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      DeSantis Tried to Bury Her. Now She’s Helping Trump Try to Bury Him.

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      Susie Wiles helped Ron DeSantis become governor of Florida, but he turned against her and banished her from his orbit. Donald Trump was all too happy to bring her in from the cold.Two months before Election Day 2020, Susie Wiles stood uncomfortably inside a hospitality tent in Florida, caught between two proud and exacting men whom she had helped elect: President Donald J. Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis.Mr. DeSantis was not thrilled to see her.A year earlier, Ms. Wiles had been one of the most powerful people in the Florida governor’s orbit, leading his political operation and plotting his path to national prominence. Then he abruptly banished her, privately questioning her loyalty and moving to blackball her across Republican politics.So when Mr. Trump and Ms. Wiles, his top Florida adviser, saw the governor inside the tent at a joint event, Mr. Trump proposed a détente.“Shake hands,” he instructed them, according to two people with direct knowledge of the exchange.They did not. Both parties looked miserable and said little before walking off.Less than three years later, Ms. Wiles, 65, has ascended to become perhaps the most significant voice inside Mr. Trump’s third presidential campaign.Born into celebrity — her father, Pat Summerall, was a famed broadcaster — the attention-shunning Ms. Wiles has worked to send three Republicans to the White House and two to rule Tallahassee over a four-decade career. A key strength, friends say, is negotiating the egos of swaggering Republican men whom she can come to understand almost viscerally.And she and the rampaging former president suddenly have more in common: They both helped make Ron DeSantis. They would both like to unmake him.“She knows where the bodies are buried,” said Roger J. Stone Jr., a longtime Trump adviser and expert of political dark arts who has known Ms. Wiles for more than 30 years.A Trump rally in Waco, Texas, in March. In a statement, Mr. Trump called Ms. Wiles “a great and well-respected leader from a wonderful family” and “a very smart and tough negotiator!”Christopher Lee for The New York TimesNow, she has become the unwitting embodiment of the conflict between her old boss and her current one, who has not hesitated to state the obvious.“This guy really hates you!” Mr. Trump has told Ms. Wiles privately, according to a person present, occasionally praising her if she is not in the room: “The only person who ever really had a problem with her is Ron DeSantis.”Ahead of the 2020 election, Mr. Trump rehired Ms. Wiles, over the governor’s objections, to run his campaign in Florida, as she had in 2016. After his defeat (though not in Florida), Mr. Trump placed her in charge of his post-presidential political affairs.In many ways, Ms. Wiles’s arc with him mirrors the party’s — the compromises made, the behaviors forgiven — reflecting professional Republicans’ unbridled embrace of a twice-impeached, freshly indicted former president who has lied for more than two years about the last election.A self-described “card-carrying member of the G.O.P. establishment” when she first joined Mr. Trump’s cause, Ms. Wiles has watched him redefine the term’s very meaning, helping to position him as a pseudo-incumbent in a party he has rebuilt in his image.Mr. Trump, forever enchanted by television celebrities of a certain era, is also partial to Ms. Wiles’s “good genes,” as he has told people, nodding at Mr. Summerall, whom the former president knew casually.“Susie is a great and well-respected leader from a wonderful family,” Mr. Trump said in a statement, “and she is also a very smart and tough negotiator!”Yet Ms. Wiles little resembles the spotlight-seeking, publicly combative Trump aides who have often passed through his upper campaign ranks. She spent much of the 1990s and 2000s working for medium-profile Jacksonville mayors. She is not a television surrogate. She tweets sparingly.Ms. Wiles has now survived in Mr. Trump’s circle for more than six years after he first mused, to her face, about firing her.Christopher Lee for The New York TimesBesides her tenure with Mr. DeSantis — whose allies now insist that Ms. Wiles leaked and influence-peddled at the governor’s expense when she was on his team — she has been the subject of far less internal backbiting than the typical senior Trump adviser. (In conversations with friends, Ms. Wiles, who declined to be interviewed, has furiously denied ever undermining Mr. DeSantis while working for him.)Those who know Ms. Wiles say she is motivated less by money or fame than by behind-the-scenes recognition that she has sway with the people who matter. She has assumed such unappealing duties as overseeing who gets paid, with a hand that aides have described as tightfisted.“She’s comfortable being staff and understanding that that’s who she is,” said Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker and an informal Trump adviser. “A lot of people, particularly in the early parts of his presidency, thought their job was to manipulate him.”The standard caveats about life with Mr. Trump remain immutable: No one can control him in earnest. No position is guaranteed in perpetuity. Ms. Wiles has now survived in his circle more than six years after he first mused, to her face, about firing her.If Ms. Wiles stops short of the let-Trump-be-Trump creed that has sometimes informed his senior team, neither has she fundamentally changed him or tried.She has not drastically curtailed his inputs from a constellation of far-right figures and MAGA hangers-on, whose value with the base Ms. Wiles recognizes. (“She has extraordinary judgment,” Mr. Stone said.)She was managing Mr. Trump’s political operation when he decided to endorse a roster of 2022 candidates who largely underperformed.She failed to head off Mr. Trump’s dinner in November with Kanye West and an entourage that unexpectedly included Nick Fuentes, an outspoken white supremacist — a gathering that raised questions about what controls were in place around the candidate.Admirers say navigating Mr. Trump’s volatile impulses is part of the bargain for anyone in Ms. Wiles’s seat — or at least anyone hoping to hang onto it.Ms. Wiles, left, little resembles the spotlight-seeking, publicly combative Trump aides who have often passed through his upper campaign ranks.Doug Mills/The New York TimesAnd adversaries know enough to fear Mr. Trump’s chances more with Ms. Wiles at his side.“She’s formidable,” said Charlie Crist, the party-switching former Florida governor who lost a bid for his old office last year as a Democrat.“She wins,” said John Morgan, a prolific Democratic donor in the state.“Susie Wiles,” Mr. DeSantis said in his 2018 victory speech, as his wife, Casey, clapped behind him. “Really the best in the business.”‘She knows when to drop the hammer’For better and for worse, Ms. Wiles developed an early tolerance for flawed and famous men.Her father, Mr. Summerall, was a professional football player who later teamed with John Madden to form one of the most successful duos in sports broadcasting history. He was also, by his own account, an alcoholic and often absentee father who credited a letter from Ms. Wiles with eventually getting him to the Betty Ford Center for treatment.In his 2006 memoir, Mr. Summerall, who died in 2013, described his daughter as someone regularly mortified by his conduct but never compelled to abandon him entirely, recalling his own xenophobic language toward a doctor during a hospitalization. “Susan wanted to crawl under the nearest bedpan and hide,” he wrote.Raised mostly in New Jersey, Ms. Wiles took an early job as an aide to Jack Kemp, a Republican congressman who had been Mr. Summerall’s teammate. She worked on presidential campaigns for Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.Pat Summerall and John Madden in 1981. Mr. Summerall was, by his own account, an alcoholic and often absentee father who credited a letter from Ms. Wiles with eventually getting him to the Betty Ford Center for treatment.CBS, via Getty ImagesShe forged ties to Republicans locally and nationally, serving