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      Wednesday briefing: What Cheney’s drubbing means for US politics

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      Wednesday briefing: What Cheney’s drubbing means for US politicsIn today’s newsletter: Is Liz Cheney’s defeat in the Wyoming primary a triumph for far-right populism – or the beginning of a new chapter?

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      Good morning. Like Keir Starmer and Boris Johnson, I’ve had a lovely summer holiday; unlike them, nobody seems to have been that bothered by my absence. With apologies to those who were hoping for more from Nimo, I’m writing to you this morning with news breaking in the US state of Wyoming, where Representative Liz Cheney, one of the few Republicans to hold Donald Trump accountable for the January 6 insurrection, has been handed an absolute drubbing.In the last couple of hours, Cheney conceded defeat in the primary contest for her seat in the US House of Representatives to Trump’s preferred revenge candidate, standing 37 points behind Harriet Hageman with 95% of precincts reporting. Two years ago, Cheney won her primary with 73% of the vote. Hageman will go forward to the midterm elections in November – and with Democrats nowhere in Wyoming, she will be returned as the state’s sole congressional representative.Cheney’s defeat means that Washington DC will lose its most authoritative and best-known Republican critic of Trump – and yet some Democrats are willing to bet that the more extreme their opponents, the better they will do.Today’s newsletter, with the help of David Smith reporting from Wyoming, is about Liz Cheney – and what her result tells us about Trump’s continuing influence over the Republican party and American politics. That’s right after the headlines.Five big stories
      Conservatives | An audio recording leaked to the Guardian has revealed that Liz Truss said British workers lacked the “skill and application” of their overseas counterparts and needed “more graft”. Her campaign claimed the recording of Truss – who has accused her critics of “talking Britain down” – “lacked context”.
      Farming | UK food tsar Henry Dimbleby has said reducing the consumption of meat and dairy is the only way to sustainably farm in England and avoid ecological breakdown.
      Ukraine | Ukraine is engaged in a counteroffensive aimed at creating “chaos within Russian forces” by striking at supply lines deep into occupied territories, a key adviser to Volodymyr Zelenskiy told the Guardian.
      Inflation | The real value of wages in the UK dropped by 3% in June, the fastest fall in 20 years, as inflation continues to outpace average pay.
      Culture | The former Pop Idol contestant and theatre star Darius Campbell Danesh has died at the age of 41. His family said Danesh died at his apartment in Rochester, Minnesota and that the cause of death was as yet unknown.
      In depth: What went down in WyomingLiz Cheney is, by almost any measure, as conservative as they come. She opposes abortion rights, denies that human activity is responsible for the climate crisis and supports tax cuts for the wealthy. When Trump was president, she voted with him 93% of the time.All of which would appear to make her a solid match for Wyoming, which last elected a Democrat to her congressional seat in 1976. But Cheney differed from what now counts as the GOP mainstream on one crucial subject: the result of the 2020 presidential election, and in particular Donald Trump’s responsibility for the events that followed on January 6.She went on to be vice-chair and the most prominent voice of the House January 6 select committee, and, in the face of credible and numerous death threats, become an unlikely hero for Democrats nostalgic for a bygone age of (some) principled, bipartisan politics. But close to 70% of Wyoming voters went for Trump in 2020, and 70% of Republicans across the US believe his false claim that the election was stolen. As a direct result, Cheney will be out of a job on 3 January next year.“There wasn’t much of a note of sadness or disappointment in her concession speech,” said David Smith, speaking shortly after attending Cheney’s campaign event in Jackson, Wyoming. “She knew this was coming.” Even so, “it’s worth remembering how unthinkable this would have been a couple of years ago. It’s another symbolic indicator of how Trump has transformed his party.”What happened last night?The margin against Cheney, even bigger than polls had suggested, represents an “absolutely crushing victory for Trump,” David said. “There’s no two ways about it. We’ve talked about what these primaries show us about Trump’s influence all year, but Wyoming was always the most watched.”For a sense of how deeply Cheney is opposed in her state, see David’s dispatch published on Saturday, and this line from one critic: “​​She’s going to ‘educate’ us in the constitution and how ‘we’re wrong and she’s right.’ Well … She’s gonna find out if she educated us or not.”While Trump’s false claims about the election and his role in the January 6 riot were clearly a crucial factor here, David also notes that Cheney’s opponents sought to argue that she was “interested in Washington over Wyoming, and had forgotten her constituents. And to some extent she leaned into that – she wasn’t discussing Wyoming policy at her concession speech, she was talking about the big national picture.”How does the result in Wyoming fit into the wider story?One measure of the big picture for Republican critics of Trump, and of his enduring influence, might be an analysis of the fates of 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump over the Capitol riot. Of those 10, four including Cheney have lost their primaries, four have retired and just two have survived.As David wrote last week, Cheney’s result can be seen as “a final national pivot away from the Bush-era establishment to the Make America Great Again movement – from old school conservatism to far-right populism.” Symbolically enough, David pointed out, Cheney’s father Dick, “Darth Vader of the Bush era himself,” was present last night “to see his daughter crushed by the MAGA movement. If you were looking for symbols, that’s pretty on-the-nose.”Trump hasn’t had it all his own way in 2022, David added, and the different outcomes are indicative of the contrasting political landscapes in deep red states like Wyoming and other more balanced races. “In Georgia, for example, the candidates he endorsed flopped,” he said. “But he’s had a surge in congressional primaries recently. After some speculation that his grip is weakening, he’s reasserted himself.”Where does that leave Democrats?Grim as the depth of Republicans’ commitment to Trumpism is for American democracy, it isn’t