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      5 Takeaways From the First Jan. 6 Hearing

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      The opening House hearing into the events surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol was a compact and controlled two hours, designed as an overview of what was described as a methodical conspiracy, led and coordinated by President Donald J. Trump, to thwart the peaceful transfer of power and democracy itself.It was also an enticement to the American people to watch the next five scheduled hearings.Here are some takeaways:Trump was at the center of the plot.The committee’s chairman, Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi, and vice chairwoman, Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming, began laying out what they described as an elaborate, intentional scheme by Mr. Trump to remain in power, one unprecedented in American history and with dangerous implications for democracy.“Jan. 6 was the culmination of an attempted coup,” Mr. Thompson said.Both leaders had blistering words for Mr. Trump and about the threat he poses to American democracy. They made it clear that, for all his ongoing bluster about stolen elections, Mr. Trump had knowingly spread claims about election fraud that people closest to him knew were false, tried to use the apparatus of government and the courts to cling to power, and then when all of that failed, sat back approvingly in the White House as a mob of his supporters stormed the Capitol threatening to hang his vice president.Key figures around Trump never believed his lie of a stolen election.The hearing used the videotaped testimony of some of Mr. Trump’s closest aides and allies to show that the Trump campaign and his White House — and perhaps the president himself — had known well that Joseph R. Biden Jr. won the 2020 election. It showed how Mr. Trump and his loyalists had used a calculated campaign of lies to bind his followers and build support for his attempt to stay in power, through extralegal means and violence.The committee played excerpts from videotaped interviews of former Attorney General William P. Barr, who said he had told Mr. Trump that the talk of widespread fraud in the 2020 election was “bullshit.” There was a clip of his daughter Ivanka Trump saying that she accepted Mr. Barr’s conclusions and of a campaign lawyer, Alex Cannon, who told Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, that Trump allies had found no election issues that could reverse the results in key states. “So there’s no there there?” Mr. Meadows responded, according to Mr. Cannon’s account.Read More on the Jan. 6 House Committee HearingsThe Meaning of the Hearings: While the public sessions aren’t going to unite the country, they could significantly affect public opinion.An Unsettling Narrative: During the first hearing, the House panel presented a gripping story with a sprawling cast of characters, but only three main players: Donald Trump, the Proud Boys and a Capitol Police officer.Trump’s Depiction: Former president Donald J. Trump was portrayed as a would-be autocrat willing to shred the Constitution to hang onto power. Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump: In videos shown during the hearing, Mr.Trump’s daughter and son-in-law were stripped of their carefully managed images.At one point, in one of the most potentially damaging moments of the videotaped interviews, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner is shown dismissing the threats of Pat A. Cipollone, then the White House counsel, to resign in the face of Mr. Trump’s machinations as “whining.”A Capitol Police officer who battled the rioters humanized the drama.Caroline Edwards, a Capitol Police officer who is believed to have been the first injured during the riot, testified in chilling detail about the first breach of police lines, in which she was crushed beneath bike racks that were pushed on her and a handful of other officers who had no chance to hold back the mob.“The back of my head clipped the concrete stairs behind me,” she testified, recounting the moment before she lost consciousness. Her testimony of continuing to fight off the rioters in efforts to protect the Capitol provided a striking contrast with the committee’s account of Mr. Trump sitting in the White House watching with apparent sympathy as the mob ransacked the building, yelling at aides who implored him to call off the violence and saying at one point, “Maybe our supporters have the right idea.”Once she came to and beheld the scene from behind police lines, Officer Edwards said, her breath was taken away. She slipped in blood, saw fellow officers writhing in pain and suffering from bear spray and tear gas, and gazed out on what she described as a war scene unfolding outside the Capitol.“It was carnage,” she said. “It was chaos. I can’t even describe what I saw.”The Proud Boys mounted an organized effort.One of the witnesses, a British documentary filmmaker named Nick Quested who was embedded with the extremist Proud Boys, gave testimony that indicated that group’s leadership had conspired with another extremist organization, the Oath Keepers, well ahead of the riot to plan an attack that would breach the Capitol.Mr. Quested showed footage he had shot of the Proud Boys leader, Enrique Tarrio, meeting clandestinely with Stewart Rhodes of the Oath Keepers on Jan. 5, and he told of the group breaking away from a morning rally behind the White House on Jan. 6 to scout police defenses around the Capitol.“I am not allowed to say what is going to happen today because everyone’s just going to have to watch,” one woman said on video on the morning of Jan. 6, when no hint of an attack was evident.There is more to come on the role of Trump and RepublicansThe hearing concluded with a hint of what was to come in the next hearings, which committee members hope will show how Mr. Trump was personally responsible for the worst attack on the Capitol since the British ransacked it in 1814 and that he remains a threat to the American democratic experiment.The committee concluded with videos of the rioters themselves saying they believed they were invited to Washington that day by their president, who had asked them to fight for him.“He lit the fuse that ultimately resulted in the violence of Jan. 6,” Mr. Thompson, the committee’s chairman, said of Mr. Trump.Ms. Cheney, whose insistence on condemning Mr. Trump and participation in the investigation have rendered her a pariah in her own party, said the case the panel would make would taint Republicans indelibly.“Tonight I say this to my Republican colleagues who are defending the indefensible,” she said. “There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain.” More

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      How Much Damage Have Marjorie Taylor Greene and the ‘Bullies’ Done to the G.O.P.?

