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      Will Hurd Searches for a 2024 Republican Base

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      Hoping to break through a crowded presidential field in 2024, the former Texas congressman is pitching himself as a modern and moderate Republican with a bipartisan vision.It is the stuff of viral internet legend now. After snow disrupted their flights, Will Hurd, the former Republican congressman, and Beto O’Rourke, a Democrat from a neighboring district, climbed into a rented Chevy Impala and took a cross-country road trip from their home state of Texas to Washington.As they live streamed what they called “a bipartisan town hall” to millions of Americans on Facebook and Twitter, featuring hourslong policy debates on health care, singalongs to Willie Nelson and doughnut runs, the two captured the national attention as Americans watched them cultivate a friendship, even as they disagreed.More than six years later, on a sunny day this July, Mr. Hurd was on the road again, this time as a longer than long-shot presidential candidate, a moderate whose penchant for bipartisanship puts him at odds with the party’s current mood.Riding in a rented gray S.U.V. and cutting through the wooded highways of New Hampshire, he was seeking the spotlight once again, in a race for the Republican nomination that is being driven by some of the party’s loudest and most partisan voices.Mr. Hurd is already a long-shot candidate, and his penchant for reaching across the aisle is something of an outlier in a race led by former President Donald J. Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida.David Degner for The New York Times“Have I changed my opinion that more unites us than divides us? No,” Mr. Hurd said, recalling the lessons he took from his trip with Mr. O’Rourke. “People were craving something different — craving it.”Mr. Hurd, 45, wants to show voters that he brings something different to the race. A Black Republican who has represented a majority Latino district and wants to broaden his party’s appeal, he is not, as he puts it, about “banning books” or “harassing my friends in the L.G.B.T.Q. community.”It’s a hard sell in a primary that so far has been dominated by culture-war issues that are the focus of the front-runners as well as by the legal issues surrounding former President Donald J. Trump.Mr. Hurd has the most difficult of paths ahead. He has been on the campaign trail for only a little more than a month and is lagging behind his opponents in staffing, name recognition and fund-raising. The latest quarterly filings showed he had just $245,000 in cash on hand.He may fall short of the qualifications for the first Republican primary debate on Aug. 23, which requires candidates to draw a minimum of 40,000 unique donors and at least 1 percent of voter support in three approved polls.Even if he were to meet those requirements, he still might not get on the debate stage: He has refused to fulfill the Republican National Committee’s most disputed stipulation, that candidates sign a pledge to support their party’s eventual nominee. Not having a seat at the debate table means losing the most important lever to gaining attention in the primary.At a pit stop outside Manchester, Mr. Hurd said he had no issue with championing another Republican. But he said he would not support Mr. Trump. “I’m not going to lie to get a microphone,” Mr. Hurd said, digging into a Philly cheesesteak and salty fries.Back on the road, Mr. Hurd did not downplay the challenges. In interviews, town halls and political events, he is often quick to refer to himself as a “dark horse” or “a start-up,” meticulously targeting the kind of voter that data suggests might be most open to his background and message. Those voters, he added, include a cross-section of people — Republicans, independents and moderates — who are tired of the toxicity in politics, reject Mr. Trump and want someone with a vision for the future of the Republican Party. Proving that group of people indeed exists as a coherent base of support will be the ultimate test of his candidacy.Mr. Hurd believes his voter base includes an eclectic mix of people who are looking for a new chapter in Republican politics.David Degner for The New York TimesMr. Hurd’s charisma and enthusiasm for wonky policy comes across in one-on-one conversations, but it remains to be seen how well his expertise will translate on the stump. At a 2024 presidential candidate speaker series at Dartmouth College, where he arrived that afternoon, an audience of more than 50 people seemed to gradually warm up to Mr. Hurd after a stiff start.“We are in a competition — the Chinese government is trying to surpass us as a global superpower,” Mr. Hurd said, warning that A.I. could lead to unemployment but could also help bridge inequality in education. “And I’m very specific. I say, the Chinese government. It’s not the Chinese people. It’s not the Chinese culture. It’s not Chinese Americans.”In the audience, Alice Werbel, 78, a retired nurse practitioner who drove in from Norwich, a bedroom community in Vermont, said she saw Mr. Hurd as “up and coming” and commended him for his courage in refusing to sign the debate pledge.Even those who admire Mr. Hurd’s politics are not necessarily set on giving him their support. One voter who saw Mr. Hurd speak at Dartmouth said she planned to vote for President Biden.David Degner for The New York TimesBut when Mr. Hurd’s remarks concluded, she did not seem convinced he had a road to the presidency. She said she planned to vote for President Biden in 2024.“Biden should appoint him technology czar or A.I. czar or cabinet secretary of technology,” she added.Afterward, at a dinner where Mr. Hurd spoke with a small group of students, Josh Paul, 21, a conservative and a government major, was not sure if the Texas Republican could pull off a win either, but he said he was going to help Mr. Hurd try. He had found Mr. Hurd’s rejection of Mr. Trump so refreshing that he sought out a campaign staffer to sign up as a volunteer.“I don’t understand how, if conservatism is all about fidelity to your oath and to the Constitution, how you can possibly sit silently by while this guy lies and lies and lies and incites an insurrection,” Mr. Paul said, referring to Mr. Trump and the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.For three terms, Mr. Hurd represented one of the most competitive congressional districts in the country — a wide, largely Hispanic area that stretches from El Paso at the western tip of Texas, all along the nation’s southwestern border, to San Antonio. The only Black Republican in the House when he announced his retirement in August 2019, Mr. Hurd said one of the reasons he was leaving Congress was to help diversify his party’s ranks.Mr. Hurd sometimes toes a difficult line in his party, embracing some core values, like opposing abortion, while taking more complicated stances on others.David Degner for The New York TimesMr. Hurd has been a fierce and consistent critic of Mr. Trump but has remained a steadfast Republican with conservative values. Before the students at Dartmouth, he said he would be willing to sign a 15-week ban on abortion, with exceptions for certain cases, such as rape or incest. Like his Republican rivals of color, he walks a thorny line between rejecting the existence of a system of racism in America while describing situations that appear to fit the definition.On the road trip through New Hampshire, he said that when his parents first arrived in San Antonio, they had to live in the only neighborhood where an interracial couple could buy a home. “There are still some communities that don’t have equal opportunity,” he said. But, “I don’t know if I’d call that systemic racism. I don’t call it that.”At a Friday town hall at Saint Anselm College in Goffstown, Thalia Floras, 60, a district retail manager and undecided Democrat, said her one concern with Mr. Hurd was his support for a ban on abortion. Yet she appreciated that he seemed open to listening to opposing views and did not resort to using phrases like “woke mob” or “radical left.”Marie Mulroy, 75, a retired public health worker and an independent raised by a Republican mother and Democratic father, said she had donated to Mr. Hurd because he was compassionate, liked to work across the aisle and had “a better understanding of the world and where we are going in the future.”In every good political argument, she said, “you have to have the thesis, antithesis and synthesis. But, “we don’t get the synthesis anymore,” she said. “And this is where the voters are — the voters are sitting in the synthesis.” More

