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      House Passes Overhaul of Electoral Count, Moving to Avert Another Jan. 6 Crisis

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      WASHINGTON — The House on Wednesday took the first major step to respond to the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol, voting mostly along party lines to overhaul the 135-year-old Electoral Count Act, the law that former President Donald J. Trump tried to exploit that day to overturn his defeat.The bill was the most significant legislative answer yet to the riot and the monthslong campaign by Mr. Trump and his allies to invalidate the 2020 presidential election, but it also underscored the lingering partisan divide over Jan. 6 and the former president’s continuing grip on his party.It cleared a divided House, passing on a 229 to 203 vote. All but nine Republicans opposed the measure, wary of angering Mr. Trump and unwilling to back legislation co-written by Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming and a leader of the House select committee investigating the events of Jan. 6 and what led to them.The partisan division could complicate future negotiations with the Senate, which is moving ahead with its own bipartisan version of the legislation that differs from the House bill in some significant respects. Lawmakers now say they do not expect final approval before Congress returns for a lame-duck session after the Nov. 8 midterm elections.The legislation is aimed at updating the law that governs Congress’s counting of the electoral votes cast by the states, the final step under the Constitution to confirm the results of a presidential election and historically a mostly ceremonial process. Democrats said that the aftermath of the 2020 election — in which Mr. Trump and his allies’ attempts to throw out legitimate electoral votes led to the violent disruption of the congressional count by his supporters on Jan. 6 — made clear that the statute needed to be changed.“These are common-sense reforms that will preserve the rule of law for all elections moving forward,” said Representative Jim McGovern, Democrat of Massachusetts and chairman of the Rules Committee. “Time is running out before the next election.”One key provision in the bill, which is also contained in the Senate proposal, would clarify that the role of the vice president, who by law presides over the counting of the ballots in his capacity as president of the Senate, is strictly ministerial. After the 2020 election, Mr. Trump and his advisers tried but failed to persuade Vice President Mike Pence to refuse to accept electoral votes from states where Trump was falsely claiming victory.The measure also would raise the threshold substantially for Congress to consider an objection to a state’s electoral votes, requiring that at least one-third of the House and Senate sign on to such a challenge, up dramatically from the one member of each chamber that is now required. The Senate proposal has a lower threshold, requiring one-fifth of the House and Senate to agree.Members of both parties have raised objections in recent elections, though none have been sustained by a majority of the House and Senate. The House bill would also more narrowly define the grounds for an objection to those with a defined constitutional basis.“Ultimately, this bill is about protecting the will of the American voters, which is a principle that is beyond partisanship,” said Representative Zoe Lofgren, the California Democrat who leads the Administration Committee and introduced the measure with Ms. Cheney. “The bottom line is if you want to object to the vote, you’d better have your colleagues and the Constitution on your side.”Passage of the bill comes as the Jan. 6 committee is wrapping up its work after a summer of high-profile hearings and preparing an extensive report, which is expected to include recommendations for how to confront the threats to democracy raised by the riot and Mr. Trump’s drive to overturn the election. Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and the chairman of the panel, said the next and likely final hearing would take place on Sept. 28.“We have substantial footage of what occurred that we haven’t used; we’ve had significant witness testimony that we haven’t used,” Mr. Thompson said in an interview. “This is an opportunity to use some of that material.”The legislation was also a direct response to Mr. Trump’s efforts to orchestrate the submission of fake slates of electors in states won by Joseph R. Biden Jr. It would require that states choose their electors under laws in place before the election, a provision intended to prevent states from reversing course if they do not like the result. And the bill would allow candidates to sue state officials if they failed to submit their electors or certified electors that did not match the election results..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-ok2gjs{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-ok2gjs a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.It also would lay out the circumstances in which a federal judge could extend an election following a catastrophe and force election officials to count ballots or certify an election if they refused to do so.Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming, sponsored the bill along with Representative Zoe Lofgren, Democrat of California.Kim Raff for The New York TimesRepublicans said the legislation represented a renewed Democratic attempt to exert more federal control over elections that are usually the responsibility of state officials and courts.Representative Tom Cole, Republican of Oklahoma, called it “another attempt to federalize elections at the expense of states.” Other Republicans accused Democrats of rushing the legislation to the floor without review by the appropriate committees or engaging Republicans.They also accused Democrats of using the bill to take aim at Mr. Trump, portraying the legislation as an extension of the work of the special committee investigating Jan. 6, which most House Republicans denounce as a partisan exercise aimed at blaming Mr. Trump for the assault on the Capitol.“This is nothing more than an attack on President Trump and the 2020 election, an attack on a man who has not been in office for nearly two years,” said Representative Guy Reschenthaler, Republican of Pennsylvania.Lawmakers said the legislation’s close association with Ms. Cheney led House Republicans to abandon it in large numbers. Her aggressive criticism of Mr. Trump prompted Republicans to remove her from a party leadership position in May last year, and she lost her re-election primary last month.But Ms. Cheney noted strong support for the measure from conservative jurists and analysts and called on Republicans to embrace it.“If your aim is to prevent future efforts to steal elections, I would respectfully request that conservatives should support this bill,” she said on the House floor. “If instead your aim is to leave open the door for elections to be stolen in the future, you might decide not to support this or any other bill to address the Electoral Count Act.”Leaders of the bipartisan group behind the Senate bill, which was made public in July, were surprised by the sudden House action on the legislation just days after it was introduced and after months with few details on how the House was proceeding. Backers of the Senate bill said the House approach could lead to more election lawsuits, a prospect that could increase Republican opposition. But they remained hopeful the bills could be reconciled.“We can work together to try to bridge the considerable differences,” said Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine and one of the chief authors of the Senate bill. “But it would have been better if we had been consulted prior to the House sponsors deciding to drop their bill.”The Senate Rules Committee is scheduled to consider that chamber’s version next week. Senator Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota and the chairwoman of the panel, is preparing a new version that incorporates changes sought by election experts and other lawmakers in hopes of enhancing its chances of approval. The legislation so far has at least 10 Republican backers, meaning it could overcome a G.O.P. filibuster if all Democrats supported it.Despite the differences, supporters of the legislation said it needed to become law.“Failure is not an option,” said Representative Pete Aguilar of California, a member of the Democratic leadership and the Jan. 6 panel. “We’ve got to put a piece of reform on the president’s desk. We’ve got to protect democracy.”Luke Broadwater More

