Banks, Jim (1979- )

Subterms

    Latest story

    100 Shares119 Views

    Representative Jim Banks Announces Senate Bid in Indiana

    by

    The seat will be open as Senator Mike Braun runs for governor instead.Representative Jim Banks, a staunch conservative with the backing of a deep-pocketed political action committee, opened his bid for an Indiana Senate seat on Tuesday with an ad highlighting his deployment to Afghanistan and issuing a broadside against “radical socialist Democrats.”Mike Braun, who currently holds the seat and is one of the state’s two Republican senators, will run for governor next year, creating an opening that could lead to a crowded primary fight in the reliably Republican state. Mr. Banks, who recently led the House’s Republican Study Committee, a conservative caucus that is broader and less confrontational than the House’s Freedom Caucus, turned to the Senate after he lost his bid to be whip, the No. 3 Republican position in the G.O.P.’s new House majority.He enters the contest with the backing of the Club for Growth, a moneyed conservative political action committee that spent millions of dollars to get its preferred House and Senate candidates across the line in the November midterms. The group and its super PAC “are prepared to spend whatever it takes to help Banks secure the nomination and victory,” its president, David McIntosh, said Tuesday.The Club for Growth is already spending money against another possible candidate, the former Indiana governor Mitch Daniels, whom it considers too conciliatory. Mr. Banks signaled that he too would focus on Mr. Daniels, who was also president of Purdue University and a White House budget director under President George W. Bush. Mr. Daniels a decade ago called for a truce on cultural issues, a stance Mr. Banks appeared to call out in an interview with Politico, saying that issues like abortion and gender “matter more than at any point in my lifetime.”“I’ll never be calling for a truce on social issues or cultural issues,” he told Politico.Mr. Banks also has the endorsement of Representative Larry Bucshon, another Indiana Republican, and Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas.But Indiana’s current governor, Eric Holcomb, who is facing a term limit, is considering a run for the Senate, as is Representative Victoria Spartz, whose Ukrainian birth has elevated her voice in Congress.In his announcement, Mr. Banks called himself “a small-town kid from a working-class home” with deep roots in Indiana and a record fighting overseas and in Congress for “conservative Hoosier values.” He threw in a nod to former President Donald J. Trump, calling him “the strongest president in my lifetime.”Mr. Braun, a businessman who had little political experience when he ran against Senator Joe Donnelly, a Democrat, in 2018, beat him by six percentage points. His victory came two years after Representative Todd Young breezed past Evan Bayh, a Democrat and former senator who had come out of retirement to try a comeback. Those defeats signaled just how difficult a Democratic comeback in the state would be.In November, Mr. Young won re-election with nearly 59 percent of the vote. More

    More stories

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      Pence Backs Trump Loyalists and Skeptics in House Elections

