McConnell, Mitch

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      Rick Scott Lashes Out at Mitch McConnell in Sign of Dimming Republican Hopes for Senate

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      The Senate’s Republican campaign chief on Thursday appeared to escalate an ugly quarrel with the party’s longtime leader in the chamber, Senator Mitch McConnell, in the latest sign of the G.O.P.’s eroding confidence about winning back the majority in November.Without naming Mr. McConnell, Senator Rick Scott of Florida, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, lashed out in a blistering opinion piece in The Washington Examiner at Republicans he said were “trash-talking” the party’s candidates, an apparent reference to comments last month in which Mr. McConnell said that “candidate quality” could harm the G.O.P.’s chances of retaking the Senate. Mr. Scott called such remarks “treasonous” and said those who make them should “pipe down.”“Unfortunately, many of the very people responsible for losing the Senate last cycle are now trying to stop us from winning the majority this time by trash-talking our Republican candidates,” Mr. Scott wrote. “It’s an amazing act of cowardice, and ultimately, it’s treasonous to the conservative cause.”Speaking to reporters in his home state last month, Mr. McConnell conceded that Republicans had a stronger chance of winning back control of the House than the Senate in November.“Senate races are just different — they’re statewide, candidate quality has a lot to do with the outcome,” he said at a Chamber of Commerce lunch in Florence, Ky. The comment was widely interpreted to reflect Mr. McConnell’s growing concern about Republicans’ roster of Senate recruits, which includes several candidates who have been endorsed by former President Donald J. Trump and appear to be struggling in competitive races.Senator Mitch McConnell has conceded that Republicans have a stronger chance of winning back control of the House than the Senate. Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesThe intraparty feuding comes at a fraught moment for Mr. McConnell, who once boasted of being “100 percent focused” on stymieing President Biden’s agenda and appeared confident of his chance to reclaim the mantle of Senate majority leader given Democrats’ tiny margin of control. Those aspirations have dimmed substantially of late as Democrats have racked up a series of legislative accomplishments and Republican candidates have foundered in key contests.Mr. McConnell’s aides have downplayed the significance of his comment about “candidate quality,” arguing that it was designed to spur donors to help underfunded Republicans in the homestretch of the campaign. Mr. McConnell subsequently hosted a fund-raiser in Louisville for Herschel Walker, the Republican Senate candidate in Georgia; Dr. Mehmet Oz, the candidate in Pennsylvania; and Representative Ted Budd of North Carolina, who is also running for Senate.“Leader McConnell’s been on airplanes and on the phone all month, and that helped make August the biggest month of the cycle so far,” said Jack Pandol, a spokesman for the Senate Leadership Fund, the political action committee Mr. McConnell controls, which has become the main vehicle for donors to support Republican candidates.A spokesman for Mr. McConnell declined to comment.Privately, some Senate campaign operatives have savaged Mr. Scott, saying they were befuddled by his decision to embark last month on an Italian yacht vacation at the same time that the committee was pulling television reservations in critical states, signaling it was losing hope of victories there. The trip was reported by Axios.Mr. Scott has been at odds with Mr. McConnell since Mr. Scott released his “11-Point Plan to Rescue America,” presenting it as a policy platform for the midterm elections. Mr. McConnell emphatically rejected the plan, telling reporters, “We will not have as part of our agenda a bill that raises taxes on half the American people and sunsets Social Security and Medicare within five years.”Mr. Scott has never backed down from promoting his plan. And on Thursday, he took on Mr. McConnell in his strongest words yet.“If you want to trash-talk our candidates to help the Democrats, pipe down,” he wrote in the opinion piece. “That’s not what leaders do.”He added, “When you complain and lament that we have ‘bad candidates,’ what you are really saying is that you have contempt for the voters who chose them. Now we are at the heart of the matter. Much of Washington’s chattering class disrespects and secretly (or not so secretly) loathes Republican voters.” More

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      Chuck Schumer Delivers on Climate Change and Health Care Deal

