Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida intends to announce the start of his 2024 presidential campaign this evening in a live conversation on Twitter with Elon Musk, the platform’s owner, moderated by the Republican donor David Sacks. DeSantis will also appear on Fox News in an interview.
One challenge for DeSantis as he enters the race will be competing for attention with former president Donald Trump, who has long shown a knack for commandeering the limelight. Trump’s aides have signaled that he plans to return to Twitter sooner rather than later, after his account was reinstated by Musk late last year.
Musk said this week that he was not formally throwing his support behind DeSantis or any other Republican. The businessman, at times the world’s richest man, has said he voted for President Biden in the 2020 election, but has since been critical of him and his administration, which has a frosty relationship with his electric car company, Tesla.
Twitter: Under Musk, Twitter has cultivated a Republican audience. This month, Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News star, announced he would start a new show on Twitter. But in choosing Twitter Spaces, DeSantis is relying on a streaming tool with a history of bugs and failures.
In other U.S. political news:
Trump’s hush-money criminal trial in New York is scheduled to begin in March 2024.
Speaker Kevin McCarthy faces a fraught pathway to a deal on the debt limit.
Videos verified by The New York Times show smoke rising near the Russian city of Belgorod.
Fighting in Russian territory
A rare cross-border assault in southern Russia by anti-Kremlin fighters aligned with Ukraine stretched into a second day yesterday, with reports of an explosion at a defense factory and skirmishes at a crossing. Some pro-Russian analysts feared that the attacks opened a new set of battlefield problems for Moscow.
Russia’s Ministry of Defense said that it had pushed back all of the pro-Ukrainian fighters across the border and that scores of “saboteurs” had been killed. The claim was disputed by people representing the anti-Kremlin fighters. A group called the Free Russia Legion, made up of Russians who have taken up arms for Ukraine, has claimed responsibility.
Ukraine has denied any direct involvement in the incursions, casting the border attacks as a sign of internal division in Russia. A Ukrainian deputy defense minister, Hanna Maliar, described the fighters as “Russian patriots” rebelling against the government of President Vladimir Putin.
On the ground: When the incursions began on Monday, smoke could be seen billowing from explosions, according to drone footage verified by The Times. Another video showed a soldier and an armored vehicle bearing Ukrainian markings about three miles into Russian territory.
Boris Johnson, the former prime minister of Britain, has again been referred to the police by a government office to assess claims that he may have further violated coronavirus regulations, the Cabinet Office said in a statement. Johnson was fined last year while still in office for breaking Covid rules in 2020.
He faced a barrage of criticism over gatherings held during strict coronavirus lockdowns, and was fined this spring by the police for having broken pandemic regulations at Downing Street. At a parliamentary hearing in March over whether he lied to lawmakers about lockdown-busting parties, Johnson denied being untruthful but struggled to justify some of the misleading statements he made.
The Times of London has reported that the latest referral to the police is linked to new allegations about his behavior in Downing Street as well as several visits to the prime minister’s country residence, Chequers, that came to light during preparations for a public inquiry into the pandemic.