Cheney, Liz

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    Lisa Murkowski Says She Won’t Vote for Trump

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    Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, said in an interview released on Sunday that she would not vote for former President Donald J. Trump. She also did not rule out the possibility of leaving the Republican Party.In the interview, which Ms. Murkowski gave to CNN, she said that she would “absolutely” not support Mr. Trump in the general election in November. She said that she wished Republicans had nominated someone whom she could vote for, but that she “certainly can’t get behind Donald Trump.”Asked whether she might leave the party and become an independent, she said that she considered herself “very independent-minded” and added, “I just regret that our party is seemingly becoming a party of Donald Trump.” But she did not give a yes-or-no answer, saying: “I am navigating my way through some very interesting political times. Let’s just leave it at that.”If Ms. Murkowski left the Republican Party, it would be welcome news for Democrats facing a brutally difficult map in the Senate elections in November. Three of their current seats are up for election in red states, and several more are up for election in swing states. There are almost no opportunities to pick up seats currently held by Republicans, and there’s no room for error, given their very narrow majority.Ms. Murkowski, who has served in the Senate for more than 20 years, has long been more moderate than many Republicans. Among other positions that are rare in her party, she supports abortion rights, and she has long been critical of Mr. Trump, including in voting to convict him in his impeachment trial after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.But most elected Republicans, even those who denounced Mr. Trump after Jan. 6, have fallen back in line behind him as it has become clear that he will be the party’s nominee for president.Ms. Murkowski’s declaration that she will not vote for Mr. Trump puts her in the company of a small number of prominent anti-Trump Republicans, among them Senator Mitt Romney of Utah and former Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming.“No, no, no, absolutely not,” Mr. Romney said last month when asked by CNN whether he would vote for Mr. Trump. More

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      Liz Cheney Implores Republicans to Reject Trump

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      She endorsed efforts to remove him from the ballot and said, “Tell the world who we are with your vote. Tell them that we are a good and a great nation.”In a flurry of appearances and commentary, former Representative Liz Cheney has stepped up her denunciations of former President Donald J. Trump in a last-ditch effort to persuade Republicans not to nominate him again.“Tell the world who we are with your vote. Tell them that we are a good and a great nation,” Ms. Cheney told primary voters in New Hampshire on Friday, in a speech at Dartmouth College’s Democracy Summit. “Show the world that we will defeat the plague of cowardice sweeping through the Republican Party.”A day later, she blasted Mr. Trump’s suggestion on the campaign trail that the Civil War could have been prevented if President Abraham Lincoln had “negotiated.”“Which part of the Civil War ‘could have been negotiated’? The slavery part? The secession part? Whether Lincoln should have preserved the Union?” she wrote on X. “Question for members of the G.O.P. — the party of Lincoln — who have endorsed Donald Trump: How can you possibly defend this?”And in an interview on Sunday on “Face the Nation” on CBS News, she denounced Mr. Trump’s attempts to end or delay his criminal trials by arguing that he had immunity against charges related to anything he did in office. She endorsed efforts to remove him from ballots under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.“I certainly believe that Donald Trump’s behavior rose to that level,” she said, referring to Section 3’s disqualification of people who engaged in insurrection against the Constitution after taking an oath to support it. (She made a similar comment at Dartmouth, saying, “There’s no question in my mind that his actions clearly constituted an offense that is within the language of the 14th Amendment.”)“I think that there’s no basis for an assertion that the president of the United States is completely immune from criminal prosecution for acts in office,” she added of Mr. Trump’s appeals on that front. “He’s trying to delay his trial because he doesn’t want people to see the witnesses who will testify against him,” she continued.Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Mr. Trump, said on Sunday: “Liz Cheney is a loser who is now lying in order to sell a book that either belongs in the discount bargain bin in the fiction section of the bookstore or should be repurposed as toilet paper.”Ms. Cheney turned against Mr. Trump in response to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. As a member of the House, she was one of 10 Republicans who voted to impeach him and one of two who served on the committee that investigated the attack. She lost her Republican primary overwhelmingly in 2022.Of all the states holding early primaries and caucuses, New Hampshire — where Ms. Cheney spoke on Friday — is the most fertile ground for Trump opponents, thanks to its voters’ moderate tendencies and the fact that independents can vote in the Republican race. Mr. Trump leads his nearest challenger there, Nikki Haley, by about 13 percentage points — a large margin, but substantially smaller than the roughly 30 points by which he leads Ron DeSantis in Iowa and Ms. Haley in South Carolina.Voting will begin in just one week, when Iowa Republicans hold their caucuses on Jan. 15. The New Hampshire primary comes next, on Jan. 23, followed by Nevada and South Carolina in February.Ms. Cheney told the audience at Dartmouth that her own plans depended on whether Republican voters heeded her call.As she has done on several occasions, she left open the possibility of running as a third-party candidate if they nominate Mr. Trump. But at the same time, she indicated a preference for President Biden over Mr. Trump, saying that while she disagreed with Mr. Biden on policy matters, “Our nation can survive and recover from policy mistakes. We cannot recover from a president willing to torch the Constitution.”“I’m going to do whatever the most effective thing is to ensure that Donald Trump is not elected,” she added. “I’ll make a decision about what that is in the coming months as we see what happens in the Republican primaries.”A spokesman for Ms. Cheney did not respond to a message asking whether she planned to make an endorsement in the primaries. More

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      Living and Struggling With Long Covid

