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      Can Kevin McCarthy and Joe Biden Fix Washington?

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      Among the various reassessments of Kevin McCarthy following his successful debt ceiling negotiations, the one with the widest implications belongs to Matthew Continetti, who writes in The Washington Free Beacon that “McCarthy’s superpower is his desire to be speaker. He likes and wants his job.”If you hadn’t followed American politics across the last few decades, this would seem like a peculiar statement: What kind of House speaker wouldn’t want the job?But part of what’s gone wrong with American institutions lately is the failure of important figures to regard their positions as ends unto themselves. Congress, especially, has been overtaken by what Yuval Levin of the American Enterprise Institute describes as a “platform” mentality, where ambitious House members and senators treat their offices as places to stand and be seen — as talking heads, movement leaders, future presidents — rather than as roles to inhabit and opportunities to serve.On the Republican side, this tendency has taken several forms, from Newt Gingrich’s yearning to be a Great Man of History, to Ted Cruz’s ambitious grandstanding in the Obama years, to the emergence of Trump-era performance artists like Marjorie Taylor Greene. And the party’s congressional institutionalists, from dealmakers like John Boehner to policy mavens like Paul Ryan, have often been miserable-seeming prisoners of the talking heads, celebrity brands and would-be presidents.This dynamic seemed likely to imprison McCarthy as well, but he’s found a different way of dealing with it: He’s invited some of the bomb throwers into the legislative process, trying to turn them from platform-seekers into legislators by giving them a stake in governance, and so far he’s been rewarded with crucial support from figures like Greene and Thomas Massie, the quirky Kentucky libertarian. And it’s clear that part of what makes this possible is McCarthy’s enthusiasm for the actual vote-counting, handholding work required of his position, and his lack of both Gingrichian egomania and get-me-out-of-here impatience.But McCarthy isn’t operating in a vacuum. The Biden era has been good for institutionalism generally, because the president himself seems to understand and appreciate the nature of his office more than Barack Obama ever did. As my colleague Carlos Lozada noted on our podcast this week, in both the Senate and the White House, Obama was filled with palpable impatience at all the limitations on his actions. This showed up constantly in his negotiation strategy, where he had a tendency to use his own office as a pundit’s platform, lecturing the G.O.P. on what they should support and thereby alienating Republicans from compromise in advance.Whereas Biden, who actually liked being a senator, is clearly comfortable with quiet negotiation on any reasonable grounds, which is crucial to keeping the other side invested in a deal. And he’s comfortable, as well, with letting the spin machine run on both sides of the aisle, rather than constantly imposing his own rhetorical narrative on whatever bargain Republicans might strike.The other crucial element in the healthier environment is the absence of what Cruz brought to the debt-ceiling negotiations under Obama — the kind of sweeping maximalism, designed to build a presidential brand, that turns normal horse-trading into an existential fight.Expectating that kind of maximalism from Republicans, some liberals kept urging intransigence on Biden long after it became clear that what McCarthy wanted was more in line with previous debt-ceiling bargains. But McCarthy’s reasonability was sustainable because of the absence of a leading Republican senator playing Cruz’s absolutist part. Instead, the most notable populist Republican elected in 2022, J.D. Vance, has been busy looking for deals with populist Democrats on issues like railroad safety and bank-executive compensation, or adding a constructive amendment to the debt-ceiling bill even though he voted against it — as though he, no less than McCarthy, actually likes and wants his current job.One reason for the diminishment of Cruz-like grandstanders is the continued presence of Donald Trump as the G.O.P.’s personality-in-chief, to whose eminence no senator can reasonably aspire. At least through 2024, it’s clear the only way that Trump might be unseated is through the counterprogramming offered by Ron DeSantis, who is selling himself — we’ll see with what success — as the candidate of governance and competence; no bigger celebrity or demagogue is walking through that door.So for now there’s more benefit to legislative normalcy for ambitious Republicans, and less temptation toward the platform mentality, than there would be if Trump’s part were open for the taking.Whatever happens, it will be years until that role comes open. In which case Kevin McCarthy could be happy in his job for much longer than might have been expected by anyone watching his tortuous ascent.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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      Tim Scott Begins Presidential Campaign, Adding to Trump Challengers

