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      ‘They didn’t stand up to Trump’: how the Republican party descended into disarray

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      They are fresh-faced, suited and booted, the National Mall behind them and the world at their feet. Congressmen Eric Cantor, Kevin McCarthy and Paul Ryan smile out from the cover of Young Guns, their co-authored 2010 book about the next generation of conservatives. “This isn’t your grandfather’s Republican party,” said publicity material at the time.Thirteen years later, the trio is neither young nor the future. Cantor (“the leader”) became Republican leader in the House of Representatives but lost his seat to a nascent rightwing populism. Ryan (“the thinker”) became speaker but retired early to escape a toxic political relationship with President Donald Trump. And this week McCarthy (“the strategist”) was ousted by some of the extremists he helped elect to Congress but could not tame.The men’s careers chart the Republican party’s journey from disciplined machine to dysfunctional malaise. Like Britain’s Conservative party, Republicans were once admired and feared for their ability to fall into line and ruthlessly consolidate power. But on Tuesday, as eight rebels joined Democrats to visit humiliation on McCarthy, the party of Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan was in turmoil – and nearly came to blows.“I’ll be really candid, I think if we had stayed together in the meeting last night, I think you would have seen fists thrown,” Congressman Garret Graves, an ally of McCarthy, told CNN. “And I’m not being dramatic when I say that. There is a lot of raw emotion right now.”Such a scene would have been unthinkable two decades ago when Republicans were effective at wielding power and pushing through laws relating to everything from foreign wars and domestic surveillance programmes to Medicare and the No Child Left Behind schools policy. Tom DeLay, House majority leader from 2003 to 2006, was dubbed “the Hammer” because of his willingness to crush dissent.Kurt Bardella, a former Republican congressional aide, said: “They were a legislative juggernaut. But that changed in the 2010s with the emergence of the Tea Party. The disruptive factions within the Republican party began to splinter away from the traditional, more pragmatic conservatism that we saw in the 2000s.“Whether it was [Speaker John] Boehner, Cantor, Paul Ryan or Kevin McCarthy, none of them was equipped to be able to manage that. None of them was equipped to prevent their own demise. It’s basically a Maga hitlist at this point, when you look at Cantor, Ryan and McCarthy on the cover of that book.”McCarthy had, as campaign chairman, played a central role in 2010 in recruiting dozens of Tea Party conservatives who took control of the House. He shared their views on fiscal restraint but underestimated their darker impulses: distrust in government, racial hostility to Barack Obama and a conviction that the base had been betrayed by the elites.It was fertile territory for Trump, who in 2015 and 2016 fused celebrity culture with economic discontent and white grievance to knock the Republican party back on its heels. Joe Walsh, a former Tea Party conservative who served in Congress, said: “The one thing Trump got right was he understood how weak the party establishment was, and so they were in no position to fight him.“When he came on the scene in 15 and 16, the base was pissed off. The establishment ignored the base for years. People like me inflamed the base, so when Trump got there the base was ready to just dictate shit. The donors in the establishment have never understood that.”Republicans at the time such as Tara Setmayer, a former communications director who worked on Capitol Hill for seven years, believed the party needed to reach young voters, women and minorities to survive. But the ascent of Trump sent it spinning in the opposite direction, with consequences that still reverberate today.“That was the inflection point,” Setmayer said. “It was political expediency instead of standing up for what was right. If enough people had stood up to Donald Trump they could have beaten him back. But they didn’t, and they let it get away from them. They mistakenly thought they could control him and it was a case of a political Frankenstein’s monster.”Ryan, then the speaker, clung to the hope that Trump would mature, moderate and become “presidential” once in office. It proved to be folly. Ryan appreciated the tax cuts and military spending but, after two years, had to accept that the “Make America great again” forces could not be contained. He bowed out of public life.The baton passed to McCarthy, who had an advantage: with Democrats in control of the House, Republicans had reason to bury their differences and unite in opposition to Speaker Nancy Pelosi. But last year’s midterm elections sowed the seeds of his downfall.Republicans emerged with a much thinner majority than opinion polls had predicted. In January it took McCarthy 15 rounds of voting to be elected speaker after cutting a deal with the far right, including a rule change that would let any member of the House to seek his removal. Nine rocky months later, after averting a government shutdown with Democratic help, he became the first speaker in history to be ditched.Democrat Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, said on Wednesday: “All three of them were chased out. Speaker Boehner, Speaker Ryan and now Speaker McCarthy have all learned the same lesson: you cannot allow the hard right to run the House, or the country.”McCarthy’s nemesis was Matt Gaetz, a Florida congressman egged on by former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, who hosts an influential podcast (Gaetz was a guest on it a day after McCarthy’s demise). Critics say Gaetz is taking advantage of an era in which, instead of working their way up the ranks one committee at a time, politicians can build their brand, “go viral” and raise money by flaunting their extremism in the rightwing media ecosystem.Rich Lowry, editor-in-chief of National Review magazine, wrote: “Republican backbenchers used to be people such as Jack Kemp and Paul Ryan, who became something by promoting ideas that they carefully developed, sincerely believed, and persuaded their colleagues to embrace. Now, the emphasis is on becoming a micro-celebrity via constant outrage.”Bardella, a former spokesperson for the conservative Breitbart News who is now a Democratic strategist, added: “Matt Gaetz isn’t the cause. He’s a symptom of the complete radicalisation of not only the Republican party a the conservative rightwing media sphere in general.“Their deliberate decision to amplify the most extreme voices and give them a platform and give them a microphone and give them an audience every single night of the most ardent Republican primary voters to watch it, absorb it, paved the way for the chaos that has engulfed the entire Republican party right now.”It seems likely to get worse before it gets better. Without a speaker, the House cannot fully function to pass laws or fund the government. Steve Scalise, the majority leader, and Jim Jordan, the judiciary committee chairman, are the two leading candidates to succeed McCarthy and frantically chasing endorsements ahead of a vote among Republicans expected on Tuesday.A long, divisive struggle could ensue while Democrats remain united, making a mockery of the temptingly alliterative headline “Dems in disarray”. Now the roles have been reversed. Even Trump wondered aloud: “Why is it that Republicans are always fighting among themselves?”Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, said: “We now see [that] the kind of authoritarian populism that talks about taking control, bringing order and strongman rule is an utter fiction.“That rhetoric has led to anarchy and the breakdown of governance and, just to bring it full circle, we’re now almost assuredly going to hear Trump and other Republican presidential candidates running on the promise to bring order to Washington to solve the very disorder they created.”He added: “We are in some very weird Alice in Wonderland politics here. The problems created by the fanatics in the Republican party have created a disorder that they are claiming they can solve.” More

