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      Where Trump, DeSantis and Other 2024 Candidates Stand on Immigration

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      Support for a wall is now routine, and some presidential candidates say they would use military force to secure the border if elected.The blistering immigration policy that Donald J. Trump enacted when he was in the White House shifted his party’s baseline on the issue to the right.His policies are now standard Republican fare: Calls to “build the wall” once set apart the right-wing fringe, but several Republican candidates now support even more exceptional measures, such as using military force to secure the border or ending birthright citizenship.Here is a look at where the candidates stand.Donald J. TrumpHis policies cemented hard-line immigration stances in the G.O.P. mainstream.Mr. Trump’s administration separated thousands of migrant families — traumatizing children and causing a public outcry. As recently as May, during a CNN event, he did not rule out reinstating that policy.His administration also forced asylum seekers to remain in Mexico while awaiting hearings, leading to the development of squalid refugee camps, and held children in crowded, unsanitary facilities.While his signature campaign promise in 2016 was to build a border wall, fewer than 500 miles of barriers were built along the nearly 2,000-mile southern border, largely in places that already had them. (At points, he suggested spikes, a moat and permission for officials to shoot migrants in the legs.)Mr. Trump toured the southern border wall near Alamo, Texas, in January 2021. Some of his 2024 rivals say they would continue work on the border wall; Mr. Trump built fewer than 500 miles during his tenure.Doug Mills/The New York TimesOne of his first actions upon taking office was to ban travelers from several majority-Muslim countries. In 2019, he began denying permanent residency to immigrants deemed likely to require public assistance, a rule that disproportionately affected people from Latin America, Africa and parts of Asia. Congress did not enact his proposals to slash legal immigration by limiting American citizens’ ability to bring in relatives and by adding education and skill requirements, but he cut it drastically in 2020 through pandemic-related actions.Ron DeSantisHe has tried to run to the right of Trump on immigration, but is mostly aligned with him.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida has outlined an aggressive policy that includes mass deportations, indefinite detention of children (in violation of a 1997 consent decree known as the Flores agreement), and license to kill some border crossers.“We have to have appropriate rules of engagement to say, if you’re cutting through a border wall on sovereign U.S. territory and you’re trying to poison Americans, you’re going to end up stone cold dead,” he told Fox News, shortly after saying while in Texas that he would authorize “deadly force” against people “demonstrating hostile intent.”He also wants to end birthright citizenship for children of undocumented immigrants, an idea Mr. Trump floated in 2018 that rejects the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of citizenship to “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” Any such effort by a president would almost immediately wind up in court.Mr. DeSantis wants to finish building a border wall; require asylum seekers to stay in Mexico while awaiting hearings, as Mr. Trump did; deputize state and local officials to carry out deportations; and deploy the military to the border, which could violate a federal prohibition on using the military for civilian law enforcement. He has said he would declare a national emergency, allowing more unilateral action.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida held a campaign event in Eagle Pass, Texas, last month. He has tried to stake out territory to the right of Mr. Trump on some campaign platforms, including immigration.Christopher Lee for The New York TimesChris ChristieHe mostly toes the G.O.P. line, but is also critical of Trump on the issue.Former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey has proposed sending the National Guard to the border to stop illegal crossings and intercept fentanyl (though fentanyl mostly comes into the U.S. through official ports of entry, hidden in legitimate commerce).He has criticized Mr. Trump as all talk on border security, noting that his wall covers only a quarter of the border. But he also said on CNN last month that since the wall had been started, “you might as well finish it,” even though “I probably wouldn’t have done that at the start.” He argues that Mr. Trump erred by enacting immigration policy through executive actions that President Biden could easily undo.Mr. Christie has changed his mind on a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants — in 2010, he urged Congress to create one; then, during his first presidential campaign in 2015, he said he considered it “extreme.” His campaign did not respond to a request to confirm his current position or to elaborate on what other immigration policies he