Mace, Nancy

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      In South Carolina, Nikki Haley Finds Some Distance from Trump

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      Nikki Haley, the former United Nations ambassador, used a well-timed endorsement of Representative Nancy Mace to get on the opposite side of the former president.WASHINGTON — Rumors were swirling in South Carolina early this February that Donald J. Trump would try to tear down a Republican congresswoman who had incurred his wrath.Then Nikki Haley, his former United Nations ambassador and South Carolina’s former governor, made her move.On Feb. 7, Ms. Haley endorsed the congresswoman, Representative Nancy Mace, jumping ahead of Mr. Trump, who backed Ms. Mace’s rival two days later. The timing of Ms. Haley’s move was widely viewed as deliberate — allowing her to exert her influence in the race without directly challenging Mr. Trump’s judgment.“Nikki’s very smart — it’d never occur to me that she doesn’t know exactly what she’s doing,” said South Carolina’s treasurer, Curtis Loftis. “If the political winds change for President Trump, she’s prepared to be there, and this is part of that.”Mr. Trump will be in Florence, S.C., on Saturday to rally his faithful behind Ms. Mace’s primary challenger, Katie Arrington, and another pro-Trump Republican, Russell Fry, who is challenging Representative Tom Rice, one of 10 Republicans who voted to impeach the former president for inciting the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Mr. Fry and Ms. Arrington will share the stage, along with several conservative luminaries, including Gov. Henry McMaster of South Carolina and Drew McKissick, the state’s Republican Party chairman. Ms. Haley will not be there.To Republicans in the state, Ms. Haley is playing a shrewd and careful game by seeming to distance herself from Mr. Trump and yet continuing to embrace him at the same time.Just after the attack on the Capitol last year, Ms. Haley pronounced herself “disgusted” with her former boss, but since then, she has been trying to get back in his good graces. She has been appearing on television to say that the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, would have never invaded Ukraine if Mr. Trump were still president. She has endorsed and raised funds for many pro-Trump candidates, while staying out of some of the races where he has endorsed challengers.How Donald J. Trump Still LoomsGrip on G.O.P.: Mr. Trump remains the most powerful figure in the Republican Party. However, there are signs his control is loosening.Power Struggle: Led by Senator Mitch McConnell, a band of anti-Trump Republicans is maneuvering to thwart the ex-president.Midterms Effect: Mr. Trump has become a party kingmaker, but his involvement in state races worries many Republicans.Post-Presidency Profits: Mr. Trump is melding business with politics, capitalizing for personal gain.Just the Beginning: For many Trump supporters who marched on Jan. 6, the day was not a disgraced insurrection but the start of a movement.But in the case of Ms. Mace, backing her early on was a way for Ms. Haley to get on the right side of Republican politics in her home state, in case Mr. Trump’s endorsements falter — and he falters with them. In South Carolina, where the former governor remains popular, the state’s early primary has often been decisive to presidential nominations; Ms. Haley and other Republicans in Mr. Trump’s shadow are positioning for possible presidential bids in 2024.“South Carolina is a hugely influential political state,” said Matt Moore, a Republican campaign consultant and former party chairman in the state. “The stakes are high, and the foundations are being set for the next decade. You want to have folks on your team.”In her first speech in Congress, Representative Nancy Mace said the House needed to “hold the president accountable” for the Capitol attack on Jan. 6, 2021, but she voted against Mr. Trump’s impeachment.Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesMs. Haley declined to be interviewed. But her aides said her endorsement of Ms. Mace had nothing to do with rumors of a pending endorsement for Ms. Arrington from Mr. Trump.“Ambassador Haley’s endorsement of Congresswoman Mace was based entirely on her record as a tough-as-nails conservative on national security, the border, law enforcement and opposing mandates on our kids,” Chaney Denton, a Haley spokeswoman, said.Ms. Haley is not shying away now. She headlined a fund-raiser Friday afternoon for Ms. Mace at The Harbour Club in Charleston, S.C., that raised around $300,000 as Mr. Trump’s forces gathered upstate.