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      Trump backs challenge to Georgia official who refused to overturn election

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      Donald Trump advanced his quest on Monday to purge elected Republicans who refused to go along with his attempt to steal the 2020 presidential election, announcing an endorsement in Georgia in an effort to unseat a key election official.

      The secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, infuriated Trump last year by refusing a point-blank request to fake the presidential election result in Georgia.
      Jody Hice, a Republican member of Congress who supported Trump’s effort to overturn Joe Biden’s win, announced on Monday he would challenge Raffensperger in a summer 2022 primary. Trump endorsed Hice immediately.
      “Unlike the current Georgia secretary of state, Jody leads out front with integrity,” Trump said in a statement that repeated his false claims of election fraud and declared his “complete and total endorsement” of Hice.
      Two months out of office, Trump has begun an effort to flex his influence with core Republican voters who will decide the party’s nominations in thousands of races across the country next year.
      Trump boasted of the effort in an appearance on a podcast hosted by a Fox News contributor, The Truth with Lisa Boothe.
      “The fact that I give somebody an endorsement has meant the difference between a victory and a massive defeat,” he said. “They’re all going to win and they’re going to win big.”
      Trump has shown a high success rate with endorsements in Republican primaries. He has repeatedly endorsed losing candidates in general election contests, however – including both Georgia US Republican senators, David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, who were beaten by Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock in January, tipping the Senate to Democratic control.
      Some Republicans fear Trump’s intervention in primary elections could produce extreme nominees who might be relatively weak in general election contests.
      Other Republicans high on Trump’s hitlist include the Georgia governor, Brian Kemp, and Alaska senator Lisa Murkowski, the only Republican senator up for re-election in 2022 to vote to convict Trump at his second impeachment trial.
      Raffensperger is the most prominent elected official to be targeted by Trump so far with an endorsement of a challenger. In a phone call after the election, Trump told Raffensperger to “find 11,780 votes” so he could win the state, which no Republican presidential candidate had lost in three decades.
      “The people of Georgia are angry, the people in the country are angry,” Trump told Raffensperger in a call Raffensperger recorded. “And there’s nothing wrong with saying, you know, um, that you’ve recalculated.”

      In an interview with the Guardian about his decision to defend the election result, Raffensperger said he voted for Trump but would not help him steal the election.
      “I’m a conservative Republican. Yes, I wanted President Trump to win,” he said. “But as secretary of state we have to do our job. I’m gonna walk that fine, straight, line with integrity. I think that integrity still matters.”
      Since being banned from his longtime social media megaphone, Twitter, for spreading election lies, Trump has tried new methods for getting messages out, in the form of statements e-blasted to reporters – and now, podcast appearances.
      Trump told Boothe the new format was better than Twitter.
      “We’re sending out releases, they’re getting picked up much better than any tweet,” he said. “When I put out a statement, it’s much more elegant than a tweet, and I think it gets picked up better.” More

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      New York Republican accused of sexual misconduct won’t seek re-election

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      Tom Reed, a Republican congressman from western New York who was accused last week of rubbing a female lobbyist’s back and unhooking her bra without her consent in 2017, apologized to the woman on Sunday and announced he will not run for re-election next year.Reed, 49, said the incident involving Nicolette Davis occurred “at a time in my life in which I was struggling”. He said he entered treatment that year as he was “powerless over alcohol”.Reed apologized to his wife and children and to Davis and said he planned “to dedicate my time and attention to making amends for my past actions”.First elected to Congress in 2010, Reed was among the members of Congress calling for the resignation of the Democratic governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, over sexual harassment allegations. In late February, Reed said he was seriously considering running against Cuomo next year.Reed said on Sunday he would not seek any elective office in 2022.The announcement came two days after the Washington Post reported the allegations from Davis, who was 25 and a lobbyist for the insurer Aflac when she said Reed, seated next to her at a Minneapolis bar, unhooked her bra from outside her blouse and moved his hand to her thigh.“A drunk congressman is rubbing my back,” she texted a co-worker at Aflac that evening, adding later: “HELP HELP.”Reed released a statement Friday saying: “This account of my actions is not accurate.”In his statement on Sunday he said: “In reflection, my personal depiction of this event is irrelevant. Simply put, my behavior caused her pain, showed her disrespect and was unprofessional. I was wrong, I am sorry, and I take full responsibility.”A former mayor of Corning, New York, Reed is co-chair of the House bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus. He voted against impeaching former president Donald Trump in January but voted in favor of certifying the election of Joe Biden. More

