The race for the top Democratic seat on the powerful House Oversight and Reform Committee got more crowded on Friday when Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) entered the contest to replace the outgoing chairwoman, Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.).
Maloney lost her primary race on Tuesday to Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.), ending a 30-year career on Capitol Hill and opening up the top panel seat in the next Congress.
Raskin's decision to seek the spot pits him against two other, more veteran Oversight Democrats — Reps. Stephen Lynch (Mass.) and Gerry Connolly (Va.), who launched their candidacies on Wednesday.
Democrats have traditionally favored seniority when choosing top committee spots, which would seem to place Raskin at a disadvantage in the race.
Still, the three-term congressman has built a sturdy national profile in his short time on Capitol Hill, leading the House's second impeachment of former President Trump after last year's attack on the U.S. Capitol, and now playing a high-profile role in the investigation of the attacks.
A former professor of constitutional law, Raskin is now making the case that his legal background makes him the best candidate to lead the Democrats on the Oversight panel.
"We are still in the fight of our lives to defend American constitutional democracy and—by extension—political freedom and human rights all over the world," Raskin wrote Friday to his fellow Democrats in a letter obtained by The Hill.
Expect a Trumpier U.S. House of Representatives next year.
House Republicans are not only forecast to win control of the lower chamber in November's midterm elections, they're also poised to bring with them a roster of new arrivals who have embraced the former president and his false claims of fraud surrounding his 2020 defeat.
A number of Trump loyalists have bumped off more moderate Republicans in the summer primaries — a list that grew longer on Tuesday with conservative victories in Florida and New York — while a number of other centrists are stepping into retirement.
The combination foreshadows a power shift in the House GOP that has the potential to complicate any bipartisan compromise with President Biden, while creating headaches for Republican leaders who will face pressure to demonstrate their governing chops in a new majority.
“I believe that [House Minority Leader] Kevin McCarthy [Calif.] would have a rough time of it,” said David Mayhew, a political scientist at Yale University.
Joe Kent, a former Green Beret, defeated pro-impeachment Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler in a Washington GOP primary earlier this month with the help of an endorsement from Trump. Running as an “America First” Republican, he railed against the “establishment” and publicly said that McCarthy, the House GOP leader, should not be Speaker.
And he’s hardly alone.
In the most recent round of primaries, winners in safe Republican House seats include former Trump appointee to the Pentagon Cory Mills, who has said that the 2020 election was “rigged.” Mills would replace outgoing Rep. Stephanie Murphy (D-Fla.).
New York State GOP Chairman Nick Langworthy, who heavily touted his previous support from Trump in the primary despite not getting a formal endorsement for the race, also won a primary in a safe GOP district on Tuesday. Rep. Chris Jacobs (R-N.Y.) ended his reelection bid for that seat due to blowback to his support for an assault weapons ban.
One of the starkest signs that incoming House Republicans will be friendlier to the former president is that Mills and Langworthy were considered the less extreme candidates in their races.
Langworthy defeated Carl Paladino, a gaffe-prone Trump supporter who was endorsed by Trump allies Reps. Matt Gaetz (Fla.), Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.), and Elise Stefanik (N.Y.). And Mills faced Florida state Rep. Anthony Sabatini, who was also supported by Gaetz and Greene and accused Mills of being a “RINO,” an acronym for "Republican in name only."
Sarah Chamberlain, president and CEO of the Republican Main Street Partnership that supports “governing Republicans” who are willing to work across the aisle, pointed to the defeats of Paladino and Sabatini to argue that loyalty to Trump may not be a defining feature of incoming Republicans.
“When the members sit around a table, Donald Trump is not what they discuss. They discuss Joe Biden and getting things done to help the American people,” Chamberlain said of the candidates supported by her group. “They're not against them by any means. They voted for him. But he is not a topic of conversation.”
Still, several of the candidates highlighted as “Young Guns” by the National Republican Congressional Committee have also expressed skepticism about the 2020 election, even if they did not make loyalty to Trump a key part of their candidate pitch this year.
Derrick Van Orden, a retired Navy SEAL seeking to replace retiring Rep. Ron Kind (D-Wis.), attended the “Stop the Steal” rally at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, but has said he never entered the Capitol and has since distanced himself from the events of that day.
Contributing to the likely power shift, many House Republicans who were critical of Trump or did not overtly embrace him will not be returning in 2022.
Eight of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump after the Jan. 6 Capitol attack either declined to run for reelection or lost their primaries. Others, like Rep. Rodney Davis (R-Ill.) and Rep. David McKinley (R-W.Va.), lost in primaries against other Trump-backed members after being put up against each other due to redistricting.
Meanwhile, Trump allies like Gaetz and Greene sailed through their primaries.
The House Freedom Caucus, the group of hard-line conservatives, is likely to grow. A PAC affiliated with the group, the House Freedom Fund, is supporting Trump-endorsed newcomers Anna Paulina Luna in Florida, Bo Hines in North Carolina, and Jim Bognet in Pennsylvania.
