Presidential Election of 2024

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      DeSantis Campaign Uses ‘Deepfake’ Images to Attack Trump, Experts Suggest

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      The images, which at first glance appear genuine and are interspersed with real photographs in a campaign video, purport to show Donald Trump hugging and kissing Dr. Anthony Fauci.As Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida begins to aggressively attack former President Donald J. Trump, his campaign has spread three images of the former president embracing Dr. Anthony S. Fauci that forensic experts say are almost certainly realistic-looking “deepfakes” generated by artificial intelligence.The images — which at first glance appear genuine and are interspersed with real photographs in a campaign video — show Mr. Trump hugging and kissing Dr. Fauci, who led the nation’s pandemic response and has been a target of harsh criticism from Mr. DeSantis. The governor has used the pandemic to contrast himself with his main rival for the Republican presidential nomination.A Twitter account run by Mr. DeSantis’s campaign posted the images, part of a video attacking Mr. Trump, on Monday. The news agency Agence France-Presse first reported that they appeared fake on Wednesday.The governor’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.Mr. Trump’s Republican allies criticized the DeSantis campaign on Thursday. Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio wrote on Twitter: “Smearing Donald Trump with fake AI images is completely unacceptable.” Representative Marjorie Taylor Green of Georgia agreed, saying: “Those fake AI campaign ads need to be taken down immediately.”In turn, Mr. DeSantis’s camp suggested the images were obviously fake, comparing them to memes circulated by Mr. Trump and his allies. But those images — which included a video of Mr. DeSantis in a woman’s suit adapted from “The Office” and a “recording” of a conversation between Mr. DeSantis, Adolf Hitler and the Devil — were clearly intended to be humorous and easy to discern as doctored.On Twitter, Christina Pushaw, the DeSantis campaign’s rapid response director, shared a fake photograph of Mr. DeSantis riding a rhinoceros (a reference to accusations that he is a “Republican in Name Only,” or RINO), writing: “I think this might be an AI-generated image. Who knows?” The image, which appeared to be photoshopped, had earlier been posted by Mr. Trump on his Truth Social website.As the 2024 campaign heats up, the use of such deepfakes has been of urgent concern to those who study manipulated images, which thanks to new technology are easier to generate than ever before. While Americans have grown far more skeptical of reports in the print, digital and broadcast news media, experts said, they have been more likely to trust videos and images that they could examine with their own eyes. The advent of deepfakes could change that.“This is the big information security problem of the 21st century,” said Matthew Stamm, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at Drexel University who reviewed the images of Mr. Trump and Dr. Fauci and strongly doubted their authenticity.After President Biden announced he would seek re-election, the Republican National Committee released a video with A.I.-generated images, including of China invading Taiwan, claiming to depict a potential future if he were to win again in 2024. Unlike Mr. DeSantis’s video, the R.N.C. ad acknowledged, in small white characters at the top left of the screen, that it had been “built entirely with A.I. imagery.”Hany Farid, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, said the use of such tactics would only increase.“We will continue to see campaigns, state-sponsored actors, trolls and people who want to sow chaos use these fake images to drive their own agendas,” said Mr. Farid, who also concluded that the images posted by the DeSantis campaign were most likely fake.While he described the three images as “pretty clumsily done” — pointing to flaws in Mr. Trump’s hair and ear, as well as nonsensical lettering in what appeared to be a White House seal and an American flag with a bizarre pattern of stars — he said generative artificial intelligence was quickly growing more sophisticated. For instance, he said, the technology had already adapted to produce more authentic-looking hands, an early flaw in its realism.“These are well-known signs that an A.I.-based synthetic image generator was likely used to create these images,” said Mr. Farid, who added that some experts were beginning to systemically review campaign materials for signs they contain deepfakes.He said politicians would now have a ready-made excuse when genuine representations of their actions — such as Mr. Trump’s infamous “Access Hollywood” tape — appear in public.“They have plausible deniability,” Mr. Farid said. “They can say it’s fake.”Jonathan Swan More

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      Where the GOP Presidential Candidates Stand on Climate Change

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      While many of them acknowledge that climate change is real, they largely downplay the issue and reject policies that would slow rising temperatures.As wildfires in Canada have sent masses of smoke over the United States this week, engulfing much of the Northeast in a yellow haze of hazardous air pollution, scientists are clear that we are seeing the effects of climate change. But the Republicans campaigning for the presidency have largely downplayed the issue and rejected policies that would slow rising temperatures.On Wednesday, even as the country experienced one of its worst days on record for air quality, with New York City especially hard-hit, former Vice President Mike Pence said in a town-hall event on CNN that “radical environmentalists” were exaggerating the threat of climate change.His response reflected what has become a pattern among Republican officials. Many of the candidates acknowledge that climate change is real, in contrast to party members’ years of outright denial. But they have not acknowledged how serious it is, and have almost universally rejected the scientific consensus that the United States, like all countries, must transition rapidly to renewable energy in order to limit the most catastrophic impacts.Here is a look at where some of the major Republican candidates stand.Donald J. TrumpAs president, Donald J. Trump mocked climate science and championed the production of the fossil fuels chiefly responsible for warming the planet.He rolled back more than 100 environmental regulations, mostly aimed at reducing planet-warming emissions and protecting clean air and water; appointed cabinet members who were openly dismissive of the threat of climate change, including Scott Pruitt as head of the Environmental Protection Agency; and withdrew the United States from the Paris Agreement, under which almost every country had committed to try to limit warming to 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels.President Biden