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    Looking Back at Her World War II Secret

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    Ruth Mirsky, who turns 100 today, was a code breaker in the U.S. Navy. “It was very hush-hush,” she remembered.Good morning. It’s Wednesday. We’ll meet a World War II code breaker who turns 100 today. We’ll also look at a filing by Representative George Santos that suggests he is already considering running for another term in Congress.Michelle V. Agins/The New York TimesSomewhere in Rockaway Park, N.Y., is a World War II code breaker who is finally talking.Ruth Mirsky, who turns 100 today, did not say much about breaking codes. She gave almost nothing away, saying things like “it was top-secret work” and “I had a very small part in it.” And “we worked in shifts. We worked around the clock — daytime, nighttime.” Not a word about encryption machines or eureka moments deciphering enemy messages long ago.Mirsky’s birthday comes 80 years after she enlisted in the Navy and became a WAVE, the acronym for Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency Services. She was promptly sent to Washington, where she became one of several thousand women scrambling to unscramble messages intercepted from the Japanese and German military.She worked in the library unit at what became known as the Naval Annex, typing incoming messages on file cards, categorizing them and noting repetitions — recurring letters or phrases that might have been potential clues to encryption. Others have said it was mind-numbing duty, an excruciating search for patterns and ciphers among monotonous columns of numbers and letters, but Mirsky still sounded fascinated.“It was a whole new thing,” she said. “For me it was, anyway.”Their diligence paid off. “Together, this group of Navy women broke and rebroke the fleet code” and “helped keep track of the movements of the Imperial Japanese Navy,” the author Liza Mundy wrote in her book “Code Girls: The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers of World War II.The women were instructed not to talk about their secret wartime lives — “it was very hush-hush,” Mirsky told me. When she visited her former boss in New York, she recalled, “he asked me, ‘What are you doing there? The F.B.I. was asking all kinds of questions to find out what kind of a person you were.’”She added: “I couldn’t even tell my fiancé.”We’ll get to him in a moment. Mirsky worked in an installation in Washington that was just off Ward Circle, “which taxi drivers started calling WAVES Circle,” Mundy wrote.Around the time Mirsky arrived in 1943, that installation was a base of operations for 1,500 women, along with just over 900 male officers and enlisted men, according to Mundy, who wrote that by early the next year, there were almost twice as many women and far fewer men. But, in what the writer Meryl Gordon called a “pre-Betty Friedan moment in American life when institutional discrimination was the norm,” the Navy’s pay scale favored the men.Mirsky did not mention that last week. She talked about two brothers, David, whom she had been dating, and Harry, who had been stationed in South Dakota as a radar specialist. “Harry came to see his brother before David’s unit went overseas,” she said. Harry had been injured when he was thrown from a jeep; at one point he had been in a body cast. With David off to the front lines, “Harry asked me if he could write to me from South Dakota, so that’s how it started,” she said.About six months later, Harry’s unit was transferred to Fort Dix, in New Jersey. He remained stateside when the unit went overseas because of the accident. He managed to go to Washington regularly — once without a pass, for which he was punished when he returned to Fort Dix, she said.You can guess what happened. Harry became the fiancé, then the husband. They were married for 39 years, until his death in 1984.She is a regular at a JASA Older Adult Center not far from her apartment center. It organized a birthday party last week, a few days early. “You can’t put 100 candles on a cake,” Mirsky told me, but she blew out 10 or so on the strawberry shortcake that was served. Assemblywoman Stacey Pheffer Amato, who represents the area, brought a proclamation and tweeted photos.“I’ve had a happy life,” Mirsky told me. “I feel I’ve done what I wanted, actually.” She mentioned her two children, Stuart Mirsky and Debra Aluisio, who had joined her at the JASA center. She mentioned her five grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren. She double-checked those numbers with her son, counting as they named the names.She talked about playing Scrabble — on an iPad.“It’s a good thing for my mind, I guess,” she said.“Very similar to the codes,” said Aluisio.WeatherIt’s a cloudy, windy day near the mid-40s. The evening is breezy and mostly clear, with temps around the mid-30s.ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKINGIn effect until April 6 (Passover).The latest Metro newsJefferson Siegel for The New York TimesJail supervisor convicted: A jail supervisor who walked away from an inmate after he had hanged himself was convicted of criminally negligent homicide, capping a trial that pointed to the brutal conditions inside New York City’s jails and the persistence of inmate suicides.A city councilman’s apartment hunt: Chi Ossé became the youngest member of the New York City Council when he was sworn in 14 months ago. Now, he faces a challenge: finding an apartment in his district. He called the search “tiring, treacherous, and competitive.”A police department’s troubled history: Najee Seabrooks was shot and killed by police officers in Paterson, N.J., after calling 911 to report that he was experiencing a mental health crisis. A coalition of groups requested a Justice Department inquiry into what it called “widespread unlawful and unconstitutional conduct” by the Paterson police.Santos signals he might run againJonathan Ernst/ReutersLittle more than two months after he assumed office, George Santos signaled that he might want a second term.Santos, the embattled Republican from Long Island who is under scrutiny for lies about his background and questions about his finances, submitted paperwork to the Federal Election Commission suggesting that he may run for re-election in 2024.My colleague Michael Gold writes that the filing does not necessarily mean that Santos will run, but it does allow him to continue to raise money and spend it on campaign-related expenses, including paying back roughly $700,000 that he lent to his campaign last year.He can also use money he raises for any potential legal fees involving some of the investigations he is facing. Federal prosecutors have been examining his campaign finances and personal business dealings, and last month the House Ethics Committee opened its own inquiry.After The New York Times reported that Santos had lied about graduating from college, working for prestigious Wall Street firms and managing an extensive real estate portfolio, Santos acknowledged that he fabricated parts of his résumé and his biography.But he has denied criminal wrongdoing and has resisted calls to resign, even as some Republicans questioned whether he could serve constituents. Republican officials in Nassau County have said they would avoid taking constituent problems to his office whenever they could. Ten House Republicans have called on Santos to resign, and a poll in January by Siena College found that 78 percent of the voters in his district wanted him to give up his seat, including 71 percent of the Republicans who were questioned.METROPOLITAN diaryClocking inDear Diary:When I was in my early 20s, I worked at a cafe in Park Slope. I used to walk to work in the darkness at 4:30 a.m., lacing up my black sneakers in my Clinton Hill apartment and schlepping past halal trucks on my way as they set up for the day.I always bought a grapefruit from the bodega across the street before starting my shift. The man at the counter would greet me with a wide smile, its warmth washing away the tired feelings left over from the morning trek.Clocking out? I’d ask.Yes, he would say. Clocking in?Yes, I’d say.And then each day, like a mantra, he would singsong to me: “You are beginning your day … and I am ending mine!”— Annabelle LewisIllustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B.P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here.Melissa Guerrero and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@nytimes.com.Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. More

