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      Two Georgia Republicans Censure Gov. Kemp and Raffensperger

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      The actions were driven by anger over the governor’s refusal to overturn the state’s 2020 primary results in favor of Trump.Republican Party officials in two deeply conservative counties voted to censure Gov. Brian Kemp and two other top party leaders in recent days, a sign that the Georgia governor continues to face grass-roots opposition from loyalists to former President Donald J. Trump, and the possibility of a primary challenge next year.In Whitfield county, in the northwest corner of the state, Republican officials unanimously voted to condemn Mr. Kemp, saying he “did nothing” to help Mr. Trump after the November election.“Because of Kemp’s betrayal of President Trump and his high unpopularity with the Trump GOP base, Kemp could end up costing the GOP the governor’s mansion because many Trump supporters have pledged not to vote for Kemp under any circumstances,” reads the resolution, which was adopted by acclimation.A similar resolution was adopted in Murray County, also in northern Georgia, by a nearly unanimous vote. It was opposed by only three of the dozens of members in attendance. Both counties also voted to censure Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.The resolutions hold no binding power over elected officials. Rather, party officials say their resolutions were intended to send a message to Mr. Kemp and other Republican lawmakers that their jobs may be in jeopardy.“I’d vote for Mickey Mouse before I would Kemp,” said Tony Abernathy, chairman of the Murray County Republican Party. “I know what I’ve got with Mickey Mouse. A RINO is useless.” RINO is the dismissive acronym for Republican in Name Only.After infuriating Mr. Trump by resisting his demands to overturn the state’s election results, Mr. Kemp has faced months of attacks, protests and opposition from his party’s base. Mr. Trump encouraged Republicans to retaliate by sending a hard-right loyalist to oppose Mr. Kemp in the primary next year.Mr. Kemp and his aides saw a path to redemption within the party in the controversial election bill that the legislature passed last month, which the governor has forcefully defended in dozens of public appearances even as the new law adds new limits to the right to vote in Georgia.Other resolutions adopted by the counties supported a bill passed in the Republican-controlled Statehouse stripping Delta of a $35 million jet fuel tax break and urged Georgians to boycott Major League Baseball and “woke companies” that criticized the election law.“The Republican grassroots are angry,” said Debbie Dooley, a conservative activist, who helped distribute drafts of the resolutions and encouraged Trump supporters to attend the local meetings. “These resolutions will let Gov. Kemp, Lt. Gov. Duncan and Secretary of State Raffensperger know we’re going to work against them in the Republican primary next year.” More

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      Can These Democratic Pollsters Figure Out What Went Wrong?

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      Five competing Democratic polling firms put their heads (and their data) together about 2020.Everybody agrees the polls missed the mark in 2020, as they had four years earlier. But nobody’s certain why.In search of answers, five competing Democratic polling firms have decided to put their heads (and their data) together, forming a group that will undertake a major effort to figure out what went wrong in 2020 — and how the polling industry can adjust.The team released a memo today announcing the project and offering some preliminary findings that seek to address why polls again underestimated support for Donald Trump. But over all, the message was one of openness and uncertainty. The big takeaway: Things need to change, including the very nature of how polls are conducted.Innovation aheadThe authors wrote that their analysis thus far had pushed them toward thinking that pollsters must take a boldly innovative approach when mapping out the road ahead.“We know we have to explore all possibilities,” Fred Yang of Garin-Hart-Yang Research Group, one of the five firms involved in the study, said in an interview today.That will probably mean embracing some tools that had been considered too untested for mainstream public polling: Officially, the survey-research community still considers live-interview phone calls to be the gold standard, but there is growing evidence that innovative methods, like sending respondents text messages that prompt them to respond to a survey online, could become essential.And it could also mean going back to some methods that have become less common in recent decades, including conducting polls via door-to-door interviews, or paying respondents to participate.“We are going to put every solution, no matter how difficult, on the table,” the memo read.The consortium of Democratic firms plans to release a fuller report this year; so will a number of traditional survey-research institutions. The American Association for Public Opinion Research, which undertook a widely discussed post-mortem analysis in 2016, is already at work on another. AAPOR is a bastion of polling traditionalism, but if the Democratic groups’ preliminary report is any indication, even the association’s coming analysis might acknowledge that the industry should embrace more experimental approaches to data collection.In a separate analysis released late last month, Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight found that traditional, live-interview phone polls weren’t meaningfully more accurate than others. In fact, out of dozens of polling firms analyzed, none of those with the lowest average error had exclusively used live-interview phone calls (and some hadn’t used them at all). Two of the three most accurate firms were Republican-aligned companies that are held in suspicion by most leaders in the social-science world, partly because they use methods that have long been considered suspect — including robo-calling, as well as newer techniques like contacting respondents via text message.What drove polling errorThe Democratic firms’ memo said polls had slightly missed the mark when determining the makeup of the electorate last year. This means they misunderstood, to some degree, who was likely to vote and who wasn’t: a crucial “X” factor in pre-election polling.Among so-called low-propensity voters — that is, the ones pollsters consider the least likely to turn out — Republicans proved four times as likely as Democrats to actually end up casting a ballot in November. This can be taken as another indication of how effective Donald Trump was at expanding the Republican electorate, and pollsters’ difficulties accounting for that, particularly among white voters without college degrees and those in rural areas.Tellingly, the researchers found that voters who considered Trump “presidential” were underrepresented in polls.But a greater source of concern was so-called measurement error. That’s a fancy way of saying polls have had trouble figuring out what percentage of people in certain demographic groups plan to vote for one candidate over the other.The report proposed some explanations for why there was significant measurement error in 2020 pre-election polling, and it landed on two big potential culprits. One was the higher prevalence of anti-institutional views (sometimes referred to as “social distrust”) among Trump supporters, meaning those voters would be less willing to respond to official surveys. The second explanation was the lower incidence of pandemic-related fears among Trump voters, meaning they were more likely than Biden voters to be willing to turn out to vote.“What we have settled on is the idea there is something systematically different about the people we reached, and the people we did not,” the report’s authors wrote. “This problem appears to have been amplified when Trump was on the ballot, and it is these particular voters who Trump activated that did not participate in polls.”New York Times PodcastsThe Improvement Association: A true story about election fraudWhy do election fraud allegations live on, even after they’ve been debunked? In our new audio series with Serial Productions, we went to one rural county to try to find out. Listen to the first episode now.On Politics is also available as a newsletter. Sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox.Is there anything you think we’re missing? Anything you want to see more of? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More

