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In short, he said of Mr. Obama’s foreign policy: “I’ve been right. He’s been wrong.”

He said that Mr. Obama’s decision not to send more American troops to Iraq to thwart the Islamic State had put America at risk. “That attack you saw in Paris? You’ll see an attack in the United States,” Mr. McCain said in an interview last Thursday. He repeated his frequent assessment that the president’s foreign policy is “a disaster” and “delusional.” He said “of course” he would have made a better commander in chief.

Mr. McCain, in a sense, grew up on the Armed Services Committee. In 1977, four years after his release as a prisoner of war in Hanoi, the Navy assigned Captain McCain to be its Senate liaison.

And by using his new platform to draw attention to global threats, he hopes to create a favorable climate for a Republican to win the White House in 2016. On Tuesday, Mitt Romney, a potential candidate, called Mr. McCain for advice.

“I think John sees the next six years, really the next eight years, as the chance to close it out strong,” said Jack Keane, a retired Army general and close friend to Mr. McCain.

"I think there is a question," McCain explained in the interview. "I'm not a constitutional scholar on that, but I think it's worth looking into. I don't think it's illegitimate to look into."

Cruz says he anticipates Rubio will get an endorsement from McCain, which is why McCain brought up his birthplace as a potential stumbling block.

"Their foreign policies are almost identical. Their immigration policies are identical," Cruz continued. "So it's no surprise that people who are supporting other candidates in this race are going to jump on the silly attacks that occur as we get closer and closer to this election."

"It was a very wise move that Ted Cruz renounced his Canadian citizenship,"

"No, it's not going to happen," Cruz said. "I won't be taking legal advice anytime soon from Donald Trump.

"This is the silly season of politics," Cruz said. "Three weeks ago every Republican was talking about Donald Trump. Today, just about every Republican in the field is attacking me."

joking that members of the press will be "checking themselves into therapy" after he becomes president.

"With all due respect to our friends in the news media, elections are not won in newsrooms in Manhattan and D.C.," Cruz said to dozens of assembled media outlets on Thursday afternoon. "They are won talking to voters one on one. Answering their questions, their hard questions, not through a whole army of press surrogates who protect a candidate."

Having won re-election last year, Mr. McCain was already free to speak his mind. Were he to run again in 2022, he would be 86, and friends say that his 2016 campaign was almost certainly his last.

“Do I hear in his voice a little bit more expression of grander ideals? I do,” said Senator Bob Corker, Republican of Tennessee. “With all that’s happened to him, and the knowledge of where he is, I sense a little bit more of that.”

In Philadelphia, the National Constitution Center awarded Mr. McCain its Liberty Medal, honoring his lifetime of public service. The senator’s acceptance speech was a treatise on his expansive view of America’s role in the world — a role that, he fears, is being diminished by Mr. Trump’s leadership.

“The international order we helped build from the ashes of world war, and that we defend to this day, has liberated more people from tyranny and poverty than ever before in history,” Mr. McCain said.

But who — if anyone — will follow?

Well aware of the mercurial nature of the president, most congressional Republicans are loath to do or say anything that could upset Mr. Trump and risk provoking an early-morning Twitter tirade from the White House when they are trying to delicately piece together a complex tax agreement.

One can practically sense Republicans tiptoeing around the Capitol, taking extra care not to awaken the president to their presence in a way that could draw a scolding or rebuke.

They are equally wary of raising the ire of hard-right activists who already had Mr. Flake in their sights, contributing to his decision. Those activists celebrated Mr. Flake’s decision, claiming a Republican scalp.

While Mr. McCain, who is being treated for brain cancer and has spoken bitingly of Mr. Trump in recent weeks, glowingly praised his home-state colleague for his “integrity and honor and decency,” he did not use the Senate floor to second Mr. Flake’s worrisome message of a government and nation at risk. Mr. Flake is popular with his colleagues, and his fellow Republicans quickly noted how sorry they were to hear of his decision. But none joined him publicly in urging Republicans to stand up more defiantly to the president.

Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the majority leader, credited Mr. Flake as a “team player” and man of high principle after Mr. Flake’s speech. But Mr. McConnell quickly turned the Senate floor back to a minor debate over a budget point of order.

The through-line, as best as I can divine it, through the last two decades was a deep, traditionalist devotion to country, a deep patriotism which for all of McCain’s faults never seemed to be a vehicle for demonizing domestic enemies, something that sets him apart from most of today’s Republican party and certainly from the President who now embodies it.

And for ambitious Republican officials, the political calculation remains stark: To the extent that Republican voters care at all about foreign policy issues, many have come to embrace Mr. Trump’s nationalistic views on issues like trade, overseas military ventures and even Russia.

Mr. Graham, who made an unsuccessful run for president and was always overshadowed by Mr. McCain as a Republican voice on foreign policy, spoke for more than half an hour at a news conference on Wednesday, walking listeners through a history of the Afghan conflict.

Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, warned that pulling out the troops would be a “grave mistake.”

“Apparently, we’re to help our adversaries ring in the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks by gift-wrapping the country and handing it right back to them,” he said in a speech on the Senate floor.

“We don’t want to engage in nation building, we don’t want to engage in endless police actions,” said John McLaughlin, who also conducted polling for Mr. Trump.

And Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri, who has ambitions of developing a new policy framework for the party, praised the decision.

“To say that there is a single Republican foreign policy position is to miss what’s been happening within the conservative movement on these issue for the last 20 years,” said Lanhee Chen, a Hoover Institution scholar and policy adviser to a number of prominent Republican officials.

Foreign policy, particularly withdrawing from Afghanistan, was one of the few areas where Republican elected officials were willing to publicly criticize Mr. Trump.

Yet chances that Republicans will achieve a complete restoration of the traditional party platform seem low, particularly if Mr. Trump continues to flex his political power among his base.

When asked about the effects of the coronavirus pandemic, 58 percent of Republicans surveyed said the outbreak showed the United States should be less reliant on other countries, compared with just 18 percent of Democrats who said the same.

For Republicans, the shift inward comes as their long dominance over issues of national security and international affairs is waning. Mr. Trump rejected Republican foreign policy orthodoxy but largely struggled to articulate a cohesive countervailing view beyond a vague notion of putting America first.

Mr. Pompeo, who recently became the co-chairman of a new foreign policy group at the Nixon Foundation that aims to reassert “conservative realism,” said he supported Mr. Biden’s decision.

Of course, as the Fox News hosts pointed out, had Mr. Trump won re-election, the troops would have been coming home next month — with the full support of Mr. Pompeo, if not many other Republican leaders.

“The general American public should not have to make up the balance as corporations avoid paying billions in U.S. taxes,” Senator McCain said.

As Tim Cook, Apple’s chief executive, testified, there is a whole range of tactics Apple has chosen not to use.

The news in the Senate report about Apple was not that the company had found ways to shift income to low-tax jurisdictions. Lots of multinational companies do that. The news was that Apple had found a way to move a large part of its income to subsidiaries that claimed to not exist anywhere, at least when it came to paying taxes.

If you look at taxes as Senator McCain seems to do, one person finding a way around taxes means the rest of us have to pay more. After all, the government must raise enough money to meet its obligations. But that is not the way a lot of Republicans look at it now. They have denounced taxes for so long that some of them seem to view those who manage to legally avoid paying taxes as heroes. Some of them also seem to think that the government they help to run is evil and that depriving it of revenue is therefore a good thing.

In theory, under the current law, American multinationals will pay American taxes on all profits — less whatever foreign taxes they paid — when they bring the profits home. That is known as “deferred” taxation. But they try to avoid doing that, and hope they can persuade the government to let them pay a minimal tax on such repatriated profits, rather than the full rate.

