Julie Hirschfeld Davis

Trump said he was “not happy” with the chant, directed at Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, a hijab-wearing freshman Democrat whom the president has singled out repeatedly for verbal excoriation. On Thursday he claimed he had tried to cut off the chant, an assertion contradicted by video of the event. Asked why he did not stop it, Trump said, “I think I did — I started speaking very quickly.”

In fact, as the crowd roared “send her back,” Trump looked around silently and paused as the scene unfolded in front of him, doing nothing to halt the chorus.

“I was not happy with it,” Trump said Thursday at the White House. “I disagree with it.

“I didn’t say that,” he added. “They did.”

Trump’s effort to dissociate himself from his own supporters reflected the misgivings of his allies, who have flooded the upper echelons of his team with expressions of concern in the wake of a rally that veered into ugly nativist territory. Among them were House Republican leaders, who pleaded with Vice President Mike Pence on Thursday morning to separate the party from the message embraced by the crowd in Greenville, North Carolina.

“That does not need to be our campaign call, like we did the ‘lock her up’ last time,” said Rep. Mark Walker, R-N.C., a top official in the party’s messaging arm, who attended the rally and tweeted hours later that he had “struggled” with the chant. “We cannot be defined by this.”

Omar, a Somalian refugee who is one of the first two Muslim women elected to the House, called Trump a “fascist” but said there was nothing new about his behavior or the response of his supporters. “He does that every single day, and it’s no different,” Omar said at the Capitol.

Walker said he had raised the issue with Pence on Thursday, saying the chant was “something that we want to address early,” before it became a staple of the president’s rallies. “We felt like this was going to be part of our discussion, to make sure that we are not defined by that.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/18/us/politics/trump-send-her-back.html" id="70c91f11-9b6e-37f9-a43b-a5c5b6fac633">The New York Times</a>.

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Thursday disavowed the “send her back” chant that broke out at his reelection rally Wednesday night when he railed against a Somali-born congresswoman, as Republicans in Congress rushed to distance themselves and their party from the ugly refrain.

Trump Disavows 'Send Her Back' Chant as Republicans Fret Over Ugly Phrase

Trump said he was “not happy” with the chant, directed at Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, a hijab-wearing freshman Democrat whom the president has singled out repeatedly for verbal excoriation. On Thursday he claimed that he had tried to cut off the chant, an assertion contradicted by video of the event. Asked why he did not stop it, Trump said, “I think I did — I started speaking very quickly.”

Trump’s effort to dissociate himself from his own supporters reflected the misgivings of his allies, who have flooded the upper echelons of his team with expressions of concern in the wake of a rally that veered into ugly nativist territory. They warned privately that the president was on dangerous ground, according to people briefed on the conversations.

Among them were House Republican leaders, who pleaded with Vice President Mike Pence on Thursday morning to separate the party from the message embraced by the crowd in Greenville, North Carolina.

Still, while they denounced the chant, Republican leaders declined to criticize Trump.

Congressional Republicans have struggled all week to respond to Trump’s attacks on Omar and three other Democratic congresswomen of color who he tweeted over the weekend should “go back” to their countries. Now they must contend with the nativist fervor of his supporters as captured in the frenzied moment in North Carolina, with a rageful refrain that they worry could further damage their party’s brand.

“Those chants have no place in our party or our country,” Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California, the Republican leader, told reporters.

Those were almost the exact words used by Rep. Tom Emmer of Minnesota, chairman of the House Republican campaign arm, earlier Thursday, when he repudiated the chant but insisted that the Twitter posts that inspired the slogan had been mere mistakes of wording.

“There’s no place for that kind of talk,” Emmer said at a breakfast with reporters in Washington where he was asked about the chant. “I don’t agree with that.

“There’s not a racist bone in the president’s body,” he added, referring to Trump’s tweets. “What he was trying to say, he said wrong.”

Still, Trump’s inner circle seemed to appreciate the gravity of the scene Wednesday night and urged him to quickly repudiate the chant. Ivanka Trump, his daughter and senior adviser, talked to the president about it Thursday morning, people familiar with the discussions said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to divulge them.

Omar, a Somalian refugee who is one of the first two Muslim women elected to the House, called Trump a “fascist” but said there was nothing new about his behavior or the response of his supporters. She cited his years of false claims that Barack Obama was not born in the United States.

“He does that every single day, and it’s no different,” Omar said at the Capitol. “What I’m going to be busy doing is uplifting people, and making sure they understand: Here in this country we are all Americans, we are all welcome, irregardless of what he says.”