necessarily the worst news for Joe Biden – or, at least, that’s what Democrats appear to think. One notable feature of this primary season (in races more likely to be competitive in November than Wyoming) has been Democratic funding of ads designed to elevate the chances of the most extreme Republican candidates, in the hope of ensuring unelectable opponents.The jury’s out on whether that’s a good idea. In a piece on that strategy last week, Lauren Gambino quoted Richard Hasen, director of the Safeguarding Democracy project, who said that at a moment when the stolen election myth is such a potent force in American politics, the Democrats’ approach is “immoral and dangerous”.While Biden has endured dismal poll ratings, the picture has gotten a little better in recent weeks, with many on his own side appearing newly motivated by the supreme court’s ruling to overturn Roe v Wade and the unexpected passage of a $739bn healthcare and climate bill.That has changed the political weather: polling analysis site FiveThirtyEight still expects Republicans to win the House, but it now views Democrats as slight favourites to keep control of the Senate. (One reason why, as Adam Gabbatt lays out here, is the calibre of some of the celebrity candidates the GOP has chosen.)Even if this helps in November, though, Cheney’s result and the Democratic strategy still point to the looming threat in 2024: a national election where Republican positions are defined by their most extreme anti-democratic voices – with Trump himself at the top of the ticket.What will Cheney do next?Cheney appeared to have accepted the inevitably of her defeat some time ago. An ad featuring her father excoriating Trump appeared more likely to appeal to a national audience than the party faithful at home. She has stayed in Washington when she might have been expected to be campaigning on the ground in Wyoming. And she has held back much of her considerable war chest.Cheney will keep her role on the January 6 committee for the rest of the year. Many suspect that one reason she kept some money back is a larger ambition in the future: a run at the presidency. In her concession speech, she dropped a clear hint about that prospect, saying: “Abraham Lincoln was defeated in elections for the Senate and House before he won the most important election of all.”Most analysts believe that she would be a long-shot candidate – and, as this Washington Post piece reports, she is herself “clear-eyed” about her prospects. Instead, she may see her possible role as a spoiler for Trump should he run again.But as David also noted: “The Cheneys always play a very long game. Her father was chief of staff to Gerald Ford decades before he was vice president. I assume Liz Cheney will view this as one setback in a very long story.”What else we’ve been reading
      Oliver Wainwright spoke to the architects who believe that “demolition is an act of violence” and are breathing new life into old buildings instead. Nimo
      Ballon d’Or winners Ada Hegerberg and Megan Rapinoe’s conversation about the state of women’s football is full of insight on how to capitalise on England’s success in the Euros – and features this bracing quote from Rapinoe: “Welcome, everybody, to the party. You’re extremely fucking late, but fine.” Archie
      In the last two years, the number of Asian Americans buying guns for the first time has risen by 43% – Claire Wang explains why. Nimo
      Comedian Nish Kumar writes about why, despite rising costs for performers and fewer younger acts, the Edinburgh fringe festival is still an invaluable place for artists to hone their craft. Nimo
      As a walking liberal cliche, I spent a good chunk of my holiday dutifully catching up on the New Yorker. Easily my favourite piece was this hilarious, fascinating story by Tad Friend about a door-to-door salesman blessed with low cunning – and cursed with a bit of a conscience. Archie
      SportTennis | Emma Raducanu defeated Serena Williams 6-4, 6-0 in a first round match at a tournment in Cincinnati. Williams’ defeat to the British No 1, 21 years her junior, is likely her penultimate tournament appearance.Athletics | Daryll Neita won bronze for the UK in the European women’s 100m as Dina Asher-Smith pulled up with cramp. Germany’s Gina Luckenkemper won gold in the race. Zharnel Hughes took silver and Jeremiah Azu bronze behind the Italian Olympic champion Marcell Jacobs in the men’s 100m.Football | Rangers were forced to settle for a 2-2 draw in their Champions League playoff first leg against PSV Eindhoven after an Armando Obispo equaliser in the 78th minute. Rangers last reached the Champions League group stage 12 years ago.The front pagesThe Guardian leads with “Truss condemns British workers for lack of ‘graft’” while the Express has “Truss fury over EUs Brexit betrayal”. The Times goes with “Sunak turns on rival over ‘moral’ duty to ease bills”.The Telegraph’s splash reads “Modern slavery law is the ‘biggest loophole’ for migrants” and the FT says “Record fall in wages signals more cost of living pain for households”.The i newspaper has “Omicron jab: Blair calls for every adult to get a booster,” while the Mail leads with “Cyclists may need number plates”.Ryan Giggs, on trial over alleged assault, makes the Mirror’s front page with the headline: “I’m a love cheat, I can’t resist”. The Sun has “Pop idol Darius dead”.Today in FocusUnderstanding the violent attack on Salman RushdieColumnist Nesrine Malik on the history of the fatwa against the author Salman Rushdie and power of his workCartoon of the day | Steve BellThe UpsideA bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all badIn 2001, a band called Panchiko played a festival in the Nottinghamshire town of Sutton-in-Ashfield. It was a flop: the crowd wasn’t enthused, and the band disbanded soon after, drifting apart from one another. That was until 2016, when their album turned up in a charity shop. The person who bought the CD made it their mission to find out who was behind the album. Thus began Panchiko’s journey into the cultural zeitgeist. For years, internet sleuths looked for Panchiko – and eventually found them. The former bandmates were shocked that, after all these years, they had, without their knowledge, acquired a dedicated fanbase. Now in their 40s, the band have come together for a US tour that is already partly sold out.Sign up here for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent to you every SundayBored at work?And finally, the Guardian’s crosswords to keep you entertained throughout the day – with plenty more on the Guardian’s Puzzles app for iOS and Android. Until tomorrow.
      Quick crossword
      Cryptic crossword
      TopicsRepublicansFirst EditionUS politicsWyomingJanuary 6 hearingsnewslettersReuse this content More