supports.Nikki HaleyShe is largely aligned with the bulk of the field and supports most of Trump’s policies.When she was governor of South Carolina, Nikki Haley signed a law requiring businesses to use a federal database to check prospective employees’ immigration status, mandating that police officers check the status of some people they stopped for unrelated reasons, and making it a crime to “harbor or transport” an undocumented immigrant. She has cited this as a national model, though a judge blocked parts of the law and the state agreed to soften it.Nikki Haley has expressed support for some of Mr. Trump’s immigration policies, but not separating families.Kathryn Gamble for The New York TimesMs. Haley has also said that she wants to restore Mr. Trump’s “remain in Mexico” policy, add 25,000 Border Patrol and ICE agents, withhold funding from “sanctuary cities” that limit cooperation with immigration officials, and immediately deport migrants. But she does not support separating families, she said.Like Mr. Trump and Mr. DeSantis, she wants to limit birthright citizenship. “For those that are in this country legally, of course I think we go according to the Constitution, and that’s fine,” she told Fox News. “But it’s the illegal immigrations that we have to make sure that just because they get here, if they have a child, you’re just building on the problems.”She told CBS News that she wanted legal immigration to be based on “merit” and businesses’ needs.Tim ScottHe is largely aligned with the bulk of the field and supports most of Trump’s policies.Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina introduced legislation alongside other Republican senators this year to withhold funding from sanctuary cities and to redirect funding that Democrats had allocated for new I.R.S. agents to border security instead. Neither bill is viable in the Democrat-controlled Senate.Mr. Scott told NBC News that he supported a requirement for asylum seekers, if they cross other countries en route to the U.S. border, to request asylum in those countries before requesting it in the United States — a policy that Mr. Biden has enacted and that a judge blocked on Tuesday.In the same interview, he said he supported a border wall, new surveillance technology and an increased military presence along the border. He said he would not rule out the possibility of sending troops into Mexico to combat drug cartels.Senator Tim Scott has said that he supports a border wall, new surveillance technology and an increased military presence along the border.Travis Dove for The New York TimesLike many candidates, Mr. Scott also wants to reinstate the Title 42 policy that allowed rapid explusion of migrants on pandemic-related public health grounds. He argued in an interview with Fox News that fentanyl, rather than the coronavirus, was the public health crisis that now justified the policy.Mike PenceHe is largely aligned with the bulk of the field and supports most of Trump’s policies.Former Vice President Mike Pence said last year that he supported a return to Mr. Trump’s immigration policies, including continuing to build a border wall, banning the establishment of sanctuary cities and reinstating the “remain in Mexico” requirement for asylum seekers.He said in a CNN town hall event that he would not, however, reinstate family separation because “we got to stop putting Band-Aids on the problem.”In the same event, he called for a “guest worker” program under which people seeking jobs in agriculture and other industries could “come and for a short period of time pay taxes, participate in our economy, and go home.”Mr. Pence also vociferously opposed the Biden administration’s lifting of Title 42 and wants to reinstate it — as well as a requirement that legal immigrants demonstrate that they will not rely on public assistance.Vivek RamaswamyHe has proposed some of the most aggressive stances of any candidate.Vivek Ramaswamy has called for securing the border by any means necessary, including military force. This could violate an 1878 law that forbids the use of federal troops for civilian law enforcement, but Mr. Ramaswamy argues that securing the border isn’t civilian law enforcement.He wants to “universally” deport undocumented immigrants and opposes any path to legal residence because “we are a nation of laws,” he said at a campaign event. “That is something we cannot compromise on.”He added that, for people brought to the United States as children, he would be open to a process allowing them to return after being deported. But all legal immigration, he says, should run on a “meritocratic” points system, with lottery-based paths eliminated.His anti-immigrant language has been incendiary. On Fox News, he said citing undocumented immigrants’ economic contributions was tantamount to making economic arguments for slavery: “‘The vegetables will rot in the field, we need people to pluck our crops’ — this is a thing that Democrats were saying in the South in the 1860s to justify a different form of immoral and illegal behavior,” he said.Asa HutchinsonHe is somewhat more moderate than Trump, but still advocates strict policies.Former Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas, in