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Brigid Bergin: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. I'm Brigid Bergin from the WNYC and Gothamist newsroom filling in for Brian Lehrer who is off today and tomorrow. Coming up on the show today, a conversation about the future of qualified immunity for police officers, then a chance to share the joys and ask about the challenges of motherhood with an expert in cognitive behavioral therapy, plus your calls about motherhood wins this past pandemic year, plus how our bodies have changed during the year of lockdown.

To start, the leadership battle among House Republicans, this week the party is expected to our state's number three in the congress, Wyoming Representative Liz Cheney. She is one of the most conservative members of the party, but also someone who has been an outspoken critic of former President Donald Trump. She voted in favor of his second impeachment, calls out his false claims that the election was stolen, and blames him for stoking the violence that led to the January 6th insurrection at the Capitol and what could come in its aftermath.

Set to replace her is upstate Congress Member Elise Stefanik, one of only four members of New York's congressional delegation who refuse to certify the results of the presidential election. She represents the North Country and most of the Adirondacks. Stefanik was once seen as a rising star of a more moderate brand of republicanism, that changed when she came out as a key Trump defender during his first impeachment trial.

Joining me now to talk about the state of play within the GOP, what it means for Republicans now and crucially in 2022 is Jacqueline Alemany, Washington Post Congressional Correspondent in Power Up anchor. Jacqueline, welcome back to WNYC.

Jacqueline Alemany: Hey, thanks so much for having me.

Brigid: Now, let's take a step back and talk about how Congresswoman Liz Cheney, daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, arrived at this moment, including her recent editorial in your paper just last week.

Jacqueline: Well, actually, this goes even farther back. The vote to oust her this week actually will be the second one. Her leadership post was saved all the way back in February when her peers were upset with her pro-impeachment vote against Donald Trump and thought it was a reason to oust her from her number three post. At the time, we were able to report out last week this telling anecdote that Rep Marjorie Taylor Greene in part help saves her from losing her posts.

At the time House Democrats were pressuring Republicans to strip Greene of her committee assignments over her history of propagating conspiracy theories and support for political violence on social media, and concurrently House Republicans were grappling with whether to keep Cheney in leadership after defending her support for Trump's impeachment. We had two Republican sources who had knowledge of house leadership's thinking at the time say that the backlash against Greene, in part allowed Cheney to keep her post. This thinking was sort of that the optics would be way too toxic for House Minority leaders, Big Tent gamble to extend just to Greene and not to Cheney.

They both saved their jobs and I think that there was a thinking that Cheney would recalibrate that she would be thankful that her job was saved, and we put her head down and stop criticizing and speaking out against President Trump. Actually, that gulf since February between Cheney and the rest of GOP leadership has only widened, and that's why we are seeing her probably lose her leadership position this week.

To be clear, she's not whipping to keep that job, Elise Stefanik is actively campaigning to get the job. That vote is likely to happen on Wednesday and would just require most likely a simple majority.

Brigid: I want to take a step back and you talked about how this gulf has widened, and really Cheney doubled down last week with that editorial where she wrote, "The Republican Party is at a turning point and Republicans must decide whether we're going to choose truth and fidelity to the Constitution." Then, she really lays out the steps she thinks the party needs to take, a 911 style commission to investigate the January 6th insurrection, and ultimately a return to conservative Republican values, which means she's steering away from what she calls "The dangerous anti-democratic Trump cult of personality." Are there Republicans besides Liz Cheney saying any of this right now?

Jacqueline: That is an excellent question. It's something that my colleague Marianna Sotomayor and I dove into over the weekend because there was a group if you remember of 10 GOP House lawmakers who made history by voting to impeach President Trump on January 13th. It was a historic milestone. The most House members from a President's own party to vote to remove them from office.

Since that vote, the 10 lawmakers have cut pretty different paths and profiles as they've grappled with the fallout, in considering their political futures, and a party that's still beholden to Trump. You have people like Adam Kinzinger, who have voiced full-throated support for Liz Cheney, and they have since made this issue pretty career-defining, arguing as you just noted, that pushing back against Trump's false assertions about the 2020 election is about protecting democracy and the soul of the Republican Party is bigger than just trying to win back the House and the Senate in 2022 midterms.

