Greene, Marjorie Taylor (1974- )

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      Democratic Dollars Flow Once Again to Likely Lost Causes

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      New fund-raising figures show emerging Democratic stars like Marcus Flowers in Georgia and Gary Chambers Jr. in Louisiana, with no clear path to victory.Gary Chambers Jr. burst onto the national scene in 2020 with a viral video of him castigating the racism of the East Baton Rouge school district. Now, he has captured the hearts and wallets of young liberals with a video for his improbable Senate campaign that shows him smoking a large joint and calling for the legalization of marijuana.He has almost no paths to victory over a sitting Republican senator in a red state like Louisiana. But he has raised $1.2 million.The same most likely goes for the Rev. Jasmine Beach-Ferrara, a gay minister who has raised $1.4 million to oust Representative Madison Cawthorn, the far-right Republican, from his North Carolina seat. And for Marcus Flowers, a cowboy-hat-wearing veteran in Georgia who raised $2.4 million just in the first three months of the year to try to dislodge Marjorie Taylor Greene from a heavily Republican district.Every election year in recent cycles, celebrity Democratic candidates have emerged — either on the strength of their personalities, the notoriety of their Republican opponents or both — to rake in campaign cash, then lose impossible elections. Some Democrats say such races are draining money from more winnable campaigns, but the candidates insist that even in losing, they are helping the party by pulling voters in for statewide races, bolstering the Democratic brand and broadening the party’s appeal.“We are asking folks to join us, join us in winning this race and doing the organizing we need,” Ms. Beach-Ferrara said in an interview, “and to say we can’t look at the map and say we aren’t running there. When you do that you get a Madison Cawthorn in office.”As first-quarter fund-raising numbers roll in, the stars are emerging. The biggest bucks belong to incumbents. Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, a Republican widely viewed as vulnerable this year, was criticized six years ago for anemic fund-raising; this time around, he raised nearly $8.7 million in the first quarter. Senator Raphael Warnock, a Georgia Democrat facing a difficult re-election, raised $13.6 million against the $5.2 million raised by his main Republican opponent, Herschel Walker.Competitive races are already awash in money. Representative Val Demings, Democrat of Florida, raised more than $10 million to challenge Senator Marco Rubio, who raised $5.8 million.A Guide to the 2022 Midterm ElectionsMidterms Begin: The Texas primaries officially opened the 2022 election season. See the full primary calendar.In the Senate: Democrats have a razor-thin margin that could be upended with a single loss. Here are the four incumbents most at risk.In the House: Republicans and Democrats are seeking to gain an edge through redistricting and gerrymandering, though this year’s map is poised to be surprisingly fairGovernors’ Races: Georgia’s contest will be at the center of the political universe, but there are several important races across the country.Key Issues: Inflation, the pandemic, abortion and voting rights are expected to be among this election cycle’s defining topics.Then there’s Mr. Flowers, whose $2.4 million haul in the first quarter easily topped Ms. Greene’s $1.1 million, in a Northwest Georgia district that has given Republicans 75 percent of the vote since it was created in 2012.Mr. Flowers has proved remarkably adept at raising small-dollar donations with a barrage of emails — sometimes multiple emails each day — that capitalize on the behavior of the far-right congresswoman he is running against. An Army veteran who served in combat, he has emphasized his military service, talking tough while attacking Ms. Greene’s sympathy for the Jan. 6 rioters and far-right conspiracy theories.Jon Soltz, the co-founder and chairman of VoteVets.org, a liberal veterans organization that gave Mr. Flowers the maximum allowable contribution, said support was not necessarily about winning the seat but holding Ms. Greene in check and using his run to elevate her profile as the face of the Republican Party in suburban districts that are more winnable.“She can’t be free to travel around the country and spew her lies and disinformation,” Mr. Soltz said. “We’re making her spend her money.”In the process, Mr. Flowers can build name recognition for future runs and might energize the Democrats who live in Northwest Georgia to come out and vote for him, Mr. Warnock and the Democratic candidate for governor, Stacey Abrams.The Rev. Jasmine Beach-Ferrara, a Democrat, is running against Representative Madison Cawthorn.Angeli Wright/Asheville Citizen-TimesMr. Cawthorn appeared at a rally with former President Donald J. Trump this month in Selma, N.C.Veasey Conway for The New York TimesMs. Beach-Ferrara is similarly buoyed by her opponent, Mr. Cawthorn, the young face of far-right conservatism in the Trump era. A married lesbian mother of three, Ms. Beach-Ferrara insists her unlikely life story will help her in a district where an influx of politically active outsiders in the Asheville area could change the region’s direction.North Carolina’s 11th House district, with new lines, is slightly less Republican than it was in 2020, when Mr. Cawthorn was first elected. She said Mr. Trump still would have won it by 10 percentage points but the state’s Democratic governor, Roy Cooper, would have lost by only 4 points.Her advantage two years later comes from disenchantment with Mr. Cawthorn, whose antics — he has called Ukraine’s president a thug and most recently said his colleagues had invited him to cocaine-filled orgies — have prompted seven Republicans to challenge him in the upcoming primary.“As people walk away from Cawthorn, our job is to meet them,” she said, adding, “For those who don’t know what to make of a gay Christian minister, what is very clear with them is I’m being honest with them from the start.”In Senator John Kennedy, Republican of Louisiana, Mr. Chambers does not have the villain that Democrats have made nationally of Ms. Greene. His campaign is based on his irreverent appeal — an outspoken Black progressive voice willing to smoke weed in a commercial, burn a Confederate flag and call white school board members racist to their faces for defending a school named after Robert E. Lee.He raised $800,000 in the first three months of the year from 18,500 donors. The average contribution was $41, many of those small-dollar donors youthful and excited, the campaign said.Critics say such campaigns are more about building the brand of Democratic consultants than making a play for a Senate seat. The man who created Mr. Chambers’s marijuana and Confederate flag ads, Erick Sanchez, helped run Andrew Yang’s presidential campaign and also hawks “Fouch on the Couch” throw pillows of Dr. Anthony Fauci for $40 a pop.But Randy Jones, one of Mr. Chambers’s campaign chiefs, said the candidate should not be discounted. Mr. Chambers, he said, is taking a page from Ms. Abrams, who energized Georgia voters of color, urban liberals and the scatterings of rural Democrats to nearly win the governorship four years ago, build a political organization and set herself up for a rematch this year with the Republican governor, Brian Kemp.Mr. Jones ran the campaign of another celebrity Democrat, Richard Ojeda of West Virginia, whose House campaign in 2018 was instructive in other ways. Mr. Ojeda, a trash-talking Bronze Star winner, sought to remake his party’s image in his emerging Republican stronghold as more muscular and more working class. He raised nearly $3 million, then lost by nearly 13 percentage points.Richard Ojeda campaigning in Logan, W.Va., in 2018.Andrew Spear for The New York TimesEmbittered by the experience, Mr. Ojeda moved to North Carolina to leave a home state he describes with the same epithet Mr. Trump used for developing countries. He uses his political notoriety to lift his group No Dem Left Behind, which promotes candidates in rural Republican areas, as he builds a new house.Even as he defended his campaign, Mr. Ojeda criticizes the party in ways that echo criticism of his own effort. Democrats across the country dumped hundreds of millions of dollars into the Senate campaigns of Jaime Harrison in South Carolina and Amy McGrath in Kentucky, when the money could have been spent on more winnable local races, he said. He insisted he could have won if Mr. Trump hadn’t come to his corner of West Virginia twice.But he also sees no point in ever trying again in a state so thoroughly Republican in the Trump era.“West Virginia is going to have to burn to the ground before it will ever rise from the ashes — that’s it,” Mr. Ojeda said. “In West Virginia, all you can do as a Democrat is stand up, fight the battle so it’s recorded and say, ‘You guys are full of’” it. More

