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      New York Republican George Santos’s Résumé Called Into Question

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      Mr. Santos, a Republican from New York, says he’s the “embodiment of the American dream.” But he seems to have misrepresented a number of his career highlights.George Santos, whose election to Congress on Long Island last month helped Republicans clinch a narrow majority in the House of Representatives, built his candidacy on the notion that he was the “full embodiment of the American dream” and was running to safeguard it for others.His campaign biography amplified his storybook journey: He is the son of Brazilian immigrants, and the first openly gay Republican to win a House seat as a non-incumbent. By his account, he catapulted himself from a New York City public college to become a “seasoned Wall Street financier and investor” with a family-owned real estate portfolio of 13 properties and an animal rescue charity that saved more than 2,500 dogs and cats.But a New York Times review of public documents and court filings from the United States and Brazil, as well as various attempts to verify claims that Mr. Santos, 34, made on the campaign trail, calls into question key parts of the résumé that he sold to voters.Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, the marquee Wall Street firms on Mr. Santos’s campaign biography, told The Times they had no record of his ever working there. Officials at Baruch College, which Mr. Santos has said he graduated from in 2010, could find no record of anyone matching his name and date of birth graduating that year.There was also little evidence that his animal rescue group, Friends of Pets United, was, as Mr. Santos claimed, a tax-exempt organization: The Internal Revenue Service could locate no record of a registered charity with that name.His financial disclosure forms suggest a life of some wealth. He lent his campaign more than $700,000 during the midterm election, has donated thousands of dollars to other candidates in the last two years and reported a $750,000 salary and over $1 million in dividends from his company, the Devolder Organization.Yet the firm, which has no public website or LinkedIn page, is something of a mystery. On a campaign website, Mr. Santos once described Devolder as his “family’s firm” that managed $80 million in assets. On his congressional financial disclosure, he described it as a capital introduction consulting company, a type of boutique firm that serves as a liaison between investment funds and deep-pocketed investors. But Mr. Santos’s disclosures did not reveal any clients, an omission three election law experts said could be problematic if such clients exist.And while Mr. Santos has described a family fortune in real estate, he has not disclosed, nor could The Times find, records of his properties. Mr. Santos’s eight-point victory, in a district in northern Long Island and northeast Queens that previously favored Democrats, was considered a mild upset. He had lost decisively in the same district in 2020 to Tom Suozzi, then the Democratic incumbent, and had seemed to be too wedded to former President Donald J. Trump and his stances to flip his fortunes.His appearance earlier this month at a gala in Manhattan attended by white nationalists and right-wing conspiracy theorists underscored his ties to Mr. Trump’s right-wing base.At the same time, new revelations uncovered by The Times — including the omission of key information on Mr. Santos’s personal financial disclosures, and criminal charges for check fraud in Brazil — have the potential to create ethical and possibly legal challenges once he takes office.Mr. Santos did not respond to repeated requests from The Times that he furnish either documents or a résumé with dates that would help to substantiate the claims he made on the campaign trail. He also declined to be interviewed, and neither his lawyer nor Big Dog Strategies, a Republican-oriented political consulting group that handles crisis management, responded to a detailed list of questions.The lawyer, Joe Murray, said in a short statement that it was “no surprise that Congressman-elect Santos has enemies at The New York Times who are attempting to smear his good name with these defamatory allegations.”A New U.S. Congress Takes ShapeFollowing the 2022 midterm elections, Democrats maintained control of the Senate while Republicans flipped the House.McCarthy’s Fraught Speaker Bid: Representative Kevin McCarthy has so far been unable to quash a mini-revolt on the right that threatens to imperil his effort to secure the top House job.Kyrsten Sinema: The Arizona senator said that she would leave the Democratic Party and register as an independent, just days after the Democrats secured an expanded majority in the Senate.A Looming Clash: Congressional leaders have all but abandoned the idea of acting to raise the debt ceiling before Democrats lose control of the House, punting the issue to a new Congress.First Gen Z Congressman: In the weeks after his election, Representative-elect Maxwell Frost of Florida, a Democrat, has learned just how different his perspective is from that of his older colleagues.A criminal case in BrazilMr. Santos has said he was born in Queens to parents who emigrated from Brazil and was raised in the borough. His father, he has said, is Catholic and has roots in Angola. His mother, Fatima Devolder, was descended from migrants who fled Jewish persecution in Ukraine and World War II strife in Belgium. Mr. Santos has described himself as a nonobservant Jew but has also said he is Catholic.Records show that Mr. Santos’s mother, who died in 2016, lived for a time in the Brazilian city of Niterói, a Rio suburb where she was employed as a nurse. After Mr. Santos obtained a high school equivalency diploma, he apparently also spent some time there.In 2008, when Mr. Santos was 19, he stole the checkbook of a man his mother was caring for, according to Brazilian court records uncovered by The Times. Police and court records show that Mr. Santos used the checkbook to make fraudulent purchases, including a pair of shoes. Two years later, Mr. Santos confessed to the crime and was later charged.The court and local prosecutor in Brazil confirmed the case remains unresolved. Mr. Santos did not respond to an official summons, and a court representative could not find him at his given address, records show.That period in Brazil overlapped with when Mr. Santos said he was attending Baruch College, where he has said he was awarded a bachelor’s degree in economics and finance. But Baruch College said it was unable to find records of Mr. Santos — using multiple variations of his first, middle and last names — having graduated in 2010, as he has claimed.A biography of Mr. Santos on the website of the National Republican Congressional Committee, which is the House Republicans’ campaign arm, also includes a stint at New York University. The claim is not repeated elsewhere, and an N.Y.U. spokesman found no attendance records matching his name and birth date.Mr. Santos, appearing with other Republican elected officials at a post-Election Day news conference, has declined to address questions about his biography.Alejandra Villa Loarca/Newsday, via Getty ImagesAfter he said he graduated from college, Mr. Santos began working at Citigroup, eventually becoming “an associate asset manager” in the company’s real estate division, according to a version of his biography that was on his campaign site as recently as April.A spokeswoman for Citigroup, Danielle Romero-Apsilos, said the company could not confirm Mr. Santos’s employment. She also said she was unfamiliar with Mr. Santos’s self-described job title and noted that Citi had sold off its asset management operations in 2005.A