Other lawmakers reps Anthony Gonzales, Jamie Herrera Butler, and Peter Meyer have defended their votes and Cheney amid a caucus-wide push to oust her from leadership, but they haven't stopped to make it a marquee issue. The rest of that pack have quietly moved on. Even if they've stood by their decision, they have seemed to toe leadership's line in their argument that what's most important now is opposing President Biden's agenda, "Let's stop giving Democrats a reason to criticize us and have them make these assertions that Republicans are disarray and not Democrats, in fact."

Look, these lawmakers, the pro-impeachment lawmakers, they're in a precarious positions, they have targets on their back and this is a president who-- They're dealing with a former president and the de facto head of the party still who is out for blood and Liz Cheney is really just the first lawmaker, I think that he feels like he's been successfully able to take down.

Brigid: Listeners, we want to hear your thoughts about this leadership change. Are you supportive of Representative Liz Cheney's push for a thorough investigation and prosecution related to the January 6th attacks? What do you think about this moment in the history of the Republican party? What about Representative Stefanik who we'll speak about more soon rising through the leadership ranks so quickly? Could it be good for New York? Call us at 646-435-7280. That's 646-435-7280.

Jacqueline, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has said there will be a vote on the leadership posts this week. You said Wednesday, and he said he supports Stefanik, you said it would be likely an upper down vote, is that the procedure? What does it change in terms of how the party is currently operating when this happens?

Jacqueline: That's a really good question. It's something that we have all been trying to figure out what the actual procedure is for changing caucus lawmakers. We think this isn't entirely sure, but we think that Congresswoman Virginia Foxx is going to introduce the motion to oust Cheney, and that vote most likely will only require a simple majority to remove her.

The vote is going to take place by secret ballot so members will not be publicly on the record as voting to remover unless they say so publicly. It's really always possible that Liz Cheney actually has more support than we realize. For example, the last time around despite a lot of the backlash against her, 145 lawmakers of her peers voted to keep her in her leadership position.

If Cheney is voted out, members can then immediately nominate her replacement, which is all but likely to be Elise Stefanik. There's going to be a three-minute nominating speech and then Stefanik would immediately rise up in the party ranks. I think we wouldn't see that big of a difference except from a messaging standpoint and you already have Elise Stefanik acting as the acting number three leader in the house.

Going on Steve Bannon his radio show last weekend, and practicing the messaging that she's intending on continuing, which is propagating President Trump's false claims that this was a fraudulent election in 2020 and really embracing the MAGA agenda.

Brigid: Let's talk some more about Congressmember Stefanick, she is significantly less conservative, and has a less conservative voting record than Cheney, how did she emerge as the likely replacement in this post?

Jacqueline: Right. That's a really important point that I think speaks to the broader issue here. This is not a test of conservatism, but a test of whether or not lawmakers are sufficiently pro-Trump and I think that this decision that we're seeing all but cements the idea that in order to hold a leadership position in this GOP, you must have an allegiance to the former president, but Stefanik is actually meeting with House Freedom Caucus members today to sort of smooth over some of those concerns because of her voting record, so she is actively whipping for the job. She is running in a clear field against Cheney.

There are other people who want the job, but they're not likely to challenge Stefanik, but she is walking through her record and assuaging some of the concerns that she isn't conservative enough, but Stefanik has been a bit of a maverick or I guess a more cynical way of looking at it would be a bit opportunistic. Her allies told my colleague Paul Kane, a super interesting piece that he wrote about her career trajectory that she's simply following the feelings of her constituency, her district in upstate New York, but I think others would look at it and see her seeing what is most politically expedient for her career and going along with that. She started out as a Paul Ryan acolyte.

Actually, was an executive assistant to Josh Bolton in the Bush White House, supported Mitt Romney, had a lot of establishment bonafide creds, Harvard graduate, used to actually even be friends with Pete Buttigieg in undergrad, and at one point worked for a Democratic campaign, but after 2016, I think we saw a rapid evolution and that does actually really reflect the district that she comes from and into this full MAGA proponent that we're seeing now.

The former president Trump gave her a big embrace last week saying she was a superior choice and then she has my complete and total endorsement for the GOP conference chair, but her transformation from embracing the Reagan-Bush ideology to now squarely residing in Trump's camp has been a remarkable one.

Brigid: Does this also have something to do with ensuring they replace Cheney with another woman? Is that a fact the factor for the GOP which doesn't have a lot of women in leadership roles?