“Jumping in the middle of this and holding a fund-raiser when President Trump is coming down here? That isn’t keeping your powder dry. That’s loading up your gun,” said Katon Dawson, a former Republican Party chairman in South Carolina.Mr. Trump has endorsed only eight Republican challengers to sitting House Republicans, and two of them are in South Carolina. Ms. Mace, a freshman who made her name as the first female cadet to graduate from The Citadel, a military college in Charleston, is unlike most of Mr. Trump’s incumbent targets.In her first speech in Congress in January 2021, Ms. Mace said the House needed to “hold the president accountable” for the Capitol attack, but she voted against his impeachment. She also opposed the creation of a bipartisan commission to investigate the attack, another vote that Mr. Trump has used to determine his endorsements.But Ms. Mace has been steadfast in saying that Mr. Trump lost the 2020 election. When he endorsed Ms. Arrington, Mr. Trump declared Ms. Mace “an absolutely terrible candidate” whose “remarks and attitude have been devastating for her community, and not at all representative of the Republican Party to which she has been very disloyal.”Representative Katie Arrington beat then-Representative Mark Sanford in the 2018 Republican primary, after she ran with Mr. Trump’s endorsement.Kathryn Ziesig/The Post And Courier, via Associated PressRussell Fry, a state representative, is challenging U.S. Representative Tom Rice, one of the few Republicans who voted to impeach Donald J. Trump. Mr. Trump is backing Mr. Fry in the primary.Jeffrey Collins/Associated PressMs. Mace then appeared in front of Trump Tower in Manhattan to praise the former president’s record and policies, saying, “If you want to lose this seat once again in a midterm election cycle to Democrats, then my opponent is more than qualified to do just that.”Mr. Trump will not be assuaged. On Friday, he said in a statement he “will be honoring Katie Arrington, who is running against the absolutely horrendous Nancy Mace,” predicting “big crowds at the Florence Regional Airport.”Ms. Mace, though, might have a point. In 2018, Ms. Arrington beat then-Representative Mark Sanford in the Republican primary after he emerged as one of the few anti-Trump Republicans in Congress. But Ms. Arrington then lost to a Democrat, Joe Cunningham. In 2020, Mr. Cunningham then lost to Ms. Mace.Further complicating matters, Ms. Arrington, the chief information security officer for acquisition and sustainment at the Department of Defense, was placed on leave last June over a suspected leak of classified information from the National Security Agency, a situation that has not gone unnoticed by Ms. Mace’s campaign.Republican officials in South Carolina said Ms. Arrington may have tipped Ms. Haley off about jumping into the primary race. Ms. Arrington was among a small group of South Carolina Republicans who visited Mr. Trump at Mar-a-Lago the weekend of Feb. 5. When she heard he was going to endorse Mr. Fry, she began letting Republicans know widely that she, too, would be entering a race, with Mr. Trump’s endorsement.Ms. Haley endorsed Ms. Mace on Feb. 7. Ms. Arrington announced her primary challenge on Feb. 8. Mr. Trump endorsed Ms. Arrington on Feb. 9.Ms. Haley is no Trump foe. Most of her endorsements have gone to Trump-favored candidates. She endorsed on Thursday the re-election of Senator Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin, and cut a fund-raising video with Herschel Walker, the former football star recruited by Mr. Trump to run for the Senate in Georgia.She pointedly has not endorsed Mr. Rice for re-election. Mr. Dawson, the former state party chairman, said Ms. Haley’s campaigning for Mr. Rice in 2012 made all the difference in his victory over the former lieutenant governor, André Bauer, in the Republican primary. But Mr. Rice’s district on the North Carolina border is far more Trump country than Ms. Mace’s affluent, highly educated district that touches Charleston and hugs the Lowcountry coast.Ms. Arrington is still talking confidently.