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      Curious to know how the two more extreme wings of the Democrats and Republicans in the House differ, I asked a high-ranking Republican staff member with decades of government experience — who requested anonymity in order to speak openly — for his take:They are different in that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the “Squad” seem to me to be more “idealist.” They actually do want to legislate/accomplish the very far-left social ideas they propose. They are willing to cause Pelosi headaches, but they have shown they are not going to go so far as to jeopardize the government (operations) and safety net that so many families depend on from a working government.On the other hand, the staff member continued,I hate to use a loaded word here but I can’t think of another one, the “MAGA Caucus” members operate more like bullies — legislative bullies. If they have the opportunity, they will gladly hold bills/government funding hostage for the sake of populism and social media. They would take pride in “shooting the hostage” as that would be very popular with their tribal base and their social media.Both blocs have thrived in an era of social media and small-dollar funding, skilled in winning publicity, often shaping public perceptions of partisan competition on Capitol Hill. In this respect, the Squad and the MAGA caucus have come to epitomize partisan hostility, the refusal of the parties to cooperate, and, more broadly, the intense political polarization that afflicts America today.The Squad and the MAGA caucus are best known for their most visible members, Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York, and Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia.Both factions have caused major headaches for their respective party leaders.Centrist Democrats contend — citing poll data from USA Today Ipsos, Pew Research, a FiveThirtyEight polling summary and the University of Massachusetts-Amherst Survey — that support from members of the Squad and their allies for defunding the police has undermined the re-election chances of moderate House Democrats running in purple districts.The participation of members of the MAGA caucus in events linked to white supremacists have increased the vulnerability of the Republican Party to charges of racism, alienating moderate suburban voters.But these are hardly equivalent in the first place, and there are other, major dissimilarities.John Lawrence, who retired in 2013 as chief of staff for the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, took a position to my Republican informant’s in his email contrasting the two blocs:The MAGA people seem far more focused on personal celebrity and staking out extremist stances whereas the Squad, while pushing the policy envelope to some extent, remain reliable party members.The difference, Lawrence argued,comes from a fundamental distinction between the parties at this point in history: Democrats approach government as an agent of making public policy across a wide swath of subjects whereas Republicans — and the MAGA people are the extreme example of this — not only have a very hostile view of government but embrace inaction (and therefore obstruction), especially at the national level.Here are some examples that illuminate the differences to which the political veterans I spoke to were referring.In a widely publicized struggle that continued for over two months in the fall of 2021, the Squad, along with the House Progressive Caucus, held the $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, a centerpiece of the Biden agenda, hostage in order to force House Democrats to pass a separate but more controversial measure, the $2.2 trillion Build Back Better bill (for spending on education, the environment, health care and in other areas).The tactic worked — in part. On Nov. 15, the House and Senate both voted to enact, and send to President Biden, the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill — with the support of a majority of the Progressive Caucus. Four days later, the House approved the $2.2 trillion Build Back Better bill by a slim vote (220-213). Although House Democratic leaders kept their promise to pass the $2.2 trillion Build Back Better bill, it remains stalled in the Senate as negotiations between the administration and Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who at times allies himself with the Republican Party, have failed to bear fruit.Compare that lengthy struggle, to which the Squad lent its strength, to the more frivolous votes cast by members of the Republican MAGA caucus — not a formal organization in the manner of the Progressive Caucus but a loose collection of representatives on the hard right.On May 18, the House voted 414-9 to pass the Access to Baby Formula Act, which would authorize the Department of Agriculture “to waive certain requirements so that vulnerable families can continue purchasing safe infant formula with their WIC (the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children).”Who cast the nine votes against the infant formula bill? The core of the MAGA caucus: House Republican Representatives Andy Biggs of Arizona, Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Matt Gaetz of Florida, Louie Gohmert of Texas, Paul Gosar of Arizona, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Clay Higgins of Louisiana, Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Chip Roy of Texas.Or take the House vote last year to fast-track visas for Afghans who provided crucial assistance to the U.S. military, which went 407-16. “Those Afghans knew the risk that their service posed to them and their families, and yet they signed up to help because they believed that we would have their back,” Representative Jason Crow, Democrat of Colorado, told the House. “They have earned a path to safety.”Who cast the 16 no votes? Five of the nine who voted against the baby formula bill — Biggs, Boebert, Gosar, Greene and Roy, plus Mo Brooks, Scott DesJarlais, Jeff Duncan, Bob Good, Kevin Hern, Jody Hice, Barry Moore, Scott Perry, Bill Posey and Matt Rosendale.Philip Bump, a Washington Post reporter, has covered what he calls the “Nay caucus,” writing “The emerging far-right ‘no’ caucus in the House” on March 19, 2021; “What’s the unifying force behind the House’s far-right ‘nay’ caucus?” on June 16, 2021; and “The House Republican ‘no’ caucus is at it again” on April 6, 2022.In his most recent article, Bump wrote:Perhaps the best description of this group is that it constitutes a highly pro-Trump, deeply conservative and often individualistic subset of a very pro-Trump, very conservative and very individualistic Republican caucus. It is a group that includes a number of legislators who go out of their way to draw attention to themselves; one way to do so is to oppose overwhelmingly popular measures.Bump ranked members of this caucus on the basis of voting no on a roll-callin which no more than a tenth of the House cast a vote in opposition. The top ten were Massie, who cast 99 such votes, Roy 93, Biggs 85, Greene 79, Ralph Norman 73, Good 57, Rosendale 56, Boebert 56, Matt Gaetz 51 and Perry 49.Members of the MAGA caucus have been sharply