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      If There Was a Republican Civil War, It Appears to Be Over

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyOpinionSupported byContinue reading the main storyIf There Was a Republican Civil War, It Appears to Be OverThe party belongs to Trump for as long as he wants it.Opinion ColumnistFeb. 17, 2021A Trump supporter wearing a paper mask of the former president’s face at a rally in Pennsylvania in 2018.Credit…Damon Winter/The New York TimesThat there is a backlash against the seven Republican senators who voted to convict Donald Trump of inciting a mob against Congress is not that shocking. What is shocking is how fast it happened.Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, for example, was immediately censured by the Louisiana Republican Party. “We condemn, in the strongest possible terms, the vote today by Senator Cassidy to convict former President Trump,” the party announced on Twitter. Another vote to convict, Richard Burr of North Carolina, was similarly rebuked by his state party, which censured him on Monday. Senators Ben Sasse of Nebraska and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania are also in hot water with their respective state parties, which see a vote against Trump as tantamount to treason. “We did not send him there to vote his conscience. We did not send him there to do the right thing or whatever he said he’s doing,” one Pennsylvania Republican Party official explained. “We sent him there to represent us.”That this backlash was completely expected, even banal, should tell you everything you need to know about the so-called civil war in the Republican Party. It doesn’t exist. Outside of a rump faction of (occasional) dissidents, there is no truly meaningful anti-Trump opposition within the party. The civil war, such as it was, ended four-and-a-half years ago when Trump accepted the Republican nomination for president.If there’s a conflict, it’s less a war and more a small skirmish with an outmatched and outnumbered opponent. Seventy-five percent of Republicans want Trump to continue to “play a prominent role in the Republican Party,” according to a new poll from Quinnipiac University, and 87 percent say he should be allowed to “hold elected office in the future.” A recent survey from Morning Consult likewise shows Trump far ahead of his rivals in a hypothetical 2024 matchup, with 54 percent support versus 12 percent for the runner-up, Mike Pence.The Republican Party belongs to Trump for as long as he wants it. Its most prominent politicians will follow his lead and attempt to build on his example. His children and in-laws will have a place as heirs to his legacy. If Trump decides to seek the White House for a second term, the nomination is almost certainly his to lose.What does it mean, in practice, for Trump to retain this strong a hold over the Republican Party? Since “Trumpism” isn’t a policy platform as much as it is a singular devotion to the man himself, a Trumpified Republican Party is one in which candidates do everything they can to shape themselves in his image. Just look at the candidates who would like to be president, if Trump doesn’t run. Most of them were, at some point before he became president, critics, with harsh words for Trump’s policies, personality and proclivities. These days, however, they’re his biggest fans.Ted Cruz has adopted a version of Trump’s Twitter presence, using the platform to stoke anti-liberal resentment and attack perceived cultural enemies. The Texas senator, who by virtue of his legislative seat and second-place finish in the last Republican primary, is one of the most high-profile politicians in the country. But he has more to say about personnel changes at Disney than the problems facing his constituents.Nikki Haley hasn’t tried to emulate Trump, but she knows not to keep too much distance between them. In December, when Trump was still working to overturn the election through the courts, the former U.N. ambassador and South Carolina governor defended him to Politico’s Tim Alberta. “He believes he’s following that oath,” Haley said of the then-president. “This would be different if he was being deceptive.” Just a few weeks later, after the attack on the Capitol, when it looked for a moment like Republicans might break with Trump, she told a crowd at the Republican National Committee’s winter meeting that “His actions since Election Day will be judged harshly by history.” But when it was clear that Trump was still in command of the party, she switched gears. “Give the man a break!” she said in an interview on Fox News in late January arguing against impeachment.Even state and legislative candidates are borrowing from Trump and aligning themselves with his political movement. Here where I live, in Virginia, Amanda Chase and Kirk Cox, Republican candidates for governor, are running on guns and “cancel culture,” with Chase still treating Trump as if he were the rightful president. Josh Mandel, running for Senate in Ohio, reintroduced himself to voters as a pro-MAGA Republican. “I’m going to Washington to advance a Trump America First Agenda and to stand up for economic freedom and individual liberty,” he told Fox News.The impeachment trial was the Republican Party’s last chance to rid itself of Trump. Had 10 more Republicans joined their colleagues in the Senate, the former president would have been on the way to being barred from future office. Presidential hopefuls like Cruz (or Josh Hawley or Marco Rubio) would have cleared out at least one obstacle to their ambition. But, in a repeat of the 2016 primary, no one wants to take the risk of losing his supporters and thus any chance at the nomination or the White House.Just as it was five years ago, the hope is to come ahead somehow without confronting Trump, to win his voters without challenging his status among Republicans. Maybe, if Trump leaves politics to monetize his post-presidency, this will work. So far, that is not looking likely; Trump still speaks as if he is the party and the party is him. In a statement attacking Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, Trump bragged that he was responsible for what Republican success there was last year. “In 2020, I received the most votes of any sitting president in history, almost 75,000,000. Every incumbent House Republican won for the first time in decades, and we flipped 15 seats, almost costing Nancy Pelosi her job.”With Trump’s grip on the party and its image what it is, the outcome we’re most likely to see is the one we already experienced: a Republican Party with Trump at its head, committed to nothing but his insatiable ego.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.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Michigan Republicans Who Voted to Impeach Trump Face Backlash

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Capitol Riot FalloutTracking the ArrestsVisual TimelineInside the SiegeMurder Charges?The Oath KeepersAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyOn Trump, Michigan Republicans Lean One Way: ‘Fealty at All Costs’Even after his defeat, Donald Trump is causing fierce infighting among Republicans in a crucial battleground state. Loyalists are rewarded. Dissenters face punishment.Representative Peter Meijer, Republican of Michigan, has confronted significant blowback in his state over his vote to impeach former President Donald J. Trump.Credit…Anna Moneymaker for The New York TimesFeb. 16, 2021Updated 5:18 p.m. ETROCKFORD, Mich. — When Representative Peter Meijer voted to impeach Donald J. Trump in January, making him one of 10 House Republicans who bucked their party, he bluntly acknowledged that “it may have been an act of political suicide.”This month, during Mr. Meijer’s first town hall event since that impeachment vote, some of his constituents made clear to the newly elected congressman that they shared his assessment — not that Mr. Trump had committed an impeachable act by helping incite a riot at the Capitol, but that crossing him was an unforgivable sin.“I went against people who told me not to vote for you, and I’ve lost that belief,” said Cindy Witke, who lives in Mr. Meijer’s district, which is anchored by Grand Rapids and small communities like this one in Western Michigan.Nancy Eardley, who spoke next, urged Mr. Meijer to stop saying the election had not been stolen. She said he had “betrayed” his Republican base.“I could not have been more disappointed,” Ms. Eardley said. “I don’t think that there’s much you can say that will ever change my mind into not primarying you out in two years.”Mr. Trump’s acquittal on Saturday in his impeachment trial served as the first test of his continuing influence over Republicans, with all but seven senators in the party voting against conviction. But in Michigan, one of the key battleground states Mr. Trump lost in the November election — and home to two of the 10 House Republicans who supported impeaching him — there are growing signs of a party not in flux, but united in doubling down on the same themes that defined Mr. Trump’s political style: conspiracy theories, fealty to the leader, a web of misinformation and intolerance.Recent elections in the statewide Republican Party have led to the elevation of Meshawn Maddock, a conservative activist who helped organize busloads of Michiganders to travel to Washington on Jan. 6, the day of the Capitol attack. Mike Shirkey, the majority leader in the State Senate and Michigan’s top elected Republican, was caught on a hot microphone arguing that the riot was “staged” and a “hoax,” a debunked conspiratorial claim now popular among Mr. Trump’s supporters. And, in a vivid indication of a divided state, an attempt by local Republicans to censure Mr. Meijer for supporting impeachment deadlocked, 11 to 11.In the state’s Sixth District, which hugs Lake Michigan, two county branches of the G.O.P. have already voted to condemn Representative Fred Upton, a veteran Republican who also backed impeachment.Victor Fitz, a prosecutor and Republican official in Cass County who supported efforts to censure Mr. Upton, said the current divide between the party’s base and its establishment wing was the biggest he had ever seen.