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      Rebooting Ron DeSantis’s Campaign

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      Admitting you’ve made mistakes is tough for anyone. For a hard-charging, hyperscrutinized political candidate who presents himself as infallible, it can be as excruciating as a root canal without anesthesia.But Ron DeSantis clearly has hit the point where his presidential quest is crying out for a serious course correction. I know it. You know it. Anxious Republican strategists and donors know it. And Team DeSantis knows it, no matter what kind of happy talk the candidate was spewing in his interview with CNN last week. (Tip: If you find yourself babbling about being one of the few folks who knows how to define “woke,” you are not nailing your message.)If things were going well for Mr. DeSantis — if he were catching fire as the less erratic, unindicted alternative to Donald Trump — there’s not a snowball’s chance he would have set foot in CNN. But as things stand, consorting with nonconservative media outlets, which he until recently avoided like a pack of rabid raccoons, is part of a bigger overhaul.Team Trump intends to have some fun with this. “Some reboots were never going to be successful, like ‘Dynasty,’ ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ or even ‘MacGyver,’” the campaign mocked in a statement last week. “And now we can add Ron DeSantis’s 2024 campaign to the list of failures.”But campaign reboots are nothing to be ashamed of. Honest! They are a common, even healthy, part of the process. Handled properly, they give candidates the chance to show off their decisiveness, tenacity, adaptability, unflappability — you name it.Not all overhauls are created equal, of course. Ronald Reagan’s in the 1980 presidential race? Golden. Jeb Bush’s in 2016? Oof. And plenty have fallen somewhere in between: John Kerry 2004, John McCain 2008, Hillary Clinton 2008. As the DeSantis campaign starts down this path, it has an abundance of recent cases to consult for potential tips, tricks and red flags.While every floundering candidacy is floundering in its own way, there are a few foundational moves common to presidential campaign reboots:1. Slash spending, which typically involves cutting campaign staff and salaries.2. Shake up the leadership team.3. Shift the focus toward more grass roots stumping in the early voting states.Spending issues are almost a political rite of passage. So many campaigns get carried away early on with high-priced advisers or an overabundance of staff members, especially with front-runners eager to project an aura of inevitability.The DeSantis campaign is still doing solidly with fund-raising, but there have been warning signs (especially in the small-donor department) that have it cutting staff and rethinking priorities. (Even more Iowa!) This is obviously no fun and may presage even less fun to come. But it is better to start making these adjustments before things get really ugly. During the summer of 2007, the struggling McCain campaign found itself nearly broke, prompting massive layoffs and pay cuts and causing general upheaval as the high-level finger-pointing spiraled.Money matters aside, a campaign’s top leadership not infrequently requires tweaking — or tossing. The candidate needs to lock down savvy people he trusts and will listen to, even as he jettisons the troublemakers. When making such assessments, there is little room for sentimentality. Sometimes even (maybe especially) longtime friends and advisers need to be … repurposed … particularly if the chain of command has become confused and internal bickering is taking its toll. This can lead to even more tumult. When Mr. McCain cut loose a couple of his top advisers in 2007, several senior staff members followed them out the door.But a failure to deal with such a situation can leave the whole enterprise feeling increasingly dysfunctional, as was often the case with Hillary’s 2008 campaign. So much infighting and backbiting. So many competing power centers. This is when a candidate really needs to step up and impose order.In many cases, a reboot may call for pushing out a new narrative. Postdownsizing, Team McCain sought to reassure donors and supporters with a plan to get lean and mean and start “Living off the land.” The candidate doubled down on wooing New Hampshire (Iowa’s social conservatives were never a natural fit for him), playing up his bus tours and broadly aiming to recapture the underdog, maverick spirit of his 2000 presidential run. John Kerry, way down in the polls behind Howard Dean in 2003, wanted to create a comeback-kid narrative by notching back-to-back victories in Iowa and New Hampshire; he lent money to his campaign and basically lived in Iowa for weeks to help execute his one-two punch.It’s hard to say how a DeSantis variation of something like this would work. He plans to start talking less about his record leading the state “where woke goes to die” and double down on an “us against the world” theme, according to NBC. This latter bit sounds very Trumpian, maybe a tad too much so, considering Mr. Trump himself is still running with a version of that line. DeSantis’s heavy investment in Iowa, along with his chummy relationship with the state’s governor, could bring Kerry-like benefits. Then again, multiple candidates are campaigning hard there and could wind up splitting the non-Trump vote.The harsh reality of reboots is that some presidential hopefuls are just too out of step with the political moment to rescue. Mr. Bush strode into the 2016 race as the man to beat. But Republicans were in no mood for his policy-heavy, mellow style of politics. (Mr. Trump’s “low energy” insult was brutally resonant.) By the fall of 2015, Team Jeb was slashing staff and hoping for the debates to help him win free media. No one cared.To be sure, Mr. DeSantis has proved himself willing to get much nastier and more reactionary than did Mr. Bush in appealing to his base’s basest instincts. (That Trump-trashing anti-L.G.B.T.Q. video his campaign shared on social media — at once homophobic and homoerotic — was certainly something special.) No way anyone is going to catch Gov. Pudding Fingers being squishy on a culture-war hot topic like trans rights or immigration.Yet the governor does carry a whiff of out-of-touch wonkiness. He can’t help but get all right-wing jargony at times — “accreditation cartels”? Really? — and his bungled, Twitter-based campaign announcement was clearly designed more to impress the online bros than the working-class voters he needs to woo away from Mr. Trump. Someone really should be working with him to fix this.In the end, of course, it may be that Mr. DeSantis is on track to crash into that highest and hardest of reboot hurdles: likability.This was, fundamentally, what kept the presidency just out of Mrs. Clinton’s reach. Even beyond the Republican haters, too many voters found her off-putting. She was not a natural retail politician. She struck people as standoffish and inauthentic. Time and again, her advisers tried to address this, but to no avail. Presidential contests have a lot to do with vibes, and she never quite managed to radiate the ones needed to go all the way.Mr. DeSantis seems to be in a dangerously similar spot. He is famously awkward on the campaign trail — and with people in general. He stinks at the whole backslapping, glad-handing thing. He has trouble making eye contact. He presents as brusque, impatient, uninterested. He’s got the obnoxious parts of Trumpism down, without the carnival barker fun.This doesn’t mean his presidential dreams are doomed. But it does suggest that a key element of his reboot should be figuring out how not to come across as a stilted, smug jerk who doesn’t care about voters.Hey, no one said this would be easy.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, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      In Louisiana, Gov. Edwards Staves Off Certain Conservative Policies for Now