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      WASHINGTON — Senator Chuck Schumer was huddled in his Capitol office on Thursday evening awaiting a climactic meeting with Kyrsten Sinema, a critical holdout on his painstakingly negotiated climate change, tax and health care deal, when the loud booms and flashes of a powerful thunderstorm shook Washington, setting the lights flickering.Mr. Schumer and his aides, so close to a signature legislative achievement to top off a surprise string of victories, glanced anxiously at one another and wondered if it was a bad omen. A 50-50 Senate, a pandemic that kept Democrats constantly guessing about who would be available to vote and the sheer difficulty of managing the nearly unmanageable chamber had left them superstitious.“I’ve been a worrier all my life, but a happy worrier,” said Mr. Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader.He needn’t have fretted. After a half-hour meeting, Mr. Schumer shook hands with Ms. Sinema, Democrat of Arizona, who agreed to lend her support to the legislation in exchange for a few revisions and some home-state drought relief. After a grueling overnight session, the Senate approved the sweeping measure on Sunday, with Vice President Kamala Harris casting the tiebreaking vote. The House was expected to follow suit later this week.It was a head-snapping change in fortune. Just a few weeks earlier, Mr. Schumer, the Democratic agenda and the party’s chances of retaining its bare Senate majority all seemed in sorry shape as last-gasp negotiations over the broad legislation appeared to collapse for good under the weight of resistance from Senator Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia.Instead, Democrats not only landed their biggest prize — the party-line climate and tax legislation — but also capped off an extraordinarily productive run for a Congress better known for its paralysis. It included passage of the first bipartisan gun safety legislation in a generation, a huge microchip production and scientific research bill to bolster American competitiveness with China, and a major veterans health care measure.The series of successes was all the more sweet for Democrats because it came with the political benefit of Republicans making themselves look bad by switching their position and temporarily blocking the bill to help sick veterans, in what appeared to be a temper tantrum over the abrupt resurrection of the climate deal.“We’ve had an extraordinary six weeks,” Mr. Schumer said in an interview, calling the climate, health and tax measure “the most comprehensive piece of legislation affecting the American people in decades.”It was far from certain he could attain this result. Mr. Schumer, who unlike his predecessors is not known as a master tactician or gifted legislator, has struggled to produce for long stretches, needing every single vote from an ideologically mixed Democratic membership. Even his allies wondered whether he was too driven by a need to be liked or his own personal political considerations in warding off a potential primary challenge from his left to be capable of the kind of ruthlessness that would be needed.Mr. Schumer said it was stamina, not bare knuckles, that had been the main requirement.“This is the hardest job I’ve ever had, with a 50-50 Senate, a big agenda and intransigent Republicans,” Mr. Schumer said. He cited a persistence instilled in him by his father, who ran an exterminating company and died last year, as a motivating factor. “Keep at it, keep at it. Look at all the pitfalls we have faced to get this done.”What’s in the Democrats’ Climate and Tax BillCard 1 of 6A new proposal. More

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      Opinion Columnists: So You Were Wrong. Or Were You?

