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      Bowman Is Latest House Democrat to Face a Primary Over Israel Stance

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      George Latimer, the Westchester County executive, told The New York Times he would run against Mr. Bowman, a rising star of the Democratic left, next year.After months of public deliberation and prodding from donors aligned with Israel, George Latimer, the Westchester County executive, said on Wednesday that he would mount a Democratic primary challenge against Representative Jamaal Bowman of New York.The decision set the stage for a potentially explosive contest next year that promises to test not only the growing Democratic divide over the war in the Middle East but the durability of the party’s progressive wing.In an interview, Mr. Latimer drew sharp contrasts between himself and Mr. Bowman, one of left’s most vocal critics of Israel. He dismissed the incumbent’s calls for a cease-fire as premature and called a recent protest outside the White House, where the congressman accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza, a political stunt.“It’s about results, not rhetoric,” said Mr. Latimer, who has deep ties to the Democratic establishment. “So much of politics has turned into that sort of showmanship — how you look in front of the cameras.”He was expected to officially begin his campaign with a video announcement later on Wednesday, just days after returning from a wartime visit to the region.The nascent contest echoes primary fights breaking out from Pittsburgh to Detroit since Hamas’s deadly Oct. 7 attack, as pro-Israel Democrats try to oust members of the House “Squad” pushing for a cease-fire. Like the other challengers, Mr. Latimer is expected to benefit from millions of dollars in outside spending by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, and other special interest groups.The race in the New York City suburbs, though, may be uniquely complex. It pits a charismatic Black progressive with a growing national profile against an old-school white liberal with deep local support. And it will play out in a district that is both home to one of the country’s most influential Jewish communities and also nearly half Black or Latino.Mr. Latimer said he shared many of Mr. Bowman’s progressive priorities but would avoid the incumbent’s “showmanship.”Gregg Vigliotti for The New York TimesMr. Latimer tread carefully around many of those fault lines as he outlined his candidacy this week, insisting that he was preparing for a campaign that would go well beyond the issue of Israel.Mr. Latimer, in his second term as county executive, urged voters not to judge him on his age, 70, or the color of his skin. Citing his four decades in elected office, he said would continue many of the progressive priorities on housing, climate change and transportation that Mr. Bowman has championed. And he avoided outright attacks on the incumbent beyond charging that Mr. Bowman was more interested in making his name than tending to his district.“If you ignore that turf because you’re a national figure and more interested in being on the national stage, then you are neglecting the needs of that community,” Mr. Latimer said.The challenge comes at a moment of profound political vulnerability for Mr. Bowman, 47, and not just because of his stance on the war. The congressman is still dealing with the repercussions of pleading guilty in October to pulling a false fire alarm in a House office building. And he has just $185,000 in his campaign account, according to recent filings.AIPAC, which privately offered Mr. Latimer its support months ago, could easily swamp that amount on its own. Marshall Wittmann, a spokesman for the group, declined to discuss the group’s spending plans this week but denounced Mr. Bowman as a representative of “the anti-Israel extremist fringe.”Mr. Bowman’s advisers and allies say defeating him may be far more difficult than his foes anticipate. Some of the left’s most influential figures were already lining up to fight back, determined to show the staying power of their movement three years after they first helped Mr. Bowman, a former middle school principal, topple a powerful three-decade incumbent, Eliot L. Engel.Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Mr. Bowman’s best-known ally, circulated a fund-raising appeal on his behalf. Left-leaning groups, including New York’s Working Families Party and Justice Democrats, have pledged resources. For now, each appear to see value in framing the primary as a conflict as one with pro-Israel special interests, not the county executive.“It’s not a surprise that a super PAC that routinely targets Black members of Congress with primary challenges and is funded by the same Republican megadonors who give millions to election-denying Republicans including Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, and Ted Cruz have recruited a candidate for this race,” said Emma Simon, a spokeswoman for Mr. Bowman’s campaign.The primary battle is one Democrats had wished to avoid. The party already hopes to flip six Republican-held swing seats in New York next year, which is key to taking back the House majority. Some Democrats have expressed concern that a pro-Israel advertising blitz against Mr. Bowman would inadvertently tarnish the party’s candidates in competitive races in neighboring districts to the north and west.Now that the matchup is underway, though, it poses a quandary for Democratic leaders, particularly Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York.Mr. Jeffries, the top House Democrat, has said he would continue the party’s longstanding policy of supporting incumbents like Mr. Bowman, even if his own views on Israel are more conservative. But Mr. Latimer said he had not received a call from Mr. Jeffries asking him not to run, and the House leader may soon have to decide how hard to fight to protect Mr. Bowman.Mr. Bowman has refused to tone down his advocacy despite growing pressure from Jewish constituents and fellow Democrats.His allies argue that there is good reason to believe many voters agree with his views, but that for many, Israel will not be a decisive issue when they cast their primary ballots next June.About half of voters in the district, which stretches from the north Bronx through many of Westchester’s liberal suburbs, are Black and Latino, according to census data. The figure is even higher among Democratic primary voters. By comparison, about 10 percent of all voters and about 20 to 25 percent of Democratic primary voters are Jewish.Mr. Bowman has repeatedly said he is standing by his position on Israel for a simpler reason: He believes in it.Mr. Bowman has refused to tone down his advocacy despite growing pressure from Jewish constituents and fellow Democrats.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesHe summarized his views outside the White House last week, where he joined protesters calling on President Biden to support a bilateral cease-fire. He used terms that most Democrats have objected to, including “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing,” in describing Israel’s deadly bombardment of Gaza, which has killed some 15,000 people, according to the local health authorities. He accused the United States of “being complicit” in those deaths. But he also condemned those targeting Israelis or Jews and repeated his earlier denunciations of Hamas.“Calling for cease-fire does not mean we support Hamas, does not mean we support the killing of Israelis or Jews, does not mean we support antisemitism,” he said. “We are calling for cease-fire because we don’t want anyone else to die.”In the interview, Mr. Latimer said he, too, was eager to see the bloodshed in Gaza end, but only after Hamas returned the remaining Israeli hostages it abducted on Oct. 7 and agreed “to step aside from violence.” Anything short of that would amount to unilateral disarmament by Israel, he argued.Mr. Latimer said he did not “know enough” to judge whether Israel’s counteroffensive had violated international law. “I’m not a secretary of state,” he said.He also rejected Mr. Bowman’s proposal for the United States to place conditions on the billions of military aid it provides to Israel. “That is a matter that I think is best left to the presidential administration,” Mr. Latimer said.He was more pointed about attempts by Mr. Bowman and his allies to build public pressure on Mr. Biden through protests and media appearances. Mr. Latimer called Mr. Bowman’s appearance outside the White House “the classic response of somebody who has been in government a couple of years.”“If you want to influence the policy of the president, you begin with the dialogue you have with your other members of Democratic Caucus,” he said. “When you have a consensus movement, that becomes more impressive to an executive.” More

