By Tim Reid

(Reuters) – At least six Republican candidates will take part in the second 2024 Republican presidential debate on Wednesday in California. Donald Trump will skip the event and give a speech in Detroit to autoworkers.

Here are some facts about the event and what to expect:

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WHEN AND WHERE WILL IT TAKE PLACE?

Following on from last month’s debate in Wisconsin,

The second showdown will take place at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation & Institute in Simi Valley, California, about 45 miles (72 km) north of Los Angeles.

The Republican National Committee, which organizes the debates, has picked the Fox Business Network to host the event, alongside Univision, the U.S.-based Spanish language TV channel, and Rumble, the online video platform popular with conservatives. The two-hour debate will start at 9 p.m. ET (0100 GMT).

FEWER CANDIDATES – AND NO TRUMP AGAIN

The qualifying rules for the second debate are more stringent than the first last month, when eight candidates were on stage in Milwaukee. This means two longshot contenders – North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum and former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson – will likely fail to make the cut due to a lack of donors and poor polling.

Former President Donald Trump, the runaway frontrunner in the nominating contest according to opinion polls, has said he will skip the debates, and did not appear at the first one.

As he did in August, Trump will hold a rival event at the same time as the debate. He will give a speech in Detroit to autoworkers and other blue-collar workers at 8 p.m. ET. The United Auto Workers (UAW) union on Sept. 14 launched strikes at three U.S. auto plants after failing to reach an agreement over new contracts, the first-ever simultaneous labor action against the Detroit Three automakers.

The six candidates likely to be on stage are: Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, former Vice President Mike Pence, former U.N. ambassador and South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, U.S. Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, biotech investor Vivek Ramaswamy, and former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie.

With a smaller lineup, there will be more time for each candidate to attack each other and make their pitches to voters. It also gives them more opportunity to shine or self-destruct.

DESANTIS DESPERATELY NEEDS A BREAKOUT PERFORMANCE

DeSantis, who was seen in January as the most likely candidate to topple Trump, has had a difficult year, with sinking poll numbers and two staff shake-ups. Once the clear second-place candidate behind Trump, DeSantis’ campaign has floundered as some other candidates closed the gap with him in recent polls.

The Florida governor delivered a solid, if not flashy, performance in last month’s debate but was frequently overshadowed by Ramaswamy. DeSantis will be looking for some breakout moments this time around to rejuvenate his candidacy.

RAMASWAMY WILL GET HIT FROM ALL SIDES

With Trump currently crushing his rivals by roughly 40 percentage points in national polls, the Republican nominating contest has become a fight for second place. His rivals hope the former president’s four criminal indictments and legal woes will somehow knock him out of the race next year, giving an alternative nominee the chance to emerge.

After Ramaswamy’s pugnacious performance in the August debate, expect to see more attacks on him and his lack of experience, especially by Haley and Pence, both of whom had strong outings last month.

Like DeSantis, Scott also needs a more forceful night after his subdued one last month. The Haley-Ramaswamy-Scott-Pence scramble to overtake DeSantis and become the clear alternative to Trump will likely be a major dynamic.

DEFEND TRUMP, ATTACK BIDEN

Do not expect to see most candidates – with the exception of Christie – going after Trump for his indictments and the fact he is now the first former president with a mug shot. Many Republican primary voters believe Trump’s claim that the indictments are an effort by the Biden administration to thwart his candidacy, and attacking him on the issue would likely be political suicide.

With the Republican-controlled House of Representatives launching a formal impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden over alleged links to the business practices of his son Hunter Biden, expect to see a barrage of accusations against the Democratic president, an issue that plays well with the Republican base despite the dearth of evidence unearthed so far.

A PLAY FOR HISPANIC VOTERS

The inclusion of Univision as a debate host is telling. Republican support among Latinos, an increasingly key voting bloc in some key battleground states, including Arizona and Nevada, has been growing in recent years, while Hispanic support for Biden has been dropping. Expect to see candidates asked about the economy and how they plan to improve the financial prospects for Latino families.

(Reporting by Tim Reid in Los Angeles, editing by Ross Colvin and Jonathan Oatis)

By Sakura Murakami and Nobuhiro Kubo

TOKYO (Reuters) – The United States Space Force has had internal discussions about setting up a hotline with China to prevent crises in space, U.S. commander General Chance Saltzman told Reuters on Monday.

The chief of space operations said a direct line of communication between the Space Force and its Chinese counterpart would be valuable in de-escalating tensions but that the U.S. had not yet engaged with China to establish one.

