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    Top Ramaswamy Aide Resigns to Join the Trump Campaign

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    The aide, Brian Swensen, had been focused on building Vivek Ramaswamy’s New Hampshire operation.Vivek Ramaswamy’s national political director is switching Republican teams and heading to former President Donald J. Trump’s campaign.The political director, Brian Swensen, has resigned and plans to join Mr. Trump’s re-election effort, a spokeswoman for Mr. Ramaswamy said on Wednesday. The news was first reported by The Messenger.The move came as Mr. Ramaswamy, whose campaign for the 2024 Republican nomination has plateaued in the polls, is barnstorming the early primary states in the final weeks before the start of the primary season in Iowa and New Hampshire in January. Mr. Swensen was with Mr. Ramaswamy in New Hampshire over the weekend. In the coming weeks, he will assist with the Trump campaign’s operation in Nevada ahead of the state’s caucuses in February. Tricia McLaughlin, the Ramaswamy campaign’s spokeswoman, said that Mr. Swensen had left on good terms and that the move had been “in the process for a while.” Mr. Ramaswamy has repeatedly praised Mr. Trump, the Republican front-runner, whom he trails by double digits, often calling him the “best president of the 21st century.”“We love Brian, and we just want him to be happy in life and in his career,” Ms. McLaughlin said, adding, “Everyone saw it very much as not a surprise and also as a positive move for Brian to take a different path.”Mr. Swensen did not respond to requests for comment.Mr. Swensen is a longtime Republican consultant. He worked on Ron DeSantis’s campaign for Florida governor in 2018 and served as deputy campaign manager for Senator Marco Rubio’s 2016 re-election campaign. He had moved to New Hampshire to focus on the Ramaswamy campaign’s operation there several months ago, long before Mr. Ramaswamy moved his campaign headquarters and full-time staff members from Ohio to Iowa and New Hampshire this month.His previous duties will be taken over by Mike Biundo, who was a former senior adviser to Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign and who previously ran Rick Santorum’s 2012 presidential campaign. Mr. Biundo joined the Ramaswamy campaign a month and a half ago and has overseen much of the campaign’s New Hampshire operation since he came on board, Ms. McLaughlin said. More

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      Republicans Seek Path for Constitutional Convention

