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      Ron DeSantis Calls for ‘Deadly Force’ Against Suspected Drug Traffickers

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      Campaigning in a Texas border city, the Florida governor laid out a series of hard-right immigration proposals, including some that would face legal roadblocks or test the limits of presidential authority.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida made a campaign stop in the border city of Eagle Pass, Texas.Brent McdonaldGov. Ron DeSantis of Florida on Monday proposed a host of hard-right immigration policies, floating the idea of using deadly force against suspected drug traffickers and others breaking through border barriers while “demonstrating hostile intent.”“Of course you use deadly force,” Mr. DeSantis said after a campaign event on a sweltering morning in Eagle Pass, a small Texas border city. “If you drop a couple of these cartel operatives trying to do that, you’re not going to have to worry about that anymore,” he added. He said they would end up “stone-cold dead.”He did not clarify how Border Patrol officers or other law enforcement authorities might determine which people crossing the border were smuggling drugs. He said only that “if someone is breaking through the border wall” while “demonstrating hostile intent or hostile action, you have to be able to meet that with the appropriate use of force.”Mr. DeSantis’s proposal served as an escalation of Republican messaging on the border and was part of a host of plans he unveiled in an effort to match the hard-line immigration stance of former President Donald J. Trump, who privately suggested shooting migrants in the legs during his administration.Mr. DeSantis said that if elected, he would seek to tear down some of the pillars of American immigration law, such as the automatic granting of citizenship to those born in the United States.And he said his administration would “fully deputize” state and local law enforcement officers in states like Texas to arrest and deport migrants back to Mexico — a power now reserved for the federal government — and to detain migrant children indefinitely, despite a court order imposing strict limits on the practice. He also promised to end “phony asylum claims.”“Of course you use deadly force,” Mr. DeSantis said of drug traffickers after the campaign event, held on a sweltering morning in Texas.Christopher Lee for The New York TimesThose policies are sure to appeal to conservative voters in the Republican presidential primary contest, but they would be likely to run into legal roadblocks and could test the limits of presidential authority. The Constitution has been held to guarantee birthright citizenship, and the Supreme Court ruled in 2012 that states cannot enact their own immigration policy.And while Mr. DeSantis argued that the country needed harsh new immigration rules because the current ones were encouraging dangerous border crossings and the mistreatment of migrant children, some of his proposals could also endanger migrants, including the use of “deadly force” against people cutting through the border wall.“You do it one time and they will never do it again,” he said.His campaign said in a news release that he would follow “appropriate rules of engagement” and that the rules would apply to “those trying to smuggle drugs into the United States.” (The overwhelming majority of drugs are smuggled in commercial vehicles coming across official ports of entry, not carried by migrants, according to U.S. border authorities.)Another plan Mr. DeSantis put forward, which would require certain asylum seekers to wait in Mexico, was previously employed by Mr. Trump, drawing criticism for forcing migrants to live in squalid tent camps where some were reportedly subjected to sexual assault, kidnapping and torture.Mr. DeSantis has made immigration a centerpiece of his campaign, but he has presented few specifics until now. Other policy proposals he released on Monday included:Deploying the military to “assist” Border Patrol agents until a wall is finished.Cracking down on Mexican drug cartel activity, including by blocking precursor chemicals used to manufacture drugs “from entering Mexican ports,” if the Mexican government does not act to stop the cartels.Detaining all migrants who cross the border without authorization until their immigration court hearing date. (Such a policy would most likely require the creation of a vast new prison system.)“These are ideas that have rightly been categorized for a really long time as radical and extremist,” said Aron Thorn, a senior lawyer in the Beyond Borders Program of the Texas Civil Rights Project.The policy rollout on Monday suggested that Mr. DeSantis, who is trailing Mr. Trump by roughly 30 percentage points in national polls, was trying to outflank the former president on immigration. Mr. DeSantis — whose “stop the invasion” language is a hallmark of America’s far right — has argued that he is the candidate most likely to enact conservative immigration policies. He has accused Mr. Trump of “running to the left,” saying that “this is a different guy today than when he was running in 2015 and 2016.”But even among voters who came to see Mr. DeSantis on Monday at a cinder-block-and-steel Veterans of Foreign Wars post in Eagle Pass, some said that they remained more inclined to vote for Mr. Trump.“He’s Trump 2.0, but this isn’t his time,” said John Sassano, 60, a retired teacher in Eagle Pass who described himself as a former Democrat. “I’d love to see him as V.P.”Sandy Bradley, 66, a retired government worker, traveled with two friends from Del Rio, a nearby border town, to hear Mr. DeSantis, buying festive cowboy hats at a Walmart on the way. “I think he will catch up,” she said, adding that Mr. DeSantis seemed to share her Christian values.She added that she wanted a candidate who would address illegal immigration and “stop all the influx.”Mr. DeSantis went directly from the event to a news conference at a ranch along the Rio Grande outside town where the state of Texas had recently constructed fencing with concertina wire in an area where migrants often cross.“This is an ongoing problem,” said Ruben Garibay, who owns the ranch. Mr. Garibay, wearing a black cowboy hat and speaking in the shade of a tree as the temperature neared 100 degrees Fahrenheit, said he had agreed to host Mr. DeSantis but had yet to make up his mind about which candidate to support. “It’s a little early in the game,” he said.Mr. Trump first deployed a so-called Remain in Mexico policy, which the Biden administration later reversed. He also proposed ending birthright citizenship during his first campaign, although he failed to do so while in office, and has recently renewed those calls as a candidate. And, of course, he ran in 2016 on building a wall at the southern border, an issue that helped propel him to the White House.On his social media site on Monday, Mr. Trump said that Mr. DeSantis’s “sole purpose in making the trip was to reiterate the fact that he would do all of the things done by me in creating the strongest Border, by far, in U.S. history.”Hundreds of migrants waiting inside a makeshift migrant camp to be loaded onto buses and taken for processing at a Customs and Border Protection substation in El Paso, Texas, in May. Ivan Pierre Aguirre for The New York TimesAs governor, Mr. DeSantis last month sent hundreds of Florida law enforcement officers and Florida National Guard members to Texas, saying President Biden had failed to secure the border, a repeat of a similar effort in 2021 ahead of Mr. DeSantis’s re-election campaign.This year, Mr. DeSantis also signed a bill cracking down on undocumented immigrants that was seen as one of the harshest such measures in the country. And he announced a national coalition of more than 90 local sheriffs who said they would band together to fight gang activity and illegal drugs that they argue are the result of the Biden administration’s border policies. (Only a few of the sheriffs are from border states.)Some immigration analysts questioned the viability of Mr. DeSantis’s proposals, suggesting they were driven by the political imperatives of a presidential campaign.“The bulk of the proposal is the usual laundry list of Republican talking points that have not been successful, either in Congress or in the court of public opinion,” said Louis DeSipio, a political scientist at the University of California, Irvine, citing the idea to end birthright citizenship, among other proposals. “The purpose is probably not a serious policy debate but instead to focus on an issue that is a weakness for Biden and a sensitive one for Trump.”And Jennie Murray, the president of the National Immigration Forum, a nonprofit group that advocates immigration policies that address economic and national security needs, pointed to the difficulties in actually carrying out Mr. DeSantis’s plans.“Deporting huge numbers of immigrants would be costly and extremely detrimental, especially during these times of historic labor shortages,” she said.Miriam Jordan More

