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      DeSantis Starts Campaign in Iowa, Hoping It Slingshots Him Past Trump

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      In Iowa, Ron DeSantis warned supporters of a “malignant ideology” taking hold across the country, described children facing “indoctrination” and vowed to fight for conservative causes.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida kicked off his presidential campaign in Iowa on Tuesday with a sweeping denunciation of the “elites” that he said dominated American institutions, pitching himself as an unrepentant fighter who could reverse a tide of progressivism in boardrooms, the government and the military.“We must choose a path that will lead to a revival of American greatness,” Mr. DeSantis told supporters at an evangelical church in the suburbs of Des Moines.In a strident speech, he painted a dark picture of America, saying he would be a salve to a “malignant ideology” that was taking hold across the nation. He described children facing “indoctrination.” He mocked transgender athletes, denounced the “woke Olympics” of diversity programs and reveled in his battle with Disney.“It is time we impose our will on Washington, D.C.,” Mr. DeSantis said. “And you can’t do any of this if you don’t win.”The stop was the first in a three-state, 12-city tour that Mr. DeSantis’s team hopes can begin the arduous process of chipping away at former President Donald J. Trump’s advantage in early polls of the 2024 Republican primary race.Mr. DeSantis did not mention Mr. Trump by name in his speech. But he left little doubt about some of the areas in which he planned to draw contrasts with the former president in the coming months, including how each leader handled the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic more than three years ago and his ability to win in 2024.Later, in a news conference, he sharpened the contrast.“The former president is now attacking me saying that Cuomo did better handling Covid than Florida did,” Mr. DeSantis said, referring to former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York, a Democrat. “I can tell you this. I could count the number of Republicans in this country on my hands that would rather have lived in New York under Cuomo than lived in Florida in our freedom zone.”“Hell, his whole family moved to Florida under my governorship, are you kidding me?” Mr. DeSantis added later of Mr. Trump.A prayer at Eternity Church in Clive, Iowa, before Mr. DeSantis’s first rally since he made his campaign official.Rachel Mummey for The New York TimesThe pastor at the Iowa church said the auditorium seated 600, and hundreds more were in spillover areas.Rachel Mummey for The New York TimesThe DeSantis campaign’s decision to hold its first in-person event at Eternity Church in Clive, a suburb of Des Moines, signaled the enduring importance of evangelical Christian voters in Iowa’s Republican caucuses, which begin the nominating process.Before the event, Mr. DeSantis and his wife, Casey DeSantis, had met privately with about 15 local pastors for a private prayer over his family and candidacy, according to a campaign aide.“As a pastor, it tells me they value the Christian vote,” Jesse Newman, the pastor of Eternity Church, said in an interview, referring to the DeSantis team’s decision to begin campaigning at the church. In his own brief address to the crowd, Mr. Newman prayed for Mr. DeSantis’s family and urged the Lord’s intervention in the “fight against globalism and socialism.”Mr. DeSantis was introduced by the state’s Republican governor, Kim Reynolds, who joked that her state was “the Florida of the north” for the similarly conservative agenda she has pushed.“They’re going to be here a lot,” Ms. Reynolds said of the DeSantis family.Mr. DeSantis entered the stage in a blazer, a blue button-down shirt and no tie, alongside Ms. DeSantis, who also addressed the crowd in a demonstration of the central role she is expected to play in the campaign. The pastor said the jam-packed auditorium seated 600, and campaign officials estimated the spillover crowd that filled the lobby and elsewhere on the complex was more than 1,000.In his speech, Mr. DeSantis made the argument that he had fought the left in Florida and won — both electorally and on a raft of policies that have been enacted during his tenure.Casey DeSantis, the governor’s wife, joined him onstage.Rachel Mummey for The New York TimesHe spoke about signing a six-week abortion ban, pressing for the death penalty for those convicted of sexually abusing children, and “even sending illegal aliens to Martha’s Vineyard.”Mr. DeSantis injected more bits of his biography into his emerging stump speech than he did during his pre-candidacy. He invoked his mother’s work as a nurse, his father’s installation of Nielsen ratings boxes and his own minimum-wage jobs.“I was given nothing,” Mr. DeSantis said.His cadence at times felt rushed. He pushed so quickly through his speech that sections were swallowed by the crowd’s applause, which did not slow him down.Mr. Trump, who has focused on Mr. DeSantis more than on all of his other rivals, is also set to visit Iowa on Wednesday and Thursday, meeting with local Republicans and faith leaders and holding a Fox News town hall event also in Clive.Mr. DeSantis has positioned himself to the right of Mr. Trump on some key issues, including abortion, as part of an effort to woo right-wing voters. In his news conference, he accused Mr. Trump of shifting to the left.“He’s not an orator, I don’t think,” said Matt Wells, a conservative activist who drove 120 miles from Washington, Iowa, to see Mr. DeSantis. “But you give him a question about policy and he’ll run with it. I have wanted someone for so long who, when they’re asked about policy, they have an answer for it right there.”Kenneth Wayne, a retired physician from Clive, cited Mr. DeSantis’s leadership skills, including his military service, as a selling point. He said he had read Mr. DeSantis’s book cover-to-cover.“I feel that this is a fellow who knows his own mind, who is not going to blow with the wind,” said Mr. Wayne, who was wearing a Vietnam veteran hat. “He’s of a solid conservative bent.”Mr. DeSantis has sought to differentiate himself from Mr. Trump on social issues, pointing to their stances on abortion and the governor’s clash with Disney, among other issues, as proof that he is the more conservative candidate in the race and that Mr. Trump has moved to the center.Mr. DeSantis has positioned himself to the right of Mr. Trump on some key issues. Rachel Mummey for The New York Times“I will be able to destroy leftism in this country,” Mr. DeSantis said on Fox News on Monday.It is part of a DeSantis pitch that, more broadly, centers on fulfilling the promises where Mr. Trump fell short, including winning the White House for a second term by appealing to Republicans and independents who say they can no longer support the former president.“There are a lot of voters that just aren’t going to ever vote for him,” Mr. DeSantis told reporters on Tuesday. “We just have to accept that.” More