a Fox News opinion essay, called for adding Border Patrol agents and authorizing murder charges against people accused of supplying fentanyl that leads to deaths. “We should ensure those who bring evil across our borders and sow criminality throughout our country are proportionately punished,” he wrote.In an interview with the New Hampshire news station WMUR, he didn’t rule out supporting a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, but said a secure border was a prerequisite for any such immigration reform. He also said that he supported a wall in some places, but that it wasn’t feasible along the full border.As governor, Mr. Hutchinson signed a law to make immigrants with federal work permits eligible for professional licenses. He also authorized the deployment of 40 Arkansas National Guard troops to the border in Texas in 2021.Doug BurgumHe expresses some more moderate views but hasn’t made detailed proposals.Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota has expressed support for lowering barriers to legal immigration, a stance that sets him apart from most other candidates in the field.In an interview with Forbes, he criticized the obstacles encountered by seasonal agricultural workers and prospective tech employees, saying, “We put them through two, three, four, five years of red tape, and then we let people illegally cross the southern border, so the two things juxtaposed against each other make no sense.”In the same interview, he accused President Biden of being weak on border security and said, “We can’t have a discussion in this country about legal immigration until we solve the illegal immigration.” But he has not described how to do that, and his campaign did not respond to a request for details.As governor, he signed legislation to create an Office of Legal Immigration to help North Dakota businesses hire foreign workers. He has also sent state National Guard troops to the border in Texas.Will HurdHe is on the more moderate end of the G.O.P. field.As a member of Congress, Will Hurd described a border wall as a “third-century solution to a 21st-century problem,” called the separation of migrant families “unacceptable,” and said Mr. Trump’s ban on travelers from several Muslim countries “endangers the lives of thousands of American men and women in our military, diplomatic corps and intelligence services.”He has also criticized Mr. Biden’s policies from the opposite direction, telling CBS News that the president is “treating everybody that comes into the country as an asylum seeker.”What Mr. Hurd himself would do is less clear, and his campaign did not respond to a request for information. He told NBC News that he wanted to “streamline” legal immigration, but offered no details. He has supported protections for “Dreamers” who migrated illegally as children, and he has also previously called for a new version of the post-World War II Marshall Plan to strengthen Central American economies and reduce the poverty and instability driving migration.Francis SuarezHe is on the more moderate end of the G.O.P. field.Mayor Francis X. Suarez of Miami opposes many of the far-right immigration policies outlined by many other candidates, including by his governor, Mr. DeSantis. He argued on Fox Business that the aggressive immigration bill Mr. DeSantis and the Florida Legislature had enacted was “having an adverse impact on small businesses in our state.”He said that he believed the country was “not ready” for amnesty for undocumented immigrants, but that he was open to creating some legal status that would protect them from deportation. Of actually deporting all of them, he said, “It’s not possible.”He has otherwise been vague, saying that he wants to make legal immigration “merit-based and skill-based” and that he believes he has “credibility” on the issue as a Hispanic Republican, but not proposing specific policies. His campaign did not respond to a request for details. More

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      Trump to Skip Iowa State Fair Interview With Gov. Kim Reynolds

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      Gov. Kim Reynolds next month will hold “Fair-Side Chats” with candidates including Ron DeSantis, Tim Scott and Perry Johnson, but not the former president.When Gov. Kim Reynolds interviews nearly the entire Republican presidential field at the Iowa State Fair next month in a series of one-on-one chats, there will be an especially notable absence: former President Donald J. Trump, the race’s clear front-runner.Ms. Reynolds’s office on Tuesday released a list of participants for the interview series that did not include Mr. Trump. The former president, who has expressed his anger at Ms. Reynolds for not endorsing him, declined an invitation to participate.While it is traditional for Iowa governors to stay on the sidelines of presidential primaries, Mr. Trump’s camp believes Ms. Reynolds is neutral in name only, pointing to a series of events she has attended with Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, Mr. Trump’s chief rival.Mr. Trump appears intent on prolonging his public feud with the popular Ms. Reynolds, which