“There’s deep disappointment” with Mr. Upton, Mr. Fitz said. “And to be frank and honest with you, I think that there are some who believe, you know, he crossed the Rubicon with this vote.”With loyalty to Mr. Trump as the all-encompassing point of dispute, Republicans are struggling with the idea of the proverbial big tent, and politicians like Mr. Upton and Mr. Meijer are at the forefront of the conflict. In the months since Election Day, as the president attacked the democratic process and a mob descended on the seat of American government in his name, the dangers of walking in his political shadow have rarely been more clear. However, what’s also clear is that his party shows little desire to break with him or his grievances.The outcome of this tug of war will decide the direction of a party that is shut out of control in Congress and the White House, and must focus on making electoral gains in the 2022 midterm elections. The G.O.P. tent has made room for conspiracy theories like birtherism and QAnon, as well as for extremist elected officials like Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia. Is there room for anti-Trumpers?The Michigan Republican Party is “more Trumpy today than it was before the election,” said Jeff Timmer, a former executive director of the Michigan Republican Party. The former president’s electoral coalition failed, he said, but its adherents are so vehement in their beliefs that the party cannot acknowledge or learn from its mistakes.“That’s why Trumpism will continue long after Trump. People who weren’t around four years ago,” he said, “people we had never heard of, they now control the levers of the party.”He added: “When you make a deal with the devil, the story usually ends with the devil collecting your soul. You don’t get it back and have a happy ending.”Places like Western Michigan are a bellwether for conservatism, reflecting the Republican Party’s trajectory from a political coalition defined by Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan to one centered on Mr. Trump. With opposition to big government running deep and the decline of manufacturing leaving deep scars, this region of the state has also come to have a libertarian bent and independent streak, as evidenced by former Representative Justin Amash, a prominent Trump critic.During interviews, business stops and the virtual town hall event, Mr. Meijer has tried to explain his impeachment vote with a similar sense of principle. He responds to his Republican detractors with grace, and calmly points to the lack of evidence for Mr. Trump’s claims of voter fraud. He opened the town hall by describing the immense fear he and other lawmakers felt during the mob violence in January.“This was a moment when we needed leadership and the president, in my opinion, did not provide that,” he said of Mr. Trump.Still, the ground is shifting beneath Mr. Meijer’s feet, party officials in Michigan warn, including some in his own district, the Third Congressional. Angry people leave messages of “traitor” in response to his social media posts. News outlets supportive of Mr. Trump have needled Mr. Meijer and other Republican incumbents who backed impeachment by highlighting their primary challengers. What’s more, the vision of Mr. Trump lives on: Many in the party want to look backward at grievances like perceived election fraud, rather than focus on the next election cycle and reaching out to the swing voters he lost.Meshawn Maddock at a Women For Trump wine and cheese party in White Lake, Mich., in September. Last month she helped organize busloads of Michiganders to travel to Washington on Jan. 6.Credit…Ruth Fremson/The New York TimesPeople like Mr. Timmer have pleaded with the party to address the suburban drift toward Democrats, which has plagued Republicans across the country. Ms. Maddock and others have zeroed in on unfounded claims of election fraud. Her husband, a member of the Michigan Legislature, and other state lawmakers signed a brief asking the Supreme Court to give state elected officials the power to overturn the election results..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-c7gg1r{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:0.875rem;line-height:0.875rem;margin-bottom:15px;color:#121212 !important;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-c7gg1r{font-size:0.9375rem;line-height:0.9375rem;}}.css-rqynmc{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.9375rem;line-height:1.25rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-rqynmc{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-rqynmc strong{font-weight:600;}.css-rqynmc em{font-style:italic;}.css-yoay6m{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-yoay6m{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1dg6kl4{margin-top:5px;margin-bottom:15px;}.css-16ed7iq{width:100%;display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;-webkit-box-pack:center;-webkit-justify-content:center;-ms-flex-pack:center;justify-content:center;padding:10px 0;background-color:white;}.css-pmm6ed{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;}.css-pmm6ed > :not(:first-child){margin-left:5px;}.css-5gimkt{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.8125rem;font-weight:700;-webkit-letter-spacing:0.03em;-moz-letter-spacing:0.03em;-ms-letter-spacing:0.03em;letter-spacing:0.03em;text-transform:uppercase;color:#333;}.css-5gimkt:after{content:’Collapse’;}.css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;-webkit-transform:rotate(180deg);-ms-transform:rotate(180deg);transform:rotate(180deg);}.css-eb027h{max-height:5000px;-webkit-transition:max-height 0.5s ease;transition:max-height 0.5s ease;}.css-6mllg9{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;position:relative;opacity:0;}.css-6mllg9:before{content:”;background-image:linear-gradient(180deg,transparent,#ffffff);background-image:-webkit-linear-gradient(270deg,rgba(255,255,255,0),#ffffff);height:80px;width:100%;position:absolute;bottom:0px;pointer-events:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}.css-1amoy78{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1amoy78{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-1amoy78:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}.css-1amoy78[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-1amoy78[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-1amoy78[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-1amoy78[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-k9atqk{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-k9atqk strong{font-weight:700;}.css-k9atqk em{font-style:italic;}.css-k9atqk a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;border-bottom:1px solid #ccd9e3;}.css-k9atqk a:visited{color:#333;-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;border-bottom:1px solid #ddd;}.css-k9atqk a:hover{border-bottom:none;}Capitol Riot FalloutFrom Riot to ImpeachmentThe riot inside the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, Jan. 6, followed a rally at which President Trump made an inflammatory speech to his supporters, questioning the results of the election. Here’s a look at what happened and the ongoing fallout:As this video shows, poor planning and a restive crowd encouraged by President Trump set the stage for the riot.A two hour period was crucial to turning the rally into the riot.Several Trump administration officials, including cabinet members Betsy DeVos and Elaine Chao, announced that they were stepping down as a result of the riot.Federal prosecutors have charged more than 70 people, including some who appeared in viral photos and videos of the riot. Officials expect to eventually charge hundreds of others.The House voted to impeach the president on charges of “inciting an insurrection” that led to the rampage by his supporters.Several Republican officials in Michigan, including Ms. Maddock, Mr. Shirkey and the recently elected state G.O.P. chair, Ron Weiser, did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this article. Mr. Upton and Mr. Meijer declined interviews, and several county and local officials who voted to censure the elected officials also would not comment.The collective public silence of many Republican leaders in Michigan signals a party walking on eggshells, without a clear leader or uniting ideology. Mr. Weiser is a member of the University of Michigan’s Board of Regents and a powerful Republican donor, but he needed the early backing of Ms. Maddock as a conduit to the Trump-supporting grass roots.Mr. Meijer already faces a primary challenger, though he is still considered the favorite. Several state Republicans in Mr. Upton’s orbit brought up the possibility that he would retire rather than embark on a potentially bruising re-election campaign.The ascension of Republicans who were in Washington for Jan. 6 or who vocally supported Mr. Trump’s claims of election fraud, like Ms. Maddock, has roiled a state with a rich history of business-friendly Republicans in the mold of former President Gerald Ford, the state’s native son.Tony Daunt, a Republican official who has served as an election watchdog and has advised the state’s Republican leaders, said he was holding out hope that the party would break from using Trump loyalty as a litmus test.“I think with the right type of leadership, the people we need would eagerly come back into the fold,” Mr. Daunt said. “There are some good things from the Trump administration and even from Trump’s political instincts that are worth bringing into the Republican camp. But Donald Trump isn’t the vehicle or the messenger for that.”Jason Watts is not as confident. An elections official in Allegan County and party treasurer in the Sixth Congressional District, he has seen the party change to a point where it now seems unrecognizable, he said. He doubts that the necessary leadership is coming.Jason Watts, a county elections official and Republican Party treasurer in the Sixth Congressional District, expressed doubt that the Republican Party would move beyond Trumpism. Credit…Erin Kirkland for The New York Times“I almost feel like I’m a person without a home,” Mr. Watts said. “Because you can change the candidate, but until we’re willing to deal with ourselves as a party, we’re going to wallow in this defeat for a few cycles.”Mr. Watts also has a secret to reveal: He never voted for Mr. Trump, even as he helped organize more than 15,000 yard signs for the Republican ticket in the county. In 2016, he supported Gov. John Kasich of Ohio in the primary and the long-shot independent candidate Evan McMullin in the general election. This year, Mr. Watts voted for the Libertarian nominee — a silent expression of discomfort with the former president that he has made public only since the Capitol attack.Does he wish he had spoken up earlier?“I just felt that if I muddled through, it was a brief storm that would pass,” Mr. Watts said. “But this undertone of hatred, this fealty at all costs, it’s going to damage us.”And what happens now?“If they are mad, so be it,” he said. “They can vote me out in two years.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      N.A.A.C.P. Sues Trump and Giuliani Over Election Fight and Jan. 6 Riot

