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      Republican Will Hurd on his failed quest for president: ‘I’m going to always look at this fondly’

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      Will Hurd wanted to be the most powerful man in the world. Like so many candidates before him, he knew the loneliness of the long distance runner criss-crossing Iowa and New Hampshire in a quest for votes that might make him president of the United States. But it was not be.This week Hurd called it a day after a campaign that failed to make much of a splash. Indeed, arguably his biggest headline came in July when he declared, “Donald Trump is running to stay out of prison,” and was roundly booed at the Iowa Republican Party’s Lincoln Dinner. Unrepentant, Hurd told them: “Listen, I know the truth is hard.”It was a telling moment that said much about the Republican party in 2023, cult-like in its devotion to Trump – he remains the runaway favourite for the nomination – and blocking its ears to dissenters making the case that it is time to move on from a doubly impeached, quadruply indicted septuagenarian.Still, in a phone interview from his home in San Antonio, Texas, Hurd – who got married last New Year’s Eve – insists that he has no regrets. “Look, running for president in my first year of marriage was incredibly difficult and it goes back to: why are you doing it?” he says. “For me, it was always very clear.“I’ve been lucky to have some amazing experiences and America is at an inflection point: if we want to make sure we leave this country better off for our kids, we’ve got to start making better decisions now. For me, that was always in my mind, that’s everything that I focused on when I woke up. It was never like, why the hell am I doing this? I knew exactly why I was doing this.”Hurd, 46, is no stranger to the campaign trail. He served three terms in the House of Representatives and was the chamber’s sole Black Republican during his final two years in office. He represented Texas’s then most competitive district, which was heavily Hispanic and stretched from the outskirts of San Antonio to El Paso, spanning more than 800 miles of US-Mexico border.But with the Republican party still in thrall to Trump, Hurd, a trenchant critic of the then president, chose not to seek re-election in 2020, saying he would instead focus his energies on technology companies in the national security domain. Last year he travelled the country promoting his book American Reboot: An Idealist’s Guide to Getting Big Things Done.Hurd was the last major candidate to join the already crowded Republican presidential primary field when he announced his run in late July. He campaigned as a pragmatic, pro-business moderate with strong national security credentials who was unafraid to seek bipartisan consensus. He took on the grind of countless hours on planes, in hotels and away from family with good grace.“What is it like to run for president?” he muses. “It’s a lot of travel. It’s a lot of interviews. I have the experience of running for Congress before but running for president, because you’re doing so much, is more raw and authentic. It’s not as staged as some of the other experiences I’ve had. To be in a position to run for president and be taken seriously was an honour. I’m going to always look at this experience fondly.”Hurd’s 14-week foray delivered moments he won’t soon forget. On 11 September he joined first responders and people from Iowa on a 21-mile walking salute to those who died in the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. At campaign stops, the crowds were often bigger than he expected or had experienced when hustling as a relative unknown in west Texas.“You’d meet some great people. I met this seven-year-old kid in New Hampshire who was super space and the fact that he asked his dad to travel like 90 minutes to come see me talk because he read something I wrote about space. That’s pretty big and cool.”Nine in 10 people in Iowa and New Hampshire are white. Democrats, for their part, have revised their 2024 presidential primary schedule, replacing Iowa with the more racially diverse South Carolina as the leadoff voting state. Hurd, the son of a Black father and white mother, has written about the racism he endured as a teenager and entitled the first part of his book: “The GOP needs to look like America.”But he denies encountering racial prejudice on the trail. “I did not experience any of that. The folks in Iowa and New Hampshire recognise and understand the important role they play in setting the tone of the country and part of that is why a dark horse candidate like me even had a chance to potentially try to catch fire.”Even so, it has been hard for anyone to find a divine spark when confronting the Trump forest fire that has consumed the Republican party for eight years. Florida governor Ron DeSantis’s challenge faded in recent months while other candidates struggled to transcend the quixotic.Asked if there was a moment when they all realised just how formidable Trump still is, notwithstanding his electoral setbacks and legal woes, Hurd replies: “I went in with that clear-minded. I knew that Donald Trump was starting with the largest base and in a place like New Hampshire I think that’s a third of the electorate, a third of the Republican primary voter.“But there’s more people that are considering somebody other than Donald Trump. There are other people that are frustrated with the direction both parties are going that want to be inspired. I also evaluate that in 2020 his support in the Republican primary electorate was 98% so he is without doubt damaged goods. People that voted for Donald Trump twice that still like him recognise his baggage is going to be more harmful than helpful.”What were Hurd’s conversations with Trump supporters like on the campaign trail – did he try to change their minds? “It’s funny, a couple times, especially in New Hampshire, you show up somewhere and someone’s wearing a Trump hat and then after you speak they’re like, ‘Can we get a picture?’ and they take the Trump hat off.“Supporters of other candidates – that’s their right and they should be proud of that. But the opportunity to articulate my positions was great and so I did that everywhere and people were open to having a conversation and I always engage people regardless of who they ultimately supported.“What makes this country great is to be able to have that competition of ideas and this experience proved to me, especially on the ground, we can disagree without being disagreeable and I saw that with the actual voters. I’m optimistic about the future of the country because of the people that I met.”But Hurd and his fellow candidates have faced their share of criticism for, at best, embarking on vanity projects with a view to becoming a TV pundit or Trump’s vice-president and, at worst, splitting the anti-Trump vote and effectively handing him the nomination. He rejects the charge.“The Republican party is supposed to be the party of the competition of ideas. We’re meant to have a diversity of thought and I’ve always said that having a number of people to put their message out there and offer different perspectives is valuable. Donald Trump as the GOP nominee is not inevitable but we put ourselves in a better position by starting to consolidate if there’s not a clear path to victory.”For all his efforts, Hurd barely registered in opinion polls of Republican voters. When he failed to qualify for the first two presidential primary debates in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and Simi Valley, California, the writing was on the wall. This week he followed the Miami mayor, Francis Suarez, who became the first presidential hopeful to suspend his campaign shortly after failing to make the first debate stage.He explains: “I’ve always been honest, and so when I knew that our pathway to victory was going to be incredibly tough, I had to be honest with supporters and event planners and people that were hosting things, and so that’s why the timeline is what it is.”Hurd is throwing his weight behind Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina and ex-US ambassador to the UN, who has been steadily gaining ground as the leading Trump alternative. Her campaign reported that she raised more than $11m between July and September and this week George Will, an influential Washington Post columnist, called on South Carolina senator Tim Scott and other contenders to drop out and rally around the “experienced, polished, steely and unintimidated” Haley.Hurd says: “Running for president is as much about organisation as it is ideas and she has been able to do that. When it comes to areas like how do you create a strong economy, how you deal with our foreign policy, those are things that I’m aligned with her and she has the best chance. There’s a lot of great people in this race and a lot of them are my friends but Nikki has the momentum to win.”Hurd joined the CIA in 2000 and, after 9/11, spent eight years on the frontlines of the “war on terror” including Pakistan, India and Afghanistan. Now the world again appears to be catching fire with unpredictable consequences. While Trump and others preach “America First” isolationism, Hurd believes that Haley, a former US ambassador to the UN, is most able to meet the moment.“People are nervous, especially with what’s happening now in Israel, two wars going on, the threat that the Chinese government poses to the US and our allies,” he adds. “People want a leader who understands these issues, who’s going to have a steady hand, and right now that’s Ambassador Haley.”Hurd sounds upbeat for a man who has just joined all those other White House hopefuls on the boulevard of broken dreams. His bio on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, still describes him as “Candidate for President. Common sense Republican. Husband.”Anyone seeking Hurd 2024 merchandise on his campaign website, however, might be out of luck. “No products were found matching your selection,” it says. More

