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      What Republicans Should Do If They Gain Power in Congress

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      Nearly everyone expects that Republicans will, if they win November’s midterm elections, use newfound majorities in the House and possibly the Senate for intense oversight of the Biden administration and to press Democrats on hot-button issues like critical race theory, gender identity and the Covid-19 response. But what else could they do?While periods of divided government can yield gridlock, they also offer opportunities for progress. A party in control of the White House and Congress often finds itself at war with its own most uncompromising elements. By contrast, a party limited to power in one or both legislative chambers has an incentive to advance moderate ideas that force difficult choices on the other side of the aisle, and one holding only the presidency knows that compromise is its only path to governing.In 1986, a 72-seat Democratic majority in the House of Representatives approved President Ronald Reagan’s tax reform, with 176 Democrats and 116 Republicans voting in favor. A decade later, half of House Democrats joined their colleagues in the Republican majority to pass welfare reform, which President Bill Clinton signed into law.Our organization, American Compass, has been developing a conservative agenda that supplants blind faith in free markets with policies focused on workers and their families. That way of thinking is making inroads in the Republican Party, creating new avenues for legislative progress. Across three categories of policymaking, the party appears poised to make good use of any control it has in the next Congress.First, genuine bipartisan agreement could emerge where the parties have similar views on an issue to which Republicans will give priority. Industrial policy to compete with China is the most likely candidate. Last month’s bipartisan breakthrough on the CHIPS and Science Act, which directs more than $50 billion to the domestic semiconductor industry, underscored the broad-based appeal of supporting innovation and domestic production in critical technologies. The bill also sparked debate that highlights the work still to be done.Many on the right, including some congressional Republicans, raised harsh criticism — but not just the typical concerns about “big government” or “picking winners and losers.” Rather, their complaint was that the bill did not interfere with the market enough, and left companies too much latitude to continue investing in China. For instance, the Republican Study Committee (R.S.C.), the largest conservative caucus in the House of Representatives, argued that the bill was too weak because a company receiving CHIPS funds to build an American factory might still be “allowed” to make new Chinese investments as well.A Republican majority will return to this issue, and groups like the R.S.C. are already formulating tough restrictions on financial flows to and from China. House Democrats have aggressive proposals of their own. And with such provisions in place, other critical industries like electric vehicle batteries and the rare earth minerals they need are ripe for CHIPS-like support. Democratic leadership may not have prioritized investment restriction, but when Republicans do, it will gain momentum quickly on both sides of the aisle.A second category of action under split control of government will be Republican legislation that has broad popular appeal but threatens a core Democratic principle or constituency. Here, education policy offers an ideal candidate. Parents’ rights and critical race theory in K-12 schools have drawn the most attention, but a broader battle is also brewing over options after high school. Both political parties routinely pay rhetorical homage to apprenticeships and other non-college pathways, but Democrats have spent their political capital on college attendees and aspirants, with proposals for student loan forgiveness and free college that neglect the majority of Americans who do not earn degrees.Republicans have the opportunity to offer a sharp contrast by excoriating the failures of the nation’s college-or-bust education system and proposing to reallocate federal education funds away from tax breaks and loan subsidies for college students toward alternatives like on-the-job training. This should appeal to the large majority of Americans that, according to a survey led by our organization, prefers options like apprenticeships to free college for themselves and their children, and all who are tired of a culture that confers respect mainly on the college bound.For many on the right, an added attraction will be reducing funding universities they see as culturally toxic. And conservatives will be willing to consider targeted student debt relief, perhaps through bankruptcy — though they will also want genuine reform that leaves the universities themselves on the financial hook for the success of students. That will not be popular with the higher-education lobby and its allies on the left, but voters may be another matter.The third place to look for economic policy developments is within the Republican caucus’s internal debates. As Democrats have learned over the past two years, a narrow congressional majority prompts tough intraparty