“I’m only 12 years old, and I had just gotten into sports,” Slater, now 42, told me Monday night by phone. “I didn’t know the significance of the Nuggets doing that. I didn’t know what that meant. But to sit and watch that, how everybody was just going crazy — I was a Nuggets fan ever since.

“In the ’90s, everybody had ‘their’ guy. He was ‘our’ guy. He made me a Nuggets fan. He made me not just a Nuggets fan, but a sports fan.”

Before Nikola Jokic, there was Mt. Mutombo. No. 55, who passed away Monday after a battle with brain cancer at the too-soon age of 58, brought the world to the Nuggets. And the Nuggets to the world.

“He was always globally-minded,” recalled former Denver teammate LaPhonso Ellis, a stalwart of those early ’90s squads, including

“And much of this may be where he was from (the Democratic Republic of Congo), but the reality is, a lot of people didn’t know he was raising two of his nieces and nephews before he ever raised any of his own children. Some of that was cultural. But to be able to handle that level of responsibility, and to give up yourself to take up that level of responsibility, says a lot about his character and who he was as a person.”

As to the “who,” Deke’s Instagram profile probably said it best: The Son of the Congo, DRC. CEO, NBA Global Ambassador, Humanitarian, Businessman, Father, and now…Hall-of-Famer.

Mutombo, who was drafted by the Nuggets out of John Thompson’s Georgetown dynasty in 1991 and spent the first five seasons of a storied 18-year NBA career in Denver, forever seemed bigger than the game. Although he excelled there, too: Mutombo, Rudy Gobert and Ben Wallace are the only players who’ve ever been named NBA Defensive Player of the Year four different times.

His was the rarest of legends, the kind we can close our eyes and conjure just from sounds alone. The thunk when his palm hit a basketball and swatted a shot five rows back. That laugh. The one that came from deep in the belly, deep in the soul, a thunderclap of sheer joy.

Whether through The Dikembe Mutombo Foundation or a wag of the finger, Deke gave better than he got. In an era of Jordan, Barkley and Hakeem, epic scorers, Mutombo made defense cool. When we think of epic blocked shots, his hands are the ones we go to. His was the finger that laughed last. And loudest.

His joy was contagious. His reach was enormous. He was ferocious on the court but courteous and thoughtful off of it. His interests, and his circles, ran the gamut: Deke spoke nine languages and also cameoed — as himself — while counting both the late Senator John McCain and fellow Hoya great Patrick Ewing as friends.

“I never got to see Bill Russell play,” Issel told me Monday. “But I think Dikembe is the best defensive player, in my mind, to ever play in the NBA.

“But I think because of his big personality and his booming voice and all of that, I think a lot of people remember his career after (playing), when he became an (ambassador for) the NBA, because of how much good he did around the world, but especially back in the Congo, his home country, that might overshadow what a great player he was.”

To most under 30, flashing fingers and cracking wise. But to fans such as Slater, he was an inspiration. The latter grew up in New Brunswick, N.J., some 30 miles from Trenton. Nets/Knicks territory. He cast his lot with the Nuggets in the ’90s. Which would be a little like a sixth-grader today growing up an hour from the Dodgers and rooting for the Rockies anyway.

“Dikembe’s career, it did impress me. And the fact he was so internationally known and how (seriously) he took his love of people,” Slater continued. “I remember when they finally won the championship (in 2023). I started to cry.”

He came for Mutombo. Slater was born with cerebral palsy. His dad took him to Knicks games, but what he remembers was New York fans teasing him. He also remembers, at the same time, watching Abdul-Rauf’s process at the free-throw line and thinking that anything was possible.

“Every time I would see him, his shooting percentage went up,” Slater recalled. “I was like, ‘This is wild. I would watch him go nuts.’

“And Mutombo was the first player to teach me that being tall doesn’t mean that you’re not fast. It was amazing. There was something about him.”

Sure was. Today, Slater’s a paraprofessional with Crossroads South Middle School in Monmouth Junction, N.J., a #Nugglyfer who still wears a throwback Denver jersey to work every now and then. The 12-year-old grew up to devote his professional life to service, to mentoring, to kids. You’ll never guess where he got that last idea from.

Lamborn went on to serve in Congress for 17 years despite facing primary challenges every two years from those frustrated by the congressman’s incompetence.

Colorado Republicans are at risk of making the same mistake – two times — this June in the critical primaries for Lamborn’s 5th Congressional District and the 4th Congressional District where incumbent Ken Buck is retiring.

Bosom buddies and political extremists Lauren Boebert and Dave Williams could win with a minority of support in two districts where long-time Republican incumbents have retired. Boebert and Williams are benefitting from the fact that Williams is the chair of the Colorado Republican Party and he is willing to shamelessly use party resources to tip the scales in this election for himself and for Boebert, both of whom the party has endorsed .

These ethical transgressions are compounded by the fact that Boebert abandoned the Western Slope announcing she would not run again in a district she almost lost in 2022, but instead selecting to run in CD4. It has every appearance of a backroom deal meant to ensure a Republican wins Congressional District 3 while giving Boebert a clear shot to win in a district where she didn’t live.

Allowing the minority of far-right voters in Congressional District 4 to select the worst possible candidate where no one on the ballot tops 30% of the vote, will have a lasting impact. The power of the incumbency is simply too strong in this nation.

Several of the candidates in these races do have a clear path to victory but it requires unaffiliated voters casting ballots this month in near-record numbers and other candidates bowing out gracefully so the more moderate vote isn’t split.

In Colorado’s redrawn 4th Congressional District, State Rep. Mike Lynch, a small business owner in Loveland, has the clearest path to victory over Boebert.

Lynch is a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and his campaign is off to a bit of a slow start because he was busy working to pass bipartisan laws as a state Representative.

He is best suited to defeat Ike McCorkle, also a veteran, in the General Election in November. Recent internal polls (less reliable than public polls) have shown that while many voters in CD4 are undecided, more say they would support McCorkle than Boebert in November.

In Colorado, unaffiliated voters can choose to cast their ballot in either the Democratic or the Republican primary. Lynch said that unaffiliated voters make up a large chunk of Congressional District 4 and winning those voters’ support is crucial to a victory over Boebert.

A few short years ago, the idea of a Democrat winning in the heavily Republican district which encompasses suburbs north and south of Denver and the vast Eastern Plains would have seemed unthinkable. But the district was redrawn, and Boebert is an outsider carrying embarrassing baggage to her new “hometown” where she’s lived for a time span best measured in weeks, not months or years.

In El Paso County’s Congressional District 5, it is Jeff Crank who has the best shot at keeping Williams out of office.

Crank, a conservative talk radio host, lost to Lamborn in 2006 drawing a close 25.4% of the vote. Had Bentley Rayburnwithdrawn from the race, Crank would have won.

Now, nearly two decades later Crank has a chance to serve in Congress if Republicans can keep from splitting the moderate vote. Lamborn has endorsed Crank even though both Rayburn and Crank tried to oust Lamborn in subsequent elections.

Times have changed, and the stakes are even higher. Lamborn, a reliable member of the Freedom Caucus, looks like John McCain compared to Dave Williams, just as Ken Buck has become somewhat of a moral guidepost for Republicans led astray by President Donald Trump’s lies. Both Republicans bowed out, in part because of this extremism, even if, unlike Buck, Lamborn won’t say that out loud.