Multinational corporations have been campaigning for a “territorial” tax system, in which the United States would tax only profits generated in this country. Doing that without finding a way to close down the loopholes that allow companies to move taxes around would simply ratify the current situation, with the difference that companies would no longer face the possibility of paying American taxes when they brought the money home.

closing those loopholes may be impossible under the current system. Companies can have one subsidiary pay any price they want to another subsidiary, so long as it is reasonably close to what an arm’s-length negotiation would produce. The I.R.S. is overmatched when it tries to challenge such pricing, particularly because there are often no comparable deals

To get anything done, Congress will have to agree that Senator McCain’s way of looking at taxes is correct, and accept that giving a tax break to one person or company must mean forcing others to pay more than they otherwise would.

“Talents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity,” might suffice for someone to be elected to the governorship of a state, but not the presidency. Election would “require other talents, and a different kind of merit,” to gain “the esteem and confidence of the whole Union,” or enough of it to win the presidency. As a result, there would be “a constant probability of seeing the station filled by characters pre-eminent for ability and virtue.” This was the Framers’ goal in designing the system that would make “the choice of the person to whom so important a trust was to be confided.”

In a nutshell, while carrying out his official duties, a president has to put the country, not himself, first; he must faithfully follow and enforce the law; and he must act with the utmost care in doing all that.

can Trump do all that? Does his personality allow him to? Answering those questions doesn’t require mental-health expertise, nor does it really require a diagnosis. You can make the argument for Trump’s unfitness without assessing his mental health: Like James Fallows, for example, you could just ask whether Trump would have been allowed to retain any other job in light of his bizarre conduct

More than a diagnosis, what truly matters, as Lincoln’s case shows, is the president’s behavioral characteristics and personality traits. And understanding how people behave and think is not the sole province of professionals; we all do it every day, with family members, co-workers, and others.

its criteria for personality disorders—they don’t require a person to lie on a couch and confess his or her innermost thoughts. They turn on how a person behaves in the wild, so to speak.

Donald Trump, as president of the United States, is probably the most observable and observed person in the world. I’ve personally met and spoken with him only a few times, but anyone who knows him will tell you that Trump, in a way, has no facade: What you see of him publicly is what you get all the time, although you may get more of it in private

accounts of a person’s behavior from laypeople who observe him might be more accurate than information from a clinical interview, and that this is especially true when considering two personality disorders in particular—what the DSM calls narcissistic personality disorder and antisocial personality disorde

These two disorders just happen to be the ones that have most commonly been ascribed to Trump by mental-health professionals over the past four years. Of these two disorders, the more commonly discussed when it comes to Trump is narcissistic personality disorder, or NPD—pathological narcissism

it touches directly upon whether Trump has the capacity to put anyone’s interests—including the country’s and the Constitution’s—above his own.

A certain amount of narcissism is healthy, and helpful—it brings with it confidence, optimism, and boldness. Someone with more than an average amount of narcissism may be called a narcissist. Many politicians, and many celebrities, could be considered narcissists

“Pathological narcissism begins when people become so addicted to feeling special that, just like with any drug, they’ll do anything to get their ‘high,’ including lie, steal, cheat, betray, and even hurt those closest to them,”

The “fundamental life goal” of an extreme narcissist “is to promote the greatness of the self, for all to see,

To many mental-health professionals, Donald Trump provides a perfect example of such extreme, pathological narcissism: One clinical psychologist told Vanity Fair that he considers Trump such a “classic” pathological narcissist that he is actually “archiving video clips of him to use in workshops because there’s no better example”

The goal of a diagnosis is to help a clinician guide treatment. The question facing the public is very different: Does the president of the United States exhibit a consistent pattern of behavior that suggests he is incapable of properly discharging the duties of his office?