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      More from our inbox:Being Jewish in AmericaBlack Voters, Beware the G.O.P.Liz Cheney’s Book: ‘Too Little, Too Late’Students Know We Need Free SpeechHolly StapletonTo the Editor:Re “What Reporting on Long Covid Taught Me,” by Ed Yong (Opinion guest essay, Dec. 22):As a Covid long-hauler (going on three years now!), I found it validating and even supportive to read Mr. Yong’s essay. It was particularly validating to have the acknowledgment of post-exertional malaise (PEM). This so aptly describes much of my life.For example, I apologize to my dog before going on a shorter-than-usual walk. I have to plan for seemingly mundane tasks of self-care and home care: taking a shower, changing clothes, doing the dishes, sweeping my apartment, doing laundry, etc. I put these tasks in my calendar, and even then the expectation of the aftermath makes me feel incapable, desperate and overwhelmed.I appreciated Mr. Yong’s astute acknowledgment that symptoms are often dismissed because of sexism (I’m transgender). And I was denied disability because it was determined that I was functional enough to wrap silverware in napkins. Yes indeed, treatment is not only a medical issue, but also a social one.Mr. Yong made it clear that his journalism has been transformed by doing research in a more integrative manner, especially actually being with current long-haulers. I’m immensely grateful to him for his journalism and to The Times for publishing it.(I earned my Ph.D. in 2012, and it’s taken me two days to write this.)River Jackson-PatonDallasTo the Editor:Ed Yong’s guest essay is right on point. Long Covid is real, and the public needs to be educated about it.My experience with Covid is that of a former registered nurse in the thick of it. I watched so many patients and co-workers get sick, some dying, some getting better, and some who are still struggling with long Covid.It is very hard for me to hear someone, usually an anti-vaxxer, say, “They should just let everyone get Covid and get it over with.”I hear this quite often and my response is always, “Are you familiar with long Covid?” I always get one of two responses: “No” or “That’s made up.” Then I try to educate.Donna HuntAtascadero, Calif.To the Editor:I appreciate Ed Yong’s extraordinary reporting on long Covid and his opinion piece about the health care system’s failure to take chronic illness patients seriously. What many do not realize is that years and even decades before the pandemic caused long Covid, many patients, including me, struggled to find doctors and treatments for many of the same health problems that long Covid patients face.I cannot give you a single name for our illness because it does not yet exist. I and countless other patients have a slew of diagnoses, including autoimmune diseases, mast cell disorders, connective tissue disorders and dysautonomia. Many of us are disabled and homebound or bedbound.Doctors for these disorders were already hard to find, and the surge of long Covid patients has made accessing knowledgeable care more difficult. I hope the increased demand will inspire more doctors to study and treat these conditions. Now that even more patients are suffering, we need to stop dismissing this constellation of illnesses.Rachel GravesTacoma, Wash.Being Jewish in AmericaPhotographs of some of the hostages captured by Hamas on display by the Western Wall in Jerusalem.Ohad Zwigenberg/Associated PressTo the Editor:Re “Why I Can’t Stop Writing About Oct. 7,” by Bret Stephens (column, Dec. 20):American democracy has promised a land, as Mr. Stephens says, “in which you didn’t have to hide.” Mr. Stephens writes despairingly about the loss of this promise, and there’s no doubt that, today, America’s promise feels remote to many. For Jews, an eroding democracy brings with it a profound sense of trauma and fear.Yet the most appropriate Jewish response to this challenge is not despair, but determination. If our institutions are buckling, let’s reinforce them with forums for civic learning. If our civic culture is fraying, let’s repair it with opportunities for dynamic and respectful conversation. If our democracy is under threat, let’s take actions that strengthen it — right now, and in communities across the country.For nearly two and a half centuries, even amid painful setbacks, the United States has offered one of the last, best places to be Jewish — not because it catered to Jews, but because its democratic pluralism, albeit aspirational and imperfect from the beginning, allowed minorities like ours an opportunity to live freely.When that democratic pluralism struggles, we shouldn’t prematurely mourn its loss. We should repair it instead. This is not naïveté; it’s the agency our parents and grandparents came here looking for.Aaron DorfmanNew YorkThe writer is the executive director of A More Perfect Union: The Jewish Partnership for Democracy, a network of synagogues and Jewish groups.Black Voters, Beware the G.O.P.Kshaun Williams says he has seen his life become harder because of rising inflation under President Biden.José Ibarra Rizo for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Black Voters in Georgia Say Biden Has Forgotten Them,” by Mara Gay (Opinion, Dec. 24):Ms. Gay cautions that Black voters in Georgia feel ignored and abandoned and may desert the Democratic Party in the coming presidential election. While her conclusions are highly debatable, there is no such doubt regarding the alternative.The Republican Party of Donald Trump has rolled back voting rights, gerrymandered predominantly Black districts, eliminated or scaled back social programs that aid the poor and sent federal troops to crack down on anti-racism protests.Should Georgia’s Black voters leave the Democrats for the Republicans, they will quickly learn the real meaning of abandonment.Tom GoodmanPhiladelphiaLiz Cheney’s Book: ‘Too Little, Too Late’Jonathan Ernst/ReutersTo the Editor:It’s with some relief that I read Carlos Lozada’s Dec. 21 column, “Liz Cheney’s Checkered History of the Trump Era.”Ms. Cheney worries about the prospect of another Donald Trump tenure in the White House, but I worry just as much about Ms. Cheney’s rush to sainthood as she plugs her new book and her ostensibly revised views.As Mr. Lozada reminds us, Ms. Cheney, right along with other Trump molls and henchmen in the G.O.P., long pledged obeisance to Mr. Trump. She — no less than the people she now criticizes — got us to this awful, scary time and place, and she shouldn’t get a pass now for what is at best a clear case of “too little, too late.”Beth Z. PalubinskyPhiladelphiaStudents Know We Need Free SpeechTim EnthovenTo the Editor:Re “Students Can Show Us the Way to Free Speech,” by Sophia Rosenfeld (Opinion guest essay, Dec. 18):Ms. Rosenfeld’s essay thoughtfully reminds us that we, as the parenting, teaching and older generations, don’t always have better answers to questions about free speech than our children and students. Indeed, as Ms. Rosenfeld writes, “The sky really isn’t falling.” Our youth are more capable of finding reasonable solutions than we think.I recently attended my son’s college graduation. For weeks before going, I loathed what I thought would surely be a depressing carnival of elite righteousness. Instead, I experienced something far more reassuring about our future.I conversed with my son’s classmates to hear their views about free speech, wokeness and education. Not surprisingly, they are intelligent, insightful, compassionate, but most of all, keenly aware of what is broken. They are respectful and friendly to each other, even when they disagree.Now is the time for the preachy older generations to step aside and trust the younger generations. They can and are navigating the treacherous waters of our time just fine.Nao MatsukataBethesda, Md. More

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      Defining Antisemitism and Anti-Zionism