battles that are more easily suppressed when in the opposition. In the wake of the Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe v. Wade, some conservatives are taking up sides on a range of policy proposals to enhance support for expectant and new parents. In a Republican Congress, the family policy debate will be front and center.The recent Family Security Act 2.0 proposal from Senators Mitt Romney, Richard Burr and Steve Daines would convert the current child tax credit into a significantly more generous cash benefit paid monthly to working families with children. While Republicans have traditionally panned direct cash payments to families as “welfare,” the F.S.A. has garnered a notably broad range of right-of-center support — for instance, from scholars at both the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center and the business-friendly American Enterprise Institute, as well as from leading anti-abortion groups.Notwithstanding the anti-tax activist Grover Norquist’s recent remark that such policies reappear from time to time “like herpes or shingles,” the traditional opponents of government spending have mostly held their fire.If Republicans coalesce around this sort of proposal, it could shoot immediately to the top of the national political agenda, where it would have significant bipartisan potential but also pose a vexing quandary for the Democratic coalition. On one hand, the F.S.A. would be a larger and more widely accessible expansion of family support than anything the Democratic presidential nominees Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden ran on — it’s tailor-made for support across the political spectrum. On the other hand, its limitation to working families would fall short of the unconditional universal payments that Democrats included for one year in 2021’s American Rescue Plan and fought to make permanent in Build Back Better but have since expired.A Republican bill along these lines could be generous, popular and anathema to the Democrats’ progressive base. Emergence of a widely backed program for supporting families will depend on how the internal Republican debate resolves and whether Democrats are ready to strike a deal.The common force pushing forward these various policy opportunities is the evolution in conservative thinking toward greater focus on the interests of the working class and a greater role for government in addressing the free market’s shortcomings. Attitudes within the Republican Party’s shifting coalition of voters have moved clearly in this direction, and at least some of its leaders have as well. If American voters elect a new Republican Congress this fall, it could provide the G.O.P. with an early test of whether the party is ready to make good on that promise.Oren Cass is the executive director at American Compass, a think tank for conservative economics. Chris Griswold is the policy director.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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      Candidates Say No Thanks to Trump ‘Endorsements’ in N.Y. House Races

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      The former president issued mock endorsements to two of his fiercest critics. Carolyn Maloney and Dan Goldman were quick to reject them.Former president Donald J. Trump made unwelcome endorsements on Wednesday evening, sarcastically offering his support to candidates who once helped lead impeachment efforts against him.Mr. Trump’s unexpected meddling in two New York City congressional primaries drew immediate denunciations from the candidates, Rep. Carolyn Maloney and Dan Goldman, a lawyer.Writing on Truth Social, a little-used social media platform he founded in October 2021 after Twitter banned him, Mr. Trump lavished praise on Ms. Maloney and Mr. Goldman.With Wednesday’s mock endorsements the former president again demonstrated his penchant for inserting himself into as many political debates as possible, even while being besieged on multiple fronts.Each candidate played a role in the first of Mr. Trump’s two impeachments. Ms. Maloney served as acting chairwoman of the House Oversight Committee, and Mr. Goldman was the inquiry’s chief investigator.Representative Carolyn B. Maloney during a hearing on Capitol Hill last month.Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesBoth are now competing to represent newly drawn districts in the city, and neither wasted time in recoiling from the former president’s sarcastic expression of favor.Mr. Trump described Ms. Maloney, who is running in the new 12th Congressional District in Manhattan, as “a kind and wonderful person who has always said terrific things about me and will support me no matter what I do.”“Carolyn has my Complete and Total Endorsement,” he wrote. “She will never let our Conservative Movement down!”Mr. Trump described Mr. Goldman, who is running in the new 10th Congressional District in Manhattan and Brooklyn, as “highly intelligent.” He also said the former impeachment investigator would assist congressional Republicans in their efforts to defeat “the Radical Left Democrats, who he knows are destroying the country.”Mr. Goldman quickly dismissed the endorsement as an act of online trolling. He said the former president was “pretending to endorse” him.