Even Trump’s own allies recognize the degree of his narcissism. When he launched racist attacks on four congresswomen of color, Senator Lindsey Graham explained, “That’s just the way he is. It’s more narcissism than anything else.” So, too, do skeptics of assigning a clinical diagnosis. “No one is denying,” Frances told Rolling Stone, “that he is as narcissistic an individual as one is ever likely to encounter.” The president’s exceptional narcissism is his defining characteristic—and understanding that is crucial to evaluating his fitness for office

The DSM-5 describes its conception of pathological narcissism this way: “The essential feature of narcissistic personality disorder is a pervasive pattern of grandiosity, need for admiration, and lack of empathy that begins by early adulthood and is present in a variety of contexts.”

The diagnostic criteria offer a useful framework for understanding the most remarkable features of Donald Trump’s personality, and of his presidency. (1) Exaggerates achievements and talents, expects to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements?

(2) Preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance

(3) Believes that he or she is “special” and unique and should only associate with other special or high-status people?

Trump claims to be an expert—the world’s greatest—in anything and everything. As one video mash-up shows, Trump has at various times claimed—in all seriousness—that no one knows more than he does about: taxes, income, construction, campaign finance, drones, technology, infrastructure, work visas, the Islamic State, “things” generally, environmental-impact statements, Facebook, renewable energy, polls, courts, steelworkers, golf, banks, trade, nuclear weapons, tax law, lawsuits, currency devaluation, money, “the system,” debt, and politicians.

(4) Requires excessive admiration? Last Thanksgiving, Trump was asked what he was most thankful for. His answer: himself, of course. A number of years ago, he made a video for Forbes in which he interviewed two of his children. The interview topic: how great they thought Donald Trump wa

(5) A sense of entitlement? (9) Arrogant, haughty behaviors? Trump is the man who, on the infamous Access Hollywood tape, said, “When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything you want”—including grabbing women by their genitals. He’s the man who also once said, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters.”

(8) Envious of others? Here’s a man so unable to stand the praise received by a respected war hero and statesman, Senator John McCain, that he has continued to attack McCain months after McCain’s death;

(6) Interpersonally exploitative? Just watch the Access Hollywood tape, or ask any of the hundreds of contractors and employees Trump the businessman allegedly stiffed, or speak with any of the two dozen women who have accused Trump of sexual misconduct, sexual assault, or rape.

Finally, (7) Lacks empathy: is unwilling to recognize or identify with the feelings or needs of others? One of the most striking aspects of Trump’s personality is his utter and complete lack of empathy

The notorious lawyer and fixer Roy Cohn, who once counseled Trump, said that “Donald pisses ice water,” and indeed, examples of Trump’s utter lack of normal human empathy abound.

“It made no sense, Priebus realized, unless you understood … ‘The president has zero psychological ability to recognize empathy or pity in any way.’

What kind of human being, let alone politician, would engage in such unempathetic, self-centered behavior while memorializing such horrible tragedies? Only the most narcissistic person imaginable—or a person whose narcissism would be difficult to imagine if we hadn’t seen it ourselves. The evidence of Trump’s narcissism is overwhelming—indeed, it would be a gargantuan task to try to marshal all of it, especially as it mounts each and every day.

A second disorder also frequently ascribed to Trump by professionals is sociopathy—what the DSM-5 calls antisocial personality disorder

Central to sociopathy is a complete lack of empathy—along with “an absence of guilt.” Sociopaths engage in “intentional manipulation, and controlling or even sadistically harming others for personal power or gratification. People with sociopathic traits have a flaw in the basic nature of human beings … They are lacking an essential part of being human.” For its part, the DSM-5 states that the “essential feature of antisocial personality disorder is a pervasive pattern of disregard for, and violation of, the rights of others that begins in childhood or early adolescence and continues into adulthood.”

Trump’s sociopathic characteristics sufficiently intertwine with his narcissistic ones that they deserve mention here. These include, to quote the DSM-5, “deceitfulness, as indicated by repeated lying, use of aliases, or conning others.” Trump’s deceitfulness—his lying—has become the stuff of legend; journalists track his “false and misleading claims” as president by the thousands upon thousands.