Colorado’s open primaries are one step in the election reform required to shut down this endless cycle of extremism. If voters put it to good use in just a few short weeks, these districts can get the conservative representation they want without the ethical lapses, conspiracy theories, and bizarre behavior they don’t deserve.

Megan Schrader is the editor of The Denver Post opinion pages.

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Kreck started at the Post on Oct. 20, 1969, and she left the newspaper on July 4, 2003. Throughout her career, Kreck worked in the paper’s library and as a reporter and features writer. Kreck, in 1987, originated a child advocacy beat at the Post. Her in-depth reporting covered , foster care, child care, access to health care for children, maternal substance abuse, migrant children and more.

An example of Kreck’s work includes the top of this October 1989 story: “Desperate to stop shooting heroin, Carol destroyed her syringes, phoned her drug dealer and told him not to call anymore. Then she opened the Yellow Pages and started dialing drug treatment programs. She called five or six before she realized there is no place in Colorado for women who are poor, uninsured and abusing drugs; one hospital told her they would treat her for $3,000.” Carol, the subject in Kreck’s story, went on to do outreach work in AIDS prevention for Empowerment, a Denver-area program for women ex-offenders and prostitutes.

In June 1992, Kreck was one of 17 people honored by then-Gov. Roy Romer and his wife, “Bea,” for her wide-ranging reporting and stories on children’s issues. The awards ceremony was titled “Raising Colorado: Investing in the Future of Our Children and Families.”

In December 1994, Kreck was honored as a “children’s champion” by the Colorado Children’s Campaign.

“Coverage of children is its own reward,” Kreck told the Post at the time, when she was mother to two teenage daughters. “What reporter wouldn’t get a kick out of being able to cover health care, justice, courts, the legislature all at once? Even though I’m having a great time, it’s still nice to be recognized.”

She was born Sept. 20, 1947, in East Lansing, Mich., to Robert and Hope Lowe, two World War II Navy veterans. The family moved to Lakewood in Carol’s youth. Kreck earned a degree in criminal justice from Metropolitan State College.

On June 4, 1977, Carol Lowe married Dick Kreck, a former Post columnist, aboard the Rio Grande Zephyr as the train chugged through Colorado’s Moffat Tunnel. The couple, who had two daughters, later divorced.

After leaving the Post, Kreck became a librarian, and she engaged in civic affairs, including attending a 2008 political town-hall meeting in Denver where Republican Sen. John McCain appeared. Kreck, who carried a sign that read “McCain = Bush,” was cited for trespassing at the event. She filed a 2010 lawsuit in federal court against the city of Denver and the police, claiming her constitutional rights were violated. The lawsuit was dismissed by U.S. District Judge Lewis Babcock in January 2011.

Kreck was a petite woman, with a bright smile and a hearty laugh. At the time of her 2008 civic brush-up, a YouTube video of her ouster from the the Denver Performing Arts Complex, where the political town hall was held, had more than 102,000 hits. A national  television political commentator referred to her as a “Democracy Superhero.”

“We were raised to really fight the man. She wanted to be known as the “bandit granny,’ ” said Molly Kreck, her daughter.

Before marijuana was legal in Colorado, Kreck grew plants in her basement, for medicinal purposes, for a friend who was battling cancer, Molly Kreck recalled. After harvesting and cleaning the plants, Kreck wanted to dispose of the stems and leaves, but she didn’t want to put them in the garbage, rationalizing that it could lead to an arrest. Instead, she burned the discards in her home fireplace on a July day.

“There was smoke all over Park Hill,” Molly Kreck said laughing.

In 1973, Kreck ran away with the circus, in town, and became a clown for a features story. In the early 1980s, Kreck wrote a story about the fact that no women were working at Mile High Stadium as beer vendors during games. After the story published, Kreck worked for a day selling beer at the stadium — the first woman to hold the exhausting, suds-slinging job.

Virginia Culver, a former longtime religion writer for the Post and friend and colleague of Kreck’s, attended a court hearing when the Denver trespassing case was still ongoing.

“They had her stand up in the courtroom. She was about 4 feet tall, and her defense attorney, standing next to her, was over 6 feet tall,” Culver said with a chuckle. “She never wavered from being a really, really strong Democrat.”

Culver recalled having breakfast at a restaurant on the 16th Street Mall where the music was being played too loud. The two friends spontaneously, and loudly, broke into song. The restaurant music, in turn, was turned off.

“She was really a very fun person,” Culver said. “We were friends for so many years.”

When Denver Post Editor Lee Ann Colacioppo started at the Post in 1999, she worked directly with reporter Kreck.

“Today, when you look up Carol Kreck, you mostly see stories about her arrest as a protester outside a John McCain town hall. That arrest certainly spoke to the stubborn, determined, passionate woman I worked with in my first years at The Post. But I hope she’ll also be remembered for the tough stories she tackled, especially the ones focused on social and juvenile justice,” Colacioppo said.

“She approached her job every day with a desire to make the world better, and as I picture her now, I see her at the back of the room on the phone, talking to one of her many, many sources she’d accumulated over the years.  Those people trusted her because they knew she wouldn’t cut corners and would not let anything get between her and the story she was chasing. She made me a better editor, and I think she succeeded in her effort to make this a better city.”

Kreck is survived by her daughters, Molly Kreck of Denver and Caitlin Kreck of Colorado Springs; her brother, Roger, and his partner, Sophia; her former husband, Dick; a stepson, Kevin Kreck of Colorado Springs; a stepdaughter, Valerie Amburn of Denver; and five grandchildren. Kreck’s body will be composted.

“She was our matriarch; she was our true north star,” Molly Kreck said.

Family and friends will gather to celebrate her life at noon Dec. 3 at the Owl Saloon, 5026 E. Colfax Ave. Readers and the public are welcome.

In an interview with The Associated Press just hours after Trump announced another White House run, Pence declined to say whether he thinks the former president is fit to return to his old job. But he implicitly positioned himself as a potential alternative for Republicans seeking conservative leadership without the chaos of the Trump era.

”I think we will have better choices in 2024,” Pence said. “I’m very confident that Republican primary voters will choose wisely.” He said that he and his family will gather over the holidays “and we’ll give prayerful consideration to what our role might be in the days ahead.”

Asked whether he blamed Trump for this week’s Republican losses, he said, “Certainly the president����ap continued efforts to relitigate the last election played a role, but … each individual candidate is responsible for their own campaign.”

Pence, while considering a presidential campaign of his own, has been raising his profile as he promotes his new memoir, “ So Help Me God,” which was released on the same day that Trump made official his long-teased White House bid. If Pence moves forward, he would be in direct competition with Trump, a particularly awkward collision for the former vice president, who spent his four years in office defending Trump, refusing to criticize him publicly until after Jan. 6, 2021.

That����ap when a mob of Trump’s supporters — driven by Trump’s lie that Pence could somehow reject the election results — stormed the Capitol building while Pence was presiding over the certification of Democrat Joe Biden’s victory. The vice president was steered to safety with his staff and family as some in the mob chanted, “Hang Mike Pence!”

