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      John Fetterman Got a New Suit for His Senate Swearing-In

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      The Pennsylvania lawmaker joins the Washington establishment. Sort of.John Fetterman has a new suit. On Jan. 3, the junior senator from Pennsylvania, whose penchant for Carhartt sweatshirts, Dickies and baggy shorts was as much a part of his political brand as any stump speech, was sworn in as part of the 118th Congress wearing a relatively tailored, previously unseen light gray two-button number. This is a big deal, in part because during his time as lieutenant governor, Mr. Fetterman had made a point of stating that he had only one dark suit. On a day notable for the chaos around the election of Speaker of the House, that suit, as well as the light blue striped tie and polished black lace-ups Mr. Fetterman also wore, may have been the biggest political fashion statement of the incoming class. It was more symbolic even than Nancy Pelosi’s bright pink passing-of-the-baton outfit, or the smattering of suffragist white worn by some women in the House, or even J.D. Vance’s Trumpian uniform of navy suit, white shirt and glowing red tie. And it confirms Mr. Fetterman as one of the more unexpected image makers in Washington. It’s not that he dresses particularly well, though the new suit was a step up. It’s that he dresses with purpose.Indeed, Mr. Fetterman’s new suit was as notable as any of the fashion statements made by various members of Congress since clothes began to play a bigger role in electoral communications. To wit: January 2019, when a large group of women of the newly elected 116th Congress wore white to their swearing-in in honor of their suffragist predecessors (and as a counterstrike to the image-making focus of the Trump administration).Or, for that matter, almost every State of the Union and major public event since then — most recently in December, when a number of lawmakers wore yellow and blue to Volodymyr Zelensky’s congressional speech. If there’s a photo op involved, there’s generally a fashion decision aforethought.The silent communication that comes via clothing has become a standard part of the political toolbox. It’s wielded with increasing dexterity by, for example, elected officials like Kyrsten Sinema, who used her kooky wardrobe of sleeveless tops, colored wigs and the occasional denim vest to telegraph her independence from political norms long before she officially became an independent. Also Jim Jordan, who symbolized his willingness to fight during committee hearings by abandoning his jackets and rolling up his shirt sleeves. The Washington wardrobe is so standardized that any deviation from the norm stands out, especially on TV.Unless, of course, your default position is deviation from the norm — in which case a return to business as usual becomes the surprise. As Mr. Fetterman well knows.Before heading off to the Capitol for his swearing-in, he tweeted, “For those of you asking, yes, there will be a Fetterman in shorts today, but it’s not me.” (It was one of his sons, gamely continuing the family campaign to free the knee.) Rather than deny the idea that he thinks about what he wears, or having his staff deny it for him, Mr. Fetterman long ago turned his wardrobe into an asset: the subject of self-deprecating funny asides, social media jokes and pretty potent public appeal.He has blogged that he can’t roll up his sleeves because he only wears short sleeves. He has tweeted that his outfits are “Western PA business casual” and celebrated his new “Formal Hoodie.” (His wife, Gisele, has made fun of him for it; political couples — they’re just like us.) He was never exactly a working man — he was a mayor with a master’s degree from Harvard — but he dressed like one, and it helped humanize him, get him recognized and make a name for himself that resonated beyond the borders of Pennsylvania and into the realm of late-night TV even before he won his election. Arguably it helped win the election.And it meant that when he showed up on Capitol Hill in November for his orientation in a dark suit and blue tie, he got the sort of excited attention not normally bestowed on a senator-elect making a drive-by visit to his new workplace. Rather he resembled some sort of semi-celebrity, even as his willingness to play by Senate dress code rules and fit into the institution can’t have escaped his new colleagues.Nor, probably, could the sleight of hand that managed to make wearing a conservative suit look like a radical move. And they can expect more where this came from: According to his office, the new suit is one of three Mr. Fetterman has purchased, along with six — count ’em — ties. More

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      George Santos Goes to Washington as His Life of Fantasy Comes Into Focus