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      More from our inbox:Josh Hawley Ran for His Life To the Editor:Re “I Was Wrong” (Sunday Opinion, July 24):Thank you for these columns. Although several seemed slightly grudging, many read as deeply felt self-examinations and sincere efforts to “walk a mile” in the shoes of others.In this age of righteousness on all sides, it takes great courage to approach the pains and the terrors of this world with real humility.What a world this would be if all our leaders — political, journalistic and religious — could allow themselves the sorrow and the glory of thinking, speaking and leading in such a manner!Steve WanghBrattleboro, Vt.To the Editor:The “I Was Wrong” columns were written by some of my favorite gurus. Their honesty and vulnerability in writing these pieces were so emotionally moving, authentic and valuable. Congratulations on putting this together.It meant so much to me, and I have passed the articles on to other colleagues in leadership, as this is what we propose to leaders of organizations in order to build trust. Thank you so much for the decision to do this!Kathy MinardiThe writer is executive director of the Whole School Leadership Institute.To the Editor:I admire Bret Stephens for admitting he was wrong (“I Was Wrong About Trump Voters”). But Mr. Stephens was mostly right.Trump voters were betrayed at least three times. The last time was by President Donald Trump himself; he did nothing for the “unprotected” citizens of the U.S., nor did he even try.Maybe, if Trump voters figure out what they really need and should expect from their government, and where justice is in the culture wars, they will make the right choice in 2024.Anthony J. DiStefanoMilton, Del.To the Editor:So Bret Stephens thinks he was wrong about Trump voters and states, “What Trump’s supporters saw was a candidate whose entire being was a proudly raised middle finger at a self-satisfied elite that had produced a failing status quo.”No, Mr. Stephens, you were not wrong about Trump voters; they simply did not choose to exercise their critical thinking skills to understand that Mr. Trump is one of the “self-satisfied elite” whose only goal in life is to obtain money and power.Moreover, if they had applied their critical thinking skills, they would have very quickly realized that Mr. Trump is a narcissist, a liar, a cheat and a master manipulator who duped them into believing that he is their savior; a 70-something golden-haired billionaire who lived on Fifth Avenue and now a mansion in Florida and who really cares about them! Really?And despite all of the recent information released from the Jan. 6 hearings, the vast majority simply reject it and continue to support Mr. Trump. So, Mr. Stephens, you were not wrong at all about Trump voters, but you are dead wrong in believing that you were and writing about it.Michael HadjiargyrouCenterport, N.Y.To the Editor:Bret Stephens’s mea culpa is spot on. Now who will really listen with an honest ear and a strategic plan for doing something for the multitudes feeling unheard, unappreciated, misunderstood? Old-fashioned town meetings might be the place to start.Dawn KellerHendersonville, N.C.To the Editor:In “I Was Wrong About Capitalism,” David Brooks suggests that his views on the value of regulation have (finally) changed because “sometimes the world is genuinely different than it was before.”While the specific regulations required certainly change with the times (there was, for example, no e-commerce to regulate until relatively recently), the need for well-crafted regulation to rein in the intrinsic detrimental tendencies of the free market, ranging from human exploitation to environmental devastation, is an unchanging truth.Capitalism is like fire; it is a powerful tool that offers transformative benefits to humanity, but, like fire, it must always be carefully managed because it can cause sweeping destruction.R. Daniel Valdes-DapenaCape May, N.J.To the Editor:Re David Brooks’s column:As a Midwestern 87-year-old lefty, I thank you for giving me a tiny sliver of hope in my tired old mind.Would that the ability to open new brain pathways be taught in schools, modeled in the halls of the government system and generally admired.There should be classes in “I was wrong.” It is such a mark of intelligence, and the school systems could redeem themselves from the sin of underpaying generous men and women who cannot break through the traps of the system.I admire you.Sally BrownMinneapolisTo the Editor:Re “I Was Wrong About Al Franken,” by Michelle Goldberg:Senator Franken was swept up in the “one size fits all” frenzy that consumed him predicated, in very large part, on one photo showing a comedian making an attempted joke gone horribly wrong.Even at the time I believed the clamor for his political head was an error. Now, given what has transpired in this nation since that day, and the very distinct possibility that Donald Trump may be his party’s 2024 presidential nominee despite a list of grievances that makes Mr. Franken’s seem as a pebble to a mountain, my belief in the mistaken rush to judgment for Mr. Franken has grown exponentially.I understand the mea culpa of this column. But too little, too late never seemed a more apt reply.Robert S. NussbaumFort Lee, N.J.To the Editor:Re Michelle Goldberg’s column about Al Franken:Thank you for your integrity, rising above pridefulness and acknowledging the costs of abridging due process. We need more of this accountability.Evelyn J. HightowerBlacklick, OhioTo the Editor:Re “I Was Wrong About Facebook,” by Farhad Manjoo:Truth will set you free, but you must be able to recognize it first. Facebook’s cacophony will not help you do that.Edgar PaukBrooklynTo the Editor:I enjoyed the collection of eight admissions from your columnists that they actually realize they were wrong about something. But only eight? This should be a weekly piece, considering how much material there is. I look forward to more of the same.Carl SchwarzNaples, Fla.To the Editor:I got through about three of the “I Was Wrong” columns before realizing that the theme was “I was wrong, but let me equivocate.” I always thought that wrong was wrong; I guess I was wrong (but I can explain).These read like a homework assignment no one wanted to do.Aaron SchurgTraverse City, Mich.Josh Hawley Ran for His Life Oliver Contreras/AFP— Getty ImagesTo the Editor:Re “Video Shows Senator Fleeing Mob He Had Exhorted With a Raised Fist” (news article, July 23):The video of Senator Josh Hawley running for his life as his buddies threatened to become too friendly with him is a perfect symbol of the Republican Party’s cowardice.Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy, of course, lead this pusillanimous bunch of big talkers and small men. That our country should be governed, if that is the correct word, by such a spineless group is sad beyond words.John T. DillonWest Caldwell, N.J. More

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      Let’s Have a New Gun Law for Independence Day

