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      Trump's Lawyers Are Unlikely to Focus on Election Fraud Claims

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Trump ImpeachmentDivisions in the SenateList of Senators’ StancesTrump ImpeachedHow the House VotedKey QuotesAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyTrump’s New Lawyers Not Expected to Focus on False Election Claims in His DefenseWhile Mr. Trump has argued for it, his lawyers will instead echo the argument of many Republicans that the impeachment trial of a former president is unconstitutional.Bruce L. Castor Jr., a former district attorney in Pennsylvania, joined former President Donald J. Trump’s legal team this weekend.Credit…Matt Rourke/Associated PressMaggie Haberman and Feb. 1, 2021Updated 10:02 p.m. ETThe new legal team that former President Donald J. Trump has brought in for his impeachment trial next week is unlikely to focus his defense on his baseless claims of widespread election fraud and instead question whether the trial is even constitutional since he is no longer president, people close to the team said on Monday.Several Trump advisers have told the former president that using his election claims as a defense for his role in the mob attack on the Capitol last month is unwise, according to a person close to the new lawyers, David Schoen and Bruce L. Castor Jr. The person said the former president’s advisers did not expect that it would be part of the arguments they make before the Senate.In an interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Monday, Mr. Schoen confirmed that he would not make that argument. “I’m not in this case for that,” he said.Mr. Schoen, an Atlanta-based criminal defense lawyer, and Mr. Castor, a former district attorney in Pennsylvania, replaced Butch Bowers and four other lawyers working with him after they parted ways with the former president.A person close to Mr. Trump said there was disagreement about the approach to strategy, as he pushed to have the legal team focus on election fraud. The person also said that the former president had no “chemistry” with Mr. Bowers, a South Carolina lawyer recommended to him by Senator Lindsey Graham, one of his most loyal supporters.A second person close to Mr. Trump said that Mr. Bowers had seemed “overwhelmed” by the case and confirmed a report from Axios that the lawyer had sought about $3 million for fees, researchers and other expenses.The new team has to file a brief with the Senate on Tuesday that will provide a first glimpse of how they plan to defend the former president. Mr. Trump never had an opportunity to offer a defense in the House impeachment proceedings because of the speed with which they were conducted.Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, warned Mr. Trump’s team on Monday to stay away from rehashing his inflated grievances and debunked theories about election fraud. Better, he said, to focus on rebutting the particulars of the House’s “incitement of insurrection” charge.“It’s really not material,” Mr. Cornyn told reporters in the Capitol of Mr. Trump’s repeated claims. “As much as there might be a temptation to bring in other matters, I think it would be a disservice to the president’s own defense to get bogged down in things that really aren’t before the Senate.”Many Republicans on Capitol Hill expect the defense team to at least partly rely on their argument that holding a trial of a former president is unconstitutional. People close to the Trump legal team said that would be a main avenue of defense, and Mr. Schoen told The Journal-Constitution that the constitutional question would be key.Mr. Schoen also said he planned to argue that Mr. Trump’s language did not “constitute incitement” of the violence on Jan. 6, when a mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol. But not all of the former president’s advisers share the belief that such an argument should be made; some have said privately that it is unnecessary to debate the key focus of the impeachment articles.The constitutional debate around that issue — many scholars disagree, citing the fact that the Senate has tried a former official in the past — will figure significantly in the trial. In preparation, the Senate has explicitly asked both sides to address in their written briefs “whether Donald John Trump is subject to the jurisdiction of a court of impeachment for acts committed as president of the United States, notwithstanding the expiration of his term in said office.”The House managers are set to file their own, more detailed legal brief on Tuesday. The document should offer the first comprehensive road map of their argument that Mr. Trump sowed baseless claims of election fraud, summoned his supporters to Washington and then directly provoked them to confront Congress as it met in the Capitol to certify his election loss.The brief will also include an argument in favor of holding the trial, with the managers prepared to argue that the framers of the Constitution intended impeachment to apply to officials who had committed offenses while in office.A similar document from Mr. Trump’s team to expand on their initial pleading is due next week before the trial begins on Feb. 9.Some around the former president have suggested arguing against the central accusation in the impeachment article — that he incited an insurrection — and instead focusing more closely on process issues like the constitutionality of the case.While the lawyers were just named, Mr. Schoen has been speaking to Mr. Trump and others around him in an informal capacity for several days, people close to the former president said. Mr. Schoen has represented a range of clients, like mobsters and Mr. Trump’s longtime adviser Roger J. Stone Jr.Mr. Castor is best known for reaching a deal not to prosecute Bill Cosby for sexual assault when he was the district attorney of Montgomery County, Pa. He also briefly served as the state’s acting attorney general.Mr. Castor’s cousin is Stephen R. Castor, the congressional investigator who battled Democrats over Mr. Trump’s attempts to pressure Ukraine to investigate Joseph R. Biden Jr. when he was preparing to run against him. A person familiar with the discussions said that Stephen Castor had recommended his cousin to the former president.It is unclear how close the Castor cousins are. Stephen Castor is a veteran of some of Capitol Hill’s most fiercely partisan oversight disputes in the past decade. He worked on investigations into the Obama administration’s handling of an attack on the American diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, and a gun trafficking program known as Operation Fast and Furious.In the meantime, the nine House impeachment managers have all but gone underground in recent days, favoring private trial preparations to the kind of TV interviews and other public appearances often used in Washington to try to shift public opinion.Democratic leaders are trying to carry out both the president’s lengthy legislative agenda and a major impeachment trial of his predecessor more or less simultaneously. The decision to maintain a low profile was apparently driven by the desire to divert as little attention as possible from Mr. Biden’s push for coronavirus relief legislation, the priority issue of his agenda.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      The G.O.P. Is in a Doom Loop of Bizarro

