2021 American Political Scene

[TopHatter]

Given the number of lawsuits filed against him while he was in office even you can't believe what you wrote. Regardless presidents can be sued by citizens for injuries done before taking office.

It's not what I "wrote", it's what Trump and his lawyers claimed (and are claiming) all the way up to the Supreme Court.

Which was in response to your statement "I think Trump was claiming he was immune to prosecution not civil liability."

Check out the two links I provided if you don't believe me.

[JRT]

Biden approval hits single digit: Nantucket man reportedly gives POTUS the finger

by Steven Nelson
November 25, 2021
New York Post

President Biden’s approval ratings have been epically low, but on a Thanksgiving Day stop at a New England Coast Guard station they suddenly reached the single digits.

A Nantucket man presented Biden’s motorcade with the middle finger Thursday as the unpopular commander in chief made the holiday stop during his stay at a billionaire’s island compound.

Biden’s approval ratings are in collapse amid the highest inflation in 31 years, which has driven up the costs of everything from turkey dinners to gas, and he’s increasingly been greeted with vulgar gestures and chants even when visiting deep-blue states.

White House pool reporter Zolan Kanno-Youngs wrote that there was a generally friendly welcome when Biden’s motorcade made the visit but that reporters “did spot one gentleman standing on his porch giving the middle finger to the presidential motorcade as we neared the coast guard station.”

Other spectators gave the thumbs up and applauded. “One person appeared to be wearing a dinosaur costume. A couple people wore turkey hats,” according to a pool report.

Biden and first lady Jill exchanged niceties with sailors at the station before returning to their vacation home, which is owned by billionaire David Rubenstein.

The president presented Coast Guard members with “challenge coins” that some members of the military collect to commemorate their service.

“I’m not joking when I say I’m thankful for these guys – I’m thankful for them, and everybody, I mean it from the bottom of my heart,” the president said of the Coast Guard members when asked what he’s thankful for.

“I’ve watched them in the South China Sea, I’ve watched them in Afghanistan, Iraq. I’ve watched them in South America … Wherever they are. People wonder what America is? [inaudible] Look and see them. That’s who they see. They don’t see us here. They see them. It makes me proud.”

Jill Biden told the group that the first family planned to attend the Massachusetts island’s Christmas tree lighting ceremony on Friday.

This year, inflation has driven the cost of the classic Thanksgiving dinner of turkey and sides up 14 percent, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation.

The US Department of Agriculture said last week that the cost of Thanksgiving foods such as turkey, sweet potatoes, green beans, milk and potatoes was only up 5 percent on average. Its unclear why the tally was lower than the private-sector estimate.

Biden has received ugly welcomes during other recent trips to the heavily Democratic Northeast.

In September, North Jersey residents heckled Biden and also gave his motorcade middle fingers. “Resign, you tyrant!” one man shouted as Biden toured a storm-damaged neighborhood.

And last month, Biden told a child on a Connecticut playground that “I like kids better than people” — as a crowd nearby bellowed “F–k Joe Biden!”

Former President Trump also regularly drove past protesters. In 2007, a DC resident memorably “mooned” Trump’s motorcade as he made a trip up Connecticut Avenue from the White House.


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[TopHatter]

GOP becoming a cult of know-nothings
The Republican Party is becoming a cult. Its leaders are in thrall to Donald Trump, a defeated former president who refuses to acknowledge defeat. Its ideology is MAGA, Trump's deeply divisive take on what Republicans assume to be unifying American values.

The party is now in the process of carrying out purges of heretics who do not worship Trump or accept all the tenets of MAGA. Conformity is enforced by social media, a relatively new institution with the power to marshal populist energy against critics and opponents.

What's happening on the right in American politics is not exactly new. To understand it, you need to read a book published 50 years ago by Seymour Martin Lipset and Earl Raab, The Politics of Unreason: Right-Wing Extremism in America, 1790-1970. Right-wing extremism, now embodied in Trump's MAGA movement, dates back to the earliest days of the country.

The title of Lipset and Raab's book was chosen carefully. Right-wing extremism is not about the rational calculation of interests. It's about irrational impulses, which the authors identify as "status frustrations." They write that "the political movements which have successfully appealed to status resentments have been irrational in character. [The movements] focus on attacking a scapegoat, which conveniently symbolizes the threat perceived by their supporters."

The most common scapegoats have been minority ethnic or religious groups. In the 19^th century, that meant Catholics, immigrants and even Freemasons. The Anti-Masonic Party, the Know Nothing Party and later the American Protective Association were major political forces. In the 20^th century, the U.S. experienced waves of anti-immigrant sentiment. After World War II, anti-communism became the driving force behind McCarthyism in the 1950s and the Goldwater movement in the early 1960s ("Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice").

The roots of the current right-wing extremism lie in the late 1960s and 1970s, when Americans began to be polarized over values (race, ethnicity, sex, military intervention). Conflicts of interest (such as business versus labor) can be negotiated and compromised. Conflicts of values cannot.

You see "the politics of unreason" in today's right-wing extremism. While it remains true, as it has been for decades, that the wealthier you are, the more likely you are to vote Republican (that's interests), what's new today is that the better educated you are, the more likely you are to vote Democratic, at least among whites (that's values, and it's been driving white suburban voters with college degrees away from Trump's "know nothing" brand of Republicanism).

Oddly, religion has become a major force driving the current wave of right-wing extremism. Not religious affiliation (Protestant versus Catholic) but religiosity (regular churchgoers versus non-churchgoers). That's not because of Trump's religious appeal (he has none) but because of the Democratic Party's embrace of secularism and the resulting estrangement of fundamentalist Protestants, observant Catholics and even orthodox Jews.

The Democratic Party today is defined by its commitment to diversity and inclusion. The party celebrates diversity in all its forms - racial, ethnic, religious and sexual. To Democrats, that's the tradition of American pluralism - "E pluribus unum." Republicans celebrate the "unum" more than the "pluribus" - we may come from diverse backgrounds, but we should all share the same "American values."

One reason right-wing extremism is thriving in the Republican Party is that there is no figure in the party willing to lead the opposition to it. Polls of Republican voters show no other GOP figure even close to Trump's level of support for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination. The only other Republican who seems interested in running is Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland, who recently criticized "Trump cancel culture."

If Trump does run in 2024, as he seems inclined to do, can he win?

It all depends on Biden's record. Right now, Biden's popularity is not very high. In fact, Biden and Trump are about equally unpopular (Biden's job approval is 52 to 43 percent negative, Trump's favorability is 54 to 41.5 percent negative). Biden will be 82 years old in 2024. If he doesn't run, the Democrats will very likely nominate Vice President Kamala Harris. When a president doesn't run for re-election, his party almost always nominates its most recent vice president, assuming they run (Richard Nixon in 1960, Hubert Humphrey in 1968, Walter Mondale in 1984, George H.W. Bush in 1988, Al Gore in 2000, Joe Biden in 2020). Democrats would be unlikely to deny a black woman the nomination. There is also some talk of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg running if Biden doesn't.