      by

      WASHINGTON — As Representative Darin LaHood, Republican of Illinois, prepared to campaign with Mike Pence, the former vice president, in his district last month, he braced for a backlash from his party’s right-wing base.Just days before, the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol had re-created in chilling detail how Mr. Pence had resisted President Donald J. Trump’s orders to overturn his defeat in Congress — and how Mr. Trump’s demands had put the vice president’s life at risk.Mr. LaHood’s fears of MAGA protesters and hostility to Mr. Pence never materialized; the former vice president received a warm welcome from the crowd at a Lincoln Day dinner in Peoria and at a closed-door fund-raising lunch with the congressman in Chicago, according to people who attended. But the concerns about how Mr. Pence would be received highlighted the awkward dynamic that has taken hold as the former vice president quietly campaigns for Republican members of Congress ahead of the midterm elections.House Republicans helped Mr. Trump spread the election lies that brought Mr. Pence within 40 feet of a mob that stormed the Capitol clamoring for his execution, and the vast majority of them remain publicly loyal to Mr. Trump, still the biggest draw and the most coveted endorsement on the campaign trail.But privately, many of them hope their party might soon return to some version of its pre-2016 identity — when Mr. Pence was regarded on the right as a symbol of conservative strength, not cowardice — and want to preserve a relationship with him in that case.Mr. Pence, who served six terms as a congressman from Indiana, has been eager to campaign for congressional candidates, particularly in the Midwest. He is seeking to carve out a viable lane of his own for a potential presidential run in 2024, even if it means helping some lawmakers who continue to spout the election lies that imperiled him.Mr. Pence spoke at an event for Representative Darin LaHood, right, in Peoria, Ill., last month.Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesOver the past year, Mr. Pence has appeared at campaign events for more than a dozen members of Congress, happily attending steak fries, picnics and fund-raisers that have at times brought in half a million dollars apiece for candidates.Overall, his aides said, he has helped to raise millions of dollars for House Republicans, many of whom still see him as a well-liked former colleague who often played the role of Trump administration emissary to Congress. On Wednesday, his alliance with congressional Republicans will be on display when he speaks on Capitol Hill as a guest of the Republican Study Committee, a conservative caucus.That followed an appearance Tuesday night at a “Young Guns” fund-raising dinner hosted by Representative Kevin McCarthy, Republican of California and the minority leader, at Del Frisco’s Double Eagle Steakhouse in Washington. Mr. Pence’s appearance there was described by an attendee as akin to a homecoming for him. Mr. Trump was mentioned only in the context of discussing the “Trump-Pence accomplishments.”Key Themes From the 2022 Midterm Elections So FarCard 1 of 5The state of the midterms. More

