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      Harriet Hageman Goes From Anti-Trump Plotter to His Champion vs. Liz Cheney

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      Harriet Hageman, a Wyoming Republican, is the former president’s choice to take on his leading G.O.P. critic. But five years ago, she tried to overturn his victory in the party’s primary race.Former President Donald J. Trump is leading an all-out war against Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming because of her perceived lack of loyalty: After voting to impeach him, she became the voice of Republican opposition to his attempt to overturn the 2020 election.But his choice to replace her, Harriet Hageman, was not always a loyal soldier herself. She was part of the final Republican resistance to his ascent in 2016, backing doomed procedural measures at the party’s national convention aimed at stripping him of the presidential nomination he had clinched two months earlier.Ms. Hageman worked with fellow supporters of Senator Ted Cruz of Texas in a failed effort to force a vote on the convention floor between Mr. Trump and Mr. Cruz, regardless of the results of the primaries and caucuses held across America. Calling Mr. Trump “the weakest candidate,” Ms. Hageman attributed his rise to Democrats who she claimed had voted in Republican primaries.She condemned Mr. Trump as a bigoted candidate who would repel voters Republicans needed to win a national election, warning that the G.O.P. would be saddled with “somebody who is racist and xenophobic.”Ms. Hageman’s yearslong journey from Never-Trumpism to declaring him the best president of her lifetime is one of the most striking illustrations yet of the political elasticity demonstrated both by ambitious Republicans in the Trump era and by the former president himself, who has relentlessly asserted his dominance over leaders of his party.Ms. Hageman is hardly the only Republican to vigorously oppose Mr. Trump and later back him when it proved politically advantageous. Mr. Cruz and Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, along with Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II, who led the 2016 rebellion at the convention, all became enthusiastic Trump supporters.None of them, however, have quite achieved Ms. Hageman’s remarkable political transformation, which has not been previously reported. Five years ago, she was a passionate opponent of Mr. Trump who tried to stop him outside the normal electoral process; now, she is his champion in the Republican Party’s marquee showdown over fealty to the former president.Ms. Cheney’s vocal opposition to Mr. Trump has turned what might otherwise be a sleepy contest for a safely Republican Wyoming congressional seat into a high-profile test case of the former president’s dominance over the party. His obsession with removing Ms. Cheney from office — he has derided her in at least 16 statements since March, including one on Thursday that contained a doctored photo combining her hair, body and eyeglasses with former President George W. Bush’s face — has overshadowed nearly all of his other political efforts, aside from vying to overturn the results of the 2020 election.“It’s going to be the most important House race in the country in 2022,” Ms. Cheney said during a “60 Minutes” interview broadcast on Sunday. “It will be one where people do have the opportunity to say, ‘We want to stand for the Constitution.’”For Ms. Hageman, joining forces with Mr. Trump to attack an old ally — the two Wyoming women were once so close that Ms. Hageman served as an adviser to Ms. Cheney’s short-lived 2014 Senate campaign — presents an opportunity to accomplish something she has been unable to do without him: win a statewide race in Wyoming.Ms. Cheney has vocally opposed Mr. Trump, who has pushed his party to remove her from office.Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesMs. Hageman has never spoken publicly about her effort to block Mr. Trump from the 2016 nomination. In a statement to The New York Times, she drew a tenuous connection between her actions and Ms. Cheney.“I heard and believed the lies the Democrats and Liz Cheney’s friends in the media were telling at the time, but that is ancient history as I quickly realized that their allegations against President Trump were untrue,” Ms. Hageman said. “He was the greatest president of my lifetime, and I am proud to have been able to renominate him in 2020. And I’m proud to strongly support him today.”Ms. Cheney, who declined to comment or be interviewed for this article, supported Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign. She endorsed him that May and, in October, issued a statement reiterating her support after the release of the “Access Hollywood” recording in which Mr. Trump bragged about groping women.The daughter of a longtime Wyoming state legislator, Ms. Hageman, 58, built her career as a water and natural resources lawyer fighting environmentalists and government regulations. She became known in Wyoming for her successful challenge of a Clinton-era prohibition on road construction on millions of acres of U.S. Forest Service land. In 2009, a headline in an environmentalist magazine called her “The Wicked Witch of the West.”In 2016, Ms. Hageman went to the Republican convention in Cleveland as a Cruz delegate after the Texas senator won Wyoming with 66 percent of the vote and 23 of 25 delegates at the state’s county conventions that March.She had been appointed by the Wyoming delegation to the national convention’s powerful Rules Committee. The big question facing the committee’s members that year was how much say delegates should have in choosing the party’s nominee.Leading up to the convention, Ms. Hageman joined a small group of Republicans who organized a last-ditch effort to “unbind” delegates. They hoped to insert a conscience provision freeing delegates to vote for whomever they wanted regardless of the results of state primaries and caucuses, a move concocted by supporters of Mr. Cruz to instigate a convention floor fight.That summer, Ms. Hageman was a regular participant in conference calls plotting the last-gasp opposition to Mr. Trump, long after he had won enough delegates to clinch the nomination. She and other delegates, many of them social conservatives from the West loyal to Mr. Cruz, argued that Mr. Trump was a cancer on the party, chosen by liberal voters in Democratic states to undermine Republicans nationwide.The Republican National Committee, working with the Trump campaign, did all it could to squash the rebellion.Ms. Hageman, center, holding a book; Senator Mike Lee, right; and Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II, behind Mr. Lee at back right, were among the Republicans who supported unbinding delegates at the party’s 2016 convention.Gina Blanchard-Reed“To vote to free the delegates at that time was considered a capital offense by the Trump campaign,” said Steve Duprey, then a Republican National Committee member from New Hampshire who was on the Rules Committee. “It was clearly an attempt to deny him the nomination, which he had won fair and square.”Reince Priebus, then the chairman of the R.N.C., held long meetings with Mr. Cuccinelli and Rules Committee members who were seeking to unbind delegates. Ms. Hageman, along with Senator Mike Lee of Utah, who was at the time the highest-profile Rules Committee member involved in the stop-Trump movement, was among the attendees. It soon became clear the Trump team had peeled away enough support from Mr. Cuccinelli that the vote would not be close. Mr. Trump’s allies forced a vote that would affirmatively declare delegates to be bound by the results of their state’s nominating contest.When it was time to vote, 87 stood