Presidential Election of 2024

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      The Complicated Reality of Joe Biden, America’s Oldest President

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      There was the time last winter when President Biden was awakened at 3 a.m. while on a trip to Asia and told that a missile had struck Poland, touching off a panic that Russia might have expanded the war in Ukraine to a NATO ally. Within hours in the middle of the night, Mr. Biden consulted his top advisers, called the president of Poland and the NATO secretary general, and gathered fellow world leaders to deal with the crisis.And then there was the time a few weeks ago when the president was hosting children for Take Your Child to Work Day and became mixed up as he tried to list his grandchildren. “So, let me see. I got one in New York, two in Philadelphia — or is it three? No, three, because I got one granddaughter who is — I don’t know. You’re confusing me.” He also drew a blank when asked the last country he had visited and the name of a favorite movie.The two Joe Bidens coexist in the same octogenarian president: Sharp and wise at critical moments, the product of decades of seasoning, able to rise to the occasion even in the dead of night to confront a dangerous world. Yet a little slower, a little softer, a little harder of hearing, a little more tentative in his walk, a little more prone to occasional lapses of memory in ways that feel familiar to anyone who has reached their ninth decade or has a parent who has.The complicated reality of America’s oldest president was encapsulated on Thursday as Congress approved a bipartisan deal he brokered to avoid a national default. Even Speaker Kevin McCarthy testified that Mr. Biden had been “very professional, very smart, very tough” during their talks. Yet just before the voting got underway, Mr. Biden tripped over a sandbag at the Air Force Academy commencement, plunging to the ground. The video went viral, his supporters cringed and his critics pounced.Anyone can trip at any age, but for an 80-year-old president, it inevitably raises unwelcome questions. If it were anyone else, the signs of age might not be notable. But Mr. Biden is the chief executive of the world’s most powerful nation and has just embarked on a campaign asking voters to keep him in the White House until age 86, drawing more attention to an issue that polls show troubles most Americans and is the source of enormous anxiety among party leaders.“You say I’m ancient?” Mr. Biden said at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in April. “I say I’m wise.”Yuri Gripas for The New York TimesThe portrait that emerges from months of interviews with dozens of current and former officials and others who have spent time with him lies somewhere between the partisan cartoon of an addled and easily manipulated fogy promoted by Republicans and the image spread by his staff of a president in aviator shades commanding the world stage and governing with vigor.It is one of a man who has slowed with age in ways that are more pronounced than just the graying hair common to most recent presidents during their time in office. Mr. Biden sometimes mangles his words and looks older than he used to because of his stiff gait and thinning voice.Yet people who deal with him regularly, including some of his adversaries, say he remains sharp and commanding in private meetings. Diplomats share stories of trips to places like Ukraine, Japan, Egypt, Cambodia and Indonesia in which he often outlasts younger colleagues. Democratic lawmakers point to a long list of accomplishments as proof that he still gets the job done.His verbal miscues are nothing new, friends note; he has struggled throughout his life with a stutter and was a “gaffe machine,” to use his own term, long before he entered Social Security years. Advisers said his judgment is as good as ever. So many of them use the phrase “sharp as a tack” to describe him that it has become something of a mantra.Mr. Biden says age is a legitimate issue but maintains that his longevity is an asset, not a liability. “You say I’m ancient?” he said at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in April. “I say I’m wise.”Still, few people fail to notice the changes in one of the nation’s most public people. As vice president a dozen years ago, Mr. Biden engaged in energetic squirt gun battles each summer with the children of aides and reporters. More than a decade later, he shuffled stiffly across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., to mark the anniversary of Bloody Sunday.Polls indicate the president’s age is a top concern of Americans, including Democrats. During a recent New York Times focus group, several voters who supported Mr. Biden in 2020 expressed worry, with one saying: “I’ve just seen the blank stare at times, when he’s either giving a speech or addressing a crowd. It seems like he loses his train of thought.”Unease about Mr. Biden’s age suffuses Democratic circles. One prominent Wall Street Democrat, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid offending the White House, noted that among party donors it was all anyone was talking about. At a small dinner earlier this year of former Democratic senators and governors, all of them in Mr. Biden’s generation, everyone at the table agreed he was too old to run again. Local leaders often call the White House to inquire about his health.In private, officials acknowledge that they make what they consider reasonable accommodations not to physically tax an aging president. His staff schedules most of his public appearances between noon and 4 p.m. and leave him alone on weekends as much as possible.A study of Mr. Biden’s schedule based on data compiled by Axios and expanded by The New York Times found that Mr. Biden has a similar morning cadence as the president he served, Barack Obama. Neither had many public events before 10 a.m., just 4 percent in Mr. Obama’s last year in office and 5 percent in Mr. Biden’s first two and a half years. But the real difference came in the evening. Mr. Obama was twice as likely to do public events after 6 p.m. compared with Mr. Biden, 17 percent to 9 percent.Aides limit exposing the president to news media interviews when he could make a politically damaging mistake. He has given just a fourth of the interviews Donald J. Trump did in the same time period and a fifth of Mr. Obama’s interviews — and none at all to reporters from a major newspaper. Mr. Biden has not given an interview to the news department of The Times, unlike every president since at least Franklin D. Roosevelt other than Dwight D. Eisenhower. And in the past 100 years, only Ronald Reagan and Richard M. Nixon have subjected themselves to as few news conferences.White House officials have not made Mr. Biden’s doctor available for questioning, as previous presidents have. In February, Kevin C. O’Connor, the White House physician, issued a five-page letter stating that Mr. Biden is “fit for duty, and fully executes all of his responsibilities without any exemptions or accommodations.”But he also wrote that the president’s tendency to walk stiffly is “in fact a result of degenerative (‘wear and tear’)” changes in his spine, and partly the result of “tighter hamstrings and calves.” The letter said there were “no findings which would be consistent with” a neurological disorder like stroke, multiple sclerosis or Parkinson’s disease. He takes medicine for atrial fibrillation, cholesterol, heartburn, asthma and allergies.Like many his age, Mr. Biden repeats phrases and retells the same hoary, often fact-challenged stories again and again. He can be quirky; when children visit, he may randomly pull a book of William Butler Yeats off his desk and start reading Irish poetry to them.At the same time, he is trim and fit, exercises five days a week and does not drink. He has at times exhibited striking stamina, such as when he flew to Poland then boarded a nine-hour train ride to make a secret visit to Kyiv, spent hours on the ground, then endured another nine-hour train ride and a flight to Warsaw. A study of his schedule by Mr. Biden’s aides shows that he has