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      A new book by a former Democratic senator warns of the risks of allowing states to call for a convention. Some in the G.O.P. see it as the only way to rein in the federal government.WASHINGTON — Representative Jodey Arrington, a conservative Texas Republican, believes it is well past time for something the nation has not experienced for more than two centuries: a debate over rewriting the Constitution.“I think the states are due a convention,” said Mr. Arrington, who in July introduced legislation to direct the archivist of the United States to tally applications for a convention from state legislatures and compel Congress to schedule a gathering when enough states have petitioned for one. “It is time to rally the states and rein in Washington responsibly.”To Russ Feingold, the former Democratic senator from Wisconsin and president of the American Constitution Society, a liberal judicial group, that is a terrible idea. Mr. Feingold sees the prospect of a constitutional convention as an exceptionally dangerous threat from the right and suggests it is closer to reality than most people realize as Republicans push to retake control of Congress in November’s midterm elections.“We are very concerned that the Congress, if it becomes Republican, will call a convention,” said Mr. Feingold, the co-author of a new book warning of the risks of a convention called “The Constitution in Jeopardy.”“This could gut our Constitution,” Mr. Feingold said in an interview. “There needs to be real concern and attention about what they might do. We are putting out the alert.”While the rise of election deniers, new voting restrictions and other electoral maneuvering get most of the attention, Mr. Feingold rates the prospect of a second constitutional convention as just as grave a threat to democratic governance.“If you think this is democracy’s moment of truth, this is one of those things,” he said.Elements on the right have for years been waging a quiet but concerted campaign to convene a gathering to consider changes to the Constitution. They hope to take advantage of a never-used aspect of Article V, which says in part that Congress, “on the application of the legislatures of two-thirds of the several states, shall call a convention for proposing amendments.”Throughout the nation’s history, 27 changes have been made to the Constitution by another grindingly arduous route, with amendments originating in Congress subject to ratification by the states.With sharp partisanship making that path near impossible, backers of the convention idea now hope to harness the power of Republican-controlled state legislatures to petition Congress and force a convention they see as a way to strip away power from Washington and impose new fiscal restraints, at a minimum.“We need to channel the energy to restore and reclaim this country’s traditional values and founding principles of limited government closest to the people and individual freedom and responsibility,” Rick Santorum, the former Republican senator from Pennsylvania who has become a convention champion, told a conservative conference this spring in the state.More Coverage of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsAn Upset in Alaska: Mary Peltola, a Democrat, beat Sarah Palin in a special House election, adding to a series of recent wins for the party. Ms. Peltola will become the first Alaska Native to serve in Congress.Evidence Against a Red Wave: Since the fall of Roe v. Wade, it’s hard to see the once-clear signs of a Republican advantage. A strong Democratic showing in a New York special election is one of the latest examples.G.O.P.’s Dimming Hopes: Republicans are still favored in the fall House races, but former President Donald J. Trump and abortion are scrambling the picture in ways that distress party insiders.Digital Pivot: At least 10 G.O.P. candidates in competitive races have updated their websites to minimize their ties to Mr. Trump or to adjust their uncompromising stances on abortion.Mr. Santorum was pushing for Pennsylvania to become the 20th state to formally call for a convention in recent years, out of the 34 states required. But it is not clear exactly how many states have weighed in, since not all have adopted the same language and some petitions were submitted decades or longer ago and may even have been rescinded.Mr. Arrington believes that when pending petitions are fully tallied, the 34-state goal might already have been exceeded. His legislation would require the archivist to “authenticate, count and publish” applications by the states, forcing Congress to act.“The problem is that they haven’t had a ministerial, clerical mechanism for the archivist to keep a count and report to Congress,” Mr. Arrington said. “I do believe we have crossed that threshold, and it is not congressional discretion — it is a constitutional mandate — that Congress should pick a date and a place for the convention.” More

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      Foster Friess, Big Donor to Republicans, Dies at 81

