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      Nancy Pelosi announces 2024 House re-election bid

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      Former House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi has announced that she will be seeking re-election in 2024. The 83-year-old Democrat representing California’s 11th district announced the news on Wednesday among volunteers and labor allies in San Francisco.Pelosi went on to tweet about her plans, saying: “Now more than ever our city needs us to advance San Francisco values and further our recovery. Our country needs America to show the world that our flag is still there, with liberty and justice for ALL. That is why I am running for reelection – and respectfully ask for your vote.”Pelosi, who has represented San Francisco since 1987, served as House speaker twice. Her first tenure as House speaker was from 2007 to 2011, during which she made history by becoming the first female speaker. Pelosi went on to lead the House of Representatives again from 2019 to the beginning of this year.Last November, Pelosi announced that she was stepping down as the leader of the Democratic party after Republicans regained control of the House of Representatives with a narrow 222-212 majority with one vacancy.Her announcement on Wednesday comes amid several politically delicate moments on Capitol Hill, particularly as Democrats prepare to take back control of the House of Representatives. Moreover, it comes as House Republicans entertain the idea of an impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden amid a federal investigation into the business dealings of his son Hunter.It also comes as growing questions surround the mental competency of older Capitol Hill leaders including the 80-year-old president, 81-year-old Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, and 90-year-old California senator Dianne Feinstein.According to a source close to Pelosi who is familiar with her re-election decision, Pelosi believes that democracy hangs in the balance in the upcoming election as she prepares to help re-elect Biden and appoint House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries as the next House speaker, the Associated Press reported.Throughout Pelosi’s leadership, she helped lead the Democratic party through a series of legislative victories including the passage of the Affordable Care Act under then-president Barack Obama in 2010, as well as legislation surrounding gun violence prevention measures, minimum wage increases.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionPelosi has also played a key role in international politics, including becoming the first highest-ranking US official to visit Taiwan in 25 years, as well as securing the votes needed to defeat Republicans’ efforts to disapprove of Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran. More

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      Fani Willis Sharply Rebukes House Republican Investigating Her

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      The prosecutor, Fani T. Willis, accused Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio of trying to obstruct her prosecution of the racketeering case against Donald J. Trump and his allies.The district attorney leading a criminal case against Donald J. Trump and his allies in Georgia accused Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio of trying to obstruct her prosecution of the case in a sharply worded letter she sent on Thursday.Soon after the district attorney, Fani T. Willis, a Democrat, announced last month that she was bringing a racketeering case against Mr. Trump and 18 other defendants for their efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia, Mr. Jordan, a Republican and chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said that he was going to investigate Ms. Willis over whether her prosecution of Mr. Trump was politically motivated.In her letter, Ms. Willis accused Mr. Jordan of trying “to obstruct a Georgia criminal proceeding and to advance outrageous partisan misrepresentations,” and of not understanding how the state’s racketeering law works.“Your attempt to invoke congressional authority to intrude upon and interfere with an active criminal case in Georgia is flagrantly at odds with the Constitution,” she added. “The defendants in this case have been charged under state law with committing state crimes. There is absolutely no support for Congress purporting to second guess or somehow supervise an ongoing Georgia criminal investigation and prosecution.”The letter came as the defendants and the prosecution continued sparring in legal filings over where and when the trial would take place. In a new filing, Mark Meadows, a defendant, who served as the White House chief of staff under Mr. Trump, was seeking a stay of the proceedings in state court until a judge ruled on his motion to move his case to federal court.The Georgia case is one of four criminal indictments that have been brought against Mr. Trump this year; Mr. Jordan’s investigation of Ms. Willis is the latest example of House Republicans using their power in Congress to try to derail efforts to prosecute the former president.When he announced his inquiry last month, Mr. Jordan, a close Trump ally, said it would look for any evidence of communication between Ms. Willis and the Biden administration and examine her office’s use of federal grant money.While Mr. Jordan expressed concerns that former federal officials were being unfairly targeted in a state prosecution, some of the issues he raised had little to do with the underlying facts of the investigation. For example, in a letter to Ms. Willis, he said her new campaign website had included a reference to a New York Times article that mentioned the Trump investigation.Ms. Willis’s response is the latest sign that she will not take attacks on her office and the investigation quietly — a striking difference in style from that of Jack Smith, the more reserved and laconic special prosecutor handling the two federal criminal cases against Mr. Trump.She has a track record as a pugnacious, law-and-order prosecutor, and is pursuing racketeering cases not only against the former president and his allies, but a number of high-profile Atlanta rappers accused of operating a criminal gang.In a heated email exchange in July over the terms of Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, providing testimony in her investigation, Ms. Willis called the governor’s lawyer, Brian McEvoy, “wrong and confused” and “rude,” after Mr. McEvoy expressed frustration over mixed signals he said he had received from her office, and asserted that there had been “leaks” associated with her investigation.“You have taken my kindness as weakness,” she wrote, adding: “Despite your disdain this investigation continues and will not be derailed by anyone’s antics.”On Thursday, scores of Trump supporters gathered near the State Capitol for a news conference and rally, demanding that the state legislature call a special session to defund Ms. Willis’s office. The effort, led by Colton Moore, a freshman state senator, has little support among Mr. Moore’s fellow lawmakers and is almost certain to fail.Mr. Moore, who has drawn attention and praise in recent weeks from news outlets supportive of Mr. Trump, said that Ms. Willis was engaged in “politicization” of the justice system. His constituents, he said, “don’t want their tax dollars funding this type of corrupt government power.”In her letter to Mr. Jordan, Ms. Willis invited him to purchase a book about racketeering statutes written by one her fellow prosecutors on the Trump case, John Floyd, titled “RICO State by State.”“As a non-member of the bar,” she wrote, “you can purchase a copy for two hundred forty-nine dollars.” More