Other criteria for antisocial personality disorder include “failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviors, as indicated by repeatedly performing acts that are grounds for arrest”; “impulsivity or failure to plan ahead”; and “lack of remorse, as indicated by being indifferent to or rationalizing having hurt, mistreated, or stolen from another.

As for impulsivity, that essentially describes what gets him into trouble most: It was his “impulsiveness—actually, total recklessness”—that came close to destroying him in the 1980s

And lack of remorse? That’s a hallmark of sociopathy, and goes hand in hand with a lack of human conscience. In a narcissistic sociopath, it’s intertwined with a lack of empathy. Trump hardly ever shows remorse, or apologizes, for anything. The one exception: With his presidential candidacy on the line in early October

In a way, Trump’s sociopathic tendencies are simply an extension of his extreme narcissism

articular, “They change reality to suit themselves in their own mind.” Although Trump “lies because of his sociopathic tendencies,” telling falsehoods to fool others, Dodes argues, he also lies to himself, to protect himself from narcissistic injury. And so Donald Trump has lied about his net worth, the size of the crowd at his inauguration, and supposed voter fraud in the 2016 election.

The latter kind of lying, Dodes says, “is in a way more serious,” because it can indicate “a loose grip on reality”—and it may well tell us where Trump is headed in the face of impeachment hearings. Lying to prevent narcissistic injury can metastasize to a more significant loss of touch with reality

Experts haven’t suggested that Trump is psychotic, but many have contended that his narcissism and sociopathy are so inordinate that he fits the bill for “malignant narcissism.” Malignant narcissism isn’t recognized as an official diagnosis; it’s a descriptive term coined by the psychoanalyst Erich Fromm, and expanded upon by another psychoanalyst, Otto Kernberg, to refer to an extreme mix of narcissism and sociopathy, with a degree of paranoia and sadism mixed in

In the view of some in the mental-health community, such as John Gartner, Trump “exhibits all four” components of malignant narcissism: “narcissism, paranoia, antisocial personality and sadism.”

Mental-health professionals have raised a variety of other concerns about Trump’s mental state; the last worth specifically mentioning here is the possibility that, apart from any personality disorder, he may be suffering cognitive decline.

His “mental state,” according to Justin A. Frank, a former clinical professor of psychiatry and physician who wrote a book about Trump’s psychology, “include[s] so many psychic afflictions” that a “working knowledge of psychiatric disorders is essential to understanding Trump.” Indeed, as Gartner puts it: “There are a lot of things wrong with him—and, together, they are a scary witch’s brew.”

when you line up what the Framers expected of a president with all that we know about Donald Trump, his unfitness becomes obvious. The question is whether he can possibly act as a public fiduciary for the nation’s highest public trust. To borrow from the Harvard Law Review article, can he follow the “proscriptions against profit, bad faith, and self-dealing,” manifest “a strong concern about avoiding ultra vires action” (that is, action exceeding the president’s legal authority), and maintain “a duty of diligence and carefulness”? Given that Trump displays the extreme behavioral characteristics of a pathological narcissist, a sociopath, or a malignant narcissist—take your pick—it’s clear that he can’t.

To act as a fiduciary requires you to put someone else’s interests above your own, and Trump’s personality makes it impossible for him to do that. No president before him, at least in recent memory, has ever displayed such obsessive self-regard

Indeed, Trump’s view of his presidential powers can only be described as profoundly narcissistic, and his narcissism has compelled him to disregard the Framers’ vision of his constitutional duties in every respect

Trump’s incapacity affects all manner of subjects addressed by the presidency, but can be seen most acutely in foreign affairs and national security.

