s take-home pay before the election?” More

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      Ron DeSantis Is Young, Has Little Kids and Wants America to Know It

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      At 44, he is more than three decades younger than Donald Trump and Joe Biden. He is subtly playing up that age gap, even if his right-wing views leave him out of step with many younger voters.As top-tier presidential candidates go, Ron DeSantis is something of a rarity these days. He was born after the Vietnam War, he came of age when computers were common in American homes and he still has young children of his own, rather than enough grandchildren to fill a basketball team.Mr. DeSantis would be 46 on Inauguration Day if elected, younger than every president since John F. Kennedy. It’s a fact he doesn’t state explicitly, but his campaign has set out to make sure voters get it.The Florida governor talks frequently about having the “energy and discipline” needed for the White House, keeping a busy schedule of morning and evening events. He and his wife, Casey DeSantis, often speak about their young children, who are 6, 5 and 3 and have joined their parents on the campaign trail. One of the few candidates with kids still at home, Mr. DeSantis regularly highlights his parental worries about schools and popular culture as he presses his right-wing social agenda.When he signed the state budget on Thursday, he joked that a tax break on one of parenthood’s most staggering expenses — diapers — had come too late for his family, though not by much.“I came home, and my wife’s like, ‘Why didn’t you do that in 2019 when our kids were still in diapers?’” Mr. DeSantis said.The evident goal is to draw a stark contrast with his main rivals, President Biden, 80, and former President Donald J. Trump, who just turned 77, both grandfathers who have sons (Hunter and Don Jr.) older than Mr. DeSantis. Voters have expressed concern about the age and fitness of both men, especially Mr. Biden.Roughly two-thirds of registered voters believe Mr. Biden is too old to effectively serve another four-year term as president, according to a national poll conducted by Quinnipiac University last month. Only 36 percent of registered voters said the same of Mr. Trump, suggesting that Mr. DeSantis’s relative youth might be more of an advantage in a general election than in the primaries.Still, Mr. DeSantis, 44, rarely talks directly about his age, and the party he represents — older and whiter than the country at large — has never been known for nominating young presidential candidates who ride a wave of energy to the White House, as Kennedy, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama did.Mr. DeSantis rarely talks directly about his age, and his views are out of step with many in his own generation. He relies on subtler means to remind voters of his relative youthfulness.David Degner for The New York TimesHis conservative views on abortion, climate change and how race is taught — among other issues — have left Mr. DeSantis out of step with many members of his own generation. Majorities of voters in his age bracket want abortion to be legal in all or most cases, think climate change is a very serious problem and support the Black Lives Matter movement. Only about one in four voters between the ages of 35 and 49 have a favorable view of Mr. DeSantis, according to the Quinnipiac poll.Mr. DeSantis also hardly seems to have a natural knack for capturing youthful enthusiasm in the way that Mr. Obama did. The last major candidate to run on a platform of generational change, the 44th president was able to count on the support of young and influential cultural icons, including hip-hop artists.Other than railing against “wokeness,” Mr. DeSantis scarcely mentions cultural influences like television shows, movies, music or social media. One of his attempts to reach younger people — announcing his campaign on Twitter with Elon Musk — went haywire when the livestream repeatedly glitched out. His rally soundtrack is a generic mix of country and classic rock, augmented by a DeSantis tribute anthem to the tune of “Sweet Home Alabama.” He doesn’t talk much about his love of golf or discuss his hobbies. His references to parenthood are often prompted by his wife.But his children — Madison, Mason and Mamie — are highly visible. Neat stacks of toys, including baseball bats and a bucket of baseballs, are usually arrayed on the front porch of the governor’s mansion in Tallahassee, visitors say.No presidential family has raised children as young as the DeSantis brood since the Kennedys, prompting hopes among supporters of a conservative Camelot at the White House. The comparison is one Ms. DeSantis especially seems to be leaning into. The elegant gowns and white gloves she sometimes favors have seemed to evoke the wardrobe of Jacqueline Kennedy.The couple’s family-centric image has softened views of Mr. DeSantis among some Democrats in Florida. “I don’t like him as a politician,” Janie Jackson, 52, a Democratic voter from Miami who runs a housekeeping business, said in an interview this past week. “But I think he’s a good father and husband.”Mr. DeSantis handed one of his daughters to wife, Casey, at a rodeo in Ponca, Okla., this month. His young family is core to his image as a presidential candidate.Thomas Beaumont/Associated PressMr. Trump, who is twice divorced and has five children with three different women, could be particularly vulnerable to such comparisons.