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      US House passes temporary funding bill to avert government shutdown

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      The House has passed a short-term funding bill, narrowly averting a partial government shutdown that would have taken place this weekend.The bill passed with a 320-99 vote on Thursday afternoon. Among Republicans, 113 voted yes and 97 voted no. Meanwhile, 207 Democrats voted yes and 2 voted against it.The two Democrats who voted against the bill were Mike Quigley of Illinois and Jake Auchincloss of Massachusetts.The bill’s passage comes after congressional leaders from both parties, including the House speaker, Mike Johnson; the House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries; the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer; the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell; as well as leaders of the House and Senate appropriations committees, announced the agreement on Wednesday.“To give the House and Senate appropriations committees adequate time to execute on this deal in principle, including drafting, preparing report language, scoring and other technical matters and to allow members 72 hours to review, a short-term continuing resolution to fund agencies through March 8 and the 22 will be necessary, and voted on by the House and Senate this week,” the statement said.With the House passing the temporary funding bill on Thursday, a congressional vote is now expected next week for six full-year appropriations bills that will extend funding for agencies under the departments of agriculture-FDA, commerce-justice and science, energy and water development, interior, military construction-veterans affairs and transportation-housing and urban development.“These bills will adhere to the Fiscal Responsibility Act discretionary spending limits and January’s topline spending agreement,” congressional leaders said on Wednesday.The remaining six appropriations bills set to be finalized and voted on by 22 March revolve around the departments of defense, financial services and general government, homeland security, labor-health and human services, as well as legislative branch and state and foreign operations.Following Thursday’s vote, Virginia’s Democratic representative Abigail Spanberger said that despite voting alongside colleagues who “understand our fundamental responsibility to keep our government functioning … Speaker Johnson’s leadership has our country yet again one week away from a partial government shutdown and within a month of the whole of the federal government shutting its doors.”“As our country remains on a collision course with a completely preventable potential shutdown, I will continue to press Speaker Johnson to bring bipartisan bills forward that would pass in the US House, pass in the US Senate, and get to the president’s desk,” she added.Before Thursday’s vote, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris met with congressional leaders in attempts to help avert a partial government shutdown, which Biden said would “significantly” damage the economy.The bill will now head to the Senate, where the majority leader, Chuck Schumer, said the chamber could vote as early as Thursday evening.“Once the House acts, I hope the Senate can pass the short-term CR [continuing resolution] as soon as tonight, but that will require all of us working together. There’s certainly no reason this should take a very long time. So, let’s cooperate and get it done quickly,” Schumer said. More

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      House and Senate negotiators reach agreement to prevent shutdown – report

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      With government funding set to partially expire on Friday, House and Senate negotiators have reached an agreement to prevent a shutdown, Politico reported.Funding for some federal departments was previously set to expire after Friday, while the rest faced an 8 March deadline. Democratic and Republican leaders in Congress met with Joe Biden yesterday at the White House, where all sides expressed their desire to avoid a shutdown that the president warned would damage the economy.More details soon … More

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      Johnson Floats Short-Term Spending Bill to Avert Partial Shutdown

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      The Republican speaker, who has come under bipartisan pressure to strike a deal that his far-right members are resisting, is weighing a temporary funding patch that would allow more time for negotiations.Speaker Mike Johnson is floating another short-term stopgap spending bill to head off a partial government shutdown at the end of the week, offering a temporary path out of a stalemate that has repeatedly threatened federal funding over the past six months.His proposal would extend funding for some government agencies for a week, through March 8, and the rest for another two weeks, until March 22. It would be contingent on congressional leaders finalizing an emerging bipartisan agreement on six of the 12 annual spending bills.And it would leave time for top lawmakers to negotiate the other six measures, and then try to pass the spending bills individually before the next set of deadlines to fund the government. That would be a tall order in the House, which has struggled to pass spending legislation amid Republican divisions.Any stopgap bill “would be part of a larger agreement to finish a number of appropriations bills, ensuring adequate time for drafting text and for members to review prior to casting votes,” said Athina Lawson, a spokeswoman for Mr. Johnson.Congressional leaders hoped to finalize the plan as early as Wednesday, leaving time for quick votes in both chambers before the midnight deadline on Friday.The details were reported earlier by Punchbowl News.The proposal offers glimmers of hope for staving off a shutdown in the immediate term, but would only punt resolution of a spending stalemate that has gripped Congress for months, as Republicans bent on steep cuts and conservative policy mandates refuse to accept a deal with Democrats. It comes after a meeting at the White House on Tuesday in which President Biden and congressional leaders from both parties escalated pressure on Mr. Johnson to accept a spending deal. Top Democrats and Republicans emerged saying they were optimistic about keeping the government funded.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      California’s Orange county was once a conservative bastion. Can it swing the balance of the US House in 2024?