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Campaign to Subvert the 2020 ElectionKey TakeawaysTrump’s RoleGeorgia InvestigationExtremist Wing of G.O.P.AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyN.A.A.C.P. Sues Trump and Giuliani Over Election Fight and Jan. 6 RiotThe civil rights group brought the suit on behalf of Representative Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, with other Democrats in Congress expected to join as plaintiffs.Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi, filed a lawsuit on Tuesday against former President Donald J. Trump and others over the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol.Credit…Anna Moneymaker/The New York TimesFeb. 16, 2021, 10:00 a.m. ETWASHINGTON — The N.A.A.C.P. on Tuesday morning filed a federal lawsuit against former President Donald J. Trump and his personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani, claiming that they violated a 19th century statute when they tried to prevent the certification of the election on Jan. 6.The civil rights organization brought the suit on behalf of Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi. Other Democrats in Congress — including Representatives Hank Johnson of Georgia and Bonnie Watson Coleman of New Jersey — are expected to join as plaintiffs in the coming weeks, according to the N.A.A.C.P.The lawsuit contends that Mr. Trump and Mr. Giuliani violated the Ku Klux Klan Act, an 1871 statute that includes protections against violent conspiracies that interfered with Congress’s constitutional duties; the suit also names the Proud Boys, the far-right nationalist group, and the Oath Keepers militia group. The legal action accuses Mr. Trump, Mr. Giuliani and the two groups of conspiring to incite a violent riot at the Capitol, with the goal of preventing Congress from certifying the election.The suit is the latest legal problem for Mr. Trump: New York prosecutors are investigating his financial dealings; New York’s attorney general is pursuing a civil investigation into whether Mr. Trump’s company misstated assets to get bank loans and tax benefits; and a Georgia district attorney is examining his election interference effort there. In the lawsuit, Mr. Thompson said he was forced to wear a gas mask and hide on the floor of the House gallery for three hours while hearing “threats of physical violence against any member who attempted to proceed to approve the Electoral College ballot count.” Mr. Thompson also heard a gunshot, according to the suit, which he did not learn until later had killed Ashli Babbitt, one of the rioters in the Capitol lobby.Mr. Thompson is seeking compensatory and punitive damages in the lawsuit filed in Federal District Court in Washington. The suit does not include a specific financial amount.Mr. Thompson, 72, claims he was put at an increased health risk by later being required to shelter in place in a cramped area that did not allow for social distancing. The lawsuit notes that Mr. Thompson shared confined space with two members of Congress who tested positive for the coronavirus shortly after the attack at the Capitol.In an interview on Monday, Mr. Thompson said he would not have brought the suit against Mr. Trump if the Senate had voted to convict him in last week’s impeachment trial.“I feared for my life,” Mr. Thompson said. “Not a day passes that I don’t think about this incident. I was committed to seeing justice brought to this situation.”He added: “This is me, and hopefully others, having our day in court to address the atrocities of Jan. 6. I trust the better judgment of the courts because obviously Republican members of the Senate could not do what the evidence overwhelmingly presented.”Mr. Thompson said he had already received a second dose of a Covid vaccine by Jan. 6 and therefore did not quarantine after his close contacts with colleagues who tested positive. But he noted, “There were a number of members who were very concerned about being housed in those numbers with people refusing to wear masks.”Both Democratic and Republican members of Congress have recently raised the prospect of Mr. Trump being held accountable in the courts for the riot. Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, voted to acquit Mr. Trump in the impeachment trial but then appeared to encourage people to take their fight to the courts.“He didn’t get away with anything, yet,” Mr. McConnell said at the trial’s conclusion, noting: “We have a criminal justice system in this country. We have civil litigation.”Derrick Johnson, president of the N.A.A.C.P., said the decision to seek compensatory and punitive damages was rooted in a history of tools that have worked to fight back against white supremacy.“The Southern Poverty Law Center filed a lawsuit against the Ku Klux Klan that bankrupted a chapter,” he said, referring to a 2008 judgment against a Kentucky-based Klan outfit that ordered the group to pay $2.5 million in damages. “This is very similar. If we do nothing, we can be ensured these groups will continue to spread and grow in their boldness. We must curb the spread of white supremacy.”While much of the focus of the impeachment trial rested on how the violent mob was threatening former Vice President Mike Pence as well as congressional leaders like the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, N.A.A.C.P. officials said the attack was deeply rooted in racial injustice.“Underlying this insurrection were the actions of folks who were challenging the voices of people of color,” said Janette McCarthy Louard, deputy general counsel of the N.A.A.C.P. “If you look at whose votes were being challenged, these came from largely urban areas. The votes of people of color were being challenged.”The suit, for instance, charges Mr. Giuliani with attempting to reject “the votes cast by voters in Detroit, the population of which is 78 percent African-American.” It also says Mr. Giuliani inaccurately claimed there was fraud in voting in Milwaukee and Madison, Wis., “both of which have large African-American populations.”Joseph M. Sellers, a partner at the civil rights law firm Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll, which jointly filed the case, said the lawsuit named Mr. Trump in his personal capacity because his conduct challenging another branch of government to do its job falls outside the official duties of the president.“He was engaging in conduct that is so far outside any remotely legitimate scope of his presidential duties,” Mr. Sellers said. “He no longer has the immunity of the president.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Police Forces Have Long Tried to Weed Out Extremists in the Ranks. Then Came the Capitol Riot.

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Capitol Riot FalloutTracking the ArrestsVisual TimelineInside the SiegeMurder Charges?The Oath KeepersAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyPolice Forces Have Long Tried to Weed Out Extremists in the Ranks. Then Came the Capitol Riot.At least 30 law enforcement officers from around the country took part in the rally on Jan. 6 that preceded the riot. Many are now being investigated.Protestors storming the Senate side of the Capitol on Jan. 6 after a rally at which President Donald J. Trump spoke.Credit…Jason Andrew for The New York TimesFeb. 16, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETFor more than three decades, Sheriff Chris West of Canadian County, Okla., a large man whose uniform often includes a Stetson hat, a vest and a gold star badge, devoted his life to law enforcement.A U.S. Marine Corps veteran, he spent 28 years as a highway patrolman in Oklahoma, working his way up to captain before being elected sheriff of his native county in 2017. He earned the accolade “Oklahoma Sheriff of the Year” in 2019, and won a second term last fall, after running unopposed.Then came Jan. 6.Mr. West said he set his badge and his official role aside when he drove to Washington to support President Donald J. Trump. “I went as a citizen, as Chris West, the individual,” he told a news conference in El Reno, the county seat, after he returned.By his own account, he marched on the Capitol waving a Trump flag and hollering slogans like “Stop the Steal!” and “We love Trump!” But he said that he did not participate in the storming of the Capitol, and he condemned the attack.His actions have divided Canadian County, which includes parts of Oklahoma City and the rural areas to its west, with several thousand people signing a petition demanding his removal and even more endorsing a counterclaim supporting him.He is one of at least 30 police or other law enforcement officers who attended the demonstration on Jan. 6. Many are now facing internal investigations and three have thus far been arrested on federal charges related to breaching the Capitol.Sheriff Chris West confirmed he marched on the Capitol, but rejected allegations as “crazy talk” that he had stormed the building.Credit…Sue Ogrocki/Associated PressTheir presence has brought to a boil questions that have been simmering for years: How many law enforcement officers nationwide subscribe to extreme or anti-government beliefs, and how, precisely, can agencies weed them out? Leaders in law enforcement say that public servants must be held to a higher standard than private individuals when it comes to accepting the results of an election and performing their duties.Police chiefs from the largest North American cities, meeting in an online conference this past week, agreed to work together to try and block members of far-right organizations or others with radical views from entering their ranks.