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      Subpoenaing the Brookings Institution, Durham Focuses on Trump-Russia Dossier

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      The special counsel scrutinizing the Russia inquiry, a Trump-era leftover, appears to be retreading ground that an inspector general explored in 2019.WASHINGTON — Exiled from Twitter, former President Donald J. Trump issued a sarcastic statement recently inquiring about the ongoing public silence from John H. Durham, the special counsel who has been investigating the Trump-Russia inquiry since May 2019.“Where’s Durham?” said Mr. Trump, who repeatedly predicted before last year’s election that Mr. Durham’s investigation would prove a deep-state conspiracy against him. “Is he a living, breathing human being? Will there ever be a Durham report?”Mr. Durham ignored the complaint publicly, and the scope of his inquiry remains opaque. But one aspect has come into focus recently, according to people familiar with the investigation: Mr. Durham has keyed in on the F.B.I.’s handling of a notorious dossier of political opposition research both before and after the bureau started using it to obtain court permission to wiretap a former Trump campaign adviser in 2016 and 2017 and questioned witnesses who may have insight into the matter.In particular, Mr. Durham has obtained documents from the Brookings Institution related to Igor Danchenko, a Russia researcher who worked there a decade ago and later helped gather rumors about Mr. Trump and Russia for that research, known as the Steele dossier, according to people familiar with the request.By asking about the dossier, Mr. Durham has come to focus at least in part on re-scrutinizing an aspect of the investigation that was already exposed as problematic by a 2019 Justice Department inspector general report and led to reforms by the F.B.I. and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.A spokesman for Mr. Durham declined to comment.Asked whether the special counsel had briefed his new supervisor — Attorney General Merrick B. Garland — a Justice Department spokesman would only point to a statement by Mr. Garland as a nominee. “If confirmed,” he said, “one of the first things I am going to do is speak with Mr. Durham and learn the status of his investigation.”In February, several weeks before the Senate confirmed Mr. Garland, Mr. Durham obtained old personnel files and other documents related to Mr. Danchenko from the Brookings Institution, a prominent Washington think tank, using a subpoena. Mr. Danchenko had worked there from 2005 until 2010.Mr. Danchenko traveled to Russia in 2016 and gathered rumors about Mr. Trump and his associates on behalf of Christopher Steele, who produced the dossier as a subcontractor for an investigative firm being indirectly paid by Democrats to look into any Trump-Russia ties.Michael Cavadel, the general counsel of Brookings, confirmed the subpoena for records and other materials about Mr. Danchenko, saying that it was received on Dec. 31 and that the think tank had taken until February to gather the files and turn them over to Mr. Durham’s team in part because its office is closed during the pandemic.“Consistent with its practices in such matters, Brookings provided the responsive documents, none of which contained information associated with the reports known as the Steele dossier,” Mr. Cavadel said.Last September, the attorney general at the time, William P. Barr, made public that from 2009 to 2011 Mr. Danchenko had been the subject of an F.B.I. counterintelligence investigation assessing his contacts with several suspected Russian intelligence officials, including at the Russian Embassy.(Skeptics of the Steele dossier have raised the prospect that Russian intelligence may have used Mr. Danchenko or his sources to seed it with disinformation, in order to further sow chaos. Mr. Danchenko was never charged and has denied ever being a Russian agent. He has also noted that during his time at Brookings he put forward analysis embarrassing to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia: evidence that Mr. Putin plagiarized parts of his dissertation.)Igor Danchenko worked for the Brookings Institution from 2005 to 2010.Jonah M. Kessel/The New York TimesMr. Durham has also asked questions that suggested a focus on skepticism about how the F.B.I. approached issues that might have undermined the dossier’s credibility as a basis for wiretap applications, people familiar with the inquiry said.For example, Mr. Durham’s team is said to have asked why the F.B.I., after identifying Mr. Danchenko as a major source for the dossier and interviewing him in early 2017, did not tell the surveillance court that he had once been the subject of a counterintelligence investigation.Mr. Durham is also said to be interested in a meeting between the F.B.I. and Mr. Steele in Rome in early October 2016, shortly before the bureau submitted the first wiretap application that used information from his dossier.The previous month, Yahoo News had published an article that contained information that overlapped with claims in the dossier, and the F.B.I. later learned that Mr. Steele had been a source for it, prompting the bureau to sever its relationship with him. At the time, as the bureau told the court in its wiretap application, it assumed the source had been someone else who had received a copy of the dossier.Mr. Durham is said to have asked why F.B.I. officials at that October meeting apparently did not ask Mr. Steele whether he was the article’s source — before using his information to apply for permission to wiretap the former Trump adviser, Carter Page.The focus raised the possibility that Mr. Durham has been exploring whether F.B.I. officials knowingly misled the surveillance court. But if Mr. Durham has found credible evidence of such a crime — as opposed to sloppy investigative work — he has yet to file any such charges.Mr. Durham interviewed the former C.I.A. director John O. Brennan in August, but told him he was not the target of any criminal inquiry. But he has yet to interview former F.B.I. officials who held senior roles in 2016 and have been demonized by Trump supporters, including the former director James B. Comey; his former deputy Andrew G. McCabe; and a former senior counterintelligence agent, Peter Strzok, according to people familiar with the matter.To the extent any eventual Durham report focuses on criticizing the F.B.I.’s handling of issues related to the Steele dossier, it would risk largely retreading ground already covered by the 2019 report by the Justice Department’s inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz.Mr. Horowitz has already brought to light the fact that the F.B.I. botched its wiretap applications in numerous ways, including uncovering numerous material facts that law enforcement officials failed to tell the court and that might have undermined their case for receiving wiretap authorization or renewals — including about the dossier.Mr. Horowitz’s report also already unearthed the fact that Mr. Danchenko had been the subject of a counterintelligence investigation when he worked at Brookings, in a footnote that was initially classified before Mr. Barr decided to make it public.The report also already focused criticism on the F.B.I.’s failure to ask Mr. Steele in October 2016 whether he played a role in the Yahoo News article.And the misconduct by the only person Mr. Durham has charged to date — Kevin Clinesmith, a former F.B.I. lawyer who altered an email shown to a colleague during preparations to seek a renewal of the wiretap, preventing another problem from coming to light internally — was uncovered by Mr. Horowitz’s investigation. (Mr. Clinesmith, who pleaded guilty to falsifying the email but insisted that he did not deliberately mislead his colleague, was sentenced to probation.)Mr. Barr assigned Mr. Durham to hunt for any potential wrongdoing by the Trump-Russia investigators in spring 2019, at a time when Mr. Trump and his supporters were pushing the notion that the inquiry had been a “deep state” plot against him. While Mr. Durham’s work has been opaque, accounts by people familiar with his investigation have made clear that he has pursued various Trumpian conspiracy theories and grievances.In seeking to discredit the Russia investigation, Mr. Trump and his allies have frequently conflated it with the flawed Steele dossier. In fact, the Page wiretaps were a minor part of the overall effort, and Mr. Horowitz’s report showed that it played no role in the F.B.I. decision to open the counterintelligence investigation in July 2016.While uncovering numerous ways the F.B.I. had botched those wiretap applications, Mr. Horowitz’s report also concluded that it had lawfully opened the overall investigation on an adequate basis. When the inspector general delivered the report, Mr. Durham intervened with an unusual public statement saying he disagreed with Mr. Horowitz that the investigation’s opening was properly predicated.Mr. Durham provided no details, but Mr. Horowitz later told Congress that Mr. Durham had told him he thought that the F.B.I. should have opened the inquiry as a “preliminary” investigation rather than going straight to a “full” one. More

