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      Biden Makes Focused Appeal to Black Voters in South Carolina

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      The president’s campaign is putting money and staff into South Carolina ahead of its primary in an effort to energize Black voters, who are critical to his re-election effort.President Biden’s campaign and affiliated groups are amping up their efforts in South Carolina, pouring in money and staff ahead of the first Democratic primary in February in an effort to generate excitement for his campaign in the state.It seems, at first glance, to be a curious political strategy. Few incumbent presidents have invested so much in an early primary state — particularly one like South Carolina, where Mr. Biden faces no serious primary challenger, and where no Democratic presidential candidate has won in a general election since Jimmy Carter in 1976.But the Biden campaign sees the effort as more than just notching a big win in the state that helped revive his struggling campaign in 2020, putting him on the path to winning the nomination. It hopes to energize Black voters, who are crucial to Mr. Biden’s re-election bid nationally, at a moment when his standing with Black Americans is particularly fraught.“One of the things that we have not done a good job of doing is showing the successes of this administration,” said Marvin Pendarvis, a state representative from North Charleston. He added that the campaign will need to curate a message “so that Black voters understand that this administration has done some of the most transformational things as it relates to Black communities, to minority communities.”Four years after Mr. Biden vowed to have the backs of the voters he said helped deliver him the White House, Black Americans in polls and focus groups are expressing frustration with Democrats for what they perceive as a failure to deliver on campaign promises. They also say that they have seen few improvements to their well-being under Mr. Biden’s presidency. Some are unsure whether they will vote at all.To counter that pessimism and boost Black turnout, Democrats are hitting the Palmetto State with a six-figure cash infusion from the Democratic National Committee, a slew of campaign events and an army of staffers and surrogates.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      New DeSantis Super PAC Revives Old Casey DeSantis Ad

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      The group emerged as Mr. DeSantis’s original super PAC began canceling its planned TV advertisements in Iowa and New Hampshire.A new super PAC that popped up in support of Gov. Ron DeSantis this week is preparing to air an ad that features Casey DeSantis, his wife, talking about her experience with cancer. The ad is nearly identical to one that was broadcast during his re-election campaign for governor last year, a video of the new spot shows. The group, Good Fight, was formed on Wednesday and soon began shipping copies of the ad to television stations. The Times obtained the ad from a person who received a copy of it, but who requested anonymity in order to share it. The narration of the ad is virtually the same as in the 2022 ad, but the new version features some new images and clips — of his children playing at the Field of Dreams in Iowa, for example — briefly spliced into the middle.Such a move could be considered “republication” of an ad, which the Federal Election Commission has regulations against. For instance, the super PAC supporting the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, later paid a fine related to republishing an ad from Mr. Romney’s 2008 presidential campaign. It is unclear whether those regulations would apply here, since the original spot is from a state campaign and not a federal one. The DeSantis ad features Ms. DeSantis trying to humanize her husband — who is often described as stiff on the campaign trail — as a father and a supportive husband when she faced breast cancer. The version that aired in 2022 had a logo that read “Ron DeSantis Florida Governor” in the upper-right corner; that logo is blurred out in the new spot sent to stations, which ends with a disclaimer that it was paid for by Good Fight.Craig Mareno, an accountant with Crosby Ottenhoff, a firm based in Birmingham, Ala., is listed on documents creating the group that were filed with the F.E.C. Reached by phone, Mr. Mareno declined to answer questions about the group or the ad, and asked for an email that he could forward to another official he said could answer questions. The DeSantis campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Adav Noti of Campaign Legal Center said it was unclear how the F.E.C. would view the use of the old DeSantis ad, since Mr. DeSantis was not a federal candidate at the time. “The entire DeSantis operation, including the campaign and all of the super PACs, have been pushing the legal envelope since the beginning, and this use of prior campaign material to put out presidential campaign ads is another example,” said Mr. Noti, whose group has already filed an F.E.C. complaint accusing Mr. DeSantis’s presidential campaign of coordinating illegally with the original DeSantis super PAC, Never Back Down.Good Fight emerged as Never Back Down, a deep-pocketed but embattled organization, began canceling $2.5 million in planned television advertisements in the early nominating states of Iowa and New Hampshire, according to AdImpact, a media tracking company.Campaigns are not allowed to coordinate directly with super PACs, but the move appears to align with the strategy suggested by the DeSantis campaign in a memo in late November.James Uthmeier, Mr. DeSantis’s campaign manager, wrote in the memo that a new super PAC formed to aid the governor, Fight Right, would air television ads, and Never Back Down would focus on its “field operation and ground game.”Never Back Down has poured millions into an ambitious door-knocking operation in early states, especially in Iowa. But that ground game has sputtered, with Mr. DeSantis’s poll numbers stagnating as former President Donald J. Trump remains far ahead both in Iowa and nationally. And the super PAC itself has been embroiled in turmoil, with a series of top executives and strategists departing over the past month.Fight Right, formed by people with ties to Mr. DeSantis, originated amid internal disagreements over strategy at Never Back Down, which struggled to meld veteran political strategists from a consulting firm with DeSantis loyalists. Mr. DeSantis had also been troubled by the group’s advertising strategy, as The Times previously reported. Fight Right began airing ads in late November attacking former Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina.In a statement, Scott Wagner, the chairman of Never Back Down, said the group was “laser focused on its core mission — running the most advanced grass-roots and political caucus operation in this race and helping deliver the G.O.P. nomination for Governor DeSantis.”