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      George Santos Signals Intention to Seek Re-election in 2024

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      The move by Mr. Santos allows him to continue fund-raising as a prospective candidate and to spend campaign funds.Representative George Santos, the embattled Republican from New York facing criminal inquiries and ethics investigations, filed paperwork on Tuesday indicating his intent to run for re-election.The statement of candidacy filed with the Federal Election Commission does not guarantee that Mr. Santos, a first-term lawmaker representing parts of Long Island and Queens, will run for office next year.But it allows Mr. Santos to continue to raise money and spend it on various campaign-related expenses, including paying back the roughly $700,000 he lent to his campaign and paying any potential legal fees connected to the inquiries that he is currently facing.The filing also offers a clear signal that Mr. Santos is leaving the door open to defending his seat in Congress, even as he has been besieged by calls to resign from his constituents, a handful of local Republican officials in his district and fellow House members, including representatives from his own party.Mr. Santos did not respond to a message seeking comment.Mr. Santos’s political future has been severely questioned after revelations in The New York Times that he lied to voters about graduating from college, working for prestigious Wall Street firms and boasting an extensive real estate portfolio. Subsequent reporting by The Times and other outlets has also raised questions about his campaign’s fund-raising and spending practices.Federal prosecutors have been examining Mr. Santos’s campaign finances and personal business dealings, and local prosecutors in New York have been exploring Mr. Santos’s behavior during his campaign. Last month, the House Ethics Committee said it would investigate whether Mr. Santos broke laws tied to his campaign filings or his personal business.While Mr. Santos has admitted to fabricating parts of his résumé and biography, he has denied any criminal wrongdoing. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has maintained that Mr. Santos was duly elected, and that the House would only take action if its Ethics Committee found cause.Yet many rank-and-file Republicans have raised concerns about Mr. Santos’s ability to properly serve constituents. Republicans in Nassau County on Long Island have said they would circumvent his office whenever possible, and 10 House Republicans have called on Mr. Santos to resign. Other Republican representatives have said they were hesitant to collaborate with Mr. Santos on legislation or party business.Mr. Santos has said he would not leave office unless all those voters who supported his campaign last year called on him to do so. A poll in January by Newsday and Siena College found that 78 percent of voters in Mr. Santos’s district wanted him to step down, including 71 percent of Republicans surveyed.Still, Mr. Santos appeared to bow to pressure in January, when he said he would temporarily recuse himself from sitting on two congressional committees. Mr. McCarthy said that he and Mr. Santos reached the decision jointly.But Mr. Santos has repeatedly declined to answer questions about whether he planned to run for re-election.In January, he repeatedly told reporters asking about his future plans that it was “too early” to answer. Last month, he told the Fox station in New York that he had not yet decided whether he would run in 2024.Mr. McCarthy — who endorsed Mr. Santos and helped his campaign in 2022 — told reporters in Washington that he would “probably have a little difficulty” supporting Mr. Santos in a re-election bid.Local Republicans have also voiced their opposition to re-electing Mr. Santos: The Nassau County Republican Committee, a powerful local party organization, has resolutely said it would not support him in 2024.The committee’s chairman, Joseph G. Cairo Jr., reiterated on Tuesday that Mr. Santos would not receive its endorsement.“If he decides to run, we will oppose and beat him,” Mr. Cairo said in a statement.The Federal Election Commission requires candidates to register if they raise or spend more than $5,000 toward an election, a threshold that Mr. Santos passed at the end of last year, according to campaign finance reports.Incumbent politicians are generally quick to register regardless of whether they have decided to run again, so they can continue to accept donations that can be used to pay old campaign debts.Those debts can include personal loans that candidates make to fund their campaigns, experts said. A Supreme Court decision last year cleared the way for candidates to be repaid well after their elections.Brett G. Kappel, an election lawyer, said that the commission’s guidance was also “pretty liberal” regarding the use of campaign money for legal expenses. Candidates can use funds for legal fees tied to “any investigation related to your status as an officeholder or candidate.” The inquiries into Mr. Santos’s campaign finances would likely qualify, he said.So far, only one other candidate has registered with the commission to fill Mr. Santos’s seat: Josh Lafazan, a Democrat who ran unsuccessfully in last year’s primary. More

