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WASHINGTON — Ahead of Tuesday’s election, when Americans weighed in at the ballot box for the first time since President Trump returned to office, a vicious fight emerged among the president’s most prominent supporters.

The head of the most influential conservative think tank in Washington found himself embroiled in controversy over his defense of Nick Fuentes, an avowed racist and antisemite, whose rising profile and embrace on the right has become a phenomenon few in politics can ignore.

Fierce acrimony between Fuentes’ critics and acolytes dominated social media for days as a historically protracted government shutdown risked food security for millions of Americans. Despite the optics, Trump hosted a Halloween ball at his Mar-a-Lago estate themed around the extravagance of the Great Gatsby era.

Marjorie Taylor Greene, a congresswoman who rose to national fame for her promotion of conspiracy theories, took to legacy media outlets to warn that Republicans are failing the American people over fundamental political imperatives, calling on leadership to address the nation’s cost-of-living crisis and come up with a comprehensive healthcare plan.

And on Tuesday, as vote tallies came in, moderate Democratic candidates in New Jersey and Virginia who had campaigned on economic bread-and-butter issues outperformed their polling — and Kamala Harris’ 2024 numbers against Trump in a majority of districts throughout their states.

The past year in politics has been dominated by a crisis within the Democratic Party over how to rebuild a winning coalition after Trump’s reelection. Now, just one year on, the Republican Party appears to be fracturing, as well, as it prepares for Trump’s departure from the national stage and the vacuum it will create in a party cast over 10 years in his image.

“Lame duck status is going to come even faster now,” Erick Erickson, a prominent conservative commentator, wrote on social media as election results trickled in. “Trump cannot turn out the vote unless he is on the ballot, and that is never happening again.”

A post-Trump debate intensifies

Flying to Seoul last week on a tour of Asia, Trump was asked to respond to remarks from top congressional Republicans, including the House speaker and Senate majority leader, over his potential pursuit of a third term in office, despite a clear constitutional prohibition against it.

“I guess I’m not allowed to run,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One. “If you read it, it’s pretty clear, I’m not allowed to run. It’s too bad.”

Less than a year remains until the 2026 midterm elections when Democrats could take back partial control of Congress, crippling Trump’s ability to enact his agenda and encumbering his administration with investigations.

But a countdown to the midterms also means that Trump has precious time left before the 2028 presidential election begins in earnest, eclipsing the final two years of his presidency.

It’s a conversation already brewing on the right.

“The Republican Party is just a husk,” Stephen K. Bannon, a prominent conservative commentator who served as White House chief strategist in Trump’s first term, told Politico in an interview Wednesday. Bannon has advocated for Trump to challenge the constitutional rule on presidential term limits.

“When Trump is engaged, when Trump’s on the ballot, when Trump’s team can get out there and get low-propensity voters — because that’s the difference now in modern politics — when they can do it, they win,” Bannon said. “When he doesn’t do it, they don’t.”

Trump has already suggested his vice president, JD Vance, and secretary of State, Marco Rubio, will be top contenders to succeed him. But an extreme faction of his political coalition, aligned with Fuentes, is already disparaging them as globalists working at the whims of a baseless conspiracy of American Jews. Fuentes targeted Vance last week, in particular, over his weight, his marriage to a “brown” Indian woman, and his support for Israel.

“The infighting is stupid,” Vance said on Wednesday in a post on the election results, tying intraparty battles to Tuesday’s poor showing for the GOP.

“I care about my fellow citizens — particularly young Americans — being able to afford a decent life, I care about immigration and our sovereignty, and I care about establishing peace overseas so our resources can be focused at home,” he said, adding: “If you care about those things too, let’s work together.”

Democratic fractures remain

Some in Republican leadership saw a silver lining in an otherwise difficult night on Tuesday.

The success of Zohran Mamdani, a 34-year-old democratic socialist who will serve as the youngest and first Muslim mayor of New York City, “is the reason I’m optimistic” for next year’s midterms, House Speaker Mike Johnson told RealClearPolitics on Wednesday.