“The Lowcountry wants a pro-Trump America First conservative to represent them,” her spokesman, Chris D’Anna, said. “Nancy knows that, indicated by her tucking her tail between her legs as she flew to New York City to shoot an apology video in front of Trump Tower.”Austin McCubbin, Ms. Mace’s campaign manager, responded, “Our opponent has proven two things — she’s the only Republican to lose this district in 40 years, and she will say just about anything.”Mr. Sanford, the former congressman whom Ms. Arrington defeated in 2018, said Ms. Haley had nothing to lose. Once Ms. Haley expressed her anger over Jan. 6, she would never get back in his good graces, he said, speaking from experience.“There’s really no way forward for her,” Mr. Sanford said of Ms. Haley. “Trump is a guy who holds decided grudges and doesn’t let them go. She doesn’t want to do anything to alienate his base, but where she can find things that appeal to that mass of Republicans that don’t feel they have a home, she’ll grab it.” More

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      Republican Recriminations Point to a Rocky Path to a House Majority

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      Simmering tensions between the far-right flank and more traditional conservatives burst into the open on Tuesday, while Republican leaders stayed silent.WASHINGTON — Hostilities between the Republican far right and its typically muted center burst into the open on Tuesday, highlighting deep divisions that could bedevil the party’s leaders if they capture a narrow majority in the House next year.Initially prompted by the anti-Muslim comments of Representative Lauren Boebert of Colorado, the Republican-on-Republican war of words on Tuesday was remarkably bitter and an indication of a brewing power struggle between an ascendant faction that styles itself after President Donald J. Trump and a quieter one that is pushing back.First, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia called her freshman colleague Nancy Mace of South Carolina “trash” for condemning Ms. Boebert’s remarks in a television interview.Ms. Mace then used a series of emojis — a bat, a pile of excrement and a crazy clown — to describe Ms. Greene, then kept up a steady stream of social media attacks, calling her a liar, a grifter and a nut.Representative Adam Kinzinger, Republican of Illinois, came to Ms. Mace’s defense, calling Ms. Greene “unserious circus barker McSpacelaser” — a reference to a social media post that she once circulated suggesting that wildfires in the West had been started by lasers owned by the Rothschilds, a Jewish banking family.Mr. Kinzinger added that Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the Republican leader and would-be speaker who has done nothing to discipline rank-and-file members of his conference for bigoted and violent statements, “continues his silent streak that would make a monk blush.”Then Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida, an ally of Ms. Greene’s, took to Twitter to amplify an attack by the right-wing provocateur Jack Posobiec denouncing Ms. Mace as a “scam artist” for promoting coronavirus vaccinations on CNN.The carnival-like behavior would amount to little more than a sideshow if it did not have real implications for midterm campaigns and, possibly, a fractured Republican majority in 2023. Party leaders again chose to remain mum as their backbenchers brawled, and Democrats took full advantage of the spectacle.“The atmosphere is what it has been and what has been created by the Republican Party over the last 50 years, where they have continued to move down the path of divisiveness, of acrimony, of threats and accusations, which have demeaned the politics of America,” Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the majority leader, told reporters.He again called on Republican leaders to discipline their members, referring to the episode that touched off the hostilities: public comments by Ms. Boebert in which she suggested that Representative Ilhan Omar, Democrat of Minnesota and a Muslim who wears a hijab, could be a suicide bomber and called her a member of the “jihad squad.”The House’s three Muslim lawmakers — Ms. Omar and Representatives Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and André Carson of Indiana, all Democrats — suggested that their party was looking at options to sanction Ms. Boebert.