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      Foster Friess, Big Donor to Republicans, Dies at 81

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      A conservative Christian and wealthy businessman, he gave millions to Rick Santorum and Donald Trump in their presidential bids.Foster Friess, a Wyoming businessman who founded an investment firm, made a fortune and gave a lot of it away to Republican presidential candidates and charities, sometimes with flair, died on Thursday in Scottsdale, Ariz. He was 81.His organization, Foster’s Outriders, which confirmed the death, said he had been receiving care at the Mayo Clinic there for myelodysplastic syndrome, a disorder of the blood cells and bone marrow.Gov. Mark Gordon of Wyoming, who defeated Mr. Friess in the Republican gubernatorial primary in 2018, writing on Twitter, called Mr. Friess “a strong and steady voice for Republican and Christian values.”Mr. Friess’s run for governor was his only try at major elected office. In the political arena he was primarily known for his donations, particularly to the presidential bids of Rick Santorum, the former United States senator from Pennsylvania, in the 2012 and 2016 campaigns. After Mr. Santorum left the 2016 race, Mr. Friess became one of the first Republican megadonors to embrace Donald J. Trump.But to many, the most important support that Mr. Friess, an evangelical Christian, and his wife, Lynnette, provided was to charities. Foster’s Outriders and the Lynn and Foster Friess Family Foundation have provided scholarships, financed work for homeless people, supported water projects in Africa and much more. His organization said Mr. Friess had donated $500 million in his lifetime.His 70th birthday party in 2010 in Jackson Hole, Wyo., where he lived much of the year, was the stuff of legend. The website wyofile.com described it.“In the invitations to the party, Friess, a born-again Christian, had asked the guests to identify their favorite charity that reflected the values of his favorite quote from Galatians: ‘Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ,’” it wrote in 2011. “He vowed to give $70,000 to the most worthy nominee.”When the time came to announce the winner, the servers at the Four Seasons Resort, where the party was being held, distributed envelopes to the guests.“Friess asked the lucky winner to stand up and shout, and for the other guests to remain seated,” the account continued. “Then he sat back and waited for the mayhem.”As people opened the envelopes, someone at every table stood and shouted, “I won!” He had funded every request, at a cost of $7.7 million.Mr. Friess thanking supporters in 2018 after conceding the Republican nomination to Gov. Mark Gordon of Wyoming. He had been endorsed by Donald Trump Jr. Alan Rogers/The Casper Star-Tribune, via Associated PressFoster Stephen Friess was born on April 2, 1940, in Rice Lake, Wis. His father, Albert, was a cattle rancher, and his mother, Ethel (Foster) Friess, was a homemaker.“I came from nothing,” he told The New York Times in 2018 during his campaign for governor when asked if he himself might be considered one of the “elites” he was railing against. “My mom dropped out of school in eighth grade to pick cotton and save the family farm. My dad had a high school education.”He graduated from the University of Wisconsin in Madison with a degree in business administration and served in the Army as an intelligence officer for a guided-missile brigade at Fort Bliss in Texas.After working in finance for several years, he founded the investment management firm Friess Associates in 1974 and was soon regarded as a first-rate stock picker. His flagship asset, the Brandywine Fund, swelled to more than $15 billion. He sold a controlling interest in Friess Associates to the Affiliated Managers Group in 2001.On the political side, Mr. Friess did more than support candidates. In 2010, he was a founding investor in The Daily Caller, Tucker Carlson and Neil Patel’s conservative news and opinion website.In 2012 Mr. Friess supported Mr. Santorum not so much because he agreed with all his policies — “I try to talk him out of them,” he told the broadcaster Lou Dobbs in February 2012 — but because he thought the Republican Party needed a new face.“These old veteran war horses, they have a hard time making it,” he said on “Lou Dobbs Tonight.” “Dole couldn’t make it, McCain couldn’t make it. On the Democratic side, Gore couldn’t make it and Kerry couldn’t make it. So the Democrats bring these fresh faces, they bring Carter from out of nowhere, they bring Clinton from out of nowhere, they bring Obama from beyond nowhere.”Later that month Mr. Friess made headlines when, on MSNBC, Andrea Mitchell asked him whether Mr. Santorum’s statements on “the dangers of contraception” would hurt his campaign.