“True to form, Trump is trying to meddle in an election,” Mr. Goldman wrote on Twitter. “This is a pathetic attempt at fooling Democrats who are far smarter than Trump is, and it’s clear that only one candidate in NY-10 is living rent-free in Trump’s head.”Dan Goldman, a lawyer, participating in New York’s 10th Congressional District Democratic primary debate last week.Pool photo by Mary AltafferFor her part, Ms. Maloney described the endorsement as “laughable.”“Trump doesn’t respect women,” she wrote on Twitter. “He instigated the attacks on January 6th and claimed that the 2020 election was a big lie.”“He should be more concerned about the investigation I’m leading as Chair of the Oversight Committee into the storage of his classified documents at Mar-a-Lago,” she added. “Thanks, but no thanks. I’ll pass.”Mr. Trump has a long history of using social media to promote his political objectives, mock his adversaries, hock his products and seek attention from voters and the news media.But his ability to do so has been severely constrained since January 2021, when he was removed from a broad range of social media sites, including Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.The companies said they banned him for his posts about the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, during which five people were killed and hundreds more were injured, and for his false claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him.The endorsements Mr. Trump made on Wednesday appeared on Truth Social, an app that has struggled to attract users. In April, MarketWatch reported that the site has roughly 513,000 daily users, making it a relative ghost town compared with the more than 200 million users who log onto Twitter each day.Nonetheless, some Democrats seized on Mr. Trump’s “endorsements.”In a statement on Wednesday, Suraj Patel, a lawyer who is running against Ms. Maloney and Representative Jerry Nadler in the 12th District, said Mr. Trump’s posts on Truth Social were proof that he preferred an older generation of Democratic leadership.Mr. Patel is 38, and both of his opponents are in their 70s.“Donald Trump is scared of a younger, more dynamic Democratic Party,” said Mr. Patel. “He knows how much more effective a new generation of diverse, energetic Democrats will be in stopping his movement.”Representative Mondaire Jones, an incumbent who has struggled to gain traction in the 10th District since moving there from the suburban district he has represented since 2021, also embraced Mr. Trump’s sarcastic endorsements. He repeatedly cited the former president’s posts at a debate on Wednesday night.“Mr. Goldman is fulfilling Donald Trump’s vision of him being a moderate person who is attempting to defeat progressives in this race,” said Mr. Jones. Later, he added that Mr. Goldman “was the first candidate on this stage to be endorsed by Donald J. Trump.”Dana Rubinstein More

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      Republicans Are America’s Problem

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      Tuesday’s primary in Wyoming delivered Liz Cheney a resounding defeat. She is one of the few Republicans in Congress willing to resist Donald Trump’s election lies, and Republican voters punished her for it.First, let me say, I have no intention of contributing to the hagiography of Liz Cheney. She is a rock-ribbed Republican who supported Trump’s legislative positions 93 percent of the time. It is on the insurrection and election lies where she diverged.In a way, she is the Elvis of politics: She took something — in this case a position — that others had held all along and made it cross over. She mainstreamed a political principle that many liberals had held all along.Excuse me if I temper my enthusiasm for a person who presents herself as a great champion of democracy but votes against the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.Situational morality is better than none, I suppose, but I see it for what it is, and I am minimally moved.However, her loss does crystallize something for us that many had already known: that the bar to clear in the modern Republican Party isn’t being sufficiently conservative but rather being sufficiently obedient to Donald Trump and his quest to deny and destroy democracy.We must stop thinking it hyperbolic to say that the Republican Party itself is now a threat to our democracy. I understand the queasiness about labeling many of our fellow Americans in that way. I understand that it sounds extreme and overreaching.But how else are we to describe what we are seeing?Of the 10 Republicans in the House who voted to impeach Donald Trump for his role in fomenting the insurrection, four didn’t seek re-election and four lost their primaries. Only two have advanced to the general election, and those two were running in states that allow voters to vote in any primary, regardless of their party affiliation.Polls have consistently shown that only a small fraction of Republicans believe Joe Biden was legitimately elected. He was, of course. (That fact apparently can’t be repeated often enough.)And in fact, according to a Washington Post analysis published this week, in battleground states, nearly two-thirds of the Republican nominees for the state and federal offices with sway over elections believe the last election was stolen.This is only getting worse. Last month, a CNN poll found that Republicans