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      John Bel Edwards, the only Democratic governor in the Deep South, has successfully vetoed bills that have glided into law elsewhere in the region. Soon, he’ll leave office.The Republican supermajority in the Louisiana State Legislature pushed through a bill this year banning gender-transition care for minors, along with other legislation banning Covid vaccine requirements in schools and any classroom discussion of gender identity and sexual orientation.It was the kind of aggressive social policy agenda that has gained traction in conservative states across the country. But unlike in most such states, where Republican bills glide into law, lawmakers in Louisiana had to return to the Capitol last week, more than a month after the session ended, to try to claw the legislation back from the brink of failure.The reason: John Bel Edwards, the lone Democratic governor in the Deep South. He has used vetoes with some success as a bulwark against conservative legislation in a state where Republicans have had a lock on the legislature for more than a decade.In Louisiana, governors have a history of successfully wielding vetoes; most years, lawmakers have not even bothered trying to override them.But this year, legislators decided to test that power, reconvening to consider overriding more than two dozen vetoes at a moment when Republicans have tightened their control of the legislature and when Mr. Edwards, who is finishing his second term, is on his way out.“You voted for this before,” State Representative Raymond J. Crews, a Republican, told his colleagues on Tuesday as he asked them to support overriding the veto of his bill, which would require schools to refer to transgender students by the names and genders on their birth certificates. “I hope you’ll do that again.”Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards has successfully used vetoes as a bulwark against certain conservative legislation in a state where Republicans have had a lock on the legislature for more than a decade.Jodi Hilton for The New York TimesMr. Crews did not get enough votes. In fact, by the time lawmakers adjourned late Tuesday, all but one of Mr. Edwards’s vetoes still stood. The single exception was the ban on transition care for minors, a bill that the Republicans had channeled most of their energy and resources into resuscitating.The outcome of the session, which lawmakers raced through on Tuesday, was one last demonstration of how Mr. Edwards, a two-term governor leaving office next year, has succeeded at checking the influence of Republican lawmakers — to an extent.“It’s kind of hard to be too disappointed — we actually did override the veto on a very important bill,” said State Representative Alan Seabaugh, a Republican who led a faction of some of the most conservative lawmakers.Still, he acknowledged, Mr. Edwards posed a formidable obstacle. “It really shows what an influence a liberal Democrat governor has over Republican legislators,” Mr. Seabaugh said.Although many in the governor’s own party would dispute the portrayal of Mr. Edwards — an anti-abortion, pro-gun rights moderate — as a liberal, there was still widespread agreement that his departure in January could bring about a significant shift in the state’s political dynamic.Many recognize a strong possibility of a Republican succeeding Mr. Edwards, setting the stage for Louisiana to veer even more to the right, after several decades of the governorship flipping back and forth between the two parties.The Louisiana State Capitol in Baton Rouge.Emily Kask for The New York TimesThe state has an all-party “jungle primary” in October. Polls show Jeff Landry, the state’s deeply conservative attorney general, as the front-runner, along with Shawn Wilson, a Democrat and former secretary of transportation and development.In a state where former President Donald J. Trump won by 20-point margins in 2016 and 2020, Mr. Edwards’s political survival has hinged on the appeal of his biography — he is a West Point graduate and a sheriff’s son — and on his blend of social conservatism and progressive achievements, including expanding Medicaid, that fits Louisiana’s unique political landscape.He has angered many in his own party with his vehement opposition to abortion rights and his restraint in criticizing Mr. Trump, who as president went to great lengths to campaign against Mr. Edwards’s re-election.Still, even Democrats who are critical of Mr. Edwards have seen him as a vital barrier against conservative policies that have easily advanced in neighboring states.“I do think that there’s always room for being a more vocal ally and a more staunch ally to our community,” Quest Riggs, who helped found the Real Name Campaign, an L.G.B.T.Q. advocacy group in New Orleans, said of the governor. “But on the other hand, his vetoes have been a political tool that has been necessary to offset the mobilization by the evangelical right in Louisiana.”Last year, lawmakers succeeded in overriding a governor’s veto for the first time in three decades, reinstating a Congressional map that Mr. Edwards had objected to because it included only one district with a majority of Black voters despite the fact that one-third of the state’s population is Black. Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for a legal challenge to the map to move forward.Many recognize a strong possibility of a Republican succeeding Mr. Edwards. Louisiana has an all-party “jungle primary” in October, and polls show Jeff Landry, the state’s deeply conservative attorney general, as the front-runner.Cooper Neill for The New York TimesAlso last year, Mr. Edwards allowed a bill that excluded female transgender students from school sports to become law without his signature, predicting a veto would be overridden.Mr. Edwards said last week that he had issued 319 vetoes in his eight years as governor, and that 317 of them had been sustained. “Usually, we have been able to find common ground to move Louisiana forward,” he said.On Tuesday, lawmakers blitzed through the vetoed bills, including measures that denied parole for dangerous offenders and prevented “foreign adversaries” from owning agriculture land.Overriding a veto requires a two-thirds majority vote in both houses, and the Republicans have a supermajority by just a thin margin. Two Republican state representatives were absent on Tuesday, and a few in the House and Senate crossed party lines to oppose some overrides, infuriating their more conservative colleagues.When the ban on gender-transition care came up, lawmakers described conflicting perceptions of what it means to protect children. Supporters of the bill said it would safeguard young people from treatments they claim are dangerous and untested, even though there is broad agreement among major medical associations in the United States that such care can be beneficial for many patients.Critics of the ban argue that it would imperil a small, vulnerable population of young people by denying them medically necessary care. Most of the 20 other states that have passed similar legislation are facing lawsuits, and judges have already temporarily blocked a few of the bans.In the House, the vote to override the veto passed 76 to 23, with seven Democrats joining the Republicans. In the Senate, it passed 28 to 11. Republicans seized the sole successful override as a victory.