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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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      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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      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

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      The McCarthy debacle barely scrapes the surface of how dysfunctional Congress is | Osita Nwanevu

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      While those who follow politics closely are busy parsing what the ouster of Kevin McCarthy as House speaker might mean for Congress, those who don’t ⁠– meaning the bulk of the American people ⁠– could be forgiven for tuning much of the drama of the last few weeks out. Ordinary Americans have little faith in Congress as it stands: as substantively or strategically consequential as they might be, the battles between members of our most reviled class, politicians, seem to most like juvenile squabbles.Here’s a detail that might incense them further. For generations, members of the US Senate have carved and scrawled their names into their desks. This rite, the stuff of summer camp and grade school, is, to the peculiar mind of a US senator, something more profound ⁠– yet another tradition, as though they needed another, signifying their membership in an august and noble fraternity.The same can be said of the Senate’s dress code, which was unanimously rescued and formalized this past week after Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer relaxed the chamber’s rules, seemingly to accommodate the defiantly casual Pennsylvania senator John Fetterman. Men will be asked to wear full business attire from now on ⁠– a requirement that has its practical advantages. As Robert Menendez, the New Jersey senator, may allegedly know, a suit jacket is a fine place to stow wads of cash in a pinch and useful, in the abstract, for another reason ⁠– disguising, through costumes of respectability, how grubby, venal and unremarkable many of our politicians are.A group letter written in the defense of the dress code described the Senate as “a place of honor and tradition”. “The world watches us on that floor,” it reads, “and we must protect the sanctity of that place at all costs.” Of course, the world usually has better things to do than keep up with congressional proceedings on C-SPAN, but there are embarrassing exceptions, the latest dramas among Republicans in the House among them, though the fact that they’re taking place in the opposite chamber shouldn’t flatter the Senate and its defenders ⁠– “the world’s greatest deliberative body” is nothing more than the geriatric wing of one of the world’s most unserious legislatures.And while much due attention is given to the problem of money in politics and more and more conversations are being had about Congress’s structural defects ⁠– once the late Dianne Feinstein is replaced and California regains its full complement of senators, each of the state’s voters will still have just over one-sixtieth the representation in the chamber of a voter in Wyoming ⁠– we ought to have a conversation, too, about the culture of the place.The inescapable fact uniting so much that grates about Congress right now ⁠– Republican shenanigans in the House, the Democratic party’s sluggishness in handling an obviously corrupt, compromised and distracted Menendez, gerontocracy within both parties ⁠– is that we ask very little of our representatives. Being a member of Congress simply isn’t substantively demanding enough.The irony of all the talk about how elderly our leaders are, and the reality that, in fact, has allowed obviously infirm politicians like Feinstein and Mitch McConnell to retain their positions even as they go catatonic in public view, is that the halls and offices of the Capitol are absolutely teeming with unelected and invisible young staffers ⁠– many of whom are in their 20s and 30s, some of whom are constitutionally incapable of occupying the offices they serve ⁠– who do much of the actual work Americans believe our elected officials do themselves.Policy research, drafting and reviewing legislative language, authoring speeches, drawing up the questions senators and congressmen ask at hearings, writing tweets and statements that go out under their bosses’ names, preparing talking points for media appearances, relaying directives from party leaders about how to vote and why ⁠– as a practical matter, the average politician in Washington today needn’t be more than a warm body with a pulse ready to cast a given vote.Of course, the late Senator Feinstein did her level best to test even that. But the fact that she, as one New York Times headline put it, “[Relied] Heavily on Staff to Function” was only partially a function of her age ⁠– the same is true of all but a relatively small and wonky contingent of unusually hard-working legislators.That’s not to say the rest don’t have concrete and vital responsibilities of their own ⁠– in 2013, the Huffington Post obtained documents from Democratic congressional campaign committee recommending that freshmen members of the caucus spend at least four hours every day calling donors for campaign contributions, more than the total amount of time recommended for visits with constituents and working in committees or voting on the House floor combined, a figure probably comparable to the number of hours spent dialing for dollars on the other side of the aisle.“After votes in the House, a stream of congressmen and women can be seen filing out of the Capitol and, rather than returning to their offices, heading to rowhouses nearby on First Street for call time, or directly to the parties’ headquarters,” Ryan Grim and Sabrina Siddiqui wrote. “The rowhouses […] are typically owned by lobbyists, fundraisers or members themselves, and are used for call time because it’s illegal to solicit campaign cash from the official congressional office.”Once call time is done, we might find our representatives making canned speeches prepared by dutiful staffers before a mostly empty chamber, some of which might find their way into campaign ads and materials later.It can’t really be a surprise, given this, that Congress attracts so many who have little fundamental interest in doing the work of governing themselves ⁠– or that it sustains the careers of even those who do well after they’re personally capable of doing it. In either case, the legislator is little more than a cog in a vast machine influenced variously by donors, interest groups, major leaders and figures in both parties, the media, primary voters, and, yes, somewhere in the mix voters in the general electorate, though it should be said that most legislators don’t have to sweat much for their approval come election time.In the 2022 midterms, 84% of House seats were either uncontested or decided in races where the victor won by more than 10 points, with the average margin of victory in all races working out to about 28 points. Nearly 95% of incumbents won reelection. On the Senate side, Cook Political Reports rated nine of the 35 races as potentially competitive; ultimately, all incumbents won their seats back.Congress, all told, isn’t a place most are ultimately forced to leave either by elections or as a matter of their age. Term limits and age limits have been floated as solutions to all this, but another complementary remedy, if we dare to dream, might be party leaders taking it upon themselves to work our representatives harder.The tasks of legislating are now well beyond the capacities of individual legislators alone, yes, but setting the expectation that they should shoulder more of the burdens now foisted upon their staffers would discourage older legislators and incumbents from sticking around too long ⁠– Feinstein might have retired long ago if she’d actually had to do more of her job herself ⁠– and help dissuade layabouts and grifters from seeking office.We’ll never be fully rid of them, of course, and we’d scarcely recognize Congress without them. But making the work of politics feel like work seems worth a try.
      Osita Nwanevu is a Guardian US columnist More