Still, Pence on Wednesday remained largely reticent to criticize Trump beyond the insurrection. That hesitance reflects the reality that the former president remains enormously popular with the GOP base that Pence would need to win over to be competitive in primary contests.

“It wasn’t exactly the style of presidency that I would have advanced had I been the first name on the ballot,” Pence said of his unlikely partnership with Trump. “But it was his presidency and I was there to support him and help him. And until that fateful day in January 2021, I sought to do just that.”

Pence said he hadn’t watched Trump’s full announcement speech on Tuesday, but made the case that voters are looking for a new, less contentious direction.

“You know, the president has every right to stand for election again,” he said. But after traveling the country campaigning with midterm candidates, “I have a genuine sense that the American people are looking for new leadership that could unite our country around our highest ideals and that would reflect the respect and civility the American people show to one another every day, while still advancing the policies that we advanced during those years of service,” he said.

Trump’s campaign launch comes as Republicans grapple with fallout from elections in which they failed to wrest control of the Senate and are on track to win only the narrowest majority in the House. Those results came despite voters’ deep concerns over inflation and the direction of the country under Democrat Biden.

Trump endorsed a long list of candidates in competitive states including Pennsylvania and Arizona who then lost their general election races. While Pence said he was pleased Republicans were taking the House, he acknowledged the election “wasn’t quite the red wave that we all had hoped for.”

“My conclusion,” he said, “is the candidates that were focused on the future, focused on the challenges the American people are facing today and solutions to those challenges did quite well.” But those still questioning the 2020 results — as Trump demanded — “did not do as well.”

In his new book, Pence writes in detail about his experience on Jan. 6, and he expounded on that Wednesday.

“I’ll never forget the simmering indignation that I felt that day, seeing those sights on the cellphones as we gathered in the loading dock below the Senate chamber. I couldn’t help but think not this, not here, not in America,” he said.

In the interview, he recalled his reaction to Trump’s tweets “that criticize me directly at a time that a riot was raging in the Capitol hallways.”

“The president����ap words were reckless, and they endangered my family and everyone at the Capitol building,” he said. “The president had decided to be a part of the problem. I was determined to be a part of the solution.”

Asked what consequences Trump should face for his actions, however, Pence punted.

“That����ap up to the American people,” he said he believes. “I truly do. And look, I’ll always be proud of the record of the Trump administration for four-and-a-half years. President Trump was not just my president. He was my friend. And we worked closely together to advance the policies that we’d been elected to serve.”

“It didn’t end well,” he acknowledged, in an understatement. “And that tragic day in January will always be a day of great sadness for me, a sadness about what had happened to our relationship, to the bad advice the president was accepting from a group of lawyers that, as I write in my book, should never have been allowed on the White House grounds, let alone in the Oval Office. ”

Pence and Trump were always an odd couple — a pugilistic, crude New York celebrity and a staid Midwestern evangelical who once wrote an essay on the evils of negative campaigning and who, as a rule, says he will not dine alone with a woman who is not his wife. Asked why he so rarely spoke up when Trump launched deeply personal insults against figures such as the late Sen. John McCain, Pence said, in effect, that that was what he had had signed up for.

“As his vice president, I believed it was my role to be loyal to the president,” he said. “And so every step of the way, the way I squared it was I believe that I had been elected vice president to support the presidency that Donald Trump had been elected to advance.”

Indeed, Pence in the book writes that even after Jan. 6, the two men “parted amicably when our service to the nation drew to a close.”

“And in the weeks that followed, from time to time, he would call me and to speak and check in,” Pence said in the interview. “But when he returned to criticizing me and others who had upheld the Constitution that day, I just decided I’d be best to go our separate ways. And we have.”

Asked why he would part “amicably” with Trump given the president����ap actions — including his decision not to call Pence to check in on his safety while the riot was underway — Pence said he believed the president had been genuinely regretful when they met for the first time after the 6th.

“For the balance of about 90 minutes, we sat, we talked. I was very direct with the president. I made it clear to him that I believe that I did my duty that day, and I sensed genuine remorse on his part,” Pence recalled. “The president and I had forged not only a good working relationship, but a friendship over four-and-a-half years. We worked together literally every day. But he was different in that time. I encouraged him to take the matter to prayer.”

As for his plans for the future, as everyone asks whether he plans to run, he and his family will gather over the holidays “and we’ll give prayerful consideration to what our role might be in the days ahead.”

It was a display of respect and affection toward Minority Leader Bob Michel, R-Ill., retiring after a 38-year House career served entirely under Democrats. He embraced with outgoing Speaker Tom Foley, D-Wash. Republicans were taking over in January under the combative Rep. Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., abandoning Michel’s consensus-building style.

Those feelings between leaders are all but gone. In their place are suspicion and even hostility, most starkly symbolized by magnetometers lawmakers must pass through before entering the House chamber.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., installed the metal detectors over GOP objections after the brutal Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack by supporters of then-President Donald Trump. Democrats also expressed concerns about Republican lawmakers who carry guns.

As I retire after nearly four decades covering Capitol Hill, that contrast and the forces behind it illustrate why I’ve loved covering Congress — and why I’ve recently felt dispirited.

___

Congress is dominated by masters of political hardball who’ve survived a Darwinian culling of the nation’s most ambitious politicians. Covering them is like attending a riveting theatrical drama, except you get to wander behind the curtain and chat up the actors.

In a moment of irony, I saw Gingrich in 1998, then speaker, lash out at the very conservatives who’d powered his own rise after they opposed his budget deal with President Bill Clinton as a surrender. Gingrich mocked them as the “perfectionist caucus,” a bow to the compromises needed in a divided government. He soon announced his retirement.

Near midnight on Sept. 11, 2001, I watched Democrats and Republicans, in a show of solidarity on the Capitol steps, spontaneously sing “God Bless America.”

Pelosi triumphantly waved the gavel aloft in 2007 when she became the first female speaker. “For our daughters and our granddaughters, we have broken the marble ceiling,” the California Democrat said.

Eight years later, I saw awe in the eyes of House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, a Catholic, as he greeted Pope Francis, whom he’d invited to address Congress.

I saw shock on Republicans’ faces the very next morning as they left a Capitol basement meeting where Boehner revealed he was quitting, hounded by a new generation of hard-right conservatives, the House Freedom Caucus.

Democrats and Republicans cheered when No. 3 House GOP leader Steve Scalise of Louisiana limped into the chamber in 2017, three months after being gravely wounded when a gunman attacked a Republican baseball practice.

I’ve seen change. Since Pelosi’s 1987 arrival, the number of women in Congress has multiplied from 25 to 146. There are around 130 lawmakers of color, up from 38.

And I’ve witnessed upheaval. Starting in 2017, Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., and others resigned amid the #MeToo sexual harassment movement.

I had one deeply embarrassing close encounter with a freshly sworn-in president in 2001. I was assigned to a ceremonial Senate room where new presidents sign papers immediately after their inaugural address.

Someone brushed my elbow. Standing beside me was President George W. Bush. I tried drawing him out with a folksy, “So, how’d it go?” He parried what was likely his first reporter’s question as president with a nod, adding, “Good.”

___

Since coming to Washington in 1983, I’ve seen debates over wars, terrorism, recessions, government shutdowns and taxes. Three of history’s four presidential impeachment trials. Fights over social justice, abortion, a pandemic.

