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A state high courts decision that the Republican front-runner for the White House is disqualified from office might seem like a pretty good opening for his ostensible G.O.P. challengers.

But in an era of smashmouth politics, ushered in by former President Donald J. Trump, only Mr. Trump appears capable of smashing anyone in the mouth. So, with under four weeks before the Iowa caucuses, the Colorado Supreme Courts ruling on Tuesday that Mr. Trump was disqualified from the states primary ballot under a section of the 14th Amendment that holds that no person shall hold any office, civil or military who has engaged in insurrection or rebellion was apparently off limits.

Mr. Trump still seems to be the one setting the parameters for legitimate debate in the G.O.P., even if he doesnt participate in the partys actual debates.

We dont need to have judges making these decisions, Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor who is rising in the polls but still far behind Mr. Trump, told reporters in Agency, Iowa, on Tuesday.

Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida not only refrained from attacking his chief rival, but he also spun out a conspiracy theory to suggest the ruling was a plot against him to aid Mr. Trump.

What the left and the media and the Democrats are doing theyre doing all this stuff, to basically solidify support in the primary for him, get him into the general, and the whole general election is going to be all this legal stuff, Mr. DeSantis said on Wednesday, speaking at the Westside Conservative Club Breakfast in Iowa.

At a restaurant outside Des Moines, he asked reporters, Were going to be litigating this stuff for how many more years going forward? I think weve got to start focusing on the peoples issues.

Vivek Ramaswamy, the entrepreneur who has clung most tightly to Mr. Trumps pant legs throughout the primary season, went so far as to pledge solidarity and withdraw his own name from the Colorado ballot, and he demanded the other candidates follow suit. A biotech financier who has spent millions of his own dollars on his campaign, Mr. Ramaswamy railed against the unelected elite class in the back of palace halls as he sat in the back of his well-appointed campaign bus.

Even Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor whose long-shot run for the Republican nomination has centered on questioning the front-runners fitness for office, demurred, engaging not on the Colorado justices conclusions but their timing.

I dont think a court should exclude somebody from running for president without there being a trial and evidence thats accepted by a jury that they did participate in insurrection, he said on Tuesday night during a town hall event in New Hampshire.

The heart of the Republican primary season is now just weeks away: Voters in Iowa will caucus on Jan. 15, with the first primary of the year, New Hampshires, coming Jan. 23. If anything, the former presidents lead seems only to grow. He clobbers his closest Republican competitors in the primary by more than 50 percentage points, in a new New York Times/Siena College poll, drawing 64 percent of Republican primary voters nationwide.

Yet his rivals remain apparently unwilling to take any real risks that could shake the dynamic. Republican primary voters have overwhelmingly decided that each new legal challenge to Mr. Trumps actions to cling to power after losing the 2020 election, each ruling in cases involving the way he has conducted business, treated women or handled classified material all of it is simply not relevant to their votes.

More than one in five Republican voters think Mr. Trump has committed crimes, and 13 percent of Republicans believe that he should be found guilty in court of trying to overturn the 2020 election, yet most of those voters also say they would still cast their ballots for him.

So, his rivals figure, why dwell on it?

I guess that state has that right to remove Trump from the ballot if they feel like it, Tim Robbins, 72, a farmer and Iowa Republican, said of the Colorado ruling after an appearance by Ms. Haley. But I think the people need to decide. Its the peoples decision, not the states decision.

He added that he agreed with Ms. Haleys hands-off approach: I dont need somebody to tell me what to think of somebody else, he said. Ill draw my own conclusions.

It seemed on Wednesday that only two people in the race for the White House wanted to talk about the Colorado ruling: Mr. Trump, who sent fund-raising appeals in emails with the subject lines BALLOT REMOVAL and REMOVED FROM THE BALLOT, and President Biden, who said Mr. Trump certainly supported an insurrection.

You saw it all, the president told reporters on Wednesday. Now, whether the 14th Amendment applies, Ill let the court make that decision.

There is no evidence suggesting that Mr. Biden has any ties to the Colorado case, or that he has meddled in any of the four criminal cases pending against Mr. Trump. But on his social media network, Mr. Trump was spinning the story that has either paralyzed his rivals for the nomination or elicited hosannas from the competition.