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      Lawmakers Urge Electoral Count Changes to Fix Flaws Trump Exploited

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      Lawmakers in both parties are eager to act after former President Donald J. Trump and his allies sought to exploit a 135-year-old law to overturn the 2020 election.Senators from both parties pressed for legislation that would update the 135-year-old Electoral Count Act, closing loopholes that former President Trump and his allies tried to exploit to reverse the 2020 election results.Sarah Silbiger for The New York TimesWASHINGTON — Determined to prevent a repeat of the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol, backers of an overhaul of the federal law governing the count of presidential electoral ballots pressed lawmakers on Wednesday to repair the flaws that President Donald J. Trump and his allies tried to exploit to reverse the 2020 results.“There is nothing more essential to the orderly transfer of power than clear rules for effecting it,” Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine and one of the lead authors of a bill to update the 135-year-old Electoral Count Act, said Wednesday as the Senate Rules Committee began its review of the legislation. “I urge my colleagues in the Senate and the House to seize this opportunity to enact the sensible and much-needed reforms before the end of this Congress.”Backers of the legislation, which has significant bipartisan support in the Senate, believe that a Republican takeover of the House in November and the beginning of the 2024 presidential election cycle could make it impossible to make major election law changes in the next Congress. They worry that, unless the outdated statute is changed, the shortcomings exposed by Mr. Trump’s unsuccessful effort to interfere with the counting of electoral votes could allow another effort to subvert the presidential election.“The Electoral Count Act of 1887 just turned out to be more troublesome, potentially, than anybody had thought,” said Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri, the senior Republican on the rules panel. “The language of 1887 is really outdated and vague in so many ways. Both sides of the aisle want to update this act.”But despite the emerging consensus, lawmakers also conceded that some adjustments to the proposed legislation were likely given concerns raised by election law experts. In attempting to solve some of the old measure’s problems, experts say, the new legislation could create new ones.Key Revelations From the Jan. 6 HearingsCard 1 of 9Making a case against Trump. More

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      Is It All About ‘Fealty to Trump’s Delusions’? Three Writers Talk About Where the G.O.P. Is Headed

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      Ross Douthat, a Times Opinion columnist, hosted an online conversation with Rachel Bovard, the policy director at the Conservative Partnership Institute, and Tim Miller, the author of “Why We Did It: A Travelogue From the Republican Road to Hell,” about the recent primaries in Arizona, Michigan and beyond, and the strength of Donald Trump’s hold on the Republican Party.Ross Douthat: Rachel, Tim, thanks so much for joining me. I’m going to start where we always tend to start in these discussions — with the former president of the United States and his influence over the Republican Party. Donald Trump has had some bad primary nights this year, most notably in May in Georgia.But overall Tuesday seems like it was a good one for him: In Michigan, his favored candidate narrowly beat Peter Meijer, one of the House Republican votes for impeachment. In the Arizona Republican primary for governor, Kari Lake is narrowly ahead, which would give Trump a big victory in his battle of endorsements against Mike Pence, who endorsed Lake’s main rival.Do you agree, or is Trump’s influence just the wrong lens through which to be assessing some of these races?Rachel Bovard: It was a good night for Trump’s endorsements, which remain critical and decisive, particularly when he’s picking candidates who can change the ideological direction of the party. No other major figure in the G.O.P. has shown they can do the same.Tim Miller: An early agreement! The Republicans put up a slate of “Big Lie” candidates at the top of the ticket in an important swing state last night, which seems pretty important.Bovard: I would dispute the notion that Arizona represented “a slate of ‘Big Lie’ candidates.”Miller: Well, Lake has long brought up fraud claims about the 2020 election. Rare potential evidence of the party bucking Trump could come from the Third Congressional District in Washington, benefited by a “jungle” primary — candidates for an office, regardless of party, run on the same ballot, and the top two candidates square off in the general election. If the Trump-endorsed candidate loses, it seems a good endorsement for that set up.Bovard: But the Blake Masters campaign in particular represented a depth of issues that appealed to Arizona voters and could represent a new generation of Republicans.Douthat: Let’s get into that question a little bit. One of the questions hanging over the phenomenon of Trumper populism is whether it represents any kind of substantial issue-based change in what the G.O.P. stands for, or whether it’s just all about fealty to Trump.The Masters campaign and the Lake campaign seem to represent different answers to that question — Masters leveraging Trump’s support to try to push the party in a more nationalist or populist direction on trade, foreign policy, family policy, other issues, and Lake just promising to stop the next (alleged) steal. Or do we think that it’s all the same phenomenon underneath?Bovard: A very significant part of Trump’s appeal, what he perhaps taught the G.O.P., was that he spoke for voters who stood outside of party orthodoxy on a number of issues. And that’s where Masters tried to distinguish himself. He had a provocative campaign message early in his campaign: American families should be able to survive on a single income. That presents all kinds of challenges to standard Republican economic policy, how we think about family policy and how the two fit together. He also seems to be fearless in the culture wars, something else that Republicans are anxious to see.So this constant distilling into the “Big Lie” overlooks something key: A sea change is slowly happening on the right as it relates to policy expectations.Miller: But you know who distilled the Masters campaign into the “Big Lie”? Blake Masters. One of his ads begins, “I think Trump won in 2020.” This is an insane view, and I assume none of us think Masters really believes it. So fealty to Trump’s delusions is the opening ante here. Had Masters run a campaign about his niche, Peter Thiel-influenced issue obsessions but said Trump lost and he was harming Republican voters by continuing to delude them about our democracy, he would’ve lost like Rusty Bowers did.I do think Masters has some differentiated policy ideas