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      A New Voice for Winning Back Lost Democratic Voters

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      Representative Marie Gluesenkamp Perez chose her guest for last month’s State of the Union address in order to make one of her favorite points. She invited Cory Torppa, who teaches construction and manufacturing at Kalama High School in her district in southwest Washington State, and also directs the school district’s career and technical education program. President Biden did briefly mention career training that night in his very long list of plans; still, Ms. Gluesenkamp Perez wasn’t thrilled with the speech.“I went back and looked at the transcript,” she said, “and he only said the word ‘rural’ once.”It’s safe to say that Ms. Gluesenkamp Perez was one of very few Democrats in the room listening for that word, but then she didn’t win her nail-biter of a race in a conservative district with a typical Democratic appeal. To court rural and working-class voters who had supported a Republican in the district since 2011, she had to speak to them in a way that her party’s left wing usually does not — to acknowledge their economic fears, their sense of being left out of the political conversation, their disdain for ideological posturing from both sides of the spectrum.She came to Congress in January with a set of priorities that reflected her winning message, and she is determined to stress those differences in a way that might help Democrats lure back some of the voters it has lost, even if it means getting a lot of puzzled looks and blank stares in the Capitol.Ms. Gluesenkamp Perez was already an unexpected arrival to the House. No one predicted that she would win her district, and her victory (by less than one percentage point) was widely considered the biggest electoral upset of 2022. The Third Congressional District is exactly the kind that Democrats have had trouble holding on to for the last 10 years: It’s 78 percent white, 73 percent without a bachelor’s degree or higher, and made up of a low-density mix of rural and suburban areas. It voted for Barack Obama once, in 2008, and Donald Trump twice, and the national Democrats wrote it off, giving her almost no campaign assistance.But as the 34-year-old mother of a toddler and the co-owner (with her husband) of an auto repair shop, she had an appealing personal story and worked hard to distinguish herself from the usual caricature of her party. She said she would not support Nancy Pelosi as speaker, criticized excessive regulation of business, and said there should be more people in Congress with grease under their fingernails. But she also praised labor unions and talked about improving the legal immigration system, boosting domestic manufacturing, and the importance of reversing climate change. In the face of this pragmatic approach, her Republican opponent, Joe Kent, followed the Trump playbook and claimed the 2020 election had been stolen and called for the F.B.I. to be defunded. She took a narrow path, but it worked, and you might think that Democratic leaders would be lined up outside her office to get tips on how to defeat MAGA Republicans and win over disaffected Trump voters.But some Democrats are still a little uncomfortable around someone who supports both abortion rights and gun rights, who has a skeptical take on some environmental regulations, and who has made self-sufficiency a political issue.“It’s a little bit of a hard message for them to hear, because part of the solution is having a Congress who looks more like America,” she said in an interview last week. “It can’t just be rich lawyers that get to run for Congress anymore.”She said there is a kind of “groupthink” at high levels of the party, a tribalism that makes it hard for new or divergent ideas to take hold. But if Democrats don’t pay attention to newcomers like Ms. Gluesenkamp Perez, they risk writing off large sections of the country that might be open to alternatives to Trumpism.