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      Mr. Santos, under scrutiny for lies about his background, is set to be sworn into Congress on Tuesday even as records, colleagues and friends divulge more about his past.In two years, George Santos went from being a little-known also-ran to a beacon of the Republican Party’s unexpected resurgence in a deep-blue state. But a swirling cloud of suspicion surrounds Mr. Santos, just as he is poised to take the floor of the House of Representatives on Tuesday, to swear to serve Constitution and country.Mr. Santos has admitted that he fabricated key parts of his educational and professional history, after a New York Times investigation uncovered discrepancies in his résumé and questions about his financial dealings. Federal and local prosecutors are investigating whether he committed crimes involving his finances or misleading statements. Now, new reporting shows that his falsehoods began years before he entered politics.Mr. Santos would join Congress facing significant pressure from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.Mr. Santos has been hard to reach. He has not answered telephone calls, text messages or emails asking him to respond to The Times’s reporting. Earlier this week, Mr. Santos’s lawyer responded to an email asking about his campaign’s unusual spending, saying it was “ludicrous” to suggest the funds had been spent irresponsibly. Mr. Santos did not answer an email sent to him and his lawyer on Friday asking for comments about new reporting on the discrepancies in his past.Members of his own party have called for more detailed explanations of his behavior, and Nick LaLota, also a Republican representative-elect from Long Island, has called for a House ethics investigation.Representative James R. Comer of Kentucky, the incoming Republican chair of the House Oversight Committee, told Fox News on Thursday night that he was “pretty confident” that the House Ethics Committee would open an investigation into Mr. Santos. He added, “What Santos has done is a disgrace. He’s lied to the voters.”New York Democrats also made it clear they want to subject Mr. Santos to deeper scrutiny. Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the incoming Democratic leader, has said Mr. Santos is “unfit to serve.” Representative Ritchie Torres said he planned to introduce the Stop Another Non-Truthful Office Seeker Act — the SANTOS Act — that would require House candidates to provide details of their backgrounds under oath.The lawmaker who may have the most significant role in his future in the House, Kevin McCarthy, the House Republican leader, has been silent when asked about The Times’s reporting and Mr. Santos’s interviews supporting it.It remains unclear how the controversy might affect Mr. Santos’s debut in Congress, including his committee assignments. Mr. Santos told NY1 last month that he hoped to serve on the House Financial Services or Foreign Affairs committees, based on his “14-year background in capital markets” and a “multicultural background.” He has since admitted to misrepresenting his work in financial services, while aspects of his heritage have been called into question.New reporting by The Times brings a clearer picture of his earlier life into view, including information about the gaps in his personal history, along with discrepancies in how he described his mother’s life.Mr. Santos has said that he grew up in a basement apartment in Jackson Heights, Queens. Until Wednesday, Mr. Santos’s campaign biography said that his mother, Fatima Devolder, worked her way up to become “the first female executive at a major financial institution.” He has also said that she was in the South Tower of the World Trade Center during the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and that she died “a few years later.”In fact, Ms. Devolder died in 2016, and a Brazilian community newspaper at the time described her as a cook. Mr. Santos’s friends and former roommates recalled her as a hardworking, friendly woman who spoke only Portuguese and made her living cleaning homes and selling food. None of those interviewed by The Times could recall any instance of her working in finance, and several chalked the story up to Mr. Santos’s tendency for mythmaking.His apparent fabrications about his own life begin with his claims about his high school. He said he attended Horace Mann School, a prestigious private institution in the Bronx, and said he dropped out in 2006 before graduating and earning an equivalency diploma. A spokesman for Horace Mann said that the school had no record of his attending at all.By 2008, court records show, Mr. Santos and his mother were living in Brazil, just outside Rio de Janeiro in the city of Niterói. Just a month before his 20th birthday, Mr. Santos entered a small clothing store and spent nearly $700 in 2008 dollars using a stolen checkbook and a false name, court records show.Mr. Santos has denied that he committed crimes in the United States or abroad. But the Brazilian record shows that he admitted the fraud to both the police and the shopkeeper.“I know I screwed up, but I want to pay,” he wrote in a message to the store’s owner on Orkut, a popular social media website in Brazil, in August 2009. “It was always my intention to pay, but I messed up.”In November 2010, Mr. Santos and his mother appeared before the police, where they both admitted that he was responsible. On Sept. 13, 2011, a Brazilian judge ordered Mr. Santos to respond to the case. Three months later, a court official tried to subpoena him, but he could not be found.By that time, he was back in New York, working at a Dish Network call center in College Point, Queens, company records show.Interviews with half a dozen former friends and colleagues, several of whom spoke on the condition that they not be identified to avoid being dragged into Mr. Santos’s controversies, suggest that he was reinventing himself when he moved back to New York, and that he would continue to do so in the years to come. They portray Mr. Santos as a striver, whose tendency toward embellishment and one-upsmanship left them with doubts about his many claimed accomplishments.He told some that he had been a journalist at a famous news organization in Brazil, but none could find his name on its website. He said that he was taking classes at Baruch College, but none of his friends remembered him studying. He bragged of Wall Street glory but often seemed to be short on cash, at times borrowing from friends whom he didn’t always repay. When he joined a travel technology company called MetGlobal, Mr. Santos portrayed himself as a man with family money. But two former co-workers said that the pay was modest and the work didn’t square with Mr. Santos’s depiction of himself as a financier passing time after bad bets left him on the outs on Wall Street.Not everything in Mr. Santos’s stated biography was a lie. A LinkBridge document supports his claim that he was a vice president. Several former colleagues confirmed he worked for MetGlobal, for a subsidiary called HotelsPro. And records examined by The Times appeared to corroborate his claim that he received his high school equivalency degree in New York in 2006.In 2016, Mr. Santos left for Florida, public records show, around the time that HotelsPro was opening an office in Orlando. Mr. Santos told Newsday in 2019 that he went there briefly for work. He received a Florida driver’s license and was registered to vote there in the 2016 election.Those who knew him recalled that Mr. Santos had long been a follower of Republican politics, and that he railed against Hillary Clinton and Bill de Blasio, who was then the mayor of New York.One who was close to Mr. Santos was Pedro Vilarva. Mr. Vilarva met Mr. Santos in 2014, when he was 18 and Mr. Santos was 26. Mr. Vilarva found him charming and sweet. They dated for a few months before Mr. Santos suggested they move in together. Mr. Vilarva said he felt on top of the world — even if he said he did find himself footing many of the bills.“He used to say he would get money from Citigroup, he was an investor,” Mr. Vilarva recalled. “One day it’s one thing, one day it’s another thing. He never ever actually went to work,” he said.Things began to unravel between the two men in early 2015, Mr. Vilarva said, after Mr. Santos surprised him with tickets to Hawaii that turned out not to exist. Around the same time, he said he discovered that his cellphone was missing, and believed Mr. Santos had pawned it.The betrayal prompted him to plug Mr. Santos’s name into a search engine, where he found that Mr. Santos was wanted by Brazilian police.“I woke up in the morning, and I packed my stuff all in trash bags, and I called my father and I left,” he said.Looking back, Mr. Vilarva said, he was young and gullible: He wanted to believe Mr. Santos’s many stories and believe in the life that they shared. Today he is worried about the impact Mr. Santos might have as an elected official.“I would be scared to have someone like that in charge — having so much power in his hands,” he said.André Spigariol More