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      Trump Steers Campaign Donations Into PAC That Covers His Legal Fees

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      A previously unnoticed change in Donald Trump’s online fund-raising appeals allows him to divert a sizable chunk of his 2024 contributions to a group that has spent millions to cover his legal fees.Facing multiple intensifying investigations, former President Donald J. Trump has quietly begun diverting more of the money he is raising away from his 2024 presidential campaign and into a political action committee that he has used to pay his personal legal fees.The change, which went unannounced except in the fine print of his online disclosures, raises fresh questions about how Mr. Trump is paying for his mounting legal bills — which could run into millions of dollars — as he prepares for at least two criminal trials, and whether his PAC, Save America, is facing a financial crunch.When Mr. Trump kicked off his 2024 campaign in November, for every dollar raised online, 99 cents went to his campaign, and a penny went to Save America.But internet archival records show that sometime in February or March, he adjusted that split. Now his campaign’s share has been reduced to 90 percent of donations, and 10 percent goes to Save America.The effect of that change is potentially substantial: Based on fund-raising figures announced by his campaign, the fine-print maneuver may already have diverted at least $1.5 million to Save America.And the existence of the group has allowed Mr. Trump to have his small donors pay for his legal expenses, rather than paying for them himself.Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Mr. Trump, did not answer detailed questions about why the Trump operation has changed how the funds he is raising are being split. Save America technically owns the list of email addresses and phone numbers of his supporters — one of the former president’s most valuable assets — and the campaign is effectively paying the PAC for access to that list, he explained.“Because the campaign wants to ensure every dollar donated to President Trump is spent in the most cost-effective manner, a fair-market analysis was conducted to determine email list rentals would be more efficient by amending the fund-raising split between the two entities,” Mr. Cheung said in a written statement.Mr. Trump gave the keynote speech at the state Republican convention in Georgia this month. Onstage, he mentioned the indictments against him, which have become intertwined with his fund-raising efforts.Jon Cherry for The New York TimesThe different rules governing what political action committees and candidate campaign committees can pay for are both dizzying and somewhat in dispute. But generally, a PAC cannot spend money directly on the candidate’s campaign, and a campaign committee cannot directly pay for things that benefit the candidate personally.For more than a year, before Mr. Trump was a 2024 candidate, Save America has been paying for bills related to various investigations into the former president and his allies. In February 2022, the PAC announced that it had $122 million in its coffers.By the beginning of 2023, the PAC’s cash on hand was down to $18 million, filings show. The rest had been spent on staff salaries, on the costs of Mr. Trump’s political activities last year — including some spending on other candidates and groups — and in other ways. That included the $60 million that was transferred to MAGA Inc., a super PAC that is supporting Mr. Trump. And more than $16 million went to pay legal bills.Mr. Trump’s rivals are not similarly splitting their online proceeds with an affiliated PAC. The websites of former Vice President Mike Pence, former Ambassador Nikki Haley and Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina direct all the proceeds to their campaign committees. The same goes for Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey and Vivek Ramaswamy.Mr. Trump at a campaign event in Manchester, N.H., in April. On his campaign website, supporters can buy an “I Stand With Trump” T-shirt and other merchandise alluding to his costly legal troubles.Sophie Park for The New York Times“I think in this particular situation, specifically because of the use of the leadership PAC to pay legal expenses and potentially other expenses that would be illegal personal use of campaign money, there’s an unusual incentive for the leadership PAC to take in more than it normally would,” said Adav Noti, senior vice president and legal director of Campaign Legal Center.In the run-up to Mr. Trump’s latest campaign, his legal bills exploded in size. Save America spent $1.9 million in what it identified as legal expenses in the first half of 2022. That figure ballooned to nearly $14.6 million in the second half of last year, federal records show.In late 2022, a Trump adviser said that about $20 million had been set aside by Save America PAC to cover legal expenses.Since then, Mr. Trump has been indicted twice, once by a Manhattan grand jury on charges stemming from a hush-money payment to a porn star, and once by a federal grand jury in Florida on charges including violations of the Espionage Act arising from Mr. Trump’s possession of classified material and government records long after he left office.A prominent attorney, Todd Blanche, left his white-collar law firm in April to join the former president’s legal team and is now representing him in both cases, and Mr. Trump recently met with about a half-dozen lawyers in Florida.Mr. Trump’s legal troubles are deeply intertwined with his political campaign and fund-raising efforts. His campaign store is selling an “I Stand With Trump” T-shirt showing the date of his indictment in Manhattan (“03.30.2023”) for $36; it recently added a second shirt with his Florida indictment date (“06.08.2023”) for $38. Half the featured items on the store’s landing page show a fake mug shot and the words “not guilty.”And Mr. Trump’s usual legal strategy — delay, delay, delay — could prove costly as overlapping teams of white-collar lawyers defend him in the federal case and the Manhattan criminal case, as well as in the investigation in Georgia, where Mr. Trump could face yet another indictment this summer for his role in trying to overturn the 2020 election. He is also facing an intensifying investigation by the special counsel Jack Smith into his efforts to cling to power after losing the election.It remains unclear whether Mr. Trump will try to use his campaign funds to pay for lawyers, should he run into difficulties with the political action committee — and whether such a move would run afoul of spending rules.“He can use the campaign to pay for legal bills that arise out of candidate or officeholder activity — and of course, some of the current legal matters fall into that category, and some do not, and some are in a gray area,” Mr. Noti said. “It really depends on what matter we’re talking about.”Jason Torchinsky, a Republican election lawyer, said he believed Mr. Trump was barred from using Save America donations to pay his personal legal expenses now that he’s a candidate, arguing that doing so would be “an excessive contribution” under Federal Election Commission precedent. And he said Mr. Trump could not use campaign money at all, because it would qualify as personal use.There have been signs that Mr. Trump’s campaign has been carefully monitoring its expenses.He has mainly attended events organized by other groups, as opposed to staging his own large-scale political rallies, which were the lifeblood of his two past runs for president and are one of his favorite parts of campaigning. Those rallies are expensive, costing at least $150,000 and usually more than $400,000.Mr. Trump has held only one full-scale rally in the seven months he has been running, with a second scheduled on July 1 in South Carolina, his first in an early-nominating state. (A rally in Iowa on May 13 was canceled after a tornado warning, though the weather cleared and Mr. DeSantis pointedly held an impromptu event nearby.)People familiar with the Trump campaign’s plans have said that the dearth of rallies was as much about husbanding resources as it was about getting Mr. Trump to engage with voters in a more traditional way. The people also suggested that more large-scale events might come in the fall, as the primary race heats up.But the fund-raising surges that Mr. Trump experienced after his first indictment at the end of March and again in June are expected to obscure a broader fund-raising slowdown. His campaign announced that he had raised $12 million in the first week after his first indictment and $7 million in the week after his second one. He will next disclose the state of his PAC and campaign’s finances in federal filings in July.Mr. Trump is unusually dependent on online fund-raising. He has held only one major campaign fund-raiser that was billed as such by his team: the event at Bedminster on the evening of his indictment. It raised $2 million. More

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      Republicans Serve Up Red Meat for a Reason