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      Effort to Remove Marjorie Taylor Greene From Ballot Can Proceed, Judge Says

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      The case that Ms. Greene unsuccessfully sought to have dismissed mirrors efforts against other Republicans centered on the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.A federal judge cleared the way on Monday for a group of Georgia voters to move forward with legal efforts seeking to disqualify Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene from running for re-election to Congress, citing her role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.The disqualification effort is based on a constitutional provision adopted after the Civil War that barred members of the Confederacy from holding office. It mirrors several other cases involving Republican members of Congress, whose roles leading up to and during the deadly riot have drawn intense criticism.The judge, Amy Totenberg, who was appointed to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia by President Barack Obama, denied Ms. Greene’s request for a preliminary injunction and temporary restraining order in the high-profile legal feud.Ms. Greene, 47, who is known for her unflinching loyalty to former President Donald J. Trump and for her clashes with Democrats, has steadfastly denied that she aided and engaged in the attack on the Capitol.In the 73-page ruling, Judge Totenberg wrote that Ms. Greene had failed to meet the “burden of persuasion” in her request for injunctive relief, which she called an extraordinary and drastic remedy.“This case involves a whirlpool of colliding constitutional interests of public import,” Judge Totenberg wrote. “The novelty of the factual and historical posture of this case — especially when assessed in the context of a preliminary injunction motion reviewed on a fast track — has made resolution of the complex legal issues at stake here particularly demanding.”James Bopp Jr., a lawyer for Ms. Greene, said on Monday night that the ruling was flawed and minimized the adverse effect that the disqualification effort was having on Ms. Greene’s right to run for office.“This is fundamentally antidemocratic,” Mr. Bopp said, maintaining that Ms. Greene had “publicly and vigorously condemned the attack on the Capitol.”He called the effort to remove her from the ballot part of a well-funded nationwide effort to strip voters of their right to vote for candidates of their choice, with elections determined by “bureaucrats, judges, lawyers and clever legal arguments.”In her request for an injunction, Ms. Greene argued that it would be impossible to fully resolve the case before Georgia holds its primary elections on May 24. Absentee ballots will start to be mailed on April 25, Ms. Greene’s motion said.In the ruling, Judge Totenberg determined that Ms. Greene had failed to prove that there was a strong likelihood that she would prevail on the merits of her legal claims. A state administrative judge is scheduled to hear the case on Friday.The decision by Judge Totenberg stood in stark contrast with a recent ruling in a similar case involving Representative Madison Cawthorn in North Carolina. In blocking that disqualification effort, U.S. District Judge Richard E. Myers II, an appointee of Mr. Trump, ruled that the 14th Amendment of the Constitution narrowly applied to members of the Confederacy after the Civil War.Ms. Greene’s critics have said that she frequently referred to efforts to challenge the 2020 presidential election results as “our 1776 moment” in public comments that led up to the riot at the Capitol. They contend that the phrase was a code used to incite violence, and point to the third section of the 14th Amendment in their argument to drop her from the ballot.That section says that “no person shall” be a member of Congress or hold civil office if they had engaged in insurrection or rebellion after “having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State.”Capitol Riot’s Aftermath: Key DevelopmentsCard 1 of 3Debating a criminal referral. More

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      In Georgia, Trump Tries to Revive a Sputtering Campaign

