A small group of Republican state lawmakers considered vulnerable by Democrats has drawn multiple challengers, setting up races that could help determine the balance of power in Sacramento after November. Under California’s top-two primary system, the two candidates who receive the most votes advance to the general election, regardless of party.

Democratic candidates in swing districts are hoping President Donald Trump’s declining popularity in California, along with voter reaction to his policies on tariffs, immigration enforcement and the war in Iran, will create problems for Republican incumbents. GOP lawmakers, meanwhile, have sought to avoid making Trump the focus of their campaigns while still holding support from the party’s pro-Trump base.

One of the Inland Empire’s most closely watched races is in Riverside County, where Assemblymember Leticia Castillo, a Corona Republican, is expected to face a rematch with Riverside City Councilmember Clarissa Cervantes, a Democrat. Cervantes narrowly lost to Castillo two years ago after raising substantial campaign funds. Tuesday’s results could provide a preview of how competitive their November contest may be.

In the Coachella Valley, Republican Assemblymember Jeff Gonzalez of Coachella is being challenged by three Democrats. Gonzalez has taken a more moderate position on immigration than many of his Republican colleagues, a stance that could be tested in a district where Democrats see an opportunity.

Similar dynamics are playing out in other purple districts across the state, from northern Sacramento County to Orange County, where Republican incumbents are trying to hold off Democratic efforts to flip seats.

Democrats are also defending seats in Southern California. In San Diego County, Sen. Catherine Blakespear, an Encinitas Democrat, faces Republican Laura Bassett in a district expected to be competitive.

Elsewhere in the state, heavily Democratic areas are featuring crowded intraparty contests for open seats. In the coastal district that includes Malibu and Santa Monica, several Democrats are competing to replace Sen. Ben Allen, who is running for state insurance commissioner. In Los Angeles, a five-way race to succeed Assemblymember Mike Gipson, who is leaving office because of term limits, has divided major labor unions and Democratic organizations.

San Diego County also has a Republican contest that may signal where the state party is headed. The race to replace GOP Sen. Brian Jones, who is termed out, has become a fight between two wings of the party: a more moderate San Marcos city councilmember backed by Jones and a far-right conservative contender.

Together, the results will offer an early measure of how much national politics may shape California’s legislative races — and whether Democrats can turn concerns about Trump into gains in competitive districts across Southern California and beyond.

Original source: CalMatters

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WASHINGTON (AP) — As Congress returns to session this week, lawmakers will be trying to forge an agreement on sending a new round of wartime assistance to Ukraine. But to succeed, they will have to find agreement on an issue that has confounded them for decades.

Republicans in both chambers of Congress have made clear that they will not support additional aid for Ukraine unless it is paired with border security measures to help manage the influx of migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border. Their demand has injected one of the most contentious issues in American politics into a foreign policy debate that was already difficult.

Time is short for a deal.

A small, bipartisan group in the Senate is taking the lead and working to find a narrow compromise that can overcome a likely filibuster by winning 60 votes. But even if they can reach a modest agreement, there is no guarantee it would pass the House, where Republicans are insisting on wholesale changes to U.S. border and immigration policies.

Republicans hope that Democrats will feel political pressure to accept some of their border proposals after illegal crossings topped a daily average of more than 8,000 earlier this fall. President Joe Biden, who is running for reelection next year, has faced pressure even from fellow Democrats over the migrant flow.

No matter what, finding compromise will be exceedingly difficult. As they left for Thanksgiving break, Senate negotiators said they were still far apart.

A look at some of the issues under discussion and why they have proved so difficult to resolve:

Asylum and humanitarian parole

Changing the asylum system for migrants is a top priority for Republicans. They want to make it more difficult for asylum-seekers to prove in initial interviews that they have a credible fear of political, religious or racial persecution in their home country before advancing toward asylum in the United States.

Republicans in the House have passed legislation that would detain families at the border, require migrants to make the asylum claim at an official port of entry and either detain them or require them to remain outside the U.S. while their case is processed.

U.S. and international law give migrants the right to seek safety from persecution, but the number of people applying for asylum in the U.S. has reached historic highs. Critics say many people take advantage of the system to live and work in the U.S. while they wait for their asylum claims to be processed in court.

Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, an independent who is part of the Senate negotiations, said in an Arizona radio interview that one of lawmakers’ goals is to ensure that “those who are here seeking asylum have an actual claim to asylum.”

Compromise is far from certain. Many Democrats are wary of making it harder to flee persecution, and the details of each policy shift are contentious.

Hardline conservatives in the House, already unlikely to support further Ukraine aid, have also signaled they won’t accept policy changes that deviate much from a bill passed in May that would have remade the U.S. immigration system. Their stance means at least some support from House Democrats will be needed to pass any agreement — no easy task.

Some progressives have already said they will oppose any Republican-led changes to immigration policy.

“The cruel, inhumane, and unworkable solutions offered by Republicans will only create more disorder and confusion at the border,” said Democratic Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

Infrastructure and enforcement

Lawmakers may find it easier to reach consensus on other areas of border policy, particularly when it comes to border staffing and enforcement.

Negotiators have looked at steps that could be taken to reinforce existing infrastructure at the border, including hiring and boosting pay for border patrol officers and improving technology. One proposal advanced by a bipartisan group of senators would call for hiring of more border patrol agents, raising their pay and ensuring they receive overtime.

Biden has shown a willingness to accept tougher enforcement measures, recently resuming deportation of migrants to Venezuela and waiving federal laws to allow for the construction of border wall that began under then-President Donald Trump. The White House also wants to install new imaging technology at ports of entry that would allow authorities to quickly scan vehicles for illegal imports, including fentanyl.

Republicans say that is not enough. They want more robust improvements, including more expansive construction of a border wall.

What Biden is asking for

Biden’s emergency request to Congress included aid for Ukraine, Israel and other U.S. allies, along with $14 billion to bolster the immigration system and border security. Money would go toward hiring more border patrol agents, immigration judges and asylum officers. It’s part of Biden’s strategy of trying to simultaneously turn away from Trump’s hard-line policies but adapt to the realities of crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Still, polls indicate widespread frustration with Biden’s handling of immigration and the border, creating a political vulnerability as he seeks reelection. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told the Senate Appropriations Committee this month that the administration has been faced with a “global phenomenon” of displaced people migrating in numbers that have not been seen since World War II.

“It is unanimous that our broken immigration system is in dire need of reform,” Mayorkas said.

Democrats have other immigration priorities, such as expanding legal immigration pathways or work authorizations for migrants already in the U.S. Democrats have also warned about the danger of delaying aid to Ukraine as it enters another winter of war against Russia.

Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, the second-ranking Democrat in the Senate, said it’s a mistake to create a situation where “we have to do significant immigration reform in the next few weeks or we won’t send money to assist the people in Ukraine or other causes important to our national security.”

Republicans have so far been adamant about the need to address Ukraine and the border at the same time.