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyOpinionSupported byContinue reading the main storyThe G.O.P. Is in a Doom Loop of BizarroBut will it doom the rest of us, too?Opinion ColumnistJan. 28, 2021Credit…L.E. Baskow/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesHere’s what we know about American politics: The Republican Party is stuck, probably irreversibly, in a doom loop of bizarro. If the Trump-incited Capitol insurrection didn’t snap the party back to sanity — and it didn’t — nothing will.What isn’t clear yet is who, exactly, will end up facing doom. Will it be the G.O.P. as a significant political force? Or will it be America as we know it? Unfortunately, we don’t know the answer. It depends a lot on how successful Republicans will be in suppressing votes.About the bizarro: Even I had some lingering hope that the Republican establishment might try to end Trumpism. But such hopes died this week.On Tuesday Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, who has said that Donald Trump’s role in fomenting the insurrection was impeachable, voted for a measure that would have declared a Trump trial unconstitutional because he’s no longer in office. (Most constitutional scholars disagree.)On Thursday Kevin McCarthy, the House minority leader — who still hasn’t conceded that Joe Biden legitimately won the presidency, but did declare that Trump “bears responsibility” for the attack on Congress — visited Mar-a-Lago, presumably to make amends.In other words, the G.O.P.’s national leadership, after briefly flirting with sense, has surrendered to the fantasies of the fringe. Cowardice rules.And the fringe is consolidating its hold at the state level. The Arizona state party censured the Republican governor for the sin of belatedly trying to contain the coronavirus. The Texas G.O.P. has adopted the slogan “We are the storm,” which is associated with QAnon, although the party denies it intended any link. Oregon Republicans have endorsed the completely baseless claim, contradicted by the rioters themselves, that the attack on the Capitol was a left-wing false flag operation.How did this happen to what was once the party of Dwight Eisenhower? Political scientists argue that traditional forces of moderation have been weakened by factors like the nationalization of politics and the rise of partisan media, notably Fox News.This opens the door to a process of self-reinforcing extremism (something, by the way, that I’ve seen happen in a minor fashion within some academic subfields). As hard-liners gain power within a group, they drive out moderates; what remains of the group is even more extreme, which drives out even more moderates; and so on. A party starts out complaining that taxes are too high; after a while it begins claiming that climate change is a giant hoax; it ends up believing that all Democrats are Satanist pedophiles.This process of radicalization began long before Donald Trump; it goes back at least to Newt Gingrich’s takeover of Congress in 1994. But Trump’s reign of corruption and lies, followed by his refusal to concede and his attempt to overturn the election results, brought it to a head. And the cowardice of the Republican establishment has sealed the deal. One of America’s two major political parties has parted ways with facts, logic and democracy, and it’s not coming back.What happens next? You might think that a party that goes off the deep end morally and intellectually would also find itself going off the deep end politically. And that has in fact happened in some states. Those fantasist Oregon Republicans, who have been shut out of power since 2013, seem to be going the way of their counterparts in California, a once-mighty party reduced to impotence in the face of a Democratic supermajority.But it’s not at all clear that this will happen at a national level. True, as Republicans have become more extreme they have lost broad support; the G.O.P. has won the popular vote for president only once since 1988, and 2004 was an outlier influenced by the lingering rally-around-the-flag effects of 9/11.Given the unrepresentative nature of our electoral system, however, Republicans can achieve power even while losing the popular vote. A majority of voters rejected Trump in 2016, but he became president anyway, and he came fairly close to pulling it out in 2020 despite a seven million vote deficit. The Senate is evenly divided even though Democratic members represent 41 million more people than Republicans.And the Republican response to electoral defeat isn’t to change policies to win over voters; it is to try to rig the next election. Georgia has long been known for systematic suppression of Black voters; it took a remarkable organizing effort by Democrats, led by Stacey Abrams, to overcome that suppression and win the state’s electoral votes and Senate seats. So the Republicans who control the state are doubling down on disenfranchisement, with proposed new voter ID requirements and other measures to limit voting.The bottom line is that we don’t know whether we’ve earned more than a temporary reprieve. A president who tried to retain power despite losing an election has been foiled. But a party that buys into bizarre conspiracy theories and denies the legitimacy of its opposition isn’t getting saner, and still has a good chance of taking complete power in four years.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.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Marco Rubio Deserves Ivanka Trump

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyOpinionSupported byContinue reading the main storyMarco Rubio Deserves Ivanka TrumpWill the senator’s sycophancy and shape-shifting come to naught?Opinion ColumnistJan. 29, 2021Credit…Ben WisemanIt’s a measure of the Republican Party’s current depravity that I think of the period when Marco Rubio was besmirching Donald Trump’s genitalia as the good old days.It was early 2016, Trump hadn’t yet locked down the Republican presidential nomination and Rubio, smarting from Trump’s nickname for him (“Little Marco’) and cracks about his overactive sweat glands, began pointing voters toward Trump’s private parts.