rejoined the Paris Agreement and undid many of Mr. Trump’s policies, but the damage may not be fully reversible. A report last year from researchers at Yale and Columbia found that the United States’ environmental performance had plummeted in relation to other countries as a result of the Trump administration’s actions.Mr. Trump has given no indication that his approach would be different in a second term. He has repeatedly minimized the severity of climate change, including claiming falsely that sea levels are projected to rise only ⅛ of an inch over 200 to 300 years. But according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, sea levels are rising by that amount every year.Ron DeSantisGov. Ron DeSantis leads a state, Florida, that is on the front lines of climate change: It has been hit hard by hurricanes, which are becoming more frequent and more severe as the Atlantic Ocean gets warmer.But Mr. DeSantis has dismissed concern about climate change as a pretext for “left-wing stuff” and said on Fox News last month, “I’ve always rejected the politicization of the weather.”He has, however, taken significant steps to fortify the state against stronger storms and rising waters. Among other things, he appointed the state’s first “chief resilience officer” and backed the Resilient Florida Program, which has sent hundreds of millions of dollars to vulnerable communities to fund projects like building sea walls and improving drainage systems.Scientists support these sorts of adaptation efforts, because the climate has already changed enough that even aggressive emission reductions will not avert all the effects. But they are also clear that such measures are not enough on their own.Nikki HaleyNikki Haley, a former governor of South Carolina, has acknowledged that climate change is real and caused by humans, but she has generally rejected governmental efforts to reduce emissions. Her advocacy group Stand for America said that “liberal ideas would cost trillions and destroy our economy.”As ambassador to the United Nations during the Trump administration, Ms. Haley was closely involved in withdrawing the United States from the Paris Agreement. At the time, she said, “Just because we pulled out of the Paris accord doesn’t mean we don’t believe in climate protection.” Over the next three years, the Trump administration systematically reversed climate protections.But Ms. Haley has supported greater use of carbon capture technology to remove carbon from the air. She and some other Republicans — including another presidential candidate, Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota — have presented this as a way to limit climate change while continuing to use fossil fuels. Many experts agree that carbon capture could be a powerful tool, but it is unlikely to be sufficient on its own, in part because of its high cost.Mike PenceMr. Pence has acknowledged that climate change is real. He said during the 2016 campaign, “There’s no question that the activities that take place in this country and in countries around the world have some impact on the environment and some impact on climate.”But that assertion falls short of the scientific consensus that human activity is the primary driver of climate change. He has also downplayed the severity, like in his comments this week that “radical environmentalists” were exaggerating climate change’s effects. And as vice president, Mr. Pence had a hand in Mr. Trump’s defiantly anti-climate agenda, including defending the decision to withdraw from the Paris accord by saying Mr. Trump had stood up for “America first.”Mr. Pence’s political organization, Advancing American Freedom, has denounced “the left’s climate radicalism” and called for a rejection of “climate mandates.” It has also called for expediting oil and gas leases and taking other steps to “unleash the full potential” of fossil fuel production in the United States.Tim ScottSenator Tim Scott of South Carolina has also acknowledged that climate change is occurring, once telling The Post and Courier, his home-state newspaper: “There is no doubt that man is having an impact on our environment. There is no doubt about that. I am not living under a rock.”At the same time, he has opposed most policies that would curb carbon dioxide emissions. During the Obama administration, Mr. Scott challenged a regulation that would have required utilities to move away from coal and adopt wind, solar and other renewable power. During the Trump administration, he argued for dumping the Paris Agreement. And last year, he voted against President Biden’s expansive climate and health legislation that will invest about $370 billion in spending and tax credits over 10 years into clean energy technologiesChris ChristieChris Christie acknowledged the reality of climate change before many of his fellow Republicans did. “When you have over 90 percent of the world’s scientists who have studied this stating that climate change is occurring and that humans play a contributing role, it’s time to defer to the experts,” he said in 2011.As governor of New Jersey, he announced a moratorium on new coal-plant permits, filed a successful petition with the E.P.A. to demand reduced pollution from a coal plant along the Pennsylvania border and signed offshore wind power legislation. But state regulators in his administration didn’t approve any wind projects — and at the same time, Mr. Christie withdrew New Jersey from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a multistate cap-and-trade partnership, and vetoed state legislators’ efforts to rejoin it.He also said in 2015 that climate change, while real, was “not a crisis.” Last year, he called for increases to domestic oil production.Asa HutchinsonAsa Hutchinson, the former governor of Arkansas, has not spoken much about climate change. But when he has, he has generally stuck to the Republican Party line, rejecting government efforts to reduce emissions.He criticized President Barack Obama’s power plant regulations and, in 2019, praised the Trump administration for its environmental deregulation. Shortly after Mr. Biden was elected president in 2020, Mr. Hutchinson joined several other Republican governors in pledging to sue if the federal government mandated emission reductions.