Trump, Donald J

Subterms

    More stories

    • 75 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      Takeaways From Texas's 2022 Primary Elections

      by

      Republicans’ turnout swamped Democrats’, while progressives claimed wins in the first elections of the 2022 midterms.For nearly a decade, the refrain from Texas Democrats has been that they are on the verge of making their state competitive, even though no Democrat has won a statewide race since 1994.Tuesday’s primary results illustrated that Democrats still have a long way to go.With more than three-quarters of the votes counted, nearly 800,000 more Republicans than Democrats voted for a candidate for governor — a gap far larger than the one in 2018, the last midterm primary election in Texas.To be sure, Republicans had a more competitive primary than Democrats. Gov. Greg Abbott’s contest against Republican challengers from his right may have been more of a draw than Beto O’Rourke’s glide path to the Democratic nomination. And Democrats will be quick to note that primary turnout is not always a predictor of big turnout in November.Still, Republicans demonstrated they are energized — even when divided between far-right and mainstream factions — and hardly ceding their hold on the state.Abbott’s right turn paid off.Before this year, Mr. Abbott had never faced a competitive Republican primary in his 25-year political career. But in a moment of conservative energy, with Republicans furious about the 2020 election and President Biden’s immigration policies, a field of Republicans bet that Mr. Abbott would be vulnerable to a challenger from his right.Turns out they were wrong.Armed with a $60 million war chest, Mr. Abbott easily dispatched seven Republicans, taking more than two-thirds of the vote. It was a win that was a year in the making. Mr. Abbott has spent much of last year placating the state’s conservative base by passing new restrictions on abortion, easing gun laws and enacting new limits on how Texas schools teach about the history of racism. Days before the primary, Mr. Abbott directed state health agencies to classify medical treatments commonly provided to transgender adolescents as “child abuse.”Mr. Abbott’s record was a striking demonstration of how a primary threat can help the right wing of the Republican Party drive the agenda, even in a state that has been trending toward Democrats.A Guide to the 2022 Midterm ElectionsPrimaries Begin: The Texas primaries officially opened the midterm election season. See the full primary calendar.In the Senate: Democrats have a razor-thin margin that could be upended with a single loss. Here are the four incumbents most at risk.In the House: Republicans and Democrats are seeking to gain an edge through redistricting and gerrymandering.Governors’ Races: Georgia’s contest will be at the center of the political universe, but there are several important races across the country.Key Issues: Inflation, the pandemic, abortion and voting rights are expected to be among this election cycle’s defining topics.In the general election, Mr. Abbott will again be a heavy favorite, this time against Mr. O’Rourke, the Democrat and former congressman who narrowly lost a 2018 race to Senator Ted Cruz and then flopped in the 2020 presidential primary.Mr. Abbott has been said to have presidential ambitions himself, if Mr. Trump does not run again in 2024. The next step on that journey for him will require a decisive victory in November. In a year when Republicans are expected to do well, he will need a show of strength in Texas to make a case he can appeal to voters nationwide.Beto O’Rourke in Fort Worth after winning his primary.LM Otero/Associated PressBeto O’Rourke put up a big number.Four years ago when he ran for the Senate, Mr. O’Rourke took just 61 percent of the 2018 Senate primary vote even though he was running against little-known, poorly funded candidates.Now, after Mr. O’Rourke has become the best-known figure in Texas Democratic politics, he easily dominated a field of four Democratic primary opponents.Mr. O’Rourke took more than 90 percent of the primary vote, carrying nearly all of the 254 counties in Texas after losing 76 of them four years ago.Mr. O’Rourke’s broad win was a reminder that he enters this race as a far different candidate than the plucky underdog who became a national star in 2018. Now running for governor, Mr. O’Rourke has name recognition and the state’s largest fund-raising network, but also baggage from his previous races. His call for government confiscation of some firearms will continue to appear in Republican attacks against him, and he also has to overcome significant G.O.P. advantages in the state.Trump picked (easy) winners.As the first primary contest of 2022, Texas previewed what will be a dominant theme of the primary season: Can Donald J. Trump play kingmaker?Mr. Trump’s record was mixed. The former president endorsed 33 Texas Republicans ahead of their primaries, but virtually all of them were widely expected to win before receiving the Trump seal of approval. As of early Wednesday morning, all of Mr. Trump’s picks for Congress were on pace to win their nominations.But other races raised doubts that Mr. Trump’s approval alone could secure a victory. Attorney General Ken Paxton, who was endorsed by Mr. Trump, and Dawn Buckingham, Mr. Trump’s choice for land commissioner, were both headed to runoffs in May, after failing to get more than 50 percent of the vote.“Big night in Texas!” Mr. Trump said late Tuesday. “All 33 candidates that were Trump endorsed have either won their primary election or are substantially leading in the case of a runoff.”There were also signs that it can be perilous for Republicans to cross Mr. Trump. Representative Van Taylor, a two-term incumbent from the Dallas exurbs who voted to confirm the 2020 election results and for a commission to investigate the Jan. 6 attack on the United States Capitol, was in danger of being forced into a runoff as votes were still being tallied early Wednesday. Mr. Taylor outspent his competitors nearly 10 to 1.That figure may put a scare into Republican incumbents facing more significant tests from Trump-backed challengers in the coming months. Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Republicans who voted for impeachment from Michigan, South Carolina and Washington State are all vulnerable and the subject of Mr. Trump’s obsession.Greg Casar in Austin after winning his primary.Ilana Panich-Linsman for The New York TimesThe Squad may get reinforcements.Progressives frustrated by Mr. Biden’s stalled social policy agenda were looking for a boost in Texas and got one — possibly three.Greg Casar, a former Austin city councilman, won easily Tuesday night and appears poised to come to Washington next year from his safely Democratic district. Another progressive contender, Jessica Cisneros, forced a runoff with Representative Henry Cuellar, a moderate who narrowly defeated her in the 2020 primary but is now under investigation by the F.B.I.Jasmine Crockett, a state lawmaker who was among the ringleaders of Texas Democrats’ flight to Washington to delay new Republican voting laws last summer, has a large lead but appears bound for a runoff in a Dallas-area district. Ms. Crockett was endorsed by Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson, who has represented the district for 35 years. Ms. Crockett leaned into the endorsement: Her campaign slogan was “passing the torch, fueling the fire.”Together, Mr. Casar, Ms. Cisneros and Ms. Crockett would bring new energy to the liberal wing of the House and to “the Squad” of progressive Democrats. Last month, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York came to Texas to campaign for Mr. Casar and Ms. Cisneros. More

