Respond to prefers-color-scheme dark in app web views

Follow section front redirects in Spectrum

Enable NLP source in PCS for load testing

Switch off the News Alerts Survey Widget when we have enough responses

Poll to determine if new LUF updates are available

Allows the winning A/B test variant to be turned on without Spectrum deployment

Show infinite scrolling sections in Assembler MultiView

Show option for NLP article summaries in Action Bar

A general feature flag for Recipe Features that aren't yet released

Feature flag for media team features that aren't yet released

Use new Orca video player for preroll plugin in Spectrum

Show the snow tracker (instead of the heat tracker) on Spectrum

Election 2024 latest news: After big weekend in Palm Beach, Trump returns to N.Y. courtroom

Bingo, beaded bracelets and volunteer iPhones power Biden’s organizing effort

How did we end up with a Biden-Trump matchup again?

Don’t be a jerk at the airport: A guide for headphones

The new cure-all for vacation excess: the IV drip 

What’s the best bus to New York? We tested 5 for comfort and value.

Miss Manners: I’m bothered by a fellow guest not touching their dessert

Ask Amy: My estranged wife is telling my son I’m an adulterer

Carolyn Hax: Sisters were close — then one accused the other’s husband of abuse

Kim Godwin steps down suddenly as president of ABC News

The New York Times, alone in its outrage over access to Biden

The ‘Access Hollywood’ video cemented Trump’s air of invincibility

We reported for months on changes sweeping Russia. Here’s what we found.  

China’s Xi visits France in first post-pandemic trip to Europe

Middle East conflict live updates: Hamas says it approves cease-fire proposal amid Israeli orders for civilians to leave Rafah

There’s still time for Congress to Trump-proof the Insurrection Act 

The Post endorses April McClain Delaney and Tom Royals for Maryland’s 6th District

Young Georgians want to be part of Europe. Their government is in the way.

Book excerpt: The admiral who had a mental breakdown over Fat Leonard

How TikTok changed fashion

How Pope Francis opened the Vatican to transgender sex workers

Improper ‘shadow’ ads thriving on Facebook during India’s election

Bosses mandated them back to the office. They took legal action instead.

The Trump-Biden battle over the 2017 tax cut

That time football legend, rig-driving eligible bachelor Biden was arrested

Trump and allies say Biden pays rent for ‘illegals’ in Michigan. Not true.

Strangers help Sesame Street puppeteer after heirloom necklace was stolen

Teen grabs wheel when driver passes out and school bus veers into traffic

Cat climbed into Amazon return box, found alive 630 miles away

Eddie Rosario and Co. lead the Nats to an MLB-best 12th comeback win

CJ Abrams keeps getting better. It’s time to think about an extension.

A frank look at hot dog prices at MLB ballparks

Under Putin, a militarized new Russia rises to challenge U.S. and the West 

In photos: The 150th running of the Kentucky Derby

WAUKESHA, WI - MAY 1st: Former president Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally on Wednesday May 1st, 2024.  (Photo by Sara Stathas for the Washington Post)

See more coverage in your recommendations

Get the weekly Campaign Moment newsletter

Set alerts for major election developments

Election 2024

The Campaign Moment newsletter

Politics alerts

Joe Walsh, a pugnacious former congressman, is preparing a Republican primary challenge to President Trump that he previewed as a daily “bar fight” with the incumbent over his morality and competency.

Mark Sanford, a former South Carolina governor and congressman, said he is inching closer to a bid of his own by sounding out activists in New Hampshire and other early-voting states about an insurgency focused on the ballooning deficit.

Jeff Flake, a former Arizona senator and Trump antagonist, said he has taken a flurry of recruitment calls in recent days from GOP donors rattled by signs of an economic slowdown and hungry for an alternative to Trump.

And former Ohio governor John Kasich will head to New Hampshire next month to “take a look at things” after experiencing “an increase” in overtures this summer, an adviser said.

The anti-Trump movement inside the Republican Party — long a political wasteland — is feeling new urgency to mount a credible opposition to Trump before it’s too late. With state deadlines for nominating contests rapidly approaching in the fall, potential candidates face pressure to decide on running within the next few weeks. So far, only former Massachusetts governor Bill Weld has declared that he is running, but he has struggled to gain traction.

Alex Edelman

Republicans considering bids, as well as those trying to draft other candidates, acknowledge that defeating Trump appears to be nearly impossible but argue that a recession or an unforeseen change in the political climate could weaken him enough to make a primary challenge more than a Never Trump fantasy.

“Anybody who says, ‘I think I can beat Donald Trump,’ I think is stretching it,” Sanford said. “It’s a daunting task and it is indeed preposterous at many different levels.”

But Sanford said he recently returned from a trip to New Hampshire and is leaning toward jumping in — “another ‘green light on go’ versus ‘no go’ ” — and figures he “could win without winning.”