has angered and puzzled conservatives in the state. One Republican state senator even flipped his endorsement from Mr. Trump to Mr. DeSantis after the spat. Mr. Trump, confident in his lead over the rest of the field, has shown a wider willingness to skip important primary events, potentially including the first Republican presidential debate in late August, which he has not committed to attending.The interviews with Ms. Reynolds, called the “Fair-Side Chats,” will take place between Aug. 10 and Aug. 18 at JR’s SouthPork Ranch at the Iowa State Fairgrounds in Des Moines. The Iowa State Fair — famous for its fried foods on sticks and life-size butter cow sculpture — is a crucial opportunity for presidential hopefuls to mingle with voters ahead of the state’s caucuses in January.Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Mr. Trump, said the former president planned to attend the state fair — just not the interview with Ms. Reynolds.“President Trump looks forward to interacting with tens of thousands of Iowans at the fair in an open and unfiltered setting,” Mr. Cheung said in a statement.Of the other major Republican presidential candidates, only former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey will not participate in an interview with Ms. Reynolds. Mr. Christie’s campaign has said he is choosing to compete in New Hampshire and South Carolina, the other early nominating states, over Iowa.Otherwise, the remaining major candidates, including Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, as well as long shots like the businessman Perry Johnson, agreed to attend.“The Iowa State Fair showcases the best of Iowa — from our people to our culture and wonderful agriculture industry — and it’s the perfect venue for a conversation with the candidates,” Ms. Reynolds said in a statement.Mr. DeSantis, meanwhile, has seemed to eagerly cultivate his relationship with Ms. Reynolds, telling reporters at a campaign stop in the state this month that he would consider her as a running mate, should he win the nomination.“I mean, she’s one of the top public servants in America,” he said.Recent polls show Mr. DeSantis in second place in Iowa, a state many of his allies say he must win, trailing Mr. Trump by roughly 30 percentage points. The governor is scheduled to begin a bus tour of the Des Moines area on Thursday before speaking at a dinner for the Republican Party of Iowa on Friday. Almost all the other candidates, including Mr. Trump, are also set to speak at the dinner. More

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      Kelly Ayotte Announces Run for Governor in New Hampshire

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      The former senator entered the race after Gov. Chris Sununu, a fellow Republican, said last week that he would not run again.Former Senator Kelly Ayotte, a Republican, entered the race for governor of New Hampshire on Monday, following Gov. Chris Sununu’s announcement last week that he would not run again for office in 2024.“I’m running for governor because New Hampshire is one election away from becoming Massachusetts — from becoming something we are not,” Ms. Ayotte wrote in her campaign announcement. Maura Healey, a Democrat, flipped the Massachusetts governor’s office last year after Charlie Baker declined to run again. Both Mr. Baker and Mr. Sununu are popular moderate Republicans in their states.Ms. Ayotte, a former attorney general in New Hampshire, was ousted from her Senate seat in 2016 by Maggie Hassan, a Democrat who had previously served as a popular governor of the state.Ms. Ayotte’s candidacy for governor comes at a time when the state is receiving renewed attention from Republican presidential hopefuls, many of whom have repeatedly traveled to the state to court voters who will be among the first to go to the polls in the G.O.P. primary.Ms. Ayotte is expected to garner widespread support among Republicans in the state, in a race that the nonpartisan Cook Political Report shifted to a tossup, from solid-Republican, after Mr. Sununu said he would not run again. Chuck Morse, the former president of New Hampshire’s state senate who lost the G.O.P. Senate primary in the race to face Ms. Hassan last year, entered the race almost immediately after Mr. Sununu’s announcement.Two Democrats in the state — Cinde Warmington, a member of the New Hampshire Executive Council, and Joyce Craig, the mayor of Manchester — announced their candidacies ahead of Mr. Sununu’s declaration.Ms. Ayotte faced a tough re-election campaign in 2016 even as Republicans gained power nationally. She served only one term in the Senate.Though New Hampshire has had several recent statewide officials that are Republicans, the state has leaned blue during presidential elections, supporting Democrats in the last five.Alongside her announcement, Ms. Ayotte rolled out a lengthy list of endorsements from dozens of Republicans across the state, who rallied around her candidacy.But national Democrats were quick to criticize the former Senator and indicated that they plan to make abortion protections central in the race.“Kelly Ayotte has spent her career working to stack the deck against New Hampshire’s working families and attacking their most fundamental freedoms — even leading the charge for a national abortion ban — which is why New Hampshire voters retired her seven years ago after a single term in the Senate,” wrote Izzi Levy, the deputy communications director for the Democratic Governors Association.In her statement on Monday, Ms. Ayotte said she would seek to tackle crime by “standing up for our law enforcement officers” and would aim to “protect and strengthen New Hampshire’s economic advantage.”She also signaled that she would lean into cultural issues motivating the Republican base, writing that she would “stand with parents, not bureaucrats, when it comes to deciding what is best for our children.” More

