Gaetz, Matt

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      Does It Matter That Investigators Are Closing In on Trump?

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      Gail Collins: Bret, which do you think is more of a threat to Trump’s political future, the classified document drama at Mar-a-Lago or the legal challenge to his businesses in New York?Bret Stephens: Gail, I suspect the most serious threats to Trump’s future, political or otherwise, are Big Macs and KFC buckets. Otherwise, I fear the various efforts to put the 45th president out of business or in prison make it considerably more likely that he’ll wind up in the White House as the 47th president. How about you?Gail: Sigh. You’re probably right but I’m still sorta hoping New York’s attorney general can hit him in the pocketbook. He’s super vulnerable when it comes to his shady finances — I’m even surprised he can find lawyers who have confidence they’ll keep being paid.Bret: No doubt the Trump Organization was run with the kind of fierce moral and financial rectitude you’d expect if Elizabeth Holmes had been put in charge of Enron. But the essential currency of Trumpism is drama, and what the New York and U.S. attorneys general have done is inject a whole lot more of it into Trump’s accounts.Gail: I don’t think the news that Letitia James accused him of fudging his financial statements will upset the base — they’ve always known this is a guy who responded to the World Trade Center terror attack by bragging that his tower was now the highest building in Lower Manhattan.Bret: A graceless building, by the way, far surpassed by the Chrysler Building, for those who care about architectural rivalries.Gail: Maybe I need to stop obsessing about this and take a look at the rest of the public world. Anything got your attention in particular?Bret: Am I allowed a rant?Gail: Bret, rants are … what we do.Bret: The investigation of Matt Gaetz, Republican of Florida, which looks like it’s about to fall apart, is an F.B.I. disgrace for the ages. It should force heads to roll. And Congress needs to appoint a Church-style committee or commission to reform the bureau. After the Ted Stevens fiasco, James Comey’s disastrous interventions with Hillary Clinton’s emails, and the bureau misrepresenting facts to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court as part of its investigation of Trump and Russia, something dramatic has to change to save the F.B.I. from continuing to lose public trust.Gail: Are you upset by the investigation or the fact that the investigation is failing?Bret: I’m upset by a longstanding pattern of incompetence tinged by what feels like political bias. I don’t like Gaetz’s politics or persona any more than you do. But what we seem to have here is a high-profile politician being convicted in the court of public opinion of some of the most heinous behavior imaginable — trafficking a minor for sex — until the Justice Department realizes two years late that its case has fallen apart. We have a presumption of innocence in this country because we tend to err the most when we assume the worst about the people we like the least.Gail: Nothing nobler than ranting about a basic moral principle on behalf of a deeply unattractive victim.Bret: He’s the yang to Lauren Boebert’s yin. But no American deserves to be smeared this way.Gail: While we’re on the general subject of crime let’s talk bail reform. Specifically, New York’s new system, under which a judge basically lets out arrestees not accused of violent felonies. New info suggests this may be increasing crime. But I’m sticking with my support for the concept. Suspects who haven’t yet been tried shouldn’t get different treatment based on their ability to come up with bail.Your turn …Bret: New York’s bail reform laws are egregious because we’re now the only state that forbids judges from considering the potential danger of a given suspect. It leads to crazy outcomes, like the guy who tried to stab Representative Lee Zeldin at a campaign stop in July and was released hours later.Another problem is that too many cities effectively decriminalized misdemeanors like shoplifting and have given up prosecuting a lot of felonies, which tends to encourage an anything-goes mentality among the criminally minded. We really need a new approach to crime, of the kind that Joe Biden and Bill Clinton pushed back in the early 1990s, when the Democrats finally determined to be a law-and-order party again.Gail: Biden’s generally held to a middle course that doesn’t drive anybody totally crazy. That’s why he got elected, after all. How would you say he’s doing these days?Bret: I’m giving him full marks on supporting Ukraine. And I know Democrats have this whole “Dark Brandon” thing given Biden’s legislative victories, along with the chance that Democrats might hold the Senate thanks to bad Republican candidates. But I still don’t see things going well. Food prices keep going up-up-up and we’re heading for a bad-bad-bad recession.You?Gail: Going for Not At All Bad. Otherwise known as N.A.A.B.Bret: I’m approaching the point of T.O.T.W.I. T.: The Only Thing Worse Is Trump.Gail: You’re way off.Biden may not have mobilized Congress the way we hoped, but he’s gotten quite a bit done — from funding the ever-popular infrastructure programs to reducing health care costs for the working and middle classes to finally, finally giving the Internal Revenue Service some funds to do its work more efficiently.But he lost you after infrastructure, right?Bret: He’s governed so much further to the left than I would have liked. Change of subject: What governor’s races are you following?Gail: It’s always a lot harder to focus on other states’ governors than the senators but I gotta admit this year I’m hooked on …Well, let’s start with one we’re going to disagree about. I’m guessing there’s no way you could be rooting for Beto O’Rourke in Texas, right?Bret: Ah, no, except as a performance artist. When are Texas Democrats going to nominate a centrist who stands a modest chance of winning a statewide race?What about the New York race? I don’t suppose you could have warm feelings for Lee Zeldin, could you?Gail: Well, to get Zeldin as their gubernatorial nominee, New York Republicans passed up a bid by Rudy’s son Andrew Giuliani, so I’d definitely put Zeldin in the Could Be Worse category.Bret: Hochul’s main achievement to date has been to get taxpayers to put up $850 million for a new Bills stadium in Buffalo. That makes her perfect for Albany, which I don’t mean as a compliment.Gail: Yeah, her Buffalo obsession is pretty irritating. But about Texas — Abbott is one of those Make Everything Worse Republicans, who most recently made the headlines by shipping busloads of migrants to northern cities. A move that did nothing to solve anything, but did help expose what a jerk he is.Really, nothing Beto has ever done is that awful.Bret: That’s because Beto has never done anything.One Democrat I am excited about is Maryland’s Wes Moore, whom I know slightly and impresses me greatly. His book, “The Other Wes Moore,” will soon be required reading the way Barack Obama’s “Dreams From My Father” used to be. And, just to be clear, that’s me saying that Moore could one day be president.Who else?Gail: Your bipartisanship is making me feel guilty. But about the governors — one other guy who fills me with rancor is my ongoing obsession, Ron DeSantis of Florida, who’s terrible in all the ways Abbott is terrible but much worse since he’s already a serious presidential candidate.Bret: And an effective governor who knows how to drive liberals crazy and whose state is attracting thousands