“Back in my days,” Mr. Friess said, “they used Bayer aspirin for contraception. The gals put it between their knees, and it wasn’t that costly.”Mr. Santorum’s primary campaign started strong but foundered, and Mr. Obama was elected to a second term, defeating Mitt Romney.In the next presidential campaign, Mr. Friess also supported Mr. Santorum initially. In mid-2015, with the Republican field choked with candidates and the nastiness level increasing, he called on the candidates not to “drift off the civility reservation.”In May 2016, with Mr. Santorum out of the race and Mr. Trump having secured the Republican nomination, Mr. Friess threw his support to the Trump cause, though acknowledging that Mr. Trump had advanced by showing the very incivility he had decried — something he expected would change to a more presidential tenor.“Donald’s strategy seems to work,” Mr. Friess told CNN that month, “but I’m convinced he’s going to shift.”Mr. Friess supported Mr. Trump throughout his administration, and when he ran for governor, the Trump family tried to return the favor — the president’s son Donald Jr. endorsed him in an opinion article in The Star Tribune of Casper, Wyo. President Trump himself was quieter, although he did offer a Twitter post late in the campaign endorsing Mr. Friess. Mr. Gordon’s victory was cited by some of as evidence of Mr. Trump’s vulnerability, though others saw it more as a local matter.Three weeks ago, when Darin Smith, a lawyer and businessman who has contended that Mr. Trump “probably” won the 2020 election, announced that he would challenge Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming, who has been critical of Mr. Trump, in the 2022 primaries, he said that Mr. Friess would be his campaign chairman.Mr. Friess’s wife of 58 years, Lynnette Estes Friess, survives him, as do their four children, Traci, Stephen, Carrie, and Michael; a brother, Herman; and 15 grandchildren. More

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      Anthony Bouchard Says He Impregnated 14-Year-Old When He Was 18

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      A Wyoming state senator who is challenging Representative Liz Cheney in the 2022 Republican primary acknowledged this week that when he was 18, he had sex with a 14-year-old girl — which is statutory rape in many states — and that she became pregnant.The state senator, Anthony Bouchard, made the disclosure in a Facebook Live video posted on Thursday and in a subsequent interview with The Casper Star-Tribune, saying that the girl gave birth to a son “more than 40 years ago” in Florida and that he married the girl after she turned 15.She died by suicide a few years later, after they had divorced and she had entered another relationship, Mr. Bouchard said.Mr. Bouchard sought to downplay his actions, saying in his video, “She was a little younger than me, so it’s like the Romeo and Juliet story.” But under current Florida law, his actions would be illegal.Because he did not specify the year he impregnated the girl, it is not clear what Florida’s laws were at the time.Mr. Bouchard said he went public with the story after a newspaper reached out to him. In the Star-Tribune interview, he blamed a “political opposition research company” for spreading it.He used his video to highlight his stance against abortion, saying he and the girl had resisted pressure to terminate the pregnancy.There was “a lot of pressure, pressure to abort a baby, I got to tell you,” he said in the 13-minute video. “I wasn’t going to do it, and neither was she. And there was pressure to have her banished from their family. Just pressure. Pressure to go hide somewhere. And the only thing I could see as the right thing to do was to get married and take care of him.”Mr. Bouchard is one of several Republicans who have said they will challenge Ms. Cheney, who was kicked out of her House leadership position this month for criticizing former President Donald J. Trump and saying she would do everything possible to ensure he was not the Republican Party’s presidential nominee in 2024.Mr. Bouchard was first elected to the State Senate in 2017 to represent the Laramie County area. He is a gun-rights activist who owns a septic system cleaning business with his wife, according to his official biography. More

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      ‘Ignoring the Lie Emboldens the Liar’

