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      Ron DeSantis’s Presidential Campaign Is Not Dead Yet

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      It’s never a good sign when political analysts are writing “What Went Wrong?” stories about your presidential campaign before it’s announced.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida has endured more than his share of pre-mortems as the conventional wisdom has turned decisively against his imminent campaign and his standing has dropped into the teens and low 20s in recent national polls of the Republican primaries from above 30 percent in March.Despite the increasingly loud chorus of doubters the last couple of months, though, the DeSantis bid still has the makings of a strong campaign. In the weeks ahead he could well change the narrative of the 2024 Republican nomination fight from “Trump is burying DeSantis” to “He’s still kicking despite Trump doing everything he can to bury him.”He’ll be lavishly funded; his favorable ratings remain quite high among Republicans; he can draw a crowd; he’ll finally actually be in the race; and perhaps most importantly, it seems he has the correct theory of how to try to topple Trump.We’ve gotten used to the idea of DeSantis running but it’s worth remembering how audacious his campaign is. He’s not in the same position as, say, Nikki Haley, who can duck Trump as much as possible, hope that lightning strikes for her and if it doesn’t, that maybe she’ll still be in Trump’s good graces if he’s the nominee.This evasion isn’t available to DeSantis, whom Trump is already accusing of grooming teenage girls and of maybe being gay. DeSantis is signing up for the possibility of getting his reputation tarnished and his political career forever blighted. A friendly rapprochement is very unlikely at the end. If they do come to terms after a Trump victory, it will surely be humiliating to DeSantis — think of a defeated foreign king being paraded as one of the props in an ancient Roman triumph.And he’s getting in when Trump is once again making his dominant position in the party unmistakable. Earlier this year, it looked as if the 800-pound gorilla had perhaps slimmed down to 400 or 500 pounds, but now he’s clearly back at his accustomed weight.If Trump is clearly the odds-on favorite, though, it’s too early to declare him inevitable, and there is a big element of the party that is still open to someone else, at least in theory. How DeSantis campaigns will matter.At the mechanical level, he’ll need to post a big fund-raising number out of the gate, continue to roll out endorsements by state officials (he’s had impressive hauls in Iowa and New Hampshire), and win the contest for the best talent among activists and organizers while building robust organizations in the early states.None of that is easy, but, with significant backing from Republican donors, it’s doable.More fundamentally, a presidential candidate needs a personal narrative that dovetails with his political message in a way that candidates for lesser offices simply don’t. Without one, they rarely succeed. Barack Obama was a groundbreaking African American candidate for a country that needed the audacity of hope. Donald Trump was the outsider billionaire for a country that needed to be made great again.What is DeSantis? He has spent the last several months talking about his record in Florida more than about himself, which is admirable in a way — but policies don’t tell a story. At the moment, the average Republican knows little or nothing about his Yale baseball career, his military service during the war on terrorism, his wife’s fight against breast cancer or his life as a very busy father of three young children. In a recent trip through Iowa, his wife, Casey, talked in a more personal mode about their life together; there will have to be more of that.Much has been made lately of DeSantis’s standoffishness. Even if this has been exaggerated, there’s no doubt that he isn’t a Bill Clinton-style politician who feeds off people. For him, retail politics is clearly work, and he needs to do it. His team now has him staying after events, to glad-hand. He’ll have to do it wherever he goes, without showing any boredom or irritation, lest he confirm the idea that he lacks a personal touch.He’ll need to plant his feet firmly on tricky issues in a Republican primary: What does he think of the legitimacy of the 2020 election? Where he is now on entitlement reform? Perhaps his worst moment in the pre-announcement phase was his backtracking on a poorly drafted statement calling the Ukraine war “a territorial dispute,” which dismayed both G.O.P. supporters and opponents of large-scale aid to Ukraine.Then, of course, there’s the big, looming question of how to respond to Trump’s attacks. Ignoring them, as DeSantis has mostly done this spring, seems weak; responding risks playing Trump’s game. No Republican has yet figured out this conundrum, with the exception of Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia.When Trump put a bounty on Kemp’s head for the offense of defying him after the 2020 election, the governor responded deftly. He said that Trump had a beef with him, not the other way around, and when responding to Trump’s claims about the election, did it dispassionately and factually. He survived Trump’s onslaught, but had the advantage of fighting a proxy war in a primary battle on his home turf, rather than running directly against Trump himself.DeSantis would do well to study the Kemp example; while it shows it’s possible to win against Trump, it also underlines that he has to be fought with care to avoid triggering a defensive reaction from his fans. DeSantis won’t and can’t make the totalist case against Trump as unfit to serve that “Never Trump” Republicans and the press might like to hear. But so it is.Much of his anti-Trump case will be based on electability. There’s no doubt that Trump blew a winnable race in 2020 — DeSantis will need to say he really did lose — and had a large hand in the Republican Party’s disappointing midterm last year. In all likelihood, DeSantis would have a much easier time beating Biden than Trump would, based on the generational contrast alone. But there are limits to this argument. Trump is competitive with Biden in polling, and an electability message doesn’t usually move the type of self-identified “very conservative” primary voters DeSantis needs to pry from Trump.The risk to DeSantis is that his candidacy takes on the feel of an establishment front-runner — lots of donor enthusiasm, an electability message — when he’s running from behind against an insurgent populist who happens to have once been president of the United States.To counter that, DeSantis is obviously going to have to retain his hard edge on cultural issues. The continued fight against Disney, which has become a morass, may actually help him: With other candidates effectively taking the side of Disney out of principle or to score points against DeSantis, he can portray himself as the most committed warrior against woke corporations.And he needs to attack Trump from the right, both on the former president’s past record (Anthony Fauci, criminal justice reform, not building the border wall) and on current disputes. Even though it causes agita among some of his big donors, the issue of abortion is a clear opening for DeSantis. Trump is foggy, while DeSantis just signed a six-week ban. He should make maximum use of this contrast, especially in Iowa where social-conservative voters are so important.For all the talk of how DeSantis has modeled his combative political style on Trump, he’s a vastly different politician and character. His approach as a speaker and campaigner is conventional, whereas Trump is outlandish. DeSantis is highly professional, whereas even after being president of the United States for four years, Trump reeks of amateurism. All indications are that DeSantis is a dutiful family man, whereas Trump has been, at best, a playboy and a boor.It may be that Republicans decide that they still want the show that only Trump can provide. If that’s the case, DeSantis and all the other non-Trump candidates will indeed be done. But he’s not dead yet.Rich Lowry is the editor in chief of National Review.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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      Why It’s Far Too Soon to Say DeSantis Is Done