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      Jim Jordan races to try to change minds of holdouts in bid for House speaker

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      The rightwing congressman Jim Jordan is seeking to shore up support for his bid to succeed Kevin McCarthy as House speaker, with plans to appear on the House floor early this week to try to sway Republican members of Congress who signaled in a secret ballot vote they will not support his bid.Jordan, a staunch ally of Donald Trump, claimed in a brief interview with Politico he believes he will get the 217 votes required to secure the speakership in a vote now set to happen on Tuesday at noon.“We think we’re going to get 217,” Jordan said.Former House speaker Kevin McCarthy has expressed support for Jordan’s bid to succeed him after a small faction of eight Republicans in the House joined Democrats to oust McCarthy from the role earlier this month and plunged the party into a bitter squabble.Congressman Steve Scalise of Louisiana was slated to secure the Republican nomination for the speaker role before Scalise withdrew from the speakership race after he failed to secure enough support to win a vote. With Republicans holding a slim majority of three seats in the House, any group of Republican holdouts could cause any nominee to fail to secure the speakership.Several Republicans have publicly said they remain no votes on Jordan’s speakership. Mike Rogers of Alabama and John Rutherford and Carlos Gimenez of Florida are in this group, according to Politico.Meanwhile, yet another potential Republican candidate has emerged if Jordan’s effort fails. Louisiana congressman Mike Johnson plans to jump into the race if Jordan stumbles, according to NBC News.“If Jordan cannot get to 217, Johnson intends to step up,” a source told the television network. “Many members are asking him to do so.”NBC added: “Johnson would seek to be a consensus candidate, attempting to bridge hard-right conservatives and moderates who have been waging a war against one another”.”Trump has vocally supported Jordan for the speakership role. The stalemate has halted legislative business.Supporters of Jordan have gone on social media encouraging followers to call Republican holdouts to demand they support Jordan’s bid or face ousting efforts of their own in primaries.That is a hardline tactic that has prompted some dismay even among Jordan’s own supporters.Texas congressman Dan Crenshaw slammed some of his fellow Republicans for an online pressure campaign on behalf of Jordan, saying it would likely put people off backing him.“That is the dumbest way to support Jordan and I’m supporting Jordan. I’m going to vote for Jordan. And as somebody who wants Jim Jordan, the dumbest thing you can do is to continue pissing off those people and entrench them,” Crenshaw told CNN’s State of the Union show.Democrats have expressed concerns over Jordan’s speakership bid, citing the congressman’s role leading up to and in the wake of the 6 January insurrection.“House Republicans are intent on doubling down and have chosen to nominate a vocal election-denier in Jim Jordan,” Congressman Pete Aguilar, chair of the Democratic caucus, told reporters. “A man whose rhetoric and partisanship fomented the January 6 attack on this very building, on these very steps.” More

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      Trump-backed Republican Jeff Landry wins Louisiana governor’s race