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      More from our inbox:Just Keeping Trump From the White House Won’t Save DemocracyPolicies on Curbing Drug AddictionLights Dim Off BroadwayAsia’s Disappearing SeaPartidarios de Israel en Los Ángeles, el mes pasadoLauren Justice para The New York TimesTo the Editor: Re “Is Anti-Zionism Antisemitism, by Definition?” (front page, Dec. 12):What is Zionism? To me, being a Zionist in 2023 means that I accept the right and the necessity of the survival of the Jewish people and the existence of a Jewish state that ensures their survival.Anything that undermines or threatens Israel’s survival also undermines or threatens the existence of the Jewish people and is, ipso facto, antisemitic.Philip B. BergerTorontoTo the Editor:I am a Jew by culture and ancestry, albeit a secular one. I abhor contemporary violence by both Hamas and Israel. Historically, however, I have found that in recent years, Israel’s aggressive behavior has been the more objectionable, and Israel seems more determined to demoralize and destroy the Gaza population than to surgically remove Hamas.In the 1950s, when I was a young child and Israel a struggling young state, I paid small sums to buy leaves that I pasted on a picture of a tree until I had bought enough for a tree to be planted in Israel in honor of my grandmother. My father bought Israel bonds — hardly the best monetary investment — in my name and those of my siblings. In the late 1960s and early ’70s, when I had my own children and when Israel had become an expansionist power, I asked him to stop.Although a Jew, I am emphatically not a Zionist, and I resent and fear the conflation of the two.Mark CohenPlattsburgh, N.Y.The writer is distinguished emeritus professor of anthropology at the State University of New York.To the Editor:Jonathan Weisman describes radically different interpretations of Zionism as, alternately, a movement ensuring Jewish sovereignty and safety, or an oppressive colonialism. What is often lost in the debate is the historic diversity among many Zionisms (plural), which continue to struggle with one another for primacy today.One version of Zionism is expansionist, deeply nationalistic and largely unconcerned about the human rights of non-Jews, while another version on the Zionist spectrum is profoundly humanist at its core and envisions an equitable coexistence between Jews and Palestinians.Supporting a Zionism that promotes pluralism and shared society is the only vision for a better future for these two peoples whose fates are intertwined.Andrew VogelNewton, Mass.The writer is the senior rabbi at Temple Sinai in Brookline, Mass.Just Keeping Trump From the White House Won’t Save Democracy Mark Peterson/Redux, for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “The Resolute Liz Cheney,” by Katherine Miller (Opinion, Dec. 10):While I appreciate former Representative Liz Cheney’s relentless opposition to Donald Trump because of the danger he poses to the nation, keeping him out of the White House won’t alone save democracy. We also desperately need to stop Ms. Cheney’s fellow Republicans from undermining elections in their pursuit of permanent political power.Republicans have used extreme means to draw House districts in their favor and refused to join Democrats to stop those gerrymanders even though they deprive voters of fair representation and promote polarization by increasing the number of safe seats.Almost all Republicans voted against restoring provisions of the Voting Rights Act that would help assure protection against racial discrimination. They opposed measures to enact basic ballot access standards, instead allowing states to impose restrictive rules and locate polling places to make it harder for groups they don’t favor to vote.And they refused to support bills to stop the pernicious influence of big donors, opposing even basic disclosure rules to stop secret “dark” money from warping our political priorities.Standing up to Mr. Trump does little good if we allow Republicans to destroy our democracy by other means. Voters need to elect people to protect free and fair elections before Republicans succeed in rigging them in their favor. Otherwise, we will have rule by a party instead of rule by the people, and our experiment in self-governance will be at an end.Daniel A. SimonNew York Policies on Curbing Drug AddictionPolice respond to a man who died of a suspected overdose in downtown Portland in July.Erin Schaff/The New York TimesTo the Editor: Re “Rethinking Drug Policies in an Ailing Portland” (front page, Dec. 12):As a law enforcement veteran, I believe that the police have an important role in supporting community safety. But policymakers can’t keep relying on the police as a Band-Aid to every problem. We cannot arrest our way out of addiction. And increasing criminalization to solve public drug use, as some suggest in the article, won’t work.I worked and supervised police narcotics and gang units. Eventually, I saw that the laws I was charged with enforcing didn’t make my neighbors safer. No matter how much we ramped up enforcement or how many people we arrested, it didn’t stop the flow of drugs into our community or prevent people from dying.For over 50 years, the United States has prioritized criminalization as a response to drug use, yet stronger drugs like fentanyl have emerged, and our country is facing a health crisis with record-setting overdose deaths.To make any progress toward curbing addiction, we need to increase access to the addiction services and support people need: treatment, overdose prevention centers, outreach teams to connect people to care, and housing. More criminalization is a false promise of change.Diane M. GoldsteinLas VegasThe writer, a retired police lieutenant, is the executive director of the Law Enforcement Action Partnership.Lights Dim Off BroadwaySignature Theater, an important Off Broadway institution, had no shows this fall.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesTo the Editor: Re “Off Broadway, Vital to Theater Scene, Struggles” (front page, Dec. 8):It saddens me to read about the struggles and closures of our city’s intimate theaters. These are the institutions that nurture new work. Losing them darkens our future.During this crisis, I hope artistic directors will remember that it doesn’t have to cost a fortune to put on a play. Even a bare-bones staging gives us something Netflix never can: a story shared by strangers in person in real time.Rob AckermanNew YorkThe author is a playwright.Asia’s Disappearing SeaRusting boats in the sand in Muynak, Uzbekistan. Muynak was once a thriving port on the Aral Sea but is now a desert town since the sea disappeared.Carolyn Drake/MagnumTo the Editor: Re “A Giant Inland Sea Is Now a Desert, and a Warning for Humanity,” by Jacob Dreyer (Opinion guest essay, nytimes.com, Nov. 28), about the shrinking Aral Sea in Uzbekistan:Together, we — an archaeologist, a geographer and a historian — have extensive experience in the Aral Sea region. We take exception to Mr. Dreyer’s description of this place as resembling “hell.” Rather than stereotyping the region as a wasteland that people should flee from (Mr. Dreyer stresses his desire to leave the region as quickly as possible), we must recognize the meaning and value that the Aral Sea and its environs still hold for its residents today, and we should center those residents’ desired futures.We also need to consider the Aral Sea region a vital knowledge zone. As we confront shrinking bodies of water in many other regions around the globe, we can learn from the perseverance of Aral Sea residents. If we listen, what lessons can we learn from them as we prepare for future ecological disasters?Elizabeth BriteKate ShieldsSarah CameronDr. Brite is a clinical associate professor at Purdue University, Dr. Shields is an assistant professor at Rhodes College, and Dr. Cameron is an associate professor at the University of Maryland, College Park. More

