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      Trump PAC Requested Refund for Legal Fees

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      The situation signals a potential money crisis as the former president runs a campaign while under indictment in two jurisdictions and, soon, potentially a third.The political action committee that former President Donald J. Trump is using to pay his legal bills faced such staggering costs this year that it requested a refund on a $60 million contribution it made to another group supporting the Republican front-runner, according to two people familiar with the matter.The decision signals a potential money crisis for Mr. Trump, who has so far refused to pay his own voluminous bills directly and has also avoided creating a legal-defense fund for himself and people who have become entangled in the various investigations related to him.It comes as Mr. Trump runs a campaign while under indictment in two jurisdictions and, soon, potentially a third, while also paying the legal fees of a number of witnesses who are close to him or who work for him.It is unclear how much money was refunded.But the refund was sought as the political action committee, Save America, spent more than $40 million in legal fees incurred by Mr. Trump and witnesses in various legal cases related to him this year alone, according to another person familiar with the matter.The numbers will be part of the Save America Federal Election Commission filing that is expected to be made public late on Monday.That $40 million was in addition to $16 million that Save America spent in the previous two years on legal fees. Since then, Mr. Trump has been indicted twice and has expanded the size of his legal team, and his two co-defendants in the case related to his retention of classified material work for him. The total legal spending is roughly $56 million.The $40 million figure was reported earlier by The Washington Post.The PAC was the entity in which Mr. Trump had parked the more than $100 million raised when he sought small-dollar donations after losing the 2020 election. Mr. Trump claimed he needed the support to fight widespread fraud in the race. Officials, including some with his campaign, turned up no evidence of widespread fraud.Mr. Trump used some of that $100 million for other politicians and political activities in 2022, but he also used it to pay more than $16 million in legal fees, most of them related to investigations into him, and at least $10 million of which was for his own personal fees.Save America began 2023 with just $18 million in cash on hand, which is less than half of what was spent on legal bills this year.Campaign finance experts are divided on whether Mr. Trump is even able to continue to use the PAC to pay for his personal legal bills, as he became a candidate last November.Mr. Trump has long told associates that lawyers and other people contracted to work for him should do so for free, because they get free publicity. And he has told several associates that legal-defense funds are organized only by people who are guilty of crimes, according to people who have heard the remarks.Earlier this year, Mr. Trump began diverting a larger percentage of every dollar he raised online away from his campaign and into his PAC, which he has used to pay for his lawyers. At the start of the 2024 campaign, Mr. Trump had devoted 99 cents of every dollar raised online to his campaign. But he shifted that formula to now give only 90 cents to the campaign and 10 cents to the PAC, which has served as a sort of de facto legal fund.The move drew sharp criticism from some of his rivals. Chris Christie, the former governor of New Jersey, called it “disgraceful” on CNN during an interview in June.“He’s going to middle class men and women in this country and they’re donating $15, $25, $50, $100 because they believe in Donald Trump and they want him to be president again,” Mr. Christie said. “They’re not giving that money so he can pay his personal legal fees.”Yet that increased amount diverted from Mr. Trump’s campaign couldn’t possibly begin to cover the high costs of legal fees that the candidate and his associates have incurred. And whatever money the super PAC returned to the political action committee to cover legal bills in theory means less money being spent in support of Mr. Trump’s candidacy.A spokesman for Mr. Trump’s campaign, Steven Cheung, would not comment on the refund request. But regarding the overall spending on lawyers, he said, “The weaponized Department of Justice has continued to go after innocent Americans because they worked for President Trump and they know they have no legitimate case.”He characterized the legal actions against Mr. Trump and his allies as “heinous actions by Joe Biden’s cronies” and said the PAC had contributed to covering legal costs to “protect these innocent people from financial ruin and prevent their lives from being completely destroyed.”A spokesman for the super PAC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Despite having his political action committee pay his legal fees, Mr. Trump, a wealthy businessman and celebrity, insisted on Saturday at a rally in Erie, Pa., that he would spend his own money on his campaign if he had to. More

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      Trump and DeSantis Collide for First Time in Iowa, as Fortunes Diverge