BIDEN SHOULD DROP ALL OF THESE FAKE POLITICAL INDICTMENTS AGAINST ME, BOTH CRIMINAL & CIVIL, he wrote. EVERY CASE I AM FIGHTING IS THE WORK OF THE DOJ & WHITE HOUSE.

Michael Gold, Jazmine Ulloa and Nicholas Nehamas contributed reporting.

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With Trump Declared an 'Insurrectionist,' His Rivals Pull Their Punches, Again - The New York Times

When Mitch McConnell, the top Republican in the Senate, was asked about former President Donald J. Trumps now-standard stump line claiming that immigrants are poisoning the blood of our country, Senator McConnell delivered an indirect but contemptuous response.

Well, it strikes me it didnt bother him when he appointed Elaine Chao secretary of transportation, Mr. McConnell, the Senate minority leader, said. Ms. Chao, who was born in Taiwan and immigrated to America as a child, is married to Mr. McConnell.

Mr. McConnell referred to a feud that has simmered for more than a year over the former presidents racist attacks against Ms. Chao. Mr. Trump, often referring to her by the derisive nickname Coco Chow, has suggested that she and by extension her husband, Mr. McConnell are beholden to China because of her connections to the country.

Mr. Trump repeated his poisoning the blood claim at a rally in New Hampshire on Saturday, prompting an outburst of criticism from Senate Republicans this week.

Senator Susan Collins of Maine told a reporter for The Independent that the former presidents remarks were deplorable.

That was horrible that those comments are just they have no place, particularly from a former president, Ms. Collins said.

Senator Mike Rounds, Republican of South Dakota, denounced Mr. Trumps language as unacceptable.

I think that that rhetoric is very inappropriate, Mr. Rounds said, according to NBC News. But this administrations policies are feeding right into it. And so, I disagree with that. I think we should celebrate our diversity.

Mr. McConnells own oblique retort, which did not directly criticize Mr. Trumps language, signaled that even some of the former presidents boldest Republican critics on Capitol Hill are treading lightly, as he dominates the polls in the Republican presidential race.

Mr. McConnell has spent years trying to steer the party away from Mr. Trump after the riot at the Capitol by Trump supporters on Jan. 6, 2021, in large part because he views the former president as a political loser. Often when Mr. McConnell criticizes Mr. Trump he does so by saying his behavior would make it hard for him to win another presidential election.

Senate Republicans are also trying to negotiate a deal with the White House, proposing sweeping restrictions on migration in exchange for approving additional military aid to Ukraine and Israel, a top priority for President Biden.

Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the Senate majority leader, denounced Mr. Trumps remarks on Tuesday as despicable but signaled that Senate Democrats would push forward with negotiations on border restrictions.

We all know theres a problem at the border, Mr. Schumer said. The president does. Democrats do. And were going to try to solve that problem consistent with our principles.

Other Senate Republicans more delicately admonished Mr. Trump for his remarks, referring to either their own immigrant heritage or the principle that America is a nation of immigrants.

My grandfather is an immigrant, so thats not a view I share, John Thune, the second-ranking Senate Republican, said in a CNN interview on Monday. He added, We are a nation of immigrants, but were also a nation of laws, describing illegal immigration as a runaway train at the Southern border.

But other Senate Republicans embraced Mr. Trumps language. Senator Tommy Tuberville, who had defended white supremacists serving in the military before retracting his remarks this year, said that Mr. Trumps attacks on immigrants did not go far enough.

Im mad he wasnt tougher than that, Mr. Tuberville told a reporter for The Independent. When you see whats happening at the border? Were being overrun. Theyre taking us over.

Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio said it was objectively and obviously true that illegal immigrants were poisoning the blood of the country. He also scolded the reporter who asked him about Mr. Trumps remarks, accusing her of using Mr. Trumps words to try to narrow the limits of debate on immigration in this country.

Representative Nicole Malliotakis, the lone Republican in a House seat in New York City, denied that Mr. Trumps remarks were referring to immigrants.