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      Ex-Trump Aide Peter Navarro to Face Trial Over Defiance of Jan. 6 Panel

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      A federal judge allowed the trial to proceed after finding little evidence that the former president authorized Mr. Navarro to ignore a subpoena from Congress.For weeks after the 2020 election had been called, Peter Navarro, a White House adviser to President Donald J. Trump, worked closely with other senior aides to keep Mr. Trump in power for a second term.After being subpoenaed last year by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, riot, which sought to learn more about those efforts, Mr. Navarro refused to comply, insisting that Mr. Trump had directed him not to cooperate and dismissing the subpoena as “illegal” and “unenforceable.”Now, after more than a year of legal wrangling, Mr. Navarro, 74, will defend those claims in a trial that starts Tuesday, when jury selection is expected to begin in Federal District Court in Washington. The case centers on a relatively simple question: whether he showed contempt for Congress in defying the House committee’s request for documents and testimony.The trial itself may be relatively short, and if Mr. Navarro were to be convicted on the two counts of contempt of Congress he is charged with, he could face up to a year in jail and a fine of up to $100,000 for each count.Since Mr. Navarro was indicted in June of last year, he has maintained that he is protected by the former president’s claim of executive privilege.Prosecutors intend to argue that Mr. Navarro refused of his own volition and that neither Mr. Trump nor his lawyers have confirmed whether Mr. Navarro sought or received his approval.The judge in the case, Amit P. Mehta, has already dealt a blow to Mr. Navarro, ruling that he cannot rely on executive privilege as a pillar of his defense. He refused to dismiss the case after concluding that Mr. Navarro had failed to produce convincing evidence that he and Mr. Trump ever discussed his response to Congress.Describing Mr. Navarro’s defense as “pretty weak sauce,” Judge Mehta emphasized that he had presented no written communications or even a “smoke signal” that would bolster his contention.“I still don’t know what the president said,” Judge Mehta said. “I don’t have any words from the former president.”“I don’t think anyone would disagree that we wish there was more here from President Trump,” Mr. Navarro’s lawyer, Stanley Woodward Jr., replied.Still, outside of court, Mr. Navarro has continued to frame the case as a fundamental dispute between the legislative and executive branches, calling the fight over executive privilege “open questions” in the law and pledging to appeal.Mr. Navarro is one of two Trump aides to face criminal charges after the House committee’s investigation. Stephen K. Bannon, another of Mr. Trump’s senior advisers, was convicted last summer on two counts of contempt of Congress and sentenced to four months in prison.After the 2020 election, Mr. Bannon and Mr. Navarro concocted a plan, known as the Green Bay Sweep, aimed at delaying certification of the outcome of the election. The strategy involved persuading Republican lawmakers to halt the counting of Electoral College votes on Jan. 6 by repeatedly challenging the results in various swing states.When the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack issued a subpoena, Mr. Bannon similarly refused to comply.Others in Mr. Trump’s inner circle were less combative in resisting the panel’s efforts.Two of Mr. Trump’s advisers, Roger J. Stone Jr. and Michael T. Flynn, ultimately appeared before the committee but declined to answer most of its questions by citing their Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination. Mr. Trump’s final chief of staff, Mark Meadows, and his deputy, Dan Scavino, negotiated the terms of their responses to subpoenas, providing documents but not testimony. None of the four men faced criminal charges.The filing of charges against Mr. Navarro was widely seen as proof that the Justice Department was willing to act aggressively against one of Mr. Trump’s top allies as the House scrutinized the actions of the former president and his advisers and aides in the events leading up to and during the Capitol attack.The trial could also shed new light on Mr. Navarro’s communications with the White House at key moments during Mr. Trump’s final days in power.One possible witness for the defense is Liz Harrington, a communication aide for Mr. Trump who helped spread false claims of election irregularities in the months after the 2020 election. Ms. Harrington had been set to testify last week about Mr. Navarro’s claims of executive privilege, but could instead provide written testimony about the extent of Mr. Navarro’s contact with Mr. Trump and his aides.Alan Feuer More

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      New York’s Migrant Crisis Is Growing. So Are Democrats’ Anxieties.