If history is any guide, Republican leaders will have a delicate line to walk if they win back House control with a more conservative majority.
GOP leaders embraced the Tea Party movement in the late aughts, which provided the burst of energy leading directly to their House takeover in 2010. But it was those same conservative majority-makers — and eventual Freedom Caucus founders — who fought their own leadership over everything from government spending to the proposed impeachment of President Obama.
The far-right pressure pushed former Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) into retirement, prevented McCarthy from rising to the Speakership in 2015 and was a thorn in the side of Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) during his short stint with the gavel.
Some congressional experts predict the new wave of Trump loyalists will create similar headaches for GOP leaders next year — unless leadership jumps on board.
“Donald Trump was the first Republican candidate for president who truly understood what the Tea Party was all about. The Paul Ryans of this world thought it was about small government. Wrong! It was a populist uprising,” said Bill Galston, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “Trump got it right; everybody else got it wrong. And so he has now elevated that big Trump party, which is socially conservative but economically inclined to big government that serves their interests.
“These are not libertarians; they're anti-libertarians in all sorts of ways,” Galston added. “And that's the Republican Party now."
The influence of aggressive, Trump-loving House members and the number of headaches they create for GOP leadership next year may depend on how successful Republicans are in House races overall in this year’s midterms. Many of the newcomer GOP candidates in competitive races trying to unseat Democrats are more centrist, and largely do not talk about the former president.
The Congressional Leadership Fund (CLF), a super PAC aligned with McCarthy, has also swooped in to support incumbent members who fought off more extreme challengers.
The CLF deployed a last-minute $50,000 in phone calls to support Rep. Daniel Webster (R-Fla.) on Tuesday as he fended off a surprisingly strong challenge from far-right, anti-Muslim activist Laura Loomer, who has been banned from multiple social media platforms.
It also helped centrist Republican Rep. David Valadao (Calif.), who voted to impeach Trump, and Rep. Young Kim (Calif.) advance to the general election as they faced more conservative challengers.
Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) on Sunday sought to distance himself from those in his party calling to defund the FBI following the agency’s search of former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.
“Oh yes, it's crazy,” Crenshaw responded when CNN’s Jake Tapper asked him about recent GOP rhetoric on “State of the Union.”
Many in the GOP have portrayed the search, which was connected to an investigation into the former president’s handling of classified documents, as politically motivated. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) filed impeachment articles against Attorney General Merrick Garland and called for the FBI to be defunded.
Those demands have been met with condemnation from some in the GOP, drawing comparisons to the defund the police movement that has been promoted by progressive lawmakers including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.).
“It makes us seem like extremist Democrats, right?” Crenshaw said on Sunday. “And so Marjorie and AOC can go join the defund the law enforcement club if they want. Ninety-nine percent of Republicans are not on that train.”
Despite separating himself from those calls, Crenshaw on Sunday did call for accountability and transparency from the FBI and Department of Justice (DOJ) following the search, saying it was "automatically political."
A federal judge last week signaled openness to releasing a redacted version of the affidavit to support the search warrant application, but the DOJ has opposed the move, citing concerns for witness safety.
“The criticisms that we're leveling against the FBI and DOJ are fully warranted,” Crenshaw told Tapper. “It is not those criticisms that lead to a crazy person attacking an FBI.”
An armed man attempted to breach the FBI’s Cincinnati field office in the days following the Mar-a-Lago search, and the intelligence community cited the incident in a recent bulletin warning of increased threats to federal law enforcement.
As expected, Rep. Liz Cheney lost her primary by a large margin Tuesday night, purely for the sin of speaking out against Donald Trump’s coup attempt. That was enough to have her Republican In Good Standing card stripped despite her reliably conservative positions on everything else. It just can’t be said enough: The desire to overturn an election, or at least the willingness to flirt with it, is a requirement for status in the Republican Party in 2022.
It’s not just Cheney, though she is the most prominent case. Ten House Republicans voted to impeach Trump in 2021. Just two will remain in Congress after this year, with four having lost primaries and four having decided to retire (before they could lose a primary).
“Congratulations to @HagemanforWY on her MASSIVE primary victory to restore the PEOPLE of Wyoming’s voice,” Rep. Elise Stefanik tweeted, noting that she had joined Trump and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy in endorsing Harriet Hageman. Stefanik, of course, replaced Cheney as the third-ranking House Republican when Cheney’s ex-communication from the party really got rolling.
”Girl, BYE,” was all Rep. Lauren Boebert had to say. Similarly, Sen. Rand Paul capped his tweet celebrating Hageman’s win with a “Bye Liz.”
This level of venom is spurred not by broad policy disagreement but by Cheney’s disloyalty in refusing to embrace the effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election, or at least keep her mouth shut about her opposition to that. That’s it. That’s all. It’s a staggering statement about today’s Republican Party.
There’s a lot of debate among Democrats about how to assess Cheney. Is she a hero? Is she just meeting the minimum bar of not supporting coups? But Cheney isn’t the point. The point is that, among Republicans, Cheney’s courage in adhering to the idea that the outcome of elections should be respected stands out, and her willingness to keep talking and name names stands out still more. Yes, everyone in office should be where she is on the basic question of whether the winner of the presidential election should become president, but they’re not. Far from it.