“Our power companies have voluntarily embraced sources of alternative energy without heavy-handed regulation from government,” he said at the time.Vivek RamaswamyVivek Ramaswamy began his presidential campaign by claiming that “faith, patriotism and hard work” had been replaced by “secular religions like Covidism, climatism and gender ideology.” In an interview with The New York Times, he defined “climatism” as “prioritizing the goal of containing climate change at all costs.”He is also an outspoken opponent of environmental, social and governance investing, or E.S.G., in which financial companies consider the long-term societal effects — including climate-related effects — of their investment decisions.Mr. Ramaswamy supports using more nuclear power and has painted a conspiracy theory for why many environmentalists oppose it. “The problem with nuclear energy is it’s too good,” he claimed on Twitter this April. “And if you solve the ‘clean energy problem’ activists lose their favorite Trojan Horse for advancing ‘global equity’ by penalizing the West.”But many environmental activists cite concerns about the safe storage of nuclear materials and the potential for accidents as the reason for their opposition — though they are by no means united in their stance, and many support nuclear power as a carbon-free source of energy.Doug BurgumGov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota has pushed harder to address climate change than most Republicans by actively identifying carbon neutrality as a goal: In 2021, he announced that he wanted North Dakota to reach it by 2030.He wants to do so through carbon-capture programs alone, without transitioning away from fossil fuels. (Climate scientists are skeptical that this is possible, even as they agree the technology holds promise.)Mr. Burgum, who created a tax incentive for one form of carbon capture, argued in an interview with Future Farmer magazine in 2021 that his policies showed “North Dakota can reach the end goal faster with innovation and free markets and without the heavy hand of government mandates and regulation.” More

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      Chris Christie Is Running for the Nomination of a Party That Doesn’t Exist

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      GOFFSTOWN, N.H. — After watching Chris Christie lambaste Donald Trump at the standing-room-only town hall where he announced his presidential campaign, Catherine Johnson, who grew up in Republican political circles, was delighted. “It was vintage Chris Christie and I loved it,” said Johnson, a 63-year-old retiree. “I believe I know where he stands on the issues. And I love where he stands on Donald Trump.”Johnson, whose father, William Johnson, was once the head of New Hampshire’s Republican Party, supported Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor, when he ran for president in 2016. She’s planning to volunteer for him this time around. “Governor Christie still reminds me of what a moderate Republican is,” she said. She was happy that he hadn’t spoken about banning books or critical race theory; at the packed event, which went on for more than two hours, culture war issues barely came up. “Honestly, we don’t care about that stuff very much,” Johnson said. “I know I don’t.”But to vote for Christie in the primary, Johnson would have to change her voter registration, because during Trump’s presidency she became a Democrat. And though she’s not thrilled with Joe Biden — “It’s hard for me to watch him give a speech because he’s so prone to gaffes,” she said — she’s not even sure she’d vote for Christie in the general, because she fears a Republican president would empower the “crazy” Republicans in the House and the Senate. “If Chris Christie is the nominee,” she said, “I’m going to have to think really hard about my vote.”Christie’s problem is that he’s running for the nomination of a party that no longer exists. In a G.O.P. where people like Johnson still felt at home, his pitch, a wholesale rejection not just of Trump but also of Trumpism, would make sense. But that Republican Party is dead; by backing Trump in 2016, Christie helped kill it. So it’s hard to figure out what he thinks he’s up to, even if his kamikaze attacks on the ex-president — “a lonely, self-consumed, self-serving mirror hog” — are fun to watch.The ex-governor certainly has fans. At his launch event here, you could almost see how he’d convinced himself that he might have a chance. A standing ovation will do that for you. I’d expected at least a few wary conservatives, if not outright MAGA trolls, in the crowd. But while there were Trump supporters protesting outside, the auditorium at Saint Anselm College was full of people hungry for Christie’s message. I asked David Dickey, who’d voted for Trump twice but turned against him after Jan. 6, what he’d do if Trump was the nominee again. He’d never vote for Biden, he said. Instead, he just wouldn’t cast a ballot.Mark Peterson for The New York TimesMark Peterson for The New York TimesThere aren’t nearly enough people like this, however, for Christie to win the Republican nomination. One March poll found that while only 40 percent of registered voters view Trump favorably, 81 percent of Republicans do. Christie seems to believe he can change these numbers. He argued, in fact, that there are no such things as “Trump voters,” only people who voted for Trump. “I don’t think he owns them,” he said during the town hall. “He thinks he owns them.” After 2016, Christie said, Trump also thought he owned the general electorate. “And what did they show him in 2020? Not so fast.”But the general electorate changed only around the edges between 2016 and 2020. Whereas to have a chance, Christie would have to catalyze a moral and ideological revolution inside his party.His central insight, that the only way to beat Trump is by taking him on directly, is almost certainly correct. It was a pleasure to watch him mock his passive-aggressive competitors with their coded criticisms of the ex-president. He intoned, with mock earnestness, “We need a leader who looks forward, not backwards.” The crowd burst out laughing. Then, as if solving a puzzle, he exclaimed: “Oooh! You’re talking about the way he still thinks the 2020 election was stolen! And you won’t say it wasn’t stolen!”It was even more amusing listening to Christie tear into Trump. He called him a “bitter, angry man who wants power back for himself” and told a story about Trump urging him, when he was governor, to declare bankruptcy for the State of New Jersey. He imitated Trump like Alec Baldwin would on “Saturday Night Live.” He even went after Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner — whose father, you’ll remember, he helped put in prison when he was a prosecutor — for the $2 billion investment Kushner secured from a fund led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia. “The grift from this family is breathtaking,” he said.But my enjoyment of his newfound Resistance shtick doesn’t bode well for Christie. The people he needs to win over are not liberal New York Times columnists, but voters who hate liberal New York Times columnists. The trick, for a Republican, is going to be painting Trump as a weak loser who will sabotage right-wing priorities. At times Christie tried to do this, as when he criticized Trump for his failure to build the border wall and repeal the Affordable Care Act. But many of his criticisms were decidedly centrist. He attacked Trump for “idolizing” Vladimir Putin and trying to extort President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, admitting, in an offhand line, that Biden deserves admiration for uniting Europe against Russian aggression. He praised John McCain, expounded on the necessity of compromise and agreed with one questioner that Trump had “traumatized” the country.At one point, in response to a question about drug prices, Christie spoke