“Engaging with his family helps humanize him,” Dave Carney, a New Hampshire-based Republican strategist, said of Mr. DeSantis. “He’s a dad. People can relate to that. It gives him credibility to talk about family issues.”But voters can sniff out shtick, Mr. Carney added. “There’s a balance,” he said. “You don’t want your kids to seem like a prop.”Younger Republicans do seem to be responding to Mr. DeSantis. A recent poll by The Economist and YouGov found that the governor received his highest level of support from Republicans and Republican leaners aged 18 to 29, although he was still trailing Mr. Trump by 39 percent to 27 percent in that group.At almost every stop on their swings through the early nominating states, Mr. DeSantis and Ms. DeSantis, who often joins her husband onstage to deliver her own remarks, mention their young family.On a recent trip to Iowa, Mr. DeSantis and his wife, 42, arrived at the state fairgrounds with their children in tow. All three were wearing DeSantis-branded shirts with a “Top Gov” logo on the back. They signed a bus belonging to a pro-DeSantis super PAC — his son did so while wearing a baseball glove — as Ms. DeSantis, sporting a black leather “Where Woke Goes to Die” jacket despite the heat, knelt down to help. Their eldest, Madison, wrote her name in red and drew a heart above it.“Did you guys write your stuff on there?” Mr. DeSantis asked, after wading through attendees while lifting up one daughter. The kids then moved on to an ice cream giveaway organized by the super PAC.“Want me to hold you?” Mr. DeSantis asked his son, Mason, before picking him up as the boy continued to eat ice cream.On the stump, Mr. DeSantis usually talks about his children to emphasize policy points, particularly on education, or to accentuate his long-running feud with Disney, which he accuses of indoctrinating children.“My wife and I just believe that kids should be able to go to school, watch cartoons, just be kids, without having some agenda shoved down their throats,” Mr. DeSantis said on a visit to New Hampshire. “So we take that very seriously, and we’ve done an awful lot to be able to support parents.”Ms. DeSantis, who has played a prominent role in her husband’s campaign, usually prompts him to open up about their children. Rachel Mummey for The New York TimesMr. DeSantis’s approach to family issues appeals specifically to conservative Republicans and has been criticized by Democrats and civil rights activists. He has signed legislation banning abortions after six weeks, outlawing gender-transition care for minors, imposing punishments on businesses that allow children to see performances like drag shows and further limiting instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in schools.On the campaign trail, the DeSantises often try to temper the polarizing nature of his political persona with tales of family life.Ms. DeSantis usually coaxes her husband to open up about their kids, including his adventures taking them for fast food at a restaurant populated by inebriated college students and, in a sign of the couple’s religiosity, having them baptized with water from the Sea of Galilee in Israel.At one stop in New Hampshire, Ms. DeSantis apologized to the crowd for her raspy voice, suggesting she had strained her vocal cords in an effort to protect the furniture in the governor’s mansion from one of her daughters.“I had a very long, in-depth conversation with that 3-year-old as to why she cannot color on the dining room table with permanent markers,” she said.On the campaign trail, Mr. DeSantis usually talks about his children to emphasize policy points, particularly on education, and temper the polarizing nature of his political persona.Thomas Beaumont/Associated PressNow, Mr. DeSantis has competition from another youthful, if far less known, candidate from his home state: Mayor Francis Suarez of Miami, 45, whose campaign announcement video this past week shows him jogging through the city and mentioning his children.Another lesser-known rival, Vivek Ramaswamy, has promoted himself as the first millennial to run for president as a Republican. Mr. Ramaswamy, 37, also has young children, sons ages 11 months and 3 years who have joined him on the trail. Campaigning with kids sometimes requires special accommodations, Mr. Ramaswamy said in a recent interview. His campaign bus, for instance, features two car seats and a diaper-changing table.At the end of an event in New Hampshire this month, he turned away from the crowd to thank his older son, Karthik, for behaving so well during his speech.“He got a bigger round of applause than I did,” Mr. Ramaswamy recounted.Shane Goldmacher More

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      Donald Trump Has a Polling Problem

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      Most Republicans still support Trump. But the polls still suggest the federal indictment is hurting him.The 50 percent threshold in a poll can sometimes be distracting. When more than half of people give a certain answer, it often becomes the dominant message to emerge from the poll question. It is the answer that appears to have won. Yet the most important information may nonetheless be lurking elsewhere.Consider the surveys over the past week that have asked Americans their opinions about the federal charges against Donald Trump. Here are the results of an ABC News/Ipsos survey, which were similar to other poll results:Americans’ views on Trump’s latest indictment More

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      Why Do So Few Democrats Want Biden to Run in 2024?

