Elections

“We need to be united,” said the Republican leader Kevin McCarthy, who worked behind the scenes for days on behalf of Representative Elise Stefanik of New York.WASHINGTON — Representative Kevin McCarthy, the minority leader, on Sunday officially endorsed Representative Elise Stefanik in her bid to oust the No. 3 House Republican, Representative Liz Cheney, who has hemorrhaged support over her repudiation of former President Donald J. Trump’s lies about election fraud.“Yes, I do,” Mr. McCarthy told the Fox News host Maria Bartiromo when she asked whether he supported Ms. Stefanik’s push to become the Republican conference chairwoman.“We need to be united, and that starts with leadership,” Mr. McCarthy said. “That’s why we will have a vote next week.”The endorsement from Mr. McCarthy — who had been working behind the scenes on Ms. Stefanik’s behalf for days — came after Mr. Trump and Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the No. 2 House Republican, endorsed Ms. Stefanik.The move made clear that fealty to Mr. Trump and willingness to embrace his false claims of election fraud have become the ultimate litmus tests among Republicans for holding a leadership position in the House. Ms. Cheney, who represents Wyoming and was once considered a future speaker, has a more conservative voting record than Ms. Stefanik. But Ms. Stefanik, a fourth-term congresswoman from New York, has joined in Mr. Trump’s efforts to cast doubt on the legitimacy of President Biden’s victory in the 2020 election.Representative Jim Banks of Indiana, the chairman of the conservative Republican Study Committee, made the case against Ms. Cheney on “Fox News Sunday.”“Right now it’s clear that she doesn’t represent the views of the majority of our conference,” Mr. Banks, who has co-sponsored legislation with Ms. Cheney opposing troop reductions in Afghanistan, told the show’s host, Chris Wallace.Mr. Banks — who like Mr. McCarthy and Mr. Scalise joined in objections to certifying Mr. Biden’s victory — added that his split from Ms. Cheney came after she criticized a memo he had written outlining a strategy for winning working-class voters.Representative Kevin McCarthy, the minority leader, helped Representative Liz Cheney turn back a challenge to her leadership post in February.Joshua Roberts/Reuters“Liz Cheney is the only Republican leader who attacked the memo about making the Republican Party the party of the working class,” he said.Some House Republicans tried to oust Ms. Cheney from her leadership post in February after she voted to impeach Mr. Trump for his role in inciting the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Ms. Cheney easily turned back that challenge — winning a 145-to-61 caucus vote — after Mr. McCarthy delivered an impassioned speech in her defense.But now it is other Republicans who are rallying to her side.Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, who voted to convict Mr. Trump in his second impeachment trial, argued that the party needed to adopt a bigger-tent philosophy in which both supporters and critics of Mr. Trump were welcome.“You look at polls, there’s a whole group of folks that agree with Liz Cheney, and so for us to win in 2022 and 2024, we need everybody,” Mr. Cassidy said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”Representative Adam Kinzinger, Republican of Illinois, pointed out that Mr. McCarthy had said Mr. Trump bore responsibility for the Capitol riot — only to later insist that others stop talking about it.“It is incredible,” Mr. Kinzinger said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “Liz Cheney is saying exactly what Kevin McCarthy said the day of the insurrection. She has just consistently been saying it.”“For me, I’m a conservative,” he added. “I’m going to fight for the soul of this party. But every member, not just leadership, every congressman, every state representative, every member of the party that pulls a ballot in the primary has to decide, are we going to exist on lies or exist on the truth?” More

A makeshift review of the vote in the state’s largest county has pleased followers of former President Donald J. Trump but is being widely criticized as a partisan exercise.Directly outside the Veterans Memorial Coliseum near downtown Phoenix, the Crazy Times Carnival wraps up an 11-day run on Sunday, a spectacle of thrill rides, games and food stands that headlines the Arizona State Fair this year.Inside the coliseum, a Republican-ordered exhumation and review of 2.1 million votes in the state’s November election is heading into its third week, an exercise that has risen to become the lodestar of rigged-vote theorists — and shows no sign of ending soon.Arizona’s Secretary of State Katie Hobbs noted the carnival’s presence outside the coliseum when she challenged the competence and objectivity of the review last week, expressing concern about the security of the ballots inside in an apparent dig at what has become a spectacle of a very different sort. There is no evidence that former President Donald J. Trump’s narrow loss in Arizona’s presidential election in the fall was fraudulent. Nonetheless, 16 Republicans in the State Senate voted to subpoena ballots in Maricopa County, home to Phoenix and two-thirds of the state’s vote in November, for an audit to show Trump die-hards that their fraud concerns were taken seriously.As recently as a week ago, officials said the review would be completed by May 14. But with that deadline a week away, only about 250,000 of the county’s 2.1 million ballots have been processed in the hand recount that is a central part of the review, Ken Bennett, a liaison between those conducting the review and the senators, said on Saturday.At that rate, the hand recount would not be finished until August.The delay is but the latest snag in an exercise that many critics claim is wrecking voters’ confidence in elections, not restoring it. Since the State Senate first ordered it in December, the review has been dogged by controversy. Republicans dominate the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, which supervised the election in the county. They said it was fair and accurate and opposed the review.After a week marked by mounting accusations of partisan skulduggery, mismanagement and even potential illegality, at least one Republican supporter of the new count said it could not end soon enough.“It makes us look like idiots,” State Senator Paul Boyer, a Republican from suburban Phoenix who supported the audit, said on Friday. “Looking back, I didn’t think it would be this ridiculous. It’s embarrassing to be a state senator at this point.”Civil-rights advocates say political fallout is the least of the concerns. They say the Arizona review is emblematic of a broader effort by pro-Trump Republicans to undermine faith in American democracy and shift control of elections to partisans who share their agenda. “This subpoena and this audit is not dissimilar to what’s happening with a number of bills being pushed nationally that basically take fair, objective processes and move them into partisan political bodies,” said Alex Gulotta, the state’s director of All Voting Is Local, a national voting-rights advocacy group. “This is not an aberration. This is a window into the future of where some people would like our elections to go.”Mr. Bennett, a former Republican secretary of state and onetime candidate for governor, said companies hired to conduct the review plan to hire more temporary workers to step up the pace of the count. But its conclusion is still weeks away.Cyber Ninjas contractors examining ballots from the 2020 general election at Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Phoenix. Two previous election audits found no evidence of widespread fraud.Courtney Pedroza/Getty ImagesLater this month, workers will have to suspend work and move their entire operation — work stations, imaging equipment, stacks of uncounted ballots that cover much of the coliseum floor — into storage elsewhere in the building to make way for a spate of high-school graduation ceremonies long scheduled to take place the week of May 17.In an interview, Mr. Bennett said that no storage site had been selected, but that he was optimistic that the hand count would be wrapped up quickly.