    • 75 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      Jan. 6 Panel Subpoenas Trump's Lawyers

      by

      The House committee issued six subpoenas to people who worked on legal aspects of the former president’s bid to invalidate the 2020 election.WASHINGTON — The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol on Tuesday subpoenaed a half-dozen lawyers and other allies of former President Donald J. Trump who promoted false claims about widespread fraud in the 2020 election and worked to overturn his loss.Those who were sent subpoenas for documents and testimony participated in a range of attempts to invalidate Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory, including filing lawsuits, pressuring local election officials to change the results and drafting proposed executive orders to seize voting machines.“The select committee is seeking information about attempts to disrupt or delay the certification of electoral votes and any efforts to corruptly change the outcome of the 2020 election,” Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and the chairman of the committee, said in a statement. “The six individuals we’ve subpoenaed today all have knowledge related to those matters and will help the select committee better understand all the various strategies employed to potentially affect the outcome of the election.”More than 550 witnesses have testified before the committee, which is tasked with writing an authoritative report about the violence of a year ago that left more than 150 police officers injured and resulted in several deaths.The committee also intends to make recommendations to prevent such an episode from happening again, and is considering making criminal referrals should its investigators uncover any crimes not already charged by the Justice Department.The subpoenas issued on Tuesday direct the witnesses to sit for interviews in March.Among those summoned was Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer who the panel said “promoted false claims of election fraud to members of Congress” and participated in a call in which Mr. Trump tried to pressure Georgia’s secretary of state to “‘find’ enough votes to reverse his loss there.”Ms. Mitchell was also in contact with Mr. Trump on Jan. 6 and the days before, the committee said it had learned.Kenneth Chesebro, another lawyer who was subpoenaed on Tuesday, promoted legal theories within the Trump campaign supporting the use of slates of bogus electors in states the former president lost. Mr. Chesebro told the Trump campaign his efforts would “‘bolster’ the argument for delaying the electoral certification” and make the public believe the election “‘was likely rigged, and stolen by Biden and Harris, who were not legitimately elected,’” the committee wrote in a letter accompanying Mr. Chesebro’s subpoena.The committee also issued a subpoena to Christina Bobb, who works for One America News Network and was reportedly involved in efforts to draft an executive order for Mr. Trump that would have directed federal agencies to seize voting machines in numerous states. Ms. Bobb was present in the “war room” of Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, in the Willard Hotel on Jan. 6, the committee said.Ms. Bobb is said to be writing a book about Jan. 6 and interviewed Mr. Trump for the project, meaning she would most likely have notes that the committee could obtain through a subpoena.Capitol Riot’s Aftermath: Key DevelopmentsCard 1 of 3The first trial. More

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      Jan. 6 Panel Subpoenas Lawyers Who Worked to Overturn Trump’s Loss

      by

      The House committee issued six subpoenas to people who worked on legal aspects of the former president’s bid to invalidate the 2020 election.WASHINGTON — The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol on Tuesday subpoenaed a half-dozen lawyers and other allies of former President Donald J. Trump who promoted false claims about widespread fraud in the 2020 election and worked to overturn his loss.Those who were sent subpoenas for documents and testimony participated in a range of attempts to invalidate Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory, including filing lawsuits, pressuring local election officials to change the results and drafting proposed executive orders to seize voting machines.“The select committee is seeking information about attempts to disrupt or delay the certification of electoral votes and any efforts to corruptly change the outcome of the 2020 election,” Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and the chairman of the committee, said in a statement. “The six individuals we’ve subpoenaed today all have knowledge related to those matters and will help the select committee better understand all the various strategies employed to potentially affect the outcome of the election.”More than 550 witnesses have testified before the committee, which is tasked with writing an authoritative report about the violence of a year ago that left more than 150 police officers injured and resulted in several deaths.The committee also intends to make recommendations to prevent such an episode from happening again, and is considering making criminal referrals should its investigators uncover any crimes not already charged by the Justice Department.The subpoenas issued on Tuesday direct the witnesses to sit for interviews in March.Among those summoned was Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer who the panel said promoted false claims of election fraud to members of Congress and participated in a call in which Mr. Trump tried to pressure Georgia’s secretary of state to “find” enough votes to reverse his loss there.Ms. Mitchell was also in contact with Mr. Trump on Jan. 6 and the days prior, the committee said it had learned.Kenneth Chesebro, another lawyer who was subpoenaed on Tuesday, promoted legal theories within the Trump campaign supporting the use of slates of bogus electors in states the former president lost. Mr. Chesebro told the Trump campaign his efforts would “‘bolster’ the argument for delaying the electoral certification” and make the public believe the election “‘was likely rigged, and stolen by Biden and Harris, who were not legitimately elected,’” the committee wrote in a letter accompanying Mr. Chesebro’s subpoena.The committee also issued a subpoena to Christina Bobb, who works for One America News Network and was reportedly involved in efforts to draft an executive order for Mr. Trump that would have directed federal agencies to seize voting machines in numerous states. Ms. Bobb was present in the “war room” of Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, in the Willard Hotel on Jan. 6, the committee said.Ms. Bobb is said to be writing a book about Jan. 6 and interviewed Mr. Trump for the project, meaning she would most likely have notes that the committee could obtain through a subpoena.Capitol Riot’s Aftermath: Key DevelopmentsCard 1 of 3The first trial. More