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      The former president held a rally in rural Georgia on Saturday in an attempt to jump-start David Perdue’s campaign to unseat Gov. Brian Kemp.COMMERCE, Ga., — When Donald Trump recruited David Perdue to run for governor of Georgia, Mr. Trump’s allies boasted that his endorsement alone would shoot Mr. Perdue ahead of the incumbent Republican governor, Brian Kemp. Georgia Republicans braced for an epic clash, fueled by the former president’s personal vendetta against Mr. Kemp, that would divide the party.But two months out from the Republican primary election, Mr. Perdue’s campaign has been more underwhelming than epic. In an effort to boost Mr. Perdue and put his own stamp on the race, Mr. Trump came to Georgia on Saturday for a rally for Mr. Perdue and the slate of candidates the former president has endorsed. Thousands of Trump supporters turned out in the small city of Commerce, 70 miles northeast of Atlanta and about 20 miles outside of Mr. Kemp’s hometown, Athens.Early polls have steadily shown Mr. Perdue, a former senator, trailing Mr. Kemp by about 10 percentage points. The governor has the backing of many of the state’s big donors and remains far ahead of Mr. Perdue in fund-raising. After pursuing a deeply conservative legislative agenda, Mr. Kemp has secured support from most of the top state leaders and lawmakers, even those who have, until now, aligned with Mr. Trump.Mr. Perdue’s sputtering start may hint at a deeper flaw in Mr. Trump’s plan to punish the governor for refusing to work to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election results: Mr. Trump’s grievances may now largely be his alone. While polls show many G.O.P. voters believe lies about fraud and irregularities in the 2020 election, there is little evidence that Republicans remain as fixated on the election as Mr. Trump. The challenge for Mr. Perdue, as well as for other candidates backed by Mr. Trump, is to make a case that goes beyond exacting revenge for 2020.“When you’re running against an incumbent governor, it’s a referendum on the incumbent,” said Eric Tanenblatt, a chief of staff to former Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue, the former senator’s cousin. “And if the incumbent has a good track record, it’s going to be hard to defeat him.”Mr. Tanenblatt backed David Perdue’s past Senate campaigns, including his losing bid last year. But Mr. Tanenblatt is now among the Republicans worried that Mr. Perdue is merely distracting the party from its top goal: fending off the likely Democratic nominee, Stacey Abrams.“Donald Trump’s not on the ballot. And there has to be a compelling reason why you would vote out an incumbent,” Mr. Tanenblatt said. “I don’t think there is one.”Former President Donald J. Trump listens as David Perdue speaks in Commerce, Ga., on Saturday.Audra Melton for The New York TimesAll seven of Mr. Trump’s endorsed candidates spoke at the rally. Nearly every speaker echoed Mr. Trump’s false election claims, placing the blame on Dominion voting machines and Democratic lawmakers for Republicans’ 2020 losses in Georgia. Mr. Perdue took things further, however, placing the blame for his Senate campaign loss and Mr. Trump’s defeat on Mr. Kemp.“Let me be very clear. Very clear,” Mr. Perdue said to the crowd. “In the state of Georgia, thanks to Brian Kemp, our elections were absolutely stolen. He sold us out.” How Donald J. Trump Still LoomsGrip on G.O.P.: Mr. Trump remains the most powerful figure in the Republican Party. However, there are signs his control is loosening.Power Struggle: Led by Senator Mitch McConnell, a band of anti-Trump Republicans is maneuvering to thwart the ex-president.Midterms Effect: Mr. Trump has become a party kingmaker, but his involvement in state races worries many Republicans.Post-Presidency Profits: Mr. Trump is melding business with politics, capitalizing for personal gain.Just the Beginning: For many Trump supporters who marched on Jan. 6, the day was not a disgraced insurrection but the start of a movement.Mr. Perdue’s allies argue that Governor Kemp’s track record is forever tainted by his refusal to try to overturn the election results or call a special legislative session to review them, even though multiple recounts confirmed Joe Biden’s win.“That’s the wound with the salt in it right now that hasn’t healed,” said Bruce LeVell, a former senior adviser to Mr. Trump based in Georgia. “David Perdue is the only one that can unify the Republican Party in the state of Georgia. Period.”Michelle and Chey Thomas, an Athens couple attending the rally, said they were unsure whether they would support Mr. Perdue in the primary or vote to re-elect Mr. Kemp as they knew little of Mr. Perdue before Saturday. Like many attendees, they were unsure if they could trust the results of the 2020 election. And Mr. Kemp, they believe, did not exercise the full extent of his power in November 2020.“A lot of candidates say they are going to do something and don’t,” Ms. Thomas said. Mr. Kemp, she added, “could’ve done a lot better job.”The candidates endorsed by Mr. Trump include Herschel Walker, a former Heisman Trophy winner running for Senate; U.S. Representative Jody Hice, a candidate for secretary of state; Vernon Jones, a former Democrat now running for Congress; and John Gordon, a conservative lawyer who helped Mr. Trump defend his false election claims in court. Mr. Trump this week endorsed Mr. Gordon’s bid for state attorney general.Mr. Kemp has had years to guard himself against a challenge from the party’s Trump wing. He was one of the first governors to roll back Covid-19 restrictions in early 2020, drawing the support of many on the right who were angry about government-imposed lockdowns. Last year, he signed into law new voting restrictions that were popular with the Republican base. And in January, the governor backed a law allowing people to carry a firearm without a permit and another banning mailed abortion pills.That record, Kemp supporters argue, won over Republican base voters, even those who agree with Mr. Trump that Mr. Kemp did not do enough to fight the election results in Georgia.“I think they’ve turned the page on the election,” said State Senator Clint Dixon, a Republican representing the Atlanta suburbs. “And folks that may have been upset about that, still, they see that Governor Kemp is a proven conservative leader that we need.”Of Mr. Trump’s rally, he added: “I don’t think it does much. And the polls are showing it.”In early March, a Fox News poll of Georgia Republican primary voters showed Mr. Kemp ahead of Mr. Perdue by 11 percentage points.Mr. Kemp has amassed a war chest of more than $12.7 million, compared with the $1.1 million Mr. Perdue has raised since entering the race in December. The Republican Governors Association has also cut more than $1 million in ads supporting Mr. Kemp — the first time the organization has taken sides in a primary race. (Since December, Ms. Abrams has been raising more than both men, bringing in $9.3 million by January.)Mr. Kemp has worked to line up key Republican leaders — or keep them on the sidelines. Earlier this month, he appointed Sonny Perdue chancellor of the state’s university system. The former governor intends to remain neutral in the primary, according to people familiar with his plans.Since losing Georgia by fewer than 12,000 votes in 2020, Mr. Trump has tried to turn the state’s politics into a proxy war over his election grievances. He blamed Mr. Kemp for his loss, saying he did not win Georgia because the governor refused to block certification of the results. Mr. Trump’s attempt to overturn the results is under criminal investigation.Mr. Trump saw Mr. Kemp’s refusal as disloyal, in part because Mr. Trump endorsed the governor in a 2018 primary, helping to propel him to a decisive win.“It is personal,” said Martha Zoller, a Georgia-based conservative radio host and former aide to both Mr. Kemp and Mr. Perdue. “President Trump believes that he made Brian Kemp.”Gov. Brian Kemp spoke to supporters at the Georgia State Capitol in Atlanta this month.Ben Gray/Atlanta Journal-Constitution, via Associated PressNow Mr. Perdue’s campaign is looking for the same boost from Mr. Trump. Although Mr. Perdue’s ads, social media pages and campaign website note that he is endorsed by Mr. Trump, Mr. Perdue’s campaign aides believe many voters are not yet paying attention and do not know that he has Mr. Trump’s support. The former corporate executive has been a Trump ally, but he hardly exuded the bombast of his political benefactor during his one term in the Senate.Mr. Perdue is now running to the right of Mr. Kemp. He recently campaigned with Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene at a rally in her rural northwest Georgia district, even after the congresswoman appeared at a far-right conference with ties to white supremacy.At the rally, Mr. Perdue lamented the “assault” on Georgia’s elections and reminded the crowd that he “fought for President Trump” in November 2020. At the time, he said, he asked not only for Mr. Kemp to call a special legislative session, but also for the resignation of Georgia’s current secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger — remarks received with loud applause.Although Mr. Perdue’s campaign has largely focused on the 2020 election, he and Mr. Kemp have split over other issues. Mr. Perdue opposed construction of a Rivian Automotive electric truck factory in the state, saying that the tax incentives it brings could benefit wealthy liberal donors. Mr. Kemp embraced the deal as a potential economic boon.Mr. Perdue also split with Mr. Kemp when Mr. Perdue gave his support to a group of residents in Atlanta’s wealthy Buckhead neighborhood who are seeking to secede from the city. The idea gained traction among some who were concerned about rising crime rates in Atlanta, but the effort is now stalled in the state legislature.If Mr. Trump was concerned about the campaign, he didn’t show it at the rally. Before bringing Mr. Perdue onstage later in the evening, he promised supporters that the former senator would champion election integrity and defeat Stacey Abrams.“That’s a big crowd of people,” he said. “And they all love David Perdue.” More