previous campaign biography of Mr. Santos indicates that he left Citi to work at a Turkey-based hospitality technology company, MetGlobal, and other profiles mention a brief role at Goldman Sachs. MetGlobal executives could not be reached for comment. Abbey Collins, a spokeswoman at Goldman Sachs, said she could not locate any record of Mr. Santos’s having worked at the company.Attempts to find co-workers who could confirm his employment were unsuccessful, in part because Mr. Santos has not provided specific dates for his time at these companies.He has also asserted that his professional life had intersected with tragedy: He said in an interview on WNYC that his company, which he did not identify, “lost four employees” at the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando in June 2016. But a Times review of news coverage and obituaries found that none of the 49 victims appear to have worked at the various firms named in his biography.After two evictions, a reversal of fortunesAs he was purportedly climbing the corporate ranks, Mr. Santos claimed to have founded Friends of Pets United, which he ran for five years beginning in 2013. As a candidate, he cited the group as proof of a history of philanthropic work.Though remnants of the group and its efforts could be found on Facebook, the I.R.S. was not able to find any record showing that the group held the tax-exempt status that Mr. Santos claimed. Neither the New York nor New Jersey attorney general’s offices could find records of Friends of Pets United having been registered as a charity.Friends of Pets United held at least one fund-raiser with a New Jersey animal rescue group in 2017; the invitation promised drinks, donated raffle items and a live band. Mr. Santos charged $50 for entry, according to an online fund-raising page that promoted the event. But the event’s beneficiary, who asked for anonymity for fear of retribution, said that she never received any of the funds, with Mr. Santos only offering repeated excuses for not forwarding the money.During that same period, Mr. Santos was also facing apparent financial difficulties. In November 2015, a landlord in the Whitestone neighborhood of Queens filed an eviction suit in housing court accusing Mr. Santos of owing $2,250 in unpaid rent.The landlord, Maria Tulumba, said in an interview that Mr. Santos had been a “nice guy” and a “respectful” tenant. But she said that he had financial problems that led to the eviction case, declining to elaborate further. The judge ruled in favor of Ms. Tulumba.In May 2017, Mr. Santos faced another eviction case, from a rent-stabilized apartment in Sunnyside, Queens. Mr. Santos’s landlord accused him of owing more than $10,000 in rent stretching over five months and said in court records that one of his tenant’s checks had bounced. A warrant of eviction was issued, and Mr. Santos was fined $12,208 in a civil judgment.By early 2021, Mr. Santos was becoming vocal on housing issues but not from a tenant perspective. During New York’s pandemic-era eviction moratorium, Mr. Santos said on Twitter that he was a landlord affected by the freeze.“Will we landlords ever be able to take back possession of our property?” he wrote.Mr. Santos said that he and his family had not been paid rent on their 13 properties in nearly a year, adding that he had offered rental assistance to some tenants, but found that some were “flat out taking advantage of the situation.”But Mr. Santos has not listed properties in New York on required financial disclosure forms for either of his campaigns; the only real estate that he mentioned was an apartment in Rio de Janeiro. Property records databases in New York City and Nassau County did not show any documents or deeds associated with him, immediate family members or the Devolder Organization.It is unclear what might have led to Mr. Santos’s apparent reversal in fortunes. By the time he launched his first run for the House, in November 2019, Mr. Santos was working in business development at a company called LinkBridge Investors that says it connects investors with fund managers.Mr. Santos eventually became a vice president there, according to a company document and a May 2020 campaign disclosure form where he declared earnings of $55,000 in salary, commission and bonuses.Mr. Santos, campaigning before Election Day, captured the race for the Third Congressional District, a contest he lost in 2020. Mary Altaffer/Associated PressOver the next two years, Mr. Santos bounced between several ill-fated ventures. As he ran for Congress, he moved from LinkBridge to take on a new role as regional director of Harbor City Capital, a Florida-based investment company.Harbor City, which attracted investors with YouTube videos and guarantees of double-digit returns, soon garnered attention from the S.E.C., which filed a lawsuit accusing the company and its founder of running a $17 million Ponzi scheme. Neither Mr. Santos nor other colleagues were named in the lawsuit, and Mr. Santos has publicly denied having any knowledge of the scheme.Two weeks later, a handful of former Harbor City executives formed a company called Red Strategies USA, as reported by The Daily Beast. Corporate filings listed the Devolder Organization as a partial owner — even though the papers to register Devolder would not be filed for another week.Red Strategies was short lived: Federal campaign records show it did political consulting work for at least one politician — Tina Forte, a Republican who unsuccessfully challenged Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in November — before it was dissolved in September for failing to file an annual report.The Devolder Organization seems to have flourished as Mr. Santos ran for office. According to Mr. Santos’s disclosures, his work there earned him a salary of $750,000. By the time it too was dissolved — also for failing to file an annual report — Mr. Santos reported that it was worth more than a million dollars.A November win raises new questionsMr. Santos announced his intent to make a second run at Congress almost immediately after the end of his first. He figured to again be an underdog in the district, which largely favored President Biden in 2020.But things began to swing in his favor. Republicans in Nassau performed well in local elections in 2021. Mr. Suozzi opted to not run for re-election in 2022, instead launching an unsuccessful bid for governor. And with high turnout expected in a midterm election that also featured a governor’s race, Mr. Santos’s race became more competitive — and his campaign stance became more tempered.During his first campaign, Mr. Santos, an adherent of Mr. Trump, opposed mask mandates and abortion access, and defended law enforcement against what he called the “made-up concept” of police brutality.But during his second campaign, older posts on Twitter were suddenly deleted, including his claims of election fraud that he said cost Mr. Trump the election in 2020. In March 2021, he resurfaced the claim, writing on Twitter in a since-deleted post, “My new campaign team has 4 former loyal Trump staffers that pushed him over the finish line TWICE, yes I said TWICE!”Mr. Santos also briefly claimed without evidence in another since-deleted tweet that he had been a victim of fraud in his first congressional race, at one point using the hashtag #StopTheSteal, a reference to a slogan associated with Mr. Trump’s false election claims.And while he previously boasted that he attended the Jan. 6 rally (but, he has said, not the riot) in support of Mr. Trump in Washington, he has since ducked questions about his attendance and a prior claim that he had written “a nice check for a law firm” to assist some rioters with their legal bills.Mr. Santos’s improved circumstances are evident on the official financial disclosure form he filed in September with the House of Representatives, though the document still leaves questions about his finances.In the disclosure, Mr. Santos said that he was the Devolder Organization’s sole owner and managing member. He reported that the company, which is based in New York but was registered in Florida, paid him a $750,000 salary. He also earned dividends from Devolder totaling somewhere between $1 million and $5 million — even though Devolder’s estimated value was listed in the same range.The Devolder Organization has no public-facing assets or other property that The Times could locate. Mr. Santos’s disclosure form did not provide information about clients that would have contributed to such a haul — a seeming violation of the requirement to disclose any compensation in excess of $5,000 from a single source.Kedric Payne, the vice president of the watchdog Campaign Legal Center, and a former deputy chief counsel for the Office of Congressional Ethics, was one of three election law experts consulted by The Times who took issue with the lack of detail.