He didnt say the words immigrants, I think he was talking about the Democratic policies, she said in a CNN interview on Monday. Look, I know that some are trying to make it seem like Trump is anti-immigrant. The reality is, he was married to immigrants, he has hired immigrants.

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McConnell and Other Senate Republicans Criticize Trump's Talk on Immigrants - The New York Times

The Senate quietly closed out its year on Wednesday by punting many of its most difficult issues into 2024. It failed to deliver on aid to Ukraine. It could not agree on a border policy plan. And a government shutdown is on the horizon.

The fizzle at the finish line guarantees that Congress will be ensnarled in policy and fiscal battles as lawmakers fight for control of the House and the Senate in Novembers elections.

The chief disappointment for leaders of both parties was the failure to agree on delivering more military aid to Ukraine in its conflict with Russia after the assistance got tied up in Republican demands for stringent new border controls.

It was a setback for Democrats, who had hoped that by keeping the Senate in Washington this week, Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, could force votes on a measure speeding tens of billions to Ukraine and addressing Republicans push for immigration policy changes. But a breakthrough did not materialize.

Mr. Schumer, in an interview, said he remained hopeful that an agreement would be ready for a quick vote when the Senate returns next month. He cited greater participation in the talks by the Biden administration and a recognition by Republicans that Democrats are willing to make serious concessions to stem the flow across the southern border.

I think the Republicans have seen that were serious about the border, and that were willing to do some things that maybe they thought we wouldnt do, he said.

Mr. Schumer said the major question for Republicans was whether opposition from Donald J. Trump, the G.O.P.s presidential front-runner, would deter them from striking a deal, even though most Republicans acknowledged that helping Ukraine was the best approach to confronting Russia and avoiding a wider conflict.

They have the looming specter of Donald Trump, who they know in their hearts has been not just irrational but nasty on this issue, trying to use it to appeal to the worst political instincts of people, Mr. Schumer said. He added that Republicans would face a choice between Mr. Trump and the specter of history looking down on them should the United States abandon Ukraine.

The lack of resolution came as no surprise to Republicans, some of whom jeered Mr. Schumer for thinking he could outmaneuver them in just a few days time on an issue as vital to their base as border security particularly given that the G.O.P.-led House left town last week for the holiday break.

But Mr. Schumer and Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the minority leader, issued a joint statement saying they were committed to addressing needs at the southern border and to helping allies and partners confront serious threats in Israel, Ukraine and the Indo-Pacific.

Mr. McConnell also acknowledged Democratic movement on border policy, saying on Wednesday that theres no longer any disagreement that the situation at the southern border is unsustainable and requires the Senate to act.

After a flurry of legislating the previous two years with Congress under Democratic control, productivity in Congress declined sharply in 2023 under divided government. The Democratic-led Senate was spared the internal power struggles that paralyzed the Republican-led House on multiple occasions, but major legislation was scarce.

I dont think the Senate has been nearly as productive as it could have been, Mr. McConnell told reporters on Tuesday.

Mr. Schumer said Democrats deserved credit for preventing congressional Republicans from overturning their accomplishments of the previous two years and averting fiscal chaos by forcing the G.O.P. into compromise agreements on raising the debt limit and temporarily funding the government.

We prevented them from doing the worst stuff, he said.

But Congress only postponed what looms as a messy spending showdown by passing a stopgap bill in mid-November. Almost immediately upon returning next month, the House and the Senate will face two staggered deadlines for funding the government on Jan. 19 and Feb. 2.

With most of the focus on Ukraine, little progress has been made on the annual spending bills and lawmakers of both parties are increasingly sounding the alarm about the dangers of cuts that would occur if no agreement can be reached. But Speaker Mike Johnson, who was installed after the ouster of Kevin McCarthy in October, has indicated that he might be willing to accept the cuts, a prospect that Mr. Schumer warned could spur an election-year backlash.

We have Senate Democrats, House Democrats and Senate Republicans sort of aligned, he said. Johnson will learn that it has to be bipartisan.

It is unclear if the threat of the back-to-back government shutdown deadlines will infuse talks over the national security package with needed momentum. Lawmakers will have only 10 days once they return to Washington to resolve a series of critical differences, including the most basic question of what size the rest of the governments 2024 fiscal year budget should be. Congress also kicked into next year contentious fights over federal aviation safety policy and the renewal of an antiterrorism surveillance policy.