Rep. Mike Turner, a strong supporter of aid to Ukraine and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday that he thought passing Biden’s package would be “very difficult” to accomplish by year’s end. “The impediment currently is the White House policy on the on the southern border,” said Turner, R-Ohio.

What’s likely not on the table

Lawmakers seem unlikely to address one of the nation’s long-standing immigration issues: granting some form of permanent legal status to thousands of immigrants who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children. Republicans have made clear that will not be addressed in this package, which they want to be more narrowly focused on border security measures.

As Congress struggled to pass a comprehensive immigration overhaul, President Barack Obama launched the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program in 2012 to shield those immigrants from deportation and allow them to work legally in the country. But it has been caught up in the courts ever since, and Trump, the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, tried to end it when he was in the White House.

Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut, one of the Senate negotiators, would not say early last week whether his side had proposed DACA provisions as part of the talks. But he said any deal “has to respect both Republican and Democratic priorities.”

“The more Republicans want, the more Democrats are going to want,” Murphy said.

Republicans argue that Ukraine aid could be a tough sell to some of their voters, and the border policy is the compromise.

Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton, a Republican who has been involved in the talks, said before the Thanksgiving holiday that the negotiations were not “very close yet, because Democrats have not yet accepted that the negotiations are not border security for Democratic immigration priorities. It’s border security for Ukraine aid.”

So far, leaders in both parties have encouraged the talks. But as senators restart their work and face pressure to approve funding by the end of the year, some are warning that a narrow deal is likely the best that they can do.

“I don’t think it’s realistic to solve anywhere close to the whole problem in the next two weeks,” Murphy said.

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Nearly two decades ago, Gavin Newsom catapulted onto the national political stage when, as mayor of San Francisco, he began issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. It was an act of defiance, far ahead of public opinion at the time, and so controversial that some of his fellow Democrats blamed him for costing the party the presidential election later that year.

But for Newsom, who said he was driven by a “moral obligation,” it eventually became a political calling card — validation for progressive voters of his fearless leadership and forward thinking that would be proven right by history.

Now the second-term governor is himself burdened by presidential ambitions — if not his own, then those of just about every pundit compiling a list of future Democratic contenders — and maneuvering more cautiously than he once did.

Even as he regularly rips Republicans across the country for stripping back the rights of Americans, Newsom declined several times in recent weeks to extend new protections to marginalized groups, delivering stinging legislative defeats to allies on some of the year’s most contentious issues.

Following a month-long hunger strike by supporters outside a Capitol office building, Newsom vetoed a measure that would have made California the first state in the country to outlaw caste discrimination. His rejection last month of a bill requiring judges to consider a parent’s affirmation of their child’s gender identity in custody disputes generated such an intense outcry that the governor’s office rushed out a package of new laws supporting LGBTQ rights the next day.

Assemblymember Lori Wilson, the Suisun City Democrat who carried the custody measure, Assembly Bill 957, said California is so often at the forefront of national debates that it “can be a shock to the system” when the state forgoes that leadership position.

“We are so used to, and sometimes take for granted, how often we get to be in the lead on these issues,” she said.

Entering the national stage

The “rights regression” has become one of Newsom’s regular talking points. At public events, he decries conservative efforts to roll back protections for abortion, voting access, LGBTQ people and more.

It came up at a signing ceremony last month for new gun safety laws, where the governor warned there was only so much the state could do under an assault of hostile court decisions. When he appointed Laphonza Butler, an openly lesbian Black woman, to succeed the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein earlier this month, he praised Butler as “uniquely positioned” to stand up to “this cultural purge that’s going on in this country.”

“That’s for a national stage,” where Newsom is trying to cement his place by rebranding himself as a leading defender of these rights cherished by liberal voters, said David McCuan, a political science professor at Sonoma State University.

Despite his frequent protests that he has no interest in the presidency, the increasingly national lens through which Newsom approaches his job has made it impossible not to view his actions as a potential positioning for a future campaign. The governor went on a “red state tour” earlier this year to promote Democrats in conservative communities and is preparing to debate Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican presidential candidate, next month on Fox News.

Lawmakers and advocates are often reluctant to discuss Newsom’s intentions on the record, including several who declined to comment for this story. But the speculation has become pervasive in political circles, a nearly automatic framing for analyzing the governor’s decisions, especially on the most contentious matters.

Anthony York, a spokesperson for Newsom, said every piece of legislation is evaluated on its merits and the governor takes that process seriously. The caste discrimination and custody measures were vetoed because of specific policy concerns, he said, and do not represent any broader retreat by Newsom from his defense of civil rights.

“You have to take the bills individually,” York said. “I would argue that California continues to be a leader on protecting and expanding rights.”

Newsom signed 890 bills this year — 85% of the 1,046 measures that made it to his desk — including many that advanced liberal priorities such as abortion access, gun control and environmental protections. Some are bold new policies unique in the country, such as a requirement for large companies to disclose their greenhouse gas emissions and a ban on certain chemicals commonly used in sweets.

Yet the proposals that the governor rejects can seem more instructive about just how far he believes the country is ready for a mainstream politician to wade into unsettled and controversial issues, such as drug use. Newsom, who once led the charge for California to legalize recreational cannabis, raised some eyebrows by vetoing a bill to decriminalize magic mushrooms and other plant-based psychedelics, something voters in Oregon and Colorado have already done.

Newsom and his team “are being very cautious about not leading public opinion and getting away from the median voter,” which occasionally belies his fiery rhetoric about rights regression, McCuan said. “The danger is that it positions him as a hollow vessel.”

Disappointing LGBTQ allies

Wilson said it’s a question she heard repeatedly from colleagues and supporters of her custody bill amid their anger and frustration over Newsom’s veto: Is this governor thinking about what’s best for Californians, or what’s best nationally?

His veto message, notably, urged caution about dictating legal standards for the judiciary branch to apply because “other-minded elected officials” in other states “could very well use this strategy to diminish the civil rights of vulnerable communities.”

It came just a few weeks after his administration encouraged the California Legislative LGBTQ Caucus to hold off introducing a bill to tamp down on policies that require parental notification when a student changes their gender identity at school. LGBTQ advocates worry these policies — which are cropping up in school districts across California as the conservative parental rights movement drives a national panic over minors transitioning — could lead to the forced outing of transgender students to their families. California Attorney General Rob Bonta is now suing to stop the policies.

Newsom’s hesitation caused surprise and confusion in the LGBTQ community because the governor has signed politically fraught measures in the past, including one last year to make California a refuge for transgender health care.

York said the governor feared unintended consequences from dictating that conservative judges must consider whether a parent affirms their child’s gender identity when making custody decisions, but that does not diminish his well-established record of defending transgender youth.

“I would challenge you to find another governor who’s been as outspoken and supportive on trans rights as Gavin Newsom,” York said.