“He’s, like, 6-2, which is why I don’t understand why his hands are the size of someone who’s 5-2,” Rubio told voters at a campaign rally in late February that year. “Have you seen his hands? And you know what they say about men with small hands.”In that age of innocence, we were talking and even laughing about the nether regions of Republican anatomy. Five years later, we’re talking and most certainly not laughing about the nether regions of Republican morality, which Rubio plumbs as shamelessly as his more exposed Senate colleagues Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz and Tom Cotton do.All four seem to have dreams of 2024 and don’t want to run afoul of Trump and his base, no matter how thoroughly that debases them. They’re vain weather vanes of his hold on the party, the strength and stubbornness of which are evident in the populous crowd of Trump-smooching presidential aspirants (these four, Mike Pompeo, Nikki Haley, etc.) versus the sparse crew of Trump-spanking ones (Larry Hogan, Ben Sasse and that’s about it).As Trump’s impeachment trial looms, everything that these young or youngish senators say and do can be seen as an audition for his mantle, which Hawley and Cruz reached for with special cynicism when they joined six other senators in voting not to certify Joe Biden’s election. Rubio and Cotton didn’t go quite that far, but I’m sure Rubio was tempted. Ever since, he has mustered extra energy for showing what a fierce Trump loyalist he can be.On Fox News recently, he dismissed Trump’s upcoming Senate trial as “stupid,” seemingly daring Hawley, Cruz and Cotton to top his disdain and his adjective. He paired that exalted commentary with an inadequately punctuated, inelegantly worded and ineptly reasoned tweet: Five people died when a Trump-loving mob, whipped into a violent frenzy by his and his Republican enablers’ lies about election fraud, stormed and trashed the Capitol. But sure, Senator Rubio, Democrats’ upset is purely theatrical. Absolutely, the lesson here is the bloodthirst of “the radical left.”That’s no garden-variety misdirection. That’s pure derangement.Marco Rubio greeted Ivanka Trump at the Capitol in 2017.Credit…Erica Werner/Associated PressIt also smacks of desperation. “Little Marco,” you see, may have big trouble. It’s blond, it’s relentless, it has a new address in Florida and it’s spelled I-V-A-N-K-A. The shiniest Trump and her smug husband, pariahs now in New York City, have moved on, and there’s some speculation that their relocation presages a Senate candidacy for her in 2022, when Rubio is up for re-election.She’d potentially challenge him in the Florida Republican primary. Now there’s a reason to sweat. Rubio confronts what Republican lawmakers all over the country do, the prospect of being ousted, en route to their general elections, by rivals who are even Trumpier than they are. Only there’s no out-Trumping an actual Trump. And there’s no defaming this Trump progeny without inflaming the Trump patriarch.Ivanka would be Rubio’s worst nightmare. She’d also be his perfect comeuppance. He would have done all that shape-shifting, summoned all that sycophancy and sold out for naught.Maybe Ivanka would take pity on him and take a pass.Yes, that was a joke.As, at this point, is Marco Rubio.I can remember back to 2013, when, as a member of the bipartisan “Gang of Eight” in the Senate, he helped to draft legislation for comprehensive immigration reform, including a path to citizenship for millions of people in this country illegally. He was then styling himself as a pragmatist determined to broaden the Republican Party’s tent.Now he rails against “amnesty.” He’s a Trump-style populist, content with a clownish part in the Republican Party’s circus.I remember how his parents’ flight to the United States from Cuba was the supposed cornerstone of his political convictions, the prompt for a hawkish foreign policy with no tolerance for autocrats at odds with our democratic values.But he just spent four years blowing kisses at an American president more autocratic and more contemptuous of those values than any in his lifetime.I remember how, for much of 2016, he pledged that he would not-not-not run for re-election to the Senate, framing that resolve as a point of honor. He said that it was an impotent institution and that lawmakers needed to limit their time in Congress, lest they become hacks. He expressed indignation at any suggestion that he would change his mind, tweeting: “I have only said like 10000 times I will be a private citizen in January.”That was in mid-May of that year. Little more than a month later, he announced his re-election bid. So much for private citizenry.Rubio says whatever he feels that the moment demands, whatever keeps the wind in his sails, because he’s unfazed by the fact that he once said something completely different, by the possibility that he’ll contradict himself down the line or by the bald selectiveness of his self-righteousness.He’s a creature of Republican vogues, so he’s polishing his anti-elitist riffs, like a tweet with which he slammed the emerging Biden administration: Politeness! Order! The horror! But that’s not the best part. Biden stands out from his five immediate predecessors in the White House, including Trump, for not having the Ivy League degrees that they did. Where there’s fancy education aplenty is in Rubio’s ranks: Hawley has degrees from Stanford and Yale, Cruz from Princeton and Harvard and Cotton from Harvard two times over.Maybe Rubio was slyly knocking those potential 2024 competitors, too, and previewing a line of 2024 attack. His own degrees are from the University of Florida, the University of Miami and the School of Unchecked Opportunism.To his anti-elitism he has added overwrought, indiscriminate media bashing, as when he responded to the coronavirus’s rampage through America with a tweet last March that accused journalists of “glee & delight in reporting that the U.S. has more #CoronaVirus cases than #China” and called it “grotesque.”I don’t recall such glee. I’ll tell you what’s grotesque: training more of your fury about the pandemic’s devastation at the unelected people covering it than at the elected one minimizing and mismanaging it.He was preening for Trump. He was parroting him. He still is, and he’s proving that while Trump may be gone from the White House, he remains deeply present in Washington, because it’s lousy with minions who remade themselves in his image.Rubio’s fate was to become what Trump once called him, not just exuberantly but prophetically: a little man, at least by the yardstick of integrity, which is the only endowment that matters.I invite you to sign up for my free weekly email newsletter. You can follow me on Twitter (@FrankBruni).AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      The First Post-Reagan Presidency