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      There are, as of Saturday, at least 13 people running for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination: former President Donald Trump; his U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley, his vice president, Mike Pence; Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida; Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota; the former governors Chris Christie of New Jersey and Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas; Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina; the former representative Will Hurd of Texas; Mayor Francis Suarez of Miami; and the entrepreneurs and media personalities Vivek Ramaswamy, Perry Johnson and Larry Elder.With this many candidates, you might assume that Republicans were fighting over a broad range of different ideas and competing solutions to the nation’s most serious problems, of which there are more than a few. But they aren’t. Instead, Republicans are studiously focused on the fever dreams and preoccupations of right-wing media swamps while showing an almost total indifference to the real world.Consider the wildfires.This month, because of unusually strong and destructive fires in the Canadian wilderness, much of the U.S. Northeast was blanketed with smoke and other pollutants. In the worst-hit areas, such as New York City, public health officials urged residents to either stay inside or use masks when venturing outdoors.This is what climate crisis looks like. Rising average temperatures mean drier conditions, increased drought and greater accumulation of the organic material — dead and dying trees, leaves and shrubs — that fuel wildfires. And this is on top of emissions produced by cars and other vehicles in an economy that still runs on fossil fuels. For many Americans, in other words, it takes little more than a glance outside the window to see a major problem of national consequence.President Biden issued a statement on Twitter, pledging assistance to the Canadian government as it fought to contain blazes and connecting the increasing strength, length and frequency of wildfires to climate change. “We’ve deployed more than 600 U.S. firefighters, support personnel and equipment to support Canada as they respond to record wildfires — events that are intensifying because of the climate crisis,” he said.Other national politicians have made similar points. “It bears repeating how unprepared we are for the climate crisis,” Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York tweeted. “We must adapt our food systems, energy grids, infrastructure, healthcare, etc ASAP to prepare for what’s to come and catch up to what is already here.”Missing in the discussion of what to do about the wildfires — and how to equip the country for future climate emergencies — is the entire Republican presidential field. There’s been no serious attempt to speak to the reality that millions of Americans have been exposed to dangerous amounts of air pollution and that this will only worsen in our continued climate crisis. No grappling with the fact that wildfire haze over the past several years has erased nearly two decades of clean air gains across the country.But we do have their previous statements on climate change. Trump appears to think that climate change is a hoax. “In my opinion, you have a thing called weather, and you go up, and you go down,” he said in a Fox News interview last year. “If you look into the 1920s, they were talking about global freezing.” As president, he rolled back more than 100 environmental regulations.His closest rival for the nomination, DeSantis, has called the concern over the climate a “pretext” for “left-wing stuff” from activists who are trying to “smuggle in their ideology.”Pence and Scott do not deny that climate change is real, but they consistently downplay the extent of human responsibility and the severity of the effect on the environment. And in a testament to their overall indifference to the problem, both of them want to expand U.S. production of fossil fuels. “From banning gas stoves to blocking vital pipelines, the far-left’s energy policies are completely unrealistic,” Scott said on Twitter this month. “The American people know the solution to affordable energy is simple: stop the radical climate agenda and start unleashing our domestic energy supply.”Haley and Christie have also acknowledged the existence of man-made climate change; they just don’t think the government should actually do anything about it. And Ramaswamy has denounced climate activism as a secular “religion.”You get the picture. In the face of a real crisis, the would-be leaders of the United States have no real plan.You can go down