2024 could be a rematch between Trump and Biden. Or a race between Trump and a black woman. Or between Trump and a gay man with a husband and child. Lee Drutman, a political scientist at the New America think tank, recently told The New York Times, "I have a hard time seeing how we have a peaceful 2024 election after everything that's happened now. I don't see the rhetoric turning down. I don't see the conflicts going away . . . It's hard to see how it gets better before it gets worse."
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[TopHatter]

Special Report: Pro-Trump news site targets election workers, inspiring wave of menace
(Reuters) - The story had a bombshell headline: “Thousands of fake votes” had been discovered in Madison, Wisconsin, two weeks after Democrat Joe Biden narrowly beat then-President Donald Trump in the state.

The bogus report from the far-right website Gateway Pundit drew attention to a set of initials – MLW – inscribed on what it claimed were “fake” ballots. Then a reader posted a comment on the story correctly identifying MLW: Maribeth L. Witzel-Behl, the Madison city clerk, whose duties include administering elections.

Other commenters soon called for Witzel-Behl’s execution. She found one post especially unnerving. It recommended a specific bullet for killing her – a 7.62 millimeter round for an AK-47 assault rifle.

Witzel-Behl was stunned by the threats and the angry calls that poured into her office. Contrary to the story’s insinuation that the initials meant the ballots were fake, in reality she and her staff wrote her initials on all absentee ballots, before they were given to voters, as a matter of policy.

Witzel-Behl is among 25 election officials and workers targeted by more than 100 threatening and hostile communications that have cited the Gateway Pundit since last year’s election, according to a Reuters review of the materials, which included emails, letters and phone messages, as well as comments posted on the website’s stories.

The messages targeted officials and staff in four jurisdictions that featured repeatedly in false or misleading Pundit reports on voter-fraud claims: the Wisconsin cities of Madison and Milwaukee; Fulton County, Georgia; and Maricopa County, Arizona.

At least five of the officials, including Witzel-Behl, received threats they considered serious enough to report to law enforcement. Among those targeted were a municipal election director in Milwaukee and a Republican supervisor in Maricopa County. The targets also included Ruby Freeman and Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, a mother and daughter who staffed a ballot counting operation in Fulton County; their ordeal was detailed this week by Reuters.

After Gateway Pundit ran an Aug. 14 story about them, a commenter posted below the piece: “The two women are traitors to the country and should be hung by the neck until dead.”

Two additional officials, a Fulton County election commissioner and another Maricopa county supervisor, blamed the Gateway Pundit for inciting serious threats of violence they received after the site implicated the officials in baseless claims of election-rigging. Those threats did not reference the website by name.

Most of the 25 officials received harassing messages that were less violent but often intimidating, racist or misogynistic. Many messages accused officials of treason, for instance, or called for their imprisonment.

The threats and harassment inspired by the Gateway Pundit illustrate the central role of disinformation in a campaign of fear being waged by Trump supporters against the frontline administrators of American democracy.

“The Gateway Pundit brought your betrayal of Wisconsin and America to my attention,” said one threat emailed to Claire Woodall-Vogg, the Milwaukee elections director. “I hope you know there are consequences for your actions. I know a lot of information about you. I will have to think about what comes next.”

The harassing communications linked to the Gateway Pundit are among more than 800 menacing messages to election officials documented by Reuters this year, including more than 100 threats that legal experts said could meet the legal threshold for federal criminal prosecution. Such threats are considered crimes if they instill fear of imminent violence or death. Law enforcement, however, has held almost no one accountable.

In more than 10% of those 800 messages, the harassers cited the Gateway Pundit as the source of the information that caused them to lash out at election officials. No other media outlet or social-media platform was mentioned more than a handful of times.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation declined to comment on whether it was investigating any of the Gateway Pundit-inspired messages but said it “takes all threats of violence seriously.” No arrests have been made. The Department of Justice, which in June launched a task force to address threats against election workers, did not respond to a comment request.

The Gateway Pundit has emerged as a major player in an expanding far-right media universe that includes TV broadcasters One America News Network and Newsmax, along with the video-sharing site BitChute and social media platforms Parler and Gab. Since the 2020 election, the Pundit has bolstered Trump’s false stolen-election narrative with coverage that generated outrage and helped grow its audience.

The Pundit’s U.S. web traffic approached 50 million monthly visits in the weeks after Trump’s November loss, up from about 15 million a year earlier, according to Similarweb, an internet-traffic intelligence service. More recently – from July through September – the audience settled at an average of 33 million monthly visits. That’s nearly double the 17 million monthly visits averaged over the same period by the website for MSNBC, the cable news channel known for left-leaning hosts.

The Gateway Pundit describes itself as a publisher of news and commentary. Launched in 2004 as an opinion blog, it established itself as one of Trump’s most dogged promoters in the 2016 presidential race. During the campaign, Trump regularly cited or retweeted Gateway Pundit stories. Once elected, he quickly granted the site White House press credentials.

A Trump spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment.

The U.S. Constitution’s free-speech and free-press provisions give news outlets – even those that publish false stories that spur threats – broad protections against any legal liability, especially criminal charges. Media can be sued for defamation, but such cases can be especially challenging to win for public officials, including many election workers and administrators.

Officials must prove not only reputational damage but "actual malice." That standard, established by the U.S. Supreme Court, means plaintiffs must prove not only that they were harmed by the publication of false information, but also that the publisher either knew the information was false or operated with “reckless disregard for the truth,” said Roy Gutterman, a Syracuse University media law professor.

“Defamation is difficult to win for everybody, but it's more difficult for public figures like most of these plaintiffs,” Gutterman said.

The Gateway Pundit currently faces at least three defamation suits filed by people who allege they faced numerous threats after being vilified in false stories. The first two suits don’t involve public officials; the site is contesting both, asserting it broke no laws and had no responsibility for the threats of violence. The third was filed yesterday by Freeman and Moss, the election workers in Georgia. A lawyer for Gateway Pundit had no comment on that suit.

The Pundit has faced some commercial blowback for its false and incendiary content. In September, it lost a major revenue source when Google stopped placing ads on the site, citing its publication of “demonstrably false” election stories. Over the previous 10 months, the Pundit earned an estimated $1.3 million from ads placed through Google’s AdSense program, according to an analysis by the Center for Countering Digital Hate, which combats online extremism.

The Pundit has retained other advertising, mostly “clickbait” promotions placed by ad networks on behalf of hundreds or thousands of companies and products. The site gets paid based on the number of ads clicked.

Reuters asked five ad networks that have appeared prominently on Gateway Pundit if they were concerned about its content. Two, Jeeng and ZergNet, said they reviewed the site in response to the Reuters inquiry and decided to stop placing ads on it. Two others, Revcontent LLC and MGID, said they are reconsidering their relationships with the site. A fifth, LockerDome, did not respond to comment requests.

Gateway Pundit’s owner and editor, Jim Hoft, is an Iowa native with a college biology degree and no previous journalism background. Hoft writes many of the articles, along with his twin brother, Joe Hoft, and a half-dozen or so contributors. After a mass shooting in 2016 killed 49 people at Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, Hoft wrote a Breitbart News column in which he came out as gay. Noting that the shooter sympathized with radical Islamist groups, he argued that the best way to protect gay people from more attacks was to re-elect Trump because he would be tough on extremists.

Jim Hoft did not respond to interview requests sent to him and his lawyer. Joe Hoft also had no comment.