“We are thrilled to have Fight Right and others covering the air for Governor DeSantis while we work the ground game in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and beyond,” Mr. Wagner added.Taryn Fenske, a spokeswoman for Fight Right, said the group was placing an advertising buy of more than $2.5 million starting Sunday, with $1.3 million behind an anti-Haley ad that is slated to start running in Iowa that day.Never Back Down previously transferred $1 million to Fight Right, which helped precipitate a major leadership shake-up at the original super PAC, where some officials questioned the move. Officials with Never Back Down and Fight Right would not directly answer questions about whether the canceled $2.5 million was being used to fund the new Fight Right ads. Both Fight Right and Good Fight are using the same firm, Digital Media Placement Services, to purchase airtime, according to AdImpact’s records. More

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      Barring Trump From the Ballot Would Be a Mistake

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      When Donald Trump appeals the Colorado decision disqualifying him from the ballot in that state’s Republican primary, the Supreme Court should overturn the ruling unanimously.Like many of my fellow liberals, I would love to live in a country where Americans had never elected Mr. Trump — let alone sided with him by the millions in his claims that he won an election he lost, and that he did nothing wrong afterward. But nobody lives in that America. For all the power the institution has arrogated, the Supreme Court cannot bring that fantasy into being. To bar Mr. Trump from the ballot now would be the wrong way to show him to the exits of the political system, after all these years of strife.Some aspects of American election law are perfectly clear — like the rule that prohibits candidates from becoming president before they turn 35 — but many others are invitations to judges to resolve uncertainty as they see fit, based in part on their own politics. Take Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which blocks insurrectionists from running for office, a provision originally aimed at former Confederates in the wake of the Civil War. There may well be some instances in which the very survival of a democratic regime is at stake if noxious candidates or parties are not banned, as in West Germany after World War II. But in this case, what Section 3 requires is far from straightforward. Keeping Mr. Trump off the ballot could put democracy at more risk rather than less.Part of the danger lies in the fact that what actually happened on Jan. 6 — and especially Mr. Trump’s exact role beyond months of election denial and entreaties to government officials to side with him — is still too broadly contested. The Colorado court deferred to a lower court on the facts, but it was a bench trial, meaning that no jury ever assessed what happened, and that many Americans still believe Mr. Trump did nothing wrong. A Supreme Court that affirms the Colorado ruling would have to succeed in constructing a consensual narrative where others — including armies of journalists, the Jan. 6 commission and recent indictments — have failed.The Supreme Court has been asked to weigh in on the fate of presidencies before, and its finer moments in this regard have been when it was a force for stability and reflected the will and interests of voters. Almost 50 years ago, the court faced a choice to end a presidency as it deliberated on Richard Nixon’s high crimes and misdemeanors. But by the time the Supreme Court acted in 1974, a special prosecutor, Leon Jaworski, had already won indictments of Nixon’s henchmen and named the president himself before a grand jury as an unindicted co-conspirator. Public opinion was with Jaworski; the American people agreed that the tapes Nixon was trying to shield from prosecutors were material evidence, and elites in both political parties had reached the same conclusion. In deciding against Nixon, the Supreme Court was only reaffirming the political consensus.As the constitutional law professor Josh Chafetz has observed, even United States v. Nixon was suffused with a rhetoric of judicial aggrandizement. But if the Supreme Court were to exclude Mr. Trump from the ballot, seconding the Colorado court on each legal nicety, when so many people still disagree on the facts, it would have disastrous consequences.For one thing, it would strengthen the hand of a Supreme Court that liberals have rightly complained grabs too much power too routinely. Joe Biden came into office calling for a re-examination of whether the Supreme Court needs reform, and there would be considerable irony if he were re-elected after that very body was seen by millions to pre-empt a democratic choice.Worse, it is not obvious how many would accept a Supreme Court decision that erased Mr. Trump’s name from every ballot in the land. Liberals with bad memories of Bush v. Gore, which threw an election to one candidate rather than counting votes, have often regretted accepting that ruling as supinely as they did. And rejecting Mr. Trump’s candidacy could well invite a repeat of the kind of violence that led to the prohibition on insurrectionists in public life in the first place. The purpose of Section 3 was to stabilize the country after a civil war, not to cause another one.As it unfolds, the effort to disqualify Mr. Trump could make him more popular than ever. As harsh experience since 2016 has taught, legalistic maneuvers haven’t hurt him in the polls. And