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At the beginning of the year, Ron DeSantis looked as if he might be the answer to all of the Republican Partys problems.

For the first time in decades, a conservative politician rose to national prominence on issues that unified the partys populist base with its beleaguered establishment and without triggering a Resistance from Florida Democrats. He seemed to offer Republicans a path beyond the divisions and defeats of the last 15 years.

Mr. DeSantis does not seem like the answer anymore. His poll numbers are cratering. His strength as a general election candidate is being questioned. This is partly because hes fallen flat on the national stage, but its also because hes slowly devolved into an older kind of Republican the kind without answers to the partys problems.

Hes been bogged down in the very issues that divided and hurt Republicans in the past, like abortion, entitlements, Russia and the conduct of Donald J. Trump. Against Mr. Trump and without Democrats as a foil, his instinct to take the most conservative stance has pushed him far to the right. Hes devolved into another Ted Cruz.

Mr. DeSantis will probably never be an entertainer like Mr. Trump, an orator like Ronald Reagan, or someone to get a beer with like George W. Bush. But to compete for the nomination, he will at least need to be who he appeared to be a few months ago: a new kind of conservative, who can appeal to the establishment and the base by focusing on the new set of issues that got him here: the fight for freedom and against woke.

Mr. DeSantiss varying campaigns against everything from coronavirus restrictions to gender studies curriculums werent extraordinarily popular, at least not in terms of national polling, but it was a type of political gold nonetheless. It let him channel the passions of the Republican base and get on Fox News without offending bourgeoiseconservative sensibilities on race, immigration and gender. In fact, many elite conservatives disliked woke and coronavirus restrictions just like the rank-and-file. Even some Democrats sympathized with his positions. As a result, he won re-election in Florida in a landslide. Democratic turnout was abysmal.

This combination of base and elite appeal made him a natural candidate to lead an anti-Trump coalition. In the last presidential primary, in 2016, Mr. Trump held the center of the Republican electorate and left his opposition split on either side. To his right, there was Mr. Cruz and the orthodox conservatives. To his left, there was Marco Rubio, John Kasich and the relatively moderate, business-friendly establishment. None of thesefactional figures stood a chance of unifying those two disparate groups, but for a fleeting moment after the midterms last year, Mr. DeSantis seemed to assemble all of the various not-necessarily-Trump factions under his banner.

Since then, Mr. DeSantiss coalition has unraveled. His superficial struggles on the campaign trail might be evident to most, but what is more easily overlooked is an overarching struggle to balance the competing needs of an ideologically diverse coalition in a Republican primary.

His challenge has two halves. First, his instinct to move to the right has been more fraught in a Republican primary than it was when woke liberals were his foil. After all, theres plenty of room to line up to the right of woke without alienating anyone on the right. Trying to be to the right of Mr. Trump, on the other hand, involves greater risk regarding both the general electorate and his relatively moderate supporters.

Perhaps surprisingly, Mr. DeSantis actually fares best among moderate voters in Republican primary polling. This probably says more about which Republicans are most skeptical about Mr. Trump than it does about Mr. DeSantis, but it nonetheless means that his conservative instincts routinely put him at odds with his own base.

In some cases, the tension between Mr. DeSantis and his base is unavoidable and his moderate supporters will sometimes lose. A politician cant always please every constituency. Abortion, for instance, poses a legitimate problem for Mr. DeSantis and every Republican nowadays.

But Mr. DeSantis has not always seemed cognizant of the delicate balancing act ahead of him and has committed errors as a result. His relatively soft position on Russia regarding Ukraine, for instance, overlooked that the elite, hawkish, neoconservative right not only cares deeply about containing Russia but would also inevitably be part of any successful anti-Trump coalition. Mr. DeSantis doesnt need to be a neocon to hold this support against Mr. Trump, but it does seem he needs to support defending Ukraine.

The second half is that the fights for freedom and against woke have not been a glue thats held his fractious coalition together. So far this year, hes struggled to make the race about these issues at all. Instead, abortion, entitlements, Russia and Mr. Trump have dominated the conversation.

