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      Top Republicans Balk at WinRed’s Plan to Charge More for Online Donations

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      Republican Party leaders are opposed to a proposed price increase by the online donation-processing company, WinRed, stirring debate about the company’s future.A battle over a threatened price increase has exposed growing tensions between top Republican Party officials and the company with a virtual monopoly on processing Republican campaign contributions online.Party leaders have risen up in opposition to the plan to raise prices, which would siphon millions of dollars from G.O.P. campaigns less than 20 months after the company, WinRed, had said its finances were robust enough to forego an extra fee on every transaction.In a series of private meetings in recent weeks, Gerrit Lansing, the president of WinRed, has told the leaders of the Republican National Committee, the House and Senate campaign arms and former President Donald J. Trump’s campaign that WinRed’s prices needed to go up.The Republican officials all objected.Mr. Lansing’s company, a private for-profit firm responsible for processing almost all online Republican political donations, charges 3.94 percent of almost every donation made online. But he said it wasn’t enough, citing an unforeseen slowdown in online G.O.P. giving last year and also plans to broaden WinRed’s suite of services. He moved to impose a 30-cent transaction fee on each of the tens of millions of coming contributions in the 2024 race, according to several people directly involved in or briefed on the conversations.The plan to raise prices appears to have stalled over fierce G.O.P. objections, according to people involved in the talks. But the episode has accelerated conversations at the party’s highest levels about the decision four years ago to clear the way for WinRed to dominate the online donation-processing field, and about whether the for-profit company’s model needs to be reassessed. Democrats process most online donations through ActBlue, which, unlike WinRed, is an independent nonprofit. ActBlue charges a flat rate of 3.95 percent per donation and does not charge an additional per-transaction fee.“WinRed is constantly evaluating what it takes to compete against and leapfrog ActBlue, combat the Democrats’ campaign to attack us by all means available, and still make the necessary investments to provide our customers with the features they need to win,” WinRed said in a statement. “At this time, WinRed has no announcements to make regarding pricing.”Representatives for the party committees declined to comment.Gerrit Lansing, the president of WinRed, has told officials about a plan to charge an extra fee on every transaction.Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call, Getty ImagesMr. Lansing’s pursuit of outside investors to expand WinRed’s digital footprint and offerings — including talks with advisers to Paul Singer, a major Republican financier — has spurred further discussions about the company’s ownership structure.The obscure industry of processing donations online is deeply consequential for Republicans because the party has faced a persistent digital fund-raising deficit against Democrats. WinRed has been held up as the linchpin of the party’s plans to help close that gap.Huge sums are involved. There were nearly 31.2 million donations made on WinRed during the 2022 federal elections, worth nearly $1.2 billion. The upcoming presidential cycle could easily double that.The creation of WinRed in 2019 was supposed to be one of Mr. Trump’s enduring legacies within the Republican infrastructure, a bold bid to unify the party around a single platform to help shrink the G.O.P. fund-raising gap with ActBlue. Mr. Trump, his son-in-law Jared Kushner and Mr. Trump’s campaign manager at the time, Brad Parscale, were all personally involved.The site has largely been a success, achieving near-universal adoption among G.O.P. campaigns. WinRed originally had charged 3.8 percent of contributions with an additional 30-cent transaction fee. That amounted to an especially steep share of smaller contributions — 68 cents, or nearly 7 percent, of a $10 donation, for instance.A Trump rally in Waco, Texas, in March. As president, Donald J. Trump was among those personally involved in the creation of WinRed in 2019.Christopher Lee for The New York TimesIn late 2021, Mr. Lansing trumpeted the removal of the 30-cent transaction fee, saying the company had been able to “achieve and maintain scale.” But the decision by credit card companies to raise their own fees not long afterward made WinRed’s move unsustainable, according to a person close to the company, as most of its processing fees are quickly spent on credit card costs.In recent weeks, Mr. Lansing told party officials that WinRed had suffered financially in 2022 as a result of diminished Republican giving and that he needed to reimpose a per-transaction fee ahead of 2024 to continue broader investments in technology. Because WinRed is a private firm, its executive compensation and the state of its finances remain mostly hidden from public view. Records show that federal candidates and committees paid WinRed at least $64 million in the 2022 election cycle; those funds were not all from processing fees but also included significant vendor fees, according to a person close to WinRed.Its Democratic counterpart, ActBlue, has faced a financial pinch too, announcing in early April plans to lay off 17 percent of its work force. ActBlue discloses more of its finances than its counterpart does, including the amount of donors who volunteered to add “tips” on top of their donations. Those tips go directly to ActBlue and have built a $68.7 million balance in ActBlue’s federal account as of the end of 2022. Mr. Lansing has begun discussing adding the option to make tips to the Republican site as well, according to people involved in the conversations.WinRed faces other unique pressures, including an investigation by multiple state attorneys general into the firm’s use of prechecked boxes that automatically signed up donors to make recurring donations unless they opted