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      In the battle between Democrats and Republicans for control of the US House of Representatives, one region could hold the key to victory – Orange county, California’s historically conservative heartland.For decades, the region – perhaps most famously described by Ronald Reagan as the place “where the good Republicans go before they die” – was a Republican stronghold and a hotbed for radical conservatives.But the county has undergone dramatic changes both politically and demographically. The region has shifted from the largely white center of conservative politics in California to a far more diverse place and one of the few true purple counties in the US, the effects of which have reverberated nationally.Today the county of 3.1 million people is home to some of the most competitive congressional elections in the US. Four of Orange county’s six congressional districts, including the seat vacated by congresswoman Katie Porter as she runs for the Senate, are ranked among the most competitive races, according to an analysis by the Cook Political Report.Recent polling from UC Irvine suggests that Asian Americans and Latino voters could play a key role in the upcoming races as potential swing voters. Orange county is far less white than it once was and its growing diversity has helped fuel its political transformation, said Jon Gould, who launched the poll.It’s a stark contrast to years past when Asian Americans were an afterthought in county political campaigns, said Andrew Ji, the managing director of the Orange county office for Asian Americans Advancing Justice. “In certain regions where there’s tight races, Asian Americans are gonna be the swing voting bloc,” Ji said.Orange county was conservative even for conservatives, a place that embraced the John Birch Society, a far-right political group that opposed the civil rights movement and spread conspiracy theories that Republican president Dwight Eisenhower was a communist.The region was overwhelmingly Republican into the 1990s, said Jim Newton, a UCLA lecturer and veteran journalist who covered the region. Demographic trends suggested it wouldn’t remain so forever, he said, but the political shift came far sooner than anticipated.In 1990, Orange county was 65% white while Latinos comprised 23% of the population and Asian Americans 10%, according to the US census. By 2020, Latinos accounted for 34% of county residents, the Asian American population climbed to 22% and white people made up 37% of the population.Greater ethnic and racial diversity fueled change, but other demographic changes played a role too, said Gould, the dean of the School of Social Ecology at the University of California, Irvine. There’s been a rise in college-educated county residents – and there is a link between higher education and less extreme Republicans, he said.“When I was younger this was the home of the John Birch Society, this was … the place Ronald Reagan was king,” said Gould. “The transformation has been remarkable.”The changes in the political landscape were evident in 2016, when Orange county favored a Democrat for president for the first time in nearly a century – giving more votes to Hillary Clinton than Donald Trump. In 2018, Democrats flipped four seats and the county sent an entirely blue delegation to Congress.The shifting political winds came as California as a whole was becoming more blue, and the far-right shift in the Republican party and Donald Trump alienated voters, particularly suburban women.View image in fullscreenThe GOP’s association with downplaying or outright denying the climate crisis also didn’t play well in a state where people take the environment seriously, Newton, the UCLA lecturer, argues.“The fact that we talk about Orange county as potentially a swing place is really bad news for Republicans,” Newton said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionDemocratic voters have a slight lead in the county today, but it remains firmly purple. Republicans won two House seats back from Democrats in 2020 with the election of Young Kim and Michelle Steel – two of the first Korean American women to serve in Congress.Purple counties – where congressional and presidential contests are truly competitive – are increasingly rare, said Gould, who recently conducted a poll of county voters.The poll published by UC Irvine suggests that the county will swing left in this year’s election due to independent and “modestly partisan Republicans”. The latter group has become a political anomaly in a sharply divided America, but could play a strong role in the races in the region. That demographic is less supportive of Trump, does not dislike Biden as much as other Republicans and is generally more diverse, Gould noted.“They tend to be more educated, wealthier and compared to the strongly attached Republicans, they are much less likely to be white,” he said. “That is where there is a Latino and Asian group of modestly attached Republicans who may very well have a strong influence on the presidential race and congressional races in 2024.”They may not necessarily vote for Democrats, he said, and the question is whether they will vote, and if so will they vote for Republicans in every race.The outcome of the congressional races could have major implications nationally and determine which party controls the House.“If Democrats can’t keep this seat, they have no hope of winning the House majority, because demographically this is exactly the type of district that is coming into the Democrats’ coalition,” David Wasserman, with the Cook Political Report, said of Porter’s seat in an interview with the Los Angeles Times.For Ji, the election is another sign of how much has changed in Orange county and there is an excitement to see it transform from a mono-political white place, into somewhere known for diversity – ethnically and politically.“I’m very excited for the future of Orange county,” Ji said. “We are pivotal. We can be seen as an inflection point and we are very important nationally in the way we vote.” More