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      Attorney General Jeff Landry, a rightwing Republican backed by Donald Trump, has won the Louisiana governor’s race, holding off a crowded field of candidates.The win is a major victory for the Republican party as they reclaim the governor’s mansion for the first time in eight years. Landry will replace current governor John Bel Edwards, who was unable to seek re-election due to consecutive term limits.Edwards is the only Democratic governor in the south.“Today’s election says that our state is united,” Landry said during his victory speech on Saturday night. “It’s a wake-up call and it’s a message that everyone should hear loud and clear, that we the people in this state are going to expect more out of our government from here on out.”By garnering more than half of the votes, Landry avoided an expected runoff under the state’s “jungle primary” system. The last time there wasn’t a gubernatorial runoff in Louisiana was in 2011 and 2007, when Bobby Jindal, a Republican, won the state’s top position.The governor-elect, who celebrated with supporters during a watch party in Broussard, Louisiana, described the election as “historic”.Landry, 52, has raised the profile of attorney general since taking office in 2016. He has used his office to champion conservative policy positions.More recently, Landry has been in the spotlight over his involvement and staunch support of Louisiana laws that have drawn much debate, including banning gender-affirming medical care for transgender youths, the state’s near-total abortion ban that doesn’t have exceptions for cases of rape and incest, and a law restricting youths’ access to “sexually explicit material” in libraries, which opponents fear will target LGBTQ+ books.Landry has repeatedly clashed with Edwards over matters in the state, including LGBTQ rights, state finances and the death penalty. However the Republican has also repeatedly put Louisiana in national fights, including over Joe Biden’s policies that limit oil and gas production and Covid vaccine mandates.Landry spent two years on Capitol Hill, beginning in 2011, where he represented Louisiana’s third US congressional district. Prior to his political career, Landry served 11 years in the Louisiana Army National Guard, was a local police officer, sheriff’s deputy and attorney.Landry has made clear that one of his top priorities as governor would be addressing crime in urban areas. The Republican has pushed a tough-on-crime rhetoric, calling for more “transparency” in the justice system and continuing to support capital punishment. Louisiana has the nation’s second-highest murder rate per capita.Along the campaign trail, Landry faced political attacks from opponents on social media and in interviews, calling him a bully and making accusations of backroom deals to gain support.He also faced scrutiny for skipping all but one of the major-televised debates. More

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      ‘He’s Bakersfield’: Kevin McCarthy’s constituents know him better than he knows himself