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      Patrick McHenry, Former Interim Speaker, Will Leave Congress

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      The North Carolina congressman, who leads the House Financial Services Committee, said he would join the growing ranks of lawmakers exiting Congress amid intense dysfunction.Representative Patrick T. McHenry of North Carolina, who made history as the first interim speaker of the House after Republicans ousted their own speaker and struggled for weeks to agree on a successor, said on Tuesday that he would leave Congress at the end of his term.The announcement by Mr. McHenry, the chairman of the Financial Services Committee, added him to the growing ranks of lawmakers who have announced that they will depart the House and the Senate, many of them citing the historic dysfunction of Capitol Hill.“This is not a decision I come to lightly,” Mr. McHenry said in a statement. “But I believe there is a season for everything and — for me — this season has come to an end.”The bow-tied and bespectacled Mr. McHenry, 48, arrived in Congress as an unruly bomb thrower in 2005 and has matured into one of the more sober-minded leaders in a Republican conference whose actions are more often driven by the attention seekers. He was named speaker pro tempore after Republicans deposed Kevin McCarthy, the California Republican who is Mr. McHenry’s close ally.Mr. McCarthy is also expected to announce in the coming days that he will not seek re-election, and many of his colleagues do not expect him to finish out his term after he has discovered the life of a rank-and-file member to be a painful existence.Mr. McCarthy’s brutal ouster prompted the House’s first invocation of a post-9/11 crisis succession plan that requires the speaker to secretly designate an interim stand-in should the post become unexpectedly vacant. Those plans never envisioned that the crisis that would lead to a vacancy would be that members of the party controlling the House would choose to overthrow their own speaker.As Republicans struggled for three weeks to coalesce around any candidate to replace Mr. McCarthy and the House remained paralyzed, Mr. McHenry was under intense pressure to take on more power and interpret his role more broadly.But he steadfastly refused, even as members asked him to bring to the floor an uncontroversial resolution in support of Israel after the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack in which about 1,200 people were killed and hundreds taken hostage. And when Republicans floated a plan to hold a formal vote to allow Mr. McHenry to preside over legislative business, he let it be known he was against it.Mr. McHenry argued that interpreting his role as anything more than simply convening the House to take a vote for a new speaker would only create more incentive for the Republican feuding to drag on and even grow worse. He made it clear that he harbored no ambition of becoming the speaker himself, and in fact was actively hostile to the idea.Mr. McHenry had chosen not to run for any leadership position during this Congress, in part because he believed that the most effective way to wield power in the House was to not allow anyone to have leverage over him. But Mr. McCarthy had a way of roping him back in.During Mr. McCarthy’s tenure as speaker, he cut out the official leadership structure, whose members he distrusted, and relied heavily on Mr. McHenry as his handpicked adviser to help handle debt ceiling negotiations with the White House and avert a government shutdown.Mr. McHenry’s departure from a seat in a solidly Republican district was not expected to have much impact on the race for control of the House, where his successor was all but certain to be another Republican.His decision not to seek re-election may have had as much to do with his own future prospects in the House as it did with overall dysfunction. Mr. McHenry will be term-limited out of his chairmanship at the end of next year.In announcing his decision not to seek another term, Mr. McHenry tried to play down any narrative that the spate of retirements and exits was due to the House becoming ungovernable.“There has been a great deal of hand-wringing and ink spilled about the future of this institution because some — like me — have decided to leave,” he said. “Those concerns are exaggerated. I’ve seen a lot of change over 20 years. I truly feel this institution is on the verge of the next great turn.”He added: “Evolutions are often lumpy and disjointed but at each stage, new leaders emerge. There are many smart and capable members who remain, and others are on their way. I’m confident the House is in good hands.” More

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      ‘Whatever it takes’: Liz Cheney mulls third-party run to block Trump victory