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      Putin ‘gains every day’ Congress fails to send Ukraine aid, top Biden official says

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      Vladimir Putin “gains every day” the US House does not pass a new aid package for Ukraine, Joe Biden’s national security adviser warned, as its president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, warned of dire outcomes unless Ukraine receives US military aid within one month.Ahead of a crunch week in Washington that could end in a government shutdown – in part made possible by hardline Republican opposition to new support for Kyiv – Jake Sullivan told CNN that “the reality is that Putin gains every day that Ukraine does not get the resources it needs and Ukraine suffers.”Sullivan pointed to “a strong bipartisan majority in the House standing ready to pass” an aid package for Ukraine “if it comes to the floor”.The Democratic-held Senate already passed a $95bn package of aid to Ukraine and other US allies, including Israel, earlier this month. But in the House, the Republican speaker, Mike Johnson, is under pressure from the pro-Trump far right of his party not to bring it to a vote.In striking contrast to the division within the US Congress, European leaders were set to meet in Paris on Monday to discuss Ukraine, seeking to show unity and support. “We are at a critical moment,” Emmanuel Macron, the president of France, said. “Russia cannot win in Ukraine.”Speaking on the second anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion, Zelenskiy on Sunday said “millions will be killed without US aid” and told a conference in Kyiv that a US failure to pass new aid would “leave me wondering what world we are living in”.The US has so far sent billions of dollars of aid and weapons, but with the pro-Russian Trump all but confirmed as the Republican nominee for president, large elements of the congressional GOP have fallen in behind him to block new Ukraine spending.Ukrainian forces report shortages of weapons and ammunition, as a grinding stalemate gives way to Russian gains. On Sunday, Zelenskiy put the overall death toll among Ukrainian troops at 31,000.US officials were previously reported to have put it at 70,000.Congress has been on holiday for two weeks and reconvenes on Wednesday. In order to approve Ukraine aid, rightwing House Republicans are also demanding spending on border and immigration reform – regardless of the fact that Senate Republicans this month sank a bipartisan border deal of their own which included it.“History is watching whether Speaker Johnson will put [the Senate foreign aid] bill on the floor,” Sullivan said. “If he does, it will pass, will get Ukraine what it needs for Ukraine to succeed. If he doesn’t, then we will not be able to give Ukraine the tools required for it to stand up to Russia and Putin will be the major beneficiary of that.”Many Republicans in the House do support Ukraine aid. A senior Republican member of the foreign relations committee called on Johnson to put the aid package on the floor for a vote or risk a party rebellion.“Ukrainians have already died because we didn’t provide this aid eight months ago as we should have,” Brad Sherman of California told CNN. “I think that it’s up to Speaker Johnson to put this bill on the floor. It’ll pass it’ll pass by a strong vote. And he needs to do that so the aid flows in March.“If he doesn’t, eventually Republicans will get tired of that obstructionism and will join Democrats in a discharge petition” – a congressional manoeuvre, rarely used, that can bypass blockages.“But that’s a very bulky way to try to pass a bill. It’s only happened once in my 28 years in Congress. I suspect that we’ll be getting the aid to Ukraine in April, unless Speaker Johnson is willing to relent.”Ukraine, Sherman said, was a “bulwark between Russia and Nato countries that we are obligated to defend, notwithstanding what Trump may have said”.Trump has repeatedly threatened to refuse to defend Nato countries he deems not to have paid enough to maintain the alliance, going so far as to say he would encourage Russia to attack such targets.The defence of Ukraine, Sherman said, “is just critical to us. They can’t do it. They haven’t been able to do it this last month, because we have not provided the artillery shells and other systems.” More

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      Spending Impasse Persists Amid G.O.P. Resistance as Partial Shutdown Looms