traveled slightly more in the first few months of his third year in office than Mr. Obama did in his.Mr. Biden’s trip to Kyiv, in which he met with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, required a nonstop schedule.Daniel Berehulak/The New York Times“Does he ramble? Yes, he does,” said Gov. Phil Murphy of New Jersey, a Democrat who categorically rejects the idea that Mr. Biden is too old to be president. “Has he always rambled? Yes, he has. Public and private. He’s the same guy. He’s literally — I’m not saying this lightly. I don’t know anyone else in my life who is so much the same guy privately as he is publicly.”Some friends bristle at the attention to his age. “I think the reason this is an issue is primarily because of the media talking about it constantly,” said former Senator Ted Kaufman, a longtime adviser to Mr. Biden from Delaware. “I do not see anything in my dealings with him that age is a problem. He’s done more than any president has been able to do in my lifetime.”Andrew Bates, a White House spokesman, noted that Republican hard-liners were grousing that Mr. Biden had gotten the better of Mr. McCarthy in the fiscal deal. “It’s telling that the same extreme MAGA members of Congress who’ve been talking about his age complained this week that he outsmarted them on the budget agreement,” Mr. Bates said.The question of Mr. Biden’s age does not come in isolation, of course. Mr. Trump, his likeliest Republican challenger, is just four years younger and was the oldest president in history until Mr. Biden succeeded him. If Mr. Trump were to win next year, he would be 82 at the end of his term, older than Mr. Biden will be at the end of this one.While in office, Mr. Trump generated concerns about his mental acuity and physical condition. He did not exercise, his diet leaned heavily on cheeseburgers and steak and he officially tipped the scales at 244 pounds, a weight formally deemed obese for his height.After complaining that he was overscheduled with morning meetings, Mr. Trump stopped showing up at the Oval Office until 11 or 11:30 a.m. each day, staying in the residence to watch television, make phone calls or send out incendiary tweets. During an appearance at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, he had trouble lifting a glass of water and seemed to have trouble making his way down a modest ramp.Most striking was Mr. Trump’s cognitive performance. He was erratic and tended to ramble; experts found that he had grown less articulate and that his vocabulary had shrunk since his younger days. Aides said privately that Mr. Trump had trouble processing information and distinguishing fact from fiction. His second chief of staff, John F. Kelly, bought a book analyzing Mr. Trump’s psychological health to understand him better, and several cabinet secretaries concerned that he might be mentally unfit discussed invoking the 25th Amendment to remove him.Former President Donald J. Trump’s cognitive issues are not as often associated with age in the public mind as are Mr. Biden’s, perhaps because Mr. Trump’s bombastic volume conveys energy.Doug Mills/The New York TimesBut perhaps because his bombastic volume conveys energy, Mr. Trump’s issues are not associated with age in the public mind as much as Mr. Biden’s are. In a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll, 73 percent said Mr. Biden is too old to be in office, compared with 51 percent who said the same of Mr. Trump.Mr. Biden manages his day with more discipline than his predecessor. Jill Biden, who teaches at Northern Virginia Community College, gets up around 6 a.m. while the president wakes an hour later, according to accounts he has given. Mr. Biden has told aides that their cat sometimes wakes him in the middle of the night by walking across his face.By 7:20 a.m., the first lady leaves for work. Mr. Biden works out at 8 a.m.; he has a Peloton bicycle in the residence and is known to watch shows like “Morning Joe” on MSNBC. He arrives at the Oval Office by 9 a.m. for a morning usually filled with meetings. For lunch, there is a rotation of salad, soup and sandwiches.Mr. Biden exercises five days a week and does not drink.Al Drago for The New York TimesFollowing afternoon events, the president returns to the residence around 6:45 p.m. For dinner, pasta is a favorite. In fact, one former official said, whenever he travels, aides make sure there is always red sauce on hand for pasta to finish his day — even as he balks at the salmon that his wife urges on him.From 8 p.m., the Bidens often read their briefing books together in the living room of the residence. The first lady typically turns in at 10:30 p.m. and the president follows a half-hour later.Aides say it is clear he actually reads the briefing books because of the questions that follow. “There’s no one who is better at asking questions to get to the bottom of an issue, calling your bluff, asking the tough questions,” said Stefanie Feldman, the White House staff secretary. “He asks just as tough questions today as he did 10 years ago.”Some who accompany him overseas express astonishment at his ability to keep up. When Italy’s new leader pushed for a meeting while the president was in Poland, he readily agreed to add it to the already packed schedule. During a trip to Ireland, people with him said he was energized and wanted to talk at length on Air Force One rather than rest.Still, after fatiguing days on the road, he skipped dinner with world leaders in Indonesia last year and again in Japan in May. Others who have known him for years said privately that they have noticed small changes. When he sits down, one former official said, he usually places a hand on his desk to hold his weight and rarely springs back up with his old energy.Mr. Biden’s staff schedules most of his public appearances between noon and 4 p.m. and leaves him alone on weekends as much as possible.Doug Mills/The New York TimesHe speaks so softly that he can be hard to hear. For speeches, aides give him a hand-held microphone to hold close to his mouth to amplify his voice even when standing at a lectern with mounted microphones.Mr. Biden and Jill Biden, his wife, often follow a similar schedule.Doug Mills/The New York TimesYet aides said that while he can momentarily forget a name or fact, he retains a formidable memory for detail. Preparing to travel to Shanksville, Pa., on the 20th anniversary of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, he became frustrated that officials had given him the wrong plan for his movements. He had been to the memorial before and knew the plan made no sense because he remembered the layout of the grounds.White House officials voice aggravation that concern about age is inflated by pictures on the internet that are sometimes faked or highly distorted. Every week, strategists conduct a word cloud analysis with a panel of voters asking what they had heard about the president, good or bad. After Mr. Biden’s foot got caught in the toe cage of his bicycle and he tumbled over last year, the two words in the bad-word cloud for weeks were “bike fell” — all the more frustrating for aides who noted that Mr. Trump hardly seemed capable of even riding a bike.Mr. Biden lately has turned to self-deprecating humor to defuse the issue, taking a cue from Mr. Reagan, who won re-election in 1984 at age 73 in part with a well-timed debate quip about not exploiting “my opponent’s youth and inexperience.”Some who accompany Mr. Biden overseas express astonishment at his ability to keep up. Still, after fatiguing days on the road, he skipped dinner with world leaders in Indonesia last year and again in Japan in May.Doug Mills/The New York TimesAt the correspondents’ dinner, Mr. Biden assured the audience that he supported the First Amendment, and “not just because my good friend Jimmy Madison wrote it.” During the Take Your Child to Work Day event, he looked back on “when I was younger, 120 years ago.”And at the Air Force Academy a few days ago, Mr. Biden joked that “when I was graduating from high school 300 years ago, I applied to the Naval Academy.” After tripping on the sandbag, he sought to laugh that off too. “I got sandbagged,” he said. More