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      Despite his struggles, fortunes can change very quickly in presidential primaries.Will Ron DeSantis start attacking Donald Trump?Sophie Park for The New York TimesIs the Ron DeSantis campaign already over?After the last few months, it’s hard not to wonder. His poll numbers have plummeted. Would-be donors seem skeptical. Pundits have questioned whether he should even run at all.But as he finally announces a presidential bid, expected later today, it is worth mulling his path back to contention. Despite it all, Ron DeSantis could still be the next Republican nominee.That might seem hard to imagine, but fortunes can change astonishingly quickly in presidential primaries. There are still more than six months until the Iowa caucuses, and there will be plenty of opportunities for him to right his ship.In the end, the factors that made Mr. DeSantis formidable at the beginning of the year could prove to be more significant than the stumbles and miscues that have recently hobbled him. The damage is not yet irreparable.Of course, the fact that he could mount a comeback doesn’t mean he will come back. His campaign’s decision to announce his bid on Twitter tonight forfeits a rare opportunity to be televised live on multiple networks in favor of a feature, Twitter Spaces, that I don’t even know how to use as a frequent Twitter user. And even if his campaign is ultimately run differently than it has been so far, it’s not clear that even a perfectly run Republican campaign would defeat Donald J. Trump — at least if the former president survives his various legal challenges politically unscathed.But if you’re tempted to write off Mr. DeSantis, you might want to think again. The history of primary elections is littered with candidates who are written off, only to surge into contention. Unknown candidates like Herman Cain briefly become front-runners. Early front-runners like Joe Biden and John McCain are written off, then come back to win. Even Barack Obama spent six months struggling and trailing an “inevitable” Hillary Clinton by double digits.Perhaps one day we’ll say something similar about Mr. DeSantis’s candidacy. As with the candidates who ultimately surged back to victory, the strengths that made Mr. DeSantis seem so promising after the midterms are still there today. He still has unusually broad appeal throughout the Republican Party. His favorability ratings remain strong — stronger than Mr. Trump’s — even though his standing against Mr. Trump has deteriorated in head-to-head polling. He is still defined by issues — like the fight against “woke” and coronavirus restrictions — that also have broad appeal throughout his party. If this was enough to be a strong contender in January, there’s reason it might be again.While it’s easy to see Mr. DeSantis’s decline over the last few months as a sign of profound weakness, the volatility of the polling can also be interpreted to mean there’s a large group of voters open to both candidates. They might be prone to lurch one way or the other, depending on the way the political winds are blowing.Mr. DeSantis’s strategy so far this year may have also increased the likelihood of big swings. As I wrote last week, there are two theories for defeating the former president — Trumpism without Trump, and a reinvigorated conservative alternative to Trump. Of the two, the proto-DeSantis campaign can more easily be interpreted as a version of Trumpism without Trump. If his campaign has done anything, it’s to narrow any disagreement with Mr. Trump — even to a fault. Mr. DeSantis hasn’t really made either an explicit or implicit case against the former president. Perhaps worse, he hasn’t punched back after being attacked.This combination of choices has helped set up an unusually rapid decline in Mr. DeSantis’s support. After all, the only thing that unifies a hypothetical Trumpism without Trump coalition is opposition to Mr. Trump and the prospect of beating him. If you’re not attacking him and you’re losing to him, then you’re not saying or doing the only two things that can hold your supporters together.The evaporating basis for Mr. DeSantis’s support has played out subtly differently on two different fronts. On the right, conservative voters open to someone other than Mr. Trump nonetheless have returned to the side of the former president. What kind of conservative wants Trumpism without strength? Toward the center, the many relatively moderate and neoconservative establishment Republicans who yearn for a candidacy opposed to Trumpism, not just to the conduct of the man himself, have withheld crucial support for Mr. DeSantis and flirted with other options, from Chris Christie to Chris Sununu.But if the DeSantis campaign can revitalize the case for his Trumpism without Trump candidacy, he might quickly reclaim many of the voters who backed him a few months ago. Indeed, it’s even possible that the current media narrative and low expectations are setting the stage for a DeSantis resurgence.Imagine what it might feel like if he launched a successful, vigorous attack against Mr. Trump after all of these months on defense. What might have otherwise been a routine sparring match would be imbued with far greater significance, unleashing months of pent-up anxiety among his supporters. What if part of the reason he’s announcing his candidacy on Twitter is to mock Truth Social? Silly as it sounds, successfully putting down Mr. Trump might breathe life into his candidacy — and the media loves a comeback story.One important factor keeping Mr. DeSantis’s path open is that, so far, none of the potential moderate alternatives to him have gained a foothold in the race. If they did, it would deny him the moderate and neoconservative voters who supported the likes of John Kasich and Marco Rubio in the last primary. He would essentially become another Ted Cruz.But for now, Mr. DeSantis is the only viable not-Trump candidate in town. As long as that’s true, he will have every chance to rebound among the voters who would prefer someone other than Mr. Trump — if there is a market for someone other than Mr. Trump.In the end, whether there’s sufficient demand for a Trump alternative may be the bigger question than whether Mr. DeSantis can resuscitate his campaign. With Mr. Trump already holding more than 50 percent support in the polls, actually defeating Mr. Trump might require some breaks, like the possibility that his legal challenges are worse than we might assume. It might also require a DeSantis win in Iowa to break Mr. Trump’s grip on a crucial segment of the party, much as the midterms seemed to temporarily crack Mr. Trump’s base last winter.But even if Mr. Trump is a clear favorite, it’s easy to see how Mr. DeSantis can at least make this a competitive race again. When he’s able to focus on his own issues, he has a distinctive political brand with rare appeal throughout a divided Republican Party. With expectations so low, the groundwork for a recovery might even be in place. It’s happened before. More

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      Vivek Ramaswamy’s Long Shot Run at the Republican Nomination