New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani speaks at Tuesday night’s victory celebration.

(Yuki Iwamura / Associated Press)

“We will have a great example to point to in New York City,” Johnson said. “They’ve handed the keys to the kingdom to the Marxist. He will destroy it.”

Mamdani’s victory is a test for a weak and diffuse Democratic leadership still trying to steer the party in a unified direction, despite this week’s elections displaying just how big a tent Democratic voters have become.

Republicans like Trump know that labeling conventional Democratic politicians as socialists and communists is a political ploy. But Mamdani himself, they point out, describes his views as socialist, a toxic national brand that could hobble Democratic candidates across the country if Republicans succeed in casting New York’s mayor-elect as the Democrats’ future.

“After last night’s results, the decision facing all Americans could not be more clear — we have a choice between communism and common sense,” Trump said at a White House event on Wednesday. “As long as I’m in the White House, the United States is not going communist in any way, shape or form.”

In an interview with CNN shortly after Mamdani’s victory was called, Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader hoping to lead the party back into the majority next year, refused repeated questioning on whether Mamdani’s win might hurt Democratic prospects nationwide.

“This is the best they can come up with?” he said, adding: “We are going to win control of the House of Representatives.”

Bannon, too, warned that establishment Republicans could be mistaken in dismissing Mamdani’s populist appeal across party lines to Trump’s base of supporters. Mamdani, he noted, succeeded in driving out low-propensity voters in record numbers — a key to Trump’s success.

Tuesday’s election, he told Politico, “should be a wake-up call to the populist nationalist movement under President Trump that these are very serious people.”

“There should be even more than alarm bells,” he added. “There should be flashing red lights all over.”

What else you should be reading

The must-read: Will these six California GOP House members survive new districts?
The deep dive: Shakedown in Beverly Hills: High-stakes poker, arson and an alleged Israeli mobster
The L.A. Times Special: Toting a tambourine, she built L.A.’s first megachurch. Then she suddenly disappeared

More to come,
Michael Wilner
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Congratulations are in order for President Trump. He said he would bring home Israel’s hostages and end the horrific fighting in Gaza, and that appears to be exactly what he is doing with this week’s deal. While many of the ideas that went into Trump’s 20-point peace plan predated his reelection, he and his team deserve a standing ovation for translating those ideas into a practical proposal, defining a first phase that was both big and digestible and putting together all the pieces that made its agreement possible.

Success, however, does have its downsides. Remember the Pottery Barn rule of foreign policy, made famous during the Iraq war? “You break it, you own it.” We now have the Trump corollary: “You patch it, you own it.”

Despite coming to office eager to shed America’s Middle East commitments, Trump just took on a huge one: responsibility for a peace plan that will forever bear his name. On Oct. 6, 2023, the day before Hamas’ assault, Arab-Israeli relations were poised for the historic breakthrough of Saudi-Israel normalization; two years later, Arab-Israeli relations — including Trump’s first-term Middle East peacemaking achievement of the Abraham Accords — are hanging on by a thread. By offering a plan that promises not just an end to fighting in Gaza but building a full and enduring regional peace, the president has taken on the task of repairing the damage wrought by Hamas’ unholy war. In other words: fixing the Middle East.

How Trump fulfills this not inconsequential responsibility has major consequences for America’s role in the region and in the world. The Chinese are watching whether, when the going gets rough, he will have the mettle to maintain a broad alliance. The Russians are watching whether the president will strictly enforce the letter of the deal or let certain unpleasant aspects slip. The Iranians will be watching whether Trump will find himself so drowning in the details of Gaza reconstruction that he won’t be able to stitch together a repeat of the highly successful Arab-Israeli coalition that protected Israel a year ago from Iran’s barrages of ballistic missiles and drones. And all these adversaries — and others — will wonder whether the intense U.S. focus needed to ensure implementation of this deal will distract the president from their own areas of mischief.