“There is zero room, not only in society, but more so in professions of public trust and service, for people to have extremist views, regardless of ideology,” said Art Acevedo, the Houston police chief and president of the Major Cities Chiefs Association, which includes senior police officials from almost 90 American and Canadian cities. President Biden’s goal of addressing domestic extremism will partly hinge on the ability to curb its spread in police departments and the military, experts noted.Concerns about extremism in police ranks have long existed, but after Sept. 11 chasing jihadists took priority over chasing domestic threats, senior police officials and law enforcement experts said.In recent years, police or other agencies in Virginia, Florida, Nebraska, Louisiana, Michigan and Texas have all fired officers belonging to the Ku Klux Klan. In Philadelphia in 2019, the Police Department announced that 13 officers would be dismissed among the 72 who were placed on administrative leave because of racist Facebook posts.For decades, Los Angeles County has downplayed accusations that sheriff’s deputies repeatedly organized secret white-supremacist groups with their own tattoos and hand signs. But a recent study by the office of the Los Angeles County Counsel concluded that the county has paid out some $55 million to settle lawsuits accusing such groups of malign influence.Sometimes groups opposed to the government emerge within law enforcement itself. Hundreds have joined the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, for example, which claims that sheriffs have the last word on whether any U.S. or local law is constitutional and should be enforced or not.During his presidency, Mr. Trump often declared himself a friend of the police, and many police unions endorsed him. Police officers enjoy the same rights as all citizens in supporting political candidates, but the problem comes when they take it a step further into anti-government activism, senior police officials and law enforcement experts said.Recently, during protests prompted by the death of George Floyd in police custody, far-right organizers, eager to recruit police or military veterans, portrayed themselves as allies to law enforcement, said Brian Levin, a former policeman and the director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino.Various organizations talked about helping to preserve law and order while amplifying distorted claims about election fraud or chaos at Black Lives Matter protests. It was a “false alliance,” Mr. Levin said, not least because such organizations seek to undermine the government. At protests members of these groups often exhibited the Thin Blue Line flag — a black-and-white American flag with one navy blue stripe down the middle meant to symbolize solidarity with the police.Some rioters brandished that flag on Jan. 6 even as Capitol Police officers were assaulted and one killed. The flag “has been hijacked by extremists,” Mr. Acevedo said. “These people act like they are so pro-police, yet they are beating cops.”Capitol protesters, holding a Thin Blue Line flag meant to show solidarity with the police, clashed with a Metropolitan Police officer outside of the Capitol on Jan. 6.Credit…Shannon Stapleton/ReutersOne Houston police officer, Tam Dinh Pham, an 18-year veteran, resigned just before he was arrested on Jan. 19 on charges of illegally entering the Capitol. Mr. Pham, 48, first denied it, then told F.B.I. agents that he wanted to “see history,” according to the criminal complaint. Two officers in a small Virginia town who were charged were fired.Mr. Pham has not been linked to any extremist organization, but Mr. Acevedo used his example to conduct an animated call and response with police cadets on their first day of training last month. The Houston Police published a video of the exchange, including these excerpts:“If anyone in this room right now believes that anyone needed to be in that Capitol building, you need to check out now! Do you understand me?”“Yes, sir!”“Because you will not survive in this department with that mind-set. You understand that?”“Yes, sir!”“Is there room for hate?”“No, sir!”“Is there room for discrimination?”“No, sir!”“Is there room for a militia in this department or any other police department?”“No, sir!”He questioned the cadets, asking four times whether they understood that they must report any officer with extremist sympathies. Recently a cadet who bragged about belonging to the Aryan Brotherhood, a neo-Nazi criminal gang, was reported by a fellow cadet and dismissed.“I think we are all pretty pissed off right now because we had cops thinking it’s OK to storm our nation’s Capitol,” Mr. Acevedo told the cadets. “Those people are absolute traitors to our nation, to our oath of office.”The number of extremists within law enforcement is unknown, with the police calling them a fringe, just as in the general public. With 18,000 law enforcement agencies nationwide, many of them small and lacking resources, there is a patchwork of rules and practices for how to weed out people perceived as threats. Dismissal is not automatic..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-c7gg1r{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:0.875rem;line-height:0.875rem;margin-bottom:15px;color:#121212 !important;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-c7gg1r{font-size:0.9375rem;line-height:0.9375rem;}}.css-rqynmc{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.9375rem;line-height:1.25rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-rqynmc{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-rqynmc strong{font-weight:600;}.css-rqynmc em{font-style:italic;}.css-yoay6m{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-yoay6m{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1dg6kl4{margin-top:5px;margin-bottom:15px;}.css-16ed7iq{width:100%;display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;-webkit-box-pack:center;-webkit-justify-content:center;-ms-flex-pack:center;justify-content:center;padding:10px 0;background-color:white;}.css-pmm6ed{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;}.css-pmm6ed > :not(:first-child){margin-left:5px;}.css-5gimkt{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.8125rem;font-weight:700;-webkit-letter-spacing:0.03em;-moz-letter-spacing:0.03em;-ms-letter-spacing:0.03em;letter-spacing:0.03em;text-transform:uppercase;color:#333;}.css-5gimkt:after{content:’Collapse’;}.css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;-webkit-transform:rotate(180deg);-ms-transform:rotate(180deg);transform:rotate(180deg);}.css-eb027h{max-height:5000px;-webkit-transition:max-height 0.5s ease;transition:max-height 0.5s ease;}.css-6mllg9{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;position:relative;opacity:0;}.css-6mllg9:before{content:”;background-image:linear-gradient(180deg,transparent,#ffffff);background-image:-webkit-linear-gradient(270deg,rgba(255,255,255,0),#ffffff);height:80px;width:100%;position:absolute;bottom:0px;pointer-events:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}.css-1amoy78{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1amoy78{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-1amoy78:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}.css-1amoy78[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-1amoy78[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-1amoy78[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-1amoy78[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-k9atqk{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-k9atqk strong{font-weight:700;}.css-k9atqk em{font-style:italic;}.css-k9atqk a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;border-bottom:1px solid #ccd9e3;}.css-k9atqk a:visited{color:#333;-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;border-bottom:1px solid #ddd;}.css-k9atqk a:hover{border-bottom:none;}Capitol Riot FalloutFrom Riot to ImpeachmentThe riot inside the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, Jan. 6, followed a rally at which President Trump made an inflammatory speech to his supporters, questioning the results of the election. Here’s a look at what happened and the ongoing fallout:As this video shows, poor planning and a restive crowd encouraged by President Trump set the stage for the riot.A two hour period was crucial to turning the rally into the riot.Several Trump administration officials, including cabinet members Betsy DeVos and Elaine Chao, announced that they were stepping down as a result of the riot.Federal prosecutors have charged more than 70 people, including some who appeared in viral photos and videos of the riot. Officials expect to eventually charge hundreds of others.The House voted to impeach the president on charges of “inciting an insurrection” that led to the rampage by his supporters.A Philadelphia police officer photographed with what appeared to be a Nazi tattoo in 2016 was not fired partly because the department had no stated policy on such tattoos. In 2019 it barred officers from displaying tattoos advocating violence or deemed lewd, among other restrictions.The Supreme Court has narrowed free speech rights for public servants speaking in an official capacity on matters of public interest, experts noted, and in those instances when the public good outweighs that of the individual. But Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies who contested being fired over gang membership, for example, were sometimes reinstated.Patrick Yoes, the national president of the Fraternal Order of Police, said that people with extreme views are likely to exist in law enforcement just as in society. “While there may be a perception that we have a major problem across the country, it does not fit into what my observations have been,” he said.Still, he and many others expect there will be more robust screening. Polygraph tests for Houston police candidates that focus on past drug use or criminal activity will be expanded to include anti-government views, Mr. Acevedo said.Art Acevedo, the Houston police chief, said there was no room for extremists within his department. “Those people are absolute traitors to our nation, to our oath of office,” he said.Credit…Godofredo A. Vásquez/Houston Chronicle, via Associated PressThe F.B.I. has called domestic extremism a significant threat, but has failed to develop a response to adherents in law enforcement, said Michael German, a former F.B.I. agent who works on law enforcement reform at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University.Officers know who holds far-right views, he and others noted, but tend to protect each other.Another key issue is balancing First Amendment rights against the potential fallout for any agency.“I don’t see there is a challenge with people having their own political beliefs — it becomes a challenge when those beliefs become all-consuming and go beyond politics to actions that can harm others,” said Mitchell R. Davis III, the police chief of Hazel Crest, a village on the outskirts of Chicago, and a veteran member of the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives.In Franklin County, Ky., five public defenders asked the local sheriff to investigate Jeff Farmer, a deputy sheriff, after he attended the Jan. 6 rally.The officer supported the false claim that the election results were fake and attended a protest brimming with “offensive symbols” like a gallows and the Confederate flag, said Nathan Goodrich, one of the public defenders. “I think police departments should make sure that their officers’ credibility is not questionable,” he said.Mr. Farmer, who was placed on administrative leave while he was investigated, did not respond to a telephone message seeking comment. He was later cleared of any criminal wrongdoing and told not to post anything on social media that would reflect badly on the sheriff’s office.In Oklahoma, critics of Sheriff West said that he had for months adopted overtly political positions. That included refusing to put in effect the Oklahoma City mask mandate aimed at reducing the spread of Covid-19 and forming a civilian “posse” to maintain order at public events, which his opponents considered a paramilitary organization. The riot came a few months later.Sheriff David Mahoney, president of the National Sheriffs’ Association, said that he passed to the F.B.I. for investigation information he had received that Sheriff West had made a celebratory telephone call from inside the Capitol.Sheriff West did not return calls seeking comment, and three main authors of the petition supporting him also declined to speak.Brandy Becerra, the main organizer of the petition against the sheriff, acknowledged that she has long been at loggerheads with Trump supporters in the county, including the sheriff. But she questioned his judgment in marching on the Capitol given that the goal was to intimidate lawmakers or worse.“I think people have a right to be worried about this sheriff,” she said.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Don’t Care for This Impeachment? Wait Until Next Year