“We never support any violence,” Jim Hoft said in an August deposition for a lawsuit. The suit alleged that his site defamed and incited threats against a former staffer of Dominion Voting Systems, a voting equipment maker often featured in the Pundit’s coverage. “We report on different individuals every day, and we always consider their safety.”

Hoft is seeking reader support through several online fundraising campaigns on GiveSendGo, a crowdfunding site. Those campaigns have raised more than $250,000 to date, according to the site. On the Pundit site, Hoft urges readers to show support by buying subscriptions. “There’s a battle for survival of the Gateway Pundit,” he says in the message.

"WE'RE COMING FOR YOU, CLAIRE"

The threat that came to Milwaukee election chief Woodall-Vogg – citing the Gateway Pundit on her “betrayal’’ – was sent to the private email address she reserves for friends and family. The subject line: “Hello Marxist Bitch.”

The Pundit began targeting Woodall-Vogg days after the election, when she informed the Wisconsin Elections Commission that a flash drive used with the city’s vote-tabulating machines was inadvertently left at a processing center on election night. The drive was retrieved within minutes and was never unattended, she explained in a letter to the commissioners. The county district attorney reviewed the matter and found no evidence of tampering.

The Gateway Pundit responded with a story headlined: “Milwaukee Elections Chief Lost Elections Flash Drive in Morning Hours of November 4th When Democrats Miraculously Found 120,000 Votes for Joe Biden.”

Woodall-Vogg began getting angry emails almost immediately. The messages continued as multiple audits and reviews confirmed Milwaukee’s results, which had helped Biden win Wisconsin.

In late July, another Pundit headline sparked a new wave of intimidation: “BREAKING EXCLUSIVE: Uncovered Email Shows Milwaukee Elections Executive Woodall-Vogg Laughing About the Election Steal on Election Night.” The evidence: a joking email exchange between Woodall-Vogg and Ryan Chew, a staffer with The Elections Group, a nonprofit organization that provided free pre-election guidance to localities on improving 2020 voting processes.

Shortly after Milwaukee’s final votes were reported late on election night, Chew wrote: “Damn, Claire, you have a flair for drama, delivering just the margin needed at 3:00 a.m. I bet you had those votes counted at midnight and just wanted to keep the world waiting!” Woodall-Vogg replied: “Lol. I just wanted to wait to say I had been awake for a full 24 hours.”

Chew and Woodall-Vogg told Reuters the exchange was an unfortunate but meaningless joke. Chew said it would have been “absurd” for Woodall-Vogg to stay up late to add drama. “That absurdity was the essence of the joke,” Chew said.

The Pundit characterized the exchange as evidence that Woodall-Vogg was part of a multi-state fraud to manufacture a late-night “drop” of Biden votes. Woodall-Vogg’s inbox exploded with more than 70 furious messages. Many cited the Pundit. Some called for her execution. One asked if she had private security. Some people left threatening voicemails. One said: “We’re coming for you, Claire.”

Woodall-Vogg left town with her two children, working remotely for 10 days. She referred a half-dozen threatening messages to Milwaukee police. The department told Reuters it had referred the communications to the FBI after police determined they could not be prosecuted under state or local law.

At the elections office, security glass and other protections are being added.

“The threats where I truly was concerned – the ones specific to me and my family – those didn’t happen until the Gateway Pundit article,” she said.

'TICK, TICK, TICK'

In June, Vernetta Nuriddin, a Democratic member of Georgia’s Fulton County election board, was starting her summer vacation when her inbox filled with two dozen hostile emails. One subject line: “Tick, Tick, Tick.”

“Not long now...,” the email read.

Nuriddin said she found the email “frightening,” suggesting a bomb or other “imminent danger.”

That morning, the email addresses of Nuriddin and other board members were published in a Gateway Pundit report that said they were named in an activists’ lawsuit seeking a review of county absentee ballots. The suit was later dismissed.

Other outlets had reported on the suit days earlier, but the hostile messages to Nuriddin and other board members didn’t start until the Pundit published their email addresses. Some of the messages cited the Gateway Pundit specifically; others, including the tick-tick email, did not. Nuriddin, who left the board this summer when her four-year term ended, said the Pundit’s reports often sparked messages from “people wishing the absolute worst on you, who don’t even know you.”

Nuriddin referred the tick-tick email to the Fulton County Police Department. It dropped the case after deciding the message was not an “articulated threat” that constituted a crime under Georgia law, said Fulton’s chief, Wade Yates.

Reuters identified the sender of the “Tick, Tick” threat: Brian Lohman, of Jacksonville, Florida. He was among nine people who said in interviews for a Nov. 9 Reuters report that they had harassed or threatened election officials.

Lohman told Reuters he didn’t mean to suggest a bomb. He said he had read that Nuriddin was named in the lawsuit over Fulton County ballots and meant to suggest time was running out before she “had to go in front of a judge.” He declined to say whether he got the news – or Nuriddin’s email address – from the Gateway Pundit story.

'HANGING OR GUILLOTINE?'

After the 2020 presidential election, the Pundit ran a slew of stories alleging voter fraud in Arizona’s Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix, the state’s largest city.

Many of these reports were false, including a May 9 article claiming the county deleted voting-machine data needed for a state audit. An hour after the story was published, county Board of Supervisors Vice Chair Bill Gates and other members received an email with a link to the article.

“You dirty mother f***ing ass holes,” the subject line read. “You all have eyes in the back of your heads?” the message continued. “People have a limit.”

The Pundit continued publishing stories with false voter-fraud claims as multiple audits confirmed the results and Maricopa supervisors defended their accuracy. On Aug. 9, an email landed in the supervisors’ public inbox, asking: “Hanging or Guillotine?” The message cited a debunked Gateway Pundit story that claimed completed ballots from the 2020 election were shredded before they were counted.

Over the next month, Gates and his fellow supervisors would get at least nine more emails from the same sender, several of them citing Gateway Pundit stories and all repeating the warning: “TREASON Hanging or Guillotine?”

The supervisors were already on edge. Gates’ fellow Republican board member, Clint Hickman, had received a voicemail on Aug. 4 that warned: “People are going to be coming and visiting the homes of the board of supervisors and basically executing their families. Should be fun.”

The voicemail did not mention the Gateway Pundit. But Hickman and Gates said they blamed the Pundit’s bogus reporting for inspiring many of the threats and harassing messages against board members. “There’s no question this blog has generated threats toward me, my colleagues, and even my family’s 77-year-old business,” Hickman said, adding that the site conjures “ridiculous scenarios” with “no fact-checking.”

Gates told Reuters he has referred about a dozen hostile messages to police. The Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office said it has been assessing threats against the supervisors. It has made no arrests.

THREATS OF HANGING AND SHOOTING

Days after the election, Gateway Pundit posted a false story that targeted election officials in Rock County, Wisconsin, about an hour south of Madison.

The site reported that a software glitch led to 10,000 votes being “moved” from Trump to Biden “in just one Wisconsin county.” Such glitches, it said, were a Democratic scheme to “steal” the race.

That article was tweeted by Eric Trump, the former president’s son. He did not respond to an interview request sent through the former president’s office.

In reality, the vote count never changed. The Associated Press had made an error in an election-results table it published and quickly corrected it.