“When we come back, we’ll have the last week of May and all of June, but I don’t think it’s going to take that long,” he said. “The hand count should be done by the middle of June.”Senators have cast the review as a way to reassure those who have supported Mr. Trump’s baseless claim that his 10,457-vote loss in November is the result of a rigged election. While it will not change the outcome of the election, they said, it may put to rest any doubts about its results.But doubts about the true purpose blossomed when Karen Fann, the Republican president of the State Senate, hired a Florida firm, Cyber Ninjas, to conduct the review. Its chief executive had promoted on Twitter a conspiracy theory that Mr. Trump’s loss in Arizona was the result of rigged voting machines.Journalists, election experts and representatives of the secretary of state, whose office is responsible for elections in Arizona, have struggled with getting permission to observe the review, while the far-right One America News cable outlet has raised money to finance it and has been given broad access to the proceedings.Claims of partisanship ballooned after it was revealed that one man who was hired to recount ballots, former State Representative Anthony Kern of Arizona, was a leader of the local “stop the steal” movement and had been photographed on the steps of the U.S. Capitol during the riot on Jan. 6 in Washington. Mr. Kern had been on the Maricopa ballot, both as a Republican candidate for state representative and as a pro-Trump presidential elector.The review came under heavy fire last week from both the Arizona secretary of state and the federal Justice Department, which separately cited widespread reports that slipshod handling of ballots and other election items threatened to permanently spoil the official record of the vote. The Justice Department noted that federal law requires record to be kept intact under penalty of a fine or imprisonment. Some of the most serious questions involve the management of the review.On Wednesday, Katie Hobbs, the Arizona secretary of state, charged that the review was being conducted with uncertified equipment and that ballot counting rules were “a significant departure from standard best practices.”She wrote: “Though conspiracy theorists are undoubtedly cheering on these types of inspections — and perhaps providing financial support because of their use — they do little other than further marginalize the professionalism and intent of this ‘audit.’”After her claims drew a number of death threats from Trump supporters, Gov. Doug Ducey of Arizona ordered state police protection this past week for Ms. Hobbs, a Democrat.The Justice Department raised issues about the protection of the ballots, and it also questioned whether another aspect of the process — a plan to go to voters’ homes to verify that they had actually cast ballots, as election records showed — could violate federal laws against intimidating voters.In her reply to the department, Ms. Fann defended the review, saying it is being conducted under “comprehensive and rigorous security protocols that will fully preserve all physical and electronic ballots, tabulation systems and other election materials.”But she appeared to back away from the plan to personally interview voters, stating that the State Senate “determined several weeks ago that it would indefinitely defer that component of the audit.”Boxes of Maricopa County ballots cast in the 2020 general election were brought to Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Phoenix to be examined and recounted as part of an audit ordered by the Arizona Senate.Pool photo by Matt YorkMs. Fann said in a letter on Friday that the Justice Department’s concerns were “misplaced” and that strict rules safeguarding documents and equipment were in place. On Saturday, Mr. Bennett said the concerns about the integrity of the process were “completely unfounded, and I believe they come from people who have always decided that they don’t want the audit at all.”Ms. Fann, who had largely remained silent about criticism of the review, chose last week to mount a public defense of it. Appearing in an interview on the Phoenix PBS news outlet, she applauded the role of One America News in supporting the review and said the Senate had no role in choosing Mr. Kern or others who counted votes.“I don’t know why he’s there or how he got there, but that’s one of the people that was selected, and that is what it is,” she said. “I don’t know that it’s a great thing, to be honest.”And she said that the news media had blown concerns about the objectivity and management of the review out of proportion.“They talk about conspiracy theories,” she said, referring to reports that the review is examining ballots for evidence of bamboo fibers and watermarks baselessly said to be signs of fraud. “But I tell you what, there’s almost a reverse conspiracy theory to demean this audit.”She suggested that her support of the review would be proved right in the end.“I think we’ll find irregularities that is going to say, you know what, there’s this many dead people voted, or this many who may have voted that don’t live here any more — we’re going to find those,” she said. “We know they exist, but everybody keeps saying, ‘You have no proof.’ Well, maybe we’ll get the proof out of this so we can fix those holes that are there.”More common is the notion that the review has become an alarming exercise in undermining faith in America’s elections.One expert on election law, David J. Becker, founder of the Center for Election Administration and Research in Washington, said Ms. Fann’s assurances about the integrity of ballots and other records appeared unlikely to satisfy the Justice Department.“There’s no question that contamination of ballots and records is an ongoing issue that raises serious concerns about federal law,” said Mr. Becker, a former lawyer in the Justice Department’s voting rights section. “We’ve never seen anything like this before, where some haphazard effort allows some unknown out-of-state contractor to start riffling through ballots. I think it’s pretty clear that the response does not resolve concerns about ballot integrity.” More

Jean Kim said in an interview that Mr. Stringer, a Democratic candidate for mayor, had abused a position of power to make unwanted advances. He has denied her allegations.He was an ambitious state assemblyman and a rising star in the liberal hothouse of Upper West Side politics. She was a New York newcomer, born in South Korea, raised in Ohio and eager to break into the city’s thriving Democratic scene.The two — Scott M. Stringer and Jean Kim — would eventually play central roles in this year’s New York City mayor’s race. But their paths first intersected more than 20 years ago, initially at political events, and then more intensely as Mr. Stringer ran an unsuccessful campaign for public advocate in 2001.That summer and fall, Ms. Kim, working unpaid on his campaign, regularly attended Mr. Stringer’s events. They socialized as well, gathering over drinks with other young activists at Upper West Side bars like Merchants. On at least one occasion, there was a kiss.On this much, Mr. Stringer and Ms. Kim largely agree. But their accounts of the nature of their relationship diverge sharply from there, as do their views of the power dynamics at play. The clashing narratives have thrown Mr. Stringer’s mayoral campaign into crisis after Ms. Kim accused him of sexual misconduct, sapping his momentum and driving many of his allies away.To Mr. Stringer, Ms. Kim was a peer with whom he had an “on-and-off” consensual relationship that spanned four to five months. At the time, he was 41. Ms. Kim was 30. They were both unmarried.To Ms. Kim, who says she was intensely involved with Mr. Stringer’s campaign while trying to forge her own path in politics, he was a mentor who made unwanted advances.Supporters of Ms. Kim at an April news conference where she went public with her allegations against Mr. Stringer. Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York TimesIn an interview at her Manhattan apartment last week, Ms. Kim described three instances during the campaign of unwanted touching in taxis, and she said Mr. Stringer had kissed her and groped her at a bar without her consent, an account she also shared with Gothamist.“He constantly reminded me of his power by saying things like, ‘You want me to make a phone call for you to change your life,’ ‘You want me to make you the first Asian district leader,’” Ms. Kim said. “There was no doubt in my mind that he was powerful and he could make or break me.”Mr. Stringer has denied making unwanted sexual advances and he said he never suggested he could give her that political position. He also objected to the idea that he had significant power over Ms. Kim.“Virtually every one of my friends volunteered on the campaign,” Mr. Stringer, who declined an interview request, said in a statement. “There was no sense in which they were subordinates. While I obviously can’t speak to how any individual felt, I don’t think most people who were part of our social circle would say there was a power dynamic at play.”Presented with Ms. Kim’s description of unwanted advances, Mr. Stringer said, “The way Jean describes our interactions, and what she leaves out, amounts to a fundamental distortion of what happened.”He offered a detailed account of what he has said was a consensual relationship.“I would estimate that on at least a dozen occasions over four to five months, an evening out ended with us kissing,” he said. “Sometimes the kissing was initiated by Jean and sometimes it was initiated by me.”Ms. Kim later said through her lawyer that Mr. Stringer’s account was “absolutely false,” and that she “certainly never initiated a kiss or any physical contact of any kind” with Mr. Stringer.Her lawyer, Patricia Pastor, said she filed a complaint with the New York attorney general’s office, alleging sexual abuse and sexual harassment.“I was never attracted to Stringer in the least,” Ms. Kim said. “He was an older man that I looked up to as a trusted mentor.”For nearly two decades, Ms. Kim largely kept her account of their interactions to herself. But as Mr. Stringer entered the final stretch of the race, appearing on her television often, and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo faced his own allegations of sexual misconduct, she decided to go public with her story, she said.When Mr. Stringer called for Mr. Cuomo to resign, Ms. Kim said she saw it as hypocritical. And when Mr. Stringer’s allies criticized Andrew Yang, a rival mayoral candidate, for “laughing at a misogynistic joke,” she said, “I felt triggered and thought about the abuse I endured.”Ms. Kim said she had not decided whom she was supporting for mayor.Mr. Stringer, Ms. Kim and around a half-dozen people involved in the 2001 race agree that the two shared overlapping social circles and that she actively supported his campaign.Beyond that, it may never be possible to know the full picture of the events of that year. Ms. Kim has not identified anyone from that time who could corroborate her version of events, and she indicated that she had no records from then regarding her allegations.In an interview on Saturday, Ms. Kim’s sister, Susan, said she recalled that at some point in 2001, Jean Kim became “withdrawn and stressed” after having previously been “very enthusiastic” about Mr. Stringer’s campaign. The next year, Susan Kim said, her sister indicated more clearly that she wanted to put distance between herself and Mr. Stringer and their shared political club, though she acknowledged that her sister “occasionally went to certain events after that.”“She did not share any specific details until fairly recently,” Susan Kim, 45, a lawyer in Manhattan, said. “We’re from an Asian family. It’s kind of like a taboo topic for us. So we didn’t really feel comfortable talking about those things.”Ms. Kim said she had not told anyone in detail about her account until she disclosed it to her fiancé, Anthony Caifano, after a brusque encounter with Mr. Stringer following his successful 2013 run for city comptroller. (Mr. Caifano, who attended the interview, confirmed the account. Ms. Pastor also attended.)Experts say there are many reasons that victims of unwanted sexual advances may not share their stories until years later, if ever. Mr. Stringer with his wife, Elyse Buxbaum, last month. He has categorically denied Ms. Kim’s allegations of sexual abuse, saying the two had an “on-and-off” consensual relationship.Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York TimesMr. Stringer’s campaign noted that several apparent discrepancies in Ms. Kim’s account have emerged since she and Ms. Pastor presented the allegations at an April 28 news conference. Such inconsistencies do not prove or disprove whether there was a consensual relationship, but Mr. Stringer’s allies argue that they raise broader doubts about Ms. Kim’s credibility.Ms. Kim and Ms. Pastor have described Ms. Kim as an “unpaid intern,” a term that can conjure an image of a student, or someone just out of college, Mr. Stringer’s allies note. But Mr. Stringer’s team and others who were directly involved in the race dispute that characterization, saying Ms. Kim was a volunteer.In her initial statement, Ms. Kim said Mr. Stringer’s advances had made her so uncomfortable that she decided to move, and to leave the Community Free Democrats, the Upper West Side political club in which they were both active.But she appeared to be listed as a vice president of the club in 2002, which Ms. Pastor did not directly dispute, and she listed herself as a club member on her résumé as late as 2013, as The Intercept has reported.Records show that she also continued to make relatively modest political contributions to Mr. Stringer long after the incidents allegedly occurred. Mr. Stringer’s campaign produced an email showing her asking if she could “be helpful” on his 2013 comptroller campaign as she passed along her résumé.Publicly and privately, supporters of Mr. Stringer who were involved in city politics at that time have questioned Ms. Kim’s description of his influence over his social circle. “The thing about these groups, there was no hierarchy, there was no power dynamic,” said Mike McGuire, a labor official who is part of a coalition that has endorsed Mr. Stringer. “We were all colleagues, friends, tied into the same business. We all hung around together.”.css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1dg6kl4{margin-top:5px;margin-bottom:15px;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-1rh1sk1{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-1rh1sk1 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-1rh1sk1 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1rh1sk1 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:visited{color:#333;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccc;text-decoration-color:#ccc;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}Ms. Kim said she had maintained ties to Mr. Stringer’s orbit because she wanted to build her career, and could not afford to alienate him. After years working in lobbying, Ms. Kim said she is shifting out of the profession and weighing other interests, including activism and stand-up comedy.“This is not a pleasant experience for me,” Ms. Kim said of her decision to make the allegations public now. “I hope to God I don’t have to move out of New York City because of it.”Ms. Kim moved to New York in 1998, she said. She later found a full-time job in public relations and threw herself into the Community Free Democrats.Ms. Pastor said on April 28 that Ms. Kim had been introduced to Mr. Stringer by Eric T. Schneiderman, another club member, whom she met in 2001. He later became New York’s attorney general and resigned after being accused of assault by several women.Ms. Kim later suggested the association was less direct: She said that she had “chatted” with Mr. Schneiderman about her interest in politics in 1998. He directed her to the Community Free Democrats and suggested she seek out Mr. Stringer, she said.Ms. Kim grew animated during the interview while describing a conversation with Mr. Stringer in early 2001 in which, she said, he sketched out an expansive role for her. In addition to her full-time job, she said, she spent about 35 hours a week helping out on the campaign, including traveling to events with Mr. Stringer.