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      The announcement from the South Carolina senator follows a tour of early nominating states. He enters the Republican primary field having raised $22 million.Tim Scott, the first Black Republican elected to the Senate from the South since Reconstruction, announced his campaign for president on Monday, adding to a growing number of Republicans running as alternatives to former President Donald J. Trump.Mr. Scott’s decision, which followed a soft rollout in February and the creation of an exploratory committee in April, came this time with a signal to the Republican establishment that he was the candidate to rally around if the party is to stop Mr. Trump’s nomination. He was introduced by the Senate’s No. 2 leader, John Thune of South Dakota, and will immediately begin a $5.5 million advertising blitz in the early nominating states of Iowa and New Hampshire.“Our party and our nation are standing at a time for choosing: Victimhood or victory? Grievance or greatness?” he planned to say at a packed and boisterous morning rally in the gym of his alma mater, Charleston Southern University, according to prepared remarks. “I choose freedom and hope and opportunity.”Long considered a rising star in the G.O.P., Mr. Scott, 57, enters the primary field having amassed $22 million in fund-raising and having attracted veteran political operatives to work on his behalf.But the field of Republicans hoping to take the nomination from Mr. Trump is about to grow far more crowded. Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida and Chris Christie, the former governor of New Jersey, are expected to enter the race in the coming days. Chris Sununu, the popular Republican governor of New Hampshire, hinted over the weekend that he was likely to throw his hat in the ring as well, scrambling the battle for the state with the first Republican primary. Mike Pence, Mr. Trump’s former vice president, is still mulling a run.With Mr. Trump’s most ardent followers unwilling to abandon their standard-bearer, the former president’s critics worry that more opponents will only split the anti-Trump vote and ensure his victory. Mr. Thune’s presence onstage Monday was an acknowledgment of that concern and a call to other elected Republicans to get on board with Mr. Scott.Aides to the Scott campaign said that his $22 million war chest was more than any presidential candidate in history, and that the $42 million he has raised since 2022 — much of which has been dolled out to other Republicans — had created a depth of loyalties other candidates do not have.The biggest question looming over Mr. Scott’s candidacy may be whether his message of positivity steeped in religiosity can attract enough Republican voters to win in a crowded primary. One of Mr. Scott’s rivals for the nomination is Nikki Haley, a former United Nations ambassador and South Carolina governor who appointed him to his Senate seat in 2012. The two have split allegiances and in-state support since Ms. Haley started her run in February, potentially complicating their efforts in a must-win early primary state.“I bet there’s room for three or four” candidates from South Carolina, Mr. Scott told the conservative radio personality Joey Hudson during a February interview. Mr. Scott has consolidated support from several top Republican donors and political consultants while touring Iowa and New Hampshire, key early nominating states, along with South Carolina, his home base. The longtime political operative Rob Collins and the former Colorado senator Cory Gardner, two well-known figures in Republican politics, are the leaders of his affiliated super PAC. Last month, two top South Carolina operatives, Matt Moore and Mark Knoop, were tapped to lead the group’s in-state operations.Mark Sanford, the disgraced former governor of South Carolina whose political comeback was cut short by his staunch criticism of Mr. Trump, joined the crowd.“I’m a huge fan of Tim Scott,” he said.A North Charleston native, Mr. Scott was raised by a single mother who worked long hours as a nursing assistant to raise him and his brothers. A car crash in high school sank his football dreams, but he attended Presbyterian College on a partial athletic scholarship before ultimately studying political science at Charleston Southern. His first foray into politics was through the Charleston County Council. After serving one term in the State House, he defeated the son of Strom Thurmond and won a seat for the First Congressional District in 2010, making him the first Black Republican House member from the Deep South since Reconstruction. Mr. Scott speaking with Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, a Democrat. Mr. Scott’s support floats in the single digits, and several other national Republicans are also eyeing a presidential run.Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesIn speeches, he often uses his biography — a story of humble beginnings and rapid rise on the political stage — to underline his view of America as a laudable work in progress rather than an irredeemably racist nation.“This is the freest and fairest land, where you and I can go as high as our character, our grit and our talent will take us,” he was set to say on Monday. “I bear witness to that.”The significance of his position is not lost on him. After a white gunman murdered nine Black parishioners at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, Mr. Scott condemned the act as a “crime of hate” and joined a bipartisan group of lawmakers in supporting Ms. Haley’s removal of the Confederate emblem from South Carolina’s state flag. As the nation reeled from the deaths of several Black men at the hands of the police in 2016, he gave a speech from the Senate floor describing instances when he was racially profiled, including by the Capitol Police.And the next year, after Mr. Trump said there were “very fine people on both sides” of a white supremacist march in Charlottesville, Va., Mr. Scott criticized his words, compelling the former president to invite the senator to the White House for a meeting about it.Mr. Scott was a leading Republican voice on police reform negotiations after the murder of George Floyd in 2020, helping draft Republicans’ proposed legislation that called for narrow reforms but did not ultimately pass. In 2017, he spearheaded the creation of Opportunity Zones, an initiative that offers tax incentives to investors in low-income neighborhoods — many of which are predominantly Black.It’s not clear, however, whether those efforts will result in added support from Black voters on a national stage. For many Black Democrats, Mr. Scott’s race matters little in light of his conservative voting record.The biggest question looming over Mr. Scott’s candidacy is whether his message of positivity steeped in religiosity can attract enough Republican voters to win in a crowded primary.Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times“The same Black people that would normally vote Republican, those are the people that will vote for Tim Scott,” said Representative Jamaal Bowman, Democrat of New York. “The majority of Black people, the near majority or new Black voters aren’t going to come out for Tim Scott.”Mr. Scott has already been tested as a presidential candidate. Days after starting his exploratory committee, Mr. Scott waffled on questions about whether he would support a federal abortion ban and did not specify the number of weeks at which he would restrict access to the procedure if elected president.Mr. Scott’s entry to the race also comes amid soul-searching for Republicans on who will carry the party’s mantle in 2024. Mr. Trump has increased his edge in the polls even as he faces new personal and political controversies, including his indictment by a grand jury in Manhattan and subsequent liability in a sexual assault trial involving the columnist E. Jean Carroll. Mr. Scott has pointedly declined to criticize Mr. Trump head-on, preferring oblique references to his own rectitude.The senator’s supporters have lauded that message, mostly positive and peppered with biblical references, as a welcome contrast to the vitriol that has become a feature of national campaigns.“You haven’t seen him burned in effigy because of a side he’s taken,” said Mikee Johnson, a Columbia-area business owner and Scott donor. “He’s more the one who’s seemed to have brought some people together.”Mr. Johnson added, “And I love him, because that’s his place.”During a March presidential forum in Charleston hosted by the conservative Christian Palmetto Family Council, Mr. Scott highlighted themes likely to take center stage during his presidential campaign.“There are two visions: One that feels like it’s pulling us down and another one that wants to restore faith in this nation,” he told the crowd after quoting the Epistle to the Galatians. “We believe that we need more faith in America, more faith in Americans, not less.” More