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      A contest once viewed as a two-man race between Donald J. Trump and Ron DeSantis has settled into a new dynamic: Mr. Trump versus everyone else.When former President Donald J. Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida shared the same stage at an Iowa Republican Party dinner on Friday, their appearances seemed to capture the basic dynamics of the 2024 presidential primary.Mr. Trump played headliner. Mr. DeSantis was reduced to an opening act.Even as Mr. Trump has been hit with two criminal indictments, with more possibly coming, he has only consolidated support in recent months, flashing the same resilience in Iowa that he has nationally.Mr. Trump’s rivals have long circled Iowa as the early state where Mr. Trump, who finished a disappointing second in the 2016 Iowa caucuses, might be most vulnerable in 2024. But although some influential leaders have signaled their eagerness for an alternative, Mr. Trump arrived on Friday for one of his episodic visits as the undisputed front-runner, as Republicans look past his political and legal liabilities.His mere appearance generated some of the evening’s loudest applause. Like the 12 other candidates who spoke, he entered to snippets of “Only in America” by Brooks & Dunn. The lyrics that blared as he took the stage were:One could end up going to prison. One just might be president.Mr. DeSantis arrived in Des Moines after a two-day bus tour that was aimed at stabilizing his campaign amid two successive rounds of staff cutbacks and demonstrating his investment in the state, which comes first on the nominating calendar. There were public displays of humility — small-town stops, shopping for snacks at a gas station (he bought a protein bar), taking questions from voters and reporters — that were previously missing from the governor’s once higher-flying campaign.Gov. Ron DeSantis, Republican of Florida, speaking at the dinner on Friday night after a more humble bus tour of Iowa.Jordan Gale for The New York Times“Six months ago, you would have said there were two tiers: Trump and DeSantis, and then everyone else,” Craig Robinson, an Iowa Republican strategist, said. Now, he said, “you have Donald Trump in a tier by himself and you have everyone else trying to be the alternative to Trump.”While Mr. DeSantis is stuck trying to reset his campaign, former Vice President Mike Pence is facing the possibility of not even qualifying for the first debate next month. The rest of the field is straining for voters to pay any attention at all.Mr. Trump has certainly provided openings for his rivals in Iowa. Against his own team’s wishes, he criticized the popular Republican governor of Iowa, Kim Reynolds, this month. (He did not mention her on Friday.) And in a state that has often rewarded frequent visits, Mr. Trump has campaigned only sporadically.On Friday, Mr. Trump stayed for an hour after his speech to shake hands and take pictures with supporters. Mr. DeSantis mingled with a crowd down the hall with a Coors Light in hand.Mr. Trump’s growing strength in national polling — he has surged above 50 percent in many surveys — has reinforced an emerging dynamic in which he is being treated as the de facto incumbent, both by party insiders with years of reluctantly falling into line under their belt and by risk-averse donors, according to interviews with numerous Republican strategists and officials.Mr. Trump greeting supporters at his new Iowa campaign headquarters on Friday.Christopher Smith for The New York TimesThe first primary debate, scheduled for late August, is widely viewed as the critical next date for Mr. DeSantis or anyone else to upend the current dynamic, even if Mr. Trump does not attend.For now, outside groups looking to slow down Mr. Trump have focused on Iowa. The new political action committee Win It Back, which is tied to the Club for Growth, has run negative television ads worth $3.5 million this month in Iowa and South Carolina.The ads themselves reveal much about the current state of the race. Each features testimonials from Republican voters describing both their affection for the former president and their interest in moving on.“I love what he did,” the narrator in one ad says. “He definitely was the right man in 2016,” the narrator in another says, before pivoting, “It’s just time for new blood.”Mr. Trump’s enduring popularity with the Republican base has meant that even his competitors often sandwich the gentlest of criticism with praise. Few of his rivals mentioned his name on Friday, while Mr. Trump repeatedly used a derisive nickname for Mr. DeSantis. “I wouldn’t take a chance on that one,” he said.One rival who addressed Mr. Trump directly was Will Hurd, a former Texas congressman running a long-shot campaign. He declared that Mr. Trump was running for president again to avoid prison. He was booed as he exited the stage.Former Representative Will Hurd was booed as he left the stage for suggesting that Mr. Trump was running for president again just to avoid prison.Jordan Gale for The New York TimesMr. DeSantis himself has generally avoided direct criticism of Mr. Trump.He did not say the former president’s name on Friday, and when he was asked about the criminal charges facing Mr. Trump in an interview with CBS News on Thursday, Mr. DeSantis answered with only a vague generality: “I think voters have to make this decision on that.”Some prominent Trump critics have questioned such a delicate approach, especially as his criminal problems have mounted.“If you’re down 20 points in the polls to anybody, you’ve got to be able to hit them,” said Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire, who decided against a 2024 run for president but attended the dinner in Iowa.Mr. Trump has been indicted by the Manhattan district attorney and a Justice Department special counsel already this year, and he may face another special counsel indictment for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. A separate investigation into efforts to interfere with the 2020 presidential election results in Georgia could result in yet another charge.Many Republicans who are leery of entering another turbulent cycle with Mr. Trump atop the ticket remain intrigued by the Florida governor but not yet sold.“I think people are just waiting for DeSantis to close the deal for them,” said David Kerr, a DeSantis supporter who attended an event in Osceola with the governor at a distillery this week.Mr. DeSantis during a stop at a center for wounded and disabled veterans in Albia, Iowa, on his bus tour on Friday.Christopher Smith for The New York TimesMr. DeSantis has now committed to visiting all 99 of Iowa’s counties (he is at 17, according to a campaign aide), an arduous task for a candidate who is trying to compete across all the early states and must travel the country to fund-raise for a campaign supported heavily by big-money bundlers.