Even the House’s chaplain, the Rev. Patrick J. Conroy, could not help but join the fray. He opened the House’s session Thursday with a pointed prayer: “This has been a difficult and contentious week in which darker spirits seem to have been at play in the people’s house. In your most holy name, I now cast out all spirits of darkness from this chamber, spirits not from you.”

Walker said he had raised the issue with Pence at a breakfast Thursday, saying the chant was “something that we want to address early” before it became a staple of the president’s arena-style rallies. “We felt like this was going to be part of our discussion, to make sure that we are not defined by that.”

The repudiation of the chant was widespread, but it was anything but clear whether the condemnations would have any effect on the president’s crowds in the future.

“The ‘send her back’ chants were wrong, vile, and don’t reflect who we are as Americans,” Matt Brooks, executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition, wrote on Twitter. “I strongly oppose @IlhanMN views and policies but those chants have no place in our society.”

At least one civil rights group, Muslim Advocates, said Wednesday that Trump’s tweets and language were endangering the lives of Omar and Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., the other Muslim woman elected to Congress in November.

“The president’s open, calculated, anti-Muslim bigotry is something we expect to see much more of throughout the 2020 campaign,” Madihha Ahussain, the group’s special counsel for anti-Muslim bigotry, said in a statement. “All Americans, including all Democrats and Republicans, should unequivocally and immediately disavow this hatred.”

Trump’s tweets Sunday targeted Omar and Tlaib as well as Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts. All of them are U.S. citizens.

“This president is evolving, as predicted, deeper into the rhetoric of racism, which evolves into violence,” Ocasio-Cortez said Thursday. She said she was worried for her safety and that House Democrats were discussing how to address security concerns that have stemmed from Trump’s targeting of their members.

Omar did not express concern for her own safety, but she worried about fellow Muslim immigrants.

“What I am scared for is the safety of people who share my identity,” said Omar, who has stood out visually in Congress with colorful head coverings that make her unique in the Capitol. “When you have a president who clearly thinks someone like me should go back, the message that he is sending is not for me, it is for every single person who shares my identity.”

Emmer tried to minimize the president’s initial remarks.

“What he was trying to say is that if you don’t appreciate this country, you don’t have to be here,” Emmer said. He quoted a constituent who told him that Omar’s statements led people to believe that she hated America, adding, “How about a little gratitude with that attitude?”

The latest criticism of Trump’s language comes two days after the House took the remarkable step of passing a resolution condemning his tweets and asserting that they were “racist comments that legitimized and increased hatred of new Americans and people of color.” Only four Republicans voted yes. All others, including Emmer and Walker, voted no.

Hours before the chant broke out at the president’s reelection rally, the House killed an attempt by Rep. Al Green, D-Texas, to impeach Trump for the statements, which he said had sullied the office of the president.

But Thursday morning, Trump’s race- and ethnicity-based insults were cited by Rep. Peter Welch of Vermont, the latest Democrat to call for impeachment, as one piece of evidence that his presidency has “wrought an unprecedented and unrelenting assault on the pillars and guardrails of our democracy.”

“Instead of embracing the fundamental responsibility of every American president to unite our country, this president has unleashed a torrent of attacks on fellow citizens based on their race, gender, religion and ethnic origin,” Welch said in a statement.

The imminent departure of Duffy is another blow to the Republican Party’s struggle to rebuild after crushing losses that swept it from power in the House. The announcement by Duffy, a former county prosecutor better known for his turn in the late 1990s as a star of the MTV reality show “The Real World,” follows a rash of retirements in recent weeks that have underscored the challenges and tribulations facing Republicans now serving in the minority.

For Duffy, the decision was deeply personal, he said Monday in a Facebook post. The lawmaker, who has eight children with his wife, Rachel Campos-Duffy, said they had recently learned that their ninth child, due in October, would have “complications, including a heart condition.”

“With much prayer, I have decided that this is the right time for me to take a break from public service in order to be the support my wife, baby and family need right now,” Duffy wrote. “It is not an easy decision – because I truly love being your Congressman — but it is the right decision for my family, which is my first love and responsibility.”

The decision is expected to prompt a special election, to be set by Wisconsin’s Democratic governor, Tony Evers.

Yet Duffy’s departure is unlikely to tip the political scales: His northern Wisconsin district, once competitive, is now regarded as solidly Republican. Duffy won reelection there last fall by about 20 percentage points, and President Donald Trump had a 20-point advantage there in 2016.

Duffy has been among the most vocal Republicans in his support for the president, rarely missing the chance to attend Trump’s rallies in Wisconsin and often taking his side publicly when he is criticized.

