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      MAGA Has Devoured American Evangelicalism

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      Tim Alberta’s recent book about the Christian nationalist takeover of American evangelicalism, “The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory,” is full of preachers and activists on the religious right expressing sheepish second thoughts about their prostration before Donald Trump. Robert Jeffress, the senior pastor at First Baptist Dallas — whom Texas Monthly once called “Trump’s apostle” for his slavish Trump boosterism — admitted to Alberta in 2021 that turning himself into a politician’s theological hype man may have compromised his spiritual mission. “I had that internal conversation with myself — and I guess with God, too — about, you know, when do you cross the line?” he said, allowing that the line had, “perhaps,” been crossed.Such qualms grew more vocal after voter revulsion toward MAGA candidates cost Republicans their prophesied red wave in 2022. Mike Evans, a former member of Trump’s evangelical advisory board, described, in an essay he sent to The Washington Post, leaving a Trump rally “in tears because I saw Bible believers glorifying Donald Trump like he was an idol.” Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, enthused to Alberta about the way Trump had punched “the bully that had been pushing evangelicals around,” by which he presumably meant American liberals. But, Perkins said, “The challenge is, he went a little too far. He had too much of an edge sometimes.” Perkins was clearly rooting for Ron DeSantis, who represented the shining hope of a post-Trump religious right.But there’s not going to be a post-Trump religious right — at least, not anytime soon. Evangelical leaders who started their alliance with Trump on a transactional basis, then grew giddy with their proximity to power, have now seen MAGA devour their movement whole.Absent the sort of miracle that would make me reconsider my own lifelong atheism, Trump is going to win Iowa’s caucuses on Monday; the only real question is by how much. Iowa tends to give its imprimatur to the Republican candidate who most connects with religious conservatives: George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004, Mike Huckabee in 2008, Rick Santorum in 2012, Ted Cruz in 2016. But this year, according to FiveThirtyEight’s polling average, Trump leads his nearest Republican rivals by more than 30 points.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      Should Trump Be Barred From the Ballot?

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      There’s this incredible dissonance at the center of our politics right now. On the one hand, all the polling suggests that Donald Trump is about to win Iowa Republican caucuses and the New Hampshire primary. He seems overwhelmingly likely to be his party’s nominee, and so possibly our next president. On the other hand, he could be constitutionally disqualified from taking office.Colorado and Maine concluded as much, and tossed him off their ballots. And now the Supreme Court is poised to take on this unprecedented question of whether a little-known provision of the Constitution, written in the aftermath of the Civil War, can bar Trump from running and scramble the election in 2024.[You can listen to this episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” on the NYT Audio App, Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, Google or wherever you get your podcasts.]The Times Opinion columnist David French has been on the show before, as both a guest and a guest host, to break down the criminal cases against Trump. This time, I’ve asked David back to make his case for why Trump is constitutionally disqualified. We discuss some of the biggest objections, what the Supreme Court is likely to do, and how the possible options risk destabilizing the country in different ways.Below is an edited excerpt from our conversation. You can listen to the full interview above or by following “The Ezra Klein Show” on the NYT Audio App, Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, Google or wherever you get your podcasts. View a list of book recommendations from our guests here.Ezra Klein: The legal movement right now to take Trump off the ballot, my sense is that emerged because of a law review article that, unusually, changed the world a bit. And this is a piece by William Baude and Michael Stokes Paulsen called “The Sweep and Force of Section 3.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      In Iowa, Two Friends Debate DeSantis vs. Trump

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      Rob Szypko and Rachel Quester, Paige Cowett and Marion Lozano, Dan Powell and Listen and follow The DailyApple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon MusicOn Monday, Iowa holds the first contest in the Republican presidential nominating process and nobody will have more on the line than Ron DeSantis. The Florida governor staked his candidacy on a victory in Iowa, a victory that now seems increasingly remote. Shane Goldmacher, a national political reporter for The Times, and the Daily producers Rob Szypko and Carlos Prieto explain what Mr. DeSantis’s challenge has looked like on the ground in Iowa.On today’s episodeShane Goldmacher, a national political correspondent for The New York Times.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida speaking in Cumming, Iowa, last week. He has campaigned hard in the state.Scott Morgan/ReutersBackground readingA weak night for Donald Trump? A Ron DeSantis flop? Gaming out Iowa.From December: Mr. Trump was gaining in Iowa polling, and Mr. DeSantis was holding off Nikki Haley for a distant second.There are a lot of ways to listen to The Daily. Here’s how.We aim to make transcripts available the next workday after an episode’s publication. You can find them at the top of the page.Shane Goldmacher More