Cheney: Two years ago. I won this primary with 73% of the vote. I could easily have done the same again. The path was clear. But it would've required that I go along with president trump's lie about the 2020 election.. That was a path I could not and would not take. pic.twitter.com/vRq0Fdz4x1
Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) is facing down a new political future after losing her House primary on Tuesday to Trump-endorsed lawyer Harriet Hageman.
Speculation about what the three-term congresswoman who hails from a Republican political dynasty will do once her time in Congress comes to a close has steadily grown louder, and on Wednesday morning the Wyoming Republican said she is “thinking about” mounting a bid for the White House.
Cheney had delivered a defiant speech Tuesday night, slamming former President Trump, the movement he created and the candidates who repeat his claims about the 2020 election. It was at once a concession speech and a promise of a future in public life.
“So I ask you tonight to join me. As we leave here, let us resolve that we will stand together — Republicans, Democrats and Independents — against those who will destroy our republic,” Cheney said.
But even as she gave little indication of what she will do next, she vowed Tuesday to “do whatever it takes to ensure Donald Trump is never again anywhere near the Oval Office.”
“This primary election is over, but now the real work begins,” she said.
Here are five questions about Liz Cheney’s political future:
Does she launch a 2024 presidential campaign?
On Wednesday, less than 12 hours after major networks finalized Cheney’s defeat, Cheney said she is “thinking about” running for president and will make a decision in the coming months.
Cheney, the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, had previously dodged questions about a potential 2024 run, preferring to bring the conversation back to her main goal: keeping Trump out of the White House.
But a presidential run would be her “next logical” step, said Republican strategist Scott Jennings.
“There are things you could do, but what better platform would there be than to be running a campaign?” Jennings told The Hill in an interview.
“You can bet that if Cheney launches a campaign for president, she's gonna, you know, the amount of coverage she will get, and the amount of media attention she will get, will far outstrip her standing in the polls,” Jennings added. “And so, it strikes me that if you're wanting to talk to Republican audiences about what you think is an important point of view, what better way to do that and to do it in the presidential cycle?”
Logistically speaking, a Cheney White House bid is possible.
The congresswoman skyrocketed to even greater national prominence through her work as vice chair of the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. She has name recognition, deep ties in the Republican Party and a sizable war chest, with $7.4 million remaining in her campaign account as of three weeks ago, according to NBC News.
And while Cheney, true to pattern, kept much of her speech Tuesday focused on Trump and Trumpism, she didn’t rule anything out for 2024.
Does she run to win the White House — or keep Trump out of it?
Insiders agree winning the 2024 GOP presidential nomination would be an uphill battle for Cheney.
Most hypothetical polls show Trump in the lead and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), a proponent of Trump’s policies, in second. And while votes are still being counted, Cheney appears to be trailing by 30 points or more.
But even with little chance of winning, Cheney may run to influence the outcome of the primary.
“How do you define success?” Jennings said. “For her it may be less about winning the nomination and more about keeping Trump from getting the nomination. So I think it just depends on how you define success.”
Her presence would also give a voice to anti-Trump Republicans who have been largely shut out of a presidential conversation dominated by Trump and people who espouse his policies and rhetoric.
“When it comes to people that are not part of the whole MAGA movement, who are not happy with the direction that the Republican Party has gone, who are more traditional conservative Republicans, like myself, from the past, I think that Liz Cheney is a more appealing option,” said Olivia Troye, a former aide to Vice President Mike Pence.
“I think it’s important to have someone like her be willing to continue to push back and tell the truth about what’s happening here,” she said.
Cheney on Tuesday referenced former President Lincoln, who fought to keep the U.S. unified.
“The great and original champion of our party, Abraham Lincoln, was defeated in elections for the Senate and the House before he won the most important election of all. Lincoln ultimately prevailed, he saved our Union, and he defined our obligation as Americans for all of history,” she said.
What does she do with her time left in office?
The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol is already racing against the clock, trying to tie up its investigation within the next few months in anticipation of Republicans winning control of the chamber in November.
But before then, the panel is vowing to hold more public hearings and present additional information to bolster its argument that Trump was at the center of a scheme to keep himself in power — presentations that Cheney will likely play a large role in.
“We’re not winding down right now,” Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) told reporters in the Capitol last month. “It’s been amazing to see, kind of, the flurry of people coming forward, so it’s not the time to wind it down.”
Cheney has played a central role in the committee’s previous hearings, delivering opening and closing statements and questioning witnesses appearing live before the panel.
And she has not shied away from criticizing Trump or her GOP colleagues during those presentations — a practice she will likely continue, if not ramp up, in the remaining months of her term.
Republican strategist Doug Heye told The Hill that whatever path Cheney takes after her primary defeat, she will make sure she remains a vocal presence in American politics, beginning with her work on the committee.
