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      Republicans Grapple With Being Speakerless, but Effectively Leaderless, Too

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      With a speaker fight in the House, concerns about an aging Senate leader and a 2024 front-runner who has the party in a vise grip, some G.O.P. members worry the turmoil could have long-term effects.Kevin McCarthy, the ousted speaker, was making his way through the Capitol when reporters asked what he thought of the chaos consuming House Republicans, who for nearly three weeks have been trying and failing to replace him.His answer veered into the existential. “We are,” he said on Friday, “in a very bad place right now.”That might be an understatement.In the House, Republicans are casting about for a new leader, mired in an internecine battle marked by screaming, cursing and a fresh flood of candidates. In the Senate, their party is led by Senator Mitch McConnell, who spent weeks arguing that he remained physically and mentally fit enough for the position after freezing midsentence in two public appearances. And on the 2024 campaign trail, the dominant front-runner, Donald J. Trump, faces 91 felony charges across four cases, creating a drumbeat of legal news that often overwhelms any of his party’s political messages.As national Democrats largely stand behind President Biden and his agenda — more united than in years — Republicans are divided, directionless and effectively leaderless.For years, Mr. Trump has domineered Republican politics, with a reach that could end careers, create new political stars and upend the party’s long-held ideology on issues like trade, China and federal spending. He remains the party’s nominal leader, capturing a majority of G.O.P. voters in national polling and holding a double-digit lead in early voting states.And yet his commanding position has turned Republicans into a party of one, demanding absolute loyalty to Mr. Trump and his personal feuds and pet causes, such as his false claims that the 2020 election was stolen. The result is an endless loop of chaos that even some Republicans say once again threatens to define the party’s brand heading into an election in which Republicans — after struggling to meet the basic responsibilities of governing the House of Representatives — will ask voters to also put them in charge of the Senate and the White House.“This looks like a group of 11th graders trying to pick the junior class president, and it will hurt our party long term,” said former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, who is challenging Mr. Trump for the party nomination. “It’s going to be very hard to make the case that the American people should turn over control of the government to Republicans when you can’t even elect a speaker.”In recent months, the former president has focused more on his own legal peril than on his party. Flouting pressure from the Republican National Committee, Mr. Trump has largely opted out of some of the party’s biggest moments. He skipped the first two Republican primary debates for his own events and plans to skip the third, forgoing a chance to present his party’s message to an audience of millions.And he has largely taken a hands-off approach to the fight over the House speakership. Nine months ago, he helped install Mr. McCarthy as speaker. But he did not come to Mr. McCarthy’s rescue this fall when Representative Matt Gaetz led the charge to oust him. He then endorsed Representative Jim Jordan, who has failed to win enough support.Political parties out of power typically lack a strong leader. In 2016, Mr. Trump’s election plunged Democrats into years of ideological battles between a restive liberal wing and a more moderate establishment. But what’s less typical — and perhaps more politically damaging, some Republicans said — is the drawn-out, televised turmoil putting the internal dysfunction on public display.“It’s kind of a captainless pirate ship right now — a Black Pearl with no Jack Sparrow,” said Ralph Reed, a prominent social conservative leader, who argued that the issues would eventually be resolved. “But on the bright side, we will have a speaker at some point.”“These Republicans are complete idiots,” Ann Coulter, the conservative commentator, said on a radio program last week.Mr. McConnell all but threw up his hands in interviews on the Sunday talk shows. “It’s a problem,” he said on “Face the Nation” on CBS. “We’re going to do our job and hope the House can get functional here sometime soon.”And The Wall Street Journal editorial board, long a bastion of establishment Republican thought, wrote more than a week into the drama: “As the current mess in choosing another House Speaker shows, never underestimate the ability of Republicans to commit electoral suicide.”Most frustrating to some Republicans is the fact that the messy battle is largely symbolic. Democrats control the Senate and the White House, meaning that whoever becomes speaker has little chance of making their agenda into law.Still, there could be real-world political implications. As Republicans battled one another, Mr. Biden focused on an actual war. He spent much of last week building support for Israel, with a wartime visit and an Oval Office prime-time appeal for $105 billion in aid to help Israel and Ukraine — funds that face an uncertain future in a House frozen by infighting.It’s a split screen Democrats are more than happy to highlight.“The president of the United States, a Democrat, gave the strongest pro-Israel speech, at least since Harry Truman, maybe in American history,” said Representative Jake Auchincloss, a moderate Democrat from Massachusetts. “The division is on the Republican side of the aisle, where they are so fractured they can’t even elect a leader of their conference.”Mike DuHaime, a veteran Republican strategist who is advising Mr. Christie, said the inability to pick a speaker was a “new low” for Republican governance. “If you don’t have the presidency there is no clear leader of the party,” he said. “That’s natural. What’s unnatural here is that we can’t run our own caucus.”But others say that Mr. Trump, along with social media and conservative media, has turned the very incentive structure of the party upside down. With a broad swath of the conservative base firmly behind the former president, there may be little political cost in causing chaos. The eight Republicans who voted to oust Mr. McCarthy, for example, are likely to face no backlash for plunging the party into disarray. As their message is amplified across conservative media, they’re more likely to see their political stars rise, with a boost in fund-raising and attention.“What’s happening is you have people who don’t want to be led, but also want to engineer a situation where they can be betrayed and use that to rail against leadership,” said Liam Donovan, a Republican strategist and former National Republican Senatorial Committee aide.Some Republicans doubt the incident will have a lasting impact. In the summer, the party will pick a nominee at its national convention, and that person will become Republicans’ new standard-bearer.Nicole McCleskey, a Republican pollster, said the messy dust-up in the House would be forgotten by next November’s elections, washed away as just another moment of broken government amid near-record lows for voters’ trust in Congress.“People are used to Washington dysfunction, and this is just another episode,” she said. “It’s Republicans and Democrats, and they’re all dysfunctional. For voters, it’s just further evidence that Washington can’t address their problems.” More