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      Liz Cheney’s Checkered History

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      Deep in her new book, “Oath and Honor,” Liz Cheney points out that the likeness of Clio, the Greek muse of history, is found in the Capitol’s National Statuary Hall. “Clio is depicted riding in the chariot of time, making notes in the book in her hand,” Cheney writes, “as a reminder that what we do in the Capitol Building is written in the pages of history.”Cheney’s book is likewise an attempt to write the history of our time, a history in which Cheney has become a protagonist. Her telling of this history, though vital, is unnecessarily partial. If this book is intended as both “a memoir and a warning,” as its subtitle declares, Cheney delivers on only half of that promise.The warning Cheney issues is clear and persuasive: A second presidential term for Donald Trump would pose great risks to the nation’s democratic practices and identity. A retribution-minded, Constitution-terminating leader buttressed by unscrupulous advisers and ethically impaired lawyers could, she argues, “dismantle our republic.” As both a witness and a target of the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol and as a leader of the House committee that investigated the attack, Cheney recognizes the power of the mob that Trump commands. She also understands the cowardice of his enablers in the Republican Party, the same kind of loyalists who would populate — or at least seek to justify — a second Trump administration.“The assumption that our institutions will protect themselves is purely wishful thinking by people who prefer to look the other way,” Cheney writes. And that was before Trump suggested that he would act dictatorially in his new term, if only on day one.As a memoir, however, Cheney’s book is overly narrow, and at times curiously uncurious. Yes, anyone interested in the author’s recollections from inside the House chamber on Jan. 6 will find plenty of material (when Jim Jordan of Ohio approached her to help “get the ladies” off the aisle, Cheney swatted his hand away, retorting, “Get away from me. You f — ing did this.”), and Cheney is unstinting in her contempt for Kevin McCarthy, then the Speaker of the House, whom she describes as unprincipled and unintelligent in roughly equal doses. (She even finds McCarthy less substantive and capable than Democratic leaders in the House, like Nancy Pelosi — a savage dig in G.O.P. world.)Yet, for all the insider detail Cheney offers, her memoir is truncated, treating the period between the 2020 election and the Jan. 6 attack as the beginning of history, or the only history that matters, as though no prior warnings about Trump had been warranted or even audible. Cheney once believed in the staying power of the country’s constitutional principles, she writes, “but all that had changed on January 6 of 2021.”Did nothing change for Cheney before Jan. 6? Not anything at all?Cheney, who has said elsewhere that she regrets voting for Trump in 2020, seems disinclined to revisit or reconsider in this book why she and so many others made their peace with earlier signs of Trump’s authoritarian, anti-constitutional impulses. Her explanation for voting against Trump’s first impeachment is thin; she wishes the Democrats had moved to subpoena John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser, to gather additional evidence. It’s a grudging excuse from Cheney, who, as a former State Department official, no doubt can recognize when diplomacy is being manipulated for domestic political gain.Instead, she merely decries those who failed to pivot away from Trump after the 2020 election and Jan. 6, blaming their social-media silos and their exposure to pro-Trump news outlets like Fox News and Newsmax. A longtime Wyoming donor, for example, had “fallen for all the nonsense” about election fraud, Cheney writes, while a close family friend “fell for the lies, hook, line, and sinker.”I did not expect “Oath and Honor” to double as a mea culpa; in any case, Cheney does not seem the type to dabble much in remorse. Her courage in challenging her party over Trump’s election fantasies is hardly rendered meaningless by her prior support for Trump, and her leadership of the House Jan. 6 committee elevated patriotism over partisanship. But history did not in fact begin with that day of violence at the Capitol nearly three years ago. Trump’s unceasing deceit, his disdain for the norms of his office and his assault on the institutions of government spanned his presidency, not just its closing weeks. And his declarations of supposed electoral fraud against him far predated the 2020 presidential contest; his similar rants ahead of the 2016 election were rendered moot only by his unlikely victory.Whether they are elected officials, media personalities, lawyers, family friends or the mob itself, people don’t just swallow Trump’s lies hook, line and sinker all of a sudden. They are lured in, one speech, one deception, one promise at a time, until a lie becomes a worldview. The most serious Trump enablers may indeed include elected officials like McCarthy and his successor Mike Johnson, both of whom brazenly supported Trump’s attempt to undo the 2020 election, and who come in for serious grief in Cheney’s book. But they are not the only ones who, at key moments throughout the Trump presidency, preferred to look the other way. Even those former supporters turned vocal opponents owe some explanation of why their minds needed changing — if only because their transformation can help illuminate the mindset of those who decline to follow their lead.It is largely correct to write, as Cheney does, that “no amount of evidence would ever convince a certain segment of the Republican Party.” It is also largely unhelpful.The irony of the history Cheney highlights in “Oath and Honor” is that her focus on the final days of Trump’s term in late 2020 and early 2021 proves quite helpful in anticipating what the early days of a second term might bring. Most of those troublesome “adults in the room” from the first Trump administration will be gone, consigned to the green room instead of the Cabinet Room. No one will threaten to resign citing principles for the simple reason that they won’t have any; loyalty will be their chief qualification.Cheney recalls how Ronald Reagan described America’s orderly transfer of power every four years as “nothing less than a miracle,” and she worries of the dangers that loom when that transfer grows disorderly. The transition from an outgoing administration to an incoming one is “a time of heightened potential vulnerability” for the country, Cheney writes, and she notes how, immediately after the 2020 election, Trump subbed out key senior officials — including the defense secretary — in favor of more pliable replacements. “Why was he appointing inexperienced loyalists to the most senior civilian positions in the Pentagon at a moment when stability was key?” Cheney asks. (After her service on the Jan. 6 committee, Cheney is able to answer her own question, concluding that Trump was considering “deploying our military for some election-related purpose.”) The president also tried to replace the attorney general with someone willing to falsely assert in writing that the 2020 vote was corrupt; only when multiple senior Justice Department officials threatened to resign did Trump back down.Now imagine an administration staffed that way from the beginning, starting on Jan. 20, 2025, and buttressed by empowered collaborators in Congress, and you’ll grasp Cheney’s most serious warning. “I am very sad to say,” she acknowledges in her final pages, “that America can no longer count on a body of elected Republicans to protect our republic.” It’s a remarkable statement considering the political lineage of its author, but a defensible one. Just as the history Liz Cheney tells in “Oath and Honor” should go back further than the lies about 2020 and the scandal of Jan. 6, the damage of a second Trump term would extend far beyond whatever measures he might inflict on day one.