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      Republicans Once Silent on Russia Ratchet Up Attacks on Biden

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      Even as they praise the bipartisan congressional response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Republicans are increasingly eager to blame President Biden for the devastation.WASHINGTON — The Senate Republican news conference on Wednesday was proceeding with the usual partisan criticism of President Biden and exhortations for him to do more — much more — to bolster Ukraine’s defense when the microphone went to Senator Ted Cruz.The Texas Republican, in a made-for-television voice, made a stark assertion: “This war didn’t have to happen — the most significant war in Europe since 1945, since the end of World War II,” he said, before telling reporters that Mr. Biden’s White House “caused this.”Lawmakers in both parties have described their shared determination to support Ukraine in its fight against Russia as the most remarkable consensus in Congress since the aftermath of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. “President Zelensky has managed not only to unite the West; to a large extent, he’s managed to unite the Congress,” Senator John Kennedy, Republican of Louisiana, said of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.But the sense of common purpose has not translated into bipartisan backing for the commander in chief; if anything, it has sharpened Republicans’ lines of attack against Mr. Biden.Senator Jim Risch of Idaho, the lead Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, emerged from Mr. Zelensky’s joint address to Congress on Wednesday to proclaim that the carnage depicted in a video that the Ukrainian president played for lawmakers was a direct result of a response by the Biden administration that had been “slow, too little, too late.”Mr. Kennedy traced Russian President Vladimir V. Putin’s invasion back to the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan, the failure to attack Syria after its leader used chemical weapons, and the Russian seizure of Crimea, all of which, he made sure to note, “happened when Joe Biden was either vice president or president.”Absent from that analysis were four years under President Donald Trump during which he repeatedly undermined NATO, sided with Mr. Putin over his own intelligence community on Russia’s interference in the 2016 election and tried to bring Russia back into the community of developed economies. Also missing was Mr. Kennedy’s own trip, with seven other Senate Republicans, to the Kremlin on July 4, 2018, after a bipartisan report of the Senate Intelligence Committee determined that Moscow had interfered in the 2016 election on Mr. Trump’s behalf.A group of Republican senators visited Moscow in 2018, after a bipartisan report of the Senate Intelligence Committee determined that Moscow had interfered in the 2016 election.Pool photo by Alexander ZemlianichenkoSenator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin was also on that trip to the Kremlin, then launched an investigation of Hunter Biden in Ukraine that sparked warnings by Democrats that he was serving as a conduit of Russian disinformation. Mr. Johnson told Fox News host Brian Kilmeade on Tuesday: “The problem we have dealing with these tyrants is the Democrats, the Biden administration, all their policies are weakening America.”Democrats argue that such criticism shows how single-minded the Republican Party has become about tearing down its opponents.“Republicans have defaulted to attacking Joe Biden in a moment of national crisis,” said Senator Christopher S. Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut. “There’s this infection in the Republican Party right now, in which power matters more than anything else, more than democracy, more than the peaceful transition of power, more than winning wars overseas.”Some Republicans have taken a different line of attack. On the far-right fringe, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, declared that an independent Ukraine only exists because the Obama administration “helped to overthrow the previous regime,” a reference to the popular uprising that took down a pro-Russian president of Ukraine — actually two Ukrainian governments ago.She, too, blamed the Biden administration, but said she opposed any intervention. Another far-right Republican, Representative Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina, was videotaped calling Mr. Zelensky “a thug,” a comment that Russian propagandists continue to use.On the other end of the spectrum, Senator Mitt Romney, Republican of Utah, offered a more comprehensive historical analysis.“I wish we’d have armed Ukraine more than we did, but that’s true for not just Biden, but Trump and before him,” said Mr. Romney, who warned during the 2012 presidential debate of a looming threat from Russia. “But,” he added, “Vladimir Putin is responsible for what’s happened in Ukraine,” not Mr. Biden.Senator John Kennedy, Republican of Louisiana, said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had managed to unite Congress with his address to it on Wednesday.Samuel Corum for The New York TimesOne Republican House member, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of angering party leaders, said the war in Ukraine is likely to buoy the president’s standing with the public and could mitigate Democratic losses in the midterm elections.Democrats have blamed inflation and rising gasoline prices — problems that predated the invasion of Ukraine — on Mr. Putin. The growing ferocity of Republican criticism could truncate any natural rallying around the flag.But public opinion, three weeks into the war, is mixed. Nearly half of Americans, 47 percent, approve of the Biden administration’s handling of the crisis, while 39 percent disapprove, according to a new survey by the Pew Research Center. Opinion is even more divided on the U.S. role going forward: 42 percent say America should be providing more support to Ukraine, while 32 percent say the current level is about right. Just a sliver, 7 percent, take Ms. Greene’s position that the United States is already doing too much.Richard H. Kohn, professor emeritus of peace, war, and defense at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, noted that internal strife has been “vicious” in periods when war was raging but the United States was not engaged in combat, such as during the early years of the two world wars.The political consensus at the start of the Cold War was shattered by Vietnam, when Senator Barry Goldwater articulated a view still dominant in the G.O.P., that the military should be all in or all out. The vaunted unity after 9/11 broke down 18 months later with the invasion of Iraq.Russia-Ukraine War: Key Things to KnowCard 1 of 4A key vote. More

