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      Liz Cheney’s Checkered History

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      Deep in her new book, “Oath and Honor,” Liz Cheney points out that the likeness of Clio, the Greek muse of history, is found in the Capitol’s National Statuary Hall. “Clio is depicted riding in the chariot of time, making notes in the book in her hand,” Cheney writes, “as a reminder that what we do in the Capitol Building is written in the pages of history.”Cheney’s book is likewise an attempt to write the history of our time, a history in which Cheney has become a protagonist. Her telling of this history, though vital, is unnecessarily partial. If this book is intended as both “a memoir and a warning,” as its subtitle declares, Cheney delivers on only half of that promise.The warning Cheney issues is clear and persuasive: A second presidential term for Donald Trump would pose great risks to the nation’s democratic practices and identity. A retribution-minded, Constitution-terminating leader buttressed by unscrupulous advisers and ethically impaired lawyers could, she argues, “dismantle our republic.” As both a witness and a target of the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol and as a leader of the House committee that investigated the attack, Cheney recognizes the power of the mob that Trump commands. She also understands the cowardice of his enablers in the Republican Party, the same kind of loyalists who would populate — or at least seek to justify — a second Trump administration.“The assumption that our institutions will protect themselves is purely wishful thinking by people who prefer to look the other way,” Cheney writes. And that was before Trump suggested that he would act dictatorially in his new term, if only on day one.As a memoir, however, Cheney’s book is overly narrow, and at times curiously uncurious. Yes, anyone interested in the author’s recollections from inside the House chamber on Jan. 6 will find plenty of material (when Jim Jordan of Ohio approached her to help “get the ladies” off the aisle, Cheney swatted his hand away, retorting, “Get away from me. You f — ing did this.”), and Cheney is unstinting in her contempt for Kevin McCarthy, then the Speaker of the House, whom she describes as unprincipled and unintelligent in roughly equal doses. (She even finds McCarthy less substantive and capable than Democratic leaders in the House, like Nancy Pelosi — a savage dig in G.O.P. world.)Yet, for all the insider detail Cheney offers, her memoir is truncated, treating the period between the 2020 election and the Jan. 6 attack as the beginning of history, or the only history that matters, as though no prior warnings about Trump had been warranted or even audible. Cheney once believed in the staying power of the country’s constitutional principles, she writes, “but all that had changed on January 6 of 2021.”Did nothing change for Cheney before Jan. 6? Not anything at all?Cheney, who has said elsewhere that she regrets voting for Trump in 2020, seems disinclined to revisit or reconsider in this book why she and so many others made their peace with earlier signs of Trump’s authoritarian, anti-constitutional impulses. Her explanation for voting against Trump’s first impeachment is thin; she wishes the Democrats had moved to subpoena John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser, to gather additional evidence. It’s a grudging excuse from Cheney, who, as a former State Department official, no doubt can recognize when diplomacy is being manipulated for domestic political gain.Instead, she merely decries those who failed to pivot away from Trump after the 2020 election and Jan. 6, blaming their social-media silos and their exposure to pro-Trump news outlets like Fox News and Newsmax. A longtime Wyoming donor, for example, had “fallen for all the nonsense” about election fraud, Cheney writes, while a close family friend “fell for the lies, hook, line, and sinker.”I did not expect “Oath and Honor” to double as a mea culpa; in any case, Cheney does not seem the type