out. A New York Times investigation in 2021 revealed how the extensive use of those boxes — known internally as “money bombs” for withdrawing more than one donation at a time — spurred an enormous wave of demands for refunds and complaints of fraud to credit card companies at the end of the 2020 campaign.WinRed sued to block subpoenas but lost a key legal battle in February when the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the investigation could proceed in Minnesota. In New York, a December filing from the state attorney general, Letitia James, that demanded compliance with a subpoena gave a glimpse into the internal documents her office has already obtained. The filing cited an internal WinRed memo as saying that, at one point in June 2020, donors who were opted into multiple donations through pre-checked boxes had caused a surge of phone calls and “a 10,000 message deep queue over one weekend.” Recurring donations were dropping over time, the memo theorized, because “as donors get used to or go through the process they become more savvy.”One Republican candidate who saw a surge of refund requests from people who were unwittingly opted into recurring donations was Kelly Loeffler, a senator who lost her runoff in Georgia in January 2021 and who found the experience of working with WinRed jarring.“It absolutely was a red flag,” Ms. Loeffler said in an interview, referring to the deluge of refund requests. Ms. Loeffler, a former co-owner of the Women’s National Basketball Association team in Atlanta, has since bought donation-processing technology from a Republican firm that stopped its business after the creation of WinRed. She has rebranded the technology and now uses it in running RallyRight, another company that processes online donations.“We have seen a need for a competitor in this market,” Ms. Loeffler said.So far, she is undercutting WinRed on price — charging 3.5 percent of donations — and ensuring that “no campaign can automatically check a recurring payments box.” She declined to name specific Republican groups that she has spoken with but said the price could go even lower — down to 3 percent — with “the scale of some of the organizations we are talking to.”Ms. Loeffler said that she was in the business not for personal profit but to direct more money to campaigns. “It’s absolutely not about me making millions of dollars,” she said. “I’ve done that.” More

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      ‘His Candidacy Feels Deader Than Disco’: Our Columnists Weigh In on Asa Hutchinson

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      As Republican candidates enter the 2024 presidential race, Times columnists and Opinion writers 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 Asa Hutchinson, the former governor of Arkansas, who announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination on Wednesday.How seriously should we take Asa Hutchinson’s candidacy?John Brummett His candidacy should be taken seriously for his diverse, relevant experience and for what he has to say about today’s political predicament. But it probably won’t be taken that way, considering that his strength is as a workhorse in a game designed for show horses. He’d make a fine and circumspect attorney general.Matthew Continetti On Earth Two, where Donald Trump never entered American politics, a two-term conservative governor from the South like Asa Hutchinson would be considered a serious candidate for the 2024 Republican nomination. But where we live, and in Trump’s G.O.P., Hutchinson is a long shot.Michelle Cottle As seriously as you would take any little-known, low-key, old-school Republican contender with decades of government experience who has said that Donald Trump has disqualified himself from being president again. So, not seriously at all.David French Just as seriously as we should take the chances of Republican primary voters turning decisively against Trump and Trumpism. At this point it’s far more of a hope than an expectation.Rosie Gray Not very seriously. Hutchinson is vying to occupy the return-to-normalcy, adult-in-the-room lane, which is a lane that Republican voters have shown little interest in over the past eight years. His candidacy is likely to struggle to break through amid the onslaught of Trump-related news.Michelle Goldberg If he could hop in a time machine to 2012, he’d be a favorite. In today’s Republican Party I don’t think he has a chance.Liz Mair Asa Hutchinson is a serious person who arguably did a better job on fiscal governance than Ron DeSantis and certainly a much better job than Donald Trump. He’s a very underrated politician, but I’m not sure “competent steward of public finances and generally affable-seeming fellow” is sufficiently salable in today’s Republican rage machine.Daniel McCarthy Asa Hutchinson probably hopes to be taken as seriously as John Kasich was in 2016. But he’ll be lucky if he has even as much impact as his fellow Arkansan Mike Huckabee had that year, which was virtually none.What matters most about him as a presidential candidate?Brummett Any airing his message gets is the most important thing. He’s making the case that boorish, irresponsible and destructive behavior is not conservatism. That’s what his party needs to hear.Continetti Hutchinson’s willingness to take stands against Trump and the ascendant New Right within the Republican Party is laudable, if only because so few conservatives have done the same thing. His fearlessness may stand out on the debate stage.Cottle He is, as advertised, a “consistent conservative” — pro-God, pro-gun, pro-business, anti-abortion rights, anti-big government — aggressively looking to remind Republicans that there is an alternative to the middle-finger nastiness of Trumpism. Which is also why his candidacy feels deader than disco. Who is his target audience?French He’s the first true “turn the page” candidate in the race. He’s a traditional Republican who’s provided the most consistent and clear critique of Trump of anyone who has entered the race. He’s called on Trump to withdraw from the race, and he’s defended prominent Republican Trump critics Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger.Gray