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      Jill Biden Takes the 2024 Campaign to Paris in Another Overseas Appeal

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      As the United States officially rejoined UNESCO, the first lady delivered what sounded like a campaign message, saying the president had rebuilt bonds that frayed under his predecessor.At first glance, Jill Biden’s work on her trips overseas appears to be rooted in the traditional duties of first ladies: She has cheered on American Olympians in Tokyo, made a secret trip to Ukraine to meet with the country’s first lady and attended the royal wedding of the crown prince of Jordan.But in a host of speeches delivered overseas, including in Namibia and France, she has also used her platform for more political purposes, including making her case that President Biden has promoted democracy and revitalized global relationships strained by former President Donald J. Trump.In Paris on Tuesday, the first lady’s presence was a reminder, as the 2024 presidential campaign heats up, that Americans may again be choosing between the two men. Dr. Biden was there to deliver remarks for the official return of the United States to UNESCO, several years after the Trump administration pulled the country — and its funding — from the group.She was also there to deliver a White House message that Mr. Biden had united allies against what she called “Putin’s unjust war” in Ukraine.“When my husband, President Biden, took office two and a half years ago, he made a promise to the American people,” Dr. Biden said, “that he would rebuild the systems that were broken and fortify our institutions, that he would work to bring divided communities back together, that he would put us on a path to a better, brighter future while restoring our leadership on the world stage. And he did.”She told a crowd of hundreds outdoors at the UNESCO headquarters in central Paris that her husband “understands that if we hope to create a better world, the United States can’t go it alone, but we must help lead the way.” The dark-gray sky above her looked ominous, and as she spoke, rain began to fall.During his time in office, Mr. Biden has cast the future as a stark battle between democratic and autocratic forces. But in practice, he has been more nuanced.Like Mr. Trump, he has embraced a working diplomatic relationship with Saudi Arabia despite his complaints about the country’s approach to human rights, and he has imposed tough restrictions on asylum seekers who cross the border the United States shares with Mexico.Still, his administration has worked to reposition the United States as a more collaborative partner than it was under Mr. Trump, who pulled out of several international accords and at one point threatened to pull the United States from NATO. For her part, Dr. Biden’s role has been to promote her husband, if not the details of his policies.Dr. Biden met with Ukrainian refugees at a school in Bucharest, Romania, last year. She has used her platform to underscore President Biden’s foreign policy message.Pool photo by Cristian Nistor“She brings a polish and a warmth and a compassion to the job unrivaled by any first lady I know of, particularly as it relates to Europe,” Mark Gitenstein, a longtime Biden ally and the ambassador to the European Union, said in an interview. Mr. Gitenstein, who has known the first lady since the 1970s, said Dr. Biden has evolved from a reluctant public figure to a first lady eager to validate her husband’s credentials.Mr. Biden has low approval ratings domestically, but recent polling has found support for his approach internationally: Views of the president and of U.S. leadership have remained stable or improved since Mr. Biden was elected, according to a survey of 23 countries published in June by the Pew Research Center.The Biden administration has rejoined several global organizations and pacts that Mr. Trump pulled out of, including the World Health Organization, the Paris climate agreement, the United Nations Human Rights Council and UNESCO. Audrey Azoulay, the director general of UNESCO, told Dr. Biden in a meeting on Tuesday that “it’s important to see the U.S. back at the table.”UNESCO, or the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, is best known for designating World Heritage sites, more than 1,150 of them since 1972. They include Yosemite National Park in California, Angkor in Cambodia and the Stone Town of Zanzibar. The organization also keeps an “intangible cultural heritage” list of humanity’s most worthy creations — like the French baguette.The United States had also withdrawn from the agency in 1984, during the Cold War, because the Reagan administration deemed it too susceptible to Moscow’s influence and overly critical of Israel. President George W. Bush pledged in 2002 to rejoin the organization partly to show his willingness for international cooperation in the lead-up to the Iraq war. Citing bias against Israel, the Trump administration again pulled out in 2017.During her trip to Paris, Dr. Biden and her daughter, Ashley Biden, toured the Élysée Palace as the guests of Brigitte Macron, the French first lady. Mrs. Macron is expected to join Dr. Biden on a tour of northern France on Wednesday, according to Dr. Biden’s staff. The first lady is scheduled to visit Mont-Saint-Michel, a UNESCO World Heritage site and a Gothic-style Benedictine abbey on an island off the coast. Dr. Biden is also scheduled to visit the Brittany American Cemetery to honor soldiers who were killed during World War II.This year Dr. Biden has also traveled to Mexico, Kenya, Namibia, Canada, Japan, Jordan, Egypt and Morocco. Sometimes, she is alongside her husband for diplomatic summits, as she was in Mexico, Canada and Japan. But more often than not, she has been the person he chooses to represent him: In May, she traveled to Britain to attend the coronation of King Charles III.Greeting students in Namibia in February, one of Dr. Biden’s many international trips this year.Dirk Heinrich/Associated PressIn Paris, she spoke, as she often does, of her long career as an educator, and of the importance of lifting up women and girls, though Dr. Biden’s policy portfolio does not include ambitious plans for education access or elevating gender issues.“Pursuing legislation or pushing a legacy-defining initiative is not the kind of activist role of first lady she wants to play,” said Michael LaRosa, her former press secretary. “In many ways, she’s much more comfortable as a permanent campaign spouse because the objective of every speech, event or trip, whether it’s political or official, is in service of her husband’s agenda and lifting up his achievements.”Some of her trips have been at the behest of foreign leaders.At the Group of 7 summit in Cornwall, England, in 2021, Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga of Japan and his wife approached her as she was climbing out of a motorcade and appealed to her to attend the Olympic Games during the pandemic, according to Mr. LaRosa.Dr. Biden attended the Olympic Games in Tokyo in 2021 after an invitation from the Japanese prime minister.Doug Mills/The New York TimesMasked, she cheered on the athletes from the bleachers.When she is on a plane, she and her aides work on speeches, look over her news coverage and talk over glasses of wine. Dr. Biden also takes cat naps, according to Vanessa Valdivia, her press secretary.Aurelien Breeden More