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      Credit…Timo LenzenSkip to contentSkip to site indexOpinionThe First Post-Reagan PresidencySo far, Joe Biden has been surprisingly progressive.Credit…Timo LenzenSupported byContinue reading the main storyOpinion ColumnistJan. 28, 2021, 8:50 p.m. ETDuring Donald Trump’s presidency, I sometimes took comfort in the Yale political scientist Stephen Skowronek’s concept of “political time.”In Skowronek’s formulation, presidential history moves in 40- to 60-year cycles, or “regimes.” Each is inaugurated by transformative, “reconstructive” leaders who define the boundaries of political possibility for their successors.Franklin Delano Roosevelt was such a figure. For decades following his presidency, Republicans and Democrats alike accepted many of the basic assumptions of the New Deal. Ronald Reagan was another. After him, even Democrats like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama feared deficit spending, inflation and anything that smacked of “big government.”I found Skowronek’s schema reassuring because of where Trump seemed to fit into it. Skowronek thought Trump was a “late regime affiliate” — a category that includes Jimmy Carter and Herbert Hoover. Such figures, he’s written, are outsiders from the party of a dominant but decrepit regime.They use the “internal disarray and festering weakness of the establishment” to “seize the initiative.” Promising to save a faltering political order, they end up imploding and bringing the old regime down with them. No such leader, he wrote, has ever been re-elected.During Trump’s reign, Skowronek’s ideas gained some popular currency, offering a way to make sense of a presidency that seemed anomalous and bizarre. “We are still in the middle of Trump’s rendition of the type,” he wrote in an updated edition of his book “Presidential Leadership in Political Time,” “but we have seen this movie before, and it has always ended the same way.”Skowronek doesn’t present his theory as a skeleton key to history. It’s a way of understanding historical dynamics, not predicting the future. Still, if Trump represented the last gasps of Reaganism instead of the birth of something new, then after him, Skowronek suggests, a fresh regime could begin.When Joe Biden became the Democratic nominee, it seemed that the coming of a new era had been delayed. Reconstructive leaders, in Skowronek’s formulation, repudiate the doctrines of an establishment that no longer has answers for the existential challenges the country faces. Biden, Skowronek told me, is “a guy who’s made his way up through establishment Democratic politics.” Nothing about him seemed trailblazing.Yet as Biden’s administration begins, there are signs that a new politics is coalescing. When, in his inauguration speech, Biden touted “unity,” he framed it as a national rejection of the dark forces unleashed by his discredited predecessor, not stale Gang of Eight bipartisanship. He takes power at a time when what was once conventional wisdom about deficits, inflation and the proper size of government has fallen apart. That means Biden, who has been in national office since before Reagan’s presidency, has the potential to be our first truly post-Reagan president.“Biden has a huge opportunity to finally get our nation past the Reagan narrative that has still lingered,” said Representative Ro Khanna, who was a national co-chair of Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign. “And the opportunity is to show that government, by getting the shots in every person’s arm of the vaccines, and building infrastructure, and helping working families, is going to be a force for good.” More

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      Democrats Prepare to Move on Economic Aid, With or Without the G.O.P.

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The New WashingtonliveLatest UpdatesBiden’s Climate AmbitionsBiden’s CabinetPandemic ResponseAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyDemocrats Prepare to Move on Economic Aid, With or Without the G.O.P.President Biden is trying to persuade Republicans to back a $1.9 trillion spending package, but Democrats are pursuing another path to get the relief approved without bipartisan support.“We want it to be bipartisan always, but we can’t surrender if they are not going to be doing that,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on Thursday.Credit…Anna Moneymaker for The New York TimesJim Tankersley and Jan. 28, 2021Updated 7:19 p.m. ETWASHINGTON — Democrats are preparing to bypass Republican objections to speed President Biden’s $1.9 trillion economic aid package through Congress, rather than pare it back significantly to attract Republican votes, even as administration officials and congressional moderates hold out hopes of passing a bill with significant bipartisan support.On a day when new data from the Commerce Department showed that the economic recovery decelerated at the end of last year, Democratic leaders in Congress and administration officials said publicly and privately on Thursday that they were committed to a large-scale relief bill and would move next week to start a process that would allow it to pass with only Democratic votes, if necessary. Behind closed doors, congressional committees are already writing legislative text to turn Mr. Biden’s plans into law.Party leaders remain hopeful that Mr. Biden can sign his so-called American Rescue Plan into law by mid-March at the latest, even with the competing demands of a Senate impeachment trial of former President Donald J. Trump, which is set to begin the week of Feb. 8.“We want it to be bipartisan always, but we can’t surrender if they are not going to be doing that,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California said at a news conference on Capitol Hill. “I do think that we have more leverage getting cooperation on the other side if they know we have an alternative as well,” she added.Officials across the administration are engaged in a whirlwind series of virtual conversations with key lawmakers, governors, mayors, civil rights leaders and a wide range of lobbying groups in an effort to build as much support as possible for the aid package. It includes $1,400 checks to many individual Americans, extensions of supplemental safety net benefits through the fall, and hundreds of billions of dollars for vaccine deployment and other efforts to curb the coronavirus pandemic.Yet there are early signs that Mr. Biden will need to at least partially trim his ambitions in order to secure even the full support of his party in the Senate — which he almost certainly needs to pass any bill.Some moderate Democrats have joined many Republicans in pushing the administration to narrow the scope of recipients for the direct checks to more directly target low- and middle-income Americans. Such a move would shave hundreds of billions of dollars off the proposal’s overall price tag. Officials privately concede that they would consider reducing the income threshold at which the size of the checks would begin phasing out for individuals and families.Mr. Biden did not announce thresholds for the checks in his proposal, but in December congressional Democrats proposed $2,000 individual checks that would slowly begin phasing out for those earning more than $75,000 a year — and allow some families earning as much as $430,000 a year to receive smaller payments.On a private caucus call with Senate Democrats and Brian Deese, the director of Mr. Biden’s National Economic Council, Senator Jon