He represents the still-extant yearning among old-school Republicans for an anti-Trump alternative. Other potential candidates who could have filled this space, like former Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland, have so far decided not to run, so Hutchinson’s bid will be a test case for how much interest such a candidacy can attract.Goldberg He is admirably anti-Trump, arguing that Jan. 6 should be disqualifying, and he had a more measured response to Trump’s indictment than other members of his party, who rushed to Trump’s defense.Mair Arkansas has produced quite a lot of talented politicians over the years. His candidacy will be a test of how big a chunk of the G.O.P. electorate cares about a candidate combining the actual ability to govern and honesty without consistently coming off as a nasty, evil person or media “personality.” My guess is that’s a pretty small chunk.McCarthy He’s as much an anti-DeSantis candidate as he is anti-Trump. As governor, Hutchinson antagonized social conservatives by vetoing legislation that banned “gender-transition procedures” for minors, and although he did sign an abortion ban, he had said more recently that the ban should be “revisited” to permit more exceptions.What do you find most inspiring — or unsettling — about his vision for America?Brummett What inspires most is that he brings precisely what this politically dysfunctional country needs: someone who can surprise both the right and left. He brings conservative bona fides, but in Arkansas, he also vetoed a bill that would have banned hormone therapy for trans youth, asserting that parents and doctors should make those decisions and that interrupting a treatment plan already in progress is cruel. He called the Affordable Care Act bad policy but went to the mat to save Medicaid expansion in his state. That kind of independent thought is inspiring.Continetti Hutchinson is a freedom conservative devoted to the limited-government principles of Ronald Reagan. I’m happy to see him standing for his beliefs.Cottle At this point, Hutchinson isn’t really offering a vision for America so much as a post-Trumpian vision for the Republican Party. This is a worthy — even glorious — aim.French A Hutchinson presidential election itself would have a singular inspiring element — his election would represent a truly bipartisan repudiation of Trump and a clear revival of the moral center of the G.O.P.Gray It’s hard to tell at this stage what that vision is, since Hutchinson’s run seems primarily motivated by opposition to Trump. Voters are likely to find his Reaganesque politics familiar, maybe even comforting, but probably not inspiring or fresh.Goldberg He seems to imagine that there’s a version of American conservatism that isn’t bitterly conspiratorial and inspired by Viktor Orban’s Hungary. I think he’s wrong, but it’s a nice fantasy.Mair I personally think about the fact that Arkansas, under him and others, hasn’t exactly been a beacon of light where occupational licensing reform is concerned — but that’s something approximately 0.1 percent of Republican primary voters care about.McCarthy What’s pitiful, if not unsettling, about Hutchinson’s vision is that it’s what passes for center-right without having the merits of either the center or the right. The center should be broadly appealing and practical rather than ideological. The right should be firmly opposed to the left. These commitments can be brought together, albeit not without tension, in an effective center-right. Republicans like Hutchinson, however, can succeed only as long as they don’t have to answer the tough policy questions. Once they do have to answer — about abortion, for example — they prove to be ideological yet also inconsistent, unpopular themselves yet hostile to the right for jeopardizing the party’s popularity.Imagine you’re a G.O.P. operative or campaign manager. What’s your elevator pitch for a Hutchinson candidacy?Brummett You think he’s a RINO? Just remember — he played a central role in Clinton’s impeachment proceedings, and the N.R.A. hired him after Sandy Hook to lead a task force that recommended armed guards at schools.Continetti Republican voters may want a brawler to take the fight to the left, but they may also want to actually win a presidential election even more.Cottle Former governors know how to get stuff done, and this one is a staunch conservative — but not of the ragey, paranoid, conspiracy-mongering variety.French Reasonable conservatism can win.Gray I would pitch him as a serious, experienced public servant with solid conservative credentials who would be an antidote to the nonstop political circus.Goldberg He looks like a TV president, was popular in bright-red Arkansas and projects a sunny affability rare among Republicans, even as he holds doctrinaire, base-pleasing views on issues like guns and abortion.Mair Don’t want to return to the days when you thought about what outrageous stuff the president was doing once a week or even daily? Vote for Asa.McCarthy Asa Hutchinson is the right choice if you think conservative Republicans have already lost the culture wars but ought to surrender slowly.John Brummett (@johnbrummett) is a columnist for The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in Little Rock.Matthew Continetti (@continetti) is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and the author of “The Right: The Hundred-Year War for American Conservatism.”Michelle Cottle is a member of the Times’s editorial board.David French and Michelle Goldberg are Times columnists.Rosie Gray is a political reporter.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 is the editor of Modern Age: A Conservative 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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      Trump Weighs Skipping Primary Debates