Of all the things that have happened to Mr. DeSantis so far this year, this might be the most troubling and telling. Tactical mistakes can be fixed, but if fighting for freedom and against woke isnt a powerful, organizing theme, then hes not especially different from any other Republican.

This might not be entirely Mr. DeSantiss fault. The coronavirus pandemic is over at least for political purposes. The peak of woke might have come and gone as well: The arc of new left culture fights seems to have bent into a reactionary phase in which debate centers as much or more on proposed Republican restrictions on books, drag shows and A.P. history curriculums as on the latest controversy about the excesses of the left. Mr. DeSantiss renewal of a year-old fight against Disney the exact origins of which I suspect would stump even many regular readers of this newsletter is a telling indicator that his campaign against woke is struggling for oxygen.

At the same time as Mr. DeSantiss new issues have faded, the old issues have come roaring back. The Supreme Court and Vladimir Putin made sure of it. So did Mr. Trump, who attacked Mr. DeSantis for old statements on cutting entitlements. And while all of these issues make Mr. DeSantis vulnerable in various ways, there are few opportunities to attack Mr. Trump as too woke.

The devolution of Mr. DeSantis, in other words, is partly due toforces beyond his control. But if freedom or woke is not enough, he will probably need a new set of issues to uniteopen-to-anyone-but-Trump voters.

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Why Ron DeSantis Is Struggling - The New York Times

Lets count off a few of them. First, theres the limits of ideological box-checking in a campaign against Trump. This is my colleague Nate Cohns main point in his assessment of DeSantiss recent struggles, and its a good one: DeSantis has spent the year to date accumulating legislative victories that match up with official right-wing orthodoxy, but we already saw in Ted Cruzs 2016 campaign the limits of ideological correctness. There are Republican primary voters who cast ballots with a matrix of conservative positions in their heads, but not enough to overcome the appeal of the Trump persona, and a campaign against him wont prosper if its main selling point is just True Conservatism 2.0.

Second, theres the mismatch between cultural conservatism and the anti-Trump donor class. Part of DeSantiss advantage now, compared with Cruzs situation in 2016, is that he has seemed more congenial to the partys bigger-money donors. But many of those donors dont really like the culture war; theyll go along with a generic anti-wokeness, but they hate the Disney battles and theyre usually pro-choice. So socially conservative moves that DeSantis cant refuse, like signing Floridas six-week abortion ban, yield instant stories about how his potential donors are thinking about closing up their checkbooks, with a palpable undercurrent of: Why cant we have Nikki Haley or even Glenn Youngkin instead?

This leads to the third dynamic that could repeat itself: The G.O.P coordination problem, a.k.a. the South Carolina pileup. Remember how smoothly all of Joe Bidens rivals suddenly exited the presidential race when it was time to stop Bernie Sanders? Remember how nothing remotely like that happened among Republicans in 2016? Well, if you have an anti-Trump donor base dissatisfied with DeSantis and willing to sustain long-shot rivals, and if two of those rivals, Haley and Senator Tim Scott, hail from the early primary state of South Carolina, its easy enough to see how they talk themselves into hanging around long enough to hand Trump exactly the sort of narrow wins that eventually gave him unstoppable momentum in 2016.

But then again, a certain cast of mind has declared Trump to have unstoppable momentum already. This reflects another tendency that helped elect him the first time, the weird fatalism of professional Republicans. In 2016 many of them passed from he cant win to he cant be stopped with barely a way station in between. A rough month for DeSantis has already surfaced the same spirit as in a piece by Politicos Jonathan Martin, which quoted one strategist saying resignedly, Were just going to have to go into the basement, ride out the tornado and come back up when its over to rebuild the neighborhood.

Influencing this perspective, again as in 2016, is the assumption that Trump cant win the general election, so if the G.O.P. just lets him lose it will finally be rid of him. Of course that assumption was completely wrong before, it could be wrong again; and even if its not, how do you know he wont be back in 2028?

