KEARNEYSVILLE, West Virginia — Ted Cruz has a competitive reelection race to run back in Texas. On Thursday, though, he showed up 1,200 miles away in a bid to shape Senate Republicans’ post-Mitch McConnell future.

Cruz was in West Virginia’s Eastern Panhandle to try to boost an underdog conservative, Rep. Alex Mooney, who faces Gov. Jim Justice in the May 14 GOP primary. Justice is the Senate minority leader’s star recruit, hand-picked to pressure Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) into retirement and make the seat Republicans’ easiest pickup on this fall’s map.

Yet to Cruz, Mooney’s candidacy is a way to push the entire party rightward — and make life more of a nightmare for party leaders. A longtime House Freedom Caucus member, Mooney is running as an insurgent from the right, while Justice is a more conciliatory ex-Democrat who has supported bipartisan compromises.

“How many of y’all have been frustrated by Republicans in the Senate? I’m going to raise my hand. It is maddening,” Cruz told a crowd of nearly 200 people in a sweltering horse auction center, likening many politicians to spineless animals. “One more conservative makes an enormous difference in the Senate.”

Mooney trails Justice badly, according to nearly all public polling, but his candidacy is a way to survey the GOP base about the anti-establishment sentiment that’s spiking among congressional Republicans. Cruz is looking for new recruits to the rabble-rousing crew of GOP senators who thrive on causing headaches for party leaders — so whether or not Mooney beats Justice, and he’s not likely to, Cruz’s endorsement stamps him as a favorite of the insurgent wing.

The same sort of longshot right-flank rebellion is also happening in the House where Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) is trying to oust a speaker who looks on paper like her natural conservative ally. But Mooney and Greene have the same problem: The party establishment now includes former President Donald Trump, who has sided with the enemies they decry as out of touch with real conservatives.

Mooney is “going to be crushed,” said former Rep. David McKinley (R-W.Va.), a Justice supporter who lost to Mooney in a 2022 House primary due to Trump’s endorsement.

Either Republican candidate is essentially guaranteed to win the seat in November given Manchin’s retirement, making West Virginia a perfect test case for the party’s red-state mood. Mooney is eager to make the primary a contest of ideologies — a rarity in a Senate cycle where nearly every other GOP contest has hinged on who can compete best in a general election.

Mooney is trying to generate momentum any way he can, including the release of internal polling and a Mountain State visit from Cruz. Mooney has even resorted to using Justice’s Internet famous pet “Baby Dog” against him, claiming that the bulldog who’s ubiquitous in the governor’s messaging knows the truth about him.

“Baby Dog knows Gov. Justice as good as anybody. He knows the man’s a liberal,” Mooney said in an interview. Justice’s campaign did not respond to requests for comment.

Mooney opposed sending more U.S. aid to Ukraine and voted against the bipartisan House government spending bill. He beat McKinley two years ago in part because — in the defeated man’s telling — Trump was irate enough about McKinley’s vote for a bipartisan infrastructure bill to endorse Mooney, who opposed that legislation. Mooney also weathered attacks on his Maryland lineage to win that race.

Pro-Mooney conservatives are particularly frustrated over a potential missed opportunity to change the complexion of the Senate GOP after bitter internal splits over funding Ukraine, government spending and reauthorizing warrantless foreign surveillance. John Fredericks, a pro-Trump conservative radio host from Virginia and a Mooney supporter, said electing Justice amounts to a “complete waste of a seat” for the GOP.

Yet Fredericks and Cruz are exceptions in a Republican Party that’s wary of crossing Trump. Cruz, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) are the only chamber Republicans siding against Justice. And the conservative Club for Growth did not follow through with its pledge to pour $10 million in the race, spending only about $1.8 million, according to media tracking firm AdImpact.

David McIntosh, president for Club for Growth Action, said the group believes “Mooney is the best conservative for the seat, but President Trump’s endorsement hardened Justice’s support and there wasn’t a viable path forward.”

“They committed. I guess they looked at poll numbers and they canceled,” said Fredericks, who drove his “MAGA Bus” to the event here. “You believe in your candidates or you don’t. And they obviously don’t.”