are now less likely to believe that democracy is under attack than they were earlier in the year, before the Jan. 6 committee began unveiling its explosive revelations. Thirty-three percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents said the party should be very accepting of candidates who say the election was stolen; 39 percent more said the party should be somewhat accepting of those candidates.Furthermore, a Washington Post-University of Maryland poll published in January found that the percentage of Republicans who say that violence against the government can sometimes be justified had climbed to 40 percent, compared with just 23 percent of Democrats. It should also be noted that 40 percent of white people said that violence could be justified compared with just 18 percent of Black people.We have to stop saying that all these people are duped and led astray, that they are somehow under the spell of Trump and programmed by Fox News.Propaganda and disinformation are real and insidious, but I believe that to a large degree, Republicans’ radicalization is willful.Republicans have searched for multiple election cycles for the right vehicle and packaging for their white nationalism, religious nationalism, nativism, craven capitalism and sexism.There was a time when they believed that it would need to be packaged in politeness — compassionate conservatism — and the party would eventually recommend a more moderate approach intended to branch out and broaden its appeal — in its autopsy after Mitt Romney’s 2012 loss.But Trump offered them an alternative, and they took it: Instead of running away from their bigotries, intolerances and oppression, they would run headlong into them. They would unapologetically embrace them.This, to many Republicans, felt good. They no longer needed to hide. They could live their truths, no matter how reprehensible. They could come out of the closet, wrapped in their cruelty.But the only way to make this strategy work and viable, since neither party dominates American life, was to back a strategy of minority rule and to disavow democracy.A Pew Research Center poll found that between 2018 and 2021, Republicans and Republican-leaning independents gradually came to support more voting restrictions.In a December NPR/Ipsos poll, a majority of Democrats, independents and Republicans all thought that American democracy, and America itself, was in crisis, but no group believed it more than Republicans.But this is a scenario in which different people look at the same issue from different directions and interpret it differently.Republicans are the threat to our democracy because their own preferred form of democracy — one that excludes and suppresses, giving Republicans a fighting chance of maintaining control — is in danger.For modern Republicans, democracy only works — and is only worth it — when and if they win.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 and Twitter (@NYTopinion), and Instagram. More

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      What Liz Cheney’s Lopsided Loss Says About the State of the G.O.P.

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      Representative Liz Cheney’s martyr-like quest to stop Donald J. Trump has ensured her place in Republican Party history. But her lopsided defeat in Wyoming on Tuesday also exposed the remarkable degree to which the former president still controls the party’s present — and its near future.Ten House Republicans voted to impeach Mr. Trump in early 2021 for his role inciting the mob that stormed the Capitol. Only two have survived the 2022 Republican primaries, a breathtaking run of losses and forced retirements in a chamber where incumbents typically prevail with ease.No single defeat was as freighted with significance as Ms. Cheney’s, or as revealing of the party’s realignment.The sheer scope of her loss — the daughter of a former vice president was defeated in a landslide — may have only strengthened Mr. Trump’s hand as he asserts his grip over the Republican Party, by revealing the futility among Republican voters of even the most vigorous prosecution of the case against him.Casting her mission of combating election denialism as a moral imperative and her work as just beginning, Ms. Cheney pledged to “do whatever it takes” to prevent a second Trump presidency. “Freedom must not, cannot and will not die here,” she declared in her concession speech on Tuesday night in Jackson.Not long ago, Ms. Cheney had been seen as a rising Republican star, even a potential House speaker-in-waiting. Now, after becoming her party’s most dogged Trump detractor — turning the Jan. 6 committee hearings into a bullhorn with which to warn of the dangers Mr. Trump and his enablers posed to the party, the country and even democracy itself — she is soon to be out of her job.Ms. Cheney had hoped the Jan. 6 riot would be a turning point for Republicans. It did prove to be a dividing line. But it was those who crossed Mr. Trump who have suffered the electoral consequences.