What does Liz Cheney’s removal from her House leadership position mean?

Now that Cheney has been ousted from her leadership position, New York Representative Elise Stefanik is expected to take her place. Stefanik has embraced Trump, saying that the party needs “to be united moving forward.”

What happened?

• Representative Liz Cheney, the highest-ranking woman in the Republican Party, has been ousted from her leadership position in the United States House of Representatives over her continued refusal to accept what has been dubbed “The Big Lie.”
• “The Big Lie” is that Donald Trump was the rightful winner of the 2020 presidential election. There is no evidence to support the claim, but it has nonetheless become a litmus test for Republicans eager to demonstrate their loyalty to the former president.
• Liz Cheney has been one of few Republicans willing to refute the claim and she was the highest-ranking member of the party to vote to impeach Trump in January.
• Liz Cheney and House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy have been at odds in recent months, with the two publicly disagreeing over whether or not Trump should be allowed to speak at the Conservative Political Action Conference, known as CPAC.
• Now that Cheney has been ousted from her leadership position, New York Representative Elise Stefanik is expected to take her place. Stefanik has embraced Trump, saying that the party needs “to be united moving forward.”
• Meanwhile, a spokesperson for Cheney told NBC News that “This is about whether the Republican Party is going to perpetuate lies about the 2020 election and attempt to whitewash what happened on January 6,” adding, “Liz will not do that. That is the issue.”

Have other Republicans come under fire like this?

• A handful of other prominent Republicans have also spoken out against the “The Big Lie,” as well as other smaller policy issues.
• On May 1, Senator Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee for president in 2012, was booed while on stage at the GOP convention in his home state of Utah.
• About a week later, Romney was censured (reprimanded) by the Weber County GOP in Utah for voting to impeach Trump two different times.
• Earlier in April, a bill that would make it illegal for transgender youth to receive gender confirming hormone treatment from doctors successfully made it through Arkansas’ state legislature, only to be vetoed by the state’s governor, Asa Hutchinson.
• But things got awkward for Governor Hutchinson when Arkansas’ Republican-controlled state legislature overruled his veto, which allowed the bill to pass anyway.
• Hutchinson is also a supporter of Cheney’s and said in a CNN interview that she shouldn’t be “ousted for a vote of conscience.” In the same interview, he attacked the former president, saying, “it’s important that we not unite with someone who is dividing our party.”

So what’s the big deal?

• Tensions inside the parties aren’t exactly uncommon in Washington, but what’s different about what’s happening with Republicans right now is that all the tension comes from the question of who should be leading the Republican Party.
• And yes, while Trump is still a popular figure among Republicans, he left office with the lowest job approval rating in recent presidential history, with only 34% of Americans approving of the job he was doing as president in a January 18 Gallup poll.
• The infighting within the Republican Party is seen as a sign of internal confusion by many and it’s unclear exactly how this fight will win the party any additional votes.
• Mitt Romney shared this sentiment in a tweet on Monday, writing that “Expelling Liz Cheney from leadership won’t gain the GOP one additional voter, but it will cost us quite a few.”

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