Democrats do nothing to increase their popularity by setting out to “save democracy” when it looks — if their legal basis for proceeding is too flimsy — as if they are afraid of practicing it. That the approval ratings of the Democratic standard-bearer, Mr. Biden, have cratered as prosecutions of Mr. Trump and now this Colorado ruling have accumulated indicates that trying again is a mistake, both of principle and of strategy.Perhaps the worst outcome of all would be for the Supreme Court to split on ideological lines, as it did in Bush v. Gore, hardly its finest hour. Justices have fretted about the damage to their “legitimacy” when their decisions look like political choices. They often are, as so many recent cases have revealed, but when the stakes are this high, the best political choice for the justices is to avoid final judgment on contested matters of fact and law and to let the people decide.In the Nixon era, the justices were shrewd enough to stand together in delivering their decision: It was handed down 8-0, with one recusal. In our moment, the Supreme Court must do the same.This will require considerable diplomacy from Chief Justice John Roberts, and it will define his stewardship as profoundly as cases such as Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, in which his effort to herd his colleagues into consensus failed. In this situation, unlike that one, it will require him to convince his liberal colleagues who might otherwise dissent. For their part, they ought to be able to anticipate the high and unpredictable costs of presuming that judges can save a nation on the brink of breakdown.The truth is that this country has to be allowed to save itself. The Supreme Court must act, but only to place the burden on Mr. Trump’s political opponents to make their case in the political arena. Not just to criticize him for his turpitude, but to argue that their own policies benefit the disaffected voters who side with a charlatan again and again.Samuel Moyn teaches law and history at Yale.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X and Threads. More

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      How DeSantis’s Ambitious, Costly Ground Game Has Sputtered

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      The Florida governor’s field operation, one of the most expensive in modern political history, has met challenges from the outset, interviews with a range of voters and political officials revealed.Ron DeSantis’s battle plan against Donald J. Trump was always ambitious.This spring, the main super PAC backing Mr. DeSantis laid out a costly organizing operation, including an enormous voter-outreach push with an army of trained, paid door-knockers, that would try to reach every potential DeSantis voter multiple times in early-nominating states.Seven months later, after tens of millions of dollars spent and hundreds of thousands of doors knocked, one of the most expensive ground games in modern political history shows little sign of creating the momentum it had hoped to achieve.Mr. DeSantis’s poll numbers have barely budged. His super PAC, Never Back Down, is unraveling. And Mr. Trump’s hold on Republican primary voters seems as unshakable as ever. With time running out before the Iowa caucuses on Jan. 15, Mr. DeSantis, the governor of Florida, appears in danger of losing the extraordinary bet he made in outsourcing his field operation to a super PAC — a gamble that is testing both the limits of campaign finance law and the power of money to move voter sentiment.Never Back Down has spent at least $30 million on its push to reach voters in person through door-knocking and canvassing in early-primary states, according to a person with knowledge of its efforts — a figure that does not include additional tens of millions in television advertising. The organization has more than 100 full-time, paid canvassers in Iowa, South Carolina and New Hampshire, along with 37,000 volunteers.That ground game has increasingly centered on a do-or-die push in Iowa, where a long-shot victory could redeem the effort. Never Back Down has knocked on doors more than 801,000 times — including repeated visits — in Iowa, according to another person familiar with its work, a staggering number in a state of just 3.2 million people. The group has knocked on the doors of some potential DeSantis voters four times, with a fifth attempt planned before the caucuses, the person said.“I know they are doing the right things,” said Will Rogers, a Republican political organizer in Iowa who said Never Back Down had been to his door several times. But, he added, “it just doesn’t seem to be moving the needle at all.”Interviews with more than three dozen voters, local officials and political strategists across Iowa and beyond revealed that — even setting aside the internal disruptions at Never Back Down — the immense, coordinated effort to identify and mobilize voters for Mr. DeSantis has struggled from the outset.Mr. DeSantis’s decision to outsource his field operation to a super PAC was unusual, and tested the limits of campaign finance law.Christopher Smith for The New York TimesSome voters have been swayed by contact from the super PAC, but many remain unconvinced. Some said the door knockers were indifferent or rude, while others said the full-court press from Never Back Down felt inauthentic. And, in a particularly brutal twist, some of the door knockers openly told Iowans that they themselves were in fact Trump supporters.“From my point of view, it hasn’t been working,” said Cris Christenson, a businessman who lives in Johnston, a Des Moines suburb. Never Back Down has been all over his neighborhood, he said, and has knocked on his door three times.Mr. Christenson said he was “not anti-DeSantis,” describing him as “very bright.” But he is a firm supporter of Mr. Trump.“It really comes down to this — Trump is so wildly popular in the state that DeSantis doesn’t stand a chance,” he said.Spreading the wordJess Szymanski, a spokeswoman for Never Back Down, said the group had built “the largest, most advanced grass-roots and political operation in the history of presidential politics.”