that are probably, not certainly, reflective of where the G.O.P. is headed, but that wasn’t the main thing here.Douthat: So Tim, speaking for the “it’s Trump fealty all the way down” camp, what separates the Arizona results from the very different recent results in Georgia, where Trump fealty was insufficient to defeat either Brian Kemp or even Brad Raffensperger?Miller: Two things: First, with Kemp, governing actually matters. With incumbents, primaries for governor can be somewhat different because of that. Kemp was Ron DeSantis-esque without the attention in his handling of Covid. (This does not extend all the way to full anti-Trump or Trump-skeptical governors like Larry Hogan of Maryland or Charlie Baker of Massachusetts — Kemp almost never said an ill word about Trump.)Second, the type of electorate matters. Republican voters actually bucked Trump in another state, my home state, Colorado. What do Georgia and Colorado have in common? Suburban sprawl around a major city that dominates the state and a young, college-educated population.Douthat: Does that sound right to you, Rachel? And is there anything we aren’t seeing about a candidate like Lake that makes her more than just a stalking horse for Trump’s own obsessions?Bovard: Tim is right in the sense that there is always nuance when it comes to state elections. That’s why I also don’t see the Washington State primary race as a definitive rejection of Trump, as Tim alluded to earlier. Lake is, as a candidate, bombastic on the election issue.Miller: “Bombastic” is quite the euphemism for completely insane. Deliberate lies. The same ones that led to the storming of the Capitol.Bovard: Well, I don’t see that as determining how she governs. She’s got an entire state to manage, if she wins, and there are major issues she’ll have to manage that Trump also spoke to: the border, primarily.By the way, I regularly meet with Democrats who still tell me the 2018 election was stolen, and Stacey Abrams is the rightful governor of Georgia, so I’m not as pearl clutchy about it, no.Miller: “Pearl clutchy” is quite a way to describe a lie that has infected tens of millions of people, resulted in multiple deaths and the imprisonment of some of Trump’s most loyal supporters. I thought the populists were supposed to care about these people, but I guess worrying about their lives being ruined is just a little “pearl clutching.”Bovard: I know we don’t want to relitigate the entirety of Jan. 6, so I’ll just say I do worry about people’s lives being ruined. And the Jan. 6 Select Committee has further entrenched the divide that exists over this.Douthat: I’m going to enforce a pivot here, while using my moderator’s power to stipulate that I think Trump’s stolen-election narrative has been more destructive than the left’s Abrams-won-Georgia narrative or the “Diebold stole Ohio” narrative in 2004.If Lake wins her primary, can she win the general-election race? Can Doug Mastriano win in Pennsylvania? To what extent are we watching a replay of certain Republican campaigns in 2010 — long before Trump, it’s worth noting — where the party threw away winnable seats by nominating perceived extremists?Bovard: A key for G.O.P. candidates going forward is to embrace both elements of the cultural and economic argument. For a long time in the party these were seen as mutually exclusive, and post-Trump, I don’t think they are anymore. Glenn Youngkin won in Virginia in part by embracing working-class economic issues — leaning into repeal of the grocery tax, for example — and then pushing hard against critical race theory. He didn’t surge on economics alone.Douthat: Right, but Youngkin also did not have to run a primary campaign so deeply entangled with Trump. There’s clearly a sweet spot for the G.O.P. to run as economic moderates or populists and anti-woke fighters right now, but can a figure like Lake manage that in a general election? We don’t even know yet if Masters or J.D. Vance, who both explicitly want to claim that space, can grab it after their efforts to earn Trump’s favor.Tim, can these candidates win?Miller: Of course they can win. Midterm elections have historically washed in candidates far more unlikely than nominees like Masters (and Lake, if she is the nominee) or Mastriano from tossup swing states. Lake in particular, with her history in local news, would probably have some appeal to voters who have a personal affinity for her outside the MAGA base. Mastriano might be a slightly tougher sell, given his brand, vibe and Oath Keeper energy.Bovard: It’s long been conventional wisdom that you tack to the right in primaries and then move more to the center in the general, so if Lake wins, she will have to find a message that appeals to as many voters as possible. She would have to present a broad spectrum of policy priorities. The G.O.P. as a voting bloc has changed. Its voters are actively iterating on all of this, so previous assumptions about what appeals to voters don’t hold up as well. I tend to think there’s a lane for Trump-endorsed candidates who lean into the Trump-style economics and key culture fights.Miller: I just want to say here that I do get pissed about the notion that it’s us, the Never Trumpers, who are obsessed with litigating Jan. 6. Pennsylvania is a critical state that now has a nominee for governor who won because of his fealty to this lie, could win the general election and could put his finger on the scale in 2024. The same may be true in another key state, Arizona. This is a red-level threat for our democracy.A lot of Republicans in Washington, D.C., want to sort of brush it away just like they brushed away the threat before Jan. 6, because it’s inconvenient.Douthat: Let me frame that D.C. Republican objection a different way: If this is a red-level threat for our democracy, why aren’t Democrats acting like it? Why did Democratic Party money enter so many of these races on behalf of the more extreme, stop-the-steal Republican? For example, given the closeness of the race, that sort of tactic quite possibly helped defeat Meijer in Michigan.Miller: Give me a break. The ads from the left trying to tilt the races were stupid and frankly unpatriotic. I have spoken out about this before. But it’s not the Democrats who are electing these insane people. Were the Democrats responsible for Mark Finchem? Mehmet Oz? Herschel Walker? Mastriano won by over 20 points. This is what Republican voters want.Also, advertising is a two-way street. If all these self-righteous Republicans were so angry about the ads designed to promote John Gibbs, they could’ve run pro-Meijer ads! Where was Kevin McCarthy defending his member? He was in Florida shining Mr. Trump’s shoes.Douthat: Rachel, I watched that Masters ad that Tim mentioned and listened to his rhetoric around the 2020 election, and it seemed like he was trying to finesse things, make an argument that the 2020 election somehow wasn’t fair in the way it was administered and covered by the press without going the Sidney Powell route to pure conspiracism.But let’s take Masters’s spirit of generalized mistrust and reverse its direction: If you were an Arizona Democrat, why would you trust a Governor Lake or a Secretary of State Mark Finchem to fairly administer the 2024 election?Bovard: Honestly, the thing that concerns me most is that there is zero trust at all on elections at this moment. If I’m a Democrat, I don’t trust the Republicans, and vice versa. Part of that lack of trust is that we aren’t even allowed to question elections anymore — as Masters did, to your point, without going full conspiracy.We regain trust by actually allowing questions and full transparency. This is one of the things that worries me about our political system. Without any kind of institutional trust, or trust of one another, there’s a breakdown.Miller: This is preposterous. Arizona had several reviews of their election. The people