to dabble much in remorse. Her courage in challenging her party over Trump’s election fantasies is hardly rendered meaningless by her prior support for Trump, and her leadership of the House Jan. 6 committee elevated patriotism over partisanship. But history did not in fact begin with that day of violence at the Capitol nearly three years ago. Trump’s unceasing deceit, his disdain for the norms of his office and his assault on the institutions of government spanned his presidency, not just its closing weeks. And his declarations of supposed electoral fraud against him far predated the 2020 presidential contest; his similar rants ahead of the 2016 election were rendered moot only by his unlikely victory.Whether they are elected officials, media personalities, lawyers, family friends or the mob itself, people don’t just swallow Trump’s lies hook, line and sinker all of a sudden. They are lured in, one speech, one deception, one promise at a time, until a lie becomes a worldview. The most serious Trump enablers may indeed include elected officials like McCarthy and his successor Mike Johnson, both of whom brazenly supported Trump’s attempt to undo the 2020 election, and who come in for serious grief in Cheney’s book. But they are not the only ones who, at key moments throughout the Trump presidency, preferred to look the other way. Even those former supporters turned vocal opponents owe some explanation of why their minds needed changing — if only because their transformation can help illuminate the mindset of those who decline to follow their lead.It is largely correct to write, as Cheney does, that “no amount of evidence would ever convince a certain segment of the Republican Party.” It is also largely unhelpful.The irony of the history Cheney highlights in “Oath and Honor” is that her focus on the final days of Trump’s term in late 2020 and early 2021 proves quite helpful in anticipating what the early days of a second term might bring. Most of those troublesome “adults in the room” from the first Trump administration will be gone, consigned to the green room instead of the Cabinet Room. No one will threaten to resign citing principles for the simple reason that they won’t have any; loyalty will be their chief qualification.Cheney recalls how Ronald Reagan described America’s orderly transfer of power every four years as “nothing less than a miracle,” and she worries of the dangers that loom when that transfer grows disorderly. The transition from an outgoing administration to an incoming one is “a time of heightened potential vulnerability” for the country, Cheney writes, and she notes how, immediately after the 2020 election, Trump subbed out key senior officials — including the defense secretary — in favor of more pliable replacements. “Why was he appointing inexperienced loyalists to the most senior civilian positions in the Pentagon at a moment when stability was key?” Cheney asks. (After her service on the Jan. 6 committee, Cheney is able to answer her own question, concluding that Trump was considering “deploying our military for some election-related purpose.”) The president also tried to replace the attorney general with someone willing to falsely assert in writing that the 2020 vote was corrupt; only when multiple senior Justice Department officials threatened to resign did Trump back down.Now imagine an administration staffed that way from the beginning, starting on Jan. 20, 2025, and buttressed by empowered collaborators in Congress, and you’ll grasp Cheney’s most serious warning. “I am very sad to say,” she acknowledges in her final pages, “that America can no longer count on a body of elected Republicans to protect our republic.” It’s a remarkable statement considering the political lineage of its author, but a defensible one. Just as the history Liz Cheney tells in “Oath and Honor” should go back further than the lies about 2020 and the scandal of Jan. 6, the damage of a second Trump term would extend far beyond whatever measures he might inflict on day one.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X and Threads. More