in Jacksonville as a district aide to Representative Tillie Fowler but becoming close with Washington fixtures like Paul Manafort, a lobbyist who was later Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign chairman (and the recipient of a presidential pardon).After leaving the business for roughly a decade when she had children, Ms. Wiles established herself as one of the party’s go-to strategists in northeastern Florida, alongside her former husband, Lanny Wiles, a veteran Republican advance man.She developed a reputation for elevating the strengths of her principals, stressing that perceived authenticity could overwhelm many warts. She did so with a down-home delivery that could sometimes be misread, colleagues said. “It all depends on how you deal with her,” said Tony Fabrizio, a pollster who knew Ms. Wiles before both worked for Mr. Trump. “She knows when to drop the hammer.”A client’s ideology has not generally been a chief concern. In 2010, Ms. Wiles helped lead Rick Scott’s campaign for Florida governor, throwing in with a Tea Party-era businessman-outsider.The next year, Ms. Wiles swerved to the establishment-friendly presidential campaign of Jon M. Huntsman Jr., the former Utah governor and Obama administration ambassador to China, briefly managing his run before abruptly leaving.Ms. Wiles seemed to acknowledge the whiplash when she joined Mr. Trump’s 2016 bid; a top Florida adviser whom Mr. Trump adored, Karen Giorno, was among those who encouraged the campaign to give her a larger role. Ms. Wiles noted in an email at the time that many people thought her support for him “was ill advised — even crazy.”Yet she seemed to appreciate Mr. Trump’s talents at a microphone and his curated celebrity, appraising his drawbacks as pardonable and politically surmountable.“I think I can help him,” she said privately.Ms. Wiles’s presence lent Mr. Trump credibility with old-guard Florida Republicans who might have preferred Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio as their nominee.Mr. Trump, though, was not initially pleased to have her. Amid a state polling downturn in fall 2016 soon after Ms. Wiles took over in Florida, as Mr. Trump sawed at a steak one night at his Miami golf resort, she was summoned to his table for what amounted to a ritual castigation.When Ms. Wiles joined Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign, she noted in an email at the time that many people thought her support for him “was ill advised — even crazy.”Stephen Crowley/The New York Times“I don’t think you can do this job,” Mr. Trump told her, tossing off expletives, before turning to others in the room. “Find me somebody else.”Ms. Wiles replied that if he wanted someone who would set her “hair on fire,” she was indeed the wrong fit. But she maintained that she could help him win.When Mr. Trump continued to complain, Ms. Wiles eventually left, shaken.But she did not leave the team. Mr. Trump, more confident as Election Day neared, later told Ms. Wiles that he was sorry they had to have “that little motivational talk,” according to a person familiar with the conversation.Ms. Wiles rejected the characterization. “We can’t do that again,” she said.“We won’t have to,” he promised.An alliance and a rupture with DeSantisMuch of Mr. DeSantis’s 2018 campaign in Florida was premised on Trump emulation: his endorsement, his talking points, a viral ad in which the would-be governor urged his toddler to “build the wall” out of blocks.So when Mr. DeSantis’s general-election bid sputtered early on, he and Representative Matt Gaetz, a close adviser at the time, determined that another Trump echo was in order. They needed Susie Wiles.It was an unnatural fit on paper — the sometimes standoffish candidate with few initial ties to Tallahassee and the genial consultant who had helped elect the man he hoped to succeed.But the two coexisted well enough at first. After Mr. DeSantis edged his Democratic opponent, Andrew Gillum, he asked Ms. Wiles to help steer his transition. Some interviews for administration posts were conducted at her home.The period represented an inflection point for Ms. Wiles. After 2016, a previous moment of campaign triumph, she did not join Mr. Trump’s White House and kept little contact with him in the years that followed. She remained in Jacksonville, where she had worked since 2011 as a managing partner at Ballard Partners, the prominent lobbying firm run by Brian Ballard, a fund-raiser for Mr. Trump and Mr. DeSantis.Ron DeSantis and his wife, Casey, after he won the 2018 race for Florida governor. Much of his campaign was premised on emulating Mr. Trump. Scott McIntyre for The New York TimesThis time, she took a top position in Florida for herself, as chairwoman of Mr. DeSantis’s political committee, charting a course to national exposure for him.“It is the governor’s desire to fund-raise and maintain a high political profile at all times,” she wrote in a January 2019 memo, “inside and outside of Florida.”Within months, Mr. DeSantis resolved to achieve these aims without Ms. Wiles.The reasons given for this have varied. Even more than Mr. Trump, according to people who know both men, the governor and his wife, Casey, his closest adviser, can grow consumed with the idea that associates are trading on his name.Did Ms. Wiles accept too much credit for his victory? Reward friends and prioritize clients with her expanded power? Speak too freely to reporters, whom Mr. DeSantis reflexively distrusts?People who have spoken to the governor attributed the breakdown to a combination of such factors, without supplying evidence for the most explosive claims. One ally recalled Mr. DeSantis remarking that staff should remain staff, suggesting that Ms. Wiles had somehow drifted from her allotted lane.Others have wondered if the governor considered her too close to Mr. Scott, with whom Mr. DeSantis has had a prickly relationship. (In a statement, Mr. Scott called Ms. Wiles “one of the best operatives in the party and a good friend.”)A spokesman for Mr. DeSantis declined to comment on Ms. Wiles.In September 2019, the rupture widened into public view. Ms. Wiles’s fund-raising memo, along with other snapshots from inside the governor’s operation, appeared in The Tampa Bay Times.Ms. Wiles, describing the entire experience to friends as bewildering and bizarre, assured anyone who would listen that she was not the source of a leak that would plainly damage her standing with a boss who prized discretion.The DeSantises would not hear it. The governor cited the article to others as a final straw.“It’s her,” he repeated. “It’s her.”Return to TrumpworldImmediately, Mr. DeSantis made it known among state power brokers that Mr. Ballard’s firm would lose favor with his office if Ms. Wiles remained there, according to people who spoke with the governor.Mr. Ballard has denied being strong-armed. Days after the Tampa Bay Times article, Ms. Wiles said she was leaving Ballard Partners “due to a nagging health issue.”In the insular, gossipy world of Florida politics, her exile was an earthquake. Friends recalled her bordering on despondent in the months afterward.Mr. DeSantis and Brad Parscale, Mr. Trump’s campaign manager at the time, sought to prevent her from joining his re-election campaign, angering her former Trump colleagues. When Jacksonville was briefly considered as a backup 2020 convention site, Mr. DeSantis was said to discourage donors from aiding the effort to bring the event to his state because Ms. Wiles was advising the planners.By early summer 2020, after some unsettling Florida presidential polling, Mr. Trump wanted her back. He explained himself in a phone call he initiated with Mr. DeSantis, according to people familiar with the conversation, sounding unmoved as the governor disparaged her.In July, a Trump campaign Twitter account announced her return with a pledge to “win Florida again going away!”Mr. Trump did, even if little else went right in November.While Ms. Wiles was not among those pushing Mr. Trump’s stolen-election fantasies before or after the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, neither did she appear to view any of his sins as unforgivable.Mr. Trump sounded incredulous for months that Mr. DeSantis would challenge him. But Ms. Wiles told him the governor would run. Christopher Lee for The New York TimesAs Mr. Trump soured on several aides after his presidency and others left on their own, Ms. Wiles was ultimately brought back, assuming broad responsibility for his political portfolio. Privately, she has signaled a gratitude for his trust in her, particularly after her experience with Mr. DeSantis.When Mr. Trump declared his candidacy, Ms. Wiles brought in an ally, Brian Jack, to oversee the campaign with her alongside Chris LaCivita, a longtime Republican strategist.With the governor expected to formally enter the presidential race soon, some DeSantis allies suspect that Ms. Wiles has helped perpetuate a theme in news coverage that he churns through staff and interacts uncomfortably with donors. (Many former aides and even supporters have attested to his disdain for glad-handing.)But over her past two years beside Mr. Trump, Ms. Wiles’s most notable read on Mr. DeSantis was far simpler.The former president had sounded incredulous for months that his onetime acolyte would challenge him. Didn’t he remember what Mr. Trump had done for him? Why risk an embarrassing defeat?Ms. Wiles respectfully disagreed.