“I was just really like, ‘Oh my God, I just hit the jackpot,’” she said. “For somebody who doesn’t know anybody, and now here he is taking me under his wing.”Mr. Stringer said in his statement that there had been no such offer.“Even I wasn’t out campaigning for 35 hours a week — most days, I was holed up in a room for hours on end raising money,” said Mr. Stringer, who, as a state lawmaker, was also traveling between New York City and Albany in 2001.In a cab that summer, Ms. Kim said, Mr. Stringer grazed her knee, suggesting he did so with his hand. Given the adrenaline of the campaign, she brushed off the episode. It happened again a few weeks later as they shared another cab. This time, his hand on her leg was “a little bit more insistent,” and she shifted away, she said.New York’s primaries in 2001 were set for Sept. 11. About a week before, Ms. Kim said, she was at a bar — she believes it was Merchants — with Mr. Stringer and others from their political circle. She and Mr. Stringer were the last to leave. They were at the bar facing each other, she said, when Mr. Stringer kissed her. Ms. Kim tensed up. Then, she said, he kissed her again, this time more passionately.“The fact that I didn’t slap him away, I think he just took that as indication that it was OK,” she said. Then, she said, he “took his hand, and he put it down, like, the back of my pants.”Ms. Kim described being both “horrified” and fearful of alienating Mr. Stringer. She said she sought to turn the conversation back to business. Mr. Stringer warned her not to tell anyone of his advances, she said. Mr. Stringer said Ms. Kim’s account of that remark was “totally and completely false. Our relationship was never a secret, and I would not have said anything of the sort.” Ms. Kim, center, and other supporters trailing Mr. Stringer on the Upper West Side in September 2001 during his campaign for public advocate. Michelle V. Agins/The New York TimesAfter the World Trade Center attacks, the primary was rescheduled for Sept. 25. Ms. Kim said she shared one more cab ride with Mr. Stringer when he made more advances, asking why she would not have sex with him.At a political meeting around that time, she said, he suggested he could make her the area’s first Asian-American district leader — if she proved her loyalty to him. Mr. Stringer denied suggesting that, but offered other details of what he has said was a consensual relationship.“She called me because she wasn’t feeling well, and I went over to her apartment to check on her,” Mr. Stringer said. “After the primary, I remember we had many long, heartfelt conversations, both on the phone and in person, about the disappointment of the election. On a few of those occasions, we kissed.”Ms. Kim said Mr. Stringer may have visited once when she was ill, but she insisted she had never initiated romantic interactions with him.As the interview at Ms. Kim’s apartment concluded, Ms. Pastor, her lawyer, raised an issue that is at the heart of the controversy — a question that has left New York Democrats deeply divided.“Is consent even possible in that situation?” she said.Kitty Bennett contributed research. More

HOUSTON — When I first heard the rumors that Matthew McConaughey was considering a run for governor of Texas, my reaction was fury. Did he not recall Kinky Friedman, the musician-comedian-novelist-gadfly whose candidacy in 2006 helped blow up the Democratic vote and gave us Rick Perry as governor for 14 years?Did he not understand that being governor of the second largest state involves a lot more than cogitating, as Mr. McConaughey does in a commercial sitting at the wheel of a Lincoln MKC, how to get around Old Cyrus the bull, who blocks his path on a desolate West Texas highway? You can’t always back up, turn around and “take the long way,” mister.Just what, I wondered, has Mr. McConaughey been smoking?Celebrities turned politicians have a very mixed record. See: Davy Crockett, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jesse Ventura, Ronald Reagan and, of course, the 45th president. But in a state as dazed and confused as Texas, we don’t need David Wooderson sitting in the statehouse telling us everything is going to be all right, all right, all right.Or do we? Our previous and current governors, Mr. Perry and his successor, Greg Abbott, have done nothing while claiming just that. Maybe Mr. McConaughey could do better.It isn’t news to anyone that many Texans abhor government interference. Mr. Perry seems to think that extends to keeping warm when temperatures drop to record lows. After a cataclysmic storm knocked out the state’s power grid in February, he said, “Texans would be without electricity for longer than three days to keep the federal government out of their business” — a sentiment probably not shared by the friends and families of the 111 people (or more) who died of hypothermia and other storm-related causes.The current legislative session — with Republicans in full control — has been grim. You can’t say they mind government interference when things like women’s reproductive systems or voting rights are involved.What some Republicans call “election integrity” (and others call voter suppression) has been high on the agenda. Despite protests from once powerful conservatives in the business community, the Legislature is looking at proposals that would put new restrictions on early voting, empower partisan poll watchers and the like. And there are moves to make abortion even more difficult for women to obtain in a state that has already imposed severe limits on the procedure and to restrict the rights of Texas’ transgender children and their parents to make their own medical decisions.It was amid this bleak news that I started reconsidering my attitude toward a possible Governor Bongo (For the uninformed: Mr. McConaughey was once arrested at his home in Austin, stoned and naked, for an exuberant session of bongo drumming in the wee hours).Yes, thinking that things couldn’t possibly get worse is never a great way to choose a candidate. But I don’t seem to be alone in thinking that a man who has played a lawyer in the movies might be better for Texas than the lawyers who play at being leaders in the Capitol. An April poll from The Dallas Morning News and the University of Texas at Tyler, revealed that Mr. McConaughey would trounce Mr. Abbott, 45 percent to 33 percent, with 22 percent opting for “someone else” — let’s hope Willie Nelson keeps his hat out of the ring.Since last November, Mr. McConaughey has been hinting about a run. I didn’t consider his memoir, “Greenlights,” a campaign biography, but it could certainly serve that purpose. Some of his pals who interviewed him on the virtual book tour could even serve in his administration: Brené Brown, a self-help dynamo and research professor at the University of Houston, could bring shame awareness education to just about any regulatory board. The voluble Woody Harrelson could replace any Abbott toady remaining on the Public Utility Commission.Mr. Abbott has categorically refused to tap the bloated Rainy Day Fund to help Texans who suffered in the storm, while Mr. McConaughey’s “We’re Texas” virtual concert raised over $7 million in a matter of hours for freeze relief. (A headline in Texas Monthly declared that “Matthew McConaughey and Beyoncé Did More for Texas Than Ted Cruz.”) He can also be a lot more inspirational than his predecessors on his YouTube channel and Instagram; when he wears his glasses and slicks back those sable waves, he looks at least as gubernatorial as Mr. Perry.Mr. McConaughey’s politics are a bit of a mystery, though we can assume that marijuana legalization might get a boost if he were in charge. He’s been fairly vocal about gun control without going nuclear like Beto O’Rourke. But a recent review of Mr. McConaughey’s voting record by The Texas Tribune revealed he’s been a no-show for primary races since 2012.Of the tactics on both sides of the politician spectrum he has said that “it curdles my stomach, man — I have not appreciated it.” Would Mr. McConaughey run as a Democrat or a Republican? That’s as much a mystery as the meaning of his soliloquy at the end of “True Detective.”Texas may not be ready for a philosopher king as a candidate, much less governor, but it sure would be fun to watch Mr. McConaughey debate Mr. Abbott and ambush him with a sensible line like this one from “Greenlights”: “I’ve found that a good plan is to first recognize the problem, then stabilize the situation, organize the response, then respond.”Or this one, delivered with Mr. McConaughey’s interstellar spelling: “Knowin the truth, seein the truth and tellin the truth are all different experiences.”May the best man win, man.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: [email protected] The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