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      Could Ron DeSantis Be Trump’s G.O.P. Heir? He’s Certainly Trying.

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      Florida’s governor has elbowed his way to the front of the line of 2024 Republican hopefuls by leveraging a brand of “competent Trumpism” (as one ally put it) and hitting back at critics of his pandemic leadership.MIAMI — No one had to tell Ron DeSantis that his mock debates had bordered on disastrous. His answers rambled. He seemed uninspired.By the time he got to the greenroom of the biggest political stage of his career, a Republican primary debate for Florida governor in June 2018, he had made a risky decision.“I thought about everything we did in debate practice,” his campaign manager, Brad Herold, recalled Mr. DeSantis’s telling him. “I’m going to throw it out and do my own thing.”At the debate’s start, the audience applauded louder for his better-known opponent, Adam Putnam. By its end — after he had cast Mr. Putnam as a vestige of old Republicanism and delivered a rat-a-tat of one-liners — Mr. DeSantis had taken command of the crowd.Nearly three years and a pandemic later, Mr. DeSantis’s inclination to keep his own counsel and drive hard at reopening Florida has made him perhaps the most recognizable Republican governor in the country and a favorite of the party faithful. In turn, he has become a polarizing leader in the resistance to lengthy pandemic lockdowns, ignoring the advice of some public health experts in ways that have left his state’s residents bitterly divided over the costs and benefits of his actions.Now, with Florida defying many of the gloomy projections of early 2020 and feeling closer to normal as the pandemic continues to dictate daily life in many other big states, Mr. DeSantis, 42, has positioned himself as the head of “the free state of Florida” and as a political heir to former President Donald J. Trump. Mr. DeSantis owes a mightier debt than most in his party to Mr. Trump, who blessed his candidacy when he was a nobody congressman taking on the staid Florida Republican Party.Mr. DeSantis’s political maneuvering and extensive national donor network have allowed him to emerge as a top Republican candidate to succeed Mr. Trump on the ballot in 2024 if the former president does not run again. The governor’s brand of libertarianism — or “competent Trumpism,” as one ally called it — is on the ascent. Seizing on conservative issues du jour like opposition to social media “censorship” and vaccine passports, he has forged strong connections with his party’s base.In February, Mr. DeSantis had a prominent speaking appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, another high-profile gathering of Republicans in his home state. Erin Schaff/The New York TimesAnd his bonds with Republican leaders may be deepening: Mr. DeSantis has a plum speaking spot on Saturday night at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s resort and political base in Palm Beach, Fla., for the Republican National Committee’s spring retreat. Other possible 2024 rivals, like former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Senator Marco Rubio, were relegated to appearances a night earlier.The governor has also taken steps to shore up his political standing around his handling of the pandemic, summoning reporters to the State Capitol on Wednesday to blast — complete with a slide-show presentation titled “FACTS VS. SMEARS” — a report in CBS News’s “60 Minutes” that did not have sufficient evidence to prove a pay-to-play dynamic between Mr. DeSantis’s administration and Covid-19 vaccine distribution for white and wealthy Floridians.His record on the virus is, in fact, mixed. By some measures, Florida has had an average performance in a pandemic that is not yet over. Yet his decisions helped keep hospitals from becoming overwhelmed with coronavirus patients. He highlights that he helped businesses survive and allowed children to go to school.What his critics cannot forget, however, is how he resisted some key public health guidelines. An op-ed article endorsing masks that his staff drafted under his name in mid-July was never approved by the governor for publication. The restrictions he now dismisses as ineffective, such as local mask mandates and curfews, which experts say in fact worked, were imposed in most cases by Democratic mayors with whom he hardly speaks.Given the ways people admire or despise him, however, the nuances seem beside the point.He infuriates passionate critics who believe he operates shrewdly to tend to his own interests. They fear that approach contributed to confusing public health messages, vaccine favoritism for the wealthy and the deaths of about 34,000 Floridians. “DeathSantis,” they call him. (Mr. DeSantis declined repeated interview requests for this article.)But at almost every turn, Mr. DeSantis has seized the criticism as an opportunity to become an avatar for national conservatives who relish the governor’s combativeness. He can score points that his potential Republican rivals in the minority in Washington, including Mr. Rubio and Senator Rick Scott, his predecessor as governor, cannot.“He’s taken the wrong approach on some of our most critical issues, Covid being first and foremost, yet within Republican political circles, he is considered to be the front-runner for the White House,” said former Representative David Jolly, an ex-Republican who is flirting with a possible run for governor. “He’s worked his hand perfectly.”Mr. DeSantis and Mr. Trump appeared together at a campaign rally in Tampa in 2018. The former president’s endorsement of Mr. DeSantis helped him win the Republican primary in the governor’s race that year.Doug Mills/The New York TimesMr. DeSantis has raised his profile despite lacking the gregarious personality that might be associated with an aspiring Trump successor. Unlike the former president, no one would describe the publicly unemotional and not especially eloquent Mr. DeSantis as a showman. (After a record day of coronavirus deaths in July, he offered, “These are tough, tough things to see.”) People close to him describe an un-Trump-like fondness for poring over articles in scientific journals.And, they say, do not underestimate the intellect and instinct that have repeatedly defied expectations and propelled Mr. DeSantis from Little Leaguer in middle-class Dunedin, Fla., to potential presidential contender.“He has a set of skills and traits that are ideal for the times,” said former Representative Carlos Curbelo, a Republican who served in the House with Mr. DeSantis. “Today, it would be very difficult to defeat him.”A long athletic, military and political résuméHe pronounces his last name “DEE-san-tis.” On the baseball field, he went simply by “D.”His team from Dunedin, on Florida’s Gulf Coast, made it to the Little League World Series in 1991. He was a 12-year-old known to be serious and competitive.Mr. DeSantis playing for Yale’s baseball team.Yale Athletics His father installed Nielsen TV-ratings boxes. His mother was a nurse. When he went to Yale, the Florida native — he was born in Jacksonville — arrived on campus in cutoff denim shorts.