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      The influx of asylum seekers has the makings of a potent political force, and Republicans are ready to test it in key 2024 house races.Republicans successfully made crime the defining issue of the 2022 midterm elections in New York, fanning fears about public safety to rout suburban Democrats and help secure the party its House majority.Barely a year later, as another critical election season begins to take shape, they appear to be aggressively testing a similar strategy, hoping that the state’s growing migrant crisis will prove as potent a political force in 2024.The rapid arrival in New York of more than 100,000 asylum seekers is already wreaking havoc on government budgets, testing the city’s safety net and turning Democratic allies against one another. Now, otherwise vulnerable Republicans in a half dozen closely watched districts have begun grabbing onto all of it as a lifeline to portray Democrats as out of touch and unable to govern.“This is a crisis of their own making,” said Representative Mike Lawler, a Republican fighting to hold a suburban district Mr. Biden won by 10 points.“It’s very similar to cashless bail,” Mr. Lawler said. “When you create a sanctuary city policy that invites migrants to come regardless of their status, you are going to get a lot of people coming, and now they can’t handle the influx.”Representative Mike Lawler, a Republican fighting to hold a suburban district President Biden won by 10 points, said the migrant crisis was of Democrats’ “own making.”Anna Moneymaker/Getty ImagesHearing the same echoes, Democrats are determined not to be caught flat-footed as they were a year ago. From the suburbs of Long Island to here in the Hudson Valley, their candidates are spending late summer openly clashing not just with Republicans who say they are to blame, but also with their own party leaders, including President Biden.In one of the most closely watched contests, Representative Pat Ryan, the lone frontline Democrat to survive the Republican suburban demolition last year, has teamed up with two Republicans to demand that Mr. Biden declare a state of emergency, and broke with his party to support a bill to discourage schools from sheltering migrants.“The No. 1 thing I learned as an Army officer: When in charge, take charge,” Mr. Ryan said in an interview. “We are in a crisis, the president is in charge, and he and his team need to take charge.”He is far from alone. Josh Riley, a Democrat who is trying to flip a neighboring district, called the president’s aloofness on the issue “offensive.”Mondaire Jones, a former Democratic congressman mounting a comeback attempt further down the Hudson, warned of “consequences at the polls” if his party does not step up.And his primary opponent, Liz Whitmer Gereghty, said Democrats across New York should be responding in lock step. “It kind of feels like we’re not,” she said.Both parties caution that the reality on the ground, where 2,900 migrants arrived just last week, is shifting too quickly for them to know exactly where the battle lines will be by next fall, when voters will also be weighing abortion rights and the criminal trials of former President Donald J. Trump, currently the leading Republican candidate.Republicans have been using fears about immigrants pouring across the border for years with only mixed success. And unlike a year ago, Democrats are trying to go on offense, accusing Republicans like Mr. Lawler of engaging in demagogy and reminding voters that his party helped stall a major immigration overhaul in Washington that they say might have prevented the latest influx.“Everybody understands this is a potential liability,” said Tim Persico, a Democratic consultant who oversaw the party’s House campaign operation last cycle. “I know there’s been a lot of finger pointing and kerfuffles, but there’s also pretty good evidence the mayor and the governor are trying to figure out how to solve this.”Still, there is little doubt that New York, a city known as a bastion for immigrants, is in the midst of a challenge to its political system with few modern parallels. Privately, Democratic pollsters and strategists are beginning to use focus groups and polls to test possible defenses on an issue they view as a tinderbox capable of igniting new political fires, fast.New York is housing roughly 59,000 asylum seekers a night because of a unique right-to-shelter mandate that dates back decades and is preparing to enroll some 19,000 migrant children in public schools this fall. An archipelago of temporary shelters has cropped up in hotels, parks and on public land, prompting increasingly raucous protests.And Mayor Eric Adams has repeatedly warned of budget cuts as the cost of caring for the newcomers spikes into the billions of dollars — taxpayer money that Republicans are quick to point out could otherwise be used to help New Yorkers.As the numbers keep climbing, Democratic leaders have been forced to choose from unpalatable