of exiles from New York, California and other poorly governed, highly taxed blue states.Gail: Sorry but having empty space to develop and few social services to support doesn’t make you effective, just well positioned.But go on ….Bret: Speaking of DeSantis, how do you think he’d fare in a theoretical matchup against California’s Gavin Newsom?Gail: Oh boy, that’s pretty theoretical. DeSantis worries me because his policies are terrible — cruel and terrible. But he’s an obsessive campaigner with a smart pitch.Have to admit I don’t have much of a feel for Newsom — in general it’s hard to be a national candidate if you’re running as a Democrat from a state that’s very liberal. Liberal for good and historic reasons, but hard to sell to folks in Kansas or North Carolina.Here’s another Republican governor I’ve been mulling — what about Brian Kemp in Georgia?Bret: I’m generally not a fan of Southern Republicans. But Kemp did stand his ground against three election deniers: David Perdue in 2022, Donald Trump in 2020 and Stacey Abrams in 2018.Gail: Kemp is one of those Republicans — like Mike Pence and Liz Cheney — who I admire for their principled stands while realizing I would never vote for them. His abortion position, for instance, is appalling. So he goes in my Honorable But Wrong list.We’re cruising toward the final stage of the Senate campaigns, too, Bret. Let me leave you with the thought that Arizona is looking great for my side and Ohio maybe conceivably possible.Bret: And who’da thunk I’d be rooting for Democrats in both races?Gail: Wow. To be continued.Bret: In the meantime, Gail, I recommend reading Richard Sandomir’s beautiful obituary for two Jewish sisters who survived the Holocaust and passed away a few weeks ago in Alabama, 11 days apart. It’s a nice reminder of how much we all have to live for — and to wish all of our readers, Jewish or otherwise, a good and sweet new year.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Rebekah Jones Will Face Matt Gaetz in Florida in November

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      Representative Matt Gaetz, the far-right Republican who easily won his primary on Tuesday in Florida’s First Congressional District, will face a Democratic challenger in November who made national headlines early in the coronavirus pandemic.Rebekah D. Jones, a former data manager for the Florida Department of Health, defeated Peggy Schiller in the Democratic primary, according to The Associated Press, after a confusing legal back-and-forth over whether Ms. Jones was eligible to appear on the ballot.Just a day before the primary, a Florida appeals court ruled that Ms. Jones could remain on the ballot. That reversed the decision of a lower court judge who had said that she was ineligible because state law requires a candidate running in a partisan primary to sign an oath declaring membership in that party for at least the previous year.During a daylong trial this month, lawyers for Ms. Schiller had showed that Ms. Jones switched her party registration from Democrat to unaffiliated for two months in 2021, while she was briefly living in Maryland after clashing with the administration of Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida over coronavirus statistics.That clash put a spotlight on Ms. Jones in 2020, when she claimed that she had been fired from her government job for refusing to suppress virus data from the public. In what became a monthslong saga, Ms. Jones filed a whistle-blower complaint, turned into a vocal critic of Mr. DeSantis and was eventually criminally charged with accessing a state computer and downloading a file without authorization.The criminal case against Ms. Jones is pending. In May, an inspector general for the Department of Health found that three allegations that Ms. Jones had made against several health officials were “unsubstantiated.”Ms. Jones returned to Florida from Maryland in July last year. She filed to run for Congress against Mr. Gaetz in his heavily Republican district in the Panhandle.A three-judge panel from the state First District Court of Appeal ruled on Monday that the candidate oath signed by Ms. Jones could not be enforced because the law “provides no express authority to disqualify a party candidate if she was not in fact a registered party member during the 365-day window.”In the ruling, Judge Rachel E. Nordby, who was appointed by Mr. DeSantis, acknowledged that the decision “could invite bad actors to qualify for the ballot using false party affiliation statements to inject chaos into a party’s primary.”The ruling allowed any votes cast for Ms. Jones to count, and preliminary results showed she defeated Ms. Schiller. More

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      Panel Provides New Evidence That G.O.P. Members of Congress Sought Pardons

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      At least half a dozen Republican members of Congress sought pre-emptive pardons from President Donald J. Trump as he fought to remain in office after his defeat in the 2020 election, witnesses have told the House Jan. 6 committee, the panel disclosed on Thursday.Mr. Trump “had hinted at a blanket pardon for the Jan. 6 thing for anybody,” Mr. Trump’s former head of presidential personnel, Johnny McEntee, testified.Representative Matt Gaetz, Republican of Florida, appeared to ask for a broad pardon, not limited to his role in Mr. Trump’s effort to reverse the outcome of the election. Mr. Gaetz even invoked the pardoned former President Richard M. Nixon as he did so, Eric Herschmann, a White House lawyer for Mr. Trump, testified.“He mentioned Nixon, and I said, ‘Nixon’s pardon was never nearly that broad,’” Mr. Herschmann recounted.Representative Mo Brooks of Alabama sent an email seeking a pre-emptive pardon for all 147 members of Congress who objected to the certification of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s Electoral College win.A former adviser to Mark Meadows, Cassidy Hutchinson, testified that Mr. Gaetz, Representative Louie Gohmert of Texas, Representative Scott Perry of Pennsylvania and Representative Andy Biggs of Arizona all expressed interest in pardons.She also testified that Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio “talked about” pardons but did not directly ask for one, and that she heard of newly elected Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia also expressing interest to the White House Counsel’s Office.Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida arriving at the Capitol in May.Michael A. McCoy for The New York TimesTaken together, the former White House aides portrayed members of Congress concerned about potential exposure to prosecution in the wake of their support for Mr. Trump’s attempts to stay in power. And the accounts provided an extraordinary, under-penalty-of-perjury portrait of efforts to use a president’s broad clemency powers for nakedly political purposes.In a statement, Mr. Perry denied seeking a pardon. “I stand by my statement that I never sought a presidential pardon for myself or other members of Congress,” he said. “At no time did I speak with Miss Hutchinson, a White House scheduler, nor any White House staff about a pardon for myself or any other member of Congress — this never happened.”Ms. Greene posted a clip of Ms. Hutchinson on Twitter and added: “Saying ‘I heard’ means you don’t know. Spreading gossip and lies is exactly what the January 6th Witch Hunt Committee is all about.” Mr. Gohmert also denied making such a request, and condemned the committee for how it has comported itself. Mr. Biggs similarly said that Ms. Hutchinson was “mistaken,” and