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      These Activists Distrust Voting Machines. Just Don’t Call Them Election Deniers.

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      As election activists rally against new voting machines, they are drifting into territory now dominated by conspiracy theorists.For decades, Lulu Friesdat made election integrity her life’s work. Drawing support from activists and academics, she co-founded Smart Elections, a nonpartisan group that is opposed to some voting machines that Ms. Friesdat believes would increase wait times and cost a small fortune to purchase and maintain.But since 2020, things have changed. Former President Donald J. Trump catapulted concerns about voting machines into the Republican mainstream by falsely claiming that the 2020 election was rigged, partly because of electronic voting machines.Election integrity advocates, like Ms. Friesdat, now find themselves in an uncomfortable position, pushing for election security while sometimes amplifying claims made most vocally by conspiracy theorists, including those involved in the so-called Stop the Steal movement.Some election activists warn that election machines could be hacked or compromised, for example, while some conspiracy theorists say, without evidence, that those hacks have already taken place. Election officials say no hacks have taken place.Misinformation watchdogs say that the somewhat overlapping arguments illustrate another consequence of Mr. Trump’s false and exaggerated voter fraud claims, which have led to doubts about election integrity among a wide swath of the American public. Ms. Friesdat and other activists like her fear that their work may become too closely tied to conspiracy theorists and Mr. Trump’s cause, making potential allies, like progressives, wary of joining the fight.“If you read an article that says that these voting machines are coming in, and people’s concerns about these issues are very similar to those of the Stop the Steal movement, then it makes it very hard for Democrats to work on this issue,” Ms. Friesdat said. “And it has nothing to do with that. It has nothing to do with the Stop the Steal movement.”Misinformation watchdogs say that the two movements could erode trust in American elections even further, intentionally or not, because conspiracy theorists tend to exaggerate legitimate criticisms to rile up supporters and raise questions about the entire electoral system.“You sow a seed of doubt, and that will grow and fester into a conspiracy theory,” said Tim Weninger, a computer science professor at the University of Notre Dame who studies misinformation on social media. “It always starts off with one untruth, and that grows into two untruths, and that grows into more, and before long you have an entire conspiracy theory on your hands.”The debate has played out nationally as multiple states have faced pushback on electronic voting machines. It is now happening in New York, where officials are considering certifying new voting machines made by Election Systems & Software, a manufacturer based in Omaha. The company has been targeted in Mr. Trump’s voting fraud narrative, alongside competitors like Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic. Yet, ES&S and its machines have also come under scrutiny by election activists and security experts.The new machines, ExpressVote XL, use an “all-in-one” design: Voters make their selections on a 32-inch touch-screen, which also prints their votes on a narrow summary card. Unlike a traditional ballot, the card records the votes in bar codes at the top of the paper, which the machine reads electronically, followed by a written summary of each pick.How the ExpressVote XL WorksImages shared by the Pennsylvania government show how the ExpressVote XL uses summary cards instead of traditional ballots. More

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      Republican Presidential Candidates Attend Iowa Roast and Ride