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      He took swipes at President Biden, Ron DeSantis and the Reagan presidential library during an event in New Hampshire.Former President Donald J. Trump used a campaign rally on Thursday in New Hampshire to add to his arguments that it was not worth his time to debate his rivals for the Republican presidential nomination, casting himself as the party’s undeclared nominee.Standing in front of several hundred supporters in a New England state that was a springboard for his election in 2016, Mr. Trump said that he held a commanding polling advantage in the 2024 Republican primary, months before any voting would begin. He has been posting similar themes on his social media site, Truth Social.He said that giving his G.O.P. rivals, like Gov. Ron DeSantis, an opening on a debate stage made no sense.“Why would you do that?” he told the crowd at a DoubleTree hotel in Manchester. In 2019, then as president, he considered skipping any presidential debates for the 2020 race before ultimately debating the Democrats’ nominee, Joseph R. Biden Jr.And on Thursday he jumped straight to the general election, saying, “I do look forward to the debate with Joe.”Mr. Biden declared on Tuesday that he would seek a second term. His predecessor claimed at his rally, without evidence, that the video Mr. Biden released to announce his re-election campaign “took supposedly seven takes to get it right.” The video features a montage of scenes from Mr. Biden’s presidency and only a few short clips where he spoke to the camera.Citing a recent Emerson College poll, Mr. Trump noted that 62 percent of G.O.P. primary voters indicated that they would support him, compared with 16 percent for Mr. DeSantis, who has not yet declared his candidacy. No other Republican was in double digits.“He’s crashing and burning,” Mr. Trump said of Mr. DeSantis, suggesting that he had benefited in the past from his association with Mr. Trump but that he was now struggling to get a foothold on his own.Mr. Trump has never shied away from broadsides against other Republicans, something Ronald Reagan famously frowned upon in what became known as the 11th Commandment. And in New Hampshire, Reagan’s presidential library was a target for Mr. Trump, who questioned its selection as the venue for the second G.O.P. primary debate. He pointed out that Frederick J. Ryan Jr., the publisher and chief executive of The Washington Post, another frequent Trump target, was chairman of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation & Institute.Representatives for the institute did not immediately respond to requests for comment, and The Post declined to comment.Separately on Thursday in Manhattan, lawyers for Mr. Trump appeared in a federal courtroom to defend him in a case brought by E. Jean Carroll, a former magazine columnist, who has accused Mr. Trump of raping her nearly three decades ago.Mr. Trump, who has denied the accusation, avoided mentioning the trial during the rally. However, he bemoaned his various other legal entanglements and alluded to his indictment this month by a New York grand jury on charges that he had concealed hush-money payments to a former porn star.He faces further legal peril. A federal investigation, in the hands of a special counsel, is investigating Mr. Trump’s efforts to reverse his defeat at the polls in 2020 and also his role in the events that led to the storming of the Capitol by his supporters on Jan. 6, 2021. And a Georgia prosecutor is in the final stages of an investigation into Mr. Trump’s attempts to reverse the election results in that state.While Mr. Trump has opened up a polling lead, the Republican field is fluid and appears likely to expand. It includes Nikki Haley, a former South Carolina governor and a United Nations ambassador in the Trump administration; Asa Hutchinson, the former governor of Arkansas; and the entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy.Another Republican who is entertaining a run is New Hampshire’s governor, Chris Sununu, who recently said that Mr. Trump’s losing streak could continue in 2024. He has cited Mr. Trump’s defeat in 2020 and Republican midterm losses in 2018 and 2022.Mr. Trump bristled at G.O.P. skeptics, singling out Mr. Sununu, whose name elicited boos from the crowd.“Isn’t he a nasty guy?” Mr. Trump said, criticizing Mr. Sununu’s decision to run for re-election as governor instead of for Senate during last year’s midterm elections.Mr. Sununu’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. More

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      House G.O.P., Divided Over Immigration, Advances Border Crackdown Plan

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      Republicans are eyeing a vote next month on legislation that would reinstate Trump-era policies, after feuding that led leaders to drop some of the plan’s most extreme provisions.WASHINGTON — House Republicans on Thursday pushed ahead with a sweeping immigration crackdown that would codify several stringent border policies imposed by the Trump administration, after months of internal feuding that led G.O.P. leaders to drop some of the plan’s most extreme provisions.The House Judiciary and Homeland Security Committees in recent days approved their pieces of the plan, which has little chance of being considered in the Democratic-led Senate but sets up a pivotal test of whether Republican leaders can deliver on their campaign promise to clamp down on record migrant inflows.For Republicans, who have repeatedly attacked President Biden on his immigration policies and embarked on an effort to impeach his homeland security secretary, the measure is a chance to lay out an alternative vision on an issue that galvanizes its right-wing base.The legislation, now expected on the floor next month, would direct the Biden administration to resume constructing the border wall that was former President Donald J. Trump’s signature project. It would also mandate that employers check workers’ legal status through an electronic system known as E-Verify and reinstate the “Remain in Mexico” policy, forcing asylum applicants to wait in detention facilities or outside the United States before their claims are heard.The plan “will force the administration to enforce the law, secure the border, and reduce illegal immigration once again,” Representative Mark E. Green, Republican of Tennessee and the Homeland Security Committee’s chairman, said during the panel’s debate on Wednesday.Democrats have derided the package as misguided and draconian, accusing