lying about the election are the problem.Douthat: Last questions: What do you think are the implications of the big pro-life defeat in the Kansas abortion referendum, for either abortion policy or the November elections?Bovard: It shows two headwinds that the pro-life movement is up against. First is money. Reporting shows that pro-abortion advocates spent millions against the amendment, and Democrats in many key races across the country are outpacing Republicans in fund-raising. Second, it reflects the confusion that exists around this issue post-Roe. The question presented to Kansas voters was a microcosm of the general question in Roe: Should abortion be removed from the state Constitution and be put in the hands of democratically elected officials? Yet it was sometimes presented as a binary choice between a ban or no ban. (This early headline from Politico is an example: “Kansas voters block effort to ban abortion in state constitutional amendment vote.”)But I don’t think it moves the needle on the midterms.Miller: I view it slightly differently. I think most voters are in a big middle that Republicans could even use to their advantage if they didn’t run to the extremes. Voters do not want blanket abortion bans or anything that can be construed as such. Something that moved the status quo significantly to the pro-life right but still maintained exceptions and abortion up to a certain, reasonable point in pregnancy would be politically palatable.So this will only be an effective issue for Democrats in turnout and in places where Republicans let them make it an issue by going too far to the extreme.Douthat: Finally, a different short-answer question for you both. Rachel, say Masters and Vance are both in the Senate in 2023 as spokesmen for this new culturally conservative economic populism you favor. What’s the first bill they co-sponsor?Bovard: I’d say a large tax on university endowments.Douthat: Tim, adding the evidence of last night to the narrative, can Ron DeSantis (or anyone else, but let’s be honest, there isn’t anyone else) beat Trump in a Republican primary in 2024?Miller: Sad to end with a wishy-washy pundit answer but … maybe! Trump seems to have a plurality right now within the party on 2024, and many Republicans have an affinity for him. So if it were Mike Pence, Chris Christie or Liz Cheney, they would have no chance.Could DeSantis thread a needle and present himself as a more electable Trump? Some of the focus groups The Bulwark does makes it seem like that’s possible. But will he withstand the bright lights and be able to pull it off? Will Trump be indicted? A lot of known unknowns. I’d put DeSantis as an underdog, but it’s not impossible that he could pull it off.Douthat: There is absolutely no shame in the wishy-washy pundit game. Thanks so much to you both for joining me.Ross Douthat is a Times Opinion columnist. Rachel Bovard is the policy director at the Conservative Partnership Institute and a tech columnist at The Federalist. Tim Miller, a writer at The Bulwark, is the author of “Why We Did It: A Travelogue From the Republican Road to Hell.”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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      Mike Pence Keeps Trying to Make Mike Pence Happen

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      It’s difficult to find a Republican strategist who will say the former vice president has a real chance in a 2024 matchup against his former boss. But he’s clearly laying the groundwork.My colleague Michael Bender wrote this week about the deepening rivalry between Donald Trump and Mike Pence, onetime partners and political allies.The two men became estranged after Pence declined to support Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election results on Jan. 6, 2021. That same day, the mild-mannered Indianan hid from a mob chanting “Hang Mike Pence” as it stormed the Capitol after being egged on by the president.This week, they made dueling appearances in Washington and things did not go well for Pence. He drew a small, polite crowd at a gathering of the Young America’s Foundation while Trump basked in a raucous reception at the America First Policy Summit. (For those unfamiliar with these institutions, both represent emerging power centers of the new, Trumpified G.O.P. establishment.)The split-screen speeches showed that Trump, as Bender notes, is still the big dog in the Republican Party.“The two appearances also underscored the wide gap in enthusiasm among Republicans between Mr. Trump and any other potential primary rival in 2024,” Bender wrote.In a New York Times/Siena College poll of Republican voters this month, just 6 percent said they would vote for Pence if he were to run for president two years from now, compared with 49 percent who said they would stick with Trump. Unscientific straw polls of young Republican activists have found Pence faring even worse in hypothetical primaries.To put the matter plainly: It is difficult to find a Republican strategist who will tell you that Pence has a real chance in a 2024 matchup against his former boss.Rick Tyler, a former presidential campaign adviser to Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, said that Pence had the best chance of nudging Republican voters away from Trump.The former vice president was being careful and “savvy,” Tyler said, in balancing the need to distance himself from Trump’s worst conduct while paying respect to his administration’s conservative policy achievements.But it was unclear, he acknowledged, whether Republican primary voters might see things the same way.Donald Trump, Post-PresidencyThe former president remains a potent force in Republican politics.Losing Support: Nearly half of G.O.P. voters prefer someone other than Donald J. Trump for president in 2024, a Times/Siena College poll showed.Trump-Pence Split: An emerging rivalry between Mr. Trump and Mike Pence, his former vice president, reveals Republicans’ enduring divisions.Looking for Cover: Mr. Trump could announce an unusually early 2024 bid, a move designed to blunt a series of damaging Jan. 6 revelations.Potential Legal Peril: From the Justice Department’s Jan. 6 inquiry to an investigation in Georgia, Mr. Trump is in legal jeopardy on several fronts.Trump supporters, Tyler said, were more like fans of pop groups or football teams than traditional voters carefully weighing the pros and cons of other candidates — making it unlikely, he said, that most would ever break with the 45th president for anyone, let alone his loyal former deputy.The anger factorIf we’ve learned anything from the past seven years of American politics, it is that the base of the Republican Party is deeply angry with the state of affairs in this country. Pence’s nostalgic paeans to broad-shouldered, Ronald Reagan-style conservatism do not seem to be what G.O.P. voters are looking for in their elected leaders. They want fire and brimstone, not low-energy sermons.And while Trump’s successful 2016 campaign did offer a dose of the usual aspirational optimism that voters like to hear, it focused much more on a list of enemies: the “deep state,” the Republican establishment, Mexican asylum seekers, Muslims, Washington politicians, a metaphorical “swamp” that included Democrats and the mainstream media.One mistake political pundits often make about voters — and I’m sure I’m guilty of this myself on occasion — is that they tend to overemphasize the extent to which most Americans are attracted to policy ideas and coherent ideologies, rather than to charismatic personalities.And nobody has ever accused Mike Pence of having a charismatic personality.