the list of issues. What do the Republican presidential candidates have to say about gun violence and mass shootings? Well Haley, at least, says that we need to end “gun-free zones” and consider the use of “clear bulletproof tape” in schools. Beyond that, she and her rivals have had nothing substantive to say. Child poverty? Nothing. Mental health care? Very little in the way of actual policies.Ask the Republican presidential candidates about the “woke mind virus” or gender-affirming care, on the other hand, and you’ll hear an endless stream of comment and condemnation, all to the deafening applause of Republican voters. Which gets to the issue.Red meat is what Republican voters want. And even Trump — who will say anything to win the approval of a crowd — is a little shocked by it. “It’s amazing how strongly people feel about that,” the former president said this month, referring to critical race theory and transgender issues. “I talk about cutting taxes, people go like that. I talk about transgender, everyone goes crazy. Five years ago, you didn’t know what the hell it was.”I am reminded here of George Wallace, the infamous and influential Alabama governor who rode the anti-civil-rights backlash to the highest reaches of American politics. In 1958, however, he was a racial moderate, running for governor against a virulent segregationist who, he said, was “rolling with the new wave of the Klan and its terrible tradition of lawlessness.” Wallace lost. And when he returned to the stage four years later, he did so as an even fiercer segregationist than his former opponent. Asked to explain his terrible transformation, he was blunt.“I started off talking about schools and highways and prisons and taxes, and I couldn’t make them listen,” he said. “Then I began talking about niggers, and they stomped the floor.”If Republican politicians have nothing to say of substance, it is because Republican voters don’t want substance. They want to stomp the floor.What I WroteMy Friday column was on Trump’s conception of the presidency — that it belongs to him — and what that might reflect about the current shape of the Republican coalition.No longer content to run government for business, the Republican Party now hopes to run government as a business.But this doesn’t mean greater efficiency or responsiveness or whatever else most people (mistakenly) associate with private industry. It means, instead, government as the fief of a small-business tyrant.The next Republican president, in short, will almost certainly be the worst boss you, and American democracy, have ever had.Now ReadingRobin D.G. Kelley on the long war on Black studies for The New York Review of Books.J. Mijin Cha on the alliance between labor and climate activists for Dissent magazine.Erik Baker on Daniel Ellsberg for The Baffler magazine.Kali Holloway on Clarence Thomas for The Nation magazine.K. Austin Collins on the westerns of Anthony Mann and Jimmy Stewart for Current magazine.Photo of the WeekJamelle BouieA festive home, seen during a recent visit to New Orleans. I used a Yashica twin-lens reflex camera and Kodak color film.Now Eating: One-Pot Pasta With Ricotta and LemonI’ve been on a real pasta kick recently, and this is an exceptionally easy dish to make — and popular with kids, too. There are a few things you can do to make this a full meal. You can add peas, asparagus or spinach as the pasta finishes boiling, and you can toss with a nice tinned tuna as well. If you want to up the flavor, you can make your own ricotta. Either way, I would serve with a simple salad to make sure the plate has plenty of green. Recipe comes from New York Times Cooking.IngredientsKosher salt1 pound short, ribbed pasta, like gemelli or penne1 cup whole-milk ricotta (8 ounces)1 cup freshly grated Parmesan or pecorino (2 ounces), plus more for serving1 tablespoon freshly grated lemon zest plus ¼ cup lemon juice (from 1 to 2 lemons)Black pepperRed pepper flakes, for serving¼ cup thinly sliced or torn basil leaves, for servingDirectionsBring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Add the pasta and cook according to package instructions until al dente. Reserve 1 cup pasta cooking water, then drain the pasta.In the same pot, make the sauce: Add the ricotta, Parmesan, lemon zest and juice, ½ teaspoon salt and ½ teaspoon pepper and stir until well combined.Add ½ cup pasta water to the sauce and stir until smooth. Add the pasta and continue to stir vigorously until the noodles are well coated. Add more pasta water as needed for a smooth sauce.Divide the pasta among bowls and top with some of the sauce that’s pooled at the bottom of the pot. Garnish with grated Parmesan, black pepper, red pepper flakes and basil, if using. More