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      Tracking Retirements in the House: Who Is Leaving Congress?

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      Dozens of members of Congress have announced plans to leave their seats in the House of Representatives, setting a rapid pace for congressional departures, with more expected as the 2024 election draws closer. Given Republicans’ razor-thin House majority, the wave of exits has the potential to lead to a significant shake-up next year. Pace of […] More

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      GOP Support Grows for Majewski, a Trump Ally With a Disputed Military Record

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      J.R. Majewski, an ally of former President Donald J. Trump, is seeking to avenge his 13-point loss in the 2022 midterm elections in Ohio.J.R. Majewski, a Trump acolyte from Ohio whom House Republicans abandoned the first time he ran for Congress in the 2022 midterm elections after discrepancies in his military record emerged, is back as a candidate — and with some prominent G.O.P. names behind him.Mr. Majewski, an Air Force veteran, picked up endorsements on Monday from Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio and Frank LaRose, Ohio’s secretary of state, in his Republican primary as he seeks to challenge Representative Marcy Kaptur, a Democrat, for a second time in the Ninth District.The show of support contrasted sharply with the National Republican Congressional Committee’s canceling its ads for Mr. Majewski during the final six weeks of his 2022 race, which he lost by 13 percentage points to Ms. Kaptur, the longest-serving woman in congressional history.The committee pulled the plug after The Associated Press reported that the Air Force had no record of Mr. Majewski, 44, serving in Afghanistan, which he continues to claim that he did, and drew attention to a series of inconsistencies about his military record. Mr. Majewski has vehemently disputed the reporting.The endorsements came just days after the release of a secret recording of Craig Riedel, a rival G.O.P. candidate and a former state legislator, telling a Republican donor that he would not support former President Donald J. Trump and did not want his endorsement. It was obtained by Charlie Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA, a pro-Trump grass-roots group.Not long after, Mr. Riedel announced that he was endorsing Mr. Trump. But the damage appeared to have been done, with at least one prominent Republican in Ohio (Representative Max Miller, a former Trump adviser) saying that he no longer supported Mr. Riedel, who lost to Mr. Majewski in the 2022 Republican primary.Mr. Riedel accused one of Mr. Majewski’s top MAGA boosters, Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida, of setting him up.“Matt Gaetz and a social media trickster pulled a stunt yesterday to try and convince President Trump to get involved in my congressional primary for proven loser JR Majewski,” Mr. Riedel wrote on X.Mr. Trump, who endorsed Mr. Majewski in 2022, heralded him on Saturday while both attended a New York Young Republican Club gala, blaming the “deep state” for undermining Mr. Majewski during his last run.“We stuck by him,” Mr. Trump said, adding, “They played dirty pool, but you’ll get a second shot, right?”Erica Knight, a spokeswoman for Mr. Majewski, said in a text message that he was expecting to be endorsed by Mr. Trump again. A campaign spokesman for Mr. Trump did not respond to a request for comment.Mr. Riedel has received endorsements from Republicans considered more mainstream, including Representative Kevin McCarthy, before he was deposed as speaker of the House, and Americans for Prosperity Action, a political network founded by the billionaire industrialist brothers Charles and David Koch. The group has spent nearly $250,000 on Mr. Riedel’s behalf this election cycle, according to the Federal Election Commission.Mr. Riedel did not respond to a request for comment.In a statement to The New York Times on Tuesday, Mr. Gaetz denied orchestrating the secret recording.“Craig Riedel trashed Trump when he thought it would help him get a New Yorker to give him money,” he said. “We have enough people willing to say and do anything for campaign cash in Congress already. Craig Riedel exposed himself in his own words. I had nothing to do with it, though I wish I had.”Aidan Johnson, a spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, in a statement called the Republican primary contest an “ugly and expensive race to the bottom.” Steve Lankenau, a former mayor of Napoleon, Ohio, is also running in the Republican primary.While Mr. Majewski has frequently promoted himself as a combat veteran who served in Afghanistan after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Air Force records obtained by The Times show that he deployed for six months in 2002 to Qatar, which is now home to the largest U.S. air base in the Middle East.According to military records, the Air Force demoted Mr. Majewski in September 2001 for driving drunk at Kadena Air Base in Japan, contradicting his earlier account that he could not re-enlist in the Air Force after his initial four years because of a “brawl.”The inconsistencies in Mr. Majewski’s public accounts of his military service brought renewed scrutiny during the last election cycle, when he was already facing questions about his presence at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and sympathies for the QAnon conspiracy movement.In August 2023, more than nine months after Mr. Majewski’s defeat, the military updated his records to reflect that he had received a Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal for his service, an honor created in 2003 for Air Force members who deployed abroad after the Sept. 11 attacks.But Afghanistan is just one of several dozen countries, including Qatar, that count toward eligibility. That has not stopped Mr. Majewski and his allies, including Mr. Trump, from claiming that he was “totally exonerated.” More

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      Biden condemns impeachment inquiry: ‘a baseless political stunt’