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      Democratic unity strikes contrast to Republican chaos as McCarthy exits

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      “Democrats in disarray” has been an oft-repeated joke in Washington in recent years, a tongue-in-cheek reference to the tensions that repeatedly flared up between the progressives and the centrists of Joe Biden’s party. But on Tuesday, House Democrats presented a united front as their Republican counterparts turned against each other and ultimately ousted one of their own in a historic defeat.The entire House Democratic caucus voted unanimously to remove the Republican Kevin McCarthy as speaker on Tuesday, joining eight mostly hard-right lawmakers in supporting a motion to vacate the chair. Refusing to intervene in a mess of Republicans’ own making, Democrats looked on as McCarthy was unseated, making him the first House speaker in US history to be removed from office.Under the oversight of their new leader, Hakeem Jeffries of New York, House Democrats have marched in lockstep to challenge Republicans’ policy agenda, offering a stark contrast to the fractious conference that McCarthy tried and failed to unify. As they look to take back the House next year, Democrats hope to use the instability displayed this week to make a broader argument about the extremism that they say has come to define the modern Republican party.Heading into the Tuesday vote, speculation abounded over whether McCarthy might offer Democrats some kind of deal to help save his speakership. But McCarthy chose not to, telling CNBC on Tuesday: “They haven’t asked for anything, and I’m not going to provide anything.”Instead, McCarthy tried to appeal to members’ faith in the integrity of the House to keep his gavel, arguing that a removal of a speaker would represent an irreversible black mark on the institution.But that argument struck many Democrats as hypocritical coming from McCarthy, particularly given the speaker’s stunning flip-flop regarding the deadly insurrection at the Capitol on 6 January 2021. In the days after the attack, McCarthy said Donald Trump “bears responsibility” for the violence carried out by a group of the former president’s supporters. But just two weeks later, McCarthy flew to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida to make amends, and he later denounced the work of the House select committee investigating the insurrection.McCarthy “went to Mar-a-Lago to kiss the ring and voted not to impeach Donald Trump for inciting a violent insurrection against the 2020 presidential election and our government”, Jamie Raskin, a Democratic member of the select committee, said Tuesday. “This is a somber day for America as the chickens come home to roost for Kevin McCarthy.”The final self-inflicted nail in McCarthy’s coffin came on Sunday, the day after the House passed a continuing resolution to extend government funding through 17 November and avert a federal shutdown. House Democrats overwhelmingly supported the stopgap funding bill, with just one member voting against it, but 90 House Republicans opposed the legislation.And yet, when McCarthy appeared on CBS News’ Face the Nation on Sunday, he attempted to blame Democrats for the last-minute scramble.“I wasn’t sure it was going to pass. You want to know why? Because the Democrats tried to do everything they can not to let it pass,” McCarthy said. “They did not want the bill. They were willing to let government shut down, for our military not to be paid.”House Democratic leaders played a clip of McCarthy’s interview during their Tuesday morning caucus meeting, just hours before the chamber’s vote on removing the speaker. McCarthy’s comments outraged Democrats, fortifying the caucus’s resolve to support the motion to vacate.“It goes in political 101 textbooks going forward as maybe one of the most … stupid things somebody could do on the eve of your survival vote,” Gerry Connolly, a Democratic Virginia congressman, told NBC News.In the end, every present House Democrat voted to oust McCarthy, ensuring the end of his speakership. Democrats commended Jeffries on keeping his members unified on Tuesday, mirroring the caucus’s unanimous support for Jeffries through 15 rounds of voting during the speakership election in January.“Yesterday was a pure demonstration of the type of leadership and continuity that [Jeffries] brings to the table and how inclusive he is,” said Antjuan Seawright, a Democratic strategist. “He has, I think, been extra intentional about keeping all four corners of the House Democratic caucus square together and living out what diversity and inclusion means when it comes to House Democrats.”Jeffries has now called on more centrist members of the House Republican conference to join Democrats in forming a “bipartisan governing coalition”.“At this point, we simply need Republican partners willing to break with Maga extremism, reform the highly partisan House rules that were adopted at the beginning of this Congress and join us in finding common ground for the people,” he wrote in a Washington Post op-ed published on Friday.So far, Republican partners have been difficult to find. Some of McCarthy’s allies blamed House Democrats for the speaker’s removal, accusing them of prioritizing their political goals over the good of the country. Democrats have scoffed at that argument, asserting that McCarthy brought about his own downfall by trying to appease the hard-right members who ultimately ousted him. McCarthy only won the speakership in January by making concessions to hard-right lawmakers, including a rule allowing any single member to introduce a motion to vacate the chair. That decision came back to haunt McCarthy this week.“The same rightwing extremism that gave McCarthy the speakership was the same rightwing extremism that took away his speakership,” Seawright said. “House Democrats should continue to draw the contrast with extremism that has hijacked and pretty much taken over the Republican conference with the comparison and the contrast of what was able to be done” when the Democrats had the House majority.Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, suggested the speakership debacle could be a launchpad for Democrats to engage in a fuller discussion about rightwing extremism. With government funding due to run out in just a month, Green said it was urgent for Democrats to make a policy-based pitch against Republicans’ legislative agenda.“Extremism doesn’t just mean they can’t rally their caucus on the House floor. Extremism means they would actually cut social security benefits for millions of current and future seniors,” Green said. “The extremists within an already extreme Republican party that are in charge are the same ones who would be most likely to use their leverage to cut programs like social security.”As the House prepares for another speakership election, much of the conversation in Washington has focused on who might replace McCarthy. But for Green, the more important conversation involves how the new Republican speaker will govern with a newly emboldened hard-right faction in his conference. Steve Scalise and Jim Jordan, two speaker candidates, have also backed drastic government funding cuts, voting in favor of McCarthy’s recent failed proposal to temporarily reduce most government agencies’ budgets by up to 30%.“I think it’s important to connect the dots between the chaos and extremism we’ve seen playing out in this leadership fight and what those same forces will attempt to do in the upcoming government funding fight,” Green said. “It’s very possible that members of the public perceive these as two very different stories, as opposed to two chapters in the same story.” More