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      For two decades, Julie and Jared Vawter have been among the Republicans whose votes for Kevin McCarthy sent him from his conservative inland California hometown of Bakersfield to Sacramento and then Washington DC, where he rose through the GOP’s ranks in the House of Representatives and, this year, was elected speaker.That climb came to an abrupt end last week, when a small group of rightwing Republicans revolted against McCarthy and, with the help of Democrats, made him the first speaker removed from the post in the chamber’s 234-year history.A week and two days after McCarthy’s downfall, the Vawters affixed McCarthy campaign pins and made their way to the monthly meeting of the Greater Bakersfield Republican Assembly (GBRA), a conservative group where some members were partial to the rightwing insurgency and its leader, the congressman Matt Gaetz.“He was a man that I feel has integrity,” Jared Vawter, 64, said of McCarthy. “And, to me, that’s one of the most important things for a congressman, is that he stand up and do what he says and says what he does.”“And reach across the aisle,” 60-year-old Julie Vawter added in the banquet room of a Bakersfield institution, Hodel’s Country Dining, just after the prayer that closed the GBRA’s meeting. “Because we have to have that. We want that from their side. We gotta have that from our side. We can’t be the Matt Gaetz, who [has] a solid line and won’t budge.”Standing on the other side of the hall, Joyce Perrone said she saw McCarthy’s downfall as the type of change that may have been a loss for Bakersfield’s famed son, but was long overdue for Washington’s political class, whom she viewed as derelict in reducing the national debt, and securing the country’s border with Mexico.“I think we welcome the chaos,” Perrone said. As for McCarthy: “He’s a good fundraiser, good speaker, he did some things, but I think people are tired of the status quo.”There’s no telling what comes next, either for McCarthy or for Congress. House Republicans have found no exit from the power vacuum McCarthy’s ouster created, and without a speaker, the chamber is essentially nonoperational.There appeared to be a breakthrough on Wednesday, when McCarthy’s deputy Steve Scalise won the party’s nomination to replace him, but he dropped out a day later after concluding he could not attain the near-unanimity required among House Republicans to win the speaker’s gavel.The consequences of McCarthy’s downfall for Bakersfield are far less apparent. The 58-year-old former speaker says he has no intention of resigning, and the district he represents, which includes about half the city’s neighborhoods and portions of the Sierra Nevada mountain range and San Joaquin valley, is considered the most Republican-leaning in the state. But McCarthy’s ouster could damage his formidable fundraising operation, while Democrats in Bakersfield and the surrounding Kern county believe they have more momentum than one would think in the traditionally conservative area.“Nobody has ever accused Kevin of not working hard, that’s for darn sure,” said Greg Perrone, the GBRA’s president. “He’s not a Harvard-educated or Ivy League-educated guy. Nobody has ever said he’s a slacker. He’s Bakersfield.”Politically conservative, culturally distinct and inland from California’s populous and picturesque coastline, Bakersfield has ever-expanding neighborhoods surrounded by the pump jacks and orchards of its two main industries, agriculture and oil – which together make the air there the worst in the nation.Half of the city’s 400,000-plus residents identify as Latino. Bakersfield is also home to a growing Punjabi Sikh community; to the descendants of the midwesterners who migrated to California during the dust bowl of the 1930s; and to a population of Basque sheepherders who arrived at the dawn of the 20th century. The city’s poverty rate, at 16%, is above the national average, according to Census Bureau data, and its rate of youth disconnectedness – the population aged 16-24 who are neither in school nor working – is among the highest in the country, according to the Social Science Research Council.McCarthy’s origin story involves him winning a $5,000 lottery ticket and, at the age of 21, using the money to open Kevin O’s Deli in a corner of his family’s store, McCarthy’s Yogurt, on Stine Road in south-west Bakersfield. Though he has occasionally fudged the details, a fact-check by the Washington Post found, McCarthy put his experience as an entrepreneur at the center of his pitch as a politician, which began when he applied for an internship with the Republican congressman Bill Thomas while attending California State University, Bakersfield.Though his parents were Democrats, McCarthy recounted in a 2014 Fox News interview that he contrasted Democratic president Jimmy Carter’s plea for Americans to wear sweaters at home to cope with rising heating prices with Republican Ronald Reagan’s description of the country as a “shining city on a hill”, and decided the latter was for him.“I knew what I wanted to believe. I believed in an entrepreneur, in greater liberty and freedom,” he said.Thomas’s chief of staff, Cathy Abernathy, turned him down for the position in Washington DC he applied for in 1987, so McCarthy asked to work in his Bakersfield office, and was accepted. He dove so deep into the tasks before him – answering the phones, tracking down delayed passport applications, sorting out constituents’ immigration troubles – that Abernathy realized McCarthy needed help.“He was on the phone so much and doing so much stuff that … he had his own intern,” she recalls.McCarthy later joined Thomas’s staff as an aide, where he met Mark Martinez, a political science professor at his alma mater. In the late 1990s, before McCarthy would win his first election as a trustee of the local community college, Martinez invited him to address his introduction to American government class.“Kevin didn’t understand what a lecture was,” Martinez recalled. “He came in, and he was actually trying to rally the troops.” The rhetoric fell flat at Cal State Bakersfield, which, unlike some of California’s other public universities, is a commuter school of politically moderate students who are often starting families or looking to change careers, Martinez said.“How do you do this?” McCarthy whispered under his breath to Martinez. “I said, ‘Kevin, this is a lecture – lecture on campaigns.’” A spokesperson for McCarthy declined to comment about this incident.By 2002, McCarthy had won an assembly seat in the state legislature and, by the end of the following year, was made the Republican minority leader.“McCarthy leans to the middle. He supports most abortion rights, but opposes spending tax dollars on abortions,” the Los Angeles Times political columnist George Skelton wrote in a 2003 profile. McCarthy also called for the creation of an independent commission to handle redistricting, because “the present system protects incumbents and produces extremists”, as Skelton tells it.Thomas opted not to run again in 2006, and that year, McCarthy took over his old seat. By 2014, his colleagues had elected him GOP majority leader in the House, the post just below speaker, making McCarthy the least experienced lawmaker to occupy the job in history, according to a University of Minnesota study.He threw his support behind Donald Trump in 2016, developing a close relationship with him during his presidency that included signing on to a baseless lawsuit trying to overturn his re-election loss in 2020. Daylight appeared between them in the wake of the January 6 attack, when McCarthy said on the House floor that Trump “bears responsibility” for the sacking of the Capitol but he wouldn’t vote to impeach him.In an interview with Bakersfield broadcaster KGET two days later, Thomas, McCarthy’s former boss, faulted him for “months of supporting those outrageous lies of the president” but said he hoped that when Joe Biden takes office, “the Kevin who spoke during the impeachment … will be the Kevin leading the Republicans on the floor of the House”.Instead, McCarthy traveled to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida to made amends, paving the way for him to emerge as the Republican frontrunner for next year’s election, and McCarthy to be elected as speaker – but only after a grueling 15 rounds of voting, thanks to opposition from many of the same GOP lawmakers who would vote to eject him months later.During his rise, McCarthy worked to make sure his roots as a small businessman were publicly known. Every few years or so, his social media accounts would share a photo of the Kevin O’s menu, or a shot of a young and mustached McCarthy at work at the deli. But at the strip mall on Stine Road where he once did business, no sign of his family’s eponymous shop remains. Today, the L-shaped building is home to a closed-up discount store, a Spanish-language church and a butcher shop where the owner, Abel Roman, is weighing whether to vote for Trump next year, or even vote at all.“Right now, I’m not pro-Biden, neither Trump,” said Roman, who immigrated from Peru 25 years ago. In 2020, he skipped voting because he “didn’t feel it’ll make any difference”. Ahead of next year’s elections, he’s similarly apathetic, and skeptical about whether politicians have the will to address why the costs of goods at his store are rising or why it’s so hard to get a loan.For the Democratic party in Kern county, McCarthy’s ouster could provide another boost in the rise they believe they’re on. The city is filling up with new residents from pricier coastal areas, who are bringing their more liberal values with them, said Christian Romo, the county Democratic party chair. The GOP still has the edge in voter registration in Kern county, but only by about 7,000 votes, while Democrats have effective control of the Bakersfield city council, thanks to an alliance with a moderate Republican.McCarthy’s district is still so thoroughly Republican that Romo views it as unconquerable. But next door to him is David Valadao, a Republican congressman who represents the remaining neighborhoods of Bakersfield and a swath of Central Valley farmland that voted for Biden in 2020. Romo says the spectacle of McCarthy’s defenestration will be part of their pitch to independent voters, whom he expects will decide whether Valadao is replaced by a Democrat next year.“It’s embarrassing that our local leader, right, ‘our local hometown guy’, had to go through 15 rounds of votes, and now was … the only speaker to ever be stripped of his power. I mean, that’s embarrassing for Bakersfield. It’s a scar in Bakersfield,” he said.McCarthy was a prodigious fundraiser, channeling the tens of millions he would reap to Republican candidates in last year’s midterms. James Brulte, who was the Republican minority leader in the state senate during McCarthy’s time in the assembly, worries about his ability to continue that from the diminished rank of speaker emeritus.“I don’t think this affects any individual race one way or another,” Brulte said of his removal. “But, given McCarthy’s prolific fundraising ability, given the fact that there is no Republican speaker right now, every day that goes by, that probably hurts Republicans, collectively, on the margins, primarily because of the fundraising impact.”Only eight Republicans voted for McCarthy’s removal, but with the party appearing as disunited with him gone as it was with him as speaker, Martinez thinks he may take a stab at returning to the post, even though he has said he does not want it.“He could become a big player and start doing stuff for the community and the region, if he was … genuinely concerned about doing what representative government is supposed to do. But that’s not where he’s at,” Martinez said. “Kevin, if he stays in Congress, is going to want to become speaker again.” More