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      Eight presidential hopefuls, with Donald Trump absent, spoke at an annual political rally in Des Moines to highlight their conservative bona fides.As the politicians and Republican Party officials tossed out the red meat on Saturday at an event at the Iowa State Fairgrounds, Wayne Johnson, a 70-year-old farmer and financial consultant from Forest City, Iowa, had some quieter thoughts about the next president he would like to see.The violence in American schools and public places, the tribalism in politics, the negativity of the nation’s elected officials — “If a leader can take us in a positive direction, people will follow,” Mr. Johnson said.His wife, Gloria, jumped in. “I really don’t care about people’s sexual habits and I don’t want to hear about it all the time,” she said with exasperation about her party’s focus on social issues like transgender care and L.G.B.T.Q. rights. “Politicians are taking positions on ‘woke’ that have more to do with sex than promoting our country in a positive way.”The event, called “Roast and Ride” — an annual motorcycle and barbecue-infused political rally sponsored by Iowa’s junior Republican senator, Joni Ernst — laid bare divisions in the party, with some attendees focusing on pocketbook issues and tone and others looking for a candidate who will take on Democrats on a social and cultural front.Saturday’s gathering featured eight presidential hopefuls, prominent and obscure, declared and undeclared. Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor; Mike Pence, the former vice president who will formally announce his run on Wednesday; Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina; and Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and United Nations ambassador, were there, along with hundreds of Iowa Republicans who will cast the first ballots of the Republican nomination season in February.Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina at the event in Des Moines on Saturday.Jordan Gale for The New York TimesThe politicians had their pitches, waltzing across a stage festooned with flags and stacked with hay bales to rail against “deep state” bureaucrats, “woke” corporations, and liberals indoctrinating and confusing America’s children. Their biggest target, unsurprisingly, was President Biden, for all manner of failings, from Afghanistan and the southern border to transgender athletes competing in women’s sports.For the presidential hopefuls, winning over Iowa Republicans — with their strong religious bent and tradition of political engagement — is the imperative first step toward wresting the G.O.P. from the front-runner for the nomination, Donald J. Trump, the one major candidate who did not make the trip on Saturday.The candidates in attendance tried to differentiate themselves from one another.The next president, Mr. Pence assured, will “hear from heaven, and he’ll heal this land.”Ms. Haley agreed, “We’ve got to leave the baggage and the negativity behind.”Mr. DeSantis chose a culture-war analogy, evoking Winston Churchill, who once vowed to fight Nazi Germany on the beaches, on the landing grounds, in the fields and in the streets. Mr. DeSantis promised on Saturday to fight “woke ideology” in the halls of Congress and in the boardrooms, saying, “We will never surrender.”Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida at the event on Saturday.Jordan Gale for The New York TimesIowa has moved more decisively from swing state to deep red than perhaps any other state, voting for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, only to shift firmly to Mr. Trump in 2016 and 2020. Mr. Trump’s eight-percentage-point victory there in 2020 nearly matched Mr. Obama’s nine-point margin 12 years before.But voters in the audience did not all have the same priorities, interests or solutions. A Republican presidential beauty pageant eight months before the Iowa caucuses will attract only the most ardent partisans, and candidates understand they are reaching out to the edges of their party, not the center.Many voters expressed concern about the economy, especially inflation, a subject most of the presidential candidates barely touched. Ron Greiner, a health insurance salesman from Omaha, was incensed that none of the candidates mentioned the Affordable Care Act — once a reliable target of Republican attacks — or health care at all.Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, at the event on Saturday.Jordan Gale for The New York TimesAnd while Ms. Johnson might be tired of all the talk of transgender issues, others leaped to their feet when Ms. Haley called transgender women competing in women’s sports “the biggest women’s issue of our day.”Jackson Cox, a 17-year-old who will vote for the first time in 2024, drove from Albert Lea, Minn., to hear the candidates he will choose from. Top of mind for him are the taxpayer dollars he said were being wasted before they reach American troops fighting for freedom in Ukraine — never mind that no U.S. troops are fighting in Ukraine. Contrary to the conservative consensus, he argued that the United States should be doing more, not less, for Ukraine.Diane Bebb, 66, of New London, Iowa, fretted over inflation, gas and food prices, and the “help wanted signs” for jobs that seemingly could not be filled.“We could start producing oil again, to help the economy and get prices down,” she said, though she wasn’t sure how more oil exploration would fill all those job openings.Her twin sister, Dione Cornelius of Bagley, Iowa, jumped in to reject the idea of backfilling the labor force with more immigrants.“They’re taking all the benefits, free health care and all that kind of stuff,” Ms. Cornelius protested.Mike Clark, 74, a semiretired acoustics consultant, worried that “the rule of law is disappearing,” not so much because of crime in the nation’s streets but because of an out-of-control F.B.I. and Justice Department pursuing Mr. Trump.“Big push for the one-world government, that’s what worries me most,” Mr. Clark said, referring to a common subject of conspiracy theories. He recommended the book “The Creature From Jekyll Island,” which pushes conspiracy theories about the founding of the Federal Reserve.Amid that cornucopia of concerns, the one issue that seemed to be most broadly felt was the porous border with Mexico. “What are we going to do with all these people?” asked Karen Clark, 81, of Des Moines.Beyond that, Iowa conservatives seemed torn. They conceded that unemployment was so low that jobs in the state weren’t being filled, but asserted that the economy was a wreck.Bill Dunton, 68, said he had been coming from his home in Toledo, Iowa, to Ms. Ernst’s Roast and Ride on his Harley-Davidson for six years. His credit card debt was just about paid off, he said with relief. He was particularly proud of the Chevy Silverado High Country diesel pickup truck he bought in 2021, which “was made for pulling.”But, he said with conviction, “the economy has gone” to pieces, using an expletive to describe it.Mr. Dunton also spoke of his ordeal with Covid-19, hospitalized for 28 days on huge tanks of supplemental oxygen, which he was still tethered to a month and a half after his discharge. Yet, he added, “I think we way overreacted” to the pandemic.Responding to the multiplicity of maladies on Iowans’ minds will present a challenge for the presidential hopefuls. But after the program, Mr. Johnson said he was impressed with his choices, and he will have time to watch the race unfold.“It’s a long run,” he noted. “Time has a way of revealing truth.” More

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      DeSantis Relied Heavily on Big Donors In Initial Money Haul

