2022 Midterm election

it's ALL wedge issues?! CRT etc

see voter suppress steal

zinke??!

see big lie 5

tag zombied?

an ah? 3 23

in the United States, Christianity isn't necessarily synonymous with right-wing politics. The Rev. Al Sharpton and the Rev. Jesse Jackson are ordained Baptist ministers. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) and centrist Democratic President Joe Biden consider themselves devout Catholics, as does Sister Mary Scullion — a Catholic nun and Philadelphia-based activist known for supporting liberal and progressive causes.

But the Republican Party, since the early 1980s, has closely allied itself with far-right white evangelicals and the Religious Right movement. And author/UC Berkeley history professor David Hollinger, in an interview with The Nation's Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins published on March 29, stresses that white evangelicals are moving more and more to the right at a time when the United States on the whole is becoming increasingly secular.

Hollinger, author of the 2022 book, "Christianity's American Fate: How Religion Became More Conservative and Society More Secular," told The Nation, "The Republican Party has cultivated white evangelicals as a key voting bloc, and it has worked wonderfully. The epistemic closures in which many evangelicals lived in the 1970s or 1950s or 1930s were formidable, but they were not encouraged and relied upon by a major political party, or kept enclosed by the availability of Fox News and other mass media freed of the 'Fairness Doctrine' that regulated news media until the Reagan Administration."

The author/UC Berkeley professor notes that within Christianity, there is a major divide between fundamentalist evangelicals and non-evangelical Mainline Protestants — who he also refers to as "ecumenical Protestants." In the United States, Mainline denominations include Episcopalians, Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians and the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church.

Hollinger told The Nation, "If the ecumenicals could reclaim the franchise, so to speak, the country would be a lot better off. Non-Christians may think they don't have a dog in that fight, but they do. Even at this time, when Christians are a smaller proportion of the American population than ever before, lots of power is in the hands of anyone who convincingly claims to speak for Christianity…. Lots of post-Protestants and post-Catholics — people who were culturally formed by Protestantism or Catholicism but no longer affirm their ancestral faith — are splendid allies for liberal Protestants. They can work together."

Hollinger argues that the United States' 2022 midterms were largely a rejection of authoritarian "Christian nationalism."

The author observes, "About 80 percent of evangelical voters supported Republican candidates in the midterm elections, which is the same level of support they gave to Trump as a presidential candidate…. Yet here's the big thing about the midterms: In the electorate as a whole, the strong support for abortion rights indicates a willingness of many voters to resist the theocratic trend of recent American politics. Since my book calls for exactly such resistance, I am heartened by this result. Yet the struggle to save democracy is far from over, and evangelically inspired Christian nationalism remains a formidable threat to it.”

OMG

cdv an 2 23

... But DeSantis never really wanted to stop the virtually nonexistent crime of voter impersonation or fraud. His goal, and that of the GOP nationally, has been to strike fear into the hearts of potential non-Republican voters to ensure election victories for his party.

In states like Alabama, Mississippi, and 20 others where the GOP controls both chambers of the state legislature and the governor’s mansion, intimidating voter-tracking police squads could be the next play in an ongoing effort to undemocratically control elections. Such policing efforts would without question disproportionately target communities of color.

While the expected midterm “red wave” of Republican victories didn’t occur nationally in 2022, the same can’t be said for the South. As documented by the Institute for Southern Studies’Facing South,the GOP actually outperformed expectations, expanding its hold on multiple state legislatures in the region. Prior to the election, analysts had predicted that the Republicans might gain 40 seats across the South; in fact, they gained at least 55. Not only did they take control of at least 25 state legislative chambers — the lone exception, Virginia’s state senate where Democrats retained a two-seat majority — but they also built or maintained supermajorities in legislative chambers in Florida, Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina, and West Virginia. This means that even if a Democratic governor is in office, Republican legislators can pass extremist bills into law despite a gubernatorial veto.

None of this is spontaneous, nor is it random. Tens of millions of dollars or more from super-rich conservative donors and right-wing foundations have poured into voter-suppression and election-manipulation efforts. Heritage Action for America, a conservative legislative-writing group linked to the Heritage Foundation, spent upwards of $24 million in 2021 and 2022 in key swing states to help Republicans write bills that would restrict voting, targeting Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, and Texas. Consider it anything but a coincidence that the language in voter-suppression bills in those states and elsewhere sounded eerily familiar. As the Guardian reported, at least 11 voter suppression bills in at least eight states were due, in part or whole, to advocacy and organizing by Heritage Action. A *New York Times* investigation found thatin Georgia, “Of the 68 bills pertaining to voting, at least 23 had similar language or were firmly rooted in the principles laid out in the Heritage group’s letter” that offered outlines and details for how to limit voting access.

Contemporary voter suppression efforts, however, go significantly beyond just trying to prevent people from voting or making it harder for them to do so. Credit that, at least in part, to the determination of so many Blacks, Latinos, and Native Americans to vote despite restrictions imposed by the states. Consequently, Republican legislators now seek to control — that is, manipulate — election administration, too.Their tactics include the harassment of election workers, far-right activists seeking positions as election officials, and various other potentially far-reaching legal maneuvers.

In fact, in recent voting, attacks on election workers, officials, and volunteers have become so prevalent that a new national organization, the Election Officials Legal Defense Network (EOLDN), was formed to protect them. EOLDN provides attorneys and other kinds of assistance to such officials when they find themselves under attack....

https://redgreenandblue.org/2022/11/16/league-conservation-voters-wave-election-2022-wasnt-red-blue-green/

key results in priority races:

9 out of 11 Dirty Dozen members defeated [Georgia still to be decided]
10 of 12 Dirty Dozen in the States members defeated
5 out of 7 Senate races won [Georgia still to be decided]
28 out of 34 General Election House races won [3 still to be called]
10 out of 11 Governors
8 out of 9 state legislative campaigns won [3 still to be called]
4 out of 7 House primaries won

...2022 By the Numbers

This cycle, LCV Victory Fund and affiliated entities contacted millions of voters through more than 2 million door knocks, over 6 million pieces of mail, over 800,000 phone calls, and over 160 television, digital, and radio ads.

Catherine Cortez Masto wins re-election in Nevada Senate - League of Conservation Voters Victory Fund$100 million invested in priority races for the 2021/2022 election cycle – including:

$26.5 million invested in 8 Senate races

$19.5 million invested in 19 Governors races

$9.2 million invested in 37 General Election House races and 7 House primaries

$8.8 million invested in state legislative races

$7.6 million invested in other state and local races

$27 million raised directly for pro-environment candidates through GiveGreen

$2 million invested in GreenRoots member mobilization (see more here)

league of conservation voters victory fund - adam laxalt defeated midterm election

2022 LCV Victory Fund defeated at least 9 of the 12 members of the 2022 federal Dirty Dozen list of the worst anti-environment and anti-democracy candidates:

Blake Masters (AZ Sen)

Joe O’Dea (CO Sen)

George Logan (CT-05)

Amanda Adkins (KS-03)

Karoline Leavitt (NH-01)

Yvette Herrell (NM-02)

Adam Laxalt (NV Sen)

Mehmet Oz (PA Sen)

Tiffany Smiley (WA Sen)

In the Georgia Senate race, Dirty Dozen member Herschel Walker received fewer votes than Sen. Warnock, but the race will be decided in a runoff on December 6th.

In the states, LCV state affiliates defeated 10 of 12 members of the Dirty Dozen in the States:

Bob Stefanowski (CT Gov)

Paul LePage (ME Gov)

Dan Cox (MD Gov)

Matthew DePerno (MI AG)

Jim Marchant (NC SOS)

Mark Ronchetti (NM Gov)

Betsy Johnson and Christine Drazan (OR Gov)

Doug Mastriano (PA Gov)

Tim Michels (WI Gov)

The story behind the numbers

We achieved all three of our top priorities this cycle:

1) Protect the Senate majority & elect new champions ✔

2) Defend pro-environment governors & elect new champions ✔

3) Protect as many incumbent House champions as possible & elect new champions ✔ (and we beat expectations!)

https://www.eenews.net/articles/u-s-climate-target-achievable-if-congress-flips-report/

chris hayes trump scuu-rewed you GOP

In the days before the 2022 midterm elections, anti-MAGA pundits ranging from MSNBC’s Mehdi Hasan to “Real Time” host Bill Maher had a dire warning: If enough election deniers and “Stop the Steal” conspiracy theorists prevail on Tuesday, November 8, they will attempt a coup in the 2024 presidential election. Their message was that “democracy is on the ballot"; Maher stressed that authoritarian despots like Hungary’s Viktor Orbán and Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan were voted into office and argued that their U.S. counterparts in the MAGA movement, similarly, should not be taken lightly.

The 2022 midterms, however, brought neither a gigantic red wave nor the “blue tsunami” that liberal/progressive activist and filmmaker Michael Moore was hoping for — although Moore was certainly right that the abortion issue did make a difference and benefited Democrats. As of Thursday morning, November 9, it remains to be seen which party will control Congress’ two branches in 2023, but Republicans definitely aren’t going to pick up the 40 or 50 U.S. House seats that they were fantasizing about.

“Stop the Steal” conspiracy theorists suffered a lot of losses on Election Night, including three of the MAGA gubernatorial candidates Hasan warned against: Tudor Dixon in Michigan, Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania and Tim Michels in Wisconsin. But in her analysis for the Washington Post, published the next morning, reporter Amy Gardner pointed out that “election deniers” enjoyed their share of victories as well. One of them was far-right Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, who was reelected.

“Among the more than 150 election deniers projected to have won by midnight: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.) and Rep. Greg Pence (Ind.), the brother of former vice president Mike Pence,” Gardner explains. “But some of the most outspoken election deniers sustained defeat in races that had been seen as winnable for Republicans when the year began, including Doug Mastriano, who lost his bid for Pennsylvania governor. Candidates who have questioned or refused to accept President Biden’s victory — 51 percent of the 569 GOP nominees analyzed by The Washington Post, 291 in total — ran in every region of the country and in nearly every state.”

Gardner continues, “Most of the victorious election deniers campaigned on a range of issues, notably inflation, abortion and crime. Voters who supported them did not necessarily do so because of their stance on 2020. But the candidates’ views on election integrity could have lasting consequences for U.S. democracy.”

The Post reporter notes that “unofficial projections” on Election Night “showed that election deniers will amount to a sizable majority within the House Republican caucus, with enormous sway over the choice of the nation’s next speaker should Republicans claim control of the chamber.”

“Tuesday’s result reflected the tricky political calculus of election denialism within the GOP,” Gardner observes. “It was a virtual requirement for many Republican candidates seeking their party’s nomination, given the importance of a Trump endorsement. Prominent Republicans who defied the former president, notably Rep. Liz Cheney (Wyo.), were defeated by internal party challenges. But it was not clear that claiming the 2020 election was rigged benefited candidates in tight general elections.”

edit bd an 12 22

Before last week’s successful vote for the omnibus spending bill, which will keep the government running through September, there was a bit of concern that it might not exceed the necessary 60-vote threshold in the Senate. In the end, 18 Republicans voted for it.

There was no doubt about its passage in the House. (Legislation there needs a simple majority; the Democrats still had that during the lame-duck session.) Even so, nine House Republicans voted for it.

Those who voted no, like New York’s Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, still reaped the benefits of the nearly $2 trillion spending bill. The congresswoman asked for and got an earmark worth $20 million.

Most of the rest of the funds earmarked by opponents of the omnibus spending bill, about $2.8 billion, according to Roll Call, were co-sponsored or sponsored by 110 House Republicans. The Senate’s Bill Cassidy, Thom Tillis and Cynthia Hyde-Smith also voted no, but asked for and received earmarks to the tune of $391 million.

OK, why am I bringing this up?

A piece of the action

It seems to me that the vote for the omnibus bill revealed a desire among a goodly number of Republicans to bring home the bacon.

That’s worth pondering.

During the Obama years, everything the Republicans did was in opposition to the Democrats, even if the Democrats were bringing to the floor legislation the Republicans previously supported. If the result was no bacon, well, so be it. (The Republicans spearheaded the effort to deep-six earmarks. The Democrats revived them last year.)

Biden’s tenure began with some resistance, but Mitch McConnell hasn’t been as committed, when it comes to spending, as he was during the Obama years. (The Senate minority leader said in 2010 that the top GOP goal was making Obama a one-term president.) For the omnibus vote, he was downright wishy-washy. He said voting for it was a good idea but could imagine waiting till the next congress.

Kevin McCarthy, who is vying to become the next speaker, vowed to kill off future bills supported by Senate Republicans who voted for the omnibus. He said that while knowing full well that 110 House Republicans would bring home the bacon after the bill’s passage.

Some Senate Republicans blamed McConnell for poor leadership. Utah’s Mike Lee wanted to punt the omnibus into next year after a Republican House is sworn in. But then 18 of his colleagues voted for it. “Our party leadership turned on Republican voters, turned on the Republican base, turned on most Republican senators,” Lee said.

Not really, though. Mitch McConnell didn’t do anything 18 Senators didn’t want. He didn’t do anything 110 House Republicans didn’t want.

They all wanted a piece of the action.

No longer believable

But why now? What makes this time different?

A possible answer arises from the midterms.

The Republicans expected to perform better among independent voters. According to the AP, they won 38 percent of indies in 2022. The Democrats, in contrast, won 51 percent in 2018. The party accustomed to enjoying a backlash didn’t enjoy one this time. They lost indies in this year’s midterm by two stunning percentage points.

The AP report goes on to suggest that indie voters broke this time for the Democrats, because the Republicans’ campaigns were almost entirely negative. They attempted to yoke Democratic candidates to inflation, gas prices and Joe Biden’s soft job approval numbers. While the Republicans were good at spelling out problems facing the country, according to the AP, they didn’t spell out solutions.

“You’ve got to tell them what you’re going to do,” David Winston, a GOP pollster, told the AP. “Somehow the Republican campaigns managed not to do that. And that’s a real serious problem.”

Eh, maybe.

Barack Obama and the Democrats had solutions galore during the 2010 midterms, but their problem-solving prowess did not prevent their “shellacking.” Indies this year didn’t blame Biden for inflation and high prices, according to the AP. It’s hard to imagine America’s first Black president getting that degree of the benefit of the doubt.

Indies just didn’t believe him.

Then again, Obama presided over an economy teetering on the fixtures of “neoliberalism,” which is to say, on tax cuts, deregulation and minimal “intervention” by the state. The pandemic changed that. At its peak, the US government floated more than 70 percent of payrolls. By the time Biden said more could be done to juice the economy, voters were already primed for more “Big Government.”

Once indie voters – or “respectable white people”– saw that active government could improve their lives, not just other people’s lives, the GOP’s anti-government rhetoric probably sounded old, even archaic.

So I don’t think indies broke for the Democrats because the Democrats had solutions. They broke for the Democrats, because, unlike in 2010, indie voters no longer believed the Republicans.

Thinking up something new

In his bid for the speakership, Kevin McCarthy is pandering to the party’s extreme right, that is, members of his conference who apparently don’t care about bringing home the bacon. The point of their existence isn’t getting a piece of the action. It’s saying no.

If that sounds like something a dozen years old, that’s because it is.

Meanwhile, other Republicans, especially in the Senate, even Mitch McConnell, the “gravedigger of democracy,” seem to understand that the times are a-changin’. Lying about the Democrats while trusting indie voters to trust them – that combo isn’t working anymore. The party of no must rethink the utility of no. No works if it results in Democratic defeat. No doesn’t work if it defeats the party of no.

Thinking up something new is going to take time, though.

Until then, the Republicans got a piece of the action.

Ralph Nader:Yeah. Well, there are millions of people who don’t buy it. We need tens of millions of people who don’t buy it. We need people talking to one another in the neighborhoods. We need people to turn out for town meetings. There are all kinds of jurisdictions in this country that allow for the referendum to be stocked with all kinds of progressive legislation at the state and local level. Most people don’t even know about it. They don’t even use it. Why? Because our schools don’t begin teaching these children civic knowledge, civic skills, and civic experience. Learn by doing.

All of this comes down to how much time do people spend to produce a deliberative democracy that wages peace and justice, equality and foreseeing and forestalling the perils for our posterity like climate disruption. That’s what it comes down to. If we don’t address it at that level, if we don’t highlight the victories of the people over powerful interests that occur from time to time in this country, we’re just documenting despair, producing discouragement, producing withdrawal from the political system, and people then just dive into their own discouraging lives and watch entertainment, bet on sports. We gotta turn it around.

The nice thing about this approach is you only have to turn around a supermajority of 535 people. You know what they want more than anything else. They want to win, and that means votes. So you focus votes to nullify the effect of money. I mean, look at the victory of Summer Lee coming out of Pittsburgh. She’s 32 years old and she’s going to be the next representative in the House from an area around Pittsburgh. She was opposed by corporations. She took on the dark side of the United Steelworkers. They opposed her.

APAC put $1 million to $2 million just before the election to defeat her. She beat them all. How? She developed a grassroots coalition based on the principle that they all bleed the same color. It doesn’t matter what labels they put on themselves. She forged this coalition and beat them all. It’s a spectacular story, which The New York Times is not spending much time reporting on. They’re too obsessed with Taylor Greene, the madcap representative from Georgia, putting her on the cover of The New York Times Magazine.