The next morning, County Clerk Lisa Tollefson got a call about the story around 7 a.m. and raced to work, finding the phone lines jammed with enraged Trump voters yelling at her staff. The furor lasted four days, and “was bad enough that we let the sheriff know, and he put protection on us,” Tollefson said.

Two weeks later, on Nov. 28, the Gateway Pundit turned its sights on Maribeth Witzel-Behl, the clerk in Madison, Wisconsin, whose initials appeared on the thousands of absentee ballots that the Pundit had wrongly characterized as “fake.”

Concerned by the story’s inaccuracies and the threats they provoked, she consulted with City Attorney Michael Haas, who sent Hoft an email requesting the Pundit correct the piece and remove the threatening comments.

“If there are additional threats or actual harassment against our employees we will be holding you accountable,” Haas wrote.

The next day, the story was updated: The references to “fake votes” were changed to “suspect votes.” All the comments also were removed from the page. The story was marked as “updated,” but contained no correction.

Joe Hoft, the brother of site founder Jim Hoff, wrote a follow-up story about Haas’s warning. Haas, he asserted, was attacking the Pundit’s free-speech rights.

“We found the City Attorney’s response threatening,” he wrote.
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[JRT]

Court won’t stop Texas abortion ban, but lets clinics sue

by Mark Sherman
December 10, 2021
The Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Friday left in place Texas’ ban on most abortions, offering only a glimmer of daylight for clinics in the state to challenge the nation’s most restrictive abortion law.

The decision, little more than a week after the court signaled it would roll back abortion rights and possibly overturn its landmark Roe v. Wade decision, was greeted with dismay by abortion rights supporters but praise by opponents.

Five conservative justices, including three appointed by former President Donald Trump, formed a majority to limit who can be sued by the clinics, a result that both sides said probably will prevent federal courts from effectively blocking the law.

Texas licensing officials may be sued, but not state court judges, court clerks or state Attorney General Ken Paxton, the court ruled. That seems to leave people free, under the unusual structure of the Texas law, to sue abortion clinics and anyone else who “aids or abets” an abortion performed after cardiac activity is detected in an embryo, around six weeks and before some women know they’re pregnant.

“The Supreme Court has essentially greenlit Texas’s cynical scheme and prevented federal courts from blocking an unconstitutional law,” the Center for Reproductive Rights, which represents the Texas clinics, said on Twitter.

The court acted more than a month after hearing arguments over the law, which makes no exceptions for rape or incest.

The law has been in place for about three months, since Sept. 1. The Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized abortion nationwide has stood since 1973.

President Joe Biden voiced concern over the high court decision to keep the Texas law in effect and restated his support for legislation that has cleared the House of Representatives and would codify in federal law the abortion right now at risk.

“We have more work to do, but I will always stand with women to protect and defend their long-recognized, constitutional right under Roe v. Wade,” Biden said in a statement.

Justice Neil Gorsuch, who has consistently voted against abortion rights, did not mention Roe in his main opinion for the court Friday. Gorsuch is one of the Trump appointees, along with Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.

Abortion providers will now attempt to run the same legal gantlet that has previously frustrated them. The federal judge who already has once blocked the law, known as S.B. 8, almost certainly will be asked to do so again. Then his decision would be reviewed by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which has twice voted to allow enforcement of the abortion ban.

In any case, it all could return to the justices, and so far there have not been five votes on the nine-member court to put the law on hold while the legal fight plays out.

“The Court should have put an end to this madness months ago, before S. B. 8 first went into effect. It failed to do so then, and it fails again today,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in a separate opinion Friday.

The court’s conservative majority also seems likely to roll back abortion rights in a Mississippi case that was argued last week, although that decision is not expected until spring.

If Roe is overruled, the fight over the Texas law would be largely beside the point because Texas is one of 12 states with a trigger law that would ban abortion in a post-Roe world.

Friday’s high court ruling came a day after a state court judge in Texas ruled that the law’s enforcement, which rewards lawsuits against violators by awarding judgments of $10,000, is unconstitutional yet left the law in place.

Critics of the decision also said it would encourage other states to adopt copycat laws on abortion and allow for attacks on other constitutional rights.

The legal fight over the Texas law is focused on its unusual structure and whether it improperly limits how the law can be challenged in court. Texas lawmakers handed responsibility for enforcing the law to private citizens, rather than state officials.

The law authorizes lawsuits against clinics, doctors and others who perform or facilitate a banned abortion. The case raised a complex set of issues about who, if anyone, can sue over the law in federal court, the typical route for challenges to abortion restrictions. Indeed, federal courts routinely put a hold on similar laws, which rely on traditional enforcement by state and local authorities.

The Supreme Court voted Friday 8 to 1 in favor of allowing the clinics’ lawsuit against the ban to proceed, with only Justice Clarence Thomas voting the other way. But the court was sharply divided, 5-4, on the knotty issue of whom to target with a court order that ostensibly tries to block the law. The justices ruled that Texas licensing officials may be sued, but dismissed claims against state court judges, court clerks and the state attorney general.

Gorsuch wrote that abortion providers have to follow the same rules that apply to people asserting other constitutional rights. “The Court has consistently applied these requirements whether the challenged law in question is said to chill the free exercise of religion, the freedom of speech, the right to bear arms or any other right. The petitioners are not entitled to a special exemption,” Gorsuch wrote.

Chief Justice John Roberts and the three liberal justices dissented from that part of the decision in an opinion that said the purpose of the Texas law was “to nullify this court’s rulings” on abortion.

The same four justices were in dissent in September when the court declined to block the law once before.

“The nature of the federal right infringed does not matter; it is the role of the Supreme Court in our constitutional system that is at stake,” Roberts wrote.

Roberts called on U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman, whose earlier order blocking the law was overturned by the appeals court, to “enter appropriate relief without delay.”

Sotomayor also chastised her colleagues for their part in the “catastrophic consequences for women seeking to exercise their constitutional right to an abortion in Texas.” She said the court’s decision closed off the most direct route to challenging the law and would “clear the way” for other states to “reprise and perfect Texas’ scheme in the future to target the exercise of any right recognized by this court with which they disagree.”

Since it took effect in September, the law has imposed t he most restrictive abortion curbs in the nation since the Supreme Court first declared a woman’s right to an abortion in its 1973 Roe v. Wade decision.

In the Texas law’s first month, a study published by researchers at the University of Texas found, the number of abortions statewide fell by 50% compared with September 2020. The study was based on data from 19 of the state’s 24 abortion clinics, according to the Texas Policy Evaluation Project.

Some residents who left the state seeking abortions have had to travel well beyond neighboring states, where clinics cannot keep up with the increase in patients from Texas, according to a separate study by the Guttmacher Institute.

Following the court’s September vote, the Justice Department filed its own lawsuit over the Texas law. The justices on Friday dismissed that suit, which raised a separate set of thorny legal issues.

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[JRT]

California's governor pledges to model an assault weapons ban on Texas abortion law

December 12, 2021
The Associated Press

California Gov. Gavin Newsom has pledged to empower private citizens to enforce a ban on the manufacture and sale assault weapons in the state, citing the same authority claimed by conservative lawmakers in Texas to outlaw most abortions once a heartbeat is detected.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Saturday pledged to empower private citizens to enforce a ban on the manufacture and sale of assault weapons in the state, citing the same authority claimed by conservative lawmakers in Texas to outlaw most abortions once a heartbeat is detected.