Ossoff of Georgia pushed for the party to go forward with a sweeping package that included another round of stimulus checks, arguing that the issue helped Democrats win both of the state’s Senate seats and clinch the majority, according to two people familiar with the comments. Mr. Ossoff declined to comment on the call because it was private.Some moderate lawmakers have also pushed the administration to justify the need for nearly $2 trillion in additional relief, warning that money already approved by Congress in previous rounds of aid — including in the $900 billion package passed in December — has not yet been spent. Some Democrats also fear Mr. Biden would be forced by parliamentary rules to drop his call for a $15-an-hour minimum wage if the bill circumvented the filibuster via the so-called budget reconciliation process, though it is unclear whether Mr. Biden could get the votes for it even if it were, as some Democrats believe, eligible for inclusion.Mr. Biden has said repeatedly that he will work with Republicans to craft a bill that could earn bipartisan support, and moderate Republicans have warned that cutting their party out of the process would undermine Mr. Biden’s calls for unity and jeopardize future attempts at negotiations.But White House officials said on Thursday that Democrats could move quickly without sacrificing bipartisanship.The New WashingtonLive UpdatesUpdated Jan. 28, 2021, 8:32 p.m. ETMatt Gaetz rallied against Liz Cheney in her own state.Representative Jim Jordan, a Trump loyalist, has decided not to run for an open Senate seat.Acting Capitol Police chief calls for permanent fencing and backup forces in wake of assault.“The president wants this to be a bipartisan package, regardless of the mechanisms,” Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, told reporters. “Republicans can still vote for a package, even if it goes through with reconciliation.”Mr. Biden recently called two Republican senators, Susan Collins of Maine and Rob Portman of Ohio, who are members of a bipartisan group intent on bridging the gap between the two parties. Ms. Psaki said the president would make more calls to Republicans and Democrats this week.Senator Rob Portman is among the Republican lawmakers whom President Biden called to try to bridge the gap between the two parties.Credit…Anna Moneymaker for The New York Times“He hasn’t called me — he’s calling them and that’s good,” Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate, told reporters. “I’m not being critical at all. But, you know, I think there’s been direct personal outreach by the president to these Republicans in the hopes that we can do this on a bipartisan basis.”But several Republicans, including those in the bipartisan group who have professed a willingness to negotiate a small package, warned that pursuing the reconciliation process and bypassing their conference would hurt relations. (When Republicans controlled both chambers and the White House in 2017, they used the process twice.)“Covid relief presents the best avenue for bipartisanship right out of the gate,” said Senator Shelley Moore Capito, Republican of West Virginia and a member of the bipartisan group. Ramming a bill through reconciliation, she added, “is a signal to every Republican that your ideas don’t matter, and I think — does that end it? No, but it certainly puts a color on it.”Administration officials have shown little willingness to push a significantly smaller bill than Mr. Biden has proposed. They worry privately that moving a package that includes only the provisions most likely to gain Republican support — the direct checks and money for vaccines — would risk stranding other elements of the plan they call critical for the recovery, like hundreds of billions of dollars in state and local aid.Mr. Deese pushed back on such suggestions during the call with Democrats and in a post on Twitter. “The needs of the American people aren’t partial; we can’t do this piecemeal,” he wrote.Many Democrats say privately that they see little hope of attracting the 10 Republican votes they would need to overcome a filibuster and avoid using the budget reconciliation process to advance the bill unless they significantly scale back Mr. Biden’s ambitions. Haunted by what Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, referred to as the “mistake” of 2009, when the Democratic Party was in control of both chambers and the White House but was “too timid and constrained in its response to the global financial crisis,” top Democrats are pushing to avoid settling for a small package.“If our Republican colleagues decide to oppose this urgent and necessary legislation, we will have to move forward without them,” Mr. Schumer said, adding that he planned to press ahead with a budget resolution as early as next week. The effort is complicated by Democrats’ tenuous grip on power in the Senate, which is split 50-50 but where Vice President Kamala Harris can break ties in her party’s favor. Those numbers give enormous sway to the most conservative members of the Democratic caucus, including Senators Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, Joe Manchin III of West Virginia and Jon Tester of Montana. Any one of them could balk at the size of Mr. Biden’s demands and force a smaller package.Mr. Tester hinted at such possibilities on Thursday, in a nomination hearing for Cecilia Rouse, Mr. Biden’s pick to lead the White House Council of Economic Advisers. He raised concerns about federal borrowing and repeatedly pressed Ms. Rouse to commit to “targeted” spending programs to lift the economy.“They need to be targeted,” Ms. Rouse replied. “They need to be smart. They need to be in those areas where we know the economic benefit outweighs the cost.”Administration officials are juggling the rescue package with a broader proposal, which Mr. Biden refers to as a recovery plan, that would spend trillions more on infrastructure improvements, clean energy deployment and a series of other initiatives rooted in Mr. Biden’s “Build Back Better” agenda from the presidential campaign. That plan will be financed, all or in part, by tax increases on corporations and high earners. Mr. Biden has promised to detail it publicly next month.Nicholas Fandos More

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      Republicans Waver on Convicting Donald J. Trump