“What we have talked about on the U.S. side at least is opening up a line of communication to make sure that if there is a crisis, we know who we can contact,” Saltzman said, adding that it would be up to President Joe Biden and the State Department to take the lead on such discussions.

The comments come as the U.S. Space Force looks into establishing a branch in Japan, as China’s military ambitions in the Indo-Pacific unnverve its neighbours and the war in Ukraine spotlights the importance of space capabilities in warfare.

Japan has been especially concerned about Taiwan and any lessons China may have drawn from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine a year ago. China, which views democratically governed Taiwan as its own territory, has not renounced the use of force to bring the island under Beijing’s control.

Saltzman, who held talks with top Japanese defence officials in Tokyo on Monday, confirmed that the space force was exploring the potential establishment of a local headquarters in Japan.

He did not elaborate on the location or the purpose it would serve, but did say it could look similar to a branch established in South Korea in November last year.

Saltzman added that deeper cooperation with like-minded countries including Japan would be crucial in being able to monitor and understand activity in the space domain to deter China and counter ‘grey zone activities’ such as jamming satellite signals.

“We have to be able to have those indications and warnings and see what they’re doing and call them on the intent. Just being hypersensitive so we don’t fall prey to grey zone activities,” Saltzman said.

The U.S. Space Force, founded in 2019, also does not have a direct line of communication with its Russian counterpart.

(Reporting by Sakura Murakami and Nobuhiro Kubo; editing by Philippa Fletcher and Toby Chopra)

By Sakura Murakami and Nobuhiro Kubo

TOKYO (Reuters) – The United States Space Force has had internal discussions about setting up a hotline with China to prevent crises in space, U.S. commander General Chance Saltzman told Reuters on Monday.

The chief of space operations said a direct line of communication between the Space Force and its Chinese counterpart would be valuable in de-escalating tensions but that the U.S. had not yet engaged with China to establish one.

“What we have talked about on the U.S. side at least is opening up a line of communication to make sure that if there is a crisis, we know who we can contact,” Saltzman said, adding that it would be up to President Joe Biden and the State Department to take the lead on such discussions.

The comments come as the U.S. Space Force looks into establishing a branch in Japan, as China’s military ambitions in the Indo-Pacific unnverve its neighbours and the war in Ukraine spotlights the importance of space capabilities in warfare.

Japan has been especially concerned about Taiwan and any lessons China may have drawn from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine a year ago. China, which views democratically governed Taiwan as its own territory, has not renounced the use of force to bring the island under Beijing’s control.

Saltzman, who held talks with top Japanese defence officials in Tokyo on Monday, confirmed that the space force was exploring the potential establishment of a local headquarters in Japan.

He did not elaborate on the location or the purpose it would serve, but did say it could look similar to a branch established in South Korea in November last year.

Saltzman added that deeper cooperation with like-minded countries including Japan would be crucial in being able to monitor and understand activity in the space domain to deter China and counter ‘grey zone activities’ such as jamming satellite signals.

“We have to be able to have those indications and warnings and see what they’re doing and call them on the intent. Just being hypersensitive so we don’t fall prey to grey zone activities,” Saltzman said.

The U.S. Space Force, founded in 2019, also does not have a direct line of communication with its Russian counterpart.

(Reporting by Sakura Murakami and Nobuhiro Kubo; editing by Philippa Fletcher and Toby Chopra)

By Sakura Murakami and Nobuhiro Kubo

TOKYO (Reuters) – The United States Space Force has had internal discussions about setting up a hotline with China to prevent crises in space, U.S. commander General Chance Saltzman told Reuters on Monday.

The chief of space operations said a direct line of communication between the Space Force and its Chinese counterpart would be valuable in de-escalating tensions but that the U.S. had not yet engaged with China to establish one.

“What we have talked about on the U.S. side at least is opening up a line of communication to make sure that if there is a crisis, we know who we can contact,” Saltzman said, adding that it would be up to President Joe Biden and the State Department to take the lead on such discussions.

The comments come as the U.S. Space Force looks into establishing a branch in Japan, as China’s military ambitions in the Indo-Pacific unnverve its neighbours and the war in Ukraine spotlights the importance of space capabilities in warfare.

Japan has been especially concerned about Taiwan and any lessons China may have drawn from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine a year ago. China, which views democratically governed Taiwan as its own territory, has not renounced the use of force to bring the island under Beijing’s control.

Saltzman, who held talks with top Japanese defence officials in Tokyo on Monday, confirmed that the space force was exploring the potential establishment of a local headquarters in Japan.

He did not elaborate on the location or the purpose it would serve, but did say it could look similar to a branch established in South Korea in November last year.