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      The Fourth of July is coming, and if all goes well — crossing many fingers — before Congress leaves town to celebrate, the House and Senate will have passed the first substantial gun safety legislation in nearly 30 years.Yeah, the last big reform was in 1994. People were watching the pilot episode of “Friends” on TV, Jeff Bezos was founding Amazon and American kids were hearing about a great new invention called PlayStation.Chris Murphy was in college, just turning 21. “I bought my first beer legally,” he said in a phone interview on Wednesday. Moving onward and upward, Murphy is now a member of the Senate from Connecticut and the lead Democratic negotiator on gun safety legislation.And there’s actually a real bill! Or at least a bipartisan agreement for what ought to be in a bill. Our job for today is to decide how we feel about it. Three choices:A. Awful! They don’t even have a ban on the sale of assault weapons to 18-year-olds.B. Not great! They keep putting all this power in the hands of the states when we all know how crazy some of the states are.C. Hey, they’re actually doing something — stop the negativity! Otherwise, you’ll be the kind of perfectionist nobody wants to be standing next to while grilling holiday hamburgers.Yeah, I think we ought to go with C.“No bill I’ve ever been involved in has been perfect,” said John Feinblatt, the president of Everytown For Gun Safety, who’s certainly been involved in his share. “But look at the big picture. You’ve got bipartisan support for a gun safety bill.”Well, 10 Republican senators publicly signed on, which is exactly the number you need to get past the inevitable filibuster motion. That’s 20 percent of the party’s members.But once again, we need to think positive. Murphy told me that in 2012, when a young gunman with an assault rifle killed 20 small children and six staff members in his district’s Sandy Hook elementary school, only “one single Republican was willing to sit down and talk” about possible legislation — Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania.Ten is better than one. The plan they’ve come up with would make it easier to disarm domestic abusers, provide a lot of new money for community mental health programs and school security, and expand the background checks on gun buyers under 21.“We couldn’t have gotten an agreement on any single one of those items a month ago,” Murphy said.Even Mitch McConnell seems to be coming around. The Senate Republican leader has always been pretty proud of his record on weapons legislation, which it’s fair to summarize as anti-gun safety. But now he’s given his blessing to some sort of reform. Perhaps he’s seen the error of his ways. Perhaps he’s seen the public polls.If something’s going to get done before the Senate goes off on its holiday recess, things have to happen pretty fast in a chamber not known for its speediness. “It took them five weeks to write an infrastructure bill. We have four days,” said Murphy.It’d be nice to see a lawmaker throw himself into a righteous cause and come out a winner, wouldn’t it, people? There’s even been a little talk about Murphy as a possible presidential contender, should Joe Biden decide not to run for re-election. “Nononononono,” the senator responded instantly when asked about the idea.What do you think? All I know is that once we get past this year’s elections, everybody is going to start speculating about 2024, and we really need to collect some post-Biden options. You do not want to be at a holiday party next winter with no names to throw into the debate.But about the gun bill. The first — and let’s face it, easiest — priority is to complain that Washington isn’t rising to the occasion. “It’s not enough,” said Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, after he rather grudgingly acknowledged the new Senate agreement represented some success.You can understand why Illinois is particularly touchy on this issue. At the N.R.A. convention in Houston last month, speakers tried to skip over the mass shooting of Texas schoolchildren days earlier by talking about how many people get gunned down every year in Chicago. Mainly with weapons imported from other states, of course, although that part didn’t really come up.The horror of those murdered children persuaded a lot of politicians to dodge that N.R.A. gathering entirely. Although not Donald Trump, a politician who actually had no idea he had any strong feelings about guns until he noticed how much cheering they got at Republican gatherings. In Houston, Trump helpfully suggested responding to the Uvalde school shooting tragedy by arming teachers.Right now our priority has to be rooting for the gun bill negotiators in Congress to get the job done before everybody goes home. “We’ve got to work through some pretty sticky wickets,” said Murphy.The wickets are, in fact, multitudinous, but at least things are moving along. “Victories beget victories,” insisted Murphy.There’s a lot of territory to cover before we get to anyplace sane on the gun front. To anyplace near where surveys tell us the American people would like to go. But it’d be nice if, on July 4, we could celebrate with more fireworks and less gunfire.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: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Trump’s Primary Losses Puncture His Invincibility