    • 138 Shares149 Views

      in Elections

      Primary Day in Texas Will Offer Preview of Midterm Battles Ahead

      by

      Texas is holding the first primary election of 2022 on Tuesday. Some of the dynamics at play include the intensity of Donald Trump’s continued hold on the Republican electorate.HOUSTON — The Texas primaries on Tuesday will provide the first pieces of the 2022 midterm puzzle.The strength of the two parties’ ideological factions. The intensity of Donald J. Trump’s continued hold on the Republican electorate. And, for bullish Republicans, the earliest signs of how advantageous the political climate has become.The full picture of the 2022 landscape will be revealed through a series of state-by-state primaries held over the next six months. But the country’s first primary elections in Texas represent almost a sneak peek of many of the coming dynamics nationwide in an increasingly challenging environment for President Biden and the Democrats. That includes the impact of strict new voting rules imposed by the Republican-controlled Texas Legislature and the political salience of abortion for both parties.A Texas state law last year effectively banned most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, and this year a ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court is expected in the Mississippi abortion case, which could affect procedures in multiple states. In South Texas, progressives are attempting to defeat one of the last anti-abortion Democrats remaining in Congress, Representative Henry Cuellar, and they received a political gift when the F.B.I. recently raided his home. Falling short under those circumstances would be a blow for the left after Mr. Cuellar narrowly won two years ago.At the top of the ticket, Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, is widely expected to vault past two spirited right-wing challengers. But he is also likely to come nowhere close to the 90 percent he marshaled in his last primary four years ago, a testament to an increasingly restive Republican base.Mr. Abbott has aggressively catered to that base over the last year and in the campaign’s closing days, telling state agencies to investigate treatment for transgender adolescents as “child abuse” and suggesting he might pardon more than a dozen Austin police officers who were indicted on charges of using excessive force during racial justice protests in 2020.“Governor Abbott is running very hard and taking the campaign very, very seriously,” said Ray Sullivan, a Republican strategist who served under two Texas governors, Rick Perry and George W. Bush. “There is an ongoing battle: the mainstream conservatives versus more right-wing, more conspiratorial and paranoid voices. Some of the primary elections will help determine where the energy is in the party.”After redistricting, Texas lawmakers erased nearly all the House seats that were competitive in the general election from the map in 2022, magnifying the importance of a handful of contested primaries in both parties. Republicans, in particular, are hoping to build on the dramatic gains the party made in South Texas and the Rio Grande Valley, particularly among working-class Latino voters in 2020, in the state’s lone open, tossup seat.Nationwide, Republicans are energized by the chance to take back both the House, which the Democrats control by a historically narrow margin, and the Senate, which is equally divided with only Vice President Kamala Harris’s tiebreaking vote giving control to the Democrats.Mr. Biden’s sagging approval ratings — not just in Texas but even in Democratic strongholds like California — and the lingering cloud of the coronavirus on life, the economy and schools have emboldened many Republican voters, candidates and strategists.But Republicans fear nominating candidates outside the mainstream. The party suffered a series of stinging defeats in two otherwise favorable cycles in the recent past, 2014 and 2010, with candidates who repelled broad swaths of the political middle that still decides elections.A Guide to the Texas PrimaryThe 2022 midterm elections begin with the state’s primary on March 1.Governor’s Race: Gov. Greg Abbott’s rightward shift will face a test in November. His likely challenger, Beto O’Rourke, is haunted by his 2020 presidential bid.Attorney General’s Race: Whether Ken Paxton can survive the G.O.P. primary may be the biggest test yet of Donald Trump’s continued power over voters.A Changing Landscape: Issues like abortion and immigration are driving Hispanic voters in Democratic strongholds to switch parties and prompting liberal candidates to shift tactics.A Deepening Divide: Competitive districts are being systemically erased across the country. Texas is an especially extreme example.New Voting Law: Officials have rejected thousands of absentee ballots based on new requirements, an alarming jump ahead of the primary.The concern among Texas Republicans chiefly centers on the attorney general, Ken Paxton, who has attracted the attention of federal investigators after some of his own top aides accused him of corruption.Despite the hostile national climate, Democrats have scored some notable recruiting successes, including two high-profile candidates who came up just short in 2018: Beto O’Rourke, who is running for governor of Texas, and Stacey Abrams, who is running again for governor of Georgia.Beto O’Rourke campaigning for Texas governor in Tyler in early February.Montinique Monroe for The New York TimesMr. O’Rourke, whose Democratic nomination is mostly a formality, has been crisscrossing the state and raising money at a fast clip: $3 million in the last month. But Mr. Abbott, a prolific fund-raiser, outpaced him and entered the final days before the primary with $50 million on hand, compared to $6.8 million for Mr. O’Rourke.Texas has a two-step primary system: Any candidate who finishes below 50 percent will face off against the No. 2 vote-getter in a May runoff.Mr. Abbott appears to be leaving nothing to chance, spending $15 million in the last month alone and seeking to leave little daylight for his conservative opponents as he has overseen a sharp push to the far right in state government.Still, Mr. Abbott, who has Mr. Trump’s support, was booed in January at a Trump rally north of Houston, only winning over the crowd by invoking the president’s name more than two dozen times in his six-minute speech.“I think Greg Abbott has been in long enough,” said Anita Brown, 62, who attended a recent rally for a right-wing House candidate in The Woodlands, a suburban enclave north of Houston. “I would just like to have someone new.”Texas is where Mr. Trump suffered one of his rare primary endorsement defeats last year, in a House race, and while he has issued a range of endorsements, from governor down to Tarrant County District Attorney, he has mostly backed incumbents and heavy favorites.Bigger tests of his influence loom later in the spring and summer, in the Senate contests in North Carolina and Alabama, and in the governor’s race in Georgia. In that Georgia race, Mr. Trump recruited David Perdue, a former senator and governor, to attempt to unseat Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican who refused to bend to Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.In Texas, Mr. Paxton, a regular guest on Fox News, commands the endorsement of Mr. Trump, but remains vulnerable because of his legal troubles: On top of his aides’ accusations of corruption, the Texas attorney general has been under indictment for securities fraud since 2015.His range of challengers represent the various Republican power centers vying to be the future of the party.There is George P. Bush, the son of Jeb Bush and a statewide office holder who has held himself out as the most electable conservative in the race, and Eva Guzman, a former state Supreme Court justice who has the backing of some traditional, business-aligned power players in Republican politics.Representative Louie Gohmert, a Trump ally whose speeches and remarks frequently land him on national television, is also running. He attended the Trump rally in Texas and got an unexpected shout-out, despite the former president’s endorsement of Mr. Paxton. Mr. Gohmert also posed with Mr. Trump during a photo line at the rally, but the Trump team refused to send Mr. Gohmert the picture, because they did not want him to use it in the primary, according to a person familiar with the exchange.Representative Louie Gohmert spoke at a forum in Midland with two other Republican candidates for attorney general, Eva Guzman, center, and George P. Bush, right.Tamir Kalifa for The New York TimesThe race has been multidimensional. Ms. Guzman has swiped at Mr. Bush, whose family dynasty has been weakened even among Texas Republicans. Mr. Bush has responded in kind. Mr. Paxton has traded attacks with Mr. Gohmert and, in recent days, started going after Ms. Guzman as well.“We haven’t seen a primary this consequential since the 1990s,” said Brandon Rottinghaus, a professor of political science at the University of Houston.The race is less about policy positions as it is about who holds power in the Republican Party now. “It will tell us a lot about Donald Trump’s juice in Texas,” Mr. Rottinghaus said.Mr. Paxton finished behind the rest of the Republican ticket in 2018, raising some fears that his renomination this year could provide a rare opening for Democrats in November. Republicans have won every statewide race in Texas since 1994.The national battle for power within the Republican Party is centered on the district of retiring Representative Kevin Brady, north of Houston, where a super PAC aligned with Representative Kevin McCarthy, the minority leader, has spent heavily to elect Morgan Luttrell, a Navy SEAL veteran. The activist wing of House Republicans has rallied behind Christian Collins, a former aide to Senator Ted Cruz.While the super PAC aligned with Mr. McCarthy is aiding Mr. Luttrell, the political arm of the House Freedom Caucus is boosting Mr. Collins.At a recent rally for Mr. Collins, Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina made clear that their support for Mr. Collins was about opposition to the existing political order in Washington.“This is primary season,” Ms. Greene said. “This is where we work out our differences. This is where iron sharpens iron.”On the Democratic side, two primaries pit the party’s ideological wings against each other.The race for one open seat features a socialist Austin city councilman, Greg Casar, taking on State Representative Eddie Rodriguez. The other race is in South Texas between Mr. Cuellar and a young progressive lawyer, Jessica Cisneros — a rematch in which abortion has been an issue for the district’s large number of Catholic voters.Both races have attracted attention from national progressive figures, including Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts — to the frustration of some Texas Democrats. They view the progressives’ efforts as potentially counterproductive for a party that has been losing ground among traditional Democratic voters in places like South Texas.“I get what people do on the fund-raising side,” said James Aldrete, a Democratic consultant. But unless Democrats do more to address the concerns of low-turnout voters, particularly in Hispanic communities, Mr. Aldrete added, “we’ll be in the same boat: no growth in the statehouse, no growth in the congressional delegation, no Democrat elected statewide.”When Ms. Ocasio-Cortez declared at a rally for Mr. Casar and Ms. Cisneros that “Texas turning blue is inevitable,” the clip was immediately picked up by Republicans, including Mr. Abbott, and wielded as an attack.“She was doing the work for Republicans,” said Matt Angle, a Democratic activist whose political action committee aims to unseat Republicans in Texas. He noted that Texas Democrats are more moderate in their approach to politics and more conservative in their views on issues like guns and abortion than national party leaders.“It’s a field trip for them,” Mr. Angle added. “For us, it’s the future of the state.” More