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      The New York Times Audio app includes podcasts, narrated articles from the newsroom and other publishers, as well as exclusive new shows — including this one — which we’re making available to readers for a limited time. Download the audio app here.A recent AP-NORC poll found that just a quarter of voters, including only around half of Democrats, want to see Joe Biden run for president again. Many voters are concerned about his age in particular.That’s a problem for Biden, but it’s not as unusual as it might seem. In 1982, only 37 percent of voters wanted Ronald Reagan, another older president, to run again; he then won the 1984 election in a landslide. And Biden also has a lot going for him: a better-than-expected midterm performance, an impressive record of legislative achievement and a track record of defeating Donald Trump.[You can listen to this episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” on Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, Google or wherever you get your podcasts.]What are Biden’s chances in 2024? How does he stack up against Republicans like Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis? What has his campaign focused on so far, and what should they focus on over the next few years?Jon Favreau served as Barack Obama’s head speechwriter from 2005 to 2013, played a key role in both of Obama’s presidential campaigns and currently co-hosts the podcast “Pod Save America.” So I asked him on the show to talk through the cases for and against Biden in 2024.We cover the concerns over Biden’s age, the strength of Vice President Kamala Harris, the key takeaways from the 2022 midterms, the surprising effectiveness of Biden’s lay-low media strategy, why voters tend to trust Donald Trump’s management of the economy more than Biden’s, how Biden’s bipartisan credentials could help him in 2024 and much more.This episode contains explicit language.You can listen to our whole conversation by following “The Ezra Klein Show” on Apple, Spotify, Google or wherever you get your podcasts. View a list of book recommendations from our guests here.Kenneth WertThis episode was produced by Rollin Hu. Fact checking by Michelle Harris, Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Mixing by Jeff Geld and Isaac Jones. The show’s production team is Emefa Agawu, Annie Galvin, Rogé Karma and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. And special thanks to Sonia Herrero and Kristina Samulewski. More

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      in Elections

      How Democrats Can Win Workers

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      We’re covering a new poll about the Democratic Party, Donald Trump’s court appearance and the N.B.A. finals.About 60 percent of U.S. voters do not have a four-year college degree, and they live disproportionately in swing states. As a result, these voters — often described as the American working class — are crucial to winning elections. Yet many of them are deeply skeptical of today’s Democratic Party.Republicans retook control of the House last year by winning most districts with below-median incomes. In nearly 20 Western and Southern states, Democrats are virtually shut out of statewide offices largely because of their weakness among the white working class. Since 2018, the party has also lost ground with Black, Asian and especially Latino voters.Unless the party improves its standing with blue-collar voters, “there’s no way for progressive Democrats to advance their agenda in the Senate,” according to a study that the Center for Working-Class Politics, a left-leaning research group, released this morning.The class inversion of American politics — with most professionals supporting Democrats and more working-class people backing Republicans — is one of the most consequential developments in American life (and, as regular readers know, a continuing theme of this newsletter).Today, I’ll be writing about what Democrats might do about the problem, focusing on a new YouGov poll, conducted as part of the Center for Working-Class Politics study. In an upcoming newsletter, I’ll examine the issue from a conservative perspective and specifically how Republicans might alter their economic agenda to better serve their new working-class base.A key point is that even modest shifts in the working-class vote can decide elections. If President Biden wins 50 percent of the non-college vote next year, he will almost certainly be re-elected. If he wins only 45 percent, he will probably lose.