They give all kinds of attention to crazy right-wing groups and institutes. They give people the impression nothing’s happened on the progressive side during the election period. So Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh is not Ann Arbor, it’s not Cambridge. It has a lot of conservatives, and she beat them all. Energy. Civic energy is what’s needed. You have 82% of Republicans against Citizens United, which is a Supreme Court decision over a decade ago that said corporations could give unlimited money for or against candidates in elections. Unlimited. A lot of it dark money.

https://www.eenews.net/articles/how-beating-up-big-oil-helped-dems-hold-the-senate/

Rolling Stone

The Most Dangerous Republicans on the Ballot

Touting an endorsement from Trump and QAnon figure Gen. Michael Flynn, DePerno's proposed platform as attorney general is also informed by...

no lnx

DEMOCRACY DESTROYERS

The Most Dangerous Republicans on the Ballot

You know about Herschel Walker, Blake Masters, and J.D. Vance. Here are 12 other Republicans who could to take an axe to democracy should they win on Tuesday

BY TIM DICKINSON, NIKKI MCCANN RAMIREZ, RYAN BORT

NOVEMBER 8, 2022

IT WAS MORE than a little troubling when Marjorie Taylor Greene, someone who had demonstrated an affinity for QAnon while pushing several other conspiracy theories, was elected to Congress in 2020. The House of Representatives voted to strip her of her committee assignments shortly after her term began, and even the office of House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy called her views “deeply disturbing.”

A lot can change in two years.

The Republican Party is now totally in thrall of extremists and conspiracy theorists, including former President Donald Trump, who made professing a belief that the 2020 election was stolen is a requirement for anyone looking to have good standing in the MAGA-fied GOP. The party-wide embrace of un-reality has birthed a slate of midterm candidates rife with QAnon adherents, election deniers, and other far-right conservatives hell-bent on destroying democracy — and with it the rights of millions of Americans.

The GOP brass is along for the ride. McCarthy even promised on Monday that Greene will be sitting on committees in the next Congress. Her brand of extremism is no longer “deeply disturbing” — it’s the Republican party line. Below is a list of some of the most dangerous Republican candidates toeing it as they run for both for positions in Congress and in state-wide positions of power.

Kari Lake

What she’s running for: Arizona governor

Why she’s so problematic: Lake is a 53-year-old former TV journalist who brings an attractive patina to far-right MAGA politics. Most notably, she’s not very interested in facts. During the pandemic she promoted herself with a logo of a burning mask and touted the virtues of quack treatments like hydroxychloroquine. She responded to an election investigation that found no fraud in Maricopa County with a demand to have the state’s election “decertified.” She has called for her opponent, the current secretary of state, to be jailed based on similar nonsense.

On the border, Lake has vowed to lead a military response to undocumented immigration, even without approval from the federal government. “As soon as my hand comes off the Bible, we’re going to send the Arizona National Guard troops,” Lake told CPAC attendees this year. She alleged a “sovereignty” of the state of Arizona, and declared: “We will take the fight to the federal government.”

Trump absolutely loves her, to the point that rumors have swirled that he could tap her as his running mate should he run in 2024.

Likelihood she’ll win: Polls show Lake with a small but consistent lead over Democrat Katie Hobbs.

What to drink if she does: A magnum of mescal.

Tim Michels

What he’s running for: Wisconsin governor

Why he’s so problematic: Wisconsin has been the beta test for national Republican strategies against democracy. The GOP has managed to turn a 50-50 swing state, through gerrymandering, into a fortress of MAGA power. The current governor, Democrat Tony Evers, has been holding back a flood, vetoing GOP-passed bills at a record clip.

Michels, a construction executive with longtime political ambitions, was caught on tape recently promising supporters: “Republicans will never lose another election in Wisconsin after I’m elected governor. (“They’re looking to impose one-party rule with zero accountability to voters,” Hillary Clinton tweeted in response, “and they’re not being subtle about it.”)

Michaels also has a long record of anti-LGBTQ rhetoric, insisting in a past senatorial debate that LGBTQ families shouldn’t “bring it out of your house, and onto the public street,” because “I believe in family values.” More recently, he’s railed against the “liberal” media, responding to an expose of his record with a call to “get out on the streets with pitchforks and torches.”

Common and John Legend Talk Words + Music

Presented By Audible

The longtime friends and collaborators connect in-person for the first time since the pandemic, reflecting on their music, artistic vulnerability, and the importance of championing cultural diversity in America.

Search for Widespread Voter Fraud Finds Very Little Voter Fraud

Lisa Murkowski Wins Reelection in Alaska, Defeating Trump-Backed Rival

Trump Is Pissed Republicans Keep Telling Him to Stay Away from Georgia

Likelihood he wins: Late polling shows a tossup.

What to drink if he does: There’s not enough Pabst in the world.

Mark Finchem

What office: Arizona secretary of state

Why he’s so problematic: A member of the Oath Keepers who marched in D.C. on Jan. 6 and remains a steadfast proponent of the Big Lie, Finchem is striving to be the top election official in Arizona. He is an ultra-MAGA election denier who could tip the scales against democracy in favor of authoritarianism — especially in a state that’s turned into ground zero for false claims of election fraud.

Finchem has said he was “honored” to have the endorsement of Andrew Torba, the antisemitic, Christian nationalist founder of Gab, the hate-filled social media network. He has compared progressive criticism of conservatives, and “cancel culture,” to the Holocaust. Finchem has also drawn criticism for appearing at a fundraiser with conspiracy theorists including 9/11 “truthers,” and for himself spouting QAnon beliefs about child-trafficking Democrats.

Likelihood he wins: The latest polls show Finchem a half-dozen points off the lead.

What to drink if he does: Make yourself the worm in a vat of tequila.

Jim Marchant

What office: Nevada secretary of state

Why he’s so problematic: Marchant is a former congressional candidate who claimed, without evidence, to have been cheated out of a House seat in 2020. He’s the president of the America First Secretary of State Coalition, a collection of Big Lie candidates that also includes Finchem. Linked to QAnon by the Las Vegas Sun, Marchant says he would not have certified Biden’s win in 2020. In the name of election “integrity,” he’s proposed reviving a practice — common in the Jim Crow South — to “wipe out the voter rolls completely and then have everybody re-register.”

Likelihood he wins: Marchant is trailing by three points in a pair of recent polls.

What do drink if he does: Fuck liquor. Fire up the gravity bong with some legal Las Vegas kind bud, and launch yourself into oblivion along with our democracy.

Doug Mastriano

What he’s running for: Pennsylvania governor

Why he’s so problematic: Mastriano is a Christian-nationalist state legislator who was reportedly Donald Trump’s “point person” in the effort to assemble Pennsylvania’s fake slate of Electoral College votes for 2020. Prior to the events of Jan. 6, Mastriano appeared with a far-right prayer group, imploring God to help Republicans “seize the power.” Mastriano then chartered buses to take supporters to D.C., where he was billed as a speaker and himself reportedly crossed police lines at the Capitol.

Mastriano, a steadfast Big Lie proponent, is an open threat to electoral democracy. He pitches himself to MAGA voters as being able to hand-select Pennsylvania’s next secretary of state — i.e. its top election authority. He’d also have sole authority to certify (or refuse to certify) Pennsylvania’s next Electoral College slate. It’s a scary proposition considering Mastriano is tied to a medley of far-right charismatic Christian apostles and prophets who see him as a God-sent militant to lead a Christian takeover of the state, and spur on one for the entire nation.

Likelihood he wins: Polls consistently show Mastriano trailing Democrat Josh Shapiro. Upsetting him would take the miracle his backers are praying for.

What to drink if he does: Drown yourself in a whole ass keg of Yeungling.

Eric Schmitt

What he’s running for: U.S. Senate in Missouri

Why he’s so problematic: Did Trump want Eric Schmitt to win the GOP primary for Senate in Missouri? Sort of! The most notable moment of the state attorney general’s campaign to head to Washington may have been the quasi-nod the former president gave both him and Eric Greitens, whom Schmitt defeated a day later. He’ll now likely be a U.S. senator, which is troubling for several reasons. For one, he’s a right-wing culture warrior who has promised “to stop the radical cancel culture agenda being advanced by the left.” He also used his post as attorney general to sue Missouri schools implementing pandemic mitigation efforts, attempted to have the Affordable Care Act dismissed, and threatened to sue the city of Kansas City if it gives financial help to city employees seeking out-of-state abortions.

It shouldn’t be surprising that Schmitt is also an election denier, and in addition to being part of the slew of attorneys general who filed lawsuits attempting to overturn President Biden’s win in various states, served as the vice chair of a dark money group whose policy outfit organized thousands of robocalls urging people to join the “Stop the Steal” Jan. 6 protest.

Likelihood he wins: Almost certain. Schmitt currently holds a double-digit lead over Democrat Trudy Busch Valentine in the red state.

What to drink if he does: Just a whole lot of Budweiser.

Kristina Kamaro

What she’s running for: Michigan secretary of state

Why she’s so problematic: It’s hard to be more extreme than Kristina Kamaro, the Trump-endorsed Republican running for secretary of state in Michigan. She’s been connected to QAnon, and has made a series of outlandish claims that wouldn’t be out of place in darkest corners of conspiracy forums, including that performers like Cardi B and Billie Eilish are putting children “under a satanic delusion.” She’s also ascribed satanism to abortion, calling the practice “child sacrifice,” and spoken about a belief in “demonic possession.”

Kamaro is an devout election denier, and has preempted Tuesday’s midterm by claiming without evidence that the result will be plagued by “illegal votes.” She even filed a lawsuit trying to prevent absentee votes from being counted. The suit was dismissed on Monday, with Wayne County Circuit Court Judge Timothy Kenny writing that Kamaro didn’t produce a “shred of evidence.”

If Kamaro wins on Tuesday, she would be set to take control of the Michigan’s election systems, which could mean curtains for democracy in the crucial swing state.

Likelihood she’ll win: Low. She’s trailing incumbent Jocelyn Benson by a wide margin.

What to drink if she does: Holy water.

Joe Kent

Why he’s so problematic: A regular Tucker Carlson guest, Kent has promised followers that as a congressman he would launch a full-fledged investigation into unfounded allegations of fraud in the 2020 election, and recently appeared at a rally supporting Jan. 6 defendants. Kent’s ties with extremist groups have followed his campaign. He’s been forced to address associations with white nationalist figures like Nick Fuentes and Patriot Prayer founder Joey Gibb, and was caught paying “consulting” fees to a someone who had been a member of the Proud Boys. There’s also evidence that Kent may have negotiated a deal with the far-right website Gab to boost his followers on the platform. Fortunately for Kent, he’s running in a district that has been held by Republicans for the last five elections.

Likelihood he wins: It’s all but guaranteed.

What to drink if he does: The driest, hoppiest IPA you’ve ever had, but at room temperature.

Don Bolduc

What he’s running for: U.S. Senate in New Hampshire

Why he’s so problematic: Bolduc, a retired Army general, ran his campaign for the Republican Party’s nomination for Senate in New Hampshire as a hard-and-fast election denier. “I signed a letter with 120 other generals and admirals saying Trump won the election, and damnit I stand by my word,” he said during an Aug. 14 GOP debate. He narrowly won the primary, after which he immediately changed course, saying “definitely” that the 2020 election was not stolen.

In other words, Bolduc is full of shit. He also seems primed to allege the 2022 election was rigged should he lose to Democrat Maggie Hassan. He’s currently trailing Hassan, which is why Democrats were hoping he’d win his primary, but if he wins it will likely mean Republicans will have taken control of the chamber, with Bolduc entrenching himself as another senator fighting to unravel democracy on behalf of the former president.

Likelihood he wins: Bolduc is the underdog, but polling averages show him within striking distance of Hassan.

What to drink if he does: A no-nonsense shot of whiskey.

Matt DePerno

What he’s running for: Michigan attorney general

Why he’s so problematic: Election conspiracy theorist Matt DePerno is trying to turn his denial of Trump’s 2020 election loss into a position as Michigan’s attorney general. He filed a lawsuit based on the conspiracy theory that Dominion Voting Systems tampered with voting machines in order to produce favorable results for Biden, but it was he who was allegedly tampering with voting equipment in the aftermath of the election.

DePerno is one of a series of candidates running for office in Michigan on the coattails of Trump’s “Big Lie.” Republicans in the state have spent the last two years trying to reshape election oversight, and DePerno could have the power to make it happen should he be elected. He’s already promised to prosecute a list of Democratic politicians including Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer and his election opponent, current Attorney General Dana Nessel.

Touting an endorsement from Trump and QAnon figure Gen. Michael Flynn, DePerno’s proposed platform as attorney general is also informed by culture war grievances. He’s promised to outlaw critical race theory and end any Covid mandates in the state.

Likelihood he wins: Nessel holds a narrow lead, but the race could go either way.

What to drink if he does: a Great Lake-sized glass of anything

J.R. Majewski

What he’s running for: U.S. House in Ohio

Why he’s so problematic: Majewski is a devoted Trump supporter and conspiracy theorist whose affinity for extremism has defined his campaign since its inception. Reports emerged in May of this year that he attended the Jan. 6 “Stop The Steal” rally challenging President Trump’s 2020 election loss. He’s attempted to distance himself from his public support for QAnon, but video emerged of him declaring that he believed “in everything that’s been put out from Q.” He also said on video that he “wanted nothing more than to go in [the Capitol]” on Jan. 6, but refrained because his companions “had physical limitations.” Majewski’s campaign was dealt a heavy blow in September, when he lost the support of the House GOP after reports emerged that he misled voters about being an Afghanistan veteran.

Likelihood he wins: Democrat Marcy Kaptur is favored in polls, but it’s close.

What to drink if he does: Loco Mocha Java Monster Energy with a shot of diesel fuel.

John Gibbs

Why he’s so problematic: John Gibbs once said women’s suffrage hurt the country. Now he needs them to help him win a seat in the House.

The far-right candidate turned a career as a political commentator into an appointment as an adviser to Ben Carson in the Trump administration, and his loyalty to the former president has manifested itself in a campaign riddled with election denial and conspiracy. Gibbs claimed the results of the 2020 election were “mathematically impossible” and attacked incumbent Republican Rep. Peter Meijer for voting to impeach Trump in the aftermath of Jan. 6.

But false claims about the 2020 election are not the only conspiracies Gibbs has promoted. In 2016, he tweeted multiple posts claiming that a Hillary Clinton campaign chairman had participated in satanic rituals. Gibbs repeatedly posted the hashtag “SpiritCooking” on Twitter, a reference to false claims on far-right forums that Clinton’s 2016 campaign chairman John Podesta used bodily fluids in his supposed dabbling with the occult.

state level midterms

https://www.alternet.org/2022/11/katie-hobbs/

jim m running

Many Republican candidates who denied or questioned the 2020 results have lost their races

Adam Edelman - 40m ago

Many Republican candidates who denied or questioned the results of the 2020 election lost their races for positions that oversee, defend and certify elections in crucial battlegrounds.

But the races involving such candidates in Arizona and Nevada remain too early to call, according to NBC News.

So-called election deniers ran in Senate and House races, as well for statewide offices that have major influence over elections, such as governor, secretary of state and attorney general.

But those candidates lost the races for governor, secretary of state and attorney general in Michigan; governor and Senate in Pennsylvania; Senate in New Hampshire and Wisconsin; and secretary of state in Minnesota and New Mexico.

Chuck Todd explains why election deniers lost in tight races

They won, however, in the races for the Senate in Ohio and Wisconsin, as well as attorney general in Florida and Ohio.

In many of the races involving election deniers, candidates sought offices with the power to affect elections; some ran in pivotal battleground states where presidential election results have an outsize impact on the Electoral College outcome — and thus who wins the White House.

Senate candidates who questioned the 2020 result lost in New Hampshire and Pennsylvania

In New Hampshire, Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan defeated Republican Don Bolduc, NBC News projects. Bolduc said during his primary that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump, but he backtracked in recent weeks.

In Pennsylvania, Republican Mehmet Oz lost the Senate race to Democrat John Fetterman, according to NBC News.

Oz walked a finer line about his stance on the 2020 election. He said at a GOP primary debate in April that “we cannot move on from the 2020 election.” But more recently, he said he would have affirmed President Joe Biden’s victory in the Senate if he’d held office on Jan. 6, 2021.

Senators are responsible for affirming the certification of election results in their states — a tradition that was routine until Jan. 6, when supporters of Trump broke into the Capitol to try to prevent Biden’s win from being finalized.

Election deniers won Senate races in Ohio and Wisconsin

In the Ohio Senate race, J.D. Vance, who said this year, “I think the election was stolen from Trump,” defeated Democrat Tim Ryan, NBC News projects.

In the Wisconsin Senate race, Republican Sen. Ron Johnson beat Democrat Mandela Barnes. Johnson’s office was involved in an attempt to deliver fake elector materials to then-Vice President Mike Pence on Jan. 6. Johnson has acknowledged texting with one of Trump’s attorneys before and after his staff tried to deliver a package to Pence, but he has also said he knew nothing about the fake elector scheme.