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      Something’s Got to Give

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      It’s been 52 years since Congress passed, and the country ratified, a constitutional amendment — the 26th Amendment, which lowered the voting age to 18 in the wake of the Vietnam War and the broader disruption of the 1960s. (The 27th Amendment, ratified in 1992, was passed in 1789.) It’s been 64 years since Congress added states to the union — Alaska and Hawaii, in 1959. And it’s been 94 years since Congress capped the size of the House of Representatives at 435 members.You might be tempted to treat these facts as trivia. But the truth is that they say something profound about American politics. For more than 50 years, the United States has been frozen in a kind of structural and constitutional stasis. Despite deep changes in our society — among them major population growth and at least two generational waves — we have made no formal changes to our national charter, nor have we added states or rearranged the federal system or altered the rules of political competition.One reason this matters, as Kate Shaw and Julie C. Suk observe in a recent essay for Times Opinion, is that “several generations of Americans have lost the habit and muscle memory of seeking formal constitutional change.” Unaccustomed to the concept and convinced that it is functionally impossible, Americans have abandoned the very notion that we can change our Constitution. Instead, we place the onus for change on the Supreme Court and hope for the best. Out with popular sovereignty, in with judicial supremacy.There is another reason this matters. Our stagnant political system has produced a stagnant political landscape. Neither party has been able to obtain a lasting advantage over the other, nor is either party poised to do so. The margins of victory and defeat in national elections are slim. The Republican majority that gave President George W. Bush a second term in the White House — and inspired, however briefly, visions of a permanent Republican majority — came to just 50.7 percent of the overall vote. President Barack Obama won his second term by around four percentage points, and President Biden won by a similar margin in 2020. Donald Trump, as we know, didn’t win a majority of voters in 2016.Control of Congress is evenly matched as well. Majorities are made with narrow margins in a handful of contested races, where victory can rest more on the shape of the district map — and the extent of the gerrymandering, assuming it holds — than on any kind of political persuasion. That’s the House. In the Senate, control has lurched back and forth on the basis of a few competitive seats in a few competitive states. And the next presidential election, thanks to the Electoral College, will be a game of inches in a small batch of closely matched states rather than a true national election.Past eras of political dynamism often came from some change in the overall political order. Throughout the 19th century, for example, the addition of states either transformed the terrain on which Americans fought partisan politics or opened avenues for long-term success for either one of the two major parties. States could be used to solidify partisan control in Washington — the reason we have two Dakotas instead of one — or used to extend and enlarge an existing coalition.Progressive-era constitutional transformations — the direct election of senators, women’s suffrage and Prohibition — reverberated through partisan politics, and the flood of Black Americans from Southern fields to Northern cities put an indelible stamp on the behavior of Democrats and Republicans.We lack for political disruption on that scale. There are no constitutional amendments on the table that might alter the terms of partisan combat in this country. There’s no chance — anytime soon — that we’ll end the Electoral College or radically expand the size of the House, moves that could change the national political calculus for both parties. There are no prospects, at this point, for new states, whether D.C., Puerto Rico or any of the other territories where Americans live and work without real representation in Congress.There’s nothing either constitutional or structural on the horizon of American politics that might unsettle or shake the political system itself out of its stagnation. Nothing that could push the public in new directions or force the parties themselves to build new kinds of coalitions. Nothing, in short, that could help Americans untangle the pathologies of our current political order.The fact of the matter is that there are forces that are trying to break the stasis of American politics. There’s the Supreme Court, which has used its iron grip on constitutional meaning to accumulate power in its chambers, to the detriment of other institutions of American governance. There’s the Republican Party, which has used the countermajoritarian features of our system to build redoubts of power, insulated from the voters themselves. And there is an authoritarian movement, led and animated by Trump, that wants to renounce constitutional government in favor of an authoritarian patronage regime, with his family at its center.Each of these forces is trying to game the current system, to build a new order from the pieces as they exist. But there’s nothing that says we can’t write new rules. And there’s nothing that says that we have to play this particular game.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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      Senator Ben Cardin Won’t Seek Re-election in Maryland

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      His retirement is likely to draw a number of Democrats and Republicans to compete for the seat.Senator Ben Cardin of Maryland, a long-serving Democrat, announced his retirement on Monday, clearing the way for highly competitive primaries to replace him in 2024, especially among Democrats in a deep-blue state.Maryland’s liberal-leaning voters have not sent a Republican to the U.S. Senate since 1980, and the eight-member congressional delegation includes just one member of the G.O.P.“I have run my last election and will not be on the ballot in 2024, but there is still much work to be done,” Mr. Cardin, 79, said in a statement. “During the next two years, I will continue to travel around the state, listening to Marylanders and responding to their needs.”High-profile Maryland Democrats who could be in the mix to replace Mr. Cardin include Representatives Jamie Raskin and David Trone, and Angela Alsobrooks, the executive of Prince George’s County.On the Republican side, there is already speculation about whether Larry Hogan, a popular former governor who in March said he would not run for president, will make a bid.In an interview, Mr. Cardin declined to endorse a successor, but he said he was confident Democrats would hold the seat. His election to the Senate in 2006 made him the third straight representative from Maryland’s Third Congressional District to join the chamber. The House seat is now held by John Sarbanes, a son of Paul Sarbanes, the senator who preceded Mr. Cardin.Mr. Cardin was named last month by Senator Chuck Schumer, the majority leader, to serve on the Judiciary Committee as a temporary replacement for Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, who is on leave recovering from shingles, but Republicans have blocked the move. Without her vote, Democrats have been unable to advance stalled judicial nominations.In a video announcing his retirement that he recorded with his wife, Myrna Cardin, Mr. Cardin touched on highlights of a career that includes enacting the Magnitsky sanctions, international penalties aimed at violators of human rights, and environmental protections for Chesapeake Bay.Much of his motivation through his 58 years in elected office, Mr. Cardin said in the video, “comes back to tzedakah, part of our tradition as Jews to help those that are less fortunate.”Mr. Cardin, who was speaker of the Maryland House of Delegates before being elected to Congress, said in the interview on Monday that he hopes to focus his final two years in the Senate on helping small businesses. More