The former presidential aspirants Beto O’Rourke and Julián Castro spoke to a crowd demonstrating outside the State Capitol.AUSTIN, Texas — A day after the Texas House of Representatives voted to make it harder to cast a ballot in a state that already has some of the nation’s most restrictive voting laws, leading Democrats and hundreds of supporters gathered outside the State Capitol on Saturday to protest against legislation steaming toward approval in the Republican-led Legislature. “This is the single greatest attack on our democracy, not just in our lifetime, but perhaps in the lifetime of this very democracy,” said former Representative Beto O’Rourke, who was a Democratic presidential candidate in the 2020 presidential primary.He was joined by a second former Democratic presidential aspirant, Julián Castro, the former San Antonio mayor.Saturday’s rally came a day after the State House of Representatives had voted, 78 to 64, to pass Senate Bill 7, which opponents continued to attack as an assault on voting rights despite a number of modifications added by Democrats. The bill now heads back to the State Senate, where representatives from the two chambers will meet in a conference committee to resolve differences between the two versions in the final three weeks of the session.Mr. O’Rourke, citing what he described as “a moment of despair,” reminded the crowd that the Texas bills are among more than 360 Republican-backed measures that are being considered or have been enacted in legislatures across the country that would limit the right to vote.Mr. Castro, who was secretary of Housing and Urban Development in the Obama administration, said the voting measures underscored a Republican motto: “If you can’t beat ’em, cheat ’em.”“We’re here today to say no,” added Mr. Castro. “We will not stand for that.”Mr. O’Rourke and Mr. Castro were the headliners among nearly a dozen speakers who appeared before up to 500 spectators in what was described as the largest gathering outside the State Capitol during this year’s legislative session.Owen Shroyer, representing the conservative website Infowars, prominently inserted himself at the front of the crowd, clutching a microphone and frequently shouting disruptive comments at the speakers.The former presidential candidate Julián Castro spoke at the rally on Saturday.Mikala Compton/ReutersThe voting issue has become one of the most contentious elements in a session featuring a number of other hot-button issues including further restrictions on abortion, allowing the unlicensed carrying of guns and curtailing of transgender people’s rights. Gov. Greg Abbott has described the voter bills as “emergency” legislation needed to ensure integrity in the election system and combat voter fraud, although he and other Republicans have acknowledged that there has been minimal evidence of fraud in recent Texas elections.Critics have assailed the voter measures as comparable to the abuses of Jim Crow, an era in which the white political power structure in Texas and other Southern states used tactics such as the now-unconstitutional poll tax and literacy tests to perpetuate segregation and suppress minority voters.House members passed Senate Bill 7 at 3 a.m. on Friday, sending it back to the Senate to resolve differences between the two chambers before the May 31 adjournment. Before the final vote on Friday, House Republican leaders accepted a number of amendments, such as reduction of criminal penalties proposed under an earlier version of the bill for various infractions committed by election officials, including unauthorized removal of a poll watcher.During legislative discussion, State Representative Rafael Anchía, a Democrat, questioned State Representative Briscoe Cain, the Republican chair of the House Elections Committee, on the use of the phrase “purity of the ballot box” in the legislation. The phrase was used in the Texas Constitution and during the Jim Crow era as the basis for excluding Black residents from all-white primaries. The phrase was from removed from the bill.Democrats said the bill still contains unacceptable provisions that could hinder voting among minorities, older people and urban residents trying to avoid long lines to vote. One provision prohibits counties from distributing unrequested mail-in ballots to voters, which would bar a repeat of a Harris County initiative that drew fierce opposition from Republican officials.The Texas business community, which initially remained largely silent, has also intensified its opposition, with more 200 businesses warning that the measures could restrict voter access and undercut the Texas economy. American Airlines and Dell Technologies, the first to oppose the bills, have since been joined by other companies including Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, Etsy, Patagonia, Warby Parker and Gearbox.A recurring theme throughout the hour-and-a-half-long rally was that the fight was not over even though the session was nearing adjournment and Republicans held the upper hand. Representative Chris Turner, the Democratic leader in the House, said Republicans could count on legal action if Democrats were unable to block the bills in the Legislature.“We’ll see them in court,” he said. More

The Scottish National Party fell short of an outright majority, though pro-independence parties appeared to retain control of Scotland’s Parliament.LONDON — Hopes for a swift path to independence in Scotland were tempered on Saturday, as the dominant Scottish nationalist party fell one seat short of a majority in the country’s Parliament.The Scottish National Party’s results, though impressive, deprived it of a symbolic victory in a closely fought election. That, in turn, is likely to stiffen the determination of Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain to deny Scottish voters the chance to hold a second referendum on independence.Yet pro-independence parties stayed in control and even expanded their overall majority in Thursday’s election, which will keep the flame of Scottish nationalism alive and ensure that the threat of Scotland’s breaking away from the United Kingdom will continue to bedevil British politics.The number of seats won by the Scottish National Party is in some ways less important than the political winds, which are still blowing in the separatists’ direction. By allying with the pro-independence Scottish Greens, the Scottish nationalists will tighten their control over the regional Parliament.Party leaders have signaled that they will put a second referendum at the top of the agenda as soon as Scotland recovers from the coronavirus pandemic. The last time the Scots voted on independence, in 2014, they opted to remain in the United Kingdom by 55 percent to 45 percent. Polls show close to a 50-50 split on the question now, with support for breaking away having weakened in recent months.While disappointing to the Scottish nationalists, the lack of a clear majority might ultimately work to their advantage, by giving them time to build support for a referendum rather than being stampeded into an immediate campaign by the pressure of an overwhelming mandate.Demonstrators for Scottish independence in Glasgow last week.Andrew Testa for The New York TimesStill, the result is a relief to Mr. Johnson, for whom the dissolution of the United Kingdom looms as a potentially defining event for his premiership. He remains deeply unpopular in Scotland, and it is not clear how well prepared his government is to counter a reinvigorated push for Scottish independence.For his part, Mr. Johnson was basking in the Conservative Party’s victories in regional elections across England, which left the opposition Labour Party in disarray and reinforced his reputation as an inveterate vote-getter.However, some of the same post-Brexit populism that won the Conservatives votes in working-class parts of the Midlands and northern England worked against him in a more liberal, Brexit-averse Scotland.Mr. Johnson vowed to reject demands for a referendum, saying that as Britain emerged from the pandemic, the country should focus on rebuilding the economy rather than fighting over constitutional issues.