Johnson initially said he’d object to certifying the Electoral College vote in key states on Jan. 6 but changed his mind after the riot and voted to certify.

Candidates who questioned the 2020 election result lost in seven key statewide races

The offices of governor, secretary of state and attorney general hold the power to fundamentally transform elections — including how they are administered and overseen, as well as a multitude of ways the results are defended and certified. Changes to those processes could affect the election in 2024, when Donald Trump might run.

In Michigan, election denying candidates lost their races for governor, secretary of state and attorney general.

Republican Tudor Dixon — who has said the 2020 election was stolen — lost t to Democratic incumbent Gretchen Whitmer in the race for governor, NBC News projects. In Michigan's secretary of state race, Democratic incumbent Jocelyn Benson defeated Republican Kristina Karamo.

After having worked as a Detroit poll challenger in 2020, Karamo claimed she witnessed fraudulent absentee ballot-counting. She later testified before a Michigan Senate committee investigating election fraud allegations, which found no evidence of widespread or systematic fraud. Karamo has also said she believes that Trump won Michigan in 2020 (Biden won the state by more than 154,000 votes) and that left-wing anarchists planned the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

In Michigan's attorney general race, Republican Matthew DePerno — who espoused debunked conspiracy theories surrounding the 2020 election result in Michigan — lost to Democratic incumbent Dana Nessel. DePerno filed a suit alleging sweeping voter fraud in the state, but both a state trial court judge and a state appeals court judge dismissed the suit.

In the election for governor in Pennsylvania, Republican Doug Mastriano, who repeatedly doubled down on false claims about the 2020 election, lost to Democrat Josh Shapiro, NBC News projects. Pennsylvania’s governor appoints the secretary of state, so the race packed an especially strong punch regarding the future of honoring election results.

In Wisconsin, Democratic Gov. Tony Evers defeated Republican Tim Michels, NBC News projects. Michels at times signaled he would consider decertifying Biden’s win in the state, and he repeated the false claim the 2020 election in the state was rife with fraud. Although Michels has waffled at times, he said during the primary that he was open to efforts to decertify Biden’s win in the state, even though there is no legal path to rescind a state’s electoral votes.

Election deniers also lost their races for secretary of state in Minnesota and New Mexico, NBC News projects.

In Minnesota, Democratic incumbent Steve Simon defeated Republican Kim Crockett, who called the 2020 election results in Minnesota illegitimate and said the election was “rigged.”

In New Mexico, Democratic Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver defeated Republican challenger Audrey Trujillo, an outspoken election denier, NBC News projects. Trujillo called Biden’s win in 2020 a “coup,” according to The New York Times.

In Georgia, meanwhile, Brad Raffensperger, the Republican secretary of state who refused to bow to pressure from Trump to overturn the 2020 election, won re-election, NBC News projects.

Election deniers won two attorney general races in battleground states

In Florida and Ohio, Republican attorneys general Ashley Moody and Dave Yost won their re-election campaigns, NBC News projects. State attorneys general can launch or defend against election lawsuits that could affect how and which votes are counted.

Moody joined a lawsuit that sought to prevent four other states from certifying their 2020 election results. Yost filed briefs in support of the lawsuit.

Overall, at least 43 election deniers ran for governor, secretary of state or attorney general across 27 states, according to States United Action, a nonpartisan group that closely tracked such candidates throughout the 2022 election season. Some of those candidates promised or hinted at taking actions that could contribute to an even more robust effort to overturn the next presidential election.

Elections experts have said that an election denier who takes a key position in a battleground state could affect elections for years. For that reason, Democrats running against them argued that their opponents were dangers to the country and sought to make the election a referendum on democracy. However, over the course of the general election campaign, many GOP candidates backed off or waffled on direct claims of a stolen election.

Races in Arizona and Nevada are too early to call

Arizona is one of three states where election deniers are the GOP nominees for governor, secretary of state and attorney general. All three races remain too early to call, according to NBC News.

Kari Lake, the nominee for governor, has been in a tight race against Democrat Katie Hobbs, and Mark Finchem ran against Democrat Adrian Fontes for secretary of state. For attorney general, Abraham Hamadeh is up against Democrat Kris Mayes. All three have questioned Biden’s presidential victory or falsely said the election was stolen from Trump.

Finchem has ties to QAnon and the Oath Keepers, and he attended Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally before the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

In Nevada, Jim Marchant — a Trump-endorsed election denier — ran against Democrat Cisco Aguilar for secretary of state. That race is also too early to call, according to NBC News.

Marchant has promised to get rid of all electronic voting machines, voting by mail and early voting. Instead, he has vowed to institute a “traceable paper-ballot-only” system that would rely only on hand counts. Marchant has also said he wouldn’t have certified the 2020 results in the state, which Biden won.

In an interview this year, Marchant said that if he is secretary of state in 2024, he won’t rule out advocating for an alternate slate of Trump electors if Trump is on the ballot and loses because of what he determines to be voter irregularities.

Marchant pushed for an alternate slate of electors in 2020 — a scheme now under investigation by the Justice Department. In addition, Marchant leads the pro-Trump America First Secretary of State Coalition, a group of candidates who have all falsely claimed that the 2020 election was stolen (members include Karamo, Finchem, Lake, Trujillo and Mastriano).

On the Senate side, Republicans Blake Masters in Arizona and Adam Laxalt in Nevada have both denied or questioned the 2020 outcome. Masters said, “I think Trump won in 2020,” and Laxalt played a prominent role in the Trump campaign’s legal efforts to overturn the election results in the state. Both races are too early to call, according to NBC News.

Meanwhile, Herschel Walker's Senate race against Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock will advance to a runoff, NBC News projects, since neither candidate topped the 50% required under state law.

Walker has said Trump must “get to the bottom of who stole this election.”

pretty much all denier beaten? how cd this one have been close?

5. Jocelyn Benson wins second term as Michigan secretary of state

Whitmer and her Democratic allies, including Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, repeatedly stressed that democracy was on the ballot in their state — and that message clearly resonated with Michigan voters. Benson’s GOP opponent Kristina Karamo, a far-right MAGA conspiracy theorist adored by QAnon supporters, didn’t prevail. On Election Night, Benson declared victory, enjoying roughly a 12 percent lead over Karamo in the vote count and pointing out that an election denier would have been in charge of Michigan’s elections had she won.

Benson told supporters, “In this election, democracy was on the ballot. Our right to vote was on the ballot. And tonight, democracy won here in Michigan.”

fund wackos worked? eg bolduc

https://www.alternet.org/2022/09/democrats-right-interfere-gop-primaries/

mma 11 22

News reports over the past several months reveal that Republican candidates and elected officials — as well as allied groups — are using multiple strategies to undermine the upcoming 2022 elections and beyond. Tactics include trying to abolish or disrupt mail-in and early voting, particularly in Pennsylvania; challenging the eligibility of registered Democratic voters in Georgia; preparing legal challenges of GOP election losses; and supporting the fringe legal theory that state legislatures are the ultimate authority of elections. Right-wing media have supported all of these tactics during this election cycle.

Right-wing media have already allied with election conspiracy theory organizations to urge their audiences to volunteer and seek offices involved with running elections in order to help subvert them. They have also supported various election deniers seeking office this year, including a cabal of QAnon-linked conspiracy theorists running for secretary of state in various swing states who are promising to steal elections in preparation for a possible 2024 run by the defeated former President Donald Trump.

But these are not the only Republican strategies to subvert elections, and right-wing media so far have supported or covered for each of the following plots.

Fox News is covering up attempts by Trump allies to suppress voting in Georgia and other states

On September 1, Bloomberg News reported that a group called VoterGA, which is supported by Trump's disgraced former national security adviser Michael Flynn and election denier Patrick Byrne, “is challenging the eligibility of tens of thousands of Georgia voters” following the enactment of a law in 2021 that encouraged such challenges. According to Bloomberg, similar eligibility challenges are happening in Texas and Florida, “but the challenges in Georgia are the most extensive currently underway”:

The group, VoterGA, filed eight boxes Monday containing what its leader says are 37,500 challenges to voters in Gwinnett County, a once solidly Republican area of suburban Atlanta that has voted Democratic since 2016.

…

The Gwinnett challenges bring the total this election cycle to about 65,000, due largely to a 2021 overhaul of Georgia voting laws enacted in response to unfounded allegations of widespread fraud in 2020. The law effectively encouraged mass challenges of voter eligibility.

In the month and a half after the Georgia law was signed into effect, Fox News defended or advocated for these unnecessary voter restrictions in at least 270 separate segments. Despite Bloomberg’s recent reporting, the GOP’s allies at Fox News, including in its so-called “news” division, continued to defend the Georgia voter suppression law that made these mass voter eligibility challenges feasible. They also pretended that high early-voter turnout invalidated any accusations of voter suppression while failing to even mention the pattern of voter challenges:

During an October 9 Fox News Sunday interview with Democratic gubernatorial nominee Stacy Abrams, Fox anchor Shannon Bream tried to use a net increase in early voting as proof against Abrams' claims of Republican-led voter suppression, proclaiming that “a net increase of 763,380 voters … sounds like the opposite of voter suppression.”
Fox anchor Harris Faulkner presumptuously stated on October 19, “So no suppression there,” after presenting strong early-turnout numbers.
Fox host Sean Hannity claimed on October 20 that the high voter turnout was “debunking the media mob and the Democrats' false narrative that Georgia’s election law is Jim Crow 2.0.”
On October 26, Fox’s The Five co-host Geraldo Riverasaid that “it certainly seems unlikely that there is a climate of voter suppression” in Georgia “when you have this kind of record turnout.”
Fox anchor Bill Hemmer and Fox contributor Sean Duffy criticized Abrams on October 25 for calling out “barriers to access” from the 2021 Georgia law, again citing turnout numbers.

Right-wing media are already laying the groundwork for “scorched-earth legal tactics” to overturn midterm losses

On October 23, Rolling Stone reported on a Trump-directed plot “laying the groundwork to challenge the 2022 midterm election results” through a series of “in-person meetings and conference calls” in recent months where he and his Republican allies “often discuss the type of scorched-earth legal tactics they could deploy.” Rolling Stone reports that Trump is fixated on Pennsylvania, but there are “plans in multiple states.” From the article:

And they’ve gamed out scenarios for how to aggressively challenge elections, particularly ones in which a winner is not declared on Election Night. If there’s any hint of doubt about the winners, the teams plan to wage aggressive court campaigns and launch a media blitz. Trump himself set the blueprint for this on Election Night 2020, when — with the race far from decided — he went on national television to declare: “Frankly, we did win this election.”

Trump has been briefed on plans in multiple states and critical races — including in Georgia. But Pennsylvania has grabbed his interest most keenly, including in the Senate contest between Democrat John Fetterman and the Trump-endorsed GOP contender Mehmet Oz. If the Republican does not win by a wide enough margin to trigger a speedy concession from Fetterman — or if the vote tally is close on or after Election Night in November — Trump and other Republicans are already preparing to wage a legal and activist crusade against the “election integrity” of Democratic strongholds such as the Philly area.

An October 27 Associated Press report suggested this Trump tactic is already happening. According to the report, “more than 100 lawsuits have been filed this year” regarding the elections, “largely by Republicans” to target voting rules, registration, use of voting machines, and the counting of ballots. The AP stated that “the cases likely preview a potentially contentious post-election period,” and that unlike Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election, this effort is much more organized:

The current effort, however, is more formalized, well-funded and well-organized and is run by the Republican National Committee and other legal allies with strong credentials. Party officials say they are preparing for recounts, contested elections and more litigation. Thousands of volunteers are ready to challenge ballots and search for evidence of malfeasance.

And as Media Matters senior fellow Matt Gertz explained on October 28, theright is already attacking the integrity of Pennsylvania’s elections, using a logjam created by the state's Republican-led state legislature as an excuse to question the validity of election results. Pennsylvania law prevents the counting of early mail-in ballots until Election Day, resulting in early tabulations that could show Republican candidates with a lead that decreases as mail-in ballots are tabulated over time. (This so-called “red mirage” phenomenon was extensively reported on in 2020.)

As if on cue, right-wing media are already lying that the Pennsylvania statewide races will be stolen by Democrats, using routine and expected delays in reporting the election results as an excuse:

On October 28, Hannity told Pennsylvania Republicans to “have poll watchers in every single location” due to delays in counting mail-in ballots forced by the Republican legislature.
On October 27, Terrance Bates of Real America’s Voice asked GOP Pennsylvania gubernatorial nominee Doug Mastriano if “the fix is in.”
Convicted criminal and former Trump strategist Steve Bannon declared on October 27 that “the only way” Democrat Josh Shapiro can win the Pennsylvania gubernatorial race “is to cheat.”
During an October 24 interview with Mastriano, radio host and campaign speaker Wendy Bell said Democrats are already “cheating” because they “lead in the early voting.”
Fox host Tucker Carlson said on October 26 that it would be “absurd” for voters to accept the Pennsylvania Senate election as legitimate if Fetterman wins.
Fox and talk radio host Mark Levinsaid on October 19: “They’re trying to steal the election for Fetterman.”

Trump and his allies are attempting to end early and mail-in voting in Pennsylvania

In addition to Trump’s reported focus on overturning Democratic victories in Pennsylvania, Semafor reported on October 18 that he and his allies are also working to change laws that allow for mail-in voting in the state, and that he’s already “woven talking points” from the campaign to overturn Pennsylvania’s mail-in voting law into his rallies in the state:

Former President Donald Trump is increasingly focused on changing voting rules in Pennsylvania, joining efforts to whip Republicans against a bipartisan mail-in voting law that’s become a Trump world obsession since he lost the state by over 80,000 votes.

Trump has spoken in recent weeks with allies who are leading a campaign to overturn the law, known as Act 77. Most recently, on September 6, he met with former Trump official Michael Caputo, Sam Faddis, a former CIA operations officer who ran for Congress in Maryland in 2016, and Pennsylvania county commissioner Doug McLinko at Trump Tower. Trump pledged to lend his support to their efforts, Faddis told Semafor.

In addition to lobbing the attacks on the integrity of Pennsylvania’s elections covered above, right-wing media personalities and allied groups have driven conspiracy theories about voter fraud in the state that are putting election workers and volunteers at risk of violence. Right-wing media are also targeting early mail-in ballots in other states, particularly Arizona. While Fox News has ignored reported examples of armed right-wing activists intimidating voters at ballot drop boxes, others are defending and supporting these risks to voters’ lives:

QAnon supporter Melody Jennings, who founded an organization backing an effort to monitor ballot drop boxes, has taken credit for people monitoring an Arizona drop box during the state’s primaries — which she called a “dry run” for the midterm general elections. This effort has led to multiple complaints of voter intimidation, including one case where armed men in camouflage have reportedly staked out a drop box in Maricopa County. Jennings defended this blatant example of voter intimidation.
On October 25, Bannon defended armed right-wing activists staking out drop boxes, saying: “It's not intimidation to put a set of eyeballs on these things — not intimidation.”
Bannon has also repeatedly hosted Jennings on his program so she can promote her organization and its mission to monitor ballot drop boxes.

Right-wing media have endorsed the radical “independent state legislature” theory, which would allow Republicans to steal future elections

Atlantic staff writer Barton Gellman, who has written extensively of Trump's attempts to subvert and even overthrow American democracy, reported in July about a Supreme Court case being pushed by Republicans that could result in the court giving state legislatures ultimate authority over elections, allowing them to disregard constitutions, court rulings, and existing state laws in order to abuse election administration or alter results. As Gellman explained, it’s a “genuinely radical proposition” that “has never been accepted by any state or federal court.” From Gellman’s July 29 article in The Atlantic:

Republican lawyers, taking note of their structural advantage among battleground-state lawmakers, set forth the “independent state legislature” (ISL) doctrine. The doctrine is based on a tendentious reading of two constitutional clauses, which assign control of the “Manner” of congressional elections and the appointment of presidential electors in each state to “the Legislature thereof.” Based on that language, the doctrine proposes that state lawmakers have virtually unrestricted power over elections and electors. State courts and state constitutions, by this reading, hold no legitimate authority over legislatures in the conduct of their U.S. constitutional functions.

…

The immediate question in Moore is whether the state supreme court, applying the state constitution, can override the legislature’s choice on the manner of drawing election districts. (Until ISL came along, the long-standing answer was “yes.”) But advocates of the independent-state-legislature doctrine have their eyes on a bigger prize: the presidency.

If you give the legislature a blank check on the manner of appointing presidential electors, then a Republican majority could—in the most muscular version of ISL—simply disregard a Biden victory in the state’s popular vote and appoint Trump electors instead.