“With every voter we interact with on the ground, we constantly find strong support and new voters committing to caucus for Governor DeSantis,” she added. Door knocking is considered a particularly useful way not just to persuade and identify supporters, but above all to mobilize them to get to the caucuses or polls.The field operation is highly organized: Never Back Down has trained hundreds of people at an in-house boot camp in Des Moines that operatives call “Fort Benning.” There, recruits learn about the biography of Mr. DeSantis and his family, study his policies and record as Florida governor, and practice door-knocking techniques.Then, in groups — toting iPads with special software that contains details about likely voters — they spread out across Iowa and other early-nominating states.In Iowa, these paid door knockers have been joined by volunteer “precinct captains” — Never Back Down aims to have at least one captain in each of Iowa’s more than 1,600 caucus precincts by Jan. 15.Attendees at an Iowa Republican Party event in May were given information on Mr. DeSantis.Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesNever Back Down is trying to reach Republicans in rural, heavily conservative areas like northwest Iowa, hoping that evangelical voters will embrace an alternative to the profane Mr. Trump.Quality control problemsSome of the challenges on the ground appear to stem from the operation’s size. The fact that it has been run by a super PAC rather than a campaign, and has relied largely on hired hands rather than volunteers, can make the outreach feel inauthentic, interviews with some caucusgoers showed.They described being put off or bemused by DeSantis campaigners who hailed from as far away as California. Douglas Jensen, a 38-year-old potential caucusgoer in rural northwestern Iowa who hasn’t decided which candidate to support, recalled being surprised to have a “very enthusiastic” man from Georgia pitch him on Mr. DeSantis at his house.Loren and Tina DeVries said they’d had door knockers from different campaigns stop by their house in Bettendorf. Some were locals — Ms. DeVries, 54, even knew the young woman who came to her door to stump for Vivek Ramaswamy personally.But the couple didn’t recognize the DeSantis door knockers, and recalled that they had been less than enthusiastic in their pitch.“The people that have come, I’m not sure if they’re there just to check a box or actually have a persuasive conversation,” Mr. DeVries, 53, said. “They’re not really doing a sell.”He still liked Mr. DeSantis, but Ms. DeVries remained undecided.Never Back Down, the super PAC supporting Mr. DeSantis, put out sign-up sheets to endorse him at an Iowa Republican Party event in Cedar Rapids.Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesDeSantis campaign materials at a restaurant in Tipton, Iowa.Jordan Gale for The New York TimesNumerous other voters have also reported lackadaisical efforts, fruitless repeat knocking and bad attitudes from door knockers. Over the summer, a paid Never Back Down canvasser in South Carolina was dismissed after he was caught making lewd remarks about a homeowner, The Washington Post reported.The super PAC has dismissed employees and volunteers who failed to meet targets for door knocking and other measures of engagement, according to people who worked with the group.Fierce competition, and a looming favoriteOther campaigns are trying to capitalize. The political network founded by the Koch brothers, Americans for Prosperity Action, which endorsed Nikki Haley last month, is aiming to knock on 100,000 doors in Iowa before the caucuses. The group is hoping that a more finely honed message, spread by the small group of well-trained volunteers and paid staff, will be enough to overcome the flood of outreach from Never Back Down.Tyler Raygor, A.F.P.’s state director, said the fact that Mr. DeSantis had been stagnant in state polls despite the huge canvassing effort cast doubt on how effective his messengers were.“It just begs the question of: ‘Who are you having out on the doors? How well are you training them?’” Mr. Raygor said.The Trump campaign has also put down roots in Iowa, though its efforts have focused more on training its 1,800 caucus captains and pushing them to persuade their friends and neighbors to caucus for Mr. Trump. Still, the campaign has reached several hundred thousand voters in Iowa through mail advertisements and door knocking, according to a person familiar with the efforts.Indeed, it seems possible that no amount of door knocking could surmount Mr. DeSantis’s biggest challenge: He is not Donald Trump.Former President Donald J. Trump still leads in polls of Iowa caucusgoers by double digits. Jordan Gale for The New York TimesJeanette Hudson, 82, of Pella, Iowa, said she and her husband, both loyal Trump supporters, had been visited at home by a “pleasant young woman” who asked if they were going to caucus for Mr. DeSantis. Ms. Hudson said they were not.The woman smiled, thanked them and left.Persuading the unconvincedDavid Polyansky, the DeSantis deputy campaign manager, said door knocking was meant to drive turnout on caucus night, not to juice poll numbers.“It gives you the chance to not only identify who might be a DeSantis supporter, but also to bring them into the fold and make sure they are going to turn out on the 15th,” he said, arguing that it was too soon to judge the effectiveness of Never Back Down’s door-knocking operation.Mr. DeSantis’s allies say that many Iowans remain undecided, and that a major part of the ground game, in the weeks ahead, is to tip them to their side.Rachel Mummey for The New York TimesIn New Hampshire, the way that Mr. DeSantis won the support of Hilary Kilcullen, 76, a physician assistant in Concord, is a model that Never Back Down hopes to emulate.Ms. Kilcullen, a Republican, said a young man had knocked on her door to tell her about Mr. DeSantis. The canvasser, who had flown up from Miami, told Ms. Kilcullen that she could rely on Mr. DeSantis in the event of a terrorist attack or other disaster.The conversation didn’t flip Ms. Kilcullen, who had grown tired of Mr. Trump, into a DeSantis supporter. But she valued the personal touch.“In this day and age, when everything has gone digital and virtual, I was impressed,” Ms. Kilcullen said. “If DeSantis could capture this passionate, young person’s attention, that means something.”Then, after hearing Mr. DeSantis speak in person this month at a town-hall event — and being impressed by his command of policy — she decided he had earned her vote.But others have yet to be convinced.One undecided caucusgoer in Iowa, Edith Hull, a 73-year-old retired farmer from Ottumwa, said she had a positive experience with a DeSantis door knocker recently.“He was a real nice young man,” she said. “And he didn’t pressure me or anything.” When he left, he gave her a large placard to hang on her doorknob, and reminded her to caucus.Asked if she felt any differently about Mr. DeSantis afterward, she said, “About the same.”Reporting was contributed by More