A sweeping Pentagon policy bill was a rare bright spot for Congress this year. Both the House and the Senate passed the bill in December, despite objections from conservative lawmakers that it omitted a series of measures they had sought to curtail Pentagon programs providing abortion access, transgender health services and diversity training. The legislations passage maintained Congresss more than 60-year streak of authorizing spending for the military.

The Senate also managed in its waning hours to overcome a nearly yearlong protest from Senator Tommy Tuberville, Republican of Alabama, who had blocked the promotions of hundreds of senior military officials. Mr. Tuberville had demanded that the Pentagon reverse a policy ensuring that service members needing to go long distances to obtain abortions or other forms of reproductive health care would be given time off and have their travel expenses reimbursed.

On Tuesday, Mr. Tuberville allowed the last of the delayed promotions to proceed without, Mr. Schumer said, getting one bit of what he asked for only a lot of pain to military families.

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Senate Wraps Up Year, Punting Ukraine Aid and Other Issues to 2024 - The New York Times

Representative Kevin McCarthy, the former speaker, had a positive spin on the five days and record-breaking 15 voting rounds it took him to win the gavel in January. Because it took this long, he said after the ordeal, now we learned how to govern.

But as the first year of the 118th Congress draws to a close, the numbers tell a different story one that doesnt involve much governing at all.

In 2023, the Republican-led House has passed only 27 bills that became law, despite holding a total of 724 votes.

That is more voting and less lawmaking than at any other time in the last decade, according to an analysis by the Bipartisan Policy Center, and a far less productive record than that of last year, when Democrats had unified control of Congress. The House held 549 votes in 2022, according to the House clerk, and passed 248 bills that were signed into law, according to records kept by the Library of Congress, including a bipartisan infrastructure law, the Inflation Reduction Act and the first bipartisan gun safety bill in decades.

The list of this years accomplishments is less ambitious and more bare minimum, such as legislation to suspend the debt ceiling and set federal spending limits that helped pull the nation back from the brink of economic catastrophe. The tally also includes two temporary spending measures to avoid government shutdowns. The House cleared the must-pass annual military policy bill last week before leaving for the year, though it is not known when President Biden will sign it into law.

The numbers reflect the challenges that have plagued Republicans all year and are likely to continue, and maybe even get worse, in 2024: a tiny majority that requires near unanimity to get anything done; deep party divisions that make unanimity all but impossible; and a right wing whose priority is reining in government, not passing new laws to broaden its reach.

The raw number of laws passed is not always the best way to capture the productivity of a Congress, because some catchall bills incorporate dozens of smaller, sometimes highly significant, bills that hitch a ride. But this year was grossly unproductive even by the lower standards of whats possible in divided government and after taking into account the reality that not all bills are created equal. In 2013, for example, when Republicans controlled the House and Democrats controlled the Senate, just as they do today, the House passed 72 bills that were signed into law.

Molly Reynolds, a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution, said Congresss productivity issues this year reached a low point. She attributed it to deepening political polarization and to the fractured House Republican conference with its too-slim-to-govern majority.

Democrats as a party are much more interested in having government do things, Ms. Reynolds said. A lot of what Republicans are motivated by is the pursuit of ideological purity. The ideological difference around the role of government makes it harder to imagine the sets of things on which the Republican House, especially with its divisions, would get together with a Democrat-led Senate and a Democrat president.

Despite the low number of bills signed into law, the House saw a frenzy of activity on the floor. That included numerous votes for numerous speaker candidates (19 across two historic speaker elections), multiple attempts to expel Representative George Santos of New York from Congress (three), failed and successful votes on censuring Democratic lawmakers (six) and dozens of votes on hard-right amendments to appropriations bills that ultimately did not pass, or proved to be non-starters in the Senate because they were laden with conservative policy priorities.

The mismatch between the number of votes taken and the number of laws passed is something far-right House Republicans might consider a win. One of the demands the faction made of Mr. McCarthy in January as they were withholding their support to make him speaker was to open up the legislative process and allow more votes on the floor.