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      Listen and follow The DailyApple Podcasts | Spotify | StitcherToday, Liz Cheney, the No. 3 Republican in the House, is expected to be removed from her leadership position.Her role in the party has increasingly become untenable for many. Ms. Cheney has continued to speak out in the starkest of terms against President Donald Trump’s role in fomenting the Jan. 6 riots and the continued insistence that the 2020 election was stolen.In doing so, she has found herself on a lonely political island.We look at the factors behind her ouster and the new requirements for Republican leadership.On today’s episodeCatie Edmondson, a reporter in The New York Times’s Washington bureau.Representative Liz Cheney’s leadership role is embattled despite her conservative voting record and her status as a member of a Republican dynasty. Erin Schaff/The New York TimesBackground readingIn turning on Ms. Cheney, Republicans have bowed to Mr. Trump’s election lies.The Wyoming congresswoman challenged Republicans to turn away from Trump after Jan. 6. Instead, they turned on her.“History is watching.” Here are five key arguments from Ms. Cheney’s Washington Post opinion essay this month.There are a lot of ways to listen to The Daily. Here’s how.Transcripts of each episode are available by the next workday. You can find them at the top of the page.Catie Edmondson contributed reporting.The Daily is made by Theo Balcomb, Lisa Tobin, Rachel Quester, Lynsea Garrison, Annie Brown, Clare Toeniskoetter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon Johnson, Brad Fisher, Larissa Anderson, Wendy Dorr, Chris Wood, Jessica Cheung, Stella Tan, Alexandra Leigh Young, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Marc Georges, Luke Vander Ploeg, Sindhu Gnanasambandan, M.J. Davis Lin, Austin Mitchell, Neena Pathak, Dan Powell, Dave Shaw, Sydney Harper, Daniel Guillemette, Hans Buetow, Robert Jimison, Mike Benoist, Bianca Giaever, Liz O. Baylen, Asthaa Chaturvedi, Rachelle Bonja, Alix Spiegel, Diana Nguyen, Marion Lozano and Soraya Shockley.Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly. Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Mikayla Bouchard, Lauren Jackson, Julia Simon, Mahima Chablani, Nora Keller, Sofia Milan, Desiree Ibekwe, Laura Kim, Erica Futterman and Shreeya Sinha. More

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      Wyoming lawmakers weigh runoff legislation that could hurt Liz Cheney.

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyHouse Passes Sweeping Expansion of Labor Rights; Senate Prospects Are DimWyoming lawmakers weigh runoff legislation that could hurt Liz Cheney.March 9, 2021, 4:05 p.m. ETMarch 9, 2021, 4:05 p.m. ETRepresentative Liz Cheney, who in January became the face of Republican opposition to former President Donald J. Trump when she released a scathing statement announcing her vote to impeach him, has faced a significant backlash in her home state.Credit…Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesWyoming Republicans this week are considering a change to state election law that may make it harder for one of their own — Representative Liz Cheney — to win re-election next year.The Wyoming Senate is set to hold a committee vote on Thursday on legislation that would require runoff contests after a primary election if no candidate wins a majority — a prospect that could doom Ms. Cheney by forcing her into a one-on-one contest with an opponent loyal to former President Donald J. Trump.Ms. Cheney, who in January became the face of internal Republican opposition to Mr. Trump when she released a scathing statement announcing her vote to impeach him, has faced a significant backlash in her home state. Already, the Wyoming Republican Party has censured her, and there are multiple Republican candidates running against her, with Trump allies coming to the state to rally her opposition.Donald Trump Jr., the former president’s eldest son, has since Monday posted two messages on Twitter in support of the legislation, saying lawmakers who oppose it are “turning their back on my father and the entire America First movement.” One of his tweets included contact information for state senators on the committee considering the proposal, which he claimed allies of Ms. Cheney were vying to thwart.But in Wyoming, the situation is more complex. Republicans dominate politics there. Twenty-eight of the 30 state senators are Republicans, along with 51 of 60 state representatives. Mr. Trump won 70 percent of the state’s vote in November.Republican contests often draw crowded fields — the state’s G.O.P. governor, Mark Gordon, won a six-way primary in 2018 with just 33 percent of the vote, then won more than two-thirds of the vote in the general election.“We’re a major one-party state so whoever wins the primary is going to win the general,” Bo Biteman, a state senator who wrote the legislation, said in an interview on Tuesday. “This is just a different tactic to make more people happy with our primary system. It has nothing to do personally with Liz Cheney and the Trump supporters.”Indeed, the proposal, which would move the state’s primary from August to May, with an August runoff in races where no candidate wins 50 percent, has support from some prominent Cheney supporters. State Senator Brian Boner, a co-author of the bill, backs the congresswoman. Matt Micheli, a former Wyoming Republican Party chairman, also favors both Ms. Cheney and the runoff proposal.Wyoming Republicans said some state lawmakers opposed it because they preferred to campaign in the state’s warm summer months rather than in the spring, when the legislature is in session.