in favor of binding delegates.Only 12, including Ms. Hageman and Mr. Lee, voted in opposition, far short of the 28 needed to put the question of unbinding delegates to a vote of the full convention, which would have been a potentially embarrassing spectacle for Mr. Trump. Though the fight was over, Ms. Hageman participated in meetings over the next few days in which Cruz delegates discussed whether they had any remaining options to stop Mr. Trump.Mr. Trump, who endorsed Ms. Hageman this month, is aware of her support for Mr. Cruz in 2016 and, during his interview with her this summer before he made his decision, briefly touched on her role in the effort to stop Mr. Trump from claiming the nomination, according to a person familiar with their talks who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the endorsement process. Mr. Trump, who has taken particular pleasure in collecting the support of converted never-Trumpers, worked to clear the Wyoming field for Ms. Hageman, sending a fleet of aides to work for her and asking other candidates to drop out of the race after he made the endorsement.The former president has for months focused on ousting Ms. Cheney. His aides and his son Donald Trump Jr. tried unsuccessfully in March to change Wyoming’s election law in a way that would have hurt the congresswoman’s re-election prospects. Ms. Hageman, Mr. Trump said in his endorsement, “is all in for America First.”It took years for Ms. Hageman to become an unabashed Trump supporter.When she ran for Wyoming governor in 2018, Mr. Trump endorsed Foster Friess, a billionaire conservative donor who had backed Mr. Trump’s 2016 effort. Mr. Friess, who died in May, finished second to Mark Gordon, who was the state treasurer and is now Wyoming’s governor. Ms. Hageman placed third.Ms. Hageman was known for her penchant to attack fellow Republican candidates in debates. She did not invoke Mr. Trump or his campaign themes in her television advertising.“She was talking about state issues then, not anything federal,” said Diemer True, a former Wyoming State Senate president who also served as chairman of the Wyoming Republican Party.In 2020, Ms. Hageman ran for office again, seeking one of Wyoming’s two posts as members of the Republican National Committee. This time, she aligned herself with Mr. Trump against Barbara Cubin, a former congresswoman backed by party moderates. Ms. Hageman prevailed at a virtual state party convention, 152 votes to 105.Kitty Bennett More

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      Sherwood Boehlert, a G.O.P Moderate in the House, Dies at 84

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      A champion of environmentalism who chided climate-change skeptics, he was among the last of the relatively progressive Rockefeller Republicans.Sherwood L. Boehlert, a 12-term moderate Republican congressman from upstate New York who bucked his party’s right-wing shift by standing firm as an environmentalist, died on Tuesday in a hospice care center in New Hartford, N.Y. He was 84.The cause was complications of dementia, his wife, Marianne Boehlert, said.As a member of the House from 1983 to 2007 and chairman of the Science Committee from 2001 to 2006, Mr. Boehlert (pronounced BOE-lert) successfully championed legislation that in one case imposed higher fuel economy standards for vehicles and in another, following the collapse of the World Trade Center in 2001, empowered the federal government to investigate structural failures the way it examines aircraft accidents.In 1990, he galvanized moderate Republicans in a bipartisan coalition that amended the Clean Air Act to reduce the pollution produced by coal-fueled power plants in the Midwest; the plants’ smoke contributed to acid rain that was fatal to fish in Adirondack lakes.He later chided global warming skeptics, inviting his fellow Republicans to “open their minds.”“Why do so many Republican senators and representatives think they are right and the world’s top scientific academies and scientists are wrong?” he wrote in an opinion essay for The Washington Post in 2010. “I would like to be able to chalk it up to lack of information or misinformation.”For someone whose closest exposure to formal training in science was a high school physics course (he received a C), Mr. Boehlert built a solid reputation in that discipline among congressional colleagues of both parties, as well as among scientists and environmentalists.National Journal called him the “Green Hornet” for his willingness to challenge fellow Republicans on the environment. Congressional Quarterly listed him among the 50 most effective members of Congress.After Republicans seized control of the House in 1994, he helped resist efforts to weaken the Clean Air Act and the Endangered Species Act; supported science education and a greater investment in research, including through the Department of Homeland Security; pushed to impose standards for voting machines in the wake of the disputed 2000 presidential election; and favored additional resources for volunteer firefighters.Representative Boehlert, center, with the North Carolina Democrat Tim Valentine, left, and the Pennsylvania Republican Curt Weldon, demonstrating their fire extinguisher skills to promote Fire Prevention Week in 1993.Chris Martin/CQ Roll Call via Associated PressSherwood Louis Boehlert, who was known as Sherry, was born on Sept. 28, 1936, in Utica, N.Y. His father was also named Sherwood. His mother was Elizabeth (Champoux) Boehlert.After serving in the Army, he graduated from Utica College in 1961 and managed public relations for the Wyandotte Chemical Company.Lured into politics as a supporter of relatively progressive New York Republicans like Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller and Senator Jacob K. Javits, he went to work for Representative Alexander Pirnie, an upstate Republican, becoming his chief of staff. He later held the same job for Mr. Pirnie’s successor, Donald J. Mitchell, also a Republican.Mr. Boehlert ran successfully for Oneida County executive and, after serving a four-year term, was elected to Congress in 1982. His district, in Central New York, included Cornell University and the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, which helped account for the Yankee regalia in his office. Unlike many of his colleagues, he returned home to his district every weekend.When he announced in 2006 that he would not seek re-election, he told The Syracuse Post-Standard that he regretted the widening partisan divisions in Washington.“I came to Capitol Hill 42 years ago, and I have never seen a higher level of partisanship and a lower level of tolerance for the other guy’s point of view,” he said.After Mr. Boehlert’s death, Chuck Schumer, the New York Democrat who is the Senate majority leader, praised him for his “rich legacy, his support of science, his commitment to combating climate change, and his deep love” for his district.Mr. Boehlert married Marianne Willey in 1976. Along with her, he is survived by two children, Tracy VanHook and Leslie Wetteland, and a stepson, Mark Brooks, from his marriage to Jean Bone, which ended in divorce; a stepdaughter, Brooke Phillips, from his wife’s first marriage; and six grandchildren. More

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      Redrawing the Map in New York