    • 88 Shares119 Views

      in Elections

      CPAC Focuses on Culture Grievances and Trump

      by

      The annual gathering of American conservatives reflected the G.O.P’s shift away from policy issues that had traditionally animated the party.ORLANDO, Fla. — Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has much of the world transfixed and on edge. President Biden announced a new Supreme Court appointment who is unlikely to get any significant Republican support.But at the Conservative Political Action Conference, the annual gathering of the right wing of American politics, the news convulsing the world seemed oddly distant. Instead, the focus was on cultural grievances, former President Donald J. Trump and the widespread sense of victimization that have replaced traditional conservative issues .Like so many of the Republican officials who have remade themselves in his image, Mr. Trump, in a speech to the conference on Saturday night, sought to portray himself as a victim of assaults from Democrats and the news media. He said they would leave him alone if he were not a threat to seek the presidency again in 2024. “If I said ‘I’m not going to run,’ the persecution would stop immediately,” Mr. Trump said. “They’d go on to the next victim.” Eight months before the midterm elections, familiar Republican themes like lower taxes and a muscular foreign policy took a back seat to the idea that America is backsliding into a woke dystopia unleashed by liberal elites. Even the G.O.P. was more than a bit suspect.Charlie Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA, a pro-Trump grass-roots group focusing on millennial conservatives, denounced “the Republican Party of old” in his speech to the conference, known as CPAC and held in Orlando, Fla., this year.“Conservative leaders can learn something from our wonderful 45th president of the United States,” Mr. Kirk said. “I want our leaders to care more about you and our fellow countrymen than some abstract idea or abstract G.D.P. number.”Placing cultural aggrievement at the centerpiece of their midterm campaigns comes as Republicans find themselves split on a host of issues that have typically united the party.This week, as Russian President Vladimir V. Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine to the near-universal condemnation of American allies, Mr. Trump on Saturday reiterated his assessment that Mr. Putin was “smart” to invade Ukraine for the price of economic sanctions, though he did call the war “a catastrophic disaster.” His former adviser Steve Bannon on Wednesday praised Mr. Putin for being “anti-woke” — the very theme of the CPAC gathering.That put them at odds with Republican elected officials, particularly congressional leaders, who have denounced Mr. Putin’s actions, as have Democrats and Mr. Biden.How Donald J. Trump Still LoomsGrip on G.O.P.: Mr. Trump remains the most powerful figure in the Republican Party. However, there are signs his control is loosening.Power Struggle: Led by Senator Mitch McConnell, a band of anti-Trump Republicans is maneuvering to thwart the ex-president.Midterms Effect: Mr. Trump has become a party kingmaker, but his involvement in state races worries many Republicans.Post-Presidency Profits: Mr. Trump is melding business with politics, capitalizing for personal gain.Just the Beginning: For many Trump supporters who marched on Jan. 6, the day was not a disgraced insurrection but the start of a movement.On Capitol Hill, Republican senators are debating whether to release an official policy agenda at all ahead of the midterms. The lack of urgency was encapsulated in a statement by Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, who dismissed a question about what Republicans would do if they took back Congress in 2022. “That is a very good question,” Mr. McConnell said. “And I’ll let you know when we take it back.”In lieu of a united policy, Republicans are hoping that a grab bag of grievances will motivate voters who are dissatisfied with Mr. Biden’s administration. At CPAC, Republicans argued that they were the real victims of Mr. Biden’s America, citing rising inflation, undocumented immigration at the Mexican border and liberal institutions pushing racial diversity in hiring and education.Every speaker emphasized personal connections to Mr. Trump, no matter how spurious, while others adopted both his aggrieved tone and patented hand gestures.Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri at CPAC on Thursday.Scott McIntyre for The New York TimesRepresentative Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina praised what he called China’s effort to instill “great patriotic and masculine values” in its youth through social media. At a Mexican restaurant inside the conference hotel, Representative Billy Long of Missouri argued that he coined the phrase “Trump Train” on 2015. He said he still used it as his wireless internet password. And Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri, a banker’s son who was educated at Stanford and Yale, sought to tie himself to alienated blue-collar workers he claimed were getting a raw deal.