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      Scalise and Jordan Seek House Speaker Backing as Trump Hangs Over Race

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      The two lawmakers sought support from members of their fractured party as the former president threatened to get involved in a potentially fierce struggle over who will lead the House.The two leading candidates to become the next Republican speaker of the House worked the phones and the halls of the Capitol on Thursday, vying for support from within their party’s fractured ranks as the chamber remained in a state of paralysis after the ouster of Representative Kevin McCarthy of California.Representatives Steve Scalise, the majority leader, and Jim Jordan, the Judiciary Committee chairman, had each landed more than a dozen endorsements by the afternoon as they raced toward a vote of Republicans tentatively scheduled for Tuesday. An election on the House floor could follow the next day, though the process could stretch much longer if no consensus can be reached.Far from the Capitol, former President Donald J. Trump, whose far-right acolytes in Congress helped lead the rebellion that has plunged the House into chaos, weighed in on what could become an epic struggle.Representative Troy Nehls of Texas wrote Thursday evening on X, formerly Twitter, that he had spoken with Mr. Trump, and that he had said he was endorsing Mr. Jordan. “I believe Congress should listen to the leader of our party,” Mr. Nehls said. “I fully support Jim Jordan for Speaker of the House.”Mr. Jordan picked up an important G.O.P. backer and cleared a potential challenger from the field with the endorsement of Representative Byron Donalds of Florida, who had previously been exploring his own run for speaker, according to a person familiar with his calls to lawmakers. Mr. Donalds said on the social media site X that Mr. Jordan “has my full support to become the next Speaker of the House!”Both Mr. Scalise and Mr. Jordan are faced with the difficult challenge of attempting to unite a fractious Republican conference that is reeling after Mr. McCarthy’s removal from the speakership.For Mr. Jordan, an Ohioan and co-founder of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus, the task will be to convince more mainstream Republicans that he can govern and not simply tear things down. He met on Thursday with members of the Main Street Caucus, a group of business-minded Republicans.For Mr. Scalise, a Louisianian who has won conference elections before as majority leader, the challenge will be to stay one step ahead of Mr. Jordan, and make better inroads with the right wing of the party.Both men are considered further to the right than Mr. McCarthy, a point Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida, who led the drive to oust Mr. McCarthy, has noted with a sense of satisfaction.“If it’s Speaker Jim Jordan or Speaker Steve Scalise, there will be very few conservatives in the country who don’t see that as a monumental upgrade over Speaker McCarthy,” Mr. Gaetz said on Newsmax.Casting a long shadow over the race is Mr. Trump, the G.O.P. presidential front-runner who holds heavy sway among congressional Republicans because of his strong standing with the party base, including many of their constituents.Some right-wing Republicans had been encouraging Mr. Trump to make a run for speaker himself, though the party’s current conference rules would block him from doing so because he is under multiple felony indictments and facing the possibility of significant prison time. Speaking Wednesday outside a Manhattan courthouse where he is facing a civil fraud case, Mr. Trump seemed to enjoy dangling the possibility of a run for speaker, telling reporters: “Lot of people have been calling me about speaker. All I can say is we’ll do whatever is best for the country and for the Republican Party.”“If I can help them during the process,” he added, “I’ll do it.”Back in the halls of the Congress, a serious race was taking shape.Mr. Scalise, who has been in leadership since 2014, has built relationships across the Republican conference. He has been quietly securing commitments through one-on-one calls with members.On such calls seeking support, Mr. Scalise has emphasized that he is second only to Mr. McCarthy in fund-raising prowess, and he has locked up a string of commitments from the south and the Midwest, according to a person familiar with his private calls, who described them on the condition of anonymity.“Not only is Steve a principled conservative, he has overcome adversity far beyond the infighting in our conference right now,” said Representative Ashley Hinson of Iowa, who endorsed Mr. Scalise after speaking with him.One clear point of contrast between Mr. Scalise and Mr. Jordan is their dueling positions on continued aid to Ukraine for its war against Russian aggression, which has become increasingly politicized and is now regarded by many Republicans as toxic.Mr. Jordan was one of 117 Republicans who voted last week against continuing a program to train and equip Ukrainian troops, while Mr. Scalise sided with 101 Republicans in supporting it.“Why should we be sending American tax dollars to Ukraine when we don’t even know what the goal is?” Mr. Jordan said Thursday on Fox News. “No one can tell me what the objective is.”Several Republicans said they were waiting to hear more from the candidates before deciding whom to support.Representative Marc Molinaro of New York said he had spoken with both Mr. Scalise and Mr. Jordan by phone.“There really wasn’t any one person in Congress who worked harder to help me get to Congress or to earn my support than Kevin McCarthy,” Mr. Molinaro said.“We now have individuals who have a week,” he added. “And so I’m going to observe, I’m going to listen, and I’m going to demand that members like me and the people we represent have a seat at the table, and then make a decision.”Robert Jimison More