“We sent a clear signal,” Mr. Landry, the attorney general and candidate for governor, said in a video posted online, “that woke liberal agendas that are destructive to children will not be tolerated in Louisiana.”Lawmakers and observers contemplated how the political climate would be different during next year’s legislative session, particularly if Republicans were to maintain their supermajority and win the governor’s race.“What happens when they don’t have to hold back anymore?” said Robert E. Hogan, a political science professor at Louisiana State University, referring to Republican lawmakers if Democrats lose the governor’s race. “You’ll have a governor that’s powerful and on your side.”That prospect has inspired trepidation among some, especially within the L.G.B.T.Q. community, but has amplified ambitions among conservatives.Mr. Seabaugh, who is leaving the House because of term limits but is running for a Senate seat, envisions passing some of the same bills next year without the threat of a veto and rolling back Mr. Edwards’s agenda. “I don’t think we can do it all in one year,” Mr. Seabaugh said, “but I’m sure going to try.” More

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      The Steep Cost of Ron DeSantis’s Vaccine Turnabout

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      On a Saturday in September 2020, with Covid-19 killing more than 600 Americans daily and hundreds of thousands of deaths still to come, Dr. Deborah L. Birx, a member of the White House coronavirus task force, heard her cellphone ring. It was Dr. Scott Rivkees, the Florida surgeon general. He was distraught.“‘You won’t believe what happened,’” she said he told her. Months before Covid vaccines would become available, Gov. Ron DeSantis had decided that the worst was over for Florida, he said. Mr. DeSantis had begun listening to doctors who believed the virus’s threat was overstated, and he no longer supported preventive measures like limiting indoor dining.Mr. DeSantis was going his own way on Covid.Nearly three years later, the governor now presents his Covid strategy not only as his biggest accomplishment, but as the foundation for his presidential campaign. Mr. DeSantis argues that “Florida got it right” because he was willing to stand up for the rights of individuals despite pressure from health “bureaucrats.” On the campaign trail, he says liberal bastions like New York and California needlessly traded away freedoms while Florida preserved jobs, in-person schooling and quality of life.But a close review by The New York Times of Florida’s pandemic response, including a new analysis of the data on deaths, hospitalizations and vaccination rates in the state, suggests that Mr. DeSantis’s account of his record leaves much out.As he notes at most campaign stops, he moved quickly to get students back in the classroom, even as many of the nation’s school districts were still in remote learning. National research has suggested there was less learning loss in school districts with more in-person instruction.Some other policies remain a matter of intense debate. Mr. DeSantis’s push to swiftly reopen businesses helped employment rebound, but also likely contributed to the spread of infections.But on the single factor that those experts say mattered most in fighting Covid — widespread vaccinations — Mr. DeSantis’s approach proved deeply flawed. While the governor personally crusaded for Floridians 65 and older to get shots, he laid off once younger age groups became eligible.Tapping into suspicion of public health authorities, which the Republican right was fanning, he effectively stopped preaching the virtues of Covid vaccines. Instead, he emphasized his opposition to requiring anyone to get shots, from hospital workers to cruise ship guests.Vaccination Rates From January to July 2021 More

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      Fact-Checking Mike Pence on the Campaign Trail

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      The former vice president has made misleading claims about abortion, fiscal policy and military spending.Since beginning his long-shot presidential campaign in June, former Vice President Mike Pence has struggled to gain traction among Republican primary voters.Mr. Pence has consistently polled in the single digits behind the two leading contenders: his onetime running mate, former President Donald J. Trump, and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida. The former vice president has broken with them most starkly on their approaches to Social Security and Medicare. He has also carved out clear positions supporting a 15-week national abortion ban and wholeheartedly backing American involvement in the war in Ukraine.Mr. Pence has made some inaccurate claims along the way. Here’s a fact check of some of his recent remarks on the campaign trail.AbortionWhat Mr. Pence Said“I did, this week, call on every other candidate for the Republican nomination to support a minimum standard of a 15-week ban on abortion at the national level that would align American law with most of the countries in Europe that literally ban abortion after 12 to 15 weeks. Our laws at the national level today are more aligned with North Korea, China and Iran than with other Western countries in Europe.”— in a June interview on Fox News SundayThis is misleading. Mr. Pence’s comparison is overly simplistic and glosses over how abortion laws in Europe work in practice. It is also worth noting that many European countries are moving toward relaxing abortion restrictions, not imposing additional ones, as The Upshot has reported.Of some four dozen countries in Europe, almost all have legalized elective abortion before 10 to 15 weeks of pregnancy. All of these countries allow abortions after the gestational limit if the mother’s life is in danger and about half do so for cases involving sexual violence — two exceptions that Mr. Pence has said he also supports. But many also allow for broader exceptions, like the socioeconomic circumstances or mental health of the mother, which Mr. Pence’s proposal does not include.In Britain, for example, an abortion must be approved by two doctors, but those requests are generally granted up to 24 weeks. In Denmark and Germany, exceptions for gestational limits of 12 weeks are made for mental and physical health as well as living conditions.At least three countries also have more permissive gestational cutoffs than Mr. Pence’s proposal: Iceland at 22 weeks, the Netherlands at 24 weeks and Sweden at 18 weeks.In contrast, China allows elective abortions without specifying gestational limits in its national laws, according to the World Health Organization. China also has said in recent years that it will aim to reduce the number of “medically unnecessary” abortions, and at least one province has prohibited abortions after 14 weeks.North Korea’s laws on abortion are unclear. In 2015, the authorities issued a directive barring doctors from performing abortions, according to the World Health Organization, but “there are no documents after 2015” on the legality of the procedure.In the United States, after the Supreme Court eliminated the constitutional right to an abortion last summer, the legal status of abortion varies widely from state to state. In some, the procedure is banned with no exceptions, and in others it is enshrined as a right with no gestational limits. A spokesman for Mr. Pence cited nine such states as exceptionally nonrestrictive.Fiscal policyWhat Mr. Pence Said“Well, first off, look, Joe Biden’s policy on our national debt is insolvency. And, sadly, my former running mate’s policy is identical to Joe Biden’s. Both of them say they’re not even going to talk about common sense and compassionate reforms to entitlements to spare future generations of a mountain range of debt.”