‘He wasn’t channeling anyone’s rage’It’s sometimes forgotten that before Pence rose to national prominence, he hosted a conservative radio talk show in Indiana.When I was an editor at Politico, during the 2016 campaign we sent a reporter, Darren Samuelsohn, to Indianapolis to dig up old episodes of the show in search of the “real Mike Pence.”Over some late nights and with the help of plenty of caffeine, Samuelsohn plowed through hours of cassette recordings, listening for insights about what was clearly a formative experience for the future vice president. (For Gen Z readers: Cassettes are an ancient form of audio technology that preceded compact discs, MP3 files and Spotify.)What we found was revealing in its own way: Pence was pretty much the opposite of a radio shock jock. As a Tea Party stalwart during an earlier era of anti-insider fervor, he criticized many of the same enemies that Trump would later target. But he did it with Midwestern politeness, in a dulcet baritone that was nothing like the Rush Limbaughs or the Howard Sterns of that era.“Pence’s show had a casually indignant air to it,” Samuelsohn wrote in his analysis. “He wasn’t channeling anyone’s rage. His banter was easygoing as he implored his listeners to dial 800-603-MIKE, ending the week with ‘Open Phone Friday.’ He came out of commercial breaks to a ‘Mike Pence!’ jingle and musical interludes from the likes of Hootie & the Blowfish and a bouncing keyboard version of ‘Great Balls of Fire.’”Gov. Ron DeSantis spoke this month in Tampa, Fla., at a gathering hosted by Turning Point USA.Phelan M. Ebenhack/Associated PressA battle of personalitiesIt’s easy to see this Mike Pence in today’s quixotic pre-2024 maneuvering.When he criticizes his onetime ally and superior, he does so only obliquely — never by name, and only with carefully manicured phrases like “Some people may choose to focus on the past, but elections are about the future,” as he put it in this week’s speech.Hmm! What person could he have possibly been referring to here?Pence has also authorized his closest aides, Marc Short and Greg Jacob, to cooperate with the House committee investigating Jan. 6 as it amasses evidence of Trump’s actions surrounding the riot. But Pence himself has not spoken in any detail about his ordeal that day, reinforcing the impression among many Republican insiders that he is afraid of openly crossing swords with Trump.Contrast that with Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who is younger, angrier and savvier about glomming onto hot-button issues on the right. DeSantis seems to be the flavor of the month, and 25 percent of 2024 Republican primary voters picked him in that same Times/Siena poll, well north of Pence.As a governor, DeSantis benefits from a platform that allows him to take actions that appeal to Republican activists and plugged-in voters, who have responded enthusiastically to his battles with Disney, teachers and his state’s wilting Democratic Party over L.G.B.T.Q. rights. And he has picked his moments to criticize Trump’s record in office — maneuvering to the right of the former president on the coronavirus pandemic and on cultural issues that have revved up the G.O.P. base, such as critical race theory.DeSantis might not ultimately be what Republicans are looking for in their next banner carrier, either. Florida strategists and former aides often describe him as thin-skinned and plodding on his feet, with a humorless stump style. And it’s difficult to envision anyone out-brawling Trump in an open 2024 Republican primary.But DeSantis was, by all accounts, a serious student at Yale even while juggling the punishing demands of being a varsity college athlete. He has a sterling military record, as far as we know. He is whip-smart and skilled at both political combat and tapping into Republican voters’ deep skepticism about the news media. There’s a chance that he will improve just enough, and Trump’s standing in the Republican Party will degrade just enough, to put him in the pole position heading into 2024.And who knows: Maybe some other person will come along and fire up conservative Iowans and New Hampshirites in the frigid January air.But Mike Pence? It’s hard to imagine how he will translate his cautious, inch-by-inch break with Trump into a seat in front of the Resolute Desk on Jan. 20, 2025.What to read tonightYour On Politics correspondent, Blake, has a dispatch on Eric Greitens’s Senate campaign in Missouri, where a barrage of attack ads has eroded his lead in the polls ahead of the Tuesday primary.My colleague Sheryl Gay Stolberg has the story of Dr. Caitlin Bernard, an outspoken doctor in Indiana who gained national attention after providing an abortion to a 10-year-old — and who is now paying the price.From Opinion: What happened when seven Trump voters and six Biden voters tried to find common ground?Thanks for reading. We’ll see you tomorrow.— BlakeIs there anything you think we’re missing? Anything you want to see more of? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More

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      Trump-Pence Ticket, Torn by Jan. 6, Becomes an Unequal Rivalry

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      WASHINGTON — Eighteen months after departing the nation’s capital for the final time as president, Donald J. Trump returned on Tuesday confronting federal investigations, fresh doubts about his viability in an increasingly likely third White House bid and an emerging rivalry with his erstwhile running mate.In addresses from two hotel ballrooms less than a mile apart in Washington, Mr. Trump and Mike Pence, the vice president whom he had left at the mercy of a mob of his supporters during the Capitol riot, put on clear display one of the most uncomfortable splits inside their party.The competing speeches on the same day would have been inconceivable for a former president and his own vice president not long ago. But the demise of precedent has long been a hallmark of the Trump era.The strange tableau also illustrated many Republicans’ frustrations and reservations about a 2024 Trump campaign, which a recent New York Times/Siena College poll suggested could cause large numbers of Republican voters to defect from the party in a general election.In his 90-minute speech, Mr. Trump repeatedly veered off script to complain about “hoax” investigations, boast about surviving two impeachments and lie about his 2020 election loss. Mr. Pence, by contrast, urged the party to look ahead and unite for the next political battles.“Some people may choose to focus on the past, but elections are about the future,” Mr. Pence said.A scowling Mr. Trump leaned on menacing imagery of an America besieged by violent crime and in desperate need of a rescue that only he could provide.“Our country is going to hell,” he said. “It’s a very unsafe place.”The two appearances also underscored the wide gap in enthusiasm among Republicans between Mr. Trump and any other potential primary rival in 2024.While Mr. Pence drew tepid applause during his 30-minute address to about 250 attendees at an event hosted by the Young America’s Foundation, Mr. Trump commanded numerous standing ovations from an audience of about 800 people at a gathering of the America First Policy Institute. The former president’s speech seemed to double as a reunion for former administration officials, campaign aides and informal advisers.Nearly everyone, that is, except Mr. Pence.Mr. Pence has been a recurring target of criticism from Mr. Trump, who has denounced the former vice president’s refusal to delay the certification of the 2020 election results on Jan. 6, 2021. In his speech, Mr. Pence made only passing reference to the ensuing attack on the Capitol — when he was forced into hiding as rioters chanted for him to be hanged — as a “tragic day.”Last week, the House committee investigating the Capitol riot detailed Mr. Trump’s decisions not to call off the violence, and the fear that members of Mr. Pence’s Secret Service detail felt for their lives.Donald Trump, Post-PresidencyThe former president remains a potent force in Republican politics.Grip on G.O.P.: Donald J. Trump is still a looming figure in his party. However, there are signs his control is loosening.Losing Support: Nearly half of G.O.P. primary voters prefer someone other than Mr. Trump for president in 2024, a Times/Siena College poll showed.Looking for Cover: Republicans are bracing for Mr. Trump to announce an unusually early 2024 bid, a move intended in part to shield him from the damaging revelations emerging from the Jan. 6 investigations.Endorsement Record: While Mr. Trump has helped propel some G.O.P. candidates to primary victories, he’s also had notable defeats. Here’s where his record stands so far in 2022.A Modern-Day Party Boss: Hoarding cash, doling out favors and seeking to crush rivals, Mr. Trump is behaving like the head of a 19th-century political machine.The hearing prompted a striking shift in the conservative media. In scathing editorials from two newspapers controlled by the Murdoch family, The New York Post said Mr. Trump was “unworthy” to be president again, while The Wall Street Journal opined that he had “utterly failed” his duty to handle the crisis.And on Monday, news emerged that two of Mr. Pence’s top aides had testified to a federal grand jury in Washington as part of the Justice Department’s criminal investigation into the events surrounding the riot. Furthermore, reports emerged on Tuesday saying that federal prosecutors had sought information about the former president’s role in the efforts to overturn the election as the Justice Department’s inquiry accelerates.While Mr. Trump and Mr. Pence were in somewhat regular contact immediately after leaving office — speaking several times by phone in conversations that avoided the subject of the Capitol riot — they have not held similar discussions in months, according to their advisers. In an interview last year, Mr. Trump said that he had never told Mr. Pence he was sorry for not acting quicker to stop the attack — and that Mr. Pence had never asked for an apology.But a rivalry has flared up behind the scenes.One source of tension has been the book Mr. Pence is writing about his time in the administration. When Mr. Trump learned about the memoir, titled “So Help Me God” and set to be published on Nov. 15, the former president was still musing about obtaining a deal of his own.But in most parts of the publishing industry, Mr. Trump was broadly seen as a risk. The former president appeared stung that Mr. Pence had gotten a multimillion-dollar deal, and within days of learning about it, he attacked the former vice president while speaking to donors at a Republican National Committee event at Mar-a-Lago, seizing on Mr. Pence’s refusal to do what Mr. Trump wanted on Jan. 6.Speaking before a gathering of young conservatives in Washington on Tuesday, former Vice President Mike Pence said that “some people may choose to focus on the past, but elections are about the future.”Patrick Semansky/Associated PressThis year, the two men have veered from each other on the midterm campaign trail. They have backed opposing candidates in several primary races, including the Republican governor’s contest next week in Arizona, and the party’s primary for governor in Georgia in June, when Mr. Pence’s pick, Gov. Brian Kemp, easily defeated his Trump-backed challenger, David Perdue.Mr. Pence, meanwhile, left out of his speech the kind of effusive praise for Mr. Trump that he had regularly injected into his addresses as vice president and instead referred to the “Trump-Pence” administration’s accomplishments.A mild-mannered former governor of Indiana, Mr. Pence remains a reviled figure among much of the Republican base — largely because he resisted Mr. Trump’s attempts to subvert the 2020 election.In a New York Times/Siena College poll of Republican voters this month, just 6 percent said they would vote for Mr. Pence if he ran for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, compared with 49 percent who said they backed Mr. Trump and 25 percent who supported Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida.Still, Mr. Pence has been praised by some fellow Republicans for his steadfastness during, and after, the Capitol riot. Pat Cipollone, the former White House counsel, told House investigators that Mr. Pence deserved the Presidential Medal of Freedom, one of the nation’s highest honors, for withstanding Mr. Trump’s pressure campaign — and remaining on Capitol grounds amid the violence — to certify the election.Mr. Pence also defended himself, and directly contradicted Mr. Trump, in a February speech to the Federalist Society in Florida where he said the former president incorrectly believed that the vice president had the authority to overturn election results.“President Trump is wrong,” Mr. Pence said at the time. “I had no right to overturn the election.”But the former vice president has been reluctant to revisit the issue. On Tuesday he drew subtle distinctions between Mr. Trump’s fixation on the 2020 election and his own preference to focus more broadly on his hopes for the conservative movement.In his speech, Mr. Trump received some of his biggest applause when he strayed from his prepared remarks, including his call to keep transgender women from playing in women’s sports — and again when he claimed he had won the presidency a second time.Mr. Trump also called for creating sprawling homeless encampments outside cities, which would have bathrooms and medical staff, and he urged aggressive policies to combat crime. He renewed his support for the death penalty for drug dealers and for controversial stop-and-frisk law enforcement tactics that, he said, would help “give police back their power and prestige.”“Leave our police alone,” Mr. Trump said. “Each time they do something, they’re afraid they’re going to be destroyed, their pensions are going to be taken away, they’ll be fired, they’ll be put in jail. Let them do their job.”In his speech, Mr. Pence celebrated the Supreme Court’s recent ruling eliminating the federal right to abortion and called for a movement of cultural conservatives to turn back a “pernicious woke agenda” that was, he argued, “allowing the radical left to continue dumping toxic waste into the headwaters of our culture.”“We save the babies, we’ll save America,” he said.Still, Mr. Pence couldn’t escape the direct contrast with Mr. Trump. When Mr. Pence finished his speech, the first question from the audience of young conservatives was about the former president “and the divide between the two of you.”“I don’t know that our movement is that divided,” Mr. Pence said. “I don’t know that the president and I differ on issues, but we may differ on focus.”Maggie Haberman More

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      Marc Short Testifies to Grand Jury in Jan. 6 Investigation