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      GOOSE LAKE, Iowa — “We’re like a bunch of blind bats. We human beings are, we millennials are, we Americans are,” Vivek Ramaswamy riffed. “We can’t see where we are.”Bats send sonar signals, which bounce off objects and allow the mammal to navigate. “So we do that, we send out our signals, and it bounces off something that is true, something that is real, like family. The two parents who brought me into this world, my mother and father. The two children who I brought into this world,” he went on. “That is real. That is true. That means something to me.”In person, Mr. Ramaswamy’s presentation is a lot more intense; it is also about a bleaker landscape of American life than the bright version of Trumpism he’s trying to project.“We’re hungry for a cause,” he said of millennials when he spoke on a recent Friday night in Iowa, in a navy suit and white dress shirt, not pausing too often for applause and walking the stage. “We’re hungry for purpose and meaning. And identity. At a point in our national history when the things that used to fill that void — things like faith, patriotism, hard work, family — these things have disappeared.” Instead, he said, “poison” and “secular cults” had taken their place.All of this — the bats and the void and the disappearance of our families from the collective American identity — was delivered to a county committee dinner in a friendly ballroom with an open bar, a buffet, patriotic decorations and a fun local musician playing country hits from the past.This is what a pro-capitalism candidate looks like in post-Trump Republican politics, in which the emphasis is on the creation of a national identity in the face of spiritual emptiness and the idea that big business and the customer aren’t always right.The next morning, at campaign events held at one of those cool digital driving ranges and at a pizza place with a beautiful old tin ceiling, the American identity crisis talk continued. “There’s more to life than just the aimless passage of time, going through the motions,” he said standing in front of what looked like a floor-to-ceiling image of a Pebble Beach fairway. “You’re more than the genetic attributes you inherited on the day you were born,” he went on to say. “You are you.”He is technically the business candidate, but not really. This is the elite corporate executive as culture warrior. Mr. Ramaswamy’s pitch in Iowa was not about the application of free-market principles to the federal government, at least not in the way you might expect from a pre-Trump Republican business candidate. Nor was it economic populism, either, not really, because his idea isn’t so much that corporations are ripping you off; it’s that they’re in bad-faith league with one another to advance liberal pieties.Thalassa Raasch for The New York TimesThalassa Raasch for The New York TimesThalassa Raasch for The New York TimesThalassa Raasch for The New York TimesTheoretically, he could be doing a business pitch. Mr. Ramaswamy started a pharmaceutical investment and drug development company that picked up pharmaceutical projects abandoned by other companies and aimed to bring the drugs to market. In 2020, as C.E.O., he refused to support Black Lives Matter and in 2021 was an author of a Wall Street Journal opinion essay arguing that online platforms were censoring people when they blocked accounts in the chaotic aftermath of Jan. 6, 2021. He has published three books critiquing the environmental, social and governance practices of BlackRock and other fund managers and started an anti-E.S.G. asset management firm.As Charles C.W. Cooke of National Review pointed out, Mr. Ramaswamy has chosen to “download and internalize” MAGA moods — shutting down the F.B.I., replacing the A.T.F., raising the voting age to 25 unless you pass a civics test or serve in the military or as an emergency worker. These are the kind of proposals that are drafted to please and anger the right people and never happen. He’s given $10,000 to the defense fund of Daniel Penny, the man accused of second-degree manslaughter in the subway chokehold death of Jordan Neely, and his campaign is selling a coffee mug that reads “truth,” with the words “wokeism,” “climatism” and “transgenderism” crossed out above. He has repeatedly portrayed trans people as mentally ill.As a Ramaswamy campaign memo recently said, “The mistake every other campaign is making is that they see their path to the nomination through Trump, when our path is alongside Trump.” In reality, many Republican politicians have seen their path alongside Mr. Trump as they wait for someone else to break him like a big piñata.Mr. Ramaswamy wants to restore an American identity that, in speeches, involves a lot of concepts but rarely anecdotes. That identity would involve the pursuit of excellence, which he described in an interview along vague, traditional lines — people achieving their maximal potential, free of societal hindrance. He contended this ethic is absent from corporate life. “I think that part of this is psychological, that in the moment people feel compelled to apologize for excellence,” he told me. To “be accepted as cool,” the most successful “have to apologize for the system that got them there by sticking the word ‘stakeholder’ in front of it,” he said, and called “the racial equity agenda” an “example of prioritizing a different value.”Mr. Ramaswamy came up in an elite world where some people employ the idea of charity or progressive impulses to get ahead, first in admissions, then in business, and they sometimes become deluded or self-interested ethical consumers. “Whatever justice is, surely it can’t be attained so incidentally, by just picking the right shirts, the right burgers and the right bankers,” he writes in the book “Woke, Inc.” He’s bothered by that thing many also dislike, which is a hedge fund putting in place a superficial diversity effort intended to disrupt as little as possible to prevent a lawsuit or make money, or a corporation with an aspirational brand made of cotton produced in the Xinjiang region of China.This is the world summarized by Sam Bankman-Fried last year in a DM he later claimed he thought was off the record: “this dumb game we woke westerners play where we say all the right shibboleths and so everyone likes us.”In “Woke, Inc.,” Mr. Ramaswamy’s solution is to separate politics and business. He argues that both stakeholder capitalists and Milton Friedman devotees miss something in the corporate system we have: A sole focus on fiduciary duty and profit maximization keeps corporations from becoming extragovernmental bodies like Dutch colonial trading companies.But it’s also not as if the only time anyone cares about racism in America is to sell Pepsi or to get into Columbia. The practical implications of keeping business and politics separate become complicated quickly for this reason; the economy is made up of millions of individuals who live in the larger world. “This is a business,” as Dolly Parton said of her decision to remove “Dixie,” the nickname for the South often associated with the Confederacy, from the Stampede, two dinner show attractions she owns. She didn’t want to offend prospective customers. What if Chick-fil-A wants to stay closed on Sundays? What if a company wants to market fratty beer to trans people and supporters as customers in and of themselves? What counts as maximizing profit or respecting the employees, and what counts as politics? What is politics?Over the past decade, many presidential candidates — especially the long-shot, unconventional kind in both parties — have talked in secular-spiritual ways about voids in American life and the corruption among elites. There are different theories of the case (technological change, inequality, institutional decline, loneliness), including the omnipresence of corporations and the emptiness of material goods for justice. The vision that markets and capitalism would liberalize the world and accelerate the realization of a pluralistic America, full of choice and privacy and respect, has begun to dim.Mr. Ramaswamy has isolated a problem in that vision (the hollowness of so much of corporate social policy). His national-identity-based explanation for the void is winning with some post-Trump conservative politicians who see the “power, dominion, control and punishment” that Mr. Ramaswamy said he believes are behind climate activism in much of American elite life. It’s a lean time for the sunnier version of a capitalist pitch — in which climate change is a problem but also a business opportunity, just like the valued employees and customers in a pluralistic, ever-changing American society.Katherine Miller is a staff writer and editor in Opinion.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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      ‘Americans Like a Happy Warrior’: Our Columnists Weigh In on Tim Scott