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      DeSantis Says He Would Cancel Student Visas of Hamas Sympathizers

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      At a G.O.P. candidate showcase in Iowa, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida and his rivals repeatedly sought to one-up one another on support for Israel.In a competition of hawkish messages on Israel, Ron DeSantis pledged on Friday night to revoke the student visas of Hamas sympathizers if elected president, while Tim Scott said he would withhold Pell grants from universities that failed to stamp out antisemitism.At an Iowa showcase featuring most of the top Republican presidential contenders, the Florida governor and the South Carolina senator engaged in one-upmanship about who would best support Israel, America’s closest Middle East ally.With their focus on students and academic institutions, they repackaged a traditional line of attack for Republicans: that liberal college campuses foster “woke” extremism, which they said was now taking the form of anti-Israel expressions.“You see students demonstrating in our country in favor of Hamas,” Mr. DeSantis said. “Remember, some of them are foreigners.”Mr. DeSantis then warned that if he became president, “I’m canceling your visa and I’m sending you home.”His remarks, during a tailgate at a construction plant in Iowa City, echoed recent talking points of former President Donald J. Trump, the G.O.P. front-runner, and Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, who sent a letter to Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken this week urging him to rescind the visas of “Hamas sympathizers.”Mr. Trump, who did not attend the event, had issued a similar pledge to expel student sympathizers of Hamas.Tim Scott, a South Carolina senator, said he had sponsored a bill to deny Pell grants to colleges that failed to stamp out antisemitism.Jordan Gale for The New York TimesMr. Scott, who has been polling in the low single digits, said that he had already sponsored a bill — which he would sign if elected president — that would deny Pell grants to colleges and universities that shirk responsibility for condemning support for terrorist groups.By their inaction, he said, they were sending a message that “it’s OK to be anti-Israel.” He continued, “I say no.”At a town hall earlier on Friday in Cedar Rapids, Nikki Haley, a former ambassador to the United Nations under Mr. Trump, delivered a similar warning and accused some colleges and universities of promoting violence.“We have got to start connecting their government funding with how they manage hate,” she said. “Because when you do that, you are threatening someone’s life when you do that. That’s not freedom of speech.”Nikki Haley, a former South Carolina governor and ambassador to the United Nations under Mr. Trump, said Israel should wipe out Hamas.Jordan Gale for The New York TimesMs. Haley, who has been sparring with Mr. DeSantis over the Israel-Hamas conflict as she threatens to eclipse him in some polls, also spoke at the showcase on Friday night. The event was hosted by Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks, a Republican from a competitive district in Iowa. The state holds its first-in-the-nation presidential caucus in mid-January.At the event, Ms. Haley called for Israel to wipe out Hamas, a militant group backed by Iran.“Stop acting like it’s Sept. 10,” she said.But Vivek Ramaswamy, the biotech entrepreneur, struck a contrast with his G.O.P. rivals, calling for restraint toward an imminent ground invasion by Israel in Gaza. He said that Israel should heed the lessons of the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.“To what end?” he said.Mr. Scott took the opposite view.”I am sick and tired of people saying to Israel, ‘Settle down,’” he said.Jazmine Ulloa More