Though she disagrees with the governor’s analysis of her bill, Wilson said she trusted the sincerity of his concerns, given his long history of supporting LGBTQ rights. But she also could not help feeling that opponents had won an ill-gotten victory by turning AB 957 into a political football, including by falsely claiming that California could take away the child of any parent who does not affirm their gender identity.

“We knew we were on the right side on this one,” Wilson said. “We knew they had villainized it. We knew they had taken it out of context.”

Wilson, whose son is transgender, said that at a time when politicians across the country are targeting trans and gender-nonconforming youth, it was important for the governor to publicly stand up for them.

“You have to take advantage when you have the opportunity to solidify the rights of the most vulnerable amongst us,” she said. “When people make calculated political decisions, voters see that.”

The blowback to the veto, which came late on a Friday evening, was so fierce and widespread that the governor’s office put out a list the following day of bills Newsom had signed “supporting LGBTQ+ Californians,” including requirements for cultural competency training and gender-neutral restrooms in schools and to place foster children with families that support their gender identity.

“There are other proof points that show the governor continues to be a strong champion in light of the attacks against LGBTQ people that are happening across the country,” said Tony Hoang, executive director of the LGBTQ advocacy group Equality California.

He added that the organization was “disappointed and disheartened by his decision to veto AB 957” and would work with the Legislature next year to address remaining gaps in protections for transgender youth.

Navigating a South Asian schism

Activists who pushed for Senate Bill 403, which would have added caste to the list of categories in the state’s housing, education and employment discrimination laws, also wonder whether Newsom’s national ambitions derailed the measure.

The governor vetoed the bill earlier this month, calling it “unnecessary” because “discrimination based on caste is already prohibited” under existing civil rights protections — echoing a point made by some Republican opponents.

American awareness of caste — a centuries-old social hierarchy system, especially prevalent in South Asian countries such as India, where one’s employment and education opportunities are determined by birth — has been rising in recent years. A 2020 state lawsuit alleging workplace discrimination at the San Jose-based tech company Cisco against an employee of Dalit ancestry, the lowest-ranking caste, garnered national headlines. This year, Seattle and Fresno became the first two cities to ban caste discrimination.

Though SB 403 passed overwhelmingly in the Legislature and was endorsed by the California Democratic Party, it also received among the most visible opposition of the legislative session, at committee hearings and through an aggressive online campaign. This was led by South Asian groups affiliated with the Hindu nationalist movement, who argued the proposal unfairly targeted Hindus because caste is part of their religion.

“This was contentious within the South Asian community,” said Ria Chakrabarty, policy director for Hindus for Human Rights, which supported the bill.

She noted that many of the opponents, who are generally upper-caste, hold powerful positions in Silicon Valley and have more money and political access than the lower-caste supporters, who are more recent immigrants to this country. Newsom might have worried that signing the bill could put a potential fundraising pool at risk, she said.

One major Democratic bundler, Ajay Jain Bhutoria, posted online after the veto about a meeting with Newsom at a Democratic National Committee donor event in Chicago last month and thanked the governor for “listening to my recommendation to veto SB403.” Bhutoria did not respond to an interview request.

York said Newsom met with many people on both sides of the issue and no one meeting swayed his mind. The governor did not want to go down the road of explicitly stating protections that are already available under existing law, he said.

“He wrestled with the issue and we had a lot of discussions about this as a staff,” York said. “He vetoes all kinds of bills that he deems unnecessary or duplicative.”

But advocates believe that Newsom did not understand the depth of the caste problem in the United States, and why a specific new protection is necessary, because he did not hear from lower-caste people.

“If he has ambitions to run for president, he should have taken sides with the exploited,” said Karthikeyan Shanmugam, secretary of Ambedkar King Study Circle, a Bay Area group that campaigns for the end of caste oppression.

Through a representative, Sen. Aisha Wahab, the Fremont Democrat who carried the bill, declined an interview request and reiterated her initial statement about the veto, which seemed to flip Newsom’s rhetoric back at him.

“I believe our laws need to be more explicit especially in times when we see civil rights being eroded across the country,” she said. “We cannot take anything for granted.”

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Republicans nominated Rep. Steve Scalise on Wednesday to be the next House speaker but struggled to quickly unite their deeply divided majority and elect the conservative in a public floor vote after the historic ousting of Rep. Kevin McCarthy from the job.

In private balloting at the Capitol, House Republicans narrowly pushed aside Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, the firebrand Judiciary Committee chairman, in favor of Scalise, the current majority leader. The Louisiana congressman, who is battling blood cancer, is seen as a hero to some after surviving a shooting on lawmakers at a congressional baseball game practice in 2017.

“We have a lot of work to do,” Scalise said afterward.

A floor vote of the whole House was expected, but tensions are still running high among Republicans who have brought the House to a standstill with bitter infighting after McCarthy’s stunning removal last week. The House was gaveled into a brief session, then broke indefinitely, with next steps uncertain.

It’s an extraordinary moment of political chaos at a time of uncertainty at home and crisis abroad, moving into a second week without a House speaker. Just 10 months after Republicans swept to power aspiring to operate as a team and run government more like a business, the GOP majority has drifted far from that goal.

“We need to make sure we’re sending a message to people all throughout the world, that the House is open to doing the people’s business,” Scalise said.

What’s uncertain is whether lawmakers who supported Jordan, the hard-liner backed by Donald Trump, will throw their support to Scalise in what is sure to be a close vote of the full House. Democrats are set to oppose the Republican nominee, easily nominating their leader, New York Rep. Hakeem Jeffries.

Jordan said little after the vote, only that the GOP majority “is divided.”

But Jordan did offer to give Scalise a nominating speech on the floor, in what would be a show of support during a vote.

A centrist leader, Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., said, “We do need to get a speaker in place so we can govern.”

“What we should have heard today after the vote count was, ‘I will heartily support Steve. Let’s get behind him,’” Bacon said. “We did not hear that.”

Americans are watching. One-quarter of Republicans say they approve of the decision by a small group of Republicans to remove McCarthy as speaker. Three in 10 Republicans believe it was a mistake, according to a poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

At the White House, presidential press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said, “We want to see the chaos be done with so that we can deliver for the American people.”

The hard-right coalition of lawmakers that ousted McCarthy, R-Calif., has shown what an oversize role a few lawmakers can have in choosing his successor.

In a floor vote, Scalise would need to amass votes from almost all Republicans to overcome the Democratic opposition. Usually, the majority needed would be 218 votes, but there are currently two vacant seats, dropping the threshold to 217.

Many Republicans want to prevent the spectacle of a messy House floor fight like the grueling January brawl when McCarthy became speaker.

Behind closed doors, the Republicans voted to set aside a proposed a rules change that would have tried to ensure a majority vote before the nominee was presented for a full floor vote.

Without the rules change, the Republican lawmakers would be expected to agree to a majority-wins process. But several lawmakers announced they were not supporting Scalise.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., said she backed Jordan in the private ballot and would do so in the floor vote. Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., said he let Scalise know “he doesn’t have my vote on the floor.”

