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    Picking a Trump V.P.: The Field of Dreams or a Field of Nightmares?

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    Michelle Cottle, Ross Douthat, Carlos Lozada and Listen to and follow ‘Matter of Opinion’Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon MusicThis week on “Matter of Opinion,” the hosts do the dirty work of strategizing the best vice-presidential candidate for Donald Trump to campaign with, and break down what goes into consequential (and not so consequential) V.P. picks.Plus, Carlos’s team has a Fightin’ chance next year.(A full transcript of the episode will be available midday on the Times website.)Illustration by The New York Times; Photograph by Olivier Douliery/Getty ImagesMentioned in this episode:“Picking the Vice President,” by Elaine Kamarck“Which Trump Toady Would the MAGA King Pick as His No. 2?” by Michelle Cottle in The Times“The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021,” by Peter Baker and Susan Glasser“Keeping Faith: Memoirs of a President,” by Jimmy CarterThoughts? Email us at matterofopinion@nytimes.com.Follow our hosts on X: Michelle Cottle (@mcottle), Ross Douthat (@DouthatNYT) and Carlos Lozada (@CarlosNYT).“Matter of Opinion” is produced by Phoebe Lett, Derek Arthur and Sophia Alvarez Boyd. It is edited by Alison Bruzek. Mixing by Pat McCusker and Carole Sabouraud. Original music by Isaac Jones, Efim Shapiro, Carole Sabouraud, Sonia Herrero and Pat McCusker. Our fact-checking team is Kate Sinclair, Mary Marge Locker and Michelle Harris. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta and Kristina Samulewski. Our executive producer is Annie-Rose Strasser. More

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      Is Liz Cheney Really Thinking About Running for President in 2024?

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      The former congresswoman is working to ensure that Donald Trump never returns to the Oval Office. She is also keeping her own door wide open.Liz Cheney was widely seen as a Republican superstar in the making, perhaps even a future president, before she was elected to Congress in 2016. Ms. Cheney never discouraged the talk, but Donald J. Trump shattered her glittering future after she voted to impeach him in 2021 and became a pariah in the G.O.P.Now, while vowing to do “everything I can” to ensure that Mr. Trump never returns to the White House, Ms. Cheney, a former congresswoman from Wyoming, has suggested that she has not abandoned her own presidential ambitions. In interviews with The Washington Post and USA Today ahead of the publication on Tuesday of her new book, “Oath and Honor: A Memoir and a Warning,” Ms. Cheney broached the possibility of a third-party challenge to Mr. Trump’s candidacy.“Several years ago, I would not have contemplated a third-party run,” Ms. Cheney told Maeve Reston of The Post. But, she said, “democracy is at risk” in the United States as well as overseas. Ms. Cheney said she would make a final decision in the next few months.Her comments were in keeping with the answer she gave in October to Jake Tapper of CNN about whether she was ruling out a presidential run. “No, I’m not,” she said.Ms. Cheney declined to comment to The New York Times.Despite her remarks, there is no evidence that Ms. Cheney has taken any steps toward running beyond keeping her options open while maximizing her relevancy during a book-promotion tour.She has not hired any campaign staff members. Close associates of hers say they are unaware of any polling, signature-gathering or related efforts associated with mounting a third-party campaign. Her political action committee, the Great Task, has stalled in activity since the 2022 midterms, when Ms. Cheney backed efforts by some Democratic candidates against Republicans who had claimed the 2020 election was stolen.In the meantime, time is running short. Filing deadlines to appear on ballots as a third-party candidate in 2024 begin as early as March in some states. Though she expressed an openness to USA Today to “setting up a new party” that might supplant a Trump-centric G.O.P., such an effort would require the kind of money, personnel and legal maneuvering that would take months if not years to produce.A Cheney presidential run is also likely to undermine her mission of thwarting Mr. Trump’s 2024 ambitions, said one close friend, because her candidacy could siphon some votes away from President Biden. According to the friend, Ms. Cheney’s comment to The Post that she would not have contemplated a third-party run until recently seemed more about her long allegiance to the G.O.P. and less about a new appetite for running as an independent.Among Beltway conservatives, including lobbyists and military hawks, Ms. Cheney remains a popular figure and a woman of presidential timber. Lawmakers and staff members who served with Ms. Cheney on the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol privately wondered whether the vice chairwoman was prioritizing her ambitions over a comprehensive investigation of the Capitol riot. To Mr. Trump’s allies, of course, the question answered itself.If the current moment suggests anything beyond the desire to sell books, it is a reminder that Liz Cheney, like her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, has long understood the importance of political leverage in furthering her core beliefs. For now, she holds no office and has no place in either major party. But she has her voice. More

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      Liz Cheney’s Primary in Wyoming Is Likely to End a Dynasty and an Era