“Muslims in this country are proud Americans, hard-working members of our community,” Mr. Carson said. “And we are not anyone’s scapegoat.”These should be heady days for House Republicans. Off-year elections this month showed real disenchantment with Democratic control of the House, Senate and White House. Redistricting in Republican-controlled state legislatures has given the party a running start to win the four or five seats it needs to control the House, and polling suggests that a narrow plurality of Americans would rather have Republicans in control of Congress. Given the party’s structural advantages on redistricting, access to polls and enthusiasm, that suggests a much broader victory would be at hand if the voting were today.Michael Steel, a former spokesman for Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the former Republican speaker, said the party’s leaders should be working behind the scenes to calm dissent and keep members focused on building a platform and an argument for control.“The top priority right now should be for everyone in the canoe to have their rifles pointing outward, not at each other,” Mr. Steel said. “And the focus should be on addition, not subtraction. That means keeping all the frogs in the wheelbarrow, even if some of those frogs are pretty ugly.”Representative Nancy Mace, Republican of South Carolina, used a series of unflattering emojis in social media attacks on Ms. Greene.Anna Moneymaker/Getty ImagesInstead, Republicans are stepping on their own message. On Tuesday, CNN unearthed another video of Ms. Boebert from September, when she said she turned to Ms. Omar and referred to the “jihad squad,” again insinuating that she could be a suicide bomber.Ms. Omar has said that no such confrontation occurred. During a call initiated by Ms. Boebert on Monday — ostensibly to offer contrition — the situation only devolved further, as Ms. Boebert refused to apologize and instead demanded that Ms. Omar publicly ask forgiveness for “anti-American” comments.Democrats were not the only ones who condemned Ms. Boebert’s behavior. Ms. Mace, a highly regarded newcomer and the first woman to graduate from the Citadel military college, appeared on CNN to say, “I have time after time condemned my colleagues on both sides of the aisle for racist tropes and remarks that I find disgusting, and this is no different than any others.”Ms. Greene, who like Ms. Boebert is a favorite of Mr. Trump’s, criticized Ms. Mace on social media and on Stephen K. Bannon’s broadcast, “War Room,” and condemned Republican leaders.“They’re always all over us whenever we say or do anything, but it’s the Nancy Maces that should be called out,” Ms. Greene told Mr. Bannon. She added that she, not Ms. Mace, represented the Republican base, a comment seconded by others on the far right, including Representative Paul Gosar of Arizona.Representative Peter Meijer, Republican of Michigan, defended Ms. Mace.“Nancy is a serious legislator who rolls up her sleeves and looks for solutions where they can be found, such as federal cannabis decriminalization, but also digs in and fights when progressives put politics above policy,” Mr. Meijer said. “I can’t think of a single credible thing those attacking her have even tried to accomplish.”Republican leaders were left pointing fingers at their Democratic counterparts, who they said had also taken no action against members who had crossed lines, whether through anti-Israel comments or exhortations to protesters that they said encouraged violence.If the Republicans claim a narrow majority in the midterms, Representative Kevin McCarthy of California would need virtually all of his conference’s votes to claim the speakership.Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesMr. Hoyer did say that Mr. McCarthy reached out to him to say Ms. Boebert wanted to apologize to Ms. Omar, an overture that Mr. Hoyer said would not end well. He was proved correct.Mr. McCarthy finds himself in a delicate position. He does not know how large a majority his party might win in November, especially since much of the redistricting has focused on shoring up incumbent advantages than creating more competitive races. A sweeping Republican win would allow him to write off the votes of his party’s fringe.But if the Republicans claim a narrow majority, Mr. McCarthy would need virtually all of the conference’s votes to claim the speakership, a prize he has sought for nearly a decade. The far right brought down Mr. Boehner in 2015, and Republican divisions over the prospects of Mr. McCarthy’s speakership sunk his last run for the post weeks later.A handful of members, including Ms. Greene, have been cool to the idea of granting him the gavel should his party claim the majority.Emily Cochrane More

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      Nancy Mace Called Herself a ‘New Voice’ for the G.O.P. Then She Pivoted.