California has banned the manufacture and sale of many assault-style weapons for decades. A federal judge overturned that ban in June, ruling it was unconstitutional and drawing the ire of the state's Democratic leaders by comparing the popular AR-15 rifle to a Swiss Army knife as "good for both home and battle." California's ban remained in place while the state appealed.

Meanwhile, Republican lawmakers in Texas this year passed a law banning abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected, which normally occurs at about six weeks into pregnancy. The Texas law allows private citizens to enforce the ban, empowering them to sue abortion clinics and anyone else who "aids and abets" with the procedure.

Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the Texas law to remain in effect while abortion clinics sue to block it. That decision incensed Newsom, a Democrat who supports abortion rights.

"If states can now shield their laws from review by the federal courts that compare assault weapons to Swiss Army knives, then California will use that authority to protect people's lives, where Texas used it to put women in harm's way," Newsom said in a statement released by his office at 7 p.m. on Saturday.

Newsom said he has directed his staff to work with the state's Legislature and its Democratic attorney general to pass a law that would let private citizens sue to enforce California's ban on assault weapons. Newsom said people who sue could win up to $10,000 per violation plus other costs and attorneys fees against "anyone who manufactures, distributes, or sells an assault weapon" in California.

"If the most efficient way to keep these devastating weapons off our streets is to add the threat of private lawsuits, we should do just that," Newsom said.

The legal fight over the Texas abortion law has focused on its unusual structure and whether it improperly limits how the law can be challenged in court. Texas lawmakers handed responsibility for enforcing the law to private citizens, rather than state officials.

The case raised a complex set of issues about who, if anyone, can sue over the law in federal court, the typical route for challenges to abortion restrictions.

Newsom's gun proposal would first have to pass California's state Legislature before it could become law. The Legislature is not in session now and is scheduled to reconvene in January. It usually takes about eight months for new bills to pass the Legislature, barring special circumstances.

State Sen. Brian Dahle, a Republican from Bieber, would oppose the plan but predicted it could probably pass California's Democratic-dominated state Legislature. He said the proposal was most likely a stunt for Newsom to win favor with his progressive base of voters ahead of a possible run for president in the future.

"The right to bear arms is different than the right to have an abortion. The right to have an abortion is not a constitutional amendment. So I think he's way off base," Dahle said. "I think he's just using it as an opportunity to grandstand."

But Newsom's Saturday night declaration is a fulfilled prophecy for some gun rights groups who had predicted progressive states would attempt to use Texas' abortion law to restrict access to guns. That's why the Firearms Policy Coalition, a nonprofit group that advocates for gun rights, filed a brief with the U.S. Supreme Court opposing the Texas law.

"If Texas succeeds in its gambit here, New York, California, New Jersey, and others will not be far behind in adopting equally aggressive gambits to not merely chill but to freeze the right to keep and bear arms," attorney Erik Jaffe wrote on behalf of the Firearms Policy Coalition.

.

...

[DOR]

Biden to sign order to streamline government services to public

The Hill, Dec 13, 2021
https://thehill.com/homenews/adminis...ices-to-public

President Biden is signing an executive order on Monday intended to cut back on the bureaucracy around government services for the public such as renewing passports, applying for loans or changing names.

The order, which Biden will sign on Monday afternoon on camera, affects 36 "customer experience improvement commitments" across 17 federal agencies. The order targets various government services dealing with travel, retirement, business, health and updating personal information, according to a White House fact sheet.

For example, the order will call for a streamlined enrollment experience for retirees looking to enroll in Social Security, and it will allow retirees to more easily claim benefits online.

Taxpayers will be given new online tools to make filing more easy, and filers will have the option to schedule customer service callbacks instead of waiting on hold.

The order will call for Americans to be able to renew their passports online rather than dealing with print forms, and it will aim to streamline the process for travelers with urgent questions for the Transportation Security Administration (TSA).

The order will also aim to ease the bureaucracy around both student loans and business loans.

The order will create a single portal for the millions of individuals with student loan debt, and small-business owners will have a more streamlined process for working with the Small Business Administration on loans, grants and certifications.

Survivors of natural disasters will also no longer be required to complete forms with several agencies when applying for assistance, according to a White House fact sheet, and they will be able to file smartphone photos and use virtual inspections when filing claims.
= = = = =

Is that the sound of millions of cheering conservatives I hear, celebrating the president who streamlined the bureaucracy?
No, I didn't think I'd hear it over the sound of Fox News complaining about executive over-reach.

[Albany Rifles]

Taxpayers will be given new online tools to make filing more easy, and filers will have the option to schedule customer service callbacks instead of waiting on hold.

This alone is a game changer.

[zraver]

Taxpayers will be given new online tools to make filing more easy, and filers will have the option to schedule customer service callbacks instead of waiting on hold.

This alone is a game changer.

If it works. The government is using multiple systems using multiple computer languages located in multiple locations, some air-gapped designed by multiple different companies for multiple different functions. I remember how bad the Obamacare website rollout went. I smell boondoggle.

[TopHatter]

Taxpayers will be given new online tools to make filing more easy, and filers will have the option to schedule customer service callbacks instead of waiting on hold.

This alone is a game changer.

Those passport changes look pretty interesting.

Guess I should finally apply for one...looks like I might get exported for a few weeks to Germany sometime next year. Wozu zum Teufel brauchst du mich??

[Albany Rifles]

If it works. The government is using multiple systems using multiple computer languages located in multiple locations, some air-gapped designed by multiple different companies for multiple different functions. I remember how bad the Obamacare website rollout went. I smell boondoggle.

Help Desk Software has made leaps and bounds in the last 8 years. Our last helpdesk was considered state of the art when we rolled it out in 2009. By 2016 it was decrepit. And for my current system we moved to Service Now which integrates 29 desperate hardware and software systems into a single help desk system. It occurred seamlessly and allows for real time video chat with customers. This integration has really saved several million dollars and have several other government organizations evaluating it for their use.

Help desk services in 2021-22 are much different than 2013.

Here is their website if interested. It really is a banger. I've been in the help desk business for over 20 years and never experienced anything like this.

https://www.servicenow.com/

[TopHatter]

The MAGA Perversion of Patriotism
Making sense of the rise of the citizen’s arrest.

Diane Vargo may look like a fashion model, but she isn’t. For eight years, she’s been the principal of Mesquite Elementary School about 20 miles south of Tucson. It seems like an impressive school. Students from kindergarten through fifth grade can study in English or in a Chinese immersion program. The school has won awards. All seems normal, but as in so many places in 2021, it’s not.

In September, after a student who tested positive for COVID-19 was told he had to quarantine for several days, the boy’s father barged into the principal’s office and demanded that the kid be allowed back into school immediately. “I didn’t come here to challenge you, I came here to tell you this is not going to happen.” After the aggressive parent refused to leave, Vargo and her assistant attempted to get help, and were even more alarmed when the intruder told her that others were on their way, warning, “If you keep doing this, we’re going to have a big problem.” Two other men did arrive within a few minutes, one carrying military-style zip ties. They told Vargo that they were going to make a “citizens’ arrest.”