Saltzman added that deeper cooperation with like-minded countries including Japan would be crucial in being able to monitor and understand activity in the space domain to deter China and counter ‘grey zone activities’ such as jamming satellite signals.

“We have to be able to have those indications and warnings and see what they’re doing and call them on the intent. Just being hypersensitive so we don’t fall prey to grey zone activities,” Saltzman said.

The U.S. Space Force, founded in 2019, also does not have a direct line of communication with its Russian counterpart.

(Reporting by Sakura Murakami and Nobuhiro Kubo; editing by Philippa Fletcher and Toby Chopra)

By Sakura Murakami and Nobuhiro Kubo

TOKYO (Reuters) – The United States Space Force has had internal discussions about setting up a hotline with China to prevent crises in space, U.S. commander General Chance Saltzman told Reuters on Monday.

The chief of space operations said a direct line of communication between the Space Force and its Chinese counterpart would be valuable in de-escalating tensions but that the U.S. had not yet engaged with China to establish one.

“What we have talked about on the U.S. side at least is opening up a line of communication to make sure that if there is a crisis, we know who we can contact,” Saltzman said, adding that it would be up to President Joe Biden and the State Department to take the lead on such discussions.

The comments come as the U.S. Space Force looks into establishing a branch in Japan, as China’s military ambitions in the Indo-Pacific unnverve its neighbours and the war in Ukraine spotlights the importance of space capabilities in warfare.

Japan has been especially concerned about Taiwan and any lessons China may have drawn from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine a year ago. China, which views democratically governed Taiwan as its own territory, has not renounced the use of force to bring the island under Beijing’s control.

Saltzman, who held talks with top Japanese defence officials in Tokyo on Monday, confirmed that the space force was exploring the potential establishment of a local headquarters in Japan.

He did not elaborate on the location or the purpose it would serve, but did say it could look similar to a branch established in South Korea in November last year.

Saltzman added that deeper cooperation with like-minded countries including Japan would be crucial in being able to monitor and understand activity in the space domain to deter China and counter ‘grey zone activities’ such as jamming satellite signals.

“We have to be able to have those indications and warnings and see what they’re doing and call them on the intent. Just being hypersensitive so we don’t fall prey to grey zone activities,” Saltzman said.

The U.S. Space Force, founded in 2019, also does not have a direct line of communication with its Russian counterpart.

(Reporting by Sakura Murakami and Nobuhiro Kubo; editing by Philippa Fletcher and Toby Chopra)

By Gram Slattery, James Oliphant and Nathan Layne

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Florida Governor Ron DeSantis had a chance in April to address Donald Trump’s growing momentum toward the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. Like several such opportunities, he let it pass him by.

    DeSantis was in Japan at the time on an international tour – a step often taken by presidential hopefuls to burnish their foreign policy credentials. Trump had launched his own candidacy five months earlier and had spent much of that time attacking the governor, who was considered his most formidable potential challenger but had yet to declare.

    Asked on camera about falling behind Trump in the polls, DeSantis awkwardly played coy. His eyes opened wide and his head wobbled from side to side as he tried to avoid answering the question, in what became a viral video clip.

    “I’m not … I’m not a candidate, so we’ll see if and when that changes,” the governor said.

    Allies, advisers, and people close to the campaign now concede that DeSantis’ reluctance in the weeks before announcing his candidacy to engage with Trump – on the Japan trip and elsewhere – was one of several costly strategic errors.

    Reuters spoke to 16 political operatives and donors close to DeSantis to reconstruct the roughly 10-week period from mid-March – before Trump’s first criminal indictment in New York – to DeSantis’ campaign launch on May 24.

    Several of the people said those weeks are crucial to understanding why DeSantis, once seen as the party’s best hope of moving on from the tumult surrounding Trump, is now almost 40 points behind the former president, according to the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll.

    The unforced errors in that early stage had a lasting impact on DeSantis’ campaign, they acknowledged.

    After Trump jumped into the race late last year, DeSantis waited for months to get in, dodging the subject of a presidential run with the media and refusing to respond to Trump’s attacks.

    DeSantis hoped a productive Florida state legislative session would boost his candidacy, according to the operatives and people close to the governor. Instead, it has saddled him with a restrictive abortion measure that has turned off some key donors.

    During those weeks, the gap between Trump and DeSantis mushroomed from roughly 8 percentage points to 34 points, according to data analysis website FiveThirtyEight. With DeSantis now more than halfway from his official launch to the first primary contest in Iowa this January, many allies are asking what – if anything – the campaign should have done differently.