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      Her shift reflects how rank-and-file Republicans — even those who may disagree with him — have decided it is too perilous to openly challenge former President Donald J. Trump.MOUNT PLEASANT, S.C. — Representative Nancy Mace had just delivered the kind of red-meat remarks that would ordinarily thrill the Republican voters in attendance here on a recent sweltering evening, casually comparing liberal Democrats to terrorists — the “Hamas squad,” she called them — and railing against their “socialist” spending plans.But asked to give an assessment of her congresswoman, Mara Brockbank, a former leader of the Charleston County Republican Party who previously endorsed Ms. Mace, was less than enthusiastic.“I didn’t like that she back-stabbed Trump,” Ms. Brockbank said. “We have to realize that she got in because of Trump. Even if you do have something against your leaders, keep them to yourself.”Ms. Brockbank was referring to Ms. Mace’s first weeks in office immediately after the Jan. 6 riot, as the stench of tear gas lingered in the halls of the Capitol and some top Republicans were quietly weighing a break with President Donald J. Trump. Ms. Mace, a freshman congresswoman, placed herself at the forefront of a group of Republicans denouncing Mr. Trump’s lies of a stolen election that had fueled the assault and appeared to be establishing herself as a compelling new voice urging her party to change its ways.But these days, as Republicans in Congress have made it clear that they have no intention of turning against Mr. Trump, Ms. Mace has quietly backpedaled into the party’s fold. Having once given more than a dozen interviews in a single day to condemn Mr. Trump’s corrosive influence on the party, Ms. Mace now studiously avoids the subject, rarely if ever mentioning his name and saying it is time for Republicans to “stop fighting with each other in public.”After setting herself apart from her party during her first week in office by opposing its effort to overturn President Biden’s victory, Ms. Mace has swung back into line. She joined the vast majority of Republicans in voting to oust Representative Liz Cheney from leadership for denouncing Mr. Trump and his election lies. She also voted against forming an independent bipartisan commission to investigate the Capitol riot.And rather than continuing to challenge party orthodoxy, Ms. Mace has leaned in to the most combative Republican talking points, castigating Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the top health official who is a favorite boogeyman of the right, accusing Democrats of forcing critical race theory on children, and publicly feuding with progressives.Her pivot helps explain why the Republican Party’s embrace of Mr. Trump and his brand of politics is more absolute than ever. It is not only the small but vocal group of hard-right loyalists of the former president who are driving the alliance, but also the scores of rank-and-file Republicans — even those who may disagree with him, as Ms. Mace has — who have decided it is too perilous to openly challenge him.“She’s a little bit like a new sailor; she tried to get her sea legs, but she’s also looking out over the horizon, and what she saw was a storm coming in from the right,” said Chip Felkel, a veteran Republican strategist in South Carolina. “So she immediately started paddling in another direction. The problem is, is that everything you say and do, there’s a record of it.”Ms. Mace declined through a spokeswoman to be made available for an interview, but said in a statement that “you can be conservative and you can be a Republican and be pissed off and vocal about what happened on Jan. 6.” (Ms. Mace’s most recent statements regarding the Capitol attack have been explanations of why she opposed commissions to investigate it.)“You can agree with Donald Trump’s policies and be pissed off about what happened on Jan. 6,” Ms. Mace said. “You can think Pelosi is putting on a sideshow with the Jan. 6 commission and still be pissed off about Jan. 6. These things are not mutually exclusive.”Ms. Mace is facing a particularly difficult political dynamic in her swing district centered in Charleston, which she won narrowly last year when she defeated Joe Cunningham, a Democrat. Her immediate problem is regaining the trust of the rock-ribbed conservatives who make up her base. It is all the more pressing because political observers expect Republicans to try to redraw Ms. Mace’s district to become more conservative, and possible primary challengers still have a year to decide whether to throw their hats in the ring.Her predicament bubbled below the surface on a recent evening here at a pork-themed “End Washington Waste” reception overlooking the Charleston Harbor and the docked Yorktown, a decommissioned Navy aircraft carrier. Voters signed the hocks of a paper pig urging Democrats to cut extraneous spending from the infrastructure bill and exchanged printed-out “Biden bucks” for cocktails, as some reflected on Ms. Mace’s balancing act.Ms. Mace campaigning in Mount Pleasant, S.C., in November. She is facing a difficult political dynamic in her swing district centered in Charleston.Mic Smith/FR2 AP, via Associated PressFrancis and Clea Sherman, a married couple who braved the 90-degree heat to attend, praised her for being “unafraid to speak out” and “tackling tough issues.”