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      The Conspiracy to End America review: Trump and the fascist threat

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      Donald Trump’s supporters want an American Caesar. Back in 2016, Paul LePage, then governor of Maine, made it explicit. “We need a Donald Trump to show some authoritarian power in our country,” he declared. Joe Sitt, a major player in New York real estate and an early Trump backer, chipped in: “We don’t have a president, we have a king.”Five years later, January 6 and its aftermath crystalized another reality: Trump found fair and free elections useless. He and his allies had grown weary of democracy. After all, they had lost.The Republican party had a new credo: “Heads, I win. Tails, you lose.”The last time the GOP won the popular vote was in 2004, and before that 1988. Seeking to return to office, Trump has threatened the media with charges of treason and hankered for the execution of Gen Mark Milley, the former chair of the joint chiefs of staff.Against this dystopian backdrop, Stuart Stevens delivers his second book, The Conspiracy to End America, on what happened to the party he served for so long, this one under the subtitle Five Ways My Old Party Is Driving Our Democracy to Autocracy. The words are jarring but dead-on. Once a senior campaign operative, Stevens knows of what he speaks. In his view, only the Democratic party values democracy as an end in itself.He did media for George W Bush’s White House runs, then helped guide Mitt Romney to the Republican nomination in 2012. Now, though, Stevens is at the Lincoln Project, a haven for never-Trumpers. Their commercials got under Trump’s skin – to the delectation of Democrats. They were mean and funny. On the page, Stevens picks up where he left off in It Was All a Lie, his book of 2019. Four years furnished plenty of new material. At present, Trump faces 91 felony counts across multiple jurisdictions yet is the odds-on favorite to capture the 2024 presidential nomination. Truth is stranger than fiction.“Trump understood the true nature of the Republican party better than those who were the party’s leaders,” Stevens writes of Trump’s first campaign, launched in 2015, a tacit admission that the author himself did not fully comprehend the world around him. It was about resentments, not upward arc: “Hate was creating a surge of appeal.”Trump beat Hillary Clinton, then lost to Joe Biden. His ambitions were only momentarily derailed. His chief challenger, the hard-right Florida governor Ron DeSantis, faded in primary polling. The rest of the field is running in place or approaching asterisk status. None can land a punch.As Stevens sees it, the late Weimar Republic and the US today have plenty in common. As was the case 90 years ago, democracy could be made expendable, particularly if the donor class goes along for the ride.Back then, in Stevens’ telling, the German aristocracy lost touch with the workers. Fearing communism, they and the industrialists made peace with Adolf Hitler – much as GOP donors opened their wallets to Trump. Stevens leaves little to the imagination: “Like Adolf Hitler, Trump hated the establishment figures who supported him, and they despised him.”He quotes Mitch McConnell, the living embodiment of the Republican establishment, the Senate majority leader when Trump won the White House. With hindsight, McConnell sounds clueless, oblivious to the approaching storm.“I think we’re much more likely to change [Trump] because if he is president, he’s going to have to deal with the sort of the right-of-center world, which is where most of us are,” McConnell told CNBC.“Going to have to deal”? Really?After McConnell helped Trump’s judicial nominees over the finishing line, the senator became expendable. He emerged as a target for Trump’s rants and loathing, including potshots at Elaine Chao, McConnell’s Chinese American wife, who resigned from Trump’s cabinet – if only after January 6. At times, McConnell’s disdain seeped out. Ultimately, though, he maintained sufficient devotion to his Caesar: McConnell blamed Trump for January 6 but refused to vote to convict at the second impeachment trial.In the same quisling spirit, McConnell has said he would vote for Trump if he becomes the Republican nominee again. A coda: just like Ted Cruz, the senator from Texas, McConnell never responded to the barbs Trump aimed at his wife.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAs for Cruz, Trump linked his father to the assassination of John F Kennedy and, for good measure, called his wife ugly. No matter: “lyin’ Ted,” as Trump nicknamed him, was there to polish Trump’s boots with his tongue.Not surprisingly, Stevens shines an unflattering light on Cruz. He also stresses that McConnell wasn’t alone in trashing Trump and then acquiescing to his dominance: he namechecks the former House speaker Kevin McCarthy, the former vice-president Mike Pence, the New York Republican Elise Stefanik and senators Lindsey Graham, Marsha Blackburn and Tim Scott, all for condemning the insurrection only to backslide swiftly.“Two weeks after the insurrection, Kevin McCarthy was once again the aging fraternity rush chairman who would do anything to be accepted by the Big Man on Campus fraternity president,” Stevens writes.This month, in McCarthy’s hour of need, Trump did not rally to his side. The Californian became the first House speaker ever ejected by his own party – while Trump toyed with the idea of becoming speaker himself. Meanwhile, out on the presidential campaign trail, Pence and Scott go nowhere. The Republican party really is The Trump Show.On Wednesday, House Republicans tapped Steve Scalise, reportedly a David Duke wannabe, as their guy for House speaker. But his candidacy was short lived. On Thursday, he pulled the plug. Other far-right connections continue. Eric Trump was slated to share the stage with Ian Smith, a Nazi apologist, at Trump Doral in Florida this week.“The collapse of American democracy is like the pandemic,” Stevens warns. “Whatever you say at the beginning will sound alarmist but likely prove inadequate at the end.”
      The Conspiracy to End America is published in the US by Hachette More