This year, Duffy introduced legislation to give the president more power to exact tariffs as retaliation for other countries imposing tariffs on the United States. It was a departure from other Republican lawmakers who have expressed concern, publicly and privately, about Trump’s penchant for protectionism.

Last month, when House Democrats brought up a resolution to condemn as racist Trump’s comments about four progressive congresswomen of color, Duffy was among the Republicans who took to the House floor to speak in the president’s defense. He called the women “anti-American” and praised Trump’s immigration policies, denying that the president’s comments merited condemnation.

Duffy’s decision to leave midway throughout his fifth term comes on the heels of several other Republican lawmakers announcing they will not seek reelection in 2020. They have publicly cited various reasons, including a desire to spend more time with family. But in private conversations, many Republicans acknowledge a list of reasons that make the prospect of another run unappealing: a bleak outlook for reclaiming the House, the doldrums of life in the minority and the prospect of sharing a ticket with Trump and being asked to answer for his every comment and policy pronouncement.

Duffy did not mention any of that in his statement Monday, but he did say the idea of life after Congress had a certain appeal.

“I will miss being your Congressman,” he wrote, “but I am also looking forward to having more time with my family, being home for more birthdays and hockey games, and having time to enjoy and care for our new baby girl, who is already so loved by our family.”

A spokeswoman for Evers said that the governor would call for a special election once the vacancy took effect, but that he and his team were still working to determine when to hold it. The state’s laws stipulate that the contest must be called before the second Tuesday in April, the spokeswoman said, leaving open the possibility that it could be held on the same day as Wisconsin’s April 7 presidential primary. That would almost certainly drive up turnout among Democrats.

This article originally appeared in

Wisconsin Congressman, Citing Family Health Issues, Will Resign Soon

WASHINGTON — Rep. Sean P. Duffy, R-Wis., one of the most recognizable faces of the Tea Party wave of 2010, announced Monday that he planned to resign from Congress next month, citing health complications of a baby he and his wife are expecting in October.

Trump did not go into specifics about what he considered to be Jews’ disloyalty, but his language echoed the anti-Semitic smear that Jews are more devoted to Israel than they are to their own country, an accusation that goes as far back as the Roman Empire and is now used by white nationalists.

Trump’s comments were the latest turn in a toxic controversy over religion and politics that erupted last week after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, at the president’s urging, barred an official visit to Israel by the first two Muslim women in Congress, Reps. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, both Democrats. The two have been harshly critical of Israel.

The move prompted condemnation from diplomats and analysts across the political spectrum that in Trump’s zeal to curry favor with Jewish voters and tighten his alliance with Netanyahu, he risked endangering the bipartisan support of Israel that has long existed in the United States, the country’s most reliable ally.

“It’s unclear who @POTUS is claiming Jews would be ‘disloyal’ to,” Jonathan Greenblatt, the chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League, said on Twitter, using a common acronym to refer to the president of the United States, “but charges of disloyalty have long been used to attack Jews.”

Logan Bayroff, the communications director for J Street, a progressive Jewish organization, said: “It is dangerous and shameful for President Trump to attack the large majority of the American Jewish community as unintelligent and ‘disloyal.’ But it is no surprise that the president’s racist, disingenuous attacks on progressive women of color in Congress have now transitioned into smears against Jews.”

In his comments Tuesday, the president lashed out anew at Omar and Tlaib for suggesting in a news conference Monday that the United States should cut off aid to Israel. The two are vocal proponents of the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, which advocates cutting ties with Israel until it ends its occupation of the West Bank. It is often condemned by its critics as inherently anti-Semitic.

“Where has the Democratic Party gone?” Trump said in the Oval Office, at the tail end of a freewheeling round of comments to reporters during a visit by the president of Romania. “Where have they gone where they are defending these two people over the state of Israel? And I think any Jewish people that vote for a Democrat, I think it shows either a total lack of knowledge or great disloyalty.”

The remark was the latest from a president who has a history of language that stokes racial and religious divisions, some of which has surfaced recently in the statements and writings of deranged people bent on committing violence.

On Tuesday, the FBI said it had arrested a Nazi sympathizer who threatened to butcher a Hispanic woman and boasted that Trump would wipe out nonwhites in a “racial war and crusade.” Earlier this month, a 21-year-old man accused of killing 22 people and injuring dozens more at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, wrote a manifesto echoing Trump’s language calling migrants crossing the southwestern border “an invasion” and saying that “this attack is a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas.”

The president’s “disloyalty” comment prompted a fresh round of outrage Tuesday from Jewish leaders, who called it divisive and dangerous.