“This report raises red flags because no clients are reported for a multimillion-dollar client services company,” Mr. Payne said, adding: “The congressman-elect should explain what’s going on.”The Times attempted to interview Mr. Santos at the address where he is registered to vote and that was associated with a campaign donation he made in October, but a person at that address said on Sunday that she was not familiar with him.Material omissions or misrepresentations on personal financial disclosures are considered a federal crime under the False Statements Act, which carries a maximum penalty of $250,000 and five years in prison. But the bar for these cases is high, given that the statute requires violations to be “knowing and willful.”The House of Representatives has several internal mechanisms for investigating ethics violations, issuing civil or administrative penalties when it does. Those bodies tend to act largely in egregious cases, particularly if the behavior took place before the member was inaugurated.Campaign disclosures show that Mr. Santos lived large as a candidate, buying shirts for his staff from Brooks Brothers and charging the campaign for meals at the restaurant inside Bergdorf Goodman.Mr. Santos also spent a considerable amount of money traveling — charging his campaign roughly $40,000 in flights to places that included California, Texas and Florida. All told, Mr. Santos spent more than $17,000 in Florida, mostly on restaurants and hotels, including at least one evening at the Breakers, a five-star hotel and resort in Palm Beach, three miles up the road from Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s private club and residence.Manuela Andreoni More

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      How Will History Remember Jan. 6?

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      Far-right groups stockpiling guns and explosives, preparing for a violent overthrow of a government they deem illegitimate. Open antisemitism on the airwaves, expressed by mainstream media figures. Leading politicians openly embracing bigoted, authoritarian leaders abroad who disdain democracy and the rule of law.This might sound like a recap of the last few years in America, but it is actually the forgotten story told in a remarkable new podcast, Ultra, that recounts the shocking tale of how during World War II, Nazi propagandists infiltrated far-right American groups and the America First movement, wormed into the offices of senators and representatives and fomented a plot to overthrow the United States government.“This is a story about politics at the edge,” said the show’s creator and host, Rachel Maddow, in the opening episode. “And a criminal justice system trying, trying, but ill-suited to thwart this kind of danger.”Maddow is, of course, a master storyteller, and never lets the comparisons to today’s troubles get too on the nose. But as I hung on each episode, I couldn’t help think about Jan. 6 and wonder: Will that day and its aftermath be a hinge point in our country’s history? Or a forgotten episode to be plumbed by some podcaster decades from now?When asked about the meaning of contemporary events, historians like to jokingly reply, “Ask me in 100 years.” This week, the committee in the House of Representatives investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot will drop its doorstop-size report, a critical early installment in the historical record. Journalists, historians and activists have already generated much, much more material, and more is still to come.In January, a Republican majority will take over the House and many of its members have pledged to begin their own battery of investigations, including an investigation into the Jan. 6 investigation. What will come from this ouroboros of an inquiry one cannot say, but it cannot help but detract from the quest for accountability for the events of that day.Beyond that, polling ahead of this year’s midterm elections indicated that Americans have other things on their minds, perhaps even more so now that the threat of election deniers winning control over voting in key swing states has receded. But what it means for the story America tells itself about itself is an open question. And in the long run, that might mean more accountability than our current political moment permits.Why do we remember the things we remember, and why do we forget the things we forget? This is not a small question in a time divided by fights over history. We all know the old saying: Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. But there is another truism that to my mind often countervails: We are always fighting the last war.The story that Maddow’s podcast tells is a doozy. It centers on a German American named George Sylvester Viereck, who was an agent for the Nazi government. Viereck was the focus of a Justice Department investigation into Nazi influence in America in the 1930s. For good reason: Lawmakers helped him in a variety of ways. One senator ran pro-German propaganda articles in magazines under his name that had actually been written by Viereck and would deliver pro-German speeches on the floor of Congress written by officials of the Nazi government. Others would reproduce these speeches and mail them to millions of Americans at taxpayer expense.Viereck also provided moral and financial support to a range of virulently antisemitic and racist organizations across the United States, along with paramilitary groups called the Silver Shirts and the Christian Front. Members of these groups sought to violently overthrow the government of the United States and replace it with a Nazi-style dictatorship.This was front-page news at the time. Investigative reporters dug up scoop after scoop about the politicians involved. Prosecutors brought criminal charges. Big trials were held. But today they are all but forgotten. One leading historian of Congress who was interviewed in the podcast, Nancy Beck Young, said she doubts that more than one or two people in her history department at the University of Houston knew about this scandal.Why was this episode consigned to oblivion? Selective amnesia has always been a critical component of the American experience. Americans are reared on myths that elide the genocide of Indigenous Americans, the central role of slavery in our history, America’s imperial adventures and more. As Susan Sontag put it, “What is called collective memory is not a remembering but a stipulating: that this is important, and this is the story about how it happened.”Our favorite stories are sealed narrative boxes with a clear arc — a heroic journey in which America is the hero. And it’s hard to imagine a narrative more cherished than the one wrought by the countless books, movies and prestige television