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      Marc Short, who was chief of staff to Vice President Mike Pence, and Greg Jacob, a lawyer for Mr. Pence, were subpoenaed in the Justice Department’s expanding criminal inquiry.Two top aides to former Vice President Mike Pence testified last week to a federal grand jury in Washington investigating the events surrounding the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, the highest-ranking officials of the Trump administration so far known to have cooperated with the Justice Department’s widening inquiry into the events leading up to the assault.The appearances before the grand jury of the men — Marc Short, who was Mr. Pence’s chief of staff, and Greg Jacob, who was his counsel — were the latest indication that the Justice Department’s criminal investigation into the events surrounding and preceding the riot is intensifying after weeks of growing questions about the urgency the department has put on examining former President Donald J. Trump’s potential criminal liability.The testimony of the two Pence aides marked the first time it has become publicly known that figures with firsthand knowledge of what took place inside the White House in the tumultuous days before the attack have cooperated with federal prosecutors.Both Mr. Short and Mr. Jacob played important roles in describing to a House select committee conducting a parallel investigation of the Capitol attack how Mr. Trump, working with allies like the lawyer John Eastman, mounted a campaign to pressure Mr. Pence into disrupting the normal counting of Electoral College votes on Jan. 6, 2021, as part of an effort to keep Mr. Trump in office.Mr. Short’s testimony was confirmed by two people familiar with it, as was Mr. Jacob’s.The Justice Department has at times appeared to be lagging behind the House select committee, which has spoken to more than 1,000 witnesses, including some from inside the Trump White House. Much of that testimony has been highlighted at a series of public hearings over the past two months.It remains unclear precisely what Mr. Short and Mr. Jacob told the grand jury or what questions prosecutors may have asked them. But both previously gave recorded and transcribed interviews to the House committee, and Mr. Jacob served as a live witness at one of the panel’s public hearings that focused on the effort to strong-arm Mr. Pence.Mr. Short and Mr. Jacob were present in the Oval Office for a meeting on Jan. 4, 2021, at which Mr. Trump had Mr. Eastman try to persuade Mr. Pence that he could delay or block congressional certification of Mr. Trump’s Electoral College defeat.Mr. Eastman’s plan relied on Mr. Pence being willing to accept, as he presided over a joint session of Congress on Jan. 6, that there were disputes over the validity of electors whose votes for Joseph R. Biden Jr. had already been certified by the states — a baseless assertion that had been promoted by a number of Trump allies in the previous weeks as a last-ditch way to help keep Mr. Trump in office.Mr. Pence ultimately rejected Mr. Trump’s pressure on him to go along. But the so-called fake electors proposal has been one of the primary lines of inquiry to have become public in the Justice Department’s sprawling investigation.Mr. Short also provided the House committee with testimony that highlighted the sense of threat that built from Mr. Trump’s efforts to derail the congressional proceedings on Jan. 6.Key Revelations From the Jan. 6 HearingsCard 1 of 9Making a case against Trump. More

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      Pence Backs Trump Loyalists and Skeptics in House Elections

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      WASHINGTON — As Representative Darin LaHood, Republican of Illinois, prepared to campaign with Mike Pence, the former vice president, in his district last month, he braced for a backlash from his party’s right-wing base.Just days before, the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol had re-created in chilling detail how Mr. Pence had resisted President Donald J. Trump’s orders to overturn his defeat in Congress — and how Mr. Trump’s demands had put the vice president’s life at risk.Mr. LaHood’s fears of MAGA protesters and hostility to Mr. Pence never materialized; the former vice president received a warm welcome from the crowd at a Lincoln Day dinner in Peoria and at a closed-door fund-raising lunch with the congressman in Chicago, according to people who attended. But the concerns about how Mr. Pence would be received highlighted the awkward dynamic that has taken hold as the former vice president quietly campaigns for Republican members of Congress ahead of the midterm elections.House Republicans helped Mr. Trump spread the election lies that brought Mr. Pence within 40 feet of a mob that stormed the Capitol clamoring for his execution, and the vast majority of them remain publicly loyal to Mr. Trump, still the biggest draw and the most coveted endorsement on the campaign trail.But privately, many of them hope their party might soon return to some version of its pre-2016 identity — when Mr. Pence was regarded on the right as a symbol of conservative strength, not cowardice — and want to preserve a relationship with him in that case.Mr. Pence, who served six terms as a congressman from Indiana, has been eager to campaign for congressional candidates, particularly in the Midwest. He is seeking to carve out a viable lane of his own for a potential presidential run in 2024, even if it means helping some lawmakers who continue to spout the election lies that imperiled him.Mr. Pence spoke at an event for Representative Darin LaHood, right, in Peoria, Ill., last month.Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesOver the past year, Mr. Pence has appeared at campaign events for more than a dozen members of Congress, happily attending steak fries, picnics and fund-raisers that have at times brought in half a million dollars apiece for candidates.Overall, his aides said, he has helped to raise millions of dollars for House Republicans, many of whom still see him as a well-liked former colleague who often played the role of Trump administration emissary to Congress. On Wednesday, his alliance with congressional Republicans will be on display when he speaks on Capitol Hill as a guest of the Republican Study Committee, a conservative caucus.That followed an appearance Tuesday night at a “Young Guns” fund-raising dinner hosted by Representative Kevin McCarthy, Republican of California and the minority leader, at Del Frisco’s Double Eagle Steakhouse in Washington. Mr. Pence’s appearance there was described by an attendee as akin to a homecoming for him. Mr. Trump was mentioned only in the context of discussing the “Trump-Pence accomplishments.”Key Themes From the 2022 Midterm Elections So FarCard 1 of 5The state of the midterms. More

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      Pence Navigates a Possible White House Run, and a Fraught Political Moment

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      In a speech on Monday, former Vice President Mike Pence sounded like a future presidential candidate, but not like someone interested in discussing the specifics of Jan. 6.Former Vice President Mike Pence has emerged from the Jan. 6 hearings in a peculiar position.To some Democrats in Congress, he has become something of a hero for resisting Donald J. Trump’s pressure campaign to overturn the 2020 election at a time when American democracy seemed to teeter on the brink. To Mr. Trump and his political base, Mr. Pence is a weakling who gave away the presidency. And to a swath of anti-Trump voters in both parties, he is merely someone who finally did the right thing by standing up to his former boss — years too late, after willingly defending or ignoring some of Mr. Trump’s earlier excesses.The whipsaw of images creates an uncertain foundation for a potential presidential campaign, for which Mr. Pence has been laying the groundwork. Yet the former vice president is continuing with his travels around the country in advance of the 2024 primaries, as he navigates his fraught positioning.Much as he did after the 2020 election, when he tried to keep his tensions with Mr. Trump from becoming public only to have him push them into the light, Mr. Pence continues to walk a tightrope, trying to make the best of a situation he didn’t seek without becoming openly adversarial to the president with whom he served and who remains the leader of the Republican Party.Mr. Pence himself has said little about Jan. 6, though his aides have testified about his resolve as Mr. Trump and his allies tried to press him to subvert President Biden’s victory. On Monday, in an economic speech at the University Club of Chicago, Mr. Pence sounded very much like a candidate — but not much like someone interested in discussing the specifics of what he lived through on Jan. 6.