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      As Republican candidates enter the 2024 presidential race, Times columnists, Opinion writers and others will assess their strengths and weaknesses with a scorecard. We rate the candidates on a scale of 1 to 10: 1 means the candidate will probably drop out before any caucus or primary voting; 10 means the candidate has a very strong chance of receiving the party’s nomination next summer. This entry assesses Tim Scott, the junior senator from South Carolina, who announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination on Monday.How seriously should we take Tim Scott’s candidacy?Jamelle Bouie The odds that Tim Scott leaves the single digits, much less overtakes Donald Trump, are extremely slim, but I still think we should take Scott’s candidacy seriously for what it might say about the Republican Party after Trump.Jane Coaston We should take it far more seriously than we ultimately will.Michelle Cottle Maybe divide Ron DeSantis’s chances by Nikki Haley’s, then multiply by the square root of Vivek Ramaswamy’s.Ross Douthat The only reason to take Scott more seriously than his fellow South Carolinian Nikki Haley is that he has less of a national identity and brand, so there’s a little more room for him to surprise us on the campaign trail. For now, though, he occupies roughly the same terrain that she does: the donor-friendly, telegenic candidate of the multiracial future who just doesn’t have the populist edge required to satisfy the typical conservative voter’s far grimmer and more combative mood.Rosie Gray Like the other non-Trump Republicans entering the race, the odds are stacked against him. However, he’s already proved to be attractive to major G.O.P. donors and is popular in the Senate (not that that helped other Republicans much in 2016).Michelle Goldberg He’s a long shot, but we should take him more seriously than any of Trump’s other declared challengers. He’s beloved by the conservative elite, has a reported $22 million in the bank and would probably be the most formidable Republican in a general election.Liz Mair He’s unlikely to be the G.O.P. presidential nominee — but very likely to be the vice-presidential nominee.Daniel McCarthy Tim Scott is the most serious candidate who isn’t Trump or Ron DeSantis. That may seem like faint praise. But Republican primary voters have been eager to consider Black candidates in recent cycles: Herman Cain in 2012, Ben Carson in 2016. That eagerness gives Scott an opening.Alex Stroman Tim Scott is a serious candidate with a biography that in any other year would make him one of the likeliest nominees for the presidency. A strong finish in Iowa — a state tailor-made for a candidate like Scott — could still propel him to the nomination.What matters most about him as a presidential candidate?Bouie In terms of his assets as a candidate, he is one of the most prodigious and impressive fund-raisers in the Republican Party, which is a testament to his serious retail political skill. But what truly matters most is the fact that he’s trying to build on the things Trump brought to Republican politics while also trying to forge a different direction for the party.Coaston He is a candidate with both a self-concept and a policy direction. He is very conservative, but his conservatism is rooted in conservative policy, not just conservative performance. His police reform bill favored oversight rather than reducing protections for police in civil cases, for example. That’s not my ideal, but it’s one that I understand, at least.Cottle As the lone Black Republican in the Senate, he is an experienced elected leader who could help soften the party’s image as a bunch of angry, racist old white guys.Douthat From his perspective, what matters most is whether Ron DeSantis collapses and there’s a scramble to find a different anti-Trump candidate — or somewhat more plausibly, whether he can sell himself as a compelling vice-presidential candidate for the eventual nominee. From the country’s perspective, he and Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy are all reminders that the G.O.P. is, in its own way, a multiethnic big tent — but not in the kind of way that’s likely to make Scott its nominee.Gray For one thing, Scott’s run is historic in that he is the first Black officeholder to seek the Republican presidential nomination, as Jamelle Bouie recently pointed out. And his candidacy, like that of Haley, will be a test of how much support truly exists for the favorites of the old G.O.P. establishment.Goldberg White people on the right love Black conservatives who mostly absolve them on racial issues while indicting progressives. Mair Scott’s entire persona and approach runs counter to what is currently dominant in the Republican Party. He’s a very positive, optimistic and upbeat guy. You don’t find that often in today’s politics — in either party. He’s also smart and a very strong communicator, even when explaining complex policy.McCarthy His candidacy makes it harder to overlook Black men who support the G.O.P. In Scott, they have an example of success within the party. Nearly one in five Black men nationwide voted for Donald Trump in 2020 — Senator Scott would broaden the national conversation as well as the Republican field.Stroman He’s inspiring and doesn’t turn off moderates or MAGA supporters. He’s a conservative, but he’s not angry about it — a refreshing outlier when both parties are dominated by loud voices playing to their bases and ignoring the middle. If his major addresses (his 2020 Republican National Convention speech and 2021 response to President Biden’s first address to Congress) are anything like his campaign, I expect he will run a compassionate-conservative-style race that focuses on uplifting and uniting the country and making Americans feel proud again.What do you find most inspiring — or unsettling — about his vision for America?Bouie I think he, along with his fellow South Carolinian Nikki Haley, represents one vision for a multiracial ideological conservatism that might have legs.Coaston He sounds like a person who exists outside of Washington, in comparison to his party, which talks a lot about the evils of the Beltway while never leaving. Today, who is a Republican and who is a Democrat is shifting. No better example of that than Tim Scott.Cottle He’s aiming for a unity and optimism vibe — more “morning in America” than “American carnage.”Douthat Scott looks like the heir to Jack Kemp’s old blueprint for how the Republican Party could thrive in a multiracial future — with an upbeat, equal-opportunity, colorblind-capitalism-lifts-all-boats vision of the American experiment. This vision was too simplistic in Kemp’s era and way too simplistic now; it is, however, a piece of what a healthy conservatism should offer to the country.Gray Scott markets himself as a positive, optimistic, let’s-work-together guy, but his politics are in line with the most intransigent conservatives of his party. Whether this is inspiring or unsettling I guess depends on one’s point of view.Goldberg He’s a sunny and optimistic figure, not an apocalyptic culture warrior, and has a record of bipartisan work on criminal justice reform. I’d be very sad if Scott became president, but I wouldn’t be terrified.Mair Scott’s personal story really exemplifies why he believes what he believes about limited government and small-c conservatism, and why it will open up opportunities for many Americans who have historically lacked them. And Scott himself is an inspiring guy.McCarthy What’s most inspiring about Senator Scott’s vision is its integration of certain sound priorities old and new: stronger border enforcement, including building the wall that Trump proposed in 2016, combined with unsexy but urgent traditional G.O.P. themes like curbing the national debt. Scott is no national conservative, but he has learned some lessons from populism