that remember World War II as a story of American righteousness in the face of a death cult. There was some truth to that story. But that death cult also had adherents here at home who had the ear and the mouthpiece of some of the most powerful senators and representatives.It also had significant support from a broad swath of the American people, most of whom were at best indifferent to the fate of European Jewry, as “The U.S. and the Holocaust,” a documentary series by the filmmakers Ken Burns, Lynn Novick and Sarah Botstein that came out in September, does the painful work of showing. A virulent antisemite, Rev. Charles E. Coughlin, hosted by far the biggest radio show in the country. At his peak in the 1930s about 90 million people a week tuned in to hear his diatribes against Jews and communism.In some ways, it is understandable that this moment was treated as an aberration. The America First movement, which provided mainstream cover for extremist groups, evaporated almost instantly after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Maybe it was even necessary to forget. When the war was over there was so much to do: rebuild Europe, integrate American servicemen back into society, confront the existential threat of nuclear war with the Soviet Union. Who had the time to litigate who had been wrong about Germany in the 1930s?Even professional historians shied away from this period. Bradley Hart, a historian whose 2018 book “Hitler’s American Friends” unearthed a great deal of this saga, said that despite the wealth of documentary material there was little written about the subject. “This is a really uncomfortable chapter in American history because we want to believe the Second World War was this great moment when America was on the side of democracy and human rights,” Hart told me. “There is this sense that you have to forget certain parts of history in order to move on.”As anyone who has been married for a long time knows, sometimes forgetting is essential to peace. Even countries that have engaged in extensive post-conflict reconciliation processes, like South Africa and Argentina, were inevitably limited by the need to move on. After all, you make peace with your enemies, not your friends.The aftermath of Jan. 6 is unfolding almost like a photo negative of the scandal Maddow’s podcast unfurls. With very few exceptions almost everyone involved in the pro-Nazi movement escaped prosecution. A sedition trial devolved into a total debacle that ended with a mistrial. President Harry Truman, a former senator, ultimately helped out his old friend Senator Burton K. Wheeler, a figure in the plot to disseminate Nazi propaganda, by telling the Justice Department to fire the prosecutor who was investigating it.But the major political figures involved paid the ultimate political price: they were turfed out of office by voters.Many of the perpetrators of the Jan. 6 riot, on the other hand, have been brought to justice successfully: Roughly 900 people have been arrested; approximately 470 have pleaded guilty to a variety of federal charges; around 335 of those charged federally have been convicted and sentenced; more than 250 have been sentenced to prison or home confinement. Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the Oath Keepers, was convicted of seditious conspiracy, the most serious charge brought in any of these cases. In their report to be released this week, the Jan. 6 committee is expected to recommend further criminal indictments. One big question looming over it all is whether former President Donald Trump will be criminally charged for his role in whipping up the frenzy that led to the assault on the Capitol.A broader political reckoning seems much more distant. Election deniers and defenders of the Jan. 6 mob lost just about every major race in swing states in the 2022 midterms. But roughly 200 Republicans who supported the lie about the 2020 election being stolen won office across the country, The New York Times reported.What larger narrative about America might require us to remember Jan. 6? And what might require us to file it away as an aberration? The historian’s dodge — “ask me in 100 years” — is the only truly safe answer. But if the past is any guide, short-term political expediency may require it to be the latter.After all, it is only now that decades of work by scholars, activists and journalists has placed chattel slavery at the center of the American story rather than its periphery. What are the current battles about critical race theory but an attempt to repackage the sprawling, unfinished fight for civil rights into a tidy story about how Black people got their rights by appealing to the fundamental decency of white people and by simply asking nicely? In this telling, systematic racism ended when Rosa Parks could sit in the front of the bus. Anything that even lightly challenges finality of racial progress is at best an unwelcome rupture in the narrative matrix; at worst it is seen as a treasonous hatred of America.History, after all, is not just what happened. It is the meaning we make out of what happened and the story we tell with that meaning. If we included everything there would be no story. We cannot and will not remember things that have not been fashioned into a story we tell about ourselves, and because we are human, and because change is life, that story will evolve and change as we do.There is no better sign that our interpretation of history is in for revision than the Hollywood treatment. Last week it was reported that Steven Spielberg, our foremost chronicler of heroic World War II tales, plans to collaborate with Maddow to make Ultra into a movie. Perhaps this marks the beginning of a pop culture reconsideration of America’s role in the war, adding nuance that perturbs the accepted heroic narrative.And so I am not so worried about Jan. 6 fading from our consciousness for now. One day, maybe decades, maybe a century, some future Rachel Maddow will pick up the story and weave it more fully into the American fabric, not as an aberration but a continuous thread that runs through our imperfect tapestry. Maybe some future Steven Spielberg will even make it into a movie. I bet it’ll be a blockbuster.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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      Why Kevin McCarthy Is Struggling to Get Republicans in Line

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      Only a few weeks remain for the would-be House speaker to rally enough support to take power.The most fascinating election of 2023 is not happening in a presidential battleground like Arizona or Pennsylvania. It’s taking place in Washington, D.C., where Representative Kevin McCarthy of California is laboring mightily to become speaker of the House — a job he has long coveted.When the full House votes for speaker on Jan. 3, McCarthy will need the backing of a majority of all members. And with the party’s narrow hold on power, even a small number of Republican defections could imperil his bid. The uncertainty over McCarthy’s fate is roiling the G.O.P. while helping Democrats who want to portray Republicans as dysfunctional and hopelessly in thrall to extremists.Most of the action is taking place behind closed doors. But McCarthy’s allies and a rump faction of ultraconservative lawmakers have been dueling one another through the Beltway news media as January approaches, giving us glimpses of the jockeying and negotiations. The battle for speaker is taking place as Democrats try to push through a critical year-end spending bill that House Republicans almost universally oppose.The past week has brought a few developments — many of them baffling even to Capitol Hill insiders. On Friday, seven conservative hard-liners issued a lengthy list of demands to the would-be