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      Mayorkas blames Trump for border woes as Republicans attack Biden

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      The Biden administration is facing mounting pressure over a surge of unaccompanied migrant children crossing into the US, with the numbers seeking asylum at a 20-year high that is placing federal facilities and shelters under immense strain.The homeland security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, took to the political talk show circuit on Sunday to press the administration’s case that it is doing all it can. He continued to refer to the problem as a “challenge” not a “crisis”, attempting to put blame squarely on the previous incumbent of the White House, Donald Trump.“It is taking time and it is difficult because the entire system was dismantled by the prior administration,” Mayorkas told CNN’s State of the Union. “There was a system in place that was torn down by the Trump administration.”On ABC’s This Week, Mayorkas highlighted the tougher aspects of Joe Biden’s border policy, stressing that the administration was still expelling families and single adults under a regulation known as Title 42. He insisted largely Central American migrants arriving in increasing numbers were being given a clear message: “Do not come. The border is closed. The border is secure.”But prominent Republicans have seized on the border difficulties as an opportunity to attack Biden for being soft on immigration.There was a system in place that was torn down by the Trump administration“This is a crisis,” Mitch McConnell, the top Republican in the Senate, has said. “I don’t care what the administration wants to call it – it is a crisis.”Tom Cotton, a senator from Arkansas and ardent Trump loyalist, lambasted the secretary’s position as “nonsense”.In an interview with Fox News Sunday, Cotton characterized the Biden administration’s stance as “basically saying the United States will not secure the border, and that’s a big welcome sign to migrants from across the world [saying] the border is wide open”.He went on to make lurid allegations, backed up with no evidence, that the focus on unaccompanied children at the border was allowing criminals smuggling fentanyl and other drugs as well as people on “terrorist watch lists” to slip into the US undetected.Political steam over border affairs has been building for two months. In one of his first acts as president, Biden scrapped Trump’s hardline policy of sending unaccompanied children seeking asylum back to Mexico.Under Biden’s guidelines, unaccompanied minors were exempted from the Title 42 rules and shielded from expulsion. That was deemed in line with the president’s pledge to achieve a “fair, safe and orderly” immigration system.On Sunday, Mayorkas said the new approach addressed the humanitarian needs of migrant children “in a way that reflects our values and principles as a country”. But in the past few weeks, the numbers of minors seeking asylum has grown so rapidly that it has outpaced capacity to process the children in line with immigration laws.He is basically saying the United States will not secure the borderMore than 5,000 unaccompanied migrant children are being detained in Custom and Border Protection (CBP) facilities in Texas and Arizona. As a backlog of cases has built up, more than 500 have been kept in custody for more than 10 days, well beyond the 72 hours allowed under immigration law.There have been reports of overcrowding and harsh conditions in federal facilities in Texas. The Associated Press reported that some children were said by immigration lawyers to be sleeping on the floor after bedding ran out.The government has tried to move as many children as possible into shelters run by the US Refugee Office, but they in turn have become stressed. There are now more than 9,500 children in shelters and short-term housing along the border. Non-governmental groups working with migrants and refugees have been forced to scramble to deal with the sudden demand for shelter.As the administration struggles to keep a grip on events, it is also coming under criticism from Republicans and media outlets for refusing to allow reporters inside the beleaguered CBP facilities where children are being held. On Friday, Mayorkas visited El Paso in Texas with a bipartisan congressional delegation. Reporters were not allowed to follow them.The Texas Republican senator Ted Cruz, called the move “outrageous and unacceptable”. In a tweet, he said: “No press. No cameras. What is Biden hiding?”Quizzed by Fox News Sunday about the apparent lack of accountability, despite Biden’s promise to bring “trust and transparency” back to public affairs, Mayorkas said the administration was “working on providing access” to border patrol stations.But he added: “First things first – we are focused on operations and executing our plans.”While the political heat is rising at the border, moves are under way in Washington to try and find a longer-term fix to the age-old immigration conundrum. Last week the House of Representatives passed a bill that would give “Dreamers”, undocumented migrants brought to the US as children, a pathway to citizenship.The legislation has an uncertain future in the Senate, given its 50-50 split and the need to reach 60 votes to pass most major legislation.Dick Durbin, a Democratic senator from Illinois who has introduced a similar Dream Act to the Senate five times in the past 20 years, told CNN that he thought he was close to securing the necessary 60 votes. He also decried the current debate about whether there was a “crisis” or “challenge” at the border.“We need to address our immigration laws in this country that are broken,” he said. “What you see at the border is one piece of evidence of that, but there’s much more.” More