without forgetting what was right about older fiscal orthodoxies.Stroman He didn’t go to Fordham or to an Ivy League school — he went to Charleston Southern, a small Southern Baptist university near his hometown, North Charleston, where he announced his presidential campaign. He was raised by a single mother in poverty, and became only the seventh Black U.S. senator in American history. Through his story, Scott has the ability to attract new voters to the party — if primary voters will give him the opportunity.Imagine you’re a G.O.P. operative or campaign manager. What’s your elevator pitch for a Scott candidacy?Bouie Americans like a happy warrior, and Scott is nothing if not a happy warrior.Coaston He speaks to an optimistic conservatism — one that believes in its own rhetoric.Cottle He has a great back story, and he’d make a heckuva V.P. candidate.Douthat If the Republican Party could just seem normal, friendly and nonapocalyptic for more than five minutes at a time, it could beat Joe Biden by five points. Why not nominate Scott and try it?Gray Scott has a compelling story and a more positive message than mudslinging rivals like Trump and DeSantis. He could be attractive to voters who are sick of the back-and-forth and want a more hopeful-seeming alternative.Goldberg At a time when the Democratic Party is losing Black men, a Tim Scott nomination would be a nightmare for Joe Biden.Mair Tim Scott offers sunny optimism for a great country whose best days really are ahead of it.McCarthy Tim Scott is the Republican answer to the 1619 Project.Stroman Trump has to win Iowa. But evangelicals win Iowa, and Tim Scott is an evangelical.Jane Coaston (@janecoaston) is a staff writer in Opinion.Michelle Cottle (@mcottle) is a member of The Times’s editorial board.Rosie Gray (@RosieGray) is a political reporter.Jamelle Bouie, Ross Douthat and Michelle Goldberg are Times columnists.Liz Mair (@LizMair) has served as a campaign strategist for Scott Walker, Roy Blunt, Rand Paul, Carly Fiorina and Rick Perry. She is the founder and president of Mair Strategies.Daniel McCarthy (@ToryAnarchist) is the editor of Modern Age: A Conservative Review.Alex Stroman (@AlexStroman) is a former spokesman with the Republican National Committee and executive director of the South Carolina Republican Party.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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      Ron DeSantis Floats ‘7-2 Conservative Majority’ on Supreme Court

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      With his 2024 campaign imminent, Ron DeSantis pointed to how he could tilt the court further to the right. He also highlighted his ability to serve for eight years as president, unlike Donald Trump.On the eve of declaring his candidacy for president, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida has begun articulating a new rationale for why Republicans should nominate him over former President Donald J. Trump, saying he could “fortify” the Supreme Court’s conservative majority during a potential eight years in office.“You would have a 7-2 conservative majority on the Supreme Court that would last a quarter-century,” Mr. DeSantis said on Monday during an address to the National Religious Broadcasters Convention in Orlando. “So this is big stuff, very important that that gets done right.”His comments seemed to signal a new avenue of attack against Mr. Trump, who could serve for only another four years in the White House. Conservatives have praised Mr. Trump for establishing a strong 6-to-3 majority on the court, which overturned Roe v. Wade last year, a decades-long ambition of Republicans.Mr. DeSantis, who is expected to declare his candidacy this week, suggested that he would appoint similarly conservative justices — but that he would have the opportunity to do so for longer than Mr. Trump.“I think if you look over, you know, the next two presidential terms, there is a good chance that you could be called upon to seek replacements for Justice Clarence Thomas and Justice Samuel Alito,” Mr. DeSantis said, referring to two of the court’s most staunchly conservative members. “And the issue with that is you can’t really do better than those two. They are the gold standard for jurisprudence.”The governor also seemed to criticize Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who was appointed by President George W. Bush in 2005 but has sometimes voted with the court’s liberal wing. Mr. DeSantis warned that replacing a justice like Justice Thomas with a jurist in the mold of Justice Roberts would “actually see the court move to the left.” He also indicated that the next president could have an opportunity to replace Justice Sonia Sotomayor, a liberal who has been on the court since 2009.In Florida, Mr. DeSantis has reshaped the State Supreme Court with conservative justices, removing a potential roadblock to enacting his agenda.While Mr. DeSantis has not talked much about his faith on a national tour ahead of his presidential run, he told the audience of Christian conservatives in Orlando about bringing home water from the Sea of Galilee in Israel to baptize his children. He also praised the nation of Israel, calling it “the cradle of our Judeo-Christian civilization.”“Those are the values that undergird our Constitution and our republic here in America,” Mr. DeSantis added. More

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      Tim Scott Begins Presidential Campaign, Adding to Trump Challengers

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      The announcement from the South Carolina senator follows a tour of early nominating states. He enters the Republican primary field having raised $22 million.Tim Scott, the first Black Republican elected to the Senate from the South since Reconstruction, announced his campaign for president on Monday, adding to a growing number of Republicans running as alternatives to former President Donald J. Trump.Mr. Scott’s decision, which followed a soft rollout in February and the creation of an exploratory committee in April, came this time with a signal to the Republican establishment that he was the candidate to rally around if the party is to stop Mr. Trump’s nomination. He was introduced by the Senate’s No. 2 leader, John Thune of South Dakota, and will immediately begin a $5.5 million advertising blitz in the early nominating states of Iowa and New Hampshire.“Our party and our nation are standing at a time for choosing: Victimhood or victory? Grievance or greatness?” he planned to say at a packed and boisterous morning rally in the gym of his alma mater, Charleston Southern University, according to prepared remarks. “I choose freedom and hope and opportunity.”Long considered a rising star in the G.O.P., Mr. Scott, 57, enters the primary field having amassed $22 million in fund-raising and having attracted veteran political operatives to work on his behalf.But the field of Republicans hoping to take the nomination from Mr. Trump is about to grow far more crowded. Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida and Chris Christie, the former governor of New Jersey, are expected to enter the race in the coming days. Chris Sununu, the popular Republican governor of New Hampshire, hinted over the weekend that he was likely to throw his hat in the ring as well, scrambling the battle for the state with the first Republican primary. Mike Pence, Mr. Trump’s former vice president, is still mulling a run.With Mr. Trump’s most ardent followers unwilling to abandon their standard-bearer, the former president’s critics worry that more opponents will only split the anti-Trump vote and ensure his victory. Mr. Thune’s presence onstage Monday was an acknowledgment of that concern and a call to other elected Republicans to get on board with Mr. Scott.Aides to the Scott campaign said that his $22 million war chest was more than any presidential candidate in history, and that the $42 million he has raised since 2022 — much of which has been dolled out to other Republicans — had created a depth of loyalties other candidates do not have.The biggest question looming over Mr. Scott’s candidacy may be whether his message of positivity steeped in religiosity can attract enough Republican voters to win in a crowded primary. One of Mr. Scott’s rivals for the nomination is Nikki Haley, a former United Nations ambassador and South Carolina governor who appointed him to his Senate seat in 2012. The two have split allegiances and in-state support since Ms. Haley started her run in February, potentially complicating their efforts in a must-win early primary state.