“One of the reasons we got along is we weren’t the traditional, Ivy-League-mold students,” said Nick Sinatra, a former Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity housemate. “He always talked politics. I’m a conservative, and at a place like that, that’s not common.”A history major, Mr. DeSantis lugged around a backpack full of books. He studied for both academics and athletics, scrutinizing ballplayers on TV. The Yale baseball team elected him captain.His résumé got only more sterling. He spent a year teaching history at a Georgia prep school before landing at Harvard Law. He received a commission in the Navy’s Judge Advocate General’s Corps, where he served at Guantánamo Bay (“not as a detainee, as an officer,” he has quipped) and in Iraq. For two years, he worked as a federal prosecutor before winning a congressional seat near Jacksonville in 2012. His 2011 book, “Dreams From Our Founding Fathers,” which laid out a stridently conservative ideology, made him popular among Florida Tea Party Republicans.Mr. DeSantis and his wife greeted supporters after he won Florida’s election for governor in 2018, narrowly defeating Andrew Gillum, then considered a Democratic rising star.Scott McIntyre for The New York TimesTwo years earlier, he had married Casey Black, a local television anchor he met on a driving range. Ms. DeSantis would become one of her husband’s closest advisers and biggest political assets, with an office at the State Capitol. They have three children under the age of 5; the youngest was born in March 2020. Mr. DeSantis said he was not in the delivery room so as to avoid using up precious personal protective equipment.The most memorable part of Mr. DeSantis’s six years in Congress might be the platform they gave him to heighten his profile on Fox News, where he frequently represented the hard-line Freedom Caucus. Later, he would staunchly defend Mr. Trump over the Russia investigation.“He was a policy wonk with an ability to really identify a few areas within his committees, responsibilities which he knew would give him the political opportunity to get on television,” said Scott Parkinson, who was Mr. DeSantis’s chief of staff in 2018. Mr. DeSantis was appearing on cable TV multiple times a day, Mr. Parkinson recalled.Mr. DeSantis often slept in his office and walked the Capitol halls wearing headphones, avoiding unwanted interactions. He made few friends and struck other lawmakers as aloof.A brief Senate run in 2016 proved critical: It exposed him to a national network of wealthy donors he would later tap in his long-shot bid for governor.Mr. DeSantis speaking at a rally in Orlando in 2018. After winning the governor’s office, he pursued a broadly conservative agenda but made moves to appeal to moderates, and his approval ratings rose.Scott McIntyre for The New York TimesMr. DeSantis barely defeated Andrew Gillum, at the time considered one of the Democrats’ brightest stars, after a bruising campaign laced with accusations of racism. Determined to show his independence in his first months in office, he appointed a chief science officer and pledged billions for the Everglades. He pardoned four wrongfully accused Black men. He lifted a ban on medical marijuana in smokable form.He was hardly a moderate: Mr. DeSantis also gutted a voter-approved measure meant to restore felons’ right to vote. He allowed some teachers to carry guns in schools. He banned so-called sanctuary cities in a state where there were none.But the mix pleased voters, and his approval ratings surged. Might the man who had shown his diaper-age daughter building a wall in a campaign ad actually be a pragmatist?Then came the pandemic.Defiant leadership during a crisisIn a state where political consultants often become synonymous with their clients over time, Mr. DeSantis has cycled quickly through advisers. A close friend and transition deputy was Representative Matt Gaetz, who is now embroiled in a scandalous federal investigation.Mr. DeSantis centralized power in his office early in the pandemic, ceding little of the spotlight to public health officials. The state Department of Health’s weekly Covid-19 recaps are titled “Updates on Florida’s Vaccination Efforts Under Governor DeSantis’ Leadership.”Mr. DeSantis’s slowness in locking down the state last year hurt his approval ratings. So did a deadly summer surge of the virus. But then, far earlier than most other governors, he pledged that schools would open in the fall and life would start returning to normal.Young people crowded the beaches in Fort Lauderdale on March 11 last year, as the coronavirus spread rapidly throughout the United States. Mr. DeSantis was slow to lock down Florida, which had a deadly summer surge.Saul Martinez for The New York Times“His policies were contrarian, and he was defiant,” said Tony Fabrizio, a Republican pollster who has tracked Mr. DeSantis’s popularity and saw it rebound beginning last summer. “The more he stands his ground, the more he speaks his mind, the more the affinity grows for him.”His critics see the governor as stubborn and unwilling to hear dissent.“The governor we have today is the governor we anticipated after the election,” said Nikki Fried, Florida’s agriculture commissioner and the only Democrat elected statewide, who looks likely to run against Mr. DeSantis.“He surprised everybody in 2019,” she added, “but obviously that is not truly who he is.”In some ways, Mr. DeSantis has filled the void left by Mr. Trump, minus the tweets. He remains a Fox News regular. He counts among his scientific advisers Dr. Scott W. Atlas, the former Trump adviser who has promoted dubious theories. Mr. DeSantis’s office said he had received a vaccine last week but not in public, reminiscent of Mr. Trump, who was given the shot behind closed doors.Mr. DeSantis spoke at a news conference in January about the opening of a coronavirus vaccination site at the Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens. Vaccine access in the state has been slower for Black, Latino and poorer communities.Joe Raedle/Getty ImagesAnd the governor’s favorite foes are the “corporate media,” against whom he has scored political points.His recent tangle with “60 Minutes” centered on the extent to which political connections have helped white, wealthy Floridians get vaccinated.Local news outlets have chronicled how vaccine access has been slower for Black, Latino and poorer communities. Some pop-up vaccination sites were opened in neighborhoods that had many older residents — and that also had ties to DeSantis campaign donors.But “60 Minutes” focused on how Publix supermarket pharmacies received doses and left out relevant details, including an extended response from the governor at a news conference.On Wednesday, in Mr. DeSantis’s words, he “hit them back right between the eyes,” accusing “60 Minutes” of pursuing a malicious narrative.He left without taking questions.Research was contributed by More