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Trump ImpeachmentLatest UpdatesTrump AcquittedHow Senators VotedSeven Republicans Vote to ConvictAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyPolitical MemoDon’t Care for This Impeachment? Wait Until Next YearLeaders of both political parties suggest that impeachments, Electoral College standoffs and Supreme Court nomination blockades may become frequent fights in American politics.Representative Jamie Raskin, center, and other House impeachment managers spoke on Saturday after the Senate voted to acquit former President Donald Trump at his second impeachment trial.Credit…Erin Schaff/The New York TimesFeb. 16, 2021Updated 4:17 a.m. ETWASHINGTON — The second season of impeachment had ended less than a day earlier, but Republicans were already talking about next season. It sounded ominous.“I don’t know how Kamala Harris doesn’t get impeached if the Republicans take over the House,” Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said Sunday morning on Fox News.Mr. Graham seemed to be suggesting that the vice president might be punished because she had expressed support for a bail fund for Black Lives Matter protesters in Minnesota last summer. “She actually bailed out rioters,” Mr. Graham charged. That statement was false, but his threat was plain: Republicans can impeach, too.In recent days, former President Donald J. Trump’s defenders have darkly accused Democrats of opening a “Pandora’s box” of partisan retribution — leading to a kind of anything-goes future in politics, where impeachments get volleyed back and forth between the two parties like a tennis match, depending on which side controls Congress. “Partisan impeachments will become commonplace,” said Bruce L. Castor Jr., one of Mr. Trump’s lawyers, as he argued the former president’s case before the Senate on Tuesday.There’s an element of plausibility here, given the hyperpartisan fervor that’s gripped American politics. But in the ensuing environment, Republicans seem to be saying that even the most outlandish accusations against a president — such as those hurled at President Biden by Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican of Georgia in her first days in Congress — should be treated the same as what Democrats impeached Mr. Trump over.In a broader sense, officials of both parties have suggested that regular impeachments may just become one of several regular features of a new and bitter normal in our politics. Previously rare or unthinkable measures could simply start happening all the timeDemocrats argue that, in fact, Republicans have opened several Pandora’s boxes in recent years. They have taken unprecedented actions, led by Mr. Trump, that have abused certain norms to a degree that has destabilized a set of once-reliable government traditions. Senate Republicans’ blockade of President Barack Obama’s nomination of Judge Merrick B. Garland to the Supreme Court in 2016, for instance, cast doubt on any future president’s ability to fill a Supreme Court vacancy when the opposing party controlled the Senate.By refusing to concede an election he clearly lost, and then maintaining repeatedly it had been stolen from him, Mr. Trump shattered what had been an undisturbed American custom ensuring a peaceful transfer of power between administrations.Mr. Trump’s false claims have persuaded a majority of Republican voters that Mr. Biden had not been legitimately elected, and led 147 Republican members of the House and the Senate to vote against the Jan. 6 certification of Electoral College votes. This level of support to overturn the election result raises the prospect of whether the once-pro forma exercise of certification might now devolve every four years into a heated partisan spectacle — or, worse, riots.Two of former President Trump’s impeachment lawyers, Michael van der Veen and Bruce Castor, spoke on Saturday after the trial concluded.Credit…Alyssa Schukar for The New York TimesIt was the deadly assault on the Capitol, of course, that set into motion Mr. Trump’s second impeachment proceeding. His lawyers attributed the rebuke not to their client’s actions on Jan. 6 but rather to his opponents’ irrational “hatred of President Trump.” They implied impeachment was a vindictive and frivolous maneuver.Democrats bristle at such notions — that they have overused and thus cheapened the power of impeachment, a tool that has been employed only four times in 244 years, but twice in the last 14 months. They agreed that impeachment should be reserved for extraordinary circumstances, but argued that Mr. Trump had engaged in an extraordinary degree of dereliction.“Look, there’s a reason there’s been two impeachments of the same man,” said Senator Robert P. Casey Jr., Democrat of Pennsylvania, in an interview Friday, on the eve of the final vote. “Trump has engaged in conduct that presidents of either party would never engage in.”It’s not like anything about this has been fun, he added. “The last thing I wanted to do these last five days is sit there and listen to this hour after hour instead of working on a full range of issues,” he said.Mr. Casey and others suggest that the Republican Party is now dominated by a former president who has convinced much of the party that any opposition to them is driven by “bad, sick and corrupt people” and should be met with extreme tactics.“The expectation from our base is for retribution,” said former Representative Tom Rooney, a Republican of Florida who did not seek re-election in 2018, in part to escape the extreme partisanship that has overtaken Congress. When asked if his former Republican colleagues would move to impeach Mr. Biden next year if they won back the House, even for something minor, Mr. Rooney rated the prospect as “absolutely possible.”“It might not necessarily be what some of those guys want to do, but it might be what the base expects,” he said. “People want Armageddon.”Let the healing begin!Or not. For as much as Impeachment II ended on Saturday with a significant number of Republican senators (seven) voting to convict Mr. Trump — and was accompanied by tough statements from some who voted not guilty, including the Republican Senate leader, Mitch McConnell — other defenders of the former president turned their focus to a bitter future of impeachment roulette.Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, suggested on Friday that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton might start looking around for a good impeachment lawyer (because, really, what would partisan Armageddon be without the Clintons?).Mr. Rubio framed his statement around a somewhat tortured rhetorical question: “Is it not true that under this new precedent, a future House facing partisan pressure to ‘lock her up’ could impeach a former secretary of state and a future Senate forced to put her on trial and potentially disqualify from future office?”It was not exactly clear whether Mr. Rubio was criticizing Mr. Trump for whipping up his supporters into a frenzy that led to irrational demands to imprison Mrs. Clinton, or whether he was accusing Democrats of acting irrationally themselves by impeaching Mr. Trump a second time in two years.What was evident, however, was that Mr. Rubio was assuming the worst intentions by the opposition — and the feeling appears extremely mutual. Cable and social media chatter have been awash in bleak scenarios.“If Republicans take Congress, they could not only impeach Biden and/or Harris,” Jon Favreau, a speechwriter for President Obama, tweeted on Sunday, “they could potentially succeed in overturning the results of the 2024 election.”Not everyone believes partisanship has reached the point where Election Day will now merely become the start of a two-month brawl every four years that will build to a potentially ugly climax in January.“I don’t think we’re there yet,” said Brendan Buck, a Republican media strategist and former top leadership aide to two former Republican speakers of the House, Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin and John A. Boehner of Ohio. He said that many House Republicans wound up voting against Mr. Biden’s Electoral College certification only because they knew it would not pass. If the result was more in doubt, he contended, they would have voted to certify.Trump supporters climbed the walls of the Capitol on Jan. 6.Credit…Jason Andrew for The New York TimesStill, Mr. Buck allowed that the current political and media environment rewarded behavior by lawmakers — and candidates — that is extreme or even unheard-of. “We’re in an era where you need to make loud noises and break things in order to get attention,” he said. “It doesn’t matter what you’re breaking — as long as you’re creating conflict and appeasing your party, anything goes.”Mr. Trump himself is the exemplar of anything goes, both in terms of how effective and destructive the approach can be, said Adam Jentleson, who was a deputy chief of staff to former Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader, and author of “Kill Switch: The Rise of the Modern Senate and the Crippling of American Democracy,” a new book about legislative leadership dynamics.Mr. Jentleson said Republicans had abandoned any coherent policy goals in lieu of pursuing a “negative partisanship” agenda — which he defines as “doing simply whatever will terrorize your opponents the most.” In essence, Trumpism.This shows no signs of abating anytime soon. “That’s clearly what Republicans will continue to run on,” Mr. Jentleson said. “And that includes impeaching whoever is in power on the other side.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Adam Kinzinger’s Lonely Mission