As it happens, the intruders were the ones arrested—by the police. Vargo has continued to receive threatening messages, such as an email reading: “Hi. Next time it will be a barrel pointed at your Nazi face.”

Journalism traditionally treats the two parties as equals, but Republicans are fabricating an alternate reality and sabo...
The same month, in Michigan, a meeting of the Barry-Eaton District Board of Health was disrupted when a man threatened to make a citizen’s arrest of a county health official after a school mask mandate was announced. That was mild compared with the death threats Genesee County officials have received over masks. And that, in turn, was less serious than what happened in Kent County, where someone tried to run a health official off the road.

Stories of threats and violence aimed at ordinary Americans who are simply serving on school boards, supervising elections, holding public office, opening a mobile vaccine clinic, or having the effrontery to be elected as secretary of state are not new. It’s a mashup of pandemic-induced mania, social media misinformation, Trump-incited disinhibition, and something in the water.

Every now and then, usually through the vehicle of tort law, someone is held accountable, most recently in the case involving the notorious liars at Gateway Pundit. The site is being sued by two election workers, mother and daughter, after Gateway Pundit identified them as the election officials in Fulton County, Georgia who supposedly pulled fraudulent ballots out of suitcases. These malicious lies, according to the pleading, “devastated” their reputations and “instigated a deluge of intimidation, harassment, and threats that has forced them to change their phone numbers, delete their online accounts, and fear for their physical safety.” One went into hiding. And just in time. Crowds with bullhorns showed up at their homes.

The citizen’s arrest has become a theme running through some of the most sinister of the recent plots. It has a long pedigree, originating in English common law. In the U.S., it has been codified in a number of ways by states. Some require that a bystander actually witness a felony in progress to undertake a citizen’s arrest. Others forbid it except in certain situations (such as a shopkeeper holding an armed robber until police arrive). Some critics, like Professor Ira Robbins, have argued that these laws are harmful, giving rise to racial profiling and other harms. The Ahmaud Arbery case would seem to vindicate his warnings

But the invocation of the citizen’s arrest as an excuse for political violence is new. Trump set this table with his “lock her up” chants in 2016, his accusations of treason against New York Times guest editorialists, the FBI, and anyone else who damaged his fragile psyche. His 2019 Twitter tantrum at Representative Adam Schiff was the gold standard: “I want Schiff questioned at the highest level for Fraud & Treason” he tweeted on a Sunday. He followed up the next morning with one saying, “Adam Schiff illegally made up a FAKE & terrible statement, pretended it to be mine as the most important part of my call to the Ukrainian President. . .Arrest for Treason?”

Back in 2020, when a gang of 14 right-wing nuts, drunk on Trump incitement, plotted to kidnap and possibly murder Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, they claimed that they were actually effecting a “citizen’s arrest.” In a normal world, such a claim would be instantly dismissed as risible. But we’re not in that world. We’re in the world where the sheriff of Barry County, Dar Leaf, who had appeared at the “Michigan Patriot Rally” with at least one of the suspects, seemed to think it had merit. “It’s just a charge, and they say a ‘plot to kidnap’ and you got to remember that,” Leaf told a local Fox affiliate. “Are they trying to kidnap? Because a lot of people are angry with the governor, and they want her arrested. So are they trying to arrest or was it a kidnap attempt?”

“Lots of people are angry with the governor,” he said. And then, as if the next words flowed logically, he added “and they want her arrested.” Right, because when we dislike the policies of duly elected officials, we arrest them?

The threats are proliferating. The Washington Post reported that lawmakers were subjected to 3900 threats in 2017. By 2020 that had more than doubled to 8600, and in 2021 the rate rose even faster. As Tim Alberta noted in his Atlantic profile of Representative Peter Meijer, the fear factor in Republican politics has dramatically changed. Without doubt, Republicans displayed a total lack of political courage in dealing with Trump from 2015 to the present. But because they didn’t stand up to him when the consequences would have been merely political, they/we now face a very different climate. Now they must fear for their safety and for that of their families. Describing a colleague who said he couldn’t vote to certify the 2020 election, Meijer said, “Remember, this wasn’t a hypothetical. You were casting that vote after seeing with your own two eyes what some of these people are capable of. If they’re willing to come after you inside the U.S. Capitol, what will they do when you’re at home with your kids?”

Many, perhaps most, of the members of the January 6 mob didn’t conceive of themselves as criminals or coup plotters (in contrast to those in the Oval Office). They thought they were vindicating democracy, not destroying it. As they were storming the Capitol, they were exchanging text and audio messages that reflected the treason talk Trump had normalized. One Army veteran involved in the attack said “We have about 30-40 of us. We are sticking together and sticking to the plan,” according to court documents. Another responded: “You are executing a citizen’s arrest. Arrest this assembly, we have probable cause for acts of treason, election fraud.”

It’s not enough to see these people as revolutionaries or criminals or dupes. Some may be all of those things, but there is a substrate of perverted patriotism here. The frequent invocation of the citizens’ arrest signifies a wish for legitimacy. They yearn to be responsible citizens, upholding the law and the Constitution and the duties of the individual. They have been corrupted, but that’s all the more reason for the rest of the American people to assert their uncorrupted patriotism more boldly. They must get active and defend the election workers, health care workers, school board members, journalists, politicians, secretaries of state, and anyone else who is being intimidated, hounded, or abused by the mob. If patriotism animates only the worst among us, we are lost.
________

[Parihaka]

Losing the Hispanics

[TopHatter]

Trump’s GOP Has Five Simple Tricks for Promoting Antisemitism
Why does America tolerate the GOP’s blatant antisemitism?

I again asked this question after listening to former President Trump’s unabashed antisemitism on fully display during an interview with Israeli journalist Barak Ravid. Here, Trump invoked the hateful “dual loyalty” trope, saying, “I’ll tell you, the Evangelical Christians love Israel more than the Jews in this country,” and complaining that The New York Times hates Israel in the same breath that he said the newspaper is run by Jews. He capped things off by reminiscing about when “Israel had absolute power over Congress.”

Trump had previously assured people that he’s “the least antisemitic person that you’ve ever seen in your entire life.” Of course, he also tweeted an image of Hillary Clinton’s face on top of a pile of cash next to the Star of David, “joked” that his son-in-law Jared Kushner, who is Jewish, is “more loyal to Israel than the United States,” and complained that American Jews who vote for Democrats show “great disloyalty” to Israel.

Maybe it’s just “economic anxiety”? Or maybe Trump’s hateful comments reflect a modern conservative movement that has gradually mainstreamed antisemitic conspiracies that create and inspire violent terrorists targeting Jews, yes, but also Muslims, immigrants of color and Black people.

We’re all “invaders” according to the vicious replacement theory spewed almost nightly on Tucker Carlson’s top-rated Fox News show without any pushback from corporate sponsors or media institutions. GOP elected officials, such as Marjorie Taylor Greene, who blamed Jews for using space lasers to start wildfires, and Paul Gosar, who is the friend of white nationalist and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes, openly endorse the theory as well. It’s the cornerstone of the QAnon movement, a national security threat, whose supporters are now running for office as Republicans.