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      In New York Primaries, Democrats Feel the Heat From the Right

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      The Queens district attorney and several City Council members face more conservative challengers who are criticizing them on issues including public safety.When Melinda Katz ran for Queens district attorney in 2019, her principal opponent in the Democratic primary was a public defender and democratic socialist with a platform of ending cash bail and eventually abolishing the police.With endorsements from progressive prosecutors around the country — as well as from Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — Tiffany Cabán, a first-time candidate, lost by fewer than 60 votes after painting Ms. Katz as a regressive Democrat.Four years later, the strongest challenge to Ms. Katz is coming from George Grasso, an opponent running to her right who has accused her of being soft on crime.It’s not the only contest in the city where moderate Democrats are facing opponents on the right in primaries on Tuesday. In several City Council races, from the Bronx to southern Brooklyn, moderate Democrats are being challenged over public safety, affordable housing and education by more conservative members of their own party.“It’s really rare that so many challengers in this primary season are running to the right of the incumbent Democrat,” said Trip Yang, a Democratic consultant who is working on the campaign of Stanley Ng, who is running to the right of the front-runner in the 43rd Council District in southern Brooklyn. “Primary challengers to incumbent Democrats are usually running from the left or making a generational argument about it being time for new leadership.”In the Bronx, Councilwoman Marjorie Velázquez, who ran as a progressive in 2021, is facing two such challengers who have criticized her support of a plan to rezone Bruckner Boulevard in Throgs Neck. In Lower Manhattan, Councilman Chris Marte is facing off against opponents who have accused him of wanting to “defund” the police, which he denies.A councilwoman from Queens, Linda Lee, who represents Bayside, faces more conservative challengers. In Harlem, three moderate candidates are running to replace Kristin Richardson Jordan, a democratic socialist who dropped out. And in the newly drawn 43rd Council District, the three Asian American Democrats running in the primary listed public safety and education as their top two issues.Marjorie Velázquez, a City Council member from the Bronx, said she is a moderate who is falsely viewed as a socialist.Anna Watts for The New York TimesSome see the trend as partially tied to demographic shifts from immigrants who are more conservative on two issues: public safety, especially after a rash of attacks on Asian Americans during the pandemic, and education, where progressives have backed changes to entry exams for specialized high schools with large Asian American enrollment.Between 2010 and 2020, New York City’s population grew by more than 629,000, according to a report from the CUNY Research Consortium on Communities of Interest. More than half of that increase came from a net growth in the Asian population, including a 43 percent growth in Brooklyn and the Bronx.Asian American voters have shifted to the right in recent elections. In the race for governor last year, majority Asian districts remained Democratic but shifted to the right by 23 points from the 2018 election, according to an analysis by The New York Times.Yiatin Chu, president of the Asian Wave Alliance, said Republican candidates are aligned with views that many Asian immigrants value, which she said Democrats have not engaged well on. Others say that Democrats have left themselves vulnerable by not effectively articulating their positions.“What elected official doesn’t care about public safety?” said Councilman Justin Brannan, a Democrat who represents Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, and is likely to face a strong Republican challenge in the general election. “But because we’ve allowed the right to paint us with this broad brush that we all want to abolish law enforcement, now Democrats feel compelled to lead with that.”He is supporting Wai Yee Chan, the executive director at Homecrest Community Services, in the 43rd Council District Democratic primary. She is running against Mr. Ng and Susan Zhuang, the chief of staff for Assemblyman William Colton.Sensing a threat from the right, Future NYC, a pro-business super PAC; Labor Strong, a coalition of the city’s most powerful unions; and the New York City District Council of Carpenters are funneling hundreds of thousands of dollars for advertising and on-the-ground support to help several moderate candidates.Future NYC recently pledged to spend approximately $500,000 to support Ms. Velázquez and Ms. Lee, said Jeff Leb, the group’s treasurer.Ms. Velázquez was one of 15 people who left the City Council’s Progressive Caucus in February after it asked members to agree to a statement of principles that included less funding for the police. She was recently endorsed by the conservative Police Benevolent Association. Still, her challengers have criticized Ms. Velázquez as too far left, citing her support of the Bruckner Boulevard rezoning that would bring affordable housing.One of them, Bernadette Ferrara, chairwoman of Bronx Community Board 11, said at a recent debate: “I am not going to let a weak and woke progressive like Marjorie Velázquez destroy a lifetime of work by stuffing the East Bronx with high-density, low-income housing.” Ms. Velázquez said she changed her mind and decided to support the Bruckner Boulevard rezoning, where new buildings will range from three to eight stories, because it would bring jobs and housing for older residents and families. The first Latina to represent her district, she said voters assume that she’s further left than she actually is.