Fox News personalities approved of the 2020 attempt by Trump to use this bogus legal theory to overturn election results in swing states. Fox host Mark Levin was particularly aggressive in pushing this approach, and his eagerness to end American democracy via the independent state legislature theory has continued unabated in recent weeks. Other conservative media figures have defended it as well:

Levin has repeatedly claimed that the independent state legislature theory is just a straightforward reading of the U.S. Constitution, even though it has never been accepted by a court. On September 30, Levin said that “even a relatively illiterate person can read that the state legislatures, specifically the legislature, determine the election processes by which electors are chosen to be president and vice president.” On October 3, Levin ranted: “‘Oh, that's the independent state legislature theory.’ No, that's what it says in the Constitution.” And on October 25, Levin even cut voters out of the loop on how presidential electors are chosen: “Article 2, section 1, Clause 2 of the Constitution, which we've talked about endlessly, provides, simply put, that the state legislatures shall determine how electors are chosen. It says legislatures. Doesn't say governors, doesn't say lower courts, doesn't say federal courts. Doesn't say voters. Legislatures.”
On October 25, radio host Sebastian Gorka mocked Hillary Clinton for warning about the independent state legislature theory.
Fox host Jesse Watters similarly attacked Clinton on October 25, accusing her of “undermining faith in our democracy” with her warning.

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/coming-right-wing-attack-pennsylvania-vote

mma no twt

Republicans and their right-wing media surrogates are telegraphing an attack on the legitimacy of the vote in Pennsylvania during next month’s midterm elections. Their deceptive strategy mimics the approach former President Donald Trump and his allies took in the lead-up to and following the 2020 elections.

Leigh Chapman, Pennsylvania’s top election official explained during a Wednesday interview that because of a state law that does not allow officials to begin counting mail-in ballots until 7 a.m. on Election Day, results for Pennsylvania’s gubernatorial and U.S. Senate elections might not be available for “days” afterwards. Since Democrats are more likely to trust and participate in mail-in voting while Republicans are more likely to vote in-person, early tabulations could show Republican candidates with a lead that is then whittled down as mail-in ballots are tabulated over time.

This is a known issue that was in effect during the last election cycle – and its continued existence is entirely the fault of Pennsylvania Republicans. Chapman, Pennsylvania’s bipartisan Election Law Advisory Board, Democratic state legislators, and Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf have all called for the Republican-led state legislature to pass legislation allowing those ballots to be “pre-canvassed” before Election Day, as occurs in other states. But the General Assembly adjourned its legislative session this week without taking action.

Nonetheless, after the New York Post wrote up Chapman’s interview using the headline, “Pennsylvania election results could take 'days,' secretary of the commonwealth says,” right-wing politicians and media figures began using her comments to baselessly cast doubt on the integrity of the counting process.

[twt]

gOP gubernatorial nominee Doug Mastriano chimed in on Thursday morning. He described Chapman’s comments as “an attempt to have the fix in” during an interview on the Trumpist Real America’s Voice network.

This wave of false suggestions that the lengthy counting process — which has been enshrined by Republican legislators — is actually evidence of Democratic malfeasance is the latest sign that the GOP and right-wing media are planning to contest the Pennsylvania results if their candidates lose:

Trump intends to “aggressively challenge elections, particularly ones in which a winner is not declared on Election Night,” and is particularly fixated on the Pennsylvania Senate race, Rolling Stone reported Sunday.
Tucker Carlson, the Fox star and GOP kingmaker, suggested on Wednesday that his viewers should treat a victory by Democrat John Fetterman in the Senate race as illegitimate.
Local election denialist groups and national conservative media figures are driving conspiracy theories about voter fraud related to ballot drop boxes and voting machines in the state.
Fox host Mark Levin, a key player in Trump’s 2020 coup attempt, alleged last week that Chapman’s guidance directing counties to continue to count undated mail-in ballots amid a legal battle shows that Democrats are “trying to steal the election for” Fetterman.

It’s also a rerun of the attack Trump, Carlson, Levin, and their allies made on the integrity of the 2020 presidential race. Election experts had long predicted that Election Day 2020 would end with a “red mirage” showing Trump in the lead, only for there to be a “blue shift” afterward as key states counted mail-in ballots that heavily favored Democratic nominee Joe Biden. But Trump carried out his planned strategy to declare victory on election night, baselessly cited his declining margins and reversals as evidence of widespread election fraud, and spent weeks trying to subvert the result. And right-wing allies like Carlson and his colleagues helped him work their viewers into a frenzy over the fantasy that the election had been rigged.

[twt]

the same strategy could play out in Pennsylvania this cycle, with Mastriano and Senate nominee Mehmet Oz holding early leads on election night, declaring victory, and, with the support of the right-wing press, alleging that mail-in ballots that subsequently reduce or eliminate their leads are fraudulent. Mastriano is a committed election denier who supported Trump’s 2020 election subversion and would have no qualms about following his subversion plan. And Oz actually road-tested a plan like that after the primary election – holding a narrow lead but with observers declaring the race too close to call, he took Trump’s advice, went on Fox, and said, “This election is ours,” while his ally Sean Hannity baselessly raised the prospect of election fraud changing the result.

Trump’s 2020 statements were obvious nonsense, and everyone at Fox knew it. Chris Stirewalt, the network’s politics editor during the election, explained during a June hearing of the January 6 committee that the “red mirage” phenomenon was well known. He even testified that he and some of his colleagues had “gone to pains” before the election to stress to Fox viewers that this would happen “because the Trump campaign and the president had made it clear that they were going to try to exploit this anomaly.”

Don’t expect to see much of that effort at Fox if the situation repeats this cycle – Stirewalt’s former colleagues have seen what happened to employees too eager to tell the truth about elections. The network purged Stirewalt shortly after the election as executives rallied around Trump to preserve flagging ratings.

Perhaps this time will be different – plan A for everyone involved is to use demagoguery, smears about the Democrats, and misrepresentations of the Republicans’ extreme positions to win the elections for Mastriano and Oz outright. But Fox and the right-wing media are putting the country back on the edge of the abyss. The last time they did that, the result was a bloody insurrection at the U.S. Capital and the near-toppling of American democracy. And two years later, Trump’s election lie has been institutionalized within the GOP, and the meager guardrails in place on the party’s extremism have been leveled.

igor salon

https://www.alternet.org/2022/10/dress-rehearsal-for-2024-senate/

Former President Donald Trump is already laying the groundwork to challenge the results of the Pennsylvania Senate race, viewing the election as a "dress rehearsal for Trump 2024," according to Rolling Stone.

Trump last month met with Republican allies at Trump Tower to demand they "do something" about the Senate race between Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman and Republican challenger Mehmet Oz, claiming that there was a "scam" happening in Philadelphia and elsewhere around the state.

"During our briefing, he was concerned that 2020 is going to happen again in 2022," Michael Caputo, a former Trump administration official who attended the meeting along with Bradford County Commissioner Doug McLinko and retired CIA officer Sam Faddis, told Rolling Stone. "Our team encouraged him to be concerned … [Furthermore], I'm advising Republicans to recruit and train election observers and a team of attorneys to oversee historically problematic precincts," Caputo said.

The meeting was one of several in which Trump has discussed plans to challenge the 2022 midterm results, and not just in Pennsylvania, four sources told the outlet, discussing "scorched-earth legal tactics they could deploy."

TrumpWorld is planning "aggressive court campaigns" if there is any hint of doubt about the results, according to the report. Trump himself has been briefed on plans in multiple states, including in Georgia, but he has been particularly fixated on the Pennsylvania race. If Oz does not win or the results are close, sources told Rolling Stone, Trump and other Republicans are already planning to "wage a legal and activist crusade against the 'election integrity' of Democratic strongholds such as Philly," according to the report.

One source told the outlet that Trump is particularly focused on Pennsylvania because he sees the Senate race as a "dress rehearsal for Trump 2024."

Trump during the September meeting urged GOP allies to work to limit mail-in voting in the state, pushing debunked claims that the 2020 election was stolen in Philadelphia and demanding officials focus on the heavily Democratic and diverse area, according to the report. Trump has asked several advisers what Republicans are doing to prevent Democrats from "steal[ing] it in Philadelphia [like] they did last time," sources told the outlet.

Numerous Trump allies are ready to help wage another campaign to stoke doubt in election results before any votes are even cast.

"It's important to prepare for legal fights that will inevitably arise," Hogan Gidley, a former Trump White House spokesman who now works at the America First Policy Institute,told Rolling Stone. "The effort that the Center for Election Integrity is focused on started at the beginning of this year…We've been seeding efforts across the country in important states…[because] having people on the ground locally is key to these efforts — because if you're not at the table, you're on the menu."

MyPillow founder Mike Lindell, who has spent millions pushing lies that voting machines flipped votes from Trump to President Joe Biden, also vowed to fight over the 2022 results.

"No matter what happens, I'm not giving up on getting rid of those voting machines … I will not stop until the machines are gone," Lindell, who is facing a $1 billion defamation lawsuit from Dominion Voting Systems, told Rolling Stone.

Patrick Byrne, the former Overstock CEO who has likewise poured his own money into the "Big Lie" crusade, has teamed with former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn to form the so-called America Project.

"We have made proper preparations for post-election challenges if necessary, but our overwhelming focus is on having a clean, transparent election, which obviates the need for post-election legal scuffles," Byrne told the outlet.

The Republican National Committee is already involved in the race, pushing the state to stop counting mail-in ballots that are missing handwritten dates.

The Third Circuit Court of Appeals earlier this year ruled that tossing such ballots would result in "disenfranchising otherwise qualified voters" over a "meaningless requirement" that does not affect the voters' eligibility. The Supreme Court last week tossed the court's decision but did not rule on whether the ballots are required to be counted. A state court previously ruled that undated ballots can be counted and the state's Supreme Court in 2020 ruled that such ballots should be counted that year but not in future elections.

Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf and Acting Secretary of State Leigh Chapman issued guidance urging counties to count the undated ballots but the RNC and a group of Pennsylvania Republicans sued last week, asking the state Supreme Court to rule that the undated ballots should not be counted. The lawsuit is led by attorneys Kathleen Gallagher and john Gore, who previously represented Pennsylvania Republicans in their attempt to overturn the 2020 results over late-arriving mail-in ballots.

It's a trend that could play out across the country as numerous election deniers seek midterm wins, including Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake and New Hampshire Senate candidate Don Bolduc. And pro-Trump media has boosted the message.

"If it is fair, Kari Lake's going to win," Fox News host Tucker Carlson said recently.

Pro-Trump radio host Mark Levin accused Democrats of "trying to steal the election for Fetterman," citing the dispute over the undated ballots.

The Rolling Stone report noted that Trump's obsession with bolstering the Republican legal infrastructure to challenge the election stands in stark contrast with the "relatively small sums" he has poured into the campaign to boost Oz's chances. His super PAC has spent just $770,000 on TV ads for [OZ?] Trump, compared to $34 million from the Senate Leadership Fund, which is allied with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.

Some Republicans have taken notice.

"There's a lot of people that were Trump supporters, who backed him through thick and thin," a Pennsylvania Republican attorney told Rolling Stone. "That's not lost on them."

yikes

an 10 22 me

a new analysis is highlighting the possibility of a disturbing outcome for the upcoming midterm elections. According to Newsweek, it is projected that election deniers could win approximately 189 races across the country.

"A previous investigation by The Washington Post found there are 291 Republicans 'election deniers' who have 'denied or questioned the outcome of the last presidential election' standing across the United States," the news outlet reported. "This constitutes more than half the total number of GOP candidates who are running for office."

"Out of the 291 Republican 'election deniers,' counting both Congressional and state races, it concluded that 171 are 'favored' to win, with another 48 running in 'close races.'"

The news outlet's analysis goes on to project that "of the 48 in tight contests, 18 are more likely than not to win." The latest findings have led to heightened concerns about the possible door midterm elections could reopen for former President Donald Trump.

Reed Galen, the co-founder of The Lincoln Project, offered his opinion of what election-denier victories could mean for the former president.

Galen said, "Election deniers will destroy confidence in our democratic institutions because they don't care about the truth and are uninterested in governing."

"Their only purpose is to obtain power so they can reinstate Donald Trump as President in 2024 regardless of the outcome of the vote. If they take office, they will throw the idea of free and fair elections out the window to get the results they want."

Gummer Ramer, who is affiliated with the Defend Democracy Together campaign, echoed similar sentiments. "Across the country, at all levels of government, election-denying candidates easily made their way through the primary," he said. "This is an indictment of the modern-day GOP."

"To win a Republican primary, you have to lie and promote conspiracy theories about the 2020 election," Ramer continued. "This constant sowing of distrust in election results is absolutely terrible for our democracy."

spec election NY dem win on abortion 8 22 // kansas

an 10 22

Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, who chairs the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), was deeply offended when Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell — during an event in Kentucky in August — told a crowd that he considers control of the U.S. Senate a toss-up in the 2024 midterms and cited “candidate quality” as a factor. McConnell expressed confidence that Republicans will “flip” the U.S. House of Representatives, but wasn’t nearly as bullish on the Senate. And his “candidate quality” comment was taken as a criticism of the MAGA candidates Trump has pushed.

McConnell, however, isn’t the only Republican who is concerned about the quality of U.S. Senate candidates who former President Donald Trump has been pushing. In an article published by CNBC’s website on September 30, reporter Brian Schwartz takes a look at Republican donors who are reluctant to get out their wallets for Trump-backed Senate hopefuls who have been underperforming in polls.

“Republican megadonors want the GOP to take back the Senate, but they don’t have confidence that some of former President Donald Trump’s top picks can catapult their party to a victory in November,” Schwartz explains. “Billionaire financiers Paul Singer, Dan Loeb and Larry Ellisonhave so far avoided donating directly to some or all of Trump’s staunchest allies running for Senate in the midterms: J.D. Vance in Ohio, Blake Masters in Arizona, Herschel Walker in Georgia, Adam Laxalt in Nevada and Dr. Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania, according to Federal Election Commission records and people familiar with the billionaires’ donations.”

The CNBC reporter adds, “All of those candidates have been endorsed by Trump. And many of them have previously sided with the former president on the false claims that the 2020 presidential election had widespread voter fraud — an accusation that’s been debunked by Trump’s former attorney general, Bill Barr, federal courts and several other top Republicans who served in Trump’s administration.”

A Republican strategist, quoted anonymously, told CNBC that those megadonors would “would be lighting their money on fire if they got totally swayed by these candidates.” And that strategist is advising donors to give their money to the Senate Leadership Fund, a political action committee run by McConnell’s former chief of staff Steven Law. That strategist said of the Senate Leadership Fund, “They have the best polls, and they won’t sink money into races they know they can’t win.”

Schwartz notes, “The campaign poll tracking website FiveThirtyEight shows Masters trailing (incumbent Sen. Mark) Kelly by more than seven percentage points…. FiveThirtyEight shows Oz trailing his Democratic rival John Fetterman by more than six percentage points and Walker trailing his competitor, (Sen. Raphael) Warnock, by more than two percentage points. Vance and Laxalt are both in statistical dead heats with their Democratic rivals; both GOP candidates are down by an average of less than a percentage point.”

Schwartz points out thatmegadonor and real estate mogul Stephen Ross“hasn’t given a penny yet to Vance, Walker, Masters, Laxalt or Oz, according to FEC filings.”

“Ross was criticized for hosting a fundraiser for Trump and the Republican National Committee at his Hamptons home in 2019, but has distanced himself from some of Trump’s favorite candidates this election cycle,” Schwartz observes. “He’s donated over $685,000 to a mix of Republicans, Democrats and their affiliated outside groups this cycle. His biggest checks so far have gone to GOP organizations tied to Republican leadership, such as House GOP campaign arm, the National Republican Congressional Committee and a joint fundraising committee called Take Back the House 2022, federal election records show.”

adl

updated on August 12, 2022 to reflect the finalized results of two primary elections. This story was originally published on August 4, 2022.

In January 2022, the ADL Center on Extremism identified more than 100 right-wing extremists running for elected office nationwide, and warned that these candidates had the potential to shift the Overton Window -- what is considered “normal” or “acceptable” in political and social discourse. While some of these candidates have lost their races, the results from the primaries held over the last few weeks demonstrate that ties to right-wing extremist ideologies and groups have ceased to be a political poison pill.

In fact, as of August 10, 2022, of the 119 right-wing extremist candidates that participated in theprimaries, about 25 percent of the candidates won their race, putting them one step closer to winning their general election in November and gaining access to or retaining political power. More alarming, of the 30 victors, 10 won by a margin of 10 percent or greater.

The right-wing extremist candidates who won their 2022 primaries subscribe to or espouse a range of extremist and fringe ideologies, including support for QAnon; ties to anti-government extremists like the militia movement and the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association; white supremacy; and antisemitism. Other candidates have sought to undermine the United States electoral system by propagating election conspiracies and participating in the January 6 Capitol attack.

ADL is also watching closely the outcomes of primary races featuring radical anti-Israel candidates on the left. While both are problematic and deserving of attention, these two issues should not be equated in terms of the threat, degree of rhetoric, and embrace by the political mainstream.