speaker, mostly involving obscure procedural rules. On Tuesday, a group of nearly 50 moderates aligned with McCarthy said they would oppose some of those ideas. Then on Wednesday, news broke that a different group of five anti-McCarthy members led by Representative Andy Biggs of Arizona had made a pact to vote as a bloc, one way or another. If they stick together, those five are enough to deny McCarthy his gavel, and it is not clear how he gets them to yes.But it’s also not clear that Republicans have another viable option. To reinforce that point, McCarthy’s allies have begun distributing buttons saying “O.K.” — as in “Only Kevin.”Annie Karni, a congressional correspondent for The New York Times, has been tracking the race closely. Here is our conversation, edited lightly for length and clarity:How large a faction are the McCarthy holdouts? Is it just the die-hards like Biggs and three or four others that some are calling the Never Kevins?Let me just start by saying that no one has any idea if McCarthy is going to pull this out. Reporters are asking Republicans. Republicans are asking reporters. The smartest people watching this closely are unwilling to make predictions at this point. McCarthy is playing it all very close to the vest. He’s not including other members of his leadership team in his deliberations or his calculations.As for your question, publicly, the Never Kevins are a small bunch: At least four people have said they are hard nos.But 31 House Republicans voted “no” on nominating McCarthy for the position back in November. How many of them were simply doing so to make a point but are ultimately for him? How many are still at “no” but keeping it to themselves, at least for now? McCarthy doesn’t necessarily know the entire list of people he has to win over.Has McCarthy won back any of the 31?That’s hard to answer, since it was a secret ballot and we don’t know who those 31 Republicans were. But it’s not a great sign for him that in the same vote, Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana had unanimous support in his race to become the No. 2 House Republican next year. In other words, for these people, it isn’t an attack on the leadership. This is an attack on McCarthy.But it also might not mean that much. For context, all this turmoil is in line with how this phase of the process has played out in the past, for lawmakers who eventually won the speakership. Paul Ryan lost 43 votes in the secret ballot phase in 2015. Nancy Pelosi, in 2018, lost 32 votes. They both eventually emerged victorious and became speaker.What do the die-hards want? Is this just “blackmail,” as former Speaker Newt Gingrich wrote this week? Do they have some kind of ideal outcome in mind?This is what makes it extra tough for McCarthy. He has to contend with something that no Democrat has had to face: a sizable group that was sent to Congress explicitly to obstruct. Some of the people he is attempting to bargain with don’t seem to have a price. They’re not motivated by legislating as much as they are about shrinking the federal government, or upending it completely.That being said, the real sticking point is what’s known in congressional jargon as the “motion to vacate,” a term we try to avoid using in news stories because it’s meaningless to most readers. What it would do is change the rules to allow any member to force a snap floor vote to get rid of the speaker at any time. The holdouts want McCarthy to commit to allowing a vote like that. So far, that’s been a nonstarter for him; he understandably views the prospect as handing his enemies a loaded political weapon.Bottom line: It seems like McCarthy is dealing with some chaos agents, which makes his process a lot more difficult than it was for Pelosi in 2018. Back then, she also had to negotiate her way to the speakership, but she was dealing with a caucus made up of members with specific demands that she could address.The alternative to McCarthy is unlikely to be his current opponent, Biggs. The Beltway chatter is that if McCarthy fails to get the necessary votes on the House floor, someone of more stature than Biggs, like Scalise or Representative Patrick McHenry of North Carolina, could potentially get drafted into becoming a speaker candidate.You reported this week, with Maggie Haberman and Catie Edmondson, that Donald Trump had been making calls to House members to ask them to support McCarthy. What were you able to learn about the arguments he had been making, and how that was resonating?Yes, we reported that Trump had been calling members who are ambivalent, at best, about McCarthy serving as speaker.Trump is not that gung-ho about McCarthy, we understand, although some of the top people around him are very pro-McCarthy. Nonetheless, Trump has been calling Republican lawmakers because he doesn’t see a viable alternative and believes McCarthy is better for him than an improbable scenario where the job goes to a moderate who can draw some Democratic votes.Trump’s thinking is in line with how a lot of people are viewing this: OK, so you don’t love Kevin McCarthy. But what’s the real alternative? Regarding Trump and McCarthy, their relationship over the course of the past few years has had its ups and downs, but usually lands back at cordial. Friendly. Not particularly close. But not bad.Also, it’s good to remember that Trump officially endorsed McCarthy’s bid for speaker. So it’s in his interest, in terms of his personal scorecard of wins and losses, to have his endorsee pull this out.One more dynamic worth a fleeting mention: Trump is making calls for McCarthy, and yet one of Trump’s biggest allies in Congress, Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida, is one of the most vocal obstacles to McCarthy’s bid. Why can’t Trump get Gaetz to cease and desist? Trump has yet to make a big public campaign on McCarthy’s behalf that would resonate with constituents of these members and put more pressure on them.So many of the concessions McCarthy has made thus far are about arcane issues, like funding formulas. But he has also welcomed into the fold far-right figures like Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Paul Gosar of Arizona and promised to restore their committee assignments. Has that bargain been worth it, from his perspective?Definitely. McCarthy wants to be speaker. He’s known as an aggressive fund-raiser, an affable people person, and generally a go-along-to-get-along guy. He’s not an ideologue, which means that he’s less scary to some Democrats than, say, Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio. But it also means he’s not bothered by making compromises for these far-right members, if it means getting where he wants.Greene has been publicly vouching for McCarthy. It’s funny — before the midterm elections, when there were questions about what could happen to thwart McCarthy’s plans to become speaker, it seemed like Greene or Trump could pose the biggest problems for him. If Trump, for instance, turned on him, the thinking was that Trump’s influence on the far right of the Republican Party would cost McCarthy critical votes.But here we are, with Trump and Greene on Team McCarthy. And yet he’s still working hard to close the sale.What to readThree Michigan men were sentenced to prison terms for their roles in the plot to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. Eliza Fawcett has the details.A new lawsuit alleges that the New York attorney general, Letitia James, shielded her former chief of staff from harassment claims, Jeffrey C. Mays reports.Trump teased a big announcement this week. It turns out he was selling digital trading cards, in what Michael C. Bender describes as a baffling move.Thank you for reading On Politics, and for being a subscriber to The New York Times. — BlakeRead past editions of the newsletter here.If you’re enjoying what you’re reading, please consider recommending it to others. They can sign up here. Browse all of our subscriber-only newsletters here.Have feedback? Ideas for coverage? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More