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      From the Fringe to the Center of the G.O.P., Jordan Remains a Hard-Liner

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      Once a tormentor of the Republican Party’s speakers, the Ohio congressman and unapologetic right-wing pugilist has become a potential speaker himself.As a co-founder of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio, once antagonized his party’s leadership so mercilessly that former Speaker John A. Boehner, whom he helped chase from his position, branded him a “legislative terrorist.”Less than a decade later, Mr. Jordan — a fast-talking Republican often seen sans jacket, known for his hard-line stances and aggressive tactics — is now one of two leading candidates to claim the very speakership whose occupants he once tormented.Mr. Jordan’s journey from the fringe of Republican politics to its epicenter on Capitol Hill is a testament to how sharply his party has veered to the right in recent years, and how thoroughly it has adopted his pugilistic style.Those forces played a pivotal role in the downfall of former Speaker Kevin McCarthy last week, though Mr. Jordan, once a thorn in his side, had since allied himself with Mr. McCarthy, a California Republican. Now, the same dynamics have placed Mr. Jordan in contention for the post that is second in line to the presidency, a notion that is mind-blowing to many establishment Republicans who have tracked his career.“That notion that he could go from ‘legislative terrorist’ to speaker of the House is just insane,” said Mike Ricci, a former aide to both Mr. Boehner and Speaker Paul D. Ryan, Republican of Wisconsin. “Jordan is an outsider, but he’s very much done the work of an insider to get to this moment. Keeping that balance is what will determine whether he will win, and what kind of speaker he will be.”The race between Mr. Jordan, a populist who questions federal law enforcement and America’s funding of overseas wars, and Representative Steve Scalise, a staunch conservative and the No. 2 House Republican from Louisiana, continued to heat up on Friday. Both men worked the phones relentlessly seeking support, including making calls with freshman lawmakers, the Congressional Western Caucus and the Main Street Caucus, a group of business-oriented Republicans.On Friday, as they were vying for support, a bloc of Republicans were quietly requesting a change to party rules that would raise the vote threshold for nominating a candidate for speaker, which would make it more difficult for Mr. Scalise to prevail.While Mr. Scalise is amassing dozens of commitments of support, so is Mr. Jordan, which could lead to a bitter and potentially prolonged battle when Republicans meet behind closed doors next week to choose their nominee — or spill into public disarray on the House floor.Mr. Jordan’s rise in Congress to a position where he can credibly challenge Mr. Scalise, who has served in leadership for years, stems from a number of important alliances he has formed over the years. His strongest base of power is his colleagues in the House Freedom Caucus, many of whom consider him a mentor. He has built a solid relationship with Mr. McCarthy, for whom Mr. Jordan proved a reliable supporter and important validator on the right. And he has forged close ties with former President Donald J. Trump, perhaps his most important ally.In a Republican House that has defined itself in large part by its determination to protect Mr. Trump and attack President Biden, Mr. Jordan has been a leader of both efforts. He leads a special subcommittee on the “weaponization of government” against conservatives. He has started investigations into federal and state prosecutors who indicted Mr. Trump, and he is a co-leader of the impeachment inquiry into Mr. Biden that Mr. McCarthy formally announced last month as he worked to appease the right and cling to his post.Mr. Trump endorsed Mr. Jordan for the top House job early on Friday, ending speculation, however unrealistic, that the former president might seek the job himself. (A speaker is not required to be an elected lawmaker.)“Congressman Jim Jordan has been a STAR long before making his very successful journey to Washington, D.C.,” Mr. Trump wrote in a post on his social media platform, Truth Social. “He will be a GREAT Speaker of the House, & has my Complete & Total Endorsement!”Mr. Trump’s endorsement could help Mr. Jordan garner support from his other fellow House Republicans, among whom Mr. Trump is popular. But it is not expected to seal a victory.Representative Warren Davidson, an Ohio Republican who is the whip of the House Freedom Caucus and a supporter of Mr. Jordan, said Mr. Trump’s endorsement was a “positive” for Mr. Jordan because “Trump is widely viewed as the leader of our party.”But, he said, some more mainstream Republicans aren’t thrilled about aligning themselves with Mr. Trump.“There are some folks in moderate districts that are like, ‘Well, that might actually complicate things for me,’” Mr. Davidson said.Mr. Jordan helped undermine faith in the 2020 presidential election results as Mr. Trump spread the lie that the election had been stolen through widespread fraud. Mr. Jordan strategized with Mr. Trump about how to use Congress’s official count of electoral votes on Jan. 6, 2021, to reject the results, voting to object even after a mob of Mr. Trump’s supporters attacked the Capitol. His candidacy for speaker has drawn a stark warning from former Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, who was the No. 3 Republican and vice chair of the Jan. 6 committee, who said that if he prevailed, “there would no longer be any possible way to argue that a group of elected Republicans could be counted on to defend the Constitution.”In a speech at the University of Minnesota this week, Ms. Cheney told the audience that “Jim Jordan was involved, was part of the conspiracy in which Donald Trump was engaged as he attempted to overturn the election.”Mr. Jordan has defended his actions in challenging the results of the 2020 election, saying he had a “duty” to object given the way some states changed voting procedures during the coronavirus pandemic.His quick rise in the Republican ranks was nearly derailed in 2018, when a sexual abuse scandal in Ohio State University’s athletics program came to light, leading to accusations that Mr. Jordan, who had been an assistant wrestling coach at the time, knew about the abuse and did nothing. Mr. Jordan has said that he was not aware of any wrongdoing.On Capitol Hill, Mr. Jordan initially worked to build some relationships with Democrats early in his career. He and Representative Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland, once teamed up on bipartisan legislation to protect press freedom. He counts former Representative Dennis Kucinich, a Democrat from Ohio who is now running Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s presidential campaign, as a friend. Even as Mr. Jordan and Representative Elijah Cummings, the Maryland Democrat who died in 2019, sparred over investigations of Mr. Trump, the two men occasionally found common ground on other Oversight Committee issues.But as Mr. Jordan formed an alliance with Mr. Trump and then became one of his most vocal defenders on Capitol Hill, his relationships with Democrats disintegrated. When Mr. Raskin introduced his press freedom bill this year, Mr. Jordan was no longer listed as a sponsor.Representative Jim Banks, Republican of Indiana, said that Mr. Jordan’s true power lay in the love he commands from base voters, built up through years of defending Mr. Trump and advocating conservative policies on Fox News and in combative congressional hearings. Mr. Jordan is known to fly to districts around the country to help raise money for candidates who are aligned with the House Freedom Caucus — and even for Republicans who are not.Mr. Banks suggested that Mr. Jordan’s credibility with the right would make it easier for the party to unify behind any spending deal he were to cut with Democrats and the White House should he become speaker. Such a deal would be a tall order. Mr. Jordan voted last week against a measure to avoid a government shutdown — an agreement with Democrats that ultimately drove Mr. McCarthy from the speakership.“Jim Jordan is a trusted conservative; he’s well-respected by the base of the Republican Party,” Mr. Banks said. “So when we get to some of these tough spending fights and Speaker Jim Jordan is negotiating with the White House and the Senate, that’s going to help Republicans rally behind him and get to a place where they can vote for those deals.”“This is a different Republican Party today than what it was a decade ago,” he added. “And the Republican Party today is a lot more like Jim Jordan. It’s more of a fighting Republican Party.” More