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      With many of Donald J. Trump’s endorsed candidates falling to defeat in recent primaries, some Republicans see an opening for a post-Trump candidate in 2024.Donald J. Trump had cast this year’s primaries as a moment to measure his power, endorsing candidates by the dozen as he sought to maintain an imprint on his party unlike any other past president.But after the first phase of the primary season concluded on Tuesday, a month in which a quarter of America’s states cast their ballots, the verdict has been clear: Mr. Trump’s aura of untouchability in Republican politics has been punctured.In more than five years — from when he became president in January 2017 until May 2022 — Mr. Trump had only ever seen voters reject a half-dozen of his choices in Republican primaries. But by the end of this month, that figure had more than doubled, with his biggest defeat coming on Tuesday when Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia thrashed a Trump-backed challenger by more than 50 percentage points. Three other Trump recruits challenging Kemp allies also went down to defeat.The mounting losses have emboldened Mr. Trump’s rivals inside the party to an extent not seen since early 2016 and increased the chances that, should he run again in 2024, he would face serious competition.“I think a non-Trump with an organized campaign would have a chance,” said Jack Kingston, a former Georgia congressman who advised the first Trump presidential campaign.Mr. Trump remains broadly popular among Republicans and has a political war chest well north of $100 million. But there has been a less visible sign of slippage: Mr. Trump’s vaunted digital fund-raising machine has begun to slow. An analysis by The New York Times shows that his average daily online contributions have declined every month for the last seven months that federal data is available.Mr. Trump has gone from raising an average of $324,633 per day in September 2021 on WinRed, the Republican donation-processing portal, to $202,185 in March 2022 — even as he has ramped up his political activities and profile.Those close to Mr. Trump — and even Republicans who aren’t — caution against misreading the significance of primary losses in which he himself was not on the ballot. Mr. Kemp, for instance, took pains ​​not to say a cross word about the former president to avoid alienating his loyal base.“To be the man, you have to beat the man,” said Jim Hobart, a Republican pollster with Public Opinion Strategies. “And until Trump either bows out of electoral politics, or is beaten by a Republican at the ballot box, his strength remains.”Rivals, including his own former vice president, Mike Pence, are gearing up for potential presidential runs, as he and others visit key early states like Iowa and ramp up their own fund-raising operations. Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida has amassed a $100 million re-election war chest and is the talk of many donors, activists and voters interested in the future of Trumpism without Trump.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida speaking to the crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, Fla., in February.Scott McIntyre for The New York Times“Donald Trump had four good years,” said Cole Muzio, president of the Frontline Policy Council, a conservative Christian group based in Georgia, who voted twice for Mr. Trump but is now looking for someone more “forward-looking.”“DeSantis is great about seeing where the left is going and playing on the field that they’re going to be on, rather than reacting to what happened a couple of years ago,” Mr. Muzio said, echoing the frustration that Mr. Trump continues to obsess about denying his 2020 election loss.After the Georgia Primary ElectionThe May 24 races were among the most consequential so far of the 2022 midterm cycle.Takeaways: G.O.P. voters rejected Donald Trump’s 2020 fixation, and Democrats backed a gun-control champion. Here’s what else we learned.Rebuking Trump: The ex-president picked losers up and down the ballot in Georgia, raising questions about the firmness of his grip on the G.O.P.G.O.P. Governor’s Race: Brian Kemp scored a landslide victory over David Perdue, delivering Mr. Trump his biggest setback of the 2022 primaries.2018 Rematch: Stacey Abrams, the Democratic nominee for governor, will again face Mr. Kemp — but in a vastly different political climate.Mr. Muzio, whose organization is hosting former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo as its fall gala headliner, spoke as he waited to hear Mr. Pence this week in Kennesaw, Ga., at a rally for Mr. Kemp — all names he included in the party’s “deep bench” of 2024 alternatives.Mr. Trump still remains the most coveted endorsement in his party, and he has boosted some big winners. Sarah Huckabee Sanders in Arkansas virtually cleared the field for governor with his support, and Representative Ted Budd in North Carolina defeated a past governor to win his party’s Senate nomination.Yet the difficult primary season has added to Mr. Trump’s personal anxieties about his standing, after he has sought to fashion himself as something of an old-school party boss in his post-presidency. He has told advisers he wants to declare his candidacy or possibly launch an exploratory committee this summer.Most of Mr. Trump’s advisers believe he should wait until after the midterm elections to announce a candidacy. Yet the sense among Republicans that Mr. Trump has lost political altitude is taking hold, including among some of those close to him.Taylor Budowich, a Trump spokesman, said the “undeniable reality” is that Republicans rely on Mr. Trump to “fuel Republican victories in 2022 and beyond.”“President Trump’s political operation continues to dominate American politics, raising more money and driving more victories than any other political organization — bar none,” Mr. Budowich said.Some Republican strategists have fixated on the fact that so many of Mr. Trump’s endorsees have landed about one-third of the vote — big winners (J.D. Vance in Ohio), losers (Jody Hice in Georgia, Janice McGeachin in Idaho and Charles Herbster in Nebraska) and those headed for a recount (Dr. Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania).One-third of the party is at once an unmatched base of unbending loyalists — and yet a cohort far from a majority.Notably, Mr. Trump’s share of what is raised overall among all Republicans online has also declined. Mr. Trump’s main fund-raising committee accounted for 19.7 percent of what was raised by Republican campaigns and committees on WinRed in the last four months of 2021, but just 14.1 percent of what was raised during the first three months of 2022. Some of that decrease is the result of other candidates on the ballot raising more this year.Still, only 10 times since July 2021 has Mr. Trump’s committee accounted for less than 10 percent of the money raised on WinRed during a single day — and nine of those instances came in March 2022, the last month data was available.The vocal opposition is no longer just confined to anti-Trump forces inside the party but is also evident in the pro-Trump mainstream. When a triumphant Mr. Kemp, whom Mr. Trump had targeted because he refused to go along with his efforts to subvert the 2020 presidential election, arrived in Nashville on Thursday to speak before a gathering of the Republican Governors Association, he received a standing ovation.Former Vice President Mike Pence, left, joined Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia during a Kemp campaign stop in Kennesaw, Ga.Nicole Craine for The New York Times“There is this temptation to engage in wish-casting in which, ‘This is the moment in which Trump is slipping!’” said Charlie Sykes, a conservative anti-Trump commentator. “On the other hand, what happened in Georgia was significant. He drew a bright red line — and voters just stampeded across it.”Understand the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6Why are these midterms so important? More