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      Florida governor Ron DeSantis rejects idea of Palestinian refugees in US

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      Republican presidential candidate and Florida governor Ron DeSantis has rejected accepting Palestinian refugees from Gaza to the US, speaking at a campaign rally in the US midwest on Saturday.“We cannot accept people from Gaza into this country as refugees,” he said. “If you look how they behave … not all of them are Hamas but they are all antisemitic, none of them believe in Israel’s right to exist.”DeSantis, who is tracking at around 12% support among Republican voters for the party’s nomination for next year’s presidential election – far below Donald Trump at 58%– spoke at a campaign rally in Creston, Iowa.Last week, the Florida governor described a pro-Palestine demonstration in Tampa and a “Victory to Palestine” event in Fort Lauderdale as “abhorrent”.In his comments Saturday, DeSantis called on neighboring Arab nations to “open their borders and absorb” Palestinian refugees.Conflating Palestinian freedoms with support of Hamas, DeSantis attacked students at Harvard for their support of Palestinian and humanitarian causes and invoked reports of babies being murdered during the cross-border Hamas attack in Israel a week ago.“We’ve got some serious problems in this country, and we’ve allowed a lot of them to fester. My view is simple: if you don’t like this country, if you hate America, you should not come to this country. We’ve got to start being smart about this,” he said.DeSantis’s comments come as some Republicans have sought to amplify an anti-immigration agenda, with claims by Maga-extremists that the Biden administration’s US-Mexico border policy could allow foreign nationals sympathetic to radical Islamist causes into the US.The New York Post reported on Saturday that House Republicans had introduced new legislation to prevent the United States from accepting any new Palestinian refugees who might be fleeing the crisis in Gaza.Tom Tiffany, one of the congressmembers behind the act, posted on social media: “We can’t let President Biden abuse our parole and visa rules to bring unvetted Palestinians into American communities the way he did with thousands of unvetted Afghans.”The Gaza Act – Guaranteeing Aggressors Zero Admission Act – would also block the Department of Homeland Security from allowing Palestinians into the United States through the agency’s parole program.Separately, the fraud-indicted New York congressman George Santos has said he was “berated” by anti-war activists at the US Capitol on Friday as they protested Israel’s retaliatory strikes in Gaza.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionCapitol Police said they had arrested Shabd Khalsa, 36, and “charged him with simple assault after an officer witnessed him have physical contact with a congressional staffer in the Longworth Building”.Khalsa, who said he was Jewish American, said he had stepped back when Santos told him he was in his personal space. Khalsa told Newsday he was trying to ask what lawmakers were doing to stop attacks on “civilians by the Israeli army in Gaza”.“My ancestors, entire branches of my family were killed in the Holocaust,” he told the outlet. “I’m here to say, you cannot weaponize Jewish pain to continue the mass murder of civilians in Gaza.” More

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      Hard-right House Republicans are against Ukraine aid – and they seem to be in charge