The following is a partial list of the right-wing extremist candidates who won their primary races as of August 2, 2022:

ARIZONA:

Kari Lake, a former Phoenix television news anchor, won the GOP primary for governor of Arizona. Lake has repeatedly called for the 2020 election to be decertified. While Lake has not voiced explicit support for QAnon, she has been endorsed by Michael Flynn, former National Security Advisor in the Trump administration and a hero in QAnon circles. She also appeared with with QAnon influencer intheMatrixxx at the Cyber Symposium; organizers, including conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell, falsely claimed the event would present "evidence" to support claims of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election. Lake also held a rally in Morristown, Arizona, with U.S. Rep Paul Gosar and Mike Lindell in March 2022.
Arizona State Representative Mark Finchem (R) won his primary to become Arizona’s Secretary of State, a position that controls the state’s electoral system. Finchem has self-identified as an Oath Keeper, shared QAnon content, vocally denied that President Biden won the 2020 election, and attended the January 6 rally in Washington, D.C., that preceded the Capitol riot.
Current Arizona State Senator and self-proclaimed Oath Keeper Wendy Rogers (R) won the race to retain her Arizona State Senate seat representing District 7. In addition, Rogers spoke in February at the America First Political Action Conference, a white nationalist conference organized by Nick Fuentes; appeared on the antisemitic TruNews streaming platform; has been a prominent voice in the effort to undermine the 2020 presidential election; and was censured in March for threatening rival politicians with violence.
U.S. Representative Paul Gosar (R) won the primary to retain his congressional seat representing Arizona’s 9th District. Gosar has ties to the Oath Keepers, Proud Boys and America First, and has been seen with far-right fringe figures including Steve Bannon, Ali Alexander and white supremacist Nick Fuentes. Gosar has a history of promoting conspiracy theories - including those surrounding the 2020 election – and in November 2021 he was censured for sharing an anime cartoon that depicted a character killing a character meant to be Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Mary Ann Mendoza (R) won the primary for Arizona State House District 9 despite having been pulled from the speaker line-up for the 2020 Republican National Convention after she shared a thread on Twitter that contained the antisemitic conspiracy theory that the Rothschild family is plotting on taking over the world and “enslaving” non-Jews and promoted the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Later in January 2021, she shared an antisemitic post on Facebook. In addition, Mendoza has expressed her belief that the insurrection was “staged” and that the 2020 election was rigged.

COLORADO:

U.S. Representative Lauren Boebert (R) won her primary to retain her seat representing Colorado’s District 3. Boebert is known for her anti-Muslim bigotry, ties to militia groups, and appearances on QAnon-related shows.

MARYLAND:

Dan Cox (R), a January 6th participant, won the Republican gubernatorial nomination in a close race. While at the January 6th riot, Cox tweeted “Mike Pence is a traitor.” He has also used a QAnon hashtag in a tweet and previously spoke at a QAnon-linked event.
Michael Peroutka (R), a former member of the neo-Confederate, white supremacist group League of the South (LOS), won the Attorney General nomination in a close race. At an LOS event in 2012, Peroutka played the Confederate song "Dixie," calling it the "national anthem.” He also spoke at the same QAnon event as Cox in April.

MICHIGAN:

John Gibbs (R), who previously served in the Trump administration and has espoused QAnon conspiracy theories, defeated the state's 3rd Congressional District incumbent Rep. Peter Meijer in a tight race. Gibbs has also echoed ‘Stop the Steal’ rhetoric ahead of his own primary.
Angela Rigas (R) won her primary for state House in District 79 by a large margin despite being a January 6th participant. In response to being called an insurrectionist or treasonist, Rigas said, “I consider all of those terms a compliment, because our Founding Fathers were called all the same things.”

NEVADA:

Jim Marchant (R), a QAnon adherent who leads a coalition of pro-Trump Secretary of State candidates, defeated seven other candidates by a 17 percent margin in the Secretary of State race. After winning his primary in June, Marchant lunched with an organizer of a QAnon event in Las Vegas.
Adam Laxalt (R), who is associated with the anti-government Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, won the U.S. Senate primary race by a 21 percent. Laxalt, a former state attorney general, has also pushed 2020 election conspiracies.

OHIO:

January 6th participant JR Majewski (R) won in Ohio’s 9th Congressional District. Majewski was also a devout QAnon adherent, once saying he believed in “everything that’s been put out by Q.” He has also posted the movement’s hashtags on Instagram and appeared on Fox News while wearing a QAnon shirt.

OREGON:

Securing the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate in a close race, Jo Rae Perkins (R) is a QAnon supporter. In 2020, Perkins further explained her beliefs in QAnon saying, “there is a ‘very strong probability/possibility that ‘Q’ is a real group of people, military intelligence, working with President Trump.’” Perkins has doubled down on her support for the conspiracy theory movement, citing it as her “source of information.”

PENNSYLVANIA:

Doug Mastriano (R) won the gubernatorial primary despite expressing numerous problematic beliefs, including promoting 2020 election fraud theories, embracing QAnon, and supporting the idea that America should be a “Christian nation.” He has also aligned himself with Andrew Torba, the antisemite who runs Gab.

WASHINGTON STATE:

Joe Kent will be the Republican nominee for the U.S. House seat representing Washington State's 3rd District. One day after his win was announced, Kent appeared on Steve Bannon's podcast, where he said, "We are at war [with the left]," adding, "We have to go after these people." Kent has ties to and has praised the putatively religious far-right group Patriot Prayer and its leader, Joey Gibson, who spoke at a Kent fundraising event in June 2021. Gibson and Patriot Prayer often appear alongside other right-wing extremist groups in the Pacific Northwest, including the Proud Boys and Washington State Three Percenters. Kent attended and spoke at the March 5, 2022 “GRIT” (Government Resistance Impedes Tyranny) event at the Washington State Capitol and posted about his participation on Twitter. The rally was hosted by anti-government extremist group Washington State Three Percenters.

This is just a sampling of the right-wing extremist candidates who have won their primaries, and there dozens more candidates vying to win their primaries over the next few weeks, meaning more are likely to get at least one step closer to having the power toto advance their right-wing extremist agendas. While some of these candidates will face stiff competition in November, others are running in safe Republican districts, and are therefore essentially assured victory. Given these candidates’ proclivity for engaging in conspiracies that undermine democracy and indulgence in ideologies that scapegoat and target perceived enemies, this is a dangerous development that risks further normalizing right-wing extremist activity and imperiling our political system.

an 9 22 reboot contract w/ am pulled then relaunch talk pts only

A woman picked to sit in on Republican Minority Leader **Kevin McCarthy**‘s staged town-hall styled rollout of the House GOP’s latest “Commitment to America,” complained to the California lawmaker that a “new” program, “social emotional learning,” which teaches children to have greater self esteem, and be aware of their emotions and those of others, is “Marxist.”

Social Emotional Learning, or “SEL,” is not new, it was developed starting in the 1960s at the Yale University School of Medicine.

But according to the woman chosen to help McCarthy introduce what he admits is the GOP’s “plan” to win back the House, SEL is just the next big “concern,” after “CRT.” Critical Race Theory has been used by far-right wing extremists to delegitimize that systemic racism exists in America.

“There are many other public education issues, concerning parents like myself,” the woman, reading from a script, tells McCarthy, who is seated among an almost entirely white audience in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania area.

The woman identified herself as Lori McRoberts “a mama bear,” who says she has three children, ages 19, 17, and 14.

In her remarks she also complained about “abusive COVID protocols, or mandates,” in schools, “or what they called the ‘health and safety plan,'” she said, reading from her typewritten remarks. She described lunchtime for students as sitting like “prisoners,” while mocking the fact that COVID is airborne, can be spread via talking, and those infected can be asymptomatic. She also described signs in schools urging children and teachers to“mask up for safety,” as “propaganda,” while lamenting that parents were not given decision-making abilities for COVID policies, neglecting to note they should be science-based, while expressing anger the protocols came from guidelines published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

After several minutes she got to the part where she blasted social learning programs.

“The slow creep of critical race theory,” she said, reading off her list of concerns, as her voice became angered, “diversity, equity, and inclusion, gender identity, and allowing biological boys to enter girls spaces in sports.”

“Now we have SEL,” she lamented, “which is ‘social-emotional learning,'” she said with disdain. “It’s indoctrination disguised as programs, like ‘kindness initiatives,’ or anti-bullying programs, or diversity projects.”

“These are all Marxist-style programs, targeting our children,” she claimed.

The Pittsburg, Pennsylvania public schools’ website says: “We all know that it is essential for children to master important academic skills, such as reading and mathematics. That’s why they go to school. But it is equally important for students to develop the ‘soft skills’ that we all need to navigate the world successfully. These include things like how to manage their own feelings and emotions, how to respect others and how to build strong, positive relationships. This is called Social-Emotional Learning (SEL).”

McRoberts continued her pre-written rant.

“Then, to make it all better, the current administration weaponized the Dept. of Justice,” she claimed, “and all the parents speaking up at school board meetings or challenging any of these programs, like I was, was now labeled a ‘domestic terrorist,'” she said, which is false.

“Our Dept. of Justice is calling me, a mom, a domestic terrorist,” she claimed, again, falsely.

After her lengthy and angry remarks, she asked how the Republican Party will “protect our children from the radical agenda of the left?”

After she spoke, to applause from the audience,U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, seated directly behind Congressman McCarthy, looked at McRoberts knowingly, repeatedly mouthing, “good job, good job.”

McCarthy responded to McRoberts, agreeing that DOJ had called parents “domestic terrorists,” which he knows is false, after The Washington Post and others have called him out on it for months.

Watch McRobert’s remarks on SEL, and the full town hall staged presentation, below or at this link.

note aha-ish parental rights is almost only issue gop has for midterms, and key to sweatervest win va

https://www.mediamatters.org/greg-gutfeld/fox-news-host-greg-gutfeld-says-he-supports-book-banning-including-beloved-which-he

quite a lot of RW BS on student loan forgive, bannon called reparations?; mebbe a string of dem wins/bills ~ 2022 red wave;

also try culture/class war BS rich college kids vs hard working real am, socialism

https://www.mediamatters.org/steve-bannon/steve-bannon-rails-against-student-debt-forgiveness-then-brags-about-his-ivy-league

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Leaked audio obtained this week by Politico revealed that billionaire casino magnate and GOP megadonor Steve Wynn recently offered Republicans a bit of messaging advice as they attempt to win back control of the Senate: Amplify the lies about Democratic tax policies.

During a Wednesday conference call hosted by the Republican National Committee, which is seeking to wrangle big-money donors amid internal concerns that the party's Senate chances are dimming, Wynn recommended "hard-hitting" ads with scripts warning ominously: "They're coming after you if you're a waiter, if you're a bartender, if you're anybody with a cash business... they're coming after you."

Wynn, a once highly prominent figure who has been accused of sexual assault and illegal lobbying, didn't specify which Democratic tax policies he was referencing. But Steve Rosenthal, a senior fellow at the Tax Policy Center, told the Washington Post Thursday that Wynn's suggested messaging resembles GOP attacks on increased funding for the Internal Revenue Service, which Republican lawmakers have systematically deprived of resources for years—a major boon to rich tax-dodgers and large corporations.

"The lack of resources prevents the IRS from ensuring that large and sprawling operations pay their full tax bill," Rosenthal said in an interview with the Post's Greg Sargent and Paul Waldman. "The point of increased enforcement is to pursue these businesses."

Wynn's advice came after the GOP had already launched hysterical attacks on the $80 billion in IRS funding included in the newly enacted Inflation Reduction Act, which passed both chambers of Congress this month without a single Republican vote. In floor debate over the package, House Republicans falsely claimed the funding would enable "robbery" by gun-wielding IRS agents.

In reality, the money will go toward ensuring the agency is capable of mundane tasks—such as answering phone calls—as well as giving it the capacity and resources to audit ultra-rich taxpayers whose returns have gone under-examined for years.[twt]

earlier this year, the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse published an analysis showing that the IRS audited low-income wage earners at a rate five times higher than everyone else in Fiscal Year 2021, a trend the agency has blamed on the higher costs of auditing wealthier taxpayers.

In a letter to the IRS chief earlier this month, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen specifically instructed the tax agency to use the new funding from the Inflation Reduction Act to "increase equity in the tax system by enforcing the tax laws against those high-earners, large corporations, and complex partnerships who today do not pay what they owe."

As Rosenthal put it to the Post,"Wynn is trying to push Republicans to scare the little fish into thinking the IRS is targeting them, when in fact the IRS has pledged to target the big fish."

Sargent and Waldman argued in a column Thursday that "it's pretty revealing for Wynn to be urging Republicans to attack those policies by arguing that their real victims will be waiters and bartenders."

"Democrats should jump on this," they wrote.

According to Politico, the 36-minute conference call also featured Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel begging rich donors to inject funding into Senate races as GOP leaders openly raise doubts about the party's prospects of retaking the upper chamber in November.

Recent polling in the key battleground states of Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, for example, shows that Democratic candidates John Fetterman and Mandela Barnes have opened up leads against their Republican opponents.

"Please help us invest in these Senate races specifically," McDaniel told donors on the call. "Give to any of these Senate candidates, all of these Senate candidates if you can, so all of them can be on TV."

Politico reported that Wynn "asked whether there are any dark-money nonprofits that contributors could give to."

Donors, he said, "are self-conscious for reasons that are personal to them, business people and folks like that."

KINGMAKER

https://www.alternet.org/2022/08/this-electronics-mogul-likely-made-the-biggest-gop-donation-ever-report/

an 8 22

The Republican Party has had its share of ultra-wealthy donors. But according to New York Times reporters Kenneth P. Vogeland Shane Goldmacher, the most generous GOP donation of 2021 came from “electronics manufacturing mogul” Barre Seid.

In 2021, Vogel and Goldmacher report,Seid donated a whopping $1.6 billion dollars to a group led by Republican activist and Federalist Society Co-Chairman Leonard A. Leo.

“This windfall will help cement Mr. Leo’s status as a kingmaker in conservative big money politics,” Vogel and Goldmacher report in a Times article published on August 22. “It could also give conservatives an advantage in a type of difficult-to-trace spending that shapes elections and political fights. The cash infusion was arranged through an unusual series of transactions that appear to have avoided tax liabilities. It originated with Mr. Seid, a long-time conservative donor who made a fortune as the chairman and chief executive of an electrical device manufacturing company in Chicago now known as Tripp Lite.”

The reporters add, “The nonprofit, called the Marble Freedom Trust, then received all of the proceeds from the sale, in a transaction that appears to have been structured to allow the nonprofit group and Mr. Seid to avoid paying taxes on the proceeds.”

In a tweet posted on August 22, Vogel emphasized just how big Seid’s donation was. Vogel wrote, “When I describe this as ‘likely the biggest single political donation,’ I mean biggest EVER. Like in the history of US politics.”

Vogel and Goldmacher explain, “For perspective, the $1.6 billion that the Marble trust reaped from the sale is slightly more than the total of $1.5 billion spent in 2020 by 15 of the most politically active nonprofit organizations that generally align with Democrats, according to an analysis by The Times. That spending, which Democrats embraced to aid the campaigns of Joseph R. Biden, Jr. and his allies in Congress, dwarfed the roughly $900 million spent by a comparable sample of 15 of the most politically active groups aligned with the Republican Party.”

According to Vogel and Goldmacher, the Marble Freedom Trust “could help conservatives level the playing field — if not surpass the left — in such nonprofit spending, which is commonly referred to as dark money because the groups involved can raise and spend unlimited sums on politics while revealing little about where they got the money or how they spent it.”

“The Marble Freedom Trust’s formation in May 2020, the donation of Tripp Lite shares by Mr. Seid, and Mr. Leo’s role have not been previously reported,” Vogel and Goldmacher note. “The funds are difficult to trace through public records. Tripp Lite is a private company that is not subject to corporate disclosure rules for public companies. On its tax filing, Marble indicated that the $1.6 billion came from the ‘sale of gifted company and subsidiaries,’ but indicated that it withheld identifying information ‘to protect donor confidentiality.’ And Eaton, the publicly traded Irish company that bought Tripp Lite, does not refer to Marble in statements related to the sale.”

Campaign finance reform suffered a major blow in the United States in 2010, when the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its widely criticized 5-4 decision in Citizens United v. FEC. Defining political contributions as a form of “speech,” the Citizens United ruling gutted restrictions on the size of campaign donations and, critics say, paved the way for a flood of “dark money” into political races.

===

8 15 22 an

In six key battleground states that played a decisive role in the 2020 presidential race, Republican candidates who have openly embraced former President Donald Trump's "Big Lie" have won nearly two-thirds of the GOP nominating contests for positions with power over state and federal elections, a potentially seismic threat to democracy.

According to a Washington Post analysis published Monday, 54 of 87 Republican nominees for key posts in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin have denied the legitimacy of President Joe Biden's 2020 election victory.

"Had those candidates held power in 2020, they would have had the electoral clout to try something that the current officeholders refused: overturning the vote and denying Biden the presidency," the Post notes. "Whether they could have succeeded in practice is a matter of vigorous debate among scholars, who cite the potential for court challenges and other means of upholding the results."

"But the experts agree on one thing: A close presidential contest that comes down to the outcome in states where officials are willing to try to thwart the popular will could throw the country into chaos," the newspaper adds. "It would potentially delay the result, undermine confidence in the democratic system, and sow the seeds of civil strife on a scale even greater than what the nation saw on January 6, 2021."

Trump, who is gearing up for a possible 2024 run as he's under criminal investigation by the Justice Department, has endorsed and campaigned for many of the candidates featured in the Post's analysis, including Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake—a former TV news anchor whose incessant lies about the 2020 election catapulted her to a win in the GOP primary earlier this month, delighting the former president.