that her testimony was edited “deceptively.”Mr. Gaetz did not respond to a request for comment.Mr. Brooks confirmed seeking a pardon, but said it was because he believed the Justice Department would be “abused” by the Biden administration. He released the letter he sent the White House, in which he said he was putting the request in writing at the instruction of Mr. Trump.The fact that it had evidence that pardons were under discussion was previewed by the committee at an earlier hearing. And the panel previously revealed that a key figure in Mr. Trump’s efforts to subvert the results of the election, the conservative lawyer John Eastman, had emailed another Trump lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, after the Capitol riot, asking to be “on the pardon list, if that is still in the works.”Mr. Eastman appeared before the committee and invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination repeatedly.It is unclear whether Mr. Gaetz’s reported request for a blanket pardon was driven by concerns about his attempts to overturn the election or other potential criminality. At the time Mr. Gaetz made the request, he had just come under Justice Department investigation for sex-trafficking a minor. He has not been charged.The question of who was getting pardons, and for what, was a source of enormous consternation in the final days of the Trump White House. The House select committee is using the information about the pardons to describe a broader effort to protect people who carried out Mr. Trump’s desires.In his final weeks, Mr. Trump randomly offered pardons to former aides who were jarred because they were not sure what he thought they had done that was criminal, two former officials have said. Key Revelations From the Jan. 6 HearingsCard 1 of 6Making a case against Trump. More

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      McCarthy Feared G.O.P. Lawmakers Put ‘People in Jeopardy’ After Jan. 6

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      New audio recordings reveal Kevin McCarthy worried that comments by his far-right colleagues could incite violence. He said he would try to rein in the lawmakers, but has instead defended them.Representative Kevin McCarthy, the House Republican leader, feared in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 attack that several far-right members of Congress would incite violence against other lawmakers, identifying several by name as security risks in private conversations with party leaders.Mr. McCarthy talked to other congressional Republicans about wanting to rein in multiple hard-liners who were deeply involved in Donald J. Trump’s efforts to contest the 2020 election and undermine the peaceful transfer of power, according to an audio recording obtained by The New York Times.But Mr. McCarthy did not follow through on the sterner steps that some Republicans encouraged him to take, opting instead to seek a political accommodation with the most extreme members of the G.O.P. in the interests of advancing his own career.Mr. McCarthy’s remarks represent one of the starkest acknowledgments from a Republican leader that the party’s rank-and-file lawmakers played a role in stoking violence on Jan. 6, 2021 — and posed a threat in the days after the Capitol attack. Audio recordings of the comments were obtained in reporting for a forthcoming book, “This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden and the Battle for America’s Future.”In the phone call with other Republican leaders on Jan. 10, Mr. McCarthy referred chiefly to two representatives, Matt Gaetz of Florida and Mo Brooks of Alabama, as endangering the security of other lawmakers and the Capitol complex. But he and his allies discussed several other representatives who made comments they saw as offensive or dangerous, including Lauren Boebert of Colorado and Barry Moore of Alabama.The country was “too crazy,” Mr. McCarthy said, for members to be talking and tweeting recklessly at such a volatile moment.McCarthy Expresses Concern About Republican Lawmakers’ RhetoricOn a Jan. 10, 2021, conference call with House G.O.P. leaders, Representative Kevin McCarthy expresses concern that Republican lawmakers’ rhetoric could lead to someone getting hurt.Mr. Brooks and Mr. Gaetz were the prime offenders in the eyes of G.O.P. leaders. Mr. Brooks addressed the Jan. 6 rally on the National Mall, which preceded the Capitol riot, using incendiary language. After Jan. 6, Mr. Gaetz went on television to attack multiple Republicans who had criticized Mr. Trump, including Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, a member of the leadership team.Those comments by Mr. Gaetz alarmed Mr. McCarthy and his colleagues in leadership — particularly the reference to Ms. Cheney, who was already the target of threats and public abuse from Mr. Trump’s faction in the party because of her criticism of the defeated president.Mr. McCarthy considered remarks made by Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida a threat to the security of other lawmakers and the Capitol complex.Audra Melton for The New York Times“He’s putting people in jeopardy,” Mr. McCarthy said of Mr. Gaetz. “And he doesn’t need to be doing this. We saw what people would do in the Capitol, you know, and these people came prepared with rope, with everything else.”Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the No. 2 House Republican, suggested that Mr. Gaetz might be crossing a legal boundary.“It’s potentially illegal what he’s doing,” Mr. Scalise said.McCarthy on Comments by GaetzRepresentative Kevin McCarthy and Representative Steve Scalise, along with a number of aides, discuss Representative Matt Gaetz criticizing other Republicans by name in the days after the Jan. 6 attack.On Tuesday night, Mr. Gaetz responded with a blistering statement, castigating the two House Republican leaders as “weak men.”“While I was protecting President Trump from impeachment, they were protecting Liz Cheney from criticism,” he said.Mr. McCarthy, referring to Mr. Brooks, said the Trump loyalist had behaved even worse on Jan. 6 than Mr. Trump, who told the crowd assembled on the National Mall to “fight like hell” before his supporters stormed the Capitol in an attempt to disrupt the electoral vote count. Mr. Brooks told the rally that it was “the day American patriots start taking down names and kicking ass.”“You think the president deserves to be impeached for his comments?” Mr. McCarthy asked rhetorically. “That’s almost something that goes further than what the president said.”Representative Mo Brooks of Alabama gave a fiery speech at the Jan. 6 rally that preceded the Capitol riot.Jacquelyn Martin/Associated PressSpeaking about rank-and-file lawmakers to his fellow leaders, Mr. McCarthy was sharply critical and suggested he was going to tell them to stop their inflammatory conduct.“Our members have got to start paying attention to what they say, too, and you can’t put up with that,” he said, adding an expletive.McCarthy Says He ‘Can’t Put Up With’ Inflammatory TalkKevin McCarthy and Steve Scalise discuss incendiary comments made by multiple G.O.P. lawmakers on a Jan. 10, 2021, conference call with other Republican congressional leaders and their aides.Mr. McCarthy and Mr. Scalise did not respond to a request for comment.Mr. Brooks on Tuesday dismissed the Republican leader’s criticism and noted that a lawsuit brought against him by a Democratic member of Congress for his Jan. 6 speech had been dismissed in court.