“What's clear is that her voice isn't going to go anywhere,” Heye said. “And that will start with, you know, the next hearings on Jan. 6, and then we'll continue in whatever form she decides to take them in.
What kind of support does she have for future moves?
Cheney may have lost her primary but she still has a vast nationwide network of supporters and donors who could be of help for any future political moves she might make.
The congresswoman broke her own record in the first quarter of the year, bringing in close to $3 million, and followed that up with a whopping $2.9 million in the second quarter.
In addition to grassroots donations, Cheney raked in money from notable Republican and Democratic donors across the country including former President George W. Bush, his former adviser Karl Rove, film producer Jeffrey Katzenberg, and billionaire hedge fund manager Seth Klarman.
However, in a Republican presidential primary, Cheney would need to appeal to a Republican primary base. And she may not be the only anti-Trump Republican in the field. Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) has repeatedly been floated as a potential 2024 GOP hopeful and has yet to rule out a run.
“I think it will be important for them to navigate how they will reach more moderate voters,” Troye said.
“These are longtime, respected Republican figures,” she continued. “And their voices can reach an audience in a way that many can’t.”
What could she do besides run for president?
While a 2024 presidential bid is the most talked-about possibility for Cheney, there are other avenues the congresswoman can pursue as she looks to continue her crusade against Trump.
One would be joining the cable news circuit as a commentator or analyst, which would give the congresswoman a sizable platform to take on the former president and denounce his false claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.
That route is a popular one for former lawmakers. Ex-Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), who was unseated by then-Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley (R) in 2018, joined NBC News and MSNBC months after the race as a political analyst, and former Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) was hired by Fox News as a contributor one day after he resigned from the House in 2017.
Cheney could also join a think tank or form her own PAC, as Kinzinger, who is not running for reelection this November, has done.
Kinzinger — another top Trump critic and Cheney’s fellow Republican on the Jan. 6 panel — launched a PAC, titled “Country First,” as a movement to challenge the GOP’s embrace of Trump.
Another option for Cheney is writing a book, a popular move for top figures leaving Washington. After bowing out of running for a third term in 2020, former Rep. Will Hurd (R-Texas), who criticized Trump on a number of occasions, penned a book titled “American Reboot: An Idealist’s Guide to Getting Big Things Done.”
While it remains unknown what Cheney will choose for her next act, Jennings says the congresswoman likely has a plan driving her recent — and future — political moves.
“I know the Cheneys and I know how smart they are and I know how they operate, and I would be surprised if this wasn’t part of a larger plan, but a plan that fits within a mission,” Jennings said. “I think she believes she’s on a mission here to keep Donald Trump out of the White House. So if that’s your mission, then they’re the kind of people who would build a plan to try to achieve that mission.”
Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) sounded defiant in her concession speech on Tuesday, acknowledging that while she had lost her primary, she would do “whatever it takes” to keep former President Trump from getting near the White House again.
“Two years ago, I won this primary with 73 percent of the votes. I could easily have done the same again, the path was clear, but it would have required that I go along with President Trump's lie about the 2020 election,” Cheney said from an outdoor stage in Jackson, Wyo., to an enthusiastic crowd.
“It would have required that I enable his ongoing efforts to unravel a democratic system and attack the foundations of our Republic. That was a path I could not and would not take,” she continued to applause. “No House seat, no office in this land is more important than the principles that we are all sworn to protect. And I well understood the potential political consequences of abiding by my duty.”
Cheney said she had called her primary opponent, attorney Harriet Hageman (R), to concede. But she suggested this was just the beginning of her next chapter.
"The primary election is over," she said. "But now the real work begins."
Hageman’s primary win, riding on Trump's endorsement, was months in the making after Cheney became one of his most vocal Republican critics, voting to impeach him following the Capitol riot and later serving on the House select committee investigating the Capitol attack.
Cheney’s speech, delivered in front of a backdrop of lush rolling hills as she stood flanked by American flags, sounded less like a concession and more like a call to action. She urged Americans not to adhere to Trump’s baseless claims about the election and to stand up for democratic values.
The Wyoming Republican warned that the survival of the country was “not guaranteed,” noting that “poisonous lies destroy free nations” — partly alluding to Trump’s dubious claims about the 2020 election.
She noted that there were candidates for governor and secretary of state who did not believe the validity of President Biden’s 2020 election or might avoid reporting the actual election results, cautioning that “our nation is barreling once again toward crisis, lawlessness and violence.”
Cheney also referenced two former presidents — Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses Grant — two presidents whose legacies are tied to the Civil War and who fought to keep the nation’s union intact, further fueling speculation about Cheney’s own possible White House ambitions.
The speech comes as Cheney was the last pro-impeachment Republican to face a primary this cycle. Only two House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump advanced in their primary, while Cheney and seven others either lost their respective races or opted not to run again.
Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) first heard that he had been endorsed by former President Trump when he looked at his phone.
“I got a text message: 'You've been endorsed,’” Donalds told The Hill.
The first-term lawmaker was surprised, but not shocked. He has been a supporter of Trump and has a good relationship with him.