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      Asa Hutchinson, Tilting at a Trump-Branded Windmill, Hangs On

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      The former Arkansas governor, nowhere in the polls, is running on principle — and on fumes, financially speaking.Asa Hutchinson sat under the fluorescent lights of a windowless conference room just off the main convention hall at the Prairie Meadows Casino and Hotel in Altoona, Iowa, on Thursday, explaining why there was a mission to the madness of his 2024 campaign for the presidency.Former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey had dropped out of the race the day before, following other big names to the exits like Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina and former Vice President Mike Pence, as well as not-so-big names like the governor of North Dakota, Doug Burgum, and a conservative commentator, Larry Elder.But as Mr. Hutchinson, a former governor of Arkansas, awaited his turn to speak at a summit on renewable fuels, he said he only found more motivation in those other departures.“My voice makes a difference,” he said. “I am the only one campaigning for president in Iowa that has said I’m not going to promise a pardon to Donald Trump. And if my voice is not there, then no one hears the alternative view.”“How in the world are you going to beat Donald Trump,” he added, “if somebody is not out there sounding the alarm that we can all go down in flames if we have the wrong nominee?”At a renewable fuels summit in Altoona, Iowa, on Thursday, Mr. Hutchinson addressed a crowd to much less fanfare than his competitors, who spoke earlier in the day.Hilary Swift for The New York TimesMr. Hutchinson, a founding leader of the Department of Homeland Security, a former chief of the Drug Enforcement Administration and a former member of Congress, has one more thing to add to that bulging résumé: the Don Quixote of the 2024 Republican primaries.The windmill he has been tilting at, Mr. Trump, has taken no more interest in him than Miguel de Cervantes’s inanimate behemoths did in that other dogged knight. But Mr. Trump’s stolid march toward the Republican nomination is what keeps Mr. Hutchinson going, on long drives with his two staff members, through snowstorms that grounded other candidates, to events where only a handful of people showed up, each of whom might well caucus on Monday for Mr. Hutchinson, he believes, if he can only make his pitch.“I’m not blind to the challenges, and that this is uphill,” he said earnestly. “I know where I am today, and I know what my goals are for next Monday. Then, when it’s over with, we’re going to evaluate it.”What money he has scraped together has paid the candidate filing fees in Colorado, Michigan, Texas and Oklahoma. He is skipping South Carolina — no point competing there, he said — but he is ready to contest Florida, because by its primary on March 19, Mr. Trump may well be on trial in Washington on felony charges stemming from his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.“The voters are going to have a lot more information post-March 4 on the risk of a Trump candidacy,” he said, referring to Mr. Trump’s trial, which is scheduled to begin one day before Super Tuesday, though even Mr. Hutchinson conceded that the trial date was likely to slip.For now, Mr. Hutchinson’s campaign defines living off the land. He had raised all of $1.2 million through September and spent $924,015 of it, a pittance compared with the pocketbooks of other candidates. He cut one television ad, he said. It hasn’t aired much.Where others fly, he drives — long distances. Aides say he has been known to drive the eight-plus hours to Des Moines from Arkansas by himself in his own car. Travel is in the cheapest S.U.V.s on offer at the rental counters. Last fall, when a flight from Chicago to Des Moines was canceled, he rounded up three strangers, pooled their money to rent a car and drove to Iowa for his scheduled events.But he has a flight booked to New Hampshire on Tuesday, after what he hopes will be a better-than-expected showing in Iowa on Monday.“You’re the media, so you tell me what the expectations are for me,” he said.“One, 2 percent?” his interlocutor ventured.“OK,” he said. “So that’s the expectations I have to beat.”Mr. Hutchinson had raised just $1.2 million through September, a pittance compared with other candidates.Hilary Swift for The New York TimesFor a man determined to sound the alarm and save the republic, he has kept expectations remarkably low.Although he says his voice matters, the story he tells to illustrate the impact he has made doesn’t exactly drive home that idea: Last June, he said, he ventured to Columbus, Ga., for that state’s Republican convention, so packed with Trump-supporting delegates that Georgia’s Republican governor, Brian Kemp, steered clear, still feeling the wrath of Mr. Trump’s most ardent followers who were upset at Mr. Kemp for refusing to overturn President Biden’s narrow victory there in 2020.Mr. Hutchinson tore into Mr. Trump in his quiet way, happy to brave the crowd. Then a man in a red MAGA hat rushed up to him afterward “and he said, ‘You didn’t fully persuade me, but at least I like you now,” Mr. Hutchinson recalled, smiling.With that, he left for his speech, wading through the trade show hallway, with its industry booths promoting ethanol production and carbon dioxide pipelines, candy bars in bowls to lure conventioneers, Fleetwood Mac piping through the sound system.The audience, maybe three-quarters full, listened respectfully. When he told the crowd that he was the only Republican candidate refusing to pardon Mr. Trump, a single clap rang out.That clapper, William Sherman, a retiree from the Beaverdale neighborhood of Des Moines, was more than happy to share his feeling.“What he said made sense,” Mr. Sherman said. But he would not be caucusing for Mr. Hutchinson: “I’m a Democrat.” More