policy responses.Mr. Adams, for instance, has repeatedly demanded that Gov. Kathy Hochul force reluctant counties outside the city to help shelter migrants. But doing so would prompt fierce backlash in many of the communities Democrats need in order to win the House, and the governor, who was already blamed for Democrats’ 2022 losses, has refused.On the other hand, any attempt by the city or state to drastically curtail the services it offers migrants would meet blowback from the left.The governor and mayor — along with congressional Democrats as ideologically diverse as Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Mr. Ryan — are united in demanding more help from Mr. Biden. But push too hard and they risk bloodying their party’s standard-bearer heading into an election year.The White House did announce on Wednesday that it would dedicate personnel to help New York process work papers for asylum seekers and request additional federal funds from Congress to help the state. But Mr. Biden, who has to make his own national political calculations around immigration, appears to have little interest in taking a more visible role.Voters are watching. A recent poll conducted by Siena College found that 82 percent of registered voters view the influx as a “serious” problem, and a majority said that the state had “already done enough” for the asylum seekers and should focus on slowing their arrivals. The same poll showed nearly every major Democrat, including Mr. Biden, underwater among suburban voters.In many ways, those poor ratings have freed Democrats facing competitive races to distance themselves from their party in ways that telegraph to voters their understanding of the problem while differentiating themselves from Republicans’ more hard-line views on immigrants.It is a tricky balancing act. At the same time Mr. Ryan is locking arms with Republicans to pressure his own party, he is also trying to shift responsibility onto Republicans and defend himself against their attacks for making the county he once led a “sanctuary” for undocumented immigrants.“Where you really get yourself in trouble as an elected official is when you don’t listen,” Mr. Ryan said, adding: “For political purposes, the MAGA Republicans want divisions and chaos. They are not actually working to resolve problems.”The task may be easier for challengers who are taking on Republican incumbents whom they can blame for failing to enact the kind of changes to the immigration system that could curb illegal border crossings, speed up the asylum system and eventually relieve pressure on New York.“In my district, the one person sitting at the table to fix this problem is Anthony D’Esposito, and he is doing nothing,” said Laura Gillen, a Democrat seeking a rematch against Mr. D’Esposito, who represents the South Shore of Long Island. (He and other New York Republicans helped pass an aggressive but partisan border security bill in May.)But Ms. Gillen, who wants to represent a district Mr. Biden won by 14 points, said the president deserved blame, too. She called a letter last week from his homeland security secretary critiquing New York’s handling of the migrants as “irresponsible.”Laura Gillen, a Democrat, plans to challenge Anthony D’Esposito, who represents the South Shore of Long Island and has taken aim at his approach to the migrant crisis.Heather Walsh for The New York TimesMr. Riley is taking a similar “all our politicians are failing us” approach, knocking both Mr. Biden and Representative Marc Molinaro, his Republican opponent.“Look, this is a federal problem and it requires a federal response, and I think President Biden needs to get his act together and help solve it,” he said.It is too soon to know whether the approach is working. In Mr. Ryan’s district, the views of voters interviewed near a hotel housing migrants appeared to break down on familiar lines. Dozens of voters, when asked by a reporter, voiced dissatisfaction with how migrants had been bused up from New York City, but they disagreed on who was to blame.“Not just the county but the country can handle this,” said Faith Frishberg, a Democrat, outside a waterfront restaurant in Newburgh. “Most of this failure is a failure to not address the immigration policy.”But there may also be a distinct drawback over time.Blaming Democratic leaders like Mr. Adams or Mr. Biden may be expedient short-term politics. But it risks reinforcing the notion that Democrats cannot govern — a potentially powerful boomerang effect in a state that has registered some signs of weariness of one-party rule in recent years.Republicans already appear eager to reinforce it.“I have not seen a less coordinated, less competent way of dealing with human lives,” Mr. Molinaro said. “I know the reporting today has become a little bit about how the president is pointing at the governor, the governor at the mayor. The story line is Democrat leaders are pointing at each other.”Timmy Facciola contributed reporting from Newburgh, N.Y., and More