about the need to protect pharmaceutical innovation, lauding Pfizer’s investment in mRNA vaccines. I appreciate that he won’t pander to his party’s Covid skepticism, but I also can’t imagine this going over well with the Republican electorate. Later, in response to a question about “reproductive justice” from a young woman who appeared to be pro-choice, he said the matter should be entirely left up to the states, which should be free to enact laws as permissive or as restrictive as they wish. That might be a good stance for a general election, but it is sure to alienate influential right-wing activists.So what is Christie up to? One theory is that he wants to redeem himself after his humiliating embrace of Trump by filleting him on the debate stage, much as he did to Marco Rubio in 2016. But to qualify for the debates, Republican candidates must have at least 1 percent support across several polls, have at least 40,000 individual donors from 20 states or territories and pledge to support whoever wins the Republican nomination. Even if Christie clears the polling and donor thresholds, he’s already sworn never to back Trump again, and his entire campaign is premised on Trump’s total unfitness.Maybe Alan Steinberg, a former Bush administration official and a columnist for Insider NJ, was on to something when he speculated that Christie might eventually run as an independent. “Given the virtual impossibility of Christie winning the 2024 G.O.P. presidential nomination, would he be willing to accept the role of the presidential candidate of a 2024 center-right independent party?” Steinberg wrote in April. After all, if Trump is ultimately nominated to face Biden, a contest most Americans do not want to reprise, the clamor for third-party candidates is likely to be intense.Or maybe Christie really thinks the force of his personality is so great that he can single-handedly turn his party around. “I’ve seen some of the press coverage of me getting ready to run, and there’s this thing like, ‘Christie doesn’t really care about winning, all he cares about doing is destroying Trump,’” he said. “Now let me ask you something. How are those two things mutually exclusive?” The crowd burst into applause. A test for Christie will be whether he can sustain his bluster in front of an audience that doesn’t start out on his side.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: [email protected] The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      The Presidential Candidate Who Has His Own Supporters Scratching Their Heads

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      Gov. Doug Burgum’s quixotic presidential campaign has baffled even North Dakotans, but then again, many of the 2024 hopefuls have prompted the same wonder.With Gov. Doug Burgum’s money and his family’s vision, Fargo, N.D., has undoubtedly changed in recent decades. Broadway, its main drag, is packed with restaurants, cafes, retailers and offices lovingly converted from old factories.Parking lots have been turned into public parks. A warehouse saved from the wrecking ball now houses North Dakota State University’s architecture and arts program. With a population of nearly 127,000 — 16 percent of North Dakota’s total population — the largest city for hundreds of miles is growing, in size and diversity, with a liberal tilt.But as a base for a presidential run, Fargo is still the smallest of towns, closer to Winnipeg, in Canada, than to Minneapolis, the nearest American metropolis. The hamlet of Arthur, where Mr. Burgum grew up and where his family’s prosperous, century-old grain elevator dominates the flat landscape, is still more removed from the nation’s political currents. Even North Dakotans who express admiration for their governor’s wealth, business acumen and energy are baffled by his suddenly lofty political ambitions.“He’s a long shot, for sure,” said Brad Moen, 69, of Jamestown, N.D., who has known Mr. Burgum for 60 years and traveled 100 miles for his presidential introduction on Wednesday. “California, New York, Ohio, Florida — they’re the big dogs, not North Dakota.”Of course Mr. Burgum has a plan for winning the Republican nomination: eschewing the culture wars and getting the party back on a business-friendly economic message of low taxes, less regulation and can-do entrepreneurship.Fargo, N.D., with a population of nearly 127,000, is the largest city for hundreds of miles and is growing in size and diversity.Dan Koeck for The New York TimesBut first he’ll face the other new entrants in a G.O.P. field that as of this week seems largely set.Former Vice President Mike Pence has piety and consistent conservatism to remind evangelical Christians of what brought them to politics in the first place. Chris Christie, the former governor of New Jersey, has his tell-it-like-it-is pugilism, as the only candidate willing to take on Donald J. Trump. Tim Scott, the senator from South Carolina, has hope and optimism. Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor, has Trumpism without Trump.Yet all these options seem to have done nothing but carve up the Republican primary electorate that is not with Mr. Trump into ever more slender slivers — leaving the former president’s inviolable piece of the pie looking larger and larger with every new candidate.That has North Dakotans asking the same question that many other Americans are: What do these candidates really want — a cabinet post in a second Trump administration, a higher national profile for a future presidential bid, a vanity project after a long career? Mr. Pence is seen by many Republican voters as the ultimate traitor, the man they wrongly believe could have given Mr. Trump a victory in 2020 and declined. Mr. Christie is viewed with hostility by many Republicans because of his outspoken contempt for Mr. Trump — and with suspicion by anti-Trump Republicans because of his loyalty to him until now.As for Mr. Burgum, who knows?“I think that he is genuinely thinking this is a vehicle for promoting North Dakota,” Dustin Gawrylow, a conservative political commentator and activist in the state, said of Mr. Burgum. Or, he suggested, “he may have his eye on a cabinet position.”Tony S. Grindberg, a utility executive and former state senator, was at Mr. Burgum’s rally on Wednesday working through how the governor could pursue his quixotic presidential run and prepare to seek a third term in Bismarck.