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      DeSantis Campaign Offloads Costs for Private Flights to Super PAC

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      The Florida governor’s campaign, facing a cash crunch, has found a way to offload the steep costs of private air travel. Campaign finance experts say the arrangement could test the limits of the law.Short on cash, Gov. Ron DeSantis’s presidential campaign has found an unusual way to pay for his habit of flying in private planes: passing the cost to the better-funded super PAC that is increasingly intertwined with his operation.The practice, described by three people who spoke about the arrangement on the condition of anonymity, appears to have cut the campaign’s travel bills by hundreds of thousands of dollars in September alone. It could test the limits of campaign finance laws, experts said.“This is old news, and it’s entirely appropriate for N.B.D. to be covering the costs of their events,” said Andrew Romeo, a spokesman for the DeSantis campaign, using shorthand for the super PAC, Never Back Down. “The campaign is firing on all cylinders, and as we see a considerable uptick in fund-raising, we are continuing to identify cost savings, run an efficient operation, and focus resources on Iowa and the early states.”Asked on Friday about the flights as he visited a Veterans of Foreign Wars post in Murrells Inlet, S.C., Mr. DeSantis said, “Everything is checked by lawyers,” adding, “I don’t move without lawyers signing off.”Never Back Down pays for Mr. DeSantis’s travel only on days when the events he is attending are hosted solely by the group, the people familiar with the arrangement said. The super PAC now hosts many of his events in early primary states.A representative for Never Back Down declined to comment on the arrangement.Federal candidates can appear as “featured guests” of super PACs, but whether a super PAC can also pay for transportation is less clear cut. Super PACs are not allowed to coordinate with campaigns, and campaign finance experts say that Mr. DeSantis’s arrangement — in which he is campaigning for president as a guest of a super PAC — could test that rule.“I think what DeSantis is currently doing is an abuse of this law to benefit his candidacy — paid for by his super PAC and its special-interest donors,” said Saurav Ghosh, a former Federal Election Commission lawyer and the director of federal campaign finance reform for the Campaign Legal Center.The Campaign Legal Center filed an ethics complaint in July with Florida officials against Mr. DeSantis for failing to disclose gifts of plane travel — made before he formally declared his candidacy for president — that was arranged by a nonprofit group, an arrangement described by The New York Times in May.Aside from comfort, private air travel can be a tremendous help to candidates as they move quickly from state to state in the thick of primary season. Many of the other Republican presidential candidates have often flown commercial, including Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, who has taken jabs at Mr. DeSantis for his well-known preference for flying private.The travel expenses for Mr. DeSantis’s campaign have previously drawn scrutiny.In July, his campaign’s first report showed that he had spent $179,000 on chartered planes, as well as $483,000 to a limited liability company for “travel.” Never Back Down paid that same company $343,000 in June.In August, The Washington Post reported that Never Back Down and the campaign had become joint investors in a private transportation management company that provided lower-cost airplane rental leases for Mr. DeSantis, citing people familiar with the deal. The Post reported that Mr. DeSantis had used planes from the company in July; in its October filing, the campaign lists the last payment to the company, Empyreal Jets, as $41,433 on August 10.A shrinking campaignCampaign finance filings show just how much Mr. DeSantis’s campaign has transformed since late July, when sagging poll numbers and astronomical spending forced him to pare back his operation and reboot his bid for the White House.Mr. DeSantis, who has served as Florida’s governor since 2019, began his run for president in May campaigning as a front-runner, with money to burn. With a large entourage in tow, he traveled to big venues, delivering his stump speech in highly stage-managed appearances; he kept the news media at arm’s length and spent millions on consultants.In July, records show, the campaign spent $5.5 million. Bills that month included nearly $1 million for travel, including