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      Daines Endorsement Reflects Uneasy Senate G.O.P. Alliance With Trump

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      Senate Republicans, even those who have broken with the former president, say their campaign chief’s decision to back him could boost their push for the majority.WASHINGTON — When Senator Steve Daines, the leader of the Senate Republican campaign arm, quietly informed Senator Mitch McConnell, the minority leader, that he intended to endorse former President Donald J. Trump, Mr. McConnell was fine with the idea.Mr. McConnell, the Kentucky Republican, is not on speaking terms with the former president, having abruptly turned against him after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. Mr. Trump has publicly savaged the senator and repeatedly demeaned his wife with racist statements.But the minority leader, according to a person familiar with his thinking, believed that somebody in the Senate G.O.P. leadership ranks should have a working relationship with the party’s leading presidential contender — and it might as well be the man charged with winning back the Senate majority.Mr. Daines’s endorsement of Mr. Trump this week — and Mr. McConnell’s private blessing of it — highlighted how top Senate Republicans have quietly decided to join forces with their party’s leading presidential candidate, putting aside the toxic relationship that some of them have with him to focus on what they hope will be a mutually advantageous political union.Mr. Daines of Montana, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, is the first and so far only member of the Senate G.O.P. leadership team to endorse Mr. Trump. Mr. McConnell, who enabled Mr. Trump and his agenda during much of his presidency before the Capitol riot, has not spoken to the former president since December 2020. His No. 2, Senator John Thune of South Dakota, also has been mercilessly attacked by Mr. Trump.Mr. Thune portrayed Mr. Daines’s embrace of the former president as the cost of doing business — what’s necessary to win.“He’s got a tough job to do,” Mr. Thune told reporters at the Capitol. “He’s got a lot of races around the country that we need to win. And I think he wants as many allies as possible.”Asked about the fact that Mr. Daines has endorsed someone who has attacked both him and Mr. McConnell, the senator was temporarily at a loss for words.“Well,” Mr. Thune said with a pause, “what can I tell you?”Many Senate Republicans, in contrast to their counterparts in the House, view Mr. Trump as a political anchor who cost them the majority in 2020 with baseless claims of voter fraud in Georgia that damaged their runoff chances. Many believe Mr. Trump cost them again in 2022 by endorsing Senate contenders who struggled in the general election. Mr. McConnell has attributed his party’s inability to win the Senate to “candidate quality” problems spurred by Mr. Trump’s primary endorsements.Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Mr. Trump, said that there was “tremendous support nationally and statewide” for the former president, when asked about Senate Republican leaders’ reluctant acceptance of Mr. Daines’s endorsement.“By contrast, DeSantis has embarrassingly tiny support,” Mr. Cheung said.Some Republicans are determined to steer clear of Mr. Trump. Senator Mitt Romney of Utah, a vocal critic of Mr. Trump’s who voted to convict the former president in both of his impeachment trials, insisted that Mr. Daines’s backing for Mr. Trump should not be regarded as an embrace of the former president by the Senate G.O.P.“Montana is a big Trump-supporting state,” Mr. Romney said on Wednesday. “I don’t think he did that as the leader of the Republican team. Mitch McConnell is our leader, and I doubt he’ll endorse anybody.”A spokesman for Mr. Daines declined to comment on Mr. Romney’s characterization of the endorsement.Some wondered whether Mr. Daines was deliberately defying Mr. McConnell like the last chairman of the party campaign arm, Senator Rick Scott of Florida, did during last year’s midterm elections.“I was surprised,” Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa, another member of the party leadership, said this week when asked what she thought of the Daines endorsement. “But all of the senators have the opportunity to endorse who they want to endorse.”In fact, Mr. Daines and Mr. McConnell are on the same page.Mr. Trump’s endorsement highlighted how Senate Republicans shows an uneasy alliance among estranged political players.Dave Sanders for The New York TimesMr. Daines gave Mr. McConnell a heads up that he would be endorsing Mr. Trump ahead of a Monday night appearance on the podcast of Donald Trump Jr., the former president’s eldest son, according to the person familiar with his thinking.Mr. McConnell views Montana, West Virginia and Ohio — which Mr. Trump won by big margins — as among the most important Senate battlegrounds in 2024, and it will fall to Mr. Daines to keep the former president on friendly terms with the party’s favored candidates, especially in the states where he remains wildly popular.While the rest of Mr. McConnell’s team keeps their distance from the former president, Mr. Daines speaks frequently with Mr. Trump, including as recently as Wednesday night, said a person with direct knowledge of the call who was not authorized to discuss it publicly.So even after Mr. Trump has denigrated Mr. McConnell’s wife, Elaine Chao, the Senate minority leader has engaged in a familiar game with the former president, with whom he worked closely to cut taxes and stack the federal judiciary with ardent conservatives.Mr. McConnell has said as little as possible about the former president since cutting off all contact with him. He has ignored Mr. Trump’s attacks against him and his wife, and he has refused to follow the approach of former Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming, who has said she plans to do whatever she can to stop Mr. Trump from becoming president again.Instead, Mr. McConnell has said he is focused on winning back the Senate, and in service of that goal he is already making accommodations for the former president. He has said he will support Mr. Trump if he wins the 2024 Republican nomination.Like many of his colleagues, Senator John Cornyn of Texas, a former chairman of the Republican campaign arm himself, is staying out of Mr. Trump’s way. He said he did not plan to endorse in the primary, but “will support the nominee” in the general election.Mr. Daines, he said, was “entitled to some latitude given the complexity of the political environment that we’re entering into.”Republicans’ goal, Mr. Cornyn added, was to win back the majority.“And I don’t really care what the tactics are,” he said. More