“I’ve seen no indication of Liz Cheney or any of her people in any way being involved in this legislation,” Mr. Micheli said. “As a conservative, this is something I’ve supported and thought would be a good idea for a long time.”An aide to Ms. Cheney declined to comment. A spokesman for Mr. Gordon did not respond to requests for comment.Mr. Biteman, who sought to overturn President Biden’s victory and said it was “best to keep my personal preferences to myself” about Ms. Cheney’s primary, said the Trump involvement in pressuring his colleagues to vote for the legislation has not been helpful.“My poor colleagues on the committee, their phones were blowing up and they had thousands of emails,” he said. “One of the senators said to me in the hallway, ‘If I get one more call, I’m voting against the bill.’ I don’t know if that was a joke or not.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Republicans new favorite study trashes Biden's climate plans – but who's behind it?

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      Sign up for the Guardian’s Green Light newsletterWyoming’s US representative, Liz Cheney, envisions a dark future for her home state under Joe Biden.If the new administration extends its pause on new oil and gas drilling on public land, it would endanger Wyoming’s economy, kill 18,000 jobs and cause the energy state to lose out on critical education, infrastructure and healthcare funding. Biden would be “cutting off a major lifeline that Americans have relied on to survive during this time”, she has said.But there is a problem with Cheney’s forecast. The numbers she is relying on came from an analysis that is the brainchild of the oil and gas industry.The Western Energy Alliance – which represents 200 western oil and gas companies – proposed the $114,000 publicly funded analysis to state officials, tried to provide matching dollars for it and stayed involved throughout its development, according to public records obtained by Documented and shared with Floodlight and Wyoming Public Media.In February 2020, a Wyoming state senator, who is also the president of an oil company, proposed the spending. The Western Energy Alliance sought to help fund the study but was unable because the industry was in serious decline. It did, however, spend $8,000 publicizing the report, as was first reported by Politico.Records show Governor Mark Gordon’s office was aware of and never disclosed the group’s deep involvement in the study.Now, the Western Energy Alliance is spending thousands more to amplify the warnings in an ad campaign against Biden’s climate policies. The numbers have been cited dozens of times in local and national newspapers, including in the New York Times in a reference to Wyoming officials’ projections.The data has become core to Republican messaging opposing Biden’s climate plans even as critics suggest the study might exaggerate economic impacts by as much as 85%. The author even appeared at a meeting of the Congressional Western Caucus in February, alongside Cheney.While industry-funded research is not uncommon, transparency advocates say it is increasingly being used to produce conclusions favorable to oil and gas companies in order to shape public opinion.“It’s a time-honored practice,” said Bruce Freed, the president and co-founder of Center for Political Accountability. “It gives cover to the industry … they’re not going to pay for anything that will undercut them.”The Western Energy Alliance first approached the University of Wyoming economics professor who authored the report, Tim Considine, in mid-2019 to ask him to write a proposal about his research for state officials, he and the group confirmed. Internal emails show the Western Energy Alliance president, Kathleen Sgamma, pitched the analysis to the governor’s office in February 2020.“Just wanted to let you know that I’m working with the Governor’s office about who will commission and pay for the analysis, so I’m making progress,” Sgamma emailed Considine.A month earlier, Considine had shared his proposal with Sgamma and then offered to amend it based on her preferences if it would “help your fund raising [sic]”.While Considine was conducting his study with state funds, the Western Energy Alliance was part of a team working with state officials to review the report before its release. The group’s spokesperson, Aaron Johnson, got Considine to change his methodology to count more possible economic impacts in Alaska. Johnson later told Considine that the study got “very positive results from industry leaders”.In response to this story, Sgamma defended the study, saying it was by a reputable professor and it shows the sacrifice that the president is asking of westerners.