“This caucus demands that you earn it,” Mr. DeSantis said on Friday. Mr. Trump has mostly focused on visiting more populous areas rather than every county.For Mr. DeSantis, the goal is to come in first — or a strong enough second to prove that Mr. Trump can be beat and narrow the contest to a two-person race. But some of Mr. DeSantis’s allies worry that the heavy emphasis on Iowa could prove a self-inflicted knockout punch — that after investing so much, his campaign will have a less than compelling case to carry on if he falters badly in the opening state.Kathy Kooiker, a Republican activist in Clark County, Iowa, had a Trump flag in her yard for years but said she had folded it folded up and put it away. She is trying to explore the other candidates to decide whom to support instead of Mr. Trump, and she went to the DeSantis event in Osceola.“He hasn’t been in Iowa as much as the other candidates, so I’m glad to see — I think it’s a mistake not to do that,” Ms. Kooiker said.Republicans in Iowa, both those who support Mr. Trump and those who oppose him, see the race there as at least slightly more competitive than national polls would suggest.Amy Sinclair, the president of the Iowa State Senate, who has endorsed Mr. DeSantis, acknowledged, “it’s a tough uphill battle to fight against a machine like Donald Trump.”But she said Mr. Trump’s swipe at Ms. Reynolds had damaged him. “He’s not doing himself any favors if he wants to win Iowa behaving that way,” she said. “You don’t insult our family.”Ryan Rhodes, who served as Iowa state director for Ben Carson’s presidential campaign in 2016, agreed that the episode had broken through among conservative activists.“Trump needs to get out there and talk to Iowans again,” Mr. Rhodes said.Mr. Trump may not yet have personally worked aggressively for votes in Iowa, but he has professionalized what in 2016 was a scattershot political operation. His campaign had secured its keynote slot on Friday night by being the fastest to confirm its attendance with the state party. More

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      Videos of Dianne Feinstein and Mitch McConnell Resurface Questions About Age

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      Two troubling moments involving Senators Dianne Feinstein and Mitch McConnell thrust questions about aging in office out of Congress and into the national conversation.After a series of troubling moments this week, an uncomfortable question has become unavoidable, leaving voters, strategists and even politicians themselves wondering: Just how old is too old to serve in public office?For years, like so many children of aging parents across America, politicians and their advisers in Washington tried to skirt that difficult conversation, wrapping concerns about their octogenarian leaders in a cone of silence. The omertà was enabled by the traditions of a city that arms public figures with a battalion of aides, who manage nearly all of their professional and personal lives.“I don’t know what the magic number is, but I do think that as a general rule, my goodness, when you get into the 80s, it’s time to think about a little relaxation,” said Trent Lott, 81, a former Senate majority leader who retired at the spry age of 67 to start his own lobbying firm. “The problem is, you get elected to a six-year term, you’re in pretty good shape, but four years later you may not be so good.”Two closely scrutinized episodes this week thrust questions about aging with dignity in public office out of the halls of Congress and into the national conversation.On Wednesday, video of Senator Mitch McConnell, 81, freezing for 20 seconds in front of television cameras reverberated across the internet and newscasts. Less than 24 hours later, another clip surfaced of Senator Dianne Feinstein, 90, appearing confused when asked to vote in committee.A political discussion on the issue of age has been building for months, as the country faces the possibility of a presidential contest between the oldest candidates in American history. President Biden, 80, already the oldest president to sit in the White House, is vying for a second term, and Donald J. Trump, 77, is leading the Republican primary race.“When I say we need to pass the baton to younger generations, I’m not talking about youthful generations,” said Representative Dean Phillips of Minnesota, 54, the only Democrat in Congress to say that Ms. Feinstein should step down and that Mr. Biden should not seek re-election. “I’m talking about simply a reasonably less aged generation.”Mr. McConnell’s stumble created a fresh opening for younger contenders to raise the issue more aggressively. On Friday, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, 44, a top Republican presidential candidate, took a jab at the country’s political gerontocracy.“You used to serve in your prime and then pass the baton to the next generation, and I think this generation has not really been as willing to do that,” Mr. DeSantis told the right-leaning commentator Megyn Kelly, noting that Mr. Biden became a senator in 1973 — five years before Mr. DeSantis was born.Notably, Mr. Trump, who would be 82 at the end of a second term, has defended Mr. Biden, saying that the president should not be discounted because of his age. “He is not an old man,” Mr. Trump posted this month on Truth Social, his social media platform. “In actuality, life begins at 80!”Doctors for Mr. Biden have said he is in good health. Less is known about Mr. Trump’s health since he left the White House.After Mr. Biden was captured tripping over a sandbag in June, White House aides have grown increasingly sensitive to any insinuation that he is physically diminished.He now regularly uses a shorter set of stairs to board Air Force One, an observation noted in a report by Politico that prompted aides to circulate 13 photos of his predecessors using stairs that appear to be of a similar length. He has not gone out to get his beloved ice cream, or dropped into any other business for an impromptu visit with voters, since early May. The White House says Mr. Biden’s crowded travel schedule has not allowed for such stops this summer.Some top advisers to Mr. Biden argue that his campaign should directly embrace his age as a political asset — and undeniable reality — rather than avoid the issue.