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      Man Accused of Ramaswamy Death Threat Is Charged With Threatening Christie

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      Tyler Anderson of New Hampshire was charged on Wednesday with threatening the lives of Chris Christie and another unnamed presidential candidate.A New Hampshire man who was charged with threatening to kill Vivek Ramaswamy and his supporters at a campaign event has been indicted by a federal grand jury with additional counts for threatening the lives of former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, another unnamed presidential candidate and other people, according to an indictment filed on Wednesday.The man, Tyler Anderson, 30, of Dover, now faces three counts of transmitting threats for having texted death threats to three presidential candidates campaigning in New Hampshire, the authorities say. The text messages were sent in three separate episodes in late November and early December. The last set of messages, sent on Dec. 8, was directed at Mr. Ramaswamy.Karl Rickett, a spokesman for the Christie campaign, confirmed on Thursday that Mr. Christie was the target of the second episode, on Dec. 6. The texts directed at Mr. Christie were found on Mr. Anderson’s phone, according to an F.B.I. affidavit.Mr. Anderson was arrested on Dec. 9 after federal agents tracked text messages threatening Mr. Ramaswamy to his phone and home address, the affidavit said. His phone was seized during the arrest, and the messages directed at Mr. Ramaswamy and Mr. Christie were found on it. Firearms were also seized during Mr. Anderson’s arrest.In an interview with an F.B.I. agent after his arrest, Mr. Anderson acknowledged sending threatening messages to Mr. Ramaswamy and other presidential candidates, according to the affidavit. The messages sent to Mr. Christie’s campaign, photos of which were included in court documents, threatened to kill Mr. Christie and others at a campaign event in a “mass shooting.” Officials redacted information in the photos that would have identified Mr. Christie as the target.The Christie campaign previously declined to say it had been targeted by the threats, but a campaign statement this month thanked law enforcement officials for “moving quickly to address these threats.”Mr. Anderson was released on Dec. 14 on the condition that he avoid contact with presidential candidates and their campaigns. His arraignment is scheduled for Jan. 5.In the first incident, on Nov. 22, Mr. Anderson sent a series of text messages threatening to “impale” and “disembowel” an unnamed presidential candidate, according to the indictment.Mr. Anderson sent additional text messages on Dec. 8 threatening to kill a third presidential candidate — later identified as Mr. Ramaswamy — and attendees of a campaign event scheduled in Portsmouth, federal prosecutors said. Those texts were sent as replies to an automated campaign message, and they implied that the threat would be carried out with a firearm. The threats to Mr. Christie were also sent as replies to an automated campaign message.A staff member for the Ramaswamy campaign reported the texts to the local police, and the F.B.I. conducted the investigation that led to Mr. Anderson’s arrest.Each of the three charges has a maximum sentence of five years in prison and three years of supervised release, and a maximum fine of $250,000. More

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      Nikki Haley Wants to Run on Her Record, Not Her Gender

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      The Republican presidential candidate would be the first woman to enter the White House, but she has so far tried to avoid the identity politics that could repel some voters.Inside the warehouse for an upscale department store chain in eastern Iowa, Michele Barton, wearing a white T-shirt emblazoned with “Women for Nikki” in bright pink letters, mused excitedly about the prospect of sending the first woman to the White House.But Ms. Barton, 52, a mother of four and a lifelong Republican, was quick to insist that she was not supporting Nikki Haley because she is a woman.“I think she is the right candidate,” she said on Wednesday as she waited for Ms. Haley to appear at a town-hall event in Davenport. “It just so happens that she is a woman.”It’s a familiar refrain from some of Ms. Haley’s most enthusiastic female supporters, who, like the candidate herself, downplay the importance of her gender in the 2024 presidential race, even as they celebrate the potentially historic nature of her bid.Ms. Haley is performing this balancing act at a striking moment in U.S. politics. Her climb in the polls and the struggles of Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida mean that the Republican candidate with the best hope of pushing the party beyond former President Donald J. Trump — who has a long history of misogynist remarks and sexual misconduct allegations — might well be a woman.Throughout her campaign, Ms. Haley has sought to tread a fine line in talking about her gender. She emphasizes elements of her life and career that inherently set her apart in an otherwise all-male field, but avoids leaning into identity politics in ways that might repel the largely white and graying base of conservative voters she needs to court in order to win the nomination.