“The bottom line is we didn’t fund it, and that’s usually where the disclosure comes in,” Sgamma said.Considine maintains his analysis was fair and independent. Critics, though, have questioned his closeness with industry, including allegations that when he worked in Pennsylvania he was “the energy industry’s go-to academic for highlighting the positives, and not the negatives, of fossil fuel development”. Considine called the criticisms “an old canard”.“I do not feel that getting comments on my study from the Western Energy Alliance affected my findings. In my judgment there was no conflict of interest to receive industry feedback,” he said.Considine’s past work also includes giving expert testimony on behalf of the coal company Murray Energy in a lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency, as well as conducting research paid for under a consulting agreement with the coal company Cloud Peak Energy.The $114,000 for the Wyoming study – funded by the public through the Wyoming Energy Authority and Wyoming State Energy Program – was proposed in early 2020 by former lawmaker Eli Bebout, who is the president of Nucor Oil and Gas and has received significant campaign contributions from the industry. Bebout, in an interview for this story, said he didn’t recall any direct involvement with the industry group.Gordon, Wyoming’s governor, declined to discuss the study for this story. “At this time, we believe the study speaks for itself,” said the spokesperson Michael Pearlman, pointing to a news release from December that did not disclose the industry involvement.Aside from the industry ties, the University of Wyoming study’s methodology has raised eyebrows among experts.Considine modeled two scenarios. In one, he considered a complete drilling ban on federal lands, which is not what Biden is proposing. In the other, he looked at a freeze on new leases, which is what Biden has done temporarily. Considine acknowledged in early emails to Sgamma that the latter would be difficult to do with existing data.Considine stands behind his conclusions. He said, if anything, his numbers were underestimates because he projected conservative productivity growth and low oil prices.But Laura Zachary, the co-director of Apogee Economics and Policy – which works with and on behalf of environmental advocacy groups – said the numbers that politicians have been quoting from Considine’s study are “very misleading”. She estimates the study exaggerates economic impacts by 70% to 85%.Another analysis of potential drilling policies, by the environmental group Resources for the Future, contradicts Considine’s conclusions of economic ruin for western states. It found the government could make oil companies pay more to drill on public lands and increase revenues going to states, while reducing climate pollution.“It’s not uncommon [in research] to take funds from industry,” Zachary said of Considine. “But it’s very important, obviously, to not have that guide what your findings are or your research methods as an academic.”The Biden administration has paused new oil and gas leasing on public lands. But companies are still drilling on previously leased lands. The climate pollution from fossil fuels developed on public lands is significant, and Biden has promised to scale it back.The state of Wyoming, meanwhile, has long fought to support fossil fuel development, given the industry’s importance for employment and revenue. The oil and gas industry alone represented nearly 30% of total state revenue in 2019. About 7% of Wyoming’s workforce is in the mining industries, which include oil and gas.The Trump administration heralded unprecedented new access to public lands for energy production, much to the chagrin of environmental advocates. If Biden’s nominee, Deb Haaland, is confirmed to run the interior department, she is expected to reverse course and prioritize the climate crisis.Wyoming’s congressional delegation voted against her nomination, arguing that she has extreme policy views and couldn’t substantively answer key questions. In one congressional meeting, Senator John Barrasso referenced a separate outlook from the American Petroleum Institute in explaining his opposition to Haaland.“I, along with other western senators, have consistently opposed nominees who hold such radical views, he said. “The people of Wyoming deserve straight answers from any potential secretary about the law, the rules and the regulations that will affect their lives and their livelihoods.”Go behind the scenes with the reporters at Floodlight. More

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      Wyoming Republicans Censure Liz Cheney for Impeachment Vote