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Opinion | It's Beginning to Feel a Lot Like 2016 Again - The New York Times

Extreme bill would cut veterans health care, jeopardize public safety, and raise costs for familieseven as House Republicans separately push for trillions in tax cuts skewed to the wealthy and big corporations

Congressional Republicans are holding the nations full faith and credit hostage in an effort to impose devastating cuts that would hurt veterans, raise costs for hardworking families, and hinder economic growth. The Default on America Act would cut veterans health care, education, Meals on Wheels, and public safety, take away health care from millions of Americans, and send manufacturing jobs overseas.Outside economists say that if enacted, the Default on America Act would increase the likelihood of a recession and result in 780,000 fewer jobs by the end of 2024. And House Republicans are demanding these cuts while separately advancing proposals to add over $3 trillion to deficits through tax cuts and giveaways skewed to the wealthy and big corporations.

The Default on America Act stands in sharp contrast with President Bidens Budget, which invests in America, lowers costs for families, protects and strengthens Medicare and Social Security, and reduces the deficit by nearly $3 trillion over 10 years, while ensuring no one making less than $400,000 per year pays a penny more in new taxes.

Today, the White House released 51 fact sheets highlighting the devastating impacts of the Default on America Act on states and the District of Columbia. Nationally, the Default on America Act would have devastating impacts on the American people. It would:Jeopardize Transportation Safety and Infrastructure

Raise Costs for Families

Harm Seniors, Older People, and Veterans

Hurt Children and Students and Undermine Education and Job Training

State Fact Sheets:

This analysis assumes an across-the-board reduction of roughly 22% compared to currently enacted FY 2023 levels for non-defense discretionary accounts. That aligns with Congressional Republicans Default on America Act, which would return discretionary spending to FY 2022 levels on an ongoing basis while exempting defense spending.

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STATE FACT SHEETS: MAGA House Republicans' Default on ... - The White House

Local Republicans issue press release calling for District 2 Texas House Representative Bryan Slaton to resign in the wake of a report issued by the House General Investigating Committee. See previous story here: Slaton Faces Expulsion

The following Press Release was received by KSST News:

For immediate Release:

It is with much sadness that we the below, 10 members of the 11 member Hopkins County RepublicanParty Executive Committee, call on Representative Bryan Slaton to immediately resign asRepresentative of House District # 2. After reading the report of the House General Investigating Committee, in the matter of Representative Bryan L. Slaton, there is no other recommendation that we can make. While we commend Representative Slaton for much good work, we cannot condone conduct unbecoming a member of the House of Representatives as set forth by the House rules and the laws of the State of Texas. It is our hope that Representative Slaton will heed our call and let the healing process begin with his family, the victim and her family, and all other parties involved. We encourage everyone to continue in prayer and lift all involved up in prayer to God for his loving comfort and healing.Donnie W. Wisenbaker, Hopkins County Republican Chairman

James Thompson, Precinct # 1 Chair Vince Palumbo, Precinct # 2 ChairKaron Weatherman, Precinct # 2A Chair Nancy Swint, Precinct # 3 ChairJohn Allen, Precinct # 3A Chair Debbie Harris, Precinct # 4 ChairDaniel Bobay, Precinct # 16 Chair Jennifer Harrington, Precinct # 17 ChairMelonie Findley, Precinct # 36 Chair

As members of the State Republican Partys Executive Committee, that serves Hopkins County, we support the Hopkins County Republican Party Executive Committee members in their call for Representative Slatons immediate resignation. Christian Bentley, SD-1 State Republican Party Executive Committee, CommitteewomanDonnie W. Wisenbaker, SD-1 State Republican Party Executive Committee, Committeeman

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Hopkins County Republicans Call for Slaton to Resign - KSST

Voters wait in line to cast their ballots during early voting in Carmel, Indiana, in 2020. | Michael Conroy/AP Photo

HOOSIER HOPEFULS A mayoral primary in the otherwise politically sleepy, tony Indianapolis suburb of Carmel suddenly hit the big time this week.

Some of the biggest names in national politics including former Vice President Mike Pence and former White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain took an interest in this city of 100,000, situated in one of the fastest growing and most educated counties in the nation.