“He’s running,” she would tell Mr. Trump. She knew her client.Kitty Bennett More

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      Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Soon to Announce White House Run, Sows Doubts About Vaccines

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      Mr. Kennedy, a Democrat who plans to kick off his campaign this week, says he wants to make vaccines safer, but he is spreading misinformation by twisting facts out of context.WASHINGTON — Robert F. Kennedy Jr. stood before the Lincoln Memorial in January 2022 and condemned the federal government’s coronavirus response by railing against totalitarianism. Jews in Nazi Germany, he suggested, had more freedom than Americans facing vaccination mandates and school, church and business closures in the era of Covid-19.“Even in Hitler’s Germany, you could cross the Alps to Switzerland,” he told a crowd of flag-waving anti-vaccine enthusiasts at a “Defeat the Mandates” rally. “You could hide in an attic like Anne Frank did.”Mr. Kennedy later apologized, though it was not the first time he had invoked the Holocaust. Over the past two decades, as he has pursued what he calls “safe vaccine activism,” Mr. Kennedy has evolved from an environmental lawyer concerned about mercury poisoning into a crusader for individual liberty — a path that has landed him, a scion of a storied Democratic clan, in the unlikely embrace of the American political right.On Wednesday, Mr. Kennedy plans to formally announce that he is challenging President Biden for the Democratic nomination for president. His vaccine skepticism gives him something in common with another candidate: former President Donald J. Trump, who like Mr. Kennedy has blamed childhood vaccines for autism — a discredited theory that has been repudiated by more than a dozen peer-reviewed scientific studies in multiple countries.“Robert F. Kennedy could jump into the Republican primary for president and only DeSantis and Trump, I think, would do better,” Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trump’s former chief strategist, said recently on his podcast, referring to Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida. Mr. Bannon said Mr. Kennedy had a “massive following” with his audience. “People love this guy,” he said.Vaccination is a singular public health success that has saved untold millions of lives. Vaccines have eradicated smallpox, averted millions of deaths from measles and sent naturally occurring polio cases plummeting, from an estimated 350,000 in 1988 to six reported cases worldwide in 2021, according to the World Health Organization.Mr. Kennedy condemned the federal government’s coronavirus response in front of the Lincoln Memorial in January 2022.Kenny Holston for The New York TimesMr. Kennedy has insisted that he is not opposed to vaccines and that his sole interest is in making them safer. “I’m not anti-vaccine, although I’m kind of the poster child for the anti-vax movement,” he said during a recent speech at Hillsdale College, a conservative Christian college in Michigan.But through his nonprofit, Children’s Health Defense, and his movies, speeches and books — including one that portrays Dr. Anthony S. Fauci as in the pocket of the pharmaceutical industry — Mr. Kennedy has used his platform and his family’s star power to sow doubts about vaccine safety, spreading misinformation by twisting facts out of context.In 2021, the Center for Countering Digital Hate named him one of its “Disinformation Dozen” — the 12 people whom the organization found to have been responsible for roughly three-quarters of anti-vaccine content on Facebook.Facebook and Instagram have removed the accounts of Children’s Health Defense, and Mr. Kennedy has accused them of censorship. He is also suing the Biden administration and Dr. Fauci, who for decades led the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, accusing them of pressuring social media companies to censor free speech.Mr. Kennedy declined to be interviewed. In an email message, he said Children’s Health Defense had “an extremely robust fact-checking operation.” He also pointed to a response by Meta, Facebook’s parent company, disputing the “Disinformation Dozen” report. Meta critiqued the study’s design, saying that focusing on just 12 people “misses the forest for the trees.”Family BacklashMr. Kennedy, 69, is the third-eldest child of Robert and Ethel Kennedy and a nephew of President John F. Kennedy, who urged Americans to take the Salk polio vaccine and signed the Vaccination Assistance Act of 1962 to help states and cities carry out childhood immunization programs.His activism, and now his political aspirations, have been wrenching for his family. Some of his family members have publicly rebuked him. His sister Rory Kennedy told CNN she was backing Mr. Biden, while his sister Kerry Kennedy said in a statement, “I love my brother Bobby, but I do not share or endorse his opinions on many issues.”Ahead of his White House bid, Mr. Kennedy is playing up his family history. He lives in California but plans to make his announcement in Boston, a city closely identified with the Kennedys. He recently tweeted a photo of himself in a vintage “Kennedy for President” T-shirt.His name and family reputation have opened doors for him. Dr. Fauci said he had met with Mr. Kennedy several times and had told him “that I believe that his intentions are not evil, but his information is incorrect, and he’s misguided and can inadvertently cause significant harm.” Dr. Fauci said that when Mr. Kennedy’s book about him, titled “The Real Anthony Fauci,” came out in 2021, he was “really shocked.”“The entire book is such a complete lie,” Dr. Fauci said.Mr. Kennedy, top left, is the third-eldest child of Robert and Ethel Kennedy, and a nephew of President John F. Kennedy.Associated PressMr. Kennedy’s messages often have a grain of truth. The Children’s Health Defense website, for instance, says “vaccines contain many ingredients, some of which are known to be neurotoxic, carcinogenic and cause autoimmunity.” Vaccines do contain preservatives and additives, such as aluminum salts, which have been in use in vaccines for decades. Studies show adverse reactions are rare and typically involve skin allergies.The Children’s Health Defense website also states that certain vaccines are not tested against placebos in clinical trials, citing polio, hepatitis and meningitis vaccines as examples. That is misleading. Brand-new vaccines — from polio to measles to Covid-19 — are tested in large clinical trials that include placebo groups. But scientists agree it would be unethical to withhold lifesaving vaccines from study participants. For that reason, when older vaccines are reformulated or updated, studies do not include a placebo group.