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      There’s No Escaping Trump

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      Bret Stephens: Hi, Gail. We skipped our conversation last week because I was in Ukraine. But even from there, it was hard to miss the news about Donald Trump’s most recent pending indictment. Your thoughts?Gail Collins: Bret, I’m in awe of your Ukraine expedition but slightly depressed to realize that Americans can’t escape Trump, even when they’re at a hospital in Irpin.Bret: Trump returning to the White House and pulling the plug on American support for Kyiv is the second-biggest threat to Ukraine, after Vladimir Putin. And did you hear Trump call the Chinese dictator Xi Jinping both “smart” and “brilliant”?But back to the latest potential indictment ….Gail: Criminal-justice wise, I think it’s very important to assure the country that nobody, including a president, can just get away with urging an angry crowd to attack the Capitol.Bret: Especially a president.Gail: But politically, I have a terrible suspicion that indictment will help him in the Republican primaries. So sad the law-and-order party has apparently lost interest in the law — or, for that matter, order — when it doesn’t suit their purpose.Bret: If there were truth in advertising, Republicans would have to rename themselves the Opposite Party. They were the party of law and order. Now they want to abolish the F.B.I. They were the party that revered the symbols of the nation. Now they think the Jan. 6 riots were like a “normal tourist visit.” They were the party of moral character and virtue. Now they couldn’t care less that their standard-bearer consorted with a porn star. They were the party of staring down the Evil Empire. Now they’re Putin’s last best hope. They were the party of free trade. Now they’re protectionists. They were the party that cheered the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision, which argued that corporations had free speech. Now they are being sued by Disney because the company dared express an opinion they dislike. They were the party that once believed that “family values don’t stop at the Rio Grande,” as George W. Bush put it. Now some of them want to invade Mexico.Gail: Woof …Bret: So that makes me want to ask you about your column last week. What’s not to like about No Labels?Gail: Bret, gonna skip my normal diatribe on the evils of Joe Lieberman, the spokesman-symbolic-head of No Labels, which is running around the country trying to get a presidential line on ballots in a bunch of states.Bret: Lieberman may be our one irreconcilable difference. I love the guy.Gail: My bottom line is that third parties — even those led by people far better than Mr. L. — are a danger to the American democratic system. You start a party that makes a big deal out of … helping hummingbirds. Tell voters who don’t love either of the two regular candidates that they can Vote Hummer and feel good. You won’t win the election, but you can throw everything into chaos. In some states, that little shift could be enough to bestow victory somewhere you’d never have wanted it to go. Say the Crow Coalition.Bret: I’d be opposed to No Labels if I were convinced that all they will do is take votes from Joe Biden and throw the election to Trump. But that depends on who takes the No Labels slot: If it’s a former Democrat, it probably hurts Biden. If it’s a former Republican, it could hurt Trump even more.Gail: Maybe. I’d rather just make people pick between the two real possibilities — each of them representing a broad coalition and certainly offering a stark choice. I don’t like plotting to win by cluttering up the ballot.Bret: But the main thing, Gail, is that I need a party I can vote for. And I think the feeling is shared by a growing fraction of voters who might be center-left or center-right but are increasingly appalled by progressive Democrats and reactionary Republicans. So any party that represents our views is good for democracy, not a threat to it.Gail: No, no Bret. Even if you vote for a third party that perfectly represents your views — or at least your view on a favorite issue — if it isn’t going to win, you’re throwing away your vote. A vote for the Green Party, for instance, is a vote that Biden would probably have gotten otherwise. Which means the Green Party is helping Trump.Bret: I agree — mostly. I used to vote exclusively for Republicans, even though I disagreed on