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      Liz Cheney, a leading Republican critic and antagonist of Donald Trump, has said she is considering mounting her own third-party candidacy for the White House, as part of her effort to thwart the former president from returning to the Oval Office.In her most explicit public statements to date on a potential presidential run, Cheney told the Washington Post on Tuesday she would do “whatever it takes” to block a Trump return.Cheney, the daughter of former Republican vice-president Dick Cheney, has previously floated the idea. But she had never explicitly stated if she was thinking of running as a semi-moderate Republican party candidate or would run as an independent.“Several years ago, I would not have contemplated a third-party run,” Cheney said in the interview. “I happen to think democracy is at risk at home, obviously, as a result of Donald Trump’s continued grip on the Republican party, and I think democracy is at risk internationally as well.”Cheney echoed that sentiment in remarks with USA Today. She said: “I certainly hope to play a role in helping to ensure that the country has … a new, fully conservative party. And so whether that means restoring the current Republican party, which looks like a very difficult if not impossible task, or setting up a new party, I do hope to be involved and engaged in that.”Cheney added that she would make decision in the next few months, describing the threats facing the US as “existential”. She the country needed a candidate to “confront all of those challenges”, adding: “That will all be part of my calculation as we go into the early months of 2024.”The former Wyoming congresswoman was speaking as part of a book tour promoting Oath and Honor: A Memoir and a Warning, which calls on the US to back pro-constitution candidates against what she describes as Trump enablers in Congress.“Every one of us – Republican, Democrat, independent – must work and vote together to ensure that Donald Trump and those who have appeased, enabled, and collaborated with him are defeated,” she wrote, calling it “the cause of our time”.With Trump 40 points ahead of 2024 Republican presidential primary challengers, she told the Post, the “tectonic plates of our politics are shifting”, upending conventional wisdom about third party candidates.The primary system process that produces a single Republican and Democrat presidential nominee, Cheney added, is “pretty irrelevant, in my view, in the 2024 cycle, because the threat is so unique”.If Cheney decides on a third-party run, she will join Robert F Kennedy Jr, Cornel West and Jill Stein. Other potential candidates include West Virginia’s soon-to-retire senator Joe Manchin, the former Connecticut senator Joe Lieberman, and ex-Maryland governor Larry Hogan.In a Harvard CAPS-Harris survey in November, Kennedy led the declared pack in terms of favorability at 52%. Kennedy scored higher than the runner-up Trump, at 51%, and Joe Biden, at 46%.“Robert Kennedy has positioned himself to appeal to members of both parties, though it is unclear how much of his ratings are from in depth knowledge of Kennedy versus his popular family name,” Mark Penn, co-director of the Harvard Caps-Harris Poll, told the Hill.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAgainst a backdrop of warnings that third-party candidates may only succeed in helping Trump win a second term in the White House, and others that it would do the opposite, polling suggests that a year out from the election voters are open to alternatives to the two-party lock-up.According to a Gallup poll in October, 63% of US adults currently agree with the statement that the Republican and Democratic parties do “such a poor job” of representing the American people that “a third major party is needed”.According to Pew Research in September, Americans’ views of politics and elected officials are unrelentingly negative. Elected officials are widely viewed as self-serving, ineffective and locked in partisan warfare. And a majority said the political process is dominated by special interests as well as campaign cash.On Monday, efforts to oppose No Labels and other third-party presidential bids ramped up with a $100,000 political advertising campaign funded by Citizens to Save Our Republic, a bipartisan group that has warned that any effort to upset democratic norms will play into Trump’s hand.“We are worried about any third party. We realize it is a free country. Anybody can run for president who wants to run for president,” former US House minority leader Richard Gephardt told reporters on Monday. “But we have a right to tell citizens the danger they will face if they vote for any of these third-party candidates.” More

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      US ‘out of money’ to help Ukraine: six key things to know about aid budget standoff