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      Republican Julia Letlow takes Louisiana seat husband won before dying of Covid

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      The Republican Julia Letlow easily won a Saturday special election for a north-east Louisiana-based US House seat her husband, Luke, won before his death from complications related to Covid-19.Julia Letlow becomes the third woman ever elected to the US House from Louisiana, the first Republican woman elected to Congress from the state and the only woman among its current congressional delegation. She trounced 11 contenders.“This is an incredible moment, and it is truly hard to put into words,” she said. “What was born out of the terrible tragedy of losing my husband, Luke, has become my mission in his honor to carry the torch and serve the good people of Louisiana’s fifth district.”Further south, the race to fill a second vacant congressional seat for Louisiana was headed to an 24 April run-off, the seat certain to stay in Democratic hands.Two state senators from New Orleans – Troy Carter and Karen Carter Peterson – secured spots in the runoff after leading among 15 candidates. The New Orleans-based second district is open because Cedric Richmond took a job as a special adviser to Joe Biden.In Louisiana, all candidates regardless of party compete in the primary. If no candidate tops 50% of the vote, a runoff is held between the top two vote-getters.Julia Letlow ran in her deep red district with the backing of Donald Trump, the endorsement of the state GOP and more money than all her competitors combined. She ran on issues similar to those her husband discussed during his campaign, supporting agriculture in the largely rural district, expanding broadband internet access and supporting conservative values.Governor John Bel Edwards offered congratulations.“She has continued to exemplify strength, determination and tenacity in the wake of a terrible tragedy. I know that these same characteristics that got her through the last few months will make her an excellent advocate for Louisiana in Washington,” the Democrat said.Luke Letlow died on 29 December, days before he was to be sworn into office. His wife announced her candidacy in January, sidelining high-profile Republicans.In the second district, Carter received Richmond’s backing and ended the primary as top vote-getter in the majority minority district along the Mississippi river.Peterson squeaked into the runoff, edging out Gary Chambers Jr, a Baton Rouge community activist and publisher who focused on social media outreach. Peterson would be the first Black woman elected to Congress from Louisiana. More

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      Democrats want 'illegal aliens and child molesters' to vote, Ted Cruz says – report

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      Claiming Democrats want to expand voting rights to “illegal aliens” and “child molesters”, the Texas senator Ted Cruz warned that if Republicans do not block the For the People Act, major legislation now before the Senate, they will be out of power for years.Cruz also said there was no room for compromise, according to the Associated Press, which cited a recording of a call hosted by the American Legislative Exchange Council, or Alec, a rightwing group which writes and pushes conservative legislation at the state level.Democrats say the bill passed by the US House, also known as HR1, is the only way they can counter voter-suppression legislation under consideration in many Republican-held states, aimed at reducing the voting power of groups, many of them minorities, that traditionally back Democrats.Increasingly, senior Democrats advocate reforming or abolishing the filibuster, which creates a 60-vote threshold for legislation in the Senate and gives Republicans an automatic block in a chamber split 50-50, as a way to pass HR1.“There’s no way under the sun that in 2021 that we are going to allow the filibuster to be used to deny voting rights,” the House majority whip, Jim Clyburn, told the Guardian this month. “That just ain’t gonna happen. That would be catastrophic.”HR1 does contain protections for the voting rights of former felons. It does not propose extending the franchise to undocumented migrants, though the Biden administration has proposed to move some such groups closer to US citizenship.HR1 also contains campaign finance reform, measures to protect voting by mail and to limit partisan gerrymandering and new ethical rules for holders of federal office.Writing for the Guardian in 2019, when HR1 first passed in the House, Carol Anderson, a professor of African American studies at Emory University, said HR1 was “designed to restore some integrity to a democratic system that the supreme court and Republicans have severely wounded.“Or, as LaTosha Brown, co-founder of BlackVotersMatter, asked in 2018, ‘Why is it a struggle for us to cast our damn vote?’”Speaking to CNN last week, Stacey Abrams, a former candidate for governor in Georgia who now campaigns for voting rights, put the issue more starkly still. Republican moves to restrict voting rights, she said, were “Jim Crow in a suit and tie”.Jim Crow was the common name for the system of laws in many southern states which undid post-civil war Reconstruction and suppressed the Black vote well into the 20th century.On the Alec call, Cruz reportedly insisted Democrats’ “only objective” was “to ensure that [they] can never again lose another election, that they will win and maintain control of the House of Representatives and the Senate and of the state legislatures for the next century”.Republicans have lost the popular vote in seven of the last eight presidential elections, although the electoral college system has placed their man in the White House after three such contests.Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton in 2016 despite losing the popular vote by nearly 3m ballots. Last year, he lost to Joe Biden by more than 7m – and lost the electoral college by the same score by which he won four years before.Republican moves to restrict voting access are backed by claims of electoral fraud which are not borne out by evidence. Trump continues to claim his defeat by Biden was the result of massive fraud, a lie repeatedly thrown out of court.Republicans in states including Georgia and Texas are moving to pass legislation that will seek to restrict access to the vote.Such moves have broad support among conservative voters. Jessica Anderson, executive director of Heritage Action, a Washington advocacy group, told the AP: “It kind of feels like an all-hands-on-deck moment for the conservative movement, when the movement writ large realizes the sanctity of our elections is paramount and voter distrust is at an all-time high. We’ve had a bit of a battle cry from the grassroots, urging us to pick this fight.” More