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      “For the last four and a half years, the only spokesman for the Republican Party has been Donald Trump,” said Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois. “It’s time to present an alternative narrative and fight for the soul of the party.”Credit…Taylor Glascock for The New York TimesAdam Kinzinger’s Lonely MissionCensured by his party and shunned by family members, Mr. Kinzinger, a six-term Illinois congressman, is pressing Republicans to leave Donald Trump behind — and risking his career doing so.“For the last four and a half years, the only spokesman for the Republican Party has been Donald Trump,” said Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois. “It’s time to present an alternative narrative and fight for the soul of the party.”Credit…Taylor Glascock for The New York TimesSupported byContinue reading the main storyFeb. 15, 2021Updated 5:05 p.m. ETWASHINGTON — As the Republican Party censures, condemns and seeks to purge leaders who aren’t in lock step with Donald J. Trump, Adam Kinzinger, the six-term Illinois congressman, stands as enemy No. 1 — unwelcome not just in his party but also in his own family, some of whom recently disowned him.Two days after Mr. Kinzinger called for removing Mr. Trump from office following the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, 11 members of his family sent him a handwritten two-page letter, saying he was in cahoots with “the devil’s army” for making a public break with the president.“Oh my, what a disappointment you are to us and to God!” they wrote. “You have embarrassed the Kinzinger family name!”The author of the letter was Karen Otto, Mr. Kinzinger’s cousin, who paid $7 to send it by certified mail to Mr. Kinzinger’s father — to make sure the congressman would see it, which he did. She also sent copies to Republicans across Illinois, including other members of the state’s congressional delegation.“I wanted Adam to be shunned,” she said in an interview.A 42-year-old Air National Guard pilot who represents a crescent-shaped district along the Chicago’s suburbs, Mr. Kinzinger is at the forefront of the effort to navigate post-Trump politics. He is betting his political career, professional relationships and kinship with a wing of his sprawling family that his party’s future lies in disavowing Mr. Trump and the conspiracy theories the former president stoked.Kinzinger Family LetterA hand-written letter from several members of Rep. Adam Kinzinger’s family. The Times has redacted the names of some family members who signed the letter but whom we did not interview.Read Document 2 pagesMr. Kinzinger was one of just three House Republicans who voted both to impeach Mr. Trump and strip Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia from her committee posts. During the House impeachment debate, he asked Democrats if he could speak for seven minutes instead of his allotted one, so that he could make a more authoritative and bipartisan argument against the president; the request was denied.He has taken his case to the national media, becoming a ubiquitous figure on cable television, late-night HBO programming and podcasts. He began a new political action committee with a six-minute video declaring the need to re-format the Republican Party into something resembling an idealized version of George W. Bush’s party — with an emphasis on lower taxes, hawkish defense and social conservatism — without the grievances and conspiracy theories that Mr. Trump and his allies have made central to the party’s identity.To do so, Mr. Kinzinger said in an interview, requires exposing the fear-based tactics he hopes to eradicate from the party and present an optimistic alternative.“We just fear,” he said. “Fear the Democrats. Fear the future. Fear everything. And it works for an election cycle or two. The problem is it does real damage to this democracy.”Mr. Kinzinger said he was not deterred by the Senate’s failure on Saturday to convict Mr. Trump in the impeachment trial.“We have a lot of work to do to restore the Republican Party,” he said, “and to turn the tide on the personality politics.”Representatives Jaime Herrera Beutler of Washington and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois were two of the 10 Republicans who voted to impeach Mr. Trump.Credit…Anna Moneymaker for The New York TimesMr. Kinzinger now faces the classic challenge for political mavericks aiming to prove their independence: His stubborn and uncompromising nature rankles the very Republicans he is trying to recruit to his mission of remaking the party.His anti-Trump stance has angered Republican constituents in his district, some of whom liken him to a Democrat, and frustrated Republican officials in Illinois who say he cares more about his own national exposure than his relationship with them.“There doesn’t seem to be a camera or a microphone he won’t run to,” said Larry Smith, the chairman of the La Salle County G.O.P., which censured Mr. Kinzinger last month. “He used to talk to us back in the good old days.”Mr. Kinzinger is unapologetic about his priorities.“Central and northern Illinois deserve an explanation and deserve my full attention, and they’ll get it,” he said. “But to the extent I can, I will also focus on the national message because I can turn every heart in central and northern Illinois and it wouldn’t make a dent on the whole party. And that’s what I think the huge battle is.”Mr. Kinzinger has drawn praise from Democrats, but he is not anyone’s idea of a progressive. His campaign website trumpets his longstanding opposition to the Affordable Care Act, and he is an opponent of abortion rights and increased taxes. He first won his seat in Congress with Sarah Palin’s endorsement. Raised in a large central Illinois family — his father, who has 32 first cousins, ran food banks and shelters for the homeless in Peoria and Bloomington — Mr. Kinzinger was interested in politics from an early age. Before he’d turned 10 he predicted he would one day be governor or president, Ms. Otto said, and he won election to the McLean County Board when he was a 20-year-old sophomore at Illinois State University.He joined the Air Force after the Sept. 11 attacks and served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Upon his discharge he joined the Air National Guard, where he remains a lieutenant colonel. In the 2010 Republican wave Mr. Kinzinger, then 32, beat a Democratic incumbent by nearly 15 percentage points and, two years later, with support from Eric Cantor, then the House majority leader, ousted another incumbent, 10-term Republican Don Manzullo, in a primary following redistricting.But Mr. Kinzinger soon became dispirited by a Republican Party he believed was centered around opposition to whatever President Barack Obama proposed without offering new ideas of its own.“His frustration level has been rising ever since he got to Congress and I think the Trump era has been difficult for him to make sense of and participate in,” said former Representative Kevin Yoder of Kansas, who was one of Mr. Kinzinger’s closest friends in Congress before losing a 2018 re-election bid. When loyalty to Mr. Trump became a litmus test for Republican conservatism, Mr. Yoder said, “that became a bridge too far for him.”Mr. Kinzinger, left, during a meeting with Republican lawmakers and Donald J. Trump at the White House in 2018 in Washington. Credit…Al Drago for The New York TimesWhile Mr. Kinzinger never presented himself as a Trump loyalist, he rarely broke with the former president on policy grounds, but he was critical of him dating back to the 2016 campaign, when he was a surrogate for Jeb Bush.Mr. Trump was aware of Mr. Kinzinger’s lack of fealty. At a fund-raiser in the Chicago suburbs before the 2016 election, Mr. Trump asked Richard Porter, a Republican National Committee member from Illinois, how Mr. Kinzinger would do in his re-election bid. He didn’t have an opponent, Mr. Porter recalled telling the future president.Mr. Trump, Mr. Porter said, poked his finger in his chest and told him to deliver to Mr. Kinzinger a vulgar message about what he should do with himself. When Mr. Porter relayed the comment to Mr. Kinzinger during a conversation on Election Day, Mr. Kinzinger laughed and invited Mr. Trump to do the same.In Illinois, Republicans have been struggling to guess what Mr. Kinzinger’s next move may be. In the interview, Mr. Kinzinger said he’s unlikely to pursue the 2022 nomination for governor or the Senate. Right now, he’s leaning toward running for re-election, but with redistricting looming this fall, it’s unclear how the state’s Democratic-controlled legislature will rearrange his district.What is clear is that Mr. Kinzinger has found himself on the wrong side of rank-and-file Republicans at home. John McGlasson, the committee member for Mr. Kinzinger’s district, said the congressman had been “insulting with his comments” since Jan. 6.Republican voters interviewed in the district last week lambasted Mr. Kinzinger for turning on Mr. Trump.“If you want to vote as a Democrat, vote as a Democrat,” Richard Reinhardt, a 63-year-old retired mechanical engineer, said while eating lunch at a Thai restaurant in Rockford. “Otherwise, if you’re a Republican, then support our president. Trump was the first president who represented me. The stuff he did helped me.”Mr. Kinzinger predicted “the hangover’’ of Mr. Trump’s post-impeachment popularity “will kind of wear off.’’Former Gov. Bruce Rauner, the last Republican to win statewide office in Illinois, in 2014, said Mr. Kinzinger could find himself a casualty of the bitter schism dividing the party. “The only winners in the war between Trump and Republicans will be Democrats,” Mr. Rauner said. “For some voters, character matters. For most, it doesn’t.”Mr. Kinzinger films an ad for his PAC, Country First, at Whiskey Acres Distilling Co. on Friday in DeKalb, Ill., as his wife, Sofia Boza-Holman Kinzinger, right, looks on. Credit…Taylor Glascock for The New York TimesMr. Kinzinger said he has little desire to reach out to the loudest critics in his district’s Republican organizations, whom he hasn’t spoken to in years and said hold little sway over voters. The letter-writers in his family, he said, suffer from “brainwashing” from conservative churches that have led them astray.“I hold nothing against them,’’ he said, “but I have zero desire or feel the need to reach out and repair that. That is 100 percent on them to reach out and repair, and quite honestly, I don’t care if they do or not.”As to his own future in the party, Mr. Kinzinger said he will know by the end of the summer whether he can remain a Republican for the long term or whether he will be motivated to change his party affiliation if it becomes clear to him that Mr. Trump’s allies have become a permanent majority.“The party’s sick right now,” he said. “It’s one thing if the party was accepting of different views, but it’s become this massive litmus test on everything. So it’s a possibility down the road, but it’s certainly not my intention, and I’m going to fight like hell to save it first.”Ellen Almer Durston contributed reporting from Rockford, Ill. Kitty Bennett contributed research.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Why Are Republicans Still This Loyal to a Mar-a-Lago Exile?