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      A conservative Christian and wealthy businessman, he gave millions to Rick Santorum and Donald Trump in their presidential bids.Foster Friess, a Wyoming businessman who founded an investment firm, made a fortune and gave a lot of it away to Republican presidential candidates and charities, sometimes with flair, died on Thursday in Scottsdale, Ariz. He was 81.His organization, Foster’s Outriders, which confirmed the death, said he had been receiving care at the Mayo Clinic there for myelodysplastic syndrome, a disorder of the blood cells and bone marrow.Gov. Mark Gordon of Wyoming, who defeated Mr. Friess in the Republican gubernatorial primary in 2018, writing on Twitter, called Mr. Friess “a strong and steady voice for Republican and Christian values.”Mr. Friess’s run for governor was his only try at major elected office. In the political arena he was primarily known for his donations, particularly to the presidential bids of Rick Santorum, the former United States senator from Pennsylvania, in the 2012 and 2016 campaigns. After Mr. Santorum left the 2016 race, Mr. Friess became one of the first Republican megadonors to embrace Donald J. Trump.But to many, the most important support that Mr. Friess, an evangelical Christian, and his wife, Lynnette, provided was to charities. Foster’s Outriders and the Lynn and Foster Friess Family Foundation have provided scholarships, financed work for homeless people, supported water projects in Africa and much more. His organization said Mr. Friess had donated $500 million in his lifetime.His 70th birthday party in 2010 in Jackson Hole, Wyo., where he lived much of the year, was the stuff of legend. The website wyofile.com described it.“In the invitations to the party, Friess, a born-again Christian, had asked the guests to identify their favorite charity that reflected the values of his favorite quote from Galatians: ‘Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ,’” it wrote in 2011. “He vowed to give $70,000 to the most worthy nominee.”When the time came to announce the winner, the servers at the Four Seasons Resort, where the party was being held, distributed envelopes to the guests.“Friess asked the lucky winner to stand up and shout, and for the other guests to remain seated,” the account continued. “Then he sat back and waited for the mayhem.”As people opened the envelopes, someone at every table stood and shouted, “I won!” He had funded every request, at a cost of $7.7 million.Mr. Friess thanking supporters in 2018 after conceding the Republican nomination to Gov. Mark Gordon of Wyoming. He had been endorsed by Donald Trump Jr. Alan Rogers/The Casper Star-Tribune, via Associated PressFoster Stephen Friess was born on April 2, 1940, in Rice Lake, Wis. His father, Albert, was a cattle rancher, and his mother, Ethel (Foster) Friess, was a homemaker.“I came from nothing,” he told The New York Times in 2018 during his campaign for governor when asked if he himself might be considered one of the “elites” he was railing against. “My mom dropped out of school in eighth grade to pick cotton and save the family farm. My dad had a high school education.”He graduated from the University of Wisconsin in Madison with a degree in business administration and served in the Army as an intelligence officer for a guided-missile brigade at Fort Bliss in Texas.After working in finance for several years, he founded the investment management firm Friess Associates in 1974 and was soon regarded as a first-rate stock picker. His flagship asset, the Brandywine Fund, swelled to more than $15 billion. He sold a controlling interest in Friess Associates to the Affiliated Managers Group in 2001.On the political side, Mr. Friess did more than support candidates. In 2010, he was a founding investor in The Daily Caller, Tucker Carlson and Neil Patel’s conservative news and opinion website.In 2012 Mr. Friess supported Mr. Santorum not so much because he agreed with all his policies — “I try to talk him out of them,” he told the broadcaster Lou Dobbs in February 2012 — but because he thought the Republican Party needed a new face.“These old veteran war horses, they have a hard time making it,” he said on “Lou Dobbs Tonight.” “Dole couldn’t make it, McCain couldn’t make it. On the Democratic side, Gore couldn’t make it and Kerry couldn’t make it. So the Democrats bring these fresh faces, they bring Carter from out of nowhere, they bring Clinton from out of nowhere, they bring Obama from beyond nowhere.”Later that month Mr. Friess made headlines when, on MSNBC, Andrea Mitchell asked him whether Mr. Santorum’s statements on “the dangers of contraception” would hurt his campaign.“Back in my days,” Mr. Friess said, “they used Bayer aspirin for contraception. The gals put it between their knees, and it wasn’t that costly.”Mr. Santorum’s primary campaign started strong but foundered, and Mr. Obama was elected to a second term, defeating Mitt Romney.In the next presidential campaign, Mr. Friess also supported Mr. Santorum initially. In mid-2015, with the Republican field choked with candidates and the nastiness level increasing, he called on the candidates not to “drift off the civility reservation.”In May 2016, with Mr. Santorum out of the race and Mr. Trump having secured the Republican nomination, Mr. Friess threw his support to the Trump cause, though acknowledging that Mr. Trump had advanced by showing the very incivility he had decried — something he expected would change to a more presidential tenor.“Donald’s strategy seems to work,” Mr. Friess told CNN that month, “but I’m convinced he’s going to shift.”Mr. Friess supported Mr. Trump throughout his administration, and when he ran for governor, the Trump family tried to return the favor — the president’s son Donald Jr. endorsed him in an opinion article in The Star Tribune of Casper, Wyo. President Trump himself was quieter, although he did offer a Twitter post late in the campaign endorsing Mr. Friess. Mr. Gordon’s victory was cited by some of as evidence of Mr. Trump’s vulnerability, though others saw it more as a local matter.Three weeks ago, when Darin Smith, a lawyer and businessman who has contended that Mr. Trump “probably” won the 2020 election, announced that he would challenge Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming, who has been critical of Mr. Trump, in the 2022 primaries, he said that Mr. Friess would be his campaign chairman.Mr. Friess’s wife of 58 years, Lynnette Estes Friess, survives him, as do their four children, Traci, Stephen, Carrie, and Michael; a brother, Herman; and 15 grandchildren. More