Mooney declined to criticize the conservative Club, which often plays in red-state primaries but is trying to rebuild its ties to Trump. He did concede the cavalry did not come for him in a primary where total GOP spending is relatively low for an open seat — around $13 million — and a few extra million could have made a huge difference.

“People are missing it,” Mooney said. “It’s not just Club for Growth. There’s a lot of groups out there that exist to help conservatives.”

Mooney does not currently plan to vote to oust Speaker Mike Johnson this week, a sign he’s got a practical side as well. Still, there’s little debate among the top Senate brass that Justice would be more of a team player, in the mold of more pragmatic center-right Republicans who could form a GOP governing wing in 2025. That will probably be helpful for McConnell’s successor as Republican leader.

Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), who backs Justice and often is open to bipartisan dealmaking, said Justice was “initially perceived and known to be the stronger candidate, and now it’s going to be what kind of senator he would become. And I feel very comfortable with that.”

In one of the reddest states in the country, it’s something of a surprise that West Virginia GOP voters aren’t reflexively seeking the most conservative candidate in the race. Still, the state party is filled with thousands of former Democrats who don’t adhere neatly to ideological lines — just like Justice, who gave Trump an early triumph in 2017 when he switched parties live on stage.

If there’s a bright side for Mooney, it’s that Trump is not directly rallying voters against him. In addition, Justice’s campaign appears to be taking Mooney less than seriously, giving the dark horse the stage to himself at times. On the other hand, the lack of activity suggests Justice believes he’s heading for a landslide win.

“Why go out and mess it up?” Manchin observed.

Still, a West Virginia trip was a no-brainer for Cruz. He’s maintained his own brand in the party even after running against Trump in 2016 and then becoming an ally by championing several candidates who put him at odds with the former president.

Unlike Mooney, Cruz won’t quite describe Justice as “Manchin 2.0;” Justice is likely to be his colleague, after all. But Cruz is clear about how important the race is for his mission to drive his party further rightward.

People “are frustrated that the Senate Republican Conference doesn’t stand up and fight for conservative principles. The only way to change that is to elect strong conservatives. And especially from bright-red states,” Cruz said. “There’s no reason not to.”

Ally Mutnick contributed to this report.

Progressive lawmakers this week compared recent police crackdowns on student anti-war demonstrations to the deadly response to anti-Vietnam War campus protests over 50 years ago, warning the Biden administration not to repeat history.

In a social media post Saturday, Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) marked the 54th anniversary of the Kent State shootings, when the Ohio National Guard shot and killed four students and injured nine others at an anti-Vietnam War protest. In her post, she compared the historic tragedy to the recent wave of police crackdowns on campuses across the country.

“On the 54th anniversary of the Kent State Massacre, students across our country are being brutalized for standing up to endless war,” Bush wrote. “Our country must learn to actually uphold the rights of free speech & assembly upon which it was founded.”

In a similar post, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) wrote: “54 years ago, the Ohio National Guard opened fire on unarmed students at Kent State. Students have a right to speak out, organize, and protest systemic wrongs. We can’t silence those expressing dissent, no matter how uncomfortable their protests may be to those in power.”

Students protesting for Palestinian liberation at campuses across the country have also referenced the legacy of student resistance and state crackdowns at inflection points throughout American history.

As Columbia University students occupied the school’s Hamilton Hall last week — which was similarly occupied during anti-war and anti-apartheid student protests in 1968, 1985 and 1992 — Columbia University Apartheid Divest made comparisons to deadly clashes between students and law enforcement in the past, warning administrators and trustees: “Do not incite another Kent or Jackson State by bringing soldiers and police officers with weapons onto our campus. Students’ blood will be on your hands.”

Since April 18, more than 2,100 people linked to campus protests against the Israel-Gaza war have been arrested by police — sometimes arriving at campuses in riot gear or with weapons drawn — at over 50 schools across the country, according to the Associated Press. A small number of injuries have been reported, mostly a result of clashes between protesters and counterprotesters. There have been no casualties reported to date.

Other progressive lawmakers recently took the opportunity to criticize America’s policies towards the Israel-Gaza war and make a comparison to U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders on Thursday went so far as to warn that Biden’s Israel policy and response to students’ anti-war protests “may be Biden’s Vietnam.”