“Vaccine injuries can and do happen,” the website declares. That is true as well, but the federal government has an aggressive system to track and detect side effects so they can be addressed.The measles vaccine, for instance, lowers the platelet count in about one in every 25,000 to 30,000 people. That can cause red spots from bleeding under the skin — a problem that is usually “short-lived and self-resolving,” said Dr. Paul A. Offit, the director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. But measles causes that problem in one in 3,000 children — roughly 10 times as many as the vaccine, he said.“There are no risk-free choices, just choices to take different risks,” said Dr. Offit, who has been a vocal critic of Mr. Kennedy. “You could argue the greatest risk of vaccines is driving to the office to get them.”A Movement GrowsBy his own account, Mr. Kennedy was at first a reluctant critic of vaccination. He got involved in 2005, when he was an environmental lawyer suing coal-fired power plants to force them to reduce emissions of mercury and other toxic chemicals.The anti-vaccine movement in the United States had been growing amid debate over a rise in cases of autism. In 1998, a British doctor named Andrew Wakefield published a study of 12 children in The Lancet, a prestigious medical journal, that suggested a link between the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine and autism.The article was retracted in 2010, and Mr. Wakefield was later barred from practicing medicine. But in the years after its publication, another theory began to take hold: that thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative that had been used for decades to prevent bacteria from growing in multiple-dose vials of vaccines, caused autism.Mr. Kennedy examining a canal that supplied water from a natural spring to a Palestinian village in 2019. He got involved in the anti-vaccine movement when he was an environmental lawyer.Daniel Rolider for The New York TimesThe measles, mumps and rubella vaccine never contained thimerosal, but other vaccines given to infants did. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says there is “no evidence” that the low doses of thimerosal in vaccines cause harm, “except for minor reactions like redness and swelling at the injection site.”But in 1999, after Congress directed the Food and Drug Administration to look at mercury in all products, the American Academy of Pediatrics, federal health agencies and vaccine manufacturers agreed that thimerosal should be removed from childhood vaccines. The decision was made “out of an abundance of caution,” said Daniel Salmon, the director of the Institute for Vaccine Safety at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.But the move alarmed parents. As Mr. Kennedy traveled the country giving speeches, he has said, mothers of intellectually disabled children began buttonholing him, pressing him to investigate vaccines.“They would say to me in a very respectful but also kind of vaguely scolding way, ‘If you’re really interested in mercury exposures to children, you need to look at vaccines,’” he told the Hillsdale College audience.In 2005, Rolling Stone and Salon copublished an article by Mr. Kennedy, headlined “Deadly Immunity,” that blamed thimerosal in vaccines for fueling the rise in autism. Salon later retracted the article. Mr. Kennedy insisted Salon caved to pressure from government regulators and the pharmaceutical industry.Thimerosal is still used in flu vaccines. In 2015, shortly after Mr. Kennedy published a book about the preservative, he met Eric Gladen, an engineer who believes he was sickened by thimerosal in a tetanus vaccine and who made a film about his experience. The two joined forces. Mr. Gladen’s advocacy group, World Mercury Project, was later rebranded as Children’s Health Defense.“We had two huge tools to raise funds; we had my film, which is about 10 years of research put into 90 minutes, and his book,” Mr. Gladen said in an interview, adding, “Between him being a Kennedy, the film and his book, it compelled a lot of people to get involved.”The anti-vaccine movement was, at the time, largely the province of the political left. Mr. Kennedy found allies in Hollywood celebrities like Jim Carrey and Jenny McCarthy. In California, he waged an unsuccessful fight against a bill to eliminate the “personal belief” exemption that allowed parents to opt out of vaccinating their children.Mr. Kennedy speaking to an anti-vaccine rally at the New York State Capitol in Albany in 2020.Hans Pennink/Associated PressMr. Kennedy has been a vocal opponent of the Vaccine Injury Compensation Act, a 1986 federal law intended to promote the development of vaccines by shielding manufacturers from lawsuits. In 2003, at the height of the thimerosal controversy, a bipartisan measure to update the law by offering immunity to vaccine additive manufacturers collapsed in Congress.Mr. Kennedy points to such efforts as evidence that lawmakers and federal regulators are conspiring to protect drug companies, which he says lack incentives to focus on safety. During the fight over the California legislation, he invoked those arguments, said Dr. Richard Pan, a former state senator who was an author of the bill and met with Mr. Kennedy at the time.“He mainly focused on the F.D.A. being corrupt and in cahoots with the pharmaceutical companies to hide the danger of vaccines,” Dr. Pan said.Meeting With TrumpShortly before Mr. Trump was inaugurated in January 2017, Mr. Kennedy met with him at Trump Tower in Manhattan. Mr. Kennedy said afterward that the president-elect wanted him to lead a “vaccine safety and scientific integrity” commission. He told Science magazine that Mr. Trump had told him he had five friends whose healthy children “developed a suite of deficits” after being vaccinated.The commission never came to pass, but the coronavirus pandemic gave Mr. Kennedy an even bigger platform. As the country grew ever more polarized, with many of Mr. Trump’s followers shunning the vaccines and Dr. Fauci becoming a lightning rod, Mr. Kennedy’s book about Dr. Fauci became a best seller.Another book by Mr. Kennedy is due out in June, this time focusing on the controversy over the origins of the coronavirus. Titled “The Wuhan Cover-Up,” it claims that federal health officials “conspired with the Chinese military” to hide the pandemic’s origins — an assertion that appears to conflate experiments by the Chinese military at the Wuhan Institute of Virology with other work there funded by the U.S. government.How much Mr. Kennedy will talk about vaccine safety during his presidential campaign remains unclear. As he did during the rally at the Lincoln Memorial, he used his talk at Hillsdale College to cloak his activism in a broader point — that the government, the press and social media companies are trying to silence him, pushing the United States toward tyranny.“The founders, specifically Hamilton, Madison, Adams, said, ‘We put freedom of expression in the First Amendment because all the other amendments are dependent on it,’” Mr. Kennedy said. “Because if you give a government the right to silence their opponents, they now have a license for any atrocity.” More

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      How Nikki Haley’s Campaign Inflated Her Fund-Raising Haul