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      Liz Cheney’s Concession Speech Invokes Lincoln and Grant

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      It was just two years ago that Representative Liz Cheney won a primary with 73 percent of the vote — a point she reminded her supporters of in her concession speech on Tuesday night in Wyoming.“I could easily have done the same again,” she said. “The path was clear. But it would have required that I go along with President Trump’s lie about the 2020 election. It would have required that I enable his ongoing efforts to unravel our democratic system and attack the foundations of our republic.”“That was a path I could not and would not take.”The path Ms. Cheney took instead led her to be ousted as chair of the House Republican conference, the third-highest role in her party’s House leadership, and installed as the vice chair of the congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.“Let us resolve that we will stand together — Republicans, Democrats and independents — against those who would destroy our republic,” Representative Liz Cheney said on Tuesday night.Kim Raff for The New York TimesAnd it led her to a more than 30 percentage point loss to a Trump-endorsed Republican, Harriet Hageman, as votes were still being counted late Tuesday night.From a stage overlooking a field in Teton County, Wyo., with mountains as her backdrop, she said she had called Ms. Hageman to concede her loss in a free and fair election. She suggested that her job now, and that of patriotic Americans, was to stand up for the Constitution.Much like the remarks she delivered at the Jan. 6 committee’s hearings, it was a speech that seemed directed not just at Republican voters, but at a wider national audience.That was evident in her paraphrase of a quote popularized by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. — “It has been said that the long arc of history bends toward justice and freedom. That’s true, but only if we make it bend” — and even more so a few minutes later, when she turned her attention to the Civil War.In the spring of 1864, after the Union suffered more than 17,000 casualties in the Battle of the Wilderness, Gen. Ulysses S. Grant had a choice, Ms. Cheney said: to retreat or to keep fighting.“As the fires of the battles still smoldered, Grant rode to the head of the column,” she said. “He rode to the intersection of Brock Road and Orange Plank Road. And there, as the men of his army watched and waited, instead of turning north, back toward Washington and safety, Grant turned his horse south toward Richmond and the heart of Lee’s army. Refusing to retreat, he pressed on to victory.” More

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      Wyoming Governor Primary Election Results 2022

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      Source: Election results and race calls from The Associated Press. The Times estimates the number of remaining votes based on historic turnout data and reporting from The Associated Press. These are only estimates and they may not be informed by official reports from election officials.The New York Times’s results team is a group of graphics editors, engineers and reporters who build and maintain software to publish election results in real-time as they are reported by results providers. To learn more about how election results work, read this article.The Times’s election results pages are produced by Michael Andre, Aliza Aufrichtig, Neil Berg, Matthew Bloch, Véronique Brossier, Irineo Cabreros, Sean Catangui, Andrew Chavez, Nate Cohn, Alastair Coote, Annie Daniel, Asmaa Elkeurti, Tiffany Fehr, Andrew Fischer, Will Houp, Josh Katz, Aaron Krolik, Jasmine C. Lee, Rebecca Lieberman, Ilana Marcus, Jaymin Patel, Rachel Shorey, Charlie Smart, Umi Syam, Urvashi Uberoy, Isaac White and Christine Zhang. Reporting by Reid J. Epstein, Lalena Fisher and Jazmine Ulloa; production by Amanda Cordero and Jessica White; editing by Wilson Andrews, Kenan Davis, William P. Davis, Amy Hughes and Ben Koski. More