All in all, Trump sought to impede and end a significant counterintelligence and criminal investigation—one of crucial importance to the nation—and did so for his own personal reasons. He did precisely the opposite of what his duties require. Indeed, he has shown utter contempt for his duties to the nation

hat constitutional mechanisms exist for dealing with a president who cannot or does not comply with his duties, and how should they take the president’s mental and behavioral characteristics into account?

it turns out that impeachment is a more practical mechanism

In short, now that the House of Representatives has embarked on an impeachment inquiry, one of the most important judgments it must make is whether any identified breaches of duty are likely to be repeated. And if a Senate trial comes to pass, that issue would become central as well to the decision to remove the president from office. That’s when Trump’s behavioral and psychological characteristics should—must—come into pla

One of the most compelling arguments about the meaning of those words is that the Framers, in Article II’s command that a president faithfully execute his office, imposed upon him fiduciary obligations. As the constitutional historian Robert Natelson explained in the Federalist Society Review, the “founding generation [understood] ‘high … Misdemeanors’ to mean ‘breach of fiduciary duty.’

Eighteenth-century lawyers instead used terms such as breach of trust—which describes the same thing. “Parliamentary articles of impeachment explicitly and repetitively described the accused conduct as a breach of trust,” Natelson argues, and 18th-century British legal commentators explained how impeachment for “high Crimes and Misdemeanors” was warranted for all sorts of noncriminal violations that were, in essence, fiduciary breaches.

why the discussion of Morris’s suggestion was so brief—the drafters knew what the words historically meant, because, as a House Judiciary Committee report noted in 1974, “at the time of the Constitutional Convention the phrase ‘high Crimes and Misdemeanors’ had been in use for over 400 years in impeachment proceedings in Parliament

Certainly Alexander Hamilton knew by the time he penned “Federalist No. 65,” in which he explained that impeachment was for “those offenses which proceed from the misconduct of public men, or, in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust.

What constitutes such an abuse or violation of trust is up to Congress to decide: First the House decides to bring impeachment charges, and then the Senate decides whether to convict on those charges. The process of impeachment by the House and removal by trial in the Senate is thus, in some ways, akin to indictment by a grand jury and trial by a petit jury

As Laurence Tribe and Joshua Matz explain in their recent book on impeachment, “the Constitution explicitly states that Congress may not end a presidency unless the president has committed an impeachable offense. But nowhere does the Constitution state or otherwise imply that Congress must remove a president whenever that standard is met … In other words, it allows Congress to exercise judgment.”

As Tribe and Matz argue, that judgment presents a “heavy burden,” and demands that Congress be “context-sensitive,” and achieve “an understanding of all relevant facts.” A president might breach his trust to the nation once in some small, inconsequential way and never repeat the misbehavior, and Congress could reasonably decide that the game is not worth the candle.

It’s also an appropriate mechanism, because the constitutional magic words (other than Treason and Bribery) that form the basis of an impeachment charge—high Crimes and Misdemeanors, found in Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution—mean something other than, and more than, offenses in the criminal-statute books. High Crimes and Misdemeanors is a legal term of art, one that historically referred to breaches of duties—fiduciary duties—by public officeholders. In other words, the question of what constitutes an impeachable offense for a president coincides precisely with whether the president can execute his office in the faithful manner that the Constitution requires.

there’s another reason as well. The people have a right to know, and a need to see. Many people have watched all of Trump’s behavior, and they’ve drawn the obvious conclusion. They know something’s wrong, just as football fans knew that the downed quarterback had shattered his leg. Others have changed the channel, or looked away, or chosen to deny what they’ve seen. But if Congress does its job and presents the evidence, those who are in denial won’t be able to ignore the problem any longer.

“I’ve been inspired by the service of better patriots than me.”

a meditation on the difference between “the 1 percent” and the rest of us, between those who bear the sting of battle and burden of grief at young lives lost, and those who watch from the sidelines.

the speech was all about Trump, and probably unconsciously so.

“Some of whom I put there because they were doing what I told them to do when they were killed.”

Better to stick with John McCain. Better, like John of Gaunt, to know that “The setting sun, and music at the close, As that last taste of sweets, is sweetest last.”

However, the U.S. is telling a different story. It says that the McCain "asserted navigational rights and freedoms in the vicinity of Peter the Great Bay in the Sea of Japan."

The 106-nautical mile closing line at the mouth of the bay is "inconsistent with the rules of international law as reflected in the Law of the Sea Convention," according to the Navy.