critical of the Squad, to put it mildly. In November 2021, Gosar posted an animated video in which, as CNN put it, he is “portrayed as a cartoon anime-type hero and is seen attacking a giant with Ocasio-Cortez’s face with a sword from behind. The giant can then be seen crumbling to the ground.”Gosar issued a statement defending the video, which shows the cartoon image of himself flying by jetpack to slay the giant Ocasio-Cortez: “The cartoon depicts the symbolic nature of a battle between lawful and unlawful policies and in no way intended to be a targeted attack against Representative Cortez,” it says, before adding, “It is a symbolic cartoon. It is not real life. Congressman Gosar cannot fly.”Ruth Bloch Rubin, a political scientist at the University of Chicago, outlined in an email the differences between the Squad and the MAGA caucus:There are a lot of ways that lawmakers can be extreme. They can be extremist in their policy preferences, extremist in their preferred tactics, and extremist in their political messaging. When it comes to policy, it isn’t exactly clear what folks like Greene and Gosar want — they aren’t exactly policy wonks. Members of the Squad have done more to communicate their policy priorities — e.g., on issues like policing and climate change — and there, what they want is generally more liberal than what some (perhaps many) in the party are likely to support.In terms of political messaging, Rubin argued, “it is undeniable that Greene and Gosar have done more to deviate from normal politics — likening vaccination requirements to Nazi rule or running violent ad campaigns — than anything ever said by any member of the Squad.”I asked Rubin which group has done more damage to its own party:If/when the Democrats lose big in the midterms, I think it likely that the Squad will face a lot of criticism for pushing progressive policies that are not sufficiently popular with voters (police reform) over those that have greater public support (expanding Medicare, for example).But, Rubin contended, Biden will also bear responsibility if Democrats suffer badly in November:In this day and age, it is unreasonable to expect that you can be an FDR-figure without the kind of sizable and stable majorities in Congress he benefited from. The upshot of being an experienced politicians is that you should anticipate this and plan accordingly.Conversely, Rubin continued:There is little evidence that Republicans like Gosar and Greene are doing any short-term damage to the Republican Party — long-term damage is less clear. And one way we can tell is that Republican leaders (and voters) wasted no time getting rid of the one member whose conduct wasn’t burnishing the party’s brand: Madison Cawthorne. The fact that this hasn’t happened to Greene or Gosar or other MAGAish members suggests they aren’t perceived to be enough of a problem.Frances Lee, a political scientist at Princeton, argued in an email that extremists can in fact play a constructive role in legislative proceedings:While not defending the excesses and demagoguery that some of the members you list have engaged in, a couple examples come to mind:Massie has strenuously objected to the continued use of proxy voting in Congress two+ years into the pandemic as undermining the traditions and character of the institution. For those of us who have long worried about the huge share of members who are only in Washington from Tuesday to Thursday, are such perspectives out of bounds?Was there any value in Massie’s insistence on holding public debate before Congress passed the $2.2 trillion CARES Act, a stance that drew harsh denunciation from President Trump himself?Lee acknowledged:Members who incite violence against other members or the institution cannot be countenanced. But I would encourage a tolerant attitude toward legitimately elected representatives, even those who hold views far outside the mainstream. It’s always worth considering what their constituents see in them and what, if anything, they contribute to debate. Such members do make Congress a more fully representative body.Michael B. Levy, who served as chief of staff to former Senator Lloyd Bentsen, Democrat of Texas, pointed out, “There are many similarities in that both groups live and die by their primaries because their districts are one-party districts and neither has to worry much about the median voter in their states.”Beyond that, Levy continued, there are significant differences: “The Squad’s agenda is a basic international social democratic left agenda which joins an expanding social welfare state to an expanding realm of cultural liberalism and identity politics.”The Squad, Levy wrote, “while willing to attack members of their own party and support candidates in primaries running against incumbents in their own party, continues to exhibit loyalty to basic democratic norms in the system at large.”In contrast, Levy argued, “The MAGA caucus has a less coherent ideology, even if it has a very distinct angry populist tone.” That may be temporary, Levy suggested,as more and more intellectuals try to create a type of coherent “integralist” ideology joining protectionism, cultural and religious traditionalism, and an isolationist but nationalist foreign policy. Arguably theirs is also a variant of identity politics, but that is less clearly articulated. As best I can tell, they do not have a coherent approach to economic policy or the welfare state.Two scholars who have been highly critical of developments in the Republican Party, Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute and Thomas Mann of the Brookings Institution, co-authors of the book “It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism,” were both far more critical of the MAGA caucus than of the Squad.Mann was adamant in his email:The MAGA Caucus is antidemocratic, authoritarian, and completely divorced from reality and truth. The Squad embraces left views well within the democratic spectrum. What’s striking about the MAGA Caucus is that they are closer to the Republican mainstream these days, given the reticence of Republican officeholders to challenge Trump. We worry about the future of American democracy because the entire Republican Party has gone AWOL. The crazy extremists have taken over one of our two major parties.The MAGA group, Ornstein wrote by email, is composed ofthe true believers, who think Trump won, that there is rampant voter fraud, the country needs a caudillo, we have to crack down on trans people, critical race theory is an evil sweeping the country and more. The Squad is certainly on the left end of the party, but they do not have authoritarian tendencies and views.Ocasio-Cortez, Ornstein wrote, “is smart, capable, and has handled her five minutes of questioning in committees like a master.”William Galston, a senior fellow at Brooking and a co-author with Elaine Kamarck, also of Brookings, of “The New Politics of Evasion: How Ignoring Swing Voters Could Reopen the Door for Donald Trump and Threaten American Democracy,” wrote by email:How does one measure “extreme”? By two metrics — detachment from reality and threats to the democratic process — the nod goes to the MAGA crowd over the Squad, whose extremism is only in the realm of