This is just a lousy remake of the Elders of the Protocols of Zion, a debunked conspiracy that emerged from Russia at the beginning of the 20th century and claimed a small, international cabal of sinister Jews were using their wealth and connections to gain control of and weaken Western civilization. In 2021, it’s called “the deep state,” with Jews supposedly using immigrants of color, Muslims, feminists, and LGBTQ groups as their pawns in a plot to gain control of and weaken Western civilization by replacing white people, especially men, in Europe and America.

They’ve even updated the blood libel conspiracy for the modern era. The conservatives aligned with QAnon believe liberals are part of an international cabal of sex traffickers who bear the “mark of the beast,” and kidnap, molest and kill children. Asked if he would disavow QAnon, and thus many of his supporters, Trump infamously said he didn’t know enough to do so, adding, “What I do hear about it, they are very strongly against pedophilia.”

And so these conspiracies persist and flourish, radicalizing the likes of Ashili Babbitt, who showed up at the US Capitol on Jan. 6 committed to unleashing “the storm,” a QAnon codeword for violence, before being shot and killed by a Capitol police officer. They radicalized the man who came carrying an automatic weapon to a Washington DC pizzeria convinced he was going to find children kidnapped and enslaved by Hillary Clinton in its basement. The supposed “great replacement” radicalized the man who shot up a synagogue in Pittsburgh, killing 11 including Holocaust survivors because, he said, the Jews were bringing in “the invaders.”

Despite all this evidence of blatant antisemitism, Republicans nonetheless have been able to avoid being labeled antisemitic despite bathing in it nearly every day though a simple five-step plan: 1) Deny, 2) Project, 3) Deflect — those first three steps, by the way, are straight out of Roger Stone’s “rules” to “Admit nothing, deny everything, launch counterattack” — 4) Praise Israel, and 5) Attack Ilhan Omar.

These Republicans are following Trump’s lead. Recall, Trump also claimed he’s the least racist person in the world despite promoting the Birther conspiracy, running a campaign fueled by Islamophobia and anti-Mexican bigotry, telling four Congresswomen of color to “go back, where you came from” and lamenting the arrival of Black and brown immigrants from “shithole countries.” Republicans realized this strategy, often employed by 4-year-olds, works like gangbusters in an overwhelmed and timid media ecosystem where most journalists lack the courage and skills to push back and challenge power. The rare time there’s outrage, you just “flood the zone with shit,” as Steve Bannon advises, and the news cycle moves on, unable to keep up with all the daily outrages any one of which would have made Barack Obama a one-term president.

Second, the GOP has perfected projection, where they pivot and blame Democrats for all their sins and vile deeds. Just last week, GOP Rep. Scott Perry, who has been identified as one of Trump’s main coup minions, accused Congresswoman Ilhan Omar of being an antisemite and terrorist sympathizer. He did this on the heels of the House passing a bill condemning Islamophobia and Reps. Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene proudly doubling down on their anti-Muslim bigotry, which resulted in death threats against Omar. However, Perry has yet to condemn Gosar for his antisemitism or asked Matt Gaetz why he invited a Holocaust denier to attend the State of the Union.

Third, the GOP is able to deflect criticisms of antisemitism by claiming that they’re merely asking questions, joking, or speaking out against “the globalists” and “elites” seeking to crush the common man on behalf of the “deep state,” sometimes with a nod toward George Soros thrown in. It’s the same way “urban crime” means “violent Black people,” and “welfare queen” means “lazy Black woman abusing the system.” When that fails, they say they’re being politically incorrect and asking the hard questions necessary to protect our country, its values and its demographics from “those” seeking to wish us harm.

Fourth, Republicans have loudly emerged as the biggest defenders of Israel and accuse anyone, including Jews and especially progressives, who is critical of Israel’s policies of being antisemitic. But in fact, Republicans are really into Israel but they’re just not into Jews. In fact, Jews are just used as a convenient political and religious pawn to placate their real base, white Evangelical Christians, who believe Jews must control the Temple Mount, also known as Haram al-Sharif to Muslims, as one of the necessary pre-conditions of the Second Coming. Unfortunately, Israel has been successfully used as a wedge to split up natural alliances between some Jewish, Muslim and POC communities in America, who need to unite immediately to confront the rising tide and political power of white supremacists, who are coming after all of us, and who use antisemitic and Islamophobic conspiracies to gain recruits to their sick cause.

Finally, Republicans rely on the double standards that exist in American political, media and cultural institutions, including among all too many Democrats, when it comes to progressive women of color, as evidenced by Congresswoman Ilhan Omar. If you doubt this, I recommend you play the game: “What would happen if Ilhan Omar said this?” I’ll start. What would happen if Ilhan Omar openly called for the destruction of one of Jerusalem’s holiest sites, calling it an ”abomination”? She’d be thrown under the bus by Sen. Chuck Schumer, who’d reverse the bus and run over again.

But that’s exactly what Paul Gosar said last week with the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and it wasn’t even headline news. It’s a statement so inflammatory and dangerous, with the potential to inspire actual violence, that even the most hard-right politicians in Israel never say it out loud. Yet, here we are, still talking about Omar’s “controversial” tweets, but not a word on Gosar, who has yet to be condemned by GOP leadership for that, or his hateful tweet against AOC, or his keynote speech at a white nationalist conference.

Everyone has moved on from Trump’s latest antisemitic outburst because the zone is indeed flooded with shit, but our communities can’t afford to brush it off, laugh, refer to it as a “trip up,” or be complacent. These hateful words, mainstreamed, praised and promoted by our elected officials, are a green light for extremists to “stand back and stand by” as they prepare to unleash violence against fellow Americans.

The GOP’s antisemitism is fuel for their fire, and silence and apathy makes people into complicit co-arsonists.
_______

[TopHatter]

'Slow-motion insurrection': How GOP seizes election power

In the weeks leading up to the deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, a handful of Americans — well-known politicians, obscure local bureaucrats — stood up to block then-President Donald Trump’s unprecedented attempt to overturn a free and fair vote of the American people.

In the year since, Trump-aligned Republicans have worked to clear the path for next time.

In battleground states and beyond, Republicans are taking hold of the once-overlooked machinery of elections. While the effort is incomplete and uneven, outside experts on democracy and Democrats are sounding alarms, warning that the United States is witnessing a “slow-motion insurrection” with a better chance of success than Trump’s failed power grab last year.

They point to a mounting list of evidence: Several candidates who deny Trump’s loss are running for offices that could have a key role in the election of the next president in 2024. In Michigan, the Republican Party is restocking members of obscure local boards that could block approval of an election. In Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, the GOP-controlled legislatures are backing open-ended “reviews” of the 2020 election, modeled on a deeply flawed look-back in Arizona. The efforts are poised to fuel disinformation and anger about the 2020 results for years to come.

All this comes as the Republican Party has become more aligned behind Trump, who has made denial of the 2020 results a litmus test for his support. Trump has praised the Jan. 6 rioters and backed primaries aimed at purging lawmakers who have crossed him. Sixteen GOP governors have signed laws making it more difficult to vote. An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll showed that two-thirds of Republicans do not believe Democrat Joe Biden was legitimately elected as president.

The result, experts say, is that another baseless challenge to an election has become more likely, not less.

“It’s not clear that the Republican Party is willing to accept defeat anymore,” said Steven Levitsky, a Harvard political scientist and co-author of the book “How Democracies Die.” “The party itself has become an anti-democratic force.”