“We absolutely think that is the most horrifying thing — not to ever happen, but certainly one of them,” Ms. Sherman said of the Capitol breach, quickly adding that she was just as outraged by racial justice protests around the country that had grown violent. “All those riots that went along in all those cities — they’ve got to stop.”Mr. Sherman, a Korean War veteran, nodded along. “It was a shame it had to happen,” he said of the Jan. 6 assault, adding that he used to “get very upset” with some of Mr. Trump’s remarks.But the former president had been effective, he said. “In my whole life I’ve never been able to see someone accomplish so much,” Mr. Sherman added, citing low unemployment rates and a strong economy. “The bottom line was, did he get the job done?”Penny Ford, a Mount Pleasant resident who attended the event with her husband, Jim Ford, gave a more grudging assessment, explaining that they had winced at Ms. Mace’s comments about the former president. Still, she said, the congresswoman was “the best we have at the moment.”Ms. Ford said they would prefer to be represented by someone like Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio — a staunch Trump loyalist who helped plan the challenge to Mr. Biden’s election in the House — or Senator Ted Cruz of Texas — who led the effort to invalidate it in the Senate — and said they would consider voting against Ms. Mace next year “if I had a choice for someone else.”The first woman to graduate from the Citadel, Ms. Mace based her winning 2020 campaign on her up-from-the-bootstraps biography, detailing her journey from scrappy Waffle House waitress to statehouse representative. She bested Mr. Cunningham, who had been the first Democrat to hold the seat in nearly four decades, by just over a percentage point.On the campaign trail, Ms. Mace walked a careful line, balancing her libertarian streak with a more pragmatic approach, playing up a history of “speaking up against members” of her own party and “reaching across the aisle.”And in the days after the Jan. 6 attack, she was unsparing in her language. What was necessary, Ms. Mace said then, was nothing short of a comprehensive rebuilding of the party. It was a time for Republicans to be honest with their voters, she said: “Regardless of the political consequences, I’m going to tell the truth.”She could not stay silent, Ms. Mace insisted.“This is a moment in history, a turning point where because of my passion for our country, for our Constitution, for the future of my children — I don’t have that option anymore,” she said in an interview the day after the attack. “I can pick up the mantle and try to lead us out of this crisis, or I can sit idly by and watch our country go to waste. And I refuse to do the latter.”Ms. Mace in 1997, during her freshman year at the Citadel, where she became the first woman to graduate two years later.Paula Illingworth/Associated PressLess than a week later, her tone abruptly changed. After joining Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York, in a bipartisan request to provide congressional staff aides with more resources to cope with the “trauma” of the Jan. 6 attack, she criticized her colleague for recounting how she feared that rioters had broken into her office building.“No insurrectionists stormed our hallway,” Ms. Mace wrote on Twitter, touching off a heated back-and-forth.She then fund-raised off the feud, arguing that “the actions of the out-of-control mob who forced their way into the Capitol” were “terrifying” and “immediately condemned by the left and right,” but that “the left,” particularly Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, had “run wild because they will never let a crisis go to waste.”More recently, when she voted against the formation of the proposed bipartisan Jan. 6 inquiry, Ms. Mace called the endeavor a “partisan, duplicate effort by Speaker Pelosi to divide our nation.”And after initially refusing to tell reporters whether she voted to oust Ms. Cheney, of Wyoming, from her No. 3 leadership post, Ms. Mace’s team issued a statement affirming that she had, saying that Republicans “should be working together and not against one another during some of the most serious socialist challenges our nation has ever faced.”Ms. Mace has, in some ways, retained her independent streak. She verbally slapped down Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, for comparing mask mandates to Nazism. And she has continued to work across the aisle with Democrats on issues like presidential war powers and cybersecurity.Her still-frequent appearances on television, though — now mostly on a variety of Fox News shows, as well as the conservative networks OAN and Newsmax — tend to stick to some of the party’s most well-tread political messages. In a recent interview on Fox News, she asserted that strident liberals had seized control of the Democratic Party.“They’re in charge,” she said, “which is why we’re seeing what we thought would be a moderate administration take a sharp left turn all of a sudden.” More