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      In Greene and Boebert, Democrats See a Helpful Political Target

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      The antics of Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert, as well as recent stumbles by other Republicans, have drawn unflattering attention to their party.WASHINGTON — Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert are two backbench freshmen in the House minority, powerless in the official hierarchy and unlikely to gain much power even in a likely Republican majority next year.But their antics, violations of decorum and association with white nationalists have elevated their profile far beyond their positions, and Democratic operatives are determined to make them the face of the Republican Party in the looming election season.The two are not the only Republicans bringing unwanted attention to the party, and some of the division in the party’s ranks is being amplified by internal disputes, not by Democrats. Senator Rick Scott of Florida, the chairman of the Senate Republicans’ campaign arm, earned a public rebuke this week from Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, for putting out a campaign manifesto that called for raising taxes on the poor and cutting Social Security.On Wednesday, a little-known Republican, Representative Van Taylor of Texas, abruptly dropped his re-election bid after operatives on the party’s right flank — angered by his vote to create a bipartisan commission to examine the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol — revealed pornographic text messages that he had sent to a paramour.But it is the faces of Ms. Boebert of Colorado and Ms. Greene of Georgia that are splashing across social media, political videos and advertising, after they both stood and heckled President Biden during his State of the Union address on Tuesday. Ms. Boebert shouted at the president just as he was referring to the death of his son Beau Biden.Not since President Donald J. Trump used racially charged language in 2019 to castigate the liberal women of color in “the Squad” have freshmen House members received quite so much attention. Representative Ilhan Omar, Democrat of Minnesota and Mr. Trump’s favorite Squad target, said there were big differences.For one, Ms. Boebert and Ms. Greene intentionally provoke responses to stay front and center, she said, while she and Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan were more often sought out by critics.On Monday, Ms. Greene was publicly rebuked by the House Republican leader, Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, over her appearance at a far-right conference with ties to white supremacy. The next day, she and Ms. Boebert heckled Mr. Biden and tried unsuccessfully to strike up a chant of “build the wall” during his State of the Union address.And while Democrats routinely condemn their own for statements they consider out of the mainstream, Republicans rarely do, instead providing Ms. Greene, Ms. Boebert and others on the far right with platforms to broadcast their messages, such as the recent Conservative Political Action Conference in Florida.“With us, the opinion pieces by Democratic pundits are already prewritten, and there’s a lot of scolding that happens within the caucus,” Ms. Omar said. “That’s not what happens with their party.”Mr. McCarthy did say that Ms. Greene’s appearance last week at the far-right conference was “appalling and wrong,” promising to have a talk with her, but that does not compare to the criticism that rained down on Ms. Omar when she used an antisemitic trope to suggest that support for Israel was driven by money. Mr. McCarthy has also said Ms. Greene will be given back the committee assignments that Democrats stripped from her if Republicans control the House next year.Speaker Nancy Pelosi, at her weekly news conference on Thursday, repeated perhaps the only criticism that a Republican leveled at Ms. Boebert and Ms. Greene after their heckling at the State of the Union.“Let me just say this,” Ms. Pelosi said. “I agree with what Senator Lindsey Graham said: ‘Shut up.’”Republican leaders have an easier political task than Democrats as they seek to keep voters focused on what they are seeing in their daily lives, such as inflation, soaring energy prices and ongoing frustrations with the coronavirus pandemic.“Democrats don’t have a clue what moves voters and are desperately trying to distract from their record of higher prices, soaring crime and a crisis along our southern border,” said Michael McAdams, the communications director for the National Republican Congressional Committee.Ms. Boebert’s staff did not respond to requests for comment, and Ms. Greene declined to speak to The New York Times. But she has remained defiant in the face of criticism. In December, she told the former Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon, “We are not the fringe; we are the base of the party.”For that reason alone, Democratic operatives say they have every right to elevate the visibility of Ms. Greene and Ms. Boebert and tie them to other Republicans who have refrained from criticizing them even as they have castigated the two Republicans serving on the committee investigating the 2021 attack on the Capitol, Representatives Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois.Representative Sean Patrick Maloney of New York, the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said the House Democrats’ campaign arm had not decided how central to make the two lawmakers in the coming campaign season.The committee is “making investments where they do the most good,” he said. “If that means making them the face of the party, we will do it. If it means ignoring them, we will do it, because the point is to win the House, not to win an argument.”“But,” he added, “their actions are disgraceful, from attending white supremacy conferences to yelling at the president when he’s talking about his fallen son.”Democratic allies are not so reticent. Jon Soltz, the chairman and co-founder of VoteVets, a liberal veterans organization, said the group was testing messages with voters to tie incumbent House Republicans in districts that lean Democratic to far-right figures in the Republican Party.The attack might not work in conservative-leaning districts, he said, but it could against Republicans whose seats emerged from redistricting as more Democratic, such as Representative Nicole Malliotakis’s in New York and Representative Mike Garcia’s in Southern California.Representative Lauren Boebert shouted at President Biden just as he was referring to the death of his son Beau Biden.Pool photo by Sarahbeth Maney“There’s some rather crazy rhetoric that comes out of their mouths, and behavior like you saw from them at the State of the Union,” Mr. Soltz said. “There are a lot of independents in suburban districts that might have leaned to Biden by five or six points, but Democrats now have to go get those voters back.”Another Democratic political operation, American Bridge, is tying Ms. Greene to Herschel Walker, the former University of Georgia football star recruited by Mr. Trump to challenge Senator Raphael Warnock, Democrat of Georgia, this fall.Jessica Floyd, the president of American Bridge, said on Thursday that the group’s efforts were crafted to make the midterm elections a choice between what she called a Republican Party of extremists against a Democratic Party focused on the economy and governance — not a referendum on Mr. Biden, whose approval ratings are dangerously low.Voters “know and don’t like the sort of extreme positions that Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert embody,” she said.She added, “That’s an opportunity for Democrats, and I think that we should seize on it.” More