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      CODY, Wyo. — At an event last month honoring the 14,000 Japanese Americans who were once held at the Heart Mountain internment camp near here, Representative Liz Cheney was overcome with emotions, and a prolonged standing ovation wasn’t the only reason.Her appearance — with her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, as well as former Senator Alan Simpson and the children of Norman Mineta, a Democratic congressman turned transportation secretary who was sent to the camp when he was 10 — was part of a groundbreaking for the new Mineta-Simpson Institute. Ms. Cheney was moved, she said, by the presence of the survivors and by their enduring commitment to the country that imprisoned them during World War II.There was something else, though, that got to the congresswoman during the bipartisan ceremony with party elders she was raised to revere. “It was just a whole combination of emotion,” she recalled in a recent interview.As Ms. Cheney faces a near-certain defeat on Tuesday in her House primary, it is the likely end of the Cheneys’ two-generation dynasty as well as the passing of a less tribal and more clubby and substance-oriented brand of politics.“We were a very powerful delegation, and we worked with the other side, that was key, because you couldn’t function if you didn’t,” recalled Mr. Simpson, now 90, fresh off being awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and as tart-tongued as ever about his ancestral party. “My dad was senator and a governor, and if I ran again today as a Republican I’d get my ass beat — it’s not about heritage.”He was elected to the Senate in 1978, the same year that Mr. Cheney won Wyoming’s at-large House seat, and they worked closely together, two Republicans battling on behalf of the country’s least populated state in an era when Democrats always controlled at least one chamber of Congress.It’s not mere clout, however, that traditional Wyoming Republicans are pining for as they consider their gilded past and ponder the state’s less certain political and economic future. Before Tuesday’s election, which is likely to propel Harriet Hageman, who is backed by former President Donald J. Trump, to the House, the nostalgia in the state is running deeper than the Buffalo Bill Reservoir.Mr. Cheney and Mr. Simpson were not only in the leadership of their respective chambers in the 1980s; they, along with Senator Malcolm Wallop, a Yale-educated cold warrior whose grandfather served in both the British House of Lords and the Wyoming Legislature, got along well and often appeared together as a delegation in a sort of road show across the sprawling state (“A small town with long streets,” as the Wyoming saying goes).From left, Senator Malcolm Wallop, Representative Dick Cheney and Senator Alan Simpson during Mr. Cheney’s nomination hearing for defense secretary in 1989.Ron Edmonds/AP PhotoEven headier was the administration of President George Bush. Mr. Cheney became defense secretary, and his wife, Lynne, served as chairwoman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, while Mr. Simpson was both the second-ranking Senate Republican and one of the president’s closest friends. On top of that, the secretary of state at the time, James A. Baker III, spent summers on his Wyoming ranch, meaning two of the country’s top national security officials could be found doing unofficial promotional work for the state’s tourism industry.“You’d have Army choppers snatching Cheney and Baker from fishing holes,” recalled Rob Wallace, who was Mr. Wallop’s chief of staff.As conservative as the state was on the national level — Lyndon B. Johnson is the only Democrat to carry Wyoming in the past 70 years — the Wyoming Republican delegation worked effectively with two well-regarded Democratic governors in that same period, Ed Herschler and Mike Sullivan.Now, Ms. Cheney hardly even speaks to the two other Wyomingites in Congress — Senators John Barrasso and Cynthia Lummis, both Republicans — and has little contact with Gov. Mark Gordon. Ms. Lummis has endorsed Ms. Hageman. But Mr. Barrasso and Mr. Gordon, who are mainline Republicans in the Cheney tradition, have sought to maintain neutrality in hopes of avoiding Mr. Trump’s wrath.More Coverage of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsAug. 9 Primaries: In Wisconsin and a handful of other states, Trump endorsements resonated. Here’s what else we learned and a rundown of some notable wins and losses.Arizona Governor’s Race: Like other hard-right candidates this year, Kari Lake won her G.O.P. primary by running on election lies. But her polished delivery, honed through decades as a TV news anchor, have landed her in a category all her own.Climate, Health and Tax Bill: The Senate’s passage of the legislation has Democrats sprinting to sell the package by November and experiencing a flicker of an unfamiliar feeling: hope.Disputed Maps: New congressional maps drawn by Republicans in Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Ohio were ruled illegal gerrymanders. They’re being used this fall anyway.“They’ve got to make their own choices and live with the choices that they make,” Ms. Cheney said about the two men, before adding: “There are too many people who think that somebody else will fix the problem, that we can stay on the sidelines and Trump will fade.” More

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      Liz Cheney Risks Primary Over Jan. 6 and Trump Investigation