Even in victory, Lake lashed out at the Arizona election process, complaining that the results "took longer than they should have."

The Post's analysis confirms that Arizona, a state Biden carried narrowly in 2020, is a bastion of election denial on the GOP side: 12 of 13 Republican nominees for state and federal offices there have questioned the election, including the chosen candidate for secretary of state.

[twt graf]

noah Bookbinder, president of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, called the rise of GOP election deniers across the U.S. "the biggest story not enough people are watching."

"This is how our democracy could crumble, quickly and quietly," Bookbinder warned.

The notion that Biden was elected illegitimately is broadly popular with Republican voters, according to recent opinion surveys. As the Post points out, "The predilection among Republican primary voters toward candidates who deny the result of the last election extends well beyond Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Arizona—three states that together accounted for 47 electoral votes in 2020, more than enough to flip the last election to Trump."

Ian Vandewalker, senior counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice, wrote in a blog post earlier this month that "the Big Lie that the election was stolen from Trump has been pushed by powerful politicians, starting with Trump himself."

"But it may be leaders closer to home who have the greatest ability to affect the popularity of election denial among the people of their state," he added.

One prominent Republican officeholder that is actively boosting election deniers is Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a possible 2024 presidential contender.

The Orlando Sentinel reported last week that DeSantis is "set to appear at rallies for Pennsylvania GOP governor's candidate Doug Mastriano, Arizona candidate for governor Kari Lake, and U.S. Senate candidate Blake Masters, all of whom have denied Biden's win and falsely claimed election fraud.

DeSantis was one of the first Republicans to suggest state legislatures could overrule voters to choose Trump.

"Appearing on Fox News on November 5, two days after the election," the Sentinel observed, "he said 'presidential electors are done by the legislators and the schemes they create and the framework. And if there's departure from that, if they're not following law, if they're ignoring the law, then they can provide remedies as well.'"

The Republican Party's elevation of fervent election deniers—often with the support of dark money—in battleground states and nationwide has dramatically raised the stakes of the upcoming November contests, given that they could usher into power officials willing to subvert the democratic process to secure their desired outcome.

Wisconsin offers an illustrative example of November's implications. As the New York Times reported Monday, "The governor's race this fall, along with a pivotal State Supreme Court contest next spring, will decide whether Republicans can solidify their grip on the swing state and remake its voting laws."

"Nowhere in the country have Republican lawmakers been more aggressive in their attempts to seize a partisan edge than in Wisconsin," the Times noted. "Having gerrymandered the Legislature past the point that it can be flipped, they are now pushing intensely to take greater control over the state's voting infrastructure ahead of the 2024 presidential contest."

===

an 8 22

With the 2022 midterm elections fast approaching, Republican candidates backed by former President Donald Trump have made tremendous headway with their regurgitation of misinformation about the previous presidential election.

Although these candidates have become very popular among Trump supporters, they presumably pose a threat to their mainstream Republican opponents. Now, an analysis is offering a hypothetical view of how the country could be shifted further to the right if Trump-backed candidates manage to dominate the 2022 midterms.

According to The New York Times' Blake Hounshell, Republicans' far-right ideologies could further impact the following areas: abortion, climate control, education, and same-sex marriage.

As one of the most controversial areas of legislation in the United States' current political climate, abortion laws have spawned some of the most heated debates of the year.

"Nowhere is the starkness of the these candidates’ positions more evident than on abortion, which has become a much more urgent litmus test on the right since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade," Hounshell wrote.

Many of the far-right Republican candidates backed by Trump have made their support of anti-abortion laws quite evident. Hounshell noted that Kari Lake, Blake Masters, Herschel Walker,Doug Mastriano, and others have been quite vocal with their opinions.

"In Georgia," Hounshell wrote, "Herschel Walker, the party’s nominee for Senate, has told reporters, 'There’s not a national ban on abortion right now, and I think that’s a problem.' Doug Mastriano, who is running for governor of Pennsylvania, introduced a fetal heartbeat bill as a state senator. Again, the bill contained no exceptions for incest or rape."

Another area of concern is climate control. "Skepticism of the human impact on the planet’s climate abounds, despite mounting scientific evidence that severe flooding, rising global temperatures, droughts, and volatile weather patterns have already arrived," he wrote.

Walker has also shared his opinion of climate control; an opinion that appears to resonate among far-right Republican lawmakers and candidates. “Since we don’t control the air, our good air decides to float over to China’s bad air,” Walker said. “So, when China gets our good air, their bad air got to move. So, it moves over to our good air space. Then, now, we got to clean that backup.”

Hounshell also highlighted Sen. Ron Johnson's (R-Wisc.) stance. "No Republican, however, has expressed his disdain for established climate science more succinctly than Senator Ron Johnson, who is seeking re-election in Wisconsin," Hounshell noted.

“'I don’t know about you guys,' Johnson said during a Republican luncheon back in June 2021. "Citing a British climate denier, he continued: 'But I think climate change is, as Lord Monckton said,' and he mouthed a barnyard epithet."

In regard to education, Hounshell wrote, "Across the board, the Trump-aligned candidates support redirecting tax dollars toward vouchers, private religious schools or other forms of 'school choice,' as do some Democrats. But where many of them go further is in calling for the elimination of the federal Education Department altogether."

And last but not least, Republican candidates have expressed deep disdain for laws protecting same-sex marriages.

"Several other Republican candidates for Senate, including Adam Laxalt in Nevada, Ted Budd in North Carolina, and Bolduc and Kevin Smith in New Hampshire, have expressed their opposition to same-sex marriage in more muted terms," he wrote.

Same-sex marriage is another topic Johnson has verbally expressed disapproval of. "One of the more surprising positions is that of Johnson, who has indicated that he plans to vote for a Democratic bill codifying the Obergefell decision when it comes before the Senate next month — a move that might have something to do with the fact that a solid majority of Wisconsinites want same-sex marriage to be legal," he wrote.

“The Respect for Marriage Act is another example of Democrats creating a state of fear over an issue in order to further divide Americans for their political benefit,” Johnson told reporters last month. “Even though I feel the Respect for Marriage Act is unnecessary, should it come before the Senate, I see no reason to oppose it.”

===

2022 will be based on bogus/gas price and wedge issues?

an 6 22

many twt

'Manufacturing hysteria’: Activist who weaponized CRT tells conservatives to make drag queens ‘more lurid’

David Badash and The New Civil Rights Movement June 18, 2022

Christopher Rufo, the far right activist who intentionally turned a college-level school of thought to examine social structures for systemic racism into a fear-mongering right-wing nationwide panic, is now focusing his attacks on LGBTQ people, by effectively weaponizing transgender identity.

Rufo, a senior fellow at the right-wing Manhattan Institute, is the man behind the right’s false panic and fury over CRT, Critical Race Theory. He’s bragged he wants to “have the public read something crazy in the newspaper and immediately think ‘critical race theory,’” and “put all of the various cultural insanities under that brand category.”

Now he’s applying that model to attack the LGBTQ community – especially transgender people and drag queens.

Rufo wants the right to turn a commonly used phrase, “drag queen,” one that many people both gay and straight use to refer to themselves, into something “more lurid” and sexual.

“Conservatives should start using the phrase ‘trans stripper’ in lieu of ‘drag queen,'” Rufo said openly Friday on Twitter, despite drag queens not generally being transgender. “It has a more lurid set of connotations and shifts the debate to sexualization.”

He thinks the 1.6 million people across America who identify as transgender should be victims of his weaponization of their very being.

Rufo knows what he’s doing is twisting language into an attack, and admits that when he uses the word “trans” people think “transgender,” but he outright states: “we can say that ‘trans’ is a stand-in for ‘transvestite,'” which is a word not commonly used in decades.

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rww 8 22

"trump’s REVENGE as Ultra MAGA Candidates DOMINATE Primaries,” exulted far-right Christian nationalist Steve Turley in his Wednesday newsletter. Indeed, Tuesday’s primary elections in several states gave major wins to Big Lie-promoting allies of former President Donald Trump, though there were exceptions to the Trumpist wave.

In a major defeat for anti-abortion activists, Kansas voters overwhelmingly rejected a referendum to remove abortion rights from the state constitution, which would have given legislators the ability to pass the kind of outright ban anti-abortion forces have put into place in other states. The huge margin of victory and massive voter turnout suggest that the Supreme Court’s recent decision overturning Roe v. Wade could be a powerful motivator for pro-choice voters this fall. Pundit Todd Starnes called the Kansas vote a “crushing defeat” for anti-abortion forces. Anti-choice activist Lila Rose called it a “tragic setback.”

Here are some highlights:

Arizona was a blowout win for Trumpism, extremism, and threats to elections. Election conspiracy theorist and Oath Keeper Mark Finchem won GOP primary for secretary of state. Blake Masters, backed by anti-democracy billionaire Peter Thiel, won the Senate primary and will have unlimited funds to attack incumbent Mark Kelly.

In very close race for governor nomination, Trump’s candidate Kari Lake pulled ahead of Mike Pence-backed developer and former member of the Arizona board of regents Karrin Taylor Robson. Lake has claimed victory even though news organizations have said the race is too close to call. Like Finchem, Lake is a hard-core promoter of lies about election fraud and says as gov she will refuse to “take orders” from the “illegitimate” Biden; she has said if she wins she will direct the attorney general to seize election equipment from 2020. “We have God on our side,” she declared.

Rep. Paul Gosar and state Sen. Wendy Rogers, associates of white nationalist Nick Fuentes, won their primaries.

House Speaker Rusty Bowers, who testified before the Jan 6 committee about the abuse he faced for resisting Trumpists’ demands to try to overturn the election, was defeated in his bid for state senate. Former state AG Tom Horne has won the primary for state superintendent of education, an office he has held previously and used to push hard-right agenda such as a ban on ethnic studies; he has pledged to ban bilingual education and create a hotline for reporting suspected teaching of critical race theory.

In the U.S. senate primary in Missouri, scandal plagued Eric Greitens and Rep. Vicky Hartzler were defeated by Erick Schmitt, who ran on “America First” themes; as state attorney general he had led the state into legal challenges of the 2020 presidential election results. Schmitt has pledged not to support McConnell for Majority Leader.

In Michigan, Trump and his allied successfully targeted Rep. Peter Meijer, who had backed Trump’s impeachment; Meijer was defeated by former Trump official John Gibbs. Winning the gubernatorial nomination was Tudor Dixon, who had been backed by the DeVos family and endorsed late in the race by Donald Trump. During the campaign, Dixon vowed to sign legislation “that creates severe criminal penalties for adults who involve children in drag shows.” A “no exceptions” supporter of abortion bans, she made a national media splash when she insisted that a 14-year-old raped by her uncle should be forced to carry the child to term. Kristina Karamo, who hopes to become the GOP nominee for secretary of state, is among the Big Lie promoters hoping to be in positions to run elections in 2024.

In Washington state, Trumpists did not fare so well. They targeted two incumbent Republicans who had voted for Trump’s impeachment, Jaime Herrera Beutler [lost] in 3rd CD and Dan Newhouse in the 4th. Their races have not been called, but both incumbents appear set to make the runoff in WA’s top-two all-party primary, while their Trumpist challengers Joe Kent and Loren Culp are currently trailing.

Tags: Anti-Abortion Anti-Choice Donald Trump Election 2022 MAGA

===

chris hayes had 2 experts and ref'd sev artl but not sure i found]

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/guns-republican-primary-campaign-ads-midterms-1336903/

see greitens rino hunt, assault ar15

no lnx twt many pix

The Real Reason Republicans Are Loading Their 2022 Campaign Ads With Guns

Conservative candidates have responded to the attack on the Capitol by doubling down on firearm worship and violent imagery to court their base

By RYAN BORT

A Republican official poses with a large gunA Republican official poses with a large gun

20,885 people were killed by guns in America in 2021, according to the Gun Violence Archive. That figure does not include suicides.

Youtube

Garrett Soldano released a pretty strange campaign ad last fall. The only words spoken in it came from a voice aggressively asking, “WHO?” and a chorus twice chanting “WE THE PEOPLE!” in response. The rest of the ad was 45 seconds of Soldano firing various weapons at a gun range, set to a heavy, looping guitar riff.

Soldano is not running for sheriff, or even for a seat in the state House. He’s a Republican running to become the next governor of Michigan.

Soldano’s ad may have been absurd, but it wasn’t atypical. Republican candidates are turning to guns, guns, guns in a very big way ahead of the midterms, serving their potential constituents with a torrent of campaign ads, Instagram posts, and even Christmas cards of themselves toting and firing deadly weapons. Conservatives using guns in campaign ads is nothing new, of course, but the way in which they’re being used in the wake of Trump’s term in office — and particularly in the wake the violent attack on the Capitol that ended it — portends a dark future for the party, and if it regains control of Washington, D.C., for the nation.

Ron Filipkowski, a researcher who tracks right-wing activity online and has highlighted several examples of Republicans going gun crazy in their campaign ads, says the use of guns in ads has “absolutely” ratcheted up this primary cycle compared to 2020 and 2018.

[RELATED STORIES

GOP Candidate Fantasizes About Murdering Political Opponents in New Ad [greitens?]

Ohio Shrinks Training Requirement for Teachers to Carry Guns From 700 Hours to 24]

“I started noticing it and was like, ‘What’s going on?'” he says. “I think it’s almost like the [Lauren] Boebert-, [Marjorie Taylor] Greene-ization of the whole America First movement that’s driving the Republican Party now. It’s those candidates who are the ones that are doing it. I feel like the establishment candidates kind of feel like they have to do it too, now.”

Boebert built her successful 2020 campaign largely around guns, and last year released an ad promising to carry a Glock on Capitol Hill. Greene in an ad for her 2020 campaign cocked an assault rifle as she warned “antifa terrorists” to stay out of her district, and last fall blew up a Prius with a 50-caliber rifle. Establishment Republicans like Lindsey Graham, who last year released a video of himself at a shooting range in khakis, are struggling to keep up, but the point is that they feel like they need to try. This is what the party is now.

Filipowski says he really started noticing the uptick in gun-centric ads, which were often the first big campaign rollout ads candidates would release, last fall. They haven’t stopped since.

Here’s Max Miller, a former Trump aide running for the Ohio U.S. House seat left vacant by retiring Republican Rep. Anthony Gonzalez, talking about using “a rifle to protect our country.”

Here’s Georgia U.S. House candidate Michael Collins blowing up “Nancy Pelosi’s Plan for America” before hopping in a big rig, throwing a football, and firing another assault rifle for good measure. “I’m not afraid to say I was pro-Trump from Day One,” he adds.

Here’s Blake Masters, who’s running for Senate in Arizona, with an intimate — and frankly, creepy — ad about his love for his Walther PPK and silencers.

Masters, a venture capitalist and favorite of Trump-loving billionaire Peter Thiel, has featured guns prominently throughout his primary campaign. He responded to President Biden’s promise on Monday to crack down on “ghost guns,” which are homemade and untraceable, by tweeting a picture of a “ghost gun” he recently built himself. “Very legal & very cool,” he wrote.

“Our founders built their own guns,” Masters added. “They intended us to as well — it’s the ultimate political act, a liberty the 2A protects. Technology will not stop. With 3D printing, this is going to get easier year after year. I’ll be a political check on ‘gun control,’ but the technological check is inevitable.”

Masters isn’t the only Republican to cry that the Second Amendment is under assault while vowing to scale back gun reform policy — Florida U.S. House candidate Anthony Sabatini even responded to Biden’s address on Tuesday by calling for the abolition of the ATF — and if the party takes back Congress in November they are likely to attempt to pass a slew of pro-gun legislation, from clearing the way for nationwide open carry to doing away with background checks. “Far-right politicians in primaries are licking the boots of gun lobbyists,” Moms Demand Action founder Shannon Watts told Rolling Stone in an email on Tuesday. They’ll certainly continue to do so once in office.

But there’s something more insidious behind the sudden rash of pro-gun ads than protecting the Second Amendment. It’s a visual reminder that the party believes Jan. 6 was a good thing, that the attack on the Capitol was a valiant effort, and that Republicans deserve candidates who is willing to implicitly or explicitly condone the use of violence to reclaim a bygone version of the United States they’ve seen slip through their fingers under Democratic leadership — to make America great again.

“It’s an extremist movement,” says Mike Madrid, a Republican strategist and co-founder of The Lincoln Project. “The GOP base, at least a wide swath of it, has been radicalized. There are very few things you can do to demonstrate you’re more extreme and intense on tribal issues than to insinuate, tacitly or overtly, violence, that you are willing to fight for the cause. That’s what it is. It’s not a Second Amendment issue. It’s saying, ‘I’m this intense. I’m this extreme. I’m willing to go to these measures to fight for our tribe.’ That’s what it’s all about.”

As Idaho gubernatorial candidate Janice McGeachin put it in an ad released Monday in which she fires an assault rifle, “the Second Amendment wasn’t ratified into the Bill of Rights so we could bird hunt.”