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      Chris Christie Gets a Super PAC Ahead of His Likely 2024 Bid

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      The former governor of New Jersey, who has been at times both a confidant and a rival of Donald Trump, will have some outside help in his effort to win the Republican primary.Allies of former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey have formed a super PAC to support him in the nascent Republican primary, as he makes preparations for a likely campaign kickoff in the next two weeks, according to an official with the group and others briefed on the matter.Mr. Christie’s candidacy is likely to to focus in part on drawing a stark contrast with former President Donald J. Trump. Mr. Christie supported Mr. Trump in 2016 and worked with him during his presidency, but they split over Mr. Trump’s claims on election night in 2020 that the race was stolen from him.People who have been close to Mr. Christie for years are leading the outside group, Tell It Like It Is, which is laying the groundwork for an imminent announcement, one of the people briefed on the matter said. Brian Jones, an aide who advised Senator John McCain’s presidential bid in 2008 and Mitt Romney’s in 2012, will run the effort.William P. Palatucci, a longtime adviser to Mr. Christie and a Republican National Committee member, will be the chair. Another long-serving adviser to Mr. Christie, Russ Schriefer, will oversee messaging as a senior adviser; and Brent Seaborn, a veteran data guru, will focus on voter targeting. Maria Comella, an adviser who also was chief of staff to former Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York, and Mike DuHaime, Mr. Christie’s top political strategist in 2016, are expected to run an eventual campaign if Mr. Christie announces as expected. Anthony Scaramucci, the hedge fund adviser who served for less than two weeks as a communications director in the Trump White House and has become a vocal Trump critic, has said he will support Mr. Christie if he runs. Mr. Christie “is willing to confront the hard truths that currently threaten the future of the Republican Party,” Mr. Jones said in a statement. “Now more than ever we need leaders that have the courage to say not what we want to hear but what we need to hear.”Chris Christie is focusing his effort in the 2024 race on New Hampshire, where he held a town hall recently at New England College.Charles Krupa/Associated PressMr. Christie has said recently that he would run if he believed he could win, but he had indicated that there were organizational issues he needed to figure out. The existence of the super PAC and the pending announcement suggest those issues have been resolved.A Christie candidacy is seen as a long shot in a Republican Party that has been remade in Mr. Trump’s image eight years after Mr. Christie first ran for president. Mr. Trump vanquished him, and Mr. Christie dropped out after coming in sixth in New Hampshire, where he had staked his candidacy.A central challenge of this campaign will be explaining to voters his transformation. He endorsed Mr. Trump in 2016, helped him with debate prep and acted at times as an informal adviser during his presidency. Then, in the earliest hours of Nov. 4, 2020, Mr. Christie split with him when he questioned Mr. Trump’s declaration that there had been widespread fraud in the election.“We heard nothing today about any evidence,” Mr. Christie said in an appearance on ABC News. “This kind of thing, all it does is inflame without informing. And we cannot permit inflammation without information.”Since then, Mr. Christie has become a full-throated critic of Mr. Trump, talking as a former federal prosecutor about the former president’s legal travails and describing him as a loser who can no longer command the crowds he once did. Mr. Christie’s candidacy is being watched by donors who either like what he’s saying or see him as the best opportunity to damage Mr. Trump, particularly from a debate stage. And like some other candidates, such as former Vice President Mike Pence, Mr. Christie appears to be banking on the notion that there are enough vestiges of the old Republican Party to which he can appeal.While New Hampshire is seen as a potentially favorable state where Mr. Christie could make inroads, his advisers are not expected to hang his candidacy on a specific state. Instead, he is expected to try to get as much media attention as possible with an unconventional campaign that will travel to places where his message is most appealing.He will be coming into the 2024 race as the person with the most coherent case against Mr. Trump while arguing that the fight needs to be taken directly to the former president. Mr. Christie is hoping to tamp down some of the grievance that has seeped into the roots of political discourse in the Republican Party since Mr. Trump became the party’s nominee in 2016. Mr. Christie is approaching the race, allies say, with the goal of delivering a hopeful message. But Mr. Christie has also repeatedly taken shots at Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, the distant second to Mr. Trump in most public polls, describing Mr. DeSantis’s fight with Disney in particular as an overreach. “Where are we headed here now that, if you express disagreement in this country, the government is allowed to punish you? To me, that’s what I always thought liberals did. And now all of a sudden here we are participating in this with a Republican governor,” Mr. Christie said last month. More

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      How Hard Will It Be for DeSantis to Beat Trump? Nixon vs. Reagan in 1968 Offers a Clue.