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Trump ImpeachmentDivisions in the SenateList of Senators’ StancesTrump ImpeachedHow the House VotedKey QuotesAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyWyoming Republicans Censure Liz Cheney for Impeachment VoteThe state party voted to censure the No. 3 Republican in the House and demanded her resignation.The latest rebuke of Representative Liz Cheney follows similar efforts around the country to punish Republicans who have voiced criticism of former President Donald J. Trump.Credit…Anna Moneymaker for The New York TimesFeb. 6, 2021Updated 9:31 p.m. ETThe Wyoming Republican Party voted on Saturday to censure Representative Liz Cheney, the No. 3 Republican in the House, for her vote last month to impeach Donald J. Trump, underlining the sharp party divisions over breaking with the former president.“My vote to impeach was compelled by the oath I swore to the Constitution,” Ms. Cheney said in a statement on Saturday. “Wyoming citizens know that this oath does not bend or yield to politics or partisanship.”The censure, which is largely symbolic, came days after Ms. Cheney easily overcame an effort by Trump loyalists in the House to strip her of her leadership position after she voted to charge Mr. Trump with “incitement of insurrection” for his role in urging on a mob that stormed the Capitol. The vote among the House Republican conference, 145 to 61, was a victory for Ms. Cheney, who also retained the support of Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the top Republican in the chamber.The fierce debate over Ms. Cheney underscored the deep divisions in the Republican Party over Mr. Trump, and state-level Republicans across the country have censured leading political figures who have voiced criticism of Mr. Trump. In Arizona, the party censured Gov. Doug Ducey, former Senator Jeff Flake and Cindy McCain, the widow of former Senator John McCain. In Nebraska, Senator Ben Sasse faces censure by his state’s party, slamming the party in a video on Friday and denouncing what he called the organization’s “worship” of Mr. Trump.The resolution to censure Ms. Cheney also called on her to “immediately resign” and refund donations the party made to her 2020 campaign, according to a copy obtained by Forbes.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Liz Cheney censured by Wyoming Republican party for voting to impeach Trump

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      Liz Cheney, the third-highest-ranking Republican leader in the House, was censured by the Wyoming Republican party on Saturday for voting to impeach Donald Trump for his role in the 6 January riot at the US Capitol.The overwhelming censure vote was the latest blowback for Cheney for joining nine Republican representatives and all Democrats in the US House in the 13 January impeachment vote.On Saturday only eight of the 74-member state GOP’s central committee stood to oppose censure in a vote that did not proceed to a formal count. The censure document accused Cheney of voting to impeach even though the US House didn’t offer Trump “formal hearing or due process”.“We need to honor President Trump. All President Trump did was call for a peaceful assembly and protest for a fair and audited election,” said Darin Smith, a Cheyenne attorney who lost to Cheney in the Republican US House primary in 2016. “The Republican party needs to put her on notice.”Cheney in a statement after the vote said she remained honored to represent Wyoming and would always fight for issues that matter most to the state. “Foremost among these is the defense of our constitution and the freedoms it guarantees. My vote to impeach was compelled by the oath I swore to the constitution,” Cheney said.Republican officials said they invited Cheney but she did not attend. An empty chair labeled “Representative Cheney” sat at the front of the meeting room.Cheney will remain as the third-ranking member of the House GOP leadership, however, after a 145-61 vote by House Republicans on Wednesday to keep her as conference committee chair.In Wyoming just three months after winning a third term with almost 70%, Cheney already faces at least two Republican primary opponents in 2022. They include the Republican state senator Anthony Bouchard, a gun-rights activist from Cheyenne, who was at the meeting but not among those who spoke. Smith also has said he is deliberating whether to run for Congress again.On 28 January the Republican US Representative Matt Gaetz, of Florida, led a rally against Cheney in front of the Wyoming Capitol. About 1,000 people took part, many of them carrying signs calling for Cheney’s impeachment though several were supportive.Trump faces trial in the US Senate on Tuesday over allegedly inciting insurrection when a mob of supporters stormed into and rampaged through the Capitol after a nearby rally led by Trump and close allies.Censure opponents mainly came from Casper, Wyoming’s second-largest city, and the Jackson Hole area near Grand Teton and Yellowstone national parks.“Let’s resist this infusion of leftwing cancel culture to try to censure and get rid of anybody we disagree with,” said Alexander Muromcew with the Teton county GOP.Momentum for censure had been growing for weeks as local Republicans in around a dozen of Wyoming’s 23 counties passed their own resolutions criticizing Cheney’s impeachment vote. More