“Kevin McCarthy spoke before knowing the facts,” Mr. Brooks said, adding that he did not recall Mr. McCarthy ever speaking with him directly about his speech.During the Jan. 10, 2021, phone call, Mr. McCarthy was speaking with a small group of Republican leaders, including Mr. Scalise, Ms. Cheney and Representative Tom Emmer of Minnesota, as well as a number of aides.It was on this G.O.P. leadership call that Mr. McCarthy told his colleagues he would call Mr. Trump and tell him, “it would be my recommendation you should resign.”The House minority leader has in recent days lied about and tried to downplay his comments: Last week, after The Times reported the remarks, Mr. McCarthy called the report “totally false and wrong.” After Mr. McCarthy’s denial, a source who had confidentially shared a recording of the call with the book’s authors agreed to let The Times publish parts of the audio. In the days since that recording has been made public, the Republican leader has repeated his denial and emphasized that he never actually carried out his plan to urge Mr. Trump to quit.Mr. McCarthy’s comments casting other Republican lawmakers as a menace within Congress illustrate the difference between how he spoke about his own party right after Jan. 6, in what he imagined to be strict confidence, and the way he has interacted with those lawmakers in the 15 months since then.On the Jan. 10 call, Mr. McCarthy said he planned to speak with Mr. Gaetz and ask him not to attack other lawmakers by name. The following day, in a larger meeting for all House Republicans, Mr. McCarthy pleaded with lawmakers not to “incite” but rather to “respect one another.”McCarthy Calls for Party UnityKevin McCarthy tells Republican lawmakers during a meeting of the G.O.P. conference on Jan. 11, 2021, that they should not attack each other over their views on the 2020 election.But in his determination to become speaker of the House after the 2022 elections, Mr. McCarthy has spent much of the last year forging a closer political partnership with the far right, showing little public concern that his most extreme colleagues could instigate bloodshed with their overheated or hateful rhetoric.In recent months Mr. McCarthy has opposed punishing Republican members of Congress who have been accused of inciting violence, including Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and, most recently, Representative Paul Gosar of Arizona, who posted an animated video on social media that depicted him killing Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, the left-wing Democrat.Capitol Riot’s Aftermath: Key DevelopmentsCard 1 of 3Trump allies’ involvement. 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      New Details Underscore House G.O.P. Role in Jan. 6 Planning

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      A court filing and newly disclosed text messages provide additional evidence of how closely some fervent pro-Trump lawmakers worked with the White House on efforts to overturn the election.WASHINGTON — It was less than two weeks before President Donald J. Trump’s staunchest allies in Congress would have what they saw as their last chance to overturn the 2020 election, and Representative Scott Perry, Republican of Pennsylvania, was growing anxious.“Time continues to count down,” he wrote in a text message to Mark Meadows, then the White House chief of staff, adding: “11 days to 1/6 and 25 days to inauguration. We gotta get going!”It has been clear for more than a year that ultraconservative members of Congress were deeply involved in attempts to keep Mr. Trump in power: They joined baseless lawsuits, spread the lie of widespread election fraud and were among the 147 Republicans who voted on Jan. 6, 2021, against certifying President Biden’s victory in at least one state.But in a court filing and in text messages obtained by CNN, new pieces of evidence have emerged in recent days fleshing out the degree of their involvement with the Trump White House in strategy sessions, at least one of which included discussions about encouraging Mr. Trump’s supporters to march to the Capitol on Jan. 6, despite warnings of potential violence. Some continued to push to try to keep Mr. Trump in office even after a mob of his supporters attacked the complex.“In our private chat with only Members, several are saying the only way to save our Republic is for Trump to call for Marshall law,” Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, wrote to Mr. Meadows on Jan. 17, 2021, misspelling the word “martial.” The revelations underscore how integrated Mr. Trump’s most fervent allies in Congress were into the effort to overturn the election on several fronts, including a scheme to appoint pro-Trump electors from states won by Mr. Biden — even after they were told such a plan was unlawful — and how they strategized to pressure their fellow lawmakers to go along.The fake electors scheme, the question of how demonstrators at Mr. Trump’s rally on the Ellipse on Jan. 6 were directed toward the Capitol and the plotting in the White House and on Capitol Hill about the potential for Vice President Mike Pence to block or delay certification of the results are at the heart not just of the inquiry by the House select committee on Jan. 6 but also of an expanding criminal inquiry by the Justice Department.“If there was a level of coordination that was designed not just to exercise First Amendment rights, but to interfere with Congress, as it certified the electoral count, then we’re in a whole different universe,” said Joyce Vance, a law professor at the University of Alabama and a former U.S. attorney. “There’s a difference between assembling and protesting, and trying to interfere with the smooth transfer of power.”Cassidy Hutchinson, a former aide to Mr. Meadows, told the House committee that she recalled at least 11 members of Congress who were involved in discussions with White House officials about overturning the election, including plans to pressure Mr. Pence to throw out electoral votes from states won by Mr. Biden.She said members of Congress involved in the discussions at various points included Mr. Perry; Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio; Representatives Andy Biggs, Paul Gosar and Debbie Lesko of Arizona; Representative Mo Brooks of Alabama; Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida; Representative Jody Hice and Ms. Greene of Georgia; Representative Louie Gohmert of Texas; and Representative Lauren Boebert of Colorado.“They felt that he had the authority to — pardon me if my phrasing isn’t correct on this, but — send votes back to the states or the electors back to the states,” Ms. Hutchinson testified, adding that they had appeared to embrace a plan promoted by the conservative lawyer John Eastman that members of both parties have likened to a blueprint for a coup.Ms. Hutchinson said that Mr. Perry, Mr. Gaetz and Mr. Gohmert were present when White House lawyers told the group that the plan to use so-called alternative electors was not “legally sound,” but that Mr. Meadows allowed it to move forward nonetheless.Cassidy Hutchinson, left, a former aide to Mark Meadows, has testified to the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack.Jonathan Ernst/ReutersText messages show that Mr. Biggs embraced the plan early on, writing to Mr. Meadows on Nov. 6 that while it was “highly controversial, it can’t be much more controversial than the lunacy that were sitting out there now.”Mr. Jordan continued to push the strategy to the end, sending a message to Mr. Meadows on Jan. 5: “Vice President Mike Pence, as President of the Senate, should call out all electoral votes that he believes are unconstitutional as no electoral votes at all.”Mr. Jordan has criticized the Jan. 6 committee for publishing