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      Ron DeSantis, the 44-year-old governor of Florida, has entered the presidential race, establishing himself as the most formidable Republican rival to Donald Trump.Mr. Trump, an inveterate liar who tried to overturn the last election, is alienating to a wide swath of voters, and many establishment Republicans have been happy to hunt out alternatives, particularly in Mr. DeSantis. After a rough midterm for Republicans that included the defeat of several Senate candidates endorsed by Mr. Trump, the former president appeared vulnerable.But since then, it has grown clear that counting him out as the likely Republican presidential nominee is foolhardy. Several factors — among them, the intense support he draws from a sizable chunk of the Republican base and his singular talent for commanding media attention — help explain why Mr. Trump holds a commanding position in the primary. History offers at least one parallel for why it will be so difficult for Mr. DeSantis and other G.O.P. contenders, like Nikki Haley, 51, the Trump administration’s ambassador to the United Nations, and Senator Tim Scott, 57, Ms. Haley’s fellow South Carolinian, to take him down.There was, more than a half century ago, another de facto leader of the Republican Party who reeked of failure. Pundits mocked and dismissed him as a has-been. Rivals across the ideological spectrum no longer feared him and cheered on his slide into irrelevancy.By the end of 1962, few believed there was a future for Richard Nixon, the former vice president. In 1960, he lost one of the closest-ever presidential races to John F. Kennedy, and members of the liberal Republican establishment, including Dwight Eisenhower, were glad to see him fall.After losing to Kennedy, Nixon tried to regroup, entering the 1962 California governor’s race against the well-liked Democratic incumbent, Pat Brown. Nixon, who had served as a representative and senator from the state, was initially expected to triumph and use the governorship as a steppingstone to the presidency. Instead, Brown swatted Nixon away after the former vice president had to endure a bruising primary battle against a Republican who was popular with the sort of movement conservatives who would, in the coming years, seize control of the party.On the morning after his loss to Brown, Nixon famously told the assembled press at the Beverly Hilton Hotel they wouldn’t have him to “kick around anymore.” That November, the journalist Howard K. Smith titled a television segment “The Political Obituary of Richard M. Nixon.”In the wake of these humiliations, Nixon’s tenuous comeback hinged on persuading both Republican voters, who could find more attractive warriors for their cause, and influential party and media elites that he in fact wasn’t completely finished. In 1964, Nixon flirted with running for president but backed away. (Mr. Trump, of course, did not feel chastened for supporting weak and beatable candidates in the midterms last year, and instead waited roughly a week to announce another presidential run.)Nixon decided to support Barry Goldwater, the far-right Arizona senator who lost in a landslide to Lyndon Johnson, the Democratic president. Nixon’s attachment to Goldwater won him some plaudits with the base of the party — he had been one of the few prominent Republicans to stick with the senator — but didn’t help alter the perception that he was a serial loser. To complete his rehabilitation, in the 1966 midterms, he strategically stumped for anti-Johnson Republicans who were poised to ride the white backlash to the Great Society and civil rights programs.By 1968, Nixon had established himself as a foreign policy maven, having undertaken many world tours in the 1960s, and cast himself as an arch, erudite critic of the Johnson administration.His period of vulnerability was briefer, but Mr. Trump today, like mid-’60s Nixon, has reasserted himself as a party kingpin. Now he, too, is contending with a popular governor from a large swing state.In the 1968 G.O.P. primary, Nixon actually had to outflank three prominent Republican governors — George Romney of Michigan, Nelson Rockefeller of New York and Ronald Reagan of California — who could offer, in the immediate term at least, more allure.Reagan, who had defeated the formidable California Governor Brown in 1966, was actually older than Nixon but had the swagger and ease of a much younger man, marrying the sort of sunny optimism Nixon could never muster with the raw appeal to a growing reactionary vote that Nixon craved.Just as Mr. DeSantis, with his wars on critical race theory, “woke” Disney and Covid restrictions, is trying to outmaneuver Mr. Trump on the cultural terrain that’s always been so vital in Republican primaries, Reagan outshone Nixon with his open disdain for Johnson’s landmark civil rights agenda, the burgeoning antiwar movement and the emerging hippie counterculture. He railed against the “small minority of beatniks, radicals, and filthy-speech advocates” upending California and successfully demoralized Brown, who remarked, shellshocked, after Reagan’s triumph that “whether we like it or not, the people want separation of the races.”Nixon rebuffed Reagan and the others in one of the last primaries where delegates and party insiders, rather than the will of voters, played a significant role in determining the nomination.Here the present diverges from history. Nixon was far more introspective, methodical and policy-minded than Trump. He was, by 1968, a significantly stronger general election candidate, winning the most votes — Trump has twice lost the popular vote — despite the segregationist George Wallace’s third-party bid, which ate into Nixon’s support.But just as a divided primary field worked to Nixon’s advantage, so it may for Mr. Trump, especially if several other candidates become viable. In such a scenario, Mr. Trump may need only pluralities in pivotal early states to take the nomination. His core fan base might be enough. Though Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign was often shambolic, it managed a finely tuned nativist, anti-free trade and anti-globalization message that cut through the noise of a chaotic primary season. In Nixonian fashion, Mr. Trump tapped into his party’s reactionaries and delighted the grass roots.The question is whether Mr. Trump can do it again. One of Nixon’s great political strengths was to assume, even at the height of his powers, the position of the aggrieved — to convince a palpable mass of voters that they, and he, were the outsiders. Genuinely self-made, this posture came naturally to Nixon. Mr. Trump, though the son of a millionaire real estate developer, has nevertheless effectively adopted it throughout his political career, once boasting of his love for the “poorly educated.”Mr. DeSantis enters the fray hoping that Mr. Trump’s many flaws, continuing legal troubles and political baggage ultimately render him weaker than he appears today. But looking at the historical parallel, even Reagan, a once-in-a-generation political talent, could not dislodge Nixon. As Mr. DeSantis’s Twitter-launch debacle suggests, he will need to quickly, and considerably, improve his standing. Perhaps then, with the help of a Trump implosion, can he hold out hope for 2024 — or even, as Reagan’s example suggests, a future presidential run.If 1968 is any guide, Mr. Trump will be tough to beat. In a crowded field, among a hungry younger generation of contenders like Mr. DeSantis, he will have to manufacture anew this kind of populism. He might just do it.Ross Barkan is an author and a contributing writer to The New York Times Magazine.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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      Chris Christie, Glenn Youngkin, Chris Sununu: Who Can Save the G.O.P. in 2024?

