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Under Trump’s Big Tent, Republicans Are Starting to Clash
Democrats have long been viewed as the big-tent party — a proudly noisy collection of differing views and competing interests, often prompting headlines describing them as “in disarray.”
Now, Donald J. Trump’s commanding victory may be ushering in a big-tent era for Republicans.
Even before he takes the oath of office on Monday, cracks in his freshly expanded coalition have emerged. With their divides, the incoming president and his party are being forced to confront a reality that has often tripped up Democrats: A bigger tent means more room for fighting underneath it.
In recent weeks, some congressional Republicans have dismissed Mr. Trump’s threats of military force against Greenland. Republicans from farm states have squirmed at his plans to impose new tariffs on all goods entering the United States. Opponents of abortion have grumbled about his selection of an abortion rights supporter for his cabinet. Mr. Trump’s embrace of tech billionaires has troubled conservatives who blame their companies for censoring Republican views and corrupting children.
And last week, a fight over the direction of immigration policy prompted Stephen K. Bannon, an architect of Mr. Trump’s political movement, to attack Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and a key Trump adviser, as a “truly evil person.”
“The big battles are all on our side of the football — meaningful, tough,” Mr. Bannon told The New York Times.
This wide range of internal fights over policy and power may be run-of-the-mill in politics, but they are somewhat extraordinary for the Trump-era Republican Party. Since Mr. Trump, a former Democrat unbound by strict ideology, effectively hijacked the party in 2016, the internal clashes have largely been between two clear factions: the traditional Republicans and the Republicans who embraced Mr. Trump.
But eight years later, most of the old guard has been thoroughly conquered or converted. Mr. Trump is entering a Washington where nearly all Republicans consider themselves part of his movement. They just don’t all agree on what, exactly, that means.
Inauguration Day will offer a vivid display of the new crosscurrents in the party. When he takes the oath of office, Mr. Trump will be joined not only by Vice President JD Vance, who spent years railing against big tech, but by at least four technology executives who are part of a crop of industry moguls who warmed to Mr. Trump in recent months, pouring money into his inauguration committee.
For most of his political career, Mr. Trump has been laser-focused on pleasing the voters who elected him. In his first term, Mr. Trump largely worried about holding on to his core group of supporters: white, working-class voters.
But with a bigger, more diverse coalition, that task has grown more complicated and far less clear. Mr. Trump’s victory in November was marked by notable gains in traditionally liberal cities and suburbs and among the Black, Latino, female and younger voters who have long been central to the Democratic Party’s base.
While those voters largely supported Mr. Trump’s goals of lowering prices and curbing illegal immigration, it’s unclear whether they also support the full scope of conservative policies — like ending automatic citizenship at birth and banning abortion nationwide — that some of his hard-right supporters are eager to implement.
“This is the most racially diverse incoming governing coalition for a G.O.P. since at least 1956, and that has the potential to change things,” said Ralph Reed, a Republican strategist and founder of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, who said he had attended every Republican inauguration over the past four decades. “But they’re good challenges to have.”
Newt Gingrich, who was speaker of the House from 1995 to 1999, pointed to two policy debates that will help show whether the party is ready to cater to its new voters.
One is whether Republicans support a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers, a cohort of immigrants who were brought to the country as children. Stripping them of their legal status comes with the political risk of alienating moderate voters, Mr. Gingrich said.
A second test, he said, would be whether Republicans can muscle through a tax bill before July 4 in order to stimulate the economy and help the party keep control of the House through the 2026 midterms.
“There will be mistakes and confusion and tension, but there will also be enormous changes,” he said.
Mr. Trump doesn’t have much wiggle room in Congress, where even slight ideological differences could have an outsize impact on his ability to enact his agenda. The party’s slim, three-vote margin in the House means that any Republican lawmaker has the power to slow down legislation, if not scuttle it entirely. In the Senate, Republicans have 53 votes, leaving little room for dissent on a majority vote.