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      More migrants bussed to Kamala Harris’s home on Christmas Eve

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      More migrants bussed to Kamala Harris’s home on Christmas EveThree buses of Central and South American migrants arrived to the vice-president’s home from Texas Three busloads of migrants were dropped off outside the Washington DC home of US vice-president Kamala Harris late on Christmas Eve, the latest episode in an escalating battle between the Joe Biden White House and the governors of southern Republican states over federal immigration policy.‘A storm is coming’: migrants stuck on US-Mexico border as temperatures plummetRead moreThe Central and South American migrants, believed to be sent from Texas, were dropped off in below-freezing temperatures, with some wearing only sweatshirts and shorts.Texas’s far-right governor, Greg Abbott, has previously sent buses to Harris’s Naval Observatory home. An organizer with the Migrant Solidarity Mutual Aid Network, Amy Fischer, told local news station ABC7 that Abbott orchestrated the drop off as a political stunt.“It really does show the cruelty behind governor Abbott and his insistence on continuing to bus people here without care about people arriving late at night on Christmas Eve when the weather is so cold,” Fischer said.The group took the travelers to the shelter of a local church where they were given warm food and clothes.Tatiana Laborde with Samu First Response, an aid group that was also there to meet the buses, said that similar drops had been made in Washington since April. “Christmas Eve and freezing cold weather is no different,” Laborde told CNN. “We are always here welcoming folks with open arms.”The arrivals were the latest salvo in an effort by Abbott to force the Biden administration to step up immigration controls at the US border with Mexico. Florida’s governor Ron DeSantis and Arizona’s governor Doug Ducey have also transported migrants to cities that are run by Democrats.“You and your administration must stop the lie that the border is secure and instead immediately deploy federal assets to address the dire problems you have caused,” Abbott wrote in a letter to Biden last week.Abbott added: “You must execute the duties that the US constitution mandates you perform and secure the southern border before more innocent lives are lost.”On Friday, US Customs and Border Protection reported that 233,740 migrants were apprehended at the southern border in November, marking the highest number ever recorded for the month. The border agency reported that of 204,000 “unique encounters”, 35% were from Cuba and Nicaragua.‘No money, nowhere to stay’: asylum seekers wait as Trump’s border restrictions drag onRead moreIn a statement released on Saturday, the federal homeland security department said it “continues to fully enforce our immigration and public health laws at the border”.“As temperatures remain dangerously low all along the border, no one should put their lives in the hands of smugglers, or risk life and limb attempting to cross only to be returned,” the Department of Homeland Security added, warning that “anyone attempting to enter without authorization is subject to expulsion” under the policy known as Title 42.Last week, the US supreme court temporarily suspended the expiration of the policy empowering border officials to turn away asylum seekers on public health grounds. The Trump White House imposed it during the early phases of the Covid-19 pandemic.Days before Title 42 was due to expire, the border city of El Paso, Texas, declared a state of emergency after migrant numbers surged. If allowed to expire, Abbott has warned that the number of people entering the US illegally “will only increase”.TopicsUS immigrationUS politicsKamala HarrisBiden administrationWashington DCnewsReuse this content More

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      Republicans lead charge to ban noncitizens from voting in local elections