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      The Republican says her crusade to stop Donald J. Trump will continue — even if she loses her primary next week. Restoring a “very sick” G.O.P. will take years, she says, “if it can be healed.”CHEYENNE, Wyo. — It was just over a month before her primary, but Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming was nowhere near the voters weighing her future.Ms. Cheney was instead huddled with fellow lawmakers and aides in the Capitol complex, bucking up her allies in a cause she believes is more important than her House seat: ridding American politics of former President Donald J. Trump and his influence.“The nine of us have done more to prevent Trump from ever regaining power than any group to date,” she said to fellow members of the panel investigating Mr. Trump’s involvement in the Jan. 6 Capitol attack. “We can’t let up.”The most closely watched primary of 2022 has not become much of a race at all. Polls show Ms. Cheney losing badly to her rival, Harriet Hageman, Mr. Trump’s vehicle for revenge, and the congresswoman has been all but driven out of her Trump-loving state, in part because of death threats, her office says.Ms. Cheney told fellow members of the House panel, “The nine of us have done more to prevent Trump from ever regaining power than any group to date.” Doug Mills/The New York TimesYet for Ms. Cheney, the race stopped being about political survival months ago. Instead, she has used the Aug. 16 contest as a sort of high-profile stage for her martyrdom — and a proving ground for her new crusade. She used the only debate to tell voters to “vote for somebody else” if they wanted a politician who would violate their oath of office. Last week, she enlisted her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, to cut an ad calling Mr. Trump a “coward” who represents the greatest threat to America in the history of the republic.In a state where Mr. Trump won 70 percent of the vote two years ago, Ms. Cheney might as well be asking ranchers to go vegan.“If the cost of standing up for the Constitution is losing the House seat, then that’s a price I’m willing to pay,” she said in an interview last week in the conference room of a Cheyenne bank.The 56-year-old daughter of a politician who once had visions of rising to the top of the House leadership — but landed as vice president instead — has become arguably the most consequential rank-and-file member of Congress in modern times. Few others have so aggressively used the levers of the office to seek to reroute the course of American politics — but, in doing so, she has effectively sacrificed her own future in the institution she grew up to revere.Ms. Cheney’s relentless focus on Mr. Trump has driven speculation — even among longtime family friends — that she is preparing to run for president. She has done little to dissuade such talk.At a house party Thursday night in Cheyenne, with the former vice president happily looking on under a pair of mounted leather chaps, the host introduced Ms. Cheney by recalling how another Republican woman, Senator Margaret Chase Smith of Maine, confronted Senator Joseph McCarthy when doing so was unpopular — and went on to become the first female candidate for president from a major party.The attendees applauded at the parallel, as Ms. Cheney smiled.In the interview, she said she was focused on her primary — and her work on the committee. But it’s far from clear that she could be a viable candidate in the current Republican Party, or whether she has interest in the donor-class schemes about a third-party bid, in part because she knows it may just siphon votes from a Democrat opposing Mr. Trump.Ms. Cheney said she had no interest in changing parties: “I’m a Republican.” But when asked if the G.O.P. she was raised in was even salvageable in the short term, she said: “It may not be” and called her party “very sick.”Understand the Aug. 2 Primary ElectionsWhile the Trump wing of the Republican Party flexed its muscle, voters in deep-red Kansas delivered a loud warning to the G.O.P. on abortion rights.Takeaways: Tuesday’s results suggest this year’s midterms are a trickier environment for uncompromising conservatives than Republicans once believed. Here’s what we learned.Kansas Abortion Vote: In the first election test since Roe v. Wade was overturned, Kansas voters resoundingly decided against removing the right to abortion from the State Constitution, a major victory for the abortion rights movement in a reliably conservative state.Trump’s Grip on G.O.P.: Primary victories in Arizona and Michigan for allies of former President Donald J. Trump reaffirmed his continued influence over the Republican Party.Winners and Losers: See a rundown of the most notable results.The party, she said, “is continuing to drive itself in a ditch and I think it’s going to take several cycles if it can be healed.”Ms. Cheney remains close to and protective of her parents and has never much expanded her inner circle beyond family and a handful of close advisers.Stephen Speranza for The New York TimesMs. Cheney suggested she was animated as much by Trumpism as by Mr. Trump himself. She could support a Republican for president in 2024, she said, but her red line is a refusal to state clearly that Mr. Trump lost a legitimate election in 2020.Asked if the ranks of off-limits candidates included Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, whom many Republicans have latched onto as a Trump alternative, she said she “would find it very difficult” to support Mr. DeSantis in a general election.“I think that Ron DeSantis has lined himself up almost entirely with Donald Trump, and I think that’s very dangerous,” Ms. Cheney said.It’s easy to hear other soundings of a White House bid in Ms. Cheney’s rhetoric.In Cheyenne, she channeled the worries of “moms” and what she described as their hunger for “somebody who’s competent.” Having once largely scorned identity politics — Ms. Cheney was the only female lawmaker who wouldn’t pose for a picture of the women of Congress after 2018 — she now freely discusses gender and her perspective as a mother.“These days, for the most part, men are running the world, and it is really not going that well,” she said in June when she spoke at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif.The audience at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library during Ms. Cheney’s speech there in June.Kyle Grillot for The New York TimesIn a sign that Ms. Cheney’s political awakening goes beyond her contempt for Mr. Trump, she said she prefers the ranks of Democratic women with national security backgrounds to her party’s right flank.“I would much rather serve with Mikie Sherrill and Chrissy Houlahan and Elissa Slotkin than Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert, even though on substance certainly I have big disagreements with the Democratic women I just mentioned,” Ms. Cheney said in the interview. “But they love this country, they do their homework and they are people that are trying to do the right thing for the country.”Ms. Cheney is surer of her diagnosis for what ails the G.O.P. than she is of her prescription for reform.She has no post-Congress political organization in waiting and has benefited from Democratic donors, whose affections may be fleeting. To the frustration of some allies, she has not expanded her inner circle beyond family and a handful of close advisers. Never much of a schmoozer, she said she longed for what she recalled as her father’s era of policy-centric politics.“What the country needs are serious people who are willing to engage in debates about policy,” Ms. Cheney said.It’s all a far cry from the Liz Cheney of a decade ago, who had a contract to appear regularly on Fox News and would use her perch as a guest host for Sean Hannity to present her unswerving conservative views and savage former President Barack Obama and Democrats.Today, Ms. Cheney doesn’t concede specific regrets about helping to create the atmosphere that gave rise to Mr. Trump’s takeover of her party. She did, however, acknowledge a “reflexive partisanship that I have been guilty of” and noted that Jan. 6 “demonstrated how dangerous that is.”Few lawmakers today face those dangers as regularly as Ms. Cheney, who has had a full-time Capitol Police security detail for nearly a year because of the threats against her — protection few rank-and-file lawmakers are assigned. She no longer provides advance notice about her Wyoming travel and, not welcome at most county and state Republican events, has turned her campaign into a series of invite-only House parties.Not welcome at most county and state Republican events, Ms. Cheney has turned her campaign into a series of invite-only House parties.Stephen Speranza for The New York TimesWhat’s more puzzling than her schedule is why Ms. Cheney, who has raised over $13 million, has not poured more money into the race, especially early on when she had an opportunity to define Ms. Hageman. Ms. Cheney had spent roughly half her war chest as of the start of July, spurring speculation that she was saving money for future efforts against Mr. Trump.Ms. Cheney long ago stopped attending meetings of House Republicans. When at the Capitol, she spends much of her time with the Democrats on the Jan. 6 panel and often heads to the Lindy Boggs Room, the reception room for female lawmakers, rather than the House floor with the male-dominated House G.O.P. conference. Some members of the Jan. 6 panel have been struck by how often her Zoom background is her suburban Virginia home.In Washington, even some Republicans who are also eager to move on from Mr. Trump question Ms. Cheney’s decision to wage open war against her own party. She’s limiting her future influence, they argue.“It depends on if you want to go out in a blaze of glory and be ineffective or if you want to try to be effective,” said Senator John Cornyn of Texas, who has his own future leadership aspirations. “I respect her but I wouldn’t have made the same choice.”Responding to Mr. Cornyn, a spokesman for Ms. Cheney, Jeremy Adler, said she was not focused on politics but rather the former president: “And obviously nothing the senators have done has effectively addressed this threat.”Ms. Cheney is mindful that the Jan. 6 inquiry, with its prime-time hearings, is viewed by critics as an attention-seeking opportunity. She has turned down some opportunities that could have been helpful to her ambitions, most notably proposals from documentary filmmakers.Still, to Ms. Cheney’s skeptics at home, her attacks on Mr. Trump have resurrected dormant questions about her ties to the state and raised fears that she has gone Washington and taken up with the opposition, dismissing the political views of the voters who gave her and her father their starts in electoral politics.Harriet Hageman at a rally hosted by former President Donald J. Trump in Casper, Wyo., in May.Natalie Behring for The New York TimesAt a parade in Casper last month, held while Ms. Cheney was in Washington preparing for a hearing, Ms. Hageman received frequent applause from voters who said the incumbent had lost her way. “Her voting record is not bad,” said Julie Hitt, a Casper resident. “But so much of her focus is on Jan 6.”“She’s so in bed with the Democrats, with Pelosi and with all them people,” Bruce Hitt, Ms. Hitt’s husband, interjected.Notably, no voters interviewed at the parade brought up Ms. Cheney’s support for the gun control bill the House passed just weeks earlier — the sort of apostasy that would have infuriated Wyoming Republicans in an era more dominated by policy than one man’s persona.“Her vote on the gun bill hardly got any publicity whatsoever,” Mike Sullivan, a former Democratic governor of Wyoming who intends to vote for Ms. Cheney in the primary, said, puzzled. (Ms. Cheney is pushing independents and Democrats to re-register as Republicans, as least long enough to vote for her in the primary.)For Ms. Cheney, any sense of bafflement about this moment — a Cheney, Republican royalty, being effectively read out of the party — has faded in the year and a half since the Capitol attack.Ms. Cheney, at the Capitol in 2019. She said in a recent interview that, “If the cost of standing up for the Constitution is losing the House seat, then that’s a price I’m willing to pay.”Erin Schaff/The New York TimesWhen she attended the funeral last year for Mike Enzi, the former Wyoming senator, Ms. Cheney welcomed a visiting delegation of G.O.P. senators. As she greeted them one by one, several praised her bravery and told her to keep up the fight against Mr. Trump, she recalled.She did not miss the opportunity to pointedly remind them: They, too, could join her.“There have been so many moments like that,” she said at the bank, a touch of weariness in her voice. More

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      Liz Cheney Is Ready to Lose. But She’s Not Ready to Quit.

