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      Trump’s Legacy: Voters Who Reject Democracy and Any Politics but Their Own

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Presidential TransitionliveLatest UpdatesCalls for Impeachment25th Amendment ExplainedTrump Officials ResignHow Mob Stormed CapitolAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyTrump’s Legacy: Voters Who Reject Democracy and Any Politics but Their OwnThe mob attack on the Capitol, and interviews with Trump voters this week, show that the president’s subversion of democratic values will have enduring influence within the Republican Party.Candy Grossi, a supporter of President Trump, said she was fed up with most elected Republicans and trusted only information from One America News Network, the far-right channel.Credit…Audra Melton for The New York TimesJan. 9, 2021Updated 9:54 a.m. ETThe sight of a violent mob inspired by President Trump smashing its way into the Capitol was more than just a shocking spectacle. It also highlighted one of the most dangerous parts of Mr. Trump’s legacy: the disbelief in democracy that has metastasized among many of his supporters.While the turmoil on Wednesday has divided Republican officials, with some resigning or calling for Mr. Trump to leave office and others rallying behind him, there are few signs of division among these voters who fervently back Mr. Trump. In lengthy interviews with some of them this week, they expressed sympathy with what they said were the motives of the mob — to stop the counting of Electoral College results in Congress, under the false premise that widespread fraud had deprived the president of re-election.The adherence of Mr. Trump’s base to his groundless claims of a “sacred landslide” victory, and their rejection of a routine Constitutional process — a position abetted by 147 Congressional Republicans who objected to certifying Mr. Biden’s election — suggests that a core part of the Republican Party, both voters and some officials, is dead-set on rejecting the legitimacy of any politics or party but their own.Trump supporters clashed with police during the riots at the Capitol on Wednesday.Credit…Kenny Holston for The New York Times“Yes, they’re raising Cain,’’ Candy Grossi, a grandmother in Georgia, said of her fellow Trump supporters as rioters breached the Capitol on Wednesday, offering a running commentary on what she was seeing on television.“We are fed up. There are so many people fed up with how crooked it is,” she said. “I really don’t have respect for our Congress anymore. They deep-sixed the president. It’s the first time in history I’ve seen one’s own party treat their president the way they did — it’s shameful.’’Ms. Grossi, 65, a retired apartment manager and a self-published author, said she did not condone the violence in the Capitol, which left an officer and a rioter dead. But she shared the mob’s rage over what she, and they, falsely called a stolen election, and their powerlessness to stop the presidency of Joseph R. Biden Jr.“People are tired,’’ she said. “It doesn’t seem to matter what we do.”In the interviews, Trump supporters adamantly clung to what they called evidence of a fraudulent election, engaged in so-called whataboutism to play down the scenes of destruction in Washington and accused the news media of being overly melodramatic in describing events as a historic inflection.Mitchell Hoyt, a Trump voter in Wisconsin, objected when a reporter referred to the “storming” of the Capitol.“The people didn’t show up with guns trying to overthrow the government, but the media likes to spin it that way,’’ he said. Though he said he believed the break-in and vandalism at the Capitol were “not a good representation of conservatism in this country,” he added: “I don’t think those people should be demonized. They’re angry and when people don’t think they have a voice that can be heard, stuff like this happens.”Mr. Hoyt, a commercial producer of maple syrup in northern Wisconsin, claimed the mainstream news media and the left used a double standard in what he called uncritical coverage last year of the protests over police killings of Black Americans that included episodes of burning and looting.“It’s not palatable,’’ he said. “People are not going to accept it.”Since Mr. Trump first ran for president more than five years ago, his critics have been predicting that one or another of his norm-shattering acts would send droves of his supporters fleeing. It has never happened. The interviews with Trump voters suggest that even his assault on the most bedrock norm of American democracy — the peaceful transition of power — may still not bring about mass defections.For these voters, the lack of allegiance to small “d” democratic values seemed to stem, in part, from the shift among many Republicans to imbibing information from sources that offer propaganda rather than news and facts. The share of Republicans who trust the mass media has plunged in the Trump years to 10 percent, according to Gallup. A majority of Republicans believe Mr. Trump was robbed of the election.The Presidential TransitionLatest UpdatesUpdated Jan. 8, 2021, 10:32 p.m. ETMore national security officials resign from a White House in turmoil.A judge has blocked Trump’s sweeping restrictions on asylum applications.Josh Hawley faces blowback for role in spurious challenge of election results.Mr. Hoyt praised The Epoch Times, a leading purveyor of right-wing misinformation, because “they just give you the facts of what’s happening.” For Ms. Grossi, One America News Network, the far-right channel that spreads conspiracy theories, is the only information source she trusts. She also follows QAnon, the baseless conspiracy movement that links top Democrats to child sex trafficking.But she is also fed up with most elected Republicans. “All of them were anti-Trump — except for the American public,’’ she said.On Friday, at Ronald Reagan National Airport in Washington, a group of die-hard Trump supporters yelled “traitor” and “liar” at Senator Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican, for failing to more aggressively back the president’s claims of a rigged election.Another likely factor that leads to delegitimizing political opponents among Trump supporters is the scorched-earth attacks on Democratic candidates during elections. Most recently, Mr. Biden and his vice-presidential running mate, Kamala Harris, were falsely tied to “socialism” and the most far-left positions on energy policy and health care.Eileen Lelich, a retired dental assistant in western Pennsylvania, disagreed that the storming of the Capitol was an “insurrection incited by the president,’’ as Senator Mitt Romney of Utah, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, described it.“I wouldn’t say that,’’ said Ms. Lelich, who called herself a staunch backer of the president. “The Trump supporters are Trump supporters. They want answers. They want to know what happened” with the election. Despite more than 60 court cases dismissing the president’s claims of fraud or misconduct by election officials, Ms. Lelich did not believe Mr. Biden had won her state. She credulously absorbed the Republican attacks on the Democratic ticket, in which Mr. Biden was portrayed as doddering and Ms. Harris as a left-wing extremist.“Biden’s not a bad guy, he’s a good person,’’ Ms. Lelich, 60, said. “But if Kamala Harris takes over, I don’t know what’s going to happen.”“I’m very worried about our world,’’ she added. “I don’t want to go into socialism.’’A legacy of the Trump era is a core of the G.O.P. who reject the tenets of democracy and the legitimacy of any politics or party but their own.Credit…Jason Andrew for The New York TimesSome members of the president’s base said they would view Mr. Biden as illegitimately occupying the Oval Office, a further polarization of Americans after years when some Democrats questioned or denied Mr. Trump’s legitimacy. In the view of many Trump supporters, the president was never given a chance to govern — he was besieged from Day 1 by claims of Russian collusion, fierce obstruction of his priorities and, ultimately, an impeachment.“If they do get Joe Biden sworn in, I think we’re in for a very turbulent time because I don’t think many people are going to accept it,’’ said Jacob Hanna, a Trump supporter in northeast Pennsylvania. “We had dead people voting, illegal aliens voting, and we’re supposed to sit here and say he’s a legitimate president — it’s just not right.’’Mr. Hanna, 19, was a poll worker in his rural township not far from Mr. Biden’s birth city of Scranton, and he cannot accept that Mr. Biden won honestly.