Over the years, this suburb of lush and well-kept lawns, McMansions, and gated communities navigated by golf carts has become the place Republican vice presidents go to retire. Pence who moved back to Carmel after his vice presidency, joining Dan Quayle who also briefly resided here in the 1990s after his own public service ended voted here in Indianas municipal elections Tuesday, which included the first open mayoral contest in three decades (Republican Jim Brainard, first elected in 1995, announced his retirement last year).

Klain, the Hoosier native who still has family ties to the northern Indianapolis suburb situated in reddish Hamilton County, has been closely watching the race, too. He is in talks with Democratic nominee Miles Nelson about campaigning for him (Klains recently passed mother, Sarann Horwitz Klain, was the former vice chair of the Hamilton County Democratic Party.)

Im all in for Miles Nelson, Klain told me recently, before tweeting about Nelsons win Tuesday evening.

Tuesdays electoral results show in miniature the national Republicans weakening grip on the suburbs. Come November, the race will also be a key post-midterms bellwether for both parties. Democrats made big gains in suburbs nationally in 2018 and 2020.

Nowhere else is that more apparent than Carmel. Slowly, this city has become more diverse and seen an influx of younger, more moderate voters who flock here for its award-winning school system, public art, affordability and culture (its home to a $126 million concert hall drawing national acts like the singer and songwriter Jason Isbell, and boasts more than 138 roundabouts, more than any other city in the U.S.). Students of the public school system speak 65 languages from 55 countries. Though many of its communities are gated, its not been walled-off from social change: Black Lives Matter marches snaked down the Monon Trail in Carmel amid $1 million townhouses and an upscale steakhouse in the summer of 2020.

Young voters from around the country are moving to Carmel, and you know what? Theyre bringing their politics, too, Nelson told me today, just a few days after winning his partys nomination.

Tuesdays electoral results in the Democratic and Republican mayoral primaries saw more than 82 percent of the Republican voters over 50 years old, according to preliminary analysis of voter data by Peter Hanscom, former Sen. Joe Donnellys (D-Ind.) campaign manager and the current Democratic 5th district vice chair.

Thats a gigantic problem for them in the general, Hanscom said. The families with kids dont seem to be on their side.

Donnelly was the first Democrat to win Carmel in his unsuccessful 2018 Senate campaign. A year later, Nelson became the citys first Democratic elected official as a city councilman. In 2020, Biden defeated Trump, who just four years earlier held a packed rally at the concert hall where I saw Isbell perform. And in 2022, Democratic Secretary of State Destiny Wells won here, too.

Our community in particular is much more international than it ever was, said Nelsons Republican challenger, Sue Finkam. With that comes people that dont vote and vote on all different aspects along the spectrum.

Now, the Indiana Democratic Party is eyeing Carmel as a potential pickup this November. Mike Schmuhl, Pete Buttigiegs former campaign manager and the state party chairman, is targeting this suburb in hopes of flipping it blue.

The city has changed a lot, Schmuhl said over lunch today at Fat Dans Chicago Deli in Carmel. This used to be a rock-ribbed, Republican, conservative area but the Republican Party has changed a lot, too. So what you have up in Carmel is a lot of development, a lot of families, educated voters, hard working people, and the Democratic Partys values appeal to those people.

Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at [emailprotected]. Or contact tonights author at [emailprotected] or on Twitter at @adamwren.

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Biden names Neera Tanden as his domestic policy adviser: President Joe Biden announced today that Neera Tanden will serve as the next head of his domestic policy council. Tanden, a longtime prominent Democratic operative, will replace Susan Rice, who plans to leave the administration later this month. Tanden has spent the last year-and-a-half as senior adviser and staff secretary in the White House, after her initial nomination to run the Office of Management and Budget faltered in the face of Senate opposition.

CDC Director Rochelle Walensky is leaving, White House says: Rochelle Walensky, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who guided Bidens response to the Covid-19 pandemic from his first day in office, is leaving her post, the White House announced today. Her announcement comes days before the Biden administration plans to end the public health emergency in place since early 2020, and at a time when Covid fears have receded and life mostly returned to a pre-pandemic normal.