“I worry very much that President Biden is putting himself in a position where he has alienated not just young people, but a lot of the Democratic base,” Sanders told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour.

Civil rights leader Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) echoed Sanders’ warning on Friday, recalling President Lyndon Johnson’s fall from favor due to his escalation of American military involvement in Vietnam.

“I was around during Vietnam. I was around during President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society programs that brought on voting rights,” Clyburn told CNN’s Sara Sidner. “He was vice president when we got the Civil Rights Act of ’64, he brought on Medicare, Medicaid — all those things that made us a great society, he was the engineer of, and all that went down the drain because of Vietnam.”

Clyburn, whom Biden awarded the presidential medal of freedom later on Friday, added “I am where I am today because of protests,” but emphasized, “We did it nonviolently.”

Responding to a question about Clyburn’s Johnson reference at a Friday night press briefing, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre highlighted Biden’s record of withdrawing troops from Afghanistan, “end[ing] the longest war in American history,” and referenced the president’s earlier speech that touched on the “right to dissent” — but stressed that it should be done peacefully.

INDIANAPOLIS — Having a business record with ties to China made little difference for a Republican six years ago running in a GOP primary in a deep-red state like Indiana. Now, in 2024, with the voting public increasingly seeing the Asian superpower as a threat to America’s own position in the world, that’s no longer the case.

Just ask Mike Braun.

When he ran for the Senate six years ago, Braun, eschewing a jacket and tie for his trademark blue shirt, vanquished two GOP lawmakers in a slash-and-burn primary as an outsider businessperson. Never mind his record of importing auto parts to his distribution company in Jasper, Indiana.

Now, though, China has become a major point of contention in the state’s gubernatorial campaign — a sign of how dramatically the politics surrounding China have shifted within the GOP. The threat of a rising China has been a dominant theme throughout the Republican primary here, inspiring campaign ads, policy proposals and, sometimes, attacks. This year, the Indiana General Assembly took steps to prohibit sister-city agreements with China, and the state’s public retirement system is divesting pension investments from the Asian nation.

And Braun himself attacked one of his opponents, the Fort Wayne developer Eric Doden, as a “pro-China RINO,” dinging what he described as his “support for Communist China.” (The source of the attack appears to be an economic development grant Doden, as a state economic development official, gave to General Electric Aviation to expand its operations in Indiana; the deal was signed off on at the time by Indiana Commerce Secretary Victor Smith, now a major Braun donor).

Braun, one of the wealthiest members of Congress, will leave the Senate at the end of his first term and is on track to win Indiana’s Republican gubernatorial primary on May 7, in a state that hasn’t elected a Democrat to the position since 2000. As a candidate, he has argued that he has a “proven conservative track record of holding China accountable” in a primary that has largely focused on the Midwestern state’s vulnerabilities to the superpower.

But as the owner of an auto parts distribution company, Braun has economic ties to China, including his own company importing Chinese-made parts and leasing land near his headquarters to a second company that routinely imported products to the U.S. from the country.

And unlike when he ran for Senate, Braun’s business record, while not in direct contention with his policy proposals, cuts a very different way at a time when the superpower is viewed negatively by a vast majority of the population, even as he has taken a tough stance on China, saying the state “should not” negotiate with Chinese companies and touting a bill to prohibit the purchase of American farmland by those associated with China. They also show the difficulty of decoupling two massive, intertwined economies.

Meyer Distributing, the company Braun has long owned and used in his political career to define himself as an “outsider conservative businessman,” still relies on China for some of its product lines.

As recently as April 19, Meyer imported to its Jasper headquarters products from Changzhou Sunwood International Trading Co., Ltd., which bills itself as the “largest and best truck bed cover manufacturer in China,” according to shipping data from ImportGenius. The foreign port listed: Shanghai.

Braun’s campaign directed POLITICO to Meyer for questions about its recent shipment. A spokesperson for Meyer did not respond to a request for comment.