Republicans of seeking to invigorate their core supporters in advance of the 2024 election by reviving some of Mr. Trump’s most severe border policies. They made vocal objections to provisions that would ban the use of the phone-based app known as “C.B.P. One” to streamline processing migrants at ports of entry, expedite the deportation of unaccompanied minors, and criminalize visa overstays of more than 10 days.Republicans “want to appeal to their extreme MAGA friends more than they want progress,” Representative Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, the top Democrat on the Homeland Security Committee, said Wednesday, calling the Republican legislation a “profoundly immoral” piece of legislation that would “sow chaos at the border.”Still, the package represents a compromise of sorts between hard-right Republicans and more mainstream G.O.P. lawmakers, including a mostly Latino group from border states that balked at proposals that threatened to gut the nation’s asylum system.The party’s immigration plan — which top Republicans had hoped to pass as one of their first bills of their new House majority — has been stalled for months. A faction led by Representative Tony Gonzales, Republican of Texas, has raised concerns about the asylum changes, threatening to withhold votes that Speaker Kevin McCarthy, Republican of California, cannot afford to lose given his slim majority.Over the last week, G.O.P. leaders have quietly made a series of concessions to win over the skeptics. Republicans on the Judiciary Committee agreed to drop a provision that would have effectively stopped the intake of asylum seekers if the government failed to detain or deport all migrants seeking to enter the country without permission. But the measure still contains a number of new asylum restrictions.“It’s in a good spot,” Mr. Gonzales said of the legislation on Thursday, saying that the changes made to the asylum provision had satisfied his concerns. “As long as nobody does any funny business — you’ve got to watch it till the very end.”G.O.P. leaders predicted on Thursday that they would be able to draw a majority for the legislation when it comes to the House in mid-May, a timeline selected to coincide with the expected expiration of a Covid-era policy allowing officials to swiftly expel migrants at the border. The termination of the program, known as Title 42, is expected to inspire a new surge of attempted border crossings and supercharge the already bitter partisan debate over immigration policy.But it was unclear whether Republicans who had objected to the E-Verify requirement would be on board.Representative Thomas Massie, Republican of Kentucky withheld his support for the Judiciary Committee’s bill because of the work authorization mandate, arguing that people “shouldn’t have to go through an E-Verify database to exercise your basic human right to trade labor for sustenance.”Such databases “always get turned against us, and they’re never used for the purpose they were intended for,” added Mr. Massie, a conservative libertarian.Representative Dan Newhouse, a Republican farmer in Washington State, has expressed concern that the E-Verify mandate could create labor shocks in the agricultural sector, which relies heavily on undocumented immigrant labor. Though the legislation delays the requirement for farmers for three years, Mr. Newhouse has argued that any such change should be paired with legislation creating more legal pathways for people to work in the United States.With the expected floor vote just weeks away, G.O.P. leaders have been treading carefully, even making last-minute concessions to Democrats in hopes of bolstering support for the legislation.During the wee hours on Thursday morning, as the Homeland Security Committee debated its bill, Republicans pared back language barring nongovernmental organizations that assist undocumented migrants from receiving funding from the Department of Homeland Security. They did so after Democrats pointed out the broadly phrased prohibition could deprive legal migrants and U.S. citizens of critical services as well.Their changes did not go far enough to satisfy Democrats, who unanimously opposed the package on the Judiciary and the Homeland Security panels — and are expected to oppose the combined border security package en masse on the House floor.They have also argued that any measure to enhance border security or enforcement must be paired with expanded legal pathways for immigrants to enter the United States. More

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      Daines Endorsement Reflects Uneasy Senate G.O.P. Alliance With Trump

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      Senate Republicans, even those who have broken with the former president, say their campaign chief’s decision to back him could boost their push for the majority.WASHINGTON — When Senator Steve Daines, the leader of the Senate Republican campaign arm, quietly informed Senator Mitch McConnell, the minority leader, that he intended to endorse former President Donald J. Trump, Mr. McConnell was fine with the idea.Mr. McConnell, the Kentucky Republican, is not on speaking terms with the former president, having abruptly turned against him after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. Mr. Trump has publicly savaged the senator and repeatedly demeaned his wife with racist statements.But the minority leader, according to a person familiar with his thinking, believed that somebody in the Senate G.O.P. leadership ranks should have a working relationship with the party’s leading presidential contender — and it might as well be the man charged with winning back the Senate majority.Mr. Daines’s endorsement of Mr. Trump this week — and Mr. McConnell’s private blessing of it — highlighted how top Senate Republicans have quietly decided to join forces with their party’s leading presidential candidate, putting aside the toxic relationship that some of them have with him to focus on what they hope will be a mutually advantageous political union.Mr. Daines of Montana, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, is the first and so far only member of the Senate G.O.P. leadership team to endorse Mr. Trump. Mr. McConnell, who enabled Mr. Trump and his agenda during much of his presidency before the Capitol riot, has not spoken to the former president since December 2020. His No. 2, Senator John Thune of South Dakota, also has been mercilessly attacked by Mr. Trump.Mr. Thune portrayed Mr. Daines’s embrace of the former president as the cost of doing business — what’s necessary to win.