“I think a referendum in the current context is irresponsible and reckless,” he said on Friday to The Daily Telegraph. “I think that there’s no case now for such a thing. I don’t think it’s what the times call for at all.”That showed no signs of stopping Scotland’s independence-minded leaders. Nicola Sturgeon, the first minister and leader of the Scottish National Party, pronounced the results, which represented a gain of one seat over 2016, as “historic and extraordinary.” She promised to push for another referendum.Speaking in Glasgow on Saturday, Ms. Sturgeon said there was “no democratic justification whatsoever for Boris Johnson or anyone else seeking to block the right of the people of Scotland to choose our future.”She and other officials claimed a mandate like that of 2011, when the Scottish National Party last won an absolute majority and petitioned for a referendum. Mr. Johnson’s predecessor, David Cameron, yielded to their demand.“He saw that there was a clear democratic mandate for it, and there will be another clear democratic mandate this time,” Lorna Slater, a leader of the Scottish Greens, told the British Broadcasting Corporation on Saturday. “What kind of country are we if we ignore that kind of democratic mandate?”Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain, center, said on Friday that the country should focus on rebuilding the economy rather than fighting over constitutional issues.Owen Humphreys/PA Images, via Getty ImagesAnalysts said the cause of independence might be helped by a drawn-out battle with the Westminster government, since it would alienate Scottish voters, potentially driving more of them into the separatist camp. There is also the prospect of bitter legal battles, potentially ending up in Britain’s Supreme Court, if the Scots threaten to proceed with a referendum in defiance of London.“That’s not a bad thing for the S.N.P., because Nicola Sturgeon has said our priority is to solve Covid first,” said Nicola McEwen, a professor of politics at the University of Edinburgh. The nationalists, she noted, also do not yet “have answers to tough questions regarding what would happen with the border.”Problems in Northern Ireland, which emerged from Brexit with a hybrid status as a part of the United Kingdom but with no border checks with the Irish republic, underscore the difficulties of even a partial split from the union. Economists warn that the cost to Scotland of leaving would be profound.Pro-independence sentiment in Scotland was fueled by the Brexit referendum in 2016, which a majority of Scots voted against. Many in Scotland would like to rejoin the European Union and view an independence referendum as a step in that direction.That is one reason Professor McEwen and other analysts predict that Scotland would not stage a “wildcat referendum,” since the European Union and other governments would be unlikely to recognize the results.Mr. Johnson, analysts said, would probably seek to blunt pro-independence sentiment by pouring money into Scotland. If the pressure continues to mount, he could offer to delegate more authority to Scotland’s government.Under the terms of limited self-government in the United Kingdom, the Scottish authorities are responsible for matters like health and education, while the British government handles immigration, foreign policy and fiscal policy.Mr. Johnson’s goal, analysts said, would be to play for time, delaying any referendum until after the next British general election, which is due to be held in 2024. But repeatedly rebuffing Scottish calls could backfire.The border between Scotland and England.Andrew Testa for The New York Times“There is a view in Westminster that denying a referendum will only fire independence sentiment,” said Mujtaba Rahman, an analyst at the Eurasia Group, a political risk consultancy. “This is not a problem that is going away. It is only going to get bigger over time.”For Ms. Sturgeon, failing to win a clear majority by such a close margin was nevertheless deflating. It seemed within her grasp last summer when she was getting credit for steering Scotland’s response to the coronavirus, an approach that was more cautious than Mr. Johnson’s and seemed, for a time, to produce better results.But Britain’s successful rollout of vaccines blurred the differences, and Scotland’s case and death rates — while somewhat lower than those of England — are no longer all that far apart. Analysts cited the British vaccine campaign as a factor in the modest decline in support for independence, which was above 50 percent in polls for much of last year.Moreover, Ms. Sturgeon, 50, became embroiled in a bitter feud with her predecessor, Alex Salmond, over a botched internal investigation of sexual misconduct charges against him. She was accused of deceiving lawmakers, breaking rules and even conspiring against Mr. Salmond, a former close ally.Ms. Sturgeon was cleared of breaching the rules and misleading Parliament just as the campaign got underway, but the dispute dented her image. Mr. Salmond launched a breakaway party, Alba, which did not win any seats but served as a reminder of the internecine split.“This year has been quite difficult for the S.N.P. and for Nicola Sturgeon personally,” Professor McEwen said. Also, she added, “The broad shoulders of the U.K. have helped see us through the pandemic.” More

The vilification of Liz Cheney and a bizarre vote recount in Arizona showed the damage from his assault on a bedrock of democracy: election integrity.Locked out of Facebook, marooned in Mar-a-Lago and mocked for an amateurish new website, Donald J. Trump remained largely out of public sight this week. Yet the Republican Party’s capitulation to the former president became clearer than ever, as did the damage to American politics he has caused with his lie that the election was stolen from him.In Washington, Republicans moved to strip Representative Liz Cheney of her House leadership position, a punishment for denouncing Mr. Trump’s false claims of voter fraud as a threat to democracy. Lawmakers in Florida and Texas advanced sweeping new measures that would curtail voting, echoing the fictional narrative from Mr. Trump and his allies that the electoral system was rigged against him. And in Arizona, the state Republican Party started a bizarre re-examination of the November election results that involved searching for traces of bamboo in last year’s ballots.The churning dramas cast into sharp relief the extent to which the nation, six months after the election, is still struggling with the consequences of an assault by a losing presidential candidate on a bedrock principle of American democracy: that the nation’s elections are legitimate.They also provided stark evidence that the former president has not only managed to squelch any dissent within his party but has also persuaded most of the G.O.P. to make a gigantic bet: that the surest way to regain power is to embrace his pugilistic style, racial divisiveness and beyond-the-pale conspiracy theories rather than to court the suburban swing voters who cost the party the White House and who might be looking for substantive policies on the pandemic, the economy and other issues. The loyalty to the former president persists despite his role in inciting his supporters ahead of the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, with his adherents either ignoring, redefining or in some cases tacitly accepting the deadly attack on Congress.