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      ‘A Tremendous Complication’: G.O.P. Dances Around Trump’s Lingering Presence

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      A gathering of Republican leaders and top donors in Florida this weekend is less a reset of priorities and more a reminder of the tensions that Donald J. Trump instills in his party.The first spring donor retreat after a defeat for a political party is typically a moment of reflection and renewal as officials chart a new direction forward.But with former President Donald J. Trump determined to keep his grip on the Republican Party and the party’s base as adhered to him as ever, the coming together of the Republican National Committee’s top donors in South Florida this weekend is less a moment of reset and more a reminder of the continuing tensions and schisms roiling the G.O.P.The same former president who last month sent the R.N.C. a cease-and-desist letter demanding they stop using his likeness to raise money will on Saturday evening serve as the party’s fund-raising headliner.“A tremendous complication” was how Fred Zeidman, a veteran Republican fund-raiser in Texas, described Mr. Trump’s lingering presence on the political scene.The delicate dance between Mr. Trump and the party — after losing the House, the Senate and the White House on his watch — will manifest in some actual shuttle bus diplomacy on Saturday, as the party’s top donors attend a series of receptions and panels at the Four Seasons Resort before traveling to Mar-a-Lago, the former president’s private club, to hear Mr. Trump speak.Mr. Trump’s insistence on leading the party “affects every member,” Mr. Zeidman said, as lawmakers and would-be elected officials jockey for a Trump endorsement that is as powerful in a Republican primary as it can be problematic in a general election.“He’s already proven that he wants to have a major say or keep control of the party, and he’s already shown every sign that he’s going to primary everybody that has not been supportive of him,” Mr. Zeidman said. “He complicates everything so much.”Among other things, Mr. Trump is considering running again in 2024. Though few of his allies believe he will follow through, his presence could have a chilling effect on other potential candidates.“The party is still very much revolving around” Mr. Trump, said Andrea Catsimatidis, chairwoman of the Manhattan Republican Party and a donor who will be at the retreat. “He was the one who very much revived the party when we weren’t winning.”Also inescapable is the fact that Mr. Trump has quickly built a political war chest that rivals that of the R.N.C. An adviser to Mr. Trump said he currently had about $85 million on hand, compared with nearly $84 million for the R.N.C.“Send your donation to Save America PAC,” Mr. Trump urged supporters last month, not to “RINOS,” the derisive acronym for “Republicans in Name Only.” Mr. Trump has appeared as passionate about punishing Republicans who crossed him, especially those who supported his second impeachment, as he has about taking back the House and Senate in 2022.For party officials, the goal is keeping the energy that has propelled Mr. Trump to success inside the Republican tent while not entirely allowing the former president to dominate it. Ronna McDaniel, the R.N.C. chairwoman whom Mr. Trump supported for a second term, has vowed to remain neutral in a potential 2024 primary should Mr. Trump run again.“It is a difficult balancing act,” said Bill Palatucci, a Republican National Committeeman from New Jersey who has been critical of Mr. Trump.“The president certainly has devoted followers,” Mr. Palatucci said, “but he also more than offended a lot of people with his conduct since the November election, which culminated in his helping to incite the riot on Jan. 6.”Organizers moved the final Saturday evening events to Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property, meaning the party will again be paying the former president’s private club to use its space.Saul Martinez for The New York TimesSeveral Republicans who are considered likely to run for president in 2024 — including Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida and Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota — were scheduled to speak to the R.N.C.’s donors at the Four Seasons. Mike Pompeo, the former secretary of state and C.I.A. director who served under Mr. Trump, had been scheduled to speak on Friday but did not attend the gathering.Notably absent are two leading Republican figures who also skipped the last big Republican gathering, the Conservative Political Action Conference, that Mr. Trump attended: former Vice President Mike Pence, who is starting his own political advocacy group, and Nikki Haley, the former United Nations ambassador.Some donors are hoping to quickly move past Mr. Trump, but they are also focused on the current Oval Office occupant.“It is very important the Republican Party puts Donald Trump as far into the past as possible,” said William Oberndorf, an investor in California who has given millions to G.O.P. candidates but fiercely opposes the former president.“However, if Joe Biden does not ensure that major pieces of legislation have bipartisan support, it is he who will bear more responsibility than any group of Republican donors ever could for resurrecting Mr. Trump’s political future and fortunes,” he added.Among donors, the jockeying for favor and financing extends beyond Mr. Trump and the R.N.C.On Thursday and Friday, a separate but overlapping gathering for Republican contributors was held at Mr. Trump’s private club: an “investors meeting” of the Conservative Partnership Institute (C.P.I.), a nonprofit organization. Mark Meadows, who served as Mr. Trump’s chief of staff, is now a senior adviser for the group, and Caroline Wren, who used to fund-raise for the former president, is raising money for it.Donors are being pitched on a dizzying array of Trump-adjacent projects, including Mr. Pence’s group and new entities being started by Ben Carson, Mr. Trump’s former housing secretary; Stephen Miller, his former White House adviser; and Russell Vought, the former director of the Office of Management and Budget.Corey Lewandowski, Mr. Trump’s first campaign manager in 2016, is said to be involved with efforts to start a Trump-aligned super PAC, as well.Mr. Trump, who continues to talk privately about a future campaign of his own in 2024, spoke to donors for the Meadows-linked group for more than an hour on Thursday, also at his private club.“All Republican roads lead to Mar-a-Lago,” said Jason Miller, an adviser to Mr. Trump. “Trump is still the straw that stirs the news cycle. His influence will be central to every speech and story line this week.”Those who have trekked there to meet Mr. Trump in recent months include Sarah Huckabee Sanders, his former press secretary and a candidate for governor of Arkansas; Senator Rick Scott of Florida, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee; and Representative Kevin McCarthy, Republican of California and the House minority leader.The R.N.C. had initially planned for its entire retreat to be held nearby in Palm Beach, but organizers moved the final Saturday evening events to Mr. Trump’s resort, meaning the party will again be paying the former president’s private club to use its space.During Mr. Trump’s White House tenure, his political campaign, the R.N.C. and his allies spent millions of dollars at Trump businesses, including his hotel in Washington near the White House and a resort property in Miami, where yet another pro-Trump group also held a conference this week.Party officials maintained that donors and a number of party activists were happier being at Trump-branded properties than they were anywhere else.Still, the Trump branding of official Republican events had alienated what was once the Republican establishment.“This is all about the Trump circle of grift,” said former Representative Barbara Comstock of Virginia, who is close to another high-profile Republican — and a frequent target of Mr. Trump’s — who was also notably absent: Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming.Ms. Comstock said that the Republicans keeping their distance were wise to “build their own coalitions” and “not get sucked into Trumpism, which has a limited and short-term appeal with demographics dying in this country.”Henry Barbour, an influential R.N.C. member from Mississippi, said that the party was still in a transitional phase since Mr. Trump’s loss.“When you lose the White House, you kind of figure it’s going to take a little bit of healing, and I think probably first quarter has hopefully got us moving on a better path,” Mr. Barbour said. Mr. Trump, he said, is a “big force in the party, but the party is bigger than any one candidate including Donald Trump.”With Mr. Trump’s priorities differing from those of other party leaders, the tension remains palpable. On Friday, the super PAC for Senate Republicans, which is aligned with Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, announced its backing of Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, who infuriated Mr. Trump by voting to impeach him. (Some Trump 2020 advisers are working for Ms. Murkowski’s Republican challenger, Kelly Tshibaka.)Last month, Mr. McConnell privately boasted of the super PAC’s fund-raising in a meeting with Senate Republicans, bragging that it had raised more than Mr. Trump’s super PAC had in 2020. He even distributed a card to hammer home the point: “In three cycles: nearly $1 billion,” the card said. Below that were Mr. Trump’s super PAC statistics: “Trump: $148+ million,” referring to the group America First.But the Republican small donor base remains very much enamored with Mr. Trump.“He’ll still be the most significant figure in the party in November 2022,” predicted Al Cardenas, a former chairman of the Florida Republican Party and former chairman of the American Conservative Union. “Everybody has a shelf life and Donald Trump has lost a bit of his shelf life.”“It could be two years,” Mr. Cardenas added. “It could be 10.” More