hundreds of thousands to jet rental companies; $1.8 million to consultants specializing in areas like survey research, media and fund-raising; and $828,000 in payroll expenses.Then came the financial report for the second quarter of 2023, which revealed an unsustainable level of spending. At the end of July, Mr. DeSantis cut more than a third of his staff, hired a new campaign manager and handed over most of his event planning to Never Back Down, which was already managing operations traditionally handled by a campaign, like field work.By the end of September, he was running like an insurgent: leaner, more accessible and much less expensive.The campaign spent 75 percent less in September than it did in July, the records show, even as Mr. DeSantis toured Iowa, traveled to New York and Texas for donor events, and delivered speeches in California and Washington, D.C. Travel costs plummeted to $130,000 in September from about $1 million in both July and August.The campaign’s top expenses in September were relatively modest: $100,000 for media placement, $70,000 for postage, $70,000 for digital fund-raising consulting. Payroll costs fell to $532,000.The downsizing was in part strategic, Mr. DeSantis’s campaign and his surrogates have said, positioning him as a nimbler, scrappier presence on the trail. They say it has been a success, allowing Mr. DeSantis to engage with voters directly and saving campaign funds.Lingering cash problemsBut Mr. DeSantis’s financial situation remains strained. Averaged over the entire quarter, the campaign spent 99 cents of every dollar it brought in, a worrisome burn rate. The campaign entered October with only $5 million in cash on hand for the primary election, and $1 million in debts, which appear to be unpaid bills.His fund-raising from July through September declined by about 25 percent from the previous quarter.More than 80 percent of all the money Mr. DeSantis’s campaign has raised since entering the race in May has come from people who have given more than $200, and at least two-thirds came from people who have given at least the maximum $3,300 allowed for the primary, a greater share than any other Republican candidate, the filings show.This is a sign of enthusiasm for Mr. DeSantis among large donors, but it suggests a weakness among smaller donors. While it is impossible to say how many individual small donors he has — his campaign has an arrangement that prevents the disclosure of donors of less than $200 in official records — such donors are critical to the long-term success of a campaign, since they can be tapped for repeated contributions, and can be an indicator of broader enthusiasm for a candidate.The campaign’s Oct. 15 filing does not provide a full picture of its financial health. Some of the campaign’s expenses may not have appeared, because campaigns sometimes defer paying bills until after the quarter is over.And some larger expenses have been shifted over to Never Back Down, which for months has been acting as a shadow campaign operation. In July, the campaign said Mr. DeSantis would shift focus to smaller, intimate events, and would rely on invitations from outside organizations rather than hosting events itself.Shifting the strategyMr. DeSantis is now running the type of campaign befitting a candidate low on cash, who is trailing the front-runner, Donald J. Trump, in national polls by more than 40 percentage points, and has lost ground to other candidates who are raising — and saving — money faster.In Iowa this month, after a full day of campaigning, Mr. DeSantis stopped at a small diner in Fort Madison to meet a group of roughly two dozen voters, patiently taking their questions in an impromptu question-and-answer session outside.In New Hampshire, he gabbed with clusters of voters at gas stations and convenience stores in the state’s remote North Country. It was a shoestring approach that felt worlds removed from a campaign that spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in May to court donors at the Four Seasons in Miami.Mr. DeSantis has also significantly adjusted his press strategy, becoming a constant presence in the mainstream news media and regularly taking questions in person from reporters.His newfound accessibility has earned him reams of free media, even if it means he now must take tougher questions.Some questions, though, can be deferred — like details about who is covering his flights. His campaign, the super PAC and other committees supporting him do not have to file financial reports again until Jan. 31, after the first nominating contests in Iowa and New Hampshire.Rachel Shorey More