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      Jan. 6 Prosecutors Gather More Evidence as Trump Indictment Decision Looms

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      The special counsel, Jack Smith, continues to push ahead on several fronts as he assembles evidence about former President Donald J. Trump’s efforts to retain power after the 2020 election.Even as the special counsel, Jack Smith, appears to be edging closer toward bringing charges against former President Donald J. Trump in connection with his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, prosecutors have been continuing to investigate multiple strands of the case.In recent weeks, Mr. Smith’s team has pushed forward in collecting new evidence and in arranging new interviews with witnesses who could shed light on Mr. Trump’s mind-set in the chaotic postelection period or on other subjects important to the inquiry. At the same time, word has emerged of previously undisclosed investigative efforts, hinting at the breadth and scope of the issues prosecutors are examining.In the past few days, a lawyer for Bernard B. Kerik, the former New York City police commissioner who worked closely after the election with Mr. Trump’s lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, gave hundreds of pages of documents to prosecutors working with Mr. Smith.The documents detailed efforts by Mr. Kerik and Mr. Giuliani to identify and investigate allegations of fraud in the election — an issue that is likely to be front and center as prosecutors seek to understand what Mr. Trump may have been thinking when he set in motion various efforts to maintain his grip on power.While it remains unclear precisely when Mr. Smith may seek an indictment of the former president, the clearest signal yet that one was in the offing came last week from Mr. Trump, who announced on social media that he had received a so-called target letter from prosecutors alluding to at least three charges he might face.Those charges included conspiracy to defraud the United States, obstruction of an official proceeding and a Reconstruction-era civil rights statute that makes it a crime for people to conspire to threaten or intimidate others from exercising rights provided to them by federal law or the Constitution.It is not uncommon for prosecutors to keep investigating a criminal case up to the moment an indictment is returned. They can even press forward after charges are filed. But prosecutors are not supposed to use a grand jury of the sort that has been used to investigate Mr. Trump to gather fresh evidence after charges are brought — unless they intend to use the information to seek additional charges.The production of documents by Mr. Kerik, who was convicted of tax fraud but pardoned by Mr. Trump, came even as his lawyer, Timothy Parlatore, was arranging for Mr. Kerik to sit down with Mr. Smith’s prosecutors for a voluntary interview next month. Mr. Giuliani did a similar interview with Mr. Smith’s team in June.Among the previously unknown steps taken by Mr. Smith’s team was an interview conducted about three months ago with Richard P. Donoghue, a former top official in the Justice Department at the end of Mr. Trump’s time in office. NBC News reported on the interview on Monday night, and Mr. Donoghue confirmed on Tuesday that it took place. But he declined to comment on what he discussed with Mr. Smith’s prosecutors.Mr. Smith’s team conducted an interview with Richard Donoghue, the former acting deputy attorney general, who appeared before the House select committee investigating Jan. 6.Jason Andrew for The New York TimesIn late 2021, Mr. Donoghue, who served as the acting deputy attorney general under Mr. Trump, told the House select committee investigating Jan. 6 that he and Jeffrey Rosen, the acting attorney general at the time, repeatedly sought to rebuff Mr. Trump’s claims that the election had been marred by widespread fraud. At one point, Mr. Donoghue testified, Mr. Trump urged him and Mr. Rosen to “just say the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican congressmen.”Mr. Donoghue also told the committee that in the waning days of his presidency, Mr. Trump wanted to replace Mr. Rosen with Jeffrey Clark, a loyalist within the Justice Department. Mr. Clark, whose home was searched as part of the election interference inquiry into Mr. Trump, had helped to a draft a letter suggesting that fraud had affected the election results and urging Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia, a Republican, to call for the creation of a fake slate of electors to the Electoral College declaring that Mr. Trump had won that state, not Joseph R. Biden Jr.Mr. Smith’s team has also reached out to Mr. Kemp seeking an interview, Garrison Douglas, a spokesman for Mr. Kemp, said on Tuesday. But Mr. Douglas declined to say whether the interview, which was reported by The Washington Post, had been merely scheduled or had already taken place.Georgia was a key location in Mr. Trump’s campaign to pressure local officials to throw him the election in their states. Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state, recorded Mr. Trump on a phone call in early January 2021, asking him to “find” sufficient votes for him to win the state.Mr. Smith’s prosecutors have also shown interest in a different line of inquiry in recent months, asking questions about a meeting that Mr. Trump held in February 2020 with officials who briefed him about election security for the upcoming race. The special counsel’s interest in the meeting, where Mr. Trump praised what officials told him were improvements in election security, was reported earlier by CNN.During the meeting, Mr. Trump attacked Joseph Maguire, who was then serving as acting director of national intelligence, for having days earlier given a briefing on Russian interference in the 2016 election to Representative Adam Schiff, Democrat of California, then the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, and other members of the panel, according to people familiar with the events.Mr. Trump viewed Mr. Schiff as an enemy after he focused extensively on whether Mr. Trump’s campaign had conspired with Russia during his 2016 campaign and he played an instrumental role in his first impeachment.At the meeting, officials from the F.B.I. and other agencies also told Mr. Trump about their preparations to secure the election from interference. Mr. Trump was so taken by what he heard that he wanted to hold a news conference to tout the security of the election, according to a person with knowledge of the talks.Mr. Trump’s apparent excitement at the meeting could shed light on his state of mind and what factual knowledge he had as he spread baseless lies about election fraud months later.In a related line of inquiry, prosecutors under Mr. Smith have asked questions as to when and how federal officials went about securing the election, and how they coordinated those efforts with secretaries of state in various states, according to a person familiar with the matter. Prosecutors have also sought to determine how regularly the White House was briefed on election security measures.Richard Fausset More

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      Where Trump, DeSantis and Other 2024 Candidates Stand on Immigration

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

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

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

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      A Trump-Biden Rematch That Many Are Dreading

