Cheney says GOP House majority in 2025 ‘presents a threat’ to US

Former Rep. Liz Cheney (Wyo.), once a top-ranking Republican in the House, warned over the weekend that a GOP majority in 2025 “presents a threat” to the United States.

“I believe very strongly in those principles and ideals that have defined the Republican Party, but the Republican Party of today has made a choice, and they haven’t chosen the Constitution. And so I do think it presents a threat if the Republicans are in the majority in January 2025,” Cheney told CBS News’s John Dickerson in an interview that aired on “CBS Sunday Morning.”

Cheney has been especially outspoken against former President Trump since the Jan. 6, 2021, attacks on the Capitol. She is releasing a book Tuesday titled “Oath and Honor: A Memoir and a Warning,” which takes aim at the state of the Republican Party and its response to the attack on the Capitol.

Cheney served as the vice chair of the House select committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attacks. She lost her August 2022 primary after becoming a frequent critic of her party and the former president.

Dickerson noted Cheney’s new book details how Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), who at the time was a little-known congressman, was involved in laying the groundwork for Trump’s attempt to overturn the election.

“Mike [Johnson] was willing time and again, to ignore the rulings of the courts to know what state and federal courts have done and said about the elections in the states in order to attempt to do Donald Trump’s bidding,” she said.

Dickerson asked what would happen if Johnson was the Speaker in January 2025, when Congress is slated to certify the 2024 presidential election.

“He can’t be,” she said. “We’re facing a situation with respect to the 2024 election where it’s an existential crisis, and we have to ensure that we don’t have a situation where an election that might be thrown into the House of Representatives is overseen by a Republican majority.”

She also warned that the United States is “sleepwalking into dictatorship” if Trump is reelected.