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      Liz Cheney Chooses Her Own Path, and It’s a Perilous One

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Trump ImpeachmentDivisions in the SenateList of Senators’ StancesTrump ImpeachedHow the House VotedKey QuotesAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyLiz Cheney Chooses Her Own Path, and It’s a Perilous OnePro-Trump forces in Washington and in her home state of Wyoming view her opposition to Donald Trump as a betrayal. Now she faces a reckoning over her leadership role in the Republican Party.People protested Representative Liz Cheney at a rally in Cheyenne, Wyo., last week.Credit…Daniel Brenner for The New York TimesFeb. 3, 2021, 3:00 a.m. ETCHEYENNE, Wyo. — Liz Cheney was getting so many questions from constituents and colleagues about whether she would vote to affirm the 2020 election results that she responded in a way befitting her background as a State Department diplomat and lawyer: She issued a 21-page memo detailing the constitutional and legal reasons Congress should not interfere with certification.Doing so, she wrote, would set “an exceptionally dangerous precedent” that no Republican should want to be associated with.Ms. Cheney was right about the danger. But she was wrong about the willingness of her fellow Republicans to go along with it. In the House, two-thirds of them voted against certification. A week later, only nine others voted with her to impeach former President Donald J. Trump for encouraging a mob of his supporters to besiege the Capitol on Jan. 6.Now Ms. Cheney, the lone representative for Wyoming and the No. 3-ranking Republican in the House, is the most visible and imperiled target of the pro-Trump majority in the G.O.P., which wants to make actions like hers a disqualifying offense for any party member seeking office. A campaign backed by members of Mr. Trump’s family and some of his allies in Congress threatens to force her out of her position in House leadership. On Wednesday in Washington, she will attend a private House Republican meeting where lawmakers will have the opportunity to confront her in person.At home in Wyoming, the sense of betrayal among Republicans is burning hot at the moment. It’s especially acute among the conservative grass roots and local party activists whose strong presence in the state helped deliver Mr. Trump his largest margin of victory anywhere — beating Joseph R. Biden Jr. with 70 percent of the vote.At least one conservative state lawmaker — who described the impeachment vote as “an ice pick in the back” by Republicans who supported it — has printed “Impeach Liz Cheney!” yard signs and is vowing to challenge her in 2022. Ten county-level Republican Party organizations have voted to censure Ms. Cheney in recent days, and more are expected to follow suit.People close to Ms. Cheney, who insisted on anonymity so they could discuss her private views, said that her break with the pro-Trump faction reflected her belief that many more Republicans share her disgust with how seriously Mr. Trump undermined confidence in the country’s electoral system.As she watched Mr. Trump and his supporters peddle conspiracy theories and promote what she called “the big lie,” Ms. Cheney became deeply unsettled by how many of her colleagues seemed so cavalier about Mr. Trump’s actions, friends and associates said. She was also bothered by the way Republicans cheered and mimicked the kind of behavior she expected of a foreign authoritarian leader but never from an American president.Ms. Cheney was one of 10 House Republicans to support impeaching Donald J. Trump last month.Credit…Anna Moneymaker/The New York TimesIn conversations with colleagues, Ms. Cheney, 54, has said she hopes her example makes more Republicans in and out of public office comfortable acknowledging that they should have pushed back earlier.Her allies said that attempts to punish her were counterproductive at a time when the party should be united in opposition to Democratic control of Washington.“The beneficiaries of Republican fratricide are Democrats,” said Karl Rove, the former Bush strategist, who is close to the Cheney family. “So the more we have purity tests and everyone has to think and act alike, particularly when it comes to former President Trump, it’s only helping Democrats.”But many of her constituents see no problem with making an example of her.A rally outside the State Capitol last week headlined by Matt Gaetz, the Florida congressman and Trump loyalist, drew several hundred people. They chanted “No more Cheney!” and cheered as Mr. Gaetz ripped into “Never Trump” Republicans, calling them relics from a party that Mr. Trump has transformed from its days under the leadership of the Bushes and Ms. Cheney’s father, former Vice President Dick Cheney.