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      The NewsGov. Ron DeSantis of Florida made a splash when he announced that he had raised a record $8.2 million in his first 24 hours as a presidential candidate. New figures disclosed by the campaign reveal that he relied heavily on larger contributors to set that record.The DeSantis campaign said it had around 40,000 donors in May as “we raised over” $8.2 million, according to text messages and emails to supporters asking for more donations. That works out to an average of more than $200 per donor — a figure far higher than is typical for a campaign heavily funded by grass-roots support. By comparison, Senator Bernie Sanders, who was a Democratic online fund-raising powerhouse, raised $5.9 million in his first 24 hours in 2019 — but from 223,000 donors, for an average donation of around $26.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesWhy It Matters: Small donors help sustain a campaign and show grass-roots support.How a campaign raises money matters. Because of strict campaign contribution limits of $3,300 per person for the primary, campaigns that raise money chiefly from bigger contributors cannot return to those same donors again and again for support.Small contributors are particularly valuable because they can give $30 more than 100 times before bumping up against contribution caps.Tim Tagaris, a Democratic digital strategist who oversaw the Sanders fund-raising operation in 2020, called the number of DeSantis donors surprisingly small.Mr. Tagaris said that 40,000 “donations in a week for a leading presidential campaign is either a sign that they didn’t prepare well enough heading into the launch or there isn’t the kind of grass-roots support from regular people they had probably hoped for.” He added, “That’s a donor number you expect from top-tier Senate campaigns, not a leading presidential.”But Eric Wilson, who has worked as a Republican digital strategist, called the number of donors a “good start” for a candidate who had not previously sought federal office.“That is what someone needs to take on Trump, because he obviously had one of the best donor files,” said Mr. Wilson, who is now the director of the Center for Campaign Innovation, a conservative nonprofit.One previous presidential candidate with a similar starting number of total donors was Kamala Harris, who had 38,000 in her first day in 2019. She raised $1.5 million that day — which indicates just how many bigger checks Mr. DeSantis received.Mr. Wilson cautioned against comparing Republican and Democratic campaigns because Republican donors are more than a decade behind on “building an online grass-roots donor culture.”The DeSantis campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.In Context: DeSantis’s haul is impressive, but worth watching.The $8.2 million opening total that Mr. DeSantis has claimed remains impressive. It exceeded the Sanders figure and broke the kickoff record set by President Biden in his 2020 campaign.It is not clear what portion of the $8.2 million is from funds earmarked for the general election. The campaign has said it was collecting up to $3,300 in general election contributions, which Mr. DeSantis can’t spend during the primary and would have to return if he doesn’t win the nomination.Overall, money is expected to be a DeSantis strength, especially because his allied super PAC has said it expects to have at least a $200 million budget.But online funds have become increasingly scarce for Republicans since last summer, including for Mr. Trump — until his recent indictment at least temporarily turbocharged his fund-raising.What’s Next: The money primary begins.The 40,000 donors that Mr. DeSantis had in his first week also happens to be the threshold that the Republican National Committee just set for candidates to qualify for the first debate stage.That figure was never expected to be a problem for Mr. DeSantis. But the fact that the candidate polling second to former President Donald J. Trump in almost every poll hit that mark during his kickoff week is a sign of just how onerous that figure is likely to be for smaller campaigns.The DeSantis team made no secret that it was soliciting big money to coincide with his kickoff. The campaign had gathered major donors at the Four Seasons in Miami for an event they called Ron-O-Rama. Officials in the DeSantis administration were also soliciting donations from Florida lobbyists, which gave some the impression that the governor’s office was tracking their donations at a time when the state budget — and Mr. DeSantis’s veto pen — hung in the balance. More

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      Can Kevin McCarthy and Joe Biden Fix Washington?

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      Among the various reassessments of Kevin McCarthy following his successful debt ceiling negotiations, the one with the widest implications belongs to Matthew Continetti, who writes in The Washington Free Beacon that “McCarthy’s superpower is his desire to be speaker. He likes and wants his job.”If you hadn’t followed American politics across the last few decades, this would seem like a peculiar statement: What kind of House speaker wouldn’t want the job?But part of what’s gone wrong with American institutions lately is the failure of important figures to regard their positions as ends unto themselves. Congress, especially, has been overtaken by what Yuval Levin of the American Enterprise Institute describes as a “platform” mentality, where ambitious House members and senators treat their offices as places to stand and be seen — as talking heads, movement leaders, future presidents — rather than as roles to inhabit and opportunities to serve.On the Republican side, this tendency has taken several forms, from Newt Gingrich’s yearning to be a Great Man of History, to Ted Cruz’s ambitious grandstanding in the Obama years, to the emergence of Trump-era performance artists like Marjorie Taylor Greene. And the party’s congressional institutionalists, from dealmakers like John Boehner to policy mavens like Paul Ryan, have often been miserable-seeming prisoners of the talking heads, celebrity brands and would-be presidents.This dynamic seemed likely to imprison McCarthy as well, but he’s found a different way of dealing with it: He’s invited some of the bomb throwers into the legislative process, trying to turn them from platform-seekers into legislators by giving them a stake in governance, and so far he’s been rewarded with crucial support from figures like Greene and Thomas Massie, the quirky Kentucky libertarian. And it’s clear that part of what makes this possible is McCarthy’s enthusiasm for the actual vote-counting, handholding work required of his position, and his lack of both Gingrichian egomania and get-me-out-of-here impatience.But McCarthy isn’t operating in a vacuum. The Biden era has been good for institutionalism generally, because the president himself seems to understand and appreciate the nature of his office more than Barack Obama ever did. As my colleague Carlos Lozada noted on our podcast this week, in both the Senate and the White House, Obama was filled with palpable impatience at all the limitations on his actions. This showed up constantly in his negotiation strategy, where he had a tendency to use his own office as a pundit’s platform, lecturing the G.O.P. on what they should support and thereby alienating Republicans from compromise in advance.Whereas Biden, who actually liked being a senator, is clearly comfortable with quiet negotiation on any reasonable grounds, which is crucial to keeping the other side invested in a deal. And he’s comfortable, as well, with letting the spin machine run on both sides of the aisle, rather than constantly imposing his own rhetorical narrative on whatever bargain Republicans might strike.The other crucial element in the healthier environment is the absence of what Cruz brought to the debt-ceiling negotiations under Obama — the kind of sweeping maximalism, designed to build a presidential brand, that turns normal horse-trading into an existential fight.Expectating that kind of maximalism from Republicans, some liberals kept urging intransigence on Biden long after it became clear that what McCarthy wanted was more in line with previous debt-ceiling bargains. But McCarthy’s reasonability was sustainable because of the absence of a leading Republican senator playing Cruz’s absolutist part. Instead, the most notable populist Republican elected in 2022, J.D. Vance, has been busy looking for deals with populist Democrats on issues like railroad safety and bank-executive compensation, or adding a constructive amendment to the debt-ceiling bill even though he voted against it — as though he, no less than McCarthy, actually likes and wants his current job.One reason for the diminishment of Cruz-like grandstanders is the continued presence of Donald Trump as the G.O.P.’s personality-in-chief, to whose eminence no senator can reasonably aspire. At least through 2024, it’s clear the only way that Trump might be unseated is through the counterprogramming offered by Ron DeSantis, who is selling himself — we’ll see with what success — as the candidate of governance and competence; no bigger celebrity or demagogue is walking through that door.So for now there’s more benefit to legislative normalcy for ambitious Republicans, and less temptation toward the platform mentality, than there would be if Trump’s part were open for the taking.Whatever happens, it will be years until that role comes open. In which case Kevin McCarthy could be happy in his job for much longer than might have been expected by anyone watching his tortuous ascent.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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      5 Takeaways From Ron DeSantis’s First Campaign Trip