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      The White House issued an urgent warning to Congress on Monday, predicting that Ukraine will soon lose ground in its war against Russia without another infusion of financial aid from the US.“I want to be clear: without congressional action, by the end of the year we will run out of resources to procure more weapons and equipment for Ukraine and to provide equipment from US military stocks,” Shalanda Young, director of the Office of Management and Budget, wrote in her letter to congressional leaders.“There is no magical pot of funding available to meet this moment. We are out of money – and nearly out of time.”In October, the White House asked Congress to approve a $106bn supplemental funding bill that would provide assistance to Ukraine, Israel and allies in the Indo-Pacific while also strengthening border security. However, bipartisan negotiations over that bill have now stalled.Although previous funding packages for Ukraine have won widespread bipartisan support in Congress, the issue has become increasingly contentious in the Republican-controlled House.Given hard-right Republicans’ entrenched opposition to additional Ukraine aid, the new House speaker, Republican Mike Johnson, must walk a fine line in his negotiations with the Senate.Here’s everything you need to know about the path forward for Ukraine aid:How much additional aid has the White House requested?The supplemental funding request that the White House outlined in October included roughly $60bn in additional aid for Ukraine. Although Congress has already appropriated more than $111bn to bolster Ukraine’s war efforts, Young warned in her letter to congressional leaders that resources are quickly running out.According to Young, the defense department has already used 97% of the $62.3bn it received, while the state department has none of its $4.7bn remaining. Noting the global stakes of the war in Ukraine, Young stressed that Congress must act immediately to prevent disaster.“This isn’t a next year problem. The time to help a democratic Ukraine fight against Russian aggression is right now,” Young said. “It is time for Congress to act.”Where do negotiations over the bill stand now?Bipartisan negotiations to craft a supplemental aid package that can pass both chambers of Congress appeared to stall over the weekend. House Republicans have pushed to include harsher immigration policies in the bill, particularly on the issues of asylum and parole applications, but those proposals are a non-starter for many Democrats.One of the lead Democratic negotiators in the talks, Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, told Politico on Monday that hard-right Republicans wanted to “essentially close the border” in exchange for supporting more Ukraine funding.“Right now, it seems pretty clear that we’re making pretty big compromises and concessions and Republicans aren’t willing to meet us anywhere close to the middle,” Murphy said.Why do hard-right Republicans oppose additional aid?As more members of the Republican party have embraced Donald Trump’s “America First” approach to foreign policy, more rightwing lawmakers have grown suspicious of providing funding to Ukraine.They have argued the US should not be sending so much money to Ukraine when those funds could be better used to address border security, even though US assistance to Ukraine represents less than 1% of the nation’s GDP.But many prominent Republicans, including Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, continue to support funding for Ukraine, and that division has caused a growing rift in the party.The issue drew increased attention in October, when the hard-right congressman Matt Gaetz of Florida accused the then speaker Kevin McCarthy of cutting a “a secret side deal” with Joe Biden to provide additional funding to Ukraine. McCarthy rejected that characterization, but Gaetz’s charge underscored how the speaker’s support for Ukraine had become a wedge issue between him and the hard-right flank of his caucus.McCarthy was then removed as speaker, after Gaetz and seven other House Republicans joined Democrats in supporting a motion to vacate the chair.How has the new House speaker navigated the negotiations?Although Johnson initially expressed support for Ukraine following the Russian invasion in February 2022, his stance has since shifted. The group Republicans for Ukraine gave Johnson a grade of “F” on its congressional scorecard, noting that he has repeatedly voted against measures aimed at strengthening US support for Ukraine.Last week, Johnson said he was “confident and optimistic” that Congress would approve aid for both Israel and Ukraine, but he has suggested the two priorities should not be linked in one bill. Responding to Young’s letter on Monday, Johnson reiterated his demand that any aid for Ukraine must be tied to stiffer border policies.“The Biden administration has failed to substantively address any of my conference’s legitimate concerns about the lack of a clear strategy in Ukraine, a path to resolving the conflict, or a plan for adequately ensuring accountability for aid provided by American taxpayers,” Johnson said on X, formerly Twitter.“House Republicans have resolved that any national security supplemental package must begin with our own border. We believe both issues can be agreed upon if Senate Democrats and the White House will negotiate reasonably.”Can Congress still pass another aid package before the end of the year?That remains highly unclear, as the two parties currently appear far apart in their negotiations. But one of the lead Republican negotiators, Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma, voiced confidence on Monday that lawmakers would ultimately reach a consensus.“We continue to work to find a solution that will protect our national security, stop the human trafficking, and prevent the cartels from exploiting the obvious loopholes in our law,” Lankford said on X. “That is the goal [and] we will continue to work until we get it right.”What are the potential consequences if a deal fails?In her letter, Young predicted that the loss of US financial support would “kneecap Ukraine on the battlefield, not only putting at risk the gains Ukraine has made, but increasing the likelihood of Russian military victories”.Such a scenario could cause the war to spill over into a broader regional conflict involving America’s other European allies, Young warned, and that perilous situation may endanger US troops abroad.“I must stress that helping Ukraine defend itself and secure its future as a sovereign, democratic, independent, and prosperous nation advances our national security interests,” Young said. “The path that Congress chooses will reverberate for many years to come.” More

