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      Matt Gaetz Is Polarizing, in Both Congress and His Florida District

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      In an overwhelmingly Republican district, Mr. Gaetz is admired for shaking up the House, but he also has plenty of critics.He is polarizing in Washington and polarizing at home. And in both places these days, he is getting more attention than anyone might expect, given his lack of seniority and thin legislative record.As Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida orchestrated the ouster of Speaker Kevin McCarthy on Tuesday, constituents in his overwhelmingly Republican district had plenty of thoughts about their congressman’s actions and suddenly robust national profile.“If we got rid of the speaker of the House, hopefully we get someone in there who doesn’t make backdoor deals with Democrats,” said Sandra Atkinson, the chairwoman of the Republican Party of Okaloosa County, adding that Republicans were proud of him for following through on his word.Critics in his district saw a political moment that was about ego and ambition and little more.“He is following through on using chaos as both a performative art — that phrase is overused but it’s true — and because he’s frustrated he’s not getting his own way,” said Phil Ehr, a Democrat who ran against Mr. Gaetz in 2018 and is now running for the U.S. Senate. “In some ways, he’s acting like a petulant child.”Yet for all of his time spent picking fights — and, his critics say, little time crafting legislation — Mr. Gaetz remains broadly popular in his district, a stretch of the western Florida Panhandle, where he won re-election last year by nearly 36 percentage points. His skirmishes in Washington, and a federal investigation that revealed embarrassing details about this private life, have done little to bruise him.Palafox Pier in Pensacola, Fla., on Tuesday. Mr. Gaetz remains broadly popular in his district, a stretch of the western Florida Panhandle where he won re-election last year.Elijah Baylis for The New York Times“There’s a lot of people who like Matt Gaetz,” said Joel Terry May, 67, a local artist, as he showed off a painting in downtown Pensacola to visitors from New Orleans. “He speaks for the people, and he speaks out.”Mr. May, who grew up in Alabama, remembers a time when former Gov. George C. Wallace visited his school back in the 1960s.“People didn’t like George Wallace nationally, but the people who elected him and represented him did,” he said. “That’s what Gaetz also understands. When you represent somebody, you want them to maintain the feel of the people. People want to see Washington work. They want their representatives to have a pulse on the area.”Mr. Gaetz is widely disliked by his peers in Congress but is grudgingly acknowledged to be smart and crafty, and certainly a master of drawing attention to himself. Mr. Gaetz was re-elected last year while under the cloud of an investigation in a federal sex-trafficking case that ultimately resulted in no criminal charges against him. (A congressional ethics review is pending.) Twice, women have been arrested after throwing their drinks at him.Now, his support for a far-right posture that could shut down the federal government — directly affecting many of the people he represents — is unlikely to dent him, his critics acknowledged.“He is loved by the First Congressional District,” said Mark Lombardo, who unsuccessfully challenged Mr. Gaetz in last year’s Republican primary.Mark Lombardo, who unsuccessfully challenged Mr. Gaetz in last year’s Republican primary. campaigning in Pace, Fla., last year. Gregg Pachkowski/Pensacola News Journal/ USA TODAYMr. Lombardo attributed his loss, among other things, to Mr. Gaetz’s family ties — his father, Don Gaetz, is a wealthy and well-known former president of the Florida Senate who on Monday filed to run for the Senate again after stepping down in 2016 — and his devotion to former President Donald J. Trump. Mr. Gaetz is one of Mr. Trump’s closest allies in Congress and has backed him for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination over Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida.“He was Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump,” Mr. Lombardo said of the congressman, “and the First District is all about Trump.”No other congressional district in the country has as many military veterans, a group that could have been badly hurt by a shutdown. Yet even his critics concede that Mr. Gaetz remains popular among them.Barry Goodson, 70, a registered Democrat and retired Army veteran who once helped organize people against a plan backed by Mr. Gaetz to privatize some of Northwest Florida’s sandy-white beaches, said he worries his health care providers at the Department of Veterans Affairs would suffer under a shutdown.“I still can’t understand why Gaetz hates negotiating rather than working out something for the people in the district,” he said.“A chaos agent is not good for public policy,” said Samantha Herring, a Democratic national committeewoman in Walton County. “It’s not good for getting highway funds, education and veterans affairs.”And Mr. McCarthy’s ouster left even some fans of Mr. Gaetz with questions about exactly what had been accomplished.“That just makes me support him even more,” said Tim Hudson, 26, a lifelong Pensacola resident, upon learning on Tuesday about the congressman’s successful ouster of Mr. McCarthy.Elijah Baylis for The New York TimesJohn Roberts, chairman of the Escambia County Republican Party, said that Republicans, even those typically sympathetic to Mr. Gaetz’s views on other policies like immigration and the national debt, generally supported keeping Mr. McCarthy as speaker.“It’s not like we’re mad at Matt Gaetz; he’s still a good congressman,” he said. “But I think this was probably the wrong move.”But as the House smoldered and shook, other backers of Mr. Gaetz said they were all in.Tim Hudson, 26, a lifelong Pensacola resident, has voted for Mr. Gaetz. Upon learning on Tuesday about the congressman’s successful ouster of Mr. McCarthy, Mr. Hudson offered only more praise.“That just makes me support him even more,” Mr. Hudson said.He added that the ouster of Mr. McCarthy “speaks to how the world really is right now. We’re tired. We’re fed up. We want to see people start getting things done.”Susan C. Beachy More