Although not uncommon during the Cold War, the U.S. and Russian naval forces have had close encounters on the sea and air even in recent years. Russian ships and planes regularly challenge U.S. naval vessels.

Last year, the Admiral Vinogradov came within 50 to 100 feet of the USS Chancellorsville as the American ship was busy recovering a helicopter. The Chancellorsville had to take evasive action to avoid the Russian warship, the Navy says.

Three key shifts in the state helped Democrats this year: a growing Latino population that leans Democratic, a surge in voters moving to Arizona from more liberal states like California and Illinois, and the way suburban voters have starkly broken with a Republican Party led by someone like Trump.

Arizona, by going blue, is moving closer to its neighbor to the northwest -- Nevada, where Democrats have taken control of almost all aspects of government

Maricopa is the fastest-growing county in the country, transforming over the last two decades into a sprawling mass of metropolitan hubs, sun-scorched planned communities and bustling strip malls.

"Maricopa County won the state of Arizona for Mark Kelly and Joe Biden," said Steven Slugocki, chair of Maricopa County's Democrats. "Here in Maricopa, we committed our resources to contact voters of color, women and traditionally underrepresented groups throughout the state. Our strategy proved to be effective."

Biden is just the second Democrat to win Arizona since 1948, when Harry Truman won. Bill Clinton narrowly won the state in 1996, but Arizona moved further right in the next two decades, electing hard-line immigration proponents like Gov. Jan Brewer and Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio and passing laws like SB 1070, a controversial state law that required officers to make immigration checks while enforcing other laws if "reasonable suspicion" of illegal immigration exists.

The Democratic victory builds on the work by grassroots organizations on the ground in Arizona, many of which focused on the state's growing Latino population by uniting around the opposition to Arpaio and the immigration crackdown

"This year was a victory for the decade-plus of work in this state," said Laura Dent, the executive director of Chispa Arizona

"It has been a decade-plus of building and the sustained work of organizing between electoral cycles have been critical."

Dent said the organizing around SB 1070 was a "catalyst" for these groups to unify around something and "build that collective power" on display this year

"I thought by 2024, Arizona would be for real a swing state," said Yasser Sanchez, an immigration lawyer who volunteered for Republican Mitt Romney's 2012 presidential campaign and worked for McCain's 2016 reelection to the Senate before rejecting a Trump-led Republican Party and helping organize Latino voters for Biden. "Every time I heard it would be before, I thought that was wishful thinking."

Looming over Biden's victory is the legacy of McCain, an Arizona stalwart whose "maverick" conservatism carried a coalition of Democrats, independents and Republicans for years in the state.

Trump to double down on his mocking attacks of the Republican senator, even after he died in 2018. This, along with comments Trump reportedly made about military members and veterans, spurred McCain's widow, Cindy McCain, to back Biden, an endorsement that was front page news in the state.

But Arizona was considered so reliably red in 2014 that a study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of California-Los Angeles dubbed Mesa -- a sprawling suburb east of Phoenix -- the "most conservative American city."

"Ten years ago, if you wanted to be politically relevant and if you wanted your vote to have an impact, you were foolish to be registered as a Democrat because they failed to field a candidate for some offices," said Mesa Mayor John Giles, a registered Republican in a nonpartisan job. "And even then, it was just volunteering to get killed in the general by the Republican."

"I am hoping to change the state blue," Schaefer said after casting her ballot. "Believe me, I have tried to turn everybody that I can possibly turn."

"Trump is dangerous for the country," Hudock said after voting days before the election. "In the last four years, Republicans have shown their true colors. ... I just wish there was a centrist party.

That quickly changed as the virus spread throughout the state, with more than 160,000 cases and 3,600 people dying in Maricopa County alone.

Biden's win in Arizona was not for a lack of trying on Trump's part. The President held seven events in the state in 2020. Biden held one event after the Democratic National Convention over the summer, a bus tour around Maricopa in October.