Rep. Ted Deutch, D-Fla., said Trump should apologize for using “the kind of language that ends up fueling the anger of white nationalists.”

“What the president is doing is creating an environment in which anti-Semitism can flourish,” Deutch said on CNN.

Trump’s remarks Tuesday had broad implications: According to the Pew Research Center, 79% of Jews voted for Democrats in last year’s midterm congressional elections. The president’s comments were in keeping with his strategy of trying to make the two Muslim lawmakers, along with two other progressive congresswomen of color who have been among his most vocal critics, the face of the Democratic Party.

“AOC plus three,” Trump said, referring to the first-term quartet of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Tlaib, Omar and Rep. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, whom he has repeatedly attacked in explicitly racial terms. “That’s what I call it: Just take AOC plus three. And you should see the things that the four of them have said about Israel over the last couple of years.”

Some conservative allies of Trump in the Jewish community sprung to his defense Tuesday, arguing that the president’s comments were giving voice to a sense of befuddlement among many American Jews that too many Democrats appeared to be tolerating extreme views about Israel within their ranks. Matt Brooks, the executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition, said the views of Omar and Tlaib, both of whom have made remarks condemned as anti-Semitic, were far outside the mainstream of their party and the country as a whole, and should be rejected by other Democrats.

“There is a growing cancer within the Democratic Party right now of people who are supportive of BDS, who are advocating a shift in the U.S.-Israel relationship away from the strong bond that exists now between this administration and the government in Israel,” Brooks said. “As the center of gravity in the Democratic Party moves further and further to the left, this problem becomes clearer and more acute. It’s certainly not an indictment of the entire Democratic Party, but the unfortunate part is that none of them are speaking up and speaking out.”

In fact, the Democrat-led House voted overwhelmingly last month to condemn the boycott-Israel movement. During the debate, Tlaib, who is Palestinian American, passionately defended the movement as a legitimate economic protest to advance human rights, calling Israel’s policies toward Palestinians “racist” and comparing the campaign to American boycotts of Nazi Germany.

On Monday in St. Paul, Minnesota, Omar raised the prospect of cutting off aid to Israel, arguing that a central purpose of the visit that she and Tlaib had hoped to make there was to conduct oversight over the $3 billion in funding that the United States provides.

“We must be asking, as Israel’s ally, the Netanyahu government stop the expansion of settlements on Palestinian land and ensure full rights for Palestinians if we are to give them aid,” Omar said. “We know Donald Trump would love nothing more than to use this issue to pit Muslims and Jewish Americans against each other. The Muslim community and the Jewish community are being othered and made into the boogeyman by this administration.”

In an emotional moment during the news conference, Tlaib broke down in tears when discussing why she turned down a last-minute offer by Netanyahu’s government to allow her to visit her 90-year-old grandmother in the West Bank if she promised not to speak out about the boycott during her stay.

“I’m her free bird, so why would I come back and be caged and bow down when my election rose her head up high, gave her dignity for the first time?” Tlaib said of her grandmother. “You don’t let anybody tell you that you’re less than or humiliate you.”

Trump ridiculed the congresswoman for the display, saying her grief was not genuine.

“All of a sudden, she starts with tears, tears — I don’t buy it,” Trump said. “I don’t buy it for a second, because I’ve seen her in a very vicious mood at campaign rallies.”

“I saw a woman who was violent and vicious and out of control,” Trump added, without elaborating on what violence he was referring to.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/20/us/politics/trump-jewish-voters.html" id="59eda4c6-4d7f-3c28-a59f-65ba2c624a4b">The New York Times</a>.

Trump Accuses Jewish Democrats of 'Great Disloyalty'

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said Tuesday that any Jewish person who votes for a Democrat is guilty of ignorance or “great disloyalty,” intensifying his efforts to drive in a partisan wedge over religion and support for Israel even as he appeared to draw on an anti-Semitic trope.

The bill, passed by a bipartisan 402-12 vote, would authorize $10.2 billion for the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund. It comes in the face of a large uptick in medical claims from people who worked on “the pile,” as the steaming heap of steel rubble was often called by those who labored there in the months after the attack in 2001. Many of them have since become gravely sick with cancer and other ailments.

Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney, D-N.Y., who has led the charge to replenish the fund, said the bill fulfilled “a moral obligation” Congress has to the Sept. 11 emergency workers, who rushed to the rubble immediately after the attacks, and others who worked there in the months that followed. The cause was championed by comedian Jon Stewart and brought to an emotional peak by the death two weeks ago of Luis G. Alvarez, a former New York City detective and advocate for the emergency workers.