“The national Democrats are just not ever going to be an alternative they vote for, no matter how much of a circus the far right becomes,” she said. “But I think there obviously can be competitive alternatives. There are different kinds of Democrats that can win, that avoid the tribalism.”She mentioned Representatives Jared Golden of Maine and Mary Peltola of Alaska, and Senators Jon Tester of Montana and John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, as examples of elected officials with an unusually broad appeal because they understand the priorities of their districts or states.In her case, those priorities center on relieving economic despair and providing a future for young people who have a hard time seeing one, particularly if they are not college-bound. Pacific County, on the western end of her district, had an 8.4 percent unemployment rate in January, compared to the 3.4 percent rate in tech-saturated King County, home of Seattle, just 150 miles to the northeast. Not everyone needs a four-year college degree, or is able to get one, but the economy isn’t providing enough opportunities for those who don’t take that path. Many high school students in her districts are never going to wind up in the chip factories that get so many headlines, or the software firms further north, but without government support they can’t even get a foothold in the construction trades.She supports what has become known on Capitol Hill as “workforce Pell” — the expansion of Pell grants to short-term skills training and apprenticeship programs, many of which are taught in community colleges. The idea has won approval among both conservative Republicans and Democrats like Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia. She said she could not hire older teenagers as apprentices in her auto repair shop because it would bump up her liability insurance. (A local nonprofit group has helped her shop and other businesses cover the extra cost, giving many students the opportunity for on-the-job training.)“My generation was the one where they were cutting all the shop classes and turning them into computer programming classes,” Ms. Gluesenkamp Perez said. “It took 10 or 15 years for that to hit the market, but now, coupled with the retirement of a lot of skilled tradespeople, there’s a six-month wait for a plumber or a carpenter or an electrician. You’d better be married to one.”She is also critical of putting certain environmental concerns ahead of human ones, a position sure to alienate some in her party.“My mom grew up in Forks, Washington, which is sort of epicenter of the spotted owl, and that decimated jobs,” she said, referring to the federal decisions in the 1990s to declare the northern spotted owl as endangered, closing off millions of acres of old-growth forest to logging. “People had trouble feeding their families. That indignity cast a really long shadow. People felt like they were being told they couldn’t work.”The Trump administration opened up much of that habitat to logging in its final days, but that decision was later reversed by the Biden administration. (The congresswoman hasn’t weighed in on that reversal.)Winning over lost voters can often mean just talking about the kinds of daily concerns they have, even if they are not monumental. That’s why Ms. Gluesenkamp Perez is an enthusiastic supporter of the right-to-repair movement, which promotes federal and state laws to give consumers the knowledge and tools to fix their own products, whether smartphones, cars, or appliances. Many companies make it virtually impossible for most people to replace a phone battery or make an adjustment on their car.“From where I live, it’s a three-hour round trip to go to the Apple Store,” she said. “Right to repair hits people on so many levels — their time, their money, their environment, their culture. It’s one of the unique things about American culture. We really believe in fixing our own stuff and self-reliance. D.I.Y. is in our DNA.”She and Neal Dunn, a Republican congressman from Florida, introduced a bill last month that would require automakers to release diagnostic and repair information about cars so that owners wouldn’t have to go to a dealership to get fixed up. That’s probably not a surprising interest for the owner of an independent repair shop, but it’s not something most Democrats spend a lot of time talking about.It’s the kind of thing, however, that may spark the interest of swing voters tired of hearing Republican candidates talk about cultural issues that have no direct relevance to their lives.“We have to stop talking about these issues of ‘oh, the creeping dangers of socialism,’ and start talking about getting shop class back in the high schools,” she said. “I don’t know anybody who stays up at night worrying about socialism. But they worry about a kid who doesn’t want to go to school anymore. Or, am I going to lose the house? Is there a school nurse? Those are the things that keep people up at night, and we have to find a way to make their lives better.”