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, Instagram, TikTok, X and Threads. 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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      Why a Second Trump Presidency May Be More Radical Than His First

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      In the spring of 1989, the Chinese Communist Party used tanks and troops to crush a pro-democracy protest in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. Most of the West, across traditional partisan lines, was aghast at the crackdown that killed at least hundreds of student activists. But one prominent American was impressed.“When the students poured into Tiananmen Square, the Chinese government almost blew it,” Donald J. Trump said in an interview with Playboy magazine the year after the massacre. “Then they were vicious, they were horrible, but they put it down with strength. That shows you the power of strength. Our country is right now perceived as weak.”It was a throwaway line in a wide-ranging interview, delivered to a journalist profiling a 43-year-old celebrity businessman who was not then a player in national politics or world affairs. But in light of what Mr. Trump has gone on to become, his exaltation of the ruthless crushing of democratic protesters is steeped in foreshadowing.Mr. Trump’s violent and authoritarian rhetoric on the 2024 campaign trail has attracted growing alarm and comparisons to historical fascist dictators and contemporary populist strongmen. In recent weeks, he has dehumanized his adversaries as “vermin” who must be “rooted out,” declared that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country,” encouraged the shooting of shoplifters and suggested that the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Milley, deserved to be executed for treason.As he runs for president again facing four criminal prosecutions, Mr. Trump may seem more angry, desperate and dangerous to American-style democracy than in his first term. But the throughline that emerges is far more long-running: He has glorified political violence and spoken admiringly of autocrats for decades.Fani Willis, the district attorney in Fulton County, Ga., brought one of the sets of indictments that Mr. Trump faces.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesAs a presidential candidate in July 2016, he praised the former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein as having been “so good” at killing terrorists. Months after being inaugurated, he told the strongman leader of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, that his brutal campaign of thousands of extrajudicial killings in the name of fighting drugs was “an unbelievable job.” And throughout his four years in the Oval Office, Mr. Trump blew through boundaries and violated democratic norms.What would be different in a second Trump administration is not so much his character as his surroundings. Forces that somewhat contained his autocratic tendencies in his first term — staff members who saw their job as sometimes restraining him, a few congressional Republicans episodically willing to criticize or oppose him, a partisan balance on the Supreme Court that occasionally ruled against him — would all be weaker.As a result, Mr. Trump’s and his advisers’ more extreme policy plans and ideas for a second term would have a greater prospect of becoming reality.A Radical AgendaTo be sure, some of what Mr. Trump and his allies are planning is in line with what any standard-issue Republican president would most likely do. For example, Mr. Trump would very likely roll back many of President Biden’s policies to curb carbon emissions and hasten the transition to electric cars. Such a reversal of various rules and policies would significantly weaken environmental protections, but much of the changes reflect routine and longstanding conservative skepticism of environmental regulations.Other parts of Mr. Trump’s agenda, however, are aberrational. No U.S. president before him had toyed with withdrawing from NATO, the United States’ military alliance with Western democracies. He has said he would fundamentally re-evaluate “NATO’s purpose and NATO’s mission” in a second term.He has said he would order the military to attack drug cartels in Mexico, which would violate international law unless its government consented. It most likely would not.He would also use the military on domestic soil. While it is generally illegal to use troops for domestic law enforcement, the Insurrection Act allows exceptions. After some demonstrations against police violence in 2020 became riots, Mr. Trump had an order drafted to use troops to crack down on protesters in Washington, D.C., but didn’t sign it. He suggested at a rally in Iowa this year that he intends to unilaterally send troops into Democratic-run cities to enforce public order in general.“You look at any Democrat-run state, and it’s just not the same — it doesn’t work,” Mr. Trump told the crowd, calling cities like New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco crime dens. “We cannot let it happen any longer. And one of the other things I’ll do — because you’re supposed to not be involved in that, you just have to be asked by the governor or the mayor to come in — the next time, I’m not waiting.”Mr. Trump’s plans to purge undocumented immigrants include sweeping raids, huge detention camps, deportations on the scale of millions per year, stopping asylum, trying to end birthright citizenship for babies born on U.S. soil to undocumented parents and invoking the Insurrection Act near the southern border to also use troops as immigration agents.Mr. Trump has sweeping plans to deal with undocumented immigrants.Verónica G. Cárdenas for The New York TimesMr. Trump would seek to expand presidential power in myriad ways — concentrating greater authority over the executive branch in the White House, ending the independence of agencies Congress set up to operate outside of presidential control and reducing civil service protections to make it easier to fire and replace tens of thousands of government workers.More than anything else, Mr. Trump’s vow to use the Justice Department to wreak vengeance against his adversaries is a naked challenge to democratic values. Building on how he tried to get prosecutors to go after his enemies while in office, it would end the post-Watergate norm of investigative independence from White House political control.In all these efforts, Mr. Trump would be backed in a second term by a well-funded outside