“I’ve heard that you’re socialist because you’re like A.O.C., and it’s like, no, I’m not,” Ms. Velázquez said referring to Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, a democratic socialist. “I am a moderate.”In Manhattan, Mr. Marte, who considers himself a progressive, said he has no plans to leave the Council caucus, and characterized his opponents as being further right than their comments suggested.All three of Mr. Marte’s challengers — Susan Lee, a consultant, Ursila Jung, a private investor, and Pooi Stewart, a substitute teacher — listed public safety as their top issue in the New York City voting guide.In a debate on NY 1, Susan Lee cited hate crimes against Asian Americans as a top public safety priority.And in the same debate, Ms. Jung defended her position by saying, “You can argue the numbers are going down, but a lot of public safety is perception.”Ms. Chu’s group endorsed George Grasso over Ms. Katz and ranked Susan Lee and Ms. Jung as their first two choices in the race against Mr. Marte. The group did not rank Ms. Chan in Brooklyn’s District 43, choosing Ms. Zhuang and Mr. Ng as their first and second choices. The Asian American winner of the Democratic primary in District 43 could face Vito J. LaBella, a former Police Department officer who is a conservative Republican, in what is expected to be a competitive general election. Mr. LaBella lost a close election for the State Senate by about 200 votes last year. He is running against Ying Tan, who works in senior services, in the Republican primary.Ms. Chu said many in her group are wary of “identity politics” and would not have a problem voting for Mr. LaBella in the general election.In the district attorney race, Ms. Katz has fended off attacks from Mr. Grasso, a former administrative judge and former Police Department first deputy commissioner, about her approach to crime.George Grasso, a primary candidate for Queens district attorney, is running as a more conservative Democratic who has accused his opponent of being soft on crime.Amir Hamja/The New York Times“I think there’s a gnawing sense among people throughout the city, and Queens in particular, that they’re just not feeling as safe as they felt a few years ago, and they’re not seeing the political leadership respond in an assertive way,” Mr. Grasso said in an interview.Ms. Katz has been endorsed by Mayor Eric Adams and Gov. Kathy Hochul, both moderates. During her first term, she said she had focused on gang takedowns, gun seizures and retail theft. She accused her opponent of “cherry picking” crime data and courting Republicans.“His claims,” said Ms. Katz, “are ludicrous.”Emma G. Fitzsimmons More

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      The Run-Up Goes to Iowa

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      Listen and follow ‘The Run-Up’Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon MusicFor the past few months, The Run-Up has been reporting on political insiders and the work they’ve quietly been doing to shape the 2024 presidential election.What we’ve found is a group of people — Republicans and Democrats — all operating under the premise that this race will revolve around former President Donald Trump. That his nomination — and thus a rematch between Trump and President Biden — is almost inevitable.But if anything is going to blow up that assumption, it’s probably going to start in Iowa.As the first state in the Republican primary process, Iowa plays a key role in narrowing the field. If Trump wins there, it may effectively mean that he has secured the nomination.However, there’s a group of voters that holds disproportionate power in the state and in American culture more broadly. These voters were once part of Trump’s coalition — and they are now wavering.If they go another way, the whole race could open up.In our final episode of the season, The Run-Up goes to Iowa and inside the evangelical church. We speak with Bob Vander Plaats, an evangelical activist with a history of picking Iowa’s winners. And we go to Eternity Church, where Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida recently spoke, and talk to Jesse Newman, the pastor, and other members of the congregation.Photo Illustration by The New York Times. Photo by Jenn Ackerman for The New York TimesAbout ‘The Run-Up’First launched in August 2016, three months before the election of Donald Trump, “The Run-Up” is The New York Times’s flagship political podcast. The host, Astead W. Herndon, grapples with the big ideas already animating the 2024 presidential election. Because it’s always about more than who wins and loses. And the next election has already started.Last season, “The Run-Up” focused on grass-roots voters and shifting attitudes among the bases of both political parties. This season, we go inside the party establishment.New episodes on Thursdays.Credits“The Run-Up” is hosted by More