“It’s the least we can do as a grateful nation,” Maloney said. “They were there for us; we have to be there for them, and we have a double moral responsibility. Not only were they the veterans of the war on terror, they were told by their government that the site was safe, when it was not.”

Maloney has for months walked the halls of Congress in a black firefighter jacket with fluorescent yellow reflective stripes and her name emblazoned on the back, to draw attention to the bill and her drive to pass it. The jacket was given to her by emergency workers pushing for an extension of the fund, and she had said she would not take it off until that goal was achieved.

“The ceremonial removal,” she said Friday before a small crowd of reporters on the steps of the Capitol immediately following the vote, turning around to shrug the jacket off her shoulders.

House passage of the bill sends it to the Republican-led Senate, where the majority leader, Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, has said he would try to bring it up this month before the chamber adjourns for its summer recess.

“Nothing about our shared goal to provide for these heroes is remotely partisan,” McConnell said in a statement Friday that called the Sept. 11 emergency workers “the very definition of American heroes and patriots.”

“We will consider this important legislation soon,” he said.

The measure has drawn broad bipartisan backing this year after an outcry from victims and their families, a number of whom visited Capitol Hill last month along with Stewart to push for quick passage. But the fund has always encountered resistance from Senate Republicans, who sought to block it in 2011. McConnell’s statement last month that he would try to bring up the measure came only after advocates targeted him for holding it up, with Stewart calling the majority leader “an impediment.”

Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California credited Stewart on Friday “for the spotlight that he put on it, to make it too hot to handle for the Senate not to take up the bill.”

“This was an overwhelming expression of bipartisan support for our brave first responders and their families,” Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said in a statement Friday. “Sen. McConnell should put the House-passed bill on the Senate floor for a vote ASAP, and not let other Republicans push them to the back burner like the last time.”

Maloney said the compensation measure, while it has special resonance in New York, was in fact a matter of national concern because, by her calculations, those who worked at ground zero included people in 433 out of the 435 congressional districts. She said its passage should mark the last time that Sept. 11 workers and their advocates should have to go to Congress to plead for help.

“I hope deeply that none of them will ever have to come to Washington again,” Maloney said.

Time is of the essence for saving the fund. More than $5 billion of the $7.4 billion that was allocated in 2015 for the next five years has been spent; a special master administering it announced in February that payments would have to be cut in half for those who had already made claims, and by 70% for anyone who applied in the future. The legislation includes about $4 billion to cover existing claims.

“There are so many people in the prime of life who have been cut down from these 9/11 cancers, blood disorders, the various intestinal tract illnesses — it’s just been a horrible experience to go through for all of these people and their families,” said Rep. Peter T. King, R-N.Y. “Hopefully, this will be the final struggle.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/12/us/politics/9-11-first-responders-fund.html" id="49c9f09c-2312-3984-a692-c79b48f260f5">The New York Times</a>.

'The Least We Can Do': House Votes to Extend Fund for 9/11 Workers

WASHINGTON — The House on Friday approved legislation to replenish a depleted federal fund to compensate emergency workers and others who became ill as a result of their work in the ruins of the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan, extending it for the lifetime of those who were at Sept. 11’s ground zero.

'The least we can do': House votes to extend fund for 9/11 workers

McKillop, a 72-year-old nurse, loves that Perry is a pediatrician, and regards her as exactly the kind of person she wants to send to Washington: a strong conservative who opposes abortion and will deal with what McKillop describes as “all these Mexicans” by building a wall and securing the border. But there’s something else on her mind, she tells Perry, leaning in slightly and lowering her voice as if sharing a secret with a girlfriend.

“I sort of like that you’re a woman; is that a little prejudiced?” McKillop said last week with a giggle.

Perry is in the final stretch of a campaign in this sprawling eastern North Carolina district that has become something of a test case for her party, with substantial implications across the country. As Republicans work to recruit and cultivate a new crop of female candidates — a critical ingredient, leaders and strategists say, to rebuilding after a disastrous midterm election — Perry’s fate will go a long way toward demonstrating whether the party can unite behind a woman.

On Tuesday, Perry, 61, faces Dr. Greg Murphy, 56, a state representative and urological surgeon, in a Republican primary runoff for the chance to run in a special election this fall to succeed Rep. Walter B. Jones, who died in February. Murphy won a 17-way Republican primary in late April, prompting the two-way runoff with Perry, who came in second.