“I don’t want to just be a woman,” she told Charlamagne Tha God on “The Daily Show” last month. “I don’t want to just be Indian. I don’t want to just be a mom. I don’t want to just be a Republican. I don’t want to just be all of those things. I’m more than that. And I think every person is more than that.”Her stump speech includes nods to her experiences as a mother and a military spouse. Her pithy rejoinders to her rivals invoke her five-inch heels. Her list of close-out songs at town-hall events includes Sheryl Crow’s “Woman in the White House.”A Haley campaign event in Iowa last month. When Ms. Haley mentions that she was the first woman and first person of color to serve as governor of South Carolina, it’s largely to argue that the United States is not “rotten” or “racist.”Jordan Gale for The New York TimesBut Ms. Haley, the daughter of Indian immigrants, seldom, if ever, mentions directly that she is vying to shatter the highest glass ceiling in American politics. (In her campaign announcement video, she said she did not believe in the idea of such ceilings.)On the campaign trail in the early voting states of Iowa and New Hampshire, she rarely brings up her gender, which her allies believe could be a potent asset to win over college-educated voters and suburban women in a general election, if she were to beat Mr. Trump in the primary.Chris Cournoyer, an Iowa state senator and Ms. Haley’s state chairwoman there, said these demographics could also help Ms. Haley become more competitive in the state, where she has trailed Mr. Trump in polls by a wide margin and until recently also lagged behind Mr. DeSantis.“I’ve heard from a lot of women who are independents, a lot of women who are Democrats, that they are going to switch parties to caucus for her on Jan. 15,” Ms. Cournoyer said.Although she often mentions her barrier-breaking victory to become the first woman and first person of color to serve as governor of South Carolina, Ms. Haley does so mainly to argue that the United States is not “rotten” or “racist.”Her event on Wednesday at the Von Maur warehouse in Davenport may have been billed as a Women for Nikki event, but aside from three coalition T-shirts on display near the entrance, the venue carried few signs of the all-female, grass-roots groups that have helped spread her message.Both Republican strategists and gender studies scholars say that Ms. Haley’s relatively muted approach to gender on the trail makes sense: The path to higher office for women is often paved with double standards and gender biases, regardless of a candidate’s party or ideology. But it can be particularly difficult for Republican women. Conservative voters tend to harbor traditional views about femininity while expecting candidates to seem “tough.”A recent study from the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University found that Republicans were less likely than Democrats to see distinct barriers to women’s political representation, support targeted efforts to increase diversity in politics and pressure party leaders to embrace strategies to expand the ranks of women in power.Kelly Dittmar, who as the center’s research director worked on the report and has analyzed Ms. Haley’s political bids, said she saw parallels between Ms. Haley’s campaigns for governor and president. In both, Ms. Haley’s ads have talked about being “new” and “different,” offering cues to voters about her race and gender but, Ms. Dittmar said, allowing them to interpret the words as they wished.“It is both strategic and in line with her own conservative identity,” Ms. Dittmar said, adding that as a candidate for governor Ms. Haley rejected calls from her constituents to promise that she would appoint an even number of men and women to her administration.No woman has ever won the Republican Party’s presidential nomination, or even a state Republican presidential primary, and Ms. Haley is only the fifth prominent Republican woman to run for her party’s nomination. Carly Fiorina, the former chief executive of Hewlett-Packard, last made the attempt in 2016, and she made gender central to her campaign.With her own calibrated approach, Ms. Haley has sought to lean into her foreign policy and executive experience, challenge misconceptions about women and electability and position herself as one of her party’s most effective messengers on abortion, despite having signed some of the nation’s toughest anti-abortion restrictions as governor of South Carolina. She recently said that as governor she would have signed a six-week ban on the procedure.The path to higher office for women is often paved with double standards and gender biases, regardless of party or ideology. Conservative voters, in particular, tend to harbor traditional views about femininity.Sophie Park/Getty ImagesThe approach has won her some of her most devoted supporters and often unpaid volunteers — women willing to drive for hours to set up chairs, collect contact information and hype up her bid. Campaign officials say that Women for Nikki chapters have now emerged in all 50 states. At recent town halls in Iowa, at least two women asked her to reiterate her stance on abortion, though they had already heard it, so that others in the room could hear it, too.“I don’t think the fellas know how to talk about it properly,” she said both times.And yet, the issue of gender has remained inescapable. In the fourth Republican presidential debate, the entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy lobbed gendered attacks, accusing her of benefiting from “identity politics,” as former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey went the other direction, defending her in what some of her supporters saw as playing the white knight. Then, there is Mr. Trump, who calls her a “Birdbrain” and remains popular among Republican women.A poll from The New York Times and Siena College released this month found that 63 percent of female Republican primary voters supported Mr. Trump. Ms. Haley had 12 percent support from that group. Other surveys show her garnering more support from men than women. But in hypothetical matchups, Ms. Haley has beaten President Biden by the widest margin of any Republican challenger, roughly splitting female votes with him.“Nikki has potent electability against Biden, but she needs to find potent electability against Trump,” said Sarah Longwell, a Republican strategist who has been working to defeat Mr. Trump. “Right now, voters just don’t believe she can do it, and so she has to change that perception.”Perhaps Ms. Haley best captured her approach in response to a question from a prospective voter while campaigning this week in Agency, Iowa. Listening to Ms. Haley on the warehouse floor of a corn seed company, Sarah Keith, 28, a chemical engineer, wanted to know how the candidate would draw more women into the party, particularly those dissatisfied with the liberal agenda.“They talk about women’s issues,” Ms. Haley said, referring to the Democrats and defining those concerns as the same ones that worry most voters, including the economy and national security. “I think women are tired. I think everybody is tired of the noise, and what they want is just to see results.” More

