Your Thursday Briefing: Liz Cheney, out

August 18, 2022

By Amelia Nierenberg

Writer, Briefings

Good morning. We're covering Donald Trump's growing power over the Republican Party and a mortgage strike in China.

In her concession speech, Liz Cheney noted that her dedication to the party has its limits: "I love my country more."Kim Raff for The New York Times

Liz Cheney will lose her seat

Liz Cheney — Donald Trump's highest-profile critic within the Republican Party — resoundingly lost her primary race for Wyoming's lone House seat. She will not be on the ballot in November.

Cheney refused to go along with the lie that Trump won the election — and voted to impeach him a second time. Now, only two of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach him remain.

Her loss offered the latest evidence of Trump's continued influence over the Republican Party. Cheney was a reliable vote on much of the Trump agenda, but the party has shifted away from specific policies in favor of Trump's current wishes and talking points.

Details: Votes are still being counted, but Cheney lost by more than 30 percentage points to Harriet Hageman, a Trump-endorsed lawyer who has not held elected office before. Here are the latest vote counts from Alaska and Wyoming.

Profile: The daughter of a former vice president, Cheney serves as the vice chairwoman of the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attacks. Here's how she thinks about her place in history.

What's next: Cheney has started a leadership political action committee, a sign that she plans to escalate her fight against Trump. She said that she is thinking about running for president.

Apartment buildings in Zhengzhou, China, last month.Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

A mortgage boycott in China

Hundreds of thousands of frustrated homeowners in more than 100 cities across China are joining together and refusing to pay back loans on their unfinished properties.

Their boycott represents one of the most widespread acts of public defiance in China. Despite efforts from internet censors to quash the news, collectives of homeowners have started or threatened to boycott in 326 properties, according to a crowdsourced list. By some estimates, they could affect about $222 billion of home loans, or roughly 4 percent of outstanding mortgages.

The boycotts are also a sign of a growing economic fallout as China reckons with the impacts of its Covid restrictions. The country's economy is on track for its slowest growth in decades. The real estate market, which drives about one-third of China's economic activity, has proved particularly vulnerable.

Context: In 2020, China started to crack down on excessive borrowing by developers to address concerns about an overheating property market. The move created a cash crunch, leading Evergrande and other large property developers to spiral into default.

Background: Protests erupted last month in Henan Province when a bank froze withdrawals. The demonstration set off a violent showdown between depositors and security forces.

Politics: The boycotts threaten to undermine Xi Jinping's pursuit of a third term as China's leader.

A partisan fighter, code-named Svarog, told The Times about efforts to booby-trap a car in the parking lot of a Russian-controlled police station.David Guttenfelder for The New York Times

Partisan fighters aid Ukraine

In recent weeks, Ukrainian guerrilla fighters known as partisans have taken an ever more prominent role in the war.

The clandestine resistance cells slip across the front lines, hiding explosives down darkened alleys and identifying Russian targets. They blow up rail lines and assassinate Ukrainian officials that they consider collaborators.

"The goal is to show the occupiers that they are not at home, that they should not settle in, that they should not sleep comfortably," said one fighter, code-named Svarog.

Increasingly, their efforts are helping Ukraine take the fight into Russian-controlled areas. Last week, they had a hand in a successful strike on an air base in Crimea, which destroyed eight fighter jets. Here are live updates.

Analysis: The legal status of the partisan forces remains murky. Partisans say they are civilians, regulated under a Ukrainian law that calls them "community volunteers." But under international law, a civilian becomes a combatant when they take part in hostilities.

Fighting: Ukrainian officials warned of a buildup of long-range Russian missile systems to the north, in Belarus. One official cited weapons just 15 miles (about 24 kilometers) from their shared border.

Your questions: Do you have questions about the war? We'd love to try to answer them.

Continue reading the main story

THE LATEST NEWS

Asia

The U.S. and South Korea had canceled or pared down similar military exercises in recent years.Yonhap, via EPA, via Shutterstock

North Korea conducted a missile test yesterday, its first since June, as South Korea and the U.S. prepared for joint military drills.
Drought is gripping parts of China, the BBC reports, and authorities are attempting to induce rainfall.
Floods in Pakistan have killed more than 580 people, The Guardian reports.
Bombings and arson attacks swept southern Thailand last night, The Associated Press reports. Muslim separatists have long operated there.
India freed 11 Hindu men who were serving life sentences for gang-raping a pregnant woman during Hindu-Muslim riots in 2002, CNN reports.

The Pacific

Australia's highest court overturned a ruling that Google had engaged in defamation by acting as a "library" for a disputed article, Reuters reports.

Police in New Zealand are looking into reports that human remains were found in suitcases bought at a storage unit auction, The Guardian reports.

U.S. News

"This bill is the biggest step forward on climate ever," President Biden said.Doug Mills/The New York Times

President Biden signed the climate, health and tax bill into law. (Here is a breakdown of its programs.)
The head of the C.D.C. said the agency had failed to respond quickly enough to the pandemic and would overhaul its operations.
Mike Pence called on Republicans to stop attacking top law enforcement agencies over the F.B.I.'s search of Donald Trump's home.

The Academy Awards apologized to a Native woman, Sacheen Littlefeather, who was booed in 1973 when she refused an award on behalf of Marlon Brando.

World News

Inflation in Britain jumped 10.1 percent in July from a year earlier, the fastest pace in four decades. Soaring food prices are behind the rise.
For the first time in months, European officials expressed optimism about reviving the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.
Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, accused Israel of "50 Holocausts." After an outcry, he walked back his remarks.
Israel and Turkey will restore full diplomatic ties after a four-year chill.
Mexico's president is staking the country's future on fossil fuels.

A Morning Read

"It was pretty gut-wrenching when we first learned our Galileo was not actually a Galileo," a library official said.via University of Michigan Library

The University of Michigan Library announced that a treasured manuscript in its collection, once thought to be written by Galileo, is actually a forgery.

Strange letter forms and word choices set off a biographer's alarm bells. A deeper look into its provenance confirmed his worst suspicions.

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ARTS AND IDEAS

The chef Tony Tung at her restaurant, Good to Eat Dumplings. Mark Davis for The New York Times

Taiwan's complex food history

Tejal Rao, our California restaurant critic, took a deep dive into the political complexities around Taiwanese cuisine in the U.S. diaspora.

Taiwanese food is often subsumed under the umbrella description of "Chinese." For China's government, which seeks unification, the conflation is convenient, and even strategic.

But the cuisine has also been shaped by the island's Indigenous tribes, long-established groups of Fujianese and Hakka people, and by Japanese colonial rule. The idea of distinguishing Taiwanese cuisine started to really take hold on the island in the 1980s, as the country transitioned from a military dictatorship to a democracy.

Some Taiwanese chefs, like Tony Tung, are using their food to start conversations. At her new restaurant in California, Tung treats every question, no matter how obtuse, as an opening to explain the island's unique history and culture. As tensions rise over the self-governed island, Tejal writes, "cooking Taiwanese food can be a way of illuminating the nuances obscured by that news."