I still overhear Democrats and Republicans making dinner plans. The sorrow over this month’s traffic accident death of Rep. Jackie Walorski, R-Ind., and two aides was bipartisan and heartfelt.

Yet today’s common ground seems narrower, the atmosphere darker, the stakes higher.

Pelosi referred to House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., as a “moron” after he opposed mask mandates in the House as the coronavirus pandemic spiked. McCarthy said it would be “hard not to hit her” with the gavel if he becomes speaker. His spokesperson called it a joke.

Both parties have fewer moderates. House districts increasingly drawn for partisan advantage push Democrats left, Republicans right as they appeal to their most activist primary voters.

Voters self-sort among social media and news outlets they believe. That hardens constituents’ views, further constraining lawmakers’ willingness to compromise.

Senate filibusters requiring bills to garner 60 votes are commonplace, derailing nearly anything without broad bipartisan support.

Through early this century, most Supreme Court nominees were approved easily.

In 2016, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., refused to let President Barack Obama fill a Supreme Court vacancy, citing upcoming elections a full nine months away. Then just weeks before Election Day 2020, McConnell sped a Trump appointee through the Senate, giving the court a 6-3 conservative majority and McConnell a legacy achievement that outraged Democrats.

___

None of that approximates Trump’s baseless assertion that the 2020 election was stolen from him, a claim rejected by dozens of courts, local officials and his own attorney general.

His false construct fueled the Jan. 6 insurrection. I wasn’t in the Capitol because of the pandemic, but there is no forgetting the death, injury, destruction and disheartening sense that democracy itself had been defiled.

Just hours after the mob was dispersed, more than half of House Republicans and eight GOP senators voted against certifying Democrat Joe Biden’s victory. McCarthy initially said Trump “bears responsibility” for the attack but later blocked a bipartisan investigation.

Many Republicans have downplayed or deflected attention from that calamitous day. Trump remains his party’s dominant figure.

Republicans have backed Trump’s claims that this month’s court-sanctioned search of his Mar-a-Lago estate was politically motivated. The FBI is led by Trump-appointed Director Christopher Wray and emerged with sensitive national security documents that are federal property.

Anti-government rhetoric by politicians is not new. But these latest assaults on faith in government and the election system underpinning it — by potent influencers like a former president and his elected supporters — come amid authorities’ warnings about increased calls for violence, even civil war.

___

Despite ever-tighter security, reporters still walk unfettered in most Capitol corridors.

I’ve bumped into celebrities from Muhammad Ali to Jon Stewart. But politicians have left the most lasting impressions.

Senate Republican leader Bob Dole of Kansas wielded light-speed wit. After the newly elected Clinton dined with GOP senators in a gesture of bipartisanship, he described a novel he’d read involving a murdered Democratic senator. “A happy ending!” Dole replied.

Gingrich’s hardening of partisan enmity — he counseled describing Democrats with focus group-tested words like “traitors” and “sick” — was sometimes answered in kind. Rep. Sam Gibbons, D-Fla., angrily left one 1995 House hearing on Medicare cuts Republicans wanted. “I had to fight you guys 50 years ago,” shouted Gibbons, who parachuted into France behind Nazi lines on D-Day.

I’ve seen agreements to authorize a military response to 9/11, keep the 2008 Great Recession from getting even worse and spend trillions of dollars to counter the pandemic.

Republicans have enacted huge tax cuts and created Medicare prescription drug coverage. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., recently muscled a top Biden priority to passage bolstering environment and health initiatives.

___

Trump’s norm-busting four years featured constant clashes with Congress including Republicans, from whom he tolerated no dissent.

I prodded one Republican, privately critical of Trump, to talk on the record. “He’d send me to Gitmo,” he said.

House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., just 48, announced in early 2018 that he would retire. He later told author Tim Alberta he could not endure two more years working with Trump.

The cautious McConnell and impulsive Trump long had a fraught relationship. It was severed as McConnell, who voted to acquit Trump over Jan. 6 on the grounds that he’d already left the White House, immediately afterward blistered him as being “practically and morally responsible” for the riot.

I’ve seen lawmakers risk their jobs by backing the party line. Democrats lost dozens of seats in 1994 after rallying behind a Clinton deficit-reduction package. They lost again in 2010 after enacting Obama’s health care law.

And I’ve seen some infuriate colleagues by straying. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., elicited gasps with his decisive thumbs-down that derailed Trump’s effort to repeal Obama’s health care statute.

Ten House Republicans voted to impeach Trump over the insurrection. At least eight, including Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., Trump’s most relentless GOP foe, will not be in Congress next year.

Lawmakers have recently approved accords helping Ukraine and veterans and modestly restricting guns — glimmers suggesting they can still work together.

Yet the confluence of today’s forces chipping away at faith in government institutions would not be recognizable to Foley and Michel.

___

Follow AP’s coverage of Congress at https://apnews.com/hub/congress.

In his telling, Reps. Jerry Nadler, 75, and Carolyn Maloney, 76, are part of a crop of Democrats who rose to power in the 1990s only to fail on issues ranging from guns to climate change and abortion. The redistricting process that merged their congressional districts offers a chance for new leadership, Patel says.

“If we keep doing the same thing over and over and expecting different result: That����ap not just the definition of insanity,” he said. “That����ap also the definition of incumbency.”

More than 1,100 miles to the west in the presidential testing ground of Iowa, Republican Jeremiah Bronson was also considering whether someone other than 76-year-old Donald Trump might carry his party into the future. Bronson expressed growing interest in 55-year-old Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin.

“He seems to be on the same page with conservatives around the country,” Bronson, 39, said as he dined on barbecued pork sandwiches with a half-dozen other Story County Republicans.

In a nation faltering along seemingly every conceivable divide, there’s a shared desire among Democrats and Republicans for a new generation of political leadership. The conversation is most pronounced when it comes to the White House as Trump considers another campaign and President Joe Biden confronts skepticism about his ability to mount a reelection bid in 2024 when he is 82.

“There’s just a sense of like, that rematch between these two old guys seems ridiculous to people,” said Sarah Longwell, a Republican strategist who conducts almost weekly focus groups with voters across the country and political spectrum.

There are recurring calls for youth and change in U.S. politics.

Bill Clinton’s appeal for a new generation of leadership helped him rise from governor of Arkansas to the first baby boomer president in 1992. In 2008, Barack Obama’s relative youth was an asset in his primary campaign against Hillary Clinton and during the general election against Arizona Sen. John McCain.

More recently, Pete Buttigieg’s 2020 presidential bid gained traction with its focus on fresh leadership before being overtaken by Biden, viewed by many Democrats as the safer choice against Trump.

The dynamics have shifted since then, with some Democratic voters furious that Biden and leaders in Congress haven’t done more to protect abortion rights, respond more aggressively to a wave of mass shootings and address climate change.

A new Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll shows 83% of U.S. adults say the country is on the wrong track. Only 36% approve of Biden’s leadership overall, while 62% disapprove. Polling from AP-NORC in recent months captured deepening pessimism among members of his own Democratic Party about Biden, the direction of the country and t he state of the economy. A January AP-NORC poll found just 28% of those surveyed and 48% of Democrats said they want Biden to run for reelection in 2024.