“Age is in fact a superpower,” said Jeffrey Katzenberg, 72, the Hollywood mogul whom Mr. Biden named as a co-chairman of his campaign. “You can’t run from it because you’re 80 years old, right? There’s no denying it. I’ve been of the camp that believes strongly this is one of his greatest assets.”Surveys indicate that voters disagree, with many Democratic voters worrying about Mr. Biden’s age amid Republican attacks. In polling conducted by YouGov last year, a majority of Americans supported age limits for elected officials but were split over the precise cutoff. A cap at age 60 would bar 71 percent of the Senate from holding office, while a limit of 70 would render 30 percent ineligible, an analysis by the firm found.In North Dakota, a conservative activist this week began circulating petitions to force a statewide referendum next year that would prohibit anyone who would turn 81 by the end of their term from being elected or appointed to congressional seats.When asked, Mr. Biden dismisses worries about his age with jokes and boasts about his political experience. Mr. McConnell took a similar approach, telling reporters that he joked with the president about his health scare by saying that he had been “sandbagged” — a reference to how Mr. Biden laughed off his fall.Of course, even a good quip can’t stop the realities of growing older. After Mr. McConnell’s freeze, reports raised additional questions about his health since he missed weeks of work for a concussion in March.For her part, Ms. Feinstein, who has struggled with memory problems and a long absence from the Senate while she recovered from shingles, has appeared at times unable to respond to questions about her condition.Part of the problem, former aides say, is the interdependent relationship between politicians and their staffs. If a senator retires, his or her entire office — several dozen employees — can be suddenly out of work.And who wants to tell the boss that they are, perhaps, past their prime? It can be smoother to simply paper over the challenges by having aides craft policy, limit access to reporters and try to avoid unscripted moments.“The Senate is such a warm, comforting place that you can live inside that bubble,” said Jim Manley, 62, who worked for Senators Ted Kennedy and Harry Reid. “You have staff at beck and call, people opening doors for you all the time.”While other industries have mandatory retirement ages, including some publicly traded companies and airlines, members of Congress have shown little desire for policies that would amount to voting themselves out of a job. Even voters can’t seem to agree on when enough is enough, remaining divided when asked to back a specific age limit.The decision to leave a defining and powerful post is difficult, but the alternative — aging in the public eye — might be worse, former senators warned.“It’s heartbreaking, embarrassing, but it’s up to the individual to come to grips with reality,” said Chuck Hagel, 77, a former Nebraska senator who left office in 2009. “The reality is we are not going backwards; we’re all getting old. At 77, versus 62 when I left the Senate, I have pains now that I didn’t even know I should have.” More

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      Rep. Dean Phillips Says He Is Considering a Run Against Biden

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      Mr. Phillips, a Minnesota Democrat, has received attention for his outspoken calls for aging members of the Democratic Party to step aside.Representative Dean Phillips, a Minnesota Democrat who has for months been saying in public what many in his party only whisper in private — that the 80-year-old President Biden should not seek re-election because of his age — said he was considering challenging Mr. Biden in next year’s primary.Mr. Phillips, 54, is in his third term in Congress representing a district that includes the suburbs west of Minneapolis. In a text message, he confirmed his interest in running but declined a request to be interviewed. He said he had “been overwhelmed with outreach and encouragement” and needed to assess his next steps.Mr. Phillips would be an extreme long shot if he were to challenge Mr. Biden. Polls show that Democrats, who were once wary about Mr. Biden seeking re-election, have coalesced behind him. The party’s major donor class is backing the president, who raised $72 million with the Democratic National Committee and his joint fund-raising committee during the three-month reporting period that ended June 30.Mr. Phillips had $277,000 in his congressional fund-raising account at the end of June.An heir to a Minnesota liquor fortune who showcased himself driving a gelato truck in his first House campaign, Mr. Phillips has been known in Congress for embracing the moderate suburban politics that were at the core of the general election coalition that propelled Mr. Biden’s 2020 victory. He was first elected in 2018, when he and dozens of fellow Democrats flipped Republican-held districts as suburban voters turned against President Donald J. Trump.In Congress, Mr. Phillips has received attention for his outspoken calls for aging members of the Democratic Party to step aside. He said last year that Mr. Biden should not seek re-election, and he has called for the resignation of Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, whose health has visibly deteriorated in recent months.The Biden campaign and the D.N.C. have so far declined to comment about Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Marianne Williamson, who began their own primary campaigns against Mr. Biden this year. Officials from both the D.N.C. and the Biden campaign declined to speak about Mr. Phillips. More

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      With DeSantis Reeling, What About Tim Scott?