    Eight advisers, allies, donors, individuals involved in his fundraising efforts or people close to DeSantis told Reuters the governor placed too much emphasis on finishing Florida’s legislative session without appearing to be running for president.

    In hindsight, such a distinction likely did not matter to voters, those people said, and left DeSantis vulnerable to attacks from Trump, as he refused to personally defend himself from the former president’s broadsides.

    “What happened was we created this vacuum of vulnerability,” said one person involved in the governor’s strategy, who said he “100%” wished the governor had declared a presidential bid earlier.

    The DeSantis campaign told Reuters it did not want to discuss any past strategic decisions and was focused on preparing for the first nominating contests, which kick off with the Iowa caucus on Jan. 15. DeSantis’ aides say they have made some course corrections in the wake of the rocky stretch around the campaign’s launch.

TRUMP FILLED THE VACUUM

Three advisers involved in formulating DeSantis’ strategy or close to top campaign staff, as well as some Florida-based donors, said that in hindsight they would have pushed DeSantis to more forcefully respond to Trump’s attacks early on – including by moving up his formal launch.

    When DeSantis did jump in, it was via a glitchy launch on X, formerly known on Twitter, that even campaign staff privately concede was a disaster.

    Trump and his aides wasted no time in trying to fill the vacuum that DeSantis had created. They embarked on a strategy to weaken DeSantis in the eyes of Republican voters, particularly by portraying him as a threat to Social Security and Medicare – the healthcare program for seniors – because he supported restructuring the programs when he was a member of Congress.

    “The president was dead set on attacking Ron DeSantis as early as possible,” Chris LaCivita, Trump’s co-campaign manager, told Reuters.

    “DeSantis has his dirty fingers all over senior entitlements. Like cutting Medicare, slashing Social Security. Even raising our retirement age,” one TV ad released by MAGA, Inc., a fund-raising super PAC supporting Trump, intoned.

    According to a Reuters analysis, Trump himself hit DeSantis over Social Security and Medicare in speeches, interviews and on social media more than 40 times between November, when Trump launched his campaign, and DeSantis’ announcement in late May.

    LaCivita said the Trump campaign tried to take advantage of the fact that DeSantis was at that point still largely unknown by a large swath of the Republican electorate.

    “When you have so little name ID in that position, you are essentially a blank canvas, and you can sit around and wait for your opponent to paint their picture, or you can paint it for him,” LaCivita said.

    As DeSantis continued to delay his entry, his donors were getting restless. One prominent donor complained to Reuters in March that DeSantis was not “cranked up” enough. “They really haven’t started hammering Trump,” the donor said.

    “At least 50 pecent of the problems that the DeSantis campaign has faced has come because of Trump’s messaging,” said Ford O’Connell, a Republican strategist in Florida. “If DeSantis tripped and fell on the campaign trail, Trump’s people made you know it happened.”

    NOT A CANDIDATE

    DeSantis had his own timetable for launching his candidacy and he would not be stampeded by Trump into moving earlier, according to interviews with two people close to the governor.

    DeSantis, who painted himself as a man who could get things done without Trump’s drama, wanted to wait until the Republican-controlled legislature in Florida passed bills that he could sell on the campaign trail.

    Some of those bills were connected to DeSantis’ “anti-woke” crusade, such as expanding the state’s ban on teaching gender-identity concepts. Others were cherished conservative policy goals, such as loosing restrictions on concealed weapons.

    But the legislative session has become best known for an abortion bill that proved repellant to some major donors who worried that the measure was so restrictive that it would turn off moderate voters and make DeSantis unelectable.

    Conservatives in the Republican-dominated legislature passeda ban in April that would outlaw the practice at six weeks, among the most restrictive in the nation. While DeSantis did not lobby for the bill, he had vowed during his re-election campaign to sign whatever measure was presented to him. He ended up signing the bill at night with little fanfare.

    In August, hotel entrepreneur Robert Bigelow, the biggest individual donor to the main pro-DeSantis super PAC, told Reuters he was cutting the governor off in part due to his abortion stance.

    People close to DeSantis told Reuters that it has been difficult at times to square donors’ unhappiness over the ban with the campaign’s desire to appeal to religious conservatives. The campaign is staking much of its future on Iowa, where conservative evangelicals, Catholics and Lutherans make up much of the voting base.

    DeSantis’ reluctance to enter the race earlier in the spring caused other headaches. He avoided personally seeking endorsements from any of the 20 Republican lawmakers in the U.S. Congress representing Florida, according to two people with knowledge of the matter, in part because he thought doing so might seem impolitic since he had not officially declared his candidacy.