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyOpinionSupported byContinue reading the main storyWhy Are Republicans Still This Loyal to a Mar-a-Lago Exile?If they don’t disown Trump, he will continue to own them.Mr. Wehner, who served in various roles in the three Republican administrations before the Trump administration, is a contributing Opinion writer.Feb. 14, 2021Credit…Brendan Smialowski/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesFive years ago, during a campaign rally in Iowa, Donald Trump famously said, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.” What no one knew at the time, but what the just-concluded impeachment trial showed in vivid and at times sickening detail, is that Mr. Trump was foreshadowing something worse.The former president didn’t stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue; he stood in the middle of the Ellipse. He didn’t use a gun; the weapons he used were his words and Twitter account. Mr. Trump didn’t commit murder; instead, urged on by their beloved leader, a mob of hundreds of Trump loyalists “stormed and occupied the Capitol, disrupting the final electoral count in a shocking display of violence that shook the core of American democracy,” in the words of The Times. As a result of Mr. Trump’s actions a theoretical person on Fifth Avenue didn’t die; five actual human beings did, with many others badly injured.But what Mr. Trump got right was in prophesying that he could act maliciously — and even seditiously — and still maintain the overwhelming support of both his base and Republican lawmakers. Representative Liz Cheney, who bravely voted to impeach Mr. Trump, correctly said that there’s never been a greater betrayal by a president of his office and his oath to the Constitution. The impeachment trial provided overwhelming, irrefutable — and in fact unrefuted — evidence that Mr. Trump was guilty as charged. He not only incited an insurrection; he delighted in watching it unfold in all of its violence, all of its devastation, all of its horror. For hours he did nothing to stop it.Yet in the aftermath of that, the vast majority of Republican lawmakers stood where they always have for the last four years: shoulder-to-shoulder with Donald Trump. And precisely because they have done so, time and time again, we became inured to how troubling the alliance between Mr. Trump and the Republican Party turned out to be, with Mr. Trump’s senatorial defenders (or should I say praetorian guard) — Lindsey Graham, Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz, Ron Johnson and others — not only shameless and remorseless, but belligerent.So why did Republicans, with seven honorable exceptions — Senators Mitt Romney, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Pat Toomey, Bill Cassidy, Richard Burr and Ben Sasse — profess their loyalty to a sociopath who has been exiled to Mar-a-Lago? Why do they continue to defend a man who lost the popular vote by more than seven million votes, whose recklessness after the election cost Republicans control of the Senate, and who is causing a flight from the Republican Party?There are different, sometimes overlapping explanations. For some, it’s a matter of cynical ambition. They want to win over the loyalty of Trump supporters, who comprise a huge part of the base of the Republican Party. For others, it’s recognizing that standing up to Mr. Trump might make life quite unpleasant and even dangerous for them, exposing them to hazards that range from primary challenges to physical attack. And for still others, it’s driven by such antipathy toward the left that they will not do anything Democrats ask them to do, even if doing so is the right thing to do. These Republicans would much rather “own the libs” than side with them against a corrupt, corrosive former president.There’s also the natural human reluctance to take a stand that puts you in conflict with your own political tribe, your colleagues, your friends. And there’s this: Over the course of the Trump presidency a lot of Republicans repeatedly — sometimes daily — quarantined their conscience in order to justify to others, and to themselves, their support for an unscrupulous man.For people who are not themselves deviant to publicly defend a person who is creates cognitive dissonance and psychological conflict. It puts people at war with themselves. But over time, one step at a time, people condition themselves to make compromises. They twist themselves into moral knots as a way to justify their stance. They create a community to reinforce their rationalizations. And with each step down the moral staircase, it gets easier.There is a reason that in the Trump era we keep returning to Eastern European analogues. Upon taking office as president, the Czech dissident and playwright Vaclav Havel said, in a New Year’s Day address in 1990, that “the worst thing is we are living in a decayed moral environment. We have become morally ill, because we have become accustomed to saying one thing and thinking another.”For nearly a half-decade, Republicans became accustomed to saying one thing and thinking another. The impeachment vote was the last, best chance to break decisively with Mr. Trump. Yet once again most Republican lawmakers couldn’t bring themselves to do it. Mr. Trump still seems to haunt them, to instill fear in them. More than that, however: He has become them, weaving himself into their minds and communities so seamlessly that they are no longer capable of distinguishing their own moral sensibilities and boundaries from his, as they might once have done. After the disgraceful impeachment vote, the task for Republicans hoping to separate themselves from the Trump years, which was already hard, if not impossible, became harder still.So for conservatives who are longing for a responsible political home and for those who believe healthy conservative parties are vital to the survival of democracy, what can be done to salvage the Republican Party?To begin with, it needs leaders who are willing to say that something has gone very, very wrong. They don’t have to dwell on it, or make it the focus of their efforts every minute, but the next generation of Republican leaders cannot pretend that the last few years were politics as they ought to be. They need to acknowledge that a sickness set in and take steps to cure it.From that should emerge a recognition that change is essential. That means putting in place a new intellectual framework, to do for the Republican Party in the 2020s what Bill Clinton did for the Democratic Party and Tony Blair did for the Labour Party in the 1990s, which was to break them of bad habits and modernize them. The situation is not exactly analogous (historical analogies never are), but there are some instructive similarities.This is of course easier said than done, but Republicans need to move past cable news and talk radio. They must begin, again, to rely on think tanks and journals from various wings of the party to work toward a policy agenda to meet the challenges of the modern world, as they did in the 1970s and 1980s. Republican leaders need to change the way their party thinks about itself, and therefore the way the country thinks about the Republican Party. One way to do that is for different figures to put forward their vision for a new Republican Party, to see what gains traction.For example, Senator Romney’s Family Security Act is an ambitious policy aimed at slashing child poverty and strengthening families by reducing penalties for marriage. (It would provide a monthly cash benefit for families, amounting to $350 a month for each young child, and $250 a month for each school-age child.) There are some interesting ideas in the area of national service, including this one from the Brookings Institution’s Isabelle Sawhill and Richard Reeves, encouraging a year of national service after high school as a way to foster national unity by bringing young people of different races, ethnicities, income levels and faith backgrounds together to work toward a common purpose, but also as a pathway to college. Yuval Levin of the American Enterprise Institute is focusing his attention on ways to encourage social solidarity as a way to combat social alienation. My Times colleague David Brooks has written about this intellectual ferment on the right.Right now all this may seem aspirational or even unachievable, but this is what has to happen if there is going to be a responsible conservative alternative to the Democratic Party. A new, post-Trump Republican Party should put in place a political infrastructure that supports conservatives in primary races who are responsible, intellectually serious and interested in governing rather than theatrics. Republicans need to talk about the country’s needs, not just the threats posed by the left. Having spread conspiracy theories and served as a battering ram against reality during the last four years, the Republican Party needs to root itself firmly in the world as it actually is. It must defend itself against QAnon and its allies whenever and wherever they present themselves, not just every once in a while. It must challenge those who want to make the Republican Party the nesting place of lunacy.None of this will be easy, and it will certainly require developing new habits of thought after the Trump era. What is even more difficult is that it will require explicitly distancing the party from the irreconcilably anti-democratic and nihilistic element of Trump’s base. While post-Trump Republicans shouldn’t go out in search of a fight, this transformation cannot be accomplished without at some point confronting hard-core MAGA supporters who have made a living through lies and intimidation.A new Republican Party won’t prevail if it enters this political battle defensively, halfheartedly, apologetically. The Kevin McCarthy model — weak, timid, unprincipled, cowering — is a loser. For Mr. McCarthy to have gone hat in hand to Mar-a-Lago was shortsighted, to say the least. Mr. McCarthy may have thought that currying favor would keep Mr. Trump on side with the party in crucial 2022 House races, but, as nearly everyone can see by now, Trump’s team has only one member: himself. Whomever he does not dominate, he undermines or betrays; if Republicans do not disown him, he will continue to own them.On the flip side, over the last few weeks, we’ve seen Representative Cheney, Senator Sasse and even Mr. Trump’s first U.N. ambassador, Nikki Haley, distance themselves from Mr. Trump because they recognize that his destructive narcissism can never be managed or contained.That said, even if all the things that need to be done are done, and done well, the base of the party may still be too radicalized, too consumed by grievance, too enmeshed in conspiracy theories, too enamored with politics as blood sport — in a word, still too Trumpified — to reform. But because we’re only in the very early stages of the post-Trump presidency, as in one sense his acquittal demonstrates, it’s too early for fatalism. It would be irresponsible not to search for embers in the ashes.For half a decade, there have been far too few figures within the Republican Party who were willing to challenge Mr. Trump, to speak the truth people knew privately but hid publicly. But with Mr. Trump in temporary exile and the impeachment trial over, we’re about to see whether the Trump presidency was an aberration or a precursor, a parenthesis or part of a pattern. Was Mr. Trump’s acquittal the end of the Trump era or the beginning of something worse? Could this be the timid start of a new, post-Trump phase for the Republican Party?I am not sure what to think, but I know what to hope.Peter Wehner (@Peter_Wehner), a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center who served in the Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush administrations, is a contributing Opinion writer and the author of “The Death of Politics: How to Heal Our Frayed Republic After Trump.”