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      This month, her campaign said she had raised $11 million in the opening six weeks of her bid for the Republican presidential nomination. But the real figure appears to be about $8.3 million.Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and United Nations ambassador, has staked her presidential run on an image as a straight shooter, with experience and drama-free competence.This weekend, though, it became clear that the impressive early fund-raising numbers her campaign promoted this month had been inflated, apparently because of double-counted money.The campaign had broadcast an $11 million haul in its opening six weeks, through the end of the first-quarter filing period on March 31. But when three of her affiliated committees filed reports on Saturday, the math did not add up.Instead, the three committees appeared to have taken in about $8.3 million, including $2.7 million that one of the committees transferred to two other committees and that was double-counted in the overall figure.On Saturday, a spokeswoman for Ms. Haley said other campaigns had accounted for their money similarly in the past.How can this happen?The muddied accounting exposes the risks of building a campaign-finance operation with a patchwork of committees, which has become standard for presidential candidates. Ms. Haley is backed by four affiliated entities registered with the Federal Election Commission, three of which made filings on Saturday.Team Stand for America, her joint fund-raising committee, solicits contributions that are then divided between three entities: her presidential campaign committee, a multicandidate political action committee and a hybrid PAC (which did not file on Saturday).According to its filing on Saturday, Team Stand for America raised nearly $4.3 million in contributions in the first quarter. It also transferred $2.7 million to affiliated committees, and here is where the math got tricky. Without those transfers, the total raised by the three committees was $8.3 million, not $11 million.More details, pleaseMs. Haley’s principal campaign committee — Nikki Haley for President — disclosed that it had taken in $5.1 million in receipts. But only $3.3 million of that sum came from contributions: The remaining $1.8 million came from Team Stand for America in two transfers recorded on March 31, the filings show.Stand for America PAC, a group that supports her but can also raise money for other candidates, reported $1.5 million in receipts — but just $600,000 of that came from contributions, the filing shows. The PAC received $886,000 in transferred money from Team Stand for America on March 31.In offering the original $11 million figure, the campaign added up the total receipts for the three groups — $5.1 million, $4.3 million and $1.5 million — without accounting for the fact that $2.7 million was being moved between the groups.What does it mean?Not much. There is nothing inaccurate about the filings themselves — they appear to add up — and there is nothing new about campaigns overhyping their fund-raising.And $8.3 million is still a sizable haul for the first six weeks of a presidential campaign. In comparison, former President Donald J. Trump’s campaign disclosed $9.5 million in receipts in January for the first six weeks of his official bid.A spokeswoman for Ms. Haley did not respond to a request for comment on Monday.In 2021, Mr. Trump’s advisers announced, inaccurately, that his affiliated political committees had raised nearly $82 million in the first six months of the year. That figure improperly counted at least $23 million in transfers to new political action committees from other accounts, The New York Times found.Mr. Trump’s joint campaign committee — which has been the main vessel for his fund-raising this election cycle — raised $18.8 million in the first quarter, his campaign has said. It transferred $14 million to his principle campaign committee, according to filings Saturday. More

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      Trump and DeSantis Super PACs Duel in TV Ads

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      As the Republican primary field takes shape, the groups supporting the top two hopefuls are already spending millions.The super PACs supporting the top two Republican presidential hopefuls have opened a wave of TV attack ads, part of a multimillion-dollar attempt to control the political narrative in the early days of an increasingly likely primary matchup.The two groups — MAGA Inc., which is backing former President Donald J. Trump, and Never Back Down, supporting Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida — have already spent over $7.5 million combined.MAGA Inc. has spent exclusively on cable networks, while Never Back Down has targeted states that have traditionally held the party’s earliest presidential nominating contests, according to spokesmen for the two super PACs and data from AdImpact, an ad-tracking firm.The groups’ opposing methods reflect the politicians’ disparate standings in the party. Mr. Trump, a businessman-turned-TV star who has led two national political campaigns and announced his third last year, is universally recognized inside the party and seeking to leverage that advantage with a broad attack against Mr. DeSantis.Mr. DeSantis, who has all but declared his 2024 candidacy and who remains a distant second to Mr. Trump in most public opinion polls, is still introducing himself to voters. A poll by the Republican research firm Cygnal in Iowa this month showed 18 percent of respondents said they had either never heard of Mr. DeSantis or didn’t know much about him.If he opens a presidential campaign in the coming months, as expected, his chance of defeating Mr. Trump will depend largely on his performance in the early primary states.Mr. DeSantis should have the resources to make up ground. Never Back Down has said it has already raised $30 million, part of a $110 million war chest available to his allies.MAGA Inc. reported $54.1 million on hand at the end of 2022. The group has been criticizing Mr. DeSantis in ads for more than a month. The first spot targets Mr. DeSantis’s support for cutting Social Security and increasing the retirement age for Medicare benefits while he was a member of Congress. “The more you learn about DeSantis, the more you see he doesn’t share our values,” the narrator says in the ad.The most recent spot attacks him over his supposed eating habits and his policy positions. It has aired on CNN, Fox and Newsmax.The ad accuses Mr. DeSantis of sticking his “dirty fingers” into senior entitlement programs, referring to his support for changes to Medicare and Social Security when he was a member of Congress. The spot also mocks Mr. DeSantis, a fast-food and snack enthusiast, for supposedly once eating pudding with three fingers instead of waiting for a spoon. (Mr. DeSantis has denied this.)“Ron DeSantis loves sticking his fingers where they don’t belong, and we’re not just talking about pudding,” a narrator says as an anonymous man in a suit sloppily eats pudding with his hands. “DeSantis has his dirty fingers all over senior entitlements like cutting Medicare, slashing Social Security, even raising the retirement age.”The super PAC supporting Mr. DeSantis, Never Back Down, returned fire this weekend with a spot aiming at Mr. Trump. Its ads are focused on Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada, all likely to hold early primaries.The pro-DeSantis ad opens by reminding viewers of Mr. Trump’s legal troubles. The former president was arrested on April 4 and charged with 34 felonies as part of an investigation into hush-money payments to a porn actress during the 2016 presidential campaign.The spot, titled “Fight Democrats, Not Republicans,” argues that Mr. Trump should be focused on those legal fights instead of attacking a fellow Republican and asks, “What happened to Donald Trump?”“Donald Trump has been attacked by a Democrat prosecutor in New York. So why is he spending millions attacking the Republican governor of Florida?” the narrator asks. “Trump’s stealing pages from the Biden-Pelosi playbook, repeating lies about Social Security.” More

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      The Republican Search for Alternatives to Trump