Those are some of the international stakes. There’s a difficult road ahead in achieving the deal itself. Some of the most vexing challenges will include:

• Implementing a highly complex Gaza peace plan that, in its requirements for disarmament, envisions Hamas to be fully complicit in its organizational suicide — or at least its institutional castration;
• Having the U.S. military orchestrate the recruitment, deployment and management of multinational forces to police the territory just as the Israel Defense Forces are withdrawing from it, a tricky maneuver fraught with risk;
• Creating and supervising a transitional administration that will oversee everything from humanitarian relief to rubble and ordnance removal to massive reconstruction projects, all the while preventing what’s left of Hamas from stealing goods to divert to underground weapons factories, an art that it perfected after previous ceasefires;
• Securing buy-in from the United Nations and its specialized agencies, which need to play an essential role in delivering food and medical services, without buckling under pressure to rehabilitate the deeply flawed U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, an organization that bears special responsibility for keeping the Palestinian-Israeli conflict alive for decades;
• Preventing Qatar and Turkey — longtime friends of Hamas who have emerged in recent weeks as diplomatic Good Samaritans — from translating their current status into a malign influence over the direction of Palestinian politics, which can only be worrisome to Israel and the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority and a long-term detriment to the cause of peace;
• And dealing every step of the way with an Israeli prime minister of a rightist coalition who will likely view every decision, great and small, through the lens of a fateful election he is expected to call very soon that will show whether the Israeli people want to punish him for the terrible errors that left Israel unprepared for Hamas’ 2023 attack or reward him for the impressive victories Israel’s military achieved across the region in the two years that followed.

Getting this far was a huge achievement. Ensuring effective execution — never a strong suit for a “big idea guy” like Trump — is a thousand times more difficult. This can’t be done with a small team of White House officials chatting on Signal. It will require an army of — please excuse the term — experts: experts in military command and control, experts in ordnance removal and disposal, experts in civilian rehabilitation and reconstruction, experts in communication and community engagement. Corporate subcontracting can address some of this, as can the impressive talents of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, but don’t be fooled into thinking that a consulting company or a former foreign official can pick up the slack of the entire U.S. government. This plan, after all, has Trump’s name on it, not Deloitte’s or Blair’s.

The president has at least one more vital task in this matter. He must explain to the American people why we are doing this. For nearly 20 years, American presidents of both parties have said they wanted to pivot away from the Middle East, but they continually find themselves entangled in the region’s often byzantine conflicts and politics. Americans deserve to know why the “America First” president has decided that American interests are intimately bound up in the success of this peace plan. Our domestic divisions notwithstanding, fair-minded people on both sides of the aisle will be rooting for Trump’s success in this peace deal.

For now, sure, the president should enjoy the accolades and celebrate the coming release of Hamas’ hostages. The morning after will come soon enough.

Robert Satloff is executive director of the Washington Institute.

In the beginning, it was 1981 and bassist Nikki Sixx left London, the glam metal band he’d formed in Hollywood three years earlier, to start a new project with drummer Tommy Lee. Then, they pulled in guitarist Mick Mars, who responded to the duo’s classified ad for a “loud, rude, and aggressive guitar player,” and eventually persuaded singer Vince Neil, a former classmate of Lee’s, to leave his band Rock Candy for Mötley Crüe.

From its start with 1981 debut “Too Fast for Love,” Mötley Crüe lived up to its mismatched epithet, from its diabolical breakout “Shout at the Devil” in 1983 to the late ‘80s with its most commercially successful release, “Dr. Feelgood.”

Addictions, near-death experiences, hiatuses, departures and reunions — Mötley Crüe survived them all. Each step on its musical journey is commemorated on “From the Beginning,” an album that includes the band’s first single “Live Wire” through its most recent track, “Dogs of War,” released 43 years later. The band also revived a Mötley Crüe classic with a newly recorded version of its “Theatre of Pain” ballad “Home Sweet Home,” featuring Dolly Parton, which reentered the charts in 2025 at No. 1, 40 years after the original recording’s release.