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      With Republicans insisting on adding right-wing policy measures to spending bills, lawmakers are running out of time to strike a deal to avert a partial government shutdown before a deadline of Friday at midnight.Congressional leaders have failed to reach a deal on legislation to keep federal funding going past Friday, with Republicans insisting on adding right-wing policy dictates to the spending bills, pushing the government to the brink of a partial shutdown within days.Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, said on Sunday that despite “intense discussions” that were continuing among top lawmakers to break the impasse, Republican recalcitrance was raising the prospect of a “disruptive shutdown” at midnight on Friday.“While we had hoped to have legislation ready this weekend that would give ample time for members to review the text, it is clear now that House Republicans need more time to sort themselves out,” Mr. Schumer said in a letter to Democratic senators. “With the uncertainty of how the House will pass the appropriations bills and avoid a shutdown this week, I ask all senators to keep their schedules flexible, so we can work to ensure a pointless and harmful lapse in funding doesn’t occur.”With no sign of a breakthrough, President Biden summoned congressional leaders to the White House on Tuesday to discuss the spending legislation, as well as the $95 billion foreign aid package for Ukraine and Israel that the Senate passed earlier this month, which Speaker Mike Johnson has refused to take up.But the more immediate task was to keep government spending from lapsing this week.Three consecutive times over the last six months, Congress has relied on short-term, stopgap spending bills passed by a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers to keep government spending flowing, essentially punting on a longer-term agreement for several weeks at a time. Each time, the Republican speaker — first Kevin McCarthy, then Mr. Johnson — has promised hard-right lawmakers that they would try to win more spending cuts and conservative policy conditions on how federal money could be spent during the next round of negotiations.Now, with patience wearing thin among ultraconservatives, pressure is mounting on Mr. Johnson, whose members want him to secure major cuts and policy changes that have no chance of enactment with Democrats in control of the Senate and White House. Lawmakers in the House, which has been out of session for the past week, are set to return to Washington on Wednesday, just two days before a deadline on Friday to fund military construction, agriculture, transportation and housing programs.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      John Avlon targets New York Republicans in US House campaign: ‘They’re scared’