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      US House close to vote on Biden impeachment inquiry, speaker says

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      The US House speaker Mike Johnson signaled on Saturday that Republicans are nearing holding a formal vote to launch an impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden.“I think it’s something we have to do at this juncture,” Johnson said during a Saturday appearance on Fox and Friends Weekend.Republicans have spent months investigating Biden and his son Hunter’s business dealings, hoping to find improprieties they could use as the basis for impeachment. The full House has not yet voted to formally authorize an impeachment inquiry, as some Republicans have publicly expressed doubts about whether there is enough evidence to justify such action.The White House has rebuffed GOP efforts to force it to turn over information in part by citing a 2020 opinion from the justice department’s office of legal counsel citing the need for a full House vote before a House committee could force the production of documents or interviews.“We conclude that the House must expressly authorize a committee to conduct an impeachment investigation and to use compulsory process in that investigation before the committee may compel the production of documents or testimony in support of the House’s ‘sole Power of Impeachment’,” the memo says.Johnson, who appeared with the GOP conference chair, Elise Stefanik, expressed confidence that there were enough votes to authorize an inquiry and said it was a “necessary step” to obtain information from the White House.“Elise and I both served on the impeachment defense team of Donald Trump twice when the Democrats used it for brazen, partisan political purposes. We decried that use of it. This is very different. Remember, we are the rule-of-law team. We have to do it very methodically,” he said.The Republican investigation thus far has not resulted in several misleading claims, but nothing substantial. At a September hearing, several of the expert witnesses called by Republicans said they did not believe there was enough evidence to justify impeachment.Hunter Biden has also offered to publicly testify before the committees investigating his business dealings. More

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      ‘To hell with this place’: George Santos sharpens attacks after expulsion

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      George Santos, the disgraced New York Republican who was expelled from the US House on Friday, spent his first hours as a former congressman railing against his former colleagues and saying he would file ethics complaints against four of them on Monday.Santos told reporters after his expulsion he was done with Congress.“Why would I want to stay here? To hell with this place,” he told reporters outside the US Capitol after the vote.By Friday evening, he was tweeting about his colleagues. He wrote on X that he would file an ethics complaint against three fellow Republicans from New York – Mike Lawler, Nicole Malliotakis and Nick LaLota – who had long pushed to oust him from Congress. He offered no proof of wrongdoing against any of the three.He also wrote that he would file a complaint against Representative Rob Menendez, whose father, New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez, has been criminally charged with acting as an unregistered foreign agent on behalf of Egypt. Santos, again, didn’t offer specific accusations of wrongdoing.Any person can file a complaint to the Office of Congressional Ethics, but that does not mean it will result in an investigation.He also urged a Republican in Congress to have the “testicular fortitude” to move to expel Jamaal Bowman, a New York Democrat, who pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor and paid a fine for setting off a fire alarm in a congressional office building.Santos spent the week leading up to his impeachment vote railing against colleagues, accusing them of having affairs and missing votes because they were hungover.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSantos became just the sixth person to ever be expelled from Congress after a bipartisan 311-114 vote on Friday. His expulsion came shortly after a report from the House ethics committee detailed how he spent campaign funds on luxury goods, cosmetics and an OnlyFans subscription. He also has pleaded not guilty to a 23-count federal indictment related to his use of campaign funds.After being elected to Congress to represent Long Island and Queens last year, Santos quickly earned a reputation as a prolific liar. Among other things, he lied about working on Wall Street, that his mother died during 9/11, and that he was a volleyball star in college. More