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      Biden Team Isn’t Waiting for Impeachment to Go on the Offensive

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      The White House has enlisted two dozen attorneys, legislative liaisons and others to craft strategies in the face of Republican threats to charge the president with high crimes and misdemeanors.Just before 8 p.m. on Thursday, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene posted a video of herself at a town hall in her Georgia district declaring that she “will not vote to fund the government” unless the House holds a vote to open an impeachment inquiry against President Biden.It took just 68 minutes for the White House to fire back with a blistering statement that such a vote would mean that House Republicans had “caved to the hard-core fringe of their party in prioritizing a baseless impeachment stunt over high-stakes needs Americans care about deeply” like drug enforcement and disaster relief.The White House, as it turns out, is not waiting for a formal inquiry to wage war against impeachment. With a team of two dozen attorneys, legislative liaisons, communications specialists and others, the president has begun moving to counter any effort to charge him with high crimes and misdemeanors with a best-defense-is-a-good-offense campaign aimed at dividing Republicans and taking his case to the public.The president’s team has been mapping out messaging, legal and parliamentary strategies for different scenarios. Officials have been reading books about past impeachments, studying law journal articles and pulling up old court decisions. They have even dug out correspondence between previous presidential advisers and congressional investigators to determine what standards and precedents have been established.At the same time, recognizing that any impeachment fight would be a political showdown heading into an election season, outside allies have been going after Republicans like Ms. Greene and Speaker Kevin McCarthy. A group called the Congressional Integrity Project has been collecting polling data, blitzing out statements, fact sheets and memos and producing ads targeting 18 House Republicans representing districts that voted for Mr. Biden in 2020.“As the Republicans ramp up their impeachment efforts, they’re certainly making this a political exercise and we’re responding in kind,” said Kyle Herrig, the executive director of the Congressional Integrity Project. “This is a moment of offense for Democrats. They have no basis for impeachment. They have no evidence. They have nothing.”The White House preparations do not indicate that Mr. Biden’s advisers believe an impeachment inquiry is inevitable. But advisers who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe internal thinking said that it was important to take on the prospect aggressively and expressed hope that the situation could be turned to their advantage.Republican congressional investigations have turned up evidence that Hunter Biden traded on his family name to generate multimillion-dollar deals and a former partner, Devon Archer, testified that Mr. Biden would put his father on speakerphone with potential business clients to impress them.Republican congressional investigations have turned up evidence that Hunter Biden traded on his family name to generate multimillion-dollar deals.Doug Mills/The New York TimesBut Mr. Archer testified that the elder Biden only engaged in idle chitchat during such calls, not business, and no evidence has emerged that the president directly profited from his son’s deals or used his power inappropriately while vice president to benefit his son’s financial interests.Republicans have not identified any specific impeachable offenses and some have privately made clear they do not see any at the moment. The momentum toward an impeachment inquiry appears driven in large part by opposition to Mr. Biden’s policies and is fueled by former President Donald J. Trump, who is eager to tarnish his potential rival in next year’s election and openly frames the issue as a matter of revenge. “Either IMPEACH the BUM, or fade into OBLIVION,” he demanded of Republicans on his social media site this past week. “THEY DID IT TO US!”That stands in sharp contrast to other modern impeachment efforts. When impeachment inquiries were initiated against Presidents Richard M. Nixon, Bill Clinton and Mr. Trump, there were clear allegations of specific misconduct, whether or not they necessarily warranted removal from office. In Mr. Biden’s case, it is not clear what actions he has taken that would be defined as a high crime or misdemeanor.Mr. McCarthy, the California Republican, cited “a culture of corruption” within the Biden family in explaining on Fox News last weekend why he might push ahead with an impeachment inquiry. “If you look at all the information we’ve been able to gather so far, it is a natural step forward that you would have to go to an impeachment inquiry,” he said.Even if Republican investigators turned up evidence that Mr. Biden had done something as vice president to help his son’s business, it would be the first time a president was targeted for impeachment for actions taken before he became president, raising novel constitutional issues.For now, though, it is hardly certain that Republicans would authorize an inquiry. Mr. McCarthy told Breitbart News on Friday that if they pursued such an inquiry, “it would occur through a vote on the floor,” not through a decree by him, and veteran strategists in both parties doubt he could muster the 218 votes needed to proceed.The speaker’s flirtation with holding such a vote may be simply a way of catering to Ms. Greene and others on his right flank. He has used the thirst to investigate Mr. Biden as an argument against a government shutdown, suggesting that a budgetary impasse would stall House inquiries.Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene has vowed to oppose funding the government unless the House holds a vote to open an impeachment inquiry against President Biden.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesBut some Republicans have warned that a formal impeachment drive could be a mistake. Representative Ken Buck, Republican of Colorado, has said that “impeachment theater” was a distraction from spending issues and that it was not “responsible for us to talk about impeachment.” Ari Fleischer, a former White House press secretary under President George W. Bush, said impeachment could “unleash an internal Republican civil war” and if unsuccessful lead to “the worst, biggest backfire for Republicans.”The White House has been building its team to defend against Republican congressional investigations for more than a year, a team now bracing for a possible impeachment inquiry. Richard Sauber, a former federal prosecutor, was appointed special counsel in the spring of last year, and Ian Sams, a longtime Democratic communications specialist, was brought on as spokesman for the White House Counsel’s Office. Russell Anello, the top Democratic staff member for the House Oversight Committee, joined last year as well.After Republicans won control of the House in the November midterm elections, more people were added to handle the multitude of congressional investigations. Stuart Delery, the White House counsel who is stepping down this month, will be replaced by Ed Siskel, who handled Republican investigations into issues like the Benghazi terror attack for President Barack Obama’s White House.A critical adviser for Mr. Biden will be his personal attorney, Bob Bauer, one of the most veteran figures in Washington’s legal-political wars. As a private lawyer, he advised the House Democratic leader during Mr. Clinton’s impeachment and then the Senate Democratic leader during the subsequent trial, helping to shape strategies that kept Democrats largely unified behind their president.Mr. Biden himself has seen four impeachment efforts up close during his long career in Washington. He was a first-term senator when Mr. Nixon resigned rather than face a seemingly certain Senate trial in 1974 and a fifth-term senator when he voted to acquit Mr. Clinton in 1999. It was Mr. Biden that Mr. Trump tried to strong-arm Ukraine into investigating, leading to the former president’s first impeachment in 2019. And it was Mr. Biden’s victory in 2020 that Mr. Trump tried to overturn with the help of a mob that attacked Congress on Jan. 6, 2021, leading to a second impeachment.The Clinton impeachment battle has provided some lessons for the Biden team, although the circumstances are significantly different and the political environment has shifted dramatically in the 25 years since then. Much as the Clinton White House did, the Biden White House has tried to separate its defense against Republican investigators from the day-to-day operations of the building, assigning Mr. Sams to respond mostly off camera to issues arising from the investigations rather than Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, during her televised briefings.As in the late 1990s, the strategy now is to paint Republicans as rabid partisans only interested in attacking the president of the other party out of political or ideological motives in contrast to a commander in chief focused on issues of importance to everyday voters, like health care and the economy.The approach worked for Mr. Clinton, whose approval ratings shot up to their highest levels of his two terms, surpassing 70 percent, when he was impeached for perjury and obstruction of justice. Mr. Biden’s approval ratings remain mired in the low 40s, but advisers think a serious impeachment threat would rally disaffected supporters.Mr. Herrig’s Congressional Integrity Project, founded after last year’s midterm elections, hopes to turn the Republican impeachment drive against them. His group’s board chairman, Jeff Peck, is a longtime Biden ally, and it recently hired Kate Berner, the former White House deputy communications director.The group has teams in New York and California and plans to expand to other battleground districts. “This is a political loser for vulnerable Republicans,” Mr. Herrig said. “McCarthy’s doing the bidding of Trump and Marjorie Taylor Greene and putting his majority at risk.” More