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      Vivek Ramaswamy Is ‘a Hint of the Future’: Our Writers on His Candidacy

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      As Republican candidates enter the race for their party’s 2024 presidential nomination, Times columnists, Opinion writers and others will assess their strengths and weaknesses with a scorecard. We rate the candidates on a scale of 1 to 10: 1 means the candidate will probably drop out before any caucus or primary voting; 10 means the candidate has a very strong chance of receiving the party’s nomination next summer. This entry assesses Vivek Ramaswamy, a hedge fund analyst turned biotech executive. More

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      DeSantis Dodges Question on Endorsing Trump as 2024 Nominee

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      The Florida governor did say he would “respect the outcome” of the primaries while Donald Trump has refused to commit to backing the party’s 2024 nominee if the former president falls short.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida on Thursday avoided saying directly that he would endorse Donald J. Trump in 2024 should the former president win the Republican nomination, showing his reluctance to make a benign show of support for the man who is beating him by a wide margin in national polls and insulting him nearly every day.Asked by a reporter at a news conference in Tampa about whether he would endorse Mr. Trump, the governor responded by complaining that Mr. Trump had recently criticized his policies during the coronavirus pandemic. Mr. DeSantis noted in particular that his rival had compared him unfavorably to New York’s former governor, Andrew M. Cuomo, a Democrat.“So what I would say is this: When you are saying that Cuomo did better on Covid than Florida did, you are revealing yourself to just be full of it,” Mr. DeSantis said. “Nobody believes that.”“I remember in 2020 and 2021, when he was praising Florida for being open, saying we did it much better than New York and Michigan and everyone was coming to Florida and that we were one of the great governors in the United States,” he continued, his voice rising. “And he used to say that all the time. Now, all of a sudden, his tune is changing. And I would just tell people, do you find it credible? Do you honestly find it credible?”Mr. Trump himself has not pledged to back the party’s nominee in 2024 if a rival defeats him in the primaries, underscoring the level of division in the Republican field. Mr. Trump’s federal indictment has led some of the other candidates to more openly criticize him, questioning his judgment. But Mr. Trump, who regularly calls Mr. DeSantis “Ron DeSanctimonious” and accuses him of needing a “personality transplant,” retains the support of many Republican voters.At the end of his answer, Mr. DeSantis, who is trailing Mr. Trump by roughly 30 percentage points in national polls as more candidates jump into the race, turned to acknowledge the importance of the nominating contest.“It’s an important process and, you know, you respect the process and you respect the people’s decisions how this goes,” he said. “But I’m very confident that those decisions are going to be positive for us.”On social media, Mr. Trump’s allies quickly pounced on Mr. DeSantis’s refusal to pledge loyalty to his rival if he falls short.“Ron DeSantis just proved once again why he’s a Never Trumper in the mold of Liz Cheney and Jeb Bush, completely disqualifying him for 2024, as well as 2028,” Steven Cheung, a spokesman for the Trump campaign, said in a statement.But Mr. Trump, of course, has taken a similar stance.“It would depend,” Mr. Trump said in a radio interview earlier this year when asked if he would support “whoever” won the party’s nomination. He added, “It would have to depend on who the nominee was.”Republicans have generally shown far more grace to Mr. Trump than to his rivals, chastising those challenging the former president for sentiments similar to ones he has also expressed.The Republican National Committee has said that candidates must promise to support the party’s eventual nominee if they want to participate in debates.Later on Thursday, at a campaign event in South Carolina, Mr. DeSantis seemed to backtrack slightly, interrupting a reporter who asked why he had seemed to avoid committing to support Mr. Trump.“I didn’t avoid, no, I was misquoted,” Mr. DeSantis shot back. “Here’s what I said, I said: ‘You run this process. You compete and you respect the outcome of the process.’ And I’ve always said that. And so that’s what I said before. That’s what I’ll do. I think I’m going to be the nominee. No matter what happens, I’m going to work to beat Joe Biden.”Voters at the South Carolina event said they hoped Mr. DeSantis and other Republican candidates would back Mr. Trump, should the former president be the nominee.“I think everybody should unite, whoever gets the nomination,” said Shawn Risseeuw, 57, a mechanical engineer who lives in North Augusta, S.C., and described himself as a strong DeSantis supporter. “They’re fools if they don’t.” More