During his first term, Trump’s grip on his voters — backed up by frequent political threats — stifled most opposition within the party. Whether his political hold remains as strong in his second — and final — term remains to be seen.
Republican strategists say there are plenty of issues where there is broad agreement across the party, including expanding the tax cuts passed during the first Trump administration and curbing illegal immigration.
Even within those issues, the challenge may be in the details. Already, Mr. Bannon and Mr. Musk have tangled over H-1B visas, a skilled-worker immigration program that has long been a key source of labor for Silicon Valley. Mr. Trump suspended H-1B visas during his first term, but last month seemed to indicate support for keeping the program.
The debt ceiling has created distance between Mr. Trump and deficit hawks in his party, including members of the House Freedom Caucus who last month refused to free him of the spending constraint.
Republicans also disagree over setting a new corporate tax rate and how much of the new tax cuts should be paid for by slashing spending.
A group of Republicans from swing districts in New Jersey, New York and California have vowed to block the tax bill unless a cap on a state and local tax deduction, known as SALT, is raised significantly. Many other Republicans oppose the measure, which would largely benefit wealthier families in blue states.
Foreign policy is another area with considerable intraparty divides, particularly over ending the war in Ukraine and over the role Russia should play in the region. Whether Republicans follow Mr. Trump’s lead and take a softer position toward Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, may offer hints of the party’s direction on America’s traditional alliances abroad.
Still, Brad Todd, a Republican strategist, said no one understood the temperature of the Republican Party quite like Mr. Trump, who spends hours calling different lawmakers, donors and activists to get their views.
“Trump is not ideological,” Mr. Todd said. “He’s a pragmatic, practical person. He is a populist in that he wants to do popular things.”
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Five years after the Surfside condo collapse, killing 98, what’s changed?
Andrea (left), Pablo (center), and Martin Langesfeld (right) hold a photograph of their daughter and sister, Nicky Langesfeld and her husband Luis Sadovnic, at a park in Doral, Fla., where the city named a street Nicky Langesfeld Place to honor her memory, Martin says, “as a reminder that she’ll be here with us forever.” Nicole “Nicky” and Luis were two of the 98 people killed when the Champlain Towers South condominium building collapsed in Surfside on June 24, 2021.
Meredith Nierman/NPR
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Meredith Nierman/NPR
SURFSIDE, Fla. — Just around the corner from where a beachfront condominium collapsed five years ago, there’s a makeshift memorial: a plastic banner strung up on a wood frame, with the names of the 98 victims, ranging in age from a year-old infant to a 92-year-old grandmother.
“It’s an unfortunate reminder of how big this tragedy was,” says Martin Langesfeld, locating the name of his sister Nicky, 26, and her husband Luis Sadovnik, 28. “It’s more than just names. It’s stories. It’s families.”
Two-thirds of the 12-story Champlain Towers South building collapsed just after 1 a.m. on June 24, 2021. It started when the pool deck caved in. Seven minutes later, as many of the occupants were sleeping, the tower began to fall.
Five escaped, and three were rescued from the rubble with severe injuries by first responders. Search teams evacuated residents in the remaining part of the building, which was demolished 10 days later for safety reasons.
Search and rescue personnel work in the rubble of the 12-story, beachfront Champlain Towers South condominium that crumbled to the ground on June 24, 2021 in Surfside.
Joe Raedle/Getty Images
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Hundreds were left without a home and belongings, and the state was forced to grapple with how it regulates structural safety.
Langesfeld is among those who’ve been pushing to improve what they consider a lax system of building oversight. His sister and brother-in-law were newlyweds, who had moved into the condo together just a few months earlier.
“A dream place, home, where you feel you’re safest is where they were killed,” he says.
He’s also frustrated there is no permanent memorial honoring the victims, while a new luxury condo is going up on the land where Champlain Towers once stood.
“It’s been almost five years and there’s no development for the memorial,” he says. “And the development for the new building is very well underway.”