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      At this point, it seems a little gratuitous to pick at the scab of Gov. Ron DeSantis’s not-so-dazzling presidential campaign opening. Let us just stipulate that when your long-anticipated announcement jump-starts #DeSaster trending on social media, things could have gone better.The feeble rollout wouldn’t much matter if the Florida governor were otherwise dominating the Republican primary race, or even holding steady. But he isn’t. Slipping poll numbers, questionable policy moves, the people skills of a Roomba — his multiplying red flags have landed the Republican Party in the odd position of having not one but two problematic front-runners: its original MAGA king and the lead runner in its Anyone But Trump lane.So where does the race go from here? Most likely nowhere new, unless someone steps up with a fresh approach to the Trump problem. Because so far, the pack of pretenders to Donald Trump’s throne reeks of weakness. And nothing delights the MAGA king more than curb-stomping the weak.A presidential field without a strong front-runner invariably invites a pile-in of challengers. Every Tim, Nikki and Vivek — and Asa, Doug, Larry, Mike, etc. — surveys the scene and thinks: Heck yeah, why not me? Why not, indeed. Given the topsy-turvy state of the political terrain, is it really much more ridiculous for Vivek Ramaswamy, the upstart tech entrepreneur, to think he has a shot at the nomination than for Mike Pence to? No rampaging MAGA mob has ever brayed for his hanging, so in some regards, he has a critical edge on the former vice president.A host of seasoned politicians, along with characters no one has ever heard of, are out there right now poring over the results of test polls and focus groups, talking with players in Iowa and New Hampshire, huddling with big donors and strategists. Fueling the frenzy, twitchy donors are casting about for a more promising champion than Mr. DeSantis, pressuring their favorite white knights to join the tournament. Listen closely and you can hear the phones chirping in the offices of popular Republican governors such as Chris Sununu, Glenn Youngkin and Brian Kemp.Even as the mass of pretenders to Mr. Trump’s throne grows, the energy from the field remains stubbornly subdued. The pretenders have adopted a stance of nonaggression, an unwillingness to come hard at the MAGA king. The reasoning behind this is no secret. The former president feeds on conflict like a vampire on virgins. But the result is a collection of challengers trying to sell beta-male energy to a voting base hooked on outrage, machismo and blood lust.The whole vibe of the Republican contest feels increasingly passive-aggressive, with the pretenders giving Mr. Trump the side eye as they throw varying degrees of shade. The most direct (like Asa Hutchinson) somberly discuss the former president’s character flaws and lament that his antidemocratic behavior has disqualified himself from high office. Far more often, the candidates lard their electoral pitches with veiled criticisms about how governing is about more than salty tweets or how the presidency isn’t about building a personal brand — all while avoiding Mr. Trump’s name, of course.Even Mr. DeSantis, who fancies himself a fighter, won’t risk a full-frontal assault. His people have said he plans to be strategic with his criticisms — more shiv than sledgehammer. How cool. How strategic. But you know what happens when someone takes a sledgehammer to a shiv, right?If Republicans are serious about dislodging Mr. Trump, this race needs a jolt. Soon. No one knows exactly what might do the trick, but those weary of groveling before him would do well to start experimenting — for the sake of the party more than even their own ambitions. At the very least, someone needs to climb into the ring with the willingness and disposition to throw a direct punch. Metaphorically, of course.Chris Christie, the former governor of New Jersey, has been making noises as if he wants to be that guy. In a recent interview with Politico, he vowed that if he runs, he will tackle Mr. Trump’s weaknesses head-on, from the character troubles to the record of losing. (So much losing.) “I don’t believe that Republican voters penalize people who criticize Trump,” he asserted.To pull this off, Mr. Christie would need to go all in on his no-nonsense, in-your-face, Jersey tough-guy shtick — the one where he yells at people to sit down and shut up — and quash the sycophantic streak that had him smooching Mr. Trump’s backside for years. If he could go bully-a-bully with the former president, things could get interesting for the first time in forever. In 2016, no Republicans went hard at Mr. Trump because no one took him seriously. This time, most are too afraid of him. They are still hoping to find some magical way to woo his voters without his noticing or fighting back.Good luck with that.This race needs a brawler in the mix — if not Mr. Christie, then someone else with that inclination.Omar Little, the drug-dealer-robbing philosopher on “The Wire,” once observed, “You come at the king, you best not miss.” But if everyone is too chicken — excuse me, too strategic — to seriously come at the king at all, how can anyone expect a regime change?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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      For Trump, the More GOP Presidential Candidates the Better

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      Ron DeSantis entered the presidential race last week along with Tim Scott, with others to follow. For the former president, the more candidates the better.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida officially entered the presidential race last week, but he appears farther than ever from the one-on-one matchup that his allies believe he needs to wrest the nomination from former President Donald J. Trump.Former Vice President Mike Pence is burrowing deeper into Iowa, crucial to his effort to dislodge the Republican front-runners, even before he has announced his bid. Former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey is intensifying preparations for another campaign, with an expected focus on New Hampshire. And Republican donors and leadership on Capitol Hill are showing fresh interest in Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, who kicked off his campaign last week. Even candidates who have barely been mentioned are suddenly expressing interest in 2024.The rapidly ballooning field, combined with Mr. Trump’s seemingly unbreakable core of support, represents a grave threat to Mr. DeSantis, imperiling his ability to consolidate the non-Trump vote, and could mirror the dynamics that powered Mr. Trump’s takeover of the party in 2016.Ron DeSantis met with supporters in Manchester, N.H., this month. Along with Iowa, the state is crucial for the Florida governor.Sophie Park for The New York TimesIt’s a matter of math: Each new entrant threatens to steal a small piece of Mr. DeSantis’s potential coalition — whether it be Mr. Pence with Iowa evangelicals or Mr. Scott with college-educated suburbanites. And these new candidates are unlikely to eat into Mr. Trump’s votes. The former president’s base — more than 30 percent of Republicans — remains strongly devoted to him.