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      Republicans lead charge to ban noncitizens from voting in local electionsEight states have passed laws against ballot access, even as some progressive cities are extending local voting rights Louisiana voters recently approved a constitutional amendment barring anyone who is not a US citizen from participating in elections, becoming the eighth state to push back against the growing number of progressive cities deciding to allow noncitizens to vote in local elections.Conservative donors pour ‘dark money’ into case that could upend US voting lawRead moreWhile noncitizens are prohibited from voting in federal elections and no states allow noncitizens to vote for statewide office, ambiguous language in constitutions has allowed localities to pass statutes legalizing noncitizen voting in local or school board elections. A short but expanding list of cities include two cities in Vermont, almost a dozen in Maryland, and San Francisco.Other cities are trying to join that list, including Boston and Washington DC, where the latter city’s council in October passed legislation allowing noncitizens who have lived in the city for at least 30 days to vote in local elections. New York City’s council also passed a measure in December to allow close to 900,000 green card holders and those with work authorization to vote in local elections, but a state trial court struck it down in June, finding it violated the state constitution. The ruling is currently being appealed.The potential for major cities like DC and New York to expand their electorates prompted backlash from Republican lawmakers.“This vote sends a clear message that the radical election policies of places like San Francisco, New York City and Washington, DC have no place in Louisiana,” Kyle Ardoin, the Republican secretary of state, said in a statement after the passage of the constitutional amendment, which he said will “ensure the continued integrity of Louisiana’s elections”.Louisiana law already prohibits anyone who is “not a citizen of the state” from voting, so voting rights advocates say the new amendment is an effort by Republicans in the state to limit voting based on false allegations that noncitizens are committing voter fraud by participating in elections.Louisiana’s amendment made it on to the 10 December ballot after it was passed by both chambers of the state legislature. Over 73% of Louisiana voters approved it, making Louisiana the latest in a series of states moving to explicitly write bans into their constitutions.Before 2020, just Arizona and North Dakota specifically prohibited noncitizens from voting in local and state elections, but voters in Alabama, Colorado and Florida all approved constitutional amendments in 2020 and Ohio approved one in November.Ohio’s amendment came after one town in the state, Yellow Springs, passed an initiative in 2019 to allow noncitizens to vote, giving voting rights in local elections to just a few dozen people in the small town. A few years later in 2022, Republican lawmakers proposed what would eventually become the constitutional amendment banning the practice and revoking the right from noncitizens in Yellow Springs.Fulvia Vargas-De Leon, senior counsel at LatinoJustice PRLDEF, a New York-based immigrant rights group, said the movement for ballot amendments is just one way that some lawmakers are trying to restrict voting rights.“It is a response to the expansion of the right to vote, and our concern is that since 2020, we’ve seen such attacks on the right to vote,” she said, adding that the pushback was coming because of an anti-immigrant sentiment “but also a larger effort to try to ban who has access to the ballot”.The United States allowed noncitizens to vote for much of its early history. From the founding of the country through 1926, noncitizens could vote in local, state and federal elections. But anti-immigrant sentiment led to lawmakers in most states to push for an end to the practice.“Resurgent nativism, wartime xenophobia, and corruption concerns pushed lawmakers to curtail noncitizen voting, and citizenship became a voting prerequisite in every state by 1926,” William & Mary professor Alan H Kennedy wrote in a paper published in the Journal of Policy History this year.In 1996, Congress passed a law prohibiting noncitizens from voting in federal elections, making illegal voting punishable by fines, imprisonment and deportation.But on the local level, the subject has re-emerged as a topic for debate in recent decades, as the populations of permanent noncitizen immigrants has grown in many cities.Advocates for noncitizen voting argue that documented immigrants pay taxes and contribute to their local communities and should have their voices heard when it comes to local policy.“We should have a representative democracy, where everyone who is part of the fabric of the community, who is involved, who pays taxes, should have a say in it,” said Vargas-De Leon, whose group intervened in the New York litigation and has filed the appeal.But conservative groups say that allowing noncitizens to vote dilutes the votes of citizens. Republican strategist Christopher Arps started the Missouri-based Americans for Citizen Voting to help states amend their constitutions to explicitly say that only US citizens can vote. He said that people who want to vote should “at least have some skin in the game” by completing the citizenship process.“We’ve been hearing for the past five, six years about foreign interference, Russia and other countries,” he said. “Well to me, this is a type of foreign interference in our elections.”It would also be a “bureaucratic nightmare”, he said, for states to have to maintain two separate voter rolls for federal and local elections, and could lead to illegal voting if noncitizens accidentally vote in a federal election.Though noncitizen voting still has not been signed into law in DC, Republicans in Congress have already introduced legislation to block it. One bill, introduced by the Texas senator Ted Cruz last month, would bar DC from using federal funds to facilitate noncitizen voting.“Allowing noncitizens and illegal immigrants to vote in our elections opens our country up to foreign influence, and allows those who are openly violating US law or even working for hostile foreign governments to take advantage and direct our resources against our will,” Cruz said in a statement.But Vargas-De Leon pointed to the benefits of expanding the electorate to include the country’s 12.9 million legal permanent residents and other documented immigrants.“All we’re trying to do here is ensure that everyone has a say in our government,” she said.TopicsUS newsThe fight for democracyUS politicsLaw (US)LouisianaOhioFloridaVermontfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Zelenskiy due in US to meet Biden and address Congress