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      Chaos in Washington Feeds Americans’ Dismal View of Politics

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      Whitney Smith’s phone buzzed with a text from her mother, alerting her to the latest can-you-believe-it mess in Washington: “Far right ousted the House speaker. Total chaos now.”Ms. Smith, 35, a bookkeeper and registered independent in suburban Phoenix, wanted no part of it. She tries to stay engaged in civic life by voting, volunteering in local campaigns and going to city meetings. But over the past week, the pandemonium of a narrowly averted government shutdown and leadership coup in the Republican-controlled House confirmed many Americans’ most cynical feelings about the federal government.“It was just like, Oh God, what now?” she said. Griping about politics is a time-honored American pastime but lately the country’s political mood has plunged to some of the worst levels on record.After weathering the tumult of the Trump presidency, a pandemic, the Capitol insurrection, inflation, multiple presidential impeachments and far-right Republicans’ pervasive lies about fraud in the 2020 election, voters say they feel tired and angry. In dozens of recent interviews across the country, voters young and old expressed a broad pessimism about the next presidential election that transcends party lines, and a teetering faith in political institutions.The White House and Congress have pumped out billions of dollars to fix and improve the nation’s roads, ports, pipelines and internet. They have approved hundreds of billions to combat climate change and lower the cost of prescription drugs. President Biden has canceled billions more in student debt. Yet those accomplishments have not fully registered with voters.A small group of hard-right Republicans drove the country to the brink of a government shutdown, then plunged Congress into chaos when they instigated the vote that, with Democratic support, removed Mr. McCarthy. Democrats are betting that voters will blame Republicans for the trouble. Many voters interviewed this week said they viewed the whole episode as evidence of broad dysfunction in Washington, and blamed political leaders for being consumed by workplace drama at the expense of the people they are meant to serve.Rep. Kevin McCarthy leaving the House floor after being ousted as Speaker of the House.Maansi Srivastava/The New York Times“They seem so disconnected from us,” said Kevin Bass, 57, a bank executive who lives in New Home, a rural West Texas town. He serves on the local school board and has two children in public school, and another in college. He describes himself as conservative who voted for former President Donald J. Trump both times. “I don’t really look at either party as benefiting our country,” he said.Voters said that Washington infighting and the Republicans’ flirtation with debt default and government shutdowns recklessly put people’s paychecks, health care and benefits at risk at a moment when they are preoccupied with how to pay rising health care and grocery bills, or to cope with a fast-warming climate unleashing natural disasters in nearly every corner of the nation.“Disgust isn’t a strong enough word,” said Bianca Vara, a Democrat and grandmother of five in the Atlanta area who runs a stall at a flea market that crackles with discussions of politics.She said she wanted leaders in Washington to address gun violence, or maybe just meaningfully crack down on the robocalls she gets. Instead, she watched with dismay as the Republican-controlled House was convulsed with an internecine melee.“It’s worse than in elementary school,” she said, “Like a playground, like dodge ball: ‘You’re out! You’re not the speaker anymore! Hit him in the head with a red ball!’”Several people said they purposely tune out political news, focusing instead on details like the price of cream cheese ($6.99), or matters wholly unconnected to politics — the Chicago Bears are 1 and 4, and Taylor Swift is showing up at Kansas City Chiefs games.When Ms. Smith’s mother texted the news of Kevin McCarthy’s ouster as House speaker to the family text message chain, nobody responded. Eventually, Ms. Smith replied with a photo of new shelves she had just put up at home.“Who’s McCarthy? I don’t even know,” said Rosemary Watson, 38, a registered independent in Mesa, Ariz., a battleground state that has narrowly elected Democrats over Trump-style Republicans in the past two elections. “I’ve purposely made that choice for my own health and well-being.”Ms. Watson, a member of the Cherokee Nation, voted for Mr. Trump in 2020 and said she did not feel politically moved by actions President Biden has taken to conserve land sacred to Native Americans or to provide billions of dollars in new tribal funding. She said she would support Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in the 2024 presidential race as a jolt to the two-party system.Whitney Smith, a bookkeeper in Gilbert, Ariz., said she did not want any part of the political turmoil in Washington. Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York TimesCynthia Taylor, 58, a Republican paralegal in the Houston area whose husband works for a rifle manufacturer, was aghast at the ouster of Mr. McCarthy and the latest near-shutdown, calling the brinkmanship a symptom of growing lawlessness in American society.“We seem to be starting to go down the line of, if I don’t agree with you, I’m going to kick you out,” she said. “Everybody is out for themselves. Everybody is out for their 15 minutes of fame.”A survey that the Pew Research Center conducted in July found a country united by a discontent with their political leaders that crosses race, age and partisan divides. Sixty-five percent of Americans polled said they felt exhausted when they thought about politics.Only 16 percent of American adults said they trusted the federal government, close to the lowest levels in seven decades of polling. Nearly 30 percent of people said they disliked both the Democratic and Republican parties, a record high. Yet in recent years, Americans have turned out to vote in record numbers — mostly to re-elect incumbents.House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries speaking at a news conference before Congress narrowly averted a shutdown.Kenny Holston/The New York Times“I never thought I’d live in times like this,” said Cindy Swasey, a 66-year-old widow in Dover, N.H. Ms. Swasey, who voted twice for President Trump but thinks of herself as an independent, said she used to like Representative Matt Gaetz and the infusion of newer, younger energy he had brought to Congress — before he played a central role in the turmoil this week.She has recently decided to skip watching future presidential debates.Working-class and middle-class Americans have seen their wages rise lately, but many say the gains pale in comparison with the rising cost of living. Thousands of union workers, from the automotive industry to health care to Hollywood, have voted with their feet by striking for better contracts.“Right now, it’s just been about getting back to work — figuring out how to put food on my plate and keep a roof over my head and put gas in my car,” said McKinley Bundick, a writer’s assistant for the CBS program “SEAL Team” who was out of work for five months while the Writers Guild of America was on strike.Several Democratic voters said their revulsion with the state of American politics was rooted in Mr. Trump’s brand of angry grievance and the election lies that stoked the Jan. 6 rioters. At the same time, several said they were dreading the prospect of another contest between Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden, and would rather fast-forward through the next presidential cycle and find someone — anyone — new.“This is the best you can give us from both parties? Are you kidding me?” said Joseph Albanese, a 49-year-old technology product specialist in Chicago who voted for Mr. Biden in 2020, but is considering skipping next year’s election altogether.For people living on an entirely different coast from the Capitol — especially younger voters — Washington’s dysfunction can seem like sensational infighting in a distant world.“It’s overwhelming, it’s a lot going on,” said Dionna Beamon, 28, who lives in the Watts neighborhood of South Los Angeles. “So really, ignorance is bliss.”Ms. Beamon, a hair stylist, said she and her friends were more concerned about issues like mental health. Her mother died of a heart attack less than two years ago and she has grappled with how to address her grief.“I feel like a lot of people are depressed now,” she said. “That’s a huge topic for my age group. The world hasn’t been the same after Covid, and when it started, we were in our early 20s. ”Howard University senior Vivian Santos-Smith wants to be a political scientist, but is dismayed by political infighting. “It seems as if ‘House of Cards’ is reality now,” she said.Jason Andrew for The New York TimesVivian Santos-Smith, 21, a senior at Howard University, said her biggest concern was the $10,000 of student debt she would have to start repaying after graduation. President Biden canceled $9 billion in student loan debt this week, but his wider efforts to cancel some $400 billion more were scuttled by the Supreme Court.She wants to be a political scientist, and one of her first challenges is trying to make sense of this moment.“It seems as if ‘House of Cards’ is reality now,” she said. “The outlook is just bleak.”Corina Knoll More