This shift has made it impossible to pass any legislation through Congress to help deal with the problem. That has forced President Obama to adopt a different approach

After the 2010 defeat in the Senate of the so-called cap-and-trade strategy, which was originally a Republican idea, Mr. Obama has taken to using the Environmental Protection Agency’s regulatory powers under the Clean Air Act, circumventing Congress entirely.

Is it possible to turn the Republican Party around?It won’t be easy. Republican leaders like Mitch McConnell of Kentucky are wedded to defending a declining coal industry and advancing the interests of oil companies, most clearly in their support for the Keystone pipeline. Many of the party’s lawmakers and presidential candidates get a lot of money from people like the Koch brothers, who have multimillion-dollar contributions for anybody who will stand against efforts to curb the use of fossil fuels.

there is more than money to the story. For many Republicans, climate change poses an existential quagmire. “To them it sounds like, ‘Everything we’ve been doing since the Industrial Revolution is going to kill us; the response must be a big government response and, by the way, it has to be international,’” said Mr. Goldston.

For the angry supporters of the Tea Party, opposed to government spending in almost any form, the prescription is anathema. “If you decide climate change is real, there must be a role for government to combat it. So the only way out is to deny it exists,” Mr. Karpinski said.

climate change denial has never been particularly strong among street-level Republicans. Recent polls find that even conservative Republicans believe the climate is changing and humans are, to some extent, to blame.

Straight denial is getting tougher as the scientific consensus strengthens. And China’s efforts to cut emissions have defanged the argument that it is pointless for the United States to act alone.

In this context, the Obama administration’s strategy of using the Clean Air Act to force emissions cuts could help change the politics.

“Some Republican governors will start taking action because the alternative is for the federal government to impose something,” Mr. Goldston said. “This will change the politics

Mankiw, George W. Bush’s former top economic adviser, argues that putting a price on carbon emissions — the preferred prescription of economists across the political spectrum— could fit well within the Republican canon.

“People are afraid this is an excuse to raise taxes and expand government generally,” Professor Mankiw said. “We need to convince them this not a tax increase but a tax shift,” using revenue from a carbon tax to reduce, say, the Social Security payroll tax, while keeping the overall tax burden roughly the same.

Then there’s health reform, where Republicans were very clear about what was supposed to happen: minimal enrollments, more people losing insurance than gaining it, soaring costs. Reality, so far, has begged to differ, delivering above-predicted sign-ups, a sharp drop in the number of Americans without health insurance, premiums well below expectations, and a sharp slowdown in overall health spending.

the biggest secret of the Republican triumph surely lies in the discovery that obstructionism bordering on sabotage is a winning political strategy. From Day 1 of the Obama administration, Mr. McConnell and his colleagues have done everything they could to undermine effective policy, in particular blocking every effort to do the obvious thing — boost infrastructure spending — in a time of low interest rates and high unemployment.

This was, it turned out, bad for America but good for Republicans. Most voters don’t know much about policy details, nor do they understand the legislative process. So all they saw was that the man in the White House wasn’t delivering prosperity — and they punished his party.

A dark portrait of a vulnerable homeland – impotent against Islamic State militants, susceptible against undocumented refugees and isolated in a world of fraying alliances –

military strikes against ISIS targets should be less concerned about “civilian casualties.”

Ted Cru

the disastrous war McCain celebrated, should be blamed on President Obama’s foreign policy.

The one reaction nearly every Republican candidate agreed on is a refusal to accept Syrian refugees – as if the real lesson of the Paris attacks is feeling less sympathy for ISIS’s victims

the Republican’s rush toward “stop letting in refugees” is reminiscent of “the ‘travel ban now or we all die of Ebola’ fad of last year.”

But there’s also the unnerving track record of many Republican officials – including would-be presidents – who seem to fall to pieces every time there’s a crisis

The GOP’s responses to Friday night’s bloodshed was a discouraging reminder of a party that still doesn’t know what to do or say when mature leadership is required