Jacqueline: Yes. There's definitely a lot of gender undertones here, even with regards to who is the lawmaker that is actually going to propose the motion to oust Cheney. There was a push for that to also be a woman that's why Virginia Foxx is going to raise it. I think the GOP is sensitive to accusations of inter-party fighting that involves taking a woman down from a leadership position since there are so few women in leadership positions and also from an electorate standpoint, which is former President Trump did not perform well with Republican moderate suburban women.

That is an important coalition that they're trying to win back and having these internal politics playing out that might make it seem like men in the party are going out of their way to disparage and takedown again the top female leader in the Republican party is not a good look.

Brigid: Let's take one of our callers. Vicky in Tudor City, Vicky, welcome to WNYC.

Vicky: Oh, good morning and thank you for this program. I just want to say, Liz Cheney is a national hero and for her to go up against this January 6th event is so brave. This country is famous for one of its founding fathers, George Washington for having said, "I cannot tell a lie." With former President Donald Trump, it's been nothing but lie after lie. He is a national disgrace and I'm for anything Liz Cheney does. I was a conservative Republican before I had to switch my parties so that I could make sure to vote Donald Trump out of office. Thank you. I'll take the comments off the line.

Jacqueline: Vicky, can I ask you one quick follow-up? Are you still a member of the Republican party?

Vicky: Oh, no. I've switched to Democrat. I was a conservative or Republican switching on and off my whole life. I'm a middle-aged woman and I'll stay that way until I can be sure conservatism reflects what conservatism really is. It has nothing to do with what the current proponents are.

Brigid: Go ahead, Jacqueline.

Jacqueline: Oh, well, I just wanted to say, you know what, Vicky, you are not alone here. The 10 House Republicans who did vote to impeach the president have actually had really successful fundraising movements in the wake of their controversial votes. The second part of Liz Cheney's whole argument here is that the Republican party is going to keep hemorrhaging voters if they continue to subscribe to what she calls the cult of Trump. That this isn't just about saving the soul of the party, but it's also about having the party really atrophy and subscribing to a losing message.

Brigid: Vicky. What would bring you back? What would be to you a statement that the party has made the change it needs to make to enlist your support?

Vicky: Well, if they would reflect truly Republican values and conservative values. I'm not for huge bureaucracy in government. I think that it's wasteful and I think that always needs to be checked and cut back and made more efficient. That's my conservative side. I also think there are plenty of Republican conservatives and I hope it's not too controversial to say that we are for women's rights and things like that. It has nothing to do with the Christian right, or the right for everyone to walk around with a gun.

Those things aren't really conservative or Republican. The fact that there's this power grab in a despotic way to say that that's what people are interested in, I think that's much more minority than people realize, minority thoughts. That's my whole idea.

Brigid: Well, Vicky, thank you so much for calling. Please call us again. Jacqueline, Vicky raised some issues around what are the policy goals of this current Republican party. Clearly, it's not clear to her that they represent the values that drew her to the party initially. You've talked about how it's really becoming a party of personality, but are there any issues that are driving beyond just support of the former president?

Jacqueline: Not any issues that are part of mainstream conversation. A big part of this argument, the argument that House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has been making is that Cheney continuing to attack president Trump actually distracts from the broader message, but if you're looking at the rhetoric and the message coming from the leader of the party, former President Trump, it is overwhelmingly about election fraud, which again did not exist. Reporters have not found any such evidence that this election fraud does exist. These claims are unsubstantiated.

He has only once in the past six weeks commented on a Biden administration policy condemning the administration's move to temporarily pause the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. We did speak with Congressman Rice, who was another pro-impeachment GOP lawmaker over the weekend, who told my colleague Marianna and I that he actually does continue to support Liz Cheney, but did credit Trump for accelerating the trend of bringing in middle-class working people. But he was clear to say that issues of tax reform, trade reform, regulatory reform, energy independence, and strong borders.

The policies that Republicans are in supportive are going to be policies that are Republican policies long after Donald Trump has faded away. That's what he emailed us in his statement. I think it's going to be difficult for the party to focus on these issues so long as Trump is completely fixated on them and this issue of "election integrity" is something that is now also driving a lot of policymaking in state and local legislatures. We can't forget that you have the Texas legislature, the Florida one who just all implemented voting restrictions and suppressive voting measures just this week. That's all driven by a lot of, again, the former president's unsubstantiated claims.