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      Zelenskiy due in US to meet Biden and address CongressTrip to Washington is Ukrainian president’s first disclosed foreign visit since Russia invaded in February Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, will arrive in Washington on Wednesday where he will meet President Joe Biden at the White House and address a joint session of Congress.The trip – Zelenskiy’s first known foreign visit since Russia invaded Ukraine – will also see the Ukrainian president meet with congressional leadership and national security committee chiefs from the Republican and Democratic parties.The trip comes as US lawmakers are due to vote on a year-end spending package that includes about $45bn in emergency assistance to Ukraine. The latest tranche of US funding would be the biggest American infusion of assistance yet to Ukraine, above even Biden’s $37bn emergency request.“The visit will underscore the United States’ steadfast commitment to supporting Ukraine for as long as it takes, including through the provision of economic, humanitarian, and military assistance,” said a White House statement announcing the visit.President Zelenskiy confirmed in a tweet that he was on his way to Washington and would be speaking before Congress, as well as conducting a number of bilateral meetings.On my way to the US to strengthen resilience and defense capabilities of 🇺🇦. In particular, @POTUS and I will discuss cooperation between 🇺🇦 and 🇺🇸. I will also have a speech at the Congress and a number of bilateral meetings.— Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) December 21, 2022
      In a letter inviting Zelenskiy to address the joint meeting of Congress, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called the fight for Ukraine a fight for democracy itself.“In the face of Putin’s horrific atrocities, Ukrainian freedom fighters have inspired the world with an iron will and an unbreakable spirit … your courageous, patriotic, indefatigable leadership has rallied not only your people, but the world, to join the frontlines of the fight for freedom”, Pelosi wrote.In a conference call with reporters on Tuesday, a senior administration official, who did not wish to be named, said Biden and Zelenskiy had discussed a potential visit when they spoke by phone on 11 December and the White House formally extended an invitation last Wednesday. Zelenskiy’s office accepted the invitation last Friday and the visit was confirmed on Sunday.Biden will first welcome Zelenskiy at the White House for bilateral meetings with the US president’s national security team and cabinet. After a press conference, Zelenskiy will go to Capitol Hill and address a joint session of Congress. He will return home after just a few hours on the ground.The official said: “We’re looking forward to having President Zelenskiy back at the White House for his second visit but his first visit since the start of Russia’s brutal war against Ukraine. It’s something we’ve wanted to do for some time and tomorrow is actually the 300th day since Russia brutally invaded Ukraine in an all-out assault with the goal of wiping its neighbour off the map and subjecting the Ukrainian people to Russian dominion.”Biden will announce a new package of nearly $2bn of security assistance including a Patriot missile battery. The US will, in a third country, train Ukrainian forces in how to operate the Patriot system.Despite some Republicans questioning the price of the war, the official predicted Zelenskiy would receive a strong bipartisan show of support. “This isn’t about sending a message to a particular political party. This is about sending a message to Putin and sending a message to the world that America will be there for Ukraine for as long as it takes.“President Putin badly miscalculated the beginning of this conflict when he presumed that the Ukrainian people would yield and that Nato would be disunited. He was wrong on both counts. He remains wrong about our staying power and that’s what this visit will demonstrate.”The senior administration official also denied that Biden will pressure Zelenskiy to seek a diplomatic end to the war. “The president is not coming with a message that is about pushing or prodding or poking Zelenskiy in any way. This is going to be a message of solidarity and support, coordination and alignment and making sure that we are very much putting Ukraine in the best possible position to defend its interests and secure its objectives.”Biden has said from the start that the US will not send forces to Ukraine to directly fight the Russians. No change to that policy is expected on Wednesday.The Associated Press contributed to this reportTopicsVolodymyr ZelenskiyUkraineWashington DCUS CongressUS politicsEuropenewsReuse this content More

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      Gen Z Problems: Maxwell Frost Is Struggling to Rent an Apartment