Neither Scalise nor Jordan was seen as the heir apparent to McCarthy, who was removed in a push by the far-right flank after the speaker led Congress to approve legislation that averted a government shutdown.

All three men have been here before. In 2018, they were similarly vying for leadership, with McCarthy and Scalise extending the rivalry to this day.

Scalise was in line for the job this time after McCarthy’s ouster, but faced a challenge from Jordan, a founding member of the Freedom Caucus, who was viewed as a more hard-edged option.

Jordan is known for his close alliance with Trump, particularly when the then-president was working to overturn the results of the 2020 election, leading to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. Trump backed Jordan’s bid for the gavel.

Several lawmakers, including Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., who engineered McCarthy’s ouster, said they would be willing to support either Scalise or Jordan.

“Long live Speaker Scalise,” Gaetz said after the vote.

McCarthy had briefly floated a possible comeback earlier this week but the eight hard-liners who helped engineer his removal showed no signs of budging. He told his colleagues late Tuesday not to put his name forward for a nomination.

At the speaker’s office, where McCarthy’s name has still be out front since his ouster last week, crews were seen carting boxes and artwork out of the stately suite in the Capitol.

For now, Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., who was named as the speaker pro-tempore, is effectively in charge. He has shown little interest in expanding his power beyond the role he was assigned — an interim leader tasked with ensuring the election of the next speaker.

The role was created in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to ensure the continuity of government. McHenry’s name was at the top of a list submitted by McCarthy when he became speaker in January.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Republicans have no clear idea who will be U.S. House speaker, leaving an unprecedented power vacuum in Congress and severely limiting America’s ability to quickly respond to the crisis in Israel — or any number of other problems at home or abroad.

On Monday, the ousted former speaker, Kevin McCarthy, quickly jumped into the void, bitterly criticizing President Joe Biden’s administration over the strength of its defense of Israel and positioning himself as a de facto Republican leader even though his colleagues toppled him from power.

But it’s not at all clear if McCarthy could seriously make a comeback — or if one of the other Republicans seeking the gavel, Steve Scalise or Jim Jordan, can be elected speaker as their majority stumbles into infighting. House Republicans are scheduled to meet behind closed doors Monday evening to try to regain control of their majority ahead of possible speaker votes this week.

“Whether I’m speaker or not … I can lead in any position I’m in,” McCarthy, R-Calif., said at the Capitol.

The upheaval in the House puts the U.S. Congress at a crossroads during a time of crisis, the first time in history it has booted a speaker from power, operating without a constitutional officer, second in line to the presidency. House business, and with it most congressional action, has come to a standstill.

It’s not at all clear what, if anything, the Congress can do with only an interim leader. At risk is immediate aid to Israel along with passage of a resolution that would show U.S. support for Israel and condemnation of Hamas for the attack as the region is now engulfed in war.

And there are broader demands on Congress, including Ukraine’s requests for aid as it fights Russia and the need to fund the U.S. government again by Nov. 17 or risk a federal shutdown. The Senate meanwhile is also out of session, on recess until next week.

“Does anybody have the votes? No,” said Rep. Mike Lawler of New York, a centrist Republican pushing for McCarthy to be reinstated as speaker.

Republicans were scheduled to meet privately Monday evening as they assessed the path forward after McCarthy’s historic ouster by a handful of hardline Republicans led by Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla.

Gaetz has said on social media there are “two great men” running for speaker, indicating he could support either Scalise or Jordan.

But neither Scalise, the majority leader who is the second-ranking Republican in the House, nor Jordan, who is the chairman of the Judiciary Committee and backed by Donald Trump, appears to have the votes needed to secure the majority vote.

Both Republicans who have eyed the speaker’s gavel for some time come with political strengths, but also baggage that leaves colleagues split and skeptical.

Scalise is battling blood cancer, and is seen by a hero among colleagues for having survived severe injuries from a mass shooting during a congressional baseball game practice in 2017. But the Louisiana Republican had apologized in 2014 after he was found to have addressed a white supremacist group in 2002 founded by a former Ku Klux Klan leader. Scalise said he didn’t know of the group’s racial views.

Jordan is a high-profile political firebrand known for his close alliance with Trump, particularly when the then-president was working to overturn the results of the 2020 election, leading to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

Some years ago, Jordan and his office denied allegations from former wrestlers during his time as an assistant wrestling coach at Ohio State University who accused him of knowing about claims they were inappropriately groped by an Ohio doctor. Jordan and his office have said he was never aware of any abuse.

“House Republicans need to unite and show the country that we’re fighting for them,” Jordan said Sunday on Fox News.

The House Republicans hold just a slim majority and they are considering rules changes to avoid another spectacle electing a new speaker, like the 15 rounds it took McCarthy in January to seize the gavel when Gaetz and others first blocked him at the start of the year.

While the full House ultimately votes on the new speaker, the position usually falls to a person from the party with the House majority.

One idea is to require the candidate for House speaker to reach the 218 majority threshold during internal voting behind closed doors before the Republicans bring the vote up publicly on the House floor.

Another idea is to change the rule that allows a single lawmaker to make a “motion to vacate” the office — which is the rare procedural tool Gaetz used to force a snap vote that ousted McCarthy. In previous years, it required more the one lawmaker to make the motion.

But the evening meeting was expected to be long on infighting and short on solutions as Republicans reeled from the chaos that has thrown their majority into grave turmoil.

Democrats so far reject both Scalise and Jordan, and are almost certain to vote against either Republican. McCarthy’s ouster came with the help of Democrats, who voiced their disdain for the speaker and joined with eight Republicans to oust him.

For now, no consensus candidate who could bridge both parties seems at all within reach.

Meantime, Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., has been named as speaker pro tempore, a position created in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to ensure the continuity of government in Washington.

The rules around the temporary speaker position have been untested before, though they appear to indicate the main power in the role is to ensure the election of a new speaker.

But if House Republicans are unable to quickly agree on a speaker, McHenry could be in the position for some time.

Any moves McHenry makes in the temporary position have the potential to become precedent-setting for the House. The North Carolina Republican is viewed as a serious legislator, with nearly 20 years in office, even though his first act was to boot Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi from her private office at the Capitol.

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On Friday, Leonard Bernal stood beside a friend amid a sea of MAGA paraphernalia and was absolutely buzzing.

Former President Trump had just wrapped up a fiery speech to 1,500 paying attendees at the California Republican Party’s fall convention in Anaheim, where he spent the better part of 90 minutes trashing the Golden State, its politicians and its policies.

Bernal, a 62-year-old Modesto retiree, loved every moment of it. Even if Trump was hard to follow as he lambasted the state’s water policies, Bernal said the former president’s speech resonated with him — he’s watched farmers struggle to keep their land fertile. Trump spoke of marauding criminal gangs and called California a “dumping ground” for prisoners, terrorists and mental patients.