Brigid: We're going to take a short break now more with Washington Post Congressional Correspondent, Jacqueline Alemany. Plus your calls just after this.

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This is Brigid Bergin in for Brian Lehrer today. Welcome back to the Brian Lehrer Show. I'm speaking with Jacqueline Alemany Washington Post's Congressional Correspondent and Power Up anchor. Jacqueline, now, last week as you had mentioned before President Trump and House GOP number two Steve Scalise, both came out in support of representative Elise Stefanik, but she also has had her critics and there's some folks who have been pushing back against her. Can you talk about why that is?

Jacqueline: Stefanik is probably a shoo-in for this number three position in leadership, but she has, I think, rubbed some of her peers the wrong way and is looking to shore up more support. She's meeting with House freedom caucus members this week who are concerned about her moderate voting record, especially in comparison to that of incumbent GOP Conference Chairwoman Liz Cheney. Then, there are I think also others who are a little graded at her tactics that this is a job that she has been plotting for, for a year and a half now and secretly employing some of the allies around her to help assist her in this quest for a leadership position.

We had sources tell us last week that Elise Stefanik has been bad-mouthing Liz Cheney for a year and a half now. When this rapid chain of events happened last week there was not surprise. Again, I have to repeat Stefanik is the consensus choice. We actually have a little nugget coming out in our piece shortly about some of the whipping efforts that she has been making and Cheney is not doing any whipping at all and has consistently said that if being in a leadership position requires her to lie and propagate former President Trump's false claims about the 2020 election, that she doesn't want that leadership position anyways.

Brigid: I want to go back to the phones. David in Nassau County. David, welcome to WNYC.

David: Thank you for having me. I see a parallel between the Republican Party today and the Nazi party at its inception. They both started on a big lie. For the Republicans, it's the stolen election and for the Nazis, it was a stolen victory in world war I because of internal betrayal. If the parallel holds then it doesn't portend well for us as I see the Republican Party continuing to assault democratic norms in the years ahead.

Brigid: David, thank you for your comments. Jacqueline, that is taking what we are seeing within the Republican Party to obviously a worst-case extreme, but are you hearing people drawing those kinds of parallels at this point?

Jacqueline: We've seen people draw those parallels a lot throughout the four years of Trump and most of those people are no longer members of the Republican Party. This is not an analogy that Liz Cheney has made in any way. This is strictly about the information crisis that is plaguing the Republican Party, but I do think that Cheney has talked about the fact that it's a problem that the majority of Republican voters now believe in a lot of this misinformation. That, in fact, is a troubling trend and a losing trend.

Brigid: Let's go to Matt in Jersey City. We'll take one more call right after that. Matt, welcome to WNYC.

Matt: Hey, thanks, guys. This conversation really crystallized for me how actually maybe Liz Cheney is in the wrong in some ways. Elize Stefanik evolution, I don't know if that was an Obama Trump district, but it just seems like she's being democratic in a way that maybe Cheney isn't and wouldn't be surprised there if she's voted out. Even it seems like Mitt Romney, I remember four years ago it was like having [unintelligible 00:23:59] whatever it was, it seemed like that [unintelligible 00:24:01] or at least there would be some sane Republicans and now Romney even seems in danger.

I guess I'm just curious, if there are a lot of pandering and going he's on-- Justifiably on the coast about lying and stuff then that's terrible, but at least from the sense of democracy is there a lot of honesty going on here and true representation?

Jacqueline: You do make a really good point and Stefanik's pivot does map precisely with her constituents in New York's north country and you are exactly right that her district used to be a Democratic stronghold. It is one of those infamous districts that I think a lot of reporters zoomed in on during 2016 to try and understand Trump better, that delivered a six percentage point margin for President Obama when Stefanik was actually working for Paul Ryan in 2012, that Trump then won by double-digit margins in 2016 and 2020.

Again, this piece that my colleague Paul Kane wrote last week has outlined all of the contours of her transformation and a lot of what her friends contend is that Stefanik is following her district's instincts. That being said, Stefanik has gone out of her way again to propagate a lot of the misinformation and the falsehoods about election fraud. She went on to Steve Bannon's radio show last week and said that the recall efforts playing out in Arizona right now should continue. I think if we're talking about preserving democracy, chipping away at Americans' confidence in elections doesn't align with that goal.