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      DeSantis Says Trump’s Indictments ‘Sucked Out All the Oxygen’ From Primary

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      Ron DeSantis seemed to acknowledge that the former president’s legal woes were making it harder for his rivals to break through in the Republican primary.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida said that the indictments of former President Donald J. Trump had “distorted” the Republican presidential primary, tacitly admitting that the former president’s legal problems have helped him.“If I could have one thing change, I wish Trump hadn’t been indicted on any of this stuff,” Mr. DeSantis told David Brody of the Christian Broadcasting Network in an interview that aired on Thursday. He added that the indictments had “just crowded out, I think, so much other stuff and it’s sucked out all the oxygen.”With just weeks until Iowans cast the first votes in the race, Mr. DeSantis’s campaign has struggled to gain ground on Mr. Trump and has had to focus more on battling former Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina for second place.When Mr. DeSantis entered the race in May, he was widely regarded as the most viable challenger to Mr. Trump. That reputation frayed as his campaign struggled to articulate an effective message, organize in key early primary states and guard against internal turmoil. Last week, the top strategist for Mr. DeSantis’s super PAC, Jeff Roe, stepped down from his post.Mr. DeSantis did not elaborate on his comments during a campaign appearance at a Veterans of Foreign Wars post in Coralville, Iowa, on Thursday morning, and he barely mentioned Mr. Trump. He did not take questions from reporters after the event.But Mr. DeSantis has previously expressed frustration over how much attention Mr. Trump’s various legal troubles have attracted. “That is not what we want from this election,” Mr. DeSantis told reporters during a campaign stop outside Des Moines on Wednesday. “What we want is a referendum on the failures of the Biden administration.”Mr. Trump’s allies and supporters have maintained that the charges against him have only fueled his rise and fortified his strength as a candidate.In August, days before Mr. Trump was charged in Georgia over his efforts to overturn his defeat in the 2020 presidential election, he boasted to a crowd of supporters in Alabama that he needed “one more indictment” to solidify his win in the race.Now facing four indictments and 91 felony counts, Mr. Trump has maintained a significant lead. A new poll from The New York Times and Siena College found that even as a growing number of Republican voters believe he has committed serious federal crimes, they still support his return to office.And Mr. Trump’s legal problems continue to grow. On Tuesday, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled that he was ineligible to hold office again because of his actions related to the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. The decision could strike him from the state’s primary ballot, but Mr. Trump’s campaign has pledged to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.In the CBN interview, Mr. DeSantis also singled out the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, who has brought one of the cases against Mr. Trump, and accused him of “distorting justice” and abusing his power.He also railed against Democratic prosecutors more broadly — and, as governor, he has taken a particularly hard line against them. He has removed two Democratic prosecutors from their posts over the last two years, citing their stances on abortion and lenience on violent crime.Nicholas Nehamas More

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      Trump Pushes Pro-Police Agenda, With a Big Exception: His Criminal Cases

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      Long a loud supporter of the police, Donald Trump is floating new protections for them. At the same time, he is raging against law enforcement officials who have brought felony charges against him.Former President Donald J. Trump has long spoken admiringly of police officers who use aggressive force on the job. For years, he has pointed to his unwavering support for local law enforcement, presenting himself as a “law and order” candidate who would help the police tackle violent crime.But now, as Mr. Trump campaigns again for the White House, he has added a new promise to his speeches on the trail: to “indemnify” police officers and protect them from the financial consequences of lawsuits accusing them of misconduct.“We are going to indemnify them, so they don’t lose their wife, their family, their pension and their job,” he said during a speech this month in New York.Legal experts say Mr. Trump’s proposal — which he first raised in an interview in October and has floated five times this month — would have little effect and would largely enforce the status quo. Police officers in most jurisdictions are already protected from being held financially responsible for potential wrongdoing. They also benefit from a legal doctrine that can shield officers accused of misconduct from lawsuits seeking damages.Since entering politics, Mr. Trump has often pledged his allegiance to the police as a way to attack Democrats, accusing them of being more concerned about progressive ideas than public safety. For decades, he has batted down calls for police reform, arguing that such changes hinder officers from using aggressive crime-fighting tactics.His promise to indemnify officers also reveals a contradiction at the heart of his current campaign. Even as he proclaims his steadfast support for rank-and-file officers, he has