“We were swamped, we had over 250 people in line,’’ he said, adding confidently that few were Biden backers. “It’s mind-boggling for me to believe we go to bed 800,000 votes ahead and we wake up, and after these magic ballots dumped overnight, we’re somehow losing.”Such disinformation, which has spread widely online, has been debunked by election analysts, who explain that mail-in ballots counted more slowly over several days heavily favored Mr. Biden after the president made their use toxic to his supporters.Robert Fuller of Georgia remained so furious about the election that he foresaw an America casting off from its deepest moorings. “We’ll be lucky if we still have a country left after this,’’ he said, citing false claims of election fraud that the president had ranted about over the weekend on a recorded call to Georgia’s top election official, a Republican.“I foresee a civil war coming, Republicans against Democrats,’’ Mr. Fuller said. “You know as well as I do they stuffed the ballots in the states of Georgia, Nevada, Arizona and Michigan.”In Georgia’s Senate runoff elections on Tuesday, Mr. Fuller, 65, supported the Republicans Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, both of whom lost. The victors — the Rev. Raphael Warnock, who will be the first Black senator from Georgia, and Jon Ossoff, who will be the Senate’s youngest member — secured control of the chamber for Democrats.Mr. Fuller does not consider either winner legitimate. Not because they didn’t win the most votes, but because of their political views, which were caricatured during the race as far left of center.“If they were legitimate Democrats it wouldn’t be a problem, but they’re not legitimate,’’ he said. Parroting comments that Mr. Trump made at a rally in Georgia on the eve of the election, he added: “Warnock is a Marxist and Ossoff is a communist, as far as I’m concerned. Might as well let the Chinese take over the country the way things are going.’’AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      The G.O.P.’s New Distancing Policy

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Presidential TransitionliveLatest UpdatesCalls for Impeachment25th Amendment ExplainedTrump Officials ResignHow Mob Stormed CapitolAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyOn Politics With Lisa LererThe G.O.P.’s New Distancing PolicyAfter years of excusing or ignoring President Trump’s most inflammatory rhetoric, many Republicans are backing away at the last minute.Jan. 9, 2021, 7:00 a.m. ETHi. Welcome to On Politics, your wrap-up of the week in national politics. I’m Lisa Lerer, your host.Sign up here to get On Politics in your inbox every weekday.“Enough is enough,” says Senator Lindsey Graham.Credit…Jonathan Ernst/ReutersFirst came the mob’s deadly rioting. Then the G.O.P.’s reputation laundering.With less than two weeks left in the Trump administration, a number of Republicans are experiencing some last-minute revelations about the president’s character, inflammatory rhetoric and polarizing leadership of the country.“All I can say is, count me out. Enough is enough. I’ve tried to be helpful,” said Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, one of President Trump’s strongest allies, who once promised “earth-shattering” revelations of voter fraud that he falsely argued had cost Mr. Trump the election. Now, after the violent breach of the Capitol this past week, Mr. Graham is refusing to rule out using the 25th Amendment to strip his former friend of his presidential powers.Mr. Graham is far from alone in scurrying away from all the praise he’s lavished on the president over the past four years. As a shaken Washington recovered from the violent attack on the Capitol, Republicans embraced the traditional tools of political self-preservation, offering resignations and strongly worded letters, anonymously sourced accounts of shouting matches and after-the-fact public condemnations.Administration officials anonymously spread the word, through Axios, that they would defy any requests from Mr. Trump that “they believe would put the nation at risk or break the law,” raising the obvious question of whether they would have carried out illegal or dangerous orders over the past four years.Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos quit their posts, saying they were “deeply troubled” by the president’s handling of the riot. Ms. Chao, it’s worth noting, stood next to Mr. Trump at the 2017 news conference where he insisted that “both sides” deserved blame after white supremacists incited deadly violence in Charlottesville, Va.At least seven lower-ranking members of the Trump administration also resigned, while many more fretted that they would be unemployable.“Now it will always be, ‘Oh yeah, you work for the guy who tried to overtake the government,’” said Mick Mulvaney, the president’s former acting chief of staff who resigned Wednesday as special envoy to Northern Ireland.Mr. Mulvaney told CNBC that the president was “not the same as he was eight months ago,” when they spoke more frequently. Left unstated was whether Mr. Trump was the same as he was four years ago, when Mr. Mulvaney called him a “terrible human being” ahead of the 2016 election.Mr. Mulvaney’s journey with the president highlights one of the most striking features of the ongoing Republican revisionism. Many in the G.O.P. warned publicly during the 2016 campaign that Mr. Trump was fomenting exactly the kind of violence that the country witnessed on Wednesday — concerns that were quickly set aside once he took office.The Presidential TransitionLatest UpdatesUpdated Jan. 8, 2021, 10:32 p.m. ETMore national security officials resign from a White House in turmoil.A judge has blocked Trump’s sweeping restrictions on asylum applications.Josh Hawley faces blowback for role in spurious challenge of election results.Of course, some Republican officials may be truly horrified by Mr. Trump’s egging on of his supporters on Wednesday and his refusal to take immediate action to stop a violent takeover of the Capitol. Many of those same Republicans frequently offered private condemnations of his actions throughout his presidency — objections they studiously kept off the record.But with less than 275 hours left in the Trump presidency, it’s hard not to see the political posturing embedded in their now-public condemnations.Many inside and outside Washington are setting their sights on the new political reality to come with a Democratic-controlled government. After years of declining to police Mr. Trump’s falsehood-filled and threatening social media posts, Twitter on Friday permanently suspended his @realDonaldTrump account “due to the risk of further incitement of violence.” Mark Zuckerberg had earlier barred the president from Facebook and Instagram through at least the end of his term.Many of Mr. Zuckerberg’s employees noted that Democrats had secured control of the Senate before he took the action.But at this point, it’s an open question whether any powerful Republicans will pay a serious price for their implicit or explicit support of Mr. Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric and dalliances with violence. So far, the penalties seem to be measured mostly in bad media coverage.Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri, who championed efforts to overturn the results of the presidential election, was publicly disowned by his political mentor, disavowed by some of his donors and dropped by his book publisher — a move he blamed on a “woke mob.” Other elected Republicans were condemned by their hometown newspapers in scathing editorials. Cracks even emerged in Rupert Murdoch’s media empire as The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, which has been a regular Trump cheerleader for years, called on the president to resign.Meanwhile, Democrats are pressing for resignations and permanent bans from the public sector for Trump aides, supporters and allies. Many would like to see criminal prosecutions once President-elect Joe Biden takes office. Some are even pushing to rid the federal government of all political appointees and civil servants who supported Mr. Trump.It’s unclear whether Mr. Biden will back such efforts. Tough investigations into the previous administration could complicate his campaign promise to unite the country and his ability to get Republican support for his legislative goals. On Friday, he avoided expressing views on specific punitive actions, saying that he’d leave those judgments to his Justice Department and that voters should determine the future of politicians like Mr. Hawley and Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, another Trump ally who backed the effort to overturn the election results.For all the Republicans attempting to distance themselves from the president, 147 of them still voted to reject the results even after the siege of the Capitol. Since then, a segment of the party has embarked upon an effort to reshape reality, downplaying the violence and suggesting that far-left activists had infiltrated the crowd and posed as fans of the president.This is obviously ridiculous: The rioters discussed plans to invade the Capitol for weeks in public social media posts. And Mr. Trump didn’t blame antifa for the rampage — instead, he told the mob, “We love you.” Still, those claims will echo through right-wing media, major news sources for the large number of activists and voters who remain loyal to Mr. Trump.Some Republicans may be trying to jump off the Trump train at the final station. But they’ve already spent years helping fuel the engine.Were you forwarded this newsletter? Sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox.Thanks for reading. On Politics is your guide to the political news cycle, delivering clarity from the chaos.Is 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.