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      How Lopsided New District Lines Deepen the U.S. Partisan Divide

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      THE WOODLANDS, Texas — Representative Dan Crenshaw was tagged as a rising Republican star almost from the moment of his first victory: A conservative, Harvard-educated, ex-Navy SEAL who lost his right eye in Afghanistan, he bucked the 2018 suburban revolt against Donald J. Trump to win a House seat in the Houston suburbs.Mr. Crenshaw won again in 2020, handily, even as Mr. Trump carried his district by only a whisper.But this year, Mr. Crenshaw’s seat has been transformed by redistricting. More liberal enclaves, like the nightlife-rich neighborhoods near Rice University, were swapped out for conservative strongholds like The Woodlands, a master-planned community of more than 100,000 that is north of the city.The result: Mr. Trump would have carried the new seat in a landslide.The new lines mean Mr. Crenshaw now has a vanishingly slim chance of losing to a Democrat in the next decade. The only political threat would have to come from the far right — which, as it happens, is already agitating against him.All across the nation, political mapmakers have erected similarly impenetrable partisan fortresses through the once-in-a-decade redrawing of America’s congressional lines. Texas, which holds the nation’s first primaries on Tuesday, is an especially extreme example of how competition between the two parties has been systemically erased. Nearly 90 percent of the next House could be occupied by lawmakers who, like Mr. Crenshaw, face almost no threat of losing a general election, a precipitous drop that dramatically changes the political incentives and pressures they confront.“What the future of the Republican Party should be is people who can make better arguments than the left,” Mr. Crenshaw said in an interview. Yet in his new district, he will only need to make arguments to voters on the right, and the farther right.When primaries are the only campaigns that count, candidates are often punished for compromise. The already polarized parties are pulled even farther apart. Governance becomes harder.The dynamic can be seen playing out vividly in and around Mr. Crenshaw’s district. He appears in no imminent political danger. He faces underfunded opposition in Tuesday’s primary, out-raising rivals by more than 100 to one.But his repeated rebuke of those who have spread the falsehood that Mr. Trump won the 2020 election — fellow Republicans whom he has called “performance artists” and “grifters” capitalizing on “lie after lie after lie” — have made him a target of what he derisively termed “the cancel culture of the right.”“They view me as a threat because I don’t really toe the line,” Mr. Crenshaw said.He has especially sparred with Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, who, in the kind of political coincidence that is rarely an accident, found herself at a recent rally in Mr. Crenshaw’s district, declaring, “It is time to embrace the civil war in the G.O.P.”Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, with supporters after a rally in The Woodlands, Texas.Annie Mulligan for The New York Times“I oftentimes argue with someone you might know named Dan Crenshaw,” she later said, his name drawing boos. “I sure do not like people calling themself a conservative when all they really are is a performance artist themself.”What to Know About RedistrictingRedistricting, Explained: Here are some answers to your most pressing questions about the process that is reshaping American politics.Understand Gerrymandering: Can you gerrymander your party to power? Try to draw your own districts in this imaginary state.Killing Competition: The number of competitive districts is dropping, as both parties use redistricting to draw themselves into safe seats.New York: Democrats’ aggressive reconfiguration of the state’s congressional map is one of the most consequential in the nation.Legal Battles: A North Carolina court’s ruling to reject a G.O.P.-drawn map and substitute its own version further cemented the rising importance of state courts in redistricting fights.In 2020, Texas was the epicenter of the battle for control of the House, with a dozen suburban seats around Dallas, Houston, Austin and San Antonio all in play.In 2022, zero Texas Republicans are left defending particularly competitive seats. They were all turned safely, deeply red.“Not having competitive elections is not good for democracy,” said Representative Lizzie Fletcher, a moderate Democrat whose Houston-area district was also overhauled. To solidify neighboring G.O.P. seats, Republican mapmakers stuffed a surplus of Democratic voters — including from the old Crenshaw seat — into her district, the Texas 7th.That seat has a long Republican lineage. George H.W. Bush once occupied it. Under the new lines, the district voted like Massachusetts in the presidential election.For Ms. Fletcher, that means any future challenges are likely to come from the left. The political middle that helped her beat a Republican incumbent in 2018 is, suddenly, less relevant. “There is a huge risk,” she said, “that people will feel like it doesn’t matter whether they show up.”A proxy fight next doorPhill Cady is showing up. He is one of Mr. Crenshaw’s new constituents, an unvaccinated former airline pilot from Conroe who takes a weekly dose of hydroxychloroquine, the Trump-promoted anti-malaria drug that medical experts have warned against, to fend off Covid.Mr. Cady was at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to protest the election results. (He said he didn’t enter the building.) He said Mr. Crenshaw’s acceptance of Mr. Trump’s defeat showed he had “lost his way,” and that Mr. Crenshaw should have helped those facing riot-related charges: “Why hasn’t he fought for the Texans to get out of jail?”Or, as Milam Langella, one of Mr. Crenshaw’s long-shot primary challengers, described the distance between the incumbent and his constituents: “The district is now blood red and he is not.”With Mr. Crenshaw facing only scattershot opposition, it was the neighboring open race to replace the retiring Representative Kevin Brady, a business-friendly Republican, that technically drew Ms. Greene to Texas.On one side is Christian Collins, a former aide to Senator Ted Cruz, who is vowing to join the so-called MAGA wing in the House. He is backed by the political arm of the House Freedom Caucus, the party’s hard-line faction.Supporters of Christian Collins, a congressional candidate, at a Feb. 19 rally in The Woodlands, Texas. Redrawn maps mean more candidates are running in safe districts for their parties.Annie Mulligan for The New York TimesOn the other side is Morgan Luttrell, a former member of the Navy SEALs who is backed by Mr. Crenshaw and a super PAC aligned with Representative Kevin McCarthy, the House minority leader.The contest is the first primary of 2022 that the McCarthy-aligned PAC has intervened in, as some McCarthy allies privately worry that the glut of new, deep-red Republican seats could complicate his speakership bid and governance of the House, should Republicans win a majority.“Does this create incentives to avoid governing? It clearly — clearly, that’s the case,” Mr. Crenshaw said. But he said it is hard to discern the impact of those incentives versus others, like social media amplifying outrage and the increasing sorting of Americans into tribes.There was tension in how Mr. Crenshaw described who holds the real power in the party, at once dismissing the far right as a fringe nuisance that only seeks to “monetize” division, while also saying traditional power brokers like congressional leaders are no longer the real political establishment either.“They’re trying to hang on by a thread,” Mr. Crenshaw said of Mr. McCarthy and Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader. “They’re trying to wrangle cats.”The Collins-Luttrell race has become something of a proxy fight over Mr. Crenshaw.Morgan Luttrell speaking with a supporter in Conroe, Texas, in a congressional race exemplifying internal party fights in safe districts.Annie Mulligan for The New York TimesA pro-Collins super PAC used Mr. Crenshaw’s name in an anti-Luttrell billboard along Interstate 45. In a debate, Mr. Collins attacked Mr. Luttrell by saying he had been “endorsed by Dan Crenshaw — I think that name speaks for itself.” At the Collins rally, speaker after speaker called Mr. Crenshaw a R.I.N.O. — a Republican in Name Only.How U.S. Redistricting WorksCard 1 of 8What is redistricting? More