been raging against federal and state law enforcement officials who have led the four criminal cases against him, resulting in 91 felony charges.Two Capitol Police officers who were injured during the riot on Jan. 6, 2021, have sued him, accusing him of inciting violence, and Colorado’s Supreme Court ruled this week that there was enough evidence that he engaged in insurrection to disqualify him from holding office again.Those realities have not stopped Mr. Trump from courting the police, meeting with law enforcement groups on the trail and posing with officers who are part of his motorcade. He and his aides often post photos and videos of the interactions on social media.Supporters of Mr. Trump at an event in Edinburg, Texas, last month honoring service members who were working on the border over the Thanksgiving holiday.Meridith Kohut for The New York TimesDuring a speech on Sunday in Nevada, he proudly told the crowd that he “shook so many hands of policemen” before arriving. Later, when he promised to indemnify officers, he called them out: “All those policemen that were shaking my hand back there, you better be listening.”Mr. Trump frequently criticizes Democrats as too critical of law enforcement. He conjures up images of big cities as lawless and unsafe, laying the blame on liberal politicians whose calls for police reform, he says, have deterred officers from carrying out their duties. The police, he has argued in recent speeches, are being “destroyed by the radical left.”“They’re afraid to do anything,” Mr. Trump said recently. “They’re forced to avoid any conflict, they’re forced to let a lot of bad people do what they want to do, because they’re under a threat of losing their pension, losing their house, losing their families.”But legal scholars who have studied the issue say that police officers are already largely shielded from personal financial consequences when it comes to lawsuits brought against them.“The idea that officers need indemnification is frankly absurd,” said Alexander A. Reinert, a professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York. “Because they already have it.”Indemnification, in a legal context, refers to a process by which one party agrees to cover the liability of another party, essentially agreeing to pay for any wrongdoing by the second party.In the case of policing, many state and local governments have laws in which they agree to indemnify police officers for lawsuits. In other cases, police unions obtain indemnification agreements as part of their bargaining.Joanna Schwartz, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, published a study in 2014 looking at lawsuits against the police in 81 jurisdictions over six years. She found that 99.98 percent of the money paid to plaintiffs in these cases came from local governments or their insurance companies — not from the officers themselves.“Officers virtually never pay anything in settlements or judgments entered against them,” Ms. Schwartz said in an interview.Mr. Trump, as is often the case, has been vague about the specifics of his plan, making it difficult to know whether such a move would be feasible, though experts say that enacting it might require legislation from Congress rather than an executive order.In Nevada on Sunday, Mr. Trump said the government would pay the police “for their costs, for their lawyers.” Earlier this year, he said he would protect states and cities from being sued, a remark that suggested a broad expansion of existing legal protections for police officers accused of violating constitutional rights.Under a legal doctrine known as qualified immunity, someone who accuses the police of using excessive force or discriminating against them must not only show that misconduct occurred, but also generally be able to cite a closely similar previous case in which officers were held responsible.Critics say that qualified immunity offers blanket protections that prevent officers from being held accountable. Policing groups say these protections are necessary to keep officers from being so worried about personal liability that they fail to do their jobs.Mr. Trump has long expressed staunch support for qualified immunity for police officers, particularly during his 2020 re-election bid, when the nation was racked with protests after the murder of George Floyd. Several major police unions endorsed him during that campaign.A rally for Mr. Trump in Latrobe, Pa., during his re-election bid in 2020, when protests over George Floyd’s murder made policing a front-and-center political issue. Anna Moneymaker for The New York TimesIn 1989, well before he entered the political arena, Mr. Trump bought advertising in New York claiming that concern over civil liberties had hampered the police and led to a rise in crime.In a newspaper ad, he wrote of being young and watching “two young bullies” harass a waitress in a diner. “Two cops rushed in, lifted up the thugs and threw them out the door, warning them never to cause trouble again,” he wrote. In 2017, when Mr. Trump was president, he urged the police not to be “too nice,” telling them not to protect the heads of people suspected of being gang members when putting them into squad cars. Law enforcement authorities across the country criticized those remarks.In 2020, as protests rocked Minneapolis, Mr. Trump called the demonstrators “thugs” on social media and wrote, “When the looting starts, the shooting starts.” The post was criticized for encouraging violence against protesters. Mr. Trump later said he meant to convey that looting generally led to violence, an interpretation that ignored the phrase’s racist history.As the protests spread across the country, he threatened to send the military to cities and states if he believed their leaders were failing to maintain order.This year, at a gathering of Republicans in California, Mr. Trump said he thought shoplifters should be shot on their way out of stores. “If you rob a store, you can fully expect to be shot as you are leaving that store,” he said, to which the crowd responded with uproarious applause.Then, after calling for the extrajudicial shootings of petty criminals, Mr. Trump returned to a familiar message.“You know, our law enforcement is great,” he said. “But they’re not allowed to do anything.”Kitty Bennett More