The North Tower of the Champlain Towers condominium complex stands on April 27, overlooking the vacant site where its sister building, Champlain Towers South, collapsed on June 24, 2021. The collapse resulted in 98 deaths and remains one of the largest structural failures in U.S. history. A new luxury condominium complex, the Delmore, is slated for construction on the empty lot.
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Technical findings released Monday by the National Institute of Standards and Technology concluded the problem started about three weeks before the collapse when two connections between garage columns and the pool deck failed, causing cracks to grow and loads to shift to connections that were not strong enough to support them.
Investigators found “severe and widespread deviations in the building’s original structural design from the codes and standards of the day,” and that the building’s construction in 1981 deviated from the design drawings. Investigators will issue a final report later that includes recommendations for changes to standards, codes and practices to improve building safety.
To date, no one has been held criminally responsible.
But in a complex civil lawsuit, more than 30 defendants contributed to a $1.2 billion class action settlement reached just a year after the collapse to address wrongful death, personal injury and property loss claims.
“I think what was apparent to all parties, legal parties, is that it was an enormous loss,” says Coral Gables attorney Rachel Wagner Furst, co-lead counsel representing the Surfside victims.
None of the settling parties admitted liability or wrongdoing, but Wagner Furst says the litigation pointed to many factors that contributed to the scope of the disaster beyond the condo board, which was singled out in the initial lawsuit for not heeding warning signs and deferring repairs on the 40-year-old building.
She notes, “Companies and individuals who had serviced the Champlain Towers South condominium building in the years before the collapse that had arguably or allegedly failed in some way to provide proper maintenance advice or counsel, including the security company that had staffed the front desk of the building and was on duty at the time that the alarm ought to have sounded.”
Attorney Rachel Wagner Furst served as co-lead counsel for the plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit for the victims of the Champlain Towers South collapse in Surfside, which resulted in a $1.2 billion settlement.
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The Surfside collapse was a wake-up call for condo associations and regulators around the country.
In the immediate aftermath in South Florida, some two dozen properties were evacuated for safety concerns. Most eventually were able to return after repairs.
The state responded by passing more stringent regulations, including new mandates for structural inspections and requiring condo associations to maintain a minimum level of reserve funding for structural upkeep.
“The Florida legislature pushed the burden to create safe housing stock in Florida onto the people who are least able to bear it, which is the Florida consumer,” says Ft. Lauderdale attorney Donna DiMaggio Berger who specializes in condominium law, and founded a group that lobbies on behalf of the more than 50,000 community associations in Florida.
She says developers also should share in the burden.
“If we wind up with the safest housing stock in the country. Bravo, well done,” she says. But “safe buildings start with the people who build them and repair them.”
Construction cranes line the skyline along the beach in Surfside, Fla., on April 27.
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No matter how well-intentioned, the building reforms could have unintended consequences, says Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava.
She says some buildings have been taken over by people who want to turn them into more expensive, luxurious developments.
“There’s tremendous pressure that people can’t afford these things and so they’re forced to sell,” she says. “We call it ‘condo vultures,’ and it is at our peril.”
Levine Cava says she understands that people want to live “the good life” in South Florida, but there must be balance.
“We know we live in paradise,” she says. “We also know that we need to have people of all means in our community.”
Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava says her community was severely changed by this tragedy, “the pain is still very real. Many people have moved on with their lives and others are still suffering greatly.”
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That’s long been the conundrum in Florida, a trend that accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic when people flocked to the Sunshine State.
And it’s evident in Surfside, just north of Miami Beach, which is becoming an ultra-wealthy enclave with a wall of condos lining the Atlantic, and more under construction. The area is adjacent to swanky shopping malls and private islands where tech titans have waterfront estates.
The Champlain Towers South property itself is soon to be home to the community’s latest luxury development, The Delmore. Billed as “expansive mansions in the sky,” the sales price of the units starts at $15 million; penthouses go for more than $150 million.
“Each penthouse has its own private pool, and that’s a glass-fronted pool that gets the view to the ocean,” says developer Jeffery Rossely, pointing to the layout on a scale model in a posh sales gallery.