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      Rep. Jennifer Wexton Announces Rare Neurological Disorder Diagnosis

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      Ms. Wexton, a Democrat who disclosed a Parkinson’s diagnosis in April, will not seek re-election after learning she has progressive supranuclear palsy, for which there is no effective treatment.Representative Jennifer Wexton, Democrat of Virginia, announced on Monday that she would not seek re-election next year after receiving a diagnosis of a rare neurological disorder.Ms. Wexton, 55, who represents a competitive district in the Virginia suburbs west of Washington, D.C., revealed in a statement that she has progressive supranuclear palsy, which she described in a statement as “Parkinson’s on steroids.”“I’m heartbroken to have to give up something I have loved after so many years of serving my community,” she said.Ms. Wexton was elected to represent Virginia’s 10th Congressional District in 2018, defeating a two-term Republican incumbent, Barbara Comstock, by 12 percentage points.In April, Ms. Wexton announced that she had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, saying at the time that it would not stop her from continuing to live her life, or pursuing her political career.“I’m doing well, and I want to bring about as much good from this diagnosis as I can — including here in Congress,” Ms. Wexton wrote on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.However, she wrote in her statement on Monday that she had noticed that people in her Parkinson’s support group weren’t having the same experience she was, and that she wasn’t making as much progress as she had hoped. She sought out other medical opinions and testing, which she said had led to her new diagnosis.Ms. Wexton said she planned to serve out the remainder of her term.“While my time in Congress will soon come to a close,” Ms. Wexton said, “I’m just as confident and committed as ever to keep up the work that got me into this fight in the first place for my remaining time in office — to help build the future we want for our children.”What is progressive supranuclear palsy?It is not uncommon for people with progressive supranuclear palsy, also known as P.S.P., to be misdiagnosed with Parkinson’s, as Ms. Wexton was. The two disorders share many symptoms, such as difficulty swallowing, and speech and balance issues.P.S.P. is caused by damage to nerve cells in areas of the brain that control thinking and body movement. It affects walking and balance as well as eye movement, and progresses more rapidly than Parkinson’s. There is currently no treatment that effectively stops or slows the disorder’s progression or symptoms, according to the National Institutes of Health.Symptoms typically appear when a person is in their mid-to-late 60s, later than when Parkinson’s symptoms usually start. Most people with P.S.P. develop severe disability within three to five years of the onset of symptoms, and may experience serious complications such as pneumonia, choking or the risk of head injuries from falls. It can also cause changes in behavior, such as forgetfulness and increased irritability.Given the nature of the disorder, Ms. Wexton said she wanted to spend her “valued time” with her friends and loved ones, including her husband and two sons.Her diagnosis has political implications for 2024.When Ms. Wexton won in 2018, she flipped her Northern Virginia district from red to blue, part of an anti-Trump wave that led to Democrats regaining control of the House. She came into Congress along with two other Democratic women who had flipped seats in Virginia, Abigail Spanberger and Elaine Luria.While Ms. Luria lost her race for re-election last year, Ms. Wexton won her third term by six points. But Ms. Wexton’s district, one of the wealthiest in the country, remains competitive, and is likely to be even more so without an incumbent running for the seat.Ms. Wexton’s decision not to run again leaves Republicans, who hold a slim majority in the House, with an opportunity to pick up a seat in the 2024 election, when Democrats will be angling to win back control of the chamber.Annie Karni More