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      More from our inbox:Perils of A.I., and Limits on Its DevelopmentAn image from a televised presidential debate in 2020.Damon Winter/The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “The Presidential Rematch Nobody Wants,” by Pamela Paul (column, July 21):Ms. Paul asks, “Have you met anyone truly excited about Joe Biden running for re-election?”I am wildly enthusiastic about President Biden, who is the best president in my lifetime. His legislation to repair America’s infrastructure and bring back chip manufacturing are both huge accomplishments. Mr. Biden has done more to combat climate change, the existential issue of the day, than all the presidents who have gone before him.Mr. Biden extracted us from the endless morass of Afghanistan. He has marshaled the free peoples of the world to stop the Russian takeover of Ukraine, giving dictators around the world pause.Mr. Biden is the first president in a generation to really believe in unions and to emphasize the issues of working people, understanding how much jobs matter.I might wish he were 20 years younger. I wish I were 20 years younger.Most important, Joe Biden is an honorable man at a time when his biggest rivals do not know the meaning of the word. Being honorable is the essential virtue, without which youth or glibness do not matter.I support his re-election with all my heart and soul.Gregg CoodleyPortland, Ore.To the Editor:We endured (barely) four years of Donald Trump. Now we have Joe Biden, whose time has come and gone, and third party disrupters who know they cannot win but are looking for publicity.Mr. Biden had his turn, and is exceedingly arrogant to believe that he is our best hope. His good sense and moral values won’t help if Donald Trump wins against him, which is eminently possible. The Democratic Party must nominate a powerfully charismatic candidate.Mitchell ZuckermanNew Hope, Pa.To the Editor:I think Pamela Paul misses the point entirely. No, Biden supporters are not jumping up and down in a crazed frenzy like Trump supporters. That is actually a good thing. People like me who fully support President Biden’s re-election are sick and tired of the nonstop insanity that is Donald Trump. I’m very happy to have a sound, calm, upstanding president who actually gets things done for middle- and working-class Americans.Excitement isn’t the answer to solving America’s problems. A president who gets things done is — like Joe Biden!Sue EverettChattanooga, Tenn.To the Editor:Pamela Paul is spot on in her diagnosis of the depressing likelihood of Trump vs. Biden, Round 2.The solution is money, as is true in all things in American politics. The Big Money donors in the Democratic Party should have a conference call with Team Biden and tell it, flat out, we’re not supporting the president’s re-election. It’s time for a younger generation of leaders.Without their money, President Biden would realize that he cannot run a competitive campaign. But in a strange echo of how Republican leaders genuflect to Donald Trump and don’t confront him, the wealthy contributors to the Democratic Party do exactly the same with Mr. Biden.Ethan PodellRutherford Island, MaineTo the Editor:In an ideal world, few would want a presidential rematch. Donald Trump is a menace, and it would be nice to have a Democratic nominee who is young, charismatic and exciting. But in the real world, I favor a Trump-Biden rematch, if Mr. Trump is the Republican nominee.Mr. Biden might shuffle like a senior, and mumble his words, but he is a decent man who loves our country and has delivered beyond expectations.In leadership crises, Americans yearn for shiny new saviors riding into town