“President Trump — he should go to the casino, he’s a lucky guy,” Dave Carney, a veteran Republican strategist based in New Hampshire, said of the former casino owner, Mr. Trump.“It’s a gigantic problem” for Mr. DeSantis, added Mr. Carney, who has worked on past presidential campaigns, because “whatever percentage they get makes it difficult for the second-place guy to win because there’s just not the available vote.”Mr. Trump’s advisers have almost gleefully greeted each successive entry as part of a divide-and-conquer strategy that his team has spoken about since 2021. And many of the candidates seem more comfortable throwing punches at Mr. DeSantis than at Mr. Trump.The DeSantis campaign sees the landscape differently.“We don’t believe it’s 2016 again,” Ryan Tyson, a senior adviser to Mr. DeSantis, said in an interview.And in a private briefing for donors this week, Mr. Tyson described a Republican electorate split into three parts: 35 percent as “only Trump” voters, 20 percent as “never Trump” and the remaining 45 percent as the DeSantis sweet spot.Mr. Tyson told donors, in audio that was leaked and published online, that every entrant besides the two front-runners were isolated in the “never Trump” segment. “If your name is not Ron DeSantis or Donald Trump, you are splitting up this share of the electorate,” he said.In the months leading up to his campaign launch, Mr. DeSantis and his allies framed the 2024 primaries as a two-man race. But as he has stumbled in recent months, amid questions about his personality and political dexterity, rivals have become emboldened. And some have the cash to stay relevant deep into the primary calendar.Senator Tim Scott, Republican of South Carolina, announced his run for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination last week.Allison Joyce/Getty ImagesMr. Scott entered the race with nearly $22 million on hand, and he raised $2 million more in his first day as a candidate. The wealthy, little-known governor of North Dakota, Doug Burgum, now sees a 2024 opening, filming ads recently to prepare for an imminent campaign, according to two people involved in the planning.Vivek Ramaswamy, an entrepreneur, has invested $10 million of his own money in his campaign. Like Mr. DeSantis, Mr. Ramaswamy sells a similar anti-woke sentiment, but he does so with the charm of a natural communicator.Mr. Trump has welcomed the non-DeSantis entrants to the race. In January, when Nikki Haley, who served as Mr. Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations, called to tell him she planned to run, Mr. Trump did not rant about her disloyalty, as some had expected. He sounded unbothered, telling her to “do what you’ve got to do,” according to two people briefed on their conversation.And in the days leading up to Mr. Scott’s announcement, Mr. Trump was watching Fox News in his Mar-a-Lago office when he said, “I like him. We’re just going to say nice things about Tim,” according to a person familiar with his private comments.The conventional wisdom at the beginning of the year was that the field would be relatively small, perhaps as few as five people running. Republican anti-Trump donors were working to thin the herd to prevent a repeat of the divided field that guaranteed Mr. Trump’s victory in 2016. Now, after Mr. DeSantis’s early stumbles, there will likely be as many as 10 candidates competing for attention and vying for the debate stage.For Mr. DeSantis, the squeeze was apparent on the day he entered the race.In New Hampshire, Ms. Haley mocked him on Fox News as merely “copying Trump,” down to his mannerisms. “If he’s just going to be an echo of Trump, people will just vote for Trump,” she said.In Iowa, Mr. Pence sat down with the type of mainstream media outlets that Mr. DeSantis has shunned, including The Des Moines Register. Mr. Pence also met with Bob Vander Plaats, the same evangelical leader Mr. DeSantis had recently brought to Tallahassee for a private meal.The split screen was a reminder that Mr. DeSantis is being pinched both ideologically and geographically, as the field expands.Nikki Haley, former governor of South Carolina and ambassador to the United Nations, announced her bid for president in February.Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesMr. Pence and Mr. Scott have made plain their plans to vie for influential evangelical voters in Iowa. In New Hampshire, both Mr. Christie, who focused his campaign on the state in 2016, and the state’s sitting governor, Chris Sununu, a moderate who has left the door open to a run, threaten to siphon votes from Mr. DeSantis. And in South Carolina, he will be sandwiched between two home-state candidates, the former governor Ms. Haley and Mr. Scott.Many Republicans who want to defeat Mr. Trump are aghast at the exploding field — along with Mr. DeSantis’s underwhelming performance in recent months. Mr. DeSantis has slipped in the polls and now trails Mr. Trump in all states and by an average of more than 30 percentage points nationally.“All Republicans have to be hitting Donald Trump,” said Mr. Sununu, who described himself as “50-50” about entering the race. “Any Republican that isn’t hitting Donald Trump hard right now is doing the entire party a disservice because if only one or two people are willing to take a shot at Donald Trump, it looks personal. It looks petty.”So far, Mr. Christie has gotten the most attention for his direct attacks on Mr. Trump, which he has signaled would be crucial to his candidacy. But he also has delighted in needling Mr. DeSantis at times, an acknowledgment of the Florida governor’s position in the race.Former Vice President Mike Pence, in dark suit, talks with Will Rogers, a lobbyist, during a meet-and-greet in Des Moines, Iowa.Charlie Neibergall/Associated PressThe reluctance to go after Mr. Trump, for many Republicans, feels eerily like a repeat of 2016. Then, Mr. Trump’s rivals left him mostly alone for months, assuming that he would implode or that they were destined to beat him the moment they could narrow the field to a one-on-one matchup, a situation that never transpired.The two Florida-based candidates in that race, Senator Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush, a former governor, spent millions of dollars strafing each other. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, who wound up as Mr. Trump’s top rival, gloated privately to donors that he was bear-hugging Mr. Trump while also patiently waiting for the moment to pounce. It never came.Mr. Trump’s current rivals seem exasperated by their collective inability to crack his foundation: Mr. Trump’s supporters have been trained for years to come to his defense whenever he is under fire.Mr. Trump has another asymmetrical advantage: Current and potential rivals have sought to avoid criticizing him too harshly so as not to alienate Republicans who still like Mr. Trump and are automatically suspicious of anyone attacking him. By contrast, other 2024 contenders have shown no hesitation in going after Mr. DeSantis.“His team — maybe him — is excellent at manufacturing the veneer of courage without actually delivering on the real thing,” Mr. Ramaswamy said in an interview last month. “And that can work across TV and even social media,” he added. “But once you poke a little bit, it’s like a little bubble in the air: A little touch, and it’s burst.”Mr. Ramaswamy, who has criticized Mr. Trump, has aimed most of his fire at Mr. DeSantis. A close friend of Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, Mr. Ramaswamy dined with Mr. Trump and Mr. Kushner at the former president’s New Jersey club, Bedminster, in 2021, according to two people familiar with the event.And while the field grows, there is the matter of the debate stage, where Mr. Trump eviscerated his opponents in the 2016 primary.The chair of the Republican National Committee, Ronna McDaniel, said earlier this year that she did not expect to need two debate stages as the party required in 2016, with the tiers of candidates determined by polling.But there could be as many as a dozen declared candidates by August, and many are already racing to collect the 40,000 donors and 1 percent polling threshold the party has indicated will be needed to get onstage. This pool includes longer-shot candidates like Larry Elder, the talk radio host who got walloped in the California recall election.“Everyone says, ‘We have to keep people from getting in.’” Mr. Sununu said. “That’s the wrong message, the wrong mentality, and that’s not going to work.”But he acknowledged that consolidation will eventually be needed to defeat Mr. Trump.“The discipline,” Mr. Sununu added, “is getting out.” More

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      Trump Must Be Pleased With the Way the Republican Race Is Shaping Up

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      This week, two candidates officially joined the Republican presidential field: Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida.They join four other declared candidates: Donald Trump; a former South Carolina governor and U.N. ambassador, Nikki Haley; a former Arkansas governor, Asa Hutchinson; and a businessman, Vivek Ramaswamy. Also, Chris Christie, a former governor of New Jersey, is poised to make another bid for the presidential nomination, and the governor of Virginia, Glenn Youngkin, is reconsidering his decision to take himself out of the race. Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota (who?) might make a run, and Trump’s former vice president, Mike Pence, continues to act as if he’s in the ring.All told, the Republican presidential field might end up almost as large and divided as the one in 2016. Which is to say that the 2024 Republican primary is, at this stage, shaping up to be a retread of the one that catapulted Trump to the commanding heights of the American political system.Once again, it is clear that many Republican elites would prefer to have someone other than Trump at the top of the ticket. But once again, those elites — donors, intellectuals, activists — are having a hard time finding a single alternative candidate to challenge the former president. DeSantis was supposed to play that part, but he has struggled to gain a foothold with Republican voters and has shown a tin ear for the challenges of national politics. As of Friday, he is far behind Trump in nearly every major poll of the national Republican primary electorate.If DeSantis continues to recede, other candidates will try to claim his spot as the party’s main alternative to Trump. And therein lies the problem. As long as there are multiple candidates vying for this position, Trump has the political space he needs to consolidate his support, which is still much greater than his rivals’.What’s more, there’s no sign that any candidate is ready to truly go on the offensive against the former president and try to render him anathema to Republican voters. Supporters of DeSantis, for example, can point to his credentials and fund-raising and conservative record in Florida. But none of that matters unless he is willing and able to make the case against Trump. So far, DeSantis hasn’t been. So far, none of the most viable candidates in the Republican presidential field appear to be ready to take that step.You could even say that there are no truly anti-Trump candidates in the Republican primary, just people hoping to take his place in the conservative political imagination. That’s why DeSantis has, as part of his campaign rollout, said he will consider pardoning some of the Jan. 6 rioters.Unless any of this changes, we can expect this Republican primary to unfold like the one in 2016, with each candidate doing everything in their power to avoid alienating Trump voters too much in the vain hope that they might capture them once Trump is out of the race. But now as then, there’s no reason to think he will leave. Which means that now as then, there’s no reason to think Trump will lose.What I WroteMy Tuesday column was on Justice Neil Gorsuch’s blinkered view of American history.In which case, Gorsuch’s denunciation of pandemic restrictions acts as an inadvertent glimpse into his view of the United States. With one notable exception (and it is quite notable) — the history of Native Americans — he is willing to ignore or doesn’t even see our long, peacetime history of repression and internal tyranny. What he seems to see instead is a long history of liberty with some significant exceptions, including our recent experience with the pandemic.My Friday column was on state governments as threats to American freedom rather than defenders of American liberties.That it is states, and specifically state legislatures, that are the vanguard of a repressive turn in American life shouldn’t be a surprise. Americans have a long history with various forms of