“I bet there’s room for three or four” candidates from South Carolina, Mr. Scott told the conservative radio personality Joey Hudson during a February interview. Mr. Scott has consolidated support from several top Republican donors and political consultants while touring Iowa and New Hampshire, key early nominating states, along with South Carolina, his home base. The longtime political operative Rob Collins and the former Colorado senator Cory Gardner, two well-known figures in Republican politics, are the leaders of his affiliated super PAC. Last month, two top South Carolina operatives, Matt Moore and Mark Knoop, were tapped to lead the group’s in-state operations.Mark Sanford, the disgraced former governor of South Carolina whose political comeback was cut short by his staunch criticism of Mr. Trump, joined the crowd.“I’m a huge fan of Tim Scott,” he said.A North Charleston native, Mr. Scott was raised by a single mother who worked long hours as a nursing assistant to raise him and his brothers. A car crash in high school sank his football dreams, but he attended Presbyterian College on a partial athletic scholarship before ultimately studying political science at Charleston Southern. His first foray into politics was through the Charleston County Council. After serving one term in the State House, he defeated the son of Strom Thurmond and won a seat for the First Congressional District in 2010, making him the first Black Republican House member from the Deep South since Reconstruction. Mr. Scott speaking with Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, a Democrat. Mr. Scott’s support floats in the single digits, and several other national Republicans are also eyeing a presidential run.Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesIn speeches, he often uses his biography — a story of humble beginnings and rapid rise on the political stage — to underline his view of America as a laudable work in progress rather than an irredeemably racist nation.“This is the freest and fairest land, where you and I can go as high as our character, our grit and our talent will take us,” he was set to say on Monday. “I bear witness to that.”The significance of his position is not lost on him. After a white gunman murdered nine Black parishioners at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, Mr. Scott condemned the act as a “crime of hate” and joined a bipartisan group of lawmakers in supporting Ms. Haley’s removal of the Confederate emblem from South Carolina’s state flag. As the nation reeled from the deaths of several Black men at the hands of the police in 2016, he gave a speech from the Senate floor describing instances when he was racially profiled, including by the Capitol Police.And the next year, after Mr. Trump said there were “very fine people on both sides” of a white supremacist march in Charlottesville, Va., Mr. Scott criticized his words, compelling the former president to invite the senator to the White House for a meeting about it.Mr. Scott was a leading Republican voice on police reform negotiations after the murder of George Floyd in 2020, helping draft Republicans’ proposed legislation that called for narrow reforms but did not ultimately pass. In 2017, he spearheaded the creation of Opportunity Zones, an initiative that offers tax incentives to investors in low-income neighborhoods — many of which are predominantly Black.It’s not clear, however, whether those efforts will result in added support from Black voters on a national stage. For many Black Democrats, Mr. Scott’s race matters little in light of his conservative voting record.The biggest question looming over Mr. Scott’s candidacy is whether his message of positivity steeped in religiosity can attract enough Republican voters to win in a crowded primary.Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times“The same Black people that would normally vote Republican, those are the people that will vote for Tim Scott,” said Representative Jamaal Bowman, Democrat of New York. “The majority of Black people, the near majority or new Black voters aren’t going to come out for Tim Scott.”Mr. Scott has already been tested as a presidential candidate. Days after starting his exploratory committee, Mr. Scott waffled on questions about whether he would support a federal abortion ban and did not specify the number of weeks at which he would restrict access to the procedure if elected president.Mr. Scott’s entry to the race also comes amid soul-searching for Republicans on who will carry the party’s mantle in 2024. Mr. Trump has increased his edge in the polls even as he faces new personal and political controversies, including his indictment by a grand jury in Manhattan and subsequent liability in a sexual assault trial involving the columnist E. Jean Carroll. Mr. Scott has pointedly declined to criticize Mr. Trump head-on, preferring oblique references to his own rectitude.The senator’s supporters have lauded that message, mostly positive and peppered with biblical references, as a welcome contrast to the vitriol that has become a feature of national campaigns.“You haven’t seen him burned in effigy because of a side he’s taken,” said Mikee Johnson, a Columbia-area business owner and Scott donor. “He’s more the one who’s seemed to have brought some people together.”Mr. Johnson added, “And I love him, because that’s his place.”During a March presidential forum in Charleston hosted by the conservative Christian Palmetto Family Council, Mr. Scott highlighted themes likely to take center stage during his presidential campaign.“There are two visions: One that feels like it’s pulling us down and another one that wants to restore faith in this nation,” he told the crowd after quoting the Epistle to the Galatians. “We believe that we need more faith in America, more faith in Americans, not less.” More

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      5 Things to Know About Tim Scott

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      Mr. Scott, who just announced a presidential campaign, is the first Black Republican senator from the South in more than a century and has been a prominent voice in his party on matters of race.Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, who announced his presidential campaign on Monday, is the first Black Republican senator from the South in more than a century and has been one of his party’s most prominent voices on matters of race, often navigating a political tightrope.Here are five things to know about Mr. Scott.A rapid riseMr. Scott was elected to Congress during the Tea Party wave of 2010 to represent South Carolina’s First District, which would flip to Democrats in 2018 and back to Republicans in 2020. He was previously an insurance agent and served on the Charleston County Council and in the South Carolina House.Just two years after winning his U.S. House seat, he was appointed to the Senate to replace Jim DeMint, a conservative hard-liner who resigned to lead the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think tank.The woman who appointed him was Nikki Haley, then the governor of South Carolina and now one of his opponents in the race for the Republican presidential nomination.Mr. Scott quickly gained national attention, not only for the historic nature of his appointment — he was the fifth Black person, and the first from the South, to serve in the Senate since Reconstruction — but also for his personal story. He was raised by a single mother and was a failing student before meeting a Chick-fil-A owner who mentored him and, he wrote in an opinion piece for The Post and Courier in 2010, taught him conservative values.He won a special election in 2014 to fill the remainder of Mr. DeMint’s term, then was elected to a full term in 2016 and re-elected in 2022 by wide margins.A Republican voice on race …Mr. Scott has used his platform as one of the few Black Republicans in Congress — there are four in the House, and he is the only one in the Senate — to argue that Democrats are wrong about the persistence of structural racism in the United States.It is a standard Republican argument but has carried different weight coming from Mr. Scott. He has presented his success as evidence that Black Americans are no longer marginalized, telling Iowans in February that he was “living proof” that “we are indeed a land of opportunity, not a land of oppression.”Mr. Scott, who has walked a political tightrope as a Republican vocal about race, spoke at a Black History Month celebration dinner in February.Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesHis grandfather grew up under Jim Crow and had to leave elementary school to pick cotton, but lived to see Mr. Scott win a House primary over the segregationist Strom Thurmond’s son. He is fond of saying his family went “from cotton to Congress in one lifetime.” In a speech at the 2020 Republican National Convention, he credited his constituents with fulfilling the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream by judging him “on the content of my character, not the color of my skin.”In 2022, as Congress debated voting rights, Mr. Scott clashed with the Senate’s two other Black members, Cory Booker of New Jersey and Raphael Warnock of Georgia, both Democrats. As the grandson of a man disenfranchised by Jim Crow, he said, he took offense at a term some had used to describe the voting restrictions Republican-led states had enacted: “Jim Crow 2.0.”It is “hard to deny progress,” he said, when two of three Black senators “come from the Southern states which people say are the places where African American votes are being suppressed.”… with some breaks from the party lineMr. Scott has spoken forcefully about modern-day racism while maintaining that it does not reflect any systemic blight.After the neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017, he criticized President Donald J. Trump’s assertion that there were “very fine people on both sides,” and ended up giving Mr. Trump a history lesson in the Oval Office.He told the president about “the affirmation of hate groups who over three centuries of this country’s history have made it their mission to create upheaval in minority communities as their reason for existence,” he said at the time. He said he had also shared his thoughts on “the last three centuries of challenges from white supremacists, white nationalists, K.K.K., Nazis.”The next year, Mr. Scott sank two of Mr. Trump’s judicial nominees. The first was Ryan W. Bounds, who had written a column in college denouncing “race-focused groups.” The second was Thomas A. Farr, who had defended a North Carolina voter ID law that a court said targeted Black people with “almost surgical precision.” Mr. Farr had also been involved years earlier in a campaign in which Senator Jesse Helms was accused of intimidating Black voters.Mr. Scott has credited his constituents with fulfilling the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream by judging him “on the content of my character, not the color of my skin.”Travis Dove for The New York TimesMr. Scott’s most emotional moment may have come in 2015, after the massacre of Black churchgoers in Charleston, S.C. In a speech on the Senate floor, he choked back tears while quoting a victim’s son who he said had expressed hope “that this evil attack would lead to reconciliation, restoration and unity.”Still, he described the shooting as “the hateful and racist actions of one deranged man,” not as evidence of a larger social issue.A proponent of police reformMr. Scott has broken from other Republicans in acknowledging bias in policing and pushing for reform, though not to the extent Democrats have.“While I thank God I have not endured bodily harm, I have, however, felt the pressure applied by the scales of justice when they are slanted,” he said in 2016, after a series of police shootings of Black men and the shooting of officers in Dallas. “I have felt the anger, the frustration, the sadness and the humiliation that comes with feeling like you are being targeted for nothing more than being just yourself.”He said that he had been pulled over numerous times, and that a Capitol Police officer had once demanded to see identification even though he was wearing a lapel pin identifying him as a senator.He initially promoted bills to increase the use of body cameras and the tracking of police shootings. When protests exploded in 2020 after the killing of George Floyd, he took on a deeper and more formal role, writing Republicans’ legislative response to the crisis.What came out of that was the Justice Act, which, among other things, would have funded de-escalation training, outlawed chokeholds and made officers’ disciplinary records from past police departments available to new departments considering hiring them.He was also instrumental in a bill — stymied in 2020 but passed in 2022 — to make lynching a federal crime, but opposed a Democratic effort to change qualified immunity, which limits officers’ civil liability.A conservative recordHis work across the aisle on policing notwithstanding, Mr. Scott has a conservative record on most issues.He describes himself as “strongly pro-life” and has supported legislation to ban abortion after 20 weeks and permanently prohibit federal funding for abortion. In a fund-raising email last year, he told supporters that if Republicans didn’t take back the Senate, Democrats would “grant abortions up to 52 weeks” — 12 weeks longer than pregnancy lasts.Challenged on that claim in an interview with PBS, he said that the email had been “hyperbolic” and accused Democrats — as many Republicans have — of supporting abortion “until the day of birth,” which does not happen even in states with no legal limits.Mr. Scott has co-sponsored legislation to repeal the federal estate tax — which applies after a person’s death if the estate of the deceased is worth more than about $12.9 million — and, this spring, pushed the Biden administration to delay new energy standards for mobile homes, under which he said low-income Americans would be “unfairly asked to bear the costs imposed by climate alarmists.”He has also been a major proponent of “opportunity zones,” which were introduced in Republicans’ 2017 tax bill. The initiative aims to create tax incentives for private investment in areas with high poverty and low job growth. Describing the provision, Mr. Scott’s Senate campaign website last year put “PRIVATE” in all caps, presenting opportunity zones as an alternative to government safety-net programs, though many of the beneficiaries have been wealthy. More

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      The Republican Presidential Plot Is Thickening