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      Wyoming Secretary of State Primary Election Results 2022

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      Source: Election results from The Associated Press. The Times estimates the number of remaining votes based on historic turnout data and reporting from The Associated Press. These are only estimates and they may not be informed by official reports from election officials.The New York Times’s results team is a group of graphics editors, engineers and reporters who build and maintain software to publish election results in real-time as they are reported by results providers. To learn more about how election results work, read this article.The Times’s election results pages are produced by Michael Andre, Aliza Aufrichtig, Neil Berg, Matthew Bloch, Véronique Brossier, Irineo Cabreros, Sean Catangui, Andrew Chavez, Nate Cohn, Alastair Coote, Annie Daniel, Asmaa Elkeurti, Tiffany Fehr, Andrew Fischer, Will Houp, Josh Katz, Aaron Krolik, Jasmine C. Lee, Rebecca Lieberman, Ilana Marcus, Jaymin Patel, Rachel Shorey, Charlie Smart, Umi Syam, Urvashi Uberoy, Isaac White and Christine Zhang. Reporting by Reid J. Epstein, Lalena Fisher and Jazmine Ulloa; production by Amanda Cordero and Jessica White; editing by Wilson Andrews, Kenan Davis, William P. Davis, Amy Hughes and Ben Koski. More

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      What Liz Cheney’s Loss in Wyoming Means