The contest has sparked a kind of battle of the sexes at the highest levels of the Republican Party, pitting two of the party’s most conservative men, who are among President Donald Trump’s closest allies in Congress, against all 13 Republican women in the House.

Rep. Mark Meadows of North Carolina, the chairman of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus, and Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, a founder of the group, endorsed Murphy after he promised to join their caucus if elected. Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the chairwoman of the Republican Conference, is backing Perry, who also has support from Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa and the former Alaska governor Sarah Palin.

The fight has attracted national interest, and with it, more than $1.5 million in outside spending. In recent days, fiercely negative ads have saturated the airwaves, transforming the contest into the ugliest in recent memory for many in this mostly rural and deeply conservative area.

It is the inaugural effort by WFW Action Fund, the political arm of a group called Winning for Women that is the first of its kind dedicated solely to electing Republican women, to sway a primary election. WFW Action has poured nearly $900,000 into the race, much of it going to advertisements attacking Murphy as a liberal out of step with Trump. In recent days, the group has also funded robocalls by Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker, and Palin, in which they call Perry the real conservative in the race and urge people to vote for her.

“This is the first real opportunity after the midterms for Republicans to prove how serious they are about electing women,” said Olivia Perez-Cubas, a spokeswoman for WFW Action Fund. “We are hoping this race sets the tone for lots more women to come.”

Not if the party’s prominent conservative men have anything to say about it. House Freedom Action, the political arm of the Freedom Caucus, which has reported spending about $240,000 in the race, has answered by portraying Perry as a closet progressive. One TV spot calls her “another lying Nancy Pelosi liberal.” Another political action group, Awake Carolina, which has spent more than $150,000, has circulated a mailer showing Perry superimposed on the tattooed face of a member of the brutal transnational gang MS-13.

Murphy, a three-term state legislator who has deep ties within the North Carolina Republican establishment, is running as a political outsider. The “swamp,” he says, is targeting him because of his association with Meadows. He declined through an aide to be interviewed; he was, said Doug Raymond, his campaign manager, “chasing votes, not headlines.”

Perry, a triathlete who has never run for political office, said she was moved to mount her first bid after New York passed the Reproductive Health Act. The measure expanded abortion rights, allowing the procedure after 24 weeks to protect the mother’s health or if the fetus was not viable.

“I really felt strongly that, as there are remarkable Democratic women voices speaking out on this, that there needs to be a strong conservative female voice with medical expertise speaking to this issue,” Perry said in an interview here last week, as an air-conditioned white minivan ferried her from house to house to knock on doors. At her feet were her campaign must-haves: an ivory canvas bag containing door cards, stickers, a glass bottle filled with iced green tea, pistachios and other snacks, and a book of daily Scripture readings.

Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York, who has dedicated her political fundraising operation to supporting Republican women in their primaries, said the race reflected an important shift.

“What it does show is, other women who are stepping forward, and we have dozens of them, it shows that there’s going to be support financially,” Stefanik said. “We haven’t necessarily seen that in past cycles.”

It has also highlighted the stereotypes confronting Republican women, who are often perceived by voters and caricatured by their opponents as more moderate or liberal-leaning, simply by nature of their gender.

“To pigeonhole female Republicans into a certain ideological mold is wrong, and it’s sexist, and I think the Freedom Caucus is walking that line here,” Stefanik said. “This is an opportunity for voters to send a strong, conservative woman to the House.”

Raymond said the involvement of outside groups whose agenda is electing more Republican women has been a “polarizing factor” in the race, and cast doubt on Perry’s political leanings.

“A lot of women from across the political spectrum have come in to support her because they have their common goal,” Raymond said, naming Stefanik, who is more politically moderate. “Greg’s talked about how he thinks it would be great to have more women in Congress, but we don’t believe in playing identity politics. You want to vote for the person who best represents the district.”

Things have gotten testy between the two doctors. They sparred over who was the heir apparent to Jones, who served for 12 terms, with Murphy insisting he had the congressman’s endorsement until his widow, Joe Anne Jones, held a news conference saying she backed Perry.

And Murphy has not tried to hide his fury at the negative advertising from groups supporting his opponent, especially one spot that took him out of context to suggest that he had once called the president “the worst top of the ticket in our history.” He threatened to sue.

“He acted like a little baby,” said Perry, who said she disagreed with the ad. “My oldest son said, ‘Mom, you’ve got to put out a commercial asking Greg if you need to be his lawn mower mother — rather than helicopter mother — parting the way to take care of him.’”

Perry, a mother of five adult sons and grandmother of 10, is no stranger to crashing old boys’ clubs. She was in the first class of scholars that included women to win the Morehead scholarship, a prestigious program created by a founder of Union Carbide.