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      Lauren Boebert, Far-Right Firebrand, Wins Re-election After Recount

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      Ms. Boebert defeated Adam Frisch in Colorado’s Republican-leaning Third District to win a second term in the House.After a recount in a remarkably close race, Representative Lauren Boebert of Colorado, known for heckling President Biden during his State of the Union speech, arming herself on Capitol Hill and ignoring Covid mask rules, won her bid for a second term. Colorado’s secretary of state, Jena Griswold, announced the results on Monday.Ms. Boebert, 35, staved off a fierce challenge from Adam Frisch, a Democratic businessman and former Aspen, Colo., city councilman, in the state’s Republican-leaning Third District.Mr. Frisch, who faced a deficit of roughly 500 votes out of more than 327,000 cast, gained just two votes in the automatic recount. In the end, Ms. Boebert won with 50.06 percent of the vote, to Mr. Frisch’s 49.89 percent.On Twitter on Sunday, before the recount was made official by the secretary of state, Ms. Boebert said: “Our conservative policies will help all Americans to overcome the challenges we face so each of us has the opportunity to live our very best life. Thank you for entrusting me to help lead the way. I’ll be working every day to prove I can get the job done right.”Mr. Frisch had sought to cast Ms. Boebert as a flamethrower in an increasingly polarized Congress, saying she was focused more on placating the Republican Party’s far-right Trump wing than on reducing inflation and adding jobs.He presented himself in a television ad as not a typical Democrat, saying that he would not vote for Representative Nancy Pelosi for House speaker and that he supported border security. He showed footage of himself hunting with a shotgun.But a disadvantage in name recognition and the makeup of voters in the district proved too much for Mr. Frisch to overcome against Ms. Boebert, who has drawn national attention for her incendiary actions.On Monday evening, he released a statement on his loss. “While we hoped for a different outcome,” Mr. Frisch said, “we defied incredible odds with the closeness of this race.” He added, “I am confident that the coalition of Democrats, Republicans and unaffiliated voters we built throughout this campaign to reject hate and extremism in Southern and Western Colorado will grow into the future.”Along with Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, a fellow Republican also in her first term, Ms. Boebert brought a no-holds-barred brand of politics to the House, feeding off a social media echo chamber of loyalists who backed former President Donald J. Trump. That has put Ms. Boebert at odds with platforms like Twitter, which temporarily suspended her account after she spread the falsehood that the 2020 election was rigged.Her rhetoric and her style of politics also made her a target of Democrats during the Republican primary, many of whom crossed party lines to support her Republican challenger, driven by fears of her extremism.Ms. Boebert won her seat in Congress in 2020, when she unseated a five-term incumbent in the Republican primary before going on to win the general election. Until then, she had run a gun-themed restaurant in Colorado’s ranch country — the Shooters Grill — where she encouraged staff members to carry firearms and defied restrictions by staying open during the pandemic. More

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      Maxwell Frost, First Gen Z Congressman, Gets His Bearings on Capitol Hill

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      In the weeks after his election, the youngest member of the incoming House has learned just how different his lifestyle and perspective is from his older colleagues’.WASHINGTON — He is a fan of early-2000s rock, which was popular when he was in kindergarten. He is still working to get his undergraduate degree. And he is couch surfing to save money as he starts his new job, which is representing Florida’s 10th Congressional District in the United States House of Representatives.Representative-elect Maxwell Frost, a 25-year-old Afro-Cuban progressive activist from Orlando, is about to be the youngest member of Congress. He has swapped the megaphone he once used to lead protests for a seat in one of the nation’s most powerful institutions, where he will be the first member of Generation Z to serve.In a body where the average age was more than twice his (58.4 years old in the most recent Congress), Mr. Frost is starting with a keen sense of mission.“I think we all have this call to action, and you feel like you have to do something,” he said on a recent Wednesday, as he made his way to a hotel room to freshen up before getting his official head shot taken.The something that motivated Mr. Frost, he said, was the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012, when he was in high school, which killed 26 people, most of them young children, and gave rise to a grim and nearly omnipresent ritual of active shooter drills for primary and secondary school students across the country.Mr. Frost, who is of Lebanese, Puerto Rican and Haitian descent and was adopted at birth in 1997, grew up in Orlando with a mother who was a Cuban refugee and schoolteacher and a father who was a Kansas-born musician.At an early age, he came to love music and the arts, eventually hosting a music festival with a friend. But he found another passion in political activism, volunteering in 2012 with President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign and then in 2016 with presidential campaigns for Senator Bernie Sanders, independent of Vermont, and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.After enrolling at Valencia College in Orlando in 2015, he took a break in 2019 to work for the American Civil Liberties Union, and later became a national organizer for the youth-led advocacy group March for Our Lives, which focuses on enacting stricter gun control measures. He drove for Uber to make ends meet.In January 2021, a political operative approached urging him to seek public office, but Mr. Frost said what ultimately persuaded him to do so was connecting with his biological mother several months later.Mr. Frost jogging to the front of the room to participate in the office lottery for new members in the Capitol last week.Kenny Holston for The New York TimesMr. Frost looking at a potential office after the lottery.Kenny Holston for The New York TimesDuring the conversation, Mr. Frost learned that his biological mother, who had seven other children and gave birth to him at the most vulnerable point in her life, had given him up because she did not have the resources to care for him.