In addition, the company has a longtime relationship with CYC Engineering, an aftermarket auto parts manufacturer that leases land from Braun just a tenth a mile away from Meyer’s headquarters, and sources about 95 percent of its products from China, according to Panjiva, the supply chain research unit of S&P Global Market Intelligence.

CYC’s CEO, Yung Jen Chi, of Union City, Calif., maxed out to Braun’s 2018 Senate campaign, campaign finance records reported here for the first time show. Jen Chi did not respond to questions from POLITICO. CYC sells the Raptor series of truck running boards and other miscellaneous parts, which are sourced from China. A 2018 Associated Press investigation found that CYC had received 400 shipments of products from Chinese manufacturers over the course of a decade — at the same time Braun was building both his personal wealth and political profile at Meyer.

Since Braun took his Senate seat in 2019, he has stepped away from day-to-day operations of Meyer, and his sons have taken over the business. But Meyer is still a central part of his political image. He cites the company frequently while on the trail and has sat for interviews with reporters there during his gubernatorial campaign. A campaign spokesperson said even though he maintained office space there, it was leased by the campaign.

Braun’s campaign declined to make him available for an interview, but pointed to his Senate bill, introduced last year, that would “prohibit the purchase of U.S. farmland by those associated with the governments of our foreign adversaries,” including China, Iran, North Korea and Russia.

In a statement, a spokesperson for Braun defended his record as job creator of a company “that employs thousands of Americans,” and cited this story’s proximity to the Tuesday primary.

“Mike Braun stood with President Trump to take on China and will continue the fight to bring jobs back to Indiana as Governor,” the spokesperson said.

Braun’s own dealings with China made news in his 2018 Senate race, when the Associated Press reported that Promaxx Automotive, which Braun’s company had patented, made the parts in China.

Meyer’s dealings with China and Chinese-sourced companies illustrates the difficulty of delinking the two economic giants, even at a time when China is becoming politically verboten territory. As recently as 2019, two-term Republican Gov. Eric Holcomb, who is term-limited, traveled to China, which supported 21 Indiana businesses at the time.

In every public poll, Braun has led the six-person GOP gubernatorial field in Indiana — which includes Lt. Gov. Suzanne Crouch, Indianapolis businessperson Brad Chambers, Doden, former Indiana Attorney General Curtis Hill, and faith leader Jamie Reitenour — since jumping into the race in 2022.

Former President Donald Trump endorsed Braun in November, and Donald Trump Jr. appeared at a rally for him and other down-ballot candidates here earlier this spring.

Speaker Mike Johnson will likely escape Marjorie Taylor Greene’s first attempt to fire him. The threat of an ouster vote will still haunt him all year long.

Despite near-universal consensus in the House that allowing any one member to force a snap vote on booting a speaker is a recipe for chaos, lawmakers in both parties are increasingly acknowledging that they have almost no chance of changing that rule before January.

It’s not for a lack of interest — in fact, the idea was brought up in GOP meetings as recently as this week. But Johnson is boxed in from both sides. He can’t change the rules with only Republican votes because of the rebels on his right flank, who insisted that former Speaker Kevin McCarthy empower them by allowing a single lawmaker to force a vote of no confidence.

And Democrats, while they’re ready to save him from Greene’s (R-Ga.) first ejection attempt next week, are clear that their mercy won’t necessarily be permanent if the Georgia firebrand, or someone else, tries again. They also have little political incentive to give Johnson more permanent protection, unless he opens up broader negotiations about potential power sharing in the House. That price is too steep for the speaker to pay.

“I don’t know how you put that genie back in the box,” Rep. David Joyce (R-Ohio) said about changing the so-called motion to vacate the speakership, which he supports overhauling, this year.

It leaves Johnson almost powerless to officially defang one of the biggest threats to his leadership — even as he’s criticized the low threshold to vote on ousting a speaker as having “harmed this office” and the majority — and opens the door for more disgruntled colleagues to try to force a showdown with him in the months to come.

Not to mention that most Republicans doubt that Johnson or Democrats have much to gain by picking a fight over changing the rule. With a little over six months left before the next round of leadership races, a growing number of Republicans are already predicting that Johnson wouldn’t win the top spot again if he runs. Trying to protect the speakership from his disgruntled hardliners only invites more of them to lash out, making the speaker’s future path to stay in leadership even tougher.