infrastructure. In 2016, conservative think tanks were bastions of George W. Bush-style Republicanism. But new ones run by Trump administration veterans have sprung up, and the venerable Heritage Foundation has refashioned itself to stay in step with Trumpism.A coalition has been drawing up America First-style policy plans, nicknamed Project 2025. (Mr. Trump’s campaign has expressed appreciation but said only plans announced by him or his campaign count.) While some proposals under development in such places would advance longstanding Republican megadonor goals, such as curbing regulations on businesses, others are more tuned to Mr. Trump’s personal interests.The Center for Renewing America, for example, has published a paper titled “The U.S. Justice Department Is Not Independent.” The paper was written by Jeffrey Clark, whom Mr. Trump nearly made acting attorney general to aid his attempt to subvert the election and is facing criminal charges in Georgia in connection with that effort.Asked for comment, a spokesman for Mr. Trump did not address specifics but instead criticized The New York Times while calling Mr. Trump “strong on crime.”Weakened GuardrailsEven running in 2016, Mr. Trump flouted democratic norms.He falsely portrayed his loss in the Iowa caucuses as fraud and suggested he would treat the results of the general election as legitimate only if he won. He threatened to imprison Hillary Clinton, smeared Mexican immigrants as rapists and promised to bar Muslims from entering the United States. He offered to pay the legal bills of any supporters who beat up protesters at his rallies and stoked hatred against reporters covering his events.In office, Mr. Trump refused to divest from his businesses, and people courting his favor booked expensive blocks of rooms in his hotels. Despite an anti-nepotism law, he gave White House jobs to his daughter and son-in-law. He used emergency power to spend more on a border wall than Congress authorized. His lawyers floated a pardon at his campaign chairman, whom Mr. Trump praised for not “flipping” as prosecutors tried unsuccessfully to get him to cooperate as a witness in the Russia inquiry; Mr. Trump later did pardon him.Mr. Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, received White House posts despite an anti-nepotism law.Al Drago for The New York TimesBut some of the most potentially serious of his violations of norms fell short of fruition.Mr. Trump pressured the Justice Department to prosecute his adversaries. The Justice Department opened several criminal investigations, from the scrutiny of former Secretary of State John Kerry and of the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey Jr. to the attempt by a special counsel, John Durham, to find a basis to charge Obama-era national security officials or Mrs. Clinton with crimes connected to the origins of the Russia investigation. But to Mr. Trump’s fury, prosecutors decided against bringing such charges.And neither effort for which he was impeached succeeded. Mr. Trump tried to coerce Ukraine into opening a criminal investigation into Mr. Biden by withholding military aid, but it did not cooperate. Mr. Trump sought to subvert his 2020 election loss and stoked the Capitol riot, but Vice President Mike Pence and congressional majorities rejected his attempt to stay in power.There is reason to believe various obstacles and bulwarks that limited Mr. Trump in his first term would be absent in a second one.Some of what Mr. Trump tried to do was thwarted by incompetence and dysfunction among his initial team. But over four years, those who stayed with him learned to wield power more effectively. After courts blocked his first, haphazardly crafted travel ban, for example, his team developed a version that the Supreme Court allowed to take effect.Four years of his appointments created an entrenched Republican supermajority on the Supreme Court that most likely would now side with him on some cases that he lost, such as the 5-to-4 decision in June 2020 that blocked him from ending a program that shields from deportation certain undocumented people who had been brought as children and grew up as Americans.Republicans in Congress were often partners and enablers — working with him to confirm judges and cut corporate taxes, while performing scant oversight. But a few key congressional Republicans occasionally denounced his rhetoric or checked his more disruptive proposals.In 2017, then-Senator Bob Corker rebuked Mr. Trump for making reckless threats toward North Korea on Twitter, and then-Senator John McCain provided the decisive vote against Mr. Trump’s push to rescind, with no replacement plan, a law that makes health insurance coverage widely available.It is likely that Republicans in Congress would be even more pliable in any second Trump term. The party has become more inured to and even enthusiastic about Mr. Trump’s willingness to cross lines. And Mr. Trump has worn down, outlasted, intimidated into submission or driven out leading Republican lawmakers who have independent standing and demonstrated occasional willingness to oppose him.Mr. McCain, who was the 2008 G.O.P. presidential nominee, died in 2018. Former Representative Liz Cheney, who voted to impeach Mr. Trump for inciting the Jan. 6, 2021, riot and helped lead the committee that investigated those events, lost her seat to a pro-Trump primary challenger. Senator Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee and the only G.O.P. senator who voted to convict Mr. Trump at his first impeachment trial, is retiring.Representative Liz Cheney, center right, helped lead the investigation of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and later lost a primary challenge to a pro-Trump candidate.Doug Mills/The New York TimesFear of violence by Trump supporters also enforces control. In recent books, both Mr. Romney and Ms. Cheney said that Republican colleagues, whom they did not name, told them they wanted to vote against Mr. Trump in the Jan. 6-related impeachment proceedings but did not do so out of fear for their and their families’ safety.Personnel Is PolicyPerhaps the most important check on Mr. Trump’s presidency was internal administration resistance to some of his more extreme demands. A parade of his own former high-level appointees has since warned that he is unfit to be president, including a former White House chief of staff, John F. Kelly; former defense secretaries Jim Mattis and Mark T. Esper; the former national security adviser John R. Bolton; former Attorney General William P. Barr; and others.Mr. Trump in turn has denounced them all as weak, stupid and disloyal. He has privately told those close to him that his biggest mistakes concerned the people he appointed, in particular his choices for attorney general. The advisers who have stuck with him are determined that if he wins a new term, there will be no officials who intentionally stymie his agenda.In addition to developing policy papers, the coalition of think tanks run by people aligned with Mr. Trump has been compiling a database of thousands of vetted potential recruits to hand to a transition team if he wins the election. Similar efforts are underway by former senior Trump administration officials to prepare to stock the government with lawyers likely to find ways to bless radical White House ideas rather than raising legal objections.Such staffing efforts would build on a shift in his final year as president. In 2020, Mr. Trump replaced advisers who had sought