Republican candidates in contested primaries this year have lobbied hard for Trump's backing, and most who get his blessing have gone on to win the party's nomination.
But Trump’s endorsements of incumbents have often come without members seeking them, a key indication that he is running up his primary endorsement success rate by putting his stamp of approval on members almost certain to win their races.
Trump has been a kingmaker in a number of key primary races, with bold endorsements in Senate primaries in Ohio and Pennsylvania, and with some revenge challengers to House Republicans who voted to impeach him after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on Capitol Hill.
“Trump used his own metrics to determine who he supports. It's been pretty successful,” said Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.). “The numbers don't lie.”
Yet in keeping with his pattern as president, Trump regularly inflates his numbers. He bragged on Truth Social after Tennessee’s primary that he had a “Perfect Record of Endorsements, 8-0.” Left unsaid was that all were incumbents, of which six ran unopposed, and the other two did not have serious challengers.
Conversations with more than a dozen House Republican members who spoke to The Hill suggested that it is normal for Trump to bestow an endorsement without a member reaching out first.
“I did not seek it,” Rep. Andy Barr (R-Ky.) said of getting a Trump endorsement ahead of his primary. “I just was going about my business, you know, campaigning and representing my district. But he reached out, and — through one of his political people — and offered an endorsement.”
After notification that Trump wanted to endorse them, the former president often calls the member and has a brief chat before the official “Save America” endorsement release, several House GOP members said.
Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-N.D.) said that he did not seek endorsements because he was running in an uncontested primary but was happy to accept one from Trump.
“He gave the greatest Trump line ever, by the way,” Armstrong said, when he called the former president back after missing his initial pre-endorsement announcement call. “Like, ‘I'm sorry, Mr. President, I missed your call.’ He says, ‘Don't worry. The call is temporary, that voicemail’s forever.’”
Norman and Reps. Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.) and Michael Cloud (R-Texas) all similarly said that Trump had reached out to them.
House GOP leadership has been involved in facilitating some of the endorsements.
Rep. Randy Feenstra (R-Iowa) said that someone in House GOP leadership gave him a “heads up” that the endorsement from Trump would be coming.
And some incumbent GOP members, meanwhile, have reached out to Trump this year.
Rep. Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.) said he sought an endorsement from Trump through House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and his political team. Guthrie had a phone chat with Trump before his endorsement was released about a week before the primary, which he then won by 60 points.
Now out of office and looking to retain a hold on the party, Trump has made more formal endorsements in primary races than ever before.
By the end of August 2020, Trump had endorsed 111 candidates in House, Senate, and governor’s races, with 109 of those advancing to the general election, according to a FiveThirtyEight analysis at the time.
He is running well ahead of that number in primaries this cycle, with 20 gubernatorial endorsements, 21 Senate endorsements, and 156 House endorsements so far, an analysis by The Hill found — not counting those who dropped out before the primary election, who Trump un-endorsed, or his dual “ERIC” endorsement in the Missouri GOP Senate primary, where state Attorney General Eric Schmitt defeated former Gov. Eric Greitens.
Some of Trump’s endorsements were a clear attempt to clear the field in key races, such as when he urged “JUST ONE CANDIDATE” to run against Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.). But most of those were incumbent members who were likely to win renomination regardless of a Trump endorsement.
Trump has backed 134 incumbent House members, accounting for more than half the GOP conference. And 66 candidates that Trump endorsed in House races ran or are running in uncontested primaries, or in a nonpartisan primary without any other Republican candidates on the ballot.
Trump's team asserted that his endorsement helps Republicans have larger victories.
“The power of President Trump’s endorsement hasn’t just resulted in massive wins for Republicans across the nation, it also has meant bigger margins of victory and an ever-growing movement for the future," Trump spokesman Taylor Budowich said in a statement. "Every candidate who earns the endorsement of President Trump benefits tremendously and has been gracious in their appreciation for his support."
A couple of the endorsements indicate a willingness to bury old hatchets.
Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) received Trump’s endorsement a week before his primary. That came more than two years after a testy phone call between the two men.
“The last conversation we had was on my cell phone in the Speaker's Lobby on March 27th of 2020. He was upset,” Massie said.
Massie tried to force a roll call vote on the CARES Act coronavirus stimulus bill, sending lawmakers scrambling to get back to Washington to avoid a delay in passing the legislation. The move enraged Trump, who called for Massie to be thrown out of the Republican Party.
Massie is one of 36 incumbent Republicans, 26 in the House and 10 in the Senate, endorsed by Trump who did not vote to object to certification of electoral votes from Arizona or Pennsylvania on Jan. 6.
Trump has endorsed just one incumbent member who voted in favor of creating a bipartisan, bicameral commission on the Jan. 6 Capitol attack: Rep. Carlos Gimenez (R-Fla.).
Gimenez, who said he sought Trump’s endorsement, talked with the former president about his vote for the commission.
“I explained to him why I voted for the first one and not the second one. The second one I consider to be illegitimate,” Gimenez said. “So, we had a good conversation about that.”