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      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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      Ben Savage, ‘Boy Meets World’ Actor, Is Running for Congress

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      The former star of the 1990s-era ABC sitcom is running as a Democrat for a seat in the Los Angeles area that is being vacated by Representative Adam B. Schiff.Ben Savage, the former child actor who was the star of the ABC sitcom “Boy Meets World” in the 1990s, said on Monday that he was running to represent a Los Angeles-area district in Congress.“I’m running for Congress because it’s time to restore faith in government by offering reasonable, innovative and compassionate solutions to our country’s most pressing issues,” Mr. Savage, 42, said in a statement on Instagram.“It’s time for new and passionate leaders who can help move the country forward,” he said. “Leaders who want to see the government operating at maximum capacity, unhindered by political divisions and special interests.”A representative for Mr. Savage did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.Mr. Savage moved to Los Angeles in 1987 and landed a role two years later in “Little Monsters,” a movie about a boy who discovers a world of monsters under his bed. He is best known for his role as Cory Matthews on “Boy Meets World,” a coming-of-age sitcom that was a staple of ABC’s Friday night lineup for seven seasons, from 1993 to 2000. He reprised his role in 2014 in a spinoff series, “Girl Meets World.”Mr. Savage, who lives in West Hollywood, submitted paperwork to the Federal Election Commission in January to run as a Democrat in the 30th Congressional District, which includes parts of well-known Southern California cities like Burbank, Glendale and Pasadena. (For those familiar with both the show and Southern California geography, the district does not include Topanga Canyon, which shares a name with Cory Matthews’s iconic love interest and sits in the 32nd District.)Mr. Savage is running to replace Representative Adam B. Schiff, a Democrat who led the first impeachment trial of former President Donald J. Trump and who is now seeking the Senate seat long held by Dianne Feinstein.Ms. Feinstein, 89, announced last month that she would retire at the end of her term in 2024, capping more than three decades in office.In November, Mr. Savage ran unsuccessfully for a seat on West Hollywood’s City Council, earning less than 7 percent of the votes, according to the Los Angeles County Registrar’s office.For his congressional run, Mr. Savage, who described himself as a “proud Californian, union member and longtime resident of District 30,” will campaign on affordable housing solutions, reforms and improvements to police-citizen interactions, and supporting women’s health rights, according to his campaign website.Mr. Savage, who graduated from Stanford University with a degree in political science, joins a growing list of California celebrities-turned-politicians.Ronald Reagan was an actor in Hollywood before his political career, serving as the governor of California and the 40th president of the United States. In 2003, Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican and former action-movie star, was sworn in as California’s 38th governor, serving two terms. And Caitlyn Jenner, the Republican former Olympian and prominent transgender activist, unsuccessfully ran for governor of California in 2021. More

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      Jennifer McClellan Wins in Virginia and Will Be State’s First Black Woman in Congress

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      Jennifer McClellan, a state senator, will fill the seat held by Representative A. Donald McEachin, who died in November.Jennifer McClellan, a veteran Democratic state senator, won a special election for Virginia’s Fourth Congressional District on Tuesday, according to The Associated Press, making her the first Black woman to represent the state in Congress.Ms. McClellan, 50, will fill the seat formerly held by Representative A. Donald McEachin, who died Nov. 28 of colorectal cancer. She has cited Mr. McEachin as a mentor and was highly favored to win in the safely Democratic district, which stretches from Richmond, where she is based, to the rural counties along Virginia’s border with North Carolina.She defeated Leon Benjamin, a Republican Navy veteran and local pastor. Mr. Benjamin lost to Mr. McEachin by nearly 30 points in November.Virginia Democrats, including the party’s entire congressional delegation and many local and statewide officials, were quick to coalesce around Ms. McClellan’s candidacy during the primary in late December. Even though the accelerated election calendar set by Gov. Glenn Youngkin left her campaign with less than two weeks to turn out primary voters, she still won with nearly 85 percent of the vote, according to the state party.Ms. McClellan centered her campaign on legislation she spearheaded as a state senator — issues she championed, like voting rights, environmental protection and abortion access, often dovetailed with the national Democratic platform.“I passed legislation to protect our right to vote and our right to a clean environment. I led the fight for our reproductive freedom,” Ms. McClellan said in a television ad. “I’ll take that same fight with me to Congress.”In a January opinion essay for Essence magazine, Ms. McClellan also said that her identity as a Black female lawmaker would help shape her policy positions.“This election isn’t just about my lived experiences, it’s about elevating the experiences of so many whose voices have not been heard in our government,” she wrote.Ms. McClellan, a lawyer who is also the vice chair of the Virginia legislature’s influential Black caucus, has been frequently promoted as a rising star among state Democrats. This is her second run for statewide office: In 2021, she fell short in a crowded primary for governor.Susan Swecker, chairwoman of the Democratic Party of Virginia, said in a statement on Tuesday night: “Jennifer McClellan’s history-making victory as the first Black woman to be elected to Congress from Virginia will have ripple effects across the Commonwealth.”“Her leadership will expand upon the outstanding progress and advocacy for which we remember Congressman A. Donald McEachin — I cannot think of a better way to honor his life and legacy than with the new generation of leadership that Congresswoman-elect Jennifer McClellan will bring to Washington.” More