Brigid: Let's try to get one more call in. Let's go to Dave in Irvington, New York. Dave, welcome to WNYC.

Dave: Good morning, Jacqueline and Brigid. I've recently joined-- actually back in February, I joined the Republican Party, unfortunately, actually, a day late to vote in this primary, but the reason I did that is because the Republican Party, it just seems to many of us to be in such terrible shape and I'm wondering, this is the opposite of what you've been discussing, but on the local level, if people like me and perhaps like you would consider joining the Republican Party and forming or trying to have a positive influence on local clubs or in my case in the town of Irvington, I think there is no Republican club, I'm about to find out because I'd like to find out if--

We're talking about preserving democratic institutions and in this country the two-party systems seems like it's around the stay, so a certain amount of adversarial in nature to all this, the structure of the politics is necessary, it's totally out of hand right now. To have people that would sway it a little more towards the center, I think that would be a very healthy thing. Anyway, I'd be curious if other people and you as well are considering how we can make the Republican Party, on at least on a local level, more democratic and accountable to the needs of the people that are members of that organization.

Brigid: Dave, thanks so much for your comments. It's an interesting perspective, and I'm not sure how much you're looking at Republican Party on the local level, Jacqueline, but it's probably something that is a concern, I think, among people of both parties in terms of how the parties operate when it comes to local politics. The piece of it that I'm wondering if you could maybe weigh in on is, of course, we have reapportionment and redistricting coming up and here in New York, that's a process that will be controlled by Democrats and we're set to lose a congressional seat.

I'm wondering to what extent you're hearing any concerns among New York Republicans that they may have their seat eliminated, perhaps even Representative Stefanik. How much of a factor is this redistricting in any of these leadership debates?

Jacqueline: Look, I'm no Republican operative and I don't follow local politics super closely. That being said, I am from Westchester, New York. So I've also been from a personal perspective watching the results of the redistricting efforts closely, but I again think that the basic problem here is not so much about civic engagement, but the trickle-down effect that Trump is having on the entire party and that a lot of even local leaders are subscribing to misinformation.

That eventually at the end of the day, it one is corrosive to our elections and voters' confidence in elections, and it also, I think, it can potentially repel people from joining the party, but actually, those apportionment changes that you've mentioned that they're going to be happening in New York, interestingly several sources had mentioned it to me prior to the Cheney-Stefanik tensions playing out in public as a potential reason for why Stefanik might not want to get into the House leadership position because she could potentially be a victim of the redistricting move in New York, but that's still all playing out. New York has gone through partisan gerrymandering before. I'm curious to see how it unfolds.

Brigid: Just in our last few moments, I'm wondering, assuming that this vote takes place, and Cheney loses her post, is there a long game for her here? Is there a way to come back after really being cast aside, and I'm wondering what it says about the vulnerability of other Republican family dynasties, could the Trump brand really supplant them all?

Jacqueline: Yes. It's truly been remarkable to watch firsthand since former President Trump walked down that escalator in Trump Tower in 2015. He has been going after the Bush Cheney dynasties and Clinton dynasty for years now. Cheney is just perhaps most high-profile member of one of those families to date in terms of ousting her from her position. Even those close to her have told me over the past two weeks that they're concerned with the way that she's handled this because someone said to me, "Losers don't make policy at the end of the day."

If Cheney is no longer in a position to actually influence the conversation because at the end of the day, she's from a district in Wyoming that voted in favor of Trump by 43 points in 2020, she's not going to be able to necessarily drive the party, at least from the inside. We haven't seen super successful efforts, I think, so far, at least from the outside in moving the party, especially as the base is still very clearly under the control of former President Trump.

We have been hounding Cheney's people and the people around Cheney for what's next? What's the plan? And actually, several pro-impeachment lawmakers have told us that they're waiting for some leadership here, for some flare signs of what they should do next because some of them are in politically precarious situations, but that we haven't seen a cohesive movement just yet. If you look at some of the previous never Trump movements that have played out, those also have faced a similar fate to what Cheney is facing right now, which is being ousted from her leadership position most likely

Brigid: Well, we'll have to leave it there. I've been speaking with Washington Post Congressional Correspondent Jacqueline Alemany, thanks so much for joining me.

Jacqueline: Thanks for having me.

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