Julián Castro, a former Obama housing secretary and onetime presidential candidate, said there’s “no doubt” that members of his party are frustrated and that Democrats in Washington need to show a sense of urgency and produce results. In a telephone interview from the Texas Democratic Convention in Dallas, he said Democrats seemed energized.

“My immediate hope is that that angst and frustration is going to be channeled positively to turnout in November,” he said, referring to the midterm elections. “And then we’ll reckon with what����ap beyond that when November happens.”

Biden has repeatedly insisted he will run for reelection. But should he decide to step aside, a host of younger Democrats could be in contention. They include Vice President Kamala Harris, who is 57. California Gov. Gavin Newsom, 54, and Illinois Gov. J.B Pritzker, 57, have garnered attention for their responses to the Supreme Court����ap abortion ruling and mass shootings.

Some Democrats seeking office this year have been clear about their desires that a new generation take its place in politics.

Last month, the Democratic candidate for governor in South Carolina, Joe Cunningham, proposed not only term limits but also age limits for officeholders, saying it was time to end America’s “geriatric oligarchy” of politicians who are staying “in office way past their prime.” To Cunningham, who recently turned 40, that includes the incumbent he hopes to oust in November, 75-year-old Republican Henry McMaster, who is the state’s oldest sitting governor.

But Cunningham also said the proposal was intended to apply to Biden.

For Republicans, the most pressing debate often seems to focus less explicitly on age and more on whether the party should move on from Trump. That����ap particularly true in the wake of hearings by the House Jan. 6 committee that have drawn new attention to his desperate efforts to stay in office after losing the 2020 election.

The Jan. 6 hearings may be sending voters looking elsewhere.

An AP-NORC in June found that 48% of U.S. adults say Trump should be charged with a crime for his role in the siege of the U.S. Capitol. January’s AP-NORC poll showed that people were just as down on Trump running again in 2024 as they were Biden: Just 27% of U.S. adults wanted Trump to run again, including a slim majority – 56% — of Republicans. That poll also showed the former president����ap popularity with the GOP dropped somewhat, with 71% of Republicans saying they had a favorable opinion of Trump compared with 78% in a September 2020 AP-NORC/USAFacts poll.

Longwell, the Republican strategist, said the hearings seem to be having an impact even among Republican voters who are not watching the sessions or persuaded by them because they are a reminder of the tumult that has surrounded Trump.

“One of the things I hear coming up over and over again in the groups is that Trump has a lot of baggage and that there’s all these other stars, Republican stars, and maybe it����ap time Trump should be like an elder statesman,” she said.

A number of figures from Trump’s world and outside it are seen as potential challengers in 2024. Trump and his associates are especially focused on Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who, at 43, is increasingly viewed as a younger heir to the former president����ap brand of politics.

Other Republicans making increasingly overt moves toward a presidential run include Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton, 45; former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, 50; Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, 51; former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, 58; and former Vice President Mike Pence, 63.

Pat Brady, the former chair of the Illinois Republican Party who is not a Trump supporter, said he thinks the “fever has broken” when it comes to Trump’s standing with the GOP.

“I think the combination of him just spending all his time, every speech, relitigating 2020. Voters typically look forward. They don’t look backward,” he said.

Brady said part of the frustrations voters have with their political leaders is the age-related.

“When you look at the leadership, I’m old and those guys make me look young,” said 61-year-old Brady. “This is a vibrant youthful country, fundamentally, and we’ve got a bunch of old people running it.”

Associated Press writers Thomas Beaumont in Cambridge, Iowa, Hannah Fingerhut in Washington and Meg Kinnard in Columbia, South Carolina, contributed to this report.

Biden will also recognize Sandra Lindsay, the New York City nurse who rolled up her sleeve on live television in December 2020 to receive the first COVID-19 vaccine dose that was pumped into an arm in the United States, the White House announced Friday.

Biden’s honors list, which the White House shared first with The Associated Press, includes both living and deceased honorees from the worlds of Hollywood, sports, politics, the military, academia, and civil rights and social justice advocacy.

The Democratic president will present the medals at the White House next week.

Biden himself is a medal recipient. President Barack Obama honored Biden’s public service as a longtime U.S. senator and vice president by awarding him a Presidential Medal of Freedom in January 2017, a week before they left office.

The honorees who’ll receive medals from Biden “have overcome significant obstacles to achieve impressive accomplishments in the arts and sciences, dedicated their lives to advocating for the most vulnerable among us, and acted with bravery to drive change in their communities, and across the world, while blazing trails for generations to come,” the White House said.

The honor is reserved for people who have made exemplary contributions to the prosperity, values or security of the United States, world peace or other significant societal public or private endeavors, the White House said.

Biles is the most decorated U.S. gymnast in history, winning 32 Olympic and World Championship medals. She is an outspoken advocate on issues that are very personal to her, including athletes’ mental health, children in foster care and sexual assault victims.

Lindsay became an advocate for COVID-19 vaccinations after receiving the first dose in the U.S.

McCain, who died of brain cancer in 2018, spent more than five years in captivity in Vietnam while serving in the U.S. Navy. He later represented Arizona in both houses of Congress and was the Republican presidential nominee in 2008. Biden said McCain was a “dear friend” and “a hero.”

Washington is a double Oscar-winning actor, director and producer. He also has a Tony award, two Golden Globes and the Cecil B. DeMille Lifetime Achievement Award. He is a longtime spokesperson for the Boys & Girls Clubs of America.

The other 13 medal recipients are:

• Sister Simone Campbell. Campbell is a member of the Sister of Social Service and a former executive director of NETWORK, a Catholic social justice organization. She is an advocate for economic justice, overhauling the U.S. immigration system and health care policy.
• Julieta Garcia. A former president of the University of Texas at Brownsville, Garcia was the first Latina to become a college president, the White House said. She was named one of the nation’s best college presidents by Time magazine.
• Gabrielle Giffords. A former U.S. House member from Arizona, the Democrat founded Giffords, an organization dedicated to ending gun violence. She was shot in the head in January 2011 during a constituent event in Tucson and was gravely wounded.
• Fred Gray. Gray was one of the first Black members of the Alabama Legislature after Reconstruction. He was a prominent civil rights attorney who represented Rosa Parks, the NAACP and Martin Luther King Jr.
• Steve Jobs. Jobs was the co-founder, chief executive and chair of Apple Inc. He died in 2011.
• Father Alexander Karloutsos. Karloutsos is the assistant to Archbishop Demetrios of America. The White House said Karloutsos has counseled several U.S. presidents.
• Khizr Khan. An immigrant from Pakistan, Khan’s Army officer son was killed in Iraq. Khan gained national prominence, and became a target of Donald Trump’s wrath, after speaking at the 2016 Democratic National Convention.
• Diane Nash. A founding member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Nash organized some of the most important 20th century civil rights campaigns and worked with King.
• Megan Rapinoe. The Olympic gold medalist and two-time Women’s World Cup soccer champion captains the OL Reign in the National Women’s Soccer League. She is a prominent advocate for gender pay equality, racial justice and LGBTQI+ rights who has appeared at Biden’s White House.
• Alan Simpson. The retired U.S. senator from Wyoming served with Biden and has been a prominent advocate for campaign finance reform, responsible governance and marriage equality.
• Richard Trumka. Trumka had been president of the 12.5 million-member AFL-CIO for more than a decade at the time of his August 2021 death. He was a past president of the United Mine Workers.
• Wilma Vaught. A brigadier general, Vaught is one of the most decorated women in U.S. military history, breaking gender barriers as she has risen through the ranks. When Vaught retired in 1985, she was one of only seven female generals in the Armed Forces.
• Raúl Yzaguirre. A civil rights advocate, Yzaguirre was president and CEO of the National Council of La Raza for 30 years. He served as U.S. ambassador to the Dominican Republic under Obama.