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Trump ImpeachmentDivisions in the SenateList of Senators’ StancesTrump ImpeachedHow the House VotedKey QuotesAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyWith Impeachment Trial Looming, Republicans Waver on Punishing TrumpHouse managers presented the Senate with an article charging Donald J. Trump with “incitement of insurrection.” But Republicans are increasingly indicating they are unlikely to find him guilty.For the second time in just over a year, the House delivered an article of impeachment to the Senate against former President Donald J. Trump, citing “incitement of insurrection.”CreditCredit…Erin Schaff/The New York TimesJan. 25, 2021Updated 10:12 p.m. ETWASHINGTON — For the second time in just over a year, the House on Monday sent an article of impeachment against Donald J. Trump to the Senate for trial, thrusting his fate into the hands of 50 Republican senators who for now appear reluctant to convict him.On a day marked more by ceremony than substance, nine House impeachment managers crossed the Capitol to inform the Senate that they were ready to prosecute Mr. Trump for “incitement of insurrection,” a bipartisan charge approved after the former president stirred up a violent mob that stormed the Capitol. But with some of the outrage wrought by the Jan. 6 rampage already dissipating, few Republicans appeared ready to repudiate a leader who maintains broad sway over their party by joining Democrats in convicting him.Senators planned to put off the heart of the trial until Feb. 9. That move will allow President Biden time to win confirmation of crucial cabinet officials and buy breathing room for Republicans to weigh their stances in what amounts to a referendum on their own futures and that of their party as much as on Mr. Trump.Unlike Mr. Trump’s last impeachment, when his party quickly rallied behind him, several Republicans, including Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, have signaled they are open to convicting the former president after his mendacious campaign to overturn his election loss turned deadly. That would allow the Senate to take a second vote to bar him from ever holding office again. But at least at the trial’s outset, their numbers fell well short of the 17 Republicans needed to join Democrats to secure a conviction.A survey by The New York Times on the eve of the trial found that 27 Republican senators had expressed opposition to charging Mr. Trump or otherwise holding him accountable by impeachment. Sixteen Republicans indicated they were undecided, and seven had no response. Most of those opposed increasingly fell back on process-based objections, rather than defending Mr. Trump.“Why are we doing this?” said Senator Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin. “I can’t think of something more divisive and unhealing than doing an impeachment trial when the president is already gone. It’s just vindictive. It’s ridiculous.”Lawmakers in both parties cautioned that Republicans’ mood could quickly shift in the weeks ahead, if more evidence broke into public view about Mr. Trump’s actions or he provoked them further with his defiant threats of retribution.Already, unflattering new details were surfacing about Mr. Trump’s broader campaign to use his power stay in office at any cost. The Justice Department’s inspector general opened an investigation on Monday into whether current or former officials had tried to use their positions inappropriately to help Mr. Trump overturn the election outcome. The inquiry appeared to be a response to a report in The Times on efforts by a senior Justice Department official working with Mr. Trump to push top law enforcement officials to falsely and publicly use fraud investigations to cast doubt on the election outcome.Although Donald J. Trump has left the White House, he remains popular with Republican voters, and many lawmakers fear crossing him.Credit…Anna Moneymaker for The New York TimesWith so much at stake, senators were moving with little precedent to guide them. Mr. Trump is the only president to have been impeached twice, and the trial will be the first in which the Senate has considered convicting a former president.With few Republicans ready to defend Mr. Trump’s actions, many have turned to arguing that the process itself is flawed because the Constitution does not explicitly say ex-presidents can be tried. Republicans have invited Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University law professor, to expound on the argument at Republicans’ luncheon on Tuesday, and some were bracing for Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, to try to force a vote to toss out the case for that reason during Tuesday’s session. Such a vote would fail, but could provide an early gauge of Republicans’ views on the trial.“We will listen to it, but I still have concerns about the constitutionality of this, and the precedent it sets in trying to convict a private citizen,” said Senator Joni Ernst, Republican of Iowa.She added: “He exhibited poor leadership, I think we all agree with that. But it was these people that came into the Capitol, they did it knowingly. So they bear the responsibility.”Irked by senators flocking to procedural claims that the trial was unconstitutional or unfair, Democrats warned Republicans that they could not hide from a substantive verdict.“There seems to be some hope that Republicans could oppose the former president’s impeachment on process grounds, rather than grappling with his awful conduct,” said Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader. “Let me be perfectly clear: This is not going to fly.”Mr. Biden, who has been reluctant to comment on the proceeding, told CNN on Monday that the trial “has to happen,” even if will complicate his legislative agenda. But he cast doubt on whether the enough Republicans would vote to convict to sustain the charge.That Republicans were going to such lengths to avoid discussing Mr. Trump’s actions underscored how precarious their political situation was. Few contest that Mr. Trump bears at least some responsibility for the most violent attack on the seat of American government since the War of 1812, and many privately blame him for costing them control of the House, Senate and White House. But he also remains a popular figure among Republican voters, and many lawmakers fear that he could marshal votes to turn them out of office should they cross him.“I guess it depends on what state you’re in and what phase in your career you are,” Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, told reporters with a chuckle when asked what would happen to Republicans who voted to convict..