“She may have been fighting for principles,” said Taylor Budowich, a spokesman and adviser to Mr. Trump. “But they are not the principles of the Republican Party.”Ms. Cheney made clear she was more than willing to lose her House seat, and she hinted broadly at a 2024 presidential campaign of her own, invoking Abraham Lincoln’s failed bids for lesser offices before he sought and won the presidency. On Wednesday, she formed a new political action committee, the Great Task, whose name nods to Lincoln and which will be filled with leftover campaign cash, and said she was “thinking” of running for president.But the outcome in Wyoming showed that while anti-Trump Republicans can count on ample money and media attention, the actual Republican constituency for them is far more limited. Indeed, one of Ms. Cheney’s last gasps was an effort to get Democrats to switch parties to vote in the G.O.P. primary.While anti-Trump Republicans may garner media attention, Mr. Trump is tightening his grip on the party.Emil Lippe for The New York TimesHer loss was also the latest sign that the central organizing principles of today’s Republican Party are tethered less to specific policies — she was a reliable vote for much of the Trump agenda — than to whatever Mr. Trump wants at any given time.Most recently, that has meant lashing out at federal law enforcement authorities over the search of Mr. Trump’s Florida home for missing materials with classified markings. More broadly, it has meant embracing his obsession with denying his 2020 defeat and amplifying his false claims of election fraud, regardless of the bloody fallout nearly 20 months ago or its destabilizing effect on the nation.More Coverage of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsLiz Cheney’s Lopsided Loss: The Republican congresswoman’s defeat in Wyoming exposed the degree to which former President Donald J. Trump still controls the party’s present — and its near future.2024 Hint: Hours after her loss, Ms. Cheney acknowledged that she was “thinking” about a White House bid, a prospect that would test the national viability of a conservative, anti-Trump platform.The ‘Impeachment 10’: With Ms. Cheney’s defeat, only two of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Mr. Trump remain.Alaska Races: Senator Lisa Murkowski and Sarah Palin appeared to be on divergent paths following contests that offered a glimpse at the state’s independent streak.“You could write the history of the modern Republican Party over the last two years, and what does Jan. 6 look like? A hiccup,” said William Kristol, the neoconservative writer who co-founded Republican Voters Against Trump, a group spending millions of dollars to oppose Trump-backed election deniers. “The price of admission to today’s Republican Party is turning a blind eye to Jan. 6.”That was the experience of Representative Peter Meijer of Michigan, who voted for Mr. Trump’s impeachment weeks after taking office and lost his re-election primary this month. He said his constituents asked him about his impeachment vote 10 times as much as about anything else.“Policy is not policy toward improving government,” Mr. Meijer explained. “It’s policy as a signifier of whether you’re part of the in group or the out group.”Refusing to repeat the lie that the 2020 election was stolen, he said, put Mr. Meijer squarely in the “out group.”In Michigan, Representative Peter Meijer, who voted for impeachment, lost his primary to a Trump-backed rival. Brittany Greeson for The New York Times“I can’t tell you the number of times somebody said, ‘You don’t have to believe the election is stolen, the important thing isn’t believing it, it’s saying it,’” Mr. Meijer recalled in an interview. “That is what a Republican is supposed to do right now.”If a series of primary setbacks this spring had showed that Mr. Trump was not invincible, then races in August have showcased his enduring influence.Representative Jaime Herrera Beutler of Washington State, another Republican vote for impeachment, was ousted by a Trump supporter. A Trump-backed candidate, Tim Michels, who has entertained trying to overturn the 2020 election, won the Republican nomination for governor of Wisconsin. And Mr. Trump’s preferred candidates swept the nominations in Arizona for Senate, governor, attorney general and secretary of state. All embraced his election denialism. More

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      Liz Cheney’s Concession Speech Invokes Lincoln and Grant

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      It was just two years ago that Representative Liz Cheney won a primary with 73 percent of the vote — a point she reminded her supporters of in her concession speech on Tuesday night in Wyoming.“I could easily have done the same again,” she said. “The path was clear. But it would have required that I go along with President Trump’s lie about the 2020 election. It would have required that I enable his ongoing efforts to unravel our democratic system and attack the foundations of our republic.”“That was a path I could not and would not take.”The path Ms. Cheney took instead led her to be ousted as chair of the House Republican conference, the third-highest role in her party’s House leadership, and installed as the vice chair of the congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.