“We’ve just gotten so far afield from any sane construction,” said Barbara Comstock, a longtime party official who was swept out of her suburban Virginia congressional seat in the 2018 midterm backlash to Mr. Trump. “It’s a real sickness that is infecting the party at every level. We’re just going to say that black is white now.”Yet as Republicans wrap themselves in the fantasy of a stolen election, Democrats are anchored in the day-to-day business of governing a nation that is still struggling to emerge from a deadly pandemic.Strategists from both parties say that discordant dynamic — two parties operating in two different realities — is likely to define the country’s politics for years to come.At the same time, President Biden faces a broader challenge: what to do about the large segment of the public that doubts his legitimacy and a Republican Party courting the support of that segment by pushing bills that would restrict voting and perhaps further undermine faith in future elections. A CNN poll released last week found that nearly a third of Americans, including 70 percent of Republicans, said Biden had not legitimately won enough votes to win the presidency.Representative Liz Cheney, the third-ranking Republican in the House, is expected to be removed from her leadership post next week after speaking out against Mr. Trump.Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesWhite House aides say Mr. Biden believes that the best way to restore some faith in the democratic process is demonstrating that government can deliver tangible benefits — whether vaccines or economic stimulus checks — to voters.Dan Sena, a Democratic strategist who oversaw the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s strategy to win the House during the last midterm elections, said the Republican focus on cultural issues, like bans on transgender athletes, was a “win-win” for his party. Many Democrats will face only scattershot attacks on their agenda while continuing to run against the polarizing rhetoric of Mr. Trump, which helped the party flip suburban swing districts in 2018 and 2020.“I would much rather have a record of siding with Americans on recovery,” Mr. Sena said. “Which tale do the American public want to listen to — what Democrats have done to get the country moving again or Donald Trump and his culture war?”Mr. Biden predicted during the campaign that Republicans would have an “epiphany” once Mr. Trump was gone and would revert to being the party he knew during his decades in the Senate. When asked about Republicans this week, Mr. Biden lamented that he didn’t understand them anymore and appeared slightly flummoxed about the “mini-revolution” in their ranks.“I think the Republicans are further away from trying to figure out who they are and what they stand for than I thought they would be at this point,” he said.But for much of the past week, Republicans put on vivid display exactly what they now stand for: Trumpism. Many have adopted his approach of courting white grievance with racist statements, and Republican-led legislatures across the country are pushing through restrictions that would curtail voting access in ways that disproportionally impact voters of color. There are also high-stakes electoral considerations. With his deeply polarizing style, Mr. Trump motivated his base and his detractors alike, pushing both parties to record voter turnout in the 2020 election. His total of 74 million votes was the second-highest ever, behind only Mr. Biden’s 81 million, and Mr. Trump has shown an ability to turn his political supporters against any Republican who opposes him.That has left Republicans convinced that they must display unwavering fealty to a departed president to retain the voters he won over. “I would just say to my Republican colleagues: Can we move forward without President Trump? The answer is no,” Senator Lindsey Graham said in an interview on Fox News this week. “I’ve determined we can’t grow without him.”In some ways, the former president is more diminished than ever. Defeated at the polls, he spends his time at his Florida resort playing golf and entertaining visitors. He lacks the bully pulpit of the presidency, has been banished from Twitter and failed this week to have his account restored by Facebook. He left office with his approval rating below 40 percent, the lowest final first-term rating for any president since Jimmy Carter in 1979.Still, his dominance over Republicans is reflected from Congress to statehouses. Local and federal lawmakers who have pushed their party to accept the results of the election, and thus Mr. Trump’s loss, have faced a steady drumbeat of censure and primary challenges. Those threats appear to be having an impact: The small number of Republican officials who have been critical of Mr. Trump in the past, including the 10 who voted for his impeachment in February, remained largely silent this week, refusing interview requests and offering little public support for Ms. Cheney.Her likely replacement, Representative Elise Stefanik, publicly promoted herself for the post and moved to establish her Trump bona fides by lending credence to his baseless voter fraud claims in interviews with hard-right supporters of the former president.The state Republican Party in Arizona undertook a quixotic re-examination of the November election results.Pool photo by Matt YorkThe focus on the election has crowded out nearly any discussion of policy or party orthodoxy. The Heritage Action scorecard, which rates lawmakers on their conservative voting records, awarded Ms. Cheney a lifetime score of 82 percent. Ms. Stefanik, who has a more moderate voting record but is a far more vocal supporter of the former president, scored 52 percent.Ms. Stefanik and many other Republican leaders are betting that the path to keeping the electoral gains of the Trump era lies in stoking their base with the populist politics that are central to the president’s brand, even if they repel swing voters.After months of being fed lies about the election by the conservative news media, much of the party has come to embrace them as true. Sarah Longwell, a Republican strategist who has been conducting focus groups of Trump voters for years, said that since the election she had found an increased openness to what she calls “QAnon curious,” a willingness to entertain conspiracy theories about stolen elections and a deep state. “A lot of these base voters are living in a post-truth nihilism where you believe in nothing and think that everything might be untrue,” said Ms. Longwell, who opposed Mr. Trump. Some Republican strategists worry that the party is missing opportunities to attack Mr. Biden, who has proposed the most sweeping spending and tax plans in generations.“Republicans need to go back to kitchen-table issues that voters really care about, sprinkle in a little culture here and there but not get carried away,” said Scott Reed, a veteran Republican strategist who helped crush right-wing populists in past elections. “And some of them are making an industry out of getting carried away.”While clinging to Mr. Trump could help the party increase turnout among its base, Republicans like Ms. Comstock argue that such a strategy will damage the party with crucial demographics, including younger voters, voters of color, women and suburbanites. Already, intraparty fights are emerging in nascent primaries as candidates accuse each other of disloyalty to the former president. Many party leaders fear that could result in hard-right candidates’ emerging victorious and eventually losing general elections in conservative states where Republicans should prevail, like Missouri and Ohio.“To declare Trump the winner of a shrinking minority, that’s not a territory you want to head up,” Ms. Comstock said. “The future of the party is not going to be some 70-year-old man talking in the mirror at Mar-a-Lago and having all these sycophants come down and do the limbo to get his approval.”Yet those who have objected to Mr. Trump — and paid the price — say there’s little political incentive to pushing against the tide. Criticizing Mr. Trump, or even defending those who do, can leave elected officials in a kind of political no man’s land: seen as traitorous to Republican voters but still too conservative on other issues to be accepted by Democrats and independents.“It’s becoming increasingly difficult, it seems, for people to go out on the stump and defend somebody like Liz Cheney or Mitt Romney,” former Senator Jeff Flake, who endorsed Mr. Biden and was censured by the Arizona Republican Party this year, said during a panel appearance at Harvard this week. “About 70 percent of Republicans probably genuinely believe that the election was stolen, and that’s debilitating. It really is.” More