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      Gov. Jim Justice Is Expected to Announce Senate Run for Joe Manchin’s Seat

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      Mr. Manchin is viewed as one of the most vulnerable Democrats in next year’s elections, in a state, West Virginia, that has overwhelmingly trended red.Gov. Jim Justice of West Virginia is set to announce a Senate campaign on Thursday, giving Republicans a strong recruit against Senator Joe Manchin III, one of the most vulnerable Democrats up for re-election in 2024.The West Virginia race is one of the most essential pickup opportunities for Republicans if they are to retake control of the Senate, which Democrats hold by a narrow 51-49 seat margin.Mr. Manchin, who represents by far the most Republican state held by any Democratic senator, has yet to announce whether he will seek re-election, but Republicans are hoping that Mr. Justice’s entry might spur him toward retirement.Mr. Manchin in recent years has been one of the few Democrats who can compete in the overwhelmingly Republican state.Mr. Justice’s team teased a “special announcement” at 5 p.m. Eastern time on Thursday at the Greenbrier Resort in White Sulphur Springs, W.Va. It made a point to note that his English bulldog — Babydog, known for a memorable appearance last year at Mr. Justice’s State of the State speech — would be present for the announcement.The advisory did not specify the nature of the announcement, though it offered a livestream link to a YouTube page with the description “The official YouTube channel for Jim Justice for U.S. Senate, Inc.” Two people with knowledge of Mr. Justice’s plans confirmed he would be entering the Senate race.Before facing Mr. Manchin, Mr. Justice would need to make it through a Republican primary. He will have at least one major opponent, Representative Alex Mooney, who has been closely allied with former President Donald J. Trump.Mr. Mooney has already attacked Mr. Justice as a “RINO,” or “Republican in name only,” one of Mr. Trump’s and his allies’ favorite insults.Mr. Mooney has the backing of the Club for Growth, the influential conservative group that has spent heavily in recent Republican primaries, and Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, endorsed him last week.Mr. Justice, a billionaire businessman, was first elected governor in 2016 and re-elected in 2020, making him term-limited next year. He initially ran and won as a Democrat, but switched his party affiliation to Republican in 2017, less than a year into his first term.He made that announcement at a rally alongside Mr. Trump, saying, “Today I will tell you as West Virginians that I can’t help you anymore being a Democrat governor.” As is traditional for politicians who switch allegiances, he said his former party had moved away from him, not the other way around.Top Senate Republicans have been eager to lure Mr. Justice into the race. One Nation, a nonprofit group aligned with Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, recently began a $1 million ad campaign against Mr. Manchin for his support of President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act.Mr. Manchin appeared on Fox News this week, in an interview with Sean Hannity, and attacked the Biden administration for the way it had implemented the legislation. He even threatened to vote to repeal it over its climate provisions.Mr. Hannity asked why Mr. Manchin had remained with the Democratic Party.“Well, they don’t always get my vote, you know that — if I can’t go home and explain, I don’t vote for it,” Mr. Manchin said. “I think about that every day: Why am I a Democrat?”Shane Goldmacher More