“We control the true spirit and identity of America,” said Mr. Gaetz, who is leading the effort to oust Ms. Cheney from the House leadership.After his speech, Teresa Kunkel, a retired state employee, said that she had attended the rally because, as a Christian, she did not believe Ms. Cheney was being an honest representative for Wyoming. “She didn’t represent what we voted for,” Ms. Kunkel said. “She betrayed us — big time.”The second impeachment of Mr. Trump last month, which Ms. Cheney supported, was an injustice, Ms. Kunkel added. “It’s like: ‘I didn’t like what you did, so you’re out. And we’re in the majority, so we can do that.’ That’s cancel culture,” she said.Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida headlined the anti-Cheney rally in Cheyenne last week.Credit…Daniel Brenner for The New York TimesStill, the push for Ms. Cheney’s removal from leadership — a step that lawmakers rarely take against members of their own party — may not foreshadow the end of her political career in Wyoming, where the Cheney family is still widely respected.The fondness with which residents speak of Ms. Cheney’s father, and the esteem he still brings to this state that is home to only 580,000 people, suggest that many voters will grant Ms. Cheney, now entering her third term, a degree of independence from Mr. Trump that other Republicans don’t enjoy.The campaign to censure her has also triggered a very different response from moderate Republicans who feel more at home in the party of the Bushes and the Cheneys than they do in the party of Trump. These Republicans — both elected officials and private citizens — say the ugliness and vitriol that Trump supporters have displayed since the election has led them to have an overdue reckoning.“At first I was really mad at Liz,” said Amy Edmonds, a Republican from Cheyenne who is friendly with Ms. Cheney. “I thought she was rushing it. And I thought the election wasn’t fair.”But after she spoke with Ms. Cheney — and read the 21-page memo at the congresswoman’s insistence — Ms. Edmonds said she came to believe she was dead wrong in believing Mr. Trump’s allegations of election fraud.“I was in some kind of fog,” she said. “I don’t know how else to describe it.”Since her epiphany last month, Ms. Edmonds said, she has apologized to two friends she fought with who had tried to tell her that the election wasn’t rigged. And now she spends time thinking about how to engage other friends who promote false stories and disinformation about election fraud on Facebook.She admits that she hasn’t been very persuasive so far, and finds that when she sends people articles from reliable news sources that debunk Mr. Trump’s false claims, “They’ll write back and say, ‘Well, this is mainstream media.’”That’s a reflection of how durable Mr. Trump’s hold on Republican voters remains — and how difficult it will be for politicians like Ms. Cheney to convince Trump supporters that they have bought into “the big lie” of a stolen election, as she has privately described it to colleagues.Amy Edmonds said that after speaking to Ms. Cheney, she saw how wrong she had been to believe Mr. Trump’s allegations of election fraud. Credit…Daniel Brenner for The New York TimesMs. Cheney is, of course, in a much more difficult position than other Republicans who want their party to move past the most divisive aspects of Mr. Trump’s presidency. Her family legacy makes her, to some, an asset as a symbol of the more traditional conservative Republicanism, and the value it places on career public service, embodied by the Bushes and her father.But that also makes her a target for Trump loyalists who reject that tradition as the very culture that Mr. Trump claimed he would root out from Washington.Kim Small, who attended the rally at the capitol in Cheyenne last week, said of Ms. Cheney, “I honestly feel like she’s what we consider ‘the swamp.’” She said she attended the rally because she felt Ms. Cheney’s criticisms of Mr. Trump “put her at odds with the vast majority of her constituents.’’Ms. Cheney’s allies described her as at peace with the stance she has taken on Mr. Trump. Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, one of the nine other Republicans who voted to impeach Mr. Trump, said that too many of his colleagues were doing the opposite of what Ms. Cheney is.“They’re waiting to see if Trump collapses,” he said. “And then if he does, they’ll be like, ‘I’ve never been with Trump, ever.’” He described the effort to punish Ms. Cheney as “cancel culture on the right.”The more difficult but ultimately meaningful path, Mr. Kinzinger said, is if Republicans signal that they don’t care about the pressure, the hostility and the possibility of political defeat.“I’m willing to not win a re-election over this,” he said. “People need to see examples of others doing this, speaking out. And damn the consequences.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More