only a partial version of this text that did not make clear he was forwarding the legal advice of a conservative lawyer.Ms. Hutchinson also testified that in one discussion, Mr. Perry, who now leads the right-wing House Freedom Caucus, endorsed the idea of encouraging supporters to march to the Capitol, and that no one on the call objected to the proposal. She made clear that the members of Congress were “inclined to go with White House guidance” about directing a crowd to the Capitol.Ms. Hutchinson testified that in one discussion, Representative Scott Perry, Republican of Pennsylvania, endorsed the idea of encouraging supporters to march to the Capitol.Oliver Contreras for The New York TimesSome Republican members of Congress agreed to speak at rallies outside the building meant to further encourage the disruption of the peaceful transition of power.Mr. Brooks and Mr. Biggs — both members of the Freedom Caucus — were scheduled to speak on Jan. 6 at a rally planned for the east side of the Capitol by the prominent Stop the Steal organizer Ali Alexander, according to a permit application. The application, dated Dec. 21, 2020, noted that “the MOC” — or members of Congress — “have been confirmed.”Less than 10 days later, according to an addendum to the permit application, Mr. Alexander filed an expanded list of speakers that included more far-right members of Congress, among them Mr. Gosar, Ms. Boebert and Ms. Greene, who formally took office on Jan. 3, 2021. None of these speakers actually appeared at the event, which was never held because of the violence that erupted at the Capitol.Mr. Brooks, however, did appear at a public event on Jan. 6, speaking at Mr. Trump’s event at the Ellipse near the White House with body armor underneath his black and yellow jacket.“Today is the day American patriots start taking down names and kicking ass,” Mr. Brooks told a huge crowd of Mr. Trump’s supporters, adding, “Are you willing to do what it takes to fight for America?”Representative Mo Brooks, Republican of Alabama, appeared at President Donald J. Trump’s rally on the Ellipse on Jan. 6.Jacquelyn Martin/Associated PressConservative members of Congress also amplified Mr. Trump’s efforts to fight the election results, echoing his aggressive posture on social media and in television interviews.Capitol Riot’s Aftermath: Key DevelopmentsCard 1 of 3McCarthy’s outrage. More

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      McCarthy Threatens Technology Firms That Comply With Riot Inquiry

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      The top House Republican said his party would retaliate against any company that cooperated with an order to preserve the phone and social media records of G.O.P. lawmakers.WASHINGTON — Representative Kevin McCarthy, the House Republican leader, has threatened to retaliate against any company that complies with the congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot, after the panel asked dozens of firms to preserve the phone and social media records of 11 far-right members of Congress who pushed to overturn the results of the 2020 election.Mr. McCarthy’s warning was an escalation of his efforts to thwart a full accounting of the deadly attack at the Capitol carried out by a pro-Trump mob, and his latest attempt to insulate the former president and Republican lawmakers from scrutiny of any ties to the violence. It came after he led the G.O.P. opposition to the creation of an independent bipartisan commission to investigate the riot, and then pulled five Republican congressmen from the select committee that Democrats created on their own, boycotting the proceedings.In preservation orders the special committee sent to 35 technology firms this week, members of the panel included the names of hundreds of people whose records they might want to review, among them some of Donald J. Trump’s most ardent allies in Congress, according to several people familiar with the documents who were not authorized to speak about their contents.The 11 Republicans are Representatives Andy Biggs and Paul Gosar of Arizona, Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Mo Brooks of Alabama, Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina, Matt Gaetz of Florida, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Louie Gohmert of Texas, Jody B. Hice of Georgia, Jim Jordan of Ohio and Scott Perry of Pennsylvania.The preservation demands were accompanied by a statement that said the committee was merely “gathering facts, not alleging wrongdoing by any individual.” But the inclusion of the Republicans’ names, reported earlier by CNN, indicated that the panel planned to scrutinize any role they may have played in fueling the violence.“These are the individuals who have been publicly supportive of Jan. 6 and the people who participated in the insurrection on Jan. 6,” Representative Bennie G. Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and the panel’s chairman, said in an interview.“We need to find out exactly what their level of participation in this event was,” he said. “If you helped raise money, if you provided misinformation to people, if you served on a planning committee — whatever your role in Jan. 6, I think the public has a right to know.”The panel has not asked to preserve the records of Mr. McCarthy, who has said he had a tense phone call with Mr. Trump as the mob laid siege to the Capitol, but Mr. Thompson said the top Republican’s name could yet be added.Mr. Thompson said Mr. McCarthy’s protestations were “typical of somebody who may or may not have been involved in Jan. 6 and doesn’t want that information to become public.”On Tuesday, Mr. McCarthy said Republicans would “not forget” and “hold accountable” those tech companies that preserve records sought by the committee. His remarks followed denunciations of the committee’s work by Representative Jim Banks, Republican of Indiana, who has called the panel’s tactics “authoritarian,” and Mr. Trump, who has called it a “partisan sham.”Ms. Greene threatened on Fox News that telecommunications companies that cooperated with the investigation would be “shut down.”Mr. McCarthy asserted, without citing any law, that it would be illegal for the technology companies to cooperate with the inquiry, even though congressional investigations have obtained phone records before. He said that if his party won control of the House, it would use its power to punish any that did.“If these companies comply with the Democrat order to turn over private information, they are in violation of federal law and subject to losing their ability to operate in the United States,” Mr. McCarthy wrote on Twitter on Tuesday. “If companies still choose to violate federal law, a Republican majority will not forget and will stand with Americans to hold them fully accountable under the law.”Representative Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland and a member of the committee, said he was stunned by Mr. McCarthy’s remarks, describing them as akin to obstructing an investigation.“He is leveling threats against people cooperating with a congressional investigation,” Mr. Raskin said. “That’s an astounding turn of events. Why would the minority leader of the House of Representatives not be interested in our ability to get all of the facts in relation to the Jan. 6 attack?”Barbara L. McQuade, a former U.S. attorney and University of Michigan law professor, called Mr. McCarthy’s claims “baseless,” noting that the panel had not requested the content of any communication.