“It worked before and it can work again,” the Democrat from Lafayette said of the New Deal-era program, which he and President Joe Biden would like to revive — albeit on a smaller scale and focused on combating climate change.

Neguse’s plan is to empower nonprofits and government agencies to build trails and fences, fight forest fires, remove invasive species and do an array of other work, primarily on public lands. In return, the organizations would receive federal money.

“Every forest could give me a list of projects in a few weeks and we would be busy for a very, very, very long time,” said Ryan Banks, program director at the in Steamboat Springs.

is to spend $10 billion expanding existing corps and send $14 billion more to those federal agencies that pay the corps for work, such as the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management. Biden has for Neguse’s idea but the money will need to come from Congress, likely as part of a large infrastructure plan that is still in the works.

“This (effort) will create hundreds of additional jobs a year through conservation corps in Colorado,” said Scott Segerstrom, executive director of the .

CCC, past and present

Red Rocks Park has one of the last intact CCC camps in the country. Thirteen of the original 14 buildings still stand. A small museum, open to the public by appointment, holds the original cots that CCC workers slept on and a stove they used for warmth.

“It was one of the largest of the New Deal programs and it was Roosevelt����ap favorite program but it was also the most popular federal program in history,” said P. O’Connell Pearson, author of “Fighting for the Forest: How FDR’s Civilian Conservation Corps Helped Save America,” a 2019 book.

Three million young, impoverished men worked for the CCC over nine years from 1933 to 1942, serving for up to two years and earning $30 per month, $25 of which had to be sent home to their families. The camps bought their food locally, a boon to those struggling areas.

“Initially there were a lot of towns or rural areas that were hesitant to have camps nearby, because you’re talking about 200 or so single young men moving in down the road from you,” Pearson said. “It sounds like a huge frat party and people were hesitant. But once it got going, people were clamoring to get camps near them. They wanted them there.”

About 32,000 men were employed at Colorado’s 172 camps. They built roads, trails and campgrounds; planted millions of trees; thinned crowded and dead brush from the forests; and fought fires. Their work remains at Red Rocks, Hanging Lake and throughout Colorado.

There are eight existing conservation corps in Colorado (five nonprofits and three run by counties) that enlist about 1,800 people and have a collective annual budget of $14 million. They employ AmeriCorps volunteers, military veterans and teenagers.

Some modern corps, such as the Rocky Mountain Youth Corps, involve camping, in which crews of eight to 10 people stay together for 10 weeks straight, working and playing away from home. Others, such as the in Durango and Salida, prefer a program that lets young volunteers return home in the evenings and on weekends.

The Rocky Mountain Youth Corps has spent five years restoring and rerouting trails atop Mount Elbert, the highest point in the state. Their basecamp is at 11,000 feet and workers spend eight days on the mountain before six days off. All food must be carried up the mountain, Banks said.

“What we’re seeing from our young people is that they don’t necessarily just want to come and work on a trail crew for a summer,” said Kevin Heiner, director of the Southwest Conservation Corps. “They want to get more training in a specific career field that allows them that steppingstone from working with us … to becoming a paid employee at one of the agencies we work with.”

In the past three years, 175 people ended up becoming fully certified wildland firefighters and 700 were certified to use chainsaws, a critical skill for lands work.

Congress’ push

The White House announced in late March that its — a $2 trillion infrastructure package — would include $10 billion for a Civilian Climate Corps. That bill is still being negotiated and Neguse’s bill hasn’t budged since being introduced March 26.

Ohio Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur has proposed a similar idea since 2009, with little success. But smaller and more bipartisan help for corps has been signed into law; in 2019, Congress for federal agencies to work with existing conservation corps and was backed by the late Republican Sen. John McCain.

Corps supporters say they represent the best of government: public-private partnerships that don’t grow government but instead employ young people seeking careers in firefighting and on public lands. In Colorado’s forests and on its mountains, the unmet need is high, they say.

“Operating budgets for our partners are dwindling,” Banks said. “There is an influx of funding when there’s a big fire … but when it comes to basic maintenance and base-level funding, our partners are strapped across the board.”

As he toured the former CCC camp at Red Rocks, Neguse a framed copy of the congressional legislation that created the CCC in 1933. In it, he sees a confluence of history and modernity.

“The CCC is something that has captured the imagination of the American public,” the congressman told reporters after the tour. “… It����ap really helpful for me to be able to tell stories of the CCC of the 1930s and make the case that it worked before and it can work again.”

Led by several prominent former Republican consultants, its slickly produced ads attacking President Donald Trump made it perhaps the best known of the so-called Never Trump organizations. The group tried to claim a higher moral ground in an effort to purge Trump from the GOP. Money flowed in by the tens of millions of dollars from donors eager to help.

But within the organization, a grave threat was emerging.

In June 2020, members of the organization’s leadership were informed in writing and in subsequent phone calls of at least 10 specific allegations of harassment against co-founder John Weaver, including two involving Lincoln Project employees, according to multiple people with direct knowledge of the situation. The email and phone calls raise questions about the Lincoln Project����ap statement last month that it was “shocked” when accusations surfaced publicly this year. It����ap also the first known suggestion that Weaver targeted a Lincoln Project staffer.

Despite the early warning, the group took no action against Weaver and pressed forward with its high-profile work. For the collection of GOP consultants and former officials, being anti-Trump was becoming very good for business. Of the $90 million Lincoln Project has raised, more than $50 million has gone to firms controlled by the group’s leaders.

There is no evidence that the Lincoln Project buried the allegations against Weaver for business reasons. But taken together, the harassment allegations and new revelations about spending practices raise significant questions about the management of one of the highest-profile antagonists of Trump. The revelations threaten the stature of not just the Lincoln Project but the broader coalition of establishment-oriented Republican groups hoping to pool their resources to excise Trump from the party.

Lincoln Project co-founder Steve Schmidt insisted that he and the rest of the group’s leadership were not aware of any internal allegations of wrongdoing involving Weaver.

“No Lincoln Project employee, intern, or contractors ever made an allegation of inappropriate communication about John Weaver that would have triggered an investigation by HR or by an outside employment counsel,” Schmidt said. “In other words, no human being ever made an allegation about any inappropriate sexualized communications about John Weaver ever.”

Weaver declined to comment for this story, but in a statement released late last month to Axios he generally acknowledged misconduct and apologized.

“To the men I made uncomfortable through my messages that I viewed as consensual mutual conversations at the time: I am truly sorry,” he wrote. “They were inappropriate and it was because of my failings that this discomfort was brought on you.”

The Lincoln Project launched in November 2019 as a super PAC that allowed its leaders to raise and spend unlimited sums of money.