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      Fact Checking Nikki Haley’s DeSantis Lies Website

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      During this week’s debate in Iowa, Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, tirelessly promoted a website to fact-check Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida. We took a closer look, and here’s what we found.More than a dozen times during Wednesday night’s Republican presidential debate, Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, directed viewers to a website purporting to correct what she called Ron DeSantis’s “lies.”But the Haley campaign’s website is itself a political project — not an exercise in objective fact-checking.The site does point to independent fact-checking to help push back on claims twisting Ms. Haley’s positions on things like Gaza refugees and to clarify her comments about being motivated to run for office by a speech made by Hillary Clinton, despite their political differences.But there are key differences between Ms. Haley’s effort and an independent fact-checking operation. The website, for example, doesn’t directly quote Mr. DeSantis or cite the specific comments being rebutted. It also deems a “lie” some statements that don’t actually contain checkable facts.“Mr. DeSantis claims he will take on the big spenders in Washington,” the site says, calling his claim a lie because while in Congress he voted to increase the federal debt limit. Ms. Haley may well use that line of criticism in her campaign, but that alone doesn’t make Mr. DeSantis’s statements about his intent to rein in federal spending a “lie.”“Ultimately it’s still campaign propaganda,” said Bill Adair, the creator of the website PolitiFact and a Duke University journalism professor. “It’s not fact-checking.”It’s certainly not the first time a political campaign has harnessed the style of fact-checking for its own objectives, Mr. Adair said, noting that the 2008 Obama campaign created a website to push back against “smears.”On the debate stage Wednesday, “it was just trumpeted more prominently and more often than I’ve ever seen it before,” Mr. Adair said. He added: “I think that shows that fact-checking has matured to the point where candidates are pretending to be fact checkers to try to give their own account of facts, although often it’s not the full truth.”Here’s further context on several of the claims made on Ms. Haley’s website, Desantislies.com.Gender-transition careThe website states that “DeSantis falsely claims Nikki Haley supports gender-changing surgeries for minors.” It goes on to say that, in fact, Ms. Haley “opposes gender-changing surgeries and puberty blockers for minors and is on record saying as much multiple times.”It is true that Ms. Haley has spoken out against minors being able to undergo gender-transition surgeries before the age of 18. But Mr. DeSantis and other critics have homed in on a comment she made in June — not mentioned on Ms. Haley’s website — suggesting that the law should not be involved in regulating such care.During a CBS interview, Ms. Haley was asked what the law should say regarding transgender care for youths. “I think the law should stay out of it, and I think parents should handle it,” Ms. Haley responded.Still, even then, Ms. Haley added that “when that child becomes 18, if they want to make more of a permanent change they can do that.”Free speechThe website says that “DeSantis falsely claims Haley opposes free speech on social media,” and points out that Mr. DeSantis previously expressed support for legal efforts to crack down on journalists’ use of anonymous sources.But the site ignores that Ms. Haley did in November call for requiring social media users to be verified by name, before walking back her comments amid criticism.“When I get into office, the first thing we have to do, social media accounts, social media companies, they have to show America their algorithms,” Ms. Haley said during a Fox News event. “Let us see why they’re pushing what they’re pushing. The second thing is every person on social media should be verified by their name.”Ms. Haley added: “First of all, it’s a national security threat. When you do that, all of a sudden people have to stand by what they say. And it gets rid of the Russian bots, the Iranian bots and the Chinese bots. And then you’re going to get some civility when people know their name is next to what they say, and they know their pastor and their family members are going to see it.”Mr. DeSantis quickly criticized her comments, saying, “Haley’s proposal to ban anonymous speech online — similar to what China recently did — is dangerous and unconstitutional.”A day later, Ms. Haley said on CNBC that “life would be more civil” if people did not post anonymously, but noted: “I don’t mind anonymous American people having free speech. What I don’t like is anonymous Russians and Chinese and Iranians having free speech.”Confronted during the December Republican debate, Ms. Haley misleadingly claimed she “never said government should go and require anyone’s name.”TaxesMr. DeSantis and his supporters have made misleading claims about Ms. Haley’s record on taxes while she was governor of South Carolina. But the claims weren’t always found to be categorically false, as Ms. Haley’s website contends.The website links to four articles, including two from The New York Times. In one example, The Times fact-checked a pro-DeSantis super PAC’s argument that Ms. Haley “raised taxes” and found it to be misleading.That’s because, technically speaking, Ms. Haley cosponsored legislation passed in 2006 that did raise the state sales tax by one percentage point. But that measure also exempted owner-occupants from paying property taxes for schools — among other provisions — and was considered by experts to be a “tax swap,” not a tax increase. An analysis at the time projected that most homeowners would have an overall decreased tax burden.ChinaCalling Ms. Haley the “most outspoken candidate on the growing China threat,” the website claims that “DeSantis falsely attacks Nikki Haley’s record on China.”There have indeed been distortions: Mr. DeSantis claimed that Ms. Haley gave a Chinese company land near a military base, referring to a fiberglass company. But while Ms. Haley celebrated the company’s opening of a plant in South Carolina, and although the state provided a grant for improving the site, it was the county government — not the state — that provided the land as part of a deal to secure hundreds of jobs.But it’s worth noting that the flawed attacks have gone both ways.For example, a pro-Haley super PAC wrongly claimed that Mr. DeSantis “voted to fast-track Obama’s Chinese trade deals.” That claim was based on a vote Mr. DeSantis took as a congressman in 2015 to extend the president’s authority to fast-track trade legislation (he was among 190 Republicans in the House to vote for it). No trade agreements subject to that authority were made with China. More

