Longest-serving U.S. congressman, Alaska's Don Young, dies at 88

U.S. Republican Representative Don Young, who was first elected to Congress in 1973 and was its longest-serving current member, died on Friday, his office said in a statement.

The 88-year-old congressman died while traveling home to Alaska, his office said.

"Don Young's legacy as a fighter for the state will live on, as will his fundamental goodness and honor. We will miss him dearly," the statement said.

His office did not give the cause of death. The Anchorage Daily News reported that Young lost consciousness on a flight from Los Angeles to Seattle and could not be resuscitated. The newspaper report cited Jack Ferguson, who had served as Young's chief of staff.

Young was Alaska's only member in the House of Representatives. The longest-serving member of the current U.S. Congress, according to his website, he represented Alaska for 25 terms and last year he filed to enter this November's election.

"I'm incredibly saddened to hear of the passing of Don Young," U.S. Representative Steve Scalise, the No. 2 Republican in the House, said in a statement.

"He was a passionate champion of his home state of Alaska, but he was also a mentor who, as the Dean of the House, had more institutional knowledge of Congress than anyone I know," Scalise said.

U.S. Representative Dean Phillips, a Democrat from Minnesota, said on Twitter: "His fiercely independent voice for Alaska and one of a kind wit and character will be missed."

Young was born in California in 1933 and moved to Alaska in 1959, shortly after statehood.

In Congress, he was known for directing billions of dollars of federal money to Alaska, the largest state in the country but with one of the smallest populations.

In late 2020, Young was diagnosed with COVID-19 after he had earlier ridiculed the disease as a "beer virus."

Pence fine tunes a message for 2024: Pro-Trump, to a point

In the past five weeks, former Vice President Mike Pence has broken with former President Donald Trump in more ways and more times than at any point in the previous five years.

That’s no coincidence.

The once loyal number two has been carefully uncoupling himself from Trump as he girds for a potential presidential bid in 2024. Speaking to Republican donors last weekend as Russian President Vladimir Putin’s unprovoked attack on Ukraine ravaged the democratic nation, Pence said, “There is no room in this party for apologists for Putin.” That unmistakable swipe at Trump — who had recently called Putin’s tactics leading up to the invasion “genius” — came after an even more direct condemnation.

“President Trump is wrong,” he said in a speech last month, responding to Trump’s argument that Pence could have overturned the 2020 election results by refusing to certify the electors.

It’s a marked shift from Pence’s deferential posture as vice president, when he was so wary of appearing out of step with his boss that he’d review speech drafts submitted by his aides and edit in Trump’s name with a Sharpie to be sure the president was getting enough credit, according to a former administration official.

But if Pence enters the 2024 presidential race, he’d need a rationale that distinguishes him from others, including Trump, a possible candidate himself. Some Pence allies say, and his recent moves suggest they're right, that Pence is settling on an a la carte approach: embracing parts of Trump’s record while rejecting others.

“He’s doing a good job of highlighting the successes of the [Trump] administration and, when it comes to Jan. 6, and, more recently, comments on Putin, he’s drawing that line,” a person close to Pence said, requesting anonymity to discuss private deliberations. Pence’s argument, this person said is, “If you like the policies of the Trump administration but not the rest of the stuff, then I’m the guy who’s going to fight for it.”

Pence has been giving speeches across the country since leaving office, mixing pointed attacks on President Joe Biden with a defense of the Trump administration’s efforts to cut taxes, reduce regulations and safeguard the southern border. He got a laugh from an audience at Stanford University last month when, as a prank, a student asked him about the location of the nearest bathroom. "Hey, this is a real thing,” Pence said. "President Harry Truman said, ‘Don’t ever pass up the opportunity to use the restroom.’” At the same time, he’s drawn his sharpest contrasts with Trump yet over Russia and a 2020 election the ex-president continues to falsely insist he won.

Another way Pence may differentiate himself in a presidential race is by reverting to a more traditional Republican platform, a second person close to him said. Under Trump, the GOP took a different turn as the former president courted authoritarian leaders and considered withdrawing from NATO, the military alliance that has been a bulwark against Russia for decades. Pence would champion more classic GOP positions while stressing the value of democratic governance, this person said. Firming up his foreign policy credentials, Pence last week met with Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and also toured the Poland-Ukraine border with his wife, Karen.