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      How Brian Kemp Is Rebounding Against Trump’s Wrath

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      After resisting Donald Trump’s demands to overturn Georgia’s election results, Gov. Brian Kemp was an outcast in his own party. Now he’s embraced the state’s new voting bill as a way to rebuild his standing.Three years ago, Brian Kemp was elected governor when Republicans embraced his nearly decade-long quest to restrict voting access in Georgia. Now he has tied his re-election hopes to making voting in the state even harder.After infuriating former President Donald J. Trump by resisting his demands to overturn the state’s election results, Mr. Kemp became an outcast in his own party. He spent weeks fending off a daily barrage of attacks from right-wing media, fellow Republican lawmakers and party officials, and Mr. Trump vowed to retaliate by sending a hard-right loyalist to oppose him in the primary next year.But the sweeping new voting bill Mr. Kemp signed two weeks ago has provided a lifeline to the embattled governor to rebuild his standing among the party’s base. The bill severely curtails the ability to vote in Georgia, particularly for people of color. Mr. Kemp has seized on it as a political opportunity, defending the law as one that expands voting access, condemning those who criticize it and conflating the criticism with so-called cancel culture.It’s an argument he believes may restore him to the good graces of Georgia Republicans after being publicly derided by Mr. Trump, a predicament that has proved fatal to the career aspirations of other ambitious conservatives.Since signing the bill into law on March 25, Mr. Kemp has done roughly 50 interviews, 14 with Fox News, promoting the new restrictions with messaging that aligns with Mr. Trump’s baseless claims that the election was rigged against him.“He knows that this is a real opportunity and he can’t blow it, because I don’t think he gets another layup like this again anytime soon,” said Randy Evans, a Georgia lawyer whom Mr. Trump made ambassador to Luxembourg, and is also a close ally of Mr. Kemp.A political ascent would represent an unlikely turnaround for Mr. Kemp, making him the most prominent Republican to find a way to overcome Mr. Trump’s campaign of retribution, and perhaps providing an early test of the former president’s ability to impose his will on the party’s electoral future. Mr. Kemp’s argument is designed to pump adrenaline into the conservative vein, by focusing on two of the most animating topics of the political right: election mechanics and an ominous portrayal of the Democratic left.“They folded like a wet dishrag to the cancel culture,” he said, responding to businesses that publicly objected to the legislation, in an interview on Fox Business on Tuesday. “It is woke in real life, and Americans and Georgians should be scared. I mean, what event are they going to come after next? What value that you have — the way that you live your life — are they coming after next? Are they going to come after your small business?”Mr. Kemp declined an interview request.Whether Mr. Kemp will be able to make amends with Mr. Trump remains unclear. Late Tuesday, the former president signaled how difficult it would be to win him over, releasing a statement slamming Mr. Kemp and Georgia Republicans for not going far enough to restrict voting access in the new law.“Kemp also caved to the radical left-wing woke mob who threatened to call him racist if he got rid of weekend voting,” Mr. Trump said. “Well, he kept it, and they still call him racist!”Mr. Kemp was the subject of right-wing attacks after resisting demands to overturn Georgia’s election results.John Bazemore/Associated PressIf Mr. Trump’s animosity lingers, he has the potential to complicate Mr. Kemp’s re-election effort by endorsing a rival and attacking the governor. Some political allies of Mr. Kemp are trying to broker a truce. Mr. Evans, for instance, is in South Florida this week aiming to engage in a delicate round of diplomacy that would get Mr. Trump on board with Mr. Kemp. He said he’s talking to Mr. Kemp daily but isn’t particularly optimistic.“There are some times,” Mr. Evans said, “when the hate is so deep and so ingrained that there’s nothing, and that’s when you just have to go to divorce. There’s no gift, no diamond, no car, no flowers, no nothing that will ever repair it.”Mr. Trump’s harsh stance notwithstanding, there are many conservatives in the state who remain fixated on the losses by Mr. Trump and the state’s two Republican senators, and are happy to see Mr. Kemp finally joining their fight, no matter how opportunistic it might seem.“I’ve not seen our party in Georgia as united in five and half years,” said Chip Lake, a longtime Republican strategist in the state. “This has allowed people who are angry at Brian Kemp for not doing enough for Donald Trump to get back on board with Brian Kemp.”Not every Republican has signed on. Debbie Dooley, a conservative activist in Georgia, said that the Republican base remembered Mr. Kemp’s denying Mr. Trump’s request to call for a special session to address the presidential election results, and that it remained eager to punish him for what it views as failing to fully investigate claims of fraud.“He is hoping Trump voters forget he was a coward,” she said. “He undermined us at every turn during investigation of election fraud, and now because he is talking tough in regard to M.L.B., Delta and Coke, he thinks we will forgive him. We won’t.”The most recent polling, conducted before Mr. Kemp signed the voting bill, showed that 15 percent to 30 percent of Georgia Republicans disapproved of his time as governor, largely because of his performance during the 2020 election.The new law Mr. Kemp is championing makes it harder to acquire an absentee ballot, creates new restrictions and complications for voting and hands sweeping new power over the electoral process to Republican legislators. It has drawn harsh criticism from local companies like Coca-Cola and Delta, and prompted Major League Baseball to move its All-Star Game out of suburban Atlanta as a form of protest.Mr. Kemp has used the rebukes to fire up the Republican base. He made little effort to calm tensions with some of his state’s most prominent corporate leaders, and said that baseball executives had “caved to fear, political opportunism, and liberal lies” in deciding to relocate the All-Star Game. Through it all, he has positioned himself as a fierce defender of Georgia’s sovereignty, saying, “Georgians will not be bullied.’’Mr. Kemp’s embrace of the voting law appears to have helped his standing among Georgia Republicans. Former Representative Doug Collins, Mr. Trump’s preferred intraparty rival for the governorship, is now leaning toward a 2022 Senate bid instead, according to strategists and activists in the state. The two remaining Republicans weighing a bid are not as well known and would face a tougher time mounting a serious challenge to Mr. Kemp, who has already banked more than $6.3 million for his re-election campaign. He’s now fund-raising off the voting bill, wrapping his re-election website in a plea for funds to help “defend election integrity.”