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      Donald Trump, Kevin McCarthy and the Ripples of Republican Chaos

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      This week, Donald Trump delivered his version of a sad tiny desk performance, hunched over the defendant’s table in a New York courtroom, diminished and watching the illusion of power and grandeur he has sold voters thin and run like oil in a hot pan.He insisted on appearing in person at his civil fraud trial, apparently believing that he would continue to perform his perverse magic of converting that which would have ended other political careers into a political win for himself.His hubris seemed to consume him, persuading him that in matters of optics, he’s not only invincible but unmatched.He has done it before: In August, he scowled in his mug shot — a precursor to his Fulton County, Ga., criminal trial — summoning the allure of an outlaw, using the photo to raise millions of dollars, according to his campaign.But I think his attempts at cosplaying some sort of roguish flintiness will wind up being missteps. Courtrooms don’t allow for political-rally stagecraft. There’s no place to plant primed supporters behind him to ensure that every camera angle captures excited admirers. He’s not the center of attention, the impresario of the event; no, he must sit silently in lighting not intended to flatter and in chairs not intended to impress.Courtrooms humble the people in them. They equalize. They democratize. In the courtroom, Trump is just another defendant — and in it, he looks small. The phantasm of indomitability, the idea of him being wily and slick, surrenders to the flame like tissues in a campfire.The image was not of a defiant would-be king, but of a man stewing and defeated.The judge in the case even issued a limited gag order after Trump posted a picture of and a comment about the judge’s clerk on Truth Social.Meanwhile, there’s the historic ouster of the House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, by members of his own party for the unforgivable sin of seeking a bipartisan solution to keep the government open.In Greek mythology exists the story of the Gigantomachy, a battle between the Olympian gods and giants. According to prophesy, the gods could emerge victorious only if assisted by a mortal. Hercules came to the rescue.But in Republicans’ version of this drama, McCarthy could have emerged victorious over his party’s anarchists only if Democrats had come to his aid. None did.He was felled by a revolt led not by a giant, but by the smallest of men, not in stature but in principles: the charmless Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida.Anyone who thought that Democrats were going to save McCarthy should have thought again. Ultimately, McCarthy succumbed to the result of his own craven pursuit of power: The rule that Gaetz used to initiate the vote to strip McCarthy of the speaker’s gavel was the rule McCarthy agreed to in order to get his hands on the gavel in the first place.Republicans are engaged in an intense session of self-flagellation. Does it also hurt the country? Yes. But in one way it might help: America needs to clearly see who the culprits are in today’s political chaos, and the damage they cause, so that voters can correct course.And the events of this week should give voters pause. The tableau that emerges from the troubles of Trump and McCarthy is one in which the G.O.P.’s leaders are chastened and cowed, one in which their power is stripped and their efforts rebuked.This is just one week among many leading up to the 2024 elections, but it is weeks like this that leave a mark, because the images that emerge from them are indelible.All the inflamed consternation about Joe Biden’s age and Hunter Biden’s legal troubles will, in the end, have to be weighed against something far more consequential: Republicans — obsessed with blind obeisance, a lust for vengeance and a contempt for accountability — who no longer have the desire or capacity to actually lead.Their impulses to disrupt and destroy keep winning out, foreshadowing even more of a national disaster if their power grows as a result.How Republican primary voters respond to this Republican maelstrom of incompetence is one thing. How general election voters will respond to it is quite another.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: [email protected] The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook and Twitter (@NYTopinion), and Instagram. More