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      White House condemns Marjorie Taylor Greene threat to shut down government

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      The White House condemned the “extreme” and “hardcore fringe” of the Republican party after one high-profile, hardcore extremist, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, said she would not vote to fund the government this month without an impeachment inquiry against Joe Biden.Without a new spending measure, government funding will run out on 30 September, with federal workers furloughed and agencies shuttered.In a statement on Thursday night, the White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said: “The last thing the American people deserve is for extreme House members to trigger a government shutdown that hurts our economy, undermines our disaster preparedness, and forces our troops to work without guaranteed pay.”Nodding to the May deal to raise the debt ceiling, Bates said House Republicans “already made a promise to the American public about government funding, and it would be a shame for them to break their word and fail the country because they caved to the hardcore fringe of their party”.Greene is a conspiracy theorist and controversialist who has said she is “on a list” to become running mate to Donald Trump if he is the Republican presidential nominee.Speaking in Georgia, she said she wanted funding withheld from Jack Smith, the special counsel who has brought 44 of 91 criminal charges against Trump. She also said she wanted to fire David Weiss, the special counsel appointed under the Trump administration investigating Hunter Biden, the president’s son and the nexus of unproven corruption allegations fueling the march to impeachment.“We have to rein in the FBI,” Greene told constituents. “I will not vote for money to go towards those things.“I will be happy to work with all my colleagues. I will work with the speaker of the House. I will work with everyone. But I will not fund those things.”Other hard-right Republicans have threatened to vote against government funding. Kevin McCarthy, the speaker who has only a five-seat majority, has indicated he will approve an impeachment inquiry when the House comes back this month.“If we shut down, all the government shuts down – investigation and everything else,” McCarthy told Fox News last weekend, calling impeachment a “natural step forward” from current investigations.Trump was impeached twice by House Democrats, first for seeking political dirt in Ukraine, then for inciting the January 6 attack on Congress. Senate Republicans acquitted him both times.As defined by the Brookings Institution, a government shutdown occurs when “Congress fails to enact the 12 annual appropriation bills [and] federal agencies must cease all non-essential functions until Congress acts”.Two shutdowns occurred under Trump, the first in January 2018, the second a year later, both resulting from fights over immigration. The first was brief but the second lasted 35 days, the longest in US history. The Congressional Budget Office said it cost about $5bn.Now, the White House wants a stopgap measure. On Thursday, a spokesperson for the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) said: “It is clear that a short-term continuing resolution will be needed next month.”The White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, said: “This is something that Congress can do. They can prevent a government shutdown. They need to prevent a government shutdown.”Also on Thursday, as Florida and other southern states assessed damage caused by Hurricane Idalia, the White House requested an extra $4bn to help pay for relief efforts after a number of climate-related disasters.In early August, Biden asked Congress to approve about $40bn in additional spending, including $24bn to support Ukraine in its war with Russia and other international needs and $12bn for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) disaster relief fund.On Thursday, citing wildfire disasters in Hawaii and Louisiana as well as hurricane-related damage in Florida, an OMB spokesperson said the White House now needed $16bn for disaster relief.“The president has been clear that were going to stand with communities across the nation as they recover from disasters for as long as it takes, and the administration is committed to working with Congress to ensure funding for the [disaster relief fund] is sufficient for recovery needs,” the spokesperson said.In his statement rebuking Greene, Bates, the White House spokesperson, cited the need to fund “high-stakes needs Americans care about deeply – like fighting fentanyl trafficking, protecting our national security, and funding Fema”.Reuters contributed reporting More