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      Last Sunday, I argued that despite his stagnation in the polls, for Republicans (and non-Republicans) who would prefer that Donald Trump not be renominated for the presidency, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida remains pretty much the only possible alternative.Naturally the week that followed was the worst yet for DeSantis, beginning with a campaign staff purge that featured a Nazi-symbol subplot and ending with the candidate doing damage control for his suggestion that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. might run his Food and Drug Administration.The worst news for DeSantis, though, was new polls out of Iowa showing Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina creeping up on him, with around 10 percent support, to the governor’s roughly 15 percent.One of my arguments a week ago was that no other Republican, Scott included, had yet shown any capacity to build the support that even a stagnant DeSantis enjoys. But if the governor falls into a sustained battle for second place, he’s probably finished, and Trump can probably just cruise.Unless that battle results in a DeSantis collapse and a chance for someone else to go up against the front-runner. After all, why should DeSantis be the only non-Trump hope just because he seemed potent early on? Why not, well, Tim Scott?Say this for Scott: He has an obvious asset that DeSantis is missing, a fundamental good cheer that Americans favor in their presidents. Say this as well: He has the profile of a potent general-election candidate, an African American and youthful-seeming generic Republican to set against Joe Biden’s senescence. Say this, finally: Scott sits in the sweet spot for the Republican donor class, as a George W. Bush-style conservative untouched by the rabble-rousing and edgelord memes of Trump-era populism.But all of these strengths are connected to primary-campaign weaknesses. To beat Trump, you eventually need around half the Republican electorate to vote for you (depending on the wrinkles of delegate allocation). And there’s no indication that half of Republican primary voters want to return to pre-2016 conservatism, that they would favor a generic-Republican alternative to Trump’s crush-your-enemies style or that they especially value winsomeness and optimism, as opposed to a style suited to a pessimistic mood.The reason that DeSantis seemed like the best hope against Trump was a record and persona that seemed to meet Republican voters where they are. His success was built after Trump’s election, on issues that mattered to current G.O.P. voters, not those of 30 years ago. He could claim to be better at the pugilistic style than Trump — with more to show for his battles substantively and more political success as well. On certain issues, Covid policy especially, he could claim to represent the views of Trump’s supporters better than Trump himself. And with DeSantis’s war on Disney, nobody would confuse him for a creature of the donor class.All this set up a plausible strategy for pulling some Trump voters to DeSantis’s side by casting himself as the fulfiller of Trump’s promise — more competent, more politically able, bolder, younger and better suited to the times.This strategy was working five months ago, and now it’s failing. But its failure doesn’t reveal an alternative pitch, and certainly Scott doesn’t appear to have one. Indeed, as The Bulwark’s Jonathan Last points out, Scott isn’t really casting himself as a Trump alternative; he’s mostly been “positioning himself as an attractive running mate for Trump, should the Almighty not intervene” and remove the former president from the race.So for him to surpass DeSantis and become Trump’s main adversary could be what Last describes as a “catastrophic success.” It might lead to a weird sacrificial-lamb campaign, in which Scott contents himself with the quarter of the primary electorate that currently supports him in head-to-head polling against Trump. Or it could push him to come up with a pitch to be Trump’s successor. But it’s hard to see what would make that pitch stronger than the one that isn’t currently working for DeSantis.After all, the governor has a substantial record of policy victories; Scott has rather fewer. DeSantis has been successful in a contested political environment; Scott is a safe-seat senator. DeSantis was arguably as important a Republican as Trump during the crucial months of the Covid era; Scott was insignificant. DeSantis has struggled to expand his policy pitch beyond Covid and anti-wokeness; Scott doesn’t even have that kind of base to build on.For DeSantis to defeat Trump would make sense in light of the G.O.P. landscape as we know it. For Scott to win would require a total re-evaluation of what we think we know about Republicans today.Such re-evaluations happen, or else Trump himself wouldn’t have been president. Success creates unexpected conditions; if Scott surpasses DeSantis, he will have the chance to make the most of them.But for now, his climb in the polls looks like a modest victory for his own campaign and a bigger one for Trump’s.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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      John Fetterman, Hoodie and All, Is Adjusting to Life in the Senate

