Former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) is taking her anti-Trump campaign to the congressional battlefield, endorsing Democrats in a pair of contested Home races in an indication that she sees the decrease chamber as a possible test on former President Trump if he wins a second time period within the White Home.
On Tuesday, Cheney endorsed John Avlon, a former CNN commentator who’s difficult GOP Rep. Nick LaLota (R-N.Y.) on Lengthy Island. And on Wednesday, she threw her weight behind Rep. Susan Wild, a four-term Democrat who’s in a decent race for reelection in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley. Extra endorsements could also be forthcoming.
Each districts rank among the many best seats within the nation, and each events are scrambling for any benefit as they battle for management of the Home subsequent yr — a razor-tight contest that continues to be too near name within the final three weeks earlier than Election Day.
“While we may not agree on everything, I know that [Wild] holds a deep respect for the integrity of our democracy,” Cheney mentioned in an announcement endorsing the Pennsylvania Democrat. “We need thoughtful and serious people in Congress who will uphold the rule of law.”
Cheney has made clear that she doesn’t assume Home Republicans match that invoice.
Way back to January of 2023, she warned that Republicans would pose “a threat” to the nation if GOP leaders retain management of the Home in 2025. And on Sunday, she went after Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), who had crafted the authorized rationale for difficult Trump’s election defeat in 2020, portraying him as a Trump sycophant and voicing doubts that he would certify the outcomes if Trump loses in November.
“He knew — and he knew with specificity — that the claims of fraud that Donald Trump was making and that he was repeating, he knew those to be false,” Cheney mentioned on NBC Information’s “Meet the Press” program. “We had very clear and specific conversations about that.”
Johnson has disputed the accusations, saying he would “absolutely” fulfill his constitutional obligation of formalizing the election outcomes — if the competition “is free and fair and legal.”
Cheney has already jumped into the presidential race, asserting in September that she is going to vote for Vice President Harris in a bid to maintain Trump from a second time period. And her foray into Home contests has precedent: In late 2022, Cheney endorsed a pair of Home Democrats with nationwide safety backgrounds, Reps. Elissa Slotkin (Mich.) and Abigail Spanberger (Va.), each of whom received tight reelection races that yr.
Nonetheless, Cheney isn’t any Democrat. The daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, she served for 3 phrases within the Home starting in 2017, siding with Trump on nearly each main coverage battle whereas defending the previous president by way of his first impeachment in 2019. However that every one modified after Jan. 6, 2021, when a mob of Trump supporters stormed into the U.S. Capitol in a failed effort to overturn his election defeat two months earlier.
Within the aftermath of the rampage, Cheney — who was then serving as chair of the Home GOP convention — broke sharply from different Republican leaders by inserting the blame squarely on Trump and warning that he poses an outsized menace to America’s democratic traditions. Her vocal condemnations infuriated lots of her Home GOP colleagues, and the backlash reduce quick her profession on Capitol Hill.
In Might of 2021, Republicans eliminated Cheney from management and changed her with a Trump loyalist in Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.). Cheney subsequently served on the choose committee that investigated the Jan. 6 assault, concluding that Trump was the driving drive behind it.
In August of 2022, as that probe was wrapping up, Cheney misplaced her GOP main to a different Trump supporter in Harriet Hageman.
The influence of Cheney’s endorsements stays unclear. Whereas she represents a conservative household dynasty, one that when carried nice weight in Republican circles, that affect has waned considerably since Trump entered the political scene and constructed an unlimited base of help that instructions management of the social gathering and tolerates little dissent.
Nonetheless, pariah standing hasn’t discouraged Cheney, who insists there’s room in politics for Republican anti-Trumpers like herself — even when it means making a separate social gathering.