— in the Fox News Sunday interviewThis is exaggerated. Asked about his calls to overhaul Social Security and Medicare, Mr. Pence criticized Mr. Trump’s and Mr. Biden’s approaches to the social programs as irresponsible. While both have said they would not cut benefits, only Mr. Biden has proposed tax increases to shore up both programs. But equating that position to one of accepting total insolvency is overstated.Currently, Social Security and Medicare both face financial shortfalls. The fund that pays for Social Security retirement benefits is projected to be depleted by 2033, and the fund that pays hospitals for Medicare patients will be exhausted in 2031. At those points, the funds will be able to pay for only 77 percent of retirement benefits and 89 percent of scheduled fees to hospitals.During the 2020 campaign, Mr. Biden proposed increasing taxes on high-income earners to pay for additional Social Security benefits. The extra funding would reduce the program’s financial shortfall, though the revenue would not close the gap entirely. While his latest presidential budget, released in March, does not mention that proposal, it does include a plan to extend the solvency of Medicare by 25 years by imposing higher taxes on the wealthy.Mr. Trump’s position on social safety net programs is a bit harder to pin down. In January 2020, he said he would be willing to consider cuts to the social safety nets “at some point” — though he quickly tried to walk back his comments and vowed to protect Social Security. His last presidential budget proposal, in February 2020, did not cut benefits to either program, but sought Medicare savings through a dozen tweaks like reducing payments to providers and reducing the cost of prescription drugs.More recently, Mr. Trump vowed in a speech in March at the Conservative Political Action Conference that “we are never going back” to proposals to raise the Social Security retirement age or cut Medicare benefits. But Mr. Trump has not yet outlined his stance on either program in more detail or addressed their solvency issues in this campaign cycle.The Pence campaign argued that neither Mr. Trump nor Mr. Biden has a current plan for Social Security, and that Mr. Biden’s plan for Medicare just delays the financial shortfall.Mr. Pence has made misleading claims about abortion, fiscal policy and military spending.Jordan Gale for The New York TimesClassified documentsWhat Mr. Pence Said“I mean, when I informed the Department of Justice that we had classified materials potentially in our home, they were at my home. The F.B.I. was on my front doorstep the next day. And what we found out was that, when Joe Biden apparently alerted the Department of Justice, 80 days later, they showed up at his office.”— in a CNN town hall in JuneThis is exaggerated. Upon the discovery of classified documents in their personal residences, Mr. Pence and Mr. Biden both cooperated with government inquiries. Mr. Pence has a point that the Justice Department’s responses to the discoveries were not identical, but he is overstating the differences.In Mr. Biden’s case, the searches occurred a few weeks — not three months — after the discovery of classified documents. In Mr. Pence’s case, the search occurred about three weeks later.On Nov. 2, lawyers for Mr. Biden discovered classified documents at the offices of the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, a think tank in Washington. On the same day, according to Biden administration officials, the lawyers alerted the National Archives and Records Administration, which is responsible for securing such documents. The next day, the National Archives retrieved the documents and referred the matter to the Justice Department. The F.B.I. searched the think tank in mid-November.On Dec. 20, Mr. Biden’s aides discovered a second set of classified documents at his home in Wilmington, Del. The same day, they alerted the U.S. attorney leading the investigation about the discovery. A month later, on Jan. 20, the F.B.I. searched the residence and seized additional documents. And on Feb. 1, the F.B.I. searched Mr. Biden’s vacation home in Rehoboth Beach, Del., but did not find additional classified documents.The discovery of classified documents in Mr. Biden’s possession prompted aides for Mr. Pence to search his home in Indiana out of caution. They found about a dozen documents with classified markings on Jan. 16 and alerted the National Archives to the discovery in a letter dated Jan. 18. The Justice Department, rather than the records agency, then retrieved the documents from Mr. Pence’s home on Jan. 19. Nearly a month later, on Feb. 10, the F.B.I. searched Mr. Pence’s home and found one additional document.The Pence campaign argued that the Justice Department, in directly requesting the documents from Mr. Pence, bypassed the standard procedures, which did not occur in Mr. Biden’s case.Unlike the Biden and Trump cases, Attorney General Merrick B. Garland did not appoint a special counsel to investigate Mr. Pence’s handling of classified materials. The Justice Department has also declined to prosecute Mr. Pence while the inquiry into Mr. Biden remains ongoing.Funding for the militaryWhat Mr. Pence Said“Since Joe Biden took office, he’s been working to cut military spending.”— at the Family Leadership Summit in Iowa in JulyThis is false. Mr. Biden’s annual budgets have generally asked for more funding for the military, and actual spending has increased each year.Mr. Biden’s first budget, released in 2021, proposed $715 billion for the Pentagon, essentially keeping funding level. That was a 1.6 percent increase from the previous year and a 0.4 percent decrease when adjusted for inflation. In December of that year, he signed into law a $770 billion defense package.After Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Mr. Biden’s proposals and congressional appropriators amped up military spending even more.The budget he released in 2022 requested $773 billion in military spending, a nearly 10 percent increase from the previous year. He eventually signed into law an $858 billion spending policy bill.And Mr. Biden’s latest budget, released in March, asked for $842 billion for the military, a 3.2 percent increase from the previous year, and $886 billion total for national defense. That legislation is currently going through the appropriations process in Congress. The Pence campaign argued that this amounted to a cut, as the rate of inflation outstrips the rate of increase.At the Iowa event, Mr. Pence cited Mr. Biden’s debt ceiling deal with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy as an example of a proposed 1 percent cut to the military. Under that deal, military spending is set at the president’s proposed amount of $886 billion and would rise to $895 billion in 2025. But all spending, for both the military and domestic programs, would be subject to a 1 percent cut if Congress does not pass annual spending bills by January.We welcome suggestions and tips from readers on what to fact-check on email and Twitter. More