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      Haley, DeSantis, Christie: 11 Trump Voters Discuss

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      What’s making you lean toward Trump? What’s making you leantoward Trump? “I felt safer.” Amy, 51, white, S.C. “He unbalanced a corrupt system.” Cristian, 35, multiracial, Nev. “Business background.” Carol, 69, white, Iowa There may still be a contest for the Republican presidential nomination underway — the Iowa caucuses aren’t until Jan. 15 — but […] More

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      Tim Scott’s Super PAC Cancels Fall TV Ad Buys

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      In a memo, the super PAC told donors that it was not going to “waste our money when the electorate isn’t focused or ready for a Trump alternative.”The main super PAC supporting Senator Tim Scott’s presidential campaign abruptly announced to donors in a memo that it was canceling millions of dollars in television ads it had reserved this fall, writing that Donald J. Trump’s strength was so ingrained among Republican voters that additional advertising would currently make little difference.“We aren’t going to waste our money when the electorate isn’t focused or ready for a Trump alternative,” Rob Collins, a Republican strategist who is a co-chairman of the super PAC, wrote in the blunt memo to donors that was circulated on Monday. “We have done the research. We have studied the focus groups. We have been following Tim on the trail. This electorate is locked up and money spent on mass media isn’t going to change minds until we get a lot closer to voting.”A copy of the memo was obtained by The New York Times.The super PAC, called the Trust in Mission PAC, or TIMPAC, has been one of the largest advertisers in the race, spending roughly $5 million in Iowa alone this year. Mr. Scott’s poll numbers have hardly budged, however, and Mr. Trump remains far ahead.In addition to the super PAC, Mr. Scott’s campaign had also spent aggressively on television advertising, spending more than $12.5 million on ads to run through the end of November, the campaign said. That total far eclipses any other campaign, according to AdImpact, a media-tracking firm. It’s not clear exactly how much the super PAC is canceling, though it could be $15 million or more. The group, according to data from AdImpact, has roughly $10 million reserved in just the next six weeks.“We are doing what would be obvious in the business world but will mystify politicos,” Mr. Collins wrote in the memo.The super PAC is likely to begin paying for some of Mr. Scott’s events as part of a move that was described as shifting resources elsewhere.The decision to cancel the ads and begin paying for some of Mr. Scott’s events comes a day after Mr. Scott revealed the deteriorating state of his campaign’s finances, which showed swelling spending and shrinking receipts.Mr. Scott had a robust $13.3 million cash on hand — including $11.6 million that can be used for the primary — but he raised only $4.6 million in the third quarter, down from $5.9 million the previous quarter. In the most recent period, Mr. Scott raised only a fraction of what former Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida pulled in, and roughly one-tenth of Mr. Trump’s haul.He was even topped by Vivek Ramaswamy, who raised $7.4 million in the third quarter, about a third of which came from donors who gave less than $200.Mr. Scott’s campaign has been spending freely. When Mr. Scott entered the race in May, he brought with him $22 million left over from his last Senate re-election — and he has been steadily burning through that stockpile. In July alone, the campaign spent $5.4 million. In contrast, Ms. Haley’s campaign spent $3.5 million in the entire third quarter.Mr. Scott’s super PAC had entered July with only $15 million in cash on hand yet it soon made $40 million in television and digital reservations.That gap raised questions about how the super PAC had secured so much money so quickly. At the center of those questions is Larry Ellison, the founder of Oracle, who previously had been one of Mr. Scott’s biggest benefactors but had not yet been among those donors who had given to the super PAC in the first half of the year. The canceled ads are likely to raise more questions about what financial role Mr. Ellison is playing.The super PAC said it would continue to spend on door-knocking programs, raising money online for Mr. Scott and holding events. The group claimed it was not giving up on the campaign entirely. Mr. Collins argued that Mr. Scott remained the “best fit” for Iowa voters and that for other campaigns and super PACs that fill the breach, “money will simply be wasted.” He wrote in the memo that two-thirds of Iowa caucusgoers will decide in the last six weeks before the caucus on Jan. 15, 2024 — not in the next six weeks.Regardless of the rationale, the decision will be seen in political circles as all but abandoning Mr. Scott.“Some will challenge our theory of the election,” Mr. Collins wrote, “but we would ask these critics to produce any evidence that shows any candidate, at this time, at any spending level, breaking through.”Matt Gorman, a spokesman for Mr. Scott, said in a statement that Mr. Scott’s campaign remained “built for the long haul — powered by the most primary cash on hand and the highest candidate favorability of anyone in the field.”He added, “On issues ranging from foreign policy to abortion, he has been the clearest and strongest voice, leading while others have followed.” More

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      Trump’s Giant Lead Is Financial, Too: 6 Takeaways From 2024 Filings

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      Ron DeSantis has spent heavily and Nikki Haley has padded her war chest. On the Democratic side, President Biden continues to show overall strength, and the party’s incumbent senators fared well.Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign entered October with nearly as much cash on hand for the Republican primary race as the rest of the field combined, underscoring the former president’s dominance as the contest enters its critical final stretch before the Iowa caucuses in January.The financial picture, laid out in quarterly fund-raising and spending reports filed by campaigns on Sunday, shows just how uphill Mr. Trump’s challengers are fighting, with some of them appearing to hemorrhage cash. Still, others showed signs of momentum. More

