Do we like Liz Cheney?
Our score: 7 out of 10. She paid a real price for standing up to Trump and has changed her mind on marriage, but her votes on LGBTQ+ rights, climate and the rest of her record are mixed.
Liz Cheney grew up as Republican royalty, the daughter of Vice President Dick Cheney, and went to Congress for Wyoming. She made her name as a hard-line conservative who held party leadership. She lost her seat in a 2022 primary after turning on Donald Trump over Jan. 6.
The stain on her record for this page's readers is 2013. Running for the Senate, she said on Fox News Sunday that she believes in the traditional definition of marriage, even though her sister is married to a woman. The sisters fell out publicly, and her sister said Liz was on the wrong side of history. Liz called it an issue on which they disagree.
In 2021 she told 60 Minutes “I was wrong” about that, and in July 2022 she was one of 46 House Republicans to vote for the Respect for Marriage Act. But she had voted against the Equality Act in February 2021, and the Human Rights Campaign scorecard gave her zeros. Nothing we found shows her campaigning against trans people. On the rest, an NBC opinion writer called her a hardliner on immigration and noted she opposes abortion. The same piece says she voted with Trump's positions about 93 per cent of the time during his presidency. On climate, in 2021 she said there are “real questions about why and what's causing it”.
Her Jan. 6 role is where the stakes got real. As vice chair she helped lead the House select committee, and in December 2024 a GOP-led House report recommended a criminal investigation of her. It alleged witness tampering linked to a former Trump aide, which Cheney rejected, saying it disregarded the evidence. That report was only a recommendation, and the article we read reported no charges.
She also put her vote where her mouth was in 2024. She endorsed Kamala Harris and campaigned with her in Ripon, Wisconsin, in October, saying “I am proudly casting my vote for Vice President Kamala Harris.” For a lifelong Republican with that surname, that cost her friends and gained her few.
Lately she's been on the speaking circuit. At Harvard on Tuesday she said the record gives little reason to trust Republicans in Congress with the midterms. At William & Mary she said she regrets backing Trump before Jan. 6 and that she won't rule out another run for office.