"It's going to be OK," Pence told a Ukrainian refugee carrying a small child, according to a video of his comments.

Making repeated appearances in early presidential primary states, Pence looks and sounds like a candidate-in-waiting. South Carolina, which typically holds the first presidential primary in the South, is becoming something of a home base. Pence is scheduled to give a commencement address in the state at the end of April and return in the first week in May to deliver a keynote speech at a Christian pregnancy center. South Carolina’s large evangelical population is a natural constituency for the former vice president, who describes himself as a Christian first, a conservative second and a Republican third.

The presidency is “not something that he’s thinking about, but if that time comes, then he’s said he and Karen will consider it and will pray on it,” said an aide for Advancing American Freedom, an issue advocacy group Pence founded, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Still, Pence's positions of late show “he is moving inexorably toward running in 2024 and maybe has already made that decision,” John Bolton, former national security adviser who served with Pence in the White House, said in an interview.

In doing so he risks making a permanent enemy of Trump, if he hasn’t already. But he appears to be on the right side of public opinion, including among the GOP. A Quinnipiac poll last month suggested that 52 percent of Republicans believed that Pence’s view that he had no authority to overturn the 2020 election results was closer to their own view than Trump’s, which was that Pence did have such power.

As for Russia, Trump still faces criticism for an interview he gave last month in which he said Putin showed “genius” and “savvy” for recognizing two Moscow-backed breakaway regions in the eastern part of Ukraine as independent, a step that was quickly followed by troops moving into those regions ahead of a full-scale invasion.

"He was wrong, pretty obviously," Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, said in an interview.

Praise for Putin appears out of step with both American voters and Republican Party leaders who sympathize with Ukraine’s plight. A Reuters/Ipsos poll earlier this month found the vast majority of Americans favored aggressive measures to help Ukraine fend off the Russian attack. Nearly three-quarters said the U.S. and its allies should set up a no-fly zone in Ukraine, an escalatory step that the Biden administration has refused to take.

“Anyone who associates themselves with any positive comments about Putin isn’t being very smart, if you look at how everyone is aghast at what’s going on in Ukraine,” said John Kelly, Trump’s longest-serving White House chief of staff.

The midterm elections in November present a fresh opportunity for Pence to move out from under Trump’s huge shadow and expand his own political network. His advocacy group announced last week it was pumping $10 million into an ad campaign aimed at 16 different Democratic House members that urges them to expand domestic oil production, among other actions. The ad buy could help him win the gratitude of Republican lawmakers in tough re-election fights. More ads will be coming, the aide to the group said.

It is unclear how much money Trump plans to invest in midterm campaigns from the $120 million-plus war chest he’s amassed. One national GOP strategist worried that it would be too little, too late.

“No one is banking on that $120 million coming in,” the strategist said, speaking on condition of anonymity to talk more freely. “It’s not something that people are assuming is going to be there.”

Trump has made a slew of endorsements as he looks to oust sitting Republican officials he has deemed disloyal. The gambit has the potential to backfire if his endorsed candidates don’t win. In the Georgia governor’s race, for example, Trump has endorsed former Sen. David Perdue, who’s running against incumbent Brian Kemp in the Republican primary. Kemp angered Trump by upholding the 2020 election result in which Trump lost the state. By contrast, Pence has vowed to support all incumbent Republican governors, even if they’re challenged by candidates Trump has endorsed. Kemp was leading Perdue by 11 points in a recent Fox News poll.

In a Republican National Committee podcast, chair Ronna McDaniel asked Trump what he planned to do to help Republicans recapture the House and Senate in the midterm elections. Trump mentioned that he would be holding rallies — his favorite forum. A spokesman for Trump did not respond to a request for comment.

Pence is “making decisions completely separate from what Trump is doing,” the second person close to Pence told NBC News.

Pence seldom revealed his thinking in meetings and waited instead until he was alone with Trump, former officials have said. Now he is writing two books that will help reintroduce himself to voters on his terms. One will focus on his work in the conservative movement over the years; another will be devoted to his vice presidency.

“I’m sure it will tell stories previously untold,” the Pence advocacy group aide said. “But it will also pull back the curtain on the many successes the Trump-Pence administration had, and his involvement in them.”