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Democrats Ready Impeachment Charge Against Trump for Inciting Capitol Mob

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Presidential TransitionliveLatest UpdatesCalls for Impeachment25th Amendment ExplainedTrump Officials ResignHow Mob Stormed CapitolAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyDemocrats Ready Impeachment Charge Against Trump for Inciting Capitol MobSpeaker Nancy Pelosi threatened decisive action against the president for his role in the insurrection against Congress if he refused to resign.“If the president does not leave office imminently and willingly, the Congress will proceed with our action,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi wrote in a letter on Friday.Credit…Anna Moneymaker for The New York TimesNicholas Fandos, Maggie Haberman and Jan. 8, 2021Updated 10:08 p.m. ETWASHINGTON — Democrats laid the groundwork on Friday for impeaching President Trump a second time, as Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California threatened to bring him up on formal charges if he did not resign “immediately” over his role in inciting a violent mob attack on the Capitol this week.The threat was part of an all-out effort by furious Democrats, backed by a handful of Republicans, to pressure Mr. Trump to leave office in disgrace after the hourslong siege by his supporters on Wednesday on Capitol Hill. Although he has only 12 days left in the White House, they argued he was a direct danger to the nation.Ms. Pelosi and other top Democratic leaders continued to press Vice President Mike Pence and the cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment to wrest power from Mr. Trump, though Mr. Pence was said to be against it. The speaker urged Republican lawmakers to pressure the president to resign immediately. And she took the unusual step of calling Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to discuss how to limit Mr. Trump’s access to the nation’s nuclear codes and then publicized it.“If the president does not leave office imminently and willingly, the Congress will proceed with our action,” Ms. Pelosi wrote in a letter to colleagues.At least one Republican, Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, followed Ms. Pelosi’s lead and told The Anchorage Daily News that she was considering leaving the Republican Party altogether because of Mr. Trump.“I want him out,” she said. “He has caused enough damage.”At the White House, Mr. Trump struck a defiant tone, insisting that he would remain a potent force in American politics as aides and allies abandoned him and his post-presidential prospects turned increasingly bleak. Behind closed doors, he made clear that he would not resign and expressed regret about releasing a video on Thursday committing to a peaceful transition of power and condemning the violence at the Capitol that he had egged on a day before.He said on Twitter on Friday morning that he would not attend President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s inauguration, the first incumbent in 150 years to skip his successor’s swearing-in. Hours later, Twitter “permanently suspended” his beloved account, which had more than 88 million followers, “due to the risk of further incitement of violence.”Federal law enforcement officials announced charges against at least 13 people in connection with the storming of the Capitol, including Richard Barnett, 60, of Gravette, Ark., who had posted a picture of himself on social media sitting at Ms. Pelosi’s desk during the mayhem with his feet up on her desk, and a Republican state delegate from West Virginia.Among enraged Democrats, an expedited impeachment appeared to be the most attractive option to remove Mr. Trump and register their outrage at his role in encouraging what became an insurrection. Roughly 170 of them in the House had signed onto a single article that Representatives David Cicilline of Rhode Island, Ted Lieu of California, Jamie Raskin of Maryland and others intended to introduce on Monday, charging the president with “willfully inciting violence against the government of the United States.”Democratic senators weighed in with support, and some Republicans appeared newly open to the idea. Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska indicated he would be amenable to considering articles of impeachment at a trial. A spokesman for Senator Susan Collins of Maine said she was “outraged” by Mr. Trump’s role in the violence, but could not comment on an impeachment case given the possibility she could soon be sitting in the jury.Even Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader and one of Mr. Trump’s most influential allies for the past four years, told confidants he was done with Donald Trump. Mr. McConnell did not directly weigh on a possible impeachment case, but he circulated a memo to senators making clear that under the Senate’s current rules, no trial could effectively be convened before Jan. 20, after Mr. Trump leaves office and Mr. Biden is sworn in, unless all 100 senators agreed to allow it sooner.It was a fitting denouement for a president who, despite years of norm-shattering behavior, has acted largely without consequence throughout his presidency, showing no impulse to change his ways, despite being impeached in Congress, defeated at the ballot box and now belatedly shunned by some members of his own party.By Friday evening, Ms. Pelosi had not made a final decision on whether to proceed with impeachment and was wary of rushing into such a momentous step. She issued a statement saying she had instructed the House Rules Committee to be ready to move ahead with either an impeachment resolution or legislation creating a nonpartisan panel of experts envisaged in the 25th Amendment to consult with Mr. Pence about the president’s fitness to serve.Democrats agreed it was logistically possible to vote on articles of impeachment as soon as next week, but they were weighing how to justify bypassing the usual monthslong deliberative process of collecting documents, witnesses and the president’s defense. Others worried that Mr. Trump’s base would rally more forcefully around him if Democrats pushed forward with impeaching him again, undermining their goal of relegating the 45th president to the ash heap of history.Republicans who only days before had led the charge to overturn Mr. Trump’s electoral defeat said impeaching him now would shatter the unity that was called for after the Capitol siege.Workers on Friday in the Capitol preparing for President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s inauguration ceremony.Credit…Anna Moneymaker for The New York Times“Impeaching the president with just 12 days left in his term will only divide our country more,” said Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the Republican leader, just a day after he voted twice to overturn Mr. Biden’s legitimate victory in key swing states.Judd Deere, a White House spokesman, issued a nearly identical statement.Democrats, too, were concerned about plunging Washington into a divisive, time-consuming and politically fraught drama that would overshadow and constrain Mr. Biden’s agenda and stomp on his attempt to unify the country.The Presidential TransitionLatest UpdatesUpdated Jan. 8, 2021, 9:42 p.m. ETA judge has