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      Leading House Republican Steve Scalise announces cancer diagnosis

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      Steve Scalise, the Republican majority leader in the US House of Representatives, said on Tuesday he has cancer.In a statement, the 57-year-old Louisianan said: “After a few days of not feeling like myself this past week, I had some blood work done. The results uncovered some irregularities and after undergoing additional tests, I was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a very treatable blood cancer.”Scalise said he had begun treatment, which would “continue for … several months”. He said he expected to continue working.“I am incredibly grateful we were able to detect this early,” he said, “and that this cancer is treatable. I am thankful for my excellent medical team, and with the help of God, support of my family, friends, colleagues and constituents, I will tackle this with the same strength and energy as I have tackled past challenges.”Scalise was elected in 2008. Sometimes dogged by reporting linking him to far-right groups, he nonetheless rose in the party hierarchy.In 2017, in Virginia, Scalise was one of four people shot when a gunman who claimed leftwing ideals attacked practice for the congressional baseball game. The gunman was killed by police. The hospital which treated Scalise said a bullet “travelled across his pelvis, fracturing bones, injuring internal organs, and causing severe bleeding”.The next year, returning to work, Scalise said the shooting “was one of the very few moments in my life, from the birth of my kids and marriage … that [I] will always remember. There were days where I [wasn’t] sure I was going to be able to walk back on to the House floor on my own, with my crutches.“Those were some dark days. You could take a bear down with the bullet I was hit with. When I looked at the caliber bullet, I was amazed I was still alive. Frankly, there are a lot of miracles that happened along the way.”Scalise also said he was “a strong supporter of the second amendment before the shooting and frankly, as ardent as ever after the shooting in part because I was saved by people who had guns”.Sticking close to the former president Donald Trump as the billionaire took over the Republican party, Scalise became majority leader, No 2 to the House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, after the midterm elections last year. On Tuesday, fellow Republicans wished Scalise well.Elise Stefanik of New York, the No 3 House Republican, said: “There is no stronger fighter than Steve Scalise. Steve is as tough and kind as they come, and he has beaten so many unbeatable odds. The Legend from Louisiana is beloved by his colleagues and America and we know he will fight this next battle with that same resolve.”Marjorie Taylor Greene, the hard-right conspiracy theorist congresswoman from Georgia, said she was praying for Scalise “and his entire family”. More

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      in Elections

      Democrats Want to Flip N.Y. House Seats. But There’s a Primary Problem.