“He’s got a tough job to do,” Mr. Thune told reporters at the Capitol. “He’s got a lot of races around the country that we need to win. And I think he wants as many allies as possible.”Asked about the fact that Mr. Daines has endorsed someone who has attacked both him and Mr. McConnell, the senator was temporarily at a loss for words.“Well,” Mr. Thune said with a pause, “what can I tell you?”Many Senate Republicans, in contrast to their counterparts in the House, view Mr. Trump as a political anchor who cost them the majority in 2020 with baseless claims of voter fraud in Georgia that damaged their runoff chances. Many believe Mr. Trump cost them again in 2022 by endorsing Senate contenders who struggled in the general election. Mr. McConnell has attributed his party’s inability to win the Senate to “candidate quality” problems spurred by Mr. Trump’s primary endorsements.Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Mr. Trump, said that there was “tremendous support nationally and statewide” for the former president, when asked about Senate Republican leaders’ reluctant acceptance of Mr. Daines’s endorsement.“By contrast, DeSantis has embarrassingly tiny support,” Mr. Cheung said.Some Republicans are determined to steer clear of Mr. Trump. Senator Mitt Romney of Utah, a vocal critic of Mr. Trump’s who voted to convict the former president in both of his impeachment trials, insisted that Mr. Daines’s backing for Mr. Trump should not be regarded as an embrace of the former president by the Senate G.O.P.“Montana is a big Trump-supporting state,” Mr. Romney said on Wednesday. “I don’t think he did that as the leader of the Republican team. Mitch McConnell is our leader, and I doubt he’ll endorse anybody.”A spokesman for Mr. Daines declined to comment on Mr. Romney’s characterization of the endorsement.Some wondered whether Mr. Daines was deliberately defying Mr. McConnell like the last chairman of the party campaign arm, Senator Rick Scott of Florida, did during last year’s midterm elections.“I was surprised,” Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa, another member of the party leadership, said this week when asked what she thought of the Daines endorsement. “But all of the senators have the opportunity to endorse who they want to endorse.”In fact, Mr. Daines and Mr. McConnell are on the same page.Mr. Trump’s endorsement highlighted how Senate Republicans shows an uneasy alliance among estranged political players.Dave Sanders for The New York TimesMr. Daines gave Mr. McConnell a heads up that he would be endorsing Mr. Trump ahead of a Monday night appearance on the podcast of Donald Trump Jr., the former president’s eldest son, according to the person familiar with his thinking.Mr. McConnell views Montana, West Virginia and Ohio — which Mr. Trump won by big margins — as among the most important Senate battlegrounds in 2024, and it will fall to Mr. Daines to keep the former president on friendly terms with the party’s favored candidates, especially in the states where he remains wildly popular.While the rest of Mr. McConnell’s team keeps their distance from the former president, Mr. Daines speaks frequently with Mr. Trump, including as recently as Wednesday night, said a person with direct knowledge of the call who was not authorized to discuss it publicly.So even after Mr. Trump has denigrated Mr. McConnell’s wife, Elaine Chao, the Senate minority leader has engaged in a familiar game with the former president, with whom he worked closely to cut taxes and stack the federal judiciary with ardent conservatives.Mr. McConnell has said as little as possible about the former president since cutting off all contact with him. He has ignored Mr. Trump’s attacks against him and his wife, and he has refused to follow the approach of former Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming, who has said she plans to do whatever she can to stop Mr. Trump from becoming president again.Instead, Mr. McConnell has said he is focused on winning back the Senate, and in service of that goal he is already making accommodations for the former president. He has said he will support Mr. Trump if he wins the 2024 Republican nomination.Like many of his colleagues, Senator John Cornyn of Texas, a former chairman of the Republican campaign arm himself, is staying out of Mr. Trump’s way. He said he did not plan to endorse in the primary, but “will support the nominee” in the general election.Mr. Daines, he said, was “entitled to some latitude given the complexity of the political environment that we’re entering into.”Republicans’ goal, Mr. Cornyn added, was to win back the majority.“And I don’t really care what the tactics are,” he said. More

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      In Israel, Ron DeSantis Promotes His Foreign Policy Credentials

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      The Florida governor, a likely contender for the Republican presidential nomination, stressed his strong interest in the country’s affairs, an issue that Donald J. Trump once made his own.Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor and a likely contender for the Republican presidential nomination, expressed strong support for Israel during a brief visit to Jerusalem on Thursday, as he promoted his diplomatic credentials in a country considered crucial to any U.S. president’s foreign policy portfolio.Mr. DeSantis declined once again to confirm his candidacy for the presidential race in 2024, but he used a speech and subsequent news briefing to showcase his experience and interest in Israeli affairs, an issue that his chief rival, Donald J. Trump, once made his own.The governor, a foreign policy novice, stressed his track record of support for Israel and for Floridian Jews, highlighting his efforts to combat antisemitism in Florida and build business ties between his state and Israel.