on a stallion. I prefer an honest old shoe whom we can count on to get us through an election of a lifetime.Jerome T. MurphyCambridge, Mass.The writer is a retired Harvard professor and dean who taught courses on leadership.To the Editor:I am grateful to Pamela Paul for articulating and encapsulating how I, and probably many others, feel about the impending 2024 presidential race. I appreciate the stability that President Biden returned to the White House and our national politics. However, the future demands so much more than Mr. Biden or any other announced candidate can deliver.Christine CunhaBolinas, Calif.To the Editor:Pamela Paul presents many reasons, in her view, why President Biden is a flawed candidate, including that Mr. Biden’s “old age is showing.” As an example, she writes that during an interview on MSNBC he appeared to wander off the set.Fox News has been pushing this phony notion relentlessly, claiming that he walked off while the host was still talking. In fact, the interview was over, Mr. Biden shook hands with the host, they both said goodbye, and while Mr. Biden left the set, the host faced the camera and announced what was coming up next on her show.Howard EhrlichmanHuntington, N.Y.Perils of A.I., and Limits on Its DevelopmentOpenAI’s logo at its offices in San Francisco. The company is testing an image analysis feature for its ChatGPT chatbot. Jim Wilson/The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “New Worries That Chatbot Reads Faces” (Business, July 19):The integration of facial surveillance and generative A.I. carries a warning: Without prohibitions on the use of certain A.I. techniques, the United States could easily construct a digital dystopia, adopting A.I. systems favored by authoritarian governments for social control.Our report “Artificial Intelligence and Democratic Values” established that facial surveillance is among the most controversial A.I. deployments in the world. UNESCO urged countries to prohibit the use of A.I. for mass surveillance. The European Parliament proposes a ban in the pending E.U. Artificial Intelligence Act. And Clearview AI, the company that scraped images from websites, is now prohibited in many countries.Earlier this year, we urged the Federal Trade Commission to open an investigation of OpenAI. We specifically asked the agency to prevent the deployment of future versions of ChatGPT, such as the technique that will make it possible to match facial images with data across the internet.We now urge the F.T.C. to expedite the investigation and clearly prohibit the use of A.I. techniques for facial surveillance. Even the White House announcement of voluntary standards for the A.I. industry offers no guarantee of protection.Legal standards, not industry assurances, are what is needed now.Merve HickokLorraine KisselburghMarc RotenbergWashingtonThe writers are, respectively, the president, the chair and the executive director of the Center for A.I. and Digital Policy, an independent research organization. Ms. Hickok testified before Congress in March on the need to establish guardrails for A.I.To the Editor:Re “Pressed by Biden, Big Tech Agrees to A.I. Rules” (front page, July 22):It is troubling that the Biden administration is jumping in and exacting “voluntary” limitations on the development of A.I. technologies. The government manifestly lacks the expertise and knowledge necessary to ascertain what guardrails might be appropriate, and the inevitable outcome will be to stifle innovation and reduce competition, the worst possible result.Imagine what the internet would be today had the government played a similarly intrusive and heavy-handed role at its inception.Kenneth A. MargolisChappaqua, N.Y. More