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      The House on Wednesday authorized the impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden, with every Republican rallying behind the politically charged process despite lingering concerns among some in the party that the investigation has yet to produce evidence of misconduct by the US president.The 221-212 party-line vote put the entire House Republican conference on record in support of an impeachment process that can lead to the ultimate penalty for a president: punishment for what the constitution describes as “high crimes and misdemeanors”, which can lead to removal from office if convicted in a Senate trial.Biden, in a rare statement about the impeachment effort, questioned the priorities of House Republicans in pursuing an inquiry against him and his family.“Instead of doing anything to help make Americans’ lives better, they are focused on attacking me with lies,” Biden said following the vote. “Instead of doing their job on the urgent work that needs to be done, they are choosing to waste time on this baseless political stunt that even Republicans in Congress admit is not supported by facts.”Authorizing the months-long inquiry ensures that the impeachment investigation extends well into 2024, when Biden will be running for re-election and seems likely to be squaring off against Donald Trump – who was twice impeached during his time in the White House. The former president has pushed his GOP allies in Congress to move swiftly on impeaching Biden, part of his broader calls for vengeance and retribution against his political enemies.The decision to hold a vote came as speaker Mike Johnson and his team faced growing pressure to show progress in what has become a nearly year-long probe centered around the business dealings of Biden’s family members. While their investigation has raised ethical questions, no evidence has emerged that Biden acted corruptly or accepted bribes in his current role or previous office as vice-president.“We do not take this responsibility lightly and will not prejudge the investigation’s outcome,” Johnson and his leadership team said in a joint statement after the vote. “But the evidentiary record is impossible to ignore.”House Democrats stood in united opposition to the inquiry resolution Wednesday, calling it a farce perpetrated by those across the aisle to avenge the two impeachments against Trump.“This whole thing is an extreme political stunt. It has no credibility, no legitimacy, and no integrity. It is a sideshow,” Massachusetts representative Jim McGovern said during a floor debate.Some House Republicans, particularly those hailing from politically divided districts, had been hesitant in recent weeks to take any vote on Biden’s impeachment, fearing a significant political cost. But GOP leaders have made the case in recent weeks that the resolution is only a step in the process, not a decision to impeach Biden. That message seems to have won over skeptics.“As we have said numerous times before, voting in favor of an impeachment inquiry does not equal impeachment,” Minnesota representative Tom Emmer, a member of the GOP leadership team, said at a news conference Tuesday.Emmer said Republicans “will continue to follow the facts wherever they lead, and if they uncover evidence of treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors, then and only then will the next steps towards impeachment proceedings be considered”.Most of the Republicans reluctant to back the impeachment push have also been swayed by leadership’s recent argument that authorizing the inquiry will give them better legal standing as the White House has questioned the legal and constitutional basis for their requests for information.A letter last month from a top White House attorney to Republican committee leaders portrayed the GOP investigation as overzealous and illegitimate because the chamber had not yet authorized a formal impeachment inquiry by a vote of the full House. Richard Sauber, special counsel to the president, also wrote that when Trump faced the prospect of impeachment by a Democratic-led House in 2019, Johnson had said at the time that any inquiry without a House vote would be a “sham”.Dusty Johnson, the South Dakota Republican congressman, said this week that while there was no evidence to impeach the president, “that’s also not what the vote this week would be about”.“We have had enough political impeachments in this country,” he said. “I don’t like the stonewalling the administration has done, but listen, if we don’t have the receipts, that should constrain what the House does long-term.”Don Bacon, the Nebraska Republican representative, who has long been opposed to moving forward with impeachment, said that the White House questioning the legitimacy of the inquiry without a formal vote helped gain his support. “I can defend an inquiry right now,” he told reporters this week. “Let’s see what they find out.”House Democrats remained unified in their opposition to the impeachment process, saying it is a farce used by the GOP to take attention away from Trump and his legal woes.“You don’t initiate an impeachment process unless there’s real evidence of impeachable offenses,” said representative Jerry Nadler, the ranking Democrat on the House judiciary committee, who oversaw the two impeachments into Trump. “There is none here. None.”Democrats and the White House have repeatedly defended Biden and his administration’s cooperation with the investigation thus far, saying it has already made a massive trove of documents available.Congressional investigators have obtained nearly 40,000 pages of subpoenaed bank records and dozens of hours of testimony from key witnesses, including several high-ranking justice department officials currently tasked with investigating the president’s son, Hunter Biden.While Republicans say their inquiry is ultimately focused on the president himself, they have taken particular interest in Hunter Biden and his overseas business dealings, from which they accuse the president of personally benefiting. Republicans have also focused a large part of their investigation on whistleblower allegations of interference in the long-running justice department investigation into the younger Biden’s taxes and his gun use.Hunter Biden is currently facing criminal charges in two states from the special counsel investigation. He’s charged with firearm counts in Delaware, alleging he broke laws against drug users having guns in 2018, a period when he has acknowledged struggling with addiction. Special counsel David Weiss filed additional charges last week, alleging he failed to pay about $1.4m in taxes over a three-year period.Democrats have conceded that while the president’s son is not perfect, he is a private citizen who is already being held accountable by the justice system.“I mean, there’s a lot of evidence that Hunter Biden did a lot of improper things. He’s been indicted, he’ll stand trial,” Nadler said. “There’s no evidence whatsoever that the president did anything improper.” More

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      House votes to formally authorize Biden impeachment inquiry