Other ex-officials who ran afoul of Trump, such as former Attorney General William Barr and former press secretary Stephanie Grisham, have come out with books that have had a retaliatory flavor.

It’s not Pence’s style to write a tell-all, but “the person who could give Donald Trump the most headaches could be Mike Pence,” a third person close to him said.

US pays $2M a month to protect Pompeo, aide from Iran threat

The State Department says it’s paying more than $2 million per month to provide 24-hour security to former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and a former top aide, both of whom face “serious and credible” threats from Iran.

The department told Congress in a report that the cost of protecting Pompeo and former Iran envoy Brian Hook between August 2021 and February 2022 amounted to $13.1 million. The report, dated Feb. 14 and marked “sensitive but unclassified,” was obtained by The Associated Press on Saturday.

Pompeo and Hook led the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran and the report says U.S. intelligence assesses that the threats to them have remained constant since they left government and could intensify. The threats have persisted even as President Joe Biden's administration has been engaged in indirect negotiations with Iran over a U.S. return to a landmark 2015 nuclear deal.

As a former secretary of state, Pompeo was automatically given 180 days of protection by the State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security after leaving office. But that protection has been repeatedly extended in 60-day increments by Secretary of State Antony Blinken due to “a serious and credible threat from a foreign power or agent of a foreign power arising from duties performed by former Secretary Pompeo while employed by the department,” the report said.

Hook, who along with Pompeo was often the public face of the Trump administration's imposition of crippling sanctions against Iran, was granted the special protection by Blinken for the same reason as Pompeo immediately after he left government service. That has also been repeatedly renewed in 60-day increments.

The latest 60-day extensions will expire soon and the State Department, in conjunction with the Director of National Intelligence, must determine by March 16 if the protection should extended again, according to the report.

The report was prepared because the special protection budget will run out in June and require a new infusion of money if extensions are deemed necessary.

Current U.S. officials say the threats have been discusses in the nuclear talks in Vienna, where Iran is demanding the removal of all Trump-era sanctions. Those sanctions include a “foreign terrorist organization” designation of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps that Pompeo and Hook were instrumental in approving.

The Vienna talks had been expected to produce an agreement soon to salvage the nuclear agreement that President Donald Trump withdrew the U.S. from in 2018.

But the talks have been thrown into doubt because of new demands made by Russia and a small number of unresolved U.S.-Iran issues, including the terrorism designation, according to U.S. officials.

Justice Thomas slams cancel culture, 'packing' Supreme Court

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas said he's concerned efforts to politicize the court or add additional justices may erode the institution's credibility, speaking Friday in Utah at an event hosted by former Republican U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch’s foundation.

Thomas, the most senior justice on the nine-member court, said he often worries about the long-term repercussions of trends such as “cancel culture” and a lack of civil debate.

“You can cavalierly talk about packing or stacking the court. You can cavalierly talk about doing this or doing that. At some point the institution is going to be compromised,” he told an audience of about 500 people at an upscale hotel in Salt Lake City.

"By doing this, you continue to chip away at the respect of the institutions that the next generation is going to need if they’re going to have civil society," Thomas said.

Rulings for the upcoming year will set laws on hot-button political issues, including abortion, guns and voting rights.

The court has leaned increasingly conservative since three justices nominated by former President Donald Trump joined its ranks. Progressives have in turn called to expand the number of justices on the court, including during the 2020 presidential primary. Democrats in Congress introduced a bill last year to add four justices to the bench, and President Joe Biden has convened a commission to study expanding the court.

“I’m afraid, particularly in this world of cancel culture attack, I don’t know where you’re going to learn to engage as we did when I grew up,” he said. “If you don’t learn at that level in high school, in grammar school, in your neighborhood, or in civic organizations, then how do you have it when you’re making decisions in government, in the legislature, or in the courts?”

In addition to condemning “cancel culture,” Thomas also blasted the media for cultivating inaccurate impressions about public figures — including himself, his wife and late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

Ginni Thomas, Justice Thomas’s wife and a longtime conservative activist, has faced scrutiny this year for her political activity and involvement in groups that file briefs about cases in front of the Supreme Court, as well as using her Facebook page to amplify partisan attacks.