“Rednecks and roughnecks get a lot of bad press these days,” Mr. Hawley said. At the same time the hallways of the massive Orlando hotel hosting the event were filled with an array of Trump paraphernalia. There were two separate kiosks marketing themselves as Trump malls, a shop selling Trump hammocks and, for $35 a book, a five-volume set of every tweet Mr. Trump published as president before Twitter banned him.MAGA shoes at CPAC.Scott McIntyre for The New York TimesCardboard cutouts of former President Donald J. Trump and Melania Trump in a hallway at CPAC.Scott McIntyre for The New York TimesSpeakers largely brushed off the war in Ukraine, beyond blaming Mr. Biden, and on Friday few people mentioned Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, Mr. Biden’s new choice for the Supreme Court. John Schnatter, the pizza magnate who in 2018 resigned as chairman of the Papa John’s franchise after using a racial slur in a comment about Black people during a conference call, mingled among the crowd, saying he was among those unfairly canceled. Senator Rick Scott of Florida warned of “woke, government-run everything.”And former Representative Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, who in 2020 ran for the Democratic presidential nomination but has adopted right-wing positions and become a darling of conservative media, labeled the government a “secular theocracy” because of its efforts to fight misinformation.Eight miles from CPAC, an even angrier right-wing gathering, the America First Political Action Conference, took place at another Orlando hotel with Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia as the main attraction and Representative Paul Gosar of Arizona appearing by video.The commentator Nick Fuentes, head of the group that hosted the conference, said Mr. Putin had been compared to Hilter. He laughed and added: “They say it’s not a good thing.” Mr. Fuentes, a white nationalist and Holocaust denier, runs what is known as the America First or “groyper” movement, which promotes a message that the nation is losing “its white demographic core.” Last month, Mr. Fuentes was subpoenaed by congressional investigators examining the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.At CPAC and beyond, focusing on the negative can be strategic as well as visceral. Polls show Republican voters have a more favorable view of Mr. Putin than of Mr. Biden, and one lesson of the backlash against the party holding the White House during the last four midterm elections is that an intense distaste for a president of the opposing party is more than enough to propel sweeping victories.“The conservative movement is always evolving, and as it evolves and reacts to the radical ideas of the progressive left, the issues that really matter to people shift a little bit,” said Charlie Gerow, a Republican candidate for governor of Pennsylvania. “The one unifying factor for conservatives is Joe Biden and his henchmen out in the states.”It was only seven years ago that Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor, told the CPAC crowd that “it’s good to oppose the bad things, but we need to start being for things.”Just as Mr. Trump excised Bush-style conservative politics from the Republican Party, so has it been removed from the annual CPAC gathering. Playing to feelings of resentment and alienation is a far safer bet for Republicans than advancing a policy agenda when the party remains split on taxes, foreign policy and how much to indulge Mr. Trump’s lies about the 2020 election. “You can always cut taxes, you can always roll back regulations, you can always elect better people,” Senator Marco Rubio of Florida said. “But when freedom is lost and it’s eroded, it is so hard to reclaim.”At CPAC, there was no shortage of stories about the horrors of cultural and political cancellations — though the speakers offered scant evidence of actual suffering.Representative Jim Banks of Indiana, after saying he would “never, ever apologize for objecting” to Mr. Biden’s victory on Jan. 6, said he and Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio were victimized when they were removed from the House committee investigating that day’s attack on the United States Capitol in 2021.“We both got canceled and kicked off the committee by Nancy Pelosi,” Mr. Banks said.Like others at CPAC who claimed to have experienced the wounds of cancel culture, Mr. Banks has seen his profile and political standing only increase since the moment he claimed to have been canceled.CPAC attendees cheering during a speech by Senator Rick Scott of Florida.Scott McIntyre for The New York TimesLeila Centner, a founder of a Miami private school, who last year told her teachers and staff they would not be allowed to interact with students if they received a coronavirus vaccine, recounted the backlash once her anti-vaccine views made news.“The media was all over me, they went ballistic,” she said.But Ms. Centner said the brouhaha turned out to be a positive thing for her and her school. She told the CPAC audience that her student enrollment went up and there was now a waiting list. She has become a personality in demand from conservative news networks, and she said in an interview that she now had a homogeneous school community that shared her views on the pandemic and the country’s racial history.“What this whole thing has done is it’s actually made our community more aligned,” she said.As the incentives in conservative politics increasingly reward figures caught up in controversies that can allow them to be portrayed as victims, leading to more face time on conservative cable television, some veteran Republicans are lamenting that there is little to be gained by a focus on policy.Former Representative Mark Walker of North Carolina, who is running for the Senate against a Trump-endorsed candidate, can’t get much attention, he said, when he touts his record working for veterans during his three terms in Congress.“Some of the new people entering the political world, they get 12 press secretaries and one policy person,” Mr. Walker said in an interview. “There’s a problem with that, right?”Alan Feuer More