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      More from our inbox:Assad Should Be Reviled, Not RecognizedThe Overuse of Guardianship Damon Winter/The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “How to Make Trump Go Away,” by Frank Luntz (Opinion guest essay, April 10):Republicans are tying themselves in knots trying to come up with candidates who can appeal to Trump voters but who are not Donald Trump. The latest effort is this essay by the Republican strategist Frank Luntz.I laughed and groaned when I read about the search for “a candidate who champions Mr. Trump’s agenda but with decency, civility and a commitment to personal responsibility and accountability.” Really? How could such a thing be possible?Mr. Trump’s agenda — if one can say he has an agenda other than himself — is one of building a power base by stoking grievance, resentment and division. It is inherently based on indecency and incivility.The last thing this country needs is a smoother, more effective version of Donald Trump. We need an agenda that brings us together to make America a better place for everyone, not just for some at the expense of others. We don’t need an agenda that divides, debases and weakens us, whoever the candidate.John MasonSanta Rosa, Calif.To the Editor:Frank Luntz’s eight suggestions to the Republican leadership on how to dump Donald Trump are well considered and rational. But one other rational thought that he omitted is the threat that Mr. Trump would run as an independent if he isn’t nominated for the 2024 presidential race. Even a small percentage of his hard-core base could crush the chances for a normal Republican candidate to win the general election.Mr. Trump is irrational enough to spend the funds he has raised already plus some of his own in a vindictive, spoiler candidacy. It’s not a mystery why Republican leaders don’t know how to escape their dilemma.Davis van BakergemSt. LouisTo the Editor:As one of the steadily increasing body of independents, I read Frank Luntz’s column avidly to see where there might be a case to be made on behalf of the Republicans. Unfortunately, there is an underlying premise that Donald Trump did a lot of good things for the country during his term.I fail to see them.True, the economy was in good shape before the coronavirus, but I ascribe that in large part to the hard work of the Obama years. The only program of note that Mr. Trump initiated was the tax cuts that sharply increased an already swollen deficit and that benefited our citizens who least needed the help. Far from helping the disenfranchised, he milked them for his personal benefit and widened the divide.Internationally, he alienated our longstanding allies in Europe. We are left with his “impact on the bureaucracy and judiciary.” Mr. Luntz must mean rendering governance ineffectual through starvation and converting the judiciary into a political body.Not my idea of a record to run on.Tony PellBostonTo the Editor:Thank you for this great piece. Everything Frank Luntz said resonated with me, a liberal residing among some very strong conservatives. He went the extra mile to really understand Trump voters and describe in great detail how a Republican candidate could succeed with them in a future election.It was very thought-provoking, and helped me gain an even deeper insight into my neighbors and their concerns. I will remember what he wrote.Mary HollenGreenbank, Wash.To the Editor:Frank Luntz offers messaging advice for Republican presidential candidates to attract MAGA voters away from Donald Trump: Listen and sympathize with Trump supporters, he says, emphasize decency, civility and personal responsibility. Acknowledge Mr. Trump’s successes and offer the mildest criticisms of his presidential record and personal behavior. “Make it more about the grandchildren” because these mature right-wing voters care about the kids’ future.No doubt there are disillusioned Trump voters who are ready for a different message, but how many? Racism, misogyny and apocalyptic nihilism are the hallmarks of Trumpism. Mr. Luntz’s advice is not only risible — adopt a liberal demeanor without the Enlightenment values — but also paradoxical. It presumes an electorate yearning for a kinder, gentler fascism. ​Geraldine MurphyNew YorkAssad Should Be Reviled, Not Recognized /EPA, via ShutterstockTo the Editor:Re “After Shunning Assad for Years, the Arab World Changes Its Tune” (news article, April 14):It is troubling to see that several Arab nations have chosen to embrace President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, whose tenure has been marked by unspeakable atrocities and egregious human rights violations. His reign of tyranny and terror should result in ongoing condemnation, not the newfound credibility that is being bestowed upon him by Syria’s Arab neighbors.Mass killings and widespread violence that have forced millions of people to flee their homes cannot and should not be overlooked when assessing the strategic importance of re-establishing formal relations with Syria and its rogue leader.Mr. al-Assad should be reviled, not recognized.N. Aaron TroodlerBala Cynwyd, Pa.The Overuse of Guardianship Rozalina BurkovaTo the Editor:Thank you for “A Better Alternative to Guardianship,” by Emily Largent, Andrew Peterson and Jason Karlawish (Opinion guest essay, April 5).As they note, the overuse of guardianship robs people of agency in their own lives. Those with guardians are left out of important conversations about their future, they don’t develop the skills necessary to make life choices and they are prohibited from entering into legal agreements, managing their money or getting married without the guardian’s consent.Because the individual has been deemed legally incompetent, the guardian signs any legally binding contracts, co-signs any disbursements and, depending on the state, may have to sign the marriage license.For people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, families are all too often counseled when their family member leaves school to seek guardianship.Nationwide data from the National Core Indicators indicates that among people with intellectual and developmental disabilities receiving services, a staggering 45 percent are under some form of guardianship. Supported decision-making, described in the essay, provides a much-needed alternative to this denial of rights and agency.Valerie J. BradleyCambridge, Mass.The writer is president emerita of the Human Services Research Institute. More

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      Just a Few Top Secrets Among Friends

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      Bret Stephens: Bob Kerrey, the former Nebraska governor and senator, emailed me a letter he was considering putting in the mail. He gave me permission to share it with our readers, so here you have it:Dear Federal Government,When a 21-year-old National Guardsman gets access to Top Secret briefings, my first conclusion is: You guys left the keys in the car and that’s why it was “stolen.” And when journalists find out who committed the crime before you do, my conclusion is that you folks are overpaid.BobYour thoughts on this latest intelligence debacle and the possibility that the suspect’s motive was to try to impress his little community of teenage gamers?Gail Collins: Yeah, Bret, the bottom line here is the fact that a teenage doofus was able to join the National Guard and quickly work his way up to its cyber-transport system, while apparently spending his spare time with his online pals playing video games, sharing racist memes and revealing government secrets.Bret: It’s enough to make me nostalgic for Alger Hiss.Gail: Teenage doofus is certainly in need of punishment, but he’s really not the main problem here. You think a lot about national security issues — what’s your solution?Bret: We certainly owe the suspect the presumption of innocence. But my first-pass answer is that when everything is a secret, nothing is a secret — in other words, a government that stamps “confidential” or “top secret” on too many documents loses sight of the information that really needs to be kept a secret.This is one area that’s really ripe for bipartisan legislation — a bill that requires the government to declassify more documents more quickly, while building taller and better fences around the information that truly needs to be kept secret.Gail: We really do agree, and to balance that out I’m gonna ask you about the Biden budget soon.Bret: Uh oh.Gail: But first I have to check your presidential prospect temperature. You kinda liked Ron DeSantis and then made a fierce turnaround, which I presume has been nailed in even further by his no-abortions agenda.Bret: It’s awful politics. It’s awful, period.Florida’s ban on abortion after six weeks of pregnancy means that many women will not even know they are pregnant before they are unable to obtain an abortion. It makes Mississippi’s 15-week ban look relatively moderate in comparison, which is like praising Khrushchev because he wasn’t as bad as Stalin. And it signals to every independent voter that DeSantis is an anti-abortion extremist who should never be trusted with presidential power.Gail: Down with DeSantis. So what about the new guy, Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, who would like to be our second Black president? He hasn’t officially announced, but