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      In an interview with The New York Times, the Pennsylvania senator spoke about the dysfunction in Congress, his health challenges and why he hasn’t traded his loungewear for a business suit.It has been an unusual first six months in Congress for Senator John Fetterman, the 6-foot-8, tattooed Democrat from Pennsylvania, who moved to Washington in January after suffering a near-fatal stroke on the campaign trail last year and going on to win one of the most competitive seats in the midterm elections.Mr. Fetterman arrived on Capitol Hill, signature hoodie and all, as a figure of fascination. For months, though, he kept colleagues and reporters at an arm’s length as he labored to cope with auditory processing issues that are a side effect of his stroke and a debilitating bout of depression that he now says prompted him to consider harming himself.He was treated for clinical depression at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center earlier this year, and his six-week stay there placed him at the center of a national conversation about mental health, a role he wasn’t always certain he wanted to fill.But in recent weeks, Mr. Fetterman has been adjusting to a more normal life for a lawmaker. Using a tablet that transcribes voice to text, he has started taking questions from reporters in the hallways, a staple of a senator’s life in Washington, and has begun inviting reporters into his office for informal off-the-record chats. He won approval last week of his first legislative proposal, an amendment to the annual military policy bill, which he wrote with Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, to ban the sale of strategic petroleum reserves to foreign adversaries.Mr. Fetterman questioned the chairman of the Federal Reserve during a hearing last month.T.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York TimesThis week, he sat down for an interview with The New York Times in which he spoke candidly (and sometimes profanely) about an array of topics, including his view that Congress is fixated on pointless fights, stumbling at times over his words — and noting that his political opponents were likely to attack him for it. He also spoke emotionally about the toll his new job has taken on his family.The interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.You’ve now been in Congress for just over six months. What is your overall impression of how the place functions?There’s a fixation on a lot of dumb shit. Bad performance art is really what it gets down to. The debt ceiling — there should have been no drama with any of that. The fact that we’re playing with something like that is antithetical to the stability of our democracy. It really is. Everything is turning into a culture war. Not everything has to be a think piece, you know.Does all of that political posturing make you cynical about Washington?Everyone here is cynical, of course. But we can fight for things that are meaningful. That we should have no hungry. Hanger. Hangry. Hanger. Hangry.[Chuckles.]Fox News will go crazy if that makes your story.We’re fighting for women’s reproductive freedom, making sure we have resources and support our unions. I’m going to fight for what’s really important.You’ve introduced legislation to expand access to contraception, with more than a dozen Democratic co-sponsors. Is there any Republican support for that in the Senate?It’s going to be very hard. Somebody needs to tell Republicans, like in a memo, “You won on abortion. You won. Why not have a serious conversation about birth control? That’s less abortions and unwanted children.” I wish we could have an honest conversation with conservatives and Republicans that birth control is the answer for both sides. But there wouldn’t be 60 votes in the Senate for that. I still really want to keep pushing it. I want to have that conversation.Mr. Fetterman with President Biden in Philadelphia last month.Pete Marovich for The New York TimesPennsylvania is going to be critical in the 2024 presidential election. You’ll be seeing a lot of President Biden. Are you at all concerned about his age?I’m not concerned about his age. And even if I was, who cares? There’s nothing you can do about his age. I’ve spent enough time around him. He’s sharp, he’s aware, he is absolutely up to the task. I’ll be doing whatever his campaign asks of me. I know Pennsylvania, I’ve won Pennsylvania. I’ll be helping with whatever he asks.Is it difficult to keep talking about your own struggles with mental health, or do you enjoy the responsibility of that new role?It’s a burden, but a privilege, too, to talk about it. It’s also an opportunity to be very bipartisan. Red or blue, if you have depression, get help, please. Don’t ever, ever, ever harm yourself. Do not leave behind a blueprint of that.In my own situation, in my very lowest, I started thinking about that. And I realized that if I do harm myself, I will leave behind for my children a blueprint that, if something happens with you, that’s the answer. I can’t do that to anyone.Even before you checked yourself into Walter Reed for treatment for depression, you were a figure of fascination on Capitol Hill. Other senators would even stop you for selfies. Why is there so much interest in you?I don’t know; it doesn’t make any sense to me at all. I don’t get it. I’ll never understand it. I don’t know why my wife married me. In the movie “Groundhog Day,” Bill Murray’s character says something like, “You think I’m arrogant? No, I don’t even like me.” That’s me. I don’t even like me. That’s the truth.You’re living alone in Washington, separated for most of the week from your three kids and your wife, who still live in Braddock, Pa.It’s awful. In the last week or two, I came across a quote by Kevin Costner talking about his divorce. He said it hits you that you’re going to be spending 50 percent less time with the people you love the most.You realize when you become a senator, you’re going to be spending 50 percent less time with the people that you love. That breaks my heart. I get emotional thinking about it. FaceTime is much better than just a phone call, but that’s the worst part of the job.Mr. Fetterman entered the House chamber before President Biden’s State of the Union address in February.Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesSix years is a long term. Would you consider moving your family to Washington for a sustainable work-life balance?No, that would be disrupting their lives. I can’t do that to them. It hurts. For example, my wife texted me about an hour ago that our three kids got great checkups. It’s parenting by text. I miss them a lot.Do you think David McCormick, the businessman who lost the Republican nomination to Dr. Oz in your Senate race, will run against Senator Bob Casey of Pennsylvania next year?If he was serious, he would have gotten in last January. And now it’s just really late. And there’s no anger focusing on Bob Casey. I’m supremely confident that Bob Casey is going to win. He is a buzz saw for some Republican who thinks they can hotdog it. He just keeps getting re-elected.Do you think the multiple indictments of former President Donald J. Trump will hurt him politically in your state?It doesn’t matter. I’m a senator, and I’m not sure how many times he’s been indicted. He’s been impeached twice. Has that changed anything? You’re still seeing Trump signs everywhere in Pennsylvania. You have to respect his strength in all of that. Trump would be very competitive in Pennsylvania. But Trump has to perform above his ceiling. I think there’s a hard ceiling in Pennsylvania he can’t get past.Ever think about dropping the sweatshirt-and-shorts uniform and just wearing a suit in Congress?You want to talk about joy? It was a eureka moment when I figured out I don’t have to be in a suit to stand at the threshold of the Senate chamber, going “yea” or “nay,” and it was amazing. I’ve been able to reduce my suit time by about 75 percent.Mr. Fetterman speaking to a reporter last month at the Capitol.Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times More

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      DeSantis Clashes With Top Rival, Tim Scott, Over Florida’s Teaching of Slavery

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      Ron DeSantis and Tim Scott, fighting to become the leading Republican alternative to Donald Trump, have clashed in recent days over Florida’s educational standards.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida hit back on Friday at one of his leading Republican rivals, Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, accusing the senator of credulously repeating liberal criticisms over Florida’s educational standards for the teaching of slavery.A day earlier, Mr. Scott had joined a long list of politicians, educators and historians in criticizing Florida’s new standards for African American history, which include a widely denounced line that middle schoolers should be instructed that “slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”Speaking to reporters in Iowa, Mr. Scott, the only Black Republican in the Senate, said: “What slavery was really about was separating families, about mutilating humans and even raping their wives. It was just devastating.”He added, “So I would hope that every person in our country — and certainly running for president — would appreciate that.”Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina criticized Florida’s educational standards on Thursday. Jordan Gale for The New York TimesMr. DeSantis, who is facing rising pressure from Mr. Scott in the unofficial contest to be the leading Republican alternative to former President Donald J. Trump, swiped back on Friday.Republicans in Washington like the senator, Mr. DeSantis said, “all too often accept false narratives, accept lies that are perpetrated by the left.”“The way you lead is to fight back against the lies, is to speak the truth,” Mr. DeSantis told reporters in rural Albia, Iowa, during a bus tour of the state. “So I’m here defending my state of Florida against false accusations and against lies, and we’re going to continue to speak the truth.”The remarks by Mr. DeSantis — who has been in a defensive crouch — plunged him deeper into a fight about slavery and education with two prominent Black Republicans.On Thursday, he rounded on Representative Byron Donalds of Florida, an ally of Mr. Trump’s, for criticizing the educational standards.“Are you going to side with Kamala Harris and liberal media outlets,” he asked, nodding to the vice president’s recent critique of Florida’s actions, “or are you going to side with the state of Florida?”DeSantis allies have defended the governor’s position and the Florida standards, arguing that critics are seizing on a few isolated lines and that mainstream standards have included similar guidance in the past.Jeremy Redfern, a spokesman for the governor’s office, called attention on Twitter to the official framework for an Advanced Placement course on African American studies that was rejected by Florida, setting off an earlier political controversy over education.The A.P. framework mentions that “in addition to agricultural work, enslaved people learned specialized trades and worked as painters, carpenters, tailors, musicians and healers.” It adds that “once free,” African Americans “used these skills to provide for themselves and others.”On Friday evening, both Mr. DeSantis and Mr. Scott, as well as Mr. Trump, Nikki Haley, former Vice President Mike Pence and other Republican candidates, will appear at a Lincoln Day dinner hosted by the Republican Party of Iowa, in a rare convergence of the top tier of the G.O.P. field.With Mr. Trump leading by more than 30 percentage points in national polls of the race, and holding a comfortable edge in limited surveys of Iowa, the rest of the Republican candidates are jockeying to overtake Mr. DeSantis as his top rival.And the governor’s position has appeared precarious: His donors and allies have increasingly expressed doubts about his strength as a candidate and his ability to fix his campaign’s problems, among them profligate spending.Mr. DeSantis also received blowback this week from fellow Republicans for remarks he made about Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a Democrat who supports abortion rights and who has spread conspiracy theories about vaccines. The governor suggested on Wednesday that Mr. Kennedy would be a good option for top posts at public health agencies like the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.On Friday in Albia, Mr. DeSantis sought to clarify his comments.“I was asked about appointing him to be like V.P., and I said, he’s liberal so I wouldn’t do that,” he said. “But I do agree with him on Fauci and the lockdowns. The lockdowns were a disaster for this country.”Mr. DeSantis said that while he would appoint only a “physician or a Ph.D” to a post like director of the C.D.C., he wanted to “work with people across the political spectrum” who agreed with his coronavirus policies.“So I want Democrats who have been willing to acknowledge the mistakes, to be willing to speak out against that,” he said. “But that’s not the same as appointing to a position.”Maya King More

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      Why Ron DeSantis Isn’t Beating Donald Trump