    • 100 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      When Will Trump Answer the Big 2024 Question?

      by

      The field of would-be Republican candidates remains frozen while the former president decides his next moves.Sign up here to get On Politics in your inbox on Tuesdays and Thursdays.Last week, during a 51-minute interview on “The John Fredericks Show,” a radio program syndicated across Virginia, former President Donald J. Trump dodged a half-dozen opportunities to say whether he is planning to run for president once again in 2024.Mr. Fredericks, who alongside his radio gig also served as a chairman of Mr. Trump’s campaigns in Virginia, began questions with “If you’re inaugurated as president again in 2025,” and “I think you’re going to run and win in 2024.” He asked, “How many seats do the Republicans have to win in 2022 to inspire you to run in 2024?”Hard-hitting journalism this was not.Still, it did cut to the heart of the biggest question in Republican politics: When will Mr. Trump announce his plans for 2024?For months the best working theory had been that he would wait as long as possible, both to freeze the rest of the potential 2024 Republican field and to keep as much attention as possible on himself, his endorsements and political proclamations.In the meantime the former president has not found any new outlet for his political attention. There’s no library in the works or legacy project like President Barack Obama’s nonprofit group Organizing for Action (which itself shuttered in 2018 after fading into obsolescence). Mr. Trump is still very much invested in his own false claims about the 2020 election, pushing local Republican officials to audit their ballots and voting machines while trumpeting the phony idea that any election that Democrats win is a fraud.All of that puts him on the same page as much of today’s Republican electorate.“If Donald Trump runs in ’24, I think he’ll clear the field, be the nominee and I think he wins handily against Biden or Harris,” said Representative Jim Banks of Indiana, who as the chairman of the conservative Republican Study Committee has hosted almost every potential non-Trump candidate to speak to his group of more than 150 Republican House members this year.Mr. Banks is hardly agnostic on the subject of Mr. Trump. His Capitol Hill office is filled with Trump memorabilia, including a framed front page of The Washington Post from the day after the former president’s first Senate acquittal on impeachment charges, autographed by Mr. Trump himself. In January he voted against accepting the results of election, and in July he was one of two Republicans whom Speaker Nancy Pelosi refused to seat on the commission investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. He has on his staff the son of Tucker Carlson, one of the most vocal pro-Trump hosts on Fox News.In our conversation on Monday afternoon, Mr. Banks, who said he was in weekly contact with Mr. Trump, said he hadn’t directly discussed if or when the former president might begin a 2024 campaign. He hadn’t been told by Mr. Trump, as Representative Jim Jordan said last week in an exchange recorded by a hidden camera, that the former president was “about ready” to announce another campaign.All that leaves the field of would-be Republican presidential candidates frozen. Those taking steps that could lead to a 2024 run include Govs. Ron DeSantis of Florida and Kristi Noem of South Dakota; Senators Tom Cotton, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio; and the former Trump cabinet members Mike Pompeo and Nikki Haley. They each owe varying levels of political allegiance to Mr. Trump; polling shows none of them would be much of a threat to dent Mr. Trump’s hold on the party even if they tried.At the same time, Democrats, fretting about President Biden’s sagging standing in public opinion polls after the messy withdrawal from Afghanistan, would generally be thrilled to make what is shaping up to be a challenging midterm election next year a referendum on Mr. Trump. The president’s party almost always loses dozens of seats in the House during the midterms; Democrats picked up 41 seats in 2018 and Republicans flipped 63 in 2010.For the moment, there are signs that Republicans are more energized across the country. They’re inundating school board meetings to talk about how race is taught in classrooms, and in some parts of the country they’re filling candidate training rooms at a pace not seen since 2009.A potential third Trump campaign, started more than three years before the next presidential election and 18 months ahead of the next Iowa caucuses, could refocus all of his party’s energy onto himself and away from the right-wing cultural issues other Republicans see as political winners.“He brings excitement among the Republican Party base that is unmatched by anybody else,” Mr. Banks said.Yet Mr. Banks had no public advice for Mr. Trump about when, or if, to begin another campaign. Mr. Trump would help Republicans in the midterms equally as a candidate or a noncandidate, Mr. Banks said, before adding that Republicans’ odds of winning back the White House would not be diminished whether Mr. Trump, or anyone else, was the nominee.“He’s savvy enough to know the right timing better than I do,” Mr. Banks said of a potential Trump campaign launch. “I’m watching all the same news and watching all the rallies that you are. I’m speculating that he’s moving in that direction.”The state of the California recallCalifornia is down to the final week of voting before the Sept. 14 recall election of Gov. Gavin Newsom. You’ll surely see a lot of California political news between now and next Tuesday: President Biden is planning a campaign stop for Mr. Newsom, a fellow Democrat, White House officials said, part of a party-wide rush to encourage Californians to return the ballots every registered voter in the state has received in the mail.In a state Mr. Biden carried by 29 percentage points last year, even a narrow victory for Mr. Newsom would send shock waves through Democratic politics. If Mr. Newsom is recalled and replaced with a Republican, expect an unending rending of garments and blame-casting among liberals comparable in recent memory only to the reaction to Mr. Trump’s victory of 2016.Should a Republican take control of the governor’s office in America’s largest state — home to its largest population of Democratic voters — that person would still face Democratic supermajorities in the State Legislature but would be in a position to appoint state judges, control the bully pulpit and potentially name a replacement for a United States senator, potentially shifting control of the 50-50 chamber.Whatever happens for Republicans, the California recall is the equivalent of found money. They either win a stunning upset, come close and spook Democrats into a period of soul searching, or lose by a comfortable margin, in which case they will still have forced Mr. Newsom into running for his political life a year before an expected re-election campaign in 2022.On Politics is also available as a newsletter. Sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox.Is there anything you think we’re missing? Anything you want to see more of? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More