“The state deserves to be bashed,” Bernal said. “Even though the country has gone to hell, California has gone into a deeper hell.”

Trump was not alone in flaying California. In the course of trying to loosen Trump’s grip on Republican voters, rival GOP candidates including Sen. Tim Scott and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis did the same during their swings through the state, castigating the state as a hellhole created by the far left and overwhelmed by homelessness and immigrants who entered the country illegally.

“Growing up in Florida I never remembered seeing a single California license plate in my life,” DeSantis told the audience Friday night. “I never met anybody who had moved from California to Florida. Fast forward 15 years later, and I become governor and all of a sudden we see a sea of California license plates in the state of Florida.”

All the while, and usually behind closed doors, the candidates held fundraisers at the homes of wealthy Californians. The state has long been a popular destination for Republican presidential contenders looking to raise cash. In 2020, Californians donated more than $92 million to Trump’s campaign and to super PACs and other groups that supported his unsuccessful reelection effort, according to the nonprofit Center for Responsive Politics.

Of the $20 million DeSantis’ campaign raised this year since he entered the race in May, about $2.1 million came from California residents, according to campaign finance disclosures through June.

Polls show Trump so far ahead, he could, because of a recent rules change, end up winning all of the state’s delegates and clinch the nomination in California’s March presidential primary. Trump enjoys about 55% support of likely Republican voters in the state, according to a recent UC Berkeley/L.A. Times poll.

During his midday speech Friday, Trump falsely claimed that the state can “take children away from their parents and sterilize them.” Echoing frequent attacks he made during his presidency, Trump also spoke of rampant crime and said brazen thieves stealing from stores should be shot on sight. He advocated for energy independence and promised to cut federal funding for schools with vaccination mandates.

“Under the Trump administration we will bring back law and order to California,” he said.

Despite his large lead in recent surveys, an effort to have the California Republican Party officially endorse Trump failed Sunday, after impassioned speakers made the case that an endorsement — unprecedented this early in a presidential primary campaign — could affect voter turnout for down-ballot races.

“Frankly, we have some Republicans who want other people other than President Trump. We need them all there,” said Fred Whitaker, chairman of the Republican Party of Orange County.

Broadly speaking though, delegates attending the three-day confab said the state had lost its way and many wanted California to return to the days of the past.

Some craved more economic opportunity and affordable living, while others expressed frustration about transgender athletes or school districts that decline to notify parents when their child identifies as transgender.

An upstart campaign to make California’s Republican Party more welcoming to a broader spectrum of views on abortion and LGBTQ+ issues failed by a large margin Saturday.

The convention overwhelmingly supported adopting its traditional platform, following a contentious weekend-long discussion over a proposal to remove language from the party platform explicitly opposing abortion and defining marriage as “between one man and one woman.”

Loud cheering accompanied the platform vote, which passed with 79%.

Committee members tasked with reforming the party platform proposed the change over the summer, appalling many conservative members. Outside the hotel ballroom where the platform was discussed, activists held signs that read, “Pray to end abortion” and “God is pro-life.”

“I don’t believe in the big tent. I believe in a tent that will house like-minded people,” GOP delegate and Paso Robles resident Randall Jordan said of the changes to the platform, the push to make the GOP more inclusive and the state’s increasingly liberal tilt. “When Trump attacks the state, I hear hope. I hear hope that someone actually is going to do something.”

For lifelong Californians Guadalupe and Hilario Gonzales, anti-California rhetoric from the presidential candidates felt validating. Guadalupe Gonzales, who attended Trump’s speech at the Anaheim convention Friday, said his gripes about how the state has handled drought, wildfires, crime and immigration resonated with her own beliefs.

“I was like, ‘Yes, you hear me!’ Because we’re hurting,” she said.

The couple didn’t seem to mind the widespread California-bashing they heard at the weekend convention.

“We’re a little bit embarrassed when we go to other states because they go, ‘Oh, you’re from California,’” Guadalupe Gonzales said. “Because they think we’re nuts!”

Like Trump and Scott, DeSantis has hosted multiple fundraisers — including one in Salinas last week — since the campaign started. At the convention, at a campaign stop in Long Beach and at Wednesday’s presidential debate in Simi Valley, the Florida governor’s message across the state was that California was adrift and Florida represented a path forward.

But before DeSantis unloaded on California during his convention speech Friday night, he spoke about returning from military duty to Coronado Island in San Diego and marveling at the state’s natural beauty and “just having the freshness of the Pacific Ocean within you.” He also highlighted his televised debate with Gov. Gavin Newsom next month, which he has said will show Americans the clear difference between states run by Republicans and Democrats.

“California is really the petri dish for American liberalism and American leftism,” DeSantis said. “What Biden is doing are things that California was doing many years ago. What California is doing now is likely what a second Biden term would do, or God forbid Kamala Harris, or God forbid Newsom himself, who knows, right?”

He touted his fights with Disney and waded into the school district controversies over policies affecting transgender students, saying, “It’s wrong to tell a second-grader that their gender is a choice. It’s not true and it’s inappropriate.”

Lines like this from DeSantis, Scott and Trump drew rapturous applause from attendees at these speeches who paid hundreds of dollars to be in close proximity to the candidates. DeSantis and Trump both ripped into Newsom — who has emerged as President Biden’s chief defender and leader of the Democratic offense this reelection season.

The California governor attended the GOP debate Wednesday as a Biden proxy and to forcefully rebut the Republican attacks on the state and the president.

“It’s so dull and so predictable. There’s this lack of originality in all this California bashing,” Newsom told reporters before the debate, adding that GDP growth in the state over the last 10 years has outpaced the nation.

“We just dominate in every category — hunting jobs, fishing jobs, manufacturing jobs — more factory jobs here than any other state by a factor of larger than the next five states combined. I’m really proud of the state,” he said.

Somewhat surprisingly, presidential candidate and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy spent little time trashing the state or even really talking about it at all during his speech Saturday. Asked why, he told reporters that despite real problems here, this type of rhetoric bored him.

“I am sick and tired of lazily just bashing” the place, Ramaswamy said. “It’s too easy.”

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The day before he was ousted, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy was doing what he loved — stopping to greet tourists at the Capitol, gushing about the beauty of the place and its history at the center of American democracy.

On Wednesday, McCarthy’s House was shuttered, his Republican majority in chaos and unable to legislate for the foreseeable future, with grave ramifications for the U.S. experiment in governing.

With no speaker of the House, a constitutional officer second in line to the presidency, the Congress cannot fully function — to pass laws, fund the government and otherwise serve as the branch of government closest to the people — during a time of simmering uncertainty at home and abroad.

“A democracy relies on its legislative branch — it’s the most important branch of any democratic government,” said Matthew Green, an expert on Congress at Catholic University.

“Without a speaker, you have real risk.”