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      The Republican says her crusade to stop Donald J. Trump will continue — even if she loses her primary next week. Restoring a “very sick” G.O.P. will take years, she says, “if it can be healed.”CHEYENNE, Wyo. — It was just over a month before her primary, but Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming was nowhere near the voters weighing her future.Ms. Cheney was instead huddled with fellow lawmakers and aides in the Capitol complex, bucking up her allies in a cause she believes is more important than her House seat: Ridding American politics of former President Donald J Trump and his influence.“The nine of us have done more to prevent Trump from ever regaining power than any group to date,” she said to fellow members of the panel investigating Mr. Trump’s involvement in the Jan. 6 Capitol attack. “We can’t let up.”The most closely-watched primary of 2022 has not become much of a race at all. Polls show Ms. Cheney losing badly to her rival, Harriet Hageman, Mr. Trump’s vehicle for revenge, and the congresswoman has been all but driven out of her Trump-loving state, in part because of death threats, her office says.Ms. Cheney told fellow members of the House panel, “The nine of us have done more to prevent Trump from ever regaining power than any group to date.” Doug Mills/The New York TimesYet for Ms. Cheney, the race stopped being about political survival months ago. Instead, she’s used the Aug. 16 contest as a sort of a high-profile stage for her martyrdom — and a proving ground for her new crusade. She used the only debate to tell voters to “vote for somebody else” if they wanted a politician who would violate their oath of office. Last week, she enlisted her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, to cut an ad calling Mr. Trump a “coward” who represents the greatest threat to America in the history of the republic.In a state where Mr. Trump won 70 percent of the vote two years ago, Ms. Cheney might as well be asking ranchers to go vegan.“If the cost of standing up for the Constitution is losing the House seat, then that’s a price I’m willing to pay,” she said in an interview this week in the conference room of a Cheyenne bank.The 56-year-old daughter of a politician who once had visions of rising to the top of the House leadership — but landed as vice president instead — has become arguably the most consequential rank-and-file member of Congress in modern times. Few others have so aggressively used the levers of the office to attempt to reroute the course of American politics — but, in doing so, she has effectively sacrificed her own future in the institution she grew up to revere.Ms. Cheney’s relentless focus on Mr. Trump has driven speculation — even among longtime family friends — that she is preparing to run for president. She has done little to dissuade such talk.At a house party Thursday night in Cheyenne, with former Vice President Dick Cheney happily looking on under a pair of mounted leather chaps, the host introduced Ms. Cheney by recalling how another Republican woman, Maine Senator Margaret Chase Smith, confronted Senator Joseph McCarthy when doing so was unpopular — and went on to become the first female candidate for president from a major party.The attendees applauded at the parallel, as Ms. Cheney smiled.In the interview, she said she was focused on her primary — and her work on the committee. But it’s far from clear that she could be a viable candidate in the current Republican Party, or whether she has interest in the donor-class schemes about a third-party bid, in part because she knows it may just siphon votes from a Democrat opposing Mr. Trump.Ms. Cheney said she had no interest in changing parties: “I’m a Republican.” But when asked if the G.O.P. she was raised in was even salvageable in the short term, she said: “It may not be” and called her party “very sick.”Understand the Aug. 2 Primary ElectionsWhile the Trump wing of the Republican Party flexed its muscle, voters in deep-red Kansas delivered a loud warning to the G.O.P. on abortion rights.Takeaways: Tuesday’s results suggest this year’s midterms are a trickier environment for uncompromising conservatives than Republicans once believed. Here’s what we learned.Kansas Abortion Vote: In the first election test since Roe v. Wade was overturned, Kansas voters resoundingly decided against removing the right to abortion from the State Constitution, a major victory for the abortion rights movement in a reliably conservative state.Trump’s Grip on G.O.P.: Primary victories in Arizona and Michigan for allies of former President Donald J. Trump reaffirmed his continued influence over the Republican Party.Winners and Losers: See a rundown of the most notable results.The party, she said, “is continuing to drive itself in a ditch and I think it’s going to take several cycles if it can be healed.”Ms. Cheney remains close to and protective of her parents and has never much expanded her inner circle beyond family and a handful of close advisers.Stephen Speranza for The New York TimesMs. Cheney suggested she was animated as much by Trumpism as Mr. Trump himself. She could support a Republican for president in 2024, she said, but her redline is a refusal to state clearly that Mr. Trump lost a legitimate election in 2020.Asked if the ranks of off-limits candidates included Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, whom many Republicans have latched onto as a Trump alternative, she said she “would find it very difficult” to support Mr. DeSantis in a general election.“I think that Ron DeSantis has lined himself up almost entirely with Donald Trump, and I think that’s very dangerous,” Ms. Cheney said.It’s easy to hear other soundings of a White House bid in Ms. Cheney’s rhetoric.In Cheyenne, she channeled the worries of “moms” and what she described as their hunger for “somebody’s who’s competent.” Having once largely scorned identity politics — Ms. Cheney was only the female lawmaker who wouldn’t pose for a picture of the women of Congress after 2018 — she now freely discusses gender and her perspective as a mother.“These days, for the most part, men are running the world, and it is really not going that well,” she said in June when she spoke at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif.The audience at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library during Ms. Cheney’s speech there in June.Kyle Grillot for The New York TimesIn a sign that Ms. Cheney’s political awakening goes beyond her contempt for Mr. Trump, she said she prefers the ranks of Democratic women with national security backgrounds to her party’s right flank.“I would much rather serve with Mikie Sherrill and Chrissy Houlahan and Elissa Slotkin than Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert, even though on substance certainly I have big disagreements with the Democratic women I just mentioned,” Ms. Cheney said in the interview. “But they love this country, they do their homework and they are people that are trying to do the right thing for the country.”Ms. Cheney is surer of her diagnosis for what ails the G.O.P. than she is of her prescription for reform.She has no post-Congress political organization in waiting and has benefited from Democratic donors, whose affections may be fleeting. To the frustration of some allies, she has not expanded her inner circle beyond family and a handful of close advisers. Never much of a schmoozer, she said she longed for what she recalled as her father’s era of policy-centric politics.“What the country needs are serious people who are willing to engage in debates about policy,” Ms. Cheney said.It’s all a far cry from the Liz Cheney of a decade ago, who had a contract to appear regularly on Fox News and would use her perch as a guest host for Sean Hannity to present her unswerving conservative views and savage former President Barack Obama and Democrats.Today, Ms. Cheney doesn’t concede specific regrets about helping to create the atmosphere that gave rise to Mr. Trump’s takeover of her party. She did, however, acknowledge a “reflexive partisanship that I have been guilty of” and noted Jan. 6 “demonstrated how dangerous that is.”Few lawmakers today face those dangers as regularly as Ms. Cheney, who has had a full-time Capitol Police security detail for nearly a year because of the threats against her — protection few rank-and-file lawmakers are assigned. She no longer provides advance notice about her Wyoming travel and, not welcome at most county and state Republican events, has turned her campaign into a series of invite-only House parties.Not welcome at most county and state Republican events, Ms. Cheney has turned her campaign into a series of invite-only House parties.Stephen Speranza for The New York TimesWhat’s more puzzling than her schedule is why Ms. Cheney, who has raised over $13 million, has not poured more money into the race, especially early on when she had an opportunity to define Ms. Hageman. Ms. Cheney had spent roughly half her war chest as of the start of July, spurring speculation that she was saving money for future efforts against Mr. Trump.Ms. Cheney long ago stopped attending meetings of House Republicans. When at the Capitol, she spends much of her time with the Democrats on the Jan. 6 panel and often heads to the Lindy Boggs Room, the reception room for female lawmakers, rather than the House floor with the male-dominated House G.O.P. conference. Some members of the Jan. 6 panel have been struck by how often her Zoom background is her suburban Virginia home.In Washington, even some Republicans who are also eager to move on from Mr. Trump question Ms. Cheney’s decision to wage open war against her own party. She’s limiting her future influence, they argue.“It depends on if you want to go out in a blaze of glory and be ineffective or if you want to try to be effective,” said Senator John Cornyn of Texas, who has his own future leadership aspirations. “I respect her but I wouldn’t have made the same choice.”Responding to Mr. Cornyn, a spokesman for Ms. Cheney, Jeremy Adler, said she was not focused on politics but rather the former president: “And obviously nothing the senators have done has effectively addressed this threat.”Ms. Cheney is mindful that the Jan. 6 inquiry, with its prime-time hearings, is viewed by critics as an attention-seeking opportunity. She has turned down some opportunities that could have been helpful to her ambitions, most notably proposals from documentary filmmakers.Still, to her skeptics at home, Ms. Cheney’s attacks on Mr. Trump have resurrected dormant questions about her ties to the state and raised fears that she has gone Washington and taken up with the opposition, dismissing the political views of the voters who gave her and her father their starts in electoral politics.Harriet Hageman at a rally hosted by former President Donald J. Trump in Casper, Wyo., in May.Natalie Behring for The New York TimesAt a parade in Casper last month, held while Ms. Cheney was in Washington preparing for a hearing, Ms. Hageman received frequent applause from voters who said the incumbent had lost her way. “Her voting record is not bad,” said Julie Hitt, a Casper resident. “But so much of her focus is on Jan 6.”“She’s so in bed with the Democrats, with Pelosi and with all them people,” Bruce Hitt, Ms. Hitt’s husband, interjected.Notably, no voters interviewed at the parade brought up Ms. Cheney’s support for the gun control bill the House passed just weeks earlier — the sort of apostasy that would have infuriated Wyoming Republicans in an era more dominated by policy than one man’s persona.“Her vote on the gun bill hardly got any publicity whatsoever,” Mike Sullivan, a former Democratic governor of Wyoming who intends to vote for Ms. Cheney in the primary, said, puzzled. (Ms. Cheney is pushing independents and Democrats to re-register as Republicans, as least long enough to vote for her in the primary.)For Ms. Cheney, any sense of bafflement about this moment — a Cheney, Republican royalty, being effectively read out of the party — has faded in the year and a half since the Capitol attack.Ms. Cheney, at the Capitol in 2019. She said in a recent interview that, “If the cost of standing up for the Constitution is losing the House seat, then that’s a price I’m willing to pay.”Erin Schaff/The New York TimesWhen she attended the funeral last year for Mike Enzi, the former Wyoming senator, Ms. Cheney welcomed a visiting delegation of G.O.P. senators. As she greeted them one by one, several praised her bravery and told her keep up the fight against Mr. Trump, she recalled.She did not miss the opportunity to pointedly remind them: They, too, could join her.“There have been so many moments like that,” she said at the bank, a touch of weariness in her voice. More