    • 113 Shares139 Views

      in Elections

      McCarthy Threatens Technology Firms That Comply With Riot Inquiry

      by

      The top House Republican said his party would retaliate against any company that cooperated with an order to preserve the phone and social media records of G.O.P. lawmakers.WASHINGTON — Representative Kevin McCarthy, the House Republican leader, has threatened to retaliate against any company that complies with the congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot, after the panel asked dozens of firms to preserve the phone and social media records of 11 far-right members of Congress who pushed to overturn the results of the 2020 election.Mr. McCarthy’s warning was an escalation of his efforts to thwart a full accounting of the deadly attack at the Capitol carried out by a pro-Trump mob, and his latest attempt to insulate the former president and Republican lawmakers from scrutiny of any ties to the violence. It came after he led the G.O.P. opposition to the creation of an independent bipartisan commission to investigate the riot, and then pulled five Republican congressmen from the select committee that Democrats created on their own, boycotting the proceedings.In preservation orders the special committee sent to 35 technology firms this week, members of the panel included the names of hundreds of people whose records they might want to review, among them some of Donald J. Trump’s most ardent allies in Congress, according to several people familiar with the documents who were not authorized to speak about their contents.The 11 Republicans are Representatives Andy Biggs and Paul Gosar of Arizona, Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Mo Brooks of Alabama, Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina, Matt Gaetz of Florida, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Louie Gohmert of Texas, Jody B. Hice of Georgia, Jim Jordan of Ohio and Scott Perry of Pennsylvania.The preservation demands were accompanied by a statement that said the committee was merely “gathering facts, not alleging wrongdoing by any individual.” But the inclusion of the Republicans’ names, reported earlier by CNN, indicated that the panel planned to scrutinize any role they may have played in fueling the violence.“These are the individuals who have been publicly supportive of Jan. 6 and the people who participated in the insurrection on Jan. 6,” Representative Bennie G. Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and the panel’s chairman, said in an interview.“We need to find out exactly what their level of participation in this event was,” he said. “If you helped raise money, if you provided misinformation to people, if you served on a planning committee — whatever your role in Jan. 6, I think the public has a right to know.”The panel has not asked to preserve the records of Mr. McCarthy, who has said he had a tense phone call with Mr. Trump as the mob laid siege to the Capitol, but Mr. Thompson said the top Republican’s name could yet be added.Mr. Thompson said Mr. McCarthy’s protestations were “typical of somebody who may or may not have been involved in Jan. 6 and doesn’t want that information to become public.”On Tuesday, Mr. McCarthy said Republicans would “not forget” and “hold accountable” those tech companies that preserve records sought by the committee. His remarks followed denunciations of the committee’s work by Representative Jim Banks, Republican of Indiana, who has called the panel’s tactics “authoritarian,” and Mr. Trump, who has called it a “partisan sham.”Ms. Greene threatened on Fox News that telecommunications companies that cooperated with the investigation would be “shut down.”Mr. McCarthy asserted, without citing any law, that it would be illegal for the technology companies to cooperate with the inquiry, even though congressional investigations have obtained phone records before. He said that if his party won control of the House, it would use its power to punish any that did.“If these companies comply with the Democrat order to turn over private information, they are in violation of federal law and subject to losing their ability to operate in the United States,” Mr. McCarthy wrote on Twitter on Tuesday. “If companies still choose to violate federal law, a Republican majority will not forget and will stand with Americans to hold them fully accountable under the law.”Representative Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland and a member of the committee, said he was stunned by Mr. McCarthy’s remarks, describing them as akin to obstructing an investigation.“He is leveling threats against people cooperating with a congressional investigation,” Mr. Raskin said. “That’s an astounding turn of events. Why would the minority leader of the House of Representatives not be interested in our ability to get all of the facts in relation to the Jan. 6 attack?”Barbara L. McQuade, a former U.S. attorney and University of Michigan law professor, called Mr. McCarthy’s claims “baseless,” noting that the panel had not requested the content of any communication.