“If [Trump] gives you a nickname and has surrogates rough you up, you could get a message out and create a national conversation on what it means to be a Republican these days and that could probably be worth the endeavor,” Sanford said.

Money will be an immense hurdle. Trump and the affiliated committees raising money for his reelection bid <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-and-rnc-report-raising-record-105-million-in-second-quarter-of-2019/2019/07/02/5c9ded46-9cd6-11e9-9ed4-c9089972ad5a_story.html" >reported collecting</a> $105 million in April, May and June, shattering quarterly records. Many traditional Republican donors already are backing Trump, but anti-Trump organizers are courting wealthy independents or even liberals to contribute in the GOP primary, if only to bruise the president and help the eventual Democratic nominee in the general election.

Trump’s advisers and allies have dismissed the efforts as feckless plotting by a bloc that has lost relevance in the GOP. They also say the Trump campaign has built significant structural advantages that have effectively ensured he will be renominated at the party’s convention in Charlotte, such as<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/03/us/politics/trump-republican-party.html" > placing</a> loyalists in leadership posts at state parties and <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2019/01/07/trump-reelection-campaign-2020-republican-convention-1083176" >working closely</a> with state GOP chairs to manage the delegate selection process.

“It’s a free country and people are allowed to have hobbies,” former House speaker Newt Gingrich said with a chuckle when asked about the primary bustle.

Inside the White House, neither Trump nor his team consider Weld or the prospective candidates to be serious threats because there has been no evidence of a groundswell of grass-roots support behind them.

“There’s no discussion of any of them or any of that,” said Kellyanne Conway, counselor to the president. “None of them even has risen to the level of a nickname.”

The Republican National Committee is using aggressive measures to stave off any possible primary tussle. RNC members passed a resolution this year giving Trump the party’s “undivided support” and effectively merged with Trump’s campaign. “Republicans are firmly behind the president and any effort to challenge him in a primary is bound to go absolutely nowhere,” RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel said in a statement.

Jabin Botsford

A Fox News poll last week had Trump at 88 percent approval among Republicans, which was the rating he had among Republicans in Gallup polling for the first half of August. The polling outlook among Republicans in early voting states is also favorable to Trump.

But that hasn’t stopped anti-Trump Republicans from scrambling to map out potential campaigns, driven by varying mixes of duty, conservative ire, ambition, vanity and loathing for Trump.

Walsh, now a talk-radio host, said he voted for Trump in 2016 but concluded after Trump <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/trump-repudiates-us-intelligence-community-by-according-equal-weight-to-putin/2018/07/16/cdac77ba-891c-11e8-85ae-511bc1146b0b_story.html" title="www.washingtonpost.com">declined in Helsinki last year</a> to confront Russian President Vladi­mir Putin over election interference that he was “fundamentally unfit” for the office. He said he is huddling this week with potential supporters and is leaning toward announcing a campaign next month.

Referring to Trump, he said, “He’s a bully and he’s a coward. Somebody’s got to punch him in the face every single day.”

Walsh, who has his own history of incendiary comments, was elected to the House from Illinois in 2010 as part of the tea party wave and served one term. He described himself as an immigration hard-liner and said he would not challenge Trump from the center but from the right and on moral grounds.

Melina Mara

Sanford is taking a different tack. He said that the case against Trump over morality, decency and corruption already is being made by other conservative commentators, so his prospective candidacy would fixate almost entirely on Trump’s deficit spending.

“We really are at a financial tipping point the likes of which we haven’t seen in a very long time,” Sanford said. “Unless we constructively engage this issue, which is not being done, I think the financial markets will do it for us, and historically that process has been bloody for regular, working, everyday Americans.”

Kasich, meanwhile, is “continually looking at this race and has seen an increase in people asking him to get in,” adviser John Weaver said. He is returning to New Hampshire in September to reconnect with supporters in the state in which he finished second to Trump in the 2016 primary.

“It’s prudent to take a look at things,” Weaver added.

Weld, a moderate and maverick who was the Libertarian Party’s vice-presidential nominee in 2016, acknowledged that his campaign has so far sputtered, but he plans to spend much of the fall roaming around New Hampshire, the first-in-the-nation primary state that has elevated past challengers of incumbents.

“I’ve been thinking for a long time that the president’s shtick might begin to wear a little thin,” Weld said. “It’s not just because of the tariffs and his economic policy, but because of how he crossed the line in going after congressman Elijah Cummings and Baltimore as a ‘rat-infested’ city, and then the outrageous racism of taking on four minority congresswomen.”

Weld’s campaign, however, is dealing with its own upheaval. His political confidant, veteran GOP strategist Stuart Stevens, departed on Aug. 1 to work at a pro-Weld super PAC, and Jennifer Horn quietly exited as Weld’s campaign manager earlier this summer, with Weld now in the process of hiring new advisers.