“Maintaining a strong U.S.-Israel relationship has been a priority for me during my time in elective office,” Mr. DeSantis said in speech at a conference hosted by The Jerusalem Post, a right-leaning English-language newspaper. The event was attended by leading right-wing figures, including David M. Friedman, who was Mr. Trump’s ambassador to Israel; and Miriam Adelson, a longtime Israeli American supporter of Mr. Trump.“Our alliance with Israel rests on unique cultural and religious affinities and Judeo-Christian values that trace back thousands of years to the Holy Land and which have been essential to the American experiment,” Mr. DeSantis said.Mr. DeSantis also met Thursday morning with Isaac Herzog, Israel’s figurehead president, and later with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Mr. Trump had an initially strong relationship with Mr. Netanyahu, but that ebbed after Mr. Trump left office.While never mentioning Mr. Trump by name, Mr. DeSantis on Thursday tried to differentiate himself from his rival by noting how he had pushed the Trump administration to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, months before Mr. Trump decided to do so.“I was an outspoken proponent and advocate of relocating our embassy,” Mr. DeSantis said to loud cheers from the audience. “We were trying to cajole the previous administration to do it,” he added.As president, Mr. Trump broke with decades of American policy by moving the embassy, recognizing Israeli sovereignty in the Golan Heights, cutting funding for Palestinians and backing the legality of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.President Donald J. Trump, at the White House, signing a proclamation in 2017 recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.Doug Mills/The New York TimesAny U.S. president is seen in Israel as a crucial partner: Israel relies on American support to ward off censure from the United Nations and receives more than $3 billion in annual funding from Washington. But Mr. Trump made support for Israel a signature foreign policy, helping to broker several landmark diplomatic deals between Israel and three Arab countries.In his appearances on Thursday, Mr. DeSantis underlined how he also had a legacy of unwavering support for Israel and American Jews, recalling how he led a trade delegation there in 2019 and promoted Holocaust education in Florida. He also hailed the deals brokered by Mr. Trump, known as the Abraham Accords, and saying that he supported efforts to secure a new one between Israel and Saudi Arabia.Mr. DeSantis also took a swipe at the Biden administration, criticizing the deterioration under President Biden in relations between the United States and Saudi Arabia, and suggesting that Washington should avoid taking sides in Israel’s domestic debate about the future of its judiciary. Mr. Biden has taken an increasingly vocal stance against efforts by the far-right Israeli government to assert greater control over the Supreme Court.“We must also in America respect Israel’s right to make its own decisions about its own governance,” Mr. DeSantis said. “You’re a smart country; you figure it out, it shouldn’t be for us to butt into these important issues.”Mr. DeSantis arrived in Israel on Wednesday night and was scheduled to leave on Thursday afternoon. His visit was the third stop of a rapid tour in which he has already passed through Japan and South Korea and which he is set to end in Britain, where Mr. DeSantis is scheduled to land on Thursday night.The tour is nominally a chance to build trade ties between Florida and key global economies such as Israel; Mr. DeSantis is accompanied by several Florida investors and entrepreneurs, who were set to meet with Israeli businesspeople on Thursday. At his news briefing, Mr. DeSantis announced several new business initiatives between Floridian firms and Israeli counterparts, including medical researchers and airline companies.But Mr. DeSantis has also used the trip to showcase his stance on foreign affairs and to be photographed with world leaders.Mr. DeSantis has never set out a comprehensive foreign policy vision. But analysis of his comments and interviews with former colleagues suggest that he supports decisive international action by the United States to protect its own interests, but is less interested in U.S. efforts to shore up the liberal international order.Mr. DeSantis was recently criticized by fellow Republicans for describing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as a “territorial dispute” that was not of crucial interest to the United States, before later walking back those comments.In Japan, he met with Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and announced his support for the U.S.-Japan alliance — in what appeared to be a departure from Mr. Trump’s more lukewarm position when he was president. And on Thursday in Jerusalem, Mr. DeSantis used part of his news briefing to sign a proclamation hailing the 75th anniversary of Israel’s establishment, which falls this year.He then signed into a law a bill that he said would fight antisemitism in Florida.During a news conference in Jerusalem on Thursday, Mr. DeSantis signed a Florida bill that he said would fight antisemitism in the state.Amir Levy/Getty ImagesHe also flagged his efforts as governor in targeting Airbnb, after the holiday listings company briefly removed from its website properties in the Israeli-occupied West Bank a few years ago. He repeated his long-held position on the West Bank, which Mr. DeSantis says is disputed territory and which he referred to as “Judea and Samaria,” using the biblical name for the territory used by right-wing Israelis.His stance is at odds with that held by most countries, who consider the West Bank occupied territory because it was captured by Israel from Jordan during the Arab-Israeli War of 1967.At his news briefing, Mr. DeSantis mainly took questions from reporters for right-wing outlets including the American outlet Newsmax; Israel Hayom, a right-wing free sheet published by Ms. Adelson; and Channel 14, a private pro-Netanyahu television channel in Israel.But some journalists fired in questions without being called on, including one reporter who asked Mr. DeSantis about his time as an officer at the American base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where the United States held people suspected of terrorism.The reporter, who did not give his name, said he had spoken to former detainees who accused Mr. DeSantis of having attended the force-feeding of prisoners at the base. Mr. DeSantis replied: “Do you honestly believe that’s credible? So this is 2006, I’m a junior officer. Do you honestly think that they would have remembered me from Adam? Of course not.” More