“Technically, he can,” he concluded, hopefully.Tony S. Grindberg, a former state senator, hoped that Mr. Burgum could pursue his presidential bid while preparing to seek a third term as governor if his loftier bid falters.Dan Koeck for The New York TimesMr. Burgum’s path to the White House seems particularly forbidding. His story is out of central casting: the son of a tiny town who as a teenager lost his father, and then channeled a natural entrepreneurial spirit into enterprises that included chimney sweeping, a business software empire and venture capital — all within the state lines of North Dakota.Mr. Burgum’s status as a billionaire traces back to Microsoft, which bought his company, Great Plains Software, in 2001 in a $1.1 billion stock deal that made him one of the richest men in the Dakotas. All that money will give him staying power in the race, but it cannot get him the 40,000 individual donors or the 1 percent in the polls that he needs to qualify for the Republican debate stage. It won’t make him a household name, and among some of the Republican faithful, it could conjure feverish images of Bill Gates, the Microsoft founder who features in many of the most outlandish far-right conspiracy theories.Even North Dakotans are not sure what to make of their governor. They can squint to see the politician they want to see.Jonathan Melgaard, 29, sees Mr. Burgum as the essence of nonpartisan leadership, an effective entrepreneur and bridge builder inspiring enough to lure him back from Colorado, where he worked for the Aspen Institute to help build a progressive, forward-looking Fargo. To voters like Mr. Melgaard, Mr. Burgum is the investor who promised to make oil-rich North Dakota “carbon neutral,” in part by backing an ambitious pipeline to bring carbon dioxide produced as an unwanted byproduct of ethanol from around the Midwest to the absorbent 300-foot-thick Broom Creek sandstone 7,000 feet under North Dakota’s surface.Jonathan Melgaard said that Mr. Burgum’s leadership drew him back to North Dakota.Dan Koeck for The New York Times“I am not a Republican,” Mr. Melgaard said. “I do not subscribe to conservative governance. I do subscribe to effective governance.”Mr. Moen waved off all that talk of carbon capture and electric vehicles and latched on to Mr. Burgum’s promise to bolster the state’s abundant traditional energy sources, oil and coal.Outside Mr. Burgum’s event, Shelly Reilly, 59, joined a small group of protesters determined to discount the governor’s nonpartisan business pitch and emphasize the bills he has actually signed, which banned gender transition care, abortion and the discussion of L.G.B.T.Q. issues in elementary schools.“I know people who have left because of him,” she said. “They’re leaving in droves.”Even Mr. Burgum doesn’t seem to know quite what to do with his record. He ran on innovation, vowing to diversify the state’s economy beyond agriculture and oil by expanding the technology sector and appealing to educated professionals with distance learning and thriving cities.Fargo shows that promise, but social policy will be Mr. Burgum’s legacy. In a recent interview with Joel Heitkamp, a popular radio host and the brother of former Senator Heidi Heitkamp, a Democrat, Mr. Burgum acknowledged that the six-week exception for rape and incest in the new abortion ban would be so short that a woman might not know in time whether she was pregnant, but he said that if he had vetoed it, the legislature would have overridden him. He said the same thing about the anti-L.G.B.T.Q. rights bills, even as he insisted most of them codified what was happening in the state anyway.“He was the most exciting person to become governor in my lifetime,” said Earl Pomeroy, a Democrat who was North Dakota’s at-large House member for 18 years before the rising tide of Republicanism swept him out. He voted for Mr. Burgum, Mr. Pomeroy said, “but it’s been years of unspectacular leadership out of the governor’s office.” He added, “He’s been somewhat captive to the crazy legislature.”Fargo’s downtown is now packed with restaurants, cafes, retailers and offices lovingly converted from old factories.Dan Koeck for The New York TimesThe governorship was Mr. Burgum’s first elective office. He spent freely to win his race in 2016 and then spent freely to bolster his support.In 2020, Mr. Burgum clashed with the state House Appropriations Committee chairman, Jeff Delzer, especially over the governor’s prized project, a new Theodore Roosevelt presidential library near the Burgum ranch in Medora, N.D. After the conflict, Mr. Burgum funded a primary challenger running as a “Trump Republican” against Mr. Delzer.The challenger, David Andahl, died of Covid-19 before his name could be taken off the ballot — and won. Then local officials reappointed Mr. Delzer to the seat.The carbon dioxide pipeline, bankrolled by the oil and gas billionaire Harold Hamm, has angered activists on the right and the left.Yet Mr. Burgum’s rally on Wednesday was packed with past and present elected officials.“There are a lot of legislators that outright fear what Doug Burgum will do to them,” Mr. Gawrylow said. “Burgum has shown he is not afraid to put his money where his mouth is, and that is scary.”Mr. Heitkamp takes Mr. Burgum’s presidential ambitions at face value. He acknowledged the rampant speculation that the governor doesn’t actually believe he can beat Mr. Trump to the nomination and then secure the White House. But Mr. Heitkamp thinks Mr. Burgum is a believer.“He’s a nerd, and he looks in the mirror and sees something that others don’t,” Mr. Heitkamp, a former Democratic state senator, said. “When he shaves in the morning, he sees a president.” More

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      The Case for Democrats to Stop Playing Defense

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      Listen and follow ‘The Run-Up’Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon MusicHeading into the 2024 presidential election, a big part of the Democratic Party’s approach is to win through defense — to watch Republicans and promise voters that Democrats will be the solution to G.O.P. extremism.Some Democrats, however, argue that this is not a viable long-term strategy.This week, Representative Elissa Slotkin shares what happens when Democrats have a plan, and Megan Hunt, a Nebraska state senator, explains what happens when they don’t.Photo Illustration by The New York Times, Photos: Barrett Emke for The New York Times; Brandon Bell/Getty ImagesAbout ‘The Run-Up’First launched in August 2016, three months before the election of Donald Trump, “The Run-Up” is The New York Times’s flagship political podcast. The host, Astead W. Herndon, grapples with the big ideas already animating the 2024 presidential election. Because it’s always about more than who wins and loses. And the next election has already started.Last season, “The Run-Up” focused on grass-roots voters and shifting attitudes among the bases of both political parties. This season, we go inside the party establishment.New episodes on Thursdays.Credits“The Run-Up” is hosted by More

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      5 Takeaways From Mike Pence’s CNN Town Hall