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      Lauren Boebert Apologizes for Vaping in a Denver Theater

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      The Colorado congresswoman previously denied vaping during the performance, but could be seen doing so on surveillance video.Representative Lauren Boebert of Colorado was kicked out of a performance of the musical “Beetlejuice” in Denver after causing a disturbance.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesRepresentative Lauren Boebert, a hard-right Republican rabble-rouser from Colorado, apologized on Friday night for her behavior at a recent performance of the family-friendly musical “Beetlejuice” in Denver, after surveillance video revealed her vaping and behaving disruptively in the theater.Ms. Boebert, 36, previously denied reports that she had been vaping. A pregnant woman seated behind her asked her to stop before she was ejected for “causing a disturbance” at the show, according to The Denver Post.“The past few days have been difficult and humbling, and I’m truly sorry for the unwanted attention my Sunday evening in Denver has brought to the community,” Ms. Boebert said in a statement Friday night. “While none of my actions or words as a private citizen that night were intended to be malicious or meant to cause harm, the reality is they did and I regret that.”Ms. Boebert, who can be seen on the video touching and carrying on with her date while sitting in the middle of a crowded theater, blamed what she called her “public and difficult divorce” for her behavior and said, “I simply fell short of my values on Sunday.”Ms. Boebert, a mother of four boys who likes to show off pictures of her new grandchild to colleagues in Congress, said she “genuinely did not recall vaping that evening” when she told her campaign to issue a statement denying she had done so. She said she would have to work hard to earn back trust from voters in her district.It may be a heavy lift for Ms. Boebert, who won re-election in 2022 by just 546 votes.If her too-close-for-comfort re-election campaign was a message that Colorado voters didn’t like her brand of disruptive politics, she hasn’t appeared to have received it. Since January, she has often acted in ways many Republicans view as detrimental to keeping control of the House in 2024 and to her keeping her seat.In June, Ms. Boebert tried to force a vote on articles of impeachment against President Biden, claiming his immigration policies constituted high crimes and misdemeanors. Some of her colleagues called the move “crazy,” and it was eventually shunted off to committees for further study.Ms. Boebert distinguished herself during the fraught speaker’s race in January as one of the most committed holdouts against Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, milking the moment for maximum Fox News exposure. In the House, she has cultivated an abrasive public persona, sometimes heckling her Democratic colleagues in the halls of the Capitol and largely ignoring reporters’ questions, except to loudly proclaim at times, “I love President Trump!”The behavior has also earned a cult following on the right. Ms. Boebert, who often wears five-inch Lucite heels and skintight dresses, has a national base of fans who enjoy her disruptive antics and extreme rhetoric.On the House floor, Ms. Boebert has railed against drag performances for children and claimed the left was “grooming” children by exposing them to “obscene content.” More

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      Pelosi, Defying Predictions, Says She Will Seek Re-election in 2024