“We’ve all been through a lot over the last several years,” Mr. Pence told the audience. “A global pandemic, social unrest, a divisive election, a tragic day in our nation’s capital — and an administration seemingly every day driving our economy into the abyss of a socialist welfare state.” Insights into Mr. Pence’s mind-set at the time have come largely from the testimony of his former chief of staff, Marc Short, and of his former counsel, Greg Jacob. Mr. Pence, as he made clear in his Chicago speech, has kept his sights trained on the Biden administration and on electing Republicans, including Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia and others who were sharply at odds with Mr. Trump, in the midterms. If Mr. Pence has sharper things to say, he may not do so until the fall, when he has a book coming out.Former Vice President Mike Pence at a campaign event for Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia in Kennesaw, Ga., in May.Nicole Craine for The New York Times“The situation Mike Pence faces is a political briar patch,” said David Kochel, a Republican strategist who worked on Jeb Bush’s presidential campaign in 2016. “The more he’s praised by Democrats and the media for doing the right thing on Jan. 6, the more some in Trump’s base grow skeptical of his loyalty to the Trump team.” He added, “There is no upside for him to lean into any of this.”Later on Monday in Peoria, Ill., Mr. Pence called on Republicans to focus on the future and not the 2020 presidential election, an indirect reference to Mr. Trump’s incessant focus on his election loss that continues to this day. “In the days between now and Election Day, let’s cast a positive vision for the future for the American people,” Mr. Pence told a crowd of Republican activists at a Lincoln Day dinner. “Yes, let’s be the loyal opposition. Let’s hold the other side accountable every single day. In the days between now and Election Day, we need you to say yes — yes to the future, yes to a future of freedom and our cherished values. And the Republican Party must be the party of the future.”The Themes of the Jan. 6 House Committee HearingsMaking a Case Against Trump: The committee appears to be laying out a road map for prosecutors to indict former President Donald J. Trump. But the path to any trial is uncertain.Day One: During the first hearing, the panel presented a gripping story with a sprawling cast of characters, but only three main players: Mr. Trump, the Proud Boys and a Capitol Police officer.Day Two: In its second hearing, the committee showed how Mr. Trump ignored aides and advisers in declaring victory prematurely and relentlessly pressing claims of fraud he was told were wrong.Day Three: Mr. Trump pressured Vice President Mike Pence to go along with a plan to overturn his loss even after he was told it was illegal, according to testimony laid out by the panel during the third hearing.Three times Mr. Pence lauded accomplishments of “the Trump-Pence administration” and he related a story from his high school reunion about a former classmate who encouraged him by telling him, “We need you guys back.”During the speech, Kathy Sparrow, the chairwoman of the Republican Party of Hancock County, Ill., shouted “Pence for president!” Mr. Pence ignored the shout. “Trump had his turn,” Ms. Sparrow said after Mr. Pence’s remarks. “It’s time for Pence to step up and run.” The attention on Mr. Pence provides both potential benefit and peril as he considers running for president.Paeans from Democrats certainly do not help him, but his actions before, during and after Jan. 6 give him an opportunity to differentiate himself in what could be a crowded primary field, one that may include Mr. Trump. Mr. Pence, whose support for Mr. Trump helped allay concerns about him from evangelical voters in 2016, has the advantage of starting as a known entity to the Republican base.Mr. Pence has tried to stake out a lane for himself by representing the aspects of the Trump White House that appealed to conservatives but without the coarse and sometimes abusive behavior from Mr. Trump that they grew weary of. But this approach has been complicated by the fact that the loudest praise for Mr. Pence has come from Democrats who voted to impeach Mr. Trump.“In a time of absolutely scandalous betrayal of people’s oaths of office and crimes being committed all over the place, somebody who does their job and sticks to the law will stand out as a hero on that day,” Representative Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland and a member of the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attacks, said on NBC News’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday. “And on that day, he was a hero.”Many other Democrats, however, have resisted the idea that Mr. Pence — who is known as cautious and loyal, and who did not break with Mr. Trump until the very end — should be praised, particularly as he considers campaigning to be the next president.“Pence is currently on his own political rehab tour, hoping he can wash the stink of being Trump’s vice president off,” the Arizona Democratic Party said in a blast email when Mr. Pence made a trip to the southern border in that state recently. “But we know just because Mike Pence didn’t give in on January 6 doesn’t change the fact he missed multiple opportunities to do the right thing for 4 whole years.”Other Democrats, including the members of the Democratic National Committee, have highlighted that Mr. Pence adhered closely to Mr. Trump without wavering during some of the biggest controversies of his presidency, including his first impeachment, and that Mr. Pence did not speak publicly about his views until moments before the election certification began on Jan. 6.Nonetheless, even some of the harshest critics of the Trump era have said that the actions of Jan. 6 should not be treated lightly.Vice President Mike Pence with President Donald J. Trump at the White House three weeks after Election Day in 2020.Erin Schaff/The New York Times“It’s true that for months before the election and weeks after, Mike Pence played along with Trump’s baseless election conspiracies,” said David Axelrod, a former top adviser to former President Barack Obama. “He certainly didn’t dissent. But, at the end of the day, he’ll be remembered for one critical moment when he resisted enormous pressure and literally put his life on the line for our democracy. And, for that, he deserves all the accolades he’s received.”The complaints from Democrats have focused not just on his tolerance for Mr. Trump’s norm-shattering behavior but also for the administration’s policies. Mr. Pence’s aides say he believed the administration was enacting policies he generally agreed with, including putting forward conservative nominees for three Supreme Court seats. His long loyalty to Mr. Trump could resonate with some Republicans, but, with the former president demanding total fealty, it is a difficult line to walk.“The irony is that Pence was arguably the primary enabler of Trump,” said Rob Stutzman, a Republican strategist based in California. “He was the mainstream traditional conservative Republican who would go to donors and not just defend Trump and his policies, but with a straight face insist that Donald J. Trump was a good man.”Mr. Short, Mr. Pence’s former chief of staff, has been critical of aspects of the House committee’s work, at a time when Mr. Trump has encouraged his supporters to view the panel as illegitimate. That has allowed Mr. Pence to keep some distance from the work of the committee, which he has not appeared before himself.Officials are expected to try again to ask Mr. Pence to testify, a move he will most likely resist. On Sunday, Representative Adam Schiff, Democrat of California and a committee member, left open the idea that requesting his presence may still happen.“Certainly a possibility,” Mr. Schiff said. “We’re not excluding anyone or anything at this point.”Maggie Haberman More