blocked Trump’s sweeping restrictions on asylum applications.Josh Hawley faces blowback for role in spurious challenge of election results.Read the draft of a leading article of impeachment against Trump.During an appearance in Wilmington, Del., Mr. Biden declined to directly weigh in on plans to impeach Mr. Trump saying, “What the Congress decides to do is for them to decide.” But he made clear his energies were being spent elsewhere. “If we were six months out, we should be moving everything to get him out of office — impeaching him again, trying to invoke the 25th Amendment, whatever it took to get him out of office,” Mr. Biden said. “But I am focused now on us taking control as president and vice president on the 20th and get our agenda moving as quickly as we can.”Mr. Trump had told advisers in the days before the march that he wanted to join his supporters in going to the Capitol, but White House officials said no, according to people briefed on the discussions. The president had also expressed interest beforehand in calling in the National Guard to hold off anti-Trump counterprotesters who might show up, the people said, only to turn around and resist calls for bringing those troops in after the rioting by his loyalists broke out.On Friday, Mr. Biden had harsh criticism for Senators Josh Hawley of Missouri and Ted Cruz of Texas, Republicans who had lodged objections to his Electoral College victory on Wednesday amid the mayhem at the Capitol. As some leading Senate Democrats called on them to resign, Mr. Biden said the pair had perpetuated the “big lie” that his election had been fraudulent, comparing it to the work of the Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels.The recriminations played out on a day when workers in the Capitol were literally repairing the damage that had been done two days before, when a mob of supporters, egged on by Mr. Trump, stormed the Capitol as lawmakers were formalizing Mr. Biden’s electoral victory. Lawmakers mourned the death of a Capitol Police officer who succumbed to injuries sustained while defending the building.From the same office ransacked by the mob, Ms. Pelosi was working furiously on Friday to try to contain Mr. Trump. She urged Republicans to follow the model of Watergate, when members of their party prevailed upon President Richard M. Nixon to resign and avoid the ignominy of an impeachment.She also said she had spoken with General Milley about “preventing an unstable president from initiating military hostilities or accessing the launch codes.”A spokesman for General Milley, Col. Dave Butler, confirmed that the two had spoken and said the general had “answered her questions regarding the process of nuclear command authority.” But some Defense Department officials have privately expressed anger that political leaders seemed to be trying to get the Pentagon to do the work of Congress and cabinet secretaries, who have legal options to remove a president.While military officials can refuse to carry out orders they view as illegal, they cannot proactively remove the president from the chain of command. That would be a military coup, these officials said.Ms. Pelosi elaborated on her thinking in a private call with House Democrats, indicating she was particularly concerned about Mr. Trump’s behavior while he remained commander in chief of the armed forces, with the authority to order nuclear strikes.“He’s unhinged,” Ms. Pelosi, according to Democrats familiar with her remarks. “We aren’t talking about anything besides an unhinged person.”She added: “We can’t move on. If we think we can move on then we are failing the American people.”Democrats appeared to be largely united after the call, which lasted more than three hours, that the chamber needed to send a strong message to Americans and the world that Mr. Trump’s rhetoric and the violence that resulted from it would not go unanswered.Ms. Pelosi had asked one of her most trusted deputies who prosecuted Democrats’ first impeachment case against Mr. Trump, Representative Adam B. Schiff of California, to give a frank assessment of the potential drawbacks of impeachment during the session.Mr. Schiff did so, but later issued a statement saying, “Congress should act to begin impeachment proceedings as the only instrument wholly within our power to remove a president who has so manifestly and repeatedly violated the Constitution and put our nation at grave risk.”At least one Democrat, Representative Kurt Schrader, a centrist from Oregon, argued against impeachment, likening the move to an “old-fashioned lynching” of Mr. Trump, and arguing it would turn the president into a martyr. He later apologized for the analogy.A bipartisan group of centrist senators, including several who helped draft a stimulus compromise last month, discussed the possibility of drafting a formal censure resolution against Mr. Trump. But it was unclear if a meaningful attempt to build support for censure would get off the ground, especially with Democrats pushing for a stiffer punishment.After years of deference to the president, leading Republicans in Congress made no effort to defend him, and some offered stinging rebukes. At least a few appeared open to the possibility of impeachment, which if successful could also disqualify Mr. Trump from holding political office in the future.Mr. Sasse said he would “definitely consider whatever articles they might move because I believe the president has disregarded his oath of office.”“He swore an oath to the American people to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution — he acted against that,” Mr. Sasse said on CBS. “What he did was wicked.”Senior Republican aides predicted other senators could adopt a similar posture, so deep was their fury at Mr. Trump. But they held back publicly, waiting to better understand a volatile and rapidly evolving situation.If the House did impeach, and the Senate put Mr. Trump on trial, 17 Republicans or more would most likely have to join Democrats to win a conviction. That was a politically perilous and unlikely decision given his continued hold on millions of the party’s voters.At the same time Republicans in Washington were chastising Mr. Trump, the Republican National Committee re-elected Ronna McDaniel, a Trump ally and his handpicked candidate, as its chairwoman for another term, and Tommy Hicks Jr., a close friend of Donald Trump Jr.’s, as the co-chairman.Political risks for Republicans breaking ranks were also on vivid display on Friday at National Airport near Washington, where several dozen jeering supporters of Mr. Trump accosted Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, angrily denouncing the Republican as a “traitor” and a “liar” for voting to formalize Mr. Biden’s victory.“It’s going to be like this forever, wherever you go, for the rest of your life,” one woman taunted to Mr. Graham, who had been one of Mr. Trump’s leading Senate allies and had initially humored his baseless claims of widespread election fraud.Nicholas Fandos More

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      Running Out the Clock on Trump Is Cowardly and Dangerous

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyOpinionSupported byContinue reading the main storyRunning Out the Clock on Trump Is Cowardly and DangerousForget the 25th Amendment. It’s Congress that was attacked and Congress that must act.Opinion ColumnistJan. 