subnational authoritarianism: state and local tyrannies that sustained themselves through exclusion, violence and the political security provided by the federal structure of the American political system.And in the latest episode of my podcast with John Ganz, we discuss the 1995 film “Judge Dredd.”Now ReadingKate Aronoff on the Inflation Reduction Act for Dissent.Michael Kazin on the Industrial Workers of the World for The Nation.Jeremy Lybarger on Rainer Werner Fassbinder for The Baffler.Sheryll Cashin on American poverty for Politico magazine.Moira Donegan on the connection between conservative attacks on abortion and trans health care for The Guardian.Photo of the WeekJamelle BouieThere’s an old hotel in Charlottesville that caught fire and sat dilapidated for years until recently, when it was bulldozed. This is a photo of the hotel just before it was razed. I think the owners are, as you might expect, going to build a new hotel.Now Eating: Chile-Oil Noodles With CilantroI am going to spend most of Memorial Day cooking a big meal for friends and family, which means that I don’t want to spend much time in the kitchen on Sunday. Enter chile-oil noodles. They are extremely easy to throw together, and I can serve them with virtually any protein. (In this case, I’ll stir-fry some chicken I have in the freezer.) Most important, I know the kids will eat them. The children are, for reasons I don’t completely understand, obsessed with noodles.Recipe comes from New York Times Cooking.Ingredients14 ounces dried udon noodles¼ cup chile oil with crunchy garlic2 tablespoons pure sesame oil2 teaspoons Sichuan chile oil, or to taste2 teaspoons soy sauce½ cup finely sliced garlic scapes or scallions, plus more for garnish2 tablespoons store-bought fried shallots, crumbled by hand (optional)½ cup finely chopped cilantro (see Note), plus a few sprigs for garnishDirectionsBring a large pot of water to boil and cook noodles according to package instructions, stirring from time to time to prevent them from sticking. Drain well in a colander, then run noodles under cold water until cooled.Meanwhile, in a large bowl, combine all three oils with the soy sauce and ½ cup garlic chives.Toss cooled noodles into the chile oil mixture. Gently fold in the crumbled fried shallots and chopped cilantro. Divide among four bowls and top with more garlic chives and cilantro sprigs. More

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      How the Internet Shrank Musk and DeSantis

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      If you had told me several months ago, immediately after Elon Musk bought Twitter and Ron DeSantis celebrated a thumping re-election victory, that DeSantis would launch his presidential campaign in conversation with Musk, I would have thought, intriguing: The rightward-trending billionaire whose rockets and cars stand out in an economy dominated by apps and financial instruments meets the Republican politician whose real-world victories contrast with the virtual populism of Donald Trump.The actual launch of DeSantis’s presidential campaign, in a “Twitter Spaces” event that crashed repeatedly and played to a smaller audience than he would have claimed just by showing up on Fox, instead offered the political version of the lesson that we’ve been taught repeatedly by Musk’s stewardship of Twitter: The internet can be a trap.For the Tesla and SpaceX mogul, the trap was sprung because Musk wanted to attack the groupthink of liberal institutions, and seeing that groupthink manifest on his favorite social media site, he imagined that owning Twitter was the key to transforming public discourse.But for all its influence, social media is still downstream of other institutions — universities, newspapers, television channels, movie studios, other internet platforms. Twitter is real life, but only through its relationship to other realities; it doesn’t have the capacity to be a hub of discourse, news gathering or entertainment on its own. And many of Musk’s difficulties as the Twitter C.E.O. have reflected a simple overestimation of social media’s inherent authority and influence.Thus he’s tried to sell the privilege of verification, the famous “blue checks,” without recognizing that they were valued because of their connection to real-world institutions and lose value if they reflect a Twitter hierarchy alone. Or he’s encouraged his favored journalists to publish their scoops and essays on his site when it isn’t yet built out for that kind of publication. Or he’s encouraged media figures like Tucker Carlson and now politicians like DeSantis to run shows or do interviews on his platform, without having the infrastructure in place to make all that work.It’s entirely possible that Musk can build out that infrastructure eventually, and make Twitter more capacious than it is today. But there isn’t some immediate social-media shortcut to the influence he’s seeking. If you want Twitter to be the world’s news hub, you probably need a Twitter newsroom. If you want Twitter to host presidential candidates, you probably need a Twitter channel that feels like a professional newscast. And while you’re trying to build those things, you need to be careful that the nature of social media doesn’t diminish you to the kind of caricatured role — troll instead of tycoon — that tempts everyone on Twitter.That kind of diminishment is what the Twitter event handed to DeSantis, whose choppy launch may be forgotten but who would be wise to learn from what went wrong. There’s an emerging critique of the Florida governor that suggests that his whole persona is too online — that his talk about wokeness, wokeness, wokeness is pitched to a narrow and internet-based faction within the G.O.P., that he’s setting himself to be like Elizabeth Warren in 2020, whose promise of plans, plans, plans thrilled the wonk faction but fell flat with normal Democratic voters.I think this critique is overdrawn. If you look at polling of Republican primary voters, the culture war appears to be a general concern rather than an elite fixation, and there’s a plausible argument that the conflict with the new progressivism is the main thing binding the G.O.P. coalition together.But it does seem true that the conflict with progressivism in the context of social media is a more boutique taste, and that lots of anti-woke conservatives aren’t particularly invested in whether the previous Twitter regime was throttling such-and-such right-wing influencer or taking orders from such-and-such “disinformation” specialist. And it’s also true that DeSantis is running against a candidate who, at any moment, can return to Twitter and bestride its feeds like a colossus, no matter whatever Republican alternative the Chief Twit might prefer.So introducing himself in that online space made DeSantis look unnecessarily small — smaller than Musk’s presence and Trump’s absence, shrunk down to the scale of debates about shadowbanning and Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. The Florida governor’s best self-advertisement in a primary should be his promise to be more active in reality than Trump, with his claim to be better at actual governance made manifest through his advantage in flesh-pressing, campaign-trail-hitting energy.The good news for DeSantis is that he doesn’t have billions invested in a social media company, so having endured a diminishing introduction he can slip the trap and walk away — toward the crowds, klieg lights and the grass.For Musk, though, escape requires either the admission of defeat in this particular arena or else a long campaign of innovation that eventually makes Twitter as big as he wrongly imagined it to be.