“Just hearing about the hardships she went through as a woman of color really solidified my beliefs,” Mr. Frost said. “I hung up the phone and said, ‘I’m running for Congress.’”A New U.S. Congress Takes ShapeFollowing the 2022 midterm elections, Democrats maintained control of the Senate while Republicans flipped the House.Divided Government: What does a split Congress mean for the next two years? Most likely a gridlock that could lead to government shutdowns and economic turmoil.Democratic Leadership: House Democrats elected Hakeem Jeffries as their next leader, ushering in a generational shift that includes women and people of color in all the top posts for the first time.G.O.P. Leadership: After a midterms letdown, Representative Kevin McCarthy and Senator Mitch McConnell faced threats to their power from an emboldened right flank.Ready for Battle: An initiative by progressive groups called Courage for America is rolling out a coordinated effort to counter the new Republican House majority and expected investigations of the Biden administration.He declared his candidacy two months later. Mr. Frost said he was moved to run “for people like my biological mother, for my family and for my district,” and wanted to be in a position “to fight to ensure that the condition doesn’t exist for anybody.”Mr. Frost’s win in the midterm elections was a bright spot for Democrats, who lost ground in Florida and narrowly lost their majority in the House. He adds to a diverse field of newly elected representatives from underrepresented communities.Not everyone has been dazzled by Mr. Frost’s youthful enthusiasm. His Republican challenger, Calvin Wimbish, suggested that he was unfit to serve in Congress. “What has he been able to do?” Mr. Wimbish asked in an interview with Spectrum News. “Has he managed people, resources, has he had time? Has he had the exposure to learning from others?”Mr. Frost is taking over the distinction of youngest member of Congress from Representative Madison Cawthorn, Republican of North Carolina, who was elected in 2020 at the age of 25. But the Florida Democrat is not the youngest member of Congress in history. That record, which is unlikely ever to be broken, belongs to William C.C. Claiborne, who may have been 22 when he was elected to the House in 1797. (There is some dispute over his age, but no question that he was under 25.)While the Constitution mandates that House members be at least 25 years old, the House chose to seat Mr. Claiborne anyway.With his youth come some unique challenges for Mr. Frost. He is spending his first few weeks in Washington crashing with friends as he searches for an affordable place to live, as he will not be paid for a few weeks, until the new Congress convenes on Jan. 3.When the moment is right, he said he would rent a studio apartment within walking or electric scooter distance of the Capitol.Mr. Frost viewing an apartment last week. He plans to couch surf during his first few weeks in Washington.Kenny Holston for The New York TimesBut his age has also given him a leg up in some areas. During the digital training portion of new member orientation over the past two weeks, he managed to set up his personal technology in half the time of his older colleagues.He surprised his fellow members-elect last week as he captured moments throughout the day with 0.5 selfies, a new fad among the Gen Z set that entails taking iPhone photos using the back camera. And he’s had the privilege of being “slimed” by Nickelodeon and getting a shout-out from the English pop band The 1975 while at one of the band’s concerts.On Capitol Hill, he has sometimes felt like a kid trying to get to know a new school. He got lost in the Capitol Visitor Center — as the soundtrack of the Broadway musical “Hamilton” blared in his headphones — and had the dizzying experience of meeting new and current members during informational sessions throughout the Capitol complex.Representative Val B. Demings, the Florida Democrat whom he will succeed, has offered him mentorship and described him in an interview as “beyond his years.”“He takes the job seriously, but I don’t think he takes himself too seriously,” Ms. Demings said. “If he can keep that kind of spirit, even on the rough days and nights here, he’ll be OK.”Her main piece of advice for the youngster: Talk to different people and look across the aisle for unlikely allies.Representative Mark Pocan, Democrat of Wisconsin, who visited Mr. Frost before the primary election to help his campaign, said he would fit right in in Congress.“You know, for someone who is 25, he’s kind of an old soul,” Mr. Pocan said, adding that he had been struck by Mr. Frost’s “thoughtfulness of how he looked at issues and his progressive values.”Mr. Frost was an activist and volunteered for several presidential campaigns before running for Congress.Kenny Holston for The New York TimesMr. Frost will be the youngest member of the 118th Congress.Kenny Holston for The New York TimesMr. Sanders was among the first to reach out to congratulate him after the election was called, Mr. Frost said, recounting how he knew his former boss was calling when the Vermont area code popped up on his phone.“He has the potential to be a great leader, speaking to the young people in this country,” Mr. Sanders said of Mr. Frost in an interview.For now, Mr. Frost is focused on some immediate tasks. He has about a year left of his undergraduate education at Valencia College, and he said he intends to resume his coursework at some point.Over the next two years, Mr. Frost aims to lean into his love for grass-roots organizing by building a strong local presence with an accessible district office. At the Capitol, he said his goal was to make incremental steps toward addressing Democratic priorities such as improving health care, enacting gun control measures and building community violence intervention programs.In the next few weeks, he will hire a staff, move into his new corner office in the Longworth Building across from the Capitol and learn how to balance his administrative budget and manage his time as a representative.“Let’s start where we can,” he said, “and not lose sight of our values.” More

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      Congressional Freshmen’s First Fight: Landing a Good Office

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      Representatives-elect cheered and sneered as they drew buttons in a lottery that would decide the order in which they could choose their new offices on Capitol Hill.WASHINGTON — Representative-elect Maxwell Frost, Democrat of Florida, took a whiff of a Vicks nasal stick his mother had given him.Representative-elect Erin Houchin, Republican of Indiana, played “The Final Countdown” by Europe on her phone.Representative-elect Becca Balint, Democrat of Vermont, ran to the front of the room with her arms raised to rally the crowd, only to return to her seat with her head downcast and feet dragging after learning her fate: She would be the ninth-to-last newly elected member of Congress to choose an office.The cheers and sneers filling an ornate room on Capitol Hill on Friday came from 73 soon-to-be freshman House members who were participating in one of the most anticipated events in their orientation to Congress: the lottery for selecting their new offices.The congressional equivalent of a college room draw, the ritual can be a stressful and sometimes raucous affair. It was done in person this week for the first time in four years — the process went remote during the pandemic — and the participants brought back beloved traditions like dancing, chanting and sign-waving for good fortune.A New U.S. Congress Takes ShapeFollowing the 2022 midterm elections, Democrats maintained control of the Senate while Republicans flipped the House.Divided Government: What does a split Congress mean for the next two years? Most likely a gridlock that could lead to government shutdowns and economic turmoil.Democratic Leadership: House Democrats elected Hakeem Jeffries as their next leader, ushering in a generational shift that includes women and people of color in all the top posts for the first time.G.O.P. Leadership: After a midterms letdown, Representative Kevin McCarthy and Senator Mitch McConnell faced threats to their power from an emboldened right flank.Ready for Battle: An initiative by progressive groups called Courage for America is rolling out a coordinated effort to counter the new Republican House majority and expected investigations of the Biden administration.The newly minted lawmakers have spent the last two weeks attending an elaborate orientation in Washington, meeting one another and learning how to navigate the tunnels that snake underneath the Capitol and its surrounding buildings and grounds. They got crash courses in how to set up their offices, but it wasn’t until Friday that they had the chance to actually choose one.