“He is falsely portraying the committee as overreaching so that he can protect his own political interests, to the detriment of Congress’s ability to do its job and the public trust in our institutions of government,” she said.In the past week, the select committee has ramped up its work, taking three wide-ranging investigative steps: a records demand to seven federal agencies focusing in part on any ties Mr. Trump may have had to the attack’s planning or execution; a document demand to 15 social media companies for material about efforts to overturn the election and domestic violent extremists who may have been involved; and the record preservation orders including the Republican representatives.The 11 Republicans include lawmakers who spearheaded the effort to challenge the election outcome in Congress on Jan. 6 and those who played at least some role in the “Stop the Steal” effort to protest the results, including promoting rallies around the country and the one in Washington whose attendees attacked the Capitol.Some of the lawmakers named in the order have continued to publicly spread the election lies that inspired the riot, and to allude to the possibility of more violence to come. Mr. Cawthorn falsely claimed on Sunday that the election had been “rigged” and “stolen,” telling a crowd in Franklin, N.C., that if elections were not safeguarded in the future, it could result in “bloodshed.”The select committee has been meeting twice a week, even during Congress’s summer recess, as its members plan their next steps. Mr. Thompson said two more hearings were in the works, one to dig deeper into the pressure campaign Mr. Trump and his allies started to overturn President Biden’s victory, and another to explore who encouraged militia and extremist groups to come to Washington before the assault.Representative Bennie G. Thompson, right, and members of the select committee have ramped up their work in the past week. Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times“There’s a concern on the committee about the executive branch leaning on state elected officials to change the outcome of the election,” Mr. Thompson said. “There’s concern about the identification with domestic terrorist organizations and their participation and encouragement to participate in the Jan. 6 march and insurrection.”Last week, the panel sought communications among top Trump administration officials about attempts to place politically loyal personnel in senior positions in the run-up to the attack; the planning and funding of pro-Trump rallies on Jan. 5 and 6; and other attempts to stop or slow the process of Mr. Trump handing over the presidency to Mr. Biden.It demanded records of communications between the White House and Ali Alexander, who publicized the “Stop the Steal” rallies, as well as Tom Van Flein, Mr. Gosar’s chief of staff.Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California and a committee member, said the requests were “broad” by design as the panel sought to produce a “comprehensive report.” He said they could be expanded to include more members of Congress if evidence emerges to suggest it is necessary.“We know that there are members who were involved in the ‘Stop the Steal’ rally; we know that there are members who had direct communications with the president while the attack on the Capitol was going on,” he said. “There are any number of members who have very pertinent information.”On Friday, the panel sent letters to 15 social media companies — including sites where misinformation about election fraud spread, such as the pro-Trump website theDonald.win — seeking any documents in their possession pertaining to efforts to overturn the election and any domestic violent extremists associated with the Jan. 6 rally and attack.The committee had already asked for records on extremist groups and militias that were present at the Capitol that day, including QAnon, the Proud Boys, Stop the Steal, the Oath Keepers and the Three Percenters. A person familiar with the committee’s discussions said its members intended to investigate more deeply plans among militia groups to coordinate.At least 10 suspected militia extremists attended paramilitary training in Ohio, Florida and North Carolina before the breach, according to court documents. Suspected domestic violent extremists also “coordinated efforts to bring tactical equipment to the event, presumably in anticipation of violence,” according to an April homeland security analysis obtained by The New York Times through a public records request filed by the group Property of the People.“There were undoubtedly insurrectionist groups that were dead-set on committing violence,” Mr. Raskin said. “If you listen to their chatter post-Jan. 6, it’s all abut how close they came, and next time they will be carrying arms.”The records preservation request delivered on Monday asked telecommunications companies to keep on file information about cell tower locations, text messages and call logs, and information uploaded to cloud storage systems.Representative Zoe Lofgren, Democrat of California and a member of the committee, emphasized that the request was “an investigation, not an accusation.”“We’ll see what we find out,” she said. “It’s fair to say you didn’t have 10,000 people just happen to show up and attack Capitol Police officers, maim them and threaten to kill the vice president and members of Congress just because they felt like it. There was a reason, there was a structure to this, and we need to uncover everything about that.” More