“Mötley Crüe and Dolly Parton together is the ultimate clickbait,” says Sixx, with a laugh. He previously played bass on the country legend’s 2023 “Rockstar” album. “I guess it’s part of that wow factor that has been part of the Mötley Crüe fabric for a long time.”

Proceeds from the new recording of “Home Sweet Home” benefit Covenant House, the nonprofit with which the band has partnered for nearly 20 years through its Mötley Crüe Giveback Initiative. Sixx first worked with Covenant House around the publication of his 2007 memoir, “The Heroin Diaries,” and helped develop a music program at the Hollywood center. In October 2024, the band also played a series of intimate club shows, dubbed Höllywood Takeöver, at the Troubadour, the Roxy and Whisky a Go Go in West Hollywood, which helped raise $350,000 for the organization.

“These kids are everything,” says Sixx. “These kids are the future. They might end up changing the world. What if one of these kids can cure cancer and they just didn’t have a shot?”

Playing those smaller shows in 2024, which also included the Underworld in Camden, London, and the Bowery Ballroom in New York City, is the bare-bones sound, much like rehearsals, that Sixx has always loved.

“One of my favorite parts about being in a band is rehearsal,” he says. “There’s nothing like it. It’s raw, just bass, drums, guitar, and vocals off the floor. Then, you add all the bells and whistles as you go along. When we can do things like that, it just reminds me who we are.”

It’s also part of what keeps Lee excited at this stage of the band’s career, which includes its third residency in Las Vegas in 13 years, which kicked off last week and runs through Oct. 3 at the Dolby Live at Park MGM. (A portion of the ticket proceeds from the 10-show residency will benefit the Nevada Partnership for Homeless Youth.)

“I’ve been married to Nikki and Vince for over 44 years,” says Lee. “Like with any marriage, you gotta create ways to make it exciting, to keep it fun, or else you find yourselves at the breakfast table, with your face in the paper saying ‘Pass the butter.’ So Vegas in Dolby Atmos, new music, club shows, crazy videos, Dolly — we’ve always been trying different stuff to make the audience and us go ‘Oh, f— yeah.”

For Mötley Crüe, Las Vegas has nearly become a second home since the band’s first residency at the Joint at the Hard Rock Hotel in 2012 and its “An Intimate Evening in Hell” a year later.

“We’ve got this great body of work that you don’t really realize until you get this far,” says Sixx. “But now, we’re in one of those interesting places where, if we don’t play the hits, we get
s—, and if we do play the hits, we get s—.”

“From the Beginning” is Mötley Crüe’s new compilation album.

(Chris Walter)

Some deeper Crüe cuts worth inclusion in the set include “Stick to Your Guns,” a non-single on “Too Fast for Love,” and a song that the Runaways’ ex-manager, producer Kim Fowley, asked a then-teenaged Sixx to write for Blondie in 1979.

“I was 17 years old, and we recorded that song, and because no record company would sign us, we started our own label and got a distribution deal,” Sixx recalls. “When we finally joint-ventured up with Elektra Records in ’82, they said we needed to take a song off since it made the vinyl sound thinner, so ‘Stick to Your Guns’ got cut, but I’ve always loved that song.”

Sixx recently revealed that Guns N’ Roses once considered covering the early Crüe track.

”Now I get people saying, ‘We want to hear, “Stick to Your Guns,” ’ “ says Sixx, laughing. “There’s like eight people that know that song. That’s a good way to shut down an arena.”

For Lee, there’s something more paternal around the band’s lengthy catalog.

“I know every artist says it, but our songs are like our kids,” he says. “And over the years, they grow up and they develop [their] own personalities and character. Some stay pretty close to home, settle down, and start their own family. Others go out on a Thursday night and come home on Sunday with no shoes and a shaved head, but we love them all the same.”