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.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Tom Perez on Democrats’ Mistakes and Why Iowa Shouldn’t Go First

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyTom Perez on Democrats’ Mistakes and Why Iowa Shouldn’t Go FirstIn an interview, the former D.N.C. chairman discussed a possible bid for Maryland governor and said Iowa and New Hampshire starting the presidential nominating process was “unacceptable.”Former D.N.C. chairman Tom Perez  is considering a bid for Maryland governor.Credit…Justin T. Gellerson for The New York TimesFeb. 14, 2021, 8:56 a.m. ETFor the past four years, Tom Perez had perhaps the most thankless job in American politics: chairman of the Democratic National Committee.During that time Mr. Perez, the first Latino to lead the committee, oversaw the rebuilding of the party apparatus from an indebted hollowed-out mess after years of neglect during the Obama administration to a cash-flush organization with more than twice as many employees as it had when he took over in February 2017.But Mr. Perez, who was urged to seek the party chairmanship by former President Barack Obama after serving under him as labor secretary, hardly had a smooth tenure. He faced internal dissent in 2018 for stripping superdelegates of their voting power in presidential contests and took public and private fire throughout 2019 from more than half of the party’s two dozen presidential candidates, who bellyached about, among other things, standards that Mr. Perez had set to qualify for debates.Mr. Perez spoke with The New York Times on Thursday about his experience running the party, the results of last year’s elections and his future political plans. His final day working for the party committee was Friday. The interview has been lightly edited and condensed.Do you think that the D.N.C. should have devoted more attention and resources to down-ballot contests given the results in state legislative and congressional races?The thing about this election cycle that is really regrettable is that we had record turnout. And we should be celebrating that on a bipartisan basis, because we did really well. We won the presidency. We have the House. We have the Senate. And Republicans won in a number of critical races. That’s undeniable. They won a number of Senate seats. They won a number of congressional seats. And they won because a lot of their people turned out. And instead, what Donald Trump and the far right chose to do is to invest in this fiction that there was some sort of massive voter fraud, which is inaccurate.The reality is we won a series of really important races. And they won a number of down-ballot races. Those are the facts of 2020. And that’s why we’re absolutely drilling down deeper to answer the question of how did we do well for Mark Kelly and Joe Biden in Arizona and not so well in some of the State House and State Senate races. Really important question. It certainly wasn’t for lack of investment. And that’s why we’re looking to understand what else do we have to do.Why was Latino support for Democrats so much softer in 2020 after four years of Trump than it was in 2016 and elections before that?Do we need to do more with Latino voters? Absolutely. And I am very committed to that. We did more than the party has ever done. But again, every cycle, we need to build on what we did before. And that’s exactly what we will do. The misinformation campaigns in South Florida were very real. And they involved both domestic and foreign actors.And the appeals to socialism in South Florida were more successful. They made those same socialism arguments in Arizona. But they fell flat. And they fell flat, in no small measure, because we had a really aggressive and longstanding organizing infrastructure in Arizona that enabled us to counteract that.Will the 2022 and 2024 elections be a referendum on President Biden’s handling of the pandemic and the economy?What voters are going to ask themselves is the same question they always ask. “Am I better off than I was two years ago? Am I seeing results that are improving my life?” As they are able to return to normalcy, whatever normalcy is going to look like post-Covid, I think that they will appreciate that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris led during this crisis.Should Iowa and New Hampshire keep going first in the presidential nominating process?That will be up to the D.N.C.’s Rules and Bylaws Committee.I’m aware. But what does the private citizen Tom Perez think?A diverse state or states need to be first. The difference between going first and going third is really important. We know the importance of momentum in Democratic primaries.I’ll try one more time. Could you make a case for defending Iowa and New Hampshire going first?The status quo is clearly unacceptable. To simply say, “Let’s just continue doing this because this is how we’ve always done it,” well, Iowa started going as an early caucus state, I believe, in 1972. The world has changed a lot since 1972 to 2020 and 2024. And so the notion that we need to do it because this is how we’ve always done it is a woefully insufficient justification for going first again.This is the Democratic Party of 2020. It’s different from the Democratic Party in how we were in 1972. And we need to reflect that change. And so I am confident that the status quo is not going to survive.How far down the road are you in thinking about running for governor of Maryland?I’m seriously considering a run for governor in Maryland.We need a governor who can really build strong relationships with the Biden administration, will build strong relationships with every one of the jurisdictions in Maryland.Marylanders are just like everybody else. We want an end to this pandemic. We want to put kids back to school. We want to put people back to work. The pandemic has disproportionately touched women and communities of color in Maryland. And I’ve had the fortune of working in local government, and with the nonprofit faith communities and state government there.So I’m currently listening. I’m on a listening tour in Maryland. And I think we need leadership, really, with a bold vision of inclusion and opportunity because ZIP code should never determine destiny in any community across America.Has Larry Hogan been a good governor for Maryland?I appreciate the fact that Larry Hogan has said critical things about Donald Trump. I appreciate that. What we really need, I think, in Maryland is leaders who will sweat the details of governance. The pandemic rollout, the vaccination process has been nothing less than chaotic in Maryland. We’ve had an unemployment insurance crisis, people waiting months and months to get their unemployment benefits. That’s just a failure of leadership at a state level.I didn’t hear a yes or no on Hogan.I applaud that he tried to get some tests from South Korea. But then it turned out that the tests didn’t work. And he covered it up. And there’s always going to be moments where mistakes are made. And good leaders fess up to those mistakes. But he tried to sweep it under the rug.Again, it’s great to see a governor who criticizes Donald Trump. But we need governors who do a hell of a lot more than just criticize.What would you be doing differently to accelerate vaccine distribution and reopen schools faster?I would be on the phone every day with county executives making sure: “What do you need? What do you not have? What do you have? What can we do?” I would be relentlessly reaching out to our colleagues in the federal government to say: “Here’s what we need. Here’s what’s going on.” I would have a war room set up and, again, every single day, say: “You value what you measure. You measure what you value. What are we doing?”Donald Trump is partly to blame for this. He was a disaster. But you look at other states — other states have been able to work around that and are doing better. Our vaccination rates do not compare well. We’re the richest state in the United States — Maryland — but we have way too many people who are on the outside looking in.You said good leaders admit their mistakes. What were the biggest mistakes you made at the D.N.C.?I wish that we could have won more elections. And so I’m looking back at what we did and some of the races we didn’t win. I was really frustrated in January and early February of 2017, because Donald Trump was in power and he was issuing all sorts of executive actions that were turning life upside down for so many people. That was in the middle of the D.N.C. race because the election wasn’t set until the end of February. So we got a late start. And I think that was a mistake.It was frustrating to see Feb. 27, a month into the administration, and I’m just showing up at work for the first time. So I think we have to be very mindful. And if there are periods of time in the future where we’re in a similar situation, where we’ve lost the White House, we better make sure we start early because I had to play a lot of catch-up. And that was a mistake.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More