“He is falsely portraying the committee as overreaching so that he can protect his own political interests, to the detriment of Congress’s ability to do its job and the public trust in our institutions of government,” she said.In the past week, the select committee has ramped up its work, taking three wide-ranging investigative steps: a records demand to seven federal agencies focusing in part on any ties Mr. Trump may have had to the attack’s planning or execution; a document demand to 15 social media companies for material about efforts to overturn the election and domestic violent extremists who may have been involved; and the record preservation orders including the Republican representatives.The 11 Republicans include lawmakers who spearheaded the effort to challenge the election outcome in Congress on Jan. 6 and those who played at least some role in the “Stop the Steal” effort to protest the results, including promoting rallies around the country and the one in Washington whose attendees attacked the Capitol.Some of the lawmakers named in the order have continued to publicly spread the election lies that inspired the riot, and to allude to the possibility of more violence to come. Mr. Cawthorn falsely claimed on Sunday that the election had been “rigged” and “stolen,” telling a crowd in Franklin, N.C., that if elections were not safeguarded in the future, it could result in “bloodshed.”The select committee has been meeting twice a week, even during Congress’s summer recess, as its members plan their next steps. Mr. Thompson said two more hearings were in the works, one to dig deeper into the pressure campaign Mr. Trump and his allies started to overturn President Biden’s victory, and another to explore who encouraged militia and extremist groups to come to Washington before the assault.Representative Bennie G. Thompson, right, and members of the select committee have ramped up their work in the past week. Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times“There’s a concern on the committee about the executive branch leaning on state elected officials to change the outcome of the election,” Mr. Thompson said. “There’s concern about the identification with domestic terrorist organizations and their participation and encouragement to participate in the Jan. 6 march and insurrection.”Last week, the panel sought communications among top Trump administration officials about attempts to place politically loyal personnel in senior positions in the run-up to the attack; the planning and funding of pro-Trump rallies on Jan. 5 and 6; and other attempts to stop or slow the process of Mr. Trump handing over the presidency to Mr. Biden.It demanded records of communications between the White House and Ali Alexander, who publicized the “Stop the Steal” rallies, as well as Tom Van Flein, Mr. Gosar’s chief of staff.Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California and a committee member, said the requests were “broad” by design as the panel sought to produce a “comprehensive report.” He said they could be expanded to include more members of Congress if evidence emerges to suggest it is necessary.“We know that there are members who were involved in the ‘Stop the Steal’ rally; we know that there are members who had direct communications with the president while the attack on the Capitol was going on,” he said. “There are any number of members who have very pertinent information.”On Friday, the panel sent letters to 15 social media companies — including sites where misinformation about election fraud spread, such as the pro-Trump website theDonald.win — seeking any documents in their possession pertaining to efforts to overturn the election and any domestic violent extremists associated with the Jan. 6 rally and attack.The committee had already asked for records on extremist groups and militias that were present at the Capitol that day, including QAnon, the Proud Boys, Stop the Steal, the Oath Keepers and the Three Percenters. A person familiar with the committee’s discussions said its members intended to investigate more deeply plans among militia groups to coordinate.At least 10 suspected militia extremists attended paramilitary training in Ohio, Florida and North Carolina before the breach, according to court documents. Suspected domestic violent extremists also “coordinated efforts to bring tactical equipment to the event, presumably in anticipation of violence,” according to an April homeland security analysis obtained by The New York Times through a public records request filed by the group Property of the People.“There were undoubtedly insurrectionist groups that were dead-set on committing violence,” Mr. Raskin said. “If you listen to their chatter post-Jan. 6, it’s all abut how close they came, and next time they will be carrying arms.”The records preservation request delivered on Monday asked telecommunications companies to keep on file information about cell tower locations, text messages and call logs, and information uploaded to cloud storage systems.Representative Zoe Lofgren, Democrat of California and a member of the committee, emphasized that the request was “an investigation, not an accusation.”“We’ll see what we find out,” she said. “It’s fair to say you didn’t have 10,000 people just happen to show up and attack Capitol Police officers, maim them and threaten to kill the vice president and members of Congress just because they felt like it. There was a reason, there was a structure to this, and we need to uncover everything about that.” More

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      In Iowa, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz Take Trump's Baton

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      At a rally in Des Moines, Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz showed that many Republicans do not plan to move on from the Trump era.DES MOINES — Far from Washington, and even farther from their home congressional districts, Representatives Matt Gaetz of Florida and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia found their people.As the two Republican lawmakers spoke at an “America First” rally in Des Moines, held in an auditorium that often hosts people with presidential aspirations, up was down and misinformation was gospel. Ms. Greene denounced Covid-19 vaccines to applause. Both declared former President Donald J. Trump the rightful winner of the 2020 election.These were facts, argued Eric Riedinger of Des Moines, 62, a small-business owner who attended the event and owns the website BigTrumpFan.com. And he would not vote for any Republican who failed to state this clearly, he said.“My biggest issue looking ahead: Stop the RINOs,” he said, using a pejorative conservative phrase for ‘Republicans in Name Only.’ “If they’re part of that infrastructure bill and supporting it, they’re not doing what they’re supposed to be doing.”The fringe of the Republican Party is sick of being called the fringe. Led by people like Ms. Greene and Mr. Gaetz, two upstart members of Congress with little legislative power and few allies in their party’s caucus, these conservatives believe they have assets more valuable than Washington clout: a shared language with the party’s base, and a political intuition that echoes Mr. Trump’s.In the months since the former president left the White House, Republican donors and party leaders have flocked to more established figures like Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida and Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, stirring buzz for their presidential prospects. At the same time, right-wing Republicans like Ms. Greene and Mr. Gaetz are loudly making the case that the post-Trump version of the Republican Party won’t swing back toward the center but will double down on the former president’s most controversial qualities.With that in mind, the two Republicans traveled to Iowa with a message about their fellow conservatives. It was not enough, they suggested, to insult Democrats as traitors to America or to cast doubt on the effectiveness of Covid vaccines and the legitimacy of the 2020 election. They told rally attendees that winning back the House in 2022 would be useless without more “America First” Republicans and that beating President Biden would require a full embrace of Mr. Trump.They sought to up the rhetorical ante on issue after issue, creating new litmus tests for their conservative rivals in the process.