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      DeSantis and Haley Diverge on Help for Gaza Refugees

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      The two Republican candidates appeared to diverge on attitudes toward civilians in the Gaza Strip who are bracing for an invasion by Israel.The deepening humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip is driving a wedge between Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley, two of the leading Republican presidential candidates, who deviated sharply on Sunday over whether the United States should help Palestinian refugees from the region ahead of an expected Israeli invasion.In an appearance on the CBS morning show “Face the Nation,” Mr. DeSantis, the Florida governor, doubled down on remarks he had made one day earlier in Iowa, espousing a hard-line opposition toward helping civilians who have been thrust into the middle of the conflict.“They teach kids to hate Jews,” he said. “The textbooks do not have Israel even on the map. They prepare very young kids to commit terrorist attacks. So I think it’s a toxic culture.”Ms. Haley, the former United Nations ambassador under President Donald J. Trump, pushed back against that view during a CNN interview on Sunday with Jake Tapper on “State of the Union.”“America has always been sympathetic to the fact that you can separate civilians from terrorists,” she said after being shown a clip of Mr. DeSantis’s initial comments on Saturday.Nearly one million people are grappling with shortages of food, clean water and shelter in Gaza, which is bracing for a land invasion by Israel in retaliation for the Oct. 7 attacks and the taking of hostages by Hamas, an Iran-backed militant group.Mr. DeSantis argued on Sunday that it would be detrimental to the United States to “import” large numbers of refugees and would fuel antisemitism, echoing comments he made about people in Gaza the day before that drew scrutiny.At a campaign event on Saturday, Mr. DeSantis said, “If you look at how they behave, not all of them are Hamas, but they are all antisemitic. None of them believe in Israel’s right to exist.”He added: “The Arab states should be taking them. If you have refugees, you don’t fly people in and take them into the United States of America.”When the CBS anchor Margaret Brennan pointed out to Mr. DeSantis that Arabs are Semites and replayed his remarks, he stood by his words.Nikki Haley, former South Carolina governor at the First in the Nation Leadersip Summit in Nashua, New Hampshire on Friday.John Tully for The New York TimesGovernor Ron DeSantis of Florida at the First in the Nation Leadership Summit in Nashua, New Hampshire on Friday.John Tully for The New York Times“There was a lot of celebrating of those attacks in the Gaza Strip by a lot of those folks who were not Hamas,” he said.Ms. Brennan suggested that it was a remote possibility that refugees from Gaza could resettle in the United States, saying that they could not even evacuate from their immediate area. Still, Republicans have used the broader conflict to frame their postures on military action and humanitarian aid.In the House, Representatives Tom Tiffany of Wisconsin and Andy Ogles of Tennessee, both Republicans, have announced that they plan to introduce a bill they say would block the Biden administration from issuing visas to Palestinian passport holders.Mr. DeSantis, who served in the Navy’s Judge Advocate General Corps in Iraq, was also asked whether he would advise the Israeli military to stop their attacks on the infrastructure that provides water and electricity to Gaza.“I don’t think they’re under an obligation to be providing water and these utilities while the hostages are being held,” he said.Ms. Haley struck a more sympathetic chord earlier on Sunday, saying that large percentages of Palestinians and Iranians did not support the violence being perpetrated against one another.“There are so many of these people who want to be free from this terrorist rule,” she said.While the Republican candidates have expressed solidarity with Israel in the wake of the Hamas attacks, they have also clashed with each other over who is most loyal to Israel, America’s closest Middle East ally, and what the role of the United States should be in conflicts overseas.Ms. Haley on Sunday continued to condemn Mr. Trump, her former boss and the Republican front-runner, for referring to Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militant group, as “very smart” while criticizing Israel’s prime minister and Israeli intelligence. She accused Mr. Trump of emboldening U.S. adversaries and drawing attention to himself.“You don’t go and compliment any of them because what that does is that makes America look weak,” she said on CNN, adding: “This isn’t about Trump. It’s not about him.”A spokesman for the Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Sunday.Ms. Haley also leveled fresh criticism toward President Biden, saying that he should never have agreed to free up $6 billion in frozen oil revenue money for Iran for humanitarian purposes as part of a hostage release deal that was announced in August.Facing blowback over the money’s release, the Biden administration and Qatar agreed last week to deny Iran access to the funds, which White House officials had said had not been spent.“You empowered Iran to go and strengthen Hamas, strengthen Hezbollah, strengthen the Houthis to spread their terrorist activity,” Ms. Haley said.The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Sunday.Haley Johnson More