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      Senator Rick Scott of Florida Weighing 2024 Presidential Campaign

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      If he runs, Mr. Scott would become the fourth Republican presidential candidate from Florida, joining Donald Trump, Gov. Ron DeSantis and Mayor Francis X. Suarez of Miami.Senator Rick Scott of Florida is considering a late entry into the Republican presidential primary race, a move that would make him the latest high-profile Florida Republican to try to wrest the nomination from Donald J. Trump, according to two people familiar with the discussions.Should he enter the race, Mr. Scott, Florida’s former governor, would be challenging both the front-runner, Mr. Trump, as well as the distant-second rival, Ron DeSantis, the state’s current governor. Mr. Scott would also join Mr. Trump, Mr. DeSantis and Mayor Francis X. Suarez of Miami as the fourth Republican presidential candidate from Florida. Mr. DeSantis in particular could see his support erode further if Mr. Scott adds to an already crowded field of Trump alternatives.Mr. Scott, who came to power as governor during the Tea Party wave of 2010, has been discussing a possible campaign for several weeks, according to the people familiar with the talks. Like other recent entries, Mr. Scott appears to be assessing a G.O.P. field in which Mr. DeSantis, with whom Mr. Scott has had a difficult relationship, has lost some support after a series of missteps and unforced errors.Larry Hogan, the Republican former governor of Maryland, captured this sentiment in a recent CBS News interview, calling Mr. DeSantis’s campaign “one of the worst I’ve seen so far.” He added, “Everyone was thinking he was the guy to beat, and now I don’t think too many people think that.”On Thursday, Will Hurd, a moderate Republican and former Texas congressman, announced a long-shot candidacy for president in a video message.For Mr. Scott, who is 70 years old and wealthy enough that he can fund his own candidacy, the campaign could be the last chance he has to make a bid for the White House, a run he has long shown interest in. Should a Republican unseat President Biden in the 2024 election, it would be difficult for Mr. Scott or anyone else in the party to challenge that new president during a re-election effort four years later.But running for president would be a dramatic shift for Mr. Scott, who announced earlier this year that he would seek a second six-year term in the Senate in 2024 instead of a national campaign.Mr. Scott’s senior adviser, Chris Hartline, said in a statement to The New York Times: “It’s flattering that some have mentioned the possibility of Senator Scott running for President, but as he’s said many times, he’s running for re-election to the Senate.”If Mr. Scott does decide to enter the race, it is unclear how aggressively he would challenge Mr. Trump, who currently dominates the field even after being indicted twice.Mr. Scott led a major for-profit hospital chain before getting involved in politics. He served as governor of Florida for two terms before running for Senate in 2018. In 2021 and 2022, he was the chairman of the Senate Republican campaign arm, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, a prestige perch that senators often use to boost their national profiles ahead of a presidential campaign. Mr. Scott’s tenure was rocky, marked by a cash drain from the committee and criticisms about how the money was spent.Mr. Trump made clear early on that he planned on trying to keep his grip on the Republican Party after the attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob on Jan. 6, 2021. Mr. Scott visited Mr. Trump at Mar-a-Lago, the former president’s private club, in April 2021 to grant him a newly-created award from the National Republican Senatorial Committee.“This weekend I was proud to recognize President Donald Trump with the inaugural @NRSC Champion for Freedom Award,” Mr. Scott wrote on Twitter, posing in a picture with Mr. Trump. “President Trump fought for American workers, secured the border, and protected our constitutional rights.”At the time, Mr. Trump remained popular with the Republican Party’s base even after his baseless claims that the 2020 election was “rigged” against him. Mr. Scott, as chairman of a party committee, appeared to find harmony with Mr. Trump to be in the best interests of Senate nominees.Mr. Scott has had a more contentious relationship with Mr. DeSantis.Before Mr. DeSantis signed into state law a bill restricting most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, Mr. Scott said that he favored keeping what were then the current restrictions, after 15 weeks of pregnancy. He also called for “cooler heads” to “prevail” as Mr. DeSantis escalated a feud with Disney, the largest private employer in Florida. A monthslong fight between the governor and the company stemmed from the opposition some officials at Disney had to a new state law restricting gender and sexuality education in elementary schools.Mr. Scott was not a favorite of some of his colleagues in the Senate. In 2022, he ran an ultimately failed bid to oust the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, from his leadership position, the capstone in what had become a toxic relationship between the two Republicans.Should Mr. Scott abandon a re-election bid in favor of a presidential run, it would create an open primary for his Senate seat. And it would potentially add another layer to the Trump-DeSantis rivalry, as a Trump-backed candidate would likely face off against a DeSantis-backed one.A Republican congressman from Florida, Representative Mike Waltz, is strongly considering a run for Senate to replace Mr. Scott if Mr. Scott makes a bid for the White House, according to a person familiar with the discussions. Mr. Waltz has endorsed Mr. Trump’s 2024 campaign for president. More