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      'Blindsided': Biden faces tough test in reversing Trump's cruel border legacy

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      Lauded for his human touch, Joe Biden is facing an early political and moral test over how his government treats thousands of migrant children who make the dangerous journey to America alone.

      Officials say the number of people caught attempting to cross the US-Mexico border is on pace to hit its highest number for 20 years. Single adults and families are being expelled under coronavirus safety rules inherited from Donald Trump.
      But a growing number of children, some as young as six years old, from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras are arriving at the southern border without parents or guardians. These minors are brought to border patrol facilities – where many languish in cramped, prison-like conditions for days on end.
      The fast-developing humanitarian emergency shows how Biden’s determination to break from Trump’s harsh, nativist crackdown in favour of a more compassionate approach has collided with the reality of finite resources and a broken system.
      “I do think that they were blindsided by this surge,” said María Teresa Kumar, founding president of the grassroots political organisation Voto Latino. “As someone that monitored this a lot, I didn’t see that coming and I don’t think the community saw that coming. It took everybody by surprise.
      “It is heart-wrenching knowing that there are children that are cold and don’t have family. It’s one of these cases where there seems to be no right answers. Knowing the people inside the administration are very much on the side of immigrants speaks to me that there are real moral dilemmas happening right now and I would not want to be in that position.”

      Democrats have called the situation a “challenge” and “problem” and blamed Trump’s legacy. Republicans have rushed to brand it the first “crisis” and “disaster” of Biden’s presidency. The battle is proof that border access remains one of the most complex, emotive and radioactive issues in American politics.
      Trump launched his campaign for the presidency by promising to build a wall, routinely vilified migrants and, ahead of the 2018 midterm elections, spoke often of an “invasion”. Biden stopped construction of the wall and promised to unwind Trump’s zero-tolerance policies.
      The number of “encounters” between migrants and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has increased every month since April 2020. But when 100,441 migrants were reported attempting to cross the border last month, it was the highest level since March 2019 and included a particular rise in unaccompanied children.
      Many such children head to the US to reunite with family members or escape poverty, crime and violence. Central America has been hit by hurricanes and the economic fallout of Covid-19. In an ABC interview this week, Biden denied that more migrants were coming because he is “a nice guy”, insisting: “They come because their circumstance is so bad.”
      Under Trump, unaccompanied children were sent straight back to Mexico. Biden decided they should go to a border patrol facility and, within 72 hours, be transferred to the health department with a view to being placed with a family member or sponsor.
      However, it has quickly become clear the system is not fit for purpose, leaving about 4,500 children stuck in facilities designed for adult men. Lawyers who visited one facility in Texas described seeing children sleeping on the floor or on metal benches and being allowed outside for a few minutes every few days.
      The administration is scrambling to find more capacity, opening emergency shelters and using a convention centre in Dallas to house up to 3,000 teenage boys. It also deployed the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema), which typically responds to floods, storms and other disasters, to help shelter and transport children at least until early June.
      Republicans seized on that move as evidence a disaster is unfolding. The House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, led a delegation of a dozen Republicans to El Paso, Texas, and spoke of “the Biden border crisis”, adding: “It’s more than a crisis. This is human heartbreak.”
      The message has resounded through a conservative media that finds Biden an elusive target. Trump made wildly exaggerated claims in a Fox News interview: “They’re destroying our country. People are coming in by the hundreds of thousands, And, frankly, our country can’t handle it. It is a crisis like we have rarely had and, certainly, we have never had on the border.”
      For Republicans, reeling from election defeat, internal divisions and failure to block Biden’s $1.9tn coronavirus relief bill, the border offers a political lifeline.
      Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center thinktank in Washington, said: “If the numbers go down next month this isn’t a crisis, but I think what they are expecting is that they’re not going to go down and that this is going to be something that will be an enduring and endemic problem.
      “It’s something that energises and unites the Trump voting coalition and could easily be seen as a failure on behalf of the administration by just enough of the people who voted for him but aren’t hardcore Democrats. So I think it’s a very smart move by Republicans to play this out and Biden needs to figure out how you can be compassionate while not being naively welcoming. He has not yet figured out how to do that.”