“There would be too much pushback” if Johnson tried to raise the threshold for forcing a referendum on him, Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) said, advising Republicans to focus until Election Day on issues like the border rather than the “distraction” of a rules change fight.

“November is around the corner,” he added. “The opportunity to revisit the rules as a whole is right around the corner.”

The internal backlash over a potential change to speaker-deposing rules is already hitting Johnson, thanks to preemptive threats from some conservatives that they’d side with Greene in favor of firing him if he pursues such a change. Reps. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) and Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) in particular both warned Johnson late last month that they could support an ouster if he attempted to reform the motion to vacate.

The Louisianian wants none of that drama heading into November, as he tries to keep the conference interested in legislation that unites Republicans and gives them tools to win battleground races that are critical to his chances of keeping the majority.

On the other side of the aisle, Democrats are already planning to make it harder to fire a speaker if they win back the House in January. Until then, they see the onus as on Republicans to come forward with an offer to fix a GOP-created problem. Plus, Democrats can identify the political reality: More GOP chaos on display can only help them on the campaign trail.

“I’m not a cheap date. … It’s not our job to bail out the Republicans every time they want to overthrow their speaker,” said Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.). He made clear that deal-making would be necessary for multiple Johnson salvage votes, adding that “if it gets to that point, that’s a discussion he and Hakeem [Jeffries] have to have.”

McGovern’s not the only progressive grousing about the lifeline Democrats are providing to Johnson, whose conservatism makes him the caucus’ natural ideological enemy. Many of them are not in much of a mood to lift Republicans out of future predicaments, either.

“I would see that as another move to help Mike Johnson, who supported overturning the election and has been an apologist for crazy right-wing ideas in the country,” Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) said of changing the rules for a speaker-ousting vote.

Democrats have already laid out an outline for the kind of power-sharing they might seek with the GOP in exchange for more durable support for Johnson. In an op-ed last year, Jeffries wrote broadly that “the House should be restructured to promote governance by consensus and facilitate up-or-down votes on bills that have strong bipartisan support,” including rules changes that “reflect the inescapable reality that Republicans are reliant on Democratic support to do the basic work of governing.”

Last fall, a bipartisan coalition tried to reach a deal that would have prevented McCarthy’s ouster in exchange for adjusting the partisan makeup of the powerful Rules Committee, which controls what bills go to the floor, and raising the motion to vacate threshold. Those talks ultimately unraveled.

But as Greene’s threat looms, Republicans have increasingly floated the idea of a rules change in private meetings — including with Johnson. The speaker said in a post on X last month that he had been encouraged to endorse a higher threshold for the motion but that the idea didn’t have a “majority of the full House.”

The idea is still coming up, though, including during a lunch for governing-minded Republicans, according to one member present. Separately, Republicans in the business-oriented Main Street Caucus privately urged Johnson to change the rule as soon as possible during a recent meeting, per two Republicans who attended that sitdown.

One of those Republicans, Rep. Kelly Armstrong (N.D.), characterized his pitch to Johnson during the Main Street meeting as: “I don’t know how you can have a one-vote motion to vacate when you have a one-vote majority.”

To help distance Johnson from the horse-trading involved in a rules change proposal, any such blueprint that might be crafted would likely come from rank-and-file members, not party leaders. But many of Johnson’s allies acknowledge that if Democrats pile on too many demands, it likely closes the door to changing the rules until January.

“It would probably require some compromises with the Democrats to do that, and I’m not sure the speaker wants to do that,” said Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), pointing to things like potentially changing the balance of power on committees.

Democratic interest in a trade-off is also likely to further rankle centrist Republicans who fumed for months after McCarthy got no help from the other party. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.), co-chair of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus and a longtime McCarthy ally, argued that Democrats shouldn’t require concessions in exchange for changing a rule that inspires bipartisan loathing.

Fitzpatrick pointed out that “very few people in the chamber” think the one-vote threshold on a motion to vacate is a “good idea” and predicted it would change next year regardless of which party takes the majority.

“Doing the right thing should be enough of a reason to support something,” he said.