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      The House voted Wednesday to formally authorize the impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden, even as Republicans have failed to produce evidence showing that the president financially benefitted from his family’s business dealings.The House voted on partisan lines, 221-212 to launch the inquiry. The vote came hours after the president’s son, Hunter Biden, defied a subpoena to appear for a closed-door deposition with House members. Instead choosing to hold a press conference on Capitol Hill, Hunter Biden reiterated his willingness to testify publicly, an offer that House Republicans have rejected.“I am here to testify at a public hearing, today, to answer any of the committees’ legitimate questions,” Hunter Biden said. “Republicans do not want an open process where Americans can see their tactics, expose their baseless inquiry, or hear what I have to say.”Hunter Biden now faces two federal indictments on gun and tax charges. As he addressed reporters on Wednesday, Hunter Biden expressed regret over his past actions while denouncing Republicans’ “lies” about his family.In a statement, Joe Biden denounced the Republican action as a “baseless impeachment stunt”. He insinuated that Republicans are avoiding “the issues facing the American people”. “Instead of doing anything to help make Americans’ lives better, they are focused on attacking me with lies. Instead of doing their job on the urgent work that needs to be done, they are choosing to waste time on this baseless political stunt that even Republicans in Congress admit is not supported by facts,” Biden said. “The American people deserve better.”The impeachment inquiry will give Republicans more power to enforce subpoenas and defend their investigation in court. The White House has argued that House Republicans’ subpoenas are illegitimate because the full chamber never voted to authorize the inquiry, but that argument could be invalidated with a successful vote on Wednesday.Earlier on Wednesday, the Republican chairs of the House oversight committee and judiciary committee, James Comer of Kentucky and Jim Jordan of Ohio, said in a joint statement: “Today, the House will vote on an impeachment inquiry resolution to strengthen our legal case in the courts as we face obstruction from the White House and witnesses. Today’s obstruction by Hunter Biden reinforces the need for a formal vote.”The previous House speaker, Republican Kevin McCarthy, unilaterally launched the inquiry in September without a formal vote on the matter. At the time, a number of more moderate Republicans expressed concerns about launching a formal inquiry, given the lack of clear evidence about Biden’s involvement in his son’s business dealings.Meanwhile, Comer and Jordan have already indicated they will move to hold Hunter Biden in contempt of Congress if the resolution passes. House Democrats defended Hunter Biden’s decision to defy his subpoena, accusing Republicans of attempting to “cherry-pick” testimony to advance baseless allegations against the president.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“They wanted to conduct the deposition in a closed-door interview, so the public couldn’t see it and so they could continue to cherry-pick little pieces of evidence and distort and misrepresent what had taken place there,” Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House oversight committee, told reporters. “They have not laid a glove on President Biden, and they have no evidence of him committing any offense, much less an impeachable offense.”
      This story was amended on 13 December 2023 to accurately reflect the House votes for the inquiry to 221-212. More

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      Milking it: bill aims to bring dairy staple back to US schools

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      “Let them drink milk!”A bipartisan bill to allow US schools to serve whole milk, in addition to low-fat options, is garnering support, as some call the attempts to bring back the dairy staple a waste of time.The Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act is a bill that would allow schools to serve whole milk and 2% milk during lunchtime.Both dairy options were phased out in 2010 after the passage of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, which mandated that schools serve 1% or fat-free milk to meet health guidelines aimed at combating childhood obesity, according to Where the Food Comes From.The Whole Milk Act comes as alternative dairy options like soy and oat milk have maintained their popularity. Plant-based dairy or protein is popular among 38% of US adults, according to Mintel, a market research group.While the bill has gained bipartisan support, some legislators criticized the legislation as a waste of time.Pennsylvania representative Mary Gay Scanlon, a Democrat, condemned legislators for spending time to advance the milk bill versus addressing the gun violence epidemic.“The American people are crying out for Congress to act, and yet the House of Representatives is using its precious time to debate chocolate milk,” Scanlon said.Democratic congressman Mike Thompson of California echoed the need for Congress to address gun violence instead of attempting to bring back whole milk.“I spent the entire weekend in my district and not one person came to me to change the law on chocolate milk,” Thompson said, adding that gun violence remains a leading cause of death among children and teens.Opponents of the bill have also said that low-fat options currently offered in schools already are already nutritionally sufficient, minus the saturated fat.Meanwhile, Republican representatives from all swaths of the country spoke in support of the act and the urgent need to bring whole milk back into schools.Wisconsin representative Derrick Van Orden decried plant-based dairy such as soy and almond milk as “not real milk”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Milk comes from a mammal,” Van Orden said.Illinois representative Mary Miller called the previous removal of whole milk from schools a facet of “radical Obama administration policies led by Michelle Obama”, referencing the former first lady’s campaign to end childhood obesity.North Carolina representative Virginia Foxx evoked Santa Claus’s affinity for cookies and milk to advocate for a return of whole milk in schools.“The nutrients in whole milk … provide the fuel Santa needs to travel the whole globe in one night. Whole milk is the unsung hero of his Christmas journey,” Foxx said.Some Democrats also spoke in support of the pro-whole milk legislation.Kim Schrier, a Democrat representative from Washington and the bill’s co-sponsor, said that more milk options would encourage children to avoid more sugary drink options at lunchtime.“I would much rather have children drinking milk, even whole milk, than juice,” said Schrier, the Wall Street Journal reported. More