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      Some Texas Hispanics Drawn to Republicans Share Immigration Grievances

      by

      Former President Donald J. Trump’s brand of populism has been widely viewed as an appeal to white voters. But similar grievances have resonated in the Rio Grande Valley in a profound way.BROWNSVILLE, Texas — Mayra Flores, the daughter of Mexican immigrants, has done much of her campaigning in South Texas in Spanish. She has heard one phrase repeatedly from voters as she and other candidates try to become the first Republicans to represent the Rio Grande Valley in Congress.¿Y nosotros?And what about us?“I hear every day that they’re tired — they feel that there is so much attention and help being given to the immigrants,” Ms. Flores said. “The attention’s on all these illegal immigrants, and not on them.”Grievance politics, it turns out, translates.Donald J. Trump’s brand of populism has been widely viewed as an appeal to white voters: Republicans around the country continue to exploit the fear that the left is attacking religious values and wants to replace traditional white American culture with nonwhite multiculturalism. But similar grievances have resonated in the Rio Grande Valley in a profound way, driving the Republican Party’s successes in a Democratic stronghold where Hispanics make up more than 90 percent of the population.The difference is in the type of culture believed to be under assault. Democrats are destroying a Latino culture built around God, family and patriotism, dozens of Hispanic voters and candidates in South Texas said in interviews. The Trump-era anti-immigrant rhetoric of being tough on the border and building the wall has not repelled these voters from the Republican Party or struck them as anti-Hispanic bigotry. Instead, it has drawn them in.“Our parents came in a certain way — they came in and worked, they became citizens and didn’t ask for anything,” said Ramiro Gonzalez Jr., a 48-year-old rancher from Raymondville, on the northern edge of the Rio Grande Valley. “We were raised hard-core Democrats, but today Democrats want to give everything away.”Ramiro Gonzalez Jr., a rancher in Raymondville, is among Latino conservatives who are reshaping South Texas politics.Jason Garza for The New York TimesFor years, the Republican primary in the Rio Grande Valley was an afterthought, a sleepy election overshadowed by a Democratic primary that grabbed all the attention and candidates. But this year, in the run-up to the Texas primary election on Tuesday, there has been a flurry of Republican rallies, door-knocking and events, including at the Hispanic community center that the Republican National Committee opened in McAllen four months ago.The Republican gains run far deeper than Mr. Trump and, in some ways, predate him, interviews with Hispanic voters and candidates showed. Republican candidates are building on a decades-long history of economic, religious and cultural sentiment that has veered toward conservatives. George W. Bush performed even better in his 2004 re-election campaign in the region than Mr. Trump did in 2020. Many of those who voted for Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama for president and then flipped for Mr. Trump had previously backed Mr. Bush.For the moment, Republicans in the Rio Grande Valley remain a minority. Last year, a Republican was elected mayor of McAllen, the Valley’s second-most populous city, and a Democratic state lawmaker in Rio Grande City switched to the Republican Party, both of whom earned praise from the Republican governor of Texas, Greg Abbott. But Democrats still dominate the vast majority of local elected offices in the Valley.A sign outside the Republican National Committee’s Hispanic community center in McAllen.Jason Garza for The New York Times“It’s still relatively insignificant, when you look at Democrat versus Republican overall,” said Representative Vicente Gonzalez, a South Texas Democrat who narrowly won his 2020 re-election. He is now running in a redrawn neighboring district and is likely to face Ms. Flores as his Republican opponent in November. Though he said he was confident voters would “come home” to Democrats this fall, Mr. Gonzalez criticized the party for not doing more to focus on the region.A Guide to the Texas PrimaryThe 2022 midterm elections begin with the state’s primary on March 1.Governor’s Race: Gov. Greg Abbott’s rightward shift will face a test in November. His likely challenger, Beto O’Rourke, is haunted by his 2020 presidential bid.Attorney General’s Race: Whether Ken Paxton can survive the G.O.P. primary may be the biggest test yet of Donald Trump’s continued power over voters.A Changing Landscape: Issues like abortion and immigration are driving Hispanic voters in Democratic strongholds to switch parties and prompting liberal candidates to shift tactics.A Deepening Divide: Competitive districts are being systemically erased across the country. Texas is an especially extreme example.New Voting Law: Officials have rejected thousands of absentee ballots based on new requirements, an alarming jump ahead of the primary.“So far I see no action,” Mr. Gonzalez said. “I’ve had to rely on myself, not on the national party coming down here to save us, so in that respect, it’s sad.”For decades, conventional wisdom held that the more Hispanic voters showed up to the polls, the more precarious the political future would be for Republicans. But the inverse has lately been reshaping South Texas politics: As tens of thousands of new voters have gone to the polls, Republicans have gained more than Democrats. In Hidalgo County, which includes McAllen, Mr. Trump received nearly twice as many votes in 2020 as he did four years earlier.Mr. Trump’s performance in these border counties was one of the big surprises of 2020, rattling Democrats who had assumed that Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric would alienate Latinos. In this year’s midterm elections, South Texas is the setting for the only competitive House race in the state, and both parties now consider Hispanic voters across the country a potentially decisive swing vote.At a dinner for Ms. Flores’ campaign at Don Chucho Tacos y Tequilas in the border city of Brownsville, her supporters began with a prayer and the pledge of allegiance to the Texas flag. They wore wide-brimmed cowboy hats and red MAGA caps. They applauded when the mariachis took the stage — and when Ms. Flores introduced her husband, an off-duty Border Patrol agent.