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      Dick Cheney Excoriates Trump in an Ad for His Daughter Liz Cheney

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      A new advertisement for Representative Liz Cheney’s re-election campaign features a leader of a bygone era in the Republican Party excoriating the leader of the current one.“In our nation’s 246-year history, there has never been an individual that was a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump,” Ms. Cheney’s father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, said in the ad, released less than two weeks before Wyoming’s primary elections on Aug. 16.He praised Ms. Cheney, who has become a pariah among Republicans for her criticism of Mr. Trump and her work as vice chairwoman of the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, for “honoring her oath to the Constitution when so many in our party are too scared to do so.”The one-minute ad landed with a bang Thursday on social media, where a single copy racked up seven million views. But in Wyoming, where Mr. Trump won 69.9 percent of the vote in 2020 — more than in any other state — it is highly unlikely to sway any significant number of voters in Ms. Cheney’s favor.For decades before Mr. Trump transformed the party, Mr. Cheney was one of the most influential Republicans in the nation: He was the White House chief of staff under President Gerald Ford, secretary of defense under President George H.W. Bush and vice president under President George W. Bush, a position in which he wielded uncommon power and was an architect of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. But the Republican Party of 2022 bears little resemblance to the party he held power in.At least six of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Mr. Trump will be leaving Congress in January: Four of them are retiring and two were defeated in primaries, with another two still awaiting primary results several days after voting ended in Washington State. It would take an astonishing political turnaround for Ms. Cheney to avoid joining them. In a Casper Star-Tribune poll last month, she trailed her opponent, Harriet Hageman, by 22 percentage points.In light of those numbers, the ad, like many of Ms. Cheney’s public statements as a leader of the Jan. 6 committee, seemed more of an appeal to history than one to the electorate.Mr. Trump “tried to steal the last election using lies and violence to keep himself in power after the voters had rejected him,” Mr. Cheney said in the ad. “He’s a coward. A real man wouldn’t lie to his supporters. He lost his election and he lost big. I know it, he knows it, and, deep down, I think most Republicans know it.”Of his daughter, he continued, “There is nothing more important she will ever do than lead the effort to make sure Donald Trump is never again near the Oval Office — and she will succeed.” More

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      Covid 3.0, Biden 2.0 and Trump Number …