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      A Close Look at the Chaotic House Republican Majority

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      C-SPAN video of the House speaker election in January. The tumult that broke out last month during the election of Kevin McCarthy for speaker illustrated the potential for profound dysfunction in the new House Republican majority. And the spectacle created by Republican lawmakers at the State of the Union address showed the unruly behavior of […] More

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      Republicans Revive a Debate on Term Limits

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      Similar proposals to restrict lawmakers’ tenures that the party pushed in the 1990s went nowhere. In this new Congress, the result is likely to be the same.WASHINGTON — In grabbing control of the House, Republicans promised a vote on a proposition that always strikes a chord with frustrated voters: imposing term limits on members of the House and Senate to finally depose those entrenched, out-of-touch lawmakers.Within months of taking power, the new majority put the idea on the floor, where it flopped spectacularly. That episode was in 1995, when Republicans, led by newly installed Speaker Newt Gingrich, pledged a vote on term limits as part of their vaunted Contract with America, only to have the proposal rejected by some of the same folks who signed off on the contract. Voters get much more excited about term limits than do those who would be bound by them.Now the new House Republican majority is again pursuing limits on how long members of Congress can serve, and the result is likely to be the same: failure to garner the votes needed to send a constitutional amendment to the states for approval. But that won’t deter the backers of the plan, who once again say the public is fed up with career politicians and that those who reject term limits do so at their political peril.“This is a long stairway, but you take the first step,” said Representative Ralph Norman, the South Carolina Republican who is the lead backer of term limits in the House. “Let everybody vote up or down. This time I think there will be consequences for those who vote against it. There is a time for politicians to go home and live under some of the rules they have passed.”Mr. Norman said he expects Speaker Kevin McCarthy to allow a vote on the idea in the next few months. A similar resolution in the Senate sponsored by Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, is unlikely to get a vote because it is opposed by both Democratic and Republican leaders.“Leadership in both parties is opposing the overwhelming consensus of the American voters on this issue,” Mr. Cruz said. “The one group that doesn’t support term limits are career politicians in Washington. If it comes to a vote, I think it is hard for elected officials to vote against it.”Critics assail the effort as gimmickry, an easy show vote for lawmakers who want to be seen as fighting the status quo in Washington while knowing they will not have to abide by term limits themselves since there is little chance they will be imposed. Opponents also say that enacting term limits would deprive Congress of the experience and savvy that lawmakers develop over years of serving.“The fact that I have had the institutional memory that I’ve had here has always been helpful to the national debate and certainly back home as well,” said Representative Richard E. Neal, Democrat of Massachusetts and a former Ways and Means Committee chairman just elected to his 18th term. “If you want to turn Congress over to the amateurs and the antis and the special interests, embrace term limits.”Newt Gingrich first oversaw a vote on term limits, which failed decisively, back in 1995.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesThe call for term limits was a central part of Republicans’ takeover of the House in the 1994 midterm elections, helping them build the case that Democrats had become corrupt and arrogant after four decades in power. The “citizen legislature” was a major plank of the contract, pledging a “first-ever vote on term limits to replace career politicians with citizen legislators.” Republicans had also been heartened by seeing state legislatures around the country impose term limits on their office holders.After Republicans won that November, the vote finally rolled around on March 29, 1995. The day before, Mr. Gingrich published an op-ed in The Washington Post laying the groundwork for a loss by blaming Democrats, since the House could not muster the two-thirds majority necessary to send a constitutional amendment to the states — 290 votes — without significant Democratic support.“This vote says to the American people that this is their country,” Mr. Gingrich wrote. “It says to our citizens that they are entrusted with greater control.”Despite his pleas, the vote to impose 12-year limits on both the House and Senate attracted a bare majority of just 227 votes, significantly short of the required supermajority threshold. A barbed Democratic alternative that would have imposed term limits retroactively, knocking out scores of lawmakers of both parties, did not even attract a majority.While Republicans tried to hold Democrats responsible for the failure, 40 Republicans also balked, and 30 of them were among the most senior Republicans in the House. That included Representative Henry J. Hyde, of Illinois, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, who won an ovation for his speech in opposition to the proposal.“I just can’t be an accessory to the dumbing down of democracy,” Mr. Hyde told his colleagues.After the defeat, Republicans sought again to make term limits a major issue in the 1996 elections and staged another vote in February 1997. The proposal fared even worse than before, barely surpassing a majority, let alone a supermajority, and any momentum for imposing term limits slowed.The momentum for adhering to personal pledges also dissipated. In one of the best-known cases, George Nethercutt, a Washington Republican who ousted Speaker Thomas S. Foley in 1994 almost solely on the basis of Mr. Foley’s opposition to term limits, reneged on his promise to serve only three terms in the House and was elected twice more.Last year, Senator Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin, won a third term in the Senate despite promising to serve only two terms, saying he broke his pledge because the nation was in too much peril for him to leave.The concept of term limits has always been more popular in the House than in the Senate, where seniority is extremely advantageous. Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the minority leader who this year broke the record for the longest-serving Senate leader, has been particularly opposed, arguing that elections already serve as term limits.But Mr. Norman, who is in his third full term after winning a special election in 2017, dismisses the idea that experience is a plus in Congress.“Look at the shape of the country,” said Mr. Norman. “I could pick 435 people off the streets to get a better return on investment than with politicians.”The resolution being pushed by Mr. Norman and Mr. Cruz is more restrictive than the ones defeated in the 1990s and would allow just three terms in the House and two in the Senate. Mr. Norman said he is open to slight upward adjustments in House tenure and has said he expects to run just a few more times himself.But Mr. Cruz, who will complete his second term next year, said his support of a two-term limit on senators does not mean he won’t be seeking a third term for himself in 2024, in line with his own bill.“I have never suggested that I support unilateral term limits,” he said. “I would happily comply with them if they applied to everyone. I never said I would do it alone if no one else complied.” More