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      Meet the House G.O.P. Freshmen Emerging as Some of the Party’s Sharpest Critics

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Capitol Riot FalloutliveLatest UpdatesInside the SiegeVisual TimelineNotable ArrestsIncitement to Riot?AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyMeet the House G.O.P. Freshmen Emerging as Some of the Party’s Sharpest CriticsEven as many freshmen have avoided breaking with President Trump, some have called for a partywide reckoning most of their caucus’s leaders have shied away from.“We have to take a take a cold, hard look at ourselves and recognize that this is a real problem for our party,” Representative Nancy Mace, Republican of South Carolina, has said.Credit…Mic Smith/Associated PressJan. 12, 2021Updated 9:17 p.m. ETWASHINGTON — Three days after Representative Peter Meijer was sworn into office, facing down a mob of violent rioters and a constitutional test, he broke with his party’s leaders and a majority of his Republican colleagues and voted to certify President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory.Now, less than a week later, Mr. Meijer, a freshman lawmaker from Michigan, is considering breaking what has been the guiding orthodoxy of his party — loyalty to President Trump — and voting to impeach its leader.“What we saw on Wednesday left the president unfit for office,” Mr. Meijer said.Most of Mr. Meijer’s colleagues in the freshman House Republican class voted last week to overturn the election results, and some of the loudest in his cohort have rushed to embrace and elevate the president’s inflammatory brand of politics and conspiratorial impulses. But just over a week into his term, Mr. Meijer is among a handful of Republican newcomers who have emerged as leading voices calling for a partywide reckoning after the deadly riot incited by Mr. Trump even as most of their own conference’s leaders shy away from such talk.The blunt, chastening language of Mr. Meijer and his fellow freshman Representative Nancy Mace of South Carolina, in particular, has dramatized in one freshman class the vast gulf between the dueling wings of a conference fractured by the departing president’s demand for total loyalty.Ten freshman Republicans, most of them from swing districts, banded together to uphold the election out of a cohort of more than 40 lawmakers. On Wednesday, some, like Representative Ashley Hinson of Iowa, took to Twitter to urge Mr. Trump to address the nation “and call for an end to this violence and disruption to our democratic process.”On Tuesday, as Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a QAnon-backing freshman Republican from Georgia, thanked her supporters on Twitter for sending “INCREDIBLE amounts of support to me for standing strong in my objection on behalf of Republican voters who feel the election is wrong,” her colleagues were condemning the drive and pressing the party to put an end to such claims.“We have to take a cold, hard look at ourselves and recognize that this is a real problem for our party,” Ms. Mace said in an interview. “We reap what we sow. We saw and heard the violent rhetoric at the rally and look what ended up happening.”On a call among Republican House members on Monday, Representative Lauren Boebert of Colorado, a hard-right freshman, suggested that some U.S. Capitol Police officers were participants in the riot. Ms. Mace shot back that she was disappointed the party was being led by conspiracy theorists, a swipe at approving comments Ms. Boebert and others in the conference previously made about QAnon.The past week has offered something of a nightmarish orientation for the Republican freshman lawmakers who voted to uphold the election. They have, both publicly and privately, expressed fury at their colleagues for emboldening rioters with bellicose language — and for following through on their pledges to throw out millions of lawfully cast ballots even after insurrectionists stormed the Capitol. Some are now themselves facing threats, and Mr. Meijer said in an op-ed in The Detroit News that he regretted not bringing his gun to Washington.Representative Tony Gonzales, Republican of Texas and a former Navy officer who voted to uphold the election, recounted to a local television station how he and other freshmen had tried to barricade the doors to the House chamber as the mob grew closer to reaching them.“Wow, wouldn’t this be something,” Mr. Gonzales recalled thinking. “I fight in Iraq and Afghanistan just to be killed in the House of Representatives.”“I was so distraught and distressed,” Ms. Mace said in an interview the day after the riot. “I woke up more heartbroken today than I was yesterday. More shocked, but also angrier than I was before. Pissed off that we allowed this to happen.”In an interview, Mr. Meijer recalled a conversation he had with a Republican colleague who believed voting to certify the election was the right thing to do, but feared that making such a move would endanger family members’ safety. Mr. Meijer described watching the lawmaker glued to one spot on the House floor for minutes, voting card in hand, contemplating what to do. The lawmaker eventually voted to overturn the election..