8, 2021Members of the National Guard early on the morning after the Capitol was attacked.Credit…Todd Heisler/The New York TimesThe most shocking thing about Wednesday’s assault on the Capitol is that it happened. A mob of Trump supporters, some of them armed, stormed and vandalized both chambers of Congress, sending duly-elected lawmakers into hiding and interrupting the peaceful transition of power from one administration to the next.That this was whipped up by the president — “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women and we’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them” — makes it an actual attack on the separation of powers: an attempt, by the executive, to subvert the legislature by force and undermine the foundation of constitutional government.Nearly as shocking as the attack itself has been the response from Congress. On Wednesday night, its members resumed their count of the electoral vote and certified Joe Biden as the next president of the United States. So far so good. But then they adjourned into recess. It was Thursday afternoon before the Democratic leadership — Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the soon-to-be Senate Majority leader, Chuck Schumer — called for the president’s removal. And even then, they urged the vice president, Mike Pence, to use the 25th Amendment to do it, with impeachment as a backstop.This is backward. A physical attack on Congress by violent Trump supporters egged on by the president demands a direct response from Congress itself. Impeachment and conviction is that response. To rely on the executive branch to get Trump out of the White House is to abdicate the legislature’s constitutional responsibility to check presidential lawbreaking.There’s also the question of those members of Congress, like Senators Ted Cruz of Texas and Josh Hawley of Missouri, who helped bring the president’s mob into fruition by backing the effort to contest and overturn the electoral vote, an effort they carried on even after the Capitol was breached and terrorized Wednesday. Even if it’s just a motion to censure, Congress needs to act.The alternative — to go slow, or worse, to take no action at all — will only create a sense of impunity. And American history offers ample evidence of how impunity in the face of mob violence can lead to something much worse than the chaos and mayhem on Wednesday. As it is, five people have died as a direct result of the mob attack on the Capitol.On Sept. 14, 1874, more than 3,500 members of the White League — a paramilitary force of ex-Confederates and Democratic partisans — seized control of the Louisiana state house in New Orleans, as well as the city hall and the arsenal. They aimed to depose Gov. William Pitt Kellogg, a Republican, and install his Democratic opponent from the previous election in 1872.It almost worked. White Leaguers overwhelmed an opposing force of Black state militia (led by James Longstreet, a Confederate general turned staunch supporter of the state’s Reconstruction government), took control of the city and even held an inauguration for the man, John McEnery, who would lead a “redeemed” Louisiana. Within days, however, news of the coup reached Washington, where an enraged President Ulysses S. Grant ordered troops to New Orleans. Rather than fight a pitched battle for control of the city, the White League surrendered, allowing Kellogg to return as governor shortly thereafter.There was no punishment for the men who planned this attempted coup. So there was no reason not to try again. After the 1876 election, the White League seized New Orleans for a second time, ensuring victory for Francis T. Nicholls, the Democratic candidate for governor, and effectively ending Reconstruction in the state.Just as important, the White League became a model for others in the South who sought an end to “Negro rule” in their states. In 1875, “White-Line” Democrats in Mississippi began a campaign of terror ahead of an election for state treasurer. They targeted Republican officials for assassination, sparked riots where Black citizens were beaten and killed, and sent armed vigilantes to break up campaign meetings and drive Black voters away from the polls. “Carry the election peaceably if we can,” declared one Democratic newspaper editor in the state, “forcibly if we must.”The next year, in South Carolina, white Democrats used a similar approach — violence, fraud and intimidation — to “redeem” the state from Republican control and to try to deliver its electoral votes to Samuel Tilden, the Democratic nominee for president.The toppling of Reconstruction was not the inevitable result of white racism. It was contingent on any number of factors, with uncontrolled violence near the top of the list. The vigilantes and paramilitaries — the White Leagues and Red shirts — operated with virtual impunity as they beat, killed and terrorized Black voters and their Republican allies. They demonstrated, again and again, that the state was weak and could be challenged and taken.Despite its violence, the mob on Wednesday was, in many respects, very silly. Once inside the Capitol, they took selfies with police and posed for photos with each other. There were livestreams and a few people even wore costumes. They also took the time to grab souvenirs; a podium here, a letter from the Speaker’s office there. It was a big game, a lark.But a lark can still have serious consequences. This particular mob successfully breached the Capitol in an effort, however inchoate, to install Donald Trump as president for a second time, against the will of the majority of voters and their electors. The mob failed to change the outcome of the election, but it showed the world what was possible. If the mob and its enablers — the president and his allies — walk away unpunished, then the mob will return.Again, five people are dead who were alive when Wednesday began. Next time, it might be dozens. Or hundreds. Next time, our government might not bounce back so easily. Here, Congress doesn’t need courage. It just needs a sense of self-preservation.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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      How New York’s Representatives Voted After the Capitol Riot

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      Trump incites mob at the Capitol on the same day as Democrats take Georgia

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyThe ArgumentSubscribe:Apple PodcastsGoogle PodcastsThe 46th: The End of Trump or the End of American Democracy?In the wake of the attack on the Capitol, Michelle Cottle joins Ross and Michelle to look at what comes next.With Ross Douthat and Michelle GoldbergMore episodes ofThe ArgumentJanuary 8, 2021  •  More

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      How The Capitol Attack Led Democrats to Demand Trump's Resignation

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Presidential TransitionliveLatest UpdatesCalls for Impeachment25th Amendment ExplainedTrump Officials ResignHow Mob Stormed CapitolAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCapitol Attack Leads Democrats to Demand That Trump Leave OfficeThe White House was propelled deeper into crisis as officials resigned in protest and prominent Republicans broke with the president after he incited a mob that assaulted Congress.National Guard troops on Thursday in front of the Capitol.Credit…Todd Heisler/The New York TimesPeter Baker and Jan. 7, 2021Updated 10:00 p.m. ETWASHINGTON — President Trump’s administration plunged deeper into crisis on Thursday as more officials resigned in protest, prominent Republicans broke with him and Democratic congressional leaders threatened to impeach him for encouraging a mob that stormed the Capitol a day earlier.What was already shaping up as a volatile final stretch to the Trump presidency took on an air of national emergency as the White House emptied out and some Republicans joined Speaker Nancy Pelosi and a cascade of Democrats calling for Mr. Trump to be removed from office without waiting the 13 days until the inauguration of President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.The prospect of actually short-circuiting Mr. Trump’s tenure in its last days appeared remote. Despite a rupture with Mr. Trump, Vice President Mike Pence privately ruled out invoking the disability clause of the 25th Amendment to sideline the president, as many had urged that he and the cabinet do, according to officials. Democrats suggested they could move quickly to impeachment, a step that would have its own logistical and political challenges.But the highly charged debate about Mr. Trump’s capacity to govern even for less than two weeks underscored the depth of anger and anxiety after the invasion of the Capitol that forced lawmakers to evacuate, halted the counting of the Electoral College votes for several hours and left four people dead.Ending a day of public silence, Mr. Trump posted a 2½-minute video on Twitter on Thursday evening denouncing the mob attack in a way that he had refused to do a day earlier. Reading dutifully from a script prepared by his staff, he declared himself “outraged by the violence, lawlessness and mayhem” and told those who broke the law that “you will pay.”While he did not give up his false claims of election fraud, he finally conceded defeat. “A new administration will be inaugurated on Jan. 20,” Mr. Trump acknowledged. “My focus now turns to ensuring a smooth, orderly and seamless transition of power. This moment calls for healing and reconciliation.”Mr. Trump initially resisted taping the video, agreeing to do it only after aides pressed him and he appeared to suddenly realize he could face legal risk for prodding the mob, coming shortly after the chief federal prosecutor for Washington left open the possibility of investigating the president for illegally inciting the attack by telling supporters to march on the Capitol and show strength.Pat A. Cipollone, the White House counsel, had warned Mr. Trump of just that danger on Wednesday as aides frantically tried to get the president to intervene and publicly call off rioters, which he did only belatedly, reluctantly and halfheartedly.