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      Republican Recriminations Point to a Rocky Path to a House Majority

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      Simmering tensions between the far-right flank and more traditional conservatives burst into the open on Tuesday, while Republican leaders stayed silent.WASHINGTON — Hostilities between the Republican far right and its typically muted center burst into the open on Tuesday, highlighting deep divisions that could bedevil the party’s leaders if they capture a narrow majority in the House next year.Initially prompted by the anti-Muslim comments of Representative Lauren Boebert of Colorado, the Republican-on-Republican war of words on Tuesday was remarkably bitter and an indication of a brewing power struggle between an ascendant faction that styles itself after President Donald J. Trump and a quieter one that is pushing back.First, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia called her freshman colleague Nancy Mace of South Carolina “trash” for condemning Ms. Boebert’s remarks in a television interview.Ms. Mace then used a series of emojis — a bat, a pile of excrement and a crazy clown — to describe Ms. Greene, then kept up a steady stream of social media attacks, calling her a liar, a grifter and a nut.Representative Adam Kinzinger, Republican of Illinois, came to Ms. Mace’s defense, calling Ms. Greene “unserious circus barker McSpacelaser” — a reference to a social media post that she once circulated suggesting that wildfires in the West had been started by lasers owned by the Rothschilds, a Jewish banking family.Mr. Kinzinger added that Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the Republican leader and would-be speaker who has done nothing to discipline rank-and-file members of his conference for bigoted and violent statements, “continues his silent streak that would make a monk blush.”Then Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida, an ally of Ms. Greene’s, took to Twitter to amplify an attack by the right-wing provocateur Jack Posobiec denouncing Ms. Mace as a “scam artist” for promoting coronavirus vaccinations on CNN.The carnival-like behavior would amount to little more than a sideshow if it did not have real implications for midterm campaigns and, possibly, a fractured Republican majority in 2023. Party leaders again chose to remain mum as their backbenchers brawled, and Democrats took full advantage of the spectacle.“The atmosphere is what it has been and what has been created by the Republican Party over the last 50 years, where they have continued to move down the path of divisiveness, of acrimony, of threats and accusations, which have demeaned the politics of America,” Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the majority leader, told reporters.He again called on Republican leaders to discipline their members, referring to the episode that touched off the hostilities: public comments by Ms. Boebert in which she suggested that Representative Ilhan Omar, Democrat of Minnesota and a Muslim who wears a hijab, could be a suicide bomber and called her a member of the “jihad squad.”The House’s three Muslim lawmakers — Ms. Omar and Representatives Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and André Carson of Indiana, all Democrats — suggested that their party was looking at options to sanction Ms. Boebert.“Muslims in this country are proud Americans, hard-working members of our community,” Mr. Carson said. “And we are not anyone’s scapegoat.”These should be heady days for House Republicans. Off-year elections this month showed real disenchantment with Democratic control of the House, Senate and White House. Redistricting in Republican-controlled state legislatures has given the party a running start to win the four or five seats it needs to control the House, and polling suggests that a narrow plurality of Americans would rather have Republicans in control of Congress. Given the party’s structural advantages on redistricting, access to polls and enthusiasm, that suggests a much broader victory would be at hand if the voting were today.Michael Steel, a former spokesman for Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the former Republican speaker, said the party’s leaders should be working behind the scenes to calm dissent and keep members focused on building a platform and an argument for control.“The top priority right now should be for everyone in the canoe to have their rifles pointing outward, not at each other,” Mr. Steel said. “And the focus should be on addition, not subtraction. That means keeping all the frogs in the wheelbarrow, even if some of those frogs are pretty ugly.”Representative Nancy Mace, Republican of South Carolina, used a series of unflattering emojis in social media attacks on Ms. Greene.Anna Moneymaker/Getty ImagesInstead, Republicans are stepping on their own message. On Tuesday, CNN unearthed another video of Ms. Boebert from September, when she said she turned to Ms. Omar and referred to the “jihad squad,” again insinuating that she could be a suicide bomber.Ms. Omar has said that no such confrontation occurred. During a call initiated by Ms. Boebert on Monday — ostensibly to offer contrition — the situation only devolved further, as Ms. Boebert refused to apologize and instead demanded that Ms. Omar publicly ask forgiveness for “anti-American” comments.Democrats were not the only ones who condemned Ms. Boebert’s behavior. Ms. Mace, a highly regarded newcomer and the first woman to graduate from the Citadel military college, appeared on CNN to say, “I have time after time condemned my colleagues on both sides of the aisle for racist tropes and remarks that I find disgusting, and this is no different than any others.”Ms. Greene, who like Ms. Boebert is a favorite of Mr. Trump’s, criticized Ms. Mace on social media and on Stephen K. Bannon’s broadcast, “War Room,” and condemned Republican leaders.“They’re always all over us whenever we say or do anything, but it’s the Nancy Maces that should be called out,” Ms. Greene told Mr. Bannon. She added that she, not Ms. Mace, represented the Republican base, a comment seconded by others on the far right, including Representative Paul Gosar of Arizona.Representative Peter Meijer, Republican of Michigan, defended Ms. Mace.“Nancy is a serious legislator who rolls up her sleeves and looks for solutions where they can be found, such as federal cannabis decriminalization, but also digs in and fights when progressives put politics above policy,” Mr. Meijer said. “I can’t think of a single credible thing those attacking her have even tried to accomplish.”Republican leaders were left pointing fingers at their Democratic counterparts, who they said had also taken no action against members who had crossed lines, whether through anti-Israel comments or exhortations to protesters that they said encouraged violence.If the Republicans claim a narrow majority in the midterms, Representative Kevin McCarthy of California would need virtually all of his conference’s votes to claim the speakership.Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesMr. Hoyer did say that Mr. McCarthy reached out to him to say Ms. Boebert wanted to apologize to Ms. Omar, an overture that Mr. Hoyer said would not end well. He was proved correct.Mr. McCarthy finds himself in a delicate position. He does not know how large a majority his party might win in November, especially since much of the redistricting has focused on shoring up incumbent advantages than creating more competitive races. A sweeping Republican win would allow him to write off the votes of his party’s fringe.But if the Republicans claim a narrow majority, Mr. McCarthy would need virtually all of the conference’s votes to claim the speakership, a prize he has sought for nearly a decade. The far right brought down Mr. Boehner in 2015, and Republican divisions over the prospects of Mr. McCarthy’s speakership sunk his last run for the post weeks later.A handful of members, including Ms. Greene, have been cool to the idea of granting him the gavel should his party claim the majority.Emily Cochrane More