‘Fight for us all’Elections can be tricky for social scientists to study. The sample sizes are small and idiosyncratic. Researchers can’t conduct hundreds of elections in a laboratory, changing one variable at a time and analyzing how the results change. But researchers can conduct polls that pit hypothetical candidates against each other and see how the results change when the candidates’ biographies, messages and policy proposals change.This approach, which has become more common among pollsters, is the one that YouGov used. It focused on swing voters — those who don’t identify strongly with either party, many of whom are working class. The poll described a pair of Democratic candidates, each with a biography and a campaign platform, and asked respondents which one they preferred.Among the findings:Voters preferred a candidate who was a teacher, construction worker, warehouse worker, doctor or nurse. The least popular candidate professions were lawyer and corporate executive.Many effective messages involved jobs, including both moderate policies (like tax credits for training at small businesses) and progressive ones (like a federal jobs guarantee). “People are obviously interested in good-paying jobs,” said Bhaskar Sunkara, the founder of Jacobin, a leftist magazine that helped sponsor the project. “They have an identity that’s rooted in their work.”Black and Latino candidates were slightly more popular than other candidates, mostly because some voters of color preferred candidates of color. (Related: Black candidates — of different ideologies — have beaten non-Black candidates in recent mayoral primaries and elections in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and Philadelphia, Matthew Yglesias of Substack pointed out to me.) But candidate messages that explicitly mentioned race were unpopular.Voters liked Democrats who criticized both political parties as “out of touch.” There is real-world evidence to support this finding, too: Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona and Representative Marcy Kaptur of Ohio won close races last year while highlighting their differences with Democratic leaders, as Data for Progress, another research group, has noted.Moderate social policies fared better than more liberal ones. The single most effective message in the poll was a vow to “protect the border”; decriminalization of the border was very unpopular.Swing voters liked tough, populist messages such as “Americans who work for a living are being betrayed by superrich elites” and “Americans need to come together and elect leaders who will fight for us all.” As Jared Abbott, the director of the Center for Working-Class Politics, argued, “Democrats need to be less concerned with rhetorical niceties.” Doing so would hardly be new: Harry Truman and Franklin Roosevelt used such red-blooded language.The bottom lineI find the study’s conclusions fascinating because they are both original and consistent with other evidence. Democrats who have won difficult recent elections, including both progressives and moderates, have often presented a blue-collar image.President Biden talks about growing up in a working-class neighborhood. Marie Gluesenkamp Pérez, who owns a car-repair shop, flipped a House district in Washington State partly by criticizing her own party for being elitist. Senator Sherrod Brown, the only Democrat to win statewide in Ohio since 2011, is a populist. So is John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, the only Senate candidate from either party to flip a seat last year.Many Americans are frustrated with the country’s direction, and they want candidates who will promise to fight for their interests. One of the vulnerabilities of today’s Democratic Party, as my colleague Nate Cohn has written, is that it has come to be associated with the establishment.More on politicsDuring a CNN town hall last night, Chris Christie called Donald Trump angry and vengeful.Hard-right House Republicans will give Kevin McCarthy a reprieve from a weeklong blockade of the House floor to allow legislative business to move forward.The Senate said it would investigate the merger between the PGA Tour and the Saudi-backed LIV Golf. (This story goes behind the scenes of the deal.)THE LATEST NEWSTrump IndictmentDonald Trump arriving in Miami yesterday.Saul Martinez for The New York TimesTrump will appear in court in Miami today.He is expected to plead not guilty on charges that he illegally kept documents and obstructed the government’s efforts to retrieve them.Trump has tested several defenses, including painting himself as a victim. But the evidence already presented could make them hard to sustain in court.Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, will preside over the trial.There have been about a dozen cases involving classified information in recent years. Many of them ended in prison sentences.Business and MediaJPMorgan Chase will pay $290 million to the victims of Jeffrey Epstein. The bank kept him as a customer despite media reports about him abusing teenage girls.Fox News told Tucker Carlson to stop posting videos on Twitter. Although Fox canceled his show, Carlson is under contract with the network until 2025.The F.T.C. sued to stop Microsoft from buying Activision Blizzard, a major video game company.Fred Ryan, the publisher and chief executive of The Washington Post, is stepping down.Other Big StoriesRussia struck a residential building in central Ukraine this morning, killing at least six people. Rescuers were searching for survivors.A climate trial has begun in Montana. Sixteen young people are accusing the state of robbing their future by embracing fossil fuels.Keechant Sewell, the N.Y.P.D.’s first female commissioner, will resign after less than 18 months. She didn’t give a reason.New York City set a minimum wage for food delivery workers: $17.96 per hour before tips.OpinionsSilvio Berlusconi provided a template for Trump’s political career, Mattia Ferraresi writes.To achieve universal health coverage, the United States should take inspiration from other countries, Aaron E. Carroll writes.Ezra Klein and Carlos Lozada discuss how Ron DeSantis’s books make the case for his candidacy over Trump’s.Here are columns by Lydia Polgreen on the decline of free news and Jamelle Bouie on Republican loyalty to Trump.MORNING READSIllustration by Eric YahnkerMr. Beast: His headline-grabbing giveaways made him the Willy Wonka of YouTube. Why do people think he’s evil?Health: Sleep is more challenging for women than for men.Lives Lived: Treat Williams, famous for his roles in the movies “Hair” and “Deep Rising” and the TV show “Everwood,” died at 71.SPORTS NEWS FROM THE ATHLETICNikola Jokic last night.Daniel Brenner for The New York TimesN.B.A. finals: The Denver Nuggets beat the Miami Heat to win their first championship. Nikola Jokic cemented his spot in the pantheon of N.B.A. greats with a stunning performance.A departure: The Oklahoma softball ace Jordy Bahl said she would leave the program.A mission: Christian McCaffrey’s voice was the last thing Logan Hale heard. Now McCaffrey, a 49ers running back, is helping fulfill his young fan’s final wish.ARTS AND IDEAS A gallery in Copenhagen.Charlotte de la Fuente for The New York TimesAn ancient reunion: It’s not a coincidence that so many of the statues in museums are missing their heads: Throughout history, invaders would target statues when they attacked a city, decapitating the likenesses of local leaders to make a statement. And the statues that survived were often chopped up by smugglers, who wanted two artifacts to sell instead of one. Now, as Graham Bowley writes in The Times, those ancient acts of vandalism have made it hard for museums to match heads with their long-lost torsos.More on culturePat Sajak is retiring from “Wheel of Fortune” after 41 seasons as its host.The Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which was at the center of recent scandals, is shutting down. The Golden Globes will continue.Elizabeth Gilbert, author of “Eat, Pray, Love,” delayed her new novel indefinitely after being criticized for setting the story in Russia.THE MORNING RECOMMENDS …Armando Rafael for The New York TimesMake a one-pot vegetable pulao, which combines rice, vegetables and spices.Try the best summer eats in New York.Visit vineyards in California that are far from the Napa crowds.Read an old magazine. You’ll understand the past in a new way.GAMESHere are today’s Spelling Bee and the Bee Buddy, which helps you find remaining words. Yesterday’s pangram was expletive.And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle and Sudoku.Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — DavidSign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. More

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      in Elections

      How Trump Plans to Beat His Indictment, Politically

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      The former president keeps consolidating Republican support, but the legal peril is the greatest he has ever faced and adds to his challenges with independent voters.Donald J. Trump will make his first appearance in federal criminal court on Tuesday. But the former president has been pleading his case for days in a far friendlier venue — the court of Republican public opinion, where he continues to dominate the 2024 field.For Mr. Trump and his team, there has been a sense of familiarity, even normalcy, in the chaos of facing a 37-count indictment in the classified documents case. After two House impeachments, multiple criminal investigations, the jailing of his business’s former accountant, his former fixer and his former campaign manager, and now two criminal indictments, Mr. Trump knows the drill, and so do his supporters.The playbook is well-worn: Play the victim. Blame the “Deep State.” Claim selective prosecution. Punish Republicans who stray for disloyalty. Dominate the news. Ply small donors for cash.His allies see the indictment as a chance to end the primary race before it has even begun in the minds of Republican