    Instead, he had a Tallahassee-based ally named Ryan Tyson reach out, those people said. Meanwhile, Trump was working the phones and hosting lawmakers at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, seeking their support.

    DeSantis’ failure to talk to those lawmakers directly, those people argued, likely contributed to much of the delegation coming out in support of Trump in mid-April. The endorsements helped drive a narrative that Trump’s nomination was inevitable, they said.

    LESSONS LEARNED

    Aides say DeSantis’ campaign has sought to make some strategic adjustments. After initially eschewing appearances in mainstream media, the governor has regularly sat for interviews to raise his profile and push back at Trump, according to two people close to the governor.

    DeSantis has also leaned into small-scale retail politics, hoping to give voters a better sense of him at a personal level. He is laser-focused on trying to stop Trump’s momentum by winning the first Republican nominating contest in Iowa.

The midwestern state uses a caucus system, during which Republicans show up to local meetings to express their candidate preference. DeSantis’ allies say that could help them as the system tends favor campaigns with sophisticated operations promoting turnout.

    “The reality is: Just be steady. Be disciplined. Outwork the competition and organize. That’s how you win in Iowa, and that’s exactly what we’re doing,” David Polyansky, a top DeSantis adviser, told Reuters.

    Evan Power, vice chairman of the Florida Republican Party who is remaining neutral in the race, said he doesn’t think it would have made much of a difference if DeSantis had entered the race earlier.

    “No matter what he was going to do, these guys were going to attack him out of the gate,” Power said.

    Even so, Power conceded that DeSantis did not need to wait for the legislative session to wrap up in May. “I don’t think it was vital, but that was the strategy he wanted. It wasn’t necessary.”

(Reporting by Gram Slattery, Jim Oliphant and Nathan Layne; Additional reporting by Alexandra Ulmer in San Francisco; Editing by Ross Colvin and Daniel Flynn)

By Gram Slattery, James Oliphant and Nathan Layne

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Florida Governor Ron DeSantis had a chance in April to address Donald Trump’s growing momentum toward the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. Like several such opportunities, he let it pass him by.

    DeSantis was in Japan at the time on an international tour – a step often taken by presidential hopefuls to burnish their foreign policy credentials. Trump had launched his own candidacy five months earlier and had spent much of that time attacking the governor, who was considered his most formidable potential challenger but had yet to declare.

    Asked on camera about falling behind Trump in the polls, DeSantis awkwardly played coy. His eyes opened wide and his head wobbled from side to side as he tried to avoid answering the question, in what became a viral video clip.

    “I’m not … I’m not a candidate, so we’ll see if and when that changes,” the governor said.

    Allies, advisers, and people close to the campaign now concede that DeSantis’ reluctance in the weeks before announcing his candidacy to engage with Trump – on the Japan trip and elsewhere – was one of several costly strategic errors.

    Reuters spoke to 16 political operatives and donors close to DeSantis to reconstruct the roughly 10-week period from mid-March – before Trump’s first criminal indictment in New York – to DeSantis’ campaign launch on May 24.

    Several of the people said those weeks are crucial to understanding why DeSantis, once seen as the party’s best hope of moving on from the tumult surrounding Trump, is now almost 40 points behind the former president, according to the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll.

    The unforced errors in that early stage had a lasting impact on DeSantis’ campaign, they acknowledged.

    After Trump jumped into the race late last year, DeSantis waited for months to get in, dodging the subject of a presidential run with the media and refusing to respond to Trump’s attacks.

    DeSantis hoped a productive Florida state legislative session would boost his candidacy, according to the operatives and people close to the governor. Instead, it has saddled him with a restrictive abortion measure that has turned off some key donors.

    During those weeks, the gap between Trump and DeSantis mushroomed from roughly 8 percentage points to 34 points, according to data analysis website FiveThirtyEight. With DeSantis now more than halfway from his official launch to the first primary contest in Iowa this January, many allies are asking what – if anything – the campaign should have done differently.

    Eight advisers, allies, donors, individuals involved in his fundraising efforts or people close to DeSantis told Reuters the governor placed too much emphasis on finishing Florida’s legislative session without appearing to be running for president.

    In hindsight, such a distinction likely did not matter to voters, those people said, and left DeSantis vulnerable to attacks from Trump, as he refused to personally defend himself from the former president’s broadsides.

    “What happened was we created this vacuum of vulnerability,” said one person involved in the governor’s strategy, who said he “100%” wished the governor had declared a presidential bid earlier.

    The DeSantis campaign told Reuters it did not want to discuss any past strategic decisions and was focused on preparing for the first nominating contests, which kick off with the Iowa caucus on Jan. 15. DeSantis’ aides say they have made some course corrections in the wake of the rocky stretch around the campaign’s launch.