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      To win back a key seat it lost in 2022, the party must first deal with a battle between Mondaire Jones and Liz Whitmer Gereghty, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s sister.Sipping iced coffee at a diner the other day, Liz Whitmer Gereghty looked every bit the dream recruit Democrats need to recapture this coveted suburban House seat north of New York City.She once owned a shop down the street, served on the school board and speaks passionately about abortion rights. She also happens to be the younger sister of one of her party’s brightest stars, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan.“My rights are at risk,” said Ms. Gereghty, 50. “Everything feels very urgent, and I have a congressman who is not representing me, so I raised my hand.”Problem is, she was not the only one. Mondaire Jones, a popular former congressman who represented much of the area until January, is also running and believes he is the best candidate to defeat Representative Mike Lawler, the Republican incumbent.It is a pattern repeating itself in swing seats across the country this summer, but nowhere more so than New York, where ambitious Democrats eager to challenge Republicans defending seats that President Biden won are creating primary pileups from Long Island to Syracuse.Contested primaries have long been a reality for both parties. But after Democrats’ underperformance in 2022 made New York a national embarrassment, party officials and strategists have been increasingly worried that Democrat-on-Democrat fights could drain millions of dollars and bruise a crop of eventual nominees, threatening their carefully laid plans to wrest back House control.“My view is we shot ourselves in the foot last cycle, and we seem intent on shooting ourselves in the head this cycle,” said Howard Wolfson, who helps steer tens of millions of dollars in political spending as Michael R. Bloomberg’s adviser.“I can’t for the life of me understand why we can’t figure this out and ensure that we have one strong candidate running in each of these districts,” he added.Paradoxically, the problem could grow only more stark if Democrats win a lawsuit seeking to redraw the state’s district lines. That could ease the party’s path to victory, but also prompt the courts to push the primary date from June to late August, extending the bitter primary season and truncating the general election campaign.There is time for leaders like Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the top House Democrat and a New Yorker, to intervene if they want to. While the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee rarely interferes in open primaries, there is a tradition of less direct maneuvering to boost preferred candidates and edge others out.So far, Mr. Jeffries appears to be doing the opposite — privately encouraging more potential candidates, with mixed success, according to four Democrats familiar with his outreach who asked to remain anonymous because they were not authorized to discuss it. He tried to nudge State Senator Michelle Hinchey into a Hudson Valley contest earlier this year and urged the former Nassau County executive, Laura Curran, to enter a large primary field for another seat as recently as July.Mr. Jeffries has also offered support to Tom Suozzi to enter the race for his old House seat on Long Island, where a crowded field of Democrats is circling Representative George Santos, a first-term Republican who faces federal fraud charges.The leader’s allies argue that the competition will strengthen their nominees, and brush off concerns that Democrats will be short on funds. A Democratic super PAC has already earmarked $45 million for New York races. And the D.C.C.C. is pitching donors — as recently as a party retreat in Torrey Pines, Calif., last weekend, according to an attendee — to give to special “nominee funds,” a kind of escrow account collecting money for primary winners.“Leader Jeffries has no plan to endorse in any Democratic primary in New York,” said Christie Stephenson, his spokeswoman. “He is confident that whoever emerges in these competitive districts will be strongly positioned to defeat the extreme MAGA Republican crowd.”But the mix of ego and ideology buffeting the star-studded race between Mr. Jones and Ms. Gereghty shows the potential risks, particularly in such a high-profile race to reclaim a Hudson Valley seat lost last year by Sean Patrick Maloney, who was the chairman of the Democratic campaign committee at the time.Mr. Jones held the Hudson Valley seat, but opted in 2022 to run for an open seat in New York City, where he lost in a primary.Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesMr. Jones, an openly gay Black Democrat, represented a more liberal configuration of the seat in Congress last term. But after a court imposed new district lines in 2022, Mr. Maloney opted to run for Mr. Jones’s seat instead of his traditional one. Rather than run against a party leader, Mr. Jones chose to move 25 miles to Brooklyn to run for an open seat there.He lost and has now moved back north.In a phone interview, Mr. Jones, 36, said he was confident that voters would understand his “impossible situation,” but regretted his decision not to challenge Mr. Maloney, who lost to Mr. Lawler in a seat Mr. Biden won by 10 points.Mr. Jones said the outcome showed that “you can’t just substitute any Democrat for Mondaire Jones in this district.” More than 100 local and national officials and groups — from the Westchester Democratic chairwoman to the congressional Black and progressive caucuses — have backed his comeback attempt, making him the clear front-runner against Ms. Gereghty.But some of the positions Mr. Jones trumpeted to win more liberal electorates in earlier campaigns could prove cumbersome.He is already tacking toward the center and would say little about Ms. Gereghty in the interview. Mr. Jones referred to his own calls to defund the police in 2020 as “emotional, facile comments”; his current campaign features video of Mr. Jones shaking hands with a local police chief while touting votes to increase police funding.Mr. Jones said he wanted to see New York grant judges new authority to set cash bail for defendants they deem dangerous. And he said he would support a state plan to tax cars traveling into central Manhattan only if there was a carveout for the suburban counties he represented.Over breakfast in Katonah, an affluent Westchester suburb, Ms. Gereghty pitched her modest record as an electoral strength in a general election. She cast herself as a member of the get-it-done wing of the Democratic Party, like her sister, and predicted Mr. Lawler would gleefully use Mr. Jones’s words against him, as he did to Mr. Maloney.“If you got tired of the Sean Maloney ads last year, we’ll at least have some more variety if he’s the candidate,” she said.Ms. Gereghty serves on a school board in her district, and was a former shop owner in the area.Joe Buglewicz for The New York TimesMs. Gereghty has no plans to drop out. But she has struggled to amass local support.Her most notable endorsement comes from Emily’s List, the national group dedicated to electing women who back abortion rights. Of the $408,000 she’s raised thus far, almost half came from residents of Michigan.Democrats have caught some breaks in neighboring districts.Republicans have yet to field a top-tier challenger to Representative Pat Ryan, the only Democrat defending a swing seat here. They are also headed toward their own fraught primary if Mr. Santos continues to run.Elsewhere, the candidates are crowding in.Three Democrats, including Sarah Hughes, a former gold medal figure skater, are vying to represent the party against Representative Anthony D’Esposito in a Long Island district Mr. Biden won by 14 points.Three more have already raised at least $300,000 to run in Mr. Santos’s neighboring district. That does not include Mr. Suozzi or Robert Zimmerman, the party’s 2022 nominee, who is eyeing another run.A similar dynamic is playing out in Syracuse, where four Democrats are competing over whether a moderate or progressive should take on Representative Brandon Williams, a Republican who narrowly won a seat that favored Mr. Biden by eight points in 2020.“Primaries can be bloodying, and they cost a lot of money,” said Ms. Curran, who has decided not to run for Mr. D’Esposito’s seat. “It clouds the message and the mission.”Republicans have watched it all with delight.Mr. Lawler spent the month of August meeting constituents and gathering large campaign checks. He said he ran into Mr. Jones along the way and got an earful — about how frustrated the Democrat was to be stuck in a primary.He won’t have a Democratic primary vote, but Mr. Lawler, who will have to defend his own conservative votes unpopular in the district, made clear he has a preference.“Look, I’d be happy to run against either,” he said. “But Mondaire Jones certainly has a very long and detailed record that shows him clearly out of step.” More