“We’ve been voting California values, Austin values, but not South Texas values,” Ms. Flores told the crowd. She added, speaking the Spanglish so prevalent in the region, “Spread the chisme. Somos Americanos.” Spread the word. We are Americans.“This,” she continued, “is our country.”“I want to bring God back into politics,” said Luis Cabrera, the pastor of City Church in Harlingen, Texas.Jason Garza for The New York Times‘We feel under attack’Pastor Luis Cabrera, 44, remembers the fear in his parents’ eyes when they fled Nicaragua in 1979, in the midst of the Sandinista revolution.His father, a lawyer for the ousted president, received death threats and after obtaining visas from the American embassy there, the family left nearly all they had behind, flying with $10,000 in cash on a flight to Washington, D.C. Eventually, Mr. Cabrera’s father found work as an immigration paralegal in Houston, and then took the family to the Rio Grande Valley.Now, Mr. Cabrera runs City Church, a small congregation in a former warehouse in the border city of Harlingen. He estimates that his church is 96 percent Hispanic, and 100 percent Republican.“The people coming now seem to be less willing to work and are more dangerous compared to how it used to be,” Mr. Cabrera said. “I’m not saying all of them, but trust me, there’s a lot of people who are crossing this border and they don’t care about this country. They want to just commit crime. They want to just come make money the wrong way. They don’t want the American dream.”The Rio Grande Valley lies at the southeast corner of the U.S.-Mexico border, an amalgam of dozens of small cities and towns across four counties, a mix of recently developed strip malls and centuries-old ranch land. The Stars and Stripes and other flags fly from the back of large pickup trucks and flagpoles installed on front yards. The vast majority of the Valley’s nearly 1.4 million residents speak Spanish and have ties to Mexico. Pockets of deep poverty remain, and residents have long viewed Border Patrol and other law enforcement jobs as a reliable path to the middle class. For all the talk by Republicans of border chaos and of dangerous migrants, crime in McAllen is at a historic low.Mr. Cabrera sells T-shirts at the entrance of his church.Jason Garza for The New York TimesThe gulf between the undocumented Central American migrants crossing the border and the Latino residents of the Valley is deep and wide.Many residents are Mexican Americans who have lived in the region for four or five generations, or proudly proclaim their parents and grandparents came to the United States legally. They know both Border Patrol agents and undocumented Mexican immigrants who have lived and worked in border cities for years. Those who are Republicans say they do not see their views on immigration as hypocritical or anti-Hispanic. Instead, they see themselves as a bulwark for law and order. A few thousand Border Patrol agents live and work in the region, many of them Hispanic, adding to a pro-law enforcement ethos that shows up in churches, schools and local politics.“We’re in a war — a war of ideas,” said Jessica Martinez, 33, a Brownsville stay-at-home mother who said she had never voted until she cast a ballot for Mr. Trump in 2020, after she grew frustrated with the relentless outrage against him from liberals. “That’s how we as Christians see it. We feel under attack.”In Harlingen, Mr. Cabrera turned the entrance of the church into a retail space. He displays and sells T-shirts reading Make America Godly Again and Make America Repent. For years, he said, he avoided speaking about politics from the pulpit. But in the last year he has hosted several Republican leaders at the church, including Mr. Abbott.“I want to bring God back into politics,” Mr. Cabrera said. “And so that’s what I’m doing.”‘I worry about our values’Joe Cadriel, a 57-year-old veteran of the gulf war’s Desert Storm and a retired social worker, has rarely placed campaign advertisements on his front lawn. But he made an exception for Ms. Flores, the Brownsville Republican running for Congress.Mr. Cadriel and his wife, Diana, a retired educator, both voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016, and then cast their ballots for Mr. Trump four years later, convinced that he would best protect the southern border, a mere 10 miles from their Weslaco home.The couple grew up in the Rio Grande Valley as children of conservative Democrats, and they harbored a proud independent streak. Mr. Cadriel has been infuriated by illegal immigration for as long as he can remember — he said he once left a job because he felt too angry seeing food stamps and other benefits going to children of unauthorized immigrants.“I’m OK with people coming in saying I’m going to do something productive,” Mr. Cadriel said. “But that wasn’t what was happening. You’d have these people claiming they needed food stamps for their children, but their children were babies, so who do you think was benefiting from it? They were just trying to take advantage.”Joe and Diana Cadriel of Weslaco, Texas, voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Donald Trump in 2020.Jason Garza for The New York TimesThe Cadriels equate walking away from the Democratic Party with getting an education, not from college courses or books, but from conservative media and scripture. A retired educator and churchgoing Catholic, Ms. Cadriel, 57, slowly began to feel that her family’s traditional values were under attack. She stopped watching Good Morning America and The View in favor of Fox News.“I worry about where we’re headed, about what will and won’t be allowed,” she said. “I worry about our values.”Republican candidates like Ms. Flores hope to capitalize on the Cadriels and other former Democrats.Ms. Flores’ parents worked as migrant farmworkers, moving each year to pick cotton in West Texas. Though her parents were Democrats, Ms. Flores said she was raised with “conservative values” and was drawn to Republicans because of her anti-abortion views. Soon after graduating from South Texas College in 2019, she became involved with the Hidalgo County Republican Party, volunteering as the Hispanic outreach chair while she worked as a respiratory therapist.Ms. Flores’ campaign signs do not mention policy or party, but instead highlight three words: “Dios, familia, patria.” God, family, country. More