“Activists in my own county who were dead set to finding someone to primary him are saying maybe he does deserve another chance,” said Jason Shepherd, the chairman of the Republican Party in Cobb County, who is running to lead the state party. “It’s going to make people less likely to wade into the race.”Mr. Kemp was first elected in 2018 after receiving President Donald J. Trump’s endorsement in the Republican primary.Gabriella Demczuk for The New York TimesThe two other lawmakers mulling primary bids are Vernon Jones, the former Democratic state legislator who became a Republican in January, and Burt Jones, a state senator. Both say they are assessing the political landscape and expect to make a decision soon. The two men took different approaches to Mr. Kemp, underscoring how quickly the politics have shifted for the governor.In an email, Vernon Jones said Mr. Kemp’s appeal to the base was “too little, too late,” casting him as profiting off a cause he neglected in November.“Governor Kemp sat back and allowed the legislature to come in and hammer out the new bill, and then in an effort to mislead the public, he chose himself as the poster boy for election reform in Georgia,” he said. Yet Burt Jones praised Mr. Kemp’s management of the moment, admitting that “what has gone on the last week has not hurt him among his base.”Every week that potential challengers deliberate over whether to enter the race gives Mr. Kemp more time to make his case to grass-roots conservatives.“You can’t beat somebody with nobody,” said Mr. Lake, the Republican strategist. “As every day goes by, you’re getting farther and farther away from Donald Trump’s presidency and Brian Kemp gets stronger with the base.”In many ways, Mr. Kemp’s embrace of the legislation signifies a return to the conservative language — and voting issues — that defined his political career. Billing himself as a “politically incorrect conservative,” Mr. Kemp has long been one of the left’s most enduring villains because of his defeat of Stacey Abrams, who was vying in 2018 to become the nation’s first Black female governor.Mr. Kemp, then the secretary of state overseeing Georgia’s elections, stalled 53,000 voter registrations, which were disproportionately from Black voters. Ms. Abrams and her allies argued that Mr. Kemp had used his position to engineer a “stolen” election, a charge he denied.Since then the two have spent years engaged in a contentious argument over voting rights, an issue that rallies their parties’ bases in the state. In an interview with a sports radio program this week, Mr. Kemp accused Ms. Abrams of running the “biggest racket in America right now” with her claims of voter suppression.Democrats say his ardent support of the law and attacks on Ms. Abrams are a cynical effort to bolster his standing among his conservative base while suppressing votes for his general election opponents.“This is all politics,” said Representative Nikema Williams, the chairwoman of the state Democratic Party, who replaced the civil rights icon John Lewis in Congress. “Let’s also be clear that a part of that politics is keeping Black and brown people away from the polls so he can continue to win elections in Georgia.” More

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      G.O.P. Group Warns Donors Not to Opt Out of Monthly Donations

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      The National Republican Congressional Committee says to donors who opt out of recurring monthly donations: “We will have to tell Trump you’re a DEFECTOR.”The political arm of House Republicans is deploying a prechecked box to enroll donors into repeating monthly donations — and using ominous language to warn them of the consequences if they opt out: “If you UNCHECK this box, we will have to tell Trump you’re a DEFECTOR.”The language appears to be an effort by the National Republican Congressional Committee to increase its volume of recurring donations, which are highly lucrative, while invoking former President Donald J. Trump’s popularity with the conservative base. Those donors who do not proactively uncheck the box will have their credit cards billed or bank accounts deducted for donations every month.The prechecked recurring box on the N.R.C.C.’s WinRed donation pageThe prechecked box is the same tactic and tool that resulted in a surge of refunds and credit card complaints when used by Mr. Trump’s campaign last year, according to an investigation published by The New York Times over the weekend. The Trump operation made the language inside its prechecked boxes increasingly opaque as the election neared. Consumer advocates and user-interface designers said the prechecked boxes were a “dark pattern” intended to deceive Mr. Trump’s supporters.The Trump operation issued more than $122 million in refunds in the 2020 cycle, which was 10.7 percent of what Mr. Trump’s campaign, the Republican National Committee and their shared accounts raised. Refunds increased as the campaign began prechecking the boxes, which at one point withdrew donations every week as well as introduced a “money bomb” that doubled a contribution.After the Times investigation, the R.N.C., the party’s central organization, adjusted the language on its own donation portal, which is linked to in its fund-raising emails and from its home page, to make it clearer that repeat donations would be withdrawn.“Keep this box checked to make this a monthly recurring donation,” says the new language in bold.The box remains prechecked, and the R.N.C. declined to comment on the change.The new disclosure language in the Republican National Committee’s prechecked recurring donation box.Michael McAdams, a spokesman for the N.R.C.C., said the committee “employs the same standards that are accepted and utilized by Democrats and Republicans across the digital fund-raising ecosystem.”The prechecked box is a tool provided by WinRed, the for-profit Republican donation platform founded in 2019. The Democratic platform, ActBlue, also allows some groups to precheck recurring donation boxes, including the political arm of House Democrats, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.The D.C.C.C. noted that it has a pop-up window telling donors who made a recurring donation that they did so immediately after the contribution is processed. “Unlike the N.R.C.C., we use clear language and confirm with our grass-roots supporters that they would like to set up a recurring monthly donation,” said Helen Kalla, a D.C.C.C. spokeswoman.The Bulwark, an anti-Trump conservative news site, first reported a different version of a prechecked box that the N.R.C.C. was using on Wednesday, which said: “Check this box if you want Trump to run again. Uncheck this box if you do NOT stand with Trump.”Political parties and campaigns typically test multiple language options to see which net the most donors. The “DEFECTOR” warning appears on the donation page linked from the N.R.C.C.’s home page.It seems highly unlikely any such list of defectors would ever actually be presented to Mr. Trump. Last month, Mr. Trump sent a cease-and-desist letter to the N.R.C.C. and other Republican Party committees warning them not to use his name or likeness to raise money.The language on the N.R.C.C.’s donation portal appears relatively new, although the prechecked box has been there before, according to records preserved by the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine.In March, the recurring box read, “Trump said he’ll run for President if we win back the House! If every Patriot makes their donation monthly, Republicans WIN.”Mr. Trump has not said that. More