For McCarthy, it’s the end of the arc of his political career, from running a sandwich counter in Bakersfield, California, to the pinnacle of power, only to have his downfall engineered by the hard-right Republican lawmakers he once recruited to Congress but ultimately could not tame.

Democrats compounded the pain, only too happy to help oust him, in a brutal display of partisan politics.

“He had made his bed,” Rep. Abigail Spanberger, D-Va., said ahead of the vote.

McCarthy is no bystander to the turmoil that so often defined his tenure in Congress, and in fact he was an early architect of the new Republican Party that has almost fully replaced what once was.

In office for nearly 20 years, McCarthy played a pivotal role in the 2010 election that sent a new generation of “ tea party ” Republicans to take control of the House. He was the campaign chairman who recruited the dozens of conservative newcomers who swept to power.

With fundraising skills and a keen eye for unique candidates, McCarthy was the party’s winning strategist, adding to Republican ranks even when it meant electing hard-right figures.

Part of the trio of “Young Guns” with Majority Leader Eric Cantor and future Speaker Paul Ryan, McCarthy and his political operation were crucial for the party as he crisscrossed the country with an extensive base of connections to wealthy donors.

Those years saw the stirrings of a party purge that continues to this day, leaving an open question of who, if anyone, can lead the House Republicans.

Then-Speaker John Boehner tried but failed to corral the newly conservative flank — enduring a U.S. debt default crisis, a prolonged government shutdown and a fiscal cliff that put the country on edge — before he was ultimately chased to early retirement by the same threat that would befall McCarthy.

Boehner’s chief antagonist at the time was Mark Meadows, then a Republican congressman who led the Freedom Caucus and would go on to become President Donald Trump’s chief of staff. Meadows filed a “motion to vacate” — at the time an unheard-of procedural move resurrected from political obscurity.

Rather than risk the continued threat of an ouster, Boehner simply mic-dropped and left.

A California Republican, McCarthy was never considered much of an ideologue. Rather, he positioned himself as a Reagan Republican, part of a generation that came of age during Ronald Reagan’s presidency captivated by a more sunny-side telling of the American experience.

That lack of a firm ideological footing in far-right politics cost McCarthy the speaker’s gavel when he first reached for it, after Boehner’s ouster in 2015, as fellow Republican lawmakers viewed him as insufficiently conservative at best. Others viewed him as operating without a political compass.

He abandoned the speaker’s race to Ryan, who was chased from the office a few short years later as he came up against the right flank during the Trump era.

“All three of them were chased out,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Wednesday.

“Speaker Boehner, Speaker Ryan and now Speaker McCarthy have all learned the same lesson: You cannot allow the hard right to run the House, or the country.”

As Republicans fell into minority status with Speaker Nancy Pelosi in charge, McCarthy went on to recruit the class of 2020 Republicans to retake House control — in line for the speaker’s gavel in another history-making moment.

But it took a brawling 15-vote slugfest over the first week of the new Congress in January for McCarthy to win the votes from his own reluctant Republican Party to become speaker, a prelude of his ouster to come.

With just a slim majority hold, a handful of hard-right holdouts forced him to make concessions for the gavel, including the ability to more easily remove him from office.

Still, finally becoming speaker after so long seemed to have changed McCarthy, and he quickly grew into the role. His mantra: “I never quit.”

His suits appeared sharper, his sunny demeanor more pronounced, the flashes of anger subdued as he ambled through the halls.

In his element, McCarthy would open the House chamber, making a point to stop and chat with visitors along the way — at times even setting up a photo line for those who swarmed to snap pictures.

Underestimated from the start, he surprisingly delivered at two crucial moments, reaching a debt deal with President Joe Biden to avoid default and preventing a government shutdown last weekend at grave risk to his job.

McCarthy had become the magnanimous “Man in the Arena,” as he liked to think of himself — the portrait of Teddy Roosevelt hanging with that of Reagan in his suite of speaker’s offices at the Capitol.

“I give as good as I get,” he quipped the night he was ousted.

But like the others before him, McCarthy was no match for the increasingly hard-right flank that has come to dominate the Republican Party.

A handful of hardliners led by Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., blocked McCarthy in January from becoming House speaker, and many of them cast the votes Tuesday on the “motion to vacate” to remove the speaker — with the government shutdown deal the latest complaint against him.

Others, including Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., who had been beneficiaries of McCarthy’s campaign funding, also turned on him in the end.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said he had just one piece of advice to the next House speaker: Get rid of the motion to vacate.

“It makes the speaker’s job impossible,” he said. “The American people expect us to have a functioning government.”

McCarthy bitterly unleashed on his foes and intimated he would use his vast campaign sums in the future to wage primary candidates against them as he tries to steer the Republican Party back to some earlier vision of itself.

“They’re not conservative,” McCarthy railed in a rambling press conference on his way out. Evoking Reagan, he said of his foes: “They don’t get to say they’re conservative because they’re angry and they’re chaotic. That’s not the party I belong to.”

McCarthy had taken great pride in reopening the House this year after pandemic closures and the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol — the people’s House, he would say.

But after nine months on the job, one of the shortest speakerships in history, the leader who said he would never quit did just that, announcing he would not try to regain the gavel as the House closed up.

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Donald Trump is facing new blowback from anti-abortion activists for refusing to commit to national abortion restrictions and for calling Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ signing of a six-week ban on the procedure a “terrible mistake.”

Speaking Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Trump repeatedly declined to say whether he would support a federal ban on abortion. He said he could “live with” the procedure being banned by individual states or nationwide through federal action, though he said “from a legal standpoint, I think it’s probably better” to be handled at the state level.

Regarding the bill signed by DeSantis, which bans abortions before many women know they are pregnant, Trump said, “I think what he did is a terrible thing and a terrible mistake.”

So far, the former president has dominated the 2024 field while at times spurning the anti-abortion groups that traditionally have huge influence in Republican primaries. But Trump’s direct attack on DeSantis, whom he’s long treated as his chief rival, could give the Florida governor new fodder as he tries to regain momentum in his campaign and solidify his second-place standing.

Speaking to an Iowa radio station on Monday, DeSantis said he was proud to have signed the Florida legislation, which he called “noble and just.”

“I don’t know how you can even make the claim that you’re somehow pro-life if you’re criticizing states for enacting pro-life protections for babies,” DeSantis told Radio Iowa.

He also criticized Trump’s statement that he would work with both sides regarding abortion policy, warning, “I think all pro-lifers should know that he’s preparing to sell you out.”

At a campaign stop in Mason City, Iowa, on Monday, Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina mentioned other candidates who oppose a national abortion ban but specifically accused Trump of retreating on the issue.

“Frankly, those pro-life folks that we really want to stand with us are not standing,” he told more than 80 people in a church meeting room. “President Trump said he would negotiate with Democrats and walked back away from where I believe we need to be, which is a 15-week limit on the federal level.”