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      Dads in Government Create the Congressional Dads Caucus

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      Male politicians who are parents of young children wearing their fatherhood on their sleeves and their babies on their chests.Several members of Congress, mostly men, held a news conference outside the Capitol last week — a typical sight in Washington. But these men were not just any men: They were dads — men who serve in the U.S. House of Representatives while also raising children. (If “father” is a catchall, “dad” seems to connote a father of young children, too busy even to expend an extra syllable.) The dads were announcing the Congressional Dads Caucus, a group of 20 Democrats aiming to push policies like paid family and medical leave and an expanded child tax credit. Spearheaded by Representative Jimmy Gomez, Democrat of California, who gained attention last month when he voted against Kevin McCarthy for Speaker of the House with his son Hodge, then 4 months, strapped to his chest, the caucus also hopes to speak for a demographic that, in the halls of power, is well represented yet historically has not cast itself as an identity bloc.But times are changing. Fathers in heterosexual partnerships in the United States increasingly wish to split child rearing equitably. (Or, at least, to talk about splitting it: The data shows women still do significantly more. And there is evidence that fathers do more than they used to, but less than they say they do.) Some men, being men, have even managed to turn the dirty work of parenting into an implicit competition: Witness the peacocking dad — catch him in his natural habitat, his own Instagram grid — with a kid on his shoulders and a Boogie Wipes packet in his rear pocket, claiming the duty of caretaking but also its glory.This trend, perhaps most visible in the upscale and progressive milieu that dominates blue states, has flowed into politics. Democrats have pushed to make family leave available to all genders. Pete Buttigieg, a rising star, took several weeks’ parental leave in 2021 from his job as U.S. Secretary of Transportation. Politicians wear their fatherhood on their sleeves and their babies on their chests.“Family leave and affordable child care until very recently were considered women’s issues — ‘the moms are mad about this,’” said Kathryn Jezer-Morton, a parenting columnist for The Cut who wrote her doctoral dissertation on mom influencers. “It’s becoming a family issue, a dad issue. It feels significant.”But a curious lag has opened between societal hopes for dads and baseline expectations. Dads who assume their proper share of parenting and homemaking, according to this emerging worldview, should not accrue psychic bonus points anymore. However, they still do. In 2023, a father feeding his child in the park or touring a prospective school is admired and complimented to a degree a mother is not.“When the dads do or say something, they get the kind of attention I wish we would,” said Representative Rashida Tlaib, Democrat of Michigan, the only woman who is a member of the Dads Caucus — and a mother of two boys, 17 and 11.Spearheaded by Mr. Gomez, the Congressional Dads Caucus is a group of 20 Democrats aiming to push policies like paid family and medical leave and an expanded child tax credit.Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post, via Getty ImagesMs. Tlaib credited Mr. Gomez for pointing out this double standard at last week’s news conference. “He acknowledged that people were like, ‘Wow, this is so great,’” Ms. Tlaib said. “And it’s like, ‘What are you talking about? A lot of us moms have done this.’”For dads, the present state of affairs can be pretty sweet. Who doesn’t want to do 40 percent of the work for 80 percent of the credit? (Especially when it’s good politics.) But being a good ally may mean flaunting fatherhood and exploiting the ease with which fathers can draw attention to parents’ issues while not making it all about them, as men have occasionally been known to do.Because the attention is part of the point. “We know dads exist, but they can bring a spotlight to this issue,” said Gayle Kaufman, a professor of sociology at