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      Donald Trump’s former vice president sought to draw a contrast with his old boss while also embracing the actions of their administration.Former Vice President Mike Pence capped his first full day as a formally declared presidential candidate with a CNN town hall on Wednesday night in Iowa, casting himself as an experienced, traditional conservative.But his challenges in a Republican primary field dominated by former President Donald J. Trump were evident throughout the roughly 90-minute event.Mr. Pence sought at once to align himself with Trump administration actions that were cheered by many Republicans, while drawing both explicit and oblique contrasts with Mr. Trump, the front-runner for the nomination. It is a difficult balancing act for any Republican candidate, but especially for Mr. Trump’s former vice president, who has so far gained little traction in the polls.He also sought to emerge as the leading social conservative in the race, quoting Scripture and emphasizing his opposition to abortion and transgender rights.“I’d put my arm around them and their parents, but before they had a chemical or surgical procedure I would say, ‘Wait, just wait,’” Mr. Pence said, when asked about his opposition to gender-transition care for young people even when their parents consent.Here are five takeaways:Trump’s legal troubles were a thorny topic.A number of the Republican 2024 hopefuls have struggled with how to distance themselves from Mr. Trump, who maintains a strong grip on a slice of the Republican base.Mr. Pence confronted that issue early in the town hall, when he was asked about the possibility of another indictment of Mr. Trump. Federal prosecutors have informed Mr. Trump’s legal team that he is a target of an investigation concerning his handling of classified documents after he left office.“It would be terribly divisive to the country,” Mr. Pence said, saying he “would hope” that an indictment would not go forward. “It would also send a terrible message to the wider world.”He added, “No one’s above the law,” when pressed on whether he thought prosecutors should not pursue an indictment even if they believed Mr. Trump had committed a crime. But he suggested that the situation involving Mr. Trump presented “unique circumstances here.”Asked whether, as president, he would pardon Mr. Trump if he was convicted of a crime, Mr. Pence instead shifted to speak lightheartedly about his chances in the race.“I’m not sure I’m going to be elected president of the United States,” he said. “But I believe we have a fighting chance. I really believe we do.”Mr. Pence has faced his own scrutiny over his retention of documents, but the Justice Department declined to pursue charges.He was firmer in criticizing Trump over Jan. 6.Hours before the town hall, Mr. Pence issued his sternest denunciations to date of Mr. Trump, lacing into him over his actions on Jan. 6, 2021.Mr. Pence, who had helped legitimize Mr. Trump in the eyes of some conservatives in 2016 and was long his loyal lieutenant, rebuffed Mr. Trump’s pressure campaign to seek to effectively reject now-President Biden’s victory in the Electoral College. He drew threats of “Hang Mike Pence” from some in the pro-Trump mob that attacked the Capitol that day.During the town hall, moderated by Dana Bash, Mr. Pence again made clear that he and Mr. Trump had “a difference” in their approach to the results of the 2020 election.“That hasn’t changed,” he said. “But also there are profound differences about the future of this country, the future of the Republican Party.”Asked if he would consider pardoning those who attacked the Capitol, as Mr. Trump has suggested doing, Mr. Pence said, “I have no interest or no intention of pardoning those that assaulted police officers or vandalized our Capitol. They need to be answerable to the law.”The declaration drew little audible reaction from the audience.He tied himself to key Trump administration decisions.Even as Mr. Pence highlighted areas of disagreement with Mr. Trump, he also spoke frequently about their shared time in the White House as he discussed issues as varied as immigration, abortion and the pandemic, illustrating the challenge of running on a record tied so closely to a political rival.“I couldn’t be more proud to have been vice president in an administration that appointed three of the justices that sent Roe v. Wade to the ash heap of history where it belongs,” he said.At another point, he said, “I’m proud of everything that we did during our administration to come alongside families and businesses in the midst of the worst pandemic in 100 years.”He made frequent overtures to evangelical voters.Mr. Pence, the former governor of Indiana, is a man of deep faith, and his allies see an opening to connect with evangelical voters in Iowa, the leadoff caucus state that is home to many socially conservative voters.Mr. Pence spoke about his personal faith journey and sprinkled his remarks with references to the Bible. He also emphasized his opposition to abortion rights, pledging that “we will not rest or relent until we restore the sanctity of life to the center of American law in every state in the country.”“If I have the great privilege to serve as president of the United States, I’ll support the cause of life at every level,” he said, even as he acknowledged that “we have a long way to go to win the hearts and minds of the American people.”Some Republican presidential candidates have been reluctant to give specifics on their positions regarding abortion policy, or have modulated how they approach it depending on the audience. Mr. Pence seemed eager to discuss the subject, but he faces stiff competition for the voters who are often most moved by the issue. White evangelical voters ultimately became one of Mr. Trump’s most crucial constituencies, and many other candidates, including Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, are competing hard to make inroads with those voters as well.He sounded at times like a pre-Trump Republican.Mr. Pence invoked former President Ronald Reagan, expressed qualms about spending and made the case for a muscular foreign policy that emphasized American leadership in the world.Throughout the night, he often sounded like a Republican candidate from the pre-Trump era.“It’s also disappointing to me that Donald Trump’s position on entitlement reform is identical to Joe Biden’s,” Mr. Pence said as he discussed the social safety net.He chided both Mr. Trump — and, more obliquely, Mr. DeSantis — for their postures toward Ukraine.“When Vladimir Putin rolled into Ukraine, the former president called him a genius,” Mr. Pence said. “I know the difference between a genius and a war criminal.”Swiping at Mr. DeSantis, he said at another point, “I know that some in this debate have called the war in Ukraine a territorial dispute. It’s not.” Mr. DeSantis, who did use that phrase, has since sought to clarify that description, also calling Mr. Putin a war criminal.And despite his own involvement in the First Step Act, a bipartisan criminal justice overhaul during the Trump administration, Mr. Pence sounded tough-on-crime notes. “I frankly think we need to take a step back from the approach of the First Step Act,” he said.As the event wound down, Mr. Pence was pressed repeatedly on how he squared casting Mr. Trump as a threat to the Constitution with his promise to support the Republican nominee. Mr. Pence did not answer directly, insisting, “I don’t think Donald Trump’s going to be the nominee.” More

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      Who’s Running in the Republican Presidential Primary?