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      Attack ads have fueled sharp ups and downs in the Alabama G.O.P. Senate race.

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      The three leaders of Alabama’s Republican Senate race have experienced giddy ascents and, in some cases, steep plunges, with the result that Representative Mo Brooks and two first-time candidates, Katie Britt and Mike Durant, enter Tuesday’s primary election tightly bunched together in recent polling. Unless one tops 50 percent, which seems unlikely, there will be a runoff between the top two.One factor driving the ups and downs in the race is a flood of attack ads from deep-pocketed outside groups aligned with the candidates, which have spent freely to drive up negative impressions of their rivals. When voters say they aren’t swayed by TV ads, Alabama is Exhibit 1 that that is not the case.Mr. Brooks, who jumped to a lead in the race last year and was endorsed by former President Donald J. Trump, was attacked by a super PAC that received $2 million from the Senate Leadership Fund, which is aligned with Senator Mitch McConnell. The Senate G.O.P. leader, who is often at odds with Mr. Trump for influence in the party, doesn’t want the hard-right Mr. Brooks to join his caucus next year.An attack ad paid for by the super PAC funded partly by the McConnell group dredged up old clips of Mr. Brooks — a leader of Mr. Trump’s crusade to reverse the 2020 election — disparaging him in 2016. “I don’t think you can trust Donald Trump with anything he says,” Mr. Brooks said then.During the time the ad was on the air, Mr. Brooks saw his support plunge to 16 percent in one poll. Shortly afterward, Mr. Trump withdrew his endorsement. Mr. Brooks has since regained a competitive footing, thanks in no small part to attack ads aimed at his two rivals.Mr. Durant, a retired Army pilot who figured in the 1993 “Black Hawk Down” episode in Somalia, appeared to lead the race in the spring. But lately he has faltered, after being raked over the coals by a group calling itself Alabama RINO PAC, which is funded in part by the McConnell-aligned group. One ad, quoting without context remarks that Mr. Durant once delivered at the U.S. Army War College, includes him saying, “The first thing that needs to be done is to disarm the population.”Another ad went after a supporter of Mr. Durant’s as “a top Never Trumper.”The money behind both the anti-Brooks and anti-Durant ads comes from supporters, in state and out, of Ms. Britt, a former chief of staff of Senator Richard C. Shelby, whose retirement has opened the seat.But Ms. Britt has hardly gotten off unscathed. The Club for Growth, the powerful anti-tax group based in Washington, which supports Mr. Brooks, is trying to undermine Ms. Britt. One ad says she is “really a lobbyist” because of a prior job leading a business group in Alabama; it goes on to quote a tweet from Donald Trump Jr. in 2021 — back when his father liked Mr. Brooks — calling her “the Alabama Liz Cheney.”Many of the attacks seemed to have landed with voters, but also apparently confused them. There is no clear leader in the latest polls. More

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      Why Republicans Are So Angry About the Supreme Court Leak