She dreamed of becoming an ear, nose and throat surgeon — “I didn’t want to be a pediatrician or an O.B., because that’s what women did, and I didn’t want to be like a typical woman,” she said. But she jettisoned the idea when she became pregnant during her first year of medical school and realized that there were no women in surgical specialties. (Besides, the men dominating the field were “crass” and “disgusting,” she said, sexually harassing her and her female peers to the point where “we could have sued the pants off all these surgeons.”)

At Merchant’s Grocery, a cheeseburger-and-fries joint on the outskirts of town, Perry chatted up the all-male lunchtime crowd. The subject of the lopsided demographic breakdown in the House came up — of the women, 89 are Democrats and only 13 are Republican — and one male attendee noted that female lawmakers always seemed to make the most noise.

Tommy Jones, 68, a retired restaurant owner, said he voted for Murphy in the primary but was considering backing Perry on Tuesday.

“We want somebody who will support constitutional principles, and support the president, and I think she probably would do that, too,” Jones said. “The only thing is that women, as you well know, sometimes get to be kind of emotional. I’d have to think about that.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/07/us/politics/north-carolina-republican-women.html" id="53febacb-2485-3239-a4c6-0d1c40993468">The New York Times</a>.

A Battle of the Sexes in North Carolina Fuels a Wider Republican Clash

NEW BERN, N.C. — On a sultry summer morning, Diane McKillop stood in her driveway gushing over Dr. Joan Perry, the Republican congressional candidate who showed up at her door to ask for her vote.

A battle of the sexes in North Carolina fuels a wider Republican clash

The failure of House liberals to attach strict conditions to billions of dollars in emergency border aid requested by President Donald Trump highlighted the outsize power of about two dozen centrist Democrats, mainly from Republican-leaning districts, who are asserting themselves to pull the chamber to the right.

Their views diverge sharply from the mostly liberal cast of Democrats seeking their party’s presidential nomination and from the diverse new crop of outspoken liberals in the House who have captured the public’s imagination and infused new energy into the progressive majority of their caucus. But their victories in districts that Trump won in 2016 are the reason House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California, a staunch liberal herself, holds her gavel. For now, they are proving far more effective at wielding their influence than those in the party’s vocal and headline-grabbing left.

“Where they come from is crucial to holding the House, and that makes them very influential,” said Laura Hall of the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington. “If you’re Speaker Pelosi or another member of the Democratic leadership, you have to always be thinking about those members whose seats went from red to blue and helped to flip the House.”

The moderates’ latest use of that clout played out in sometimes ugly fashion last week in the Capitol, in heated scrums on the House floor, angry exchanges between erstwhile allies, mudslinging on Twitter, and late-night meetings with leadership. One liberal accused his moderate colleagues of enabling child abuse. A moderate clapped back that the name-caller, Rep. Mark Pocan of Wisconsin, was just chasing followers on social media.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, whose rock-starlike popularity on the left has given her a louder than usual microphone for a first-term lawmaker, accused the moderates of being the new Tea Party.

Their tactics, she huffed, are “just horrifying.”

The nasty intraparty divisions looked familiar to Republicans, who could scarcely restrain their glee as Pelosi grappled with the same dynamics their party faced when it held the House majority. Former Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin and his predecessor, John Boehner of Ohio, had to contend with the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus, the ideological outgrowth of the Tea Party, which routinely threatened to vote against crucial measures they considered insufficiently conservative.

“It seems to me that Nancy Pelosi’s facing exactly the same set of problems that John Boehner faced,” Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., said with a chuckle. “She’s very able, but it’s rough. We've been there.”

Well, not quite. The Tea Party, which drew its name from the mantra “Taxed Enough Already,” represented the far-right of the Republican Party, while the coalition of Democrats that is now asserting itself is in the center, often allied with moderate Republicans across the aisle.

But unlike Ocasio-Cortez and her like-minded colleagues, the moderates have taken a tactical page from the roughly 40 Republicans who make up the Freedom Caucus, whose sway in the Republican majority came from their willingness to defect from the party line on crucial votes unless they received concessions.

While the House’s liberal superstars are adept at promoting their progressive positions and routinely generate headlines for breaking with the party line, they have not made a habit of lobbying their colleagues to defy Pelosi en masse. Last week, the foursome known as The Squad — Ocasio-Cortez and Reps. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ayanna S. Pressley of Massachusetts — announced their opposition to a Democratic border spending bill that included strict rules on the way the money could be used, saying it was not liberal enough. But when that first vote was tallied, they were the only four Democrats opposed, and the measure passed easily.