policy. I could argue that the Squad’s policy stances — defund the police, abolish ICE, institute a Green New Deal — have done more damage to the Democratic Party than the MAGA crowd has to the Republicans. President Biden has been forced to back away from these policies, while Republicans sail along unscathed. By refusing to criticize — let alone break from — the ultra-MAGA representatives, Donald Trump has set the tone for his party. A majority of rank-and-file Democrats disagree with the Squad’s position. There’s no evidence that the Republican grassroots is troubled by the extremism in their own ranks.I asked Galston what the implications were of Marjorie Taylor Greene winning renomination on May 24 with 69.5 percent of the primary vote.He replied:Trumpists hold a strong majority within the Republican Party, and in many districts the battle is to be seen as the Trumpiest Republican candidate. This is especially true in deep-red districts where winning the nomination is tantamount to winning the general election. A similar dynamic is at work in deep-blue districts, where the most left-leaning candidate often has the advantage. Candidates like these rarely succeed in swing districts, where shifts among moderate and independent voters determine general election winners. In both parties, there has been a swing away from candidates who care about the governance process, and toward candidates whose skills are oratorical rather than legislative. I could hypothesize that in an era of hyperpolarization in which gridlock is the default option, the preference for talkers over doers may be oddly rational.They may be talkers rather than doers, but if, as currently expected, Republicans win control of the House on Nov. 8, 2022, the MAGA faction will be positioned to wield real power.Joshua Huder, a senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Government Affairs Institute, explained in an email that there has beenchange in lawmaking that amplifies the extremes of majority parties. In previous generations, extreme progressives or conservatives were more easily excluded from rooms where policy and procedural decisions were made. Either committee leaders would craft deals away from their party caucuses or leaders had an easier time finding moderates in the other party to craft solutions that the extreme wings of their caucus might oppose.In contrast, Huder wrote:Today’s partisan-cohort legislative style inherently incorporates more extreme voices. Decisions are made within the caucus or negotiated with various caucus factions through leadership offices. Put simply, the influence of extreme wings of each party are more intimately woven into legislative negotiations. And as a result, intense partisan warfare is more common.In this environment, Huder continued, “undeniably, their influence on congressional decision making has grown. They don’t get what they want all the time, but many congressional fights and tactics can be explained by the influence of the more extreme wings of each party.”Recent history suggests that the MAGA caucus and the overlapping but larger Freedom Caucus have Kevin McCarthy, the House Republican minority leader who is favored to become speaker of the House if his party takes control, firmly in their grip. The Freedom Caucus played a key role in forcing Speaker John Boehner out of office in 2015 and a central role in pushing Boehner’s successor, Paul Ryan, to retire three years later.“The Freedom Caucus has become the political home of right-wing troublemakers who often embarrass and even defy the party leadership,” Ed Kilgore wrote in the Intelligencer section of New York magazine. “A group of experienced ideological extortionists answering to gangster leadership of Trump is going to be hard to handle for the poor schmoes trying to keep the G.O.P. from falling into a moral and political abyss.”If McCarthy takes the speaker’s gavel next year, he will be in the unenviable position of constantly addressing the demands of a body of legislators who at any moment could turn on him and cut him off at the knees.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      6 Takeaways From Tuesday’s Elections

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      For the most part on Tuesday, primary voters in seven states from New Jersey to California showed the limits of the ideological edges of both parties.A liberal district attorney, Chesa Boudin, was recalled in the most progressive of cities, San Francisco, but conservative candidates carrying the banner of former President Donald J. Trump did not fare well, either.For all the talk of sweeping away the old order, Tuesday’s primaries largely saw the establishment striking back. Here are some takeaways.California called for order.Wracked by the pandemic, littered with tent camps, frightened by smash-and-grab robberies and anti-Asian-American hate crimes, voters in two of the most progressive cities sent a message on Tuesday: Restore stability.In Los Angeles, the nation’s second-largest city, Rick Caruso, a billionaire former Republican who rose to prominence on the city’s police commission, blanketed the city with ads promising to crack down on crime if elected mayor.His chief opponent, Karen Bass, a veteran Democratic congresswoman, argued that public safety and criminal justice reform were not mutually exclusive, and disappointed some liberal supporters by calling to put more police officers on the street. The two are headed for a November mayoral runoff.Rick Caruso with supporters at his election night event Tuesday in Los Angeles.Jenna Schoenefeld for The New York TimesAnd in San Francisco, voters who were once moved by Chesa Boudin’s plans as district attorney to reduce the number of people sent to prison ran out of patience with seemingly unchecked property crime, violent attacks on elderly residents and open drug use during the pandemic. They recalled him.Statewide, the Democratic attorney general, Rob Bonta, advanced easily to the general election runoff. Mr. Bonta is a progressive, but was careful to stress that criminal justice reform and public safety were both priorities.The choices seemed to signal a shift to the center that was likely to reverberate through Democratic politics across the nation. But longtime California political observers said the message was less about ideology than about effective action. “This is about competence,” said Zev Yaroslavsky, who served in local government in Los Angeles for nearly four decades and is now the director of the Los Angeles Initiative at the Luskin School of Public Affairs at the University of California, Los Angeles.