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      Other young adults, who have poor credit history and are frustrated with expensive rental application fees, can relate to the housing troubles of the first Gen Zer elected to Congress.WASHINGTON — At 25, Representative-elect Maxwell Frost will be youngest member of Congress. He’s also in debt, after maxing out credit cards to win Florida’s 10th Congressional District seat.He said he was upfront about his bad credit when he applied for a one-bedroom apartment in Washington, D.C., where he now has to live part-time for at least the next two years. A broker, he said, told him that was fine. He paid a $50 application fee and then was denied the apartment because of his poor credit history.Mr. Frost, the first Gen Zer elected to Congress and a Democrat, took to Twitter in early December to voice his frustration: “This ain’t meant for people who don’t already have money.”While most other Gen Zers haven’t accrued campaign debt, Mr. Frost’s housing woes have generated a wide range of commiserating among Gen Z Twitter users who have short credit histories and less capital to afford expensive deposits and application fees.Mr. Frost said he also lost hundreds of dollars last year when he was searching for housing in his home district in Orlando.“Application fees are becoming a source of revenue for management companies,” Mr. Frost said in an interview. “We live in a world right now where you can run an extensive background check for $15, why are fees up to $200? Why do we use a credit score to determine if an applicant can pay rent when there’s so many things that hurt someone’s credit score?”The fees are the sour cherry on top of a brutal housing market: Last month, the typical asking rent in the United States was over $2,000, up from $1,850 in November 2021 and $1,600 in November 2020, according to data from Zillow. For Washington D.C., the typical asking rent was over $2,200 last month, a figure that’s been following the national trajectory.Some Gen Zers see no feasible way to get a place of their own: Nearly a third of people between the ages of 18 and 25 are living at home permanently, one recent report found.Raegan Loheide, 25, started looking for a new apartment with their partner and their current roommate last May. Mx. Loheide, a barista, was living in an apartment in Queens, but said their mental and physical health was deteriorating from a series of maintenance issues that their landlord refused to fix, including a roach infestation, holes in the ceiling, a lack of heat and a broken toilet.“We didn’t feel safe,” Mx. Loheide said.But in the months following, Mx. Loheide, their roommate and their partner applied to five apartments — spending hundreds of dollars on application fees — all of which they were rejected from.“The first rejection was because we didn’t have a third guarantor,” Mx. Loheide said. “I kept asking the brokers ‘why?’ but I barely ever got a real answer.”Eventually, Mx. Loheide felt they had no choice but to stay in their current apartment, even if it meant an emotional toll and more landlord troubles.“We couldn’t move,” Mx. Loheide said. “We kept expanding our budgets and scraping together more to afford to relocate, but what good is that if we can’t even get approved?”Why Landlords Care About Your CreditCredit is one of the tools property owners have to utilize to tell upfront if a tenant will be able to make their rent payments, said Jay Martin, the executive director of the Community Housing Improvement Program, a trade association for 4,000 property managers and owners in New York.“Property owners have a fiduciary duty to figure out that the applicants that they’re screening are going to be able to pay the rent that they are applying for, because they have mortgages that they’ll have to pay with the rent money that they are collecting,” Mr. Martin said.Mr. Martin added that the money from application fees “is not in any way a form of revenue for management companies, brokers or property owners.” The fee, Mr. Martin said, goes toward covering the cost of running the background checks, credit checks and other screening processes.Still, some tactics and motives have drawn criticism.Brokers also may encourage people who will likely get denied from an apartment application to apply anyway, for financial incentives or in hopes of raising their statistics on how many applicants they can bring in, said Felipe Ernst, a faculty member in Georgetown’s masters of real estate program and founder of a D.C.-based real estate development firm.While it can create more competition for an apartment and give a landlord more options to choose from, it can negatively impact potential renters who are already struggling since application fees, which can add up to hundreds of dollars, are almost always nonrefundable, he said.“It’s borderline unethical to put someone in the wringer, knowing that they won’t get approved,” Mr. Ernst said. “But at the same time, you need to have a realistic look on your finances. I don’t go to a Ferrari dealership if I can only buy a Honda.”Vipassana Vijayarangan could not live with her boyfriend as planned because her lack of credit disqualified her from renting an apartment with him.Todd Midler for The New York TimesSettling for a Room or a CouchFor people desperate to rent apartments, they are just searching high and low for somewhere to live.In 2018, Vipassana Vijayarangan had to move to D.C. on short notice for a new job. She stayed in an Airbnb until she had pay stubs for a rental application, and with her partner, she found a suitable two-bedroom apartment to apply to in Washington’s Capitol Hill neighborhood.“I told the agent in an email, ‘I’m very interested in this apartment, but I do not have any credit,’” Ms. Vijayarangan, 31, said. “When I lived in the U.S. on a student visa, I didn’t have — and was not allowed — to get a social security card. So it was impossible for me to even apply for the secured version of a credit card until I had work authorization.”Similar to Mr. Frost’s situation, the broker assured Ms. Vijayarangan that her lack of credit wouldn’t be a problem, but in the end, her application was denied.Ms. Vijayarangan, who now works as a data scientist in New York, eventually rented a room in a rowhouse from an immigrant landlord who understood her situation, she said. But, Ms. Vijayarangan and her partner, an American citizen who had a more established credit history, ended up living apart because he could get approved but she could not. “That could have been the first time that we were living together and building a life together,” she said. “We didn’t get to do that.”Mr. Frost is now the proxy for discouraged Gen Zers, but he is just the latest in the storied tradition of members of congress lamenting the process of finding a secondary residence in D.C. after being elected. Through the years, representatives and senators have opted to split a place with one another or even sleep in their offices to save money.In an interview last week, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York, said that she has previously “dealt with very similar issues.”In 2018, just after she was first elected and was set to be the youngest woman to serve in Congress, she told The Times, “I have three months without a salary before I’m a member of Congress. So, how do I get an apartment? Those little things are very real.”Similarly, Representative Mondaire Jones, Democrat of New York, said he also ran up debt when he first ran for office.“This place is not set up for people who are not independently wealthy,” Mr. Jones said. “People here don’t understand wealth inequality because they’ve not experienced it.”Mr. Frost has a budget of less than $2,000 a month. He’s looking for a studio apartment within walking distance of the U.S. Capitol since he does not intend to have a car or a driver to chauffeur him. His geographic hopes have restricted his apartment hunt to a few gentrifying neighborhoods.Unsure when he’ll finally secure a place to live, he plans to continue couch surfing for a few months to save money and find an apartment in one of his desired neighborhoods.“I was very close to taking out a loan, which would mean spending a lot of personal money to pay back the loan,” Mr. Frost said. “Rent problems are not just mine. There are millions of Americans that have these same problems.” More