    • 125 Shares109 Views

      in Elections

      Barr Rebukes Trump as ‘Off the Rails’ in New Memoir

      by

      William P. Barr’s memoir of his time as attorney general under George H.W. Bush and then again under Donald J. Trump defends his more recent leadership of the Justice Department.WASHINGTON — Former Attorney General William P. Barr writes in a new memoir that former President Donald J. Trump’s “self-indulgence and lack of self-control” cost him the 2020 election and says “the absurd lengths to which he took his ‘stolen election’ claim led to the rioting on Capitol Hill.”In the book, “One Damn Thing After Another: Memoirs of an Attorney General,” Mr. Barr also urges his fellow Republicans to pick someone else as the party’s nominee for the 2024 election, calling the prospect of another presidential run by Mr. Trump “dismaying.”“Donald Trump has shown he has neither the temperament nor persuasive powers to provide the kind of positive leadership that is needed,” Mr. Barr writes.The memoir — an account of Mr. Barr’s time as attorney general under President George H.W. Bush and then again under Mr. Trump — defends his own actions in the Trump administration that led to sharp criticism of a Justice Department setting aside its independence to bend to White House pressure.Mr. Barr was long considered a close ally of Mr. Trump. But the two fell out toward the end of the Trump administration, when Mr. Barr refused to go along with Mr. Trump’s baseless claims that the 2020 election had been stolen.In a statement last June, Mr. Trump denounced his former attorney general, calling him a “swamp creature” and a “RINO” — meaning Republican in Name Only — who “was afraid, weak and frankly, now that I see what he is saying, pathetic.”For his part, Mr. Barr portrays Mr. Trump as a president who — despite sometimes displaying “the menacing mannerisms” of a strongman ruler as a “schtick” to project an image of strength — had operated within guardrails set up by his advisers and achieved many conservative policy goals. But Mr. Trump “lost his grip” after the election, he writes.“He stopped listening to his advisers, became manic and unreasonable, and was off the rails,” Mr. Barr writes. “He surrounded himself with sycophants, including many whack jobs from outside the government, who fed him a steady diet of comforting but unsupported conspiracy theories.”Throughout the book, Mr. Barr scorns the news media, accusing them of “corruption” and “active support for progressive ideology.” The political left, he writes, became radicalized during President Barack Obama’s second term. He compares its support for social justice issues to “the same kind of revolutionary and totalitarian ideas that propelled the French Revolution, the Communists of the Russian Revolution and the fascists of 20th-century Europe.”Mr. Barr also denounces the inquiry by the F.B.I. and then the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, into links between Russia and Trump campaign aides in 2016. He writes that “the matter that really required investigation” was “how did the phony Russiagate scandal get going, and why did the F.B.I. leadership handle the matter in such an inexplicable and heavy-handed way?”Mr. Barr rejects as “drivel” the criticism that his summary of the special counsel’s report that he issued before the report became public was distorted in a way that favored Mr. Trump. Mr. Barr insists that his description — including his declaration that Mr. Trump did not commit obstruction of justice — was “entirely accurate.”In defending that conclusion, Mr. Barr writes that it was a “simple fact that the president never did anything to interfere with the special counsel’s investigation.”But his book does not address any of the specific incidents that Mr. Mueller’s report laid out as raising potential obstruction-of-justice concerns, such as the fact that Mr. Trump dangled a pardon at his former campaign chairman, Paul J. Manafort, while urging Mr. Manafort not to cooperate with the inquiry.In a chapter titled “Upholding Fairness, Even for Rascals,” Mr. Barr defends his handling of two other cases arising from the Mueller investigation. Mr. Barr writes that it was “reasonable” for him to overrule line prosecutors and seek a more lenient sentence for Mr. Trump’s ally Roger J. Stone Jr.And addressing his decision to drop the prosecution of Michael T. Flynn, Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser, for lying to the F.B.I. — even though Mr. Flynn had already pleaded guilty — he writes that the evidence was insufficient, the F.B.I.’s handling of the case had been “an abuse of power” and Mr. Mueller’s charges against him were not “fair.”As he did while in office, Mr. Barr laments that Mr. Trump’s public comments about the Justice Department undermined his ability to do his job.“Even though I was basing decisions on what I thought was right under the law and facts, if my decisions ended up the same as the president’s expressed opinion, it made it easier to attack my actions as politically motivated,” he writes.Mr. Barr also describes resisting Mr. Trump’s bidding in some cases. He declined to charge the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey Jr. for allegedly leaking classified information; insisted that the administration had run out of time to add a question about citizenship to the 2020 census; and rejected Mr. Trump’s “bad” idea that he could use an executive order to end birthright citizenship for children born in the United States to undocumented immigrants.Lawyers at the White House and the Justice Department had to talk Mr. Trump out of those ideas, which could be “bruising” and amounted to “eating grenades,” Mr. Barr writes.On the scandal that led to Mr. Trump’s first impeachment, in which Mr. Trump withheld aid to Ukraine as leverage to try to get Ukraine’s president to announce an investigation into Joseph R. Biden Jr., Mr. Barr was scathing.He calls it “another mess — this one self-inflicted and the result of abject stupidity,” a “harebrained gambit” and “idiotic beyond belief.” But while Mr. Barr describes the conversation Mr. Trump had with Ukraine’s president on the topic as “unseemly and injudicious,” he maintains that it did not rise to a “criminal offense.”Similarly, Mr. Barr writes that he did not think Mr. Trump’s actions before the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol — which he had condemned in a statement the day after as “orchestrating a mob to pressure Congress” and “a betrayal of his office and his supporters” — met the legal standard for the crime of incitement, even though they were “wrong.”The book opens with a Dec. 1, 2020, meeting with Mr. Trump hours after Mr. Barr gave an interview contradicting the president’s claims of a stolen election, saying the Justice Department had “not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election.”Mr. Trump was furious, he writes, accusing Mr. Barr of “pulling the rug out from under me” and saying he must “hate Trump.” After Mr. Barr says he explained why claims of various fraud were unfounded, he offered to resign and Mr. Trump slammed the table and yelled “accepted!” Mr. Trump reversed himself as Mr. Barr left the White House, but Mr. Barr stepped down before the end of the month.His book expands on that theme, going through specific “fact-free claims of fraud” that Mr. Trump has put forward and explaining why the Justice Department found them baseless. He lists several reasons, for example, that claims about purportedly hacked Dominion voting machines were “absolute nonsense” and “meaningless twaddle.”“The election was not ‘stolen,’” Mr. Barr writes. “Trump lost it.” More