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      Whenever I want to put myself to sleep at night, I run through the names of all the former vice presidents. OK, sorta peculiar. It might be time for a break. Maybe I’ll just try making a list of Republican candidates for president.Back when Donald Trump announced it all seemed sorta life-as-usual, but now the race is definitely on. There are currently somewhere between 12 and 400 Republicans eyeing the White House.All the major names are men except Nikki Haley, who’s arguing that “it’s time to put a badass woman in the White House.” Well, yeah. There’s very little chance Haley’s campaign is going anywhere, but I think we can all agree she could really perk things up.We’re also expecting some energy from the newly announced candidate Chris Christie. Rather than dodging the whole Donald Trump matter whenever possible, Christie stresses that he’s running to save the country from a former close colleague who he now calls a “lonely, self-consumed, self-serving mirror hog.”And that’s just the beginning! On Wednesday we acquired Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota. His great claim to fame is having built a software company that he sold for over $1 billion. Warning: Do not call Burgum a billionaire. (“Not even close!”) He’s really not into that. You’ll hurt his feelings.Vivek Ramaswamy doesn’t have that problem since he’s reportedly worth only $600 million or so (biopharmaceuticals). Still, he’s invested at least $10 million in the race so far and it’s gotten … well, hey, we’re talking about him.Ramaswamy, who’s 37, went to Harvard around the same time as Pete Buttigieg and has claimed that Buttigieg is “like the Diet Coke to my Coca-Cola.” Where do you think he came up with that one? Feel free to discuss amongst yourselves.OK, and let’s see … there’s Perry Johnson. Ever heard of Perry Johnson? He did run for governor of Michigan last year but got thrown off the Republican primary ballot for invalid petition signatures. Which must have been a little embarrassing for someone who made his fortune building a firm that promises to help your company meet business quality standards.Johnson used a pinch of his money running an ad during the Super Bowl celebrating, um, himself. (“Perry Johnson: Quality guru. Governor for a perfect Michigan.”) Fans who lost interest in the game between the Los Angeles Rams and the Cincinnati Bengals were free to contemplate the suggestion that they give thanks to Johnson “when your car door closes just right.”Didn’t work. But they do say he’s a really great bridge player. Just remember him that way. Perry Johnson … I bid two no-trump.You don’t need any previous government experience in your bio to be on the campaign trail. Ryan Binkley of Texas is out meeting and greeting in Iowa, and he’s never done anything remotely like this before. Although he claims he started thinking about running for president around eight years ago. So it’s not like he hasn’t been mulling.Binkley bills himself as a pastor and — wait for the shock — super fiscal conservative. He’s also the chief executive and co-founder of Generational Group, an investment banking firm that specializes in mergers and acquisitions.Are you picking up on a theme here, people? We have a very crowded field of superrich candidates. (Don’t call them billionaires!) And while sitting on piles of cash will not necessarily make you president, it sure does help open a lot of doors.There actually are some candidates who don’t seem to have a ton of money. We haven’t gotten to Larry Elder, a California talk radio host who did very well against other Republicans in the Gov. Gavin Newsom recall election. Which was certainly a great triumph for Elder except for the part about Newsom beating the entire recall idea back by huge margins.Or Asa Hutchinson, the 72-year-old former governor of Arkansas. OK, not necessarily a new broom. But you will so impress your friends when you say, “… And let’s not forget about Asa Hutchinson.”I guess Senator Tim Scott really ought to be up higher. He is the best known Black candidate in the field so far and he is having adventures. Got into a fight on TV over Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill, much to the audience’s irritation. (“Do not boo. This is ‘The View,’” urged Whoopi Goldberg.)Mike Pence is a sorta interesting challenge. You will remember that when Trump lost the 2020 election, Pence had an allegedly ceremonial role certifying the results. Which he did, guaranteeing a normal transfer of power and getting to hear the Jan. 6 crowd of rioters chanting “Hang Mike Pence.”Should we be grateful? I mean, yeah, sure, when it comes to writing his obituary. But do you want to root for Pence this time around? He’s extremely conservative, especially on social matters. (“Well, I think defending the unborn first and foremost is more important than politics. I really believe it’s the calling of our time.”)Sigh. Will the Republican field get any bigger? Or is it going the other way? I was watching one of the TV news channels the other day and suddenly a headline flashed:“Breaking News: Sununu Passes on Presidential Campaign.”Yes — shocker of the week! — the governor of New Hampshire has decided he’s not going to try for the nomination. Possibly the highest-ranking Republican in the country who definitely doesn’t want to give it a shot.Guess you’ll all have to stop saying, “Yeah, but wait until Chris Sununu gets in there.”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: [email protected] The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      With Migrant Flights, Ron DeSantis Shows Stoking Outrage Is the Point

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      The flights to California illustrate the broader bet Gov. Ron DeSantis has made that the animating energy in the G.O.P. has shifted from conservatism to confrontationalism.Ron DeSantis’s decision to send migrants from near the Mexico border to the capital city of California is at first glance the latest in a series of escalating clashes between the Florida governor and his Democratic counterpart, Gavin Newsom.But the performative gambit in the early days of Mr. DeSantis’s 2024 presidential run is better understood as an opening bid to prove to Republican primary voters that he can be just as much a provocateur, and every bit as incendiary, as former President Donald J. Trump.For Mr. DeSantis, the flights illustrate the broader bet he has made that the animating energy in the Republican Party today has shifted from conservatism to confrontationalism. And that in this new era, nothing is more fundamental than picking fights and making the right enemies, whether it’s the migrants who have slogged sometimes thousands of miles to slip through the border, the news media or the chief executive of the biggest blue state on the map.Mr. DeSantis has used this playbook before. He ordered up flights from the Texas border last year to the symbolically liberal hamlet of Martha’s Vineyard, a stunt that drew exactly the outrage he sought. Those flights are now a staple of his stump speech, usually to cheers from the crowd. His allies in the Florida Legislature earmarked $12 million of taxpayer money into the state budget this year for just this purpose.