And some of the votes happened because House members defied the speaker and forced them against his wishes, like a resolution to impeach Mr. Biden over his border policies and a move to censure Representative Adam B. Schiff of California and fine him $16 million.

Its a good reminder that not every vote is in pursuit of an actual legislative product, Ms. Reynolds said.

Some Republican lawmakers have expressed frustration at their inability to get things done. If we dont change the foundational problems within our conference, its just going to be the same stupid clown car with a different driver, Representative Dusty Johnson of South Dakota vented to reporters in October after Mr. McCarthys ouster.

But those foundational problems remain.

Rebellious right-wing Republicans, angry at Speaker Mike Johnson for relying on Democrats to pass legislation to avoid a government shutdown, voted to block two major spending bills from coming to the floor.

That marked the fourth time this year that House Republicans broke a longstanding code of party discipline by refusing to back procedural measures proposed by their own leaders that must be passed to bring legislation to the floor. That did not happen once under former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who led the House for a total of eight years, or under the previous two Republican speakers, Paul D. Ryan or John A. Boehner.

When it came to the politics of retribution and revenge, however, the House had a historically productive year. It sometimes took multiple attempts, but Republicans were ultimately successful at formally censuring three Democratic members of the House: Mr. Schiff and Representatives Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Jamaal Bowman of New York.

Before this year, only two members had been censured in almost four decades.

I suspect that has something to do with the breakdown on the Republican side of party leadership, said Sarah Binder, a professor of political science at George Washington University. Theres no restraining of members from going to the floor.

It took the House three tries, but it also made history when it voted to expel Mr. Santos, making him the first person to be expelled from the House without first being convicted of a federal crime or supporting the Confederacy.

Republican leaders tried to frame the year as productive, in its own way.

In his end-of-year recap, Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the majority leader, said Republicans had succeeded in passing legislation to confront rising crime, unleash American energy, lower costs for families, secure President Bidens wide-open border, combat executive overreach and burdensome agency rules, and refocus our military on its core mission of national security.

But many of those bills amounted to political messaging tools that would stand no chance of passage in a Democratic-controlled Senate.

Other than the must-pass bills, those that did make it into law addressed the smallest of small-bore issues, such as the 250th Anniversary of the United States Marine Corps Commemorative Coin Act and a bill to designate the clinic of the Department of Veterans Affairs in Gallup, N.M., as the Hiroshi Hershey Miyamura V.A. Clinic. On Tuesday evening, Mr. Biden signed into law the Duck Stamp Modernization Act of 2023, which allows waterfowl hunters the use of electronic federal duck stamps instead of physical ones to meet licensing requirements.

In his farewell speech to Congress, Mr. McCarthy highlighted as one of his hallmark achievements of the year a successful effort to prevent a new law. The measure blocked a rewrite of the criminal code for the District of Columbia that would have reduced mandatory minimum sentences for some violent offenses while increasing them for others.

The president threatened to veto it, Mr. McCarthy said, but we did it anyway, and we stopped him and it became law.

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House Dysfunction by the Numbers: 724 Votes, Only 27 Laws Enacted - The New York Times

It may take weeks to find out whether the decision by the Colorado Supreme Court to declare Donald J. Trump ineligible to be on the state primary ballot will hold.

But its short-term political impact was clear by the time Mr. Trump stepped off a stage on Tuesday night in Iowa, where he learned of the ruling shortly before a scheduled campaign rally began.

Allies of the former president posted on social media that the ruling was an outrage, one that the U.S. Supreme Court needed to rectify.

Colorados top court found that Mr. Trump had incited an insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, and should be barred from the ballot under the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. Mr. Trump could remain on the ballot regardless the Colorado justices put their ruling on hold as appeals are likely to proceed but Mr. Trumps team was hardly dwelling on that detail.

Even if Mr. Trump remains on the ballot, any court having said that Mr. Trump incited an insurrection will be used against him in a general election, in ways his advisers know could be damaging. But the Republican primary is different. Officials with Mr. Trumps rival G.O.P. campaigns privately feared that the decision would be seen as an overreach by Democrats, one that could bolster his current lead among Republicans in the Iowa caucuses on Jan. 15, and in the primaries immediately after.