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      If Liz Cheney’s loss to Harriet Hageman in Wyoming’s primary election on Tuesday seems like a bad dream to many of Ms. Cheney’s Democratic admirers, that’s because it is: For a generation, progressives have imagined the moment when the white working class would finally turn against an insular and privileged Republican establishment. That day has arrived. But it isn’t what Democrats dreamed.Apparently uninterested in everyday governing, the new insurgents who elected Ms. Hageman are consumed with demonstrating that they are authentic conservative Republicans. And in that sense, they are succumbing to the same impulses they associate with their liberal opponents: a shrill hostility to different viewpoints, an obsession with virtue signaling and a willingness to purge their own ranks. The older tradition of Republican politics — the one that cradled Ms. Cheney from girlhood and shaped her in office — is still alive, though embattled, even in Wyoming. Progressives who realize that this privileged Republican establishment was a linchpin of our democracy all along may start rooting for a counterrevolution from above rather than a revolution from below.In the not very distant past, Wyoming’s G.O.P. was focused on governing the state by addressing everyday challenges, like distributing a limited number of liquor licenses and funding its public schools. Politics was “frankly boring,” recalled Tim Stubson, a partisan of the old school.The Cheneys exemplified Wyoming’s establishment: They are quiet and diligent legislators, even a little bland. They are also highly educated and wealthy, splitting their time between Washington and Wyoming’s Teton County, one of the wealthiest counties in the United States.Wyoming politics began to change beneath their feet, slowly at first, as the Tea Party rose to power, and then rapidly during the Trump years, as a new guard waged war with the establishment, making politics less about ordinary governance than about identity.We’ve spent the last year traveling Wyoming, from Cheyenne in the south to Sheridan in the north, from Evanston in the west to Wheatland in the east, talking to local political activists and leaders. This obsession with identity left a mark everywhere, but nowhere more obviously than at the recent Republican state conventions. Just a decade ago, few delegates would have attended party meetings with guns strapped to their hips. Now many do. That wasn’t enough for one delegate at the last convention: He reportedly strutted about with a gun fully cocked. In another departure from old norms, many delegates have taken to wearing their cowboy hats inside the convention center. “That’s not a Wyoming thing,” noted JoAnn True, a patron of the old party. This is mostly because there is no need to wear a cowboy hat indoors — unless your goal is to sport a costume that signals a conservative social identity.Virtue signaling is also on the rise. One convention delegate argued that Wyoming schoolchildren should not be required to say the Pledge of Allegiance, since the word “indivisible” suggests that states can’t secede from the union. Another Republican Party figure was criticized for allegedly failing to adopt an appropriately respectful posture during the pledge.Acting the part of a true Wyoming conservative is a delicate art. It’s not only about signaling that you belong to a rugged, rural working class, but also about highlighting your conservative bona fides, which often means exiling anyone who doesn’t toe the line. Now a conservative cancel culture as unforgiving as its progressive rival is sweeping over the Wyoming G.O.P.Ms. Cheney, of course, is the most prominent victim of that cancel culture: She has been censured twice by the party, and now has been voted out of office. But she is just the tip of an iceberg that mostly lies beneath the media’s radar. Other members of the old type have been censured as well. Their crimes are varied, ranging from supporting Medicaid expansion to founding a nonpartisan PAC to fund female candidates.Websites have emerged that help the new censors identify politically incorrect Republicans. WyoRINO, for example, exposes legislators “who falsely claim to be Republicans” by scrutinizing their voting records for the slightest signs of apostasy. According to the site’s index, nearly a two-thirds majority of Wyoming’s Republican legislators are faking it.Those who are formally censured, though, usually have something else in common: They are from the upper class. In recent years the party has censured a wealthy activist, a state senator with a doctorate and a physician. Joe McGinley, the physician — a prominent party leader of the old style — was censured for reasons that are still a bit mysterious. But as a Stanford-trained doctor, he was a perfect symbol of an inauthentic conservative. Joey Correnti IV, a pistol-packing delegate, mocks his supposed haughtiness, claiming that he introduces himself as “Doctor Joe McGinley.”Plenty of the new insurgents are themselves comfortable members of the professional class pretending to be “one of the people.” Some, like Ms. Hageman, simply seem opportunistic, while others sincerely share cultural affinities with Wyoming’s working class. But to its credit, the new identity politics has also done something rare in this gilded age of American politics: It has elevated genuinely working-class citizens into positions of power. For example, Tom James, elected to the State Senate in 2018, grew up in a foster home and campaigned for office as he delivered pizzas. Meanwhile, Frank Eathorne, the current chairman of the state party, previously worked as a Terminix pest exterminator. As Tim Stubson of the old establishment acknowledged, “It’s a much more blue-collar party.”These candidates are starting to reshape the G.O.P. beyond Wyoming as well. Representative Lauren Boebert of Colorado earned a G.E.D., having left high school after she got pregnant. Meanwhile, in New Jersey, a truck driver won a State Senate seat on a shoestring budget. And in Arizona, Rusty Bowers — who resisted pressure from Donald Trump to overturn his state’s election results — was just badly defeated by David Farnsworth, a small businessman and former crane operator with an A.A. degree.For decades, progressives have hoped that the white working class would turn against the affluent bankers, doctors and oil magnates who control the Republican Party. Well, it did. Class warfare of a kind did finally break out. It’s just not the sort of war progressives imagined, much less hoped for.That’s true partly because progressive longings for class war rested on a falsehood. Influential books like Thomas Frank’s “What’s the Matter With Kansas” insisted that the Republican elite was rapaciously consumed with padding its wealth and exploiting its working-class supporters. Like other myths, that critique contained a kernel of truth. Wyoming’s establishment was too insular at times — and it practiced self-dealing on occasion.But whatever its sins, it was also public spirited. It cared about the general welfare of the state and worked hard on its behalf, laboring away for a pittance in a legislature that begins its sessions in the dead of Wyoming’s punishing winter, when driving is treacherous. The new identitarians infiltrating the State Legislature seem less interested in seeking remedies to real problems than in signaling to their base.Thus, they perform small symbolic acts, like pushing a bill that requires local law enforcement officials to ignore federal law that violates the Second Amendment, or sponsoring a bill that prohibited the teaching of critical race theory in Wyoming public schools. It failed because enough traditional conservatives don’t believe it’s a real problem. Tom Walters, a state representative of the old school, observed, “They speak of it as though it’s there, and yet they know all their teachers and they know their teachers aren’t teaching it.”Addressing these phantoms swallows up time, leaving larger issues neglected. Cathy Connolly, the Democratic minority leader in the State House, told us: “We have one of the highest suicide rates in the nation. We now have the highest workplace fatality rate. We’ve got Covid issues. We’ve got hospitals closing. We’re not looking at these issues because we have these stupid bills,” she said, adding an expletive.The right’s new identity craze wasn’t engineered by Donald Trump. It simply created an opportunity that he exploited. But Mr. Trump has rendered identity politics more dangerous than its progressive rival by wedding it to a cult of personality and a campaign to steal an election. Those changes have only widened the party’s class divide: While a substantial majority of white Republican primary voters without a college degree say they would prefer to vote for him in 2024, those with college degrees generally want someone else, according to a July New York Times/Siena College poll.Ms. Cheney’s fall highlights the cultish character of the right’s evolving politics of identity. During her first two terms, she supported Mr. Trump’s positions 93 percent of the time, according to FiveThirtyEight (almost as often as Kevin McCarthy and more often than Elise Stefanik). Yet Ms. Cheney is not only considered to be a “Republican in Name Only” by many Wyoming Republicans — she is the face of the RINOs. At the state convention, one attendee sported a T-shirt that said “No More RINOs” with Ms. Cheney’s name circled and crossed out. To cross Mr. Trump is to become a fake conservative.Sadly, the G.O.P. establishment was not strong enough to save Ms. Cheney. Happily, though, it isn’t dead, even in Wyoming. In fact, it’s far more entrenched than Ms. Cheney’s defeat might suggest. The old guard still controls the State Legislature and Wyoming’s two most populous counties, both of which pushed back forcefully on efforts to censure Ms. Cheney. And in some places the new insurgents have been outmaneuvered and beaten back. For example, in Campbell County, where support for Mr. Trump surpasses that of most Wyoming counties, the establishment wrestled the party away from the new identitarians.Similar fights are playing out in state parties and legislatures from Colorado to Arizona, Idaho, Illinois and Texas, where the new identitarians are gaining momentum, chipping away at the old guard’s power. But even if they continue to advance, their style of politics may also contain the seeds of its destruction. Any party that elevates symbolism over governing risks stirring mass revolt down the road. Some practitioners of identity politics on the left have already discovered that lesson the hard way. When some members of the San Francisco Board of Education busied themselves renaming schools instead of prioritizing reopening them after lengthy closures during the pandemic, they were recalled. Results matter even in the age of identity politics.Though the outcome of the G.O.P.’s civil war is impossible to determine, one thing is clear: Both sides see the conflict in existential terms. As the traditionalist Dr. McGinley said of Ms. Cheney’s race: “The soul of the Republican Party is at stake.” Ms. Cheney fought valiantly for the party’s soul and was celebrated by traditional Republicans in Wyoming for doing so. They don’t believe her cause is lost — and neither should we.Stephanie Muravchik (@stephaniemurav1) and Jon A. Shields are professors of government at Claremont McKenna College and the authors of “Trump’s Democrats.” They are working on a new book about Liz Cheney’s Wyoming and the future of the American right.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Liz Cheney loses Wyoming Republican primary to Trump-endorsed rival