As Congress prepares to hold confirmation hearings for Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, Thomas recalled his 1991 confirmation process as a humiliating and embarrassing experience that taught him not to be overly prideful. During congressional hearings, lawmakers grilled Thomas about sexual harassment allegations from Anita Hill, a former employee, leading him to call the experience a “high tech lynching.”

If confirmed, Jackson would be the first Black woman on the court, and would join Thomas as its second Black justice.

Thomas, who grew up in Georgia during segregation, said he held civility as one of his highest values. He said he learned to respect institutions and debate civilly with those who disagreed with him during his years in school. Based on conversations he’s had with students at his university lectures in recent years, he said he doesn’t believe colleges are welcoming places for productive debate, particularly for students who support what he described as traditional families or oppose abortion.

Thomas did not reference the future of Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 Supreme Court decision that extended abortion rights throughout the country. The court this year is scheduled to rule on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization and whether Mississippi can ban abortions at 15 weeks. While the court deliberates over the case, lawmakers in Florida, West Virginia and Kentucky are advancing similar legislation hoping the court overturns Roe and establishes new precedent.

‘Arsonists with keys to the firehouse’: once-obscure state races fuel fears for US democracy

Last year, Brad Raffensperger was attracting national headlines for taking a stand against Donald Trump and his lies about the 2020 election.

In a phone call that was quickly made public, Trump demanded that Raffensperger, Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, “find” enough votes to deprive Joe Biden of a victory in the battleground state. Raffensperger refused to do so and won widespread praise for his courage.

Raffensperger is paying for his actions in a way that reveals how his once obscure elected position is now at the center of a battle for the future of American democracy – and attracting all the big money and political heat that entails.

This year, Raffensperger is facing a brutal primary race against a Trump-backed candidate, the US congressman Jody Hice, and trying to cling on to his job. Hice, who has said the 2020 results in Georgia would have been different if the race had been “fair”, has already raised more than twice as much money as Raffensperger.

Hice’s impressive haul is partly thanks to the unusually high number of out-of-state donations that his campaign has attracted, as more Americans across the country zero in on secretary of state races.

And Georgia is not unique. As Trump and his allies continue to spread the “big lie” of widespread fraud in the 2020 race, many voters are focusing their attention – and wallets – on the officials who oversee states’ elections.

Secretary of state candidates in both parties are now posting substantial fundraising figures, intensifying concerns over how election administration has become a heated political issue in the US.

Secretary of state races have historically attracted little notice and even less money. The winners of these elections assume rather bureaucratic roles, and their duties may include managing state records, overseeing the department of motor vehicles and keeping the state seal. But in many states, the secretary of state also serves – crucially – as the chief election official.

In the weeks after the 2020 election, as Trump and his supporters falsely claimed the results had been tainted by fraud, secretaries of state in key battleground states became the target of intimidation and threats. Now the former president is using the power of his endorsement to wield influence in the races for those posts.

While Trump did not endorse any candidates for secretary of state in 2020, he has already endorsed three in the 2022 cycle: Hice in Georgia, Mark Finchem in Arizona and Kristina Karamo in Michigan. All three candidates have embraced the lie that Democrats stole the 2020 election by allowing fraud to affect the results. Biden’s margin of victory in each of those states was less than three points, and their input could prove decisive in the next presidential election.

“They are willing to overturn the will of the voters in order to choose the winner,” said Kim Rogers, executive director of the Democratic Association of Secretaries of State. “It is disempowering, and it is akin to giving an arsonist keys to the firehouse.”

Republicans and Democrats’ disparate concerns over election fairness have contributed to a significant increase in donations to secretary of state candidates.

According to an analysis by the Brennan Center for Justice, donations for secretary of state races in six battleground states are three times higher than they were at this point in the last election cycle, in 2018, and eight times higher than the 2014 cycle. Fundraising has particularly increased in Arizona, Geor­gia and Michigan, which also happen to be the three states where Trump has issued an endorsement.

“A lot more money is going to these once sleepy, bureaucratic races,” said Ian Vandewalker, senior counsel in the Brennan Center’s elections and government program. “The places that we’ve seen the biggest increase – which is basically Arizona, Georgia and Michigan – each of those places had some degree of nationally covered election controversy around 2020.”