Even by the standards of the Republican Party’s descent into Trumpian nihilism, the latest bloodletting within the ranks of its congressional leadership is gripping — the car crash next to the dumpster fire that you can’t look away from.House Republicans are on track next week to oust Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming as conference chairwoman, the third-highest position in the conference. Ms. Cheney is being purged for her stubborn refusal to accept — much less peddle — the dangerous, crackpot lie that the 2020 election was stolen from former President Donald Trump. In today’s G.O.P., fealty to the defeated president’s false allegation of electoral fraud is the ultimate litmus test.Ms. Cheney has not simply failed this test, repeatedly — she brandishes her defiance like a weapon.On Monday, Mr. Trump issued a proclamation: “The Fraudulent Presidential Election of 2020 will be, from this day forth, known as THE BIG LIE!” Ms. Cheney fired back on Twitter (from which the former president is still banned): “The 2020 presidential election was not stolen. Anyone who claims it was is spreading THE BIG LIE, turning their back on the rule of law, and poisoning our democratic system.”“The Republican Party is at a turning point,” she warned in a May 5 opinion piece in The Washington Post, “and Republicans must decide whether we are going to choose truth and fidelity to the Constitution.”Clearly, such apostasy cannot stand.But with a House leadership dominated by white men, and a party plagued by a longstanding gender gap, Republican lawmakers recognize the potential risk of replacing their top-ranking woman with another white guy. Such bad optics. So it is that Republican House leaders have been whipping votes to install another woman in the job, Representative Elise Stefanik of New York.Unlike Ms. Cheney, Ms. Stefanik is happy — make that eager — to go along with Mr. Trump’s pernicious election-fraud fiction. Just this week, she sat down for interviews with Steve Bannon, Mr. Trump’s onetime political guru, and Sebastian Gorka, a former Trump aide, to praise the former president and suggest that there are many, many questions that still need to be answered about the outcome. Among other Trumpist talking points, she accused judicial officers in Pennsylvania of “unconstitutional overreach,” and she endorsed the sketchy election audit that Republicans are conducting in Arizona.Ms. Stefanik is assumed to have more than enough votes lined up to replace Ms. Cheney. Her ascension is considered close to a done deal.Here’s where things really get awkward. Aside from her Trump bootlicking, Ms. Stefanik is a terrible pick to help lead House Republicans, with both an ideology and a political style ill-suited to the conservative zeitgeist. At least they were until recently. In aiming to swap out Ms. Cheney with Ms. Stefanik, Republican leaders are revealing — again — just how hollow their party has become and how far it has fallen.With her establishment pedigree and her neocon foreign policy views, Ms. Cheney may not be a perfect fit for today’s Republican Party, but she is a rock-ribbed conservative who has for years fought fiercely in the party trenches. Like her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, she is tough and aggressive, and she delights in lobbing partisan bombs at Democrats. She is pro-torture and anti-abortion. In other words, she has long been the kind of Republican that Democrats love to hate.Ms. Stefanik, on the other hand … Most of America had never heard of the New York lawmaker before her emergence as a passionate Trump defender during his first impeachment. Her toadiness has only grown since, earning ever more love from Mr. Trump. On Wednesday, he endorsed her for conference chairwoman.But before all that, Ms. Stefanik was seen as an exemplar of the kinder, gentler future of the Republican Party. Elected in 2014 at age 30, the polished, media-savvy Harvard alumna was a fresh, friendly, moderate face that many hoped would help the G.O.P. shed its image as a bunch of angry old white guys. Pro-business and uninterested in culture warring, she fit in well with the party’s establishment wing. Her first political job was in the Bush 43 White House. In 2017, she was elected co-chair of the Tuesday Group (since renamed the Republican Governance Group), a caucus of moderate, centrist House Republicans.Ms. Stefanik’s voting record reflects this brand. She has a measly 44 percent lifetime score from the American Conservative Union — compared to Ms. Cheney’s 78 percent — and a 56 percent from the conservative Heritage Action, versus Ms. Cheney’s 82 percent. Ms. Stefanik’s ratings from conservative groups like FreedomWorks and the Club for Growth are even lower (37 percent and 35 percent), and both organizations have come out against her joining leadership. During Mr. Trump’s presidency, Ms. Stefanik voted with him 77.7 percent of the time, according to FiveThirtyEight, but Ms. Cheney did 92.9 percent of the time.One of Ms. Stefanik’s top priorities has been to improve her party’s image with women and, more specifically, to get more Republican women elected. Her PAC is credited with having contributed to the victories of several women in this year’s freshman House class. Her efforts, which can run up against the G.O.P.’s professed disdain for identity politics, have occasionally put off some party brethren.Ms. Stefanik is, in short, the kind of Republican that conservatives generally love to hate.Despite the seal of approval from Mr. Trump and some congressional leaders, not everyone is thrilled by the idea of Ms. Stefanik’s likely promotion. Some of her male colleagues have grumped that they were not even considered for the post because of their gender. The conference vice chair, Mike Johnson of Louisiana, has reportedly been griping about the “coronation.”Trickier still, some hard-core MAGA loyalists suspect Ms. Stefanik of being a pretender — a “wolf in sheep’s clothing,” as one far-right site put it — and are raising a stink about her voting record and political background. Lou Dobbs, the deep-MAGA former TV host, declared her a RINO — that is, a Republican in name only. Her more creative critics at the website Revolver coined a fresh term for her: TINO — Trumpist in name only. They also dubbed her “another neocon establishment twit.”So much for Republican unity.To be fair, having sold their soul to Mr. Trump, Republican lawmakers cannot allow Ms. Cheney to remain in leadership. Unlike most of her colleagues, she refuses to let the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol fade from memory, pretend it was no big deal or falsely claim that it was perpetrated by lefty extremists. Every word out of her mouth is an indictment not merely of Mr. Trump but also of her fellow lawmakers’ degeneracy and opportunism.Ms. Stefanik, by contrast, is scrambling to reassure MAGA voters that she is worthy of their support. In addition to doubling down on election-fraud nonsense, she has been test-driving a more populist, own-the-libs persona, whining about “cancel culture” and “Trump derangement syndrome” and the anti-conservative bias of Big Tech.In other words, Ms. Stefanik is forsaking the ideology and the political brand that brought her to Congress as she grovels before the gold-plated altar of Trumpism. All this to impress the followers of a defeated president who would just as soon see the Republican Party burned to ash.In that sense, she may be a perfect leader for her House colleagues after all.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: [email protected] The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More