For years, events that would thwart other politicians have at best slowed Mr. Trumps forward motion, with the prominent exception of his loss in the 2020 election to Joseph R. Biden Jr. Throughout 2023, Mr. Trump has exploited as political fodder events that would have sunk other candidates such as being indicted four times, on 91 felony charges with a Republican electorate that has been told Democrats are threatening their way of life.

Since March, Mr. Trump has perfected a playbook of victimhood, raising campaign funds off each indictment and encouraging Republican officials to defend him. Many including some who are fearful of Mr. Trumps hold on the partys core voters have obliged.

Democrats and the comparatively few Republicans who want to see Mr. Trump stopped have described his criminal legal travails as of his own making, and tried to highlight the details of the crimes he is accused of committing. They vary widely and include charges he conspired to defraud the United States with months of election lies aimed at subverting the transfer of power as well as charges stemming from mishandling classified documents.

But Mr. Trump has repeatedly collapsed all those cases into what he has called a witch hunt, one aimed at stopping his candidacy as opposed to holding him accountable. He and his allies are already folding the Colorado ruling into that same narrative.

Mr. Trump who rose in politics in 2011 fanning a fringe lie that President Obama, the first Black U.S. president, may not have been eligible to serve now finds himself contending with his own eligibility to hold office from the fallout of his actions after he lost in 2020. But while most Republicans rejected his lies about Mr. Obama, a large number are backing Mr. Trumps claim of being wronged.

Even people who dislike Mr. Trump intensely feared the ruling to toss him off the ballot will merely help him with a Republican electorate that will see it as interfering with an election, at a time when Mr. Trump is regularly described by Democrats as a threat to democracy.

This vindicates his insistence that this is a political conspiracy to interfere with the election, Ty Cobb, who worked as a lawyer in the Trump White House and who has since condemned his behavior, told CNN. Thats the way he tries to sell this, added Mr. Cobb, who mocked that claim of a broad conspiracy but nonetheless predicted the U.S. Supreme Court might unanimously overturn the Colorado ruling.

Mr. Trumps campaign emailed out that portion of the interview.

REMOVED FROM THE BALLOT FIGHT BACK! was the subject line of a second fund-raising email from Mr. Trump later in the night.

Mr. Trump said nothing about the ruling at his Iowa rally, as Republicans filled the void for him. His Republican opponents the few who remain from a once-crowded field once again were left having to walk a line around the man theyre trying to beat.

Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who is mocked daily by Mr. Trumps team for his footwear and who has struggled to replace the former president as the new generation of the MAGA movement, may as well have been articulating Mr. Trumps own defense in his statement.

The Left invokes democracy to justify its use of power, even if it means abusing judicial power to remove a candidate from the ballot based on spurious legal grounds. SCOTUS should reverse, Mr. DeSantis wrote in a social media post.

Chris Christie, the former governor of New Jersey whose core message has been that Mr. Trump is unfit for office, said that voters, not the courts, should decide whether he is president. Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina who has made significant gains in recent polling, made a similar statement.

Vivek Ramaswamy, the most vocally pro-Trump of any of the candidates this cycle, said he would withdraw from the Colorado ballot unless Mr. Trump is restored.

Mr. Trumps team is confident such a restoration will happen. Privately, several of his advisers agreed with Mr. Cobbs assessment that the U.S. Supreme Court will take up his appeal and side with him. It remains to be seen if that happens, or if the justices decide to let the ruling stand. If they do the latter, similar lawsuits would most likely be filed in other states, although a number of 14th Amendment suits have already failed elsewhere.

Regardless of the eventual outcome, Mr. Trumps team, which was surprised by the Tuesday ruling, made quick work of trying to turn it into another galvanizing moment of victimhood. Their approach echoed something Mr. Trumps oldest mentor, the ruthless lawyer and fixer Roy M. Cohn, who battled prosecutors himself, once said.

I bring out the worst in my enemies, Mr. Cohn once told the columnist William Safire, and thats how I get them to defeat themselves.

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Indicted or Barred From the Ballot: For Trump, Bad News Cements Support - The New York Times