The Brennan Center analysis also indicated that out-of-state donations to secretary of state candidates are increasing at an even faster rate than overall donations. Finchem, who has called on the Arizona legislature to decertify the 2020 presidential results in three major counties, already has six times as many donors as every secretary of state candid­ate in the 2018 elec­tion combined. Two-thirds of those donors live outside Arizona.

Democrats have taken note of Republican enthusiasm about secretary of state elections, and they are responding by ramping up their own fundraising.

The Democratic Association of Secretaries of State and its partner groups raised a record $4.5m in 2021, compared with $1.5m raised during the entire 2018 cycle. The organization has said it is on track to meet its fundraising goal of $15m for the 2022 cycle, in part because of the increase in first-time individual donors. Other progressive groups, including End Citizens United and iVote, have pledged to spend tens of millions more on secretary of state races this year.

“The engagement is at every single level. We have seen a massive increase in our email list and grassroots support,” Rogers said.

Rogers believes Democratic activists are increasingly turning their attention to secretary of state races partly because they have been frustrated by the lack of progress at the federal level. Congressional Democrats have repeatedly tried to pass national voting rights legislation, which would reverse some of the voting restrictions enacted by 19 states last year, but Senate Republicans have successfully used the filibuster to defeat those bills.

“I think there are a lot of activists who got involved in 2020 who fought incredibly hard for the federal voting rights legislation in 2021,” Rogers said. “When 50 Republicans blocked it yet again, folks were looking for a way to stay engaged and to continue the fight, and they shifted their assets into the states.”

Republicans complain that Democrats are trying to alter election regulations to their benefit at both the federal and state levels. Andrew Romeo, communications director for the Republican State Leadership Committee, said Democrats were “ramping up their interest in secretary of state races because they see control of these offices as a way to change the rules to compensate for their inability to win elections”.

Romeo’s group is an umbrella organization that promotes Republican candidates for state legislatures, state supreme courts and secretary of state offices, among other roles. The RSLC and its policy partner group raised $33.3m in 2021, exceeding their previous odd-year record by more than $14m.

But to Democrats like Rogers, the outcome of secretary of state races in key battleground states represents nothing less than the fate of American democracy.

“These folks want to rig the game, and they are out to do that,” Rogers said.

Vandewalker fears that the increasingly dire messaging about secretary of state races will contribute to a political climate in which both parties distrust the outcome of elections.

“Money and attention being paid to these races is not inherently a bad thing. The voters should be informed about these candidates,” Vandewalker said. But he adds, “that kind of rhetoric is extremely dangerous to voter confidence because of course one side or the other is going to win and is going to count the votes. And democracy counts on people accepting the result, even if their side doesn’t win.”

Falun Gong organizer eligible for political asylum, Ninth Circuit rules

An organizer of the Chinese spiritual movement Falun Gong who fled to California is eligible for political asylum because he is likely to be arrested and imprisoned if returned to China, a federal appeals court ruled Friday.

Chunguo Liu’s application for asylum had been rejected by an immigration judge and the U.S. Board of Immigration Appeals, who both concluded he had failed to show he faced persecution if deported. But the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco said Liu’s testimony, and a U.S. government report on China’s treatment of Falun Gong members, demonstrated a likelihood of persecution.

“Liu’s testimony established that government agents sought to arrest him for practicing and organizing Falun Gong and did in fact arrest, detain, and imprison all of the people with whom he regularly practiced,” the three-judge panel said. The court said Liu had also testified credibly that police in China had often come to his home to look for him since he left the country.

Falun Gong, a meditation practice, grew rapidly in China in the 1990s before it was outlawed by the government in 1999. Its followers have marched in San Francisco and elsewhere to protest China’s treatment of the movement.

Liu’s case is long-running — he appealed the immigration board’s ruling in 2015 in Los Angeles and has remained in the United States since then. The timing and circumstances of his flight from China were not described in the court ruling, and his lawyer could not be reached for comment.

Federal appeals courts seldom overturn deportation rulings, generally deferring to the findings of the immigration courts, a branch of the U.S. Justice Department. But the panel in Liu’s case said there was “no substantial evidence” to support the board’s conclusion.

