| A conversation with … Heath Mayo, founder of Principles First. His center-right, anti-Trump group is kicking off its fifth annual summit in Washington today. It’s meant to be a counterweight to the pro-Trump Conservative Political Action Conference that’s also happening this week. Mayo says his crowd needs to think more “outside the box” than simply changing the Trump-dominated GOP — as evidenced by a summit lineup that includes Democratic Gov. Jared Polis of Colorado and businessman Mark Cuban. We spoke with Mayo about the difficult political moment in which his group finds itself. This conversation has been edited and condensed for length and clarity. In this week’s Quinnipiac poll, 90 percent of Republicans nationwide approved of President Donald Trump’s job performance. What role is your group playing in this political environment? November, obviously — and even the Republican primary before that — gave a pretty loud statement about where the Republican Party stands. … It’s a protectionist, isolationist party. It’s sort of committed itself to the whims of Donald Trump, and it’s set aside principles of free trade, principles of a strong defense and standing with our allies, principles of equal justice under the law and accountability under the law. People at the Principles First Summit are pretty clear-eyed about that reality, and I think the moment is ripe for disruption, whether that disruption finds the Democratic Party … to find a way to cobble together an electoral majority, then that can be the direction we go. If it means forming something new in our politics or just a grassroots movement that holds both parties to account, then that’s also … a direction we could take. In the nearer term, what counts as success for Principles First? For example, is it swaying more independent-minded GOP senators — as rare as they are — when it comes to nominations? That’s certainly one — supporting those folks when they decide to take a principled stand. Like you say, those are few and far between, so I don’t think many in our room are optimistic that there’s going to be many instances of that courage in the coming months. I think more importantly … is that 2026 and 2028 start today. … I see ourselves as serving a role of really going out into the country, hosting dinners, bringing people together, the grassroots, to really create a base of support for these ideas and the rejection of what Trump is doing in the White House, because he’s really calling into question a lot of the fundamental principles and ideas that have always made America great. These things that used to not be not up for debate really now are a part of the political debate when we are, you know, saying that [Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky] caused the war in Ukraine — just a flat-out lie — [or] when we’re hiking up tariffs on our allies by 25 percent. These things are not going to lower the prices of consumer goods. We saw some Republicans in Congress pretty plainly disagree with Trump’s criticism of Zelensky this week. Does that give you any hope that Republicans can still call out a falsehood? We’ll see. … We’ve certainly seen moments like this in the past. … I can think of a number of those situations off the top of my head, but January 6th is a good one, right? Right after the attack [on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021], everybody condemned him, some were ready to impeach him again, but then three, four months, and we really didn’t hear much out of them. You’re hearing from them now [about Zelensky] just because of the shock and awe of exactly what he said … but, you know, Trump has a way of grinding these people down. Looking at Trump’s first month in office, is there anything on which you’ve found room for agreement? I think certainly the idea that we can trim the fat of our federal government is a laudable one. I mean, as with most things with Trump, the implementation here is suspect. He’s always said that he was going to elevate the very best and brightest who know how to get things done into positions of power, but at every turn, it seems that incompetence is really plaguing his administration. Elon Musk is … there probably more to do, you know, troll memes than anything, and you see him firing … nuclear engineers that then we’re having to go back and rehire because we didn’t realize we cut them. I mean, that’s just ridiculous. Have any GOP lawmakers given you hope during Trump’s first weeks in office? I wish there had been more of them, and I wish even the ones who had given us some examples of courage would show it more consistently, but I think a senator like Bill Cassidy (R-Louisiana). … [Rep.] Don Bacon (R-Nebraska) has been out there … really, you know, tooting a horn on Ukraine and saying that this is ridiculous. [Rep.] Mike Lawler (R-New York) has as well. There’s certainly been a handful that have held him to account on Ukraine. Sen. [Lisa] Murkowski (R-Alaska) voted the right way on some of these more incompetent nominees. … [Sen.] Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) has been a really loud voice of reason on [nominees]. … I think he stood up and made really long, principled sort of statements about why these folks were just not fit for their positions. And I think when Mitch McConnell is shooting down your nominee of a Republican president, you know that you’ve really kind of jumped the shark. This year’s lineup for the Principles First Summit seems to have a few more Democrats in it than usual, such as Polis. What does that say about how your efforts have evolved? It means a lot to me. It reflects the reality of the situation that we’re in. This is not a project to save the Republican Party from itself. The Republican Party has made that choice. This is a project to build a coalition of Americans who believe in the founding principles of our country, and whether you’re a Democrat or a Republican or a Libertarian or an independent, we want you at the Principles First Summit because it’s going to take all of us, clearly, to get to 50-plus-one and to really turn the tide of where our country is at this moment. Some of your speakers, such as former Georgia lieutenant governor Geoff Duncan (R), very visibly endorsed Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, in the presidential election. How effective do you think that kind of cross-party campaigning is going forward? I think they were helpful, but I’m really skeptical, honestly, how much endorsements, high profile or not, really move the needle in a national election like that. … The only thing I read into it is that you got to do more. We’ve got to really test the bounds of what we think is possible in terms of coalitions that we build. And we’ve got to start forming new identities. This whole “Republicans for Harris” thing — it’s good, but it kind of is almost not reflective of the urgency of the moment. I mean, what does it mean to be a Republican today? What do you get by staying on the party? A lot of these folks who have continued to call themselves Republicans out of a sense of loyalty to the party or whatnot — I don’t know that it’s gotten us much over the years. You know, I don’t know … if we really moved Trump on anything as a result of those stands. I really think it’s time to think outside the box. | 
Meryl Kornfield and 