“Let us resolve that we will stand together — Republicans, Democrats and independents — against those who would destroy our republic,” Representative Liz Cheney said on Tuesday night.Kim Raff for The New York TimesAnd it led her to a more than 30 percentage point loss to a Trump-endorsed Republican, Harriet Hageman, as votes were still being counted late Tuesday night.From a stage overlooking a field in Teton County, Wyo., with mountains as her backdrop, she said she had called Ms. Hageman to concede her loss in a free and fair election. She suggested that her job now, and that of patriotic Americans, was to stand up for the Constitution.Much like the remarks she delivered at the Jan. 6 committee’s hearings, it was a speech that seemed directed not just at Republican voters, but at a wider national audience.That was evident in her paraphrase of a quote popularized by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. — “It has been said that the long arc of history bends toward justice and freedom. That’s true, but only if we make it bend” — and even more so a few minutes later, when she turned her attention to the Civil War.In the spring of 1864, after the Union suffered more than 17,000 casualties in the Battle of the Wilderness, Gen. Ulysses S. Grant had a choice, Ms. Cheney said: to retreat or to keep fighting.“As the fires of the battles still smoldered, Grant rode to the head of the column,” she said. “He rode to the intersection of Brock Road and Orange Plank Road. And there, as the men of his army watched and waited, instead of turning north, back toward Washington and safety, Grant turned his horse south toward Richmond and the heart of Lee’s army. Refusing to retreat, he pressed on to victory.” More

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      The M.T.A.’s Money Woes

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      The New York area transportation authority is contending with reduced ridership, debt and inefficiency.Good morning. It’s Wednesday. We’ll look at what the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s looming budget deficit might mean for riders — and drivers. And, with an eye to next week’s primary, we’ll recap a key congressional race in Manhattan.Timothy Mulcare for The New York TimesThe Metropolitan Transportation Authority is facing a $2.5 billion budget deficit for 2025, 12 percent of its operating budget. That has New Yorkers who remember past financial emergencies worried about service cuts. I asked Ana Ley, a Metro reporter who covers transit in New York, to explain.The chairman of the M.T.A. told you that transit in New York City “is like air and water — we cannot exist without it.” But the M.T.A. cannot exist without revenue. Is that one reason the authority is talking about charging drivers as much as $23 to drive into Midtown Manhattan under a congestion pricing program?Congestion pricing is one way the M.T.A. can generate new sources of revenue, but that money is only supposed to be used for infrastructure upgrades, like building new platform barriers or elevators. The way congestion pricing works right now, it can’t be used for operating expenses, which are the dollars the M.T.A. uses for day-to-day costs to run the subways, buses and trains. A lot is used to pay employees. That’s the type of money it desperately needs right now.Some lawmakers have urged the M.T.A. to dip into money it has reserved for system improvements to pay for those everyday operating expenses. But government watchdogs warn that it could push the M.T.A.’s huge debt load even higher because the authority relies heavily on bonds for capital improvement projects.Transit advocates have said the state should move money from the federal government’s $1 trillion infrastructure bill from highway and road upgrades to pay for transit.And many experts agree that the M.T.A. — which has a reputation for huge overspending and labor redundancies — could address part of its problem by simply being more efficient.How bad is the M.T.A.’s financial picture?It has been bad for a long time. The pandemic just made it get a lot worse very quickly.The state let the M.T.A. issue bonds in the early 1980s to save it from economic decline at the time, and the authority’s debt load ballooned. Expenses have since outpaced income, and the authority has borrowed heavily to keep up.More troublingly, the M.T.A. relies more on fares than most other transit systems in the nation, and it lost a huge number of riders through the pandemic. The federal government offered a one-time bailout of more than $14 billion to keep it afloat, but that money will run out in two years. That’s why transit leaders are scrambling for a fix.How far from prepandemic ridership is the M.T.A. right now? What about earlier forecasts that said the M.T.A. by next year would carry 86 percent of the passengers it had before Covid hit?Ridership has struggled to rebound and hovers at about 60 percent of prepandemic levels. Forecasters predict they will reach only 80 percent of prepandemic levels by 2026, which is way down from earlier expectations of 86 percent by next year. As a result of that drop, the latest projections from the authority’s consultant, McKinsey & Company, estimate that the M.T.A. will bring in $7.9 billion in revenue in 2026, down considerably from a previous estimate of $8.4 billion. Before the pandemic, it had expected to make $9.6 billion that year.Those early pandemic estimates now seem too rosy because at the time that McKinsey made them, it didn’t expect the coronavirus to evolve so much and stifle the city’s recovery. We also didn’t know remote work would become so popular, or that riders would avoid transit after