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      Winners and Losers From the Fifth Republican Debate in Iowa

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      Welcome to Opinion’s commentary for the fifth Republican presidential debate, held in Des Moines, Iowa, on Wednesday night. In this special feature, Times Opinion writers and contributors rate the candidates on a scale of 0 to 10: 0 means the candidate didn’t belong on the stage and should have dropped out before the debate even […] More

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      Christie’s Exit Should Give Haley a Chance in New Hampshire. Will It Be Enough?

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      A group of moderate voters is now available, but it may not put her over the top against Trump.Chris Christie and Nikki Haley on a debate stage last month.Gerald Herbert/Associated PressEight years ago, Chris Christie gave Donald J. Trump the biggest political assist of the 2016 campaign.He eviscerated a surging Marco Rubio on the debate stage just days before the New Hampshire primary. In doing so, he ensured that the Republican mainstream would be divided and allowed Mr. Trump to regain his footing with a win after a loss in Iowa.Mr. Trump won’t be getting the same favor again.On Wednesday, Mr. Christie withdrew from the race. Whatever his intent, by bowing out he has effectively done what he didn’t do eight years ago: step out of the way of a mainstream conservative with moderate appeal, in this case Nikki Haley, who is surging heading into the New Hampshire primary.In the most recent polls, she reached about 30 percent of the vote in New Hampshire. It was a tally that put her within striking distance of Mr. Trump and even made a victory imaginable. But she still trailed by about 12 percentage points, and her path to victory remained quite narrow.With Mr. Christie out of the race, those 12 points don’t look so hard anymore. Mr. Christie has held around 10 percent of the vote in New Hampshire for months, and Ms. Haley and Mr. Trump would essentially be tied in New Hampshire if her support were hypothetically combined with Mr. Christie’s.According to FiveThirtyEight on Wednesday night, Ms. Haley and Mr. Christie’s support added up to 41.5 percent of the vote in New Hampshire, to 42.4 percent for Mr. Trump.Of course, not every one of Mr. Christie’s voters will back Ms. Haley. But in this particular case, there’s good reason to think the preponderance of his voters really will coalesce behind her.Mr. Christie is the only vocal anti-Trump candidate and, not surprisingly, his supporters are the likeliest to be anti-Trump. In a CNN/UNH poll this week, 65 percent of Mr. Christie’s supporters said Ms. Haley was their second choice. In a CBS/YouGov poll last month, 75 percent of Mr. Christie’s supporters in New Hampshire said they would consider Ms. Haley. Just 9 percent said they would consider Mr. Trump.With these numbers, Ms. Haley’s path to victory isn’t like hitting an inside straight — it is fairly straightforward. No, the Christie vote, alone, will probably not be enough. But she has been steadily gaining in the polls and, historically, there’s a lot of precedent for surging candidates to keep gaining — especially over a contest’s final days. With Mr. Trump at just 42 percent of the vote, there’s no reason to think her path is closed off.Of course, a Haley win in New Hampshire would not mean