“People want solutions,” he said. “They don’t give a damn about left or right. It’s the common-sense problem-solving they seem to be missing. Government is supposed to take care of the basics, and the public believes the government hasn’t been doing that.”For House Republicans, the Jan. 6 commission vote still matters.In May 2021, 35 House Republicans voted for an independent, bipartisan commission to look at the events surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.At first blush, the vote should not have mattered much: The legislation creating the commission was negotiated by the top Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee, John Katko of New York, with the blessing of the Republican leader, Kevin McCarthy of California. Besides, the commission was filibustered by Republicans in the Senate and went nowhere.Representative Michael Guest voting on Tuesday in Brandon, Miss.Hannah Mattix/The Clarion-Ledger, via Associated PressBut Tuesday’s primaries showed that the vote still mattered. In Mississippi, Representative Michael Guest, one of the 35, was forced into a June 28 runoff with Michael Cassidy, who ran as the “pro-Trump” Republican and castigated the incumbent for voting for the commission. In South Dakota, Representative Dusty Johnson, another one of the 35, faced similar attacks but still mustered 60 percent of the vote.In California, Representative David Valadao, who also voted for the commission, struggled to keep pace with his Democratic challenger, State Assemblyman Rudy Salas, as a Republican rival, Chris Mathys, took votes from his supporters on the right.In all, now, 10 of the 35 will not be back in the House next year, either because they resigned, retired or were defeated in primaries. And more are likely to fall in the coming weeks.In New Jersey, it is all about name recognition.In New Jersey on Tuesday, two familiar names won their party nominations to run for the House in November: for the Republicans, Thomas Kean Jr., the son and namesake of a popular former governor; for the Democrats, Robert Menendez, son and namesake of the sitting senator.Robert Menendez Jr. with voters in West New York, N.J., last week.Bryan Anselm for The New York TimesMr. Menendez goes into the general election the heavy favorite to win New Jersey’s heavily Democratic Eighth Congressional District and take the seat of Albio Sires, who is retiring.The younger Mr. Kean has a good shot, too. He narrowly lost in 2020 to the incumbent Democrat, Representative Tom Malinowski, but new district lines tilted the seat toward the Republicans, and Mr. Malinowski has faced criticism for his failure to disclose stock trades in compliance with a recently enacted ethics law.MAGA only gets you so far.Candidates from the Trump flank of the Republican Party could have done some real damage to the prospects of a so-called red wave in November, but with the votes still being counted, far-right candidates in swing districts did not fare so well.National Republicans rushed in to shore up support for a freshman representative, Young Kim, whose narrowly divided Southern California district would have been very difficult to defend, had her right-wing challenger, Greg Raths, secured the G.O.P.’s spot on the ballot. It looked as though that would not happen.In Iowa’s Third Congressional District, establishment Republicans got the candidate they wanted to take on Representative Cindy Axne in State Senator Zach Nunn, who easily beat out Nicole Hasso, part of a new breed of conservative Black Republicans who have made social issues like opposing “critical race theory” central to their political identity.And if Mr. Valadao hangs on to make the November ballot for California’s 22nd Congressional District, he will have vanquished a candidate on his right who made Mr. Valadao’s vote to impeach Mr. Trump central to his campaign.Ethics matter.Two primary candidates entered Republican primaries on Tuesday with ethical clouds hanging over their heads: Representative Steven Palazzo in Mississippi and Ryan Zinke in Montana.In 2021, the Office of Congressional Ethics released a report that said Mr. Palazzo had used campaign funds to pay himself and his wife at the time nearly $200,000. He reportedly used the cash to make improvements on a riverside property that he was hoping to sell. Voters in Mississippi’s Fourth District gave him only about 32 percent of the vote, forcing him into a runoff on June 28.Former Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke with voters in Butte, Mont., last month.,Matthew Brown/Associated PressMr. Zinke left what was then Montana’s only House seat in 2017 to become Mr. Trump’s first interior secretary. He departed that post in 2019 with a number of ethics investigations examining possible conflicts of interest and questionable expenditures of taxpayer funds. Still, when Mr. Zinke declared to run for Montana’s new First District, he was widely expected to waltz back to the House.Instead, he was in an extremely tight race with Dr. Al Olszewski, an orthopedic surgeon and former state senator who had come in a distant third when he tried to run for his party nomination for governor in 2020, and fourth when he vied for the Republican nomination to run for the Senate in 2018.If at first you don’t succeed …Dr. Olszewski may not win, but his improved performance could be an inspiration to other past losers. The same goes for Michael Franken, a retired admiral who on Tuesday won the Democratic nomination to challenge Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa in November.Mr. Franken has the résumé for politics: He is an Iowa native and led a remarkable career in the Navy. But losing often begets more losing, and in 2020, he came in a distant second to Theresa Greenfield for the Democratic nod to take on Senator Joni Ernst.Ms. Greenfield was defeated that November, and for all his tales of triumph over past adversity, Mr. Franken is likely to face the same fate this fall. Mr. Grassley will be 89 by then, but Iowans are used to pulling the lever for the senator, who has held his seat since 1981. Despite Mr. Grassley’s age, the seat is considered safely Republican. More

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      Best- and Worst-Case Outcomes of the Jan. 6 Public Hearings

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      On Thursday, a bipartisan House select committee will begin public hearings on the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol. The weeks ahead will be awash with news as the committee reveals what happened in the days and weeks before the attack — and to what extent the rioters were emboldened, or enabled, by the White House and Republican lawmakers.To wade through the news and help us understand what to pay attention to as the hearings unfold, host Jane Coaston calls upon two experts on the Republican Party.[You can listen to this episode of “The Argument” on Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, Google or wherever you get your podcasts.]Nicole Hemmer is an author and historian of conservative media. Ross Douthat is a Times Opinion columnist. They give their takes on what narratives might play out in the hearings and comment on the danger of far-right extremism in the G.O.P. “I don’t see an incentive structure that pulls the Republican Party in general away from procedural extremism, or even really at the moment, anything that pulls them back to a majoritarian democratic process,” Hemmer says.Mentioned in this episode:“What Oprah Winfrey Knows About American History That Tucker Carlson Doesn’t” by Nicole Hemmer in The New York Times“Are We Witnessing the Mainstreaming of White Power in America?” episode from The Ezra Klein Show“Why Would John Eastman Want to Overturn an Election for Trump?” by Ross Douthat in The New York Times(A full transcript of the episode will be available midday on the Times website.)Samuel Corum/Getty ImagesThoughts? Email us at argument@nytimes.com or leave us a voice mail message at (347) 915-4324. We want to hear what you’re arguing about with your family, your friends and your frenemies. (We may use excerpts from your message in a future episode.)By leaving us a message, you are agreeing to be governed by our reader submission terms and agreeing that we may use and allow others to use your name, voice and message.“The Argument” is produced by Phoebe Lett, Elisa Gutierrez and Vishakha Darbha. Edited by Alison Bruzek and Anabel Bacon. With original music by Isaac Jones and Pat McCusker. Mixing by Pat McCusker. Fact-checking by Kate Sinclair and Mary Marge Locker. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta with editorial support from Kristina Samulewski. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. More