“We are looking at all actors, not only the people who went into the building,” Michael R. Sherwin, the U.S. attorney in Washington, told reporters. Asked if that included Mr. Trump, he did not rule it out. “We’re looking at all actors,” he repeated. “If the evidence fits the elements of a crime, they’re going to be charged.”The president’s late, grudging video statement came after a day of disarray in the West Wing, where officials expressed growing alarm about the president’s erratic behavior and sought to keep more staff members from marching out the door. Aides hoped the latest statement would at least stanch the bleeding within Mr. Trump’s own party. Ivanka Trump, his eldest daughter, called lawmakers before it posted, promising it would reassure them.Despite the talk of healing, however, Mr. Trump quietly made plans to take a trip next week to the southwestern border to highlight his hard-line immigration policies, which have inflamed Washington over the years, according to a person briefed on the planning. He also told advisers he wanted to give a media exit interview, which they presumed might undercut any conciliatory notes.Washington remained on edge on Thursday, awakening as if from a nightmare that turned out to be real and a changed political reality that caused many to reassess the future. As debris was swept up, businesses and storefronts remained boarded up, thousands of National Guard troops began fanning out around the city and some of the participants in the attack were arrested. Amid scrutiny over the security breakdown, the Capitol Police chief and the Senate sergeant-at-arms resigned.The main focus, however, was on Mr. Trump. Ms. Pelosi and Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, called on Mr. Pence and the cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment. But after the vice president refused to take their telephone calls, Ms. Pelosi told reporters that she would pursue impeachment if he did not act.“While it’s only 13 days left, any day can be a horror show for America,” Ms. Pelosi said, calling Mr. Trump’s actions on Wednesday a “seditious act.”Speaker Nancy Pelosi called on Thursday for President Trump to be stripped of his powers through the 25th Amendment or to be impeached again.Credit…Jason Andrew for The New York Times“This president should not hold office one day longer,” said Mr. Schumer, who will become majority leader with the seating of two Democrats elected to the Senate in Georgia this week and the inauguration of Vice President-elect Kamala Harris as the tiebreaker.Mr. Biden would not address whether Mr. Trump should remain in office but called Wednesday “one of the darkest days in the history of our nation” and forcefully laid blame at the president’s feet after years of stirring the pot. “I wish we could say we couldn’t see it coming,” he said. “But that isn’t true. We could see it coming.”Even aides to Mr. Trump quietly discussed among themselves the possibility of invoking the 25th Amendment, and several prominent Republicans and Republican-leaning business groups endorsed the idea, including John F. Kelly, a former White House chief of staff to Mr. Trump; Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois; Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland; and Michael Chertoff, a former homeland security secretary under President George W. Bush.The conservative editorial page of The Wall Street Journal called on Mr. Trump to resign, terming his actions “impeachable.”But Mr. Pence, several cabinet secretaries and other administration officials concluded that the 25th Amendment was an unwieldy mechanism to remove a president, according to people informed about the discussions. The notion became even less plausible when two cabinet members — Elaine L. Chao, the transportation secretary, and Betsy DeVos, the education secretary — resigned in protest of the president’s encouragement of the mob.John R. Bolton, a former national security adviser to Mr. Trump who broke with him, said the idea was misguided. “People glibly have been saying it’s for situations like this,” he said in an interview. In fact, he said, the process of declaring a president unable to discharge his duties is drawn out and could lead to the chaos of having two people claiming to be president simultaneously.The Presidential TransitionLatest UpdatesUpdated Jan. 7, 2021, 9:15 p.m. ETBetsy DeVos, education secretary, is second cabinet member to resign.Here’s what Trump’s cabinet members have said about the storming of the Capitol.Lawmakers fear a coronavirus outbreak after sharing close quarters in lockdown.While an impeachment conviction would only strip Mr. Trump of his power days earlier than he is set to lose it anyway, it could also disqualify him from running again in 2024. And even if another impeachment might not be any more successful than the first one, in which he was acquitted by the Senate last year in the Ukraine pressure scheme, advocates argued that the mere threat of it could serve as a deterrent for the remaining days of his tenure.The latest danger signs may only encourage Mr. Trump to pardon himself before leaving office, an idea he had raised with aides even before the Capitol siege, according to two people with knowledge of the discussions.In several conversations since Election Day, Mr. Trump has told advisers that he is considering giving himself a pardon and, in other instances, asked whether he should and what the effect would be on him legally and politically, according to the two people.Mr. Trump has shown signs that his level of interest in pardoning himself goes beyond idle musings. He has long maintained he has the power to pardon himself, and his survey of aides’ views is typically a sign that he is preparing to follow through on his aims. He has also become increasingly convinced that his perceived enemies will use the levers of law enforcement to target him after he leaves office.Despite ransacking the Capitol, the mob failed to stop Congress from counting the Electoral College votes in the final procedural stage of the election held Nov. 3. After the rioters were cleared from the building, lawmakers voted down efforts by Mr. Trump’s Republican allies to block electors from swing states and formally sealed Mr. Biden’s victory at 3:41 a.m. Thursday with Mr. Pence presiding in his role as president of the Senate.A scarf left in the Capitol on Wednesday by a Trump supporter.Credit…Jason Andrew for The New York TimesThe bust of President Zachary Taylor appeared to have been smeared with blood in the Capitol.Credit…Jason Andrew for The New York TimesMr. Trump’s Twitter account was suspended for part of the day on Thursday before being restored, temporarily depriving him of that platform. But Facebook and Instagram barred him from their sites for the remainder of his presidency.Behind the scenes, Mr. Trump railed about Mr. Pence, who refused to use his position presiding over the electoral count to block it despite the president’s repeated demands.The vice president, who for four years had remained loyal to Mr. Trump to the point of obsequiousness, was angry in return at the president’s public lashing. Senator James M. Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma, told The Tulsa World that Mr. Pence privately expressed a sense of betrayal by Mr. Trump “after all the things I’ve done for him.”Even when the vice president had to be evacuated during the siege on Wednesday, the president never checked with him personally to make sure he was OK. The Secret Service agents wanted the vice president to leave the building, but he refused and sheltered in the basement, according to two officials. Congressional leaders were whisked to Fort McNair for their safety, but the vice president later urged them to finish the count at the Capitol.On Thursday, Mr. Pence did not go to the White House complex, instead working out of the vice-presidential residence, according to administration officials.He was not the only one feeling betrayed by the president. In the White House, aides were exasperated and despondent, convinced that Mr. Trump had effectively nullified four years of work and ensured that his presidency would be defined in history by the image of him sending a mob to the Capitol in an assault on democracy.Ms. Chao stepped down a day after her husband, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, forcefully repudiated Mr. Trump’s effort to overturn the election. “Yesterday, our country experienced a traumatic and entirely avoidable event as supporters of the president stormed the Capitol building following a rally he addressed,” she wrote in her resignation letter. “As I’m sure is the case with many of you, it has deeply troubled me in a way that I simply cannot set aside.”In her own letter, Ms. DeVos laid the responsibility for the mayhem directly at Mr. Trump’s feet. “There is no mistaking the impact your rhetoric had on the situation, and it is the inflection point for me,” she wrote, just a couple weeks after Mr. Trump pardoned four security contractors convicted of war crimes in Iraq committed while working for her brother, Erik Prince.Mr. Trump was barred from Twitter for much of the day on Thursday, and Facebook barred him for the remainder of his term.Credit…Erin Schaff/The New York TimesIn addition to three White House aides who resigned on Wednesday, others stepping down included Matthew Pottinger, the deputy national security adviser; Tyler Goodspeed, the acting chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers; and Mick Mulvaney, the former acting White House chief of staff, who has been serving as a special envoy to Northern Ireland.Also leaving were two other National Security Council aides as well as officials at the Justice and Commerce Departments. Gabriel Noronha, a Trump appointee who worked on Iran issues at the State Department official, was fired after tweeting that the president was “entirely unfit to remain in office.”“The events of yesterday made my position no longer tenable,” Mr. Goodspeed said in a brief interview. On CNBC, Mr. Mulvaney said, “I can’t stay here, not after yesterday.”Mr. Mulvaney went further, suggesting Mr. Trump had become increasingly unhinged in recent months. “Clearly he is not the same as he was eight months ago and certainly the people advising him are not the same as they were eight months ago and that leads to a dangerous sort of combination, as you saw yesterday,” he said.Former Attorney General William P. Barr, perhaps the president’s most important defender until stepping down last month after a falling out, denounced Mr. Trump. In a statement to The Associated Press, Mr. Barr said that the president’s actions were a “betrayal of his office and supporters” and that “orchestrating a mob to pressure Congress is inexcusable.”Even one of Mr. Trump’s lawyers in his bid to reverse the election results in Pennsylvania, Jerome M. Marcus, broke with him on Thursday, filing a motion withdrawing because “the client has used the lawyer’s services to perpetrate a crime and the client insists upon taking action that the lawyer considers repugnant and with which the lawyer has a fundamental disagreement.”But concern about the exodus grew among some officials, who feared what Mr. Trump could do without anyone around him and worried about destabilizing the United States in a dangerous world. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo; Robert C. O’Brien, the national security adviser; and John Ratcliffe, the director of national intelligence, among others, were urged to stay. Mr. Cipollone received calls from senators and cabinet members urging him to remain.“I understand the high emotions here,” former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in an interview, “but I hope that the national security team will stay in place because it’s important to send a signal to our adversaries that the United States is prepared and functioning and they shouldn’t try to take advantage at this time.”In the weeks since the election, Mr. Trump has shrunk his circle, shutting out those who told him to concede and favoring those telling him what he wanted to hear, that he was somehow cheated of the presidency. As supporters stormed into the Capitol on Wednesday, Mr. Trump was initially pleased, officials said, and disregarded aides pleading with him to intercede.Unable to get through to him, Mark Meadows, his chief of staff, sought help from Ivanka Trump. Former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, a longtime friend who has publicly criticized his efforts to invalidate the election results, tried to call Mr. Trump during the violence, but could not get through to him.The video that Mr. Trump eventually released on Wednesday justified the anger of the rioters even as he told them it was time to go home. Rather than condemn their action, he embraced them. “We love you,” he said. “You’re very special.”Mr. Christie said he believed that Mr. Trump deliberately encouraged the crowd to march on the Capitol as a way to put pressure on Mr. Pence to reject the election results during the congressional count.“Unfortunately, I think what the president showed yesterday is he believes he’s more important than the system, bigger than the office,” Mr. Christie told the radio show host Brian Kilmeade. “And I think he’s going to learn that that was a very, very big miscalculation.”Peter Baker More

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      Republicans Splinter Over Whether to Make a Full Break From Trump

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Presidential TransitionliveLatest UpdatesCalls for Impeachment25th Amendment ExplainedTrump Officials ResignHow Mob Stormed CapitolAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyRepublicans Splinter Over Whether to Make a Full Break From TrumpRepublicans face a disturbing prospect: that Wednesday’s Trump-inspired violence could linger for decades as a stain on the party.The chaos and violence caused by supporters of President Trump on Wednesday have convinced some Republicans they need to break with him for good.Credit…Jason Andrew for The New York TimesJonathan Martin and Jan. 7, 2021Updated 9:05 p.m. ETWASHINGTON — President Trump not only inspired a mob to storm the Capitol on Wednesday — he also brought the Republican Party close to a breaking point.Having lost the presidency, the House and now the Senate on Mr. Trump’s watch, Republicans are so deeply divided that many are insisting that they must fully break from the president to rebound.Those divisions were in especially sharp relief this week when scores of House Republicans sided with Mr. Trump in voting to block certification of the election — in a tally taken after the mob rampaged through the Capitol — while dozens of other House members and all but eight Republican senators refused to go along.Republicans who spent years putting off a reckoning with Mr. Trump over his dangerous behavior are now confronting a disturbing prospect: that Wednesday’s episode of violence, incited by Mr. Trump’s remarks, could linger for decades as a stain on the party — much as the Watergate break-in and the Great Depression shadowed earlier generations of Republicans.“His conduct over the last eight weeks has been injurious to the country and incredibly harmful to the party,” said Chris Christie, the former governor of New Jersey who was the first major Republican to endorse Mr. Trump.Mr. Christie said Republicans must “separate message from messenger,” because “I don’t think the messenger can recover from yesterday.”A small number of Republican officials who have been critical of Mr. Trump in the past, including Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois and two governors, Phil Scott of Vermont and Larry Hogan of Maryland, called for Mr. Trump’s removal from office.Top Republicans ran headlong into an immediate problem, though: Millions of Republican voters are seeking no such separation from Mr. Trump, nor are the House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, many of his House colleagues and state lawmakers around the country.For the moment at least, they are far more loyal to their lame-duck president than the traditional party leaders who preceded him.Still, spurred by the threat many of them felt to their physical safety, and reduced to a political minority following twin losses in Georgia’s Senate runoffs, a swelling group of Republican lawmakers and strategists said publicly what many in their ranks have long voiced privately: It is time to move on.