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      Sydney Harper and Soraya Shockley and M.J. Davis Lin and Listen and follow The DailyApple Podcasts | Spotify | StitcherAfter the 2020 census, New York, like many other states, is using population data to redraw congressional and legislative districts.With the midterm elections just a year away, the outcome of the reconfiguring could be crucial in determining which party takes control of the House of Representatives — which Democrats currently hold by a thin margin.Clearly aware of the stakes, New York Democrats are considering a tactic that is usually a preserve of the Republican Party: gerrymandering.On today’s episodeNicholas Fandos, a political correspondent for The New York Times.The State Legislature in Albany this month. Republicans and Democrats on the redistricting commission can’t agree on a set of maps for legislative districts.Cindy Schultz for The New York TimesBackground readingA bipartisan commission will examine two competing proposals for the redistricting of New York State. The failure to compromise may pave the way for Democrats to step in and knock out Republican congressional seats.There are a lot of ways to listen to The Daily. Here’s how.Transcripts of each episode are available by the next workday. You can find them at the top of the page.Nicholas Fandos contributed reporting.The Daily is made by Lisa Tobin, Rachel Quester, Lynsea Garrison, Annie Brown, Clare Toeniskoetter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon Johnson, Brad Fisher, Larissa Anderson, Wendy Dorr, Chris Wood, Jessica Cheung, Stella Tan, Alexandra Leigh Young, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Marc Georges, Luke Vander Ploeg, M.J. Davis Lin, Austin Mitchell, Neena Pathak, Dan Powell, Dave Shaw, Sydney Harper, Daniel Guillemette, Robert Jimison, Mike Benoist, Liz O. Baylen, Asthaa Chaturvedi, Kaitlin Roberts, Rachelle Bonja, Diana Nguyen, Marion Lozano, Soraya Shockley, Corey Schreppel, Anita Badejo, Rob Szypko, Elisheba Ittoop and Chelsea Daniel.Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly. Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Theo Balcomb, Cliff Levy, Lauren Jackson, Julia Simon, Mahima Chablani, Nora Keller, Sofia Milan, Desiree Ibekwe, Erica Futterman, Wendy Dorr and Elizabeth Davis-Moorer. More

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      Anthony Gonzalez, a Republican Who Voted to Impeach Trump, Won't Run in 2022

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      Representative Anthony Gonzalez, one of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Donald Trump, is the first of the group to retire rather than face a stiff primary challenge.WASHINGTON — Calling former President Donald J. Trump “a cancer for the country,” Representative Anthony Gonzalez, Republican of Ohio, said in an interview on Thursday that he would not run for re-election in 2022, ceding his seat after just two terms in Congress rather than compete against a Trump-backed primary opponent.Mr. Gonzalez is the first, but perhaps not the last, of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Mr. Trump after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot to retire rather than face ferocious primaries next year in a party still in thrall to the former president.The congressman, who has two young children, emphasized that he was leaving in large part because of family considerations and the difficulties that come with living between two cities. But he made clear that the strain had only grown worse since his impeachment vote, after which he was deluged with threats and feared for the safety of his wife and children.Mr. Gonzalez said that quality-of-life issues had been paramount in his decision. He recounted an “eye-opening” moment this year: when he and his family were greeted at the Cleveland airport by two uniformed police officers, part of extra security precautions taken after the impeachment vote.“That’s one of those moments where you say, ‘Is this really what I want for my family when they travel, to have my wife and kids escorted through the airport?’” he said.Mr. Gonzalez, who turns 37 on Saturday, was the sort of Republican recruit the party once prized. A Cuban American who starred as an Ohio State wide receiver, he was selected in the first round of the N.F.L. draft and then earned an M.B.A. at Stanford after his football career was cut short by injuries. He claimed his Northeast Ohio seat in his first bid for political office.Mr. Gonzalez, a conservative, largely supported the former president’s agenda. Yet he started breaking with Mr. Trump and House Republican leaders when they sought to block the certification of last year’s presidential vote, and he was horrified by Jan. 6 and its implications.Still, he insisted he could have prevailed in what he acknowledged would have been a “brutally hard primary” against Max Miller, a former Trump White House aide who was endorsed by the former president in February.Yet as Mr. Gonzalez sat on a couch in his House office, most of his colleagues still at home for the prolonged summer recess, he acknowledged that he could not bear the prospect of winning if it meant returning to a Trump-dominated House Republican caucus.“Politically the environment is so toxic, especially in our own party right now,” he said. “You can fight your butt off and win this thing, but are you really going to be happy? And the answer is, probably not.”For the Ohioan, Jan. 6 was “a line-in-the-sand moment” and Mr. Trump represents nothing less than a threat to American democracy.“I don’t believe he can ever be president again,” Mr. Gonzalez said. “Most of my political energy will be spent working on that exact goal.”Mr. Gonzalez said there had been some uncertainty after the assault on the Capitol over whether Republican leaders would continue to bow to Mr. Trump.But the ouster of Representative Liz Cheney from her leadership post; the continued obeisance of Representative Kevin McCarthy, the House minority leader; and the recent decision to invite Mr. Trump to be the keynote speaker at a major House Republican fund-raiser were clarifying. At least in Washington, this is still Mr. Trump’s party.“This is the direction that we’re going to go in for the next two years and potentially four, and it’s going to make Trump the center of fund-raising efforts and political outreach,” Mr. Gonzalez said. “That’s not something I’m going to be part of.”His decision to leave rather than fight, however, ensures that the congressional wing of the party will become only more thoroughly Trumpified. And it will raise questions about whether other Trump critics in the House will follow him to the exits. At the top of that watch list: Ms. Cheney and Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, who are both serving on the otherwise Democratic-dominated panel investigating the Capitol riot.Mr. Gonzalez said he believed he could have prevailed in a “brutally hard primary” against Max Miller, right, a former Trump White House aide, who appeared with the former president at an Ohio rally in June.David Maxwell/EPA, via ShutterstockAsked how he could hope to cleanse the party of Mr. Trump if he himself was not willing to confront the former president in a proxy fight next year against Mr. Miller, Mr. Gonzalez insisted that there were still Republicans in office who would defend “the fundamentals of democracy.”With more ardor, he argued that Mr. Trump has less of a following among grass-roots Republicans than the party’s leaders believe, particularly when it comes to whom the rank-and-file want to lead their 2024 ticket.“Where I see a big gap is, most people that I speak to back home agree with the policies but they also want us to move on from the person” and “the sort of resentment politics that has taken over the party,” Mr. Gonzalez said.Congressional maps are set to be redrawn this year, and it’s unclear what Mr. Gonzalez’s district, the 16th, will look like afterward. But he said he would probably not take sides in the primary to succeed him, which is now likely to include additional candidates.He said he would remain in the House through the end of his term unless something changed with his family.Mr. Gonzalez was emphatic that the threats were not why he was leaving — the commute was more trying, he said — but in a matter-of-fact fashion, he recounted people online saying things like, “We’re coming to your house.”In accordance with the advice House officials gave to all members, Mr. Gonzalez had a security consultant walk through his home to ensure it was well protected.“It’s a reflection of where our politics looked like it was headed post-Jan. 6,” he said.Neither Mr. Trump nor any of his intermediaries have sought to push him out of the race, Mr. Gonzalez said.Asked about Mr. Trump’s inevitable crowing over his exit from the primary, Mr. Gonzalez dismissed the former president.“I haven’t cared what he says or thinks since Jan. 6, outside when he continues to lie about the election, which I have a problem with,” he said.What clearly does bother him, though, are the Republicans who continue to abet Mr. Trump’s election falsehoods, acts of appeasement that he said were morally wrong and politically foolhardy after the party lost both chambers of Congress and the White House under the former president’s leadership.“We’ve learned the wrong lesson as a party,” Mr. Gonzalez said, “but beyond that, and more importantly, it’s horribly irresponsible and destructive for the country.” More

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      As Washington Stews, State Legislatures Increasingly Shape American Politics

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      From voting rights to the culture wars, state legislatures controlled by Republicans are playing a role well beyond their own state borders.With the release of the 2020 census last month, the drawing of legislative districts that could in large part determine control of Congress for the next decade heads to the nation’s state legislatures, the heart of Republican political power.Increasingly, state legislatures, especially in 30 Republican-controlled states, have seized an outsize role for themselves, pressing conservative agendas on voting, Covid-19 and the culture wars that are amplifying partisan splits and shaping policy well beyond their own borders.Indeed, for a party out of power in Washington, state legislatures have become enormous sources of leverage and influence. That is especially true for rural conservatives who largely control the legislatures in key states like Wisconsin, Texas and Georgia and could now lock in a strong Republican tilt in Congress and cement their own power for the next decade. The Texas Legislature’s pending approval of new restrictions on voting is but the latest example.“This is in many ways genuinely new, because of the breadth and scope of what’s happening,” said Donald F. Kettl, a scholar of state governance at the University of Texas at Austin. “But more fundamentally, the real point of the spear of Trumpism is appearing at the state and local level. State legislatures not only are keeping the flame alive, but nurturing and growing it.”He added that the aggressive role played by Republican legislatures had much further to run.“There’s all this talk of whether or not Republicans are a party that has any future at this point,” he said, “but the reality is that Republicans not only are alive and well, but living in the state legislatures. And they’re going to be pushing more of this forward.”The next battle, already underway in many states, is over the drawing of congressional and state legislative districts. Republicans control 26 of the legislatures that will draw political maps, compared with 13 for Democrats. (Other states have nonpartisan commissions that draw legislative districts, or have just one seat.)Democrats have embraced their own causes, passing laws to expand voting rights, raise minimum wages and tighten controls on firearms in the 18 states where they control the legislatures.But Republican legislatures are pursuing political and ideological agendas that dwarf those of their opponents. This year’s legislative sessions have spawned the largest wave of anti-abortion legislation since the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision in 1973. Many Republican legislatures have seized power from Democratic-leaning cities and counties on issues including policing, the coronavirus and tree preservation. They have made base-energizing issues like transgender rights and classroom teaching on race centerpieces of debate.Most important, they have rewritten election and voting laws in ways that largely hinder Democratic-leaning voters and give Republicans more influence over how elections are run — and, critics say, how they are decided. And in some states, they are eyeing their own versions of the Arizona State Senate’s brazenly partisan review of the 2020 vote, a new and, to many, dangerous attack on the nonpartisan underpinnings of American elections.Anti-abortion demonstrators outside the Texas State Capitol in Austin in May.Sergio Flores/Getty Images One reason for the new activism is obvious: With Republicans out of power in Washington and Congress largely gridlocked, states are the party’s prime venues for setting policy.“I don’t know how long it’s been since Congress has even passed a budget,” said Bryan Hughes, a Republican state senator who sponsored Texas’ latest voting bill. “So yes, clearly more responsibilities have fallen to states.”Many Democratic legislators say Republicans are shirking those responsibilities.“We’re one of four states with no pre-K education,” said State Representative Ilana Rubel, an Idaho Democrat. “We have a major housing crisis. We have a property-tax crisis. Those were the things we thought would be discussed. Instead, we found ourselves in a Fox News fever dream where all they wanted to do was get into these manufactured crises at the national level.”The national role being played by state legislatures reflects in part the sorting of Americans into opposing partisan camps. Thirty years ago, 15 of the 50 state legislatures were split between Republican and Democratic control. Today, only Minnesota’s House and Senate are divided.And the system favors partisanship. Few pay attention to state assembly races, so roughly four in 10 seats nationwide are uncontested in general elections, said Gary Moncrief, a co-author of the standard work on state politics, “Why States Matter.”“That means the real decisions are made in the primaries,” he said, where voters tend to be hard-liners.Gov. Tate Reeves signed a bill in March that would bar transgender athletes from competing on female sports teams.Rogelio V. Solis/Associated PressAt first blush, state assemblies seem ill-suited to wield influence. Most are part-time affairs run by citizen lawmakers. But the minor-league image is not entirely deserved. State lawmakers control $2 trillion a year in spending and have a plate of issues, from prisons to schools to the opioid crisis, that can get lost in the whir of Washington politics.And increasingly, top Republican strategists and well-funded conservative groups like the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, have poured in money and resources and policy prescriptions, figuring that legislation with no chance of getting through Congress could sail through friendly statehouses.“From where I stand, they have a far greater impact on the life of ordinary citizens than Congress,” Tim Storey, the executive director of the National Conference of State Legislatures, said of the state-level bodies.If there is one area where state legislatures have the potential to shape the nation’s politics to a degree that goes well beyond established boundaries, it is voting.Following former President Donald J. Trump’s false claims of a stolen election, at least 18 states tightened voting rules, often in ways that most affect Democratic-leaning constituencies. Contractors examined and recounted ballots as part of an audit ordered by the Arizona Senate in Phoenix in May.Pool photo by Matt YorkMost glaringly, they also gave the party more power over the mechanisms of administering elections and counting ballots. Arkansas empowered the State Elections Board to investigate local elections and “take corrective action” against suspected irregularities, purportedly to give Republicans a fair shake. Iowa and other states would levy fines and even criminal penalties for missteps by local election officials, raising concerns that punishments could be used for partisan gain.Georgia’s legislature gave itself control over most appointments to the State Election Board and allowed it to investigate and replace local election officials. Already, lawmakers are seeking an inquiry in Fulton County, a Democratic stronghold, although procedural hurdles in the law raise questions about how easily it could be used for partisan ends.The legislature also gave elected county commissioners sole power to appoint local election board members, a change that has already enabled the removal of at least 10 members of those boards, most of them Democrats.Republicans say they are seeking to deter fraud and ensure that elections are better run. Many experts and most Democrats call the laws worrying, given efforts by G.O.P. legislators and officials in at least 17 states to halt or overturn the election of President Biden and their continuing calls for often partisan ballot reviews of long-settled elections. Many fear that such failed tactics are being retooled to succeed as early as 2024.“That is the absolutely last step toward an authoritarian system,” said Thomas E. Mann, a co-author of two books about the implications of Republicans’ rightward drift, “and they’re just hellbent on getting there.”The Republican speaker of the Georgia House of Representatives, David Ralston, rejected that. Claims that his state’s laws open back doors to sway election results, he said, amount to “hysteria.”Compared to voting laws in Democratic bastions like New York or Delaware, he said, “we’re much more ahead of the game.” And while Republican claims of fraud dominated Georgia’s 2020 elections, he noted that the voting rights advocate Stacey Abrams, who ran as a Democrat, had also refused to accept her loss in the 2018 race for governor, claiming voter suppression.Democrats from the Georgia House protested a restrictive voting law outside the State Capitol in March.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesLawmakers also pushed through legislation overriding or banning actions by local officials, generally urban Democrats. Among the targets were measures like mask requirements and proposals to reduce police department budgets in response to last summer’s unrest.Some see brakes on how far to the right Republican legislatures can go.Opponents are already taking the latest Republican initiatives to court. The federal Justice Department has sued to block portions of Georgia’s new voting law and has warned that partisan meddling with election reviews like the one in Arizona risk violating federal laws.Lawyers for Democrats and voting-rights advocates are taking aim at other voting measures. And in some states, Democratic governors like Roy Cooper of North Carolina are serving as counterbalances to Republican legislatures.“This state would look very, very different if Roy Cooper had not been governor,” said Christopher Cooper, a scholar of state politics at Western Carolina University, who is not related to the governor. “He’s vetoed more bills than any governor in North Carolina history.”Others doubt vetoes and court decisions will settle much. “I don’t see any solution from litigation,” said Richard Briffault, a Columbia University expert on state legislation. “If there’s going to be a change, it’s going to be through the political process.”And some say legislatures have the power to enact policy and a base that revels in what a few years back seemed like overreach. Why would they stop?“This has become the new normal,” said Trey Martinez Fischer, one of the Texas Democrats who fled the state in July to block passage of the restrictive voting bill. “And I would expect, with a Biden administration and a Democratic Congress, that we’re likely to see more.”Nick Corasaniti contributed reporting. More

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      As Biden Faces a Political Crisis, His Party Looks On in Alarm

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      Democrats fear that if the pandemic or the situation in Afghanistan continues to worsen, their party may lose the confidence of the moderate swing voters who lifted it to victory in 2020.With President Biden facing a political crisis that has shaken his standing in his party, Democrats across the country are increasingly worried about their ability to maintain power in Washington, as his administration struggles to defend its chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan and stanch a resurgent pandemic that appeared to be waning only weeks ago.While Americans watched devastating scenes of mayhem at the Kabul airport and ascendant Taliban forces last week, the steady drumbeat of bipartisan criticism left many Democrats frustrated and dismayed at a White House they viewed as having fumbled the end of the country’s longest war on multiple fronts.On Capitol Hill, lawmakers announced congressional investigations into the administration’s handling of the withdrawal, as a handful of Democratic lawmakers weighed whether calling for the resignation of Mr. Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, would help the president “reset the narrative,” according to a Democratic House member, speaking on the condition of anonymity.The harrowing images appalled even the president’s staunchest supporters, many of whom — like a majority of the American public — support the decision to remove American troops from Afghanistan. But some of them worry the execution of the withdrawal has undermined Mr. Biden’s central campaign promise to restore a steady hand to governance, particularly on issues of national security.Interviews with more than 40 Democrats, lawmakers, strategists and party officials show a White House at a pivot point. If the virus continues to worsen or the situation in Afghanistan deteriorates further, many of the president’s allies fear he will lose the confidence of the moderate swing voters who lifted his party to victory in 2020. Already, Democrats in battleground districts have been sounding alarms that the party needs to become more aggressive with their messaging, particularly on the economy and the efforts to combat the surge in coronavirus cases fueled by the highly contagious Delta variant.There are plenty of other reasons for Democrats to be worried: Historically, the president’s party loses seats in the midterm elections and the Republican advantage in redistricting has only increased those odds.For many establishment Democrats, the Taliban’s rapid seizure of Afghanistan was the first time during Mr. Biden’s administration that they found themselves creating any daylight between themselves and the president.“I consider Afghanistan a bone-headed mistake, unforced error,” said David Walters, a former Oklahoma governor who is now a member of the Democratic National Committee’s executive committee. “There is no real excuse. This was morally and politically a disaster and just bad policy.”Yet, so far, most of the party has walked a fine line between expressing dismay at the current situation while not publicly denouncing the White House’s role in it.“Afghanistan definitely has entered the conversation in a big way. We’ve done six or seven town halls in the last week and Afghanistan has come up in all of them,” said State Senator Jeff Jackson of North Carolina, an Army veteran who fought in Kandahar and is now running for the U.S. Senate. “It’s pretty clear there are concerns. They’ve seen the images we’ve all seen.”Still, when asked about the administration’s responsibility for the evacuation of Afghans who risked their lives to support U.S. troops, Mr. Jackson offered a tempered critique.“It should have been a much higher priority for the current administration,” he said.On a conference call on Friday organized by the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington, four House members who served in the military — two Democrats and two Republicans — tried to tamp down the political recriminations, but their frustrations peeked through. Representative Kai Kahele, Democrat of Hawaii, acknowledged that the “optics” could not “get any worse than an entire airfield of Afghans running around a taxiing C-17, having that aircraft take off and have Afghans fall to their deaths.”Representative Kai Kahele, Democrat of Hawaii, is a combat veteran who served in Iraq and Afghanistan.Kelsey Walling/Hawaii Tribune-Herald, via Associated PressWhether that kind of restraint will hold remains a major question for the White House. Administration officials believe that the public remains on their side, with polling showing firm support for the withdrawal, and that any political fallout from the current crisis will fade long before the midterm elections. But Republicans are salivating over what they see as an opportunity to push a broader narrative of a weak and incompetent White House, furthering the caricature of Mr. Biden as a bystander in his own administration.“​​Democrats are universally satisfied with their president. They think he’s kept his promises and they blame Republican obstruction for anything that he hasn’t gotten,” said Frank Luntz, a Republican pollster who recently consulted with the White House on its pandemic response. “That said, there’s a certain point when Democrats will begin to question whether he’s got the right stuff.”Mr. Biden has offered a defiant defense of both his decision to withdraw troops from Afghanistan and his handling of the resurgence of the virus. After a campaign that promised bipartisan comity and a desire to extend a hand across the aisle, Mr. Biden has begun blaming Republican governors, some of whom have banned mask mandates in their states, for prolonging the pandemic and threatening the safe return to in-person schooling.He has attributed the swift collapse of the government in Kabul and tumultuous scenes at the airport there to the refusal of Afghanistan’s military to fight in the face of the Taliban advance. On Friday, Mr. Biden offered his most extensive remarks about the situation in a news conference, a tacit acknowledgment by the administration that its earlier response had failed to assuage concerns.“I made the decision,” he said, while acknowledging that the United States received conflicting information before the operation about how quickly Afghanistan’s government might fall. “I took the consensus opinion.”Mr. Biden’s response was a sharp departure for a politician who spent decades stressing the importance of human rights while cultivating a folksy, feel-your-pain persona.Meighan Stone, an expert on women’s rights and foreign policy with the Council on Foreign Relations, said Democratic women spent years hearing about the plight of Afghan women and many were disappointed in what they saw as Mr. Biden’s callous response in this moment of crisis.“It’s been deeply disappointing to see the lack of empathy communicated,” said Ms. Stone, who also sits on the board of Indivisible, a national network of local liberal groups. “There’s a profound disconnect between President Biden’s remarks and the images women are seeing on TV and social media of Afghan women and girls in need.”Strategists in both parties caution that the midterm elections are still more than a year away, leaving far from certain the long-term political effect of both the Delta variant and Afghanistan on Democrats’ narrow control of the Senate and House.Understand the Taliban Takeover in AfghanistanCard 1 of 5Who are the Taliban? 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      The Congressional Black Caucus: Powerful, Diverse and Newly Complicated

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      The group, which includes most Black members of Congress, remains publicly united. But in private, an influx of new members who think differently about its purpose are making a play for the future.The Congressional Black Caucus is the largest it has ever been, jumping to 57 members this year after a period of steady growth. The 50-year-old group, which includes most Black members of Congress and is entirely Democratic, is also more diverse, reflecting growing pockets of the Black electorate: millennials, progressives, suburban voters, those less tightly moored to the Democratic Party.But while a thread of social justice connects one generation to the next, the influx of new members from varying backgrounds is testing the group’s long-held traditions in ways that could alter the future of Black political power in Washington.The newcomers, shaped by the Black Lives Matter movement rather than the civil rights era, urge Democrats to go on the offensive regarding race and policing, pushing an affirmative message about how to overhaul public safety. They seek a bolder strategy on voting rights and greater investment in the recruitment and support of Black candidates.Perhaps more significant than any ideological or age divide, however, is the caucus’s fault line of political origin stories — between those who made the Democratic establishment work for them and those who had to overcome the establishment to win.Representative James E. Clyburn of South Carolina, a Democrat and the most powerful Black lawmaker in the House, said in an interview that the group still functioned as a family. But that family has grown to include people like Representative Cori Bush of Missouri, an outspoken progressive who defeated a caucus member in a hotly contested primary last year, and Representative Lauren Underwood of Illinois, whose district is overwhelmingly white.“There was not a single member of the caucus, when I got there, that could have gotten elected in a congressional district that was only 4 percent African American,” Mr. Clyburn said, referring to Ms. Underwood.“We didn’t have people in the caucus before who could stand up and say, ‘I know what it’s like to live in an automobile or be homeless,’” he said of Ms. Bush, whose recent dayslong sit-in on the Capitol steps pushed President Biden’s administration to extend an eviction moratorium.In interviews, more than 20 people close to the C.B.C. — including several members, their senior aides and other Democrats who have worked with the group — described the shifting dynamics of the leading organization of Black power players in Washington.Representative Lauren Underwood of Illinois serves a district that is overwhelmingly white.Sarah Silbiger/The New York TimesThe caucus is a firm part of the Democratic establishment, close to House leadership and the relationship-driven world of political consulting and campaigns. However, unlike other groups tied to party leaders, the caucus is perhaps the country’s most public coalition of civil rights stalwarts, ostensibly responsible for ensuring that an insider game shaped by whiteness can work for Black people.Today, the C.B.C. has swelling ranks and a president who has said he owes his election to Black Democrats. There is a strong chance that when Speaker Nancy Pelosi eventually steps down, her successor will be a member of the group. At the same time, the new lawmakers and their supporters are challenging the group with a simple question: Whom should the Congressional Black Caucus be for?The group’s leadership and political action committee have typically focused on supporting Black incumbents and their congressional allies in re-election efforts. But other members, especially progressive ones, call for a more combative activist streak, like Ms. Bush’s, that challenges the Democratic Party in the name of Black people. Moderate members in swing districts, who reject progressive litmus tests like defunding police departments or supporting a Green New Deal, say the caucus is behind on the nuts and bolts of modern campaigning and remains too pessimistic about Black candidates’ chances in predominantly white districts.Many new C.B.C. members, even those whose aides discussed their frustration in private, declined to comment on the record for this article. The leadership of the caucus, including the current chair, Representative Joyce Beatty of Ohio, also did not respond to requests for comment.Miti Sathe, a founder of Square One Politics, a political firm used by Ms. Underwood and other successful Black candidates including Representative Lucy McBath, a Georgia Democrat, said she had often wondered why the caucus was not a greater ally on the campaign trail.She recounted how Ms. Underwood, a former C.B.C. intern who was the only Black candidate in her race, did not receive the caucus’s initial endorsement.In Ms. Underwood’s race, “we tried many times to have conversations with them, to get their support and to get their fund-raising lists, and they declined,” Ms. Sathe said.Representative Cori Bush of Missouri, an outspoken progressive, defeated a caucus member in a hotly contested primary race last year.Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesRepresentative Ritchie Torres of New York, a 33-year-old freshman member, said the similarities among C.B.C. members still outweighed the differences.“It seems one-dimensional to characterize it as some generational divide,” he said. “The freshman class — the freshman members of the C.B.C. — are hardly a monolith.”Political strategy is often the dividing line among members — not policy. The Clyburn-led veterans have hugged close to Ms. Pelosi to rise through the ranks, and believe younger members should follow their example. They have taken a zero-tolerance stance toward primary challengers to Democratic incumbents. They have recently pushed for a pared-down approach to voting rights legislation, attacking proposals for public financing of campaigns and independent redistricting committees, which have support from many Democrats in Congress but could change the makeup of some Black members’ congressional districts.And when younger members of Congress press Ms. Pelosi to elevate new blood and overlook seniority, this more traditional group points to Representatives Maxine Waters of California and Bennie Thompson of Mississippi — committee chairs who waited years for their gavels. The political arm of the Black caucus reflects that insider approach, sometimes backing white incumbents who are friends with senior caucus leaders instead of viable Black challengers.Representative Gregory Meeks of New York, the chairman of the caucus’s political action committee, said its goal was simple: to help maintain the Democratic majority so the party’s agenda can be advanced.“You don’t throw somebody out simply because somebody else is running against them,” he said. “That’s not the way politics works.”Representative James E. Clyburn of South Carolina, the most powerful Black lawmaker in the House, said the group still functioned as a family.T.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York TimesIn a special election this month in Ohio to replace former Representative Marcia Fudge, the newly appointed housing secretary and a close ally of Mr. Clyburn’s, the caucus’s political arm took the unusual step of endorsing one Black candidate over another for an open seat. The group backed Shontel Brown — a Democrat who is close to Ms. Fudge — over several Black rivals, including Nina Turner, a former state senator and a prominent leftist ally of Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont.Mr. Meeks said the caucus had deferred to its ranking members from Ohio, including Ms. Beatty and Ms. Fudge. Mr. Clyburn also personally backed Ms. Brown. In the interview, he cited a comment from a campaign surrogate for Ms. Turner who called him “incredibly stupid” for endorsing Mr. Biden in the presidential primary race. “There’s nobody in the Congressional Black Caucus who would refer to the highest-ranking African American among them as incredibly stupid,” Mr. Clyburn said.Ms. Turner, a progressive activist, defended the remark and said the caucus’s endorsement of Ms. Brown “did a disservice to the 11 other Black candidates in that race.” She argued that Washington politics were governed by “a set of rules that leaves so many Black people behind.”“The reasons they endorsed had nothing to do with the uplift of Black people,” Ms. Turner said, citing her support of policies like reparations for descendants of enslaved people and student debt cancellation. “It had everything to do about preserving a decorum and a consensus type of power model that doesn’t ruffle anybody’s feathers.”Privately, while some Black members of Congress were sympathetic to Ms. Turner’s criticism, they also regarded the comment about Mr. Clyburn as an unnecessary agitation, according to those familiar with their views. Last year, several new C.B.C. members across the political spectrum grew frustrated after concluding that Democrats’ messaging on race and policing ignored the findings of a poll commissioned by the caucus and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. The poll, obtained by The New York Times, urged Democrats in swing districts to highlight the policing changes they supported rather than defending the status quo.But the instruction from leaders of the caucus and the Democratic campaign committee was blunt: Denounce defunding the police and pivot to health care. “It was baffling that the research was not properly utilized,” said one senior aide to a newer member of the Black caucus, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to voice the frustrations. “It could have helped some House Democrats keep their jobs.”The caucus is perhaps the country’s most public coalition of civil rights stalwarts, ostensibly responsible for ensuring that an insider game shaped by whiteness can work for Black people.Anna Moneymaker for The New York TimesMr. Clyburn makes no secret of his disdain for progressive activists who support defunding the police. In the interview, he likened the idea to “Burn, baby, burn,” the slogan associated with the 1965 Watts riots in California.“‘Burn, baby, burn’ destroyed the movement John Lewis and I helped found back in 1960,” he said. “Now we have defunding the police.” Mr. Meeks, the political point man for the caucus, said he expected its endorsements to go where they have always gone: to Black incumbents and their allies. Still, he praised Ms. Bush’s recent activism as helping to “put the pressure on to make the change happen,” a sign of how new blood and ideological diversity could increase the caucus’s power.But Ms. Bush won despite the wishes of the caucus’s political arm. And those who seek a similar path to Congress are likely to face similar resistance.When asked, Mr. Meeks saw no conflict.“When you’re on a team,” he said, “you look out for your teammates.” More

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      As Congress Recesses, Democratic Successes Do Not Include Voting Rights

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      Democratic leaders vow to make voting legislation the “first matter of legislative business” in September. But their path remains cluttered with obstacles.WASHINGTON — With deadlines looming ahead of next year’s midterm elections, the Senate adjourned on Wednesday for a monthlong recess with only the slimmest of paths left for passing federal voting rights legislation that Democrats hope can stop a wave of Republican state laws clamping down on ballot access.Before dawn on Wednesday, Senate Republicans blocked last-minute attempts to debate a trio of elections bills, but Democratic leaders vowed that more votes would be the “first matter of legislative business” when they return in mid-September. First up is likely to be a scaled-back version of the party’s far-reaching Senate Bill 1, the For the People Act, or S. 1, that Democrats believe will unite all 50 senators who caucus with them.“Let there be no mistake about what is going on here,” Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, said just after 4 a.m. “We have reached a point in this chamber where Republicans appear to oppose any measure — no matter how common sense — to protect voting rights and strengthen our democracy.”But such outrage did little to clarify how the party plans to get around a wall of Republican opposition in the Senate that has blocked progress since June. Nor did it quiet some of the outspoken and well-financed activists demanding that President Biden and his congressional majorities do everything possible — including scrapping the Senate’s planned vacation and its legislative filibuster rule — to get the job done.Pressed by reporters later on Wednesday to outline how exactly Democrats would reverse their fortunes, Mr. Schumer said he was making progress by “showing very clearly to every one of our 50 senators that Republicans won’t join us.”“As I’ve said before, everything is on the table,” Mr. Schumer said.Advocates of voting rights legislation believe fleshing out Republicans’ opposition will help build a rationale for centrist Democratic senators like Joe Manchin III of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona to reverse course and support either changing the entire filibuster rule or creating an exemption for elections-related changes to pass with a simple majority, rather than 60 votes.“Biden and Senate Democrats need to tell us what their plan to pass S. 1 is,” said Nita Chaudhary, the head of programming at the liberal advocacy group MoveOn, “before it’s too late.”“We have reached a point in this chamber where Republicans appear to oppose any measure — no matter how common sense — to protect voting rights and strengthen our democracy,” said Senator Chuck Schumer, the majority leader.Tom Brenner for The New York TimesThe Census Bureau was expected on Thursday to share detailed demographic data with states, kicking off the final stages of the once-in-a-decade process of redrawing congressional districts. Under the current rules, Republicans plan to press their advantages in control of state redistricting processes to draw new maps that tilt the national playing field toward their own candidates, making it easier to retake control of the House next year.The For the People Act, which passed the House this spring, would end partisan gerrymandering by both parties by forcing states to use independent commissions to draw district boundaries. The bill would also mandate that states set up automatic voter registration, 15 days of early voting and no-excuse mail-in voting. It would require political groups to disclose the identity of their big donors.But Richard L. Hasen, an election law expert at the University of California, Irvine, said Democrats could soon lose their window of opportunity to change the course of the redistricting process and the 2022 election. In time, it could similarly become difficult to stop the effects of new voting laws in more than a dozen Republican states that experts say will make it harder for young people and people of color to vote.“If something passes after states have gone through those processes and the election is underway, it would be much less likely that any congressional requirement could go into effect before the 2024 elections,” Mr. Hasen said of the redistricting process.Still, Democratic leaders insist they are making progress and can pass elections legislation even as they try to sew up two vast infrastructure and social program bills in the fall.Mr. Manchin, the only Democratic senator who does not support the original For the People Act, appears to be on the cusp of endorsing a somewhat narrower alternative that he has spent weeks negotiating with fellow Democrats. The new bill is likely to maintain many of the pillars of the original legislation, but include for the first time a national voter identification requirement and lop off new ethics requirements and a public campaign financing program for senators.Mr. Manchin said this week that he was still trying to win Republican votes for the plan, an unlikely outcome. But his colleagues have another motivation: They believe that Mr. Manchin will be more determined to fight for — and potentially change Senate rules for — a bill he helped write and watched Republicans tank.Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia is the only Democratic senator who does not support the original For the People Act, but he appears close to endorsing a narrower alternative.T.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York Times“This is an iterative process,” said Senator Raphael Warnock, a Georgia Democrat pushing party leaders not to let the issue lapse. He acknowledged they were up against a “tight deadline.”The votes early Wednesday morning appeared to be intended to make precisely that point. After hours of debate over Democrats’ separate $3.5 trillion budget blueprint, Mr. Schumer tried to force debates and votes on the original For the People Act, and on narrower bills focused on redistricting and campaign finance disclosure using unanimous consent to waive the normal Senate procedures.Republicans blocked all three, which they said constituted an attempt by Democrats to usurp the states and rewrite election rules for their benefit.“This isn’t going to work,” said Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader. “It isn’t going to work tonight, and it isn’t going to work when we get back.”Republicans have threatened to grind the Senate to a halt if Democrats ax the filibuster rule. Mr. McConnell also suggested that his vote on Tuesday for Mr. Biden’s $1 trillion infrastructure package was in part to show Ms. Sinema and Mr. Manchin — two of its lead architects — that the Senate could still function in a bipartisan way.So far, it has worked.Ms. Sinema told ABC’s “The View” last week that a rules change could backfire and allow Republicans to pass a nationwide ban on mail-in voting when they next control Congress. And in an interview this month, Mr. Manchin appeared to rule out any filibuster exemptions.But Democrats still believe the new state voting laws and Republican efforts to rack up new safely red House seats in the weeks ahead may help move the senators.“They are going to try to use the redistricting process to draw themselves into the majority, not only in the House of Representatives but the state legislatures,” said Eric H. Holder Jr., the former attorney general who leads the National Democratic Redistricting Committee.Mr. Holder said that as long as Congress passed legislation outlawing the practice by the fall, Democrats could probably use the courts to stop the new maps. If not, he suggested Republicans might be correct when they spoke of locking in “a decade of power.”“That’s what’s at stake,” he said. More