Challengers to incumbent House Republicans have attacked those who voted in favor of the commission in primaries this year. Republicans blocked the measure in the Senate, prompting creation of the House select committee investigating Jan. 6. Reps. Cheney and Adam Kinzinger (Ill.) were the only Republicans to vote for the ultimate panel’s creation.
The biggest line in the sand for Trump appears to be voting to impeach. He stayed out of some races where votes for the Jan. 6 commission became a line of attack, such as the cases of Reps. Dusty Johnson (S.D.), Michael Guest (Texas), and Van Taylor (R-Texas), who was forced into a runoff and ended his campaign after the primary over an affair scandal.
Many Republican candidates hoping to win Trump’s endorsement flocked to Mar-a-Lago ahead of the primary season, hosting events or hoping to get some face time with the former president. Nevada gubernatorial candidate Michele Fiore even purchased ads early this year on Fox News in Palm Beach, Fla., hoping that the former president was watching. She was unsuccessful, with Trump later endorsing Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo.
But the best indicator of whether a candidate would win a Trump endorsement was usually if he or she looked likely to win.
More than 96 percent of Trump-endorsed House candidates who have had primaries so far won their primaries, not counting those who dropped out before the election.
Trump un-endorsed Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) in the GOP Senate primary and then endorsed Katie Britt, who had overtaken him in the polls. He made an early endorsement last September for Michigan state Rep. Steve Carra against pro-impeachment Rep. Fred Upton, but redistricting scrambled the map and put Upton up against Rep. Bill Huizenga (R-Mich.), to whom Trump then switched his endorsement. Upton later said he would not run for reelection.
A large number of Trump’s endorsements were announced in the days before primary elections, with some of those candidates not worried about losing.
But that hasn’t put a damper on incumbent members’ thrill of getting the endorsement.
“Anytime you have an endorsement from a President of the United States, that's really cool,” said Donalds.
Paige Kupas, Stephen Neukam and Zach Wendling contributed research.
Rep. Liz Cheney may be about to lose her day job. If so, she’s totally OK with that.
Cheney, a third-term Wyoming Republican, is charging into Tuesday’s primary in the Cowboy State defiantly embracing the very message that’s sparked the conservative backlash brewing to oust her: Namely, that former President Trump, with his baseless claims of a “stolen” election, poses an existential threat to the country’s democratic foundations and should be barred from holding future office.
That argument, combined with Cheney’s national prominence, has made her both the public face of the anti-Trump movement and a pariah in the eyes of the MAGA faithful, including those in ruby-red Wyoming where the former president remains wildly popular.
Some recent polls have Cheney’s challenger — an election denier named Harriet Hageman — leading by almost 30 points.
The Cheney name has been revered in conservative Wyoming circles for decades; the seat she holds was once held by her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney. And two years ago, the thought of her losing that seat would have been laughed out of Laramie.
Then came last year’s attack on the Capitol — a riot aimed at overturning Trump’s election defeat. Since then, Cheney has pursued the 45th president with a crusader’s zeal, becoming one of only 10 House Republicans to support Trump’s second impeachment, which deemed him responsible for inciting the insurrection, and then joining the Jan. 6 select committee investigating the rampage.
It was then, political experts say, that Cheney decided the fight against Trump and his election lies was more important than keeping her job in Congress.
“She's almost certainly toast,” said David Barker, a political scientist at American University. “My guess is that she knew that the second she decided to really join the Jan. 6 committee and pursue the president in that way.”
“She hasn't just been kind of a passive member of the committee,” Barker added. “She's been really leading the whole charge and doing so in the most provocative and high-profile ways.”
Indeed, Cheney, as vice chair of the select committee, has been the most prominently featured figure throughout the eight public hearings the panel has staged this summer. And heading into the final stretch of what appears to be a doomed campaign for a fourth term, Cheney is not dodging the anti-Trump sentiment that’s put her in hot water with Wyoming voters. She’s amplifying it.
“America cannot remain free if we abandon the truth. The lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen is insidious — it preys on those who love their country,” Cheney said in a closing-argumentcampaign video released Thursday. “It is a door Donald Trump opened to manipulate Americans to abandon their principles, to sacrifice their freedom, to justify violence, to ignore the rulings of our courts and the rule of law.
“This is Donald Trump’s legacy, but it cannot be the future of our nation.”
Cheney is 56 years old, and her own legacy — along with her political future — remains uncertain. But this much is clear: She’s gambled both on the notion that, in challenging the most popular figure in her own party, she can prevent him from becoming president once again. In that campaign, she’s essentially arguing that the GOP needs saving from itself — and she’ll either be the one to do it, or fall hard trying.
“She faced a binary choice between doing what she thought was right and necessary, after Jan. 6, and continuing her political career in the Republican Party,” said Bill Galston, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “And unlike most politicians, she made a clean and honorable choice. And she's obviously prepared to take the consequences.”
In a last-ditch effort to gain ground in Tuesday’s primary contest, Cheney last week aired a public endorsement from her father. Appearing in a cowboy hat and questioning Trump’s masculinity, Dick Cheney called the former president “a coward” who “tried to steal the last election using lies and violence.”