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      As he flails to reverse a polling decline that is beginning to resemble a rockslide, Gov. Ron DeSantis must be feeling a little clueless about why his political fortunes are crumbling so quickly. Attacking wokeness and bullying transgender people seemed to work so well in Florida, so why aren’t national Republicans in awe of the divisions he’s deepened? Making repeated appearances with racial provocateurs never stopped him from getting elected as governor, so why did he have to fire a young aide who inserted Nazi imagery into his own video promoting Mr. DeSantis’s presidential campaign?But the political bubble inhabited by Mr. DeSantis is so thick — symbolized by the hugely expensive private-plane flights that are draining his campaign of cash, since he and his wife, Casey, won’t sit with regular people in a commercial cabin — that he has been unable or unwilling to understand the brushoff he has received from donors and potential voters and make the changes he needs to become competitive with Donald Trump in the Republican primaries.For years, Mr. DeSantis has created an entire political persona out of a singular crusade against wokeness, frightening teachers and professors away from classroom discussions of race, defending a school curriculum that said there were benefits to slavery, claiming (falsely) that his anti-vaccine crusade worked and engaging in a pointless battle with his state’s best-known private employer over school discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity. He had the support of the Florida Legislature and state Republican officials in most of his efforts and presumably believed that an image of a more effective and engaged Trump would help him beat the real thing.But it’s not working. A Monmouth University poll published on Tuesday showed Mr. Trump with a 20-point lead over Mr. DeSantis in a head-to-head match, and the advantage grew to more than 30 points when all the other candidates were thrown in. Major donors have started to sour on him, and The Times reported on Thursday that they are disappointed with his performance and the management of his campaign, which he says he will somehow reboot.“DeSantis has not made any headway,” wrote the poll’s director, Patrick Murray. “The arguments that he’d be a stronger candidate and a more effective president than Trump have both fallen flat.”The most obvious fault in his strategy is that you can’t beat Donald Trump if you don’t even criticize him, and Mr. DeSantis has said little about the multiple indictments piling up against the former president or about his character. Granted, there are downsides to a full-frontal attack on Mr. Trump at this point, as other Republicans have become aware, and Mr. DeSantis still needs to establish some kind of identity first. But he can’t become an alt-Trump without drawing a sharp contrast and holding Mr. Trump to account for at least a few of his many flaws. There are graveyards in Iowa and New Hampshire full of candidates who tried to ignore the leader through sheer force of personality, and even if he had one of those, Mr. DeSantis hasn’t demonstrated the skills to use it. Both men will speak Friday night at the Lincoln Dinner in Des Moines, and if Mr. DeSantis leaves his rival unscathed, it’s hard to imagine how he goes the distance.The deeper problem, though, is that Mr. DeSantis is peddling the wrong message. Only 1 percent of voters think that wokeness and transgender issues are the country’s top problem, according to an April Fox News poll — essentially a repudiation of the governor’s entire brand. Race issues and vaccines are also low on the list.Lakshya Jain, who helps lead the website Split Ticket, which is doing some really interesting political analysis and modeling, said Mr. DeSantis misinterpreted what Florida voters were saying when they re-elected him by a 19-point margin in 2022.“The economy was doing well in Florida, and Democrats didn’t put up a good candidate in Charlie Crist,” Mr. Jain told me. “I’m not sure the majority of Florida voters really cared what he was saying on wokeness. It’s not really an issue people vote on.”The economy, naturally, is what people care most about, but Mr. DeSantis hasn’t said much about his plans to fight inflation (which is already coming down) or create more jobs (which is happening every month without his help). Clearly aware of the problem, he announced on Thursday that he would unfurl a Declaration of Economic Independence in a major speech in New Hampshire on Monday (a phrase as trite and tone-deaf as the name of his Never Back Down super PAC).That appears to be the first fruit of his campaign reboot, but there are good reasons he doesn’t like to stray from his rigid agenda, as demonstrated by his occasionally disastrous footsteps into foreign policy. Bashing Bidenomics means he’ll immediately have to come up with an excuse for why inflation is so much higher in Florida than the nation as a whole. Though the national inflation rate in May was 4 percent compared with a year earlier, it was 9 percent in the Miami-Ft. Lauderdale-West Palm Beach area for the same period and 7.3 percent in the Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater area.The primary reason for that is the state’s housing shortage, an issue that Mr. DeSantis largely ignored during his first term and has only belatedly taken a few small steps to address. When the issue inevitably comes up on the campaign trail, you can bet that Mr. DeSantis will find some way of blaming it on President Biden. That way he can quickly pivot to his preferred agenda of rewriting Black history, questioning science and encouraging gun ownership.He really can’t help himself; just this week he said he might hire the noted anti-vaccine nut Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to work at the Food and Drug Administration or the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Then he got into an online fight with Representative Byron Donalds, Florida’s only Black Republican member of Congress, over the state’s astonishingly wrong curriculum on slavery, and a DeSantis spokesman called Mr. Donalds a “supposed conservative.”Great way to expand your base. Remind me: When does the reboot start?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