a lot of social issues. Now I vote mostly for Democrats, even though I disagree on a lot of economic issues. But I’ve never before felt such a level of disaffection with both parties, which makes No Labels … intriguing. We’ll see if it goes anywhere.Gail: OK, I’ve ranted enough. Let’s talk about something important that no one ever wants to talk about: Congress. The big defense budget is being bogged down by some House Republicans who want to include right-wing social issues that everyone knows the Senate will never accept. Even the normal military promotions are stalled by one Republican Senator, Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, who wants to eliminate travel aid to enlisted women seeking abortions.These are all supposed to be your guys — explain what we can do about all this.Bret: Well, this is just another way in which I’m totally appalled by so many of today’s Republicans. They had no trouble effectively freezing and even reducing military spending for the sake of their debt-ceiling antics, despite claiming to be seriously concerned by the military threat from China (or Iran or Russia). And now they’re committing the exact sin they routinely accuse liberals of doing: injecting a partisan social agenda into questions of national security.But Gail, Congress is too depressing. Let’s talk about the actors’ and writers’ strikes. Should we join them, at least morally speaking?Gail: I see two big things about the strikes. One is complicated and important — how do you compensate the creative talent when movies and TV are available around the clock via streaming?The other is more emotional and understandable: The creative talent is scrambling to get adequate pay while the top guys — the producers and company executives — are making a mountain of money from the current system.In a word, I’m on the writer-actor side. How about you?Bret: Don’t tell anyone this, but I am, too. I think the strike is about more than the particulars of how the so-called creative class gets paid. It’s really about whether or not there can be a creative class at all.My working assumption is that within 20 years, if not much sooner, A.I. will be able to write, direct and act (via computer-generated images that are indistinguishable from real people) movies and TV shows. It will write credible novels and news stories and opinion columns, and compose film scores and pop music. That may not really affect me, if only because I’ll be close to retirement. But it will mean a growing number of creative endeavors will no longer easily find meaningful vocational outlets. It will amount to a kind of material degradation to human civilization that may prove irreversible.Gail: Grab a picket sign!Bret: Never thought I’d be a fan of any form of organized labor, but there it is. And it’s also a good occasion to praise President Biden for trying to create some shared ethical guidelines for the development of A.I.Gail: I’m the last one to make an informed prediction on anything relating to science and technology, but you’re right, it’s good to know we’ve got some principled leaders trying to figure things out.Bret: Even though the depressing reality is that humanity doesn’t have a particularly good track record of controlling new technologies, particularly when they can make some people richer or other people more powerful. The historian in me says the same might have been said with every past transformative technology, from the wheel to the printing press to nuclear energy. Maybe artificial intelligence will follow the same path. But A.I. is also the first technology I can think of that doesn’t supplement human creativity, but rather competes with it.Gail: And gee, Bret, we’ve agreed about almost everything this week — including organized labor! Next week I swear we’ll talk about something that stirs up a fight.Bret: I’m sure I’ll have strong views about the Oppenheimer film once I’ve seen it. Have I ever mentioned that I think Harry Truman was completely right to drop the bombs?Gail: We can compare thoughts then. Hope you get a chance to see “Oppenheimer” soon — although I should warn you it did feel as if three hours was a long time to contemplate atomic warfare. In an old theater with squeaky seats.I’m most certainly not an expert on World War II, but I hate the idea of killing something like 200,000 people to make a point about our nation’s breakthrough in technological firepower.Bret: History is filled with counterfactuals. I wonder how many American fighting men, including my grandfather — and, for that matter, how many Japanese soldiers and civilians — would have been killed if we had invaded the Japanese home islands the way we had to take Iwo Jima or Okinawa. I think the aggregate number would have been far higher.Gail: I can see that our ongoing conversation about this is going to be hard and deep, Bret. I’ll bring wine. And maybe we should also make it a point to see “Barbie” before we chat again. We can talk about global destruction and mass market capitalism at the same time.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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      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