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      To John Avlon’s knowledge, “the National Republican Congressional Committee didn’t feel compelled to weigh in when any of the other candidates in the Democratic primary got in the race. But they did for me. And I think that’s because they’re scared.”The race is in New York’s first congressional district, a US House seat represented by a Republican, Nick LaLota, in an area that trended towards Joe Biden in 2020 and is thus one of many Democratic targets in the state this year. Avlon announced his run on Wednesday.“I think they thought they were going to have a relatively easy race, maybe facing the candidate who had been defeated before. But I think when they saw me getting in the race, they recognised that changes the calculus.”Avlon, 51, is no unknown quantity: he has written four books on politics and history, was for five years editor-in-chief of the Daily Beast and, until this month, was a contributor and anchor at CNN.The primary comes first. Nancy Goroff contested the seat on the eastern end of Long Island in 2020 and is in again. So is James Gaughran, a former state senator. There’s plenty of time for things to get testy but Gaughran welcomed Avlon to the race, telling Politico: “I’ve watched him a lot on CNN, and I’ve actually become a big fan. His advocacy – particularly pointing to the issues we have in this country of trying to save this country from Donald Trump, is spot on.”Avlon laughs. “That was very kind of Jimmy. And by the way … don’t we want to see more of that? Don’t we want to see more, ‘Let’s have a civil conversation, disagree where we disagree, find the areas where we agree, and be civil and constructive and not tear each other down in primaries, because it distracts the focus from the real work to be done, which is winning a general election.’”Republicans have not been quite so welcoming to Avlon. The NRCC said it looked forward “to litigating this smug, liberal hack’s past so voters can see just how left he and the rest of the modern Democrat [sic] party have become”.A LaLota spokesperson piled in, calling Avlon “a Manhattan elitist without any attachments to Long Island other than his summer home in the Hamptons” and claiming NY-1 “has a history of rejecting out-of-state and Manhattan elitists, from both sides of the aisle, who parachute into the district”.Avlon has homes in Sag Harbor and Manhattan. LaLota, a graduate of the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, lives in Amityville – outside his district.Avlon says: “I don’t think it’s remotely credible to attack me as radical far left. That’s the kind of cut-and-paste political attack that people realise is just fundamentally false. And I think the reality is that Nick LaLota has been a Donald Trump flunky, doing whatever he says rather than solving problems on behalf of people in Suffolk county. You know, he’s far too far right for this swing district.”Twice, Avlon mentions as a model the centrist Tom Suozzi’s Democratic win this month in NY-3, the seat formerly held by the notorious George Santos, the sixth House member ever expelled. Twice, Avlon cites as motivation farcical scenes in Washington DC in which Senate Republicans sank their own border and immigration deal, Trump having made clear he wants to campaign for president against the backdrop of a “border crisis”, real or confected.House Republicans have since refused to consider a foreign aid package without attendant border reform.Avlon says: “When LaLota attacked Senator James Lankford [of Oklahoma, the Republican negotiator] for trying to solve the border crisis with a bipartisan solution, he just revealed himself as part of the problem, not part of the solution of our politics. I want to be part of the solution.”To some Democrats, “centrist” has become a dirty word. Not to Avlon. He has distanced himself from No Labels, the group he co-founded in 2010, left a decade ago and now accuses of a “reckless gamble with democracy” in its flirtation with a presidential campaign. But the political centre is still where he wants to be, “particularly in swing districts [like NY-01] as a matter of practicality but I think also on principle.“If the larger goal is to win elections, we still need to find a way to reunite America. That’s a lofty goal. I’m not saying that’s why I’m running. But once we break this fever, we need to find a way to come together again. I do believe in the power of unifying leaders in divided times and the best American politics is that which focuses on what unites us, not what divides us.”Avlon’s third book, from 2017, was Washington’s Farewell: The Founding Father’s Warning to Future Generations. The historian Richard Norton Smith called it “a stake through the heart of political extremism”, a subject Avlon knows well, also having written Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe is Hijacking America (2010) and presented Reality Check with John Avlon: Extremist Beat for CNN.“There’s a fundamental importance in building broader community and building a big tent,” he says. “The Democratic party is the last big tent party. The Democratic party, unfortunately, is the only functioning political party in America, because the other party is set to re-nominate a guy who tried to destroy our democracy, and is using election lies as a litmus test for loyalty. I don’t think you can underscore that enough.“But in the larger sense, democracy depends upon reasoning together. That requires common facts and identifying common ground and focusing on how you solve common problems. And that’s about putting country over party.”Avlon’s own marriage is bipartisan. His wife, Margaret Hoover, is a TV host and political commentator whose great-grandfather, Herbert Hoover, was the unlucky president hit by the Great Depression.Avlon is “proud of her and her family and the work she does to defend and extend his legacy. When Margaret and I are on air together or doing something onstage together, I hope it serves as a reminder that people can disagree agreeably – again, that partisan politics shouldn’t define every aspect of our lives, especially our personal lives. We can have honest disagreements, as long as it’s accompanied by an assumption of goodwill.”Avlon also started out working for a Republican: Rudy Giuliani, when he was mayor of New York City, long before he became Trump’s attack dog. As speechwriter and policy director, Avlon was there on 11 September 2001, when the towers fell.“September 11 is one of the defining moments in my life,” he says. “And I don’t think that’s unusual. I think New Yorkers understand how it defined our collective character. And I think some folks have slipped into a certain 9/11 amnesia. And I’ve warned against the wisdom of that, in a lot of segments, on air and written.“I’ll always be proud of the work we did in those days. My team and I were responsible for writing the eulogies for 343 firefighters, for police officers and Port Authority workers. And I think that memory, and the example they set by running into the fire, and the way we were briefly able to unite as a nation, in the aftermath, those are all core parts of my character and my experience.“And I think folks in Suffolk county will understand that, because they’ve experienced it themselves or they’ve been touched by it themselves. You don’t have to be retired police officer or firefighter to understand the importance of that day and its aftermath to our communities. It’s just part of who I am.” More

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      To Trump or not to Trump: Stefanik and Hutchinson offer contrasting Republican visions