TRUMP FILLED THE VACUUM

Three advisers involved in formulating DeSantis’ strategy or close to top campaign staff, as well as some Florida-based donors, said that in hindsight they would have pushed DeSantis to more forcefully respond to Trump’s attacks early on – including by moving up his formal launch.

    When DeSantis did jump in, it was via a glitchy launch on X, formerly known on Twitter, that even campaign staff privately concede was a disaster.

    Trump and his aides wasted no time in trying to fill the vacuum that DeSantis had created. They embarked on a strategy to weaken DeSantis in the eyes of Republican voters, particularly by portraying him as a threat to Social Security and Medicare – the healthcare program for seniors – because he supported restructuring the programs when he was a member of Congress.

    “The president was dead set on attacking Ron DeSantis as early as possible,” Chris LaCivita, Trump’s co-campaign manager, told Reuters.

    “DeSantis has his dirty fingers all over senior entitlements. Like cutting Medicare, slashing Social Security. Even raising our retirement age,” one TV ad released by MAGA, Inc., a fund-raising super PAC supporting Trump, intoned.

    According to a Reuters analysis, Trump himself hit DeSantis over Social Security and Medicare in speeches, interviews and on social media more than 40 times between November, when Trump launched his campaign, and DeSantis’ announcement in late May.

    LaCivita said the Trump campaign tried to take advantage of the fact that DeSantis was at that point still largely unknown by a large swath of the Republican electorate.

    “When when you have so little name ID in that position, you are essentially a blank canvas, and you can sit around and wait for your opponent to paint their picture, or you can paint it for him,” LaCivita said.

    As DeSantis continued to delay his entry, his donors were getting restless. One prominent donor complained to Reuters in March that DeSantis was not “cranked up” enough. “They really haven’t started hammering Trump,” the donor said.

    “At least 50 pecent of the problems that the DeSantis campaign has faced has come because of Trump’s messaging,” said Ford O’Connell, a Republican strategist in Florida. “If DeSantis tripped and fell on the campaign trail, Trump’s people made you know it happened.”

    NOT A CANDIDATE

    DeSantis had his own timetable for launching his candidacy and he would not be stampeded by Trump into moving earlier, according to interviews with two people close to the governor.

    DeSantis, who painted himself as a man who could get things done without Trump’s drama, wanted to wait until the Republican-controlled legislature in Florida passed bills that he could sell on the campaign trail.

    Some of those bills were connected to DeSantis’ “anti-woke” crusade, such as expanding the state’s ban on teaching gender-identity concepts. Others were cherished conservative policy goals, such as loosing restrictions on concealed weapons.

    But the legislative session has become best known for an abortion bill that proved repellant to some major donors who worried that the measure was so restrictive that it would turn off moderate voters and make DeSantis unelectable.

    Conservatives in the Republican-dominated legislature passeda ban in April that would outlaw the practice at six weeks, among the most restrictive in the nation. While DeSantis did not lobby for the bill, he had vowed during his re-election campaign to sign whatever measure was presented to him. He ended up signing the bill at night with little fanfare.

    In August, hotel entrepreneur Robert Bigelow, the biggest individual donor to the main pro-DeSantis super PAC, told Reuters he was cutting the governor off in part due to his abortion stance.

    People close to DeSantis told Reuters that it has been difficult at times to square donors’ unhappiness over the ban with the campaign’s desire to appeal to religious conservatives. The campaign is staking much of its future on Iowa, where conservative evangelicals, Catholics and Lutherans make up much of the voting base.

    DeSantis’ reluctance to enter the race earlier in the spring caused other headaches. He avoided personally seeking endorsements from any of the 20 Republican lawmakers in the U.S. Congress representing Florida, according to two people with knowledge of the matter, in part because he thought doing so might seem impolitic since he had not officially declared his candidacy.

    Instead, he had a Tallahassee-based ally named Ryan Tyson reach out, those people said. Meanwhile, Trump was working the phones and hosting lawmakers at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, seeking their support.

    DeSantis’ failure to talk to those lawmakers directly, those people argued, likely contributed to much of the delegation coming out in support of Trump in mid-April. The endorsements helped drive a narrative that Trump’s nomination was inevitable, they said.

    LESSONS LEARNED

    Aides say DeSantis’ campaign has sought to make some strategic adjustments. After initially eschewing appearances in mainstream media, the governor has regularly sat for interviews to raise his profile and push back at Trump, according to two people close to the governor.