“Last time Republicans had full control, the first year under President Trump, Republicans didn’t fund and build the wall,” Ms. Greene said to the crowd of about 200 people. “Republicans didn’t defund sanctuary cities, they funded them. And this is the one that blows my mind: They did not defund Planned Parenthood.”She added, “This time around, Republicans need to take back the House with people that are going to do as they say.”Mr. Gaetz said that unlike many Republicans in Congress, he and Ms. Greene did not take corporate donations, arguing that many in the party were “too often shills for big business.” (Both of them, especially Ms. Greene, have demonstrated small-dollar fund-raising prowess.)In interviews, Republicans who went to the rally or who have followed Ms. Greene and Mr. Gaetz from afar said the pair’s efforts should not be discounted. In 2016, Mr. Trump stormed through the Republican primary and swept to power after party leaders underestimated the grass-roots appetite for his openly anti-immigrant language, his insults toward G.O.P. leaders and his economic message that targeted some corporations.Ms. Greene visited the Republican Party booth at the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines on Thursday.Scott Olson/Getty ImagesNow, Mr. Gaetz and Ms. Greene appear intent on doing the same thing, to set the table for another presidential run by Mr. Trump or to send a warning shot to any would-be successors.If their bet is correct and the Republican base has left the Trump era wanting more of his bombastic style, it will have profound effects on the country’s political landscape. At minimum, Trump loyalists have shown themselves to be a stubborn force, threatening to pull additional congressional and presidential candidates into the waters of misinformation and racial intolerance.Kathy Pietraszewski, a 69-year-old rally attendee from Des Moines, said she had formally left the Republican Party after the 2020 election because she believed leaders were insufficiently supportive of Mr. Trump’s attempts to overturn the results. Recently, she has focused on speaking out against Covid vaccines, which is part of the reason she likes Ms. Greene.“I know what the globalist agenda is, and their one world order starts with a vaccine,” Ms. Pietraszewski said. “So my No. 1 issue is freedom.”Polling and voter registration data suggest she is not alone. The Republican base, unlike the Democratic one, has a much higher tolerance for politicians who criticize their own party, and many Republicans still want Mr. Trump to be involved in the party’s future, according to a recent Associated Press-NORC poll. Vaccine skepticism and distrust in the 2020 election results are also high among conservative Americans. In May, a Quinnipiac University poll found that two-thirds of Republicans believed Mr. Biden’s victory was not legitimate.However, both Ms. Greene and Mr. Gaetz face significant hurdles to advancing their political careers.Mr. Gaetz is the subject of a Justice Department investigation of whether he had a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old and paid for her to travel with him, according to people briefed on the matter. Ms. Greene has set off a series of controversies since she took office early this year, repeatedly using antisemitic and Islamophobic language and endorsing the executions of Democrats.Ms. Greene has since been stripped of her House committee assignments, but she has found an audience with Mr. Trump and his allies in the conservative media ecosystem. Several attendees at the Iowa rally said they had heard about her appearance there from a podcast run by Steve Bannon, the former Trump adviser.“We know what American people want,” Ms. Greene said. “We know for a fact what you want. We don’t buy into the swamp.”In Washington, the two members of Congress are treated like little more than a media sideshow, a nuisance for Republican leaders. They do not have traditional legislative power, and antics like Ms. Greene’s promise to bring impeachment articles against Mr. Biden gain no traction in Congress.Their words support Mr. Trump’s core policies: cutting immigration, attacking liberal messaging on race and policing, targeting big tech companies. But Brian Robinson, a Republican strategist from Georgia, said there was a big difference between someone who excites activists and someone who has Mr. Trump’s universal name recognition and business-friendly persona.“A person like Marjorie Taylor Greene attracts crowds and attention because they are speaking to an audience that feels marginalized but also mobilized, because they’re angry,” he said.“But revving up certain segments of the party can also alienate other parts of the party,” he added, saying the same thing happens to Democrats.Michael Murphy, a Republican consultant based in California, said, “They fascinate the media,” but added that “as far as real muscle, even in the Republican primary, they’re just one of many factions.”Still, Ms. Greene and Mr. Gaetz may have the next-best thing, according to rally attendees, other close watchers of the Republican Party and even some liberals. They are messengers of the type of white grievance politics that Mr. Trump deployed nationally. They say openly what others will only hint at, no matter its factual basis or the risk of backlash. And they speak with the fearful moral urgency that many Republican voters feel.“It’s hard for me to think about 2024, because I don’t know if we’ll make it there,” Ms. Pietraszewski said, expressing dire worries about the country’s future. “With the Black Lives Matter and Marxism and critical race theory, I don’t know.”At the rally, Ms. Greene called Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, who is Somali-born, “a traitor to America.” Mr. Gaetz said that Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III, the first Black person to serve in that role, “might be the stupidest person to have ever served in a presidential cabinet in America’s history.” Ms. Greene declared that the United States faced a new “axis of evil” made up of the news media, Democrats and big tech companies. They both promised to support the Jan. 6 Capitol rioters who had been arrested.Each comment drew applause.“I’m not voting for anyone who won’t say Donald Trump had the election stolen from him,” said Ron James, a 68-year-old retiree from Des Moines. “And I don’t think anyone in that room would, either.” More

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      Elise Stefanik and the Young Republicans Who Sold Out Their Generation