    • 150 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      At CPAC, Trump Misleads About Biden, a Russian Pipeline and Gas Prices

      by

      The former president made inaccurate claims about his border wall, the Biden administration and a Russian pipeline, among other topics.Former President Donald J. Trump repeated familiar boasts and grievances in a keynote speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Saturday.Mr. Trump repeatedly invoked the lie that the 2020 election was “rigged” and mounted exaggerated attacks on President Biden. Even as he condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as an “atrocity” and praised the country’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, as a “brave man,” he repeated his misleading claim that the Obama administration had merely provided Ukraine with “blankets.”Here’s a fact-check.What Mr. Trump Said“The wall will be quickly completed. We’ll build the wall and complete the wall in three weeks. It took two and half years on the wall, two and half years just to win all the litigation, over 11 lawsuits that they threw at us. And we have it just about finished, and I said they can’t be serious. They don’t want to close up the little loops.”False. During his campaign in 2016, Mr. Trump promised to construct a 1,000-mile-long border wall that would be paid for by Mexico. By the time he left office, his administration had constructed 453 miles of border wall, most of which replaced or reinforced existing barriers. In places where no barriers previously existed, the administration built a total of 47 miles of new primary wall.Mr. Trump’s vow that he would have been able to complete the wall within three weeks also does not track with the initial construction pace. Construction of replacement barriers in Calexico, Calif., began in February 2018, the first border wall project under Mr. Trump. Construction of the first new section of wall in the Rio Grande Valley began in November 2019. That amounts to 12.9 miles of replacement wall and 3.3 miles of new wall per month.How Donald J. Trump Still LoomsGrip on G.O.P.: Mr. Trump remains the most powerful figure in the Republican Party. However, there are signs his control is loosening.Power Struggle: Led by Senator Mitch McConnell, a band of anti-Trump Republicans is maneuvering to thwart the ex-president.Midterms Effect: Mr. Trump has become a party kingmaker, but his involvement in state races worries many Republicans.Post-Presidency Profits: Mr. Trump is melding business with politics, capitalizing for personal gain.Just the Beginning: For many Trump supporters who marched on Jan. 6, the day was not a disgraced insurrection but the start of a movement.What Mr. Trump Said“Just one year ago, we had the most secure border in U.S. history, record low gas prices.”False. When Mr. Trump left office in January 2021, the national average price of a gallon of gasoline for that month was $2.42. That is not a record low. Gas prices fell to $2.21 in January 2015 under former President Barack Obama, $1.13 under former President George W. Bush and $0.96 under former President Bill Clinton.What Mr. Trump Said“I’m the one who ended his pipeline. He said you’re killing me with the pipeline. Nobody else ended his pipeline. Biden came in. He approved it.”This is misleading. Mr. Trump was referring to the status of a natural gas pipeline between Russia and Germany under his administration and that of President Biden. In fact, American presidents — and most European countries other than Germany and France — have consistently opposed the project, but they have limited say in whether the pipeline is built.Mr. Trump signed a law imposing sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline in December 2019, prompting a suspension in construction. But by then, most of the pipeline had already been built, with 2,100 kilometers laid and 300 kilometers remaining. Construction resumed a year later in 2020.The current White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, described Nord Stream 2 as a “bad deal” that divides Europe and leaves Ukraine and Central Europe vulnerable to Russian manipulation. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that the Biden administration’s opposition was “unwavering.”But the State Department nonetheless lifted sanctions on the company building the pipeline in May 2021. According to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, this might be because “the administration’s ability to prevent the pipeline from becoming operational is limited” while sanctions “could jeopardize U.S.-German and U.S.-European cooperation in other areas, including countering Russian aggression.”Mr. Biden issued new sanctions on the pipeline this week after Germany announced that it would suspend the certification of the pipeline in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.What Mr. Trump Said“The reason we’ve got soaring gas prices is because Biden has shut down American energy, canceled our oil and gas leases just two days ago. Two days ago, they canceled many oil and gas leases because of the environment.”This is misleading. The Biden administration indefinitely halted new federal oil and gas leases and permits in response to a court ruling. It did not revoke existing leases. A federal judge had blocked the way the administration was calculating the cost of climate change, leading the administration to pause regulatory decisions that relied on the metric. More

    • 125 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      How Lopsided New District Lines Deepen the U.S. Partisan Divide