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      Who Will Attend the First Republican Debate? What We Know About Trump and His Rivals.

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      Republican presidential candidates are supposed to face off in Milwaukee on Aug. 23. But Donald Trump, the field’s front-runner, may not show up, and others have yet to make the cut.With a month to go before the first Republican presidential debate, the stage in Milwaukee remains remarkably unsettled, with the front-runner, former President Donald J. Trump, waffling on his attendance and the rest of the participants far from certain.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida is in. So are Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, and Vivek Ramaswamy, the entrepreneur and author. Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor and scourge of Mr. Trump, said he would be on the stage as well.But the Republican National Committee’s complicated criteria to qualify for the Aug. 23 gathering — based on candidates’ donors and polling numbers — have also created real problems for others in the field.Former Vice President Mike Pence, who would be a serious candidate for the Republican nomination by most measures, may not be invited to debate because of the R.N.C.’s measures: Candidates must have at least 40,000 individual donors, and 1 percent in three national polls of Republican voters, or 1 percent in two national polls and two polls in the early primary states.The debate in Milwaukee — the first of three scheduled so far — has been billed by the party and the candidates as an inflection point in a race that has remained in stasis, even with its front-runner under state and federal indictment, with more charges expected soon. Mr. Trump is likely to face charges next month stemming from his efforts to overturn President Biden’s 2020 victory in Georgia, and has been notified that he could be indicted soon on federal charges for clinging to power after his electoral defeat.Yet he remains the prohibitive leader in state and national polling, with Mr. DeSantis a distant second and the rest of the field clustered in single digits.The debate will offer the dark horses perhaps their last shot at making an impression, if they can qualify, and all candidates not named Trump a chance to present themselves as the true alternative to the legally challenged former president. Over the next month, political observers will see a steady taunting of the front-runner by candidates who see a no-lose scenario. Either they goad Mr. Trump to share the stage with them, giving them equal billing with the front-runner and a chance to take a shot at him, or they paint him as too scared to show up, denting his tough-guy image.“As Governor DeSantis has already said, he looks forward to participating in the debates and believes Trump should as well — nobody is entitled to this nomination; they must earn it,” said Bryan Griffin, a spokesman for the DeSantis campaign.On CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday, Mr. Christie promised, “I’ll be on this stage for all of the debates, and I will hold Donald Trump personally responsible for failing us.”For his part, Mr. Trump has stayed noncommittal. Senior advisers have counseled him against showing up and validating his challengers, but his rivals believe they can prick his ego and shame him to the stage.“You’re leading people by 50 or 60 points, you say, why would you be doing a debate?” Mr. Trump said on Fox News last weekend. “It’s actually not fair. Why would you let someone who’s at zero or one or two or three be popping you with questions?”The Republican Party has chosen Milwaukee to host two key events as it chooses its 2024 presidential nominee.Morry Gash/Associated PressIn some sense, the Milwaukee debate is haunted by the circuslike atmosphere that pervaded the Republican debates of 2015 and 2016, when Mr. Trump ran roughshod over crowded stages with insulting nicknames and constant interruptions. At one point, the discussion devolved into lewd references to the significance of the size of Mr. Trump’s hands.The Republican National Committee’s thresholds were intended to keep the number of participants down and ensure that only serious candidates made the stage. The final roster will not be set until 48 hours before debate night, when the last polls come in and the candidates must pledge that they will back the eventual Republican nominee.But with a month to go, the polling and donor thresholds — imperfect as they may be — are already narrowing the field.Ronna McDaniel, the chairwoman of the R.N.C., said Friday on Fox Business that a candidate who cannot win over “40,000 different small dollar donations” is “not going to be competitive against Joe Biden.”Candidates like Mr. Ramaswamy and Mr. Scott have used the donor rules to tout the power of their campaigns beyond the single digits they have garnered in national polling.