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      The Stagnation of Ron DeSantis

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      Is it possible to rapidly “reboot” a struggling presidential campaign? Pundits have to hope so, since otherwise our advice-giving beat becomes a bit irrelevant. But thinking back over recent primary candidacies that seemed to sag and then recovered, from John Kerry in 2004 to John McCain in 2008 to Joe Biden in 2020, it’s hard to identify brilliant strategic pivots. Instead what you see is candidates with fundamental strengths who hung around until events conspired to make those strengths more relevant, their opponents’ weaknesses more manifest, and their campaigns suddenly triumphant.For Ron DeSantis, currently engaged in a campaign reset after months of stagnant polling, there’s no way to sell these case studies to his restive donors. “Don’t worry, we’re going to hang around and hope things break our way at the last minute” isn’t exactly an inspiring rallying cry, especially for a candidate who briefly seemed poised to become the 2024 front-runner, but now languishes 20 or 30 points behind Donald Trump.And it’s easy enough to list things that DeSantis could be doing differently. Some of them, like talking less about the swiftly-receding Covid era and seeking combat with the mainstream media, are obvious enough that the campaign is already trying to adapt. Other possibilities seem to still elude his team — above all, the benefits of breaking out of the movement-conservative box a bit more, making big promises on economic as well as social policy, and avoiding a replay of Ted Cruz’s ideologically self-limiting 2016 campaign.But any benefit from these shifts is likely to be incremental rather than dramatic. Meanwhile, the reset that’s so often urged on DeSantis — the idea that he needs to go hard after Trump’s unfitness for high office — is a theory supported by exactly zero polling evidence.The reality is that if there were some obvious path to rising higher in the polls at this stage of the campaign, another Republican candidate would have probably discovered it. As The Dispatch’s Nick Catoggio, no great DeSantis admirer, pointed out a week ago, amid all the talk about his faltering campaign the Florida governor’s support “exceeds the combined share of every candidate who’s trailing him, a field that includes a sitting senator, two former governors, and the most recent former vice president of the United States.”The Trump-friendly Vivek Ramaswamy, often portrayed as the breakout figure in the non-DeSantis field, stands just shy of 5 percent in the RealClearPolitics polling average. The most forthrightly anti-Trump figure, Chris Christie, stands at 2 percent. The sunny donor favorite Tim Scott is at 3 percent.Those numbers make DeSantis’s stagnant 20 percent look pretty good, and his Trump-adjacent positioning like a much stronger play than the alternatives.Yes, it’s not as strong as it looked during Trump’s post-midterm swoon. But the argument I made back then — that Trump was far more likely to lose in a fade than in a knockout — isn’t obviated by the fact that he hasn’t faded yet. Quite the reverse: It’s precisely Trump’s recovery and resilience amid multiplying indictments that suggests the futility of a Christie-style assault, while leaving DeSantis’s more hedged strategy with a narrowing but still discernible path.That path looks like this: First, in Iowa, DeSantis needs some of the very conservative voters who temporarily backed away from Trump after the midterms to back away again. Then in New Hampshire, he needs the momentum of an Iowa victory to reconcile the party’s moderates to the necessity of rallying to him, instead of sticking with Scott or Christie or Nikki Haley. Pull off that combination, and he’s well positioned for South Carolina, Florida and beyond.There’s no reason to expect things to play out this way. We’ve seen repeatedly how Trump’s supporters always seem to want to return to him, and how Trump’s skeptics always seem incapable of uniting effectively. We haven’t seen enough potency from DeSantis-the-candidate to expect him to make those patterns break.But sitting at 20 percent for a long time and then riding an early primary victory to consolidation is an imaginable scenario, at least, and one that tracks with recent examples of campaigns that first disappointed and ultimately surged. Whereas all the other scenarios for beating Trump, whether involving current contenders or some late-entering white knight, seem like wishcasting from Republicans who don’t want to settle for DeSantis.Maybe this will change in the debate season, whose set-pieces are more likely to actually reset DeSantis’s campaign than any move his team makes now, while giving his rivals their best opportunities to shake his hold on second place.But pending those confrontations, the disappointment with DeSantis doesn’t change the fact that the guy stagnating in second is more likely to finish first than all the distant others.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, Twitter (@NYTOpinion) and Instagram. More

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      Tim Scott Is Turning Heads With Donors and Early-State Voters

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      The South Carolina senator is gaining in early-voting states and has money, a positive message and a compelling story. Now he needs to take on the Republican front-runners.He is rising in the polls and turning heads in Iowa and New Hampshire, behind heavy spending on ads that play to voters’ appetite for a leader who is upbeat and positive in a dark political moment.He has experience, a compelling personal story and a campaign war chest that gives him staying power in a Republican primary that so far has been a two-man race. And among Republican voters, he is the candidate that everyone seems to like.Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina is perfectly positioned to seize the moment if former President Donald Trump collapses under the weight of his criminal cases or if the challenge to him from Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida evaporates.The only question is whether either moment will come.Mr. Scott’s growing popularity in early primary states has made him more of a contender in the still-young primary campaign and — in the eyes of current and potential supporters, and donors — a possible alternative to Mr. DeSantis, who is seen as an alternative to Mr. Trump.Andy Sabin, a wealthy metals magnate who switched his allegiance from Mr. DeSantis to Mr. Scott and is hosting a fund-raiser for three dozen wealthy donors in the Hamptons next month, cited his frustration with the front-runners and said he hoped that more in the donor class would join him in backing Mr. Scott. Prospective donors, Mr. Sabin said, “all want to see what he’s about.”