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      As he excoriated Kevin McCarthy over his leadership of the House Republican conference last week, hard-right congressman Matt Gaetz accused the then speaker of cutting a “secret side deal” with Joe Biden to provide additional funding to Ukraine amid its ongoing war against Russia.“It is becoming increasingly clear who the speaker of the House already works for, and it’s not the Republican conference,” Gaetz, who represents a solidly Republican district in Florida, said in a floor speech at the time.The day after Gaetz delivered that speech, McCarthy was out of a job, becoming the first House speaker in US history ever to be ejected from office. Although McCarthy denied the existence of a side deal, Gaetz’s complaints underscored how funding for Ukraine served as one of the thorniest issues during the former speaker’s brief and contentious tenure.As Donald Trump’s “America First” philosophy has gained popularity among Republicans, anti-Ukraine sentiment has spread through the party’s base and now into the halls of Congress. Even as bipartisan support for Ukraine remains robust in the Senate, a majority of the House Republican conference appears skeptical if not outright hostile to the idea of more funding.That dynamic has further complicated House Republicans’ already difficult task of electing a new speaker, as any speaker candidate must negotiate with hard-right lawmakers who adamantly oppose more funding for Kyiv. Those lawmakers have made Ukraine funding a top priority in the search for a new speaker, and that tension raises serious questions about whether Congress will be able to approve another aid package, especially now that much of their attention has shifted to the war between Israel and Hamas. If lawmakers cannot pass more funding, Ukraine supporters warn the consequences could be deadly.“This is critical to the war effort for Ukraine, which is then critical to the defense of Europe and, I think, critical to US national security,” said Max Bergmann, the director of the Europe, Russia and Eurasia program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). “If Congress doesn’t act now, then a lot of Ukrainians are going to die.”The rising opposition to funding Ukraine among Republicans appears to be a direct response to Trump’s approach to foreign policy, which has resonated deeply with the more isolationist faction of his party. That philosophy has frustrated establishment Republicans, who embrace the party’s traditional vision of diplomacy, remembering the days of Ronald Reagan using the country’s military and economic might to fight communism abroad.“Republicans once stood against communism and thugs like Vladimir Putin, but it’s a shame that not every Republican is speaking out against what Russia is doing to Ukraine,” said Gunner Ramer, a spokesperson for the group Republicans for Ukraine.Ramer’s group, which is a project of the anti-Trump conservative group Defending Democracy Together, often conducts focus groups with Republican voters. Those discussions have seen an increase in anti-Ukraine sentiment in recent months, Ramer said, and polling confirms that trend.According to a CBS News/YouGov poll conducted last month, only 39% of Republicans now believe the US should send weapons to Ukraine, representing a 10-point drop in support since February. On the question of sending aid and supplies to Ukraine, 50% of Republicans support the idea while 50% oppose it. In contrast, 86% of Democrats and 63% of independent voters support sending aid and supplies to Ukraine.“I think it’s a top-down thing. We recognize that Donald Trump has overtaken the Republican party,” Ramer said. “What Donald Trump tapped into is this isolationist bit of the Republican party, and I think that that is affecting how Republican voters approach the issue.”When the House voted last month on a bill to provide $300m in funding for a program to train and equip Ukrainian fighters, a majority of the Republican conference – 117 members – opposed the legislation. The vote represented a crucial tipping point, as hard-right lawmakers like Gaetz have implored leaders to block any bill that does not have the support of a majority of the Republican conference.In a statement explaining his opposition to the bill, the congressman John Curtis of Utah, a Republican who had previously showed support for Ukraine, called on the Biden administration to articulate a clear strategy for defeating Russia and to specify how funds were being used.“I support Ukraine in their war,” Curtis said. “I support continued funding for their efforts, but these are basic questions any organization would ask in a transaction. To continue spending Utahans taxpayer dollars, Congress must receive assurances to these questions.”Ukraine still has support from many lawmakers of both parties in Congress, who have helped deliver more than $100bn in aid to Kyiv since the start of the war. But the rising opposition to Ukraine among House Republicans specifically, combined with the party’s razor-thin majority in the lower chamber, has made it all the more difficult for any speaker to lead the conference – as McCarthy knows all too well.Although McCarthy has been supportive of Ukraine aid, he used the power of his speakership to secure some wins for the “America First” contingent of his conference. When the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, visited Capitol Hill last month, McCarthy denied him the opportunity to deliver a joint address to Congress.As Congress scrambled late last month to avoid a government shutdown, McCarthy introduced a stopgap spending bill that included no additional funding for Ukraine. The Senate version of the stopgap bill, which was ultimately shelved in favor of McCarthy’s proposal, had included $6bn in Ukraine aid, and that was already well below the $24bn requested by Biden in August.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThose concessions were not enough to sway the eight House Republicans, including Gaetz, who collaborated with Democrats to oust McCarthy last week. Now Republicans must unite around a new speaker, and that process is proving even more arduous than expected.On Wednesday, Steve Scalise, the House majority leader, won his conference’s nomination, defeating the judiciary committee chair Jim Jordan. Scalise’s victory may have come as a relief to Ukraine supporters, given that Jordan had already signaled he would not support another aid package. Scalise, on the other hand, received a grade of B on Republicans for Ukraine’s lawmaker report card.Then, on Thursday evening, Scalise abruptly dropped out of the race due to opposition from some of the same hard-right lawmakers, who have also embraced anti-Ukraine views. After the ouster of McCarthy and the rapid downfall of Scalise, Ramer fears that the successful maneuvers staged by hard-right lawmakers might intimidate some of the pro-Ukraine Republicans in the House.“I do have a concern that a lot of even rank-and-file Republicans are going to look at what happened to McCarthy and be afraid to alienate this isolationist part of the Republican party,” Ramer said.Ukraine supporters have suggested a number of ideas to ease the passage of another aid package through Congress, such as including the money in a broader bill providing funding for Taiwan and border security. With House Republicans eager to approve more funding for Israel following the Hamas attacks last weekend, members of both parties proposed a joint Ukraine-Israel aid package.Hard-right lawmakers have staunchly opposed the idea of a Ukraine-Israel package, but such a bill could provide some political cover for the next Republican speaker, Bergmann noted.“It gives a new speaker the opportunity to say that their hands were tied, and they have to bring this to the floor and essentially get Ukraine funding over the line, without being seen as betraying the far right,” Bergmann said.Another idea floated by some Ukraine supporters in Congress, including the Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, involves passing a much larger aid package to support Kyiv through next year – thus avoiding another drawn-out fight on the issue until after the 2024 elections.“You just want to make this done through this political cycle, and then you can approach it again during the lame-duck session,” Bergmann said. “[It] makes all the sense in the world. Frankly, to not do that is crazy.”The clock is ticking. Ukraine cannot indefinitely continue its current efforts without more aid, and a prolonged delay could imperil its military and humanitarian missions. If that happens, Bergmann suggested, the hard-right Republicans who oppose Ukraine aid may soon start to see the political tide turn against them, which could prompt a change of their hearts.“The ads sort of write themselves,” Bergmann said. “When there’s imagery of Ukrainian cities getting pummeled, the ads will be: these people caused this, and they have blood on their hands.” More