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      Former aide to Republican fabulist George Santos pleads guilty to fraud

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      The ex-treasurer for US congressman George Santos pleaded guilty Thursday to a fraud conspiracy charge and implicated the indicted New York Republican in a scheme to embellish his campaign finance reports with a fake loan and fake donors.Nancy Marks, who was a close aide to Santos during his two congressional bids, entered the plea at a federal courthouse on Long Island, where she was a longtime political operative and bookkeeper for multiple candidates.Speaking to the judge, Marks said that among other things, she and Santos had submitted bogus campaign finance reports falsely saying he had loaned his campaign $500,000 – even though in reality he did not have that kind of money and the loan did not exist. She said the purpose of the fake loan was to make it look as if he was richer than he really was, which might attract other donors, including a Republican committee.Reading from a prepared statement, Marks also said she had provided the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) with a fake list of people who had supposedly given money to the campaign.“The donors, who are real people, didn’t give me permission to use their names,” Marks said in court.Her plea agreement comes with a recommendation that she serve three and a half to four years in prison.Outside the courthouse, Marks’s lawyer said that while his client had not formally entered into a cooperation agreement with prosecutors, she would be willing to testify against him if asked.“If we get a subpoena we’ll do the right thing,” said the attorney, Ray Perini. He said Santos had “mentally seduced” his client.“There’s a manipulation involved that had to do with her family and the death of her husband,” Perini said, declining to elaborate. “There were lies told.”Any such testimony could be a severe blow to the congressman, who faces separate charges that he embezzled money from his campaign, lied in financial disclosures submitted to Congress and received unemployment funds when he wasn’t eligible.An attorney for Santos, Joseph Murray, attended the court hearing and said afterward that he expected Marks was cooperating with the government. A congressional spokesperson for Santos declined to comment.Marks resigned as Santos’s treasurer amid growing questions about his campaign finances and revelations that the Republican had fabricated much of his life story.After his election, news reporters revealed that Santos had made up stories about where he went to college and where he worked, telling people he was a Wall Street dealmaker with a real estate portfolio when he was actually struggling financially had had faced eviction from multiple apartments. Santos also lied about his heritage, saying he was Jewish, when he wasn’t.Santos has acknowledged embellishing his resume but has accused people of overreacting.Santos faces a 13-count federal indictment centered on charges of money laundering and lying to Congress about his wealth in a financial disclosure.Marks had not previously been charged. Thursday marked her first appearance in court. More