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-c7gg1r{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:0.875rem;line-height:0.875rem;margin-bottom:15px;color:#121212 !important;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-c7gg1r{font-size:0.9375rem;line-height:0.9375rem;}}.css-1sjr751{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}.css-1sjr751 a:hover{border-bottom:1px solid #dcdcdc;}.css-rqynmc{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.9375rem;line-height:1.25rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-rqynmc{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-rqynmc strong{font-weight:600;}.css-rqynmc em{font-style:italic;}.css-yoay6m{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-yoay6m{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1dg6kl4{margin-top:5px;margin-bottom:15px;}.css-16ed7iq{width:100%;display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;-webkit-box-pack:center;-webkit-justify-content:center;-ms-flex-pack:center;justify-content:center;padding:10px 0;background-color:white;}.css-pmm6ed{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;}.css-pmm6ed > :not(:first-child){margin-left:5px;}.css-5gimkt{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.8125rem;font-weight:700;-webkit-letter-spacing:0.03em;-moz-letter-spacing:0.03em;-ms-letter-spacing:0.03em;letter-spacing:0.03em;text-transform:uppercase;color:#333;}.css-5gimkt:after{content:’Collapse’;}.css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;-webkit-transform:rotate(180deg);-ms-transform:rotate(180deg);transform:rotate(180deg);}.css-eb027h{max-height:5000px;-webkit-transition:max-height 0.5s ease;transition:max-height 0.5s ease;}.css-6mllg9{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;position:relative;opacity:0;}.css-6mllg9:before{content:”;background-image:linear-gradient(180deg,transparent,#ffffff);background-image:-webkit-linear-gradient(270deg,rgba(255,255,255,0),#ffffff);height:80px;width:100%;position:absolute;bottom:0px;pointer-events:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}.css-1cs27wo{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1cs27wo{padding:20px;}}.css-1cs27wo:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}.css-1cs27wo[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-1cs27wo[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-1cs27wo[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-1cs27wo[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-k9atqk{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-k9atqk strong{font-weight:700;}.css-k9atqk em{font-style:italic;}.css-k9atqk a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;border-bottom:1px solid #ccd9e3;}.css-k9atqk a:visited{color:#333;-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;border-bottom:1px solid #ddd;}.css-k9atqk a:hover{border-bottom:none;}The Trump Impeachment ›From Riot to ImpeachmentThe riot inside the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, Jan. 6, followed a rally at which President Trump made an inflammatory speech to his supporters, questioning the results of the election. Here’s a look at what happened and at the ongoing fallout:As this video shows, poor planning and a restive crowd encouraged by Mr. Trump set the stage for the riot.A two hour period was crucial to turning the rally into the riot.Several Trump administration officials, including cabinet members Betsy DeVos and Elaine Chao, announced that they were stepping down as a result of the riot.Federal prosecutors have charged more than 70 people, including some who appeared in viral photos and videos of the riot. Officials expect to eventually charge hundreds of others.The House voted to impeach the president on charges of “inciting an insurrection” that led to the rampage by his supporters.Mr. McConnell, who steered the president to acquittal a year ago, has largely left senators to navigate the proceeding on their own this time. He has made clear through advisers and calls with colleagues that he personally views Mr. Trump’s conduct as impeachable and sees the process as a possible way to purge him from the party and rebuild before the 2022 midterm elections. But he has not committed to voting to convict.At least a half-dozen or so Republicans appear ready to join him if he does, but dozens of others appear to be unwilling to break from four years of alliance with Mr. Trump.Carrying a slim blue envelope on Monday, the House managers, led by Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland, walked the impeachment article through a Capitol where memories of the siege were still fresh. They started in the House chamber, where lawmakers had ducked for cover and donned gas masks as rioters tried to force their way in; past Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office suite, which was ransacked; through the Rotunda, where officers fired tear gas as they lost control over the throng; and into the well of the Senate chamber, where invaders wearing pro-Trump gear congregated, taking photos on the dais from which the vice president and senators had been forced to evacuate minutes before.House Impeachment Managers Rep. Madeleine Dean and Rep. Jamie Raskin talk after delivering the article of impeachment to the Senate on Capitol Hill.Credit…Erin Schaff/The New York TimesAfter Mr. Raskin read the charge in full, the managers departed, leaving the matter to the Senate, which planned to reconvene at 2:30 p.m. Tuesday to issue a summons to Mr. Trump to answer for the charge. Senators were expected to formally agree to a schedule for the coming weeks and swear an impeachment oath dating to the 18th century to do “impartial justice.”Mr. Trump’s new defense lawyer, Butch Bowers, was said to be trying to line up at least one additional lawyer to join him, according to people familiar with the planning. He was also working with Jason Miller, an adviser to Mr. Trump, on a public-relations campaign.Other aspects of the trial began to come into focus on Monday as well. Senator Patrick J. Leahy, the Senate president pro tempore, said he would preside over the trial, assuming a role filled last year by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.The Constitution states that the chief justice of the United States presides over any impeachment trial of the president or vice president. But it does not explicitly give guidance on who should oversee the proceeding for others, including former presidents. Mr. Schumer said Chief Justice Roberts was uninterested in reprising a time-consuming role that would insert him and the Supreme Court into the political fight over Mr. Trump.The role was largely ceremonial in the first impeachment trial of Mr. Trump a year ago. But as the presiding officer, Mr. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, could issue rulings on key questions around the admissibility of evidence and whether a trial of a former president is even allowed under the Constitution. He will also retain a vote himself.The job could also have gone to Vice President Kamala Harris, in her capacity as president of the Senate. But there were clear drawbacks for Ms. Harris in overseeing a proceeding that is all but certain to be regarded by some as an effort by Democrats to use their newfound power to punish the leader of the rival political party.Mr. Leahy’s presence on the dais could open Democrats to similar charges from the right, particularly if he issues a contentious ruling, but officials said there was no clear alternative without the chief justice. In a statement, Mr. Leahy was adamant he would take “extraordinarily seriously” his trial oath to administer “impartial justice.”Maggie Haberman More

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      Senator Rob Portman of Ohio Will Not Seek Re-Election in 2022