“Tim will be on the debate stage for months to come thanks to over 145,000 donations from over 53,000 unique donors across all 50 states,” said Nathan Brand, a spokesman for the Scott campaign.Long-shot candidates like the Los Angeles commentator Larry Elder, Mayor Francis X. Suarez of Miami, former Representative Will Hurd of Texas and the businessman Perry Johnson are not likely to make the cut.In an interview on Friday, Mr. Elder said he was only about halfway to the donor threshold, and because his name is often omitted from Republican polling, reaching 1 percent could be impossible. For candidates like him, he conceded, making the stage is existential for his campaign.“It’s crucial for me to get on that debate stage; that’s Plan A, and Plan B is to make Plan A work,” he said, suggesting there is no other option.Some candidates, like Mr. Pence and Asa Hutchinson, the former governor of Arkansas, could also fall short of qualifying. Mr. Pence, who has easily cleared the polling threshold but has badly lagged in fund-raising, launched an email blitz on Wednesday, pleading for 40,000 people to send his campaign $1. Mr. Hutchinson is still short of 40,000 but did reach 1 percent in a qualifying national poll this month.Doug Burgum, the governor of North Dakota, may still qualify, in part because Mr. Burgum, a wealthy former software executive, is offering $20 gift cards to the first 50,000 people who donate at least $1 to his campaign. He is also pumping up his standing in early-state polls with a well-financed ad blitz.“Gov. Burgum will absolutely be on the debate stage next month,” said his spokesman, Lance Trover.Mr. Burgum is not alone in his creative fund-raising strategies. Mr. Ramaswamy, who like Mr. Burgum is wealthy enough to self-fund his presidential bid, is offering donors a 10 percent cut of the donations they get from those they convince to give to the Ramaswamy campaign. Mr. Suarez last week said he would enter anyone who sends his campaign $1 into a raffle for Lionel Messi’s first game with Inter Miami, the South Florida Major League Soccer club.“It corrupts the process. It makes us look foolish. It makes us look silly,” said Mr. Elder, who accused the R.N.C. of stacking the deck for elected officials and the super rich.A super PAC for Chris Christie, who has staked his campaign on criticizing Mr. Trump, has been running advertisements mocking the former president’s reluctance to debate.Pete Marovich for The New York TimesMr. Christie is making something of a mockery of another R.N.C. demand — that every candidate sign a pledge to back the eventual nominee. Mr. Christie, who was once a confidant of Mr. Trump’s and is now his sworn enemy, has said he will sign the pledge, but he has added that he will take the promise as seriously as Mr. Trump takes his promises — that is to say, not seriously at all. In the spring of 2016, Mr. Trump reneged on a similar pledge, though it became moot when he secured the nomination.Karl Rickett, a spokesman for Mr. Christie, said on Friday that the former governor had not swerved from that stand.Mr. Hurd has said flat out that he will not sign the pledge, but there is little indication he can make the debate stage anyway.For his part, Mr. Trump may make a mockery of the debate itself. In 2016, he skipped a Republican primary debate over his feud with the Fox New host Megyn Kelly and “counterprogrammed” a benefit for veterans in Des Moines. On his Truth Social media site on Sunday, Mr. Trump said “so many people have suggested” that he debate the former Fox News star Tucker Carlson on the night of the first Republican debate.Aides to rival campaigns last week said the Republican National Committee should place sanctions on Mr. Trump if he pulls a similar stunt in August.Whether Mr. Trump shows up or not, he will be the target of his rivals for the next four weeks. And if the former president does not show, he still could attend the debate at the Ronald Reagan Library in Simi Valley, Calif., in September, or the one in Alabama in October.Mr. Christie’s super PAC, Tell It Like It Is, is already running advertisements mocking Mr. Trump’s reluctance. And others are jumping in.“We can’t complain about Biden not debating R.F.K. if Trump is not going to get on the debate stage and stand next to us,” Ms. Haley said last week, referring to the president and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has challenged Mr. Biden for the Democratic nomination.“I have never known him to be scared of anything,” she said of Mr. Trump. “I certainly don’t expect him to be scared of the debate stage, so I think he’s going to have to get on there.” More

