On Politics: What Republicans have been up to while Biden’s drama has unfolded
What Republicans have been up to while Biden's drama has unfolded
The self-generated political crisis that has convulsed the Democratic Party over the past two weeks has felt, to Republicans, like a lovely day on the fairway. "Republicans are standing on the sidelines with polite golf claps," said David Urban, a political strategist and past campaign aide to former President Donald Trump, "going, 'Wow, incredible, well done.'" They watched President Biden melt down on the debate stage. They watched his party agonize over his unsteady recovery. And, crucially, they managed to stay largely out of it (even when Trump was surreptitiously filmed weighing in from an actual golf course). "I can't remember a time when there's been a week that's gone by, two weeks, when the former president hasn't been dominating the news cycle," Urban said. It has not, however, been an uneventful period for the G.O.P. Since the debate, two Trump allies — Steve Bannon and Rudy Giuliani, have been imprisoned and disbarred, respectively. House Republicans failed to pass what should have been an easy spending bill (though they did manage to pass two bills blocking efficiency standards for kitchen appliances). The party approved a platform that has angered some conservatives and found itself on defense over Trump allies' sweeping agenda. So, with just days to go before the Republican National Convention begins in Milwaukee, on Monday, let's take a look at a few story lines you might have missed if you've been glued to the Biden saga. I'll be back next week — from Milwaukee. Trump learned the value of silence — kind of.Trump has never shied away from the limelight, and relentless personal attacks on Biden have been a plank of his campaign strategy. But as a slice of the Democratic Party has turned on its own nominee, he has been mostly content to step aside and let them. "When your opponent's in a hole, just let them keep digging," Urban said. Trump has piped up more in recent days, but his relative quiet most likely reflects his confidence in his ability to beat Biden, and his desire for the president to stay in the race. Next week, however, Trump will be back in the spotlight — and his team is preparing attacks on Vice President Kamala Harris, just in case she becomes the Democratic nominee. Republicans celebrated presidential immunity, sometimes in foreboding terms.Four days after the debate, the Supreme Court ruling expanding presidential immunity forced delays in Trump's federal trial for trying to overturn the election — and it helped him push back the sentencing date for his conviction on 34 counts of falsifying business records in New York. "TOTAL EXONERATION," Trump claimed, inaccurately, on Truth Social. The next day, while speaking about the ruling on Bannon's podcast, the president of the conservative Heritage Foundation said the country was "in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be" — comments that alarmed Democrats and frustrated some Republicans who worried such rhetoric would scare voters. They rewrote their platform.Republicans this week adopted a party platform that cements their identity as the party of Trump. It pumps up the party's nationalism and protectionism but softens its stance on abortion rights — a move Democrats warn is a fig leaf — and casts aside longtime preoccupations like fiscal restraint. The document amounts to a pledge of allegiance to Trump, as my colleague Robert Draper put it, and it has spurred some discord among the party's conservatives — although the Republican strategist Scott Jennings downplayed the sour grapes. "Some people are niffled about it," he said, using his own invented word, "but the alternative is Biden." They sought to disavow Project 2025.As Biden's campaign sought to salvage his candidacy and get back on the attack, it pummeled Trump over his ties to the authors of Project 2025, a sweeping set of conservative policy proposals that would remake U.S. government. Trump has falsely claimed that he knows nothing about the project, or the people involved in it. But as my colleague Simon Levien wrote this week, portions of the document were written by his allies, including Russell Vought, his former budget director, and John McEntee, a former White House personnel chief in the Trump administration. And there is considerable overlap between Project 2025, which was spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation, and Trump's own second-term plans, known as Agenda47. Democrats have seized on the project to warn of the dangers of a second Trump administration. And they are almost certain to continue to do so — no matter who their nominee is in November.
MEET THE CANDIDATE A Democrat who could make history — and help her party win back the HousePresident Biden's troubles, as well as a Senate map that has put his party on defense, have given the fight for control of the House new importance for Democrats. They need to pick up only four seats to reclaim control of the chamber. My colleague Maggie Astor has this exclusive dispatch on one of the candidates their party is pinning its hopes on. In 2018, when Janelle Bynum was the only Black Democrat in the Oregon House of Representatives, a voter called the police to report her as a suspicious person while she knocked on doors for her re-election campaign. Now, Bynum, the Democratic nominee in Oregon's Fifth Congressional District, is trying to become the first Black person to represent her state in Congress. The district, which stretches from the suburbs of liberal Portland to the outdoorsy city of Bend, is exactly the kind of place Democrats think can help them win the House. It's currently represented by a Republican, Representative Lori Chavez-DeRemer, who narrowly defeated a progressive Democrat in 2022. It's also where Biden beat Trump by about nine points in 2020. To reclaim the district, Democrats in Washington set their sights on Bynum. Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader, personally spoke with her and urged her to run — catching her at a time when, tired of tough statehouse races in a swing district, she was considering leaving politics altogether. As a lawmaker, Bynum has been a vocal supporter of police reform and of liberalizing drug laws, policy positions that Republicans are attacking her for. But her résumé and background stood out to national Democrats. She is a four-term state legislator, a former electrical engineer, a business owner and a mother of four — and she has beaten Chavez-DeRemer before, twice, in tough elections for the State House. "We viewed her as one of the strongest potential candidates in the nation to win a seat that could flip control of the United States Congress," Jeffries told me. The race offers insight into both parties' strategies as they battle for the nation's few remaining swing districts. During the primary, Democrats worked hard to help Bynum defeat Jamie McLeod-Skinner, the progressive who had lost to Chavez-DeRemer in 2022. Bynum prevailed in a landslide, even though a super PAC that appeared to have ties to Republicans dumped $340,000 into the race to support McLeod-Skinner in its final days. For Republicans, the question is whether an incumbent like Chavez-DeRemer can separate herself from Trump in a district that voted against him — or if she even wants to. Chavez-DeRemer broke with her party more than almost any other House Republican last year, according to Roll Call, a fact that she says undermines Bynum's description of her as a "rubber stamp" for the MAGA agenda. But she also backed Trump for president in March. In an interview with me — her first with a national publication since winning the nomination — Bynum did not dwell on the fact that she would be Oregon's first Black member of Congress. Instead, she cast her campaign largely as a way to help Democrats defend little-d democracy against Trump and his allies. "Everyone needs to sacrifice some level of their time, their energy, their commitment to investing in our democracy," she said. Still, she noted that her mother was part of a segregated high-school graduating class and recalled the excitement with which her children's classmates responded to seeing her photo in a voter guide. "Let's acknowledge that, that I'm literally one generation away from segregation," she said. "So that's a thing. But more importantly, if we're looking back, I think we should also look forward." — Maggie Astor Read past editions of the newsletter here. If you're enjoying what you're reading, please consider recommending it to others. They can sign up here. Have feedback? Ideas for coverage? We'd love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com.
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