Following Sunday’s interview, the country’s largest anti-abortion organization, which backs a national ban on abortions at 15 weeks of pregnancy, quickly released a statement saying anything less restrictive “makes no sense.”

“We’re at a moment where we need a human rights advocate, someone who is dedicated to saving the lives of children and serving mothers in need. Every single candidate should be clear on how they plan to do that,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America.

The Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe v. Wade left the decision of whether and how to restrict abortion to the states, creating a patchwork of laws across the country, with most Republican-led states imposing new restrictions and states led by Democrats passing protections. Twenty-five million women of childbearing age now live in states where abortions are more difficult to get than before the ruling.

Trump has approached abortion from a political stance, saying that the Supreme Court’s decision gave conservatives room to negotiate new restrictions. He has argued Republicans’ push for abortion restrictions hurt the GOP in the 2022 midterm elections and that GOP candidates need to do a better job of explaining the issue.

Banning abortion at six weeks of pregnancy, as Florida enacted earlier this year, is unpopular with the U.S. public, according to an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research conducted in June. The poll found that 73% of all U.S. adults believe abortion should be allowed up to six weeks of pregnancy, which is when cardiac activity in a fetus may be detected and before women often know they’re pregnant. About half of Americans say abortions should be permitted up to 15 weeks.

In that poll, 56% of Republicans said abortion should be allowed in their state up to 6 weeks and 29% supported making the procedure legal up to 15 weeks.

But in Iowa’s first-in-the-nation Republican caucuses, evangelicals and other social conservatives who strongly oppose abortion make up the majority of those who participate and decide the winner. Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds this summer signed an abortion ban similar to Florida’s. Reynolds has not endorsed a candidate.

Trump has called himself the “the most pro-life president in American history” and noted that three of his Supreme Court picks formed part of the conservative majority that overturned Roe.

He has so far declined to go along with some of his rivals, including his onetime vice president, Mike Pence, who is pushing for national bans that would take effect relatively early in a pregnancy.

Interviews with GOP voters and activists over the past several months suggest a split between people satisfied with Trump’s record during his term and others who want Trump to endorse a national abortion ban.

Some Republicans in some key states, including those backing his rivals, expressed displeasure after the interview.

Among them was South Carolina state Rep. John McCravy, who sponsored the most recent, restrictive abortion measure, which bans the practice in his state after around six weeks of pregnancy. South Carolina will be among the early states to choose a nominee. McCravy described himself in an interview as “certainly disappointed.”

“It sounded completely out of step with his staunch support for life while he was president,” he said.

Kristen Waggoner, CEO of the conservative legal organization Alliance Defending Freedom, also took issue.

“Laws protecting the unborn are not a ‘terrible mistake.’ They are the hallmark of a just and moral society,” she wrote on X. “Governors who protect life should be applauded, not attacked.”

Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life Action, called the interview “extremely disappointing” and sent a letter to Trump asking him to clarify his statements. The organization, one of the largest anti-abortion groups in the U.S., said it plans a $5 million door-knocking campaign in 2024 but noted its members were discouraged by Trump’s comments.

“The pro-life vote is up for grabs,” Hawkins stated.

“We need clarity on your vision even as we celebrate your pro-life record.”

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NEW YORK (AP) — After every new indictment, Donald Trump has boasted that his standing among Republicans only improves — and he has a point.

Nearly two-thirds of Republicans — 63% — now say they want the former president to run again, according to new polling from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. That’s up slightly from the 55% who said the same in April when Trump began facing a series of criminal charges. Seven in 10 Republicans now have a favorable opinion of Trump, an uptick from the 60% who said so two months ago.

But in a crucial warning sign for the former president and his supporters, Trump faces glaring vulnerabilities heading into a general election, with many Americans strongly dug in against him. While most Republicans — 74% — say they would support him in November 2024, 53% of Americans say they would definitely not support him if he is the nominee. Another 11% say they would probably not support him in November 2024.

The findings bolster the arguments of some of Trump’s rivals for the Republican nomination who laud his tenure as president, but warn that he can’t win in a general election when he must compete for votes beyond the GOP base. Trump lost the popular vote in the 2016 campaign, attaining the presidency only by winning a majority in the Electoral College. He lost to Democrat Joe Biden by an even larger 7 million-vote margin in 2020, a defeat he has falsely attributed to widespread voter fraud.

Some Republicans who are pushing the party to move past Trump argue his standing with the broader public has only deteriorated since the last presidential election, dragged down by his role in sparking the violent Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol and the constant turmoil that surrounds him, epitomized by his unprecedented legal woes.

“There is a meaningful number of voters who have voted for Trump twice and can’t vote for him again after all of this,” said Sarah Longwell, an anti-Trump Republican strategist who has been running focus groups with GOP voters.

A spokesman for Trump’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment on the dynamics described in the poll, which was conducted before Trump was charged late Monday in Georgia in a sprawling 98-page indictment that accuses him and 18 others of a criminal conspiracy to overturn the results of that state’s 2020 election. He now faces a whopping 91 total felony charges in cases brought in Georgia, New York, Washington, D.C., and Florida.

Adding to Trump’s headwinds, the poll found that opposition to Biden’s reelection is not as deeply entrenched. The 80-year-old president, who faces only nominal rivals in a Democratic primary, faces skepticism among voters, particularly over his age. But just 43% of Americans say they would definitely not support him in a general election, with another 11% saying they probably wouldn’t.

Meanwhile, the charges in Georgia and Washington have turned Trump’s attention back to his grievances about the last election — something aides and allies have spent months urging Trump to limit focusing on at his events.

Hours after the Georgia indictment was made public, he announced plans on his social media site to hold an event next Monday at his New Jersey golf club to unveil a new “report” that would offer “irrefutable” proof of election fraud.

Federal and state election officials and Trump’s own attorney general have said there is no credible evidence that the election was tainted. The former president’s allegations of fraud were also roundly rejected by courts, including by judges Trump appointed. And in Georgia, the state at the center of his latest indictment, three recounts were conducted after the election — each of which confirmed his loss to Biden.

While Trump’s appeals resonate among GOP voters, they are less popular among the independents and swing voters he will need to win over in a general election and were blamed for some GOP losses in the 2022 midterm elections.

“Trump needs to embody the voters’ grievances and not his own grievances,” Longwell said. “Anytime he’s talking about 2020 he’s looking backward and the voters get more excited about looking forward.”

As Trump’s legal woes intensify, other Republican presidential hopefuls have spent the past week courting voters at the Iowa State Fair, a rite of passage in a more traditional era of politics. While Republicans at the fair were largely supportive of Trump, there was some evidence of concern about the political impact of the indictments.

Rich Stricklett, a Republican and Trump supporter from Bondurant, Iowa, echoed Trump’s dismissal of the charges as a “witch hunt.”

“I do think it’s politically driven to knock out a candidate that’s a threat to the current president,” he said. “I think that’s what they’re trying to do is make sure that I don’t go out and vote for him because he’s got that hanging over his head.”