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      As Trump Thunders About Last Election, Republicans Worry About the Next One

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      Donald Trump is the Republicans’ greatest asset in mobilizing voters. But some fret that his obsession with false claims about the 2020 election could cost the G.O.P. in 2022.Republicans believe they have a good shot at taking Congress next year. But there’s a catch.The G.O.P.’s ambitions of ending unified Democratic control in Washington in 2022 are colliding with a considerable force that has the ability to sway tens of millions of votes: former President Donald J. Trump’s increasingly vocal demands that members of his party remain in a permanent state of obedience, endorsing his false claims of a stolen election or risking his wrath.In a series of public appearances and statements over the last week, Mr. Trump has signaled not only that he plans to work against Republicans he deems disloyal, but also that his meritless claims that widespread voter fraud cost him the White House in 2020 will be his litmus test, going so far as to threaten that his voters will sit out future elections.“If we don’t solve the Presidential Election Fraud of 2020,” Mr. Trump said in a statement last week, “Republicans will not be voting in ’22 or ’24. It’s the single most important thing for Republicans to do.”The former president’s fixation on disproved conspiracy theories is frustrating to many in his party who see it as needlessly divisive at a time when Republicans feel they are poised to take back the House of Representatives and perhaps the Senate in the 2022 midterm elections. They worry he could cost Republicans otherwise winnable seats in Congress and complicate the party’s more immediate goal of winning the governor’s race in Virginia next month.The concern over Mr. Trump’s attempts to make all federal elections a referendum on him points to the larger debate among Republicans over what his role should be, as someone who remains singularly popular with the party’s base but is also a liability with swing voters and a motivator for Democrats to turn out.Some rising stars in the Republican Party — like Representative Elise Stefanik of New York, who ousted Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming from a House leadership post in a bitter intraparty fight over the Jan. 6 riots and Mr. Trump’s attempts to downplay them — have been clear: They want Mr. Trump to play a role in the 2022 midterms. Ms. Stefanik called him “an asset to Republicans on the ballot” at a fund-raiser last week.And top party strategists said they expected the former president to remain front and center in the Republicans’ campaign to retake control of the House. “He’s the leader of the party,” said Corry Bliss, a consultant to Republicans on congressional races. “The more energized and engaged he is, the better we’ll do.”But party officials believe Mr. Trump’s threat about his supporters staying home en masse is real. And the potency of his false claims about 2020 caught even some of his staunchest allies in the party off guard.The stakes are amplified by Mr. Trump’s increasingly pointed hints that he plans to be the party’s nominee in 2024.Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene has been an outspoken supporter of Mr. Trump and the claims of voting irregularities during the 2020 election.Kenny Holston for The New York TimesRepresentative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia has supported exhaustive audits of the 2020 results to look for evidence of voting irregularities that repeated reviews have failed to produce. Still, she has told colleagues that she was surprised by a recent survey of Republican voters in her district, according to one person who spoke with her about it.The internal survey found that 5 percent of Republican voters said they would sit out the 2022 election if the state of Georgia did not conduct a forensic audit of the 2020 election — a demand that some of Mr. Trump’s hard-core supporters have made. Another 4 percent said they would consider sitting out the election absent an audit.The possibility that nearly 10 percent of Republicans could sit out any election — even one in a solidly red district like the one held by Ms. Taylor Greene — was something Republican strategists said they found alarming.Since Mr. Trump left office, polls have repeatedly shown that large majorities of Republican voters want him to run in 2024. And roughly 40 percent of Republicans say they consider themselves to be primarily his supporters rather than supporters of the party — about the same share who said so last November, according to the political research firm Echelon Insights.Many Republicans don’t seem to want to hear anything critical about him. A recent poll by the Pew Research Center, for instance, highlighted the lack of an appetite for much dissent. Nearly two-thirds of Republicans, Pew found, said their party should not be accepting of elected officials who criticize Mr. Trump.Mr. Trump’s recent interference in the Virginia contest — where polls show the Republican candidate, Glenn Youngkin, narrowly trailing his Democratic rival, former Gov. Terry McAuliffe — worried advisers to Mr. Youngkin’s campaign. They watched as their carefully scripted plan to keep the race focused on their candidate and on claims that Democrats have veered too far left became engulfed by news coverage of the former president praising Mr. Youngkin at a political rally last week.Mr. Trump remains overwhelmingly popular within the Republican party.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesSome Republicans said they feared they were watching a preview of the awkward and unpleasant dilemma their candidates would face for the foreseeable future, as Mr. Trump remains the most popular figure in their party, determining what candidates say and how voters think.“Here is where Trump is so destructive,” said Barbara Comstock, a former Republican member of Congress who lost her seat in suburban Virginia in 2018. That year, voters in swing districts across the country turned against centrist incumbents like her in a repudiation of Mr. Trump.Trump’s Bid to Subvert the ElectionCard 1 of 6A monthslong campaign. More