Proud Boys juror says groups deleted messages weighed on jury: Andre Mundell, one of the 12 jurors who decided the four-month trial on Thursday, told Vice News that he was convinced that the Proud Boys leaders including former national chair Enrique Tarrio had committed seditious conspiracy in part because of the lengths the group took to hide its activities, deleting key messages. The Proud Boys didnt want everybody to know the plan, because then I guess it would have gotten out. And they didnt want it to get out, Mundell said in the interview, noting that the thousands of messages they reviewed extracted from the phones of Tarrio and his co-defendants were peppered with blank slots where exchanges had been deleted.

Magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll leaves Manhattan Federal Court after her civil trial against former President Donald Trump rests. | Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images

IN THEIR OWN WORDS E. Jean Carroll and Donald Trump rested their cases late Thursday in the civil trial in which Carroll accused Trump of raping her decades ago. She is suing him in Manhattan federal court for battery over the alleged rape, and for defamation over social media comments Trump made last year accusing Carroll of promoting a hoax. He maintains the alleged incident never happened. While Trumps lawyers didnt call any witnesses, Carrolls team called nearly a dozen over the course of seven days. Read what they said here.

SUBPOENA SEASON Federal prosecutors who are investigating former President Donald Trumps handling of classified documents are now issuing a wave of new subpoenas, developing a picture of why and how Trump took documents to Mar-a-Lago that werent supposed to be there.

The New York Times reports that prosecutors now have the cooperation of someone who worked for Trump at Mar-a-Lago.

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END OF AN ERA COVID-19 is no longer an international public health emergency, the World Health Organization decided today, marking a major turning point in the global response to the crisis that has killed nearly 7 million people and caused some 65 million cases of long COVID, writes Ashleigh Furlong.

The removal of the highest alert level from the global health body comes more than three years since the declaration was first made on January 30, 2020, as COVID-19 spread beyond China and public health officials around the globe became increasingly panicked at what they were witnessing. At that time, the official death toll was just 171. Now, the WHO estimates over 6.9 million deaths.

DRUNK ON POWER On Dec. 31, 1999, while the rest of the world was fixated on Y2K, ailing Russian President Boris Yeltsin tearfully concluded his annual New Years address by announcing he was stepping down as president, appointing Vladimir Putin, his little-known prime minister, in his stead. In the months that followed, Putin stood for election in his own right, winning the presidency handily, writes Mark Lawrence Schrad.

One day before his formal inauguration, on May 6, 2000, Putin signed a directive that would begin the reconsolidation of Russias top revenue-generating industries. But Putins first target wasnt oil or natural gas, or diamonds or gold or nickel. It was vodka.

On that date, Putin created a new company called Rosspirtprom an acronym for Russian Spirits Industry to seize control of the means of vodka production. It was a move that not only helped Putin amass enormous wealth over the coming two decades, but was a critical first step in cementing his grip on the Russian economy and the Russian people, who would help line his pockets while his vodka helped ruin their health.

Read the saga of how Putin amassed so much power in the industry and what hes doing with it now here.

253,000

The number of jobs the U.S. added in April, a robust number thats evidence of a labor market that still shows surprising strength despite rising interest rates, chronically high inflation and a banking crisis that could weaken the economy. The unemployment rate ticked down to 3.4 percent, matching a 54-year low.

ITS OVER With the shuttering of Vice News Tonight and reports that the company is circling bankruptcy along with the recent end of BuzzFeed News there have been all kinds of recriminations about the era in media when those two platforms appeared to be the future, with sky-high valuations from Wall Street and willing buyers across the more traditional media landscape. One of the most interesting comes from Aris Roussinos a former war correspondent on the front lines for Vice in UnHerd. Roussinos speaks to his experiences in the field, what it was like to work for the company and where it all went wrong.

On this date in 1985: President Ronald Reagan speaks during ceremonies at the site of the former Bergen-Belsen Nazi concentration camp in West Germany. Reagan was on a state visit to honor victims of World War II and the Holocaust and attend ceremonies commemorating the 40th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe. | AP Photo

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Republicans wrestle with their suburban problem - POLITICO - POLITICO