Charles Ommanney

New Hampshire’s terrain is far from guaranteed to be fertile for Trump’s critics. Former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski is mulling a Senate campaign that could energize Trump’s most loyal supporters in the state — and Trump has cultivated his core voters there with arena rallies and frequent visits.

“It’s going to be extremely difficult for any primary candidate to build the operation required to be effective,” said Horn, a former New Hampshire GOP chair.

Despite the daunting odds, Flake said some Republican donors have “stepped up” their calls to him in recent days as the stock market has been rattled. Flake said they have asked whether he would reconsider a bid against Trump, months after he <a href="https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/arizona/2019/01/29/jeff-flake-wont-run-president-joins-cbs-contributor-common-ground/2709367002/" >joined</a> CBS News as a contributor and ruled out a 2020 campaign.

“They are wondering, if the economy isn’t stellar next year, how is the party going to win? By the president offending more people?” Flake said, declining to name the donors.

Flake said he has told them he is unlikely to reconsider his decision but would keep the door slightly ajar.

“I haven’t changed my mind and this is still the president’s party,” he said. “That’s the case right now.”

Anthony Scaramucci, once one of Trump’s biggest boosters on the White House staff, has turned on the president and is using his celebrity to rally Republicans against his former boss. He announced Tuesday he would create a super PAC, “the Committee to Dismantle Trump,” to run advertisements attacking the president.

“I’m going to throw my own dough in there, ask others to put their dough in there, and we’re going to explain to people what he’s doing,” Scaramucci told strategists David Axelrod and Mike Murphy on the<a href="https://twitter.com/murphymike/status/1163955190363328512?s=20" > “Hacks on Tap” podcast</a>. He added, “I can grab a hold of 5, 6, 8 percent of the people that know he’s nuts and possibly move them.”

David Becker

At the center of the fledgling movement is Bill Kristol, a longtime conservative commentator, who has become a power broker for anti-Trump Republicans — and a target of scorn for Trump and his followers.

Kristol directs an outside group, Republicans for the Rule of Law, and has played the role of recruiter, such as when he pitched Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan about running against Trump at a Baltimore Orioles game in April. Hogan <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/hogan-will-not-challenge-trump-leaving-trumps-gop-critics-with-limited-options/2019/06/01/c74c0b3a-8473-11e9-bce7-40b4105f7ca0_story.html" >decided</a> not to run.

Kristol said he respects Weld, along with others who might run, but said his “dream scenario” would be for Trump to weaken this fall and a more prominent Republican decide to get in. This would have echoes of 1968, when then-President Lyndon B. Johnson’s reelection campaign was upended by Sen. Eugene McCarthy’s near upset in the New Hampshire Democratic primary, prompting Johnson to withdraw and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy to enter the race.

“You need more erosion of Trump in the polls, maybe an economic slowdown, more of a sense of him coming unglued, but the key is getting voters to focus on the question of whether they’re okay with four more years of Trump in the Oval Office,” Kristol said.

Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, is privately held by many anti-Trump activists and donors as their preferred standard-bearer, even though they do not expect him to run.

While Romney has kept a low profile in the Senate, he said in a speech in Salt Lake City on Monday that he considers himself a “renegade Republican” — and, in a swipe at Trump, said that “the likes of Putin and [North Korean dictator] Kim Jong Un deserve a censure rather than flattery,” <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/news/politics/2019/08/19/mitt-romney-slaps/" >according to the Salt Lake Tribune</a>.

But Romney was realistic about the political dynamics. “My slice of the Republican Party these days is about that big,” he said, holding his hands closely together.

<email>robert.costa@washpost.com</email>

<email>philip.rucker@washpost.com</email>

University of Notre Dame, B.A. in American studies

University of Cambridge, M.Phil. in politics

Robert Costa is chief election & campaign correspondent for CBS News. He collaborates on special projects and investigations with The Washington Post, where he previously worked as a national political reporter. He is the co-author, with Bob Woodward, of the book "Peril."

Robert Costa

Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting, 2018, for coverage of Russian interference

George Polk Award, 2018, for coverage of Russian interference

Gerald R. Ford Journalism Prize, 2018, for distinguished reporting on the presidency

White House Correspondents' Association's Aldo Beckman Award, 2021, for overall excellence in White House coverage

Sigma Delta Chi Award, 2018, for coverage of Russian interference

Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, 2022, for coverage of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol

George Polk Award, 2022, for coverage of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol

Robin Toner Prize for Excellence in Political Reporting, 2022, for coverage of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol

A Very Stable Genius: Donald J. Trump's Testing of America

I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump's Catastrophic Final Year

Yale University, B.A. in History, 2006

Philip Rucker is the National Editor for The Washington Post, leading the staff covering Washington, national security, politics, U.S. news, health, science, race, immigration and other topics. He previously was White House Bureau Chief and co-authored two bestselling books about President Trump. He is a Political Analyst for NBC News and MSNBC.