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      Liz Cheney loses Wyoming Republican primary to Trump-endorsed rivalThe vice-chair of the House January 6 panel faced retribution from state voters for going against the former president Liz Cheney has paid the price for her staunch opposition to Donald Trump’s assault on US democracy by losing her seat in Congress to a challenger backed by the former president.In praise of Liz Cheney. May we have more politicians like her | Robert ReichRead moreThe vice-chair of the January 6 committee was beaten by a conservative lawyer, Hageman – who has echoed Trump’s false claims of widespread voter fraud – in a Republican primary election to decide Wyoming’s lone member in the House of Representatives.Conceding defeat in a speech in Jackson, she said: “No House seats, no office in this land is more important than the principles we are all sworn to protect. And I well understood the potential political consequences of abiding by my duty.“Our republic relies upon the goodwill of all candidates for office to accept honorably the outcome of elections. And tonight, Harriet Hageman has received the most votes in this primary. She won.“I called her to concede the race this primary election is over. But now the real work begins.”Widely predicted by opinion polls, the result continues a winning streak for Trump-endorsed candidates in congressional primaries and deals a blow to the last vestiges of the Republican party establishment.It would have been unthinkable just a few years ago in Wyoming, a deeply conservative state where the Cheney family has been seen as political royalty.The three-term congresswoman’s father, Dick Cheney, represented the state in the US House for a decade before becoming defense secretary under George HW Bush from 1989 to 1993 and vice-president under George W Bush from 2001 to 2009.Supporting his daughter this month, Dick Cheney called Trump the greatest “threat to our republic” in American history.He also said he was proud of his daughter “for standing up to the truth, doing what’s right, honoring her oath to the constitution when so many in our party are too scared to do so”.But Liz Cheney’s crusade against Trump during the January 6 committee’s televised hearings angered local Republicans, who accused her of putting her national career ambitions ahead of Wyoming constituents.She was praised by Democrats and independents for taking a principled stand despite the likelihood it would prove an act of political self-sacrifice.Leading Republicans were eager to celebrate Cheney’s defeat.In a statement released before the race was called, Elise Stefanik of New York, who replaced Cheney as the No3 House Republican, said: “Congratulations to Harriet Hageman on her massive Republican primary victory in Wyoming over Nancy Pelosi’s puppet Liz Cheney.“… Harriet is a true America First patriot who will restore the people of Wyoming’s voice, which Liz Cheney had long forgotten”.Ronna McDaniel, chair of the Republican National Committee, followed suit, saying Hageman would “make Wyoming proud”.The Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump group formed by disaffected conservatives, said: “Tonight, the nation marks the end of the Republican party.“What remains shares the name and branding of the traditional GOP, but is in fact an authoritarian nationalist cult dedicated only to Donald Trump.” More details soon …TopicsUS midterm elections 2022US CongressHouse of RepresentativesRepublicansUS politicsUS Capitol attackJanuary 6 hearingsnewsReuse this content More