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      Since she stepped down from leadership last year, many observers expected Representative Nancy Pelosi of California to head toward retirement. But she has kept people guessing about her future.Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, who served for decades as the Democratic Party’s House leader and was the first woman to become speaker, announced on Friday that she would seek re-election in 2024, ending months of speculation about her political future.“In light of the values of San Francisco, which we’ve always been proud to promote, I’ve made the decision to seek re-election,” Ms. Pelosi said on Friday at an event in her hometown focused on organized labor.Since she stepped down from leadership last year after Democrats lost the House majority, many observers expected that Ms. Pelosi, who at 83 is the seventh-oldest member of the chamber, was headed for retirement. Some had been surprised to see her stay in Congress at all, a rare move for a former speaker, and speculated that she would not finish her term.But colleagues said she has relished her lower profile as a rank-and-file member with emeritus status. In that new role, Ms. Pelosi offers advice on an as-needed basis to her party’s new leadership team, often sits in the back rows of the House floor gabbing with her closest friends and focuses her attention on San Francisco while quietly remaining a fund-raising powerhouse for Democrats.“I’m emancipated now!” an ebullient Ms. Pelosi said in a recent interview with The Los Angeles Times.Even after Ms. Pelosi made clear she would stay on after giving up her leadership post, some Democrats assumed that she would leave Congress early, potentially clearing the way for her daughter Christine Pelosi, a party activist and a Democratic National Committee executive committee member, to run for her seat.Ms. Pelosi’s decision to carry on with her 36-year career in the House comes at a moment of renewed scrutiny on the advanced age and health status of the country’s leading public servants — including President Biden, 80, and Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, 81, the longtime Republican leader — and questions about whether they have overstayed their time in power. Ms. Pelosi managed to somewhat insulate herself from those critiques when she decided last year to step down from leadership, essentially giving herself a demotion.Senator Dianne Feinstein, another California Democrat who at 90 is the oldest member of Congress, plans to retire after her term ends next year. But she is facing calls to step down sooner amid a precipitous health decline that has raised questions about her ability to do her job. Ms. Pelosi recently attributed those calls to sexism.A major factor in Ms. Pelosi’s decision to not only finish her term but to seek another, according to people close to her, was the health of her husband, Paul Pelosi, who was brutally beaten with a hammer at the couple’s home in San Francisco last year by an assailant who later said he had been targeting the speaker. With Mr. Pelosi on a solid path to recovery, allies said, Ms. Pelosi did not feel it was necessary to step away from a job she loved.“Nancy Pelosi has always been untraditional,” said Stacy Kerr, who for a decade served as a senior aide to Ms. Pelosi. “She’s done things her own way her whole career, driven by the needs of her district and the country. We shouldn’t expect that she won’t continue to be a trailblazer now.”Still, Ms. Pelosi, famous for keeping her own counsel, had not shared her plans with anyone. People close to her said on Friday that she had ultimately decided to run again because she also viewed it as an urgent priority to re-elect Mr. Biden and help Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the minority leader, become the next House speaker.Ms. Pelosi is still her party’s most prolific fund-raiser in Congress, a political skill that could be determinative in helping Democrats win back the House majority next year.The National Republican Congressional Committee quickly tried to frame her decision to stay on as a sign of Mr. Jeffries’s weakness.“The babysitter agreed to stay late!” the group’s press secretary, Will Reinert, said in a statement, noting that House Democrats still relied on Ms. Pelosi as the main engine of their fund-raising machine.In an online post, Ms. Pelosi characterized her decision to run again as one driven by local and global concerns.“Now, more than ever, our city needs us to advance San Francisco values and further our recovery,” Ms. Pelosi said in announcing her plans. “Our country needs America to show the world that our flag is still there, with liberty and justice for all.” More

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      Federal Court Again Strikes Down Alabama’s Congressional Map