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      The Undoing of George Santos

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      Lying is one thing in politics. But lying and stealing for the sake of Ferragamo and Hermès?In the end, it may have been the luxury goods that brought down George Santos.Not the lies about going to Baruch College and being a volleyball star or working for Goldman Sachs and Citigroup. Not the claims of being Jewish and having grandparents who were killed in the Holocaust and a mother who died of cancer as result of 9/11. (Not true, it turned out.) Not the fibs about having founded an animal charity or owning substantial real estate assets. None of the falsehoods that have been exposed since Mr. Santos’s election last year. After all, he did survive two previous votes by his peers to expel him from Congress, one back in May, one earlier in November.Listen to This ArticleOpen this article in the New York Times Audio app on iOS.At this point, the discussion around lies and politics is so familiar, it has become almost background noise.But taking $6,000 of his campaign contributions and spending it on personal shopping at Ferragamo? Dropping another couple thousand at Hermès? At Sephora? On Botox?Those revelations, documented in the House Ethics Committee report released Nov. 16, seemed simply too much. Despite the fact that Mr. Santos had announced that he would not seek re-election, despite the fact that he is still facing a 23-count federal indictment, Representative Michael Guest, the chairman of the House Ethics Committee, introduced a resolution the week before Thanksgiving calling for Mr. Santos’s expulsion from Congress. On Friday, the House voted in favor — 311 to 114, with two voting present — making Mr. Santos only the third representative since the Civil War to be ejected from that legislative body.George Santos Lost His Job. The Lies, Charges and Questions Remaining.George Santos, who was expelled from Congress, has told so many stories they can be hard to keep straight. We cataloged them, including major questions about his personal finances and his campaign fund-raising and spending.As Michael Blake, a professor of philosophy, public policy and governance at the University of Washington, wrote in The Conversation, Mr. Santos’s lies provoked “resentment and outrage, which suggests that they are somehow unlike the usual forms of deceptive practice undertaken during political campaigns.”It was in part the ties that had done it. The vanity. The unabashed display of greed contained in the silken self-indulgence of a luxury good.“Material objects are at the heart of this thing,” said Sean Wilentz, a professor of American history at Princeton University. “They expose what is seen as a universal character flaw and make it concrete.”Mr. Santos appeared in his trademark prep school attire at the federal courthouse in Central Islip, N.Y., in May, when he pleaded not guilty to federal charges of wire fraud, money laundering and theft of public funds.Hilary Swift for The New York TimesWhite collar crime is often abstract and confusing. Tax evasion is not sexy. (Nothing about taxes is sexy.) It may get prosecutors excited, but the general public finds it boring. To be sure, the House Ethics Committee report, all 55 pages of it, went far beyond the juicy details of designer goods (not to mention an OnlyFans expense), but it is those details that have been plastered across the headlines and stick in the imagination. They make the narrative of wrongdoing personal, because one thing almost everyone can relate to is luxury goods.These days they are everywhere: unboxed on TikTok with all the seductive allure of a striptease; dangling by celebrities on Instagram; glittering from store windows for the holidays. Lusted after and dismissed in equal measure for what they reveal about our own base desires and human weaknesses, they are representative of aspiration, achievement, elitism, wealth, indulgence, escapism, desire, envy, frivolity. Also the growing and extreme wealth gap and the traditions of royalty and dictators — the very people the settlers (not to mention the Puritans) came to America to oppose.There’s a reason even Richard Nixon boasted in a 1952 speech that his wife, Pat, didn’t “have a mink coat. But she does have a respectable Republican cloth coat.”As Mr. Wilentz said, it has been, and still is, “unseemly to appear too rich in Washington.” (At least for anyone not named Trump. In this, as in so many things, the former president appears to be an exception to the rule.)In the myth of the country — the story America tells itself about itself — our elected officials, above all, are not supposed to care about the trappings of wealth; they are supposed to care about the health of the country. “The notion of elected officials being public servants may be a polite fiction, but it is a polite fiction we expect politicians to maintain,” Mr. Blake said.Even if, as David Axelrod, the former Democratic strategist and senior fellow at the Institute of Politics at the University of Chicago, points out, speaking of the amount of money needed to run for office these days, “office holders and candidates spend an awful lot of time rubbing shoulders with people of celebrity and wealth and often grow a taste for those lifestyles — the material things; the private planes and lavish vacations.”Mr. Santos at the Capitol in November, just before his third expulsion resolution was introduced.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesIndeed, Mr. Santos is simply the latest elected official whose filching of funds to finance a posh lifestyle brought them to an ignominious end.In 2014, for example, a former governor of Virginia, Bob McDonnell, was found guilty on federal bribery charges of accepting $175,000 worth of cash and gifts, including a Rolex watch and Louis Vuitton handbags and Oscar de la Renta gowns for his wife from the businessman Jonnie R. Williams Sr., and sentenced to two years in prison. (The Supreme Court later vacated the sentence.) During the trial, the products were entered as exhibits by the prosecution — glossy stains on the soul of the electorate.In 2018, Paul Manafort, Mr. Trump’s former campaign chairman, was convicted on eight counts of bank fraud and tax crimes after a Justice Department investigation revealed that he had spent $1.3 million on clothes, mostly at the House of Bijan in Beverly Hills, including a $15,000 ostrich jacket that set the social media world alight with scorn. More recently, Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey was accused of accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of gold bars and a Mercedes-Benz, among other bribes, in return for political favors.In each case, while the financial chicanery was bad, it was the details of the stuff — the objects themselves — that became the smoking gun, the indefensible revelation of moral weakness. And so it was with Mr. Santos.Even if, at one point, his appreciation of a good look may have made him seem more accessible — he reviewed NASA’s spacesuit and created a best- and worst-dressed list for the White House Correspondent’s dinner, both on X — it also proved his undoing. As the House Ethics Committee report read: “He blatantly stole from his campaign. He deceived donors into providing what they thought were contributions to his campaign but were in fact payments for his personal benefit.”And worse — for vanity, reeking of ostentation. That’s not just an alleged crime. It’s an affront to democracy.Audio produced by More