      Others, however, regard the Republican response as predictable ploy by a party obsessed with demonising migrants. Kumar said: “They’re phonies and it is coldly calculated because they know they have problems with suburban white women voters, and they are trying to make a case for it for the midterms.
      “It’s cynical and gross because when children were literally dying at the border, when they had a president that was teargassing refugees, not one of them stood up. It’s callous and cold political expediency and it’s shameful.”
      The White House has pointed out that the Trump administration forcibly separated nearly 3,000 children from parents, with no system in place to reunite them. Alejandro Mayorkas, the first migrant and first Latino in charge of the Department of Homeland Security, told Congress: “A crisis is when a nation is willing to rip a nine-year-old child out of the hands of his or her parent and separate that family to deter future migration. That, to me, is a humanitarian crisis.”
      Mayorkas argues that Trump’s decision to cut staffing, bed capacity and other resources was reckless given the likelihood that the number of migrants would rise again as the pandemic waned.
      “The system was gutted,” he said, “facilities were closed and they cruelly expelled young children into the hands of traffickers. We have had to rebuild the entire system, including the policies and procedures required to administer the asylum laws that Congress passed long ago.” More

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      'His new business': Trump seeks personal political brand as he grips Republican base

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      Days after being acquitted in his second impeachment trial last month, Donald Trump issued a statement lashing out against one of the very Republican senators who made that acquittal possible.“The Republican party can never again be respected or strong with political ‘leaders’ like Senator Mitch McConnell at its helm,” the former president said in a statement, after the Republican leader criticized him for inciting the 6 January insurrection at the Capitol. Trump added: “Mitch is a dour, sullen and unsmiling political hack, and if Republican senators are going to stay with him, they will not win again.”But the shocking statement is just one of many colorful examples of how Trump has spent his post-presidency so far: attacking fellow Republicans who dare to criticize him while continuing to promote his personal political brand and his own firm grip on much of the party’s base.Such antics and behavior could cause trouble for the Republican party, as it attempts to take control of Congress in 2022’s midterm elections by continuing to embrace Trumpism as its guiding philosophy. While party leaders have encouraged Trump to focus on the efforts to flip the House and the Senate, the former president at times seems more interested in extracting revenge against the handful of Republican politicians who supported his impeachment.Speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) late last month, Trump rattled off the names of each of the 17 Republican lawmakers who voted to impeach or convict him and suggested they should be removed from office. “Get rid of them all,” Trump told the CPAC crowd.Trump is already putting in effort to unseat those Republicans. The former president has vowed to help defeat Lisa Murkowski next year, attacking the Alaska Republican as “disloyal” after she supported his conviction in the Senate. Trump has also endorsed Max Miller, a former aide who launched a primary challenge against Anthony Gonzalez, one of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach him.Jason Miller, a senior adviser to Trump, said the former president would be releasing another round of endorsements in the coming days, including one for a primary challenger running against an incumbent Republican.“There are upcoming endorsements for folks running for reelection, as well as open seats, as well as, in one case, it will likely be a primary challenge against a sitting Republican,” Miller told the Guardian. “His endorsement is still the single biggest endorsement in politics. He plans on using that.”Trump’s attacks on “disloyal” Republicans seem to be the latest example of the former president’s vengeful attitude about politics and business, said Michael D’Antonio, the author of the The Truth About Trump.He is a person who very much believes in getting even with anyone he believes harmed him“He is a person who very much believes in getting even with anyone he believes harmed him,” D’Antonio said. “It’s always a matter of, ‘Are you with me? And if you’re not with me, then you’re against me, and you must be destroyed.’”Miller emphasized that Trump remains “committed” to working with the party’s committee groups, such as the Republican National Committee (RNC), to elect candidates who support the former president’s “America first” agenda. But Trump has been adamant that anyone using his name or likeness to fundraise must have his pre-approval before doing so.In a fiery statement released earlier this month, the former president criticized “Rinos,” meaning “Republicans in name only”, for using his likeness to raise money for their campaigns.