voters by framing 2024 as an active battle with President Biden. Until now, the main pro-Trump super PAC, MAGA Inc., has focused heavily on Mr. Trump’s chief Republican rival, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, in its $20 million of ad spending. But that messaging has shifted after the indictment, with a new commercial already being shown that pits Mr. Trump directly against Mr. Biden.The intended effect, said a person familiar with the strategy, is to present Mr. Trump as the party’s leader and the presumptive nominee who has already entered a head-to-head battle with Mr. Biden and his Justice Department, making Mr. Trump’s Republican opponents look small by comparison.Mr. Trump, who flew to Florida on Monday ahead of his Tuesday appearance, is determined to serve as narrator of his own high-stakes legal drama. He posted on Truth Social to reveal he had been indicted minutes after his lawyer had called to alert him last week.“The only good thing about it is it’s driven my poll numbers way up,” Mr. Trump told the Georgia Republican Party in a combative speech on Saturday.So far, the indictment fallout appears to be moving along two parallel tracks in different directions, one political, the other legal.Politically, Mr. Trump has continued to consolidate Republican support. In a CBS News poll on Sunday, only 7 percent of likely Republican primary voters initially said the indictment would change their view of Mr. Trump for the worse — and twice as many said it would change their view “for the better.” A full 80 percent of likely Republican voters said Mr. Trump should be able to serve even if convicted.Mr. Trump will make his first appearance in the federal criminal court in Miami on Tuesday.Saul Martinez for The New York TimesLegally, the specificity and initial evidence presented in the charging document that was unsealed on Friday showed the gravity of the case.That evidence includes a recording of Mr. Trump claiming to have a classified document in front of him and acknowledging he no longer had the power to declassify it, photographs of documents strewn across a storage room floor — which Mr. Trump was particularly rankled by — surveillance footage, reams of subpoenaed texts from his own aides and notes from his own lawyer. “If even half of it is true, then he’s toast,” Bill Barr, who served as attorney general under Mr. Trump, said on Fox News. “It’s very, very damning.”As he headed to Miami, Mr. Trump was working to reassemble a legal team shaken by two major resignations on Friday as the special counsel who brought the charges, Jack Smith, said he would push for a “speedy trial.”For Mr. Trump, who has long blurred public-relations woes and legal peril, his 2024 campaign began in part as a shield against prosecution, and victory at the ballot box would amount to the ultimate acquittal. Still, few political strategists in either party see running while under indictment as a way to appeal to the independent voters who are crucial to actually winning the White House.But Mr. Trump has rarely looked past the task immediately in front of him, and for now that is the primary. The CBS poll showed him dominating his closest rival, Mr. DeSantis, 61 percent to 23 percent.“The only good thing about it is it’s driven my poll numbers way up,” Mr. Trump told the Georgia Republican Party on Saturday.Jon Cherry for The New York TimesOn Sunday night, the chief executive of the MAGA Inc. super PAC, Taylor Budowich, sent a memo of talking points to surrogates that tellingly does not mention Mr. DeSantis at all, only Mr. Biden.Another person familiar with the super PAC’s strategy said that the fundamentals of the political race had not changed even as the indictment has brought Mr. Trump the gravest legal threat he’s ever faced. And the PAC would eventually continue attacking Mr. DeSantis, while also elevating other Republican candidates to shear off some of Mr. DeSantis’s support.The uncomfortable initial posture of Mr. Trump’s rivals was captured in a video released by Mr. DeSantis’s super PAC attacking the “Biden DOJ” for “indicting the former president.” Mr. Trump’s team was delighted to see it, even if the ad cast Mr. DeSantis as the man to clean house inside the federal government. Forcing rivals to rally around Mr. Trump, as they see it, is a reaffirmation of the former president’s place at the head of the G.O.P.Yet on Monday, there was a slight shift in tone from solely denouncing the Justice Department. “Two things can be true,” Nikki Haley, the former United Nations ambassador, said on Fox News, adding if the indictment was accurate “President Trump was incredibly reckless with our national security.” Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina called it a “serious case with serious allegations” during a campaign stop in his home state, according to The Post and Courier.The arc of how Mr. Trump has bent the Republican Party and its voters to his interests is not new. He famously joked that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose support in his 2016 campaign.He survived a succession of scandals as president — including the long-running investigation by a previous special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, that sent some Trump advisers to prison — that few others could. One reason, his advisers and allies say, is that Republican voters have become inured to the various accusations he has faced, flattening them all into a single example of prosecutorial and Democratic overreach, regardless of the specifics.Jack Smith, the special counsel who charged the former president, said he would push for a “speedy trial.”Kenny Holston/The New York Times“Most people on my side of the aisle believe when it comes to Donald Trump, there are no rules,” Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, one of Mr. Trump’s most ardent Republican defenders, said on ABC News’ “This Week” on Sunday. “And you can do the exact same thing or something similar as a Democrat and nothing happens.”The New York Post captured the sentiment succinctly with a tabloid banner on Monday that read, “What About the Bidens?”One Trump adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss strategy, noted that most politicians would assume a defensive crouch when facing a federal indictment. But not Mr. Trump, who delivered two speeches on Saturday, has posted dozens of times on his social media site and is determined to use the national spotlight to drive a proactive message of his own. “It is Trump 24/7, wall-to-wall — why not use that to your advantage?” the adviser said, referring to the blanket media coverage Mr. Trump has been receiving after his indictment.On Monday evening, Mr. Trump did three straight radio interviews, including one with Americano Media, where the host, Carines Moncada, told Mr. Trump that the charges against him had echoes of “persecution” of conservative leaders in Latin America. “I think maybe one of the reasons they like me, so many people have been so hurt in Colombia, in other countries in Latin America, South America,” Mr. Trump replied.The charges, however, could pose a long-term political challenge. An ABC/Ipsos poll from the weekend found that more independents thought Mr. Trump should be charged than thought he should not. And 61 percent of Americans found the charges either very or somewhat serious.In the CBS poll, 69 percent of independent voters said they would consider Mr. Trump’s possession of documents about nuclear systems or military plans a national security risk (46 percent of Republicans said the same, suggesting a potential fracture in the party over that point).On Tuesday, Mr. Trump will fly to New Jersey after his hearing, commandeering the cameras again to deliver prime-time remarks that his team hopes will be televised.Mr. Trump’s advisers took note that some cable and broadcast networks gave live coverage on Monday to the departure of his motorcade as it headed for the airport. On Twitter, the Trump adviser Jason Miller noted that even Fox News, which has generally shied away from extensive live Trump coverage, broadcast footage the motorcade. Mr. Miller had mocked Fox News over the weekend for not carrying Mr. Trump’s appearances live.The Trump operation said it had raised $4 million in the first 24 hours after his previous indictment by the Manhattan district attorney in March. But the campaign has yet to disclose the sum this time.Trump supporters outside Mar-a-Lago on Sunday. Saul Martinez for The New York TimesIn a major fund-raiser that was in the works before the indictment, Mr. Trump is gathering top donors on Tuesday evening at Bedminster, his private club. Those who raise at least $100,000 are invited to attend a “candlelight dinner” after his address to the media.The indictment news has blotted out other developments on the campaign trail. The announcement over the weekend by Mr. DeSantis of his first endorsement from a fellow governor, Kevin Stitt of Oklahoma, was barely a blip. And when Mr. Trump turns himself in at a Miami courthouse on Tuesday, it will keep the attention on the former president.Roughly 15 different groups are trying to galvanize Trump supporters to come to the Miami courthouse for his hearing, according to one person briefed on the plans. The juxtaposition in Mr. Trump’s own language about the stakes, legally and politically, can be jarring.“This is the final battle,” Mr. Trump said on Saturday.But aware of the violence that broke out on Jan. 6, 2021, when Mr. Trump urged supporters to march on the Capitol, he was more cautious on Sunday when speaking to Roger J. Stone Jr., his longest-serving adviser, in an interview for Mr. Stone’s radio show.Mr. Trump said they should join that final battle while protesting “peacefully.” More