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      Liz Cheney Braces for Wyoming’s Verdict, but History Will Have to Wait

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      Tonight’s big news will be the fate of Representative Liz Cheney, whose latter-day conversion from dedicated Republican partisan to Donald Trump’s chief inquisitor in Congress has been one of the most compelling story lines of the last 18 months.In just a few hours, we should know whether Cheney is able to retain her seat as Wyoming’s lone House member while helping investigate her own party’s leader — or whether her decision to do so has made her anathema to Republican base voters.You’ll be able to follow the results here. The polls closed at 9 p.m. Eastern time.Surveys show Cheney well behind her primary opponent, a Trump supporter named Harriet Hageman, even though she has vastly outraised and outspent her challenger thanks to her much louder national megaphone.But it’s precisely her fame that has probably doomed Cheney with Trump’s core voters, who see her as an apostate and a traitor to their cause.It was Cheney who spoke up inside the Republican Party after the assault on the Capitol, asking her colleagues whether Trump was considering resigning after whipping up the mob on Jan. 6, 2021.It was Cheney whose excommunication from the G.O.P. has driven a much larger discussion about the direction of a party that has become, in the eyes of many, a cult of personality centered on a person who is utterly unmoored from traditional conservative principles.And it was Cheney whose road-to-Damascus moment has awakened her to an entirely new mission: from rapidly ascending the ranks of Republican leadership in the House to turning her back on a party whose course her family has done so much to shape.To make sense of Cheney’s astonishing turn — and her apparent stoicism in the face of what looks like almost certain defeat in today’s primary election in Wyoming — I spoke with my colleague Jonathan Martin, who knows the full arc of her story about as well as anyone.Our conversation, lightly edited for length and clarity:Republicans I speak with often seem baffled by Liz Cheney. They want to know what her real motivations are, assuming she has some ulterior political aims beyond the Jan. 6 committee that explain her stance against Trump. What do you make of that?I think it’s fair to say — and perhaps quite obvious — that she’s resigned to losing her primary. But as for motivations, I don’t think it’s more complicated than what she’s said publicly about her paramount goal: to stop Trump from returning to the White House.More Coverage of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsLiz Cheney: If the G.O.P. congresswoman loses her primary, as is widely expected, it will end the run of the Cheney dynasty in Wyoming. But she says her crusade to stop Donald J. Trump will continue.The Impeachment 10: Ms. Cheney is part of a group of 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Mr. Trump over the Jan. 6 riot. Most of them have lost their primary races or are retiring.Sarah Palin: As the former Alaska governor and 2008 vice-presidential Republican nominee seeks the state’s lone House seat, voters appeared torn on whether she remained committed to them or had abandoned them for national fame.Abortion Ads: Since Roe v. Wade was overturned, Democrats have spent nearly eight times as much on abortion-related ads as Republicans have, with Democratic strategists believing the issue has radically reshaped the 2022 landscape in their party’s favor.That’s clearly the aim of her work on the Jan. 6 committee (which, far more than the Wyoming primary, is her focus). As we reported recently, she privately told her colleagues on the panel in July that they had done “more to prevent Trump from ever regaining power than any group to date.”What do you think Liz Cheney learned about politics or life or public service from her dad?I’d only tweak the question to say she’s still learning.They remain very close, speaking every day. In fact, Liz’s inner circle is not much larger than her parents and her longtime chief of staff. She inherited her policy views, love of history and belief in American exceptionalism from both parents (don’t forget, her mother, Lynne, is a historian). Their view of Trump is clear enough from Liz’s comments and the former vice president’s recent ad.Dick Cheney attended his daughter’s swearing-in to Congress in 2017. They remain very close and are said to speak every day.Stephen Crowley/The New York TimesBut there’s something else that’s not as well known — the family’s love for the House. History would be different if Liz had run for Wyoming’s open Senate seat in 2020.But she grew up in a House family, her dad serving as the second-ranking Republican in the 1980s. Her parents even wrote a book, “Kings of the Hill,” on somewhat forgotten House speakers of the past. And Liz herself appeared to be on track to be a future speaker until she broke with much of her party after the 2020 election.I’ve heard it said that Cheney thinks she is playing to history, and that she is willingly choosing martyrdom in Wyoming because in some sense she thinks it’s fate. Does that sound right to you?Yes indeed. She believes strongly that she’s answering history’s call and that Trump must be stopped to protect her party and the country.For the wonks out there, Liz is very much a believer in the Great Man theory of history, and she wishes American schools would rededicate themselves to this approach. She told me as much when I interviewed her in Cheyenne this month.I think we all assume she’s going down with the ship tonight in Wyoming. Aside from the top-line result, what are you looking for in the numbers?I’m very curious about the urban-rural gap and what could be called the education divide. We know from polling that Trump is stronger with Republicans without college degrees. How much does that show up in the proxy war here in Wyoming?We have this single-minded focus in the Washington chattering class about whether famous politicians like Cheney want to run for president. But of course, there are other options, like setting up a political action committee to throw your weight around, as John Bolton did, or starting some kind of think tank or institute, as John McCain did. What are you hearing about what the Liz Cheney superfans in the disaffected corners of the G.O.P. want her to do next?I think it’s totally plausible that she could run for president or set up an organization to block Trump. And I think as long as Trump is blocked, her fans would be quite content.A Liz Cheney primerIn case you missed it, Jonathan Martin visited Cody, Wyo., on the eve of Tuesday’s Republican primary — which he called “the likely end of the Cheneys’ two-generation dynasty in Wyoming as well as the passing of a less tribal and more clubby and substance-oriented brand of politics.”In “Liz Cheney and the Fate of the 10 Republicans Who Defied Trump,” Michael Bender and Malika Khurana assess the former president’s campaign of vengeance against the House Republicans who voted to impeach him over the Capitol riot.Reid Epstein trudged around Wyoming back in February, when it was still unclear whether Cheney was planning to run again. What he found: a state that seemed ready to choose Trump over his would-be nemesis.For The New York Times Magazine, Robert Draper went deep last year on Cheney’s decision to embrace her role on the Jan. 6 committee and set aside her ambitions within the mainstream of the Republican Party.And our colleagues in The Times’s Opinion section heard from 13 voters in Wyoming who will decide Cheney’s fate.What to readBeyond Liz Cheney’s race in Wyoming, two other prominent Republican women — Senator Lisa Murkowski and Sarah Palin, the former vice-presidential nominee — are facing primary voters today in Alaska. Follow live updates on both states (though be forewarned that because of Alaska’s unique election system, its contests might not be called tonight).Two top House Democrats accused the Trump-appointed internal watchdog of the Department of Homeland Security — who is under criticism for his handling of an investigation into missing Secret Service text messages around the time of the Capitol riot — of refusing to cooperate with congressional demands, and even blocking his employees from testifying before Congress.Pat Cipollone and Patrick Philbin, the White House counsel and his deputy under Trump, are said to have been interviewed by the F.B.I. in connection with boxes of sensitive documents that were stored at Mar-a-Lago after Trump left office, Maggie Haberman reports. (Here’s a timeline of Trump’s false and misleading comments about the search of his Florida residence.)Nicholas Fandos profiles Representative Carolyn Maloney, who is “nearing the endgame of an unwelcome, wide-open and increasingly vicious primary fight against her longtime congressional neighbor, Representative Jerrold Nadler, after a New York court unexpectedly combined their Manhattan districts this spring.”— BlakeIs there anything you think we’re missing? Anything you want to see more of? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More