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      The Pillow Guy and the R.N.C. Chair

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      Listen and follow ‘The Run-Up’Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon MusicThroughout our reporting inside the Republican Party over the past few months, one person kept showing up: Mike Lindell, MyPillow chief executive and election denier.At the Republican National Committee’s winter meeting, he ran to unseat the party chairwoman, Ronna McDaniel. At the Conservative Political Action Committee in Maryland, he couldn’t walk 10 feet without being cornered for a selfie. And more recently, he was a part of news coverage about the Dominion lawsuit and Tucker Carlson’s ouster from Fox News.While plenty of people don’t take him seriously, Lindell represents, maybe better than anyone else, the challenge facing the Republican Party in this moment: an establishment trying desperately to satisfy its base, despite evidence that their extreme beliefs are costing the party elections.After months of reporting on that dynamic, we talk to Mr. Lindell and Ms. McDaniel, two people who sit at opposite poles of the party.Photo Illustration by The New York Times. Photograph by Jordan Vonderhaar for The New York Times; Jae C. Hong/Associated PressAbout ‘The Run-Up’First launched in August 2016, three months before the election of Donald Trump, “The Run-Up” is The New York Times’s flagship political podcast. The host, Astead W. Herndon, grapples with the big ideas already animating the 2024 presidential election. Because it’s always about more than who wins and loses. And the next election has already started.Last season, “The Run-Up” focused on grass-roots voters and shifting attitudes among the bases of both political parties. This season, we go inside the party establishment.New episodes on Thursdays.Credits“The Run-Up” is hosted by More

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      Gov. Jim Justice Is Expected to Announce Senate Run for Joe Manchin’s Seat

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      Mr. Manchin is viewed as one of the most vulnerable Democrats in next year’s elections, in a state, West Virginia, that has overwhelmingly trended red.Gov. Jim Justice of West Virginia is set to announce a Senate campaign on Thursday, giving Republicans a strong recruit against Senator Joe Manchin III, one of the most vulnerable Democrats up for re-election in 2024.The West Virginia race is one of the most essential pickup opportunities for Republicans if they are to retake control of the Senate, which Democrats hold by a narrow 51-49 seat margin.Mr. Manchin, who represents by far the most Republican state held by any Democratic senator, has yet to announce whether he will seek re-election, but Republicans are hoping that Mr. Justice’s entry might spur him toward retirement.Mr. Manchin in recent years has been one of the few Democrats who can compete in the overwhelmingly Republican state.Mr. Justice’s team teased a “special announcement” at 5 p.m. Eastern time on Thursday at the Greenbrier Resort in White Sulphur Springs, W.Va. It made a point to note that his English bulldog — Babydog, known for a memorable appearance last year at Mr. Justice’s State of the State speech — would be present for the announcement.The advisory did not specify the nature of the announcement, though it offered a livestream link to a YouTube page with the description “The official YouTube channel for Jim Justice for U.S. Senate, Inc.” Two people with knowledge of Mr. Justice’s plans confirmed he would be entering the Senate race.Before facing Mr. Manchin, Mr. Justice would need to make it through a Republican primary. He will have at least one major opponent, Representative Alex Mooney, who has been closely allied with former President Donald J. Trump.Mr. Mooney has already attacked Mr. Justice as a “RINO,” or “Republican in name only,” one of Mr. Trump’s and his allies’ favorite insults.Mr. Mooney has the backing of the Club for Growth, the influential conservative group that has spent heavily in recent Republican primaries, and Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, endorsed him last week.Mr. Justice, a billionaire businessman, was first elected governor in 2016 and re-elected in 2020, making him term-limited next year. He initially ran and won as a Democrat, but switched his party affiliation to Republican in 2017, less than a year into his first term.He made that announcement at a rally alongside Mr. Trump, saying, “Today I will tell you as West Virginians that I can’t help you anymore being a Democrat governor.” As is traditional for politicians who switch allegiances, he said his former party had moved away from him, not the other way around.Top Senate Republicans have been eager to lure Mr. Justice into the race. One Nation, a nonprofit group aligned with Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, recently began a $1 million ad campaign against Mr. Manchin for his support of President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act.Mr. Manchin appeared on Fox News this week, in an interview with Sean Hannity, and attacked the Biden administration for the way it had implemented the legislation. He even threatened to vote to repeal it over its climate provisions.Mr. Hannity asked why Mr. Manchin had remained with the Democratic Party.“Well, they don’t always get my vote, you know that — if I can’t go home and explain, I don’t vote for it,” Mr. Manchin said. “I think about that every day: Why am I a Democrat?”Shane Goldmacher More