The court said a 2012 report by the U.S. State Department, cited by Liu, found that Falun Gong practitioners in China “have been subjected to involuntary commitment to psychiatric facilities, physical and psychological coercion to renounce their beliefs, and assignment to reeducation-through-labor camps.”

The court returned the case to the immigration appeals board for further review, but said the record in the case “compels the conclusion that Liu is eligible for asylum.”

The panel consisted of Judges Sidney Thomas, M. Margaret McKeown and Ronald Gould.

Mike Pence knocks Trump and lays the groundwork for possible presidential run

Former Vice President Mike Pence has spent the past week outmaneuvering Donald Trump, his old boss and potential 2024 primary opponent.

Shortly after the plane Trump was flying on last weekend was forced to land due to an engine failure, Pence flew to Israel on the private jet of the GOP’s most prized donor, Miriam Adelson. And while Trump was avoiding criticizing Russian President Vladimir Putin in a call-in interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity, Pence and his wife, Karen, flew to the border between Ukraine and Poland to distribute relief aid to refugees.

In perhaps the most telling indication that the political dynamic between the two men has shifted, Pence implicitly hit Trump at a Republican National Committee speech last Friday, saying the GOP should not include any “apologists for Putin.”

“Welcome to the front end of the Pence boomlet,” said veteran Republican pollster Michael Cohen, who has no relation to the former Trump lawyer. “Who had a better week or past few weeks than Pence? I mean, it’s not even close.”

When Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine, he not only resolidified the old Western alliances formed in the wake of World War II, he also shook up the Republican Party’s power dynamics, at least temporarily.

The longtime center of power on the right, Trump has been struggling to garner attention for himself after six years of almost unilaterally controlling the national stage. And Pence, who’s best known for being stiff, boring and deferential to the former president, has walked into the center of the vacuum created by Trump's absence.

Pence has even grabbed prime slots on Fox News, making news in an interview with one of Trump’s favorite hosts, Maria Bartiromo. Bartiromo pressed Pence repeatedly on his plans for 2024, and whether he would run against Trump if the former president enters the race. But Pence played coy, brushing away the questions.

“I’m confident the Republican Party will nominate a candidate who will be the next president of the United States of America, and at the right time, my family and I will reflect and consider how we might participate in that process,” Pence said.

The burst of attention for Pence comes after more than a year of laying groundwork behind the scenes, making campaign-style trips to early-voting states like New Hampshire and Iowa and courting Republican donors who have bankrolled successful White House bids.

Trump remains the leader in early polls for the 2024 party nomination, but despite his popularity with the Republican grassroots, a number of GOP lawmakers are mulling runs of their own. All are trying to develop their own unique brands, whether through Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s culture-war broadsides or Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton’s appeal to unite the pre- and post-Trump wings of the GOP.

Yet despite his very public falling out with Trump, Pence's backers see him as a figure uniquely suited to bring together the warring factions within the GOP. An evangelical Christian originally elected to Congress in 2000, he steadily climbed the ranks of the House Republican caucus. In 2012, Indiana voters elected him governor, a position he left to become Trump’s running mate and shore up the erstwhile TV host’s conservative bona fides.

Since the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection, in which Trump-backed rioters threatened to hang Pence for not helping the then president overturn the 2020 election results, Pence has been slowly and steadily hitting the campaign trail — even though he has yet to announce his intentions for 2024. A Pence spokesman did not respond to Yahoo News’ request for comment.

But the real break in the dam seemed to come almost immediately after Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine. Trump and his backers, who just days earlier had been touting Putin’s “genius,” suddenly looked outdated and perhaps out of touch with the GOP.

“The McCain wing of the GOP is back and stronger than ever, truth-telling about Mr. KGB,” said longtime Republican strategist Scott Reed, who ran Bob Dole’s campaign for president in 1996.

But Republican operatives, like the candidates they advise, are still trying to game out whether the turn from Trump-style populism, at least in matters of foreign policy, is permanent or merely a passing fluke.

“It’s too soon to tell, but I still think Americans don’t want U.S. troops over there, and a lot don’t want to even send money there,” said former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski. “This could be an issue in the midterms.”

Pence, meanwhile, is doing what he has always done, plodding forward steadily and waiting for his moments to grab the spotlight.