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      He swung back at Donald Trump. He vowed to vanquish the “woke mob” and turn the country into mega-Florida. He had normal encounters with voters that didn’t become memes.After his unusual, buzzy and ill-fated presidential debut on Twitter last week, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida carried out a far more traditional campaign tour this week, barnstorming Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina to sell himself as the strongest Republican alternative to former President Donald J. Trump.Along the way, he drew sizable, enthusiastic crowds of DeSantis-curious voters. He held babies. He got testy with a reporter. He threw some punches at Mr. Trump. He warned of a “malignant ideology” being pressed by liberals and vowed to “impose our will” to stop it.Here are five takeaways.He won’t cower against Trump — but how hard he’ll counterattack is unclear.For months, Mr. DeSantis held his fire against Mr. Trump. Those days are clearly over.“Petty,” he labeled Mr. Trump’s taunts. “Juvenile.” The former president’s criticisms of him? “Bizarre” and “ridiculous.”But Mr. DeSantis made those remarks not from the stage, in front of Republican voters, but behind the scenes in comments to reporters, suggesting that he is not quite ready to attack Mr. Trump head-on. Instead, his most direct shots were saved for President Biden (“We’re going to take all that Biden nonsense and rip it out by the roots”). When it comes to Mr. Trump, the governor has said he is simply defending himself from a man with whom he avoided public disagreements for years.“Well, now he’s attacking me,” a seemingly aggrieved Mr. DeSantis said outside Des Moines.There are risks to bashing Mr. Trump. For some voters, part of Mr. DeSantis’s appeal has been his willingness to avoid warring with a fellow Republican.“DeSantis has Trump policies, without all the name-calling,” said Monica Schieb, an Iowa voter who supported Mr. Trump in 2016 but now plans to back Mr. DeSantis.Mr. DeSantis drew healthy crowds on the trip, as he did in Gilbert. He often sought to highlight his relative youthfulness at age 44, in contrast to Donald J. Trump and President Biden. Nicole Craine for The New York TimesA key message: He’s young and energetic and can serve two terms.Mr. DeSantis packed his schedule with three or four rallies per day, covering hundreds of miles in each state and addressing a total of more than 7,000 people, his campaign said.The events did not quite have the MAGA-Woodstock energy of Mr. Trump’s arena rallies, but they were lively and well-attended. Tightly orchestrated, too: There was no chowing of hoagies or cozying up to bikers at diners. Up-tempo country music and occasionally cheesy rock (“Chicken Fried” by the Zac Brown Band and “Eye of the Tiger” by Survivor) preceded him onstage.The message behind the rigorous schedule?Turning the country into a mega-Florida takes a “disciplined, energetic president,” in his words.It’s a phrase we’re likely to hear more of, given that it takes aim at both of the major obstacles in Mr. DeSantis’s path to the White House: Mr. Trump and President Biden.At nearly every event, Mr. DeSantis, 44, used comments about his energy level as an indirect swipe at his much older opponents. Mr. Trump is 76; Mr. Biden is 80. And Mr. DeSantis regularly noted that unlike his main Republican rival, Mr. Trump, he would be able to serve two terms.The messaging allowed Mr. DeSantis to set a clear contrast with the former president without necessarily angering Mr. Trump’s loyal supporters.Two terms, the governor says, would give him more time to appoint conservative Supreme Court justices and unwind the “deep state.” (Mr. Trump responded angrily to the new line of attack, saying in Iowa on Thursday that “you don’t need eight years, you need six months,” adding, “Who the hell wants to wait eight years?”)The case Mr. DeSantis is making, however, sometimes seems to be undercut by his own delivery. Even supporters acknowledge that he is not a natural orator, and on the stump he sometimes calls himself an “energetic executive” in a neutral monotone.Mr. DeSantis kicked off the tour with an event on Tuesday at an evangelical church in Clive, Iowa. Rachel Mummey for The New York TimesHumbly, he compares himself to Churchill, fighting ‘the woke mob’ on the beaches.If Mr. DeSantis had to summarize what he believes is wrong with America in one word, his three-state tour suggests the answer might be “woke,” a term that many Republican politicians find easy to use but hard to define. The governor frequently rails against “wokeness,” which he describes as a “war on the truth,” in distinctly martial terms.At several events, Mr. DeSantis, a military veteran, seemed to borrow from Winston Churchill’s famous “We shall fight on the beaches” speech, given to exhort the citizens of Britain in their existential struggle against Nazi Germany.“We will fight the woke in education,” Mr. DeSantis said in New Hampshire. “We will fight the woke in corporations. And we will fight the woke in the halls of Congress. We will never surrender to the woke mob.”(Mr. Trump seemed to take a shot at his rival’s use of the word, saying on Thursday, “I don’t like the term ‘woke,’ because I hear ‘woke, woke, woke.’” He added: “It’s just a term they use. Half the people can’t even define it. They don’t know what it is.”)Earlier, at his kickoff rally outside Des Moines on Tuesday night, Mr. DeSantis seemed to put the various building blocks of his stump speech together into a coherent vision, one that portrayed the United States as a nation being assaulted from the inside by unseen liberal forces bent on reshaping every aspect of American life.“They are imposing their agenda on us, via the federal government, via corporate America, via our own education system,” he said. “All for their benefit and all to our detriment.”In turn, Mr. DeSantis promised to aggressively wield the power of the presidency in order to resculpt the nation according to conservative principles, much as he says he has done in Florida, where he has often pushed the boundaries of executive office.“It does not have to be this way,” he continued in his Iowa kickoff speech. “We must choose a path that will lead to a revival of American greatness.” The line drew cheers.Mr. DeSantis on Thursday in Manchester, N.H. Apart from a few contentious exchanges with reporters, he avoided awkward moments on the trip. David Degner for The New York TimesHis interactions: Pretty normal, overall.Both detractors and supporters were watching closely for how Mr. DeSantis, who sometimes appears uncomfortable with the basics of retail politics, interacted with voters. Democrats and Trump allies have made a legion of memes out of his uncomfortable facial expressions or clumsy responses to voters in casual conversations. (An emphatic “OK!” is often his answer to learning a person’s name or a child’s age.)But apart from a pugnacious exchange or two with the news media — episodes that are, of course, cheered by the Republican base — Mr. DeSantis avoided obvious awkward moments. He tried to make himself relatable, playing up his dad credentials. He told stories about taking his family out for fast food and contending with a 3-year-old who needed to use the “little potty.”After his speeches, he worked the rope line, talked with voters, snapped pictures and signed autographs. He always reacted enthusiastically when voters told him they lived part-time in Florida. “What part?” was his standard follow-up, before discussing how badly those areas had been hit by Hurricane Ian.While this all might be a low bar, it was set, in part, by Mr. Trump’s relentless mockery of Mr. DeSantis’s personality.Frank Ehrenberger, 73, a retired engineer who attended a DeSantis event in Iowa on Wednesday, said the governor had struck him as “genuine.”Still, Mr. DeSantis may need to do more. At events in Iowa and New Hampshire on Wednesday and Thursday, he did not take audience questions from the stage, leading to some criticism. Instead, at one stop in New Hampshire, Mr. DeSantis tossed baseball caps to the crowd.The early nominating states require a set of political skills different from the one that works in Florida, where politicians rely heavily on television advertising to get their messages across.By Friday, during his visit to South Carolina, he had seemed to shift his strategy, electing to answer voters’ questions from the stage alongside his wife, Casey DeSantis.Casey DeSantis has given remarks in the middle of Mr. DeSantis’s stump speeches at events, talking about both their family life and what she casts as her husband’s ability to clean up “the swamp” in Washington.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesYou’ll be seeing a lot more of Casey DeSantis.At his events, Mr. DeSantis has paused his stump speech to invite Ms. DeSantis onto the stage to deliver her own remarks. As she speaks, he usually stands smiling behind her before returning to the lectern to close out his speech. At one stop in New Hampshire, he kissed her temple after she had finished.These intermissions — not unprecedented, but unusual as a routine at presidential campaign events — underscore the high-profile role Ms. DeSantis is expected to play her in husband’s bid, after acting as an important adviser in his political rise.If this first tour is anything to go by, she is likely to be one of the most prominent and politically active spouses of a major presidential candidate in several election cycles, perhaps since Bill Clinton in 2008.Onstage, Ms. DeSantis tells the usual marital stories meant to humanize candidates and illustrate their family life — including an oft-repeated bit about the time one of their three children wielded permanent markers to decorate the dining room table in the governor’s mansion.But she is far from light entertainment. Much of her roughly five-minute speech is meant to portray her husband, whom she often refers to as “the governor,” as an authoritative, decisive leader, one capable of cleaning up “the swamp” in Washington.“Through all of the history, all the attacks from the corporate media and the left, he never changes,” Ms. DeSantis said Thursday in New Hampshire. “He never backs down, he never cowers. He never takes the path of least resistance.”Ann Klein More