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      Once upon a time, a shiny new trio of young conservatives — Ryan Costello, Carlos Curbelo and Elise Stefanik — wanted to help build a modern, millennial Republican Party. The 30-somethings, all sworn into Congress in 2015, understood that millennials often agreed on many of the nation’s core problems, and believed it was up to them to offer conservative solutions. They were out to create a new G.O.P. for the 21st century.“Whether it’s environmental policy or immigration policy, the younger generations are more open to the America of tomorrow,” Mr. Curbelo told me in 2018, when I interviewed him for a book about millennial political leaders. “We certainly have a lot of work to do on all those issues. The good news is that we have a lot of younger Republicans in Congress, and they all get it.”It was clear, even then, that millennial voters across the political spectrum cared more about issues like racial diversity, L.G.B.T.Q. rights and college affordability than their parents did. Polls showed that young Republicans were more moderate on some issues than older ones, particularly on questions of immigration and climate change.So Mr. Curbelo and Ms. Stefanik teamed up to fight for immigration reform, particularly for protections for young immigrants. They refused to join the right wing’s fight against marriage equality, likely recognizing that most young people embraced L.G.B.T.Q. rights. And Ms. Stefanik introduced a 2017 resolution, along with Mr. Costello and Mr. Curbelo, calling for American innovation to fight climate change — one of the strongest climate change statements to come out of the Republican Party in years. (Some octogenarian Republicans remained skeptical of climate science; just two years earlier, Senator Jim Inhofe brought a snowball onto the Senate floor to prove that global warming was a hoax.)But their visions of the “America of tomorrow” hadn’t foreseen Donald Trump.By 2018, Mr. Trump’s antics had helped lead Mr. Costello to opt for early retirement. That fall Mr. Curbelo, a sharp critic of the president, lost his re-election bid. Mia Love, the only Black Republican woman in Congress, was also defeated in the Democratic wave that year. Another young House Republican, Justin Amash, left the party in the face of Trumpism and dropped his bid for re-election in 2020. And Will Hurd, a young moderate and one of the few Black Republicans in the House in recent years, also decided not to run again.Ms. Stefanik is one of the few of this set who survived, but only by transforming into a MAGA warrior. By 2020, she was co-chairing Mr. Trump’s campaign and embracing his conspiracy theories about a stolen election. Her pivot paid off: This month, she was elected to the No. 3 position in the House Republican Party. She is now the highest-ranking woman and most powerful millennial in the House G.O.P.But a comparison of her past goals and present ambitions makes clear that Ms. Stefanik has morphed from optimist to operator, choosing short-term power over the long-term health of her party.When I interviewed Ms. Stefanik in 2018 and 2019, she seemed to understand that the Republican Party was in trouble with young people. “The G.O.P. needs to prioritize reaching out to younger voters,” she told me. “Millennials bring a sense of bipartisanship and really rolling up our sleeves and getting things done.” Now she has tied her political career to the man who has perhaps done more than any other Republican to drive young voters away from her party, resulting in surging youth turnout for Democrats in the 2018 and 2020 elections.Ms. Stefanik’s rise — and her colleagues’ fall — is not just a parable of Trumpism. It’s a broader omen for a party struggling to reach a 21st-century electorate. She ascended by embracing a movement that is all about relitigating the past rather than welcoming the future. Now she and other new Trump loyalists in Congress are caught between their party and their generations, stuck between their immediate ambitions and the long-term trends. The G.O.P. has embraced a political form of youth sacrifice, immolating their hopes for young supporters in order to appease an ancient, vengeful power.Of course, the road to political obsolescence is littered with the bones of political analysts like me who predicted that demographics would be destiny. But Mr. Trump didn’t just devastate the G.O.P.’s fledgling class of up-and-coming talent. He also rattled the already precarious loyalty of young Republican voters; from December 2015 to March 2017, nearly half of Republicans under 30 left the party, according to Pew. Many returned, but by 2017, nearly a quarter of young conservatives had defected.Millennials and Gen Zers were already skeptical of the G.O.P., but Mr. Trump alienated them even further. His campaign of white grievance held little appeal for the two most racially diverse generations in U.S. history. Youth voter turnout was higher in 2020 than it was in 2016, with 60 percent of young voters picking Joe Biden. His youth vote margin was sufficient to put him over the top in key states like Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia, according to an analysis by Tufts University, and young voters of color were particularly energized.Contrary to conventional wisdom that young people are always liberal and older people are always conservative, most voters form their political attitudes when they’re young and tend to stay roughly consistent as they age. And anti-Trumpism may now be one of the most durable political values of Americans under 50. By the end of Mr. Trump’s presidency, after the Jan. 6 insurrection, almost three-quarters of Americans under 50 said they strongly disapproved of him. Even young Republicans were cooling off: According to a new CBS poll, Republicans under 30 were more than twice as likely as those older than 44 to believe that Mr. Biden was the legitimate winner of the 2020 election and roughly twice as likely to believe the party shouldn’t follow Mr. Trump’s lead on race issues.“Younger conservatives aren’t focused on the election being stolen or the cultural sound bites,” said Benji Backer, the president of the American Conservation Coalition, a conservative climate action group. He told me that Ms. Stefanik had “distanced herself from the youth conservation movement,” after years of being one of the most climate-conscious Republicans in Congress. Now, he said, “peddling misinformation about the election and Jan. 6 has made it harder for young people to look up to her as a future voice in the party.”The new G.O.P. of 2015 has been replaced by a newer G.O.P.: a cohort of young Republican leaders who seem far more concerned with owning the libs on social media than with proposing conservative solutions to issues that matter to young people.This cohort includes millennials like Representative Matt Gaetz and Representative Lauren Boebert as well as Representative Madison Cawthorn, a Gen Z-er, all Trump loyalists who voted to overturn the electoral vote result. Mr. Gaetz introduced a bill to terminate the Environmental Protection Agency, Ms. Boebert introduced a bill to designate antifa as a “domestic terrorist organization,” and Mr. Cawthorn has so embraced the Trumpian ethos of rhetoric as leadership that he once said he “built my staff around comms rather than legislation.”It’s clear that this version of the Republican Party is firmly the party of old people: Mr. Gaetz and Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene kicked off their America First tour with a Trumpian rally at the Villages, Florida’s famous retirement community.Once, the young leaders of the G.O.P. were trying to present next-generation solutions to next-generation problems. Now they’ve traded their claim on the future for an obsession with the past.Charlotte Alter is a senior correspondent at Time and the author of “The Ones We’ve Been Waiting For: How a New Generation of Leaders Will Transform America.”The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More