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      in Elections

      Why Kevin McCarthy Is Struggling to Get Republicans in Line

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      Only a few weeks remain for the would-be House speaker to rally enough support to take power.The most fascinating election of 2023 is not happening in a presidential battleground like Arizona or Pennsylvania. It’s taking place in Washington, D.C., where Representative Kevin McCarthy of California is laboring mightily to become speaker of the House — a job he has long coveted.When the full House votes for speaker on Jan. 3, McCarthy will need the backing of a majority of all members. And with the party’s narrow hold on power, even a small number of Republican defections could imperil his bid. The uncertainty over McCarthy’s fate is roiling the G.O.P. while helping Democrats who want to portray Republicans as dysfunctional and hopelessly in thrall to extremists.Most of the action is taking place behind closed doors. But McCarthy’s allies and a rump faction of ultraconservative lawmakers have been dueling one another through the Beltway news media as January approaches, giving us glimpses of the jockeying and negotiations. The battle for speaker is taking place as Democrats try to push through a critical year-end spending bill that House Republicans almost universally oppose.The past week has brought a few developments — many of them baffling even to Capitol Hill insiders. On Friday, seven conservative hard-liners issued a lengthy list of demands to the would-be speaker, mostly involving obscure procedural rules. On Tuesday, a group of nearly 50 moderates aligned with McCarthy said they would oppose some of those ideas. Then on Wednesday, news broke that a different group of five anti-McCarthy members led by Representative Andy Biggs of Arizona had made a pact to vote as a bloc, one way or another. If they stick together, those five are enough to deny McCarthy his gavel, and it is not clear how he gets them to yes.But it’s also not clear that Republicans have another viable option. To reinforce that point, McCarthy’s allies have begun distributing buttons saying “O.K.” — as in “Only Kevin.”Annie Karni, a congressional correspondent for The New York Times, has been tracking the race closely. Here is our conversation, edited lightly for length and clarity:How large a faction are the McCarthy holdouts? Is it just the die-hards like Biggs and three or four others that some are calling the Never Kevins?Let me just start by saying that no one has any idea if McCarthy is going to pull this out. Reporters are asking Republicans. Republicans are asking reporters. The smartest people watching this closely are unwilling to make predictions at this point. McCarthy is playing it all very close to the vest. He’s not including other members of his leadership team in his deliberations or his calculations.As for your question, publicly, the Never Kevins are a small bunch: At least four people have said they are hard nos.But 31 House Republicans voted “no” on nominating McCarthy for the position back in November. How many of them were simply doing so to make a point but are ultimately for him? How many are still at “no” but keeping it to themselves, at least for now? McCarthy doesn’t necessarily know the entire list of people he has to win over.Has McCarthy won back any of the 31?That’s hard to answer, since it was a secret ballot and we don’t know who those 31 Republicans were. But it’s not a great sign for him that in the same vote, Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana had unanimous support in his race to become the No. 2 House Republican next year. In other words, for these people, it isn’t an attack on the leadership. This is an attack on McCarthy.But it also might not mean that much. For context, all this turmoil is in line with how this phase of the process has played out in the past, for lawmakers who eventually won the speakership. Paul Ryan lost 43 votes in the secret ballot phase in 2015. Nancy Pelosi, in 2018, lost 32 votes. They both eventually emerged victorious and became speaker.What do the die-hards want? Is this just “blackmail,” as former Speaker Newt Gingrich wrote this week? Do they have some kind of ideal outcome in mind?This is what makes it extra tough for McCarthy. He has to contend with something that no Democrat has had to face: a sizable group that was sent to Congress explicitly to obstruct. Some of the people he is attempting to bargain with don’t seem to have a price. They’re not motivated by legislating as much as they are about shrinking the federal government, or upending it completely.That being said, the real sticking point is what’s known in congressional jargon as the “motion to vacate,” a term we try to avoid using in news stories because it’s meaningless to most readers. What it would do is change the rules to allow any member to force a snap floor vote to get rid of the speaker at any time. The holdouts want McCarthy to commit to allowing a vote like that. So far, that’s been a nonstarter for him; he understandably views the prospect as handing his enemies a loaded political weapon.Bottom line: It seems like McCarthy is dealing with some chaos agents, which makes his process a lot more difficult than it was for Pelosi in 2018. Back then, she also had to negotiate her way to the speakership, but she was dealing with a caucus made up of members with specific demands that she could address.The alternative to McCarthy is unlikely to be his current opponent, Biggs. The Beltway chatter is that if McCarthy fails to get the necessary votes on the House floor, someone of more stature than Biggs, like Scalise or Representative Patrick McHenry of North Carolina, could potentially get drafted into becoming a speaker candidate.You reported this week, with Maggie Haberman and Catie Edmondson, that Donald Trump had been making calls to House members to ask them to support McCarthy. What were you able to learn about the arguments he had been making, and how that was resonating?Yes, we reported that Trump had been calling members who are ambivalent, at best, about McCarthy serving as speaker.Trump is not that gung-ho about McCarthy, we understand, although some of the top people around him are very pro-McCarthy. Nonetheless, Trump has been calling Republican lawmakers because he doesn’t see a viable alternative and believes McCarthy is better for him than an improbable scenario where the job goes to a moderate who can draw some Democratic votes.Trump’s thinking is in line with how a lot of people are viewing this: OK, so you don’t love Kevin McCarthy. But what’s the real alternative? Regarding Trump and McCarthy, their relationship over the course of the past few years has had its ups and downs, but usually lands back at cordial. Friendly. Not particularly close. But not bad.Also, it’s good to remember that Trump officially endorsed McCarthy’s bid for speaker. So it’s in his interest, in terms of his personal scorecard of wins and losses, to have his endorsee pull this out.One more dynamic worth a fleeting mention: Trump is making calls for McCarthy, and yet one of Trump’s biggest allies in Congress, Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida, is one of the most vocal obstacles to McCarthy’s bid. Why can’t Trump get Gaetz to cease and desist? Trump has yet to make a big public campaign on McCarthy’s behalf that would resonate with constituents of these members and put more pressure on them.So many of the concessions McCarthy has made thus far are about arcane issues, like funding formulas. But he has also welcomed into the fold far-right figures like Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Paul Gosar of Arizona and promised to restore their committee assignments. Has that bargain been worth it, from his perspective?Definitely. McCarthy wants to be speaker. He’s known as an aggressive fund-raiser, an affable people person, and generally a go-along-to-get-along guy. He’s not an ideologue, which means that he’s less scary to some Democrats than, say, Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio. But it also means he’s not bothered by making compromises for these far-right members, if it means getting where he wants.Greene has been publicly vouching for McCarthy. It’s funny — before the midterm elections, when there were questions about what could happen to thwart McCarthy’s plans to become speaker, it seemed like Greene or Trump could pose the biggest problems for him. If Trump, for instance, turned on him, the thinking was that Trump’s influence on the far right of the Republican Party would cost McCarthy critical votes.But here we are, with Trump and Greene on Team McCarthy. And yet he’s still working hard to close the sale.What to readThree Michigan men were sentenced to prison terms for their roles in the plot to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. Eliza Fawcett has the details.A new lawsuit alleges that the New York attorney general, Letitia James, shielded her former chief of staff from harassment claims, Jeffrey C. Mays reports.Trump teased a big announcement this week. It turns out he was selling digital trading cards, in what Michael C. Bender describes as a baffling move.Thank you for reading On Politics, and for being a subscriber to The New York Times. — BlakeRead past editions of the newsletter here.If you’re enjoying what you’re reading, please consider recommending it to others. They can sign up here. Browse all of our subscriber-only newsletters here.Have feedback? Ideas for coverage? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More