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      Bret Stephens: Happy ’22, Gail. Hope your year is off to a good start. Eager to get your thoughts on Covid 3.0, which nearly every other person I know seems to have.Gail Collins: Happy New Year, Bret. I had a nice long holiday with plane travel, visits to see family and friends, and a few other outings. No Covid interruptions whatsoever, but I have gotten warnings from friends whose friends are sick, and a neighbor who just had a really bad episode.But I remember other holidays in which the flu laid a bunch of people low. Still keep thinking that if everyone takes all the vaccine shots, wears masks in public and avoids scenes like, say, jam-packed bars, it’s still possible to live a pretty normal life.Do you disagree?Bret: I think we need to treat Omicron fundamentally differently than we did previous variants. Everyone should get triple vaxxed. But the idea that we can “stop the spread” or “flatten the curve” is unrealistic, probably unnecessary and possibly counterproductive.Boosted people can still get sick, though for the most part not too severely. More than half of the people in New York City hospitals who have Covid aren’t there because of Covid. Testing doesn’t always detect the virus, and when it does it’s often too late. Mask wearing hasn’t appreciably slowed it, at least not with the surgical or cloth masks most people prefer. And contact tracing is pointless with something that spreads this quickly. Maybe instead of trying to flatten the curve, we should accept the spike and think of Omicron as the coronavirus’s version of the old chickenpox party, the sort my mom took me to as a kid so I could get it over with and gain immunity.Gail: It’s been interesting hearing some of the anti-vaxxers also denouncing other vaccines against childhood diseases. Still haven’t heard any of them call for bringing back smallpox.Bret: A pox on them, metaphorically speaking. On a different subject, I bet you never found yourself being thankful to Dick Cheney for standing up for truth, decency and the American way.Gail: Fortunately his daughter already prepared me to cheer for people I totally disagree with. Liz Cheney is pretty far on the far right when it comes to everything from taxes to abortion to guns, but she’s a great example of how principled people can break with their party when it comes to other profound issues, like last January’s riot.Bret: Riot is too kind a word.Gail: I’ve run into the parents of childhood friends who I remembered as extremely cranky, but found them very charming at 80. So Cheney Sr.’s new look wasn’t so surprising. Although those were dads who used to yell about curfews, and that’s not quite the same as invading Iraq.But about Liz — I’ll bet a lot of Republicans in Congress agree with her deep in their little Trump-terrorized hearts. Don’t you think?Bret: I used to think that. But now I think they are in denial so deep it’s clinical. They’ve convinced themselves that the people who stormed the Capitol were misguided patriots, which is like saying that Harvey Weinstein was a clumsy romantic. They are keen to point fingers at Nancy Pelosi for not doing enough to secure the building, which amounts to indicting the victim for not doing enough to secure his possessions from thugs. They are upset that Democrats use the word “insurrection,” as if a violent attempt to overturn a democratic election ought better be described as a frat party that got a little outta hand. They fulsomely praise Mike Pence for doing his constitutional duty by refusing to interfere with the certification of the election, but say nothing of the 147 congressional Republicans who would not accept the result. They carry on about Stacey Abrams refusing to accept her loss in the 2018 Georgia governor’s race, while treating Donald Trump’s incessant, obsessive, demagogic, destructive lying about 2020 as just one of his exuberant personality quirks.Gail: It is amazing how we can come together on non-government-spending issues.Bret: There’s an old expression, from Poland I think, that goes, “Not my circus. Not my monkeys.” Unfortunately for the country, the G.O.P. has become our national circus, with Tucker Carlson as its scowling ringmaster. Now the question is whether Democrats can govern effectively to keep the clown show from coming back to power. Are you hopeful?Gail: You know, President Biden is the opposite of a crowd-rouser, but at this moment it might be OK to have a national leader who’s just … sane and normal and principled.He’s not going to lead the nation into any stupendous changes, but maybe right now the thing we’re looking for is “that good guy like my eighth-grade teacher.”Bret: Even better would be a good guy who loudly insists that eighth-grade teachers in Chicago show up to work. Sorry, you were saying ….Gail: My actual eighth-grade teacher, as I have alluded to earlier, was a nun, who told us, “Remember, the Romans killed Jesus, not the Jews.” The fact that I still recall that means it was an actual piece of information back then.Bret: I’m glad your nun cleared that up. My Hebrew forebears were far too busy controlling the Roman media, financing Roman conquests and manipulating the Roman Senate to waste their malice on an unconventional rabbi.Gail: And while we’re talking about cultural revolutions — I know this is before your time, but I remember as a teen hearing that Sidney Poitier won the Oscar for best actor and being so excited. I knew it was a big deal, and I guess the fact that the movie he won for, “Lilies of the Field,” was about this Black man helping a bunch of nuns meant a lot in our Catholic girlhood.It just reminded me of all the times when any acknowledgment of Black achievement seemed like big news to the country.Bret: A class act, as our colleague Charles Blow noted in a charming remembrance last week. For my generation, the corresponding analogy was the gay-rights movement in the 1980s, during the AIDS crisis. I remember watching the music video for a song called “Smalltown Boy” by the British band Bronski Beat, which made an impression. It was a small masterpiece of storytelling as well as a stunningly courageous and honest tale of coming out.But getting back to Biden, I don’t think sane, normal and principled will do. I’m kinda hoping for “effective” and “canny.” We’ve been a little lacking in that department ….Gail: Well, hey, I thought his speech about Jan. 6 was pretty powerful, don’t you agree?Bret: Up to a point, yes. It was eloquent. And I had no disagreement with the substance.I have a couple of worries, though. If Biden meant to commemorate an important anniversary, fine and good. But if he means for congressional Democrats to make “Remember Jan. 6” the organizing principle of their election campaigns, it’s political malpractice. It politicizes the event in a way that will diminish its significance and turn off wavering voters who feel they’re being talked down to. And it’s a distraction from the job Democrats should be doing, which is convincing the public that they’ve got their interests and concerns in mind. Elections are always about “What have you done for me, lately?” Democrats aren’t going to win on the promise of safeguarding abstract principles, important as that may be.Gail: I think you’re worried that the post-Jan. 6 ethos will include leftie opposition to the profitability obsession of big business. Like refusing to expand Medicaid, letting Big Pharma run amok on prescription drug prices and keeping a lid on Medicare.Bret: I just think Democrats need to be careful not to mix milk and meat, so to speak. The smart play is to let the Jan. 6 committee do its work and let the public draw its conclusions. In the meantime, fix the supply-chain bottlenecks. Pick a quarrel with any teachers union that tries to keep schools closed. Propose an immigration bill that funds border security in exchange for citizenship for Dreamers. Break Build Back Better into bite-size components and get its most popular parts passed with votes from Joe Manchin, Kyrsten Sinema and even a Republican or two, like Lisa Murkowski or Susan Collins.To keep Trump and his epigones away from high office, it isn’t enough having the moral high ground. It’s like something Adlai Stevenson supposedly said once when a voter told him that every thinking person was on his side. “I’m afraid that won’t do,” he replied. “I need a majority.” Democracy needs a majority.Gail: Hey, my final mission today is clear. I want us to stop here so we can all remember the time we concluded with Adlai Stevenson.Till next week, Bret.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: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Liz Cheney’s Unlikely Journey From G.O.P. Royalty to Republican Outcast