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      For These Republicans, 2024 Is Just Around the Corner

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      Mike Pence. Mike Pompeo. Rick Scott. They share big ambitions, but one name hovers above them all …Antonio de Luca/The New York TimesPresident Biden told reporters last month that his “plan is to run for re-election,” despite already being the oldest person to have won a presidential election. So, for now at least, the question of who will lead the Democratic ticket in 2024 has been put to rest.On the Republican side, however, certainty is in short supply. It’s beyond early to be talking about the next presidential election (we’re still hardly even ready to talk about the midterms!) — but that’s only if you aren’t planning to run. Some Republican candidates have already made trips to Iowa and New Hampshire, and others are laying plans to go, in what often represents the first step in building out a campaign operation in those early-voting states.And on Wednesday, in a conspicuously forward-looking move, former Vice President Mike Pence announced the formation of a new political organization, Advancing American Freedom, whose advisory board is stacked high with former Trump administration officials and allies. The news came on the same day Simon & Schuster announced that it would publish Pence’s autobiography as part of a two-book deal.The G.O.P. is badly fractured, trying to hold together a dominant base of those loyal to former President Donald Trump and a stubborn minority of pro-decorum, anti-Trump conservatives. Anyone looking to grab the Republican mantle will have to find some way of satisfying both camps — and maybe even expanding upon them.A national poll from Pew Research Center last month found that most Republicans didn’t think the G.O.P. should be accepting of elected officials in the party who openly criticize Trump. But looking at the nation at large, Pew also found that a majority of Americans called Trump either a “poor” or “terrible” president. So it may be tough for Republicans to get very far in a general election if their candidate is seen as too staunch of a Trump loyalist.With all these factors at play, I caught up with our political reporter and Trump guru Maggie Haberman. Here’s what she had to say.Mike Pence on Wednesday announced that he had started the group Advancing American Freedom, with the self-described mission of “promoting traditional conservative values,” advocating “the successful policies of the Trump administration” and opposing Biden’s “expansion of government.” Is this a preliminary move toward a possible 2024 run?It most certainly gives Pence a perch from which to run, and, more significantly, to differentiate himself from Trump to the best of his ability. He has more of a challenge than most of the potential 2024 candidates in presenting himself as a continuation of what Republicans liked about the Trump era, without the parts they didn’t.A stubborn divide remains between the party’s Trump-supporting base and its establishment wing. Pence, for one, has always done his best to skate along that divide. For Republican presidential hopefuls, will there be any room for being even semi-critical of Trump?I think they all have to survive a G.O.P. primary, and the bulk of the Republican base is going to want someone who resembles Trump in some way.There is going to be little room for a Republican to separate from Trump in the primary — barring new circumstances that change Trump’s standing with those voters — and then pivot back in a general election and be viable with swing voters.Pence has also been so, so reluctant to criticize Trump, even after his own life was at risk in the Capitol attack on Jan. 6.A number of other prominent Republicans have recently been laying groundwork in Iowa. (Despite the 2020 Democratic caucus shenanigans, the state is certain to hold an early contest in 2024.) Mike Pompeo, the former secretary of state, and Senator Rick Scott of Florida just went there, and others are reportedly planning trips. After the Conservative Political Action Conference last month, what clues are you seeing about how the 2024 field will shape up? Does any one figure seem particularly well positioned?It’s so early in the cycle, it’s very hard to say. We don’t know what the world — or the country — will look like closer to 2024, although the midterms will tell us something about the mood of the electorate.Scott is in a bit of a different position than some candidates, having been a governor and now a senator. Scott surprised leaders in his own party by siding with Trump’s objections to the electoral certification, which helps him in a primary but which could be a challenge in other ways.Where does Trump himself stand in all this? He has been relatively quiet since January, his speech at CPAC aside — but he’s still running a political operation out of his residence in Florida. Whether or not he runs again in three years, is it safe to say he will be playing an active role in the race somehow?Remember, Trump keeps telling people he’s running. While most of his own advisers are skeptical that he will do it, it could have a chilling effect on the field for a while. He wants to remain dominant in the party and he is a major factor in down-ballot primaries so far.But that isn’t the only impactful factor in these races. He wants to be relevant; remember that only a narrow majority of Republicans want to see him as the nominee again.Drop us a lineTrump’s Twitter ban: We want to hear from youWe’re nearing the end of three months in which former President Donald Trump has been barred from Twitter and Facebook. This has upset his supporters, of course, but has resulted in a general lowering of the conversational temperature, particularly on Twitter. Our colleague Sarah Lyall is working on an article about the absence of Trump’s voice on social media, and we’d love to hear from readers.We want to know:1. Did you follow (or block) Trump on Twitter?2. How did his tweets make you feel when you saw them on Twitter, or read about them afterward?3. Have you noticed his absence from social media platforms since January? Do you miss his voice, or are you happy not to hear it anymore?Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com and include your name, email address and profession, and you may be included in forthcoming news coverage.On Politics is also available as a newsletter. Sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox.Is there anything you think we’re missing? Anything you want to see more of? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More