he’s certainly doing that dance.Bret: In theory, he has a lot going for him. He exudes personal authenticity and optimism about America, as well as a sense of aspiration — attractive qualities in any politician. He’s sort of a standard-issue conservative on most policy issues and supports a 20-week national abortion ban, which is middle-of-the-road for most Americans and almost liberal for today’s Republican Party. He has the potential to win over some minority voters who have been trending conservative in recent years, while neutralizing potential Democratic attacks on racial issues.But how he fares with voters outside of his home base remains to be seen. A lot of these presidential aspirants fall apart the moment they come into contact with audiences who ask difficult questions.Gail: Yeah, recent interviews with Scott do seem to suggest there might be a problem there. On CBS, he said he was “100 percent pro-life.” When asked if that meant he supported Lindsey Graham’s proposed 15-week abortion ban, he replied “That’s not what I said.” Ummm …Bret: But we keep talking about Republicans. Are you still 100 percent convinced Joe Biden is gonna run for re-election? Because … I’m not.Gail: No way I’m going 100 percent. Biden’s current evasiveness could certainly be an attempt to time his big announcement for when everybody’s back from summer vacation and all geared up for presidential politics. Or, sigh, he could just want to string out his current status as long as possible because he knows once he announces he’s not running, he’ll practically disappear from the national political discussion.But I have trouble imagining that he doesn’t dream about knocking Donald Trump off the wall one more time. Why are you so doubtful?Bret: I know Biden is supposed to be following some kind of “Rose Garden strategy” of signing bills while his opponents tear themselves to pieces. But, to me, he just seems tired. I know that 90 is supposed to be the new 60, as you put it last week in your delightful column. I just don’t think that’s true of him. His 80 looks like the old 80 to me. Also, rank-and-file Democrats seem to be about as enthusiastic for his next run as they are for their next colonoscopy.I keep hoping he has the wisdom to know that he should cede the field as a one-term president who accomplished big things for his party rather than risk encountering senility in a second term.Gail: It’s important to stand up for the durability of so many 90-somethings. But age is certainly an issue in a lot of politics these days. I’m troubled right now about Senator Dianne Feinstein, who’s 89 and ailing. The Democrats need her vote to get anything much done in the Senate, particularly on judicial nominations.Bret: She’s a good argument for the point I was making about Biden.Gail: Very different cases — Biden is in great shape at 80; Feinstein is 89 and clearly failing. She’s already announced this year that she’s not running for re-election, but she really ought to step down instantly. A short-term governor-appointed successor could give the Democrats a much-needed vote, at least on some issues. But he or she shouldn’t be one of the possible candidates to succeed her. Maybe somebody who would just cheer us up for a while. How about Brad Pitt?Bret: Well, he’s definitely a Democrat, like most everyone else in Hollywood except Jon Voight. But my money is on Representative Adam Schiff succeeding Feinstein.Gail: Not a bad idea long term, although I’m hoping for another woman.OK, now it’s really time to talk about that Biden budget. Protect Medicare, expand some good programs like family leave and free community college for the poor. Balance it all out with a hike in the minimum income tax for billionaires.Are you surprised to hear that works for me?Bret: Expected nothing less. Basically I look at Biden’s budget not as a serious proposal but as a political ad for Democrats in 2024. In reality I expect we’ll get roughly the same budget as this year, only with much higher defense spending to account for threats from Russia and China.But the proposed tax on billionaires really bothers me, because it’s partially a tax on unrealized gains — that is, money people don’t actually have. If it were to pass, it could eventually apply to lots of people who are very far from being billionaires. It’s just like the Alternative Minimum Tax, which was originally devised in the late 1960s to hit a tiny handful of very rich people who weren’t paying their taxes, but wound up becoming another tax wallop to people of lesser means. I take it you … disagree?Gail: Uh, yeah. The very rich tend to organize their finances around legal tax avoidance. So they hold onto their often rapidly appreciating assets and just borrow against them.Bret: The problem remains that we’re talking about a tax on income that includes much more than income.Gail: It’s certainly important that what’s billed as a tax on the very rich not be applied to the middle class. But the complaints about Biden’s plan really are claims that it won’t just hit billionaires — it’ll make the hundred-millionaires suffer. Not feeling this is a problem.Bret: Fortunately it won’t pass this House or pass muster with this Supreme Court.On another note, Gail, an article in The Wall Street Journal reminds me that this month is the 50th anniversary of the first cellphone call — back when cellphones were the size of a shoe. Today, according to the article, more people have access to cellphones than they do to working toilets — six billion-plus versus around 4.5 billion. Any thoughts on the meaning of this golden anniversary?Gail: Wait, I’m mulling your toilet factoid …Bret: Yeah. Pretty shocking.Gail: OK, moving on. It’s thrilling the way cellphones allow parents to keep track of where their kids are and friends to stay in contact when they’re out of town. Can’t tell you how many times I’ve watched old movies when the heroine or the hero was in crisis and thought, “Oh, God if you could just call somebody.”But all this good news is connected to the technical and cultural changes that encourages people to communicate without having to take responsibility for what they say. Obviously, there are problems and we’ve got to figure out ways to make it work.Do you have a plan?Bret: We can’t escape the fact that new technologies are almost always both liberating and enslaving, and almost always unavoidable. Cellphones freed us from being attached to a physical location in order to be in touch — while putting us all on call no matter where we were. Smartphones put the world in our back pockets but also addicted us to tiny screens. If, God forbid, ChatGPT ever takes over this conversation, then, well, hmm … the two of us are going to spend a lot more time drinking good wine on your patio. There are worse fates.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 ‘Diploma Divide’ Is the New Fault Line in American Politics

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      The legal imbroglios of Donald Trump have lately dominated conversation about the 2024 election. As primary season grinds on, campaign activity will ebb and wane, and issues of the moment — like the first Trump indictment and potentially others to come — will blaze into focus and then disappear.Yet certain fundamentals will shape the races as candidates strategize about how to win the White House. To do this, they will have to account for at least one major political realignment: educational attainment is the new fault line in American politics.Educational attainment has not replaced race in that respect, but it is increasingly the best predictor of how Americans will vote, and for whom. It has shaped the political landscape and where the 2024 presidential election almost certainly will be decided. To understand American politics, candidates and voters alike will need to understand this new fundamental.Americans have always viewed education as a key to opportunity, but few predicted the critical role it has come to play in our politics. What makes the “diploma divide,” as it is often called, so fundamental to our politics is how it has been sorting Americans into the Democratic and Republican Parties by educational attainment. College-educated voters are now more likely to identify as Democrats, while