    DeSantis has also leaned into small-scale retail politics, hoping to give voters a better sense of him at a personal level. He is laser-focused on trying to stop Trump’s momentum by winning the first Republican nominating contest in Iowa.

The midwestern state uses a caucus system, during which Republicans show up to local meetings to express their candidate preference. DeSantis’ allies say that could help them as the system tends favor campaigns with sophisticated operations promoting turnout.

    “The reality is: Just be steady. Be disciplined. Outwork the competition and organize. That’s how you win in Iowa, and that’s exactly what we’re doing,” David Polyansky, a top DeSantis adviser, told Reuters.

    Evan Power, vice chairman of the Florida Republican Party who is remaining neutral in the race, said he doesn’t think it would have made much of a difference if DeSantis had entered the race earlier.

    “No matter what he was going to do, these guys were going to attack him out of the gate,” Power said.

    Even so, Power conceded that DeSantis did not need to wait for the legislative session to wrap up in May. “I don’t think it was vital, but that was the strategy he wanted. It wasn’t necessary.”

(Reporting by Gram Slattery, Jim Oliphant and Nathan Layne; Additional reporting by Alexandra Ulmer in San Francisco; Editing by Ross Colvin and Daniel Flynn)

By Daniel Trotta

(Reuters) – California is on the verge of recording a second straight year of relatively mild wildfire damage, after historic rains put the state on track to avoid the calamities of recent fire seasons.

The state of nearly 40 million people has received 141% of average precipitation over the past 12 months, according to the state Department of Water Resources, ending a two-decade drought.

The year included a long spring and a cool summer that in August produced California’s first major hurricane in 84 years, increasing moisture in the trees, brush, grasses and soil and helping prevent the typical outbreak of multiple major fires around Labor Day in early September.

“This is my 47th fire season and this is the first year in a really long time that we haven’t had tons of fires on either side of Labor Day,” said Tim Chavez, assistant chief of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire). The fire season unofficially runs from June to October.

   Cal Fire also says the state benefited from a program that nearly doubled the acreage deprived of fuel by prescribed burns from a year ago and the addition of 24 aircraft leased during fire season that improved response times.

“Our biggest compliment is when people never hear about all the fires that we respond to,” Cal Fire spokesman Nick Schuler said.

But the grasses and brush that flourished from the rain will build up and dry out when drought conditions inevitably return, said Michele Steinberg, wildfire division director for the National Fire Prevention Association.

After disastrous years in 2020 and 2021, wildfire damage this season has been largely limited to the sparsely populated northwest corner of the state.

Cal Fire has reported 5,474 wildfires burning 257,407 acres (104,169 hectares) in 2023, similar to the same period of 2022. The five-year average over the same interval is 6,142 fires and 1.2 million acres burned.

In 2020, more than 8,600 wildfires killed 33 people and consumed 4.3 million acres.

Western Canada and other parts of the United States were less fortunate this year, notably Hawaii, where the Lahaina fire last month killed 97 people, the deadliest U.S. wildfire in more than 100 years.

Experts warn California’s favorable conditions could change quickly, especially in more arid Southern California, where a shift in wind patterns could dry up excess moisture with warm desert air.

“We’re really only a prolonged heatwave followed by a windstorm away from having major fires,” Chavez said.

UCLA meteorologist Daniel Swain said climate change is going to result in more extreme dry years periodically interspersed with more extreme wet years. He said 2024 could be above average due to the weather pattern El Niño.

“We will see those extreme fire seasons return. But we’ll also get these breaks,” Swain said on his regular YouTube program last week. “So, a reprieve. I’ll take it.”

(Reporting by Daniel Trotta; Editing by Shri Navaratnam)

By Andy Sullivan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Republican-controlled House of Representatives is due to try to advance steep spending cuts this week that stand no chance of becoming law and could force a partial shutdown of the U.S. government by next Sunday.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy sought to avoid that scenario when he hammered out a spending agreement with Democratic President Joe Biden this spring. But some members of his own party have threatened to depose him if he does not support steeper cuts that are sure to be rejected by the Democratic-controlled Senate.

Hundreds of thousands of federal workers will be furloughed and a wide range of services, from financial oversight to medical research, will be suspended if Congress does not provide funding for the new fiscal year that starts Oct. 1.

Congress typically misses that deadline and passes stopgap spending bills to avoid disruption while they finish their work.

But McCarthy has been unable so far to muster support for a temporary spending extension as a group of hardline Republicans have refused to go along. Republicans control the House by a narrow 221-212 majority and have few votes to spare.

McCarthy has put the stopgap bill on hold and instead will advance legislation that reflects conservative priorities.