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      in US Politics

      US House votes to remove bust of judge who wrote Dred Scott decision defending slavery

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      US House votes to remove bust of judge who wrote Dred Scott decision defending slaverySupreme court justice Roger Taney wrote 1857 decision justifying slavery, widely regarded as one of worst rulings in history The US House of Representatives voted on Wednesday to remove from the Capitol a bust of Roger Taney, the supreme court justice who in 1857 wrote the Dred Scott decision, justifying slavery and denying that Black people had rights any “white man was bound to respect”.‘Confederates were traitors’: Ty Seidule on West Point, race and American historyRead moreIf the new measure is signed into law by Joe Biden, the bust will be removed from outside the old supreme court chamber and replaced by a bust of Thurgood Marshall, the first Black justice.The measure that passed the House by voice vote was reduced from one which would also have removed statues of Confederates who fought the civil war to protect slavery and which was re-introduced in the aftermath of the Capitol riot of 6 January 2021, when Trump supporters carried Confederate flags into the Capitol.On Wednesday, Zoe Lofgren, a House Democrat from California, said she would have preferred to remove Confederate statuary too, but to remove the Taney bust was literally about “who we put on a pedestal”.“The United States Capitol is a beacon of democracy, freedom and equality,” said Lofgren, a member of the January 6 committee. “What and who we choose to honor in this building should represent our values. Chief Justice Taney … does not meet the standard.”The Dred Scott case concerned an enslaved man who lived in Illinois and the Louisiana territory, where slavery was forbidden, then with his wife sued for freedom when taken back to Missouri, a state where slavery was legal.The court ruled 7-2 for Scott’s enslaver, John Sandford, an army surgeon.Taney wrote that Black people “had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit”.The text of the bill to remove the bust of Taney called the ruling “infamous”, adding that its the effects “would only be overturned years later by the ratification of the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to the constitution of the United States”, thereby “render[ing] a bust of his likeness unsuitable for the honour of display to the many visitors to the Capitol”.David Blight on Frederick Douglass: ‘I call him beautifully human’Read moreIt also quoted the withering judgment of Frederick Douglass, the great writer and campaigner who escaped slavery in Taney’s native Maryland in 1838.In May 1857, Douglass lamented “this infamous decision of the slave-holding wing of the supreme court”, which “maintains that slaves are within the contemplation of the constitution of the United States, property … in the same sense that horses, sheep, and swine are property”.On Wednesday Chris Van Hollen, a senator from Maryland, said: “We should honour those who advanced justice, not glorify those who stood in its way.“Sending this legislation to the president’s desk is a major step in our efforts to tell the stories of those Americans who have fought for a more perfect union – and remove those who have no place in the halls of Congress.”TopicsUS CongressHouse of RepresentativesUS politicsWashington DCAmerican civil warRaceSlaverynewsReuse this content More