those without college degrees — especially white Americans, but increasingly others as well — are now more likely to support Republicans.It’s both economics and cultureThe impact of education on voting has an economic as well as a cultural component. The confluence of rising globalization, technological developments and the offshoring of many working-class jobs led to a sorting of economic fortunes, a widening gap in the average real wealth between households led by college graduates compared with the rest of the population, whose levels are near all-time lows.According to an analysis by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, since 1989, families headed by college graduates have increased their wealth by 83 percent. For households headed by someone without a college degree, there was relatively little or no increase in wealth.Culturally, a person’s educational attainment increasingly correlates with their views on a wide range of issues like abortion, attitudes about L.G.B.T.Q. rights and the relationship between government and organized religion. It also extends to cultural consumption (movies, TV, books), social media choices and the sources of information that shape voters’ understanding of facts.This is not unique to the United States; the pattern has developed across nearly all Western democracies. Going back to the 2016 Brexit vote and the most recent national elections in Britain and France, education level was the best predictor of how people voted.This new class-based politics oriented around the education divide could turn out to be just as toxic as race-based politics. It has facilitated a sorting of America into enclaves of like-minded people who look at members of the other enclave with increasing contempt.The road to political realignmentThe diploma divide really started to emerge in voting in the early 1990s, and Mr. Trump’s victory in 2016 solidified this political realignment. Since then, the trends have deepened.In the 2020 presidential election, Joe Biden defeated Mr. Trump by assembling a coalition different from the one that elected and re-elected Barack Obama. Of the 206 counties that Mr. Obama carried in 2008 and 2012 that were won by Mr. Trump in 2016, Mr. Biden won back only 25 of these areas, which generally had a higher percentage of non-college-educated voters. But overall Mr. Biden carried college-educated voters by 15 points.In the 2022 midterm elections, Democrats carried white voters with a college degree by three points, while Republicans won white non-college voters by 34 points (a 10-point improvement from 2018).This has helped establish a new political geography. There are now 42 states firmly controlled by one party or the other. And with 45 out of 50 states voting for the same party in the last two presidential elections, the only states that voted for the winning presidential candidates in both 2016 and 2020 rank roughly in the middle on educational levels — Pennsylvania (23rd in education attainment), Georgia (24th), Wisconsin (26th), Arizona (30th) and Michigan (32nd).In 2020, Mr. Biden received 306 electoral votes, Mr. Trump, 232. In the reapportionment process — which readjusts the Electoral College counts based on the most current census data — the new presidential electoral map is more favorable to Republicans by a net six points.In 2024, Democrats are likely to enter the general election with 222 electoral votes, compared with 219 for Republicans. That leaves only eight states, with 97 electoral votes — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — up for grabs. And for these states, education levels are near the national average — not proportionately highly educated nor toward the bottom of attainment.The 2024 mapA presidential candidate will need a three-track strategy to carry these states in 2024. The first goal is to further exploit the trend of education levels driving how people vote. Democrats have been making significant inroads with disaffected Republicans, given much of the party base’s continued embrace of Mr. Trump and his backward-looking grievances, as well as a shift to the hard right on social issues — foremost on abortion. This is particularly true with college-educated Republican women.In this era of straight-party voting, it is notable that Democrats racked up double-digit percentages from Republicans in the 2022 Arizona, Michigan and Pennsylvania governors’ races. They also made significant inroads with these voters in the Senate races in Arizona (13 percent), Pennsylvania (8 percent), Nevada (7 percent) and Georgia (6 percent).This represents a large and growing pool of voters. In a recent NBC poll, over 30 percent of self-identified Republicans said that they were not supporters of MAGA.At the same time, Republicans have continued to increase their support with non-college-educated voters of color. Between 2012 and 2020, support for Democrats from nonwhite-working-class voters dropped 18 points. The 2022 Associated Press VoteCast exit polls indicated that support for Democrats dropped an additional 14 points compared with the 2020 results.However, since these battleground states largely fall in the middle of education levels in our country, they haven’t followed the same trends as the other 42 states. So there are limits to relying on the education profile of voters to carry these states.This is where the second group of voters comes in: political independents, who were carried by the winning party in the last four election cycles. Following Mr. Trump’s narrow victory with independent voters in 2016, Mr. Biden carried them by nine points in 2020. In 2018, when Democrats took back the House, they carried them by 15 points, and their narrow two-point margin in 2022 enabled them to hold the Senate.The importance of the independent voting bloc continues to rise. This is particularly significant since the margin of victory in these battleground states has been very narrow in recent elections. The 2022 exit polls showed that over 30 percent of voters were independents, the highest percentage since 1980. In Arizona, 40 percent of voters in 2022 considered themselves political independents.These independent voters tend to live disproportionately in suburbs, which are now the most diverse socioeconomic areas in our country. These suburban voters are the third component of a winning strategy. With cities increasingly controlled by Democrats — because of the high level of educated voters there — and Republicans maintaining their dominance in rural areas with large numbers of non-college voters, the suburbs are the last battleground in American politics.Voting in the suburbs has been decisive in determining the outcome of the last two presidential elections: Voters in the suburbs of Atlanta, Detroit, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Phoenix determined the winner in the last two presidential elections and are likely to play the same pivotal role in 2024.These voters moved to the suburbs for a higher quality of life: affordable housing, safe streets and good schools. These are the issues that animate these voters, who have a negative view of both parties. They do not embrace a MAGA-driven Republican Party, but they also do not trust Mr. Biden and Democrats, and consider them to be culturally extreme big spenders who aren’t focused enough on issues like immigration and crime.So in addition to education levels, these other factors will have a big impact on the election. The party that can capture the pivotal group of voters in the suburbs of battleground states is likely to prevail. Democrats’ success in the suburbs in recent elections suggests an advantage, but it is not necessarily enduring. Based on post-midterm exit polls from these areas, voters have often voted against a party or candidate — especially Mr. Trump — rather than for one.But in part because of the emergence of the diploma divide, there is an opening for both political parties in 2024 if they are willing to gear their agenda and policies beyond their political base. The party that does that is likely to win the White House.Doug Sosnik was a senior adviser to President Bill Clinton from 1994 to 2000 and is a senior adviser to the Brunswick Group.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