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      Republicans failed to comply with a court order to create a second majority-Black district or something “close to it,” the judicial panel said.A panel of federal judges rejected Alabama’s latest congressional map on Tuesday, ruling that a new map needed to be drawn because Republican lawmakers had failed to comply with orders to create a second majority-Black district or something “close to it.”In a sharp rebuke, the judges ordered that the new map be independently drawn, taking the responsibility away from the Republican-controlled legislature while chastising state officials who “ultimately did not even nurture the ambition to provide the required remedy.”The legislature had hastily pushed through a revised map in July after a surprise Supreme Court ruling found that Alabama’s existing map violated a landmark civil rights law by undercutting the power of the state’s Black voters. The revised map, approved over the objections of Democrats, increased the percentage of Black voters in one of the state’s six majority-white congressional districts to about 40 percent, from about 30 percent.In its new ruling, the district court panel in Alabama found that the legislature had flouted its mandate.“We are not aware of any other case in which a state legislature — faced with a federal court order declaring that its electoral plan unlawfully dilutes minority votes and requiring a plan that provides an additional opportunity district — responded with a plan that the state concedes does not provide that district,” the judges wrote. Responsibility for a new map now falls to a special master, Richard Allen, a longtime Alabama lawyer who has worked under several Republican attorneys general, and a cartographer, David Ely, a demographer based in California. Both were appointed by the court. The decision — or the independent map to be produced — can be appealed. State officials have said that a new congressional map needs to be in place by early October, in order to prepare for the 2024 elections.The litigation has been closely watched in Washington and across the country, as several other states in the South face similar voting rights challenges, and control of the U.S. House of Representatives rests on a thin margin. Prominent lawmakers in Washington — including Speaker Kevin McCarthy of California and Democrats in the Congressional Black Caucus — have kept careful tabs on the redistricting effort.At least one nonpartisan political analysis has predicted that at least one Alabama district could become an election tossup with a new map, given that Black voters in Alabama tend to vote for Democratic candidates.The decision was joined by Judge Stanley Marcus, who was nominated by former President Bill Clinton; and by Judges Anna M. Manasco and Terry F. Moorer, both named to their posts by former President Donald J. Trump. (Judge Marcus typically sits on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, in Atlanta.)For Alabama, the ruling caps off nearly two years of litigation, marking yet another instance in the state’s tumultuous history where a court has forced officials to follow federal civil rights and voting laws.Two decades ago, a lawsuit forced the creation of the Seventh Congressional District, the state’s sole majority-Black district, in southwest Alabama. (Under the Republican-drawn map rejected on Tuesday, the share of Black voters in that district dropped to about 51 percent from about 55 percent.)“It’s really making sure that people who have consistently been kept at the margins or excluded as a matter of law from politics have a chance — not a guarantee — but a realistic chance of electing candidates of choice,” said Kareem Crayton, the senior director for voting and representation at the Brennan Center for Justice and a Montgomery, Ala., native. “The fact that we’re having to fight over that principle is really sad in 2023.”After the 2020 census, which began the process of setting district lines for the next decade across the country, the Alabama legislature maintained six congressional districts with a white Republican incumbent. A group of Black voters challenged the map under a landmark voting rights law, given that more than one in four residents of Alabama is Black.The Birmingham court said the map would need to be redrawn, but the Supreme Court intervened and said a new map could not be put in place so close to the primary races ahead of the 2022 election. In doing so, the Supreme Court unexpectedly affirmed the key remaining tenet of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which bars any voting law that “results in a denial or abridgment of the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race.” The court had gutted much of that landmark civil rights law a decade earlier, and many had expected a similar result with the Alabama case.But in a weeklong special session, Republicans refused to create a second majority-Black district, and shielded their six incumbents from a potentially brutal primary at a moment when the party has only a slim majority in the U.S. House of Representatives.Republicans defended their revised map, calling it a fair attempt to keep counties and communities with similar economic and geographic issues together, while adhering to the Constitution. Democrats and the Black voters who brought the challenge called it a squandered opportunity to provide equal representation to a historically disenfranchised bloc of voters.At a hearing in August, the panel of judges sharply pressed the state’s attorneys on whether the revised map had done enough to adhere to their guidance on how to address the voting rights violation, making their skepticism clear.“What I hear you saying is that the state of Alabama deliberately disregarded our instructions,” Judge Moorer said at one point. More