Its founders represent a who’s who of prominent Republican strategists on cable television, including Schmidt and Reed Galen, both former advisers to John McCain; conservative attorney George Conway; former New Hampshire GOP chair Jennifer Horn; Florida-based veteran political ad maker Rick Wilson; and Weaver, who has long advised former Ohio Gov. John Kasich.

Backed by its founders’ commanding social media presence, the organization quickly attracted a massive following of Trump critics in both parties that exceeded even its own founders’ expectations.

Since its creation, the Lincoln Project has raised $90 million. But only about a third of the money, roughly $27 million, directly paid for advertisements that aired on broadcast and cable, or appeared online, during the 2020 campaign, according to an analysis of campaign finance disclosures and data from the ad tracking firm Kantar/CMAG.

That leaves tens of millions of dollars that went toward expenses like production costs, overhead — and exorbitant consulting fees collected by members of the group.

“It raises questions about where the rest of the money ultimately went,” said Brendan Fischer, an attorney with the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center in Washington. “Generally speaking, you’d expect to see a major super PAC spend a majority or more of their money on advertisements and that����ap not what happened here.”

The vast majority of the cash was split among consulting firms controlled by its founders, including about $27 million paid to a small firm controlled by Galen and another $21 million paid to a boutique firm run by former Lincoln Project member Ron Steslow, campaign finance disclosures show.

But in many cases it����ap difficult to tell how much members of the group were paid. That����ap because the Lincoln Project adopted a strategy, much like the Trump campaign they criticized, to mask how much money they earned.

While several firms did collect payments, Weaver and Wilson are not listed in publicly available records. They were likely paid as subcontractors to those firms, an arrangement that avoids disclosure. Schmidt collected a $1.5 million payment in December but quickly returned it.

“We fully comply with the law,” Schmidt said. “The Lincoln Project will be delighted to open its books for audit immediately after the Trump campaign and all affiliated super PACs do so, explaining the cash flow of the nearly $700 million that flowed through their organizations controlled by Brad Parscale and Jared Kushner.”

The Lincoln Project parted with one co-founder, Horn, last week, claiming in an unusual public statement that she was seeking a $250,000 signing bonus and a $40,000-a-month consulting contract. Horn said that she left following revelations of Weaver’s “grotesque” behavior and divergent views with existing leadership about how to move forward.

Public records reveal that the unexpected success of the Lincoln Project has extended a lifeline to some founders who have spent much of the past decade under financial distress.

Over the past decade, Weaver has repeatedly failed to pay taxes, defaulted on loans and faced lawsuits from creditors seeking to collect. In October, he paid off $313,000 in back taxes owed to the IRS dating back to 2011, records show. A separate case in Texas is still pending over $340,000 back rent his family owes after shuttering a children’s boutique they operated, records show.

Others used the money earned during their time with Lincoln Project to refinance homes, or purchase a new one. Schmidt purchased a $1.4 million “Mountain Modern” custom home in Kamas, Utah, with five bedrooms, seven baths and a “stunning” view of the Uinta Mountains, according to property records and real estate listings. He is currently trying to resell the home for $2.9 million.

But as money flowed into the group, multiple people with direct knowledge said allegations against Weaver were repeatedly raised inside the organization, long before leaders acknowledged them publicly in late January. Those with knowledge insisted on anonymity in order to disclose private communications.

Last June, someone working for the Lincoln Project payroll sent an email to Steslow, one of the organization’s co-founders, detailing numerous cases of sexual harassment involving Weaver that spanned several years. While the AP has not seen the email, its contents were confirmed by four people who had directly seen it.

Schmidt did not confirm the existence of the email, saying only that if one existed, it was not shared with anyone on the organization’s board or leadership.

But multiple people familiar with the situation say that Steslow immediately raised the email with Galen, who helped manage day-to-day operations at the time, and the Lincoln Project����ap corporate counsel Matthew Sanderson. Steslow also encouraged his colleagues to remove Weaver from the organization.

Those allegations and others were discussed on subsequent phone calls with organization leaders in June and August, and employees were assured that the alleged incidents would be investigated. Weaver went out on medical leave in August, but as the presidential campaign moved into the summer and fall, there was no formal resolution.

The Washington Blade reported earlier this week details of another set of internal communications over the summer indicating that Lincoln Project leaders were aware of allegations against Weaver and preparing to respond to media reports.

The allegations against Weaver followed a similar pattern in which the 61-year-old married father of two would allegedly send private messages to young gay men on Twitter. They often began with references to work before shifting to things like their personal appearance, workout routines and favorite sexual positions.

At least two Lincoln Project employees were targeted last year, including an intern who was finishing law school, and a communications staffer. There is no allegation of physical contact.

Already, Trump’s allies have begun seizing on the Lincoln Project����ap problems to discredit the broader Never Trump movement.

An unrelated group known as the Republican Accountability Project this week is running television ads across 19 states pressuring 22 Republican senators to vote to “convict and disqualify” Trump in the ongoing impeachment trial. The group has also launched a $1 million billboard campaign calling for the resignation of key Trump allies who voted to block the certification of the election results.

One of the Republicans targeted in the billboard attack, Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., falsely conflated the groups in a fiery response through an adviser.

“The Never-Trump movement is doing all they can to distract the press from their massive sexual abuse and harassment scandal,” Stefanik adviser Alex DeGrasse said. He called the billboard campaign “next-level desperation.”

Adelson died at 87 from complications related to treatment for non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, Las Vegas Sands announced Tuesday.

He was the son of Jewish immigrants, raised with two siblings in a Boston tenement, who over the second half of his life became one of the world’s richest men. The chairman and CEO of the Las Vegas Sands Corp. brought singing gondoliers to the Las Vegas Strip and foresaw correctly that Asia would be an even bigger market. In 2018, Forbes ranked him No. 15 in the U.S., worth an estimated $35.5 billion.

“If you do things differently, success will follow you like a shadow,” he said during a 2014 talk to the gambling industry in Las Vegas.

Blunt yet secretive, the squatly-built Adelson resembled an old-fashioned political boss and stood apart from most American Jews, who for decades have supported Democrats by wide margins. Adelson was considered the nation’s most influential GOP donor over the final years of his life, at times setting records for individual contributions during a given election cycle.

In 2012, Politico called him “the dominant pioneer of the super PAC era.”

Adelson regularly hosted the party’s top strategists and most ambitious candidates at his modest office, wedged among the casinos on the Strip. Throughout, he helped ensure that uncritical support of Israel became a pillar of the GOP platform, never more visibly demonstrated than when the Trump administration relocated the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in 2018.

The inflammatory move had been adamantly opposed by Palestinians and was long a priority for Adelson, who had even offered to help pay for it, and for the Republican Jewish Coalition, of which he was the primary benefactor. Adelson and his wife, Miriam, were front and center at the ceremony in Jerusalem.

More recently, he reportedly purchased the U.S. ambassador’s official residence near Tel Aviv for some $67 million in a move that was seen as helping prevent the embassy from relocating back to Tel Aviv after Trump leaves office. Just weeks ago, Adelson provided a private plane for Jonathan Pollard, a former U.S. intelligence analyst who spent 30 years in prison for spying for Israel, to move to Israel after his parole ended.