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      Wyoming Democrats Voice Support for Liz Cheney at the Polls

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      Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming may not prevail in her Republican primary on Tuesday, but her effort to convince Democrats and independents to support her candidacy appears to have paid off in Wyoming’s bluest county, Teton, where Ms. Cheney lives.Interviews at polling places in the county on Monday, the last day of early voting, and on Tuesday turned up a stream of voters re-registering as Republicans in order to participate in the party’s primary and vote for Ms. Cheney.“I think she knows somebody is unfit when she sees him and she’s not going to kiss the ring and I respect her for that,” said Brad Hoyt, an architect in Wilson, Wyo., a small community just west of Jackson where Ms. Cheney lives. Mr. Hoyt, who wanted to record his support for Ms. Cheney’s opposition to former President Donald J. Trump, said he was “in between” the major parties and would change his registration at Wilson’s Old Schoolhouse, the village’s polling place.Not far behind Mr. Hoyt was Andy Calders, a musician who said he is a Democrat but registered as a Republican in Wyoming so that he could participate in nominating contests for the state’s dominant party.“She’s only done one thing I liked, but I liked it so much I voted for her,” Mr. Calders said of Ms. Cheney’s effort to hold Mr. Trump “accountable for what he’s obviously done” in attempting to overturn the 2020 election.Mr. Trump backed Harriet Hageman in the primary against Ms. Cheney, who is serving on a congressional panel investigating Mr. Trump’s involvement in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.The anti-Trump voters were turning out in equally large numbers in Jackson, where the wait to vote reached 45 minutes at one point on Monday.Maggie Shipley, who works for a local nonprofit organization, said she was switching her registration to Republican so that she could vote for Ms. Cheney in the primary.“The election lies are terrifying to me and preserving democracy is really important and at least she has that going,” Ms. Shipley explained. More