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      The country is divided. There are those Americans furious that the Supreme Court is soon to take away the right to have an abortion. And there are those Americans furious that someone leaked that the Supreme Court was soon to take away the right to have an abortion.Among those Americans angry with the anonymous leak of Justice Samuel Alito’s draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade is the entire Republican Party. “Last night’s stunning breach was an attack on the independence of the Supreme Court,” said Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, in a statement issued after the leak. “This lawless action should be investigated and punished as fully as possible. The Chief Justice must get to the bottom of it and the Department of Justice must pursue criminal charges if applicable.”Senator Ted Cruz of Texas told Fox News, “The leak of the draft Supreme Court opinion will do lasting damage to the integrity of the court and the independence of the judiciary.” And Senator Mike Lee of Utah wrote that because the Supreme Court relies on “decorum and confidentiality” to do its work, it is therefore “dangerous, despicable, and damaging” to leak its deliberations to the public. The Supreme Court, he declared, “is not a political body.”He might also have added that it has a right to privacy.In any case, McConnell, Cruz, Lee and the rest of their Republican colleagues must be joking.The Supreme Court is, and has always been, a political body. That’s true of the justices, certainly. Over the course of the court’s history, most of them were chosen with political considerations in mind, to the point that many were politicians themselves. It’s true of the institution as well. The Supreme Court deals with political issues — not simply abstract questions of law — and operates within the context of political conflict and political struggle.And the Supreme Court, right now, is an avowedly partisan institution, an unaccountable super-legislature controlled by men and women drawn from a cadre of conservative ideologues and apparatchiks, acting on behalf of the Republican Party and its allies. Whatever legitimacy it had retained was sacrificed in the drive to build the majority that seems poised to overturn Roe v. Wade and open the floodgates to harsh restrictions on the reproductive autonomy of millions of Americans.When McConnell led the Senate Republican caucus in a blockade of President Barack Obama’s nominee for the Supreme Court in 2016 and then killed what remained of the judicial filibuster the next year to place Neil Gorsuch in the seat instead, they diminished the legitimacy of the court. When those same Republicans looked past a credible accusation of sexual assault to confirm Brett Kavanaugh in 2018, they again diminished the legitimacy of the court. And when, with weeks left before the 2020 presidential election, Republicans ignored their own rule from four years earlier — that an election-year vacancy “should not be filled until we have a new president” — to place Amy Coney Barrett on the bench in a rushed, slapdash process, they once more diminished the legitimacy of the court.What’s more, their occasional protests notwithstanding (in a speech last year at the McConnell Center at the University of Louisville, Barrett insisted the court was “not comprised of a bunch of partisan hacks”), the court’s conservatives have done almost nothing to dispel the view that their majority is little more than the judicial arm of the Republican Party. They use “emergency” orders to issue sweeping rulings in favor of ideologically aligned groups; they invent new doctrines designed to undermine voting rights protections; and as we’ve just witnessed, they’ll let nothing, not even 50 years of precedent, stand in the way of a sweeping ideological victory.No discussion of the Supreme Court’s legitimacy, or lack thereof, is complete without mention of the fact that its current composition is the direct result of our counter-majoritarian institutions. Only once in the past 30 years — in the 2004 election — has anything like a majority of the American electorate voted for a president who promised a conservative Supreme Court. The three members who cemented this particular conservative majority — Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett — were nominated by a president who lost the popular vote and were confirmed by senators representing far fewer than half of all Americans.The typical response to this point is to say we do not elect presidents by popular vote. And we don’t, that’s true. But Americans have always acted as if the popular vote conveys democratic legitimacy. That’s why supporters of Andrew Jackson condemned the “corrupt bargain” that placed John Quincy Adams in the White House in 1825, why many supporters of Samuel Tilden were furious with the compromise that gave Rutherford B. Hayes the presidency after the 1876 presidential election and why allies of George W. Bush were prepared to argue that he was the rightful winner of the 2000 election in the event he lost the Electoral College but won a majority of voters.It matters whether a president has democratic legitimacy. Donald Trump did not. But rather than act with that in mind, he used his power to pursue the interests of a narrow ideological faction, giving its representatives free rein to shape the Supreme Court as they saw fit. The court, then, is stained by the same democratic illegitimacy that marked Trump and his administration.Republicans seem to know this, and it helps explain why they’re so angry about the leak. They hope to write conservative ideology into the Constitution. For that to work, however, Americans need to believe that the court is an impartial arbiter of law, where each justice uses reason to come to the correct answer on any given issue of constitutional interpretation.The leak throws that out the window. The leak makes it clear that the Supreme Court is a political body, where horse-trading and influence campaigns are as much a part of the process as pure legal reasoning.If the court is a political body — if it is a partisan body — then a roused and unhappy public may decide to reject its judgments and authority. That public may ask itself why it should listen to a court that doesn’t heed its opinion. And it may decide that the time has come to reform the court and dismantle the ill-gotten majority that conservatives worked so hard to create.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: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      in Elections