“The easiest way to prove one’s tribal loyalty in 2020s America is by theatrically hating the other tribe,” said Russell Moore, the editor in chief of Christianity Today and the former president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.A private charter plane that carried more than a dozen migrants, at Florida’s direction, at a Sacramento airport on Monday.Andri Tambunan for The New York TimesIn recent days, two charter flights orchestrated by the DeSantis administration carried roughly three dozen migrants from a New Mexico airport to Sacramento. The migrants, who are mostly Venezuelan, said they had been recruited from outside a shelter in El Paso, with promises of employment that California officials have said amounted to deception. Mr. Newsom, the California governor who is a potential future presidential contender himself, has suggested that the affair could merit “kidnapping charges,” calling Mr. DeSantis in a tweet a “small, pathetic man.”Mr. Moore said he believed “that migrants and asylum seekers are created in the image of God and shouldn’t be mistreated or treated as political theater for anybody.” But he could also see the more crass calculations that Mr. DeSantis is making in a polarized era where politicians are most clearly defined not by what they’re for, but who they’re against.“The one heresy that no tribe seems to allow is a refusal to hate the other tribe,” Mr. Moore said.Mr. DeSantis, who flew to Arizona on Wednesday for a border event, is not a trailblazer in this regard. It was Mr. Trump who began his 2016 campaign by calling Mexicans rapists, who promised to “build the wall” and later pitched a Muslim ban, making an “America First” approach to immigration a central theme of the party. And it was Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas who first began busing immigrants to blue cities and states last year (an idea Mr. Trump floated as president in 2018 but never pursued). Mr. DeSantis later one-upped Mr. Abbott’s buses with the dramatic flights to Martha’s Vineyard, which are now the subject of a federal class-action lawsuit.At the demographic and geographic epicenter of Mr. DeSantis’s presidential candidacy is an effort to appeal to deeply conservative evangelical voters in Iowa, where the Republicans’ 2024 nominating contest begins. Evangelical voters helped propel the Iowa victories of Ted Cruz, Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee in the last three open contests.Yet the DeSantis campaign and its allies see fighting the left as the fastest way to appeal to those voters rather than overt displays of religiosity. “Christians aren’t looking for a savior to be a president, they already have one,” said one DeSantis adviser, who was not authorized to speak publicly to discuss strategy, explaining how Mr. Trump has dominated that voting bloc despite concerns about his moral character.Kevin Madden, who served as a top adviser on Mitt Romney’s 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns, said transporting migrants, however cynical, allowed Mr. DeSantis to agitate all the right people.Mr. DeSantis and his wife, Casey, praying at a campaign stop in Iowa last month.Rachel Mummey for The New York Times“He’s provoking Gavin Newsom,” Mr. Madden said. “He’s provoking the most extreme liberal voices to attack him. He is provoking media voices. And that works to his favor because it endears him to the forces on the right who want to see a clash of political civilizations.”Outrage sells. Campaign contributions have repeatedly surged to the fury merchants on the right, whether the politicians selling the lie that the 2020 election was stolen or the G.O.P. hard-liners who battled Representative Kevin McCarthy’s ascent to the House speakership. An “own the libs” mentality has come to drive, if not define, the right online.On the left, Mr. Newsom has sought to elevate himself through his tussles with Mr. DeSantis, too. He ran a television advertisement in Florida attacking him last year. He challenged him to a debate. He traveled this spring to the New College of Florida, a public liberal arts institution where Mr. DeSantis is engineering a right-wing intellectual takeover. In his personal Twitter account, Mr. Newsom has slammed Mr. DeSantis by name at least 20 times.“I think I’m being generous — ‘small and pathetic’ — very generous,” Mr. Newsom said in an interview on NBC’s “Today Show” broadcast on Wednesday. He accused Mr. DeSantis of using migrants as “pawns,” adding, “He’s just weakness masquerading as strength.”Mr. Newsom’s new PAC has been running a rotation of online fund-raising ads that attack Mr. DeSantis. “In my book, a bully and a coward doesn’t deserve to be the leader of the free world,” Mr. Newsom says of Mr. DeSantis in a video ad that began running on Facebook on Wednesday.Mr. DeSantis’s round-table discussion in Arizona on border security was a government event underwritten by taxpayers, not his campaign. After days of mystery, Mr. DeSantis’s administration took credit for the Sacramento flights on Tuesday. On Wednesday, he did not mention Mr. Newsom by name, though he said “sanctuary jurisdictions” had “incentivized” illegal immigration.Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, a possible eventual presidential hopeful, has sought to elevate himself through his tussles with Mr. DeSantis, too.Patrick T. Fallon/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThen Mr. DeSantis shifted to pick another fight with President Biden. “I don’t know how you can just sit there and let the country be overrun with millions and millions of people coming illegally,” Mr. DeSantis said.Mr. DeSantis has become expert at agitating the right’s boogeymen. He once called Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious disease expert, a “little elf” who needed to be chucked “across the Potomac.” And when Mr. DeSantis’s motives are questioned by reporters, his snapbacks have been quickly packaged and posted on social media in hopes of generating viral hits.If he were to become president, Mr. DeSantis has made plain he would use the White House’s powers to the fullest. He is fond of saying that although he first won the governorship in 2018 with barely 50 percent of the vote, that victory came with 100 percent of the executive authority.As governor, he proudly used the power of the state to overrule local governments, ousting a prosecutor and prohibiting school districts from imposing mask mandates. Such actions are a departure from the limited-government conservatism of yesteryear. His allies say it is a vivid signal to voters that Mr. DeSantis will leverage the powers of government to battle their enemies, at a moment when many Republicans feel that their values and nation are under siege.Cesar Conda, a former chief of staff to Senator Marco Rubio of Florida who, two decades ago, served as the top domestic policy adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney, said that “Ronald Reagan would be rolling over in his grave using taxpayer dollars” to fly migrants from one faraway state to another.“DeSantis’s move is part of a growing strain in conservatism, endorsed by younger conservatives, to aggressively use the power and resources of government to achieve — or coerce — policy goals,” Mr. Conda said. “The ‘less government, lower taxes, more freedom’ mantra of conservatism is becoming quaint and old-fashioned, unfortunately.”Shawn Hubler More