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      There’s No Escaping Trump

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

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      Rebooting Ron DeSantis’s Campaign

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      Admitting you’ve made mistakes is tough for anyone. For a hard-charging, hyperscrutinized political candidate who presents himself as infallible, it can be as excruciating as a root canal without anesthesia.But Ron DeSantis clearly has hit the point where his presidential quest is crying out for a serious course correction. I know it. You know it. Anxious Republican strategists and donors know it. And Team DeSantis knows it, no matter what kind of happy talk the candidate was spewing in his interview with CNN last week. (Tip: If you find yourself babbling about being one of the few folks who knows how to define “woke,” you are not nailing your message.)If things were going well for Mr. DeSantis — if he were catching fire as the less erratic, unindicted alternative to Donald Trump — there’s not a snowball’s chance he would have set foot in CNN. But as things stand, consorting with nonconservative media outlets, which he until recently avoided like a pack of rabid raccoons, is part of a bigger overhaul.Team Trump intends to have some fun with this. “Some reboots were never going to be successful, like ‘Dynasty,’ ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ or even ‘MacGyver,’” the campaign mocked in a statement last week. “And now we can add Ron DeSantis’s 2024 campaign to the list of failures.”But campaign reboots are nothing to be ashamed of. Honest! They are a common, even healthy, part of the process. Handled properly, they give candidates the chance to show off their decisiveness, tenacity, adaptability, unflappability — you name it.Not all overhauls are created equal, of course. Ronald Reagan’s in the 1980 presidential race? Golden. Jeb Bush’s in 2016? Oof. And plenty have fallen somewhere in between: John Kerry 2004, John McCain 2008, Hillary Clinton 2008. As the DeSantis campaign starts down this path, it has an abundance of recent cases to consult for potential tips, tricks and red flags.While every floundering candidacy is floundering in its own way, there are a few foundational moves common to presidential campaign reboots:1. Slash spending, which typically involves cutting campaign staff and salaries.2. Shake up the leadership team.3. Shift the focus toward more grass roots stumping in the early voting states.Spending issues are almost a political rite of passage. So many campaigns get carried away early on with high-priced advisers or an overabundance of staff members, especially with front-runners eager to project an aura of inevitability.The DeSantis campaign is still doing solidly with fund-raising, but there have been warning signs (especially in the small-donor department) that have it cutting staff and rethinking priorities. (Even more Iowa!) This is obviously no fun and may presage even less fun to come. But it is better to start making these adjustments before things get really ugly. During the summer of 2007, the struggling McCain campaign found itself nearly broke, prompting massive layoffs and pay cuts and causing general upheaval as the high-level finger-pointing spiraled.Money matters aside, a campaign’s top leadership not infrequently requires tweaking — or tossing. The candidate needs to lock down savvy people he trusts and will listen to, even as he jettisons the troublemakers. When making such assessments, there is little room for sentimentality. Sometimes even (maybe especially) longtime friends and advisers need to be … repurposed … particularly if the chain of command has become confused and internal bickering is taking its toll. This can lead to even more tumult. When Mr. McCain cut loose a couple of his top advisers in 2007, several senior staff members followed them out the door.But a failure to deal with such a situation can leave