several high-profile violent incidents amplified the perception that the system has become more dangerous.So what can the M.T.A. do?Without help from the state, not much that would make riders or transit workers happy.It could cut service, raise fares or lay off employees. But its potential budget gap is huge, and those things alone would probably not fix it.Cuts would be especially devastating, because they could plunge the system into a so-called transit death spiral, where reduced service and delayed upgrades make public transit a less convenient option, which would reduce ridership and further shrink revenue until the network collapsed. The M.T.A. got a glimpse of that in 2010, when transit leaders cut their way out of a fiscal crisis triggered by the Great Recession, inconveniencing 15 percent of its transit riders and driving some away altogether.Today, any new service reductions risk deepening work force inequities that were laid bare by the pandemic. White-collar workers have had the option to stay home, but many lower-wage workers, who tend to be people of color with longer commutes, still need to travel to their jobs.WeatherExpect of chance of showers in the morning. The rest of the day is mostly sunny, with temperatures near 80. At night, temps will drop to around the high 60s.ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKINGIn effect until Sept. 5 (Labor Day).The latest Metro newsJefferson Siegel for The New York TimesCrimeProsecutor, advocate and now defendant: Adam Foss (above), a former Boston prosecutor who became a criminal justice reform advocate, pleaded not guilty to charges of rape and sexual abuse in Manhattan.Mafia clans charged: Nine members and associates of the Genovese and Bonanno families were charged with racketeering in a case that centered on money laundering and secret gambling parlors.HousingReduce emissions or face fines: Building owners are on high alert about upgrades needed to comply with city regulations to fight climate change.Apartment hunting tips: An investigative reporter gives backgrounding tips for your next apartment search, ProPublica reports.More local newsSocial services chief scrutinized: The city’s social services commissioner is being investigated after homeless families had to spend the night at a Bronx intake office.Digging deep at an amusement park: At Diggerland U.S.A., children can experience the thrill of operating real construction machinery. (Adults like it, too.)In Manhattan, congressional musical chairsFrom left: Drew Angerer/Getty Images; Dave Sanders for The New York TimesWith the Democratic congressional primary six days away, it’s time for a recap of a key race.It’s unusual for two incumbents to face off in a primary for the same seat. But that is what is happening in Manhattan, where a redistricting plan joined the East and West Sides above 14th Street in one district for the first time since before World War II.Representative Jerrold Nadler, from the West Side, and Representative Carolyn Maloney, from the East Side, are the players in this game of congressional musical chairs. The music will stop when the votes are counted next week.Both have served in Congress since the 1990s. Both have accumulated enough seniority to be committee chairs, he of Judiciary, she of Oversight. Also in the race is Suraj Patel, a 38-year-old lawyer who says it is time for a generational change.Senator Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, is supporting Nadler. Many politicians and political operatives had expected him to sit out the primary, as nearly every other House Democrat from New York has done. So has Senator Kirsten Gillibrand. As might be expected, there’s some history between all of them: Maloney endorsed Gillibrand’s campaign for president in 2020. The first time Schumer ran for the Senate, in 1998, Nadler endorsed him.For Maloney and her allies, the race has increasingly focused on women. With the Supreme Court and Republican-led states rolling back reproductive rights, her supporters see this as a moment to rally behind a woman in Congress. Maloney has spent a sizable portion of the $900,000 she has lent the campaign reinforcing the message “you cannot send a man to do a woman’s job.”My colleague Nicholas Fandos writes that few women have ever had more influence in Washington or used it with such intense focus — pressing for the Equal Rights Amendment, paid family leave, protections against gender-based violence and a national women’s history museum. Maloney has support from the feminist Gloria Steinem, who called her “the most needed, the most trusted and the experienced.”The primary fight has been increasingly vicious. Nadler has cast himself as the progressive and has highlighted his status as the city’s last Jewish congressman. Maloney told Nicholas Fandos flatly that Nadler did not work as hard as she did, particularly on local issues.She also said that residents of one of the nation’s wealthiest and most liberal districts needed her, not Nadler or Patel. But Nadler’s team put together a Nadler women’s group led by two former Manhattan borough presidents, Gale Brewer and Ruth Messinger. Senator Elizabeth Warren appears in a Nadler television commercial, and he also has the backing of the actor Cynthia Nixon, who ran for governor of New York four years ago.METROPOLITAN diary(Central Park, 9 a.m.)Dear Diary:I had not breathedin yearsbut oneeveningpickeda windthe stringsof my sinewedthroatan old man-dolinand a melodymoved throughme— Rolli AndersonIllustrated 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 More

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      in Elections

      Liz Cheney Loses Wyoming Primary to Trump-Backed Harriet Hageman

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      JACKSON, Wyo. — Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming was decisively defeated by Harriet Hageman in her Republican primary on Tuesday, handing Donald J. Trump his most prized trophy yet in his long campaign to purge the Republican Party of his critics.Ms. Hageman, a lawyer in Cheyenne, was lifted by Mr. Trump’s endorsement in her race against Ms. Cheney, the daughter of a former vice president and former member of the House Republican leadership. Ms. Cheney’s loss was as anticipated as it was consequential. The leading Republican voice against Mr. Trump, and vice chairwoman of the committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, next year will no longer have her perch in Congress from which to battle a figure she believes poses a grave threat to American democracy.Ms. Cheney conceded defeat just as The Associated Press called the race, suggesting she was setting a model for accepting the will of voters. “Harriet Hageman has received the most votes in this primary — she won,” Ms. Cheney told supporters gathered outdoors on a ranch here. She went on to implore Americans to stand up to Mr. Trump and others who deny his loss in the 2020 presidential election. “No citizen of this republic is a bystander,” she said, adding: “We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.”But the repudiation of Ms. Cheney made clear Republican primary voters’ frequent willingness to reject officeholders who openly and aggressively confront Mr. Trump, even as the former president remains embroiled in multiple investigations. Just two of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Mr. Trump last year will advance to the general election this fall.None of those 10, however, had the stature of Ms. Cheney, the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney.Her loss, two months after George P. Bush’s landslide defeat in a bid for attorney general in Texas, represents the full and perhaps final transition of the G.O.P. from the traditional conservatism of the Bush-Cheney era to the grievance-oriented populism of Mr. Trump.Other contests held Tuesday would reveal the extent of that transformation. In Alaska, Senator Lisa Murkowski, another daughter of local political royalty and one of seven Republicans to vote to convict Mr. Trump of incitement of insurrection, is in a re-election fight against a field led by Kelly Tshibaka, a Republican and former state official whom Mr. Trump endorsed.Alaskans were also deciding whether to embrace a comeback for former Gov. Sarah Palin, the onetime vice-presidential nominee whose slashing attacks on the media presaged Mr. Trump’s rise. Ms. Palin is running both in a special election runoff for a House seat and in a primary for a full term of her own. The state’s system of ranked-choice voting allows the top four finishers in the primaries to move on to the general-election ballot in November. Results in those races were not expected Tuesday night.More Coverage of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsLiz Cheney: If the G.O.P. congresswoman loses her primary, as is widely expected, it will end the run of the Cheney dynasty in Wyoming. But she says her crusade to stop Donald J. Trump will continue.The Impeachment 10: Ms. Cheney is part of a group of 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Mr. Trump over the Jan. 6 riot. Most of them have lost their primary races or are retiring.Sarah Palin: As the former Alaska governor and 2008 vice-presidential Republican nominee seeks the state’s lone House seat, voters appeared torn on whether she remained committed to them or had abandoned them for national fame.Abortion Ads: Since Roe v. Wade was overturned, Democrats have spent nearly eight times as much on abortion-related ads as Republicans have, with Democratic strategists believing the issue has radically reshaped the 2022 landscape in their party’s favor.Ms. Cheney has vowed to continue her fight against the former president, casting the primary as only one front in a longer political war in which she’s determined to prevail.Focused almost entirely on the Jan. 6 panel, and reluctant to campaign publicly while facing death threats and venomous criticism, Ms. Cheney has long been resigned to her political demise in the state that elevated her father 44 years ago to the seat she now holds. She has set her sights beyond Wyoming, arguing that blocking Mr. Trump’s return to the White House is her most important task, a mission that has fueled speculation that she’s considering a presidential bid.Ms. Cheney delivered her concession speech in measured tones, speaking as if she was on the Jan. 6 committee rostrum in the Capitol rather than standing in front of bales of hay at a ranch in the shadow of the Teton Mountains. She hinted at a potential presidential bid, or at least a grass-roots and bipartisan effort, to block Mr. Trump’s comeback, as she extended a hand to Democrats and independents. More