Davidson College and the author of “Superdads: How Fathers Balance Work and Family in the 21st Century.” “Just being realistic, when men think it’s important, it’s likely to get more attention.”One caucus member, Andy Kim of New Jersey, said that part of the caucus’s project was to shift the automatic association of family concerns away from being “mom” problems. He recalled someone asking his wife if she wished to be a stay-at-home mother, when it was in fact he who used comp time and then left his job at the State Department in order to care for their first of two sons, who are now 7 and 5. “She said, ‘You should talk to my husband,’” he said. The Dads Caucus’s inciting incident illustrated how novel it felt to see a dad dadding hard in Washington. Like many Congressional mothers and fathers, Mr. Gomez brought his family to Washington for his swearing-in ceremony, which typically would have followed a pro forma vote for the House Speaker. But this year, the body required an extraordinary 15 ballots over five days to select Mr. McCarthy. Families stayed in town; babies fussed.During an early voting round, Mr. Gomez and his wife, Mary Hodge (for whom Hodge Gomez is named — Ms. Hodge rejected a hyphenated last name, Mr. Gomez said), decided in the Democratic cloakroom to strap Hodge into a chest carrier to calm him. Which is how the 48-year-old congressman came to stride the House floor and cast his vote, as he put it then, “on behalf of my son, Hodge, and all the working families,” while Hodge politely squirmed and received a coochie-coo tickle from Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Ms. Hodge, who is the deputy mayor of city services in Los Angeles, returned to the West Coast before the voting marathon was complete. Hodge stayed with Mr. Gomez, who tweeted myriad baby shots. Mr. Gomez said in an interview that a mother in the identical situation likely would not have received such glowing coverage, like a “CBS Weekend News” feature with the caption “Congressman Pulls Double Duty.”“The praise I was getting for doing what any mother would do was out of proportion,” he said, adding, “if a woman did that, people would question her commitment to her job.”Mr. Gomez said the caucus had been formed with only Democrats in order to get it off the ground, given the disagreements between Democrats and Republicans over many economic family policies (to say nothing of related ones like abortion).Patrick T. Brown, a fellow at the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center who studies family economics, said some Republicans — he cited Senators Mitt Romney and J.D. Vance, among others — might co-sign some Democratic economic proposals for families. “There’s a growing recognition that not all the pressures facing families are cultural in nature,” Mr. Brown said. “It’s not all Hollywood elites making family life harder, it’s the pressures of the modern economy. If you’re concerned about people getting married later or not having kids, you need to orient policy in a more pro-family direction.”The caucus has already called for expanding child care access and universal family medical leave. But its most immediate achievement may be its members’ open reckoning with how prevailing conversations about care-taking shortchange everyone. Mothers are often ignored for what they do and made to feel guilt‌y for what they don’t. Fathers are frustrated by the limited public imagination for what they can do and evince a palpable, wistful anxiety of influence when speaking about motherhood. (“We talk about our kids like any moms do,” said Dan Goldman, a Caucus member and father of five who was elected to Congress from the Brooklyn district that includes the dad stronghold Park Slope.)Last year, before founding the Dads Caucus, Mr. Gomez went so far as to join the Congressional Mamas Caucus. “I had always advocated for all these issues,” he said.Because yes, of course, the Mamas Caucus — founded by Ms. Tlaib to push for many of the same policies the Dads Caucus backs — predates the Dads Caucus by several months.No matter: Ms. Tlaib was equanimous.“If it took Jimmy Gomez starting a Dads Caucus to get The New York Times to call me to talk about the Mamas Caucus,” she said, “then I’m all in.” More