“They’re disenchanted with Trump and DeSantis,” he said. “And the others, I’ve seen very little momentum.”Since he entered the race in May, Mr. Scott’s standing has slowly crept up in Iowa and New Hampshire. A University of New Hampshire poll of likely voters, out Tuesday, found him in third place among the state’s primary voters, with 8 percent of the vote, ahead of former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey and former Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina, both of whom have focused intensely on the state.He is also running third in recent Iowa polls — at around 7 percent — and a few national polls have shown him as the second choice for many supporters of Mr. Trump or Mr. DeSantis, though it comes at a time when primary voters not committing to Mr. Trump are often considering several candidates.Mr. Scott’s strength in early states has caught the eye of other potential donors, including the billionaire cosmetics heir Ronald Lauder, who met with Mr. Scott in South Carolina this month. In August, Mr. Scott will make a fund-raising swing through at least five states, including Colorado, Tennessee and Wisconsin.While he has not been as much of a presence on the campaign trail as his rivals have, Mr. Scott and his allied groups have poured considerable money into Iowa and New Hampshire, spending $32 million to run ads through January 2024 — more than any other Republican candidate or group on the airwaves, according to the tracking firm AdImpact. Mr. Scott is the only Republican contender who has booked ad time that far ahead.Mr. Scott, who has outspent his rivals on advertising in Iowa and New Hampshire, hopes to raise his national profile in next month’s first Republican debate.Jordan Gale for The New York TimesMr. Scott’s supporters say his positive campaign message and general appeal provide a contrast with the primary’s front-runners. The highest-ranking Black Republican, he is running on an only-in-America story as a candidate and a senator with roots in a low-income Charleston community.Still, though Mr. Scott has shown some momentum in the early states — including his home state — Republican voters have yet to flock to him en masse, and he is still relatively unknown nationally.A Quinnipiac University poll of voters nationwide found him tied with Mr. Christie in the primary among likely Republican voters, behind Ms. Haley and former Vice President Mike Pence, who are tied for third. And while he is well-liked in early primary states, more than half of Republican voters surveyed nationally said they did not know enough about him to have an opinion.Alex Stroman, the former executive director of the South Carolina Republican Party, acknowledged the issue but said that it was solvable. “I think that the more people are introduced to Tim Scott, that they are going to like Tim Scott,” he said. “The problem is, it is a crowded primary.”Asked during a town hall in New Hampshire on Tuesday how voters should contend with such a crowded field, Mr. Scott said he expected that “the field will dwindle pretty quickly” by the time voters cast ballots in the state’s February primary election.Mr. Scott’s campaign has been focused on a positive message and his faith. But some conservatives have said he needs to sharpen his message on key issues.Mic Smith/FR2 Associated Press, via Associated PressThe first opportunity to introduce himself to a national audience will be the Aug. 23 Republican debate. Mr. Scott’s campaign manager, Jennifer DeCasper, said recently that Mr. Scott had met the donor and polling thresholds to be on the debate stage. Mr. Scott, who raised more than $6 million in the second quarter, has more than $20 million in the bank — one of the largest war chests in the primary and enough, Ms. DeCasper maintained, to keep his campaign afloat through the Iowa caucuses and all three of the early state primaries.“At the end of the day, candidates can post any number they want,” she said. “But the name of the game is how much actual cash you have on hand that’s available for use in the Republican primary.”On Tuesday, Trust in the Mission PAC, a group supporting Mr. Scott, announced that it would spend $40 million on broadcast and digital advertising in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina — a gigantic outlay that far outpaces the spending of any other candidate in the G.O.P. field and could possibly reshape it.The PAC’s spending reflects a huge bet on increasing Mr. Scott’s profile, especially as he maintains a relatively limited presence on the campaign trail: He has relegated his time in early primary states this month to the few days of the week that he is not in the Senate. The group has already shelled out more than $7 million on advertisements through the summer; the $40 million buy will kick in beginning in September. It is also helping fund a small field operation of about a dozen canvassers in the early primary states.One challenge Mr. Scott still faces is presenting a policy message that separates him from the rest of the Republican primary field. His advertisements in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina are biographical, and some touch on national security, warning of the threat that China could pose, while others seize on cultural issues, criticizing Democrats’ policies on education and their views on race.But trying to appeal to a broad swath of Republican voters without alienating key portions of the party’s primary electorate has proved challenging.Terry Amann, an Iowa pastor who has met with most of the Republican candidates, said Mr. Scott needed to articulate a more solid policy plan to connect with the conservative evangelicals who could decide the caucuses in January. Though the senator’s conservative message and his frequent biblical allusions have endeared him to many Republican faith-based voters, Mr. Amann said, Mr. Scott has not clearly defined his stance on abortion restrictions.“If you’re going to be the candidate that stands out on faith, there are some issues that I believe are worth laying it down for, and that’s one of them,” he said. “That would be my challenge to him if he wants to step off from the rest of the pack.”With just over a month until the first debate and six months until the Iowa caucuses, Mr. Scott’s campaign still sees an opening to refine his message and consolidate more voters. Still, while he tries to surpass Mr. DeSantis, the bigger challenge will be wresting the support of more than half of Republican primary voters from Mr. Trump.“These campaigns, candidates, have to figure out what the hell they want voters to know about them,” said Dave Carney, a veteran Republican strategist in New Hampshire. Mr. Scott, because of his background, has a unique story to tell, which can get “people to listen a little bit,” Mr. Carney said. “That’s a great advantage.”But, he added, “the point isn’t just to get their interest — then you have to make the deal.”You have to sell the deal.”Ruth Igielnik More

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      Building a Legal Wall Around Donald Trump

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      The American legal system is on the cusp of a remarkable historical achievement. In real time and under immense pressure, it has responded to an American insurrection in a manner that is both meting out justice to the participants and establishing a series of legal precedents that will stand as enduring deterrents to a future rebellion. In an era when so many American institutions have failed, the success of our legal institutions in responding to a grave crisis should be a source of genuine hope.I’m writing this newsletter days after the Michigan attorney general announced the prosecution of 16 Republicans for falsely presenting themselves as the electors qualified to vote in the Electoral College for Donald Trump following the 2020 election. That news came the same day that the former president announced on Truth Social that he’d received a so-called target letter from Jack Smith, the special counsel appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland to investigate Trump’s efforts to overturn the election. The target letter signals that the grand jury investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol is likely to indict Trump, perhaps any day now.On Monday, a day before this wave of news, the Georgia Supreme Court rejected a desperate Trump attempt to disqualify the Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis from prosecuting Trump and to quash a special grand jury report about 2020 election misconduct. Trump’s team filed their petition on July 13. The