“In our nation's 246-year history, there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump,” he says in the minute-long ad.
Still, 70 percent of Wyoming voters chose Trump in 2020 — the highest number of any state in the country. And even the appeals of a state institution like Dick Cheney aren’t expected to save his daughter in Tuesday’s race. The experts say the simple reason is that the GOP, as old-guard power brokers like Dick Cheney knew it, no longer exists.
“Donald Trump executed a hostile and irreversible takeover of the Republican Party,” Galston said. “The Reagan party that appealed to so many of the now middle-aged or even aging Republican conservatives in the 1980s and '90s is gone. It's not coming back.”
Cheney is hardly alone among GOP lawmakers suffering politically for clashing publicly with Trump over the Jan. 6 attack. Of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump last year, only two are in line to return in the next Congress. Four others are retiring, while three more lost their primaries to Trump-endorsed conservatives who backed his false election claims.
Cheney, of the 10, is the last outstanding race, and the outcome appears certain.
“Yeah, he won — in the short term, at least,” Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), one of the impeachment-supporting retirees, acknowledged to WGN-TV in Chicago last week. “There’s no use in pretending somehow I scored some major victory and saved the party.”
To Trump’s allies, the former president remains a heroic figure — the single most electrifying force in the GOP who launched the populist movement that toppled Hillary Clinton and continues to fuel expectations that Republicans will flip control of the House in November’s midterm elections. In that light, Cheney, Kinzinger and the other Trump critics are seen as apostates to the larger cause of winning power.
In February, the Republican National Committee took the remarkable step of voting to censure both Cheney and Kinzinger for their involvement in the Jan. 6 investigation. It said the two were “participating in a Democrat-led persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse.”
Cheney’s likely defeat on Tuesday has raised plenty of speculation about potential next steps, including the possibility that she’d make a presidential run of her own in 2024 — an idea she has not ruled out.
Still, her success in such a contest would hinge squarely on the collapse of Trump’s popularity within the party, which is likely to endure, some experts said, longer than Cheney would prefer.
“My sense is that if it is [her plan], she's going to have a long wait,” Galston said. “I don't think that Donald Trump supporters will ever forgive her, nor do I think they're going away.
An uptick in threats to the FBI after it executed a search warrant at former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate is unsettling the political right, with some calling on allies of the former president to tone down their rhetoric.
Barriers have been erected outside the perimeter of the FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C., while the FBI and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) reportedly issued a joint bulletin Friday warning about spikes in threats that included a bomb threat at FBI headquarters and calls for “civil war” and “armed rebellion.”
Fox News host Steve Doocy on Monday urged the former president and others to “tamp down the rhetoric against the FBI” in light of the threats, while Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), ranking member on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” that Trump’s language was “inflammatory.”
“I don’t want to put any law enforcement in the bull’s-eye of a potential threat,” McCaul said.
The bulletin issued by DHS and the FBI cited an incident in which a man armed with an AR-15-style rifle allegedly fired a nail gun into an FBI office in Cincinnati last week, according to NBC News. He was fatally shot by police after a chase and standoff, according to Ohio State Highway Patrol.
Trump on Monday in an interview with Fox News did say the temperature on the issue needed to come down, adding that he’d told aides to reach out to the Department of Justice to help.
But in the same interview, Trump directed his wrath at the Justice Department and suggested that his supporters’ anger was justified. Trump said that Americans are “not going to stand for another scam,” said that the FBI can “break into a president’s house” in a “sneak attack” and suggested that the FBI “could have planted anything they wanted” during the search.
In another post on Truth Social, his social media platform, he claimed that his passports had been taken during the search. Passports were not included on a list of items mentioned as part of a warrant released on Friday, though some of the descriptions of what was seized were broad in nature.
The president’s account on the platform his own business launched is one of his most direct ways to reach supporters online now, since he lost access to his Twitter and Facebook accounts after his posts the day of the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol.
Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.), a former FBI agent, told Margaret Brennan of “Face the Nation” on Sunday that he was concerned about the safety of FBI agents.
“Violence is never the answer to anything,” Fitzpatrick said. “We live in a democracy that's 246 years old, Margaret. That's not long, that's just a few generations, and yet we're the world's only democracy. And the only way that can come unraveled is if we have disrespect for our institutions that lead to Americans turning on Americans and the whole system becomes unraveled. And a lot of that starts with the words we're using.”
“I'm also urging all my colleagues to understand the weight of your words and support law enforcement no matter what,” he added.
Republicans have sought to differentiate between Biden appointees and rank-and-file FBI agents when raising concerns about potential politicization of the department.
“I won't smear the FBI, like the career FBI agents,” Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) said Friday. “But the political appointees running this stuff are very worrisome.”
FBI Director Christopher Wray was appointed by Trump in 2017.