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      Dick Cheney always saw doomsday threats from America’s enemies. His daughter is in a lonely battle against what both see as a danger to American democracy: Donald J. Trump.CASPER, Wyo. — Representative Liz Cheney was holed up in a secure undisclosed location of the Dick Cheney Federal Building, recounting how she got an alarmed phone call from her father on Jan. 6.Ms. Cheney, Republican of Wyoming, recalled that she had been preparing to speak on the House floor in support of certifying Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s election as president. Mr. Cheney, the former vice president and his daughter’s closest political adviser, consulted with her on most days, but this time was calling as a worried parent.He had seen President Donald J. Trump on television at a rally that morning vow to get rid of “the Liz Cheneys of the world.” Her floor speech could inflame tensions, he told her, and he feared for her safety. Was she sure she wanted to go ahead?“Absolutely,” she told her father. “Nothing could be more important.”Minutes later, Mr. Trump’s supporters breached the entrance, House members evacuated and the political future of Ms. Cheney, who never delivered her speech, was suddenly scrambled. Her promising rise in the House, which friends say the former vice president had been enthusiastically invested in and hoped might culminate in the speaker’s office, had been replaced with a very different mission.“This is about being able to tell your kids that you stood up and did the right thing,” she said.Ms. Cheney entered Congress in 2017, and her lineage always ensured her a conspicuous profile, although not in the way it has since blown up. Her campaign to defeat the “ongoing threat” and “fundamental toxicity of a president who lost” has landed one of the most conservative House members in the most un-Cheney-like position of resistance leader and Republican outcast. Ms. Cheney has vowed to be a counterforce, no matter how lonely that pursuit might be or where it might lead, including a possible primary challenge to Mr. Trump if he runs for president in 2024, a prospect she has not ruled out.Ms. Cheney, with her establishment background and partisan instincts, was seen as a possible speaker after her election to the House. Amr Alfiky/The New York TimesBeyond the daunting politics, Ms. Cheney’s predicament is also a father-daughter story, rife with dynastic echoes and ironies. An unapologetic Prince of Darkness figure throughout his career, Mr. Cheney was always attuned to doomsday scenarios and existential threats he saw posed by America’s enemies, whether from Russia during the Cold War, Saddam Hussein after the Sept. 11 attacks, or the general menace of tyrants and terrorists.Ms. Cheney has come to view the current circumstances with Mr. Trump in the same apocalyptic terms. The difference is that today’s threat resides inside the party in which her family has been royalty for nearly half a century.“He is just deeply troubled for the country about what we watched President Trump do,” Ms. Cheney said of her father. “He’s a student of history. He’s a student of the presidency. He knows the gravity of those jobs, and as he’s watched these events unfold, certainly he’s been appalled.”On the day last month that Ms. Cheney’s House colleagues ousted her as the third-ranking Republican over her condemnations of Mr. Trump, she invited an old family friend, the photographer David Hume Kennerly, to record her movements for posterity. After work, they repaired to her parents’ home in McLean, Va., to commiserate over wine and a steak dinner.“There was maybe a little bit of post-mortem, but it didn’t feel like a wake,” said Mr. Kennerly, the official photographer for President Gerald R. Ford while Mr. Cheney was White House chief of staff. “Mostly, I got a real sense at that dinner of two parents who were extremely proud of their kid and wanted to be there for her at the end of a bad day.”Mr. Cheney declined to be interviewed for this article, but provided a statement: “As a father, I am enormously proud of my daughter. As an American, I am deeply grateful to her for defending our Constitution and the rule of law.”The Cheneys are a private and insular brood, though not without tensions that have gone public. Ms. Cheney’s opposition to same-sex marriage during a brief Senate campaign in 2013 enraged her sister, Mary Cheney, and Mary’s longtime partner, Heather Poe. It was conspicuous, then, when Mary conveyed full support for her sister after Jan. 6.“As many people know, Liz and I have definitely had our differences over the years,” she wrote in a Facebook post on Jan. 7. “But I am very proud of how she handled herself during the fight over the Electoral College…Good job Big Sister.’’Ms. Cheney with her father after the vice presidential debate in 2004. Mr. Cheney has long been her closest professional alter ego.Jim Wilson/The New York TimesHer Father’s Alter EgoIn an interview in Casper, Ms. Cheney, 54, spoke in urgent, clipped cadences in an unmarked conference room of the Dick Cheney Federal Building, one of many places that carry her family name in the nation’s least populous and most Trump-loving state. Her disposition conveyed both determination and worry, and also a sense of someone who had endured an embattled stretch.Ms. Cheney had spent much of a recent congressional recess in Wyoming and yet was rarely seen in public. The appearances she did make — a visit to the Chamber of Commerce in Casper, a hospital opening (with her father) in Star Valley — were barely publicized beforehand, in large part for security concerns. She has received a stream of death threats, common menaces among high-profile critics of Mr. Trump, and is now surrounded by a newly deployed detail of plainclothes, ear-pieced agents.Her campaign spent $58,000 on security from January to March, including three former Secret Service officers, according to documents filed with the Federal Election Commission. Ms. Cheney was recently assigned protection from the Capitol Police, an unusual measure for a House member not in a leadership position. The fortress aura around Ms. Cheney is reminiscent of the “secure undisclosed location” of her father in the days after the Sept. 11 attacks.Ms. Cheney’s temperament bears the imprint of both parents, especially her mother, Lynne Cheney, a conservative scholar and commentator who is far more extroverted than her husband. But Mr. Cheney has long been his eldest daughter’s closest professional alter ego, especially after he left office in 2009, and Ms. Cheney devoted marathon sessions to collaborating on his memoir, “In My Times.” Their work coincided with some of Mr. Cheney’s gravest heart conditions, including a period in 2010 when he was near death.His health stabilized after doctors installed a blood-pumping device that kept him alive and allowed him to travel. This included trips between Virginia and Wyoming in which Mr. Cheney would drive while dictating stories to Ms. Cheney in the passenger seat, who would type his words into a laptop. He received his heart transplant in 2012.Mr. Cheney, left, served as Wyoming’s at-large congressman from 1979 to 1989. As powerful as he was as vice president, he had always considered himself a product of the House.George Tames/The New York TimesFather and daughter promoted the memoir in joint appearances, with Ms. Cheney interviewing her father in venues around the country. “She was basically there with her dad to ease his re-entry back to health on the public stage,” said former Senator Alan K. Simpson, a Wyoming Republican and a longtime family friend.By 2016, Ms. Cheney had been elected to Congress and quickly rose to become the third-ranking Republican, a post her father also held. As powerful as Mr. Cheney was as vice president, he had always considered himself a product of the House, where he had served as Wyoming’s at-large congressman from 1979 to 1989.Neither father nor daughter is a natural politician in any traditional sense. Mr. Cheney was a plotter and bureaucratic brawler, ambitious but in a quiet, secretive and, to many eyes, devious way. Ms. Cheney was largely focused on strategic planning and hawkish policymaking.After graduating from Colorado College (“The Evolution of Presidential War Powers” was her senior thesis), Ms. Cheney worked at the State Department and the United States Agency for International Development while her father was defense secretary. She attended the University of Chicago Law School and practiced at the firm White & Case before returning to the State Department while her father was vice president. She was not sheepish or dispassionate like her father — she was a cheerleader at McLean High School — but held off running for office until well into her 40s.Once in the House, Ms. Cheney was seen as a possible speaker — a hybrid of establishment background, hard-line conservatism and partisan instincts. While she had reservations about Mr. Trump, she was selective with her critiques and voted with him 93 percent of time and against his first impeachment.As for Mr. Cheney, his distress over the Trump administration was initially focused on foreign policy, though he eventually came to view the 45th president’s performance overall as abysmal.“I had a couple of conversations with the vice president last summer where he was really deeply troubled,” said Eric S. Edelman, a former American ambassador to Turkey, a Pentagon official in the George W. Bush administration and family friend.People protesting Ms. Cheney’s decision to impeach President Donald J. Trump this year at Wyoming’s Capitol in Cheyenne.Daniel Brenner for The New York TimesAs a transplant recipient whose compromised immune system placed him at severe risk of Covid-19, Mr. Cheney found that his contempt for the Trump White House only grew during the pandemic. He had also known and admired Dr. Anthony S. Fauci for many years.At the same time, Ms. Cheney publicly supported Dr. Fauci and seemed to be trolling the White House last June when she tweeted “Dick Cheney says WEAR A MASK” over a photograph of her father — looking every bit the stoic Westerner — sporting a face covering and cowboy hat (hashtag “#realmenwearmasks”).She has received notable support in her otherwise lonely efforts from a number of top-level figures of the Republican establishment, including many of her father’s old White House colleagues. Former President George W. Bush — through a spokesman — made a point of thanking Mr. Cheney “for his daughter’s service” in a call to his former vice president on his 80th birthday in January.Ms. Cheney did wind up voting for Mr. Trump in November, but came to regret it immediately. In her view, Mr. Trump’s conduct after the election went irreversibly beyond the pale. “For Liz, it was like, I just can’t do this anymore,” said former Representative Barbara Comstock, Republican of Virginia.A 2024 Run for President?Ms. Cheney returned last week to Washington, where she had minimal dealings with her former leadership cohorts and was less inhibited in sharing her dim view of certain Republican colleagues. On Tuesday, she slammed Representative Paul Gosar of Arizona for repeating “disgusting and despicable lies” about the actions of the Capitol Police on Jan. 6.“We’ve got people we’ve entrusted with the perpetuation of the Republic who don’t know what the rule of law is,” she said. “We probably need to do Constitution boot camps for newly sworn-in members of Congress. Clearly.”She said her main pursuit now involved teaching basic civics to voters who had been misinformed by Mr. Trump and other Republicans who should know better. “I’m not naïve about the education that has to go on here,” Ms. Cheney said. “This is dangerous. It’s not complicated. I think Trump has a plan.”Ms. Cheney voted for Mr. Trump’s agenda 93 percent of time and against his first impeachment in 2019.Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesMs. Cheney’s own plan has been the object of considerable speculation. Although she was re-elected in 2020 by 44 percentage points, she faces a potentially treacherous path in 2022. Several Wyoming Republicans have already announced plans to mount primary challenges against Ms. Cheney, and her race is certain to be among the most closely followed in the country next year. It will also provide a visible platform for her campaign to ensure Mr. Trump “never again gets near the Oval Office” — an enterprise that could plausibly include a long-shot primary bid against him in 2024.Friends say that at a certain point, events — namely Jan. 6 — came to transcend any parochial political concerns for Ms. Cheney. “Maybe I’m being Pollyanna a little bit here, but I do think Liz is playing the long game,” said Matt Micheli, a Cheyenne lawyer and former chairman of the Wyoming Republican Party. Ms. Cheney has confirmed as much.“This is something that determines the nature of this Republic going forward,” she said. “So I really don’t know how long that takes.” More