“The Second Amendment has always been a defensive posture,” Madrid continues. “It’s always been don’t take my guns. What we are moving into now is something foundationally different. It’s now advocating that gun ownership and bearing arms is a virtue. It’s not a right. It’s almost an obligation. … There’s a desire to see a society that is centralized on this type of weaponry. There’s a lot of paranoia involved here, but it’s also demonstrative of a society that a lot of these members feel is out of their control. They feel quote unquote America is gone. It’s behind them. It’s already been taken, and the only way to defend themselves from whatever that boogeyman is, is to have a stockpile of gold bullion, canned goods, and a ton of weaponry.”

Madrid, like Filipkowski, acknowledges that the use of guns in political ads is “growing,” and that by 2024 Republicans are going to be blowing stuff up. “Brandishing weapons and leaning into gun culture is viewed as revolutionary, and by revolutionary I mean, in their minds, the most virtuous sense, as defenders of quote unquote America,” he says. “There’s the 1776 rhetoric and there’s the patriot rhetoric, and there’s the American flag that’s always waved. It’s this absurd definition of what American is, and it’s getting more and more extreme in the Republican Party every election cycle.”

The fact that it’s getting so extreme among Republicans, and Republicans alone, may lead some to believe that the tenor of the ads could calm down a little ahead of the general election, when candidates typically pivot to a more moderate message in an effort to court a wider swath of voters.

In last year’s gubernatorial election in Virginia, Glenn Youngkin hammered guns, abortion, and his love of Trump during the Republican primary, but eased up on guns and abortion and distanced himself from Trump ahead of the general election, which he went on to win convincingly over Democrat Terry McAullife.

But this new fixation on guns is not coming from savvy billionaires like Youngkin. It’s coming from the hardcore MAGA set, and not only is it likely to stick around beyond the primaries, it’s likely hardwired into the DNA of a party now driven by extremism, conspiracy, and a belief that violence is a legitimate tool to achieve desired political outcomes.

“It’s not going to change,” Madrid says. “This is not this is not a primary tactic. This is mainstream Republicanism. So once you start to move off of that, you will start to lose the intensity of the support and turnout you need from the shrinking Republican base. Radicalization is the goal. This is about saying I’m willing to go to arms to overthrow what’s here or what’s coming. I’m willing to be violent in that cause. It’s not a small fringe group. These people are winning Republican primaries.”

In This Article: guns, Lauren Boebert, marjorie taylor greene

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yikes gerry qanon:

an 6 22

in Ohio, much of the focus on former President Donald Trump’s endorsements of Republican candidates has been on “Hillbilly Elegy” author J.D. Vance, who is competing with Rep. Tim Ryan, the Democratic nominee, in Ohio’s 2022 U.S. Senate race. One Trump-endorsed MAGA candidate and GOP nominee in Ohio who hasn’t received nearly as much national attention as Vance is J.R. Majewski, a full-fledged QAnon conspiracy theorist running for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives via Ohio’s 9th Congressional District.

Majewski is hoping to unseat the Democratic nominee, long-time Rep. Marcy Kaptur. If the 43-year-old Majewski managed to defeat Kaptur, it would be a political shocker; the Ohio Democrat was first elected to the U.S. House in 1982. Kaptur, now 75, has the distinction of being the only woman who has been serving in that branch of Congress for almost 40 years.

Kaptur survived the red waves of 1994 and 2010 and was reelected both years. But thanks to gerrymandering, it isn’t out of the question that Majewski — even with his support of QAnon — could win.

The Guardian’s Adam Gabbatt, in an article published on June 13, observes, “This is no quixotic campaign…. The 9th District has been redrawn for 2022, and is now rated as a toss-up by**the Cook Political Repor**t, ahead of elections in which Republicans are increasingly hopeful of winning the House and the Senate. If that happens, (President) Joe Biden will face extreme difficulty in passing any meaningful legislation for the rest of his first term.”

Majewski is among the extremists who buys into the Big Lie and doesn’t believe that Biden legitimately won the 2020 presidential election — never mind the fact that numerous recounts confirmed the fact that he did. The Ohio Republican marched with fellow Big Lie promoters in Washington, D.C. on January 6, 2021, although he wasn’t part of the mob who broke into the U.S. Capitol Building.

The Big Lie isn’t the only conspiracy theory that Majewski believes. QAnon has been claiming that the United States’ federal government has been hijacked by an international cabal of pedophiles, child sex traffickers, Satanists and cannibals and that Trump was put in the White House to fight the cabal.

Majewski, Gabbatt notes, repainted a pro-Trump sign on his front law so that it was changed into a sign promoting QAnon.

“The sign repainting wasn’t Majewski’s only dalliance with QAnon — a baseless right-wing conspiracy theory which has been labeled a potential domestic terror threat by the FBI — and which states, among other things, that a cabal of Democrats and liberals are engaged in child trafficking,” Gabbatt reports. “In a television interview about the sign, Majewski was wearing a QAnon t-shirt — and Media Matters, a media watchdog, documented multiple instances of Majewski posting images and hashtags relating to the baseless conspiracy theory.”

Majewski has also called for red states to secede from the United States. In a video posted on the Periscope app, Gabbatt notes, Majewski said, “I didn’t want to be a hype beast, but I’ve had it in my back pocket to say that every state that went red should secede from the United States. I don’t think it sounds out there.”

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penn wacko mastriano dominionist but

https://www.alternet.org/2022/05/brian-kemp-2657387890/

raffensberger win

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NY scotus? 4 22

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thiel and ken griffin big $

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an 422

Extremist groups and lawmakers are engaged in an "insidious and coordinated” plot to undermine American democracy. That's according to a newly issued report from the nonpartisan civil rights organization National Urban League (NUL).

The report, titled "Under Siege: The Plot to Destroy Democracy," documents the “conspiracy and the urgent case for a national mobilization to protect and defend our most sacred constitutional right”. NUL specifically notes four key tactics in the effort: gerrymandering, voter suppression, misinformation and intimidation.

In 2021 alone, 20 states have leveraged census data to redraw congressional maps, it noted. It labeled the new maps proposed by Republican state lawmakers “no more than modern-day gerrymandering that strips voting power away from communities with Black and brown voters."

By NUL's count, 34 laws were passed in 19 states between January 1 and December 7 2021 that make it more difficult for people to vote.

In addition to shortening the window to apply and deliver mail ballots, it says, those laws limit absentee voting lists, restrict assistance in returning a voter’s mail ballot, reduce the availability of mail ballot drop boxes, and increase barriers for voters with disabilities, among other restrictions.

"The burden of these laws – strict photo ID requirements, the elimination or restriction of Sunday voting, voting by mail and early voting, and the closing of polling locations – overwhelmingly falls on Black voters,” Marc Morial, president and CEO of NUL, said in the report.

“Since the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965, the United States has seen a steady rise in disenfranchisement practices giving one party an edge over the other. But never before has the nation seen such an insidious and coordinated campaign to obliterate the very principle of ‘one person, one vote’ from the political process.”

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edit bd 4 22

I’ve come to believe no one knows exactly why candidates win or lose elections for public office. We say we do. We don’t, though.

We would know why Candidate X defeated Candidate Y if we had direct knowledge of every single cause and effect accreting toward one irrefutable end. We can’t know, though. Our brains are limited.

Explanations for what happened are always after the fact. So they are never exact or complete or conclusive. And it can’t be otherwise – this is how it will be until we can see the world from God’s point of view.

As a storytelling species, we end up making everything that happened before the end fit the end. Why do we tell these stories? Well, again, the end is all we know for sure. Maybe we just like stories. Anyway, do you like thinking about how much of life is determined arbitrarily?

This is not to paper over obvious errors in campaigning. However, it is to say that even a campaign run “perfectly” can end in defeat. Terry McAuliffe got more Democratic voters to show up for this year’s race for Virginia governor than any Democratic candidate ever. He still lost.

For all the above reasons, I have sympathy for the Democrats running for reelection. I’m particularly sympathetic to Democrats holding seats in swing districts. They can’t know how the race will end. Every choice is like swimming to the surface after being underwater while upside down and blindfolded. They can’t afford to retrofit chaos and chance.

That doesn’t stop the Democrats’ liberal critics. For them, the way to beat the Republicans is obviously obvious. Democracy is facing an existential crisis! The Republicans are stoking political violence by calling opponents pedophiles! That goes for their own, too! They lie and lie and lie! All you gotta do is tell swing voters the whole truth!

Case in point is Kevin Kruse, a superlative historian and very loud and very confident critic of Democratic orthodoxy: “You'd think this would be an easy call for Democrats -- the GOP attacks aren't just baseless; there are many examples of pedophiles and sex traffickers in the GOP! -- but Democrats never miss a chance to miss a chance.”

To me, Kruse represents a genre of writing, found mostly on Twitter, in which the Democrats never do what they should be doing if they cared about beating back the tide of right-wing authoritarianism.

When the Republicans say the quiet part out loud (eg, that state legislators plan to steal the next presidential election), these critics call on the Democrats to pounce. When the Democrats dodge though, and instead stick with kitchen-table stuff, like the cost of health care, their critics say they don't have the guts. Welp, they say, we’re doomed.

I think liberal critics of the Democrats fail to think about something the Democrats think about. The voters they need to keep the Congress don’t know democracy is in crisis, don’t believe democracy is in crisis or kinda-sorta perhaps maybe don’t mind if democracy is in crisis.

It depends.

It depends on what the Democrats offer.

For these voters, it’s difficult to accept the fact that the Republicans have gone full fascist. It’s so hard it’s easier not to. And that’s easy, because, well, these people are not far from where the Republicans are. That’s what happens in a society organized by white supremacy.

That’s what the Democrats understand.

White supremacy is on the Republicans’ side.

So: What do you say to people who don’t believe the Republicans are dangerous? What do you say to people who believe democracy is fine now that the former president is out of power? What do you say to people who are already leaning toward the Republicans, because, you know, whiteness, but open to giving the Democrats a fair hearing?

You avoid “hot buttons” issues.

If you don’t, you lose.

You talk about the cost of health care.

If you do, you might win.

By urging the Democrats to do what they think the Democrats should be doing without respecting them enough to appreciate the stakes involved, these liberals critics reveal their faith in the American people.

A totally misguided faith.

They seem to think these swing voters will do the right thing once presented with the facts. I don’t know why they would when it’s easier, and more pleasurable, to believe the dulcet lies of white supremacy.

Look, the critics might be right. They might be wrong.

But let’s be honest.

The Democrats are asking respectable white people who are indifferent to suffering, who are immune to the painful outcomes of white supremacy and who are perhaps open to the Republicans suggesting that democracy has gone too far to vote for them.

That’s a huge challenge.

Let’s respect it.

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cawthorne fail

4 22

Free Speech For People just filed, on behalf of Arizona voters, lawsuits challenging the candidacies of Paul Gosar, Andy Biggs, & Mark Finchem

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3 22 digby

no lnx

Former president Donald Trump had another of his interminable rallies this weekend. He said the usual things delighting his South Carolina crowd and boring the rest of us into a coma. This time, however, he did add one memorable new line to the script which got people's attention:

As we watch the horrific carnage unfolding in Ukraine and the repressive crack down in Russia, comments like that are all the more chilling. He truly does want to emulate Vladimir Putin or Kim Jong Un. As the Washington Post reported recently, he has repeated his earlier admiration for Kim's "total control" as well:

He espoused praise for North Korea's brutal leader, marveling at how Kim's generals and aides "cowered" when the dictator spoke to them. "Total control," Trump said of how Kim ran the country, describing generals snapping to attention and standing up on command. "His people were sitting at attention," he added. "I looked at my people and said I want my people to act like that."

I have little doubt that if he wins another term, he will be much worse than he was in the first. He won't make the mistake of hiring people who might stand in his way a second time.

However, as we know, Trump isn't really serious about governing and wouldn't know how to do it efficiently even if he were. It doesn't make him any less dangerous, of course. His chaotic narcissism can do as much damage as a serious ideological authoritarian could. But he's laid out a style template for someone who is serious, showing them exactly the attitude that appeals to the MAGA base. And nobody in GOP politics is as ready to seize the mantle as Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, Trump 2.0.

The personality and affect have been evident since DeSantis won the governor's seat back in 2018. The Trumpian pettiness, the contempt, the reflexive hostility seem to come naturally to him. He treats the press like dirt and thinks insults are the highest form of humor. If he has any personal warmth or human compassion it's certainly well hidden. He even gestures like Trump.

But with DeSantis, it's more than just style. He's got the Republicans in Florida working together like clockwork to enact the most authoritarian agenda in the country, calibrated perfectly to appeal to the base in advance of his re-election campaign --- and a potential presidential run in 2024.

Florida has been at the leading edge of COVID denialism from the very beginning, but in recent days DeSantis and his hand-picked science-denying surgeon general have taken it to a new level. They had already turned masks into a battleground with the governor taking it upon himself earlier this month to scold high school kids for wearing them in his presence, declaring that it's time to end the "COVID theatre." This was ironic since it turned out that many of the kids had been told by their parents to wear them and DeSantis' numerous assaults on education over the past year have been rationalized as a defense of "parental rights." Then last week the surgeon general went even further, defying the CDC and most physicians by recommending that kids not get vaccinated for COVID-19. DeSantis and his medical henchman seem determined to keep the virus circulating as long as they can.

Meanwhile, the legislative season just coming to a close has produced such an astonishing array of right-wing culture war victories delivering on Desantis' "anti-woke" agenda that it's hard to know where to start. Building on last year's education wrecking ball in which they banned Critical Race Theory from schools despite the fact that they were not teaching it, instituted a requirement that schools teach about the "evils of communism" and passed a higher education law that allows for budget cuts to colleges based on student and faculty surveys about "viewpoint diversity" (which DeSantis defines as "indoctrination") this year they took it to a whole new level. Salon's Amanda Marcotte offered this tart analysis of the "Stop WOKE Act" "

The legislature also passed the "Stop WOKE Act," which bars both schools and businesses from having any training or program that supposedly causes an "individual should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race, color, sex, or national origin." This has been largely covered as a ban on any kind of diversity training, but it's even more expansive than that. As I note in Friday's Standing Room Only newsletter, conservatives can also block anti-sexual harassment trainings by claiming it's guilt-tripping men to tell them that ass-pinching is not allowed in the workplace.

The "fuck your feelings" crowd sure are sensitive snowflakes, aren't they?

Maximum leader DeSantis also got his wish for a first in the nation election police force which will report directly to him. I've got a tip for them: it turns out that the Republican Party in south Florida changed the registrations of hundreds of Democrats to Republican without their permission. That's a crime. In fact, DeSantis might end up regretting this one. If the election police are on the level (which is unlikely, I know) it's almost certain they will be putting many more Republicans behind bars than Democrats. Even Trump's Chief of Staff just blatantly committed it in the last election.

And then there is the grotesque "Don't Say Gay" law which prohibits teachers from discussing the subject in grades K-3. But because it uses the new vigilante system of civil law harassment, and is written so poorly, it will result in a chilling effect on all school districts and will result in small kids with gay parents being treated like aliens and many LGBTQ kids being shoved in the closet. If you doubt their intentions, just listen to DeSantis' vile press secretary:

Those of you who are of a certain age will hear the echoes of one of Florida's original homophobic crusaders Anita Bryant whose "Save Our Children" campaign was based upon the noxious lie that gays were "recruiting" the nice Christian children of the sunshine state.

Under pressure, the CEO of Disney, the state's largest employer and a major DeSantis donor belatedly objected to the bill and spoke to the Governor about it. DeSantis didn't budge and Disney announced that they will be suspending all political donations in the state of Florida after which the governor had a full blown meltdown:

Florida Republicans believe these Commie Symp mega corporations have no right to criticize them.

There was a time when business property rights were sacrosanct in the GOP as a matter of principle. But in the new authoritarian right, if a business doesn't toe their bigoted line, the government "won't stand for it."

Donald Trump is still likely to get the nomination and we can only hope and pray he doesn't win. His dictatorial impulses are well known. But Ron DeSantis is the future of the Republican Party and he's figured out how to take all that right-wing hate and grievance and put it into practice. You don't want to know what he could do on a national level.

===

https://www.alternet.org/2022/02/rick-scott-dark-rigthwing-agenda/

NO LNX

GOP Senator introduces dark right-wing blueprint for the future

[Florida paper blasts GOP Sen. Rick Scott’s 'full partisan' defense of Trump in scathing editorial

NBC News]

Brandon Gage February 22, 2022

Beginning in 2016 and continuing into 2020, the Republican Party’s platform has essentially parroted whatever former President Donald Trump has wanted. United States Senator Rick Scott (R-Florida), the chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, is trying to change that.

Scott, who was among the cohort of lawmakers who objected to President Joe Biden's 2020 Electoral College victory in Pennsylvania, has introduced an “11 Point Plan to Rescue America,” a draconian 31-page manifesto spelling out how he envisions the GOP governing if it retakes control of Congress in November.

“Hopefully, by doing this, we’ll have more of a conversation about what Republicans are going to get done. Because when we get the majority, I want to get something done,” Scott said in an interview with Politico. “There’s things that people would rather not talk about. I’m willing to say exactly what I’m going to do. I think it’s fair to the voter.”

He also acknowledged that Democrats would probably never agree to any of his terms and that his plan may even “strike fear in the heart of some Republicans.”