      by

      THE WOODLANDS, Texas — Representative Dan Crenshaw was tagged as a rising Republican star almost from the moment of his first victory: A conservative, Harvard-educated, ex-Navy SEAL who lost his right eye in Afghanistan, he bucked the 2018 suburban revolt against Donald J. Trump to win a House seat in the Houston suburbs.Mr. Crenshaw won again in 2020, handily, even as Mr. Trump carried his district by only a whisper.But this year, Mr. Crenshaw’s seat has been transformed by redistricting. More liberal enclaves, like the nightlife-rich neighborhoods near Rice University, were swapped out for conservative strongholds like The Woodlands, a master-planned community of more than 100,000 that is north of the city.The result: Mr. Trump would have carried the new seat in a landslide.The new lines mean Mr. Crenshaw now has a vanishingly slim chance of losing to a Democrat in the next decade. The only political threat would have to come from the far right — which, as it happens, is already agitating against him.All across the nation, political mapmakers have erected similarly impenetrable partisan fortresses through the once-in-a-decade redrawing of America’s congressional lines. Texas, which holds the nation’s first primaries on Tuesday, is an especially extreme example of how competition between the two parties has been systemically erased. Nearly 90 percent of the next House could be occupied by lawmakers who, like Mr. Crenshaw, face almost no threat of losing a general election, a precipitous drop that dramatically changes the political incentives and pressures they confront.“What the future of the Republican Party should be is people who can make better arguments than the left,” Mr. Crenshaw said in an interview. Yet in his new district, he will only need to make arguments to voters on the right, and the farther right.When primaries are the only campaigns that count, candidates are often punished for compromise. The already polarized parties are pulled even farther apart. Governance becomes harder.The dynamic can be seen playing out vividly in and around Mr. Crenshaw’s district. He appears in no imminent political danger. He faces underfunded opposition in Tuesday’s primary, out-raising rivals by more than 100 to one.But his repeated rebuke of those who have spread the falsehood that Mr. Trump won the 2020 election — fellow Republicans whom he has called “performance artists” and “grifters” capitalizing on “lie after lie after lie” — have made him a target of what he derisively termed “the cancel culture of the right.”“They view me as a threat because I don’t really toe the line,” Mr. Crenshaw said.He has especially sparred with Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, who, in the kind of political coincidence that is rarely an accident, found herself at a recent rally in Mr. Crenshaw’s district, declaring, “It is time to embrace the civil war in the G.O.P.”Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, with supporters after a rally in The Woodlands, Texas.Annie Mulligan for The New York Times“I oftentimes argue with someone you might know named Dan Crenshaw,” she later said, his name drawing boos. “I sure do not like people calling themself a conservative when all they really are is a performance artist themself.”What to Know About RedistrictingRedistricting, Explained: Here are some answers to your most pressing questions about the process that is reshaping American politics.Understand Gerrymandering: Can you gerrymander your party to power? Try to draw your own districts in this imaginary state.Killing Competition: The number of competitive districts is dropping, as both parties use redistricting to draw themselves into safe seats.New York: Democrats’ aggressive reconfiguration of the state’s congressional map is one of the most consequential in the nation.Legal Battles: A North Carolina court’s ruling to reject a G.O.P.-drawn map and substitute its own version further cemented the rising importance of state courts in redistricting fights.In 2020, Texas was the epicenter of the battle for control of the House, with a dozen suburban seats around Dallas, Houston, Austin and San Antonio all in play.In 2022, zero Texas Republicans are left defending particularly competitive seats. They were all turned safely, deeply red.“Not having competitive elections is not good for democracy,” said Representative Lizzie Fletcher, a moderate Democrat whose Houston-area district was also overhauled. To solidify neighboring G.O.P. seats, Republican mapmakers stuffed a surplus of Democratic voters — including from the old Crenshaw seat — into her district, the Texas 7th.That seat has a long Republican lineage. George H.W. Bush once occupied it. Under the new lines, the district voted like Massachusetts in the presidential election.For Ms. Fletcher, that means any future challenges are likely to come from the left. The political middle that helped her beat a Republican incumbent in 2018 is, suddenly, less relevant. “There is a huge risk,” she said, “that people will feel like it doesn’t matter whether they show up.”A proxy fight next doorPhill Cady is showing up. He is one of Mr. Crenshaw’s new constituents, an unvaccinated former airline pilot from Conroe who takes a weekly dose of hydroxychloroquine, the Trump-promoted anti-malaria drug that medical experts have warned against, to fend off Covid.Mr. Cady was at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to protest the election results. (He said he didn’t enter the building.) He said Mr. Crenshaw’s acceptance of Mr. Trump’s defeat showed he had “lost his way,” and that Mr. Crenshaw should have helped those facing riot-related charges: “Why hasn’t he fought for the Texans to get out of jail?”Or, as Milam Langella, one of Mr. Crenshaw’s long-shot primary challengers, described the distance between the incumbent and his constituents: “The district is now blood red and he is not.”With Mr. Crenshaw facing only scattershot opposition, it was the neighboring open race to replace the retiring Representative Kevin Brady, a business-friendly Republican, that technically drew Ms. Greene to Texas.On one side is Christian Collins, a former aide to Senator Ted Cruz, who is vowing to join the so-called MAGA wing in the House. He is backed by the political arm of the House Freedom Caucus, the party’s hard-line faction.Supporters of Christian Collins, a congressional candidate, at a Feb. 19 rally in The Woodlands, Texas. Redrawn maps mean more candidates are running in safe districts for their parties.Annie Mulligan for The New York TimesOn the other side is Morgan Luttrell, a former member of the Navy SEALs who is backed by Mr. Crenshaw and a super PAC aligned with Representative Kevin McCarthy, the House minority leader.The contest is the first primary of 2022 that the McCarthy-aligned PAC has intervened in, as some McCarthy allies privately worry that the glut of new, deep-red Republican seats could complicate his speakership bid and governance of the House, should Republicans win a majority.“Does this create incentives to avoid governing? It clearly — clearly, that’s the case,” Mr. Crenshaw said. But he said it is hard to discern the impact of those incentives versus others, like social media amplifying outrage and the increasing sorting of Americans into tribes.There was tension in how Mr. Crenshaw described who holds the real power in the party, at once dismissing the far right as a fringe nuisance that only seeks to “monetize” division, while also saying traditional power brokers like congressional leaders are no longer the real political establishment either.“They’re trying to hang on by a thread,” Mr. Crenshaw said of Mr. McCarthy and Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader. “They’re trying to wrangle cats.”The Collins-Luttrell race has become something of a proxy fight over Mr. Crenshaw.Morgan Luttrell speaking with a supporter in Conroe, Texas, in a congressional race exemplifying internal party fights in safe districts.Annie Mulligan for The New York TimesA pro-Collins super PAC used Mr. Crenshaw’s name in an anti-Luttrell billboard along Interstate 45. In a debate, Mr. Collins attacked Mr. Luttrell by saying he had been “endorsed by Dan Crenshaw — I think that name speaks for itself.” At the Collins rally, speaker after speaker called Mr. Crenshaw a R.I.N.O. — a Republican in Name Only.How U.S. Redistricting WorksCard 1 of 8What is redistricting? More