Category: Politics

The Next Big Test of Trump’s Power

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MORGANTOWN, West Virginia—Eight days before a Republican-primary election that could end his political career, Representative David McKinley stood on the sunny banks of the Monongahela River and stared into a tank filled with brown sewage. A fetid stench—something like a mix of sulfur and diapers—befouled the crisp Appalachian air. McKinley, battling Representative Alex Mooney, a fellow GOP lawmaker backed by Donald Trump, in his bid for his seventh term in Congress, was touring a wastewater-treatment plant and promoting his vote for an infrastructure law that could prove to be either…

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Iowa Is Closer Than Ever to Losing Its Place

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Every few years for the past four decades, Iowa’s prime placement in American politics has come under threat. The arguments against Iowa’s outsize role in choosing each party’s nominee for president are always the same: The state is too white—90.6 percent white, to be exact—making it completely unrepresentative of the American electorate. Caucuses are messy and volunteer-led, meaning that the process is vulnerable to all kinds of problems (see the great caucus disaster of 2020). Plus, it’s cold as hell in February in Iowa, not exactly the weather most conducive…

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The Last of the Establishment Republicans

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On the afternoon of March 3, 2020, Governor Mike DeWine stepped to a lectern inside the Ohio statehouse to announce his most difficult pandemic decision. Ohio, the governor announced, would bar most spectators from the upcoming Arnold Classic, a bodybuilding and fitness festival hosted annually by Arnold Schwarzenegger that draws a quarter of a million people from 80 countries to Ohio’s capital city. “Everything in life is a risk,” DeWine said. “We all make calculated decisions. We don’t eliminate all risk in life. But with regard to the Arnold Classic,…

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Charlie Baker and the Rise of One-Party Rule

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At least once a week during the past two years, a flock of protesters could be found outside the seaside home of the Republican governor of Massachusetts, airing their grievances about the man they call “Char-lie Baker.” (It rhymes with pie—get it?) Two years of “Char-lie Baker” would be a lot for any person to take, especially when the clamor is coming from members of your own party. The gatherings began in April 2020, when more than a dozen anti-lockdown demonstrators drove, horns blaring and Trump flags hoisted high, back…

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Republicans Think They Can Win the COVID Funding Fight

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If a new coronavirus variant surges in the United States this year—perhaps the one currently tearing through Europe—there’s a reasonable chance that the country will be unprepared to fight it. You can thank Congress for that. Last week, lawmakers passed a massive spending bill without any additional funding for COVID-19 relief, despite White House pleas for more. Democrats would like to fulfill the administration’s request. But Republicans have taken the position that Congress has already done enough. “We don’t need COVID funding,” GOP Representative Randy Feenstra of Iowa told me.…

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Want to Understand the Red-State Onslaught? Look at Florida.

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The red-state drive to roll back civil rights is entering a new phase, perhaps best symbolized by Florida’s passage this week of the “Don’t Say ‘Gay’” bill censoring how schools discuss sexual orientation. President Joe Biden’s administration is leaning more heavily into the fight, even as business leaders are retreating from the battlefield. In multiple states, prominent companies that regularly tout their commitment to diversity and inclusion have largely stood aside as GOP-controlled legislatures and governors have approved laws that restrict voting access, curtail abortion rights and LGBTQ freedoms, and…

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