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      ‘A dangerous game’: Republican chaos and indecision as crises shake the world

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      The US’s closest ally in the Middle East is reeling from what many call its “9/11” and now a humanitarian disaster looms in Gaza. Winter is approaching in Ukraine, which needs urgent supplies to maintain its counteroffensive against Russia. From China’s expansive ambitions, to coups in Africa, to the climate crisis, the world is crying out for leadership.But on Capitol Hill in Washington, Republicans can’t find one. Friday marked the 10th day of paralysis as the party struggles to elect a speaker of the House of Representatives to replace the ousted Kevin McCarthy. This after majority leader Steve Scalise won a closed-door vote but abandoned his run because he lacked enough support to win on the House floor.Such petty bickering, grievances and vendettas might typically fascinate seasoned Washington watchers and readers of political insider newsletters but be met by a shrug by many Americans and indifference overseas. This time, however, is different. The ripples of Republican dysfunction could soon be felt across a troubled world.“It’s a dangerous game that we’re playing,” Michael McCaul, chairman of the House foreign affairs committee, told reporters on Thursday. “It just proves our adversaries right that democracy doesn’t work. Our adversaries are watching us and Israel is watching. They need our help.”McCaul, a Republican congressman from Texas, has put forward a bipartisan resolution with Gregory Meeks of New York, the top Democrat on the committee, condemning Hamas and reaffirming support for Israel. But the House cannot vote on it until there is a speaker in the chair.McCaul added: “I’m going to remind my colleagues about how dangerous this is. If we don’t have a speaker, we can’t assist Israel in this great time of need after this terrorist attack. So I think we’re playing with fire and we need to stop playing games and politics with this and vote a speaker in.”The House speaker is the third-highest-ranking elected official in the country, second in line to the presidency. Without one, legislative business is at a standstill. The House is currently under the control of Representative Patrick McHenry of North Carolina, who was named as the temporary speaker after McCarthy’s departure, but his ability to move legislation is unclear.Joe Biden said on Tuesday that he would seek approval from Congress for additional funding for Israel in the wake of the devastating attack by Hamas. But the fight over the speakership puts a question mark over how soon such aid could be approved and sent.Biden has also requested $24bn in additional funding for Ukraine but this too hangs in limbo. Although the White House has claimed that the vast majority of House Republicans still support such assistance, there has been growing dissent in recent weeks and the issue was a factor in McCarthy’s downfall.Then there is the threat of a government shutdown that would further dent US credibility overseas. Congress has until a self-imposed deadline of 17 November to pass 12 new bills to fund the government for the rest of the year and into 2024. The leadership vacuum is sucking up precious time and energy and making a shutdown more likely.Biden had spent the first two years of his presidency seeking to restore order and rebuild alliances after the “America first” mayhem of the Donald Trump years. But when Republicans gained control of the House in January with a narrow majority that empowered the far right, that effort was always likely to suffer erosion.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionKarine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, told reporters: “What we’re seeing is certainly shambolic chaos over there on the other side of Pennsylvania Avenue, and they need to get their act together … We’ve never seen a conference behave this way or be this chaotic.”Biden’s speech on Tuesday was described as one of the most powerful statements of support for Israel ever given by a US president; he has previously spoken of his deep-rooted love for the country. Huge uncertainties remain: Israel has ordered a million people to evacuate northern Gaza ahead of an expected ground invasion; Hamas could still have more surprises in store; Hezbollah, an Iran-backed militia based in Lebanon, could still open a second front.But instead of addressing the crisis with one voice, Republicans are consumed with a bogus impeachment inquiry into Biden and the publicity-seeking antics of members such as Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Nancy Mace. And this week New York Republicans moved to expel accused fraudster George Santos.Kyle Herrig, executive director of the Congressional Integrity Project, said: “Since day one the Maga Republicans in the House majority have failed to work on real domestic priorities and instead focused on partisan stunts in their extreme efforts to return Donald Trump to the White House.“Their ongoing dysfunction, misplaced priorities and failures now impede the efforts of President Biden to come to the aid of key allies internationally. Chaos, not governance, defines the House Republican Caucus.” More