American democracy has been flawed and manipulated by both parties since its inception. Millions of Americans — Black people, women, Native Americans and others — have been excluded from the process. Both Republicans and Democrats have written laws rigging the rules in their favor.

This time, experts argue, is different: Never in the country's modern history has a a major party sought to turn the administration of elections into an explicitly partisan act.

Republicans who sound alarms are struggling to be heard by their own party. GOP Reps. Liz Cheney of Wyoming or Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, members of a House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection, are often dismissed as party apostates. Others have cast the election denialism as little more than a distraction.

But some local officials, the people closest to the process and its fragility, are pleading for change. At a recent news conference in Wisconsin, Kathleen Bernier, a GOP state senator and former elections clerk, denounced her party’s efforts to seize control of the election process.

“These made up things that people do to jazz up the base is just despicable and I don’t believe any elected legislator should play that game,” said Bernier.

LOCAL CONTROL

Bernier’s view is not shared by the majority of the Republicans who control the state Legislature in Wisconsin, one of a handful of states that Biden carried but Trump wrongly claims he won. Early in 2021, Wisconsin Republicans ordered their Legislative Audit Bureau to review the 2020 election. That review found no significant fraud. Last month, an investigation by the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty came to the same conclusion.

Still, many Republicans are convinced that something went wrong. They point to how the nonpartisan Wisconsin Elections Commission — which the GOP-led Legislature and then-Republican governor created eight years ago to run the state’s elections — changed guidance for local elections officers to make voting easier during the pandemic.

That's led to a struggle for control of elections between the state Legislature and the commission.

“We feel we need to get this straight for people to believe we have integrity,” said GOP Sen. Alberta Darling, who represents the conservative suburbs north of Milwaukee. “We’re not just trying to change the election with Trump. We’re trying to dig into the next election and change irregularities.”

Republicans are also remaking the way elections are run in other states. In Georgia, an election bill signed this year by the GOP governor gave the Republican-controlled General Assembly new powers over the state board of elections, which controls its local counterparts.

The law is being used to launch a review of operations in solidly-Democratic Fulton County, home to most of Atlanta, which could lead to a state takeover. The legislature also passed measures allowing local officials to remove Democrats from election boards in six other counties.

In Pennsylvania, the GOP-controlled legislature is undertaking a review of the presidential election, subpoenaing voter information that Democrats contend is an unprecedented intrusion into voter privacy. Meanwhile, Trump supporters are signing up for local election jobs in droves. One pastor who attended the Jan. 6 rally in the nation's capital recently won a race to become an election judge overseeing voting in a rural part of Lancaster County.

In Michigan, the GOP has focused on the state’s county boards of canvassers. The little-known committees’ power was briefly in the spotlight in November of 2020, when Trump urged the two Republican members of the board overseeing Wayne County, home to Democratic-bastion Detroit, to vote to block certification of the election.

After one of the Republican members defied Trump, local Republicans replaced her with Robert Boyd, who told The Detroit Free Press that he would not have certified Biden’s win last year.

Boyd did not return a call for comment.

A similar swap — replacing a traditional Republican with one who parroted Trump's election lies — occurred in Macomb County, the state’s third most populous county.

The Detroit News in October reported that Republicans had replaced their members on boards of canvassers in eight of Michigan's 11 most populous counties

Michigan officials say that if boards of canvassers don’t certify an election they can be sued and compelled to do so. Still, that process could cause chaos and be used as a rallying cry behind election disputes.

“They’re laying the groundwork for a slow-motion insurrection,” said Mark Brewer, an election lawyer and former chair of the Michigan Democratic Party.

The state’s top election official, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, warned: “The movement to cast doubt on the 2020 election has now turned their eyes ... to changing the people who were in positions of authority and protected 2020.”

TRUMP’S RETRIBUTION

That includes Benson.

Multiple Republicans have lined up to challenge her, including Kristina Karamo, a community college professor who alleged fraud in the 2020 elections and contended that the Jan. 6 attackers were actually antifa activists trying to frame Trump supporters.

Trump has been clear about his intentions: He is seeking to oust statewide officials who stood in his way and replace them with allies.

“We have secretary of states that did not do the right thing for the American people,” Trump, who has endorsed Karamo, told The Associated Press this month.

The most prominent Trump push is in Georgia, where the former president is backing U.S. Rep. Jody Hice, who voted against Biden's Electoral College victory on Jan. 6, in a primary race against the Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger. He rejected Trump's pleas to “find” enough votes to declare him the winner.

Trump also encouraged former U.S. Sen. David Perdue to challenge Gov. Brian Kemp in the GOP primary. Kemp turned down Trump's entreaties to declare him the victor in the 2020 election.

In October, Jason Shepherd stepped down as chair of the Cobb County GOP after the group censured Kemp. “It’s shortsighted. They’re not contemplating the effects of this down the line,” Shepherd said in an interview. “They want their pound of flesh from Brian Kemp because Brian Kemp followed the law.”

In Nevada, multiple lawsuits seeking to overturn Biden's victory were thrown out by judges. A suit aimed at overturning his congressional loss was filed by Jim Marchant, a former GOP state lawmaker now running to be secretary of state, and it too was dismissed. The current Republican secretary of state, Barbara Cegavske, who is term limited, found there was no significant fraud in the contests.

Marchant said he's not just seeking to become a Trump enabler, though he was endorsed by Trump in his congressional bid. “I've been fighting this since before he came along,” Marchant said of Trump. “All we want is fair and transparent elections.”

In Pennsylvania, Republican state Sen. Doug Mastriano, who organized buses of Trump supporters for Trump's rally near the White House on Jan. 6, has signaled he’s running for governor. In Arizona, state Rep. Mark Finchem's bid to be secretary of state has unnerved many Republicans, given that he hosted a daylong hearing in November 2020 that featured Trump adviser Rudolph Giuliani. Former news anchor Kari Lake, who repeats Trump's election falsehoods, is running to succeed Republican Gov. Doug Ducey, who stood up to Trump's election-year pressure and is barred from another term.

Elsewhere in Arizona, Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer, who defended his office against the conspiratorial election review, has started a political committee to provide financial support to Republicans who tell the truth about the election. But he's realistic about the persistence of the myth of a stolen election within his party's base.

“Right now,” Richer said, “the incentive structure seems to be strongly in favor of doing the wrong thing.”

HIGH STAKES RACES FOR GOVERNOR

In Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, Democratic governors have been a major impediment to the GOP's effort to overhaul elections. Most significantly, they have vetoed new rules that Democrats argue are aimed at making it harder for people of color to vote.

Governors have a significant role in U.S. elections: They certify the winners in their states, clearing way for the appointment of Electoral College members. That raises fears that Trump-friendly governors could try to certify him — if he were to run in 2024 and be the GOP nominee — as the winner of their state's electoral votes regardless of the vote count.

Additionally, some Republicans argue that state legislatures can name their own electors regardless of what the vote tally says.

But Democrats have had little success in laying out the stakes in these races. It's difficult for voters to believe the system could be vulnerable, said Daniel Squadron of The States Project, a Democratic group that tries to win state legislatures.

“The most motivated voters in America today are those who think the 2020 election was stolen,” he said. “Acknowledging this is afoot requires such a leap from any core American value system that any of us have lived through.”
___________