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      Group Chat Linked to Roger Stone Shows Ties Among Jan. 6 Figures

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      The roster of participants highlights how Mr. Stone, the pro-Trump political operative, was involved with a strikingly large number of people who sought to overturn the 2020 election.It was known as F.O.S. — or Friends of Stone — and while its members shifted over time, they were a motley cast of characters.There were “Stop the Steal” organizers, right-wing influencers, Florida state legislative aides and more than one failed candidate loyal to former President Donald J. Trump. One participant ran a website that promoted disinformation about the Capitol attack. Another was an officer in the Army Reserve allied with Michael T. Flynn, Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser.At least three members of the group chat are now facing charges in connection with the riot at the Capitol in January 2021. They include Owen Shroyer, the right-hand man of the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones; Enrique Tarrio, the onetime chairman of the Proud Boys; and Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the Oath Keepers militia.But the focus of the chat was always the man whose photo topped its home page: Roger J. Stone Jr., a longtime political operative and adviser to Mr. Trump.While little is known about what was said on the chat, the membership list of Friends of Stone, provided to The New York Times by one of its participants, offers a kind of road map to Mr. Stone’s associations, showing their scope and nature in the critical period after the 2020 election. During that time, Mr. Stone was involved with a strikingly wide array of people who participated in efforts to challenge the vote count and keep Mr. Trump in the White House.Some of the 47 people on the list are identified only by nicknames or initials, and Mr. Stone had pre-existing political ties with many of them. Still, as prosecutors deepen their inquiry into the storming of Capitol, the list suggests that Mr. Stone had the means to be in private contact with key players in the events of Jan. 6 — political organizers, far-right extremists and influential media figures who subsequently played down the attack.Reached by email, Mr. Stone said that he did not control who was admitted to the group chat and noted that Stop the Steal activities were protected by the First Amendment.“There is no story,” he wrote. “Just harassment.”Enrique Tarrio, the onetime chairman of the Proud Boys, maintained close ties to Mr. Stone.Eva Marie Uzcategui/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesWhile the origins of the group chat remain somewhat obscure, Friends of Stone has existed since at least 2019, when Mr. Stone was indicted in connection with the Russia investigation by the special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, said one of its participants, Pete Santilli, a veteran right-wing radio host. According to Mr. Santilli, the group chat — hosted on the encrypted app Signal — was a kind of safe space where pro-Stone figures in politics and media, many of whom were banned from social media, could get together and trade links and stories about their mutual friend.“The primary reason for the chat was to have a place for supporters to share stuff,” Mr. Santilli said. “You drop a link and everyone shares it on their nontraditional channels.”But after Mr. Trump’s defeat, Friends of Stone seemed to assume another purpose as Mr. Stone found himself in the middle of the accelerating Stop the Steal movement devised to challenge the results of the election. The Washington Post, citing footage from a Danish documentary film crew that was following Mr. Stone, said that in early November 2020, he asked his aides to direct those involved in the effort to monitor the chat for developments.In recent weeks, the Justice Department has expanded its investigation of the riot from those who physically attacked the Capitol to those who were not at the building but may have helped to shape or guide the violence. Investigators appear to be interested in finding any links between organizers who planned pro-Trump rallies at the Capitol that day and right-wing militants who took part in the assault.The group chat’s membership list includes several people who fit that description.Named on the list are activists like Marsha Lessard and Christina Skaggs, leaders of a group called the Virginia Freedom Keepers who helped to organize an anti-vaccine rally scheduled for the east side of the Capitol on Jan. 6. Ms. Lessard and Ms. Skaggs worked with another anti-vaccine activist, Ty Bollinger, who was also on the list.Members of the group were among those who took part in a conference call on Dec. 30, 2020, when a social media expert who formerly worked for Mr. Stone urged his listeners to “descend on the Capitol” one week later, promising that Joseph R. Biden Jr. “will never be in that White House.”Ms. Lessard, Ms. Skaggs and Mr. Bollinger did not return phone calls seeking comment.Ali Alexander, one of the most prominent Stop the Steal organizers who planned his own event at the Capitol that day, was on the list as well. His lawyer did not return a phone call seeking comment.In the days leading up to Jan. 6, Mr. Stone was scheduled to speak at both Mr. Alexander’s event and the rally hosted by Ms. Lessard, Ms. Skaggs and others, including Bianca Gracia, the leader of a group called Latinos for Trump, according to permits and event fliers. Mr. Stone never spoke at those events, however, and hurried out of Washington even as the police were still securing the Capitol, according to the film footage cited by The Post.Ali Alexander planned his own event at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.Anna Moneymaker/Getty ImagesMr. Stone’s connections to Mr. Rhodes and the Oath Keepers were based, at least in part, on the fact that the militia group provided security for him on Jan. 5 and Jan. 6. The Oath Keepers also protected Mr. Alexander and his entourage on Jan. 6 and served as security at the events hosted by Ms. Skaggs, Ms. Lessard and Ms. Gracia, court papers say.At least one of Mr. Stone’s Oath Keeper bodyguards, Joshua James, has pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy charges in the Capitol attack and is cooperating with the government’s inquiry. Kellye SoRelle, a lawyer for the Oath Keepers, was part of the Friends of Stone chat as well and is also said to be cooperating with prosecutors in the riot investigation.Mr. Stone, a Florida resident, has long maintained close ties to the Proud Boys, especially to Mr. Tarrio, who lived in Miami before his arrest. Members of the Proud Boys have acted as bodyguards for Mr. Stone and have served as some of his most vocal supporters.In 2019, after Mr. Stone was indicted by Mr. Mueller on charges including obstruction and witness tampering, Mr. Tarrio responded by wearing a T-shirt reading “Roger Stone Did Nothing Wrong” at one of Mr. Trump’s political rallies. At one point, Mr. Tarrio’s personal cellphone had a message recorded by Mr. Stone.Nayib Hassan, Mr. Tarrio’s lawyer, declined to comment on his client’s role in the chat.During his prosecution, Mr. Stone posted an image on social media of the federal judge in his case, Amy Berman Jackson, with cross hairs next to her head. When questioned in court about the image, he acknowledged that he had been sent a series of photos by Mr. Tarrio and two other Florida Proud Boys whose names appear on the Friends of Stone membership list: Jacobs Engels and Tyler Ziolkowski.Mr. Engels was with Mr. Stone in Washington on Jan. 5 and Jan. 6. He initially agreed to talk about the group chat but then did not return a phone call seeking comment.Another person who appeared on the Friends of Stone list — under the name “Ivan” — was Ivan Raiklin, an Army Reserve lieutenant colonel who promoted a plan after the election to pressure Vice President Mike Pence not to certify electors from several disputed swing states. This plan, which Mr. Raiklin called the “Pence Card,” was ultimately taken up by Mr. Trump and some of his legal advisers, like the lawyer John Eastman.Mr. Raiklin, who did not return phone calls seeking comment, was at the Capitol on Jan. 6, but showed no sign of entering the building. Closely aligned with Mr. Flynn, he has continued to question the results of the 2020 vote, appearing at so-called election integrity events and arguing that Mr. Trump was set up by members of the “deep state.”While the government has gathered thousands of pages of private messages in its vast investigation of the Capitol attack, it remains unclear if prosecutors have gotten access to the Friends of Stone group chat. Along with the membership list, The Times was given images of a few snippets of conversations to verify the chat’s authenticity.In one of them, Ms. Skaggs told the group that she had just spoken with the pro-Trump lawyer L. Lin Wood, who took part in the effort to overturn the election. Ms. Skaggs’s message, which does not bear a date, said Mr. Wood was claiming that the Insurrection Act — a form of martial law — had been invoked the night before.Responding to her message, Mr. Rhodes, who had repeatedly urged Mr. Trump to use the Insurrection Act to stay in power, answered incredulously.“I’ll believe it when I see it,” he wrote, dismissing the account with an obscenity. More

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      The Madison Cawthorn Show Is Over, and We All Deserve Refunds

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      In this era of partisanship, extremism and general insanity, there are few electoral outcomes that can unite voters across the political spectrum. For instance, is it a good thing that Pennsylvania Republicans just picked an election-denying conspiracist as their nominee for governor? What about the fact that Pennsylvania Democrats, in their Senate primary, went for the tattooed, goateed, progressive lieutenant governor who suffered a stroke last week over the button-down, centrist (some would say milquetoast) congressman who served in the Marine Corps and as an assistant U.S. attorney?So many perspectives. So many opinions.But on one point, most sensible people can agree: The voters in North Carolina’s 11th Congressional District have done the nation a great service by giving the boot to Representative Madison Cawthorn, the scandal-plagued 26-year-old freshman firebrand favored by Donald Trump. While the loss is surely disappointing for young Mr. Cawthorn, it is almost certainly the best outcome for him as well.It is hard not to take satisfaction in the downfall of a political creature as flamboyantly vile, reckless, incendiary and — how to put this gently? — dense as Mr. Cawthorn. Among his more notable transgressions: He has been cited (twice) in recent months for trying to board a plane with a gun. He has been busted twice for driving with a revoked license. He has been accused of sexual misconduct by multiple women and of having an inappropriate relationship with a male aide. He has brazenly lied about his background, including key details of the 2014 car crash that left him with limited use of his legs. He is facing accusations of insider trading.But wait! There’s more! Mr. Cawthorn has said nasty things about Volodymyr Zelensky, even as the Ukrainian president struggles to defend his nation from the butchery of Vladimir Putin. Cheering the not-guilty verdict in the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse, the teenager who killed two people during the unrest after the police shooting of a Black man in Kenosha, Wis., Mr. Cawthorn urged his social media followers to “be armed, be dangerous.” And he has been among the most aggressive, irresponsible peddlers of Mr. Trump’s election-fraud lies, at one point warning that if America’s election systems “continue to be rigged” and “stolen,” the result can only be “bloodshed.”Of course, in Mr. Trump’s Republican Party, many if not all of the above controversies might have been dismissed as youthful foolishness — boys being boys, if you will — or petty missteps overblown by the libs.But Mr. Cawthorn’s colleagues finally drew a line when he claimed that people he “looked up to” in Washington — presumably his Republican colleagues — had done cocaine and invited him to orgies. Today’s congressional Republicans might forgive a colleague’s tolerance or even encouragement of an armed and bloody assault on American democracy. But they will not stand for being associated with the term “key bump.”Neither were Republicans charmed when risqué images of Mr. Cawthorn (pre-Congress) recently made the rounds on social media: pics of him rocking ladies’ lingerie and a brief video of him naked and — there really is no way to put this tastefully — humping another man’s head. The emergence of these unflattering tidbits was, in fact, widely assumed to be part of a smear campaign orchestrated by Republicans weary of Mr. Cawthorn’s antics.Getting elected to Congress is quite an accomplishment for anyone, much less a 25-year-old who had his life derailed as a teenager. A recent Politico piece detailed the anguish Mr. Cawthorn expressed about his life to a friend in the summer of 2015. He texted that he missed the ability to do basic things, such as dressing himself and using the bathroom without help, and to experience ordinary pleasures, such as “being able to compete” and “being checked out by girls.” “I miss not peeing the bed because