When asked at a gambling conference what he hoped his legacy would be, Adelson said it wasn’t his glitzy casinos or hotels, it was his impact in Israel. He donated $25 million, a record sum for a private citizen, to Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial. He established a think tank in Jerusalem. He was closely aligned with the conservative Likud party and funded a widely-read free daily newspaper called “Israel Hayom,” or “Israel Today,” so supportive of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that some Israelis nicknamed it “Bibi-ton.”

In the U.S., Adelson helped underwrite congressional trips to Israel, helped build a new headquarters for the lobbying group the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and later was a top supporter of the Israeli-American Council, whose conferences have attracted top Republicans (Vice President Mike Pence) and Democrats (House Speaker Nancy Pelosi). He sponsored “Birthright” trips to Israel for young Jewish adults that were criticized by some participants as intolerant of opposing views.

His attachment to Israel was life-long and so deep that he once said he wished his military service had been in an Israeli uniform instead of an American one.

Adelson was a late bloomer in business and in politics. He didn’t become a casino owner, or a Republican, until well into middle age. Through the 1990s and after his wealth soared and his engagement in politics intensified. He was a supporter of President George W. Bush and backed Republican Rudolph Giuliani for the 2008 presidential race, before turning to the eventual candidate, Sen. John McCain, who lost to Barack Obama.

“Sheldon battled his way out of a tough Boston neighborhood to build a successful enterprise that loyally employed tens of thousands – and entertained millions,” said Bush in a prepared statement Tuesday. “He was an American patriot and a strong supporter of Israel.”

Adelson’s leverage grew considerably in 2010 after the Supreme Court����ap “Citizens United” decision lifted many restrictions on individual campaign contributions. He and his wife spent more than $90 million on the 2012 election, funding presidential candidate Newt Gingrich and later Mitt Romney, who also lost to Obama.

“I’m against very wealthy people attempting to or influencing elections,” he told Forbes magazine in 2012. “But as long as it����ap doable I’m going to do it.”

Adelson came around slowly to Trump, who during the campaign had said he would be “neutral” in negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. Trump even ridiculed his initial liking for Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, tweeting in 2015, “Sheldon Adelson is looking to give big dollars to Rubio because he feels he can mold him into his perfect little puppet. I agree!” Adelson eventually endorsed Trump, but remained hesitant through much of 2016. He gave more than $20 million in the final weeks of the campaign after reports that he would contribute $100 million, and was more generous with congressional races.

But after Trump’s surprise victory, the new president spoke often with Adelson and embraced his hardline views on the Middle East. He cut funding for Palestinian refugees and withdrew from the Obama administration’s nuclear nonproliferation deal with Iran. He moved the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem even though earlier administrations — Democratic and Republican — avoided doing do because it directly challenged the Palestinian view that the ancient city should be part of any peace agreement.

Adelson, in turn, aided Trump financially, including $5 million for his inauguration, and supported him through his media holdings. Late in 2015, Adelson secretly purchased the Las Vegas Review-Journal — the paper’s own reporters revealed he was the new owner — and soon raised concerns he was imposing his own views. Some longtime staffers left in protest.

In what was widely seen as a mark of the Adelsons’ influence with Trump, Miriam Adelson was given a Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2018.

Adelson, who contributed more than $100 million to the 2018 off-year elections, held extraordinary power among Republicans even though he didn’t always agree with them. In a 2012 interview with The Wall Street Journal, he called himself “basically a social liberal,” pro-choice on abortion and supportive of immigrant rights. He cited taxes and differences over Israel as major reasons for leaving the Democratic party.

“His life made him a fearless advocate for freedom and entrepreneurship and a source of counsel and support to a generation of conservatives, including me,” said House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif.

In Nevada, his influence was such that even the state’s most prominent Democrat, Sen. Harry Reid, hesitated to take him on. In a 2014 interview with MSNBC, the then-Senate majority leader differentiated between Adelson and fellow GOP billionaire donors Charles and David Koch. Reid had sharply criticized the Koch brothers as callous and greedy, while saying that he respected Adelson because he was “not in it to make money,” a widely challenged opinion.

He had previously told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow that he remained friends with Adelson despite their political differences.

“Sheldon Adelson and I still meet and have conversations. He has a problem, I try to help him,” Reid said.

Adelson was married twice. He and his first wife, Sandra, were divorced in 1988. Three years later, he married Miriam Farbstein-Ochshorn, an Israeli-born doctor he met on a blind date and whom many believe helped deepen his involvement with Israel. Their honeymoon trip to Venice inspired Adelson to raze the historic Sands hotel-casino, once a favorite hangout for Frank Sinatra among others, and replace them with a pair of massive complexes: The Venetian and The Palazzo, one of the city’s tallest buildings.

Sheldon Adelson adopted his first wife’s three children and had two children with his second wife. Among numerous philanthropic projects, he and Miriam Adelson were especially committed to the research and treatment of substance abuse, a personal cause for Sheldon Adelson. His son Mitchell, from his first marriage, died of an overdose in 2005. (Sheldon Adelson would spend millions opposing state efforts to legalize marijuana).

Sheldon Garry Adelson was born in 1933, in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston. His father was a taxi driver, his mother the manager of a knitting store. A natural entrepreneur, he was selling newspapers by age 12 and running a vending machine business at 16. After dropping out of City College of New York and serving in the Army, he attempted to start dozens of businesses, from toiletries to de-icing windshields.

Adelson, who said he disdained email, began to amass his fortune with a technology trade show, starting computer convention COMDEX in 1979 with partners before selling his stake in 1995 for more than $800 million.

When he bought the Sands Hotel in 1989, he was thinking convention space, not just gambling, would make money. It did. He built a convention hall to keep his hotel rooms full on weekdays and others soon followed the business model. Meanwhile, his effort to replicate the Strip in Macao, the only place in China where casino gambling is legal.

When faced with water and marsh land, Adelson directed his company to build land where there wasn’t any, piling sand up to create the Cotai Peninsula. Soon his Macao revenue outstripped that of his Las Vegas holdings. He later expanded his business to Singapore, where his Marina Bay Sands hotel and its infinity pool were featured in the hit film “Crazy Rich Asians,” and had been pressing to open a casino in Japan.

His Macao business also spawned a long-running wrongful termination lawsuit brought by a former chief of Sands China Ltd. who accused Adelson and the company of firing him for exposing a host of misdeeds. Adelson often clashed with attorneys while appearing on a Clark County courtroom’s witness stand.

The Sands China lawsuit was among dozens involving Adelson, whose cases included his suing a Wall Street Journal reporter for calling him “foul-mouthed” (the parties settled, the words remained) to being sued by his sons from his first marriage for cheating them out of money (he won).

A long-running feud with fellow casino tycoon Steve Wynn turned to friendship when Wynn joined Adelson’s effort to end online gambling. Critics said Adelson was trying to stifle competition. Adelson countered that there was no way to ensure children and teenagers wouldn’t gamble and said he was “not in favor of it exploiting the world’s most vulnerable people.”

Trump’s election would again prove useful to Adelson. During the Obama administration, the Justice Department said online gambling that does not involve sporting events would not violate the Wire Act, a 1961 federal statute. In a legal opinion that became public early in 2019, the department reversed itself and decided the statute applies to any form of gambling.

____

Josef Federman contributed to this story from Jerusalem.