“The box we picked from is over 100 years old,” said Representative-elect Wiley Nickel, Democrat of North Carolina, who credited his luck in getting a good draw to refusing to look at the number he had pulled from the mahogany container. “Any time you get to stand in the shoes of people who have come before you is an amazing honor.”The box dates to the early 20th century, when a blindfolded House page would draw marbles for lawmakers. On Friday, newly elected members took turns pulling buttons bearing the numbers that would determine the order in which they could select an available office.Over the span of an hour, they cheered and heckled one another, sneering with envy when a colleague pulled a low number and whooping with schadenfreude when someone pulled a high one.After the draw they left, armed with floor plans, to survey both empty and occupied offices. Staff aides briefed their uninitiated bosses on the pros and cons of each House office building: Longworth, a neo-Classical building lined with Ionic columns, has low ceilings but is more central; Cannon, the Beaux-Arts marble and limestone edifice next door, is the most recently renovated and therefore the most desirable.Representative-elect Max Miller, Republican of Ohio, was among the lucky first few who landed an office there. He waved a single finger in the air for luck as the crowd cheered him on, chanting, “No. 1.” To his surprise, he drew the first pick, eliciting raucous applause.A member-elect drew the number 42 from the mahogany box that has been used for the office lottery since the early 20th century.Kenny Holston for The New York TimesMr. Frost drew a middling 23. He held out hope he could still get a Cannon office, joking to a reporter at one point about starting a dirty-tricks campaign to persuade his colleagues to go elsewhere.“We should talk smack on Cannon,” he said.As Mr. Frost browsed through the halls of Longworth, one staffer warned him that mice run there. He was in the market for a newer office to accommodate his allergies, with a large room for staffers.Representative-elect Robert Garcia, Democrat of California, said he wanted a blue carpet in his office as a symbol of his pride in his party.When members were done shopping, they returned to make their selections, huddling around laptop computers that showed the remaining available offices.Nikki Rapanos, chief of staff for Representative-elect Nick LaLota, Republican of New York, stomped when she heard Representative-elect Derrick Van Orden, Republican of Wisconsin, claim her boss’s top choice: a corner office in Longworth with ample space for staff.Ms. Rapanos had even played “My Way” by Frank Sinatra to channel the spirit of Mr. LaLota, who was not in attendance, and bring her office luck when drawing a number.Representative-elect Seth Magaziner, Democrat of Rhode Island, who drew the fourth-to-last pick, raised both his hands in resignation after the selection. He tried to make the best of his misfortune.“They say the best office is the one you’re in,” Mr. Magaziner said. More

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      Mary Peltola Wins Bid to Serve Full Term in the House for Alaska

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      Ms. Peltola became the first Alaska Native woman elected to Congress earlier this year when she won a special election in the state.Representative Mary Peltola, Democrat of Alaska and the first Alaska Native woman to serve in Congress, on Wednesday won a full term in the House, according to The Associated Press, holding back three conservative challengers.Ms. Peltola first won the seat in an August special election to finish the term of Representative Don Young, a Republican who died in March. Her victory, which flipped the seat for Democrats for the first time in 50 years, was considered an upset against Sarah Palin, the former governor and vice-presidential candidate. With her latest success, Ms. Peltola has secured a full two-year term as the lone representative for the state of Alaska. The loss for Republicans in the state ensures that they will hold 220 seats in the House — a razor-thin margin with just two races yet to be called — when leaders had hoped to pad that majority with as many additional seats as possible.“WE DID IT,” Ms. Peltola exulted on social media, posting a video of a dancing crab. With 136,893 votes after two rounds of tabulation, Ms. Peltola secured 54.9 percent of the vote, The Alaska Division of Elections said. Ms. Peltola defeated two of her Republican rivals from the special election — Ms. Palin and Nick Begich III, who is part of a prominent liberal political family in Alaska — as well as Chris Bye, a libertarian.Ms. Palin received 45.1 percent support, with a total of 112,255 votes. Mr. Begich received a total of 64,392 votes before being eliminated in the second round, while Mr. Bye was eliminated in the first round with 4,986 votes.State law allows absentee ballots to be counted up to 15 days after Election Day if postmarked by then and sent from outside the United States. Election officials decided to wait to tabulate rounds of ranked-choice voting until all ballots were counted.Because none of the candidates appeared to have secured more than 50 percent of the votes by Nov. 23 — 15 days after Election Day — Alaskan election officials tabulated the next round of votes once all ballots were counted.With the establishment of an open primary system ahead of Mr. Young’s death in which the top four candidates could advance regardless of party, four dozen candidates jumped into the race to replace him. Ms. Peltola was able to secure a spot in the general election, along with Ms. Palin and Mr. Begich.While Ms. Palin and Mr. Begich split the conservative vote, Ms. Peltola assembled a coalition of Democrats, centrists and Alaska Natives behind her “pro-family, pro-fish” platform. A Democrat had not held the seat in half a century, since Mr. Young had replaced Mr. Begich’s grandfather, a Democrat.“Our nation faces a number of challenges in the coming years, and our representatives will need wisdom and discernment as they work to put America on a more sound path,” Mr. Begich said in a statement congratulating Ms. Peltola on her victory. While the majority of his supporters voted for Ms. Palin, 7,460 of them ranked Ms. Peltola and helped push her over the majority threshold.Ms. Peltola worked to highlight her bipartisan credentials, often speaking openly about her friendship with Ms. Palin on the campaign trail. With just a couple of seats determining which party controls the House, she could potentially play a critical role should Republicans seek to win over Democratic votes for must-pass legislation and any effort to approve bipartisan measures.While Ms. Peltola took office only in September, shortly before the midterm elections, she quickly took over pushing for legislation Mr. Young had introduced and hired multiple Republican aides on his staff.Ms. Peltola has also allied herself with her state’s two Republican senators, Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan, to pressure the Biden administration to reconsider a key drilling project in Alaska and ensure more federal support was granted to the state after the remnants of a typhoon damaged some communities.She received an emotional and warm reception at the Alaska Federation of Natives convention last month, where attendees waved cutouts of her face and endorsed her candidacy. Mr. Young’s family also endorsed her and filmed an ad for her, bestowing her with one of his signature bolo ties. More