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      Bret Stephens: Hi, Gail. It looks like we’ll be getting two new campaign launches soon in the race for the Republican presidential nomination: Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida. Any free advice you want to offer them on how they can beat you-know-who?Gail Collins: Gee, Bret, I guess they could both could use a little help being faster on their feet when they’re surrounded by curious reporters. But it’s not like I’m rooting for either of them. I’ve already told you — with multitudinous qualifications — that if I was locked up in a room and forced to choose between DeSantis and Trump, I’d beat my head against the wall and then pick The Donald.Bret: Gail! No! No no no no. You’re reminding me of the old “Bad Idea Jeans” skit from “Saturday Night Live,” in which a bunch of middle-aged guys bat around some really, really terrible brainstorms: “Well, he’s an ex-freebase addict and he’s trying to turn his life around, and he needs a place to stay for a couple of months ….”What about Tim Scott?Gail: Scott hasn’t been a serious enough possibility for me to worry about. Give me a little more time to judge what looks like it will be a growing throng.You’re the one who’s in charge of Republicans. Nikki Haley was your fave — is she showing any serious promise? Who’s next on your list?Bret: Scott has a $22 million campaign war chest, which alone makes him a potentially serious contender. He speaks the Reaganesque language of hope, which is a nice contrast to the vituperative and vengeful styles of Don and Ron. He’s got an inspiring, up-from-poverty life story that will resonate with a lot of voters. He has the potential to attract minority voters to the G.O.P., and, as important, appeal to middle-of-the-road voters who might be persuaded to cast a ballot for a Republican provided they won’t feel guilty or embarrassed by it.Charlie Neibergall/Associated PressRebecca Blackwell/Associated PressAll he needs is to work on his answers to those pesky questions about his position on abortion. As for DeSantis, he needs to stop coming across as a colossal, monomaniacal, humorless, lecturesome and tedious jerk, the Ted Cruz of this campaign season.Gail: Well, your recipe for Scott certainly does seem more doable. Sorta depressing though, that we judge potential candidates for the highest office in the land by their ability to raise money, a lot of it from special interests. Sure there are folks out there planning to send Tim $10 online, but we’re basically talking about big money donors.Bret: Sorry, but is it any different than Democrats? Didn’t President Biden just headline a $25,000-a-plate fund-raiser at the home of a former Blackstone exec? Our standards have become so debased in the last few years that I’m grateful for anything that passes as politics as usual.Gail: Sigh. Moving on — I guess we should talk about the debt limit negotiations. Any deep thoughts?Bret: Not sure if they’re deep, but the Republican insistence on capping spending at 2022 levels is going to cripple military spending in the very decade in which we face serious strategic competition. I’m all for budget discipline, but the G.O.P.’s rediscovery of fiscal purity is fundamentally at odds with its tough-on-China stance. It also reminds me of the composer Oscar Levant’s quip: “I knew Doris Day before she was a virgin.”Gail: I always love your quotes but fitting in Oscar Levant may be a new high.Bret: All joking aside, I think the Biden administration would be smart to make a few concessions on spending, both because it’s the right thing to do and because it will help pin the blame on Republicans in the event we end up in default and possibly recession. Your thoughts?Gail: Biden’s clearly ready to go there. What we’re watching is a dance to see who gets the most credit for avoiding default while avoiding super-outrage from the base.Bret: Big problem here is that too much of the Republican base is basically unappeasable. They’d rather put the nation’s finances in a wooden barrel and send it hurtling over Niagara Falls than be accused of compromising with Democrats.Gail: One of the Republicans’ big yelling points has been a stricter requirement that able-bodied people who get federal aid should do some kind of work for it.Most people aren’t against that in theory, but the enforcement is a big, potentially expensive, pain that could lead to deserving people getting cut off by bureaucratic snafus, and causing big trouble for some single mothers. Without any real turnaround in the status quo.I find it deeply irritating, but I’m kinda reconciled to the idea that something will happen. You’re a big supporter, right?Bret: The work requirements of the 1996 welfare reform bill were one of the best achievements of the decade — and helped make Bill Clinton a two-term president. Even if enforcement is difficult, it’s politically, financially and morally preferable to subsidizing indolence.Switching subjects, Gail, Democrats were enraged when DeSantis and the governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, started busing migrants north to New York City and other self-declared sanctuary cities. Now the mayor of New York, Eric Adams, is declaring a crisis and busing some of those same migrants out of the city, often to the consternation of nearby smaller cities like Newburgh that are straining under the weight of the new arrivals. Are you ready to denounce Adams?Gail: Not quite the same thing, Bret. States like Texas have a permanent relationship with countries across the border — it’s part of their economy. In times like this, the rest of the country should offer support — from good border enforcement to services for the needy. And of course to accept these folks if they come to our states of their own volition.Bret: Not quite sure why some states should bear a heavier share of the immigration burden just because they happen to be next to Mexico, particularly when immigration enforcement is primarily a federal responsibility. I think we in the nonborder states have so far sort of failed to appreciate the scale of the crisis and the burden it has imposed on border towns.Gail: We know Texas has been mass-shipping immigrants to places like New York to make a political score, not solve a problem.Bret: Well, both are possible.Gail: Adams isn’t the best-organized mayor in history, but I don’t think even a great administrator could have successfully coped with all of this. There just aren’t enough places in the city for these people to go. And Gov. Kathy Hochul had big plans for expanding housing around the state, which were killed off by nonurban lawmakers.It’s true some of the smaller cities have also been flooded with needy newcomers. But there are plenty of wealthier suburban and rural communities who could do a lot more. Having spent part of my career covering state government for suburban papers, I can tell you there’s nothing that a lot of those towns hate/fear/oppose more than programs that bring in lower-income would-be residents.Bret: As a matter of moral conviction, I believe we ought to be welcoming to strangers. And I’m mindful that my mother arrived in this country as a refugee, albeit one who waited year after year for a U.S. visa.But as a matter of politics, the Biden administration’s performance has been disastrous. In the next New York City budget, emergency migrant aid is projected to cost more than the city’s Fire Department. Every government has a far greater responsibility toward its own citizens — especially the neediest — than it does to people who arrive here in violation of the law. And if President Biden doesn’t get an effective handle on the border, he’s going to turn the entire country against immigrants in a way that will permanently damage our spirit of openness.Gail: This is going to require a lot more arguing in the future.Bret: We’ll put it aside for now. In the meantime, the most profound, meaningful and soul-rending article in The Times for as long as I can remember is our colleague Sarah Wildman’s essay about the loss of her daughter Orli, at age 14. Where there are no words, Sarah found the words:Recently, several people quietly told me that she had helped them in some way, inspired them or helped them with their pain. If she could continue to engage, to be concerned beyond herself, they could, too. Her instinct was always to assist, to write to the kid on the other side of the country struggling with chemo-related hair loss, to find out if a friend’s sibling headed to the hospital needed advice on how to navigate hospital time, to see if a newly diagnosed child wanted tips on making life in cancer care more bearable, or even to encourage someone going through a divorce to dance. And so, even when I’m crushed with grief, Orli continues to teach me. Some of the lessons are basic but worth repeating: It matters to reach out, over and over, even in minor ways. It matters to visit. It matters to care.May Orli’s memory always be for a blessing.Gail: Bret, this one is so moving I have to throw in one last comment: Agreed, agreed.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