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      RNC Rules for First Debate Pose Challenge for Underfunded Candidates

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      Republican presidential candidates hoping to join the first G.O.P. primary debate on Aug. 23 must have a minimum of 40,000 unique donors to their campaign.The Republican National Committee on Friday laid out its criteria for candidates to qualify for the first Republican presidential primary debate, establishing a key fund-raising threshold and requiring candidates to pledge to support the eventual party nominee.The criteria for the debate, scheduled for Aug. 23 in Milwaukee, come as the Republican presidential primary field grows more crowded, with several contenders expected to join the race in the coming days and weeks. A second debate could be held on Aug. 24 if enough candidates qualify, the R.N.C. said in a statement.To qualify for the stage, candidates must garner support of at least 1 percent in multiple national polls recognized by the committee, and some polling from the early-voting states will count as well. The candidates must also have a minimum of 40,000 unique donors to their campaign, with at least 200 unique donors per state or territory, in 20 states and territories, according to the committee.The 40,000-donor debate threshold is likely to prove a consequential and costly barrier to some underfunded candidates. Republican campaigns had already been told informally about the criteria, and some were racing to ensure they had enough donors. Some super PACs are spending money for online ads to drive small donations to the campaigns.In 2020, even some well-known Democratic candidates struggled to achieve the 65,000-donor threshold that the Democratic Party had set for early debates and diverted money to running ads online to find contributors. The 40,000 minimum could prove a challenge for lesser-known Republicans and those who have yet to begin their campaigns.Former Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas, who has struggled to gain traction in the polls, insisted that he intended to make the debate stage in a statement on Friday, even as he expressed a range of concerns about the criteria.“The 40,000 donor threshold will keep some candidates from being on the debate stage and benefits candidates who generate online donations through extreme rhetoric and scare tactics,” he said in the statement. “It also deprives the voters in Iowa and other early states of an opportunity to evaluate the entire field of candidates.”And Larry Elder, a conservative commentator who also faces an uphill battle in the presidential race, said in an interview that while he expected to meet the polling threshold, the 40,000-donor rule was “onerous.”“It’s hard to get 40,000 individual donors,” Mr. Elder said, declining to specify how many donors he had so far. “We’re working hard. I’ve got a professional team to do it, but I think it’s hard, and I know that other campaigns have complained about it as well.”Still, some campaigns — and would-be campaigns — were quick to sound notes of confidence on Friday afternoon.“Looking forward to being there!” said Nachama Soloveichik, a spokeswoman for Nikki Haley, the former United Nations ambassador and former governor of South Carolina. Former Vice President Mike Pence is expected to soon jump into the race as well, and his team hit a similar theme.“There isn’t a better communicator in the Republican Party than Mike Pence, so we are looking forward to being on stage,” said Devin O’Malley, an adviser to Mr. Pence.And Tricia McLaughlin, a senior adviser to Vivek Ramaswamy, the entrepreneur, author and “anti-woke” activist, said the campaign already had “north of 43,000” individual donors. The next campaign finance filing deadline is later this summer. This is not the first time there have been efforts to cull the Republican debate stage participants. In 2016, lower-polling candidates were relegated to undercard debates.The criteria for the additional Republican debates for this campaign cycle have not been announced. One person briefed on the discussions said there could be an escalation of the donor threshold for later debates, or for the polling averages required.Two Republicans familiar with the discussions said Gov. Ron DeSantis’s team had wanted a higher threshold than 1 percent, which would have been likely to thin out the stage, giving him a more direct interaction with former President Donald J. Trump, the current Republican front-runner.Mr. Trump, for his part, has already suggested that he may skip primary debates, claiming that it was not worth his time to debate his rivals because of his polling advantage. Candidates hoping to debate in the August matchup are also expected to promise not to participate in any debate not approved by the party committee for the rest of the election cycle, and to pledge to support the eventual Republican nominee.“I have always supported the party nominee, but I have never supported a party loyalty oath,” said Mr. Hutchinson, who has been critical of Mr. Trump. “The pledge should simply be that you will not run as a third party candidate.”Those who make it onstage will be grouped according to polling, with the highest-polling candidate in the center, the committee said.Fox News is slated to host the first debate in Milwaukee.Shane Goldmacher More