Indeed, Scott’s proposal is replete with extreme right-wing priorities:

Our kids will say the pledge of allegiance, salute the Flag, learn that America is a great country, and choose the school that best fits them. We will inspire patriotism and stop teaching the revisionist history of the radical left; our kids will learn about the wisdom of the US Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the founding fathers. Public schools will focus on the 3 R’s, not indoctrinate children with critical race theory or any other political ideology.

Government will never again ask American citizens to disclose their race, ethnicity, or skin color on any government forms. We are going to eliminate racial politics in America. No government policy will be based on race. People “will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” We are all made in the image of God; to judge a person on the color of their epidermis is immoral.

The soft-on-crime days of coddling criminal behavior will end. We will re-fund and respect the police because they, not the criminals, are the good guys. We will enforce our laws, all of them, and increase penalties for theft and violent crime. We will clean up our cities and stop pretending that crime is OK. We have zero-tolerance for “mostly peaceful protests” that attack police officers, loot businesses, and burn down our cities.

We will secure our border, finish building the wall, and name it after President Donald Trump. Nations have borders. We should give that a try. President Trump’s plan to build a wall was right. We welcome those who want to join us in building the American dream, immigrants who want to be Americans, not change America. We are a stronger nation because we are a nation of immigrants; but immigration without assimilation makes us weaker. Politicians from both parties talk big about border security and do nothing. We are done with that.

We will grow America’s economy, starve Washington’s economy, and stop Socialism. Socialism is un-American and always leads to poverty and oppression. We will stop it. We will shrink the federal government, reduce the government work force by 25% in 5 years, sell government buildings and assets, and get rid of the old, slow, closed, top-down, government-run-everything system we have today

We will eliminate all federal programs that can be done locally, and enact term limits for federal bureaucrats and Congress. Many government agencies should be either moved out of Washington or shuttered entirely. Yesterday’s old government is fundamentally incompatible with the digital era. The permanent ruling class in Washington is bankrupting us with inflation and debt, so they must be removed. For you to have more, Washington must have less.

We will protect the integrity of American Democracy and stop left-wing efforts to rig elections. Today’s Democrat Party is trying to rig elections and pack the courts because they have given up on Democracy. They don’t believe they can win based on their ideas, so they want to game the system and legalize voter fraud to stay in power. In true Orwellian fashion, Democrats refer to their election rigging plans as “voting rights”. We won’t allow the radical left to destroy our democracy by institutionalizing dishonesty and fraud.

We will protect, defend, and promote the American Family at all costs. The nuclear family is crucial to civilization, it is God’s design for humanity, and it must be protected and celebrated. To say otherwise is to deny science. The fanatical left seeks to devalue and redefine the traditional family, as they undermine parents and attempt to replace them with government programs. We will not allow Socialism to place the needs of the state ahead of the family.

Men are men, women are women, and unborn babies are babies. We believe in science: Men and women are biologically different, ‘male and female He created them.’ Modern technology has confirmed that abortion takes a human life. Facts are facts, the earth is round, the sun is hot, there are two genders, and abortion stops a beating heart. To say otherwise is to deny science.

Americans will be free to welcome God into all aspects of our lives, and we will stop all government efforts to deny our religious freedom and freedom of speech. The Democrat Party and their Big Tech allies are not merely secular; they have virtually created a new religion of wokeness that is increasingly hostile toward people of faith, particularly Christians and Jews. They are determined to drive all mention of God out of public view. We will not be silenced, canceled, or told what words to use by the politically correct crowd.

We are Americans, not globalists. America will be dependent on NO other country. We will conduct no trade that takes away jobs or displaces American workers. Countries who oppose us at the UN will get zero financial help from us. We will be energy independent and build supply chains that never rely on our adversaries. We will only help countries that are willing to defend themselves, like Israel.

Each topic contains a trove of bullet points ranging from the ridiculous – like naming a border wall with Mexico after Trump – to mirroring the plot of a dystopian horror film, such as punishing single mothers for not having a spouse.

“Even though many single moms heroically do the job of raising a family (as my mom often had to) children need and deserve both parents – and government should not be shy about saying so,” Scott writes.

Scott’s plan also includes language that encourages discrimination against individuals who do not conform to the arcane conservative heteronormative standard.

“Humans are born male and female, there are two genders, and to deny that is to deny science,” Scott writes. This is false and it leads to harm among LGBTQIA Americans.

Scott later adds that “no tax dollars will be used to pay for any diversity training or other woke indoctrination that is hostile to faith.” In other words, programs that are not in line with personal religious convictions will be banned.

He even suggests raising taxes on millions of low-income Americans.

“All Americans should pay some income tax to have skin in the game, even if a small amount. Currently over half of Americans pay no income tax,” Scott, who is a billionaire, declares.

The Washington Post noted on Tuesday that “in the Tax Foundation’s estimate, as many as 75 million people who paid no such taxes after deductions and credits in 2020” would see their tax obligations jump. “If you include the 32 million who didn’t file returns, such as retirees, the number climbs well over 100 million Americans.”

That is unlikely to go over well with most voters.

Nevertheless, despite the extraordinary diversion from mainstream American values, Scott maintains that his message is a winning one.

“As a general rule, you know, probably this year’s election is going to be a lot about the Biden agenda. But I do believe we’re going to win,” Scott told Politico. “We ought to have a plan and what we’re trying to get done when we get the majority.”

===

~ goofball cands

https://www.alternet.org/2022/02/mcconnell-2656651190/

===

https://www.alternet.org/2022/02/qanon-followers/

no lnx twt

QAnon followers are focused on 'a new project' in swing states

Meaghan Ellis February 11, 2022

QAnon enthusiasts, who believe former President Donald Trump represents some form of new world order, are now focusing on a different plot in hopes of regaining control of the White House.

According to The Guardian, QAnon advocates have turned their attention toward Secretary of State election races in various swing states. So, why do these races have the attention of QAnon followers? They believe these particular races could be the key to ensuring there is not a repeat of the 2020 presidential election. In many swing states, Republican election officials refused to assist Trump in overturning the presidential election.

Now, QAnon believers and far-right extremists are adamant about putting people in place who align with Trump's beliefs. Alex Kaplan, a senior researcher at Media Matters for America who has studied the evolution of conspiracy theories, explained how QAnon's actions could create more problems in the very near future.

“This is the way that QAnon could trigger a constitutional crisis,” said Kaplan. “QAnon is linked to an effort to recruit and elect candidates to positions directly controlling election administrations, and given their ties to harming democracy, that is very concerning.”

Per The Guardian, QAnon's agenda and their strategic plot to control the outcome of elections was detailed by former Republican lawmaker and Trump loyalist, Jim Marchant who is currently running to become a high-ranking election official in Nevada. Marchant revealed the moment he was propositioned by QAnon advocates and QAnon influencer Juan Savin about running for Secretary of State. It was at that moment when he realized those particular election races could be a key to controlling elections.

“I knew right then that they had figured out that we need to take back the secretary of state offices around the country. Not only did they ask me to run, they asked me to put together a coalition of other like-minded secretary of state candidates. I got to work, Juan O Savin helped, and we formed a coalition.”

Savin has also spoken out about the QAnon agenda. In January, Savin also shared details about the supposed "project" the movement had in place. Marchant explained, “We have a project that we are doing helping candidates across the country that we started here in Nevada that has prospered pretty well, with a number of Trump endorsements."

On Sunday, Savin also weighed in on “the secretary of state stuff”, as he boasted that “across the country we are gaining strength rapidly to get back into this game in an effective way. A lot of those offices that they thought they held and weren’t going to matter, we are going to flip those.”...

===

Dem Gov wiEvers told Kroll, “This is an all-hands-on-deck moment here. If I weren’t able to veto bills without the Republicans overriding my veto, we’d be Georgia right now. We’d be Texas. We’d be Arizona.”

===

https://www.alternet.org/2022/01/mitch-mcconnell-2656462927/

john s salon an 1/22

New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, who recently bowed out of a much-anticipated U.S. Senate bid, revealed that he was "bothered" after conversations with dozens of Republican Senators, who apparently wanted him to be a "roadblock" until the GOP retakes the White House. Sununu told The Washington Examiner this month that he was initially "pretty close" to running, explaining: "I wasn't ready to make an announcement, but I was like, 'OK, this makes sense. I think I could be a voice nationally.'" But after chatting with "most" of the GOP Senate caucus, Sununu reportedly soured on the role once it became apparent that they wanted him to be a legislative mule.

"They were all, for the most part, content with the speed at which they weren't doing anything. It was very clear that we just have to hold the line for two years," he told the Examiner. "OK, so I'm just going to be a roadblock for two years. That's not what I do."

"It bothered me that they were OK with that," the governor added.

Sununu's comments come in the wake of an intense legislative standoff between Democrats and Republicans over voting rights, an issue which became the focus of President Biden's agenda after negotiations on the "Build Back Better Act" – the president's $2.2 trillion social safety net plan – fell apart.

On Wednesday, Senate Republicans successfully filibustered Biden's sweeping voting rights overhaul – known as the "Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act" – which would standardize voting laws across all 50 states and clamp down on voter suppression. Not a single Republican backed the measure, even though the bill is supported by nearly 70% of Americans, according to a Navigator poll from November.

With Republicans having dashed Biden's hopes of passing the party's two signature pieces of legislation – the "Build Back Better Act" and the "Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act" – Democrats now question whether their colleagues believe in anything other than mindless obstructionism.

During a press conference on Wednesday, Biden echoed the spirit of Sununu's remarks, asking reporters, "What are Republicans for? What are they for? Name me one thing they're for."

That same day, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., sidestepped questioning when asked to lay out GOP's official agenda. "That's a very good question," McConnell said. "And I'll let you know when we take it back."

According to a recent Axios report, the Kentucky Republican has privately told colleagues and donors that the Republicans have no legislative agenda and are more interested in picking apart Democrats'.

Meanwhile, the House GOP caucus appears to be adopting the opposite strategy, according to The Washington Post, with its leadership drumming up a "list of policy pledges" designed to buoy support for the party in 2022.

Among those helming this effort are House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., and House Whip Steve Scalise, R-La., both of whom ardently supported Donald Trump's election fraud conspiracy and voted to overturn the 2020 election.

Playing an advisory role to McCarthy is former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who crafted the "Contract with America," a legislative platform widely linked to the GOP's successful campaign to flip both chambers in 1994.

Gingrich told the Post that McCarthy doesn't believe an anti-Biden agenda is sufficient for 2022, saying, "We need a positive message."

"I think that's clearly what McCarthy wants to do and I've offered to look at stuff and offer advice," Gingrich added. "There's lots of people in the House working on it. It will be a widespread commitment."

While the exact details of McCarthy's agenda remain hazy, the broad contours of the plan are clear.

So-called "parental rights" are expected to be front and center as Republican state officials continue to decry the alleged instruction of "critical race theory" – whose prevalence appears to be vastly overstated. For remedy, McCarthy has already released an informal "Parents Bill of Rights," which includes such provisions as the "right to be heard" and the "right to know what's being taught in schools and see reading material."

The House Speaker is also expected to assemble seven "issue-specific task forces" that will tackle a variety of other policy objectives, such as countering China's economic prowess, combating the recent crime wave, securing the nation's borders, regulating Big Tech, cutting corporate taxes, bulldozing environmental regulations, and curtailing inflation.

The soaring cost of consumer goods has proven an evergreen source of whataboutism for Republicans, even as the year-end jobs numbers indicate that Biden has steered the economy through an unprecedented economic recovery since he took office. Fox News called inflation a "top weapon" for the GOP to wield against Democrats in the upcoming midterms.

Throughout 2021, the consumer prices index rose 6.8% – the highest increase it has seen since 1982.

But when it comes to actually tackling inflation, lawmakers have historically had to walk a tightrope, said Brian Riedl, who served as an aide to Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio.

"There is nothing that messages well, significantly reduces inflation and is painless," Riedl told the Post. "It's easier to criticize inflation than to map out an actual solution going forward, and that's the box Republicans are currently in."

===

no lnx twt

‘A huge setback for the GOP': Republicans suffer a blow in their fight for control of the House

Alex Henderson January 14, 2022

Between President Joe Biden’s weak approval ratings, gerrymandering and voter suppression, many pundits have been predicting that Republicans will retake the U.S. House of Representatives in November. But that remains to be seen, and Republican gerrymandering was dealt a blow in the Midwest this week when the Ohio Supreme Court — including Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor — struck down the congressional map that Ohio Republicans had in mind for the Buckeye State.

On top of that, Rep. John Katko of New York State has announced that he won’t be seeking reelection — which is more bad news for the GOP. Katko is one of the Republicans who is moderate enough to fare well among centrist Democrats and swing voters in his state. Neither of these problems is necessarily decisive for control of the House, but if 2022 ends up being close, a few seats on the margin could make all the difference.

The Ohio Supreme Court ruled, 4-3, that the map violated the state’s constitution by drawing the districts to unfairly favor one party over another. Columbus Dispatch reporters Jessie Balmert and Laura A. Bischoff note that the map “could have given Republicans as much as a 12-3 advantage in a state that voted for President Barack Obama and President Donald Trump twice.”

Ohio Supreme Court Justice Michael Donnelly, who was part of the majority opinion, argued, “When the dealer stacks the deck in advance, the house usually wins.”

READ: Here's what it would really mean to prosecute Trump]

Now, lawmakers in the Ohio State Legislature, according to Balmert and Bischoff, will have 30 days to “craft a new map.”

The Cook Political Report’s Dave Wasserman, in response to the ruling, tweeted:

Meanwhile, in New York State, Katko’s decision not to seek another term takes away a GOP candidate who isn’t a polarizing figure among centrist Democrats and swing voters. Katko, who voted to impeach former President Donald Trump following the January 6, 2021 insurrection, is conservative but not extreme.

Not surprisingly, Trump sees Katko’s decision as good news, as he considers the congressman a RINO: Republican in Name Only.

READ: 'To defy Trump's wishes is to defy God's plan': The scary truth about modern right-wing misinformation]

But outside of the MAGA bubble, political analysts are saying that Democrats just got some good news in New York State. Two of them are Cook's Wasserman and Kyle Kondik of Sabato's Crystal Ball:

Here are some more reactions to Katko’s announcement:

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===

AN 122

NO LNX

Inside the secret 'endorsement operation' to get Trump's 'stamp of approval'

Meaghan Ellis January 15, 2022

Republican candidates, current lawmakers, and those seeking re-election have all adopted one disturbing common theme to get themselves across the campaign threshold: support former President Donald Trump and echo all of his claims of voter fraud in exchange for his endorsement which comes with overwhelming exposure and support from his relatively large base.

With the 2022 midterm elections fast approaching, NBC News' Jonathan Allen and Marc Caputo are now shedding light on Trump's "endorsement operation" and how it continues to give him the ability to exert power over the entire political party.

Republican candidates and lawmakers have certain requirements that must be followed in order for them to acquire the former president's endorsement but the work doesn't stop there.

"The most common theme of Trump's endorsements, particularly at the state level, is that he is backing candidates who have voiced support for his lie that the 2020 election was rigged against him," Allen and Caputo wrote. "Fifty-nine of the 91 have questioned the 2020 election results, according to an NBC News review, including those who voted against certifying President Joe Biden's victory in Congress."

On the other side of the spectrum, there is also a system in place for those who choose to challenge the former president's position. For those candidates and lawmakers, whom Trump refers to as "RINOs: Republicans in Name Only," there are countermeasures in place.

"He has also become enamored of the anti-endorsement, ripping into Republican incumbents who challenge him or his lie about the election," they wrote.

Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey (R), Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) are current targets for the former president due to their decision to speak freely in a manner that goes against Trump's wishes.

"Rumors are that Doug Ducey, the weak RINO Governor from Arizona, is being pushed by Old Crow Mitch McConnell to run for the U.S. Senate," he said in a Friday statement, ahead of his weekend rally in that state. "He will never have my endorsement or the support of MAGA Nation!"

"I will never endorse this jerk again," Trump said last Sunday after Rounds admitted that the 2020 presidential election was legitimate.

The writers also highlighted another common trend as they noted that "Trump is looking to find races where his endorsement can be tied directly to a hopeful's fate."

"He has stayed away from several competitive GOP Senate primaries where multiple candidates are running as acolytes, including in Missouri, Arizona, and Ohio," Allen and Caputo explained. "In Pennsylvania, Trump endorsed Sean Parnell — only to see Parnell suspend his campaign amid domestic abuse allegations. That served as a warning that he needed a better vetting process."

There is also a process for uncharted territory. In regions where Trump does not have a solid relationship with a current Republican lawmaker or candidate, there is what is described as a more "strategic" approach.

"In cases where Trump doesn't have a long-standing relationship with the candidate — or isn't making the endorsement to thwart an adversary — Republicans familiar with the process describe a more cautious and strategic approach than the one he pursued as president or in the immediate aftermath of his defeat," the wrote.

A categorization of Republican candidates also exists. According to Allen and Caputo, there is a "two-tier process" in place. "The candidates Trump is going to endorse come hell or high water, and the lower-tier hopefuls who are getting vetted," they explained.

A Republican operative also weighed in with details about this process. "In the end, he makes these decisