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      Ronny Jackson Harassed Staff as White House Doctor, Watchdog Says

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCongressman Harassed Staff and Got Drunk as White House Doctor, Watchdog SaysRonny Jackson, a Republican who enthused that President Donald J. Trump had “incredible genes,” sexually harassed a woman on a White House trip and had “meltdowns” with his staff, a report found.Investigators found that Representative Ronny Jackson, Republican of Texas and the former White House physician, created a hostile work environment and engaged in inappropriate behavior.Credit…Tamir Kalifa for The New York TimesCatie Edmondson and March 3, 2021, 7:17 p.m. ETWASHINGTON — Ronny Jackson, the White House doctor who rhapsodized about Donald J. Trump’s “incredible genes” and went on to win a Texas congressional seat with the former president’s help, cursed and belittled his subordinates, drank and took sleeping pills on the job, and sexually harassed a woman, according to a detailed report released Wednesday by the Pentagon’s inspector general.Dr. Jackson, a rear admiral in the Navy when he served as White House physician, became infamous for his rosy assessment of Mr. Trump’s “excellent health” in early 2018, when he said that had the commander in chief, 71 at the time, simply adhered to a better diet over the previous two decades, he could have lived to be 200.His effusive praise of Mr. Trump later helped win him a nomination to become the secretary of veterans affairs. But Mr. Trump abandoned the nomination several weeks later after numerous news accounts reported that Dr. Jackson was a bully to his staff, kept sloppy medical records, drank too much and loosely dispensed strong drugs on Air Force One and in the White House to curry favor with top officials.With the endorsement of Mr. Trump, who tweeted that “Ronny is strong on Crime and Borders, GREAT for our Military and Vets,” Dr. Jackson went on to win a Republican primary in Texas and was elected to Congress in 2020.On Wednesday, Dr. Jackson vehemently disputed the findings of the report. In a statement released by his congressional office, he accused the Pentagon’s investigators, who are nonpartisan, of seeking to punish him for his support of Mr. Trump.The searing report, which came after a nearly three-year investigation started by Glenn A. Fine, the acting inspector general for the Defense Department at the time, went further than previous news reports. It concluded that “Jackson’s overall course of conduct toward subordinates disparaged, belittled, bullied and humiliated them,” and documented instances in which Dr. Jackson was drunk or under the influence of a powerful sleeping drug while he was responsible for the president’s health and safety.The report also detailed evidence of what it said was Dr. Jackson’s harassment of a woman he worked with in the medical unit. In 2014, before a presidential trip to Manila as the physician for President Barack Obama, the report said Dr. Jackson told a male subordinate that he thought a female medical professional they were working with had a nice body, using coarse and demeaning language, and said he would “like to see more of her tattoos.”While in Manila, witnesses said, Dr. Jackson went out for a night of drinking. After he came back to the hotel where the medical team was staying, they said, he began yelling and pounding on the female subordinate’s hotel room door between 1 and 2 a.m. while “visibly intoxicated.” Witnesses said he created so much noise they worried it would wake Mr. Obama.“He had kind of bloodshot eyes,” the woman recalled to investigators. “You could smell the alcohol on his breath, and he leaned into my room and he said, ‘I need you.’ I felt really uncomfortable.”“When a drunk man comes to your room and they say, ‘I need you,’ your mind goes to the worst,” she said.The report, first described by CNN, painted a picture of a physician who engaged in reckless and sometimes threatening behavior that created a toxic environment for subordinates. Nearly all of the 60 witnesses interviewed by investigators described Dr. Jackson’s “screaming, cursing” behavior and his “yelling, screeching, rage, tantrums and meltdowns” when dealing with subordinates.Investigators found that Dr. Jackson also engaged in inappropriate behavior on trips abroad with Mr. Trump.In Argentina, a witness recalled that Dr. Jackson “smelled of alcohol” as he assumed his duties as the primary physician on the trip, and that the doctor had a beer a few hours before going on duty, in defiance of a policy prohibiting White House medical personnel from drinking on presidential trips. Dr. Jackson had previously recounted to witnesses that he found that rule to be “ridiculous,” investigators said.Former subordinates interviewed by investigators raised concerns that Dr. Jackson took Ambien, a sleep-aid medication, to help him sleep during long overseas travel. Though it appears Dr. Jackson never was called upon to provide medical care after he had taken the drug, his subordinates worried that it could have left him incapacitated and unable to perform his duties.In his statement, Dr. Jackson accused the inspector general of resurrecting “false allegations” because “I have refused to turn my back on President Trump.”“I flat-out reject any allegation that I consumed alcohol while on duty,” Dr. Jackson said. “I also categorically deny any implication that I was in any way sexually inappropriate at work, outside of work or anywhere with any member of my staff or anyone else. That is not me, and what is alleged did not happen.”In a fact sheet also provided to reporters, Dr. Jackson’s office noted that Mr. Obama had promoted him to rear admiral “after the alleged events” outlined in the report, and had profusely praised him for his work.A spokesman for Mr. Trump did not reply to requests for comment on the report.Former Obama administration officials declined to comment Wednesday on the report or Dr. Jackson’s behavior while he served as White House physician. In 2018, several aides to Mr. Obama said they were surprised by the revelations about Dr. Jackson.Former White House officials said at the time that they had heard rumors about Dr. Jackson drinking, though all of them said they never saw him drunk on the job. But many said Dr. Jackson earned the nicknames “Candyman” and “Dr. Feelgood” for dispensing sleeping pills, muscle relaxants and other drugs with ease.“I didn’t see any of the alleged behaviors,” David Axelrod, who served as Mr. Obama’s senior adviser from 2009 to 2011, said in spring 2018. “My experience was consistently positive.”But the Pentagon report is unsparing in its details.Investigators were told that Dr. Jackson “yelled and cursed over the telephone at a medical subordinate while the subordinate was dealing with a medical emergency in Africa.” During a trip to Martha’s Vineyard, where Mr. Obama often vacationed, Dr. Jackson “cursed at subordinates for failing to purchase a specific type of bug spray,” the report said.“He would rage all the time,” one person is quoted anonymously in the report as saying about Dr. Jackson. “Screeching, red in the face, bug-eyed, sweating, ears red, jaw clenched. I mean I’m talking rage, and I’m a clinician. I’m a board-certified physician. Rage.”Investigators for the inspector general’s office said in the report that officials in Mr. Trump’s White House tried to stonewall the investigation, instructing Dr. Jackson not to answer any questions about his time as White House physician and insisting on having White House lawyers sit in on interviews with anyone who was employed by the administration at the time.“We determined that the potential chilling effect of their presence would prevent us from receiving accurate testimony,” investigators wrote in the report. Despite that, they wrote that interviews with former employees of the medical unit “and the documents we could access” were “sufficient to determine the facts and reach conclusions regarding these allegations based on a preponderance of available evidence.”In April 2020, Mr. Trump pushed out Mr. Fine as he purged a number of inspectors general with whom he disagreed. A person familiar with the incident said the investigation into Dr. Jackson played a role in Mr. Fine’s dismissal.Investigators were unable to corroborate accusations in 2018 by Senate Democrats that Dr. Jackson crashed a government vehicle after becoming intoxicated at a going-away party for a Secret Service agent. Dr. Jackson has consistently denied that he was ever involved in any accident involving alcohol, and the report said that “no information or witness testimony supported the allegation.”Jennifer Steinhauer More

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      How to Keep Extremists Out of Power

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyOpinionSupported byContinue reading the main storyHow to Keep Extremists Out of PowerEvery political reform proposal must be judged by its ability to fuel or weaken extremist candidates.Mr. Pildes has spent his career as a legal scholar analyzing the intersection of politics and law and how that impacts our elections.Feb. 25, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETCredit…Shay Horse/NurPhoto, via Getty ImagesAmerican democracy faces alarming risks from extremist forces that have rapidly gained ground in our politics. The most urgent focus of political reform must be to marginalize, to the extent possible, these destabilizing forces.Every reform proposal must be judged through this lens: Is it likely to fuel or to weaken the power of extremist politics and candidates?In healthy democracies, they are rewarded for appealing to the broadest forces in politics, not the narrowest. This is precisely why American elections take place in a “first past the post” system rather than the proportional representation system many other democracies use.What structural changes would reward politicians whose appeal is broadest? We should start with a focus on four areas.Reform the presidential nomination processUntil the 1970s, presidential nominees were selected through a convention-based system, which means that a candidate had to obtain a broad consensus among the various interests and factions in the party. “Brokered conventions” — which required several rounds of balloting to choose a nominee — offered a vivid demonstration of how the sausage of consensus was made. In 1952, for example, the Republican Party convention selected the more moderate Dwight D. Eisenhower over Robert A. Taft, the popular leader of the more extreme wing of the party, who opposed the creation of NATO.Our current primary system shifted control from party insiders to voters. Now, in a primary with several credible contenders, a candidate can “win” with 35 percent of the vote. This allows polarizing candidates to win the nomination even if many party members find them objectionable. (In 2016, Donald Trump won many primaries with less than 40 percent of the vote.)How can we restore some of the party-wide consensus the convention system required? The parties can use ranked-choice voting, which allows voters to rank candidates in order of preference. This rewards candidates with broad appeal to a party’s voters, even if they have fewer passionate supporters. In this system, a candidate intensely popular with 35 percent of the party’s voters but intensely disliked by much of the rest would not prevail. A candidate who is the first choice of only 35 percent but the second choice of another 50 percent would do better. Ranked-choice voting reduces the prospects of factional party candidates. Presidents with a broad base of support can institute major reforms, as Teddy Roosevelt, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson and Ronald Reagan demonstrated.Reform the party primariesMany incumbents take more extreme positions than they might otherwise endorse because they worry about a primary challenge.One way to help defang that threat is to eliminate “sore-loser” laws. These laws, which exist in some form in 47 states, bar candidates who have lost in a party primary from running in the general election as an independent or third-party candidate. Thus, if a more moderate candidate loses in a primary to a more extreme one, that person is shut out from the general election — even if he or she would likely beat the (sometimes extreme) winners of the party primaries. One study finds that sore-loser laws favor more ideological candidates: Democratic candidates in states with the law are nearly six points more liberal and Republicans nearly nine-to-10 points more conservative than in states without these laws.Though Alaska has a sore-loser law, Senator Lisa Murkowski’s 2010 re-election is still instructive. That year, as an incumbent, she lost the Republican primary to a conservative candidate endorsed by the Tea Party and Sarah Palin. But the state permitted an exception to the sore-loser law for write-in candidates, and Ms. Murkowski, running as a write-in Republican candidate, won the general election.If sore-loser laws are eliminated, that reform should be combined with ranked-choice voting in the general election. That would ensure that in a multicandidate general election, the winner would reflect a broad consensus. Other ideas for restructuring primaries to minimize the existence of factional candidates include one adopted by Alaska voters in November: The top four candidates in a single primary move on to the general election, where the winner is chosen through ranked-choice voting.Reform gerrymanderingMany reformers agree on the need to take redistricting out of the hands of partisan state legislatures and give it to a commission. In several recent state ballot initiatives, voters have endorsed this change. But that still raises a question: What constitutes a fair map?Redistricting reform should have as a goal the creation of competitive election districts. Competitive districts pressure candidates from both the left and the right, which creates incentives to appeal to the political center. They also encourage more moderate candidates to run in the first place, because they know they have a greater prospect of winning than in a district whose seat is safe for the other party.In safe seat districts, as long as a candidate survives the primary, that person is assured of winning the general election — which means primary candidates don’t have to move toward the center.The sources of centrism in the House or Senate frequently come from politicians in swing districts or states. In the recent House impeachment, for example, the percentage of Republicans elected with 57 percent of the vote or less who voted for impeachment was more than double that of Republicans elected with more than 57 percent of the vote. Similarly, it was Democrats holding competitive seats who resisted the initial impeachment of President Trump, until news broke of his call with Ukraine.Not every district can be made competitive. But in 2018, maps that emphasized competitiveness could have produced at least 242 highly competitive districts, although only 72 races actually were competitive. The more senators and representatives who face competitive pressures in their general elections, the larger the forces of compromise and negotiation will be in Congress.The goal of creating competitive districts should not take a back seat to approaches that focus on whether the partisan outcomes match vote shares in a particular map. In these approaches, the closer a plan comes to matching the number of seats one party gets to its statewide share of the vote, the fairer that map is deemed to be. So, if 55 percent of the statewide vote goes to Democrats, then Democrats should have roughly 55 percent of the seats in the state Legislature and the U.S. House delegation from the state. The problem comes when a fair partisan map produces candidates, in getting to that 55 percent overall, who are all elected from seats so safe for one party, they never have to compete for voters in the center.If we want to reduce extremist forces in our politics, candidates should have to appeal to a diverse set of interests and voters in competitive districts as much as possible.Reform campaign-finance reformThe way campaigns are financed also has major effects on the types of candidates who run and win.Campaign-finance efforts are now rightly focused on “leveling up” campaign dollars — by providing public funds to candidates — rather than trying to “level down” by imposing caps on election spending. That shift is partly a result of Supreme Court doctrine, but also of the difficulties of narrowing the number of channels through which money can flow to candidates.But publicly financed elections can take at least two different basic forms, and the form taken can have significant ramifications for whether the forces of extremism are further accentuated or limited.In the traditional form of public financing, which is used in around 11 states that have public financing, the government provides grants of campaign funds to the qualified candidates.In the other form — which has taken up much of the reform energy in recent years — the government provides matching funds for small donations. This based on a matching-funds program that has existed in New York City for a number of years.The campaign-finance reform proposal that House Democrats passed after the 2018 midterms, which is now a focus of the Democratic agenda, would include a small-donor matching program. The legislation would provide $6 in public funds to candidates for every dollar they raise in small donations (those of $200 or less), up to a certain level.But there is a risk that making public funding proportional to small donations will accelerate polarization and extremism even further. Research suggests small donors are more ideologically extreme than average citizens and donate to ideologically more extreme candidates. In his campaigns, Mr. Trump raised a higher percentage of his contributions from small donors than any major-party presidential nominee in history.Numerous studies have shown that in general, individual donors (large and small) are the most ideological source of money in politics. Traditional public financing is far more neutral in the types of candidates who benefit.In debating campaign-finance reform, we must focus not just on the values of participation or equality but also on the overall effects different approaches to reform are likely to have on political extremism or moderation.Jan. 6 provided a painful demonstration of the dangerous currents gathering in American political culture. Every proposed election reform must now be measured against this reality to make sure political reform furthers American democracy.Richard H. Pildes is a professor at New York University’s School of Law and an author of the casebook “The Law of Democracy: Legal Structure of the Political Process.”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.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Mitch McConnell Would Like Trump to Fade Away

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyOpinionSupported byContinue reading the main storyMitch McConnell Would Like Trump to Fade AwayGood luck with that.Mr. Edsall contributes a weekly column from Washington, D.C. on politics, demographics and inequality.Feb. 24, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETCredit…Erin Schaff/The New York TimesMitch McConnell is savvy enough to know that when he took the Senate floor to blame Donald Trump for the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol, he was pouring gasoline on an intraparty feud.As accurate as McConnell’s statement may have been — “There’s no question — none — that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day” — McConnell was attacking a man who had won an unprecedented level of devotion from a majority of the Republican electorate, devotion bordering on religious zeal.The escalating feud threatens to engulf the party in an internal struggle that will be fought out in the 2022 House and Senate primaries, pitting Trump-backed candidates against those who have offended the former president.When Trump viciously counterattacked on Feb. 16, Democrats were especially cheered by this passage in his remarks:Where necessary and appropriate, I will back primary rivals who espouse Making America Great Again and our policy of America First. We want brilliant, strong, thoughtful, and compassionate leadership.In effect, Trump is gearing up to run a slate of favored candidates in the 2022 primaries against incumbent Republicans, especially, but by no means limited to those who supported his impeachment.Politico reported on Feb. 20 that:Trump will soon begin vetting candidates at Mar-a-Lago who are eager to fulfill his promise to exact vengeance upon incumbent Republicans who’ve scorned him, and to ensure every open GOP seat in the 2022 midterms has a MAGA-approved contender vying for it.Twenty Republican-held Senate seats are at stake in 2022, and at least two of the incumbents up for re-election — John Thune of South Dakota and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska — are certain to be on Trump’s hit list.Murkowski voted to convict the president. Thune voted against conviction, but before that he publicly dismissed efforts to overturn Joe Biden’s victory. Trump then tweeted on Dec. 13:RINO John Thune, ‘Mitch’s boy’, should just let it play out. South Dakota doesn’t like weakness. He will be primaried in 2022, political career over!!!McConnell will not be on Trump’s hit list for the simple reason that he just won re-election and does not have to face voters until 2026. But his name will be there in invisible ink.Another group Trump is very likely to target for political extinction is made up of the 10 Republican members of the House who voted to impeach the president.These incumbent Republicans only scratch the surface of the potential for intraparty conflict in the event Trump adopts a scorched earth strategy in an all-out attack on Republican candidates who voiced criticism of the former president.Trump’s venom is likely to encompass a host of state-level Republicans who disputed his claims of a stolen election, including Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia and Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio, both up for re-election in ’22.Assuming that Trump versus McConnell becomes a major theme in the 2022 Republican primaries, the numbers, especially among white evangelical Christians, favor Trump.Robert Jones, founder and chief executive of the Public Religion Research Institute, noted that his group’s polling has found that many Republicans have elevated Trump to near-deity status. In an email, Jones wrote:Just ahead of the election, a majority (55 percent) of white evangelicals and a plurality (47 percent) of Republicans said they saw Trump as “being called by God to lead at this critical time in our country.”Jones continued:If McConnell is counting on the impeachment for inciting insurrection to weaken Trump’s future within the party, he seems to have miscalculated: Three-quarters of Republicans and two-thirds of white evangelicals agreed with the statement, “Trump is a true patriot.”I asked Gary Jacobson, a political scientist at the University of California-San Diego, about the consequences of a Trump versus McConnell battle over the future of the Republican Party. He emailed in reply: “The deck is stacked against McConnell, at least for the next election cycle.”Jacobson sent a copy of a paper he is working on, “Donald Trump’s Big Lie and the Future of the Republican Party,” that provides strong evidence in support of his assessment.Among Republicans, over much of the Trump presidency, the favorability ratings of Trump, the party and McConnell generally rose and fell in tandem, Jacobson noted. That changed in December 2020:After the Electoral College voted in mid-December, the proportion holding favorable opinions of all three fell, but more for the Republican Party and much more for McConnell than for Trump. Trump’s average was 5.6 points lower for January-February 2021 than it had been for all of 2020, the party’s average was 11.3 points lower.According to Jacobson, the drop was disastrous for McConnell:In December, after McConnell congratulated Biden, his favorability ratings among Republicans dropped about 13 points from its postelection average (66 percent) and then fell another 17 points after he blamed Trump for the Capitol invasion, with the biggest drop occurring among the share of Republicans who held very favorable opinions of Trump (57 percent in this survey).The pattern is clear in the accompanying graphic:Trump on TopThe share of Republicans holding favorable views of Trump, McConnell and the party overall. More

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      Just When You Thought Politics Couldn’t Unravel Any Further

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyOpinionSupported byContinue reading the main storyThe conversationJust When You Thought Politics Couldn’t Unravel Any FurtherWhat happens when “All the King’s Men” meets “National Lampoon’s Vacation”? Nothing good.Gail Collins and Ms. Collins and Mr. Stephens are opinion columnists. They converse every week.Feb. 22, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETCredit…Sarah Silbiger/Getty ImagesGail Collins: Bret, my favorite recent political story was Ted Cruz’s Terrible Vacation. Partly because it made Ted look like such a jerk.Bret Stephens: Gail, first off all, my heartfelt sympathies and condolences to all of our friends suffering in Texas, and not just because Ted Cruz is one of their senators.Also, isn’t the whole Cancún Caper such a perfect encapsulation of Cruz’s character? He’s what happens when “All the King’s Men” meets “National Lampoon’s Vacation.” He’s Shakespeare’s Richard III as interpreted by Mr. Bean. He is to American statesmanship what “Fifty Shades of Grey” was to English prose writing, minus the, um, stimulus.Gail: Wow, that is one hell of a series of analogies.Bret: I get carried away when it comes to the junior senator from Texas.Gail: But there was also a pet angle that allowed me to revisit the saga of Mitt Romney driving with a dog on the car roof.Bret: “Pet angle” is our double entendre for the day.Gail: Mitt’s canine transport certainly fades in comparison. Meanwhile, one of Biden’s dogs just got attacked on a right-wing Newsmax show for looking … unpresidential. I think “from the junkyard” was the term used.I’m going to go out on a limb and say the president’s German shepherds will get the public’s support.Bret: If everyone just got a goldendoodle like mine, ours would be a happier, saner world.Gail: In the non-canine world, I’m already getting worried the Democrats will lose control of Congress. That’s sorta the pattern when people vote in nonpresidential years. Wondering if it would help if Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer sponsored a pet show.Bret: Don’t be so fatalistic, Gail. In the Senate, you have incumbent Republicans retiring in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Ohio and possibly Wisconsin, all of which are swing states and potential Democratic pickups. And Georgia and Arizona, both of which have Senate races in ’22, seem to have swung solidly blue.Gail: Thanks, I needed that.Bret: As for the House, Republicans did well last year by recovering a lot of the close seats they lost in swing districts in 2018. But Democrats will have a three-word magic weapon to wield there, too: Marjorie. Taylor. Greene.Gail: And how about Lauren. Opal. Boebert. The Republican from Colorado who appeared at a virtual House committee meeting sitting in front of a stash of guns she said were “ready for use?”Bret: Our colleague Jen Senior had a terrific column the other day on this whole phenomenon of right-wing women whose political strategy seems to involve out-feminizing women and out-masculinizing men. It’s a case of Tammy Wynette meets Rambo, I guess.But back to the 2022 races. If and when the stimulus package passes and the pandemic finally ends, Democrats look to be in a good position. What are your worries?Gail: Nothing along the line of the Democrats deserving punishment. So far they’ve done pretty darned well, multiple crises considered.But I keep remembering how stunned Barack Obama was when the voters tossed Democrats out of their House and Senate seats two years into his administration. People just get … tired. Or disappointed because stuff they hoped would happen probably hasn’t.Bret: As I recall, Obama devoted his first two years in office to using a 59-seat Senate majority to jam Obamacare through Congress in 2010, and voters responded later that year with a “shellacking,” as Obama called it. I think the lesson for Democrats is to stick to popular legislative items and resist sweeping progressive proposals.Gail: Then the lesson would be not to try anything that would answer a major national problem.Bret: A.k.a. a giant, wasteful government program. Sorry, my knee is starting to jerk.Gail: If it wasn’t for Obamacare, millions of Americans would be without health insurance. They wouldn’t be protected from losing coverage because of pre-existing conditions. It certainly wasn’t perfect, in part because of resistance from certain lawmakers who were in the thrall of the insurance industry. But one way to judge its overall success is to look at the Republicans who are now terrified to oppose it.Bret: As I remember it, Obamacare succeeded in pricing people out of the private insurance plans they had and were happy with and which Obama promised they could keep.Gail: Well, that promise thing was … imperfect. But I certainly don’t want Biden to avoid serious reforms because he’s worried about 2022. Already disappointed that we’re not seeing much action on gun control.Bret: All I want for Purim this year is immigration reform. It’s the most important long-term issue facing the country if we are going to continue to have demographic growth and an equal-opportunity society and we have a rare legislative opportunity to solve it with a bipartisan grand bargain. If Biden also wants to build lots of bridges, tunnels and high-speed rails, I’m down with that, too.Gail: Go infrastructure! But whatever happens, I’ll be nervous about an off-presidential-year election.And how about you? If I offered you Republican control in the House and Senate would you take it? With glee or a feeling of foreboding?Bret: The Senate, sure. I’m a big believer in the virtues of divided government. The House, definitely not.Republican representatives have a spectacular talent for political self-harm. It’s a major reason Bill Clinton was able to win re-election in 1996, by running against Newt Gingrich’s government shutdown. And it’s also a reason Obama got a second term in 2012, after Republicans forced another fiscal crisis in order to achieve unpopular budget cuts — cuts they abandoned during Trump’s presidency.Gail: Yeah, and there’s nobody less concerned about budget deficits than a Republican member of Congress with a tax-cut bill.Bret: The Republican hypocrisy here is notable, but it’s also a function of the party’s Trumpian captivity. My advice to Republicans is, first, break with Trump and, second, break with Trump. But that’s not likely to happen, is it?Gail: Trump loses the election, his unpopularity costs Republican Senate seats, and then he eggs on rioters who storm the capitol. But that good old Republican base still loves him.Bret: Trump worship is the political equivalent of a substance addiction. It makes you delusional, it makes you sick, it makes you mean, it causes agonizing withdrawal symptoms and, to borrow a line from Neil Young, all Republicans can say is, “I love you, baby, can I have some more?”Gail: And he’ll stay active. His private financial disasters are going to be a distraction, but also an incentive. If he dropped out of the political game, he wouldn’t be able to fill the tables at Mar-a-Lago with paying guests who also happen to be prominent politicians and lobbyists.And of course, if the Republicans are going to get rid of him, they’ll need an alternative. Who’s your pick of the week for the next nominee not named Trump?Bret: Nobody I like has a snowball’s chance in hell. Ideally it would be someone like Rob Portman, who’s retiring, or Charlie Baker, who’s from Massachusetts, or Mitch Daniels, who left politics a long time ago to go do something truly valuable with his life. There’s also Ben Sasse, whom I like a lot. But I just don’t see him getting the nomination.That leaves me with a choice between Nikki Haley, Josh Hawley, maybe Ron DeSantis. In that lineup, Haley is the easy favorite. What do you think of her?Gail: Well, depends on the moment since she seems to change her political positions every 15 minutes. Gail said snidely.DeSantis is awful on matters like vaccine distribution, and you have to admit it isn’t every governor who plans to have state flags fly at half-staff for Rush Limbaugh. Hawley was a disaster during the whole capitol riot crisis, and I notice he’s the only Republican who’s voted against every single Biden cabinet nominee so far.I loved it when Sasse called Hawley’s behavior “really dumbass,” so he’d have to be my favorite. Although I understand he’s not exactly a front-runner.Speaking of national political names, what do you think about Andrew Cuomo’s latest troubles?Bret: You mean that his administration deliberately underreported the number of Covid deaths in nursing homes and then tried to cover it up for fear of a federal investigation? Or that he later threatened to “destroy” a state lawmaker who had dared to criticize him?All I can say is: This is a scandal that could not have happened to a nicer guy.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.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Democrats Beat Trump in 2020. Now They’re Asking: What Went Wrong?

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyDemocrats Beat Trump in 2020. Now They’re Asking: What Went Wrong?Disappointed by down-ballot losses, Democratic interest groups are joining forces to conduct an autopsy of the election results. Republicans do not yet seem willing to reckon with the G.O.P.’s major defeats.Joseph R. Biden Jr. speaking outside the Chase Center in Wilmington, Del., after winning the election on Nov. 7.Credit…Erin Schaff/The New York TimesFeb. 20, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETDemocrats emerged from the 2020 election with full control of the federal government and a pile of lingering questions. In private, party leaders and strategists have been wrestling with a quandary: Why was President Biden’s convincing victory over Donald J. Trump not accompanied by broad Democratic gains down ballot?With that puzzle in mind, a cluster of Democratic advocacy groups has quietly launched a review of the party’s performance in the 2020 election with an eye toward shaping Democrats’ approach to next year’s midterm campaign, seven people familiar with the effort said.There is particular concern among the Democratic sponsors of the initiative about the party’s losses in House districts with large minority populations, including in Florida, Texas and California, people briefed on the initiative said. The review is probing tactical and strategic choices across the map, including Democratic messaging on the economy and the coronavirus pandemic, as well as organizational decisions like eschewing in-person canvassing.Democrats had anticipated they would be able to expand their majority in the House, pushing into historically red areas of the Sun Belt where Mr. Trump’s unpopularity had destabilized the G.O.P. coalition. Instead, Republicans took 14 Democratic-held House seats, including a dozen that Democrats had captured in an anti-Trump wave election just two years earlier.The results stunned strategists in both parties, raising questions about the reliability of campaign polling and seemingly underscoring Democratic vulnerabilities in rural areas and right-of-center suburbs. Democrats also lost several contested Senate races by unexpectedly wide margins, even as they narrowly took control of the chamber.Strategists involved in the Democratic self-review have begun interviewing elected officials and campaign consultants and reaching out to lawmakers and former candidates in major House and Senate races where the party either won or lost narrowly.Four major groups are backing the effort, spanning a range of Democratic-leaning interests: Third Way, a centrist think tank; End Citizens United, a clean-government group; the Latino Victory Fund; and Collective PAC, an organization that supports Black Democratic candidates.They are said to be working with at least three influential bodies within the House Democratic caucus: the Congressional Black Caucus, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and the New Democrat Coalition, a group of centrist lawmakers. The groups have retained a Democratic consulting firm, 270 Strategies, to conduct interviews and analyze electoral data.The newly elected Democratic Representatives Jason Crow, Antonio Delgado, Jared Golden and Abigail Spanberger participated in a forum hosted by End Citizens United in 2019.Credit…Erik S Lesser/EPA, via ShutterstockDemocrats are feeling considerable pressure to refine their political playbook ahead of the 2022 congressional elections, when the party will be defending minuscule House and Senate majorities without a presidential race to drive turnout on either side.Dan Sena, a former executive director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said there was a recognition in the party that despite Mr. Biden’s victory the 2020 cycle had not been an unalloyed Democratic success story.“I think people know that there was good and bad coming out of ’20 and there is a desire to look under the hood,” Mr. Sena said.Among the party’s goals, Mr. Sena said, should be studying their gains in Georgia and looking for other areas where population growth and demographic change might furnish the party with strong electoral targets in 2022.“There were a series of factors that really made Georgia work this cycle,” he said. “How do you begin to find places like Georgia?”Matt Bennett, senior vice president of Third Way, confirmed in a statement that the four-way project was aimed at positioning Democrats for the midterm elections.“With narrow Democratic majorities in Congress and the Republican Party in the thrall of Trump-supporting seditionists, the stakes have never been higher,” he said. “Our organizations will provide Democrats with a detailed picture of what happened in 2020 — with a wide range of input from voices across the party — so they are fully prepared to take on the G.O.P. in 2022.”In addition to the outside review, some of the traditional party committees are said to be taking narrower steps to scrutinize the 2020 results. Concerned about a drop-off in support with Latino men, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee conducted focus groups in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas earlier this year, one person familiar with the study said. It is not clear precisely what conclusions emerged from the exercise.So far there is no equivalent process underway on the Republican side, party officials said, citing the general lack of appetite among G.O.P. leaders for grappling openly with Mr. Trump’s impact on the party and the wreckage he inflicted in key regions of the country.As a candidate for re-election, Mr. Trump slumped in the Democratic-leaning Upper Midwest — giving up his most important breakthroughs of 2016 — and lost to Mr. Biden in Georgia and Arizona, two traditionally red states where the G.O.P. has suffered an abrupt decline in recent years. The party lost all four Senate seats from those states during Mr. Trump’s presidency, three of them in the 2020 cycle.But Mr. Trump and his political retainers have so far responded with fury to critics of his stewardship of the party, and there is no apparent desire to tempt his wrath with a comprehensive analysis that would be likely to yield unflattering results. One unofficial review, conducted by Mr. Trump’s pollster, Tony Fabrizio, concluded that Mr. Trump had shed significant support because of his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, with particularly damaging losses among white voters.In the past, Democratic attempts at self-scrutiny have tended to yield somewhat mushy conclusions aimed at avoiding controversy across the party’s multifarious coalition.Donald J. Trump spoke on election night at the White House.Credit…Doug Mills/The New York TimesThe Democratic Party briefly appeared headed for a public reckoning in November, as the party absorbed its setbacks in the House and its failure to unseat several Republican senators whom Democrats had seen as ripe for defeat.A group of centrist House members blamed left-wing rhetoric about democratic socialism and defunding the police for their losses in a number of conservative-leaning suburbs and rural districts. Days after the election, Representative Abigail Spanberger of Virginia said the party should renounce the word “socialism,” drawing pushback from progressives like Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York.That airing of differences did not last long: Democrats quickly closed ranks in response to Mr. Trump’s attacks on the 2020 election, and party unity hardened after the Jan. 5 runoff elections in Georgia and the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. But there are still significant internal disagreements about campaign strategy.It has been eight years since either political party conducted a wide-ranging self-assessment that recommended thorough changes in structure and strategy. After the 2012 election, when Republicans lost the presidential race and gave up seats in both chambers of Congress, the Republican National Committee empaneled a task force that called for major changes to the party organization.The so-called 2012 autopsy also recommended that the G.O.P. embrace the cause of immigration reform, warning that the party faced a bleak demographic future if it did not improve its position with communities of color. That recommendation was effectively discarded after House Republicans blocked a bipartisan immigration deal passed by the Senate, and then fully obliterated by Mr. Trump’s presidential candidacy.Henry Barbour, a member of the R.N.C. who co-authored the committee’s post-2012 analysis, said it would be wise for both parties to consider their political positioning after the 2020 election. He said Democrats had succeeded in the election by running against Mr. Trump but that the party’s leftward shift had alienated otherwise winnable voters, including some Black, Hispanic and Asian-American communities that shifted incrementally toward Mr. Trump.“They’re running off a lot of middle-class Americans who work hard for a living out in the heartland, or in big cities or suburbs,” Mr. Barbour said. “Part of that is because Democrats have run too far to the left.”Mr. Barbour said Republicans, too, should take a cleareyed look at their 2020 performance. Mr. Trump, he said, had not done enough to expand his appeal beyond a large and loyal minority of voters.“The Republican Party has got to do better than that,” he said. “We’re not just a party of one president.”Henry Barbour, a member of the Republican National Committee, at the party’s 2020 convention in Charlotte, N.C.Credit…Carlos Barria/ReutersIn addition to the four-way review on the Democratic side, there are several narrower projects underway focused on addressing deficiencies in polling.Democratic and Republican officials alike found serious shortcomings in their survey research, especially polling in House races that failed to anticipate how close Republicans would come to retaking the majority. Both parties emerged from the campaign feeling that they had significantly misjudged the landscape of competitive House races, with Democrats losing seats unexpectedly and Republicans perhaps having missed a chance to capture the chamber as a result.The chief Republican and Democratic super PACs focused on House races — the Congressional Leadership Fund and House Majority PAC — are both in the process of studying their 2020 polling and debating changes for the 2022 campaign, people familiar with their efforts said.The Congressional Leadership Fund, a Republican group, is said to be undertaking a somewhat more extensive review of its spending and messaging, though it is not expected to issue any kind of larger diagnosis for the party. “We would be foolish not to take a serious look at what worked, what didn’t work and how you can evolve and advance,” said Dan Conston, the group’s president.Several of the largest Democratic polling companies are also conferring regularly with each other in an effort to address gaps in the 2020 research. Two people involved in the conversations said there was general agreement that the industry had to update its practices before 2022 to assure Democratic leaders that they would not be caught by surprise again.Anna Greenberg, a Democratic pollster involved in reviewing research from the last cycle, said that the party was only now digging more deeply into the results of the 2020 election because the last few months had been dominated by other crises.Several Democratic and Republican strategists cautioned that both parties faced a challenge in formulating a plan for 2022: It had been more than a decade, she said, since a midterm campaign had not been dominated by a larger-than-life presidential personality. Based on the experience of the 2020 campaign, it is not clear that Mr. Biden is destined to become such a polarizing figure.“It’s hard to know what an election’s like without an Obama or a Trump,” Ms. Greenberg said, “just normal, regular, ordinary people running.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Michigan Republicans Who Voted to Impeach Trump Face Backlash

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Capitol Riot FalloutTracking the ArrestsVisual TimelineInside the SiegeMurder Charges?The Oath KeepersAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyOn Trump, Michigan Republicans Lean One Way: ‘Fealty at All Costs’Even after his defeat, Donald Trump is causing fierce infighting among Republicans in a crucial battleground state. Loyalists are rewarded. Dissenters face punishment.Representative Peter Meijer, Republican of Michigan, has confronted significant blowback in his state over his vote to impeach former President Donald J. Trump.Credit…Anna Moneymaker for The New York TimesFeb. 16, 2021Updated 5:18 p.m. ETROCKFORD, Mich. — When Representative Peter Meijer voted to impeach Donald J. Trump in January, making him one of 10 House Republicans who bucked their party, he bluntly acknowledged that “it may have been an act of political suicide.”This month, during Mr. Meijer’s first town hall event since that impeachment vote, some of his constituents made clear to the newly elected congressman that they shared his assessment — not that Mr. Trump had committed an impeachable act by helping incite a riot at the Capitol, but that crossing him was an unforgivable sin.“I went against people who told me not to vote for you, and I’ve lost that belief,” said Cindy Witke, who lives in Mr. Meijer’s district, which is anchored by Grand Rapids and small communities like this one in Western Michigan.Nancy Eardley, who spoke next, urged Mr. Meijer to stop saying the election had not been stolen. She said he had “betrayed” his Republican base.“I could not have been more disappointed,” Ms. Eardley said. “I don’t think that there’s much you can say that will ever change my mind into not primarying you out in two years.”Mr. Trump’s acquittal on Saturday in his impeachment trial served as the first test of his continuing influence over Republicans, with all but seven senators in the party voting against conviction. But in Michigan, one of the key battleground states Mr. Trump lost in the November election — and home to two of the 10 House Republicans who supported impeaching him — there are growing signs of a party not in flux, but united in doubling down on the same themes that defined Mr. Trump’s political style: conspiracy theories, fealty to the leader, a web of misinformation and intolerance.Recent elections in the statewide Republican Party have led to the elevation of Meshawn Maddock, a conservative activist who helped organize busloads of Michiganders to travel to Washington on Jan. 6, the day of the Capitol attack. Mike Shirkey, the majority leader in the State Senate and Michigan’s top elected Republican, was caught on a hot microphone arguing that the riot was “staged” and a “hoax,” a debunked conspiratorial claim now popular among Mr. Trump’s supporters. And, in a vivid indication of a divided state, an attempt by local Republicans to censure Mr. Meijer for supporting impeachment deadlocked, 11 to 11.In the state’s Sixth District, which hugs Lake Michigan, two county branches of the G.O.P. have already voted to condemn Representative Fred Upton, a veteran Republican who also backed impeachment.Victor Fitz, a prosecutor and Republican official in Cass County who supported efforts to censure Mr. Upton, said the current divide between the party’s base and its establishment wing was the biggest he had ever seen.“There’s deep disappointment” with Mr. Upton, Mr. Fitz said. “And to be frank and honest with you, I think that there are some who believe, you know, he crossed the Rubicon with this vote.”With loyalty to Mr. Trump as the all-encompassing point of dispute, Republicans are struggling with the idea of the proverbial big tent, and politicians like Mr. Upton and Mr. Meijer are at the forefront of the conflict. In the months since Election Day, as the president attacked the democratic process and a mob descended on the seat of American government in his name, the dangers of walking in his political shadow have rarely been more clear. However, what’s also clear is that his party shows little desire to break with him or his grievances.The outcome of this tug of war will decide the direction of a party that is shut out of control in Congress and the White House, and must focus on making electoral gains in the 2022 midterm elections. The G.O.P. tent has made room for conspiracy theories like birtherism and QAnon, as well as for extremist elected officials like Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia. Is there room for anti-Trumpers?The Michigan Republican Party is “more Trumpy today than it was before the election,” said Jeff Timmer, a former executive director of the Michigan Republican Party. The former president’s electoral coalition failed, he said, but its adherents are so vehement in their beliefs that the party cannot acknowledge or learn from its mistakes.“That’s why Trumpism will continue long after Trump. People who weren’t around four years ago,” he said, “people we had never heard of, they now control the levers of the party.”He added: “When you make a deal with the devil, the story usually ends with the devil collecting your soul. You don’t get it back and have a happy ending.”Places like Western Michigan are a bellwether for conservatism, reflecting the Republican Party’s trajectory from a political coalition defined by Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan to one centered on Mr. Trump. With opposition to big government running deep and the decline of manufacturing leaving deep scars, this region of the state has also come to have a libertarian bent and independent streak, as evidenced by former Representative Justin Amash, a prominent Trump critic.During interviews, business stops and the virtual town hall event, Mr. Meijer has tried to explain his impeachment vote with a similar sense of principle. He responds to his Republican detractors with grace, and calmly points to the lack of evidence for Mr. Trump’s claims of voter fraud. He opened the town hall by describing the immense fear he and other lawmakers felt during the mob violence in January.“This was a moment when we needed leadership and the president, in my opinion, did not provide that,” he said of Mr. Trump.Still, the ground is shifting beneath Mr. Meijer’s feet, party officials in Michigan warn, including some in his own district, the Third Congressional. Angry people leave messages of “traitor” in response to his social media posts. News outlets supportive of Mr. Trump have needled Mr. Meijer and other Republican incumbents who backed impeachment by highlighting their primary challengers. What’s more, the vision of Mr. Trump lives on: Many in the party want to look backward at grievances like perceived election fraud, rather than focus on the next election cycle and reaching out to the swing voters he lost.Meshawn Maddock at a Women For Trump wine and cheese party in White Lake, Mich., in September. Last month she helped organize busloads of Michiganders to travel to Washington on Jan. 6.Credit…Ruth Fremson/The New York TimesPeople like Mr. Timmer have pleaded with the party to address the suburban drift toward Democrats, which has plagued Republicans across the country. Ms. Maddock and others have zeroed in on unfounded claims of election fraud. Her husband, a member of the Michigan Legislature, and other state lawmakers signed a brief asking the Supreme Court to give state elected officials the power to overturn the election results..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-c7gg1r{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:0.875rem;line-height:0.875rem;margin-bottom:15px;color:#121212 !important;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-c7gg1r{font-size:0.9375rem;line-height:0.9375rem;}}.css-rqynmc{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.9375rem;line-height:1.25rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-rqynmc{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-rqynmc strong{font-weight:600;}.css-rqynmc em{font-style:italic;}.css-yoay6m{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-yoay6m{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1dg6kl4{margin-top:5px;margin-bottom:15px;}.css-16ed7iq{width:100%;display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;-webkit-box-pack:center;-webkit-justify-content:center;-ms-flex-pack:center;justify-content:center;padding:10px 0;background-color:white;}.css-pmm6ed{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;}.css-pmm6ed > :not(:first-child){margin-left:5px;}.css-5gimkt{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.8125rem;font-weight:700;-webkit-letter-spacing:0.03em;-moz-letter-spacing:0.03em;-ms-letter-spacing:0.03em;letter-spacing:0.03em;text-transform:uppercase;color:#333;}.css-5gimkt:after{content:’Collapse’;}.css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;-webkit-transform:rotate(180deg);-ms-transform:rotate(180deg);transform:rotate(180deg);}.css-eb027h{max-height:5000px;-webkit-transition:max-height 0.5s ease;transition:max-height 0.5s ease;}.css-6mllg9{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;position:relative;opacity:0;}.css-6mllg9:before{content:”;background-image:linear-gradient(180deg,transparent,#ffffff);background-image:-webkit-linear-gradient(270deg,rgba(255,255,255,0),#ffffff);height:80px;width:100%;position:absolute;bottom:0px;pointer-events:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}.css-1amoy78{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1amoy78{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-1amoy78:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}.css-1amoy78[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-1amoy78[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-1amoy78[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-1amoy78[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-k9atqk{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-k9atqk strong{font-weight:700;}.css-k9atqk em{font-style:italic;}.css-k9atqk a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;border-bottom:1px solid #ccd9e3;}.css-k9atqk a:visited{color:#333;-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;border-bottom:1px solid #ddd;}.css-k9atqk a:hover{border-bottom:none;}Capitol Riot FalloutFrom Riot to ImpeachmentThe riot inside the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, Jan. 6, followed a rally at which President Trump made an inflammatory speech to his supporters, questioning the results of the election. Here’s a look at what happened and the ongoing fallout:As this video shows, poor planning and a restive crowd encouraged by President Trump set the stage for the riot.A two hour period was crucial to turning the rally into the riot.Several Trump administration officials, including cabinet members Betsy DeVos and Elaine Chao, announced that they were stepping down as a result of the riot.Federal prosecutors have charged more than 70 people, including some who appeared in viral photos and videos of the riot. Officials expect to eventually charge hundreds of others.The House voted to impeach the president on charges of “inciting an insurrection” that led to the rampage by his supporters.Several Republican officials in Michigan, including Ms. Maddock, Mr. Shirkey and the recently elected state G.O.P. chair, Ron Weiser, did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this article. Mr. Upton and Mr. Meijer declined interviews, and several county and local officials who voted to censure the elected officials also would not comment.The collective public silence of many Republican leaders in Michigan signals a party walking on eggshells, without a clear leader or uniting ideology. Mr. Weiser is a member of the University of Michigan’s Board of Regents and a powerful Republican donor, but he needed the early backing of Ms. Maddock as a conduit to the Trump-supporting grass roots.Mr. Meijer already faces a primary challenger, though he is still considered the favorite. Several state Republicans in Mr. Upton’s orbit brought up the possibility that he would retire rather than embark on a potentially bruising re-election campaign.The ascension of Republicans who were in Washington for Jan. 6 or who vocally supported Mr. Trump’s claims of election fraud, like Ms. Maddock, has roiled a state with a rich history of business-friendly Republicans in the mold of former President Gerald Ford, the state’s native son.Tony Daunt, a Republican official who has served as an election watchdog and has advised the state’s Republican leaders, said he was holding out hope that the party would break from using Trump loyalty as a litmus test.“I think with the right type of leadership, the people we need would eagerly come back into the fold,” Mr. Daunt said. “There are some good things from the Trump administration and even from Trump’s political instincts that are worth bringing into the Republican camp. But Donald Trump isn’t the vehicle or the messenger for that.”Jason Watts is not as confident. An elections official in Allegan County and party treasurer in the Sixth Congressional District, he has seen the party change to a point where it now seems unrecognizable, he said. He doubts that the necessary leadership is coming.Jason Watts, a county elections official and Republican Party treasurer in the Sixth Congressional District, expressed doubt that the Republican Party would move beyond Trumpism. Credit…Erin Kirkland for The New York Times“I almost feel like I’m a person without a home,” Mr. Watts said. “Because you can change the candidate, but until we’re willing to deal with ourselves as a party, we’re going to wallow in this defeat for a few cycles.”Mr. Watts also has a secret to reveal: He never voted for Mr. Trump, even as he helped organize more than 15,000 yard signs for the Republican ticket in the county. In 2016, he supported Gov. John Kasich of Ohio in the primary and the long-shot independent candidate Evan McMullin in the general election. This year, Mr. Watts voted for the Libertarian nominee — a silent expression of discomfort with the former president that he has made public only since the Capitol attack.Does he wish he had spoken up earlier?“I just felt that if I muddled through, it was a brief storm that would pass,” Mr. Watts said. “But this undertone of hatred, this fealty at all costs, it’s going to damage us.”And what happens now?“If they are mad, so be it,” he said. “They can vote me out in two years.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Adam Kinzinger’s Lonely Mission

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      “For the last four and a half years, the only spokesman for the Republican Party has been Donald Trump,” said Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois. “It’s time to present an alternative narrative and fight for the soul of the party.”Credit…Taylor Glascock for The New York TimesAdam Kinzinger’s Lonely MissionCensured by his party and shunned by family members, Mr. Kinzinger, a six-term Illinois congressman, is pressing Republicans to leave Donald Trump behind — and risking his career doing so.“For the last four and a half years, the only spokesman for the Republican Party has been Donald Trump,” said Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois. “It’s time to present an alternative narrative and fight for the soul of the party.”Credit…Taylor Glascock for The New York TimesSupported byContinue reading the main storyFeb. 15, 2021Updated 5:05 p.m. ETWASHINGTON — As the Republican Party censures, condemns and seeks to purge leaders who aren’t in lock step with Donald J. Trump, Adam Kinzinger, the six-term Illinois congressman, stands as enemy No. 1 — unwelcome not just in his party but also in his own family, some of whom recently disowned him.Two days after Mr. Kinzinger called for removing Mr. Trump from office following the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, 11 members of his family sent him a handwritten two-page letter, saying he was in cahoots with “the devil’s army” for making a public break with the president.“Oh my, what a disappointment you are to us and to God!” they wrote. “You have embarrassed the Kinzinger family name!”The author of the letter was Karen Otto, Mr. Kinzinger’s cousin, who paid $7 to send it by certified mail to Mr. Kinzinger’s father — to make sure the congressman would see it, which he did. She also sent copies to Republicans across Illinois, including other members of the state’s congressional delegation.“I wanted Adam to be shunned,” she said in an interview.A 42-year-old Air National Guard pilot who represents a crescent-shaped district along the Chicago’s suburbs, Mr. Kinzinger is at the forefront of the effort to navigate post-Trump politics. He is betting his political career, professional relationships and kinship with a wing of his sprawling family that his party’s future lies in disavowing Mr. Trump and the conspiracy theories the former president stoked.Kinzinger Family LetterA hand-written letter from several members of Rep. Adam Kinzinger’s family. The Times has redacted the names of some family members who signed the letter but whom we did not interview.Read Document 2 pagesMr. Kinzinger was one of just three House Republicans who voted both to impeach Mr. Trump and strip Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia from her committee posts. During the House impeachment debate, he asked Democrats if he could speak for seven minutes instead of his allotted one, so that he could make a more authoritative and bipartisan argument against the president; the request was denied.He has taken his case to the national media, becoming a ubiquitous figure on cable television, late-night HBO programming and podcasts. He began a new political action committee with a six-minute video declaring the need to re-format the Republican Party into something resembling an idealized version of George W. Bush’s party — with an emphasis on lower taxes, hawkish defense and social conservatism — without the grievances and conspiracy theories that Mr. Trump and his allies have made central to the party’s identity.To do so, Mr. Kinzinger said in an interview, requires exposing the fear-based tactics he hopes to eradicate from the party and present an optimistic alternative.“We just fear,” he said. “Fear the Democrats. Fear the future. Fear everything. And it works for an election cycle or two. The problem is it does real damage to this democracy.”Mr. Kinzinger said he was not deterred by the Senate’s failure on Saturday to convict Mr. Trump in the impeachment trial.“We have a lot of work to do to restore the Republican Party,” he said, “and to turn the tide on the personality politics.”Representatives Jaime Herrera Beutler of Washington and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois were two of the 10 Republicans who voted to impeach Mr. Trump.Credit…Anna Moneymaker for The New York TimesMr. Kinzinger now faces the classic challenge for political mavericks aiming to prove their independence: His stubborn and uncompromising nature rankles the very Republicans he is trying to recruit to his mission of remaking the party.His anti-Trump stance has angered Republican constituents in his district, some of whom liken him to a Democrat, and frustrated Republican officials in Illinois who say he cares more about his own national exposure than his relationship with them.“There doesn’t seem to be a camera or a microphone he won’t run to,” said Larry Smith, the chairman of the La Salle County G.O.P., which censured Mr. Kinzinger last month. “He used to talk to us back in the good old days.”Mr. Kinzinger is unapologetic about his priorities.“Central and northern Illinois deserve an explanation and deserve my full attention, and they’ll get it,” he said. “But to the extent I can, I will also focus on the national message because I can turn every heart in central and northern Illinois and it wouldn’t make a dent on the whole party. And that’s what I think the huge battle is.”Mr. Kinzinger has drawn praise from Democrats, but he is not anyone’s idea of a progressive. His campaign website trumpets his longstanding opposition to the Affordable Care Act, and he is an opponent of abortion rights and increased taxes. He first won his seat in Congress with Sarah Palin’s endorsement. Raised in a large central Illinois family — his father, who has 32 first cousins, ran food banks and shelters for the homeless in Peoria and Bloomington — Mr. Kinzinger was interested in politics from an early age. Before he’d turned 10 he predicted he would one day be governor or president, Ms. Otto said, and he won election to the McLean County Board when he was a 20-year-old sophomore at Illinois State University.He joined the Air Force after the Sept. 11 attacks and served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Upon his discharge he joined the Air National Guard, where he remains a lieutenant colonel. In the 2010 Republican wave Mr. Kinzinger, then 32, beat a Democratic incumbent by nearly 15 percentage points and, two years later, with support from Eric Cantor, then the House majority leader, ousted another incumbent, 10-term Republican Don Manzullo, in a primary following redistricting.But Mr. Kinzinger soon became dispirited by a Republican Party he believed was centered around opposition to whatever President Barack Obama proposed without offering new ideas of its own.“His frustration level has been rising ever since he got to Congress and I think the Trump era has been difficult for him to make sense of and participate in,” said former Representative Kevin Yoder of Kansas, who was one of Mr. Kinzinger’s closest friends in Congress before losing a 2018 re-election bid. When loyalty to Mr. Trump became a litmus test for Republican conservatism, Mr. Yoder said, “that became a bridge too far for him.”Mr. Kinzinger, left, during a meeting with Republican lawmakers and Donald J. Trump at the White House in 2018 in Washington. Credit…Al Drago for The New York TimesWhile Mr. Kinzinger never presented himself as a Trump loyalist, he rarely broke with the former president on policy grounds, but he was critical of him dating back to the 2016 campaign, when he was a surrogate for Jeb Bush.Mr. Trump was aware of Mr. Kinzinger’s lack of fealty. At a fund-raiser in the Chicago suburbs before the 2016 election, Mr. Trump asked Richard Porter, a Republican National Committee member from Illinois, how Mr. Kinzinger would do in his re-election bid. He didn’t have an opponent, Mr. Porter recalled telling the future president.Mr. Trump, Mr. Porter said, poked his finger in his chest and told him to deliver to Mr. Kinzinger a vulgar message about what he should do with himself. When Mr. Porter relayed the comment to Mr. Kinzinger during a conversation on Election Day, Mr. Kinzinger laughed and invited Mr. Trump to do the same.In Illinois, Republicans have been struggling to guess what Mr. Kinzinger’s next move may be. In the interview, Mr. Kinzinger said he’s unlikely to pursue the 2022 nomination for governor or the Senate. Right now, he’s leaning toward running for re-election, but with redistricting looming this fall, it’s unclear how the state’s Democratic-controlled legislature will rearrange his district.What is clear is that Mr. Kinzinger has found himself on the wrong side of rank-and-file Republicans at home. John McGlasson, the committee member for Mr. Kinzinger’s district, said the congressman had been “insulting with his comments” since Jan. 6.Republican voters interviewed in the district last week lambasted Mr. Kinzinger for turning on Mr. Trump.“If you want to vote as a Democrat, vote as a Democrat,” Richard Reinhardt, a 63-year-old retired mechanical engineer, said while eating lunch at a Thai restaurant in Rockford. “Otherwise, if you’re a Republican, then support our president. Trump was the first president who represented me. The stuff he did helped me.”Mr. Kinzinger predicted “the hangover’’ of Mr. Trump’s post-impeachment popularity “will kind of wear off.’’Former Gov. Bruce Rauner, the last Republican to win statewide office in Illinois, in 2014, said Mr. Kinzinger could find himself a casualty of the bitter schism dividing the party. “The only winners in the war between Trump and Republicans will be Democrats,” Mr. Rauner said. “For some voters, character matters. For most, it doesn’t.”Mr. Kinzinger films an ad for his PAC, Country First, at Whiskey Acres Distilling Co. on Friday in DeKalb, Ill., as his wife, Sofia Boza-Holman Kinzinger, right, looks on. Credit…Taylor Glascock for The New York TimesMr. Kinzinger said he has little desire to reach out to the loudest critics in his district’s Republican organizations, whom he hasn’t spoken to in years and said hold little sway over voters. The letter-writers in his family, he said, suffer from “brainwashing” from conservative churches that have led them astray.“I hold nothing against them,’’ he said, “but I have zero desire or feel the need to reach out and repair that. That is 100 percent on them to reach out and repair, and quite honestly, I don’t care if they do or not.”As to his own future in the party, Mr. Kinzinger said he will know by the end of the summer whether he can remain a Republican for the long term or whether he will be motivated to change his party affiliation if it becomes clear to him that Mr. Trump’s allies have become a permanent majority.“The party’s sick right now,” he said. “It’s one thing if the party was accepting of different views, but it’s become this massive litmus test on everything. So it’s a possibility down the road, but it’s certainly not my intention, and I’m going to fight like hell to save it first.”Ellen Almer Durston contributed reporting from Rockford, Ill. Kitty Bennett contributed research.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Stacey Abrams and Lauren Groh-Wargo: How to Turn Your Red State Blue

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      Credit…June ParkSkip to contentSkip to site indexOpinionStacey Abrams and Lauren Groh-Wargo: How to Turn Your Red State BlueIt may take 10 years. Do it anyway.Credit…June ParkSupported byContinue reading the main storyStacey Abrams and Ms. Abrams was the Democratic nominee for governor of Georgia in 2018. Ms. Groh-Wargo was her campaign manager. They opened Fair Fight Action in late 2018.Feb. 11, 2021We met and became political partners a decade ago, uniting in a bid to stave off Democratic obsolescence and rebuild a party that would increase the clout of regular, struggling Georgians. Our mission was clear: organize people, help realize gains in their lives, win local races to build statewide competitiveness and hold power accountable.But the challenge was how to do that in a state where many allies had retreated into glum predictions of defeat, where our opponents reveled in shellacking Democrats at the polls and in the Statehouse.That’s not all we had to contend with. There was also a 2010 census undercount of people of color, a looming Republican gerrymander of legislative maps and a new Democratic president midway into his first term confronting a holdover crisis from the previous Republican administration. Though little in modern American history compares with the malice and ineptitude of the botched pandemic response or the attempted insurrection at the Capitol, the dynamic of a potentially inaccurate census and imminent partisan redistricting is the same story facing Democrats in 2021 as it was in 2011. State leaders and activists we know across the country who face total or partial Republican control are wondering which path they should take in their own states now — and deep into the next decade.Georgians deserved better, so we devised and began executing a 10-year plan to transform Georgia into a battleground state. As the world knows, President Biden won Georgia’s 16 electoral votes in November, and the January runoff elections for two Senate seats secured full congressional control for the Democratic Party. Yet the result wasn’t a miracle or truly a surprise, at least not to us. Years of planning, testing, innovating, sustained investment and organizing yielded the record-breaking results we knew they could and should. The lessons we learned can help other states looking to chart a more competitive future for Democrats and progressives, particularly those in the Sun Belt, where demographic change will precede electoral opportunity.We realize that many people are thinking about Stacey’s political future, but right now we intend to talk about the unglamorous, tedious, sometimes technical, often contentious work that creates a battleground state. When fully embraced, this work delivers wins — whether or not Donald Trump is on the ballot — as the growth Georgia Democrats have seen in cycle after cycle shows. Even in tough election years, we have witnessed the power of civic engagement on policy issues and increases in Democratic performance. This combination of improvements has also resulted in steady gains in local races and state legislative races, along with the continued narrowing of the statewide loss margin in election after election that finally flipped the state in 2020 and 2021.The task is hard, the progress can feel slow, and winning sometimes means losing better. In 2012, for example, we prevented the Republicans from gaining a supermajority in the Georgia House of Representatives, which would have allowed them to pass virtually any bill they wanted. We won four seats they had drawn for themselves, and in 2014 we maintained those gains — just holding our ground was a victory.The steps toward victory are straightforward: understand your weaknesses, organize with your allies, shore up your political infrastructure and focus on the long game. Georgia’s transformation is worth celebrating, and how it came to be is a long and complicated story, which required more than simply energizing a new coterie of voters. What Georgia Democrats and progressives accomplished here — and what is happening in Arizona and North Carolina — can be exported to the rest of the Sun Belt and the Midwest, but only if we understand how we got here.Understand why you’re losing.To know how to win, we first had to understand why a century of Democratic Party dominance in Georgia had been erased. For most of the 20th century, Georgia Democrats had existed in a strained alliance of rural conservatives, urban liberals and suburbanites, all unconvinced that voting Republican would serve their ends. After serving as the incubator of the Gingrich revolution in the early 1990s, Georgia turned sharply to the right. When Democrats lost U.S. Senate seats in 2002 and 2004, as well as the governorship in 2002, it showed that former conservative Democrats had fully turned Republican. The Democratic Party lost its grip on power. By 2010, Democrats were losing every statewide race, and in 2012 the State Senate fell to a Republican supermajority. Clearly, Democrats had to change tactics. More