With every song, Lee says, the band members understand each other more. “We know how to push each other a little further, and hopefully get the greatest out of each other.”

While there’s always room to make new music, Sixx, who has been the band’s chief songwriter since its inception, prefers the pace of releasing singles.

“It’s just a different landscape now,” he says, “so to create one or two ideas, or co-write three is manageable, and it’s also digestible for the fans.”

So many things have changed, and he is also aware of some misconceptions about the band. “The music is Mötley Crüe — Mötley Crüe is not ‘The Dirt,’ ” says Sixx, citing the 2019 film based on the band’s 2001 tell-all memoir. “People have it confused because we were so honest and it became such a part of the fabric of us that they forget about the riff on ‘Kick Start My Heart’ and just remember the hotel that we tried to burn down in Ontario.”

Another misconception, Sixx says, is the band’s split with Mars in 2022. After issuing a statement that Mars had retired from touring due to his ongoing battle with ankylosing spondylitis, the guitarist sued Mötley Crüe in April 2023, alleging that he was forced out of the band and that his bandmates attempted to cut his 25% ownership stake. Guitarist John 5 — who has filled in on lead guitar duties since October 2022, prior to the lawsuit — continues to tour with the band.

“[Mick] came to us and said, health-wise, he couldn’t fulfill his contract, and we let him out of the deal,” recalls Sixx. “Then he sued us because he just said that he can’t tour. We were like, ‘Well, if you can’t tour, you can’t tour.’ I will probably come to that too someday.”

Although there was no final settlement in court between Mars and the band, a Los Angeles judge ruled in 2024 that the band failed to provide documents to Mars in a timely manner and was ordered to pay his legal fees, Loudwire reported. The underlying dispute regarding the band’s business and Mars’ potential ousting went into private arbitration.
The arbitration is still ongoing but in the first phase the arbitrator ruled in favor of the band and against Mars. The arbitration is still ongoing but in the first phase the arbitrator ruled in favor of the band and against Mick.

Mars’ claims around the band’s use of backing tracks were another point of contention and something Sixx has continued defending. He says the band started playing around with audio enhancements in 1985 and cites the “Girls Girls Girls” track “Wild Side” as a “perfect example” with its sequenced guitar parts. “Anything we enhance the shows with, we actually played,” he says. “If there are background vocals with my background vocals, and we have background singers to make it sound more like the record. That does not mean we’re not singing.”

Mars, who is currently working on his second solo album, was contacted by The Times but declined to comment for the story.

Sixx calls Mars’ accusations a “crazy betrayal” to his legacy and to the fans. “Saying he played in a band that didn’t play, it’s a betrayal to the band who saved his life,” adds Sixx. “People say things like, ‘Well, if you guys are really playing, then I need isolated tracks from band rehearsal.’ … It’s ludicrous.”

Another battle the band has found itself in involves Neil’s health problems and the criticism he’s faced following recent performances. Originally scheduled to perform in March and April, Mötley Crüe postponed its Las Vegas shows so the lead singer could undergo an undisclosed medical procedure. “He needed time to heal, and he’s been working really hard,” Sixx says.

“You can tell he’s working up the stamina, and a lot of people are like, ‘Oh, man, he’s not kicking ass like he used to,’ but it takes a lot of courage to have a doctor tell you you will probably never go onstage again and to fight through that. If he’s got some imperfect moments here and there. They’re getting erased as the days go with rehearsal.”

Back in Las Vegas, Lee has looked forward to connecting with fans again, even if those in their teens and 20s were turned on to the band via “The Dirt.”

“Our goal is the same for all: to give them an incredible show,” he says, “to leave it all on the stage.”

Now, more than 40 years into Mötley Crüe, it may have been a patchwork journey of emotions for Sixx, but he wouldn’t change the experience for anything.

“We believe in this band,” he says. “It’s been 44 years. We’ve been in the band longer than we weren’t in the band. We’ve seen everything — everything. I guess that’s why it was a movie.”