the whole enterprise feeling increasingly dysfunctional, as was often the case with Hillary’s 2008 campaign. So much infighting and backbiting. So many competing power centers. This is when a candidate really needs to step up and impose order.In many cases, a reboot may call for pushing out a new narrative. Postdownsizing, Team McCain sought to reassure donors and supporters with a plan to get lean and mean and start “Living off the land.” The candidate doubled down on wooing New Hampshire (Iowa’s social conservatives were never a natural fit for him), playing up his bus tours and broadly aiming to recapture the underdog, maverick spirit of his 2000 presidential run. John Kerry, way down in the polls behind Howard Dean in 2003, wanted to create a comeback-kid narrative by notching back-to-back victories in Iowa and New Hampshire; he lent money to his campaign and basically lived in Iowa for weeks to help execute his one-two punch.It’s hard to say how a DeSantis variation of something like this would work. He plans to start talking less about his record leading the state “where woke goes to die” and double down on an “us against the world” theme, according to NBC. This latter bit sounds very Trumpian, maybe a tad too much so, considering Mr. Trump himself is still running with a version of that line. DeSantis’s heavy investment in Iowa, along with his chummy relationship with the state’s governor, could bring Kerry-like benefits. Then again, multiple candidates are campaigning hard there and could wind up splitting the non-Trump vote.The harsh reality of reboots is that some presidential hopefuls are just too out of step with the political moment to rescue. Mr. Bush strode into the 2016 race as the man to beat. But Republicans were in no mood for his policy-heavy, mellow style of politics. (Mr. Trump’s “low energy” insult was brutally resonant.) By the fall of 2015, Team Jeb was slashing staff and hoping for the debates to help him win free media. No one cared.To be sure, Mr. DeSantis has proved himself willing to get much nastier and more reactionary than did Mr. Bush in appealing to his base’s basest instincts. (That Trump-trashing anti-L.G.B.T.Q. video his campaign shared on social media — at once homophobic and homoerotic — was certainly something special.) No way anyone is going to catch Gov. Pudding Fingers being squishy on a culture-war hot topic like trans rights or immigration.Yet the governor does carry a whiff of out-of-touch wonkiness. He can’t help but get all right-wing jargony at times — “accreditation cartels”? Really? — and his bungled, Twitter-based campaign announcement was clearly designed more to impress the online bros than the working-class voters he needs to woo away from Mr. Trump. Someone really should be working with him to fix this.In the end, of course, it may be that Mr. DeSantis is on track to crash into that highest and hardest of reboot hurdles: likability.This was, fundamentally, what kept the presidency just out of Mrs. Clinton’s reach. Even beyond the Republican haters, too many voters found her off-putting. She was not a natural retail politician. She struck people as standoffish and inauthentic. Time and again, her advisers tried to address this, but to no avail. Presidential contests have a lot to do with vibes, and she never quite managed to radiate the ones needed to go all the way.Mr. DeSantis seems to be in a dangerously similar spot. He is famously awkward on the campaign trail — and with people in general. He stinks at the whole backslapping, glad-handing thing. He has trouble making eye contact. He presents as brusque, impatient, uninterested. He’s got the obnoxious parts of Trumpism down, without the carnival barker fun.This doesn’t mean his presidential dreams are doomed. But it does suggest that a key element of his reboot should be figuring out how not to come across as a stilted, smug jerk who doesn’t care about voters.Hey, no one said this would be easy.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More