When the House returns on Tuesday, lawmakers expected to take up four spending bills for the coming fiscal year that would impose new restrictions on abortion access, undo an $11 billion Biden administration climate initiative, and resume construction of the Mexico-U.S. border wall, a signature initiative of former President Donald Trump.

Those bills are certain to get rejected by the Senate, and the White House has said Biden would veto two of them.

McCarthy has said he hopes the effort would buy goodwill and allow him to pass a stopgap that would avoid a shutdown.

But Representative Matt Gaetz, a prominent McCarthy antagonist, said on Sunday he would not back a stopgap, even if it results in a shutdown.

“If the departments of Labor and Education have to shut down for a few days as we get their appropriations in line, that’s certainly not something that is optimal. But I think it’s better than continuing on the current path,” he said on Fox News.

Another hardliner, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, said in a statement she would not even support bringing the spending bills up for debate on the House floor, because Ukraine aid is included with them.

Greene and other members of the hardline House Freedom Caucus have pushed to cut agency spending to $1.47 trillion, which is $120 billion less than Biden and McCarthy agreed to in their May compromise.

That only accounts for a fraction of the total U.S. budget, which will come to $6.4 trillion for this fiscal year. Lawmakers are not considering cuts to popular benefit programs like Social Security and Medicare, which are projected to grow dramatically as the population ages.

The Senate, meanwhile, is scheduled to advance a stopgap spending measure on Tuesday. If it passes, that could force McCarthy to rely on Democratic votes to pass it as well and avoid a shutdown before Oct. 1, which would incur the anger of his right flank and potentially put his job at risk.

Trump has urged Republicans to force a shutdown to interfere with his two federal criminal cases. The Justice Department says criminal prosecutions would continue in the event of a shutdown.

(Reporting by Andy Sullivan; Editing by Lincoln Feast)

By Andy Sullivan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Republican-controlled House of Representatives is due to try to advance steep spending cuts this week that stand no chance of becoming law and could force a partial shutdown of the U.S. government by next Sunday.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy sought to avoid that scenario when he hammered out a spending agreement with Democratic President Joe Biden this spring. But some members of his own party have threatened to depose him if he does not support steeper cuts that are sure to be rejected by the Democratic-controlled Senate.

Hundreds of thousands of federal workers will be furloughed and a wide range of services, from financial oversight to medical research, will be suspended if Congress does not provide funding for the new fiscal year that starts Oct. 1.

Congress typically misses that deadline and passes stopgap spending bills to avoid disruption while they finish their work.

But McCarthy has been unable so far to muster support for a temporary spending extension as a group of hardline Republicans have refused to go along. Republicans control the House by a narrow 221-212 majority and have few votes to spare.

McCarthy has put the stopgap bill on hold and instead will advance legislation that reflects conservative priorities.

When the House returns on Tuesday, lawmakers expected to take up four spending bills for the coming fiscal year that would impose new restrictions on abortion access, undo an $11 billion Biden administration climate initiative, and resume construction of the Mexico-U.S. border wall, a signature initiative of former President Donald Trump.

Those bills are certain to get rejected by the Senate, and the White House has said Biden would veto two of them.

McCarthy has said he hopes the effort would buy goodwill and allow him to pass a stopgap that would avoid a shutdown.

But Representative Matt Gaetz, a prominent McCarthy antagonist, said on Sunday he would not back a stopgap, even if it results in a shutdown.

“If the departments of Labor and Education have to shut down for a few days as we get their appropriations in line, that’s certainly not something that is optimal. But I think it’s better than continuing on the current path,” he said on Fox News.

Another hardliner, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, said in a statement she would not even support bringing the spending bills up for debate on the House floor, because Ukraine aid is included with them.

Greene and other members of the hardline House Freedom Caucus have pushed to cut agency spending to $1.47 trillion, which is $120 billion less than Biden and McCarthy agreed to in their May compromise.

That only accounts for a fraction of the total U.S. budget, which will come to $6.4 trillion for this fiscal year. Lawmakers are not considering cuts to popular benefit programs like Social Security and Medicare, which are projected to grow dramatically as the population ages.

The Senate, meanwhile, is scheduled to advance a stopgap spending measure on Tuesday. If it passes, that could force McCarthy to rely on Democratic votes to pass it as well and avoid a shutdown before Oct. 1, which would incur the anger of his right flank and potentially put his job at risk.

Trump has urged Republicans to force a shutdown to interfere with his two federal criminal cases. The Justice Department says criminal prosecutions would continue in the event of a shutdown.

(Reporting by Andy Sullivan; Editing by Lincoln Feast)