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyPortman to Retire in Ohio, Expanding 2022 Battle for SenateThe respected Republican legislator cited gridlock and partisanship in deciding to give up his seat. His exit underscores how far the party has strayed from its former identity.Senator Rob Portman of Ohio, a top trade and budget official in the administration of George W. Bush, was once regarded as a conservative stalwart. Credit…Anna Moneymaker for The New York TimesCarl Hulse and Jan. 25, 2021, 6:02 p.m. ETWASHINGTON — Senator Rob Portman of Ohio, a Republican with deep ties to the former party establishment, announced on Monday that he would not seek re-election in 2022, underscoring the rightward shift of his party and opening a major battleground in what will be a bruising national fight for Senate control.One of the most seasoned legislators in the Senate, Mr. Portman, 65, voiced frustration with the deep polarization and partisanship in Washington as one of the factors in his decision to step aside after a successful career in the House, executive branch and Senate.“It has gotten harder and harder to break through the partisan gridlock and mark progress on substantive policy, and that has contributed to my decision,” Mr. Portman said in a statement that was widely viewed as a surprise so soon after the last election.Mr. Portman, a top trade and budget official in the administration of George W. Bush, was once regarded as a conservative stalwart. But as his party shifted to the right in recent years, he had come to be seen as one of the few right-of-center Republican senators interested in striking bipartisan deals, an increasingly perilous enterprise at a time when the party’s core supporters have shown a penchant for punishing moderation.Mr. Portman was one of the lawmakers responsible for pushing through the new North American trade deal in 2019. He was also part of a bipartisan coalition that crafted a pandemic relief measure late last year and applied pressure to the House and Senate leadership to embrace and pass it after months of delay.With the Senate increasingly a gridlocked battlefield, Mr. Portman is the latest Republican to assess the political landscape and opt for an exit, putting seats in play in competitive states. Senators Richard M. Burr of North Carolina and Patrick J. Toomey of Pennsylvania have announced they will not be running again. Former President Donald J. Trump won Ohio soundly, but he only narrowly prevailed in North Carolina and was defeated in Pennsylvania.Mr. Portman is highly regarded by members of both parties.“Rob and I haven’t always agreed with one another,” Senator Sherrod Brown, Mr. Portman’s Democratic counterpart in Ohio, wrote on Twitter. “But we’ve always been able to put our differences aside to do what’s best for Ohio.”Mr. Portman sought to maneuver carefully around Mr. Trump while he was in office, carefully criticizing the former president’s actions and statements he disagreed with while praising Mr. Trump’s policies. He voted against removing Mr. Trump from office in the Senate impeachment trial last year, and is considered unlikely to convict the former president in the forthcoming one, even though he will not face voters again.The senator’s decision to retire rather than seek a third term illustrated how difficult it has become for more mainstream Republicans to navigate the current political environment, with hard-right allies of Mr. Trump insisting that Republican members of Congress side with them or face primary contests.Mr. Portman called it a “tough time to be in public service.”“We live in an increasingly polarized country where members of both parties are being pushed further to the right and further to the left,” he said, “and that means too few people who are actively looking to find common ground.”With the Senate split 50-50 and Democrats in the majority by virtue of Vice President Kamala Harris breaking any ties, Republicans would need a net gain of one seat to take back the majority they lost this month after six years in control.Given the Republican tilt of Ohio, which supported Mr. Trump in the presidential election, Republicans would hold the advantage in the race, particularly in a midterm election where the party out of presidential power typically fares well. But the open seat could make it easier for Democrats to compete, particularly if Republicans choose a hard-right candidate with the potential to alienate independents and suburban voters.One of those hard-right prospects, Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, was among the first names mentioned on Monday as a possible replacement for Mr. Portman. Perhaps Mr. Trump’s staunchest ally in the House, Mr. Jordan was the former president’s principal defender on the House floor when Mr. Trump was impeached for a second time this month.Mr. Jordan’s frequent Fox News appearances have also earned him national fame with conservatives; he had over $5 million left over when his 2020 campaign ended.Yet his profile has also made Mr. Jordan a political lightning rod, and a number of Ohio Democrats believe he would be the easiest Republican to defeat. If he did enter the race, he would likely have company in the primary. Representative Steve Stivers, a Columbus-area lawmaker and the former chairman of the House campaign committee, indicated to associates on Monday that he was considering a bid. Other potential Republicans included Lt. Gov. Jon Husted; Jane Timken, the chairwoman of the state party; and Representatives Bill Johnson and Michael R. Turner.The roster of potential Democratic candidates is smaller in what has become a Republican-dominated state. The two most formidable candidates could be Mayor Nan Whaley of Dayton and Representative Tim Ryan. Ms. Whaley has been expected to run for governor, but when asked on Monday if she would enter the Senate contest, she said she was “thinking about it.”Mr. Ryan, who represents a heavily industrial slice of northeastern Ohio, has repeatedly mulled statewide campaigns, only to run for re-election. He did, however, mount a long-shot presidential campaign in 2019 and has made little secret of his angst in the House, having once tried to dethrone Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Mr. Ryan may have another good reason to finally run statewide: After he won by a smaller-than-expected margin last year, Ohio Republicans could carve up his seat in redistricting to make it hard for him to win.Whoever emerges for the Democrats will confront a state that has shifted sharply to the right after decades as the country’s quintessential political battleground. Mr. Brown is the last statewide Democratic officeholder, having won re-election against lackluster opposition in 2018.Mr. Portman said he made his plans public on Monday to give others time to prepare for a costly statewide race. His advisers said that besides his unhappiness with the partisanship of Washington, he was wary of making an eight-year commitment that would keep him in the Senate into his 70s.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More