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      At the Conservative Political Action Conference on Friday, Elise Stefanik made her case for a glittering prize: the Republican nomination for vice-president to Donald Trump. At the Principles First summit on Saturday, Cassidy Hutchinson received a prize of her own: a Profiles in Courage award.Stefanik, who is 39 and the No 3 Republican in the US House, received standing ovations from an audience ultra-loyal to Trump. Hutchinson, 28, received standing ovations too, as she appeared with Alyssa Farah Griffin and Sarah Matthews, fellow Trump White House staffers turned Trump critics, before an audience of anti-Trump conservatives.Stefanik is a former moderate who has molded herself in Trump’s far-right image, to rise in a party locked in his grip. Hutchinson is a former Trump loyalist who became a star witness before the House January 6 committee.Hutchinson’s aim now, she said on Saturday, is to “bring people back to reality, to bring people back to not believing these conspiracy theories and the propagation of lies that Donald Trump has done”.Over two days of Washington talk, at two contrasting events, Stefanik and Hutchinson offered starkly differing visions of the present and future of the American right – as well as interesting studies in political star power.At CPAC, in the Maryland suburbs, Stefanik backed Trump’s lie about a stolen 2020 election, safe in the knowledge that most of her cheering audience would not remember what she said the day Trump’s supporters stormed Congress to try to overturn that result. For the record – which she allegedly sought to delete – Stefanik lamented “truly a tragic day for America” and demanded rioters be “prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law”.At Principles First, an event linked to the Bulwark website and staged in downtown DC, echoes of January 6 were also strong. Hutchinson received her award from its previous recipient, Harry Dunn, a former police officer who helped defend the Capitol.Gesturing to people onstage, Matthews said: “We’re all lifelong Republicans or lifelong conservatives. We probably all agree with about 70% of Donald Trump’s policies. But I think we’re all very open-eyed to his character.Hutchinson said: “What we need to do is practice compassion for people who did fall into [Trump’s] seduction, people who were artificially duped. We have to help educate people out of that belief system. We have to plug them back in.”Describing the costs of her decision to stand against Trump, she emphasised the experiences of others, such as the Georgia elections workers Shaye Moss and Ruby Freeman and the Arizona official Rusty Bowers, who also experienced “horrible attacks that ruined our lives”.“We need to push towards normalcy,” Hutchinson said. “We start in this next election. We start by doing everything we possibly can to make sure that Donald Trump never gets near the Oval Office again, and to make sure that every … ”Interrupted by applause, she eventually continued: “ … that every member of Congress that has enabled Donald Trump’s agenda is also held accountable and voted out of office.”That would include Stefanik, named by Farah as someone “we were very close with” but also someone comfortable with the “mental gymnastics” it takes to stay with Trump.View image in fullscreenAnother name came up: Mike Gallagher of Ohio, until this month a Republican rising star, now on his way out of the House after voting against an impeachment of Joe Biden mounted to satisfy Trump’s thirst for revenge and based on the claims of a man indicted for lying and linked to Russian intelligence.Gallagher’s retirement “makes me sad”, Matthews said, “because we need more people like Mike Gallagher in Congress and less people like Marjorie Taylor Greene.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThat jab at the far-right Trump ally from Georgia drew its own applause. But Matthews also rebuked Stefanik and her ilk.“Sadly, people are more concerned with their own positions of power than they are with doing what’s right for the country. These people were elected not to serve Donald Trump. They’re there to serve their constituents, and they seem to have forgotten that.“They’re doing his bidding and they’re so concerned with not painting a target on their own back. Donald Trump, when people speak out against him, what does he do? He tries to find a primary opponent, so he gets them out and gets someone he would approve in … and it’s really disappointing because I think … people would believe the threat of Donald Trump if these elected officials would come out and say what I know they privately say.”Dunn, the former Capitol officer, is running to become an elected official, seeking a seat in Congress as a Maryland Democrat. Outside the ballroom, he could be overheard discussing a “small-business tour” in his prospective district. Listening to Hutchinson – then seeing her signing copies of her memoir and patiently posing for selfies, a line snaking off down the hall – it wasn’t hard to imagine her following a similar path. After all, it was a scene similar, in its way, to the one at CPAC that saw Stefanik surrounded by admirers as she spoke to Steve Bannon.On stage, Hutchinson said: “As I’ve been traveling around the country, I’ve been very encouraged by the amount of young people who see the threat Donald Trump poses and see we need to do more.“We need to do more to mobilise voters. We need to do more to educate voters. The reality of this next election is it’s going to come down to a handful of states, similarly to how it happened in 2020. We need to focus on those states and make sure that those constituents are adequately educated on who they’re voting for.“And if the ticket is a binary choice between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, people need to understand on a very basic, very fundamental level that there’ll be one candidate on that ballot that will support our democracy so we can continue to thrive. And it’s not Donald Trump.”Her audience rose to its feet again. More