Some Republicans have continued to use incendiary rhetoric to speak to their massive online bases.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), using her official congressional account since her personal Twitter was suspended in January over COVID-19 misinformation, told her 1 million followers Monday that “Republicans must force” the “political persecution” to stop. Greene filed articles of impeachment against Attorney General Merrick Garland last week.
Katherine Keneally, a senior analyst at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), said she is most concerned about the potential for extremist groups to capitalize on this moment to mobilize for future membership.
“Specifically, any accelerationist groups that are seeing an uptick in people being upset at the FBI, a government agency, works very well for recruitment for an organization that wants to collapse the US government. So I think that's where my concern is, that these even more nefarious groups are going to use this as a catalyst moment for recruitment,” she said.
According to a report compiled by ISD analysts, social media accounts believed to belong to the alleged Cincinnati gunman, Ricky Shiffer, suggest he was “motivated by a combination of conspiratorial beliefs related to former President Trump and the 2020 election (among others), interest in killing federal law enforcement, and the recent search warrant executed at Mar-a-Lago earlier this week.”
ISD researchers found that Shiffer was likely prepping for the attack for at least two days, based on posts from a since-removed Truth Social account believed to belong to him.
The researchers also found posts and photographs placing Shiffer at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, although it is not confirmed if he was present during the insurrection, and posts on the right-wing video site Rumble that show Shiffer encouraging users to “get in touch with the Proud Boys,” a far-right group.
Keneally said the Ohio incident hasn’t been mentioned widely by other far-right users of online platforms, likely because it wasn’t successful. But researchers are still seeing general calls for violence targeting the FBI.
Those monitoring the online vitriol, across mainstream platforms and fringe sites that cater to conservative users, warned that the posts from lawmakers and influencers online could incite their followers to take real-world action.
“It certainly plays a role in the radicalization process,” Keneally said.
“While they might not be directly calling for violence, the conspiratorial allegations certainly play a role in how these people are radicalized, and how they go down that path, regardless of whether it's an official stating, ‘kill the FBI,’ that's not what needs to be said to help radicalize. You just accused the FBI of ‘overstepping their boundaries,’ or like ‘taking away your constitutional rights,’ and that's what that's what people are mobilizing around,” Keneally said.
House Republicans on Friday wasted no time rallying behind former President Trump following a court’s decision to unseal the search warrant that had empowered the FBI to search his Mar-a-Lago residence in South Florida earlier in the week.
FBI agents on Monday retrieved 11 sets of documents categorized as classified to some degree, an inventory of the items seized showed, including one set labeled “various classified/TS/SCI documents,” a highly-classified category of sensitive items typically pertaining to national security. Agents also retrieved four sets of "top secret" items.
But Republican lawmakers on Friday dismissed the news, accusing the Department of Justice (DOJ) of conducting a political witch hunt designed for the sole purpose of harming Trump politically as he weighs another run at the White House in 2024.
"What they've been doing to President Trump is a political persecution,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) told reporters on the steps of the Capitol. “Merrick Garland has abused his position of power, as the attorney general, to politically persecute Joe Biden’s enemies. And the whole purpose of this is to prevent President Trump from ever being able to hold office.”
“We cannot tolerate this in America,” she continued, “where our great institutions are wielded and abused in such a way to defeat people’s political enemies.”
Greene then walked into the Capitol and introduced articles of impeachment against Garland.
She was hardly alone. Other GOP lawmakers also defended Trump against a DOJ they’re portraying as out of control. Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), another close Trump ally, wondered why the department isn’t continuing its investigation into Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of State, who came under scrutiny for using a private server to conduct official business, but was never charged.
“Did they find Hillary Clinton’s 33,000 deleted emails in the safe? That’s what I want to see,” said Boebert, who also endorsed the effort to impeach Garland.
Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.), chairman of the Republican Study Committee, didn’t go quite so far, but accused Garland of withholding information vital to the public’s understanding of the investigation.
“The fact that Merrick Garland is selectively working through the media rather than releasing further details, is again – makes all of this very fishy,” he said. “There's so much that the American people deserve to know that we don't know.”
Other Republicans brought up various DOJ investigations of the past, suggesting the department goes soft on Democrats and their allies while dropping the hammer on Republicans and other conservatives.
Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) cited another concern, saying he’s worried that the DOJ was overly aggressive in targeting a former president.
“People are rightfully upset [about] the precedent this sets. It seems highly unnecessary to be sending in armed FBI agents into Mar-a-Lago when he could have just subpoenaed these documents. He supposedly knew they were there. He was being cooperative already … with other documents,” said Crenshaw.
Earlier in the year, Trump had turned over 15 boxes of documents and other materials to the National Archives. The DOJ later subpoenaed Trump for additional documents the agency suspected he had withheld.
Garland on Thursday had delivered a highly unusual statement defending Monday’s search, saying the DOJ had first attempted “less intrusive means,” which failed to yield the remaining materials.
Democrats, meanwhile, have defended the agency. While they’re eagerly awaiting more details, they’re voicing concerns that at least some of the documents might have been related to defense and national security.
"If the nature of these documents is what [it] appears to be, this is very serious,” said Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).