to check him and installed a young aide, John McEntee, to root out further officials deemed insufficiently loyal.Depending on Senate elections, confirming particularly contentious nominees to important positions might be challenging. But another norm violation Mr. Trump gradually developed was making aggressive use of his power to temporarily fill vacancies with “acting” heads for positions that are supposed to undergo Senate confirmation.In 2020, for example, Mr. Trump made Richard Grenell — a combative Trump ally and former ambassador to Germany — acting director of national intelligence. Two prior Trump-era intelligence leaders had angered Mr. Trump by defending an assessment that Russia had covertly tried to help his 2016 campaign and by informing Democratic leaders it was doing so again in 2020. Mr. Grenell instead won Mr. Trump’s praise by using the role to declassify sensitive materials that Republicans used to portray the Russia investigation as suspicious.Richard Grenell was one of the acting heads named by Mr. Trump for positions that are supposed to undergo Senate confirmation. He became acting director of national intelligence.Pete Marovich for The New York TimesAfter Mr. Trump left office, there were many proposals to codify into law democratic norms he violated. Ideas included tightening limits on presidents’ use of emergency powers, requiring disclosure of their taxes, giving teeth to a constitutional ban on outside payments and making it harder to abuse their pardon power and authority over prosecutors.In December 2021, when Democrats still controlled the House, it passed many such proposals as the Protecting Our Democracy Act. Every Republican but one — then-Representative Adam Kinzinger, who was retiring after having voted to impeach Mr. Trump after the Jan. 6 riot — voted against the bill, which died in the Senate.The debate on the House floor largely played out on a premise that reduced its urgency: Mr. Trump was gone. Democrats argued for viewing the reforms as being about future presidents, while Republicans dismissed it as an unnecessary swipe at Mr. Trump.“Donald Trump is — unfortunately — no longer president,” said Representative Rick Crawford, Republican of Arkansas. “Time to stop living in the past.” More

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      It’s Not the Economy. It’s the Fascism.

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      To spend more than a little time toggling between news sites of different bents is to notice a fierce debate over the American economy right now. Which matters more — the easing of inflation or the persistence of prices that many people can’t afford or accept? Low unemployment or high interest rates? Is the intensity of Americans’ bad feelings about the economy a sane response or a senseless funk estranged from their actual financial circumstances?On such questions may the 2024 election turn, so the litigation of them is no surprise. It’s not just the economy, stupid. It’s the public relations war over it.But never in my adult lifetime has that battle seemed so agonizingly beside the point, such a distraction from the most important questions before us. In 2024, it’s not the economy. It’s the democracy. It’s the decency. It’s the truth.I’m not talking about what will influence voters most. I’m talking about what should. And I write that knowing that I’ll be branded an elitist whose good fortune puts him out of touch with the concerns of people living paycheck to paycheck or priced out of housing and medical care. I am lucky — privileged, to use and own the word of the moment — and I’m an imperfect messenger, as blinded by the peculiarities of his experience in the world as others are by theirs.But I don’t see any clear evidence that a change of presidents would equal an uptick in Americans’ living standards. And 2024, in any case, isn’t shaping up to be a normal election with normal stakes or anything close to that, at least not if Donald Trump winds up with the Republican presidential nomination — the likeliest outcome, to judge by current conditions. Not if he’s beaten by a Republican who had to buy into his fictions or emulate his ugliness to claim the prize. Not if the Republican Party remains hostage to the extremism on display in the House over these past few months.That assessment isn’t Trump derangement syndrome. It’s straightforward observation, consistent with Liz Cheney’s new memoir, “Oath and Honor,” at which my Times colleague Peter Baker got an advance peek. Cheney describes House Republicans’ enduring surrender to Trump as cowardly and cynical, and she’s cleareyed on what his nomination in 2024 would mean. “We will be voting on whether to preserve our republic,” she writes. “As a nation, we can endure damaging policies for a four-year term. But we cannot survive a president willing to terminate our Constitution.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      McCarthy Claimed Trump Was ‘Not Eating’ After Leaving Office, Cheney Says

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      In a new memoir, Liz Cheney wrote that Kevin McCarthy justified his trip to Mar-a-Lago by saying the former president was depressed after losing re-election.Former President Donald J. Trump was “really depressed” in the days after losing re-election and leaving office in January 2021, so much so that he was “not eating.”At least that is what Kevin McCarthy told Liz Cheney in trying to explain why he had traveled to Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, an act of solidarity that many have identified as a pivotal moment in reviving the former president’s political viability.Mr. McCarthy, the California congressman who was then the House Republican leader, had condemned Mr. Trump for fueling the Jan. 6 mob attack on the Capitol and even suggested that he resign, only to turn around and effectively absolve the former president by embracing him again. In her new book, Ms. Cheney, perhaps the country’s most vocal anti-Trump Republican, reports that Mr. McCarthy justified the Jan. 28 visit as an act of compassion for a beaten ally.Ms. Cheney wrote that she was so shocked when she first saw the photograph of Mr. McCarthy and Mr. Trump standing side by side with grins on their faces that she thought it was a fake. “Not even Kevin McCarthy could be this craven, I thought,” she wrote. “I was wrong.” She went to see Mr. McCarthy to confront him about rehabilitating the twice-impeached former president who had just tried to overturn an election he lost.“Mar-a-Lago?” she asked Mr. McCarthy, according to the book. “What the hell?”He tried to downplay the meeting, saying he had already been in Florida when Mr. Trump’s staff called. “They’re really worried,” Mr. McCarthy said by her account. “Trump’s not eating, so they asked me to come see him.”“What?” she recalled replying. “You went to Mar-a-Lago because Trump’s not eating?”