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      Quinn Mitchell, Known for His Pointed Questions of Candidates, Ejected From GOP Event

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      Quinn Mitchell, an aspiring journalist from New Hampshire, was escorted out of a G.O.P. candidate summit on Friday, though he was later allowed to return.It was the type of tough question a Republican presidential candidate might get on a Sunday morning talk show, only the person asking it was 15: Quinn Mitchell wanted to know if Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida believed that former President Donald J. Trump had violated the peaceful transfer of power on Jan. 6, 2021.Video of the uncomfortable exchange at a June 27 town hall in Hollis, N.H., for Mr. DeSantis, who dodged the question, ricocheted online. So did the pair’s next encounter at a July 4 parade in Merrimack, N.H., where a video showed Quinn, an aspiring journalist, being shooed away by a handler for the Florida governor.But the teenager said he was not prepared for what happened on Friday, when he was briefly ejected by police officers from the First in the Nation Leadership Summit, a candidate showcase organized by the New Hampshire Republican Party. The two-day event in Nashua, N.H., featured Mr. DeSantis and most of the G.O.P. field, but not Mr. Trump.“They said, ‘We know who you are,’” Quinn, who has his own political blog and podcast, said in a phone interview on Saturday from his home in Walpole, N.H., referring to the organizers of the summit.Quinn, who received a guest credential for the summit from the state’s G.O.P., said a person associated with the event had told him that he had a history of being disruptive and had accused him of being a tracker, a type of political operative who records rival candidates.The next thing he knew, Quinn said, he was being led to a private room and was then ushered out of the Sheraton Nashua hotel by local police officers. His ejection was first reported by The Boston Globe.Jimmy Thompson, a spokesman for the New Hampshire Republican Party, said in a text message on Saturday that the teen’s removal had been a mistake.“During the course of the two-day event, an overzealous volunteer mistakenly made the decision to have Quinn removed from the event, thinking he was a Democrat tracker,” Mr. Thompson wrote. “Once the incident came to our staff’s attention, NHGOP let him back into the event, where he was free to enjoy the rest of the summit.”Quinn met Vivek Ramaswamy at a Republican event in Newport, N.H., last month. Mr. DeSantis isn’t the only candidate who has faced his direct questions.Sophie Park for The New York TimesA spokesman for the DeSantis campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Saturday.A public information officer for the Nashua Police Department also did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Saturday.According to his website, Quinn has attended more than 80 presidential campaign events since he was 10, taking advantage of New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation status in the nominating process to pose questions to candidates.He said he wanted to hear former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey speak on Friday, along with the businessman Perry Johnson, a long-shot candidate.At a town hall featuring Mr. Christie in April, Quinn had asked another pointed question: Would Hillary Clinton have been better than Mr. Trump as president?Mr. Christie, the former president’s loudest critic in the G.O.P. field, answered that he still would have chosen Mr. Trump in the 2016 election, describing the contest as “the biggest hold-your-nose-and-vote choice” the American people ever had.About two months later, it was Mr. DeSantis’s turn to field a question from Quinn, this one about Mr. Trump’s actions on Jan. 6.“Are you in high school? said Mr. DeSantis, who has faced criticism as a candidate for not being fluid when interacting with voters and journalists, a dynamic that has made for some awkward exchanges on the campaign trail.The Florida governor pivoted, arguing that if the 2024 election focused on “relitigating things that happened two, three years ago, we’re going to lose.”Quinn said that it did not seem like a coincidence that he was kicked out of the event on Friday before Mr. DeSantis’s remarks, which he had planned to skip.“They know the story between me and DeSantis,” he said.By the time he was allowed to return to the event, Quinn said he was able to catch Mr. DeSantis’s remarks. But when the governor opened it up for a question, Quinn left.“OK, one quick question, what do you got?” Mr. DeSantis asked an audience member.Nicholas Nehamas More