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      Democratic congressman says home vandalized by Gaza ceasefire protesters

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      A Democratic congressman says his home was vandalized on Thursday night by “people advocating for a ceasefire in Israel and Gaza”.Adam Smith, a US House member from Washington state, called the vandalism to his home in the city of Bellevue “sadly reflective of the coarsening of the political discourse in our country, and is completely unwarranted, unnecessary, and harmful to our political system”.Smith, the ranking Democrat on the House armed services committee, has not joined calls from some in his party for a ceasefire and was part of a group that sent a letter to Joe Biden applauding the president’s support for Israel.The vandalism entailed spray-painting Smith’s garage, the Seattle Times reports.Smith said he and his staff have often met with groups across the political spectrum, including pro-Palestinian activists. And he said he was still willing to meet with those groups “in a productive and peaceful way”.“The extremism on both the left and right side of our political spectrum is a threat to a healthy, functioning democracy and has been condoned for far too long,” Smith said in a statement. “The simple truth is that extremism on both sides is degrading to our political system and must be rooted out for our democracy to be able to persist.”Pramila Jayapal, also a Democratic House member from Washington state, wrote on X that vandalizing someone’s home “crosses the line”.“As an activist before coming to Congress, as a member of Congress who’s been violently targeted at my home, I firmly believe everyone should be able to feel safe in their homes,” Jayapal said. “Let’s find smart, non-violent ways to air our differences & respect the boundaries of home & family.” More