“Yeah, he’s really depressed,” Mr. McCarthy said.Ms. Cheney’s book, “Oath and Honor,” a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times ahead of its publication on Tuesday, offers a scathing assessment of not only Mr. McCarthy but an array of Republicans who in her view subordinated their integrity to curry favor with Mr. Trump. Her account of his subjugation of the party presents a tapestry of hypocrisy, with inside-the-room scenes of Republicans privately scorning “the Orange Jesus,” as one wryly called him, while publicly doing his bidding.Ms. Cheney with Kevin McCarthy a few weeks after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.Anna Moneymaker for The New York TimesThe much-anticipated memoir arrives on bookshelves even as Mr. Trump is in a commanding position to win next year’s Republican presidential nomination. Ms. Cheney, who represented Wyoming in Congress and led the House Republican Conference, making her the third-ranking member of her party, has assailed him as a budding autocrat in more visceral terms than most of his challengers for the nomination.The daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney and a conservative star in her own right who was once on track to become House speaker, Ms. Cheney ultimately paid a price for her opposition to Mr. Trump and her service as vice chair of the House committee that investigated his role in instigating the Jan. 6 attack. She lost her leadership position and eventually her seat in a Republican primary last year. But she has vowed to do whatever she can to keep Mr. Trump from returning to the Oval Office.Indeed, she subtitled her book “A Memoir and a Warning” to make the point that Mr. Trump represents a clear and present danger to America if he is on the ballot next November. “We will be voting on whether to preserve our republic,” she wrote. “As a nation, we can endure damaging policies for a four-year term. But we cannot survive a president willing to terminate our Constitution.”A re-elected Mr. Trump, she said, would face few checks on his power. “Step by step, Donald Trump would tear down the other structures that restrain an American president,” she wrote. “The assumption that our institutions will protect themselves,” she added, “is purely wishful thinking by people who prefer to look the other way.”Asked for comment on Wednesday, Mr. Trump, who has openly called for “termination” of the Constitution to immediately remove President Biden from office and reinstall himself without waiting for another election, did not directly address any of Ms. Cheney’s specific assertions but simply dismissed her as a disgruntled critic.“Liz Cheney is a loser who is now lying in order to sell a book that either belongs in the discount bargain bin in the fiction section of the bookstore or should be repurposed as toilet paper,” Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Mr. Trump, said by email. “These are nothing more than completely fabricated stories because President Trump is the clear front-runner to be the Republican nominee and the strongest candidate to beat Crooked Joe Biden.”Likewise, Mr. McCarthy did not deny anything in the book, copies of which have also been obtained by CNN and The Guardian. His office released a statement saying, “For Cheney, first it was Trump Derangement Syndrome, and now apparently it’s also McCarthy Derangement Syndrome.”In Ms. Cheney’s telling, Mr. Trump knew that he lost the 2020 election even as he told the public that he had not — and she cited no less than Mr. McCarthy as a witness. Just two days after the November election, she said, Mr. McCarthy told her he had spoken to Mr. Trump. “He knows it’s over,” she quoted him saying. “He needs to go through all the stages of grief.”That could in theory make Mr. McCarthy an important witness in the federal or state criminal cases against Mr. Trump, refuting any defense by the former president’s lawyers that he was acting on good-faith belief that fraud had stolen the election from him.Also depicted as a Trump acolyte is Representative Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican who in recent weeks vaulted from the backbench to the speakership after Mr. McCarthy’s support for Mr. Trump failed to save him from a right-wing rebellion.Mr. Johnson took the lead in trying to corral support for Mr. Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election. He sent an email to all House Republicans telling them that he had spoken with the president, who expected them to sign onto a friend-of-the-court brief to the Supreme Court. “He said he will be anxiously awaiting the final list to review,” Mr. Johnson wrote.Also depicted as a Trump acolyte is Representative Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican who in recent weeks vaulted from the backbench to the speakership.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesMs. Cheney took that as a veiled threat and said she was surprised about Mr. Johnson, whom she had thought of as a friend. “He appeared especially susceptible to flattery from Trump and aspired to being anywhere in Trump’s orbit,” she wrote. “When I confronted him with the flaws in his legal argument, Johnson would often concede, or say something to the effect of, ‘We just need to do this one last thing for Trump.’”At first, Mr. McCarthy agreed with her that the pro-Trump brief went too far and told her he would not sign it because it would interfere with the power of states to run their own elections. “It federalizes too much,” he told her. But a day later, his name was added to the brief after all.Mr. Johnson did not back down even after the Supreme Court unanimously rejected the case, sending Ms. Cheney a Fox News poll showing that 77 percent of Trump voters and 68 percent of Republicans believed the election had been stolen. “These numbers are big,” Mr. Johnson said, “and something we have to contend with as we thread the needle on messaging.”Ms. Cheney noted that Mr. Trump’s supporters believed the election was stolen because Republicans like Mr. McCarthy and Mr. Johnson were echoing his lies.Other Republicans were willing to toss aside traditions, norms and constitutional processes in the name of satisfying Mr. Trump’s desire to stay in power. When one Republican said during a meeting that they should not claim the election was rigged when there was no evidence, Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, one of Mr. Trump’s staunchest allies, said, “The only thing that matters is winning.”Likewise, she assailed Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, for seeking to set aside the counting of Electoral College votes on Jan. 6 while a commission investigated election results that had already been recounted and certified. “It was one of the worst cases of abandonment of duty for personal ambition I’ve ever seen in Washington,” Ms. Cheney wrote.In some cases, she found that Republicans stayed loyal to Mr. Trump out of outright fear. One colleague told her he was worried about the safety of his wife and baby if he spoke out.Behind the scenes, though, other Republicans cheered her on. After she was one of only 10 House Republicans to vote to impeach Mr. Trump for his role in the Jan. 6 attack, former President George W. Bush sent her a note. “Liz, Courage is in short supply these days,” he wrote. “Thank you for yours. You showed strong leadership and I’m not surprised. Lead on. 43.”Her vocal criticism of Mr. Trump grated on other Republicans, highlighting what she called their “cowardice” in the face of the former president. When she contradicted Mr. McCarthy on Mr. Trump’s future role in the party during a joint news conference, Mr. McCarthy complained to her privately afterward.“You’re killing me, Liz,” he said.“Kevin, this is about the Constitution,” she replied. “Think of what Trump did. Think how appalled any of our previous Republican leaders would be about this. How would Reagan have reacted to this? How would Bush have reacted? Think of my dad.”Mr. McCarthy dismissed that line of thinking. “This isn’t their party anymore,” he said.On that, she wrote, she had to agree. More