court rejected it a mere four days later. Willis can continue her work, and she’s expected to begin issuing indictments — including potentially her own Trump indictment — in August, if not sooner.Presuming another Trump indictment (or more than one) is imminent — or even if it is not — the legal response to Jan. 6 will continue. But to truly understand where we are now, it’s important to track where we’ve been. If you rewind the clock to the late evening of Jan. 6, 2021, America’s long history of a peaceful transfer of power was over, broken by a demagogue and his mob. To make matters worse, there was no straight-line path to legal accountability.Prosecuting acts of violence against police — or acts of vandalism in the Capitol — was certainly easy enough, especially since much of the violence and destruction was caught on video. But prosecuting Trump’s thugs alone was hardly enough to address the sheer scale of MAGA misconduct. What about those who helped plan and set the stage for the insurrection? What about the failed candidate who set it all in motion, Donald Trump himself?Consider the legal challenges. The stolen election narrative was promulgated by a simply staggering amount of defamation — yet defamation cases are difficult to win in a nation that strongly protects free speech. Trump’s legal campaign was conducted by unethical lawyers raising frivolous arguments — yet attorney discipline, especially stretching across multiple jurisdictions, is notoriously difficult.The list continues. Trump’s team sought to take advantage of ambiguities in the Electoral Count Act, a 19th-century statute that might be one of the most poorly written statutes in the entire federal code. In addition, Trump’s team advanced a constitutional argument called the independent state legislature doctrine that would empower legislatures to dictate or distort the outcomes of congressional and presidential elections in their states.There’s more. When we watched insurrectionists storm the Capitol, we were watching the culminating moment of a seditious conspiracy, yet prosecutions for seditious conspiracy are both rare and difficult. And finally, the entire sorry and deadly affair was instigated by an American president — and an American president had never been indicted before, much less for his role in unlawfully attempting to overturn an American election.Now, consider the response. It’s easy to look at Trump’s persistent popularity with G.O.P. voters and the unrepentant boosterism of parts of right-wing media and despair. Does anything make a difference in the fight against Trump’s lawlessness and lies? The answer is yes, and the record is impressive. Let’s go through it.The pro-Trump media ecosphere that repeated and amplified his election lies has paid a price. Fox News agreed to a stunning $787 million defamation settlement with Dominion Voting Systems, and multiple defamation cases continue against multiple right-wing media outlets.Trump’s lawyers and his lawyer allies have paid a price. Last month the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit upheld the bulk of a sanctions award against Sidney Powell and a Mos Eisley cantina’s worth of Trump-allied lawyers. A New York State appellate court temporarily suspended Rudy Giuliani’s law license in 2021, and earlier this month a Washington, D.C., bar panel recommended that he be disbarred. Jenna Ellis, one of Guiliani’s partners in dangerous dishonesty and frivolous legal arguments, admitted to making multiple misrepresentations in a public censure from the Colorado Bar Association. John Eastman, the former dean of Chapman University’s law school and the author of an infamous legal memo that suggested Mike Pence could overturn the election, is facing his own bar trial in California.Congress has responded to the Jan. 6 crisis, passing bipartisan Electoral Count Act reforms that would make a repeat performance of the congressional attempt to overturn the election far more difficult.The Supreme Court has responded, deciding Moore v. Harper, which gutted the independent state legislature doctrine and guaranteed that partisan state legislatures are still subject to review by the courts.The criminal justice system has responded, securing hundreds of criminal convictions of Jan. 6 rioters, including seditious conspiracy convictions for multiple members of the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys. And the criminal justice system is still responding, progressing steadily up the command and control chain, with Trump himself apparently the ultimate target.In roughly 30 months — light speed in legal time — the American legal system has built the case law necessary to combat and deter American insurrection. Bar associations are setting precedents. Courts are setting precedents. And these precedents are holding in the face of appeals and legal challenges.Do you wonder why the 2022 election was relatively routine and uneventful, even though the Republicans fielded a host of conspiracy-theorist candidates? Do you wonder why right-wing media was relatively tame after a series of tough G.O.P. losses, especially compared to the deranged hysterics in 2020? Yes, it matters that Trump was not a candidate, but it also matters that the right’s most lawless members have been prosecuted, sued and sanctioned.The consequences for Jan. 6 and the Stop the Steal movement are not exclusively legal. The midterm elections also represented a profound setback for the extreme MAGA right. According to an NBC News report, election-denying candidates “overwhelmingly lost” their races in swing states. It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the relentless legal efforts also had a political payoff.And to be clear, this accountability has not come exclusively through the left — though the Biden administration and the Garland Justice Department deserve immense credit for their responses to Trump’s insurrection, which have been firm without overreaching. Multiple Republicans joined with Democrats to pass Electoral Count Act reform. Both conservative and liberal justices rejected the independent state legislature doctrine. Conservative and liberal judges, including multiple Trump appointees, likewise rejected Trump’s election challenges. Republican governors and other Republican elected officials in Arizona and Georgia withstood immense pressure from within their own party to uphold Joe Biden’s election win.American legal institutions have passed the Jan. 6 test so far, but the tests aren’t over. Trump is already attempting to substantially delay the trial on his federal indictment in the Mar-a-Lago case, and if a second federal indictment arrives soon, he’ll almost certainly attempt to delay it as well. Trump does not want to face a jury, and if he delays his trials long enough, he can run for president free of any felony convictions. And what if he wins?Simply put, the American people can override the rule of law. If they elect Trump in spite of his indictments, they will empower him to end his own federal criminal prosecutions and render state prosecutions a practical impossibility. They will empower him to pardon his allies. The American voters will break through the legal firewall that preserves our democracy from insurrection and rebellion.We can’t ask for too much from any legal system. A code of laws is ultimately no substitute for moral norms. Our constitutional republic cannot last indefinitely in the face of misinformation, conspiracy and violence. It can remove the worst actors from positions of power and influence. But it cannot ultimately save us from ourselves. American legal institutions have responded to a historical crisis, but all its victories could still be temporary. Our nation can choose the law, or it can choose Trump. It cannot choose both. More