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      Donald Trump backs hard-right loyalist Jim Jordan for House speaker

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      Donald Trump is officially backing the brash, longtime loyalist and founding member of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus, the Ohio congressman Jim Jordan, to succeed Kevin McCarthy as House speaker when voting takes place next week.“Congressman Jim Jordan has been a STAR long before making his very successful journey to Washington, DC, representing Ohio’s 4th Congressional District,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social social media platform, with his some of his signature inflammatory flourishes, early on Friday.He added: “He will be a GREAT Speaker of the House & has my Complete & Total Endorsement!”The announcement came hours after the Texas congressman Troy Nehls said on Thursday night that the former US president had decided to back Jordan’s bid and after Trump said he would be open to serving as interim leader himself if Republicans could not settle on a successor following McCarthy’s stunning ouster.Trump, the current Republican presidential frontrunner for the 2024 election, has used the leadership vacuum on Capitol Hill to further demonstrate his control over his party and drag it further to the right.House Republicans are deeply fractured and some have been asking him to lead them in the lower congressional chamber, a seemingly fanciful suggestion that he also promoted after inflaming the divisions that forced out McCarthy as speaker.“Just had a great conversation with President Trump about the Speaker’s race. He is endorsing Jim Jordan, and I believe Congress should listen to the leader of our party,” Nehls wrote late on Thursday on X, formerly known as Twitter.In an interview later with the Associated Press, Nehls, who had been encouraging Trump to run for the post himself, said the ex-president instead wanted Jordan.“After him thinking about it and this and that … he said he really is in favor of getting behind Jim Jordan,” Nehls said.Jordan is one of two leading candidates maneuvering for speaker along with the congressman Steve Scalise of Louisiana. Both are trying to lock in the 218 votes required to win the job and need the support of both the far-right and moderate factions of the party. It’s unclear whether Trump’s endorsement will force Scalise, the current GOP majority leader, out of the race, or if either can reach the threshold.Indeed, Nehls said that if no current candidate succeeds in earning the support needed to win, he would once again turn to Trump. “Our conference is divided. Our country is broken. I don’t know who can get to 218,” he said in the interview.Trump earlier in the day had been in talks to visit Capitol Hill next week ahead of a speakership vote that could happen as soon as Wednesday, according to three people familiar with the discussions who spoke on condition of anonymity ahead of an official announcement. Trump confirmed the trip to Fox News Digital and said he would travel on Tuesday to meet with Republicans.The trip would have been Trump’s first to the Capitol since leaving office and since his supporters attacked the building in a bid to halt the peaceful transition of power on 6 January 2021. Trump has been indicted in both Washington DC and Georgia over his efforts to overturn the results of the election, which he lost to his Democratic party challenger, Joe Biden.Jordan is one of Trump’s biggest champions in Washington DC and has been leading spurious investigations into prosecutors who have charged the former president. He was also part of a group of Republicans who worked with Trump to overturn his defeat, ahead of January 6. Scalise has also worked closely with Trump over the years.Others are waiting in the wings potentially to contest for the speakership, including the Oklahoma representative Kevin Hern, who as chair of the Republican study committee leads the largest faction of Republicans in the chamber.The Associated Press contributed reporting. More

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      in Elections

      Chaos or Conscience? A Republican Explains His Vote to Oust McCarthy.

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      Asthaa Chaturvedi, Olivia Natt and Rachel Quester, Paige Cowett, Lisa Chow and Marion Lozano and Listen and follow The DailyApple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon MusicThe ouster of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy a few days ago demonstrated how powerful a small group of hard-right House Republicans have become and how deep their grievances run.We speak to one of the eight republicans who brought down Mr. McCarthy: Representative Tim Burchett of Tennessee.On today’s episodeRepresentative Tim Burchett of Tennessee’s 2nd Congressional District.Tim Burchett is one of the eight Republicans who voted to oust Kevin McCarthy.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesBackground readingHow have the Republicans who ousted Mr. McCarthy antagonized him before?Although some names have started to be bandied about, there is no clear replacement candidate for the speaker’s position.There are a lot of ways to listen to The Daily. Here’s how.We aim to make transcripts available the next workday after an episode’s publication. You can find them at the top of the page.Michael Barbaro More