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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      DeSantis Steps Up Attacks on Trump, Hitting Him on Crime and Covid

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      Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida vowed to repeal the First Step Act, a Trump-era criminal justice law, if elected president. He called it “basically a jailbreak bill.”Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida escalated his hostilities with former President Donald J. Trump on Friday, arguing that his Republican presidential rival was weak on crime and immigration, and accusing him of ceding critical decision-making during the coronavirus pandemic to Dr. Anthony S. Fauci.In an appearance with the conservative commentator Ben Shapiro, Mr. DeSantis accused Mr. Trump, the G.O.P. front-runner, of “moving left” on criminal justice and immigration issues after winning over the party’s base in 2015 and 2016.He pledged that he would repeal what is known as the First Step Act, a bipartisan criminal justice measure signed into law by Mr. Trump in 2018 that expanded early-release programs and modified sentencing laws, including mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent drug offenders.“He enacted a bill, basically a jailbreak bill,” Mr. DeSantis said. “It has allowed dangerous people out of prison who have now reoffended and really, really hurt a number of people.”This year, The New York Times reported that Mr. DeSantis and his allies saw the criminal justice bill, which Mr. Trump signed at the urging of his son-in-law Jared Kushner — and instantly regretted — as an area of political weakness, and that Mr. DeSantis had signaled he would use it in the nomination fight. The bill is unpopular with parts of Mr. Trump’s hard-core base.But for Mr. DeSantis, assailing Mr. Trump over the First Step Act is potentially complicated. Mr. DeSantis himself voted for the first version of the bill when he was in Congress, and Trump allies have sought to highlight that fact.“So now Swampy Politician Ron DeSanctimonious is claiming he voted for it before he voted against it,” Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Mr. Trump, said in a statement. “He sounds just like John Kerry. What a phony! He can’t run away from his disastrous, embarrassing, and low-energy campaign announcement. Rookie mistakes and unforced errors — that’s who he is.”(Mr. DeSantis’s allies note that the version of the bill he voted for looked significantly different, and that the final version passed when he was no longer in the House.)When Mr. Shapiro asked Mr. DeSantis about Mr. Trump’s recent criticism that crime had risen on his watch in Florida, the former president’s adopted state, Mr. DeSantis bristled and said Mr. Trump’s policies had undermined law and order.Mr. DeSantis stepped up his attacks on his onetime ally, whom he had avoided criticizing directly for months, less than 48 hours after he entered the race in a bumpy Twitter event.And as Mr. DeSantis seems to veer to the right on issues like crime, some of his campaign’s internal strategy is coming to light.At a fund-raising meeting in Miami on Thursday, donors peppered Mr. DeSantis’s top campaign staff members with questions about his policy positions and how they should be presented to other Republicans, according to a leaked audio recording posted online by the website Florida Politics.One donor raised a question about the rightward shift, to which a campaign official eventually responded, “We just got to win a primary in order to be in a general.”The donors and officials also discussed how to talk to Republicans who support abortion rights. (Mr. DeSantis last month signed a six-week abortion ban in Florida, which contains limited exceptions, while Mr. Trump has been hesitant to support a federal ban.)A staff member offered one possible answer.“Abortion is safe, legal and rare in Florida,” he said, parroting a phrase coined by former President Bill Clinton, a Democrat. “It has not been banned,” he added. “It is limited.”In his interview with Mr. Shapiro on Friday, Mr. DeSantis sought to cast himself as unwavering on illegal immigration, saying that Mr. Trump had attacked him for opposing amnesty legislation while in Congress.He also faulted Mr. Trump for his administration’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak in 2020, especially the level of influence exerted by Dr. Fauci, the longtime top infectious disease expert and face of the federal government’s pandemic response.Dr. Fauci, who retired in January, has been a frequent target of Republican attacks over issues like remote learning, stay-at-home orders and vaccine mandates.“He responded by elevating Anthony Fauci and really turning the reins over to Dr. Fauci, and I think to terrible consequences for the United States,” Mr. DeSantis said. “I was the leader in this country in fighting back against Fauci. We bucked him every step of the way.”He said that Dr. Fauci should have been fired, but Mr. Trump had honored him.“I think the fact that Donald Trump gave Anthony Fauci a presidential commendation on Trump’s last day in office, that was a gut punch to millions of people around this country who were harmed by Fauci’s lockdowns,” Mr. DeSantis said.A day earlier, in a post by Mr. Trump on his Truth Social platform, the former president slammed Mr. DeSantis over Florida’s response to the pandemic. He said that even former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York had done a better job limiting the loss of lives to the virus than Mr. DeSantis had.Mr. DeSantis described Mr. Trump’s claim as “very bizarre,” and said that it suggested he would double down on his actions if there were another pandemic. More