that Mr. Trump’s path to the nomination was in jeopardy. Not even Mr. Christie seems optimistic about her chances; he was heard on a hot mic Wednesday saying “she’s going to get smoked,” presumably referring to Ms. Haley, and he did not endorse her.Her appeal is concentrated among highly educated and moderate voters, who represent an outsize share of the electorate in New Hampshire. She also depends on the support of registered independents — in some other key primary contests, they are not eligible to vote. Back in 2016, moderate candidates who went nowhere nationally — John Kasich, Mr. Christie and Jeb Bush — added up to 34 percent of the vote in New Hampshire. If you add the 11 percent held by Mr. Rubio, a mainstream conservative, that’s 45 percent of the vote that went for establishment candidates. In other words, this state is not representative of the Republican electorate.But this time, the voters who backed those moderate Republicans will have a chance to coalesce behind a single candidate and, in doing so, deal a blow to Mr. Trump. The consequences may mostly prove to be symbolic: a rare Republican rebuke of Mr. Trump and a reminder that the old mainstream of the Republican Party remains to be reckoned with.But there is a chance, albeit a small one, that a Haley win in New Hampshire would prove to be more important. Mr. Trump may face criminal trials in the months ahead. While it seems exceedingly unlikely today, an erosion of his aura of dominance might make him ever so slightly more vulnerable if a trial gets underway. More

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      With Chris Christie Out, Nikki Haley Is Poised to Benefit in New Hampshire

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      Ms. Haley has cut into former President Donald J. Trump’s lead in the state where Mr. Christie had spent significant time wooing voters opposed to Mr. Trump.The former New Jersey governor Chris Christie’s decision on Wednesday to drop out of the presidential race shook up a contest for the Republican nomination that had appeared to be former President Donald J. Trump’s for the taking, giving a huge shot of adrenaline to Nikki Haley just five days before ballots begin to be cast in the monthslong nomination fight.The most obviously altered battleground is likely to be New Hampshire, where Ms. Haley, the former governor of South Carolina and Mr. Trump’s first ambassador to the United Nations, is within striking distance of the former president. Even without his endorsement, many New Hampshire voters who planned to side with Mr. Christie as an opponent of Mr. Trump’s are likely to flip to Ms. Haley, as is potentially some of Mr. Christie’s leadership team.But the jolt will have much broader implications, argued John Sununu, a former New Hampshire senator and the brother of the current governor, Chris Sununu, both of whom have endorsed Ms. Haley. A contest that has centered on Mr. Trump’s return and the fight between Ms. Haley and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida for second place will now focus squarely on the threat Ms. Haley poses to Mr. Trump’s coronation.A memo that Mr. Trump’s campaign blasted out after Christie’s announcement on Wednesday night did just that, broadcasting what it called internal polling that showed Mr. Trump beating Ms. Haley in a head-to-head contest 56 percent to 40 percent.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More