“I fully support the Republican party and important GOP committees, but I do not support Rinos and fools, and it is not their right to use my likeness or image to raise funds,” Trump said. “So much money is being raised and completely wasted by people that do not have the GOP’s best interests in mind.”Trump instead encouraged his supporters to donate to his own political action committee, the Save America Pac. According to Miller, the Pac already has more than $80m in the bank, with about a year and a half to go until the midterm elections.Trump’s efforts to direct contributions toward his own Pac, where he and his advisers have much more control over how funds are spent, have led to criticism that the former president is more focused on raising money for himself rather than helping the Republican party regain control of Congress.“He doesn’t want anything to impact his ability to raise money for the super Pac that he has created, so he wants to divert as much cash away from the RNC to that Pac,” said Michael Steele, a former RNC chairman and a frequent Trump critic. “This is all transactional for him. It’s not personal. It’s the next level of financial transactions that Trump wants to engage in.”Capitalizing off of his political brand may be Trump’s best financial prospect at this point. The Trump Organization’s revenue sharply declined last year, and Trump is personally responsible for $300m in loans that are due over the next four years, according to a New York Times analysis of his tax records. His financial woes come as the Manhattan district attorney has launched an expansive investigation of the Trump Organization’s business dealings.“If you look at all the peril he faces legally and the near collapse of many of his businesses, he’s looking for a revenue stream, and no dollar amount is too small for him to fight for,” D’Antonio said of Trump’s latest fundraising efforts. “I think that’s his new business.”The RNC has continued to fundraise off Trump’s name as well, and senior Republicans have generally attempted to downplay any tension between the former president and party leaders, insisting they are united in their goal to push back against Joe Biden’s agenda. “The Republican civil war is now cancelled,” Senator Rick Scott, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said in a widely shared memo late last month.Yet, when Scott met with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida earlier this month, the former president would not commit to staying out of Senate primary races. “He didn’t say he was going to,” Scott told CNN on Tuesday, when asked if Trump indicated he would get involved in primary battles. “I’m sure he wants to be helpful, so the best thing for him to do would be to participate in whoever wins the primaries and come back then.”Scott is one of a number of Republican leaders who have made the journey from Washington to Palm Beach in recent weeks to consult with Trump at Mar-a-Lago. The House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, and the House minority whip, Steve Scalise, have also paid visits to the Florida resort since Trump left the White House.Even incumbent Republicans, such as Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, have traveled to Mar-a-Lago to fundraise and meet with Trump, with the apparent hope to secure an endorsement from the former president and prevent any primary challenges as they seek reelection.Trump has already endorsed several Senate Republicans up for re-election next year, including Tim Scott of South Carolina and Jerry Moran of Kansas, and Miller said the former president’s next round of endorsements will include more sitting Republican senators.“Everybody is coming to Mar-a-Lago or trying to get President Trump on the phone to ask for his endorsement,” Miller said.The widespread efforts to appeal to Trump underscore the massive influence the former president still holds over the Republican party, even after leaving office. But Trump and party leaders may be on a collision course if the former president continues to target incumbents and redirect money toward his own Pac, potentially jeopardizing Republicans’ hopes of taking back Congress.“They are about to come headlong into each other because their interests don’t align,” Steele said. “Trump is not in the business of expanding the party. He is in the business of having in place people who support him, and he can afford to lose people who don’t support him.” More