While Stricklett pointed to polls showing indictments appear to have helped Trump in the primary, he said he is worried about the potential impact.

“What I’m concerned about,” he said, “is that it’d be enough that he wouldn’t win.”

Mary Kinney, a Republican from Des Moines who caucused for Trump in 2016, was also critical of the charges.

“It seems like they are just throwing anything at the wall to see if it will stick because they are so afraid of him,” she said.

But as Kinney eyes the next election, she’s planning to support South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott in the caucuses, arguing that it’s time for the party to move forward with a next-generation candidate.

“I think people are just done with it,” she said. “It’s time to move on. I think people are trying to move forward from 2020.”

But others warn that it would be premature to assume Trump’s legal woes will lead to his political downfall. Former Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who ran against Trump in the 2016 GOP primary, said he was skeptical that the onetime president would face political consequences from the courtroom dramas.

“Anybody else, circumstances would be much different,” he said. “But one of the key things that President Trump has done well on is kind of positioned this as, ‘They’re going after me because I dared to take on the machine, I dared to take on the swamp, I dared to take on the establishment.’”

Walker said he believes there are many voters — “not only in the primary, but a lot of swing voters … who’ve been let down so many times” and “want someone who’s not afraid of anyone. So in some ways, this makes the point that he just may be doing right for the average American because the left is out to get him.”

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a Trump ally who blasted the charges as “disgusting,” predicted they would “enrage the country” and help Trump, even in a general election.

“I think every American who cares about the rule of law should be enraged by what they saw,” Gingrich said. “He’ll be stronger and he’ll win the general election.”

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Bill Mehlem recalls a time when his politics generally aligned with conservatives, enthusiastically backing Republicans such as John McCain during his 2008 presidential campaign.

But the stay-at-home dad has grown dismayed with the tempestuous GOP molded by former President Donald Trump, who is now seeking a return to the White House. And the threat of a Republican-led impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden’s family finances and the churning U.S. House probes of his son, Hunter Biden, have left Mehlem indignant, angry and remembering why he’s a political independent. “It’s all about revenge politics to keep Trump’s base” engaged for the 2024 elections, Mehlem said. “It’s all about nothing.”

That sentiment reflects the gamble House Republicans are making as they consider moving forward with an impeachment inquiry against Biden. The talk delights some Republicans who are eager for retribution following several indictments of Trump in recent months, including two federal cases that charge him with hoarding classified documents and working to overturn the 2020 election.

But for many of those outside of the die-hard GOP base, the impeachment chatter is a turn off. It’s especially risky for the party in California, where five House Republicans occupy Democratic-leaning districts that Biden won in 2020. Those districts alone could help Democrats retake the House majority next year.

In one crucial battleground — sprawling through suburbs and high desert north of Los Angeles — GOP Rep. Mike Garcia will need to overcome a nearly 13-point Democratic registration advantage to claim a fourth term and remain the sole Republican House member anchored in heavily Democratic Los Angeles County. In suburban Santa Clarita, at the heart of Garcia’s district, Mehlem said he saw no chance he would support Garcia — in part because the congressman joined House Republicans who attempted to reject electoral votes from Arizona and Pennsylvania after the 2020 presidential election.

But in a Congress often stalemated by partisan division, he has his doubts about Democrats, too. Despite its reputation as a Democratic stronghold, a string of California House districts has proved volatile in recent elections, highlighting their importance to both parties as they seek the majority. Democrats seized seven seats from Republicans in 2018, then Republicans reclaimed four from Democrats in 2020. In the 2022 elections, California Republicans gained one seat, from 11 to 12, while Democrats dropped to 40 seats from 42, after California lost a House seat in reapportionment after the 2020 census. Overall, the state dropped to 52 districts from 53.

With the chamber divided 222-212, with one vacancy, only a handful of seats separate the two parties. Also in play: a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision on the Voting Rights Act that is expected to lead to new, Democratic-leaning districts in Alabama and possibly elsewhere.

In Santa Clarita, Democrat Bonnie Untaran said the House should be debating skyrocketing rents and home prices and lowering the cost of living, not focusing on the Bidens. “It’s starting to get unrelatable to our daily life,” she said. Untaran said she will consider voting for the Republican Garcia — a former Navy combat pilot and the son of a Mexican immigrant father — providing he talks about local issues.

The importance of pocketbook issues was echoed by former Republican congressman Doug Ose, who said GOP candidates need to stick to what families talk about at kitchen tables. When Republicans carried state swing districts in 2022, “they were not talking about the Hunter Biden investigation or a Joe Biden impeachment.

They were talking about bread-and-butter issues, and that’s where I think the voters are,” said Ose, who represented a Sacramento-area district. “Why would you go talk about something else?” he asked. Indeed, Republican candidates have had success in state swing districts in recent years by making elections a referendum on California itself under progressive Democratic rule, pointing to pervasive homelessness in major cities, vexing crime rates and wallet-sapping taxes.

In the middle of a California summer, with voters distracted by barbecues and baseball games, it’s unclear how many people are following the day-to-day scrum on Capitol Hill, although Congress is now in recess for the month. Independent voter Hamilton Grier, a father of two, said he intentionally avoids political news so he won’t be distracted from his marketing job. He had “no idea” what the Hunter Biden investigations were about.

Grier worries about inflation, and the world to come for his kids, a 1-year-old daughter and a 3-year-old boy. He expects to shift his attention to politics when the elections get closer. “I’m scared for them,” he said. “I don’t know what the future will be like.” In recent posts on X, formerly known as Twitter, Garcia writes about rising gas prices, inflation, a porous border with Mexico and climbing mortgage rates — without mentioning Hunter Biden.

Veteran Democratic consultant Bill Carrick said GOP House candidates already are facing two challenges in heavily Democratic California: Trump, if he becomes the nominee, is widely unpopular in the state outside his conservative base, and suburban woman are likely to see an elevated turnout, driven by concern over abortion rights after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling. With the focus on the Bidens, McCarthy “has strategically taken the position that he is going to stoke up the base in a lot of the rural, red-state areas,” Carrick said.

But California isn’t Texas or Utah, where conservative politics tend to dominate. “The current McCarthy strategy doesn’t really account for that,” Carrick said, adding that House control will likely turn on swing districts in states like California and New York. But there is also a risk for Democrats, depending on what the investigations turn up. And voters say Republicans like Garcia can help themselves by focusing on things that matter back home. Democrat Laura Stotler, a retired government employee, said she plans to vote for Garcia, based on his attention to district issues.

She doesn’t always agree with his votes, but she credits him with showing up at events she has attended, and his office responded when she made an inquiry about pending legislation honoring women telephone operators who served during World War I. As for Washington news, she avoids it. She said she doesn’t need the stress. “I can’t keep track of who is getting indicted for what,” she said. “I’m just so tired of it.”

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