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      Pence Won’t Face Charges in Classified Documents Inquiry

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      The Justice Department informed the former vice president of its decision days before he was expected to announce his campaign for president.The Justice Department has declined to pursue charges against former Vice President Mike Pence in its investigation into his retention of classified documents at his home in Indiana, informing him in a brief letter on Thursday night, according to three people familiar with the situation.Word that the case would be closed came days before Mr. Pence, 63, was set to announce his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination in Iowa.The F.B.I. and the Justice Department’s national security division “conducted an investigation into the potential mishandling of classified information,” the department wrote to Mr. Pence’s lawyer, according to a person who had read the letter. Based on the results of that investigation, “no criminal charges will be sought,” that person said.The decision served as a reminder of an enormously consequential plotline that remains unresolved as the 2024 election season gets underway.The most important, by far, is the criminal investigation into former President Donald J. Trump and whether he sought to obstruct the inquiry now led by a special counsel, Jack Smith, after Mr. Trump and his aides repeatedly resisted efforts to return sensitive government documents. President Biden is also under investigation by a special counsel, Robert K. Hur, over the improper retention of materials dating from his eight years as vice president — although Mr. Biden has been far more cooperative with investigators.A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment on the Pence investigation. But Attorney General Merrick B. Garland did not deem the matter serious enough to appoint a special counsel in the case, as he had done for the investigations into Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden, senior law enforcement officials said.For Mr. Pence, a man who has made personal probity — and a determination to defend the rule of law in defiance of Mr. Trump after the 2020 election — the core of his long-shot presidential campaign, the decision represented bittersweet vindication, ending an embarrassing episode that had threatened his reputation.From the start, Mr. Pence and his team cooperated with the authorities, in stark contrast to Mr. Trump, who defied a federal subpoena to return materials stored at his Florida residence and resort, Mar-a-Lago.In January, a lawyer for Mr. Pence voluntarily searched the former vice president’s house in Carmel, Ind., for documents after aides to President Biden discovered sensitive material at an office the president had once occupied in Washington and at his home in Delaware.About a dozen documents with classified markings were “inadvertently boxed and transported” to Mr. Pence’s home, according to one of his aides at the time, and subsequently returned to the National Archives and Records Administration.After the F.B.I. searched his home in February and found one additional classified document, his advisers continued to emphasize his cooperation.“The vice president has directed his legal team to continue its cooperation with appropriate authorities and to be fully transparent through the conclusion of this matter,” his adviser, Devin O’Malley, said then.Mr. Pence and Trump remain in a legal and political tangle resulting from their odd-couple White House partnership.In April, Mr. Pence testified for more than five hours before a federal grand jury in Washington investigating the actions of Mr. Trump and his aides in the days leading up to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. He had sought to limit his testimony and avoid appearing, citing the “speech or debate” clause of the Constitution to argue that he was protected from legal scrutiny.Mr. Trump unsuccessfully sought to prevent Mr. Pence from discussing their private interactions, citing executive privilege.It is not clear what testimony Mr. Pence provided. But prosecutors were surely interested in Mr. Pence’s account of his interactions with Mr. Trump and Trump advisers including John Eastman, a lawyer who promoted the idea that he could delay or block the congressional certification process on Jan. 6 to give Mr. Trump a chance to remain in office.Mr. Pence’s unwillingness to go along with that plan infuriated Mr. Trump, who assailed his vice president privately and publicly on Jan. 6.He subsequently became a target of the Trump loyalists who stormed the Capitol building that day, with some chanting, “Hang Mike Pence!” Someone erected a fake gallows outside the building.Mr. Pence, a former governor of Indiana, faces significant challenges in his bid for the presidency. He trails far behind his former boss and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida in the polls, and has made no effort to channel the harder-edged populist energies overtaking the Republican Party.Instead, he is expected to pitch himself as a “classical conservative” who would return his party to its Reagan-era brand of mainstream conservatism. He is also likely to appeal to evangelicals, adopting a hard-line position in support of a federal abortion ban and promoting free trade and government regulations. More