“What happened in Georgia, what happened today are all indicative that we have to chart a course,” said Senator John Thune of South Dakota, the second-ranking Republican, who Mr. Trump has demanded be unseated in a primary next year. “I think our identity for the past several years was built around an individual, we got to get back to where it’s built on a set of principles and ideas and policies.”Mr. Thune added that “those conversations” must “happen pretty soon.”A handful of other Republican officials, including some who are also up for re-election next year, were even more critical.Asked if Republicans should cut ties with Mr. Trump, Representative Fred Upton of Michigan, a 34-year lawmaker, said, “After today I do.”Standing after midnight in a Capitol Rotunda still littered with the dirt and detritus left behind by the mob that breached the building, Mr. Upton said: “This is his legacy, not the tax cuts, not the judges. Today.”Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who Mr. Trump has also demanded be unseated, offered a measure of deadpan when she said Republicans should part ways with their divisive leader. “I think today is a pretty good reason why,” Ms. Murkowski said walking into a Senate chamber surrounded by machine gun-bearing law enforcement officers.Mr. Trump has targeted Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and others for primary challenges by more conservative Republicans.Credit…Anna Moneymaker for The New York TimesThe Republican crackup has been years in the making, but the party will hardly make a clean break — if it makes one at all.The gulf between Republican leaders and their grass-roots activists has never been wider since the start of the Trump era. And, as when the divisions first emerged after Mr. Trump denigrated Mexicans, Muslims and women, the party is not feuding over any sort of grand policy agenda. It’s simply a personal loyalty test.The Presidential TransitionLatest UpdatesUpdated Jan. 7, 2021, 9:15 p.m. ETBetsy DeVos, education secretary, is second cabinet member to resign.Here’s what Trump’s cabinet members have said about the storming of the Capitol.Lawmakers fear a coronavirus outbreak after sharing close quarters in lockdown.While veteran lawmakers were flatly urging a separation, more than 100 House Republicans, unpersuaded by the chaos in the Capitol, continued with their effort to block Congress from certifying President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory. Some adopted conspiracy theories from right-wing news outlets and social media that it was left-wing saboteurs carrying out a false flag operation who ravaged the halls of Congress.By Thursday morning, Mr. Trump was greeted with applause when he dialed into a breakfast at the winter meeting of the Republican National Committee, most of whose members have become a reflection of the party’s pro-Trump activist wing. On Friday, the committee was set to re-elect Mr. Trump’s handpicked committee chair with no opposition.When it comes to Mr. Trump, few better grasp the difficulty of balancing principle and political survival than Representative Chip Roy of Texas. A former chief of staff to Senator Ted Cruz, Mr. Roy broke with his former boss and was a leader in a group of House conservatives who resisted the president’s push to reject certification of Mr. Biden’s victory.“We are divided about even ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,’’’ Mr. Roy said in an impassioned speech on the House floor Wednesday night. He said those words once united the nation but now they “tear us apart because we disagree about what they even mean.’’Now Mr. Roy is facing opprobrium from many Trumpists and wrestling with how the party can harness Trump-inspired grass-roots energy without remaining a cult of personality.“If the Republican Party is centered solely on President Trump himself, we will fail,” he said. “But if we forget what it was about his message that appealed to people who are really frustrated, then we will also fail.”Representative Chip Roy of Texas was a leader in a group of House conservatives who resisted Mr. Trump’s push to reject the Electoral College certification.Credit…Pool photo by Bill ClarkRepublicans may recover next year the way minority parties usually do in a new president’s first midterm election — with an oppositional message against Democrats. But their longer-term challenges could prove harder to resolve. The party drifted from any unifying policy vision in the Trump years and memorably did not even create a party platform last year.Former Gov. Jon M. Huntsman Jr. of Utah, a Republican who served as Mr. Trump’s envoy to Russia, said the G.O.P. lacked a coherent set of priorities needed to make it a “relevant governing party.”“The party has to admit its failures and it has to bring party leadership from all demographics together in pursuit of a common agenda,” Mr. Huntsman said, adding, “We’ve got to basically start from a blank slate.”Some Republicans, particularly those who were always critical of Mr. Trump, are adamant that his exile will reveal him to be more of a spent force than a power broker. The president’s political legacy, they say, is one of defeat and division.“These antics have dampened enthusiasm for him and will diminish his influence even more,” said former Senator Jeff Flake, long an opponent of Mr. Trump.For a number of Republicans who have long been skeptical of Mr. Trump, the events of the last two months have been clarifying. From his initial refusal to concede defeat and his relentless attacks on Republican state officials, which undermined the party’s hopes for winning the Georgia Senate seats, to savaging lawmakers and his own vice president just hours before the Capitol riot, Mr. Trump has proved himself a political arsonist.“Trump is a political David Koresh,” said Billy Piper, a former chief of staff to the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, referring to the cult leader who died with his followers during an F.B.I. siege in Waco, Texas. “He sees the end coming and wants to burn it all down and take as many with him as possible.”The violence in Washington appeared to embolden an array of Republican lawmakers, including some who took office only days ago, to condemn Mr. Trump’s political recklessness and urge the party toward a different course. The party’s humiliating double losses in Georgia, the day after Mr. Trump appeared at a rally there, also served to punctuate the growing peril for Republicans in the fastest-growing, more culturally diverse parts of the country, which are on track to amass more political power in the coming decade.The party faces a threat to its financial base, too. Several of the most powerful business federations in Washington denounced the chaos this week in stinging language, including an extraordinary statement from the normally nonpolitical National Association of Manufacturers that suggested Mr. Pence invoke the 25th Amendment to remove the president from office. Representative Tom Reed of New York, who has emerged as a leader of more moderate Republicans in the House, said Thursday that the party needed to begin “not worrying about base politics as much, and standing up to that base.” He argued that Republicans should pursue compromise legislation with Mr. Biden on issues like climate change, and forecast that a sizable number of Republicans would take that path.“If that means standing up to the base in order to achieve something, they’ll do it,” Mr. Reed predicted.Mr. Reed warned his party that the Democrats would depict the G.O.P. as a dangerous party in 2022 if they did not rebut that charge.“They’re going to, obviously, paint us with the backdrop of yesterday,” he said, alluding to the mob violence.Representative Young Kim, a Republican elected two months ago to a purple seat in Southern California, said she had been “disgusted” by the Wednesday assault on the Capitol and blamed Mr. Trump for dishonestly telling his supporters that they had a chance to overturn the election.“The leaders at the top — in this case, our president — should have taken some responsibility and put down the flame before it ignited to the level that it did,” Ms. Kim said, adding of the mob: “People came because they listened to our leader, the president, telling us: Come to Washington, you have a vote, you have a voice, you can change the outcome. Well, that was simply not true.”Ms. Kim, who is one of a cohort of Republican female and minority candidates who helped the party cut deeply into the Democratic majority in the last election, acknowledged that she would most likely face “some blowback from the base” for voting to certify Mr. Biden’s election. But she said that should not be a primary consideration as Republicans emerge from the Trump era.“We need to be able to stand up and use our own independent judgment,” she said.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More