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      ‘Ignoring the Lie Emboldens the Liar’

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      Listen and follow The DailyApple Podcasts | Spotify | StitcherToday, Liz Cheney, the No. 3 Republican in the House, is expected to be removed from her leadership position.Her role in the party has increasingly become untenable for many. Ms. Cheney has continued to speak out in the starkest of terms against President Donald Trump’s role in fomenting the Jan. 6 riots and the continued insistence that the 2020 election was stolen.In doing so, she has found herself on a lonely political island.We look at the factors behind her ouster and the new requirements for Republican leadership.On today’s episodeCatie Edmondson, a reporter in The New York Times’s Washington bureau.Representative Liz Cheney’s leadership role is embattled despite her conservative voting record and her status as a member of a Republican dynasty. Erin Schaff/The New York TimesBackground readingIn turning on Ms. Cheney, Republicans have bowed to Mr. Trump’s election lies.The Wyoming congresswoman challenged Republicans to turn away from Trump after Jan. 6. Instead, they turned on her.“History is watching.” Here are five key arguments from Ms. Cheney’s Washington Post opinion essay this month.There are a lot of ways to listen to The Daily. Here’s how.Transcripts of each episode are available by the next workday. You can find them at the top of the page.Catie Edmondson contributed reporting.The Daily is made by Theo Balcomb, Lisa Tobin, Rachel Quester, Lynsea Garrison, Annie Brown, Clare Toeniskoetter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon Johnson, Brad Fisher, Larissa Anderson, Wendy Dorr, Chris Wood, Jessica Cheung, Stella Tan, Alexandra Leigh Young, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Marc Georges, Luke Vander Ploeg, Sindhu Gnanasambandan, M.J. Davis Lin, Austin Mitchell, Neena Pathak, Dan Powell, Dave Shaw, Sydney Harper, Daniel Guillemette, Hans Buetow, Robert Jimison, Mike Benoist, Bianca Giaever, Liz O. Baylen, Asthaa Chaturvedi, Rachelle Bonja, Alix Spiegel, Diana Nguyen, Marion Lozano and Soraya Shockley.Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly. Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Mikayla Bouchard, Lauren Jackson, Julia Simon, Mahima Chablani, Nora Keller, Sofia Milan, Desiree Ibekwe, Laura Kim, Erica Futterman and Shreeya Sinha. More