      Ron DeSantis and Other Republicans Desecrate What Their Party Long Championed

      by

      In 2010, the Supreme Court held that “political speech does not lose First Amendment protection ‘simply because its source is a corporation.’” The case was Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, and the conservative justices sided with a group barred by the government from airing a political documentary.Republicans used to celebrate that decision. “For too long, some in this country have been deprived of full participation in the political process,” said Mitch McConnell, then the majority leader. The Supreme Court, he added, “took an important step in the direction of restoring the First Amendment rights of these groups.”Mr. McConnell was standing up for a principle: People have a bedrock right to form associations, including corporations, and to use them to speak their minds.In the last few years, however, as large companies have increasingly agitated for left-of-center causes, many Republicans have developed a sudden allergy to corporate political speech, one that will have vast consequences for both the party and the nation.Disney’s Magic Kingdom Park in Florida.Ted Shaffrey/Associated PressConsider the recent drama in Florida. The evident retaliation by Gov. Ron DeSantis and his Republican allies against Disney, a major corporate player in their state, is part of a larger trend: What critics once called the party of big business is now eager to lash out at large companies and even nonprofits it deems inappropriately political — which in practice means anti-Republican.Conservatives angry at technology platforms over what they see as unfair treatment of right-of-center viewpoints have found a champion in a Republican senator, Josh Hawley of Missouri, who has introduced bills to reform legal protection for certain social media platforms and offered the Bust Up Big Tech Act. J.D. Vance, running in the Ohio Republican Senate primary, has suggested that we “seize the assets” of the Ford Foundation and other progressive NGOs; he also called for raising the taxes of companies that showed concerns about state-level voting legislation favored by Republicans last year. Leading right-wing commentators, from Tucker Carlson of Fox News to Ben Shapiro of The Daily Wire, cheer the efforts on.Too many conservatives seem to have no qualms today in wielding state power to punish their political opponents and shape the economy to their whims. This is not just a departure from the Republican consensus of the last half-century. It is a wholesale rejection of free markets and the very idea of limited government. It will make America poorer and the American people more vulnerable to tyranny.Republicans’ reversal is easy enough to explain: As companies increasingly accede to activist demands to make themselves combatants in a culture war, they have alienated broad swaths of the population. Twenty years ago, according to Gallup, fewer than half of Americans said they were somewhat or very dissatisfied with “the size and influence of major corporations.” Today, that number is 74 percent. Defending economic liberty is now passé. Taking on “big business” has become an effective way to score political points on the right, at least when the businesses are also seen as “woke.”The change may be politically expedient, but it will have grave costs. Conservatives once understood that free markets are an engine that produces widespread prosperity — and that government meddling is too often a wrench in the works. Choosing winners and losers, and otherwise substituting the preferences of lawmakers and bureaucrats for the logic of supply and demand, interferes with the economy’s ability to meet people’s material needs. If Republicans continue down this path, the result will be fewer jobs, higher prices, less consumer choice and a hampering of the unforeseen innovations that make our lives better all the time.But conservatives are turning on more than markets; they may be turning on the rule of law itself. The First Amendment prohibits the government from abridging people’s ability to speak, publish, broadcast and petition for a redress of grievances, precisely because the American founders saw criticizing one’s rulers as a God-given right. Drawing attention to errors and advocating a better path forward are some of the core mechanisms by which “we, the people” hold our government to account. The use of state power to punish someone for disfavored political speech is a gross violation of that ideal.The American economy is rife with cronyism, like subsidies or regulatory exemptions, that give some businesses advantages not available to all. This too makes a mockery of free markets and rule of law, transferring wealth from taxpayers and consumers to politically connected elites. But while ending cronyism is a worthy goal, selectively revoking privileges from companies that fall out of favor with the party in power is not good-government reform.One might doubt the retaliatory nature of Republicans’ corporate speech reversal, but for their inability to quit stepping in front of cameras and stating the quiet part aloud. In the very act of signing the law that does away with Disney’s special-purpose district and several others, Mr. DeSantis said this: “You’re a corporation based in Burbank, Calif., and you’re gonna marshal your economic might to attack the parents of my state. We view that as a provocation, and we’re going to fight back against that.”But if government power can be used for brazen attacks on American companies and nonprofits, what can’t it be used for? If it is legitimate for politicians to retaliate against groups for political speech, is it also legitimate to retaliate against individuals? (As Senator Mitt Romney once said, “Corporations are people, my friend.”) And if even the right to speak out is not held sacred, what chance do the people have to resist an authoritarian turn?Conservatives, confronting these questions, once championed free markets and limited government as essential bulwarks against tyranny. Discarding those commitments is not a small concession to changing times but an abject desecration, for cheap political gain, of everything they long claimed to believe.For decades, the “fusionist” governing philosophy — which, in bringing together the values of individual freedom and traditional morality, charges government with protecting liberty so that the people will be free to pursue virtuous lives — bound conservatives together and gave the Republican Party a coherent animating force. That philosophy would reject the idea that political officials should have discretion over the positions that companies are allowed to take or the views that people are allowed to express.The G.O.P. today may be able to win elections without fusionism, but it cannot serve the interests of Americans while wrecking the economy and undermining the rule of law.Stephanie Slade (@sladesr) is a senior editor at Reason magazine.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: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More