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      Tim Scott Set to Announce Presidential Exploratory Committee for 2024

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      Mr. Scott, a Republican senator from South Carolina, will appear on Fox News on Wednesday morning.Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, the most prominent Black leader in the Republican Party, will start an exploratory committee for a 2024 presidential run on Wednesday, according to three people with knowledge of his plans.The announcement, which was first reported by The Post and Courier of Charleston, S.C., opens an all-but-declared presidential campaign for Mr. Scott, who will test his message this week in the early primary voting states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, his home state.An exploratory committee will allow Mr. Scott, who would enter the Republican primary with nearly $21.8 million on hand in his Senate account, to raise money directly for a 2024 campaign and garner more national attention before a formal presidential announcement. He will host a donor retreat in Charleston this weekend, where he is expected to update his top donors on his plans.Allies have already established a super PAC that is expected to be supportive of Mr. Scott, should he make his run official. Last week, the PAC announced that it was expanding through the hiring of two veteran South Carolina political operatives, Matt Moore and Mark Knoop.Mr. Scott also teased his plans to run in a fund-raising email to supporters on Tuesday evening, saying he would make “a major announcement” on Wednesday. He will announce his plans on “Fox and Friends” on Fox News that morning, according to the email.Mr. Scott, who will campaign in Iowa on Wednesday, in New Hampshire on Thursday and in South Carolina on Friday, is expected to heavily emphasize his only-in-America rise, a story he first told on the national stage at the 2020 Republican National Convention.“Our family went from cotton to Congress in one lifetime,” Mr. Scott said. “And that’s why I believe the next American century can be better than the last.” In 2021, he was tapped to deliver the Republican response to President Biden’s first joint address before Congress, a speech that turbocharged Mr. Scott’s online fund-raising.Mr. Scott’s biography, his oratorical skills and his prominence as the top-ranking Black Republican in Congress have him on many Republican short lists to serve as a potential vice president, though advisers to Mr. Scott have rebuffed that as the goal.If and when Mr. Scott officially enters the race, he will be the second South Carolina Republican in the 2024 sweepstakes, following the entry of Nikki Haley, the former governor and former United Nations ambassador. He also joins an increasingly crowded primary field for president: Former President Donald J. Trump, former Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas and the tech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy have all begun campaigns. Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida is expected to join the field in the coming months. More

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      Republican Mark Lamb Files to Run for Kyrsten Sinema’s Senate Seat

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      Mark Lamb, a sheriff and an ally of former President Donald J. Trump, will run for the seat held by Kyrsten Sinema, a Democrat-turned-independent.Mark Lamb, a right-wing sheriff and an ally of former President Donald J. Trump known for his policing of elections and his defiance of a pandemic lockdown, announced Tuesday that he would run for Senate in Arizona next year, a contest that could determine control of the closely divided chamber.Mr. Lamb, 50, became the first high-profile Republican to compete for the seat, one currently held by Senator Kyrsten Sinema, who left the Democratic Party in December to become an independent. Ms. Sinema has not said whether she will run, but if she does, there is already one Democratic challenger: Representative Ruben Gallego, a progressive Democrat from Phoenix.In his announcement video, Mr. Lamb said he would “stand up to the woke left” and “secure our border and support our law enforcement.” He also called out his support for gun rights and his anti-abortion stance in the ad.Mr. Lamb, as the top law enforcement officer in Arizona’s third-most populous county, Pinal, made headlines when he refused to enforce the state’s stay-at-home order in 2020 and then when he expressed sympathy for the rioters who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. He has also sown doubt over the results of the 2020 election and drawn scrutiny for his embrace of private militias and hard-line positions on immigration.The field appears likely to grow, as Republicans see an opening to retake the seat in the potential matchup between Mr. Gallego and Ms. Sinema, which could split the Democratic and independent voters who have powered victories for the left in the state.Kari Lake, a Republican who refused to accept her defeat in the governor’s race last year, has also signaled that she could jump into the race.Ms. Sinema has infuriated Democrats with her departure and opposition to key planks of their agenda in the Senate. Her split with the party came shortly after it gained an outright majority in the Senate during the midterm elections last fall.Arizona was one of the key battlegrounds in those elections, and in 2020, Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory there over Mr. Trump helped him to secure the presidency. More