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-c7gg1r{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:0.875rem;line-height:0.875rem;margin-bottom:15px;color:#121212 !important;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-c7gg1r{font-size:0.9375rem;line-height:0.9375rem;}}.css-rqynmc{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.9375rem;line-height:1.25rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-rqynmc{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-rqynmc strong{font-weight:600;}.css-rqynmc em{font-style:italic;}.css-yoay6m{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-yoay6m{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1dg6kl4{margin-top:5px;margin-bottom:15px;}.css-16ed7iq{width:100%;display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;-webkit-box-pack:center;-webkit-justify-content:center;-ms-flex-pack:center;justify-content:center;padding:10px 0;background-color:white;}.css-pmm6ed{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;}.css-pmm6ed > :not(:first-child){margin-left:5px;}.css-5gimkt{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.8125rem;font-weight:700;-webkit-letter-spacing:0.03em;-moz-letter-spacing:0.03em;-ms-letter-spacing:0.03em;letter-spacing:0.03em;text-transform:uppercase;color:#333;}.css-5gimkt:after{content:’Collapse’;}.css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;-webkit-transform:rotate(180deg);-ms-transform:rotate(180deg);transform:rotate(180deg);}.css-eb027h{max-height:5000px;-webkit-transition:max-height 0.5s ease;transition:max-height 0.5s ease;}.css-6mllg9{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;position:relative;opacity:0;}.css-6mllg9:before{content:”;background-image:linear-gradient(180deg,transparent,#ffffff);background-image:-webkit-linear-gradient(270deg,rgba(255,255,255,0),#ffffff);height:80px;width:100%;position:absolute;bottom:0px;pointer-events:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}.css-1cs27wo{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1cs27wo{padding:20px;}}.css-1cs27wo:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}.css-1cs27wo[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-1cs27wo[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-1cs27wo[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-1cs27wo[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-k9atqk{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-k9atqk strong{font-weight:700;}.css-k9atqk em{font-style:italic;}.css-k9atqk a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;border-bottom:1px solid #ccd9e3;}.css-k9atqk a:visited{color:#333;-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;border-bottom:1px solid #ddd;}.css-k9atqk a:hover{border-bottom:none;}Capitol Riot FalloutFrom Riot to ImpeachmentThe riot inside the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, Jan. 6, followed a rally at which President Trump made an inflammatory speech to his supporters, questioning the results of the election. Here’s a look at what happened and at the ongoing fallout:This video takes a look inside the siege on the capitol. This timeline shows how a crucial two hour period turned a rally into the riot.Several Trump administration officials, including cabinet members Betsy DeVos and Elaine Chao, announced that they were stepping down as a result of the riot.Federal prosecutors have charged more than 70 people, including some who appeared in viral photos and videos of the riot. Officials expect to eventually charge hundreds of others.House Democrats have begun impeachment proceedings. A look at how they might work.“It just broke my heart,” Mr. Meijer said.The vote, he said, instantly drew a clear “fault line” through the conference: between those who voted to uphold the election, and those who “knew what the most expedient vote was.”That fault line has extended through the conference’s leadership. Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the No. 3 Republican, announced on Tuesday that she would vote to impeach Mr. Trump, becoming only the second House Republican to do so and the first member of leadership to make such an announcement. Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the minority leader, and Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the minority whip, both voted to overturn the election results.“There has never been a greater betrayal by a president of the United States of his office and his oath to the Constitution,” Ms. Cheney said in a statement.Ms. Cheney’s announcement will no doubt provide political cover for other Republicans in the conference to follow suit. In the days before the vote, Ms. Cheney circulated a 21-page memo warning Republicans that objecting to the results would “set an exceptionally dangerous precedent,” and as the tear gas cleared last Wednesday, she explicitly blamed Mr. Trump for the violence in remarks that other Republicans, including Ms. Mace and Mr. Meijer, began to echo.“Every accomplishment that the president had over the last four years has been wiped out,” Ms. Mace said on Fox News. “The outcome of the rally, some of the rhetoric, led to that violence.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More