The moderates, in contrast, have been ready and willing to bring legislation down. In a majority that holds the House by a narrow margin, Pelosi can afford to lose no more than 17 of her fellow Democrats on any vote. That gives a potent weapon to any faction that can hold together that many lawmakers to insist on its position.

The moderates began demonstrating their penchant for breaking with their leaders on the House floor early this year, siding with Republicans on procedural votes meant to put Democrats in a tough political spot. They also balked at a two-year budget measure they worried would worsen a fiscal picture already badly stained by red ink. Threats to block any effort by liberals to increase domestic spending essentially assured that the bill would not have the necessary support to pass, and the vote was postponed indefinitely.

Their influence has also been felt on one major initiative that has not taken off; concern for their fates is one reason that Democratic leaders seldom talk about impeaching Trump, a move that is now supported by more than 80 House Democrats, about one-third of the caucus, almost all of them progressives.

But last week was the centrists’ most visible and audacious power play yet.

With the Senate and House at a stalemate over the $4.6 billion humanitarian aid package, several of the moderates banded together and threatened to side with Republicans to block a Democratic alternative that contained less money for immigration enforcement and more conditions for the administration. The move pushed Pelosi to abandon her plan to pass the more restrictive bill, which had higher standards for facilities holding migrant children. Instead she brought up a Senate version that had bipartisan support and swiftly cleared it to become law.

The move left Pelosi’s natural allies in the House’s Hispanic and progressive caucuses stunned and feeling betrayed. “Since when did the Problem Solvers Caucus become the Child Abuse Caucus?” Pocan said on Twitter. Reps. Max Rose, D-N.Y., and Dean Phillips, D-Minn., were later seen angrily confronting him on the House floor.

Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva, D-Ariz., a former co-chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said the episode left him “very resentful,” and feeling as if the moderates had essentially forced the House to silence its natural inclinations.

“I just hope that in forcing us to do nothing, they don’t feel like they’ve actually accomplished anything,” Grijalva said. “I don’t know what the motivation was, to try to assert some power or what, but in the future, we shouldn’t hesitate bringing our agenda and our legislation forward because it might offend 23 or 24” centrists.

The episode also exposed divisions among the moderates themselves. On the House floor Thursday, about 10 moderate freshman Democrats huddled near the marble dais, arguing about the way forward. One lawmaker said if they sided with the other party in a bid to force the House to consider the weaker Senate bill, “we might as well be Republicans,” according to one person familiar with the exchange who described it on the condition of anonymity.

Rep. Abigail Spanberger, D-Va., grew red-faced and emotional during the exchange, and stormed off the House floor, returning a short time later and accepting an embrace from Rep. Katie Porter, D-Calif. Both ultimately supported the bill.

It was a version of a point that had been made, in much gentler fashion, during floor remarks by Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., the chairman of the Rules Committee. He warned that the procedural move the moderates were threatening to join “is a vote to give control of the House floor to the Republicans.”

The moderates said they had done the party a favor, getting the House to the only tenable position as quickly as possible.

“The question was, would you rather just obstruct and delay, as some wanted to, or were we going to get humanitarian aid to children at the border right now?” said Rep. Josh Gottheimer, D-N.J., the co-chairman of the Problem Solvers Caucus, a group of 23 Republicans and 23 Democrats that presses for bipartisan compromises.

The group met on Wednesday and discussed the mounting anxiety many of them had about going home for a July 4 recess having failed to pass the border bill. After taking a vote, members decided to issue a news release calling for the House to pass the Senate bill, effectively surrendering a politically risky fight over immigration so the aid could go through.

“There was a very significant and real concern that we wouldn’t act at all and leave town with no immediate humanitarian aid for children at the border,” Gottheimer said. “That was unacceptable.”

The result was a bitter pill for liberals who had insisted they could not vote for the aid package without tough new restrictions and higher standards for facilities that hold migrant children.

Pressley conceded that the left had work to do to figure out how to wield its power more effectively.

“We are building new muscle,” she said in an interview, “and as we build that new muscle, we will better understand how to flex it.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/30/us/politics/left-moderate-democrats.html" id="fb7814f6-d97c-3d8b-a670-0937aa7547a3">The New York Times</a>.

For All the Talk of a Tea Party of the Left, Moderates Emerge as a Democratic Power

WASHINGTON — For all the talk of a Tea Party of the left, the true power in the House revealed its face last week — the Mighty Moderates.

For all the talk of a tea party of the left, moderates emerge as a Democratic power

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