Jeffery Rossely, a developer at the Dubai-based firm Damac Properties, points to a model of a luxury property called The Delmore.
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Rossely is with Damac Properties, a Dubai-based firm. This is the company’s first residential project in the U.S. Damac was the only bidder with a $120 million cash offer for the property.
“It was obviously at the time a tragic opportunity, but the courts had already ordered sale of the property,” Rossely says. “The money was required to compensate the victims.”
But the project has not received a warm welcome in Surfside. At town meetings he says his company has been accused of having blood on its hands.
A sign welcoming visitors to Surfside, Fla., stands directly across the street from the former site of the Champlain Towers South condominium. Today, a new luxury residential development called The Delmore is under construction on the empty lot where the tower once stood.
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“I didn’t understand why there would be angst for someone coming in and paying that money upfront,” says Rossely.
But in retrospect, he concedes, the project needed a different approach.
“We should have spent a bit more time on due diligence, on community reaction, rather than on the physical property itself,” Rossely says. “We went through what I would call the traditional due diligence. Maybe we should have gone through emotional due diligence, as well.”
The question now is whether people will want to live in the new building. There are no buyers yet in the pre-sale phase.
Meanwhile, the town of Surfside will light a torch at 1:15 a.m. on Wednesday, just outside the development’s fence, to remember the Champlain Towers South victims five years after the collapse.
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Trump says proof of his allegations that vandals cut Reflecting Pool paint will be provided in court
Washington — President Trump on Monday said proof will be provided in court of his allegations that vandals “cut” a massive slit in the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, which he claims is the reason the paint is peeling on the recently renovated but algae-plagued project.
In an exchange with CBS News senior White House correspondent Ed O’Keefe, Mr. Trump insisted that vandals, rather than questionable craftsmanship, are responsible for the enduring problems following the $14.7 million sealant job. The president claimed vandals cut a 350-foot slit in the pool between the World War II Memorial and the Lincoln Memorial. Five people have been arrested for vandalism related to the Reflecting Pool, and five additional individuals were issued federal citations, according to the U.S. Park Police, although neither the company behind the project nor the U.S. Park Service has said a cut slit was responsible for the peeling.
Asked if he had proof, such as photos or video, that vandals used a knife to cut a massive slit in the pool, Mr. Trump responded: “Well, let’s put it this way, when you have a 350, I think it’s 350, not 250, when you have a 350-foot slit, from one end to the other, you think that’s proof? You think that’s proof?”
O’Keefe noted that reporters had been to the site and found no evidence of a slit.
“Well, you’d have to go see the Parks Department. They’ll show it to you, or see, see the secretary, but I saw it,” Mr. Trump said, likely referencing Interior Secretary Doug Burgum. “They cut it, they cut it very violently. The same thing with the floor, they cut it, and then they lifted it. They pulled it, and that’s what it is.”
After defending the project, the president said, “We also have pictures.”
O’Keefe asked the president for evidence of his claims.
“Yeah, at the right time you’ll see it,” Mr. Trump said. “You’ll see it in court. You’ll see it in court, but all you have to do is call the Parks Department, call the Department of Interior.”
The president also suggested someone may have placed fertilizer in the water to create the algae that teams have been attempting to clear.
“If you put fertilizer in the water, you get algae, but somebody said they might have put fertilizer, they did something to create the algae,” the president said, again without providing evidence for his claims.
CBS News has reached out to the National Park Service and the Department of the Interior. So far, there’s been no response.
Atlantic Industrial Coatings, which received a no-bid contract to install the sealant on the floor of the Reflecting Pool, told CBS News there are “some areas” that “require repairs.”
“These areas are a very small part of the massive 7-acre project, and do not indicate a failure of the liner,” the company said. “These repairs can not be made until the pool is drained. As soon as it’s feasible for the park, the pool will be drained and AIC will be back to make those needed repairs as part of the warranty.”
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