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      in US Politics

      Why do eight radicals hold power over the entire US House of Representatives? | David Daley

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      It’s simple math: when the score reads 210 to 8, the side with the much tinier number should lose.Yet that’s not how it works in the US House of Representatives.On Tuesday, a mutiny led by eight hardline conservatives toppled speaker Kevin McCarthy and plunged the House into chaos. Rattled financial markets declined steeply and the prospects for a government shutdown six weeks from now rose dramatically. The 15-round, days-long speaker battle that McCarthy finally won in January might seem like a short dash compared to the marathon to come.The unforgivable sin that led Representative Matt Gaetz and a small band of Republican insurgents to move on McCarthy now? The six-week, bipartisan compromise that the speaker brokered this weekend to prevent a government shutdown that would have further shaken markets, made air travel more dangerous, and halted paychecks for millions of workers, including in the military.Eight members shouldn’t have this outsized power. Leaders who recognize the reality of compromise under divided government shouldn’t be ousted for working toward an accord. Yet our system incentivizes extremism and anti-majoritarianism. It will only get worse until we change the rules and stop punishing what a functional democracy would reward.It’s true that McCarthy all but sealed his fate when he agreed to allow just one member of his caucus – in this case, Gaetz – to call a vote to vacate the chair. This condition of earning the Gaetz faction’s support back in January contained the seeds of his demise; as the principle of Chekhov’s Gun holds, a weapon introduced in the first act always returns before the end of the play.It’s also true that Democrats – every one of whom voted against the speaker – provided the bulk of the votes that deposed McCarthy, as more reasonable voices within both parties failed to chart a path together that did not empower extremists.“Now what?” cried one frustrated Republican after the vote. It’s a great question. There’s obviously no bipartisan consensus candidate. But which Republican could gain the trust and support of the majority of the caucus, and also the victorious far right? Who would take the job under the conditions forced on McCarthy? Why would Gaetz and his allies now settle for anything less? The entire incentive structure has gone berserk.There’s more than enough blame to go around. Yet none of the partisan finger-pointing will solve the problem. Anti-majoritarian rules brought us to this ungovernable place. Fixing them is the only way out.The good news is that’s actually not so hard. If the House elected leaders with ranked-choice voting (RCV), this debacle could have been avoided from the beginning. Imagine how different this would have been. The Democratic minority leader Hakeem Jeffries would have led after the first round. McCarthy would have been second. And the Republican Freedom Caucus protest candidate would have finished a distant third. No one would have earned a majority, so an instant runoff would have kicked in.The Republican rebels would have been forced to make up their minds. When the options came down to McCarthy or Jeffries, they’d have to make a choice. Rather than being obstructionist kingmakers and winning concessions disproportionate to their numbers, Gaetz and his crew would have been heard – and that’s it. Under RCV, a gaggle of Gaetzes don’t get to run the show. They have a voice in line with their actual numbers. And then majorities prevail.If the House used ranked-choice voting, McCarthy would not have been forced into a deal that allowed any one member to call for a vote to vacate the chair. Gaetz and his allies might have been furious that the Republican speaker went around them to win overwhelming bipartisan majorities to keep the government open. But they would not have had the power to destabilize the entire institution. Eight renegades could have criticized the deal all they wanted. They wouldn’t get to win.Now what, indeed. By early November, the House will need to pass a funding package that keeps the government open. The deal this past weekend reflected the reality of a divided government. Cooler heads found a way toward an imperfect deal that reflected the best winnable compromise. That’s how divided government works.The cost of compromise cannot be that the furthest extreme gets to manipulate the game to bring down those who dare make a deal. That’s a recipe for permanent dysfunction – and deepening minority rule.After all, Matt Gaetz didn’t even win office with a majority. Gaetz won his seat in Congress in 2016 with just 36% of the vote – and merely 35,689 votes – in a crowded Republican primary. He has won re-election since then thanks to the power of incumbency and a district wildly gerrymandered to ensure a Republican victor.Gaetz, in other words, represents the fringe of the fringe – a plurality winner in a district rigged to be uncompetitive from the get-go. This is yet another problem that a ranked-choice election would solve. The Gaetz Caucus wouldn’t be able to win election simply by appealing to a far fringe that values confrontation and chaos without any concern for the consequences. We have a Congress filled with members responsive only to a radical minority. If we want a different Congress, one responsive to majorities, one where the people rule and not the far fringe, we need to remake the rules.In that Congress, the fairer one America deserves, forging consensus that Americans desire would be rewarded, not repudiated. Matt Gaetz might be one of 435 members, but his caucus of eight wouldn’t hold power over the rest of us. And those 36,000 primary voters who cast a ballot for Gaetz seven years ago wouldn’t get to call the shots for all 300 million of us.
      David Daley is the author of Ratf**ked: Why Your Vote Doesn’t Count and Unrigged: How Americans Are Battling Back to Save Democracy. He is a senior fellow at FairVote More