I have no control over my penis,” he wrote, and “not having to have pills keep me alive.” He missed his “pride as a man” and “not having to convince myself every day not to pull the trigger and end it all.”Many young people suffer horrific tragedies. And Mr. Cawthorn’s suffering in no way excuses his personal misbehavior or his toxic politics. But clearly the guy is struggling on some level and could benefit from stepping back from public life. The political circus is not the best place to achieve a healthy, balanced existence. To the contrary, modern politics tends to enable and exacerbate the worst tendencies in many people, immersing them in a world of partisan warfare and public pressure, increasingly cut off from a “normal” life.Today’s Republican politics, in particular, rewards acting out. The more performatively transgressive, divisive and obnoxious you are, the more authentically MAGA you are considered. Mr. Cawthorn threw himself into this bad-boy role with more gusto than most. He seems to have been particularly drawn to his party’s obsession with violence and toxic masculinity — clearly to ill effect.And so, even as we cheer the electoral humiliation of this exceptional jerk — the rare ultra-MAGA lawmaker too outrageous even for today’s G.O.P. to tolerate — here’s hoping his next gig is more conducive to helping him get his life together.America is better off without Mr. Cawthorn in Congress. So is he.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      America’s Doug Mastriano Problem

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      If the Ohio Senate primary two weeks ago provided some clarity about the ideological divisions in the Republican Party, Tuesday’s primaries often seemed more like a showcase for the distinctive personalities that populate a Trumpified G.O.P.The Pennsylvania Senate race gave us an especially vivid mix: As of this writing, the Celebrity Doctor and the Hedge Fund Guy Pretending to Be a MAGA True Believer may be headed for a recount, after the Would-Be Media Personality With the Inspiring Back Story and the Unfortunate Twitter Feed faded back into the pack. In the governor’s race, Republican voters chose to nominate Doug Mastriano, a.k.a. the QAnon Dad. In North Carolina, they ended — for now — the political career of Representative Madison Cawthorn, the Obviously Suffering Grifter.On substance, as opposed to personality, though, the night’s stakes were relatively simple: Can Republicans prevent their party from becoming the party of constitutional crisis, with leaders tacitly committed to turning the next close presidential election into a legal-judicial-political train wreck?This is a distinctive version of a familiar political problem. Whenever a destabilizing populist rebellion is unleashed inside a democratic polity, there are generally two ways to bring back stability without some kind of crisis or rupture in the system.Sometimes the revolt can be quarantined within a minority coalition and defeated by a majority. This was the destiny, for instance, of William Jennings Bryan’s 1890s prairie-populist rebellion, which took over the Democratic Party but went down to multiple presidential defeats at the hands of the more establishmentarian Republicans. You can see a similar pattern, for now, in French politics, where the populism of Marine Le Pen keeps getting isolated and defeated by the widely disliked but grudgingly tolerated centrism of Emmanuel Macron.In the alternative path to stability, the party being reshaped by populism finds leaders who can absorb its energies, channel its grievances and claim its mantle — but also defeat or suppress its most extreme manifestations. This was arguably the path of New Deal liberalism in its relationship to Depression-era populism and radicalism: In the 1930s, Franklin Roosevelt was able to sustain support from voters who were also drawn to more demagogic characters, from Huey Long to Charles Coughlin. Two generations later, it was the path of Reaganite conservatism in its relationship to both George Wallace’s populism and the Goldwaterite New Right.The problem for America today is that neither stabilizing strategy is going particularly well. Part of the Never Trump movement has aspired to a Macron-style strategy, preaching establishment unity behind the Democratic Party. But the Democrats haven’t cooperated: They conspicuously failed to contain and defeat Trumpism in 2016, and there is no sign that the Biden-era variation on the party is equipped to hold on to the majority it won in 2020.Meanwhile, the Republican Party at the moment does have a provisional model for channeling but also restraining populism. Essentially it involves leaning into culture-war controversy and rhetorical pugilism to a degree that provokes constant liberal outrage and using that outrage to reassure populist voters that you’re on their side and they don’t need to throw you over for a conspiracy theorist or Jan. 6 marcher.This is the model, in different styles and contexts, of Glenn Youngkin and Ron DeSantis. In Tuesday’s primaries it worked for Idaho’s conservative incumbent governor, Brad Little, who easily defeated his own lieutenant governor’s much-further-right campaign. Next week the same approach seems likely to help Brian Kemp defeat David Perdue for the governor’s nomination in Georgia. And it offers the party’s only chance, most likely via a DeSantis candidacy, to defeat Donald Trump in 2024.Unfortunately this model works best when you have a trusted figure, a known quantity, delivering the “I’ll be your warrior, I’ll defeat the left” message. The Cawthorn race, in which the toxic congressman was unseated by a member of the North Carolina State Senate, shows that this figure doesn’t have to be an incumbent to succeed, especially if other statewide leaders provide unified support. But if you have neither unity nor a figure with statewide prominence or incumbency as your champion — no Kemp, no Little — then you can get results like Mastriano’s victory last night in Pennsylvania: a Republican nominee for governor who cannot be trusted to carry out his constitutional duties should the presidential election be close in 2024.So now the obligation returns to the Democrats. Mastriano certainly deserves to lose the general election, and probably he will. But throughout the whole Trumpian experience, the Democratic Party has consistently failed its own tests of responsibility: It has talked constantly about the threat to democracy while moving leftward to a degree that makes it difficult to impossible to hold the center, and it has repeatedly cheered on unfit Republican candidates on the theory that they will be easier to beat.This happened conspicuously with Trump himself, and more unforgivably it happened again with Mastriano: Pennsylvania Democrats sent out mailers boosting his candidacy and ran a big ad buy, more than twice Mastriano’s own TV spending, calling him “one of Donald Trump’s strongest supporters” — an “attack” line perfectly scripted to improve his primary support.Now they have him, as they had Trump in 2016. We’ll see if they can make the story end differently this time.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTOpinion) and Instagram. More