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      McCarthy endorses Trump for president: ‘We’re very honest with each other’

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      Former US House speaker Kevin McCarthy has endorsed Donald Trump in the 2024 race for the Oval Office while also expressing interest in joining his administration should he win, even though loyalists of the ex-president drove the congressman into an early exit.While serving as a House leader, McCarthy did not formally endorse Trump’s campaign for a second presidency, though the California representative was generally supportive of his fellow Republican. But, four days after announcing in an opinion column in Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal that he was leaving Congress at the end of December, McCarthy appeared on CBS News Sunday Morning and made clear that he backed Trump’s attempts to return to power.“I will support the president,” McCarthy told the show’s anchor Robert Costa on Sunday while discussing his post-congressional plans. “I will support president Trump.”After he confirmed those remarks were an endorsement of the former president, who is grappling with a multitude of pending criminal charges, McCarthy was asked by Costa if he would be “willing to serve in a Trump cabinet”.McCarthy replied, “In the right position. Look, if I’m the best person for the job – yes.”He went on to say that he worked together with Trump for the Republicans to seize what is now a four-seat majority in the House after a showing in the 2022 midterms that was widely considered to be underwhelming for their party.“Look, I worked with president Trump on a lot of policies,” McCarthy said. “But we also have a relationship where we’re very honest with each other.”McCarthy lost his hold on the House speaker’s gavel in October after he relied on Democratic support to keep the federal government funded and open. As retaliation, the far-right, pro-Trump faction in the House that helped make him speaker after enduring 15 votes for the role last year ensured he became the first ever ejected from the role by his own party.It was a bitter twist for McCarthy, who had taken the far-right position 146 other congressional Republicans did when they voted to object to Joe Biden’s victory over Trump in the 2020 election.McCarthy and his GOP colleagues maintained that position after a mob of Trump supporters attacked the US Capitol and breached its walls on 6 January 2021. Trump even received a visit at his Mar-a-Lago home from McCarthy shortly after the failure of the Capitol attack plunged the defeated president into an apparent depression, according to the Liz Cheney book Oath and Honor.McCarthy’s support at one point prompted Trump to affectionately refer to him as “My Kevin” at one point.After his ouster, McCarthy pledged that he would not resign from Congress, saying he had “a lot more work to do”. But months of behind-the-scenes tension, including an alleged physical attack on Tennessee Republican House member Tim Burchett, appeared to change his mind and convince him to step away in the coming weeks instead of when his term expires in early 2025.McCarthy on Sunday said “Trump needs to stop” campaigning on promises of exacting revenge against his political enemies if returned to the Oval Office.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“America doesn’t want to see the idea of the retribution,” McCarthy said. “If it’s rebuild, restore and renew, then I think you’ll see that.”Despite Trump’s gloomy message, McCarthy predicted Trump would clinch the White House, help Republicans expand their numerical advantage in the House and retake a majority in the Senate if the Democrats nominate Biden for re-election.Much of McCarthy’s congressional agenda was blunted by Democratic control of the White House and the Senate, where the party has a 51-49 edge.Trump faces 91 criminal charges accusing him of election subversion, illegal retention of government secrets and hush-money payments to an adult film actor. He has also contended with civil litigation over his business affairs and a rape allegation deemed “substantially true” by a judge.Nonetheless, Trump has emerged as the clear frontrunner to be the Republicans’ 2024 presidential nominee, and a Wall Street Journal poll published Saturday showed Trump leading Biden 47% to 43%.“If Biden stays as the nominee for the Democrats, I believe Donald Trump will win,” McCarthy said. “I believe the Republicans will gain more seats in the House and the Republicans will win the Senate.” More

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      The Squad review: AOC, the rise of the left and the fight against dark money

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      Ryan Grim’s sprawling new book is called The Squad, but it is about much more than Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her progressive allies in the US House. It does provide mini-biographies of AOC, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Ayanna Pressley, Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman, but it should have been called The Squad and Its Enemies, given the amount of space it devotes to their adversaries.Grim also gives a blow-by-blow replay of the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries, and extremely detailed accounts of how Joe Biden’s infrastructure and domestic spending bills finally made it through Congress.The book seems to have been written at great speed without much time for editing. At times that makes it a little hard to follow. For example, on page 30, we learn that Justice Democrats, an organization founded in 2017 to elect “a new type of Democratic majority in Congress”, suddenly pulled out of AOC’s first race because she wasn’t raising enough money herself.“She was crushed and considered dropping out,” Grim writes. But then, two pages later, we learn that Justice Democrats “just went all in and just diverted it all” to AOC. “We stopped raising money for anybody else,” an organizer explains.There are small, easily checkable errors. The Rayburn House Office Building, we’re told, was “built in the 1950s during the postwar boom”. Actually its cornerstone was laid in 1962 and the building opened in 1965.Grim is a big fan of hard-left, hard-edged judgments against middle-of-the-road Democrats. On the very first page, we are told of the “rubble of the Obama administration’s pivot to austerity in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis”. Nine pages later, Obama is accused of encouraging more home foreclosures “to keep the bailed-out banks alive”.According to Grim, the present House Democratic leader, Hakeem Jeffries of New York, has a “visceral hatred toward the radical left”; gets “roughly half” of his campaign money from corporate political action committees; and has the additional sins of being a “vocal supporter of charter schools”, an ally of the former New York governor Andrew Cuomo and a supporter of Hillary Clinton.Grim is on more solid ground when he attacks the Problem Solvers, a group that “claimed it would solve problems by bringing together moderate Democrats and reasonable Republicans for common sense solutions” but whose primary goal is to block “tax increases on private equity moguls and hedge fund executives” who funded dark money groups linked to No Labels, the “centrist” group threatening to run a third-party candidate for president, potentially hurting Joe Biden and helping Donald Trump.Grim offers very long sections about the debilitating effects of dark money on the entire political system, and the negative effects of the extremely large amounts spent by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) and the rest of the lobby for Israel. He is at his best when he describes Washington alliances that are mostly invisible to casual students of the Capitol scene. There is a long narrative about Josh Gottheimer, a former Clinton intern and speechwriter turned New Jersey congressman elected with the support of Aipac, a Problem Solvers founder .Gottheimer’s most important ally is Mark Penn, a key Hillary Clinton strategist and the former head of the PR powerhouse Burson-Marsteller. Gottheimer, a congressional champion of Israel, was paradoxically aided by Penn’s longtime work for Saudi Arabia. The Saudis and the United Arab Emirates “built an alliance with the Israeli lobbying operation in Washington”, Grim explains. “Israel won Arab cred from the two autocracies even as its settlements in occupied Palestinian territory were rapidly expanding. And the autocracies were helped by association with one of Washington’s most powerful lobbies.”“Israel and the Arabs standing together is the ultimate ace in the hole,” an Israeli embassy official tells the author.Because of this unholy alliance, Gottheimer became one of the “top recipients of cash” from lobbyists and lawyers working for Saudi Arabia in his first re-election cycle.We also learn in detail how the mere threat of opposition by Aipac in his Florida congressional primary transformed Maxwell Frost’s position on the Middle East. The young Democrat had signed a pledge to “heed the call of Palestinian civil society for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions” (BDS) and called for “an end to US political, military and economic support to Israel, and to all military security and policing collaborations”. But after Richie Torres, a New York Democrat, befriended Frost, the Floridian ended up “a candidate who wanted no strings attached to military aid to Israel” and who considered BDS “extremely problematic and a risk to the chances of peace and a two-state solution”.Stories like this lend credence to the judgment of Summer Lee of Pennsylvania, who survived her own “near-death experience” at the hands of the Israel lobby. She tells Grim she knows people deterred from running for office “because this is a topic that they know will bury them. There’s absolutely a chilling effect”.Lee continues: “It’s very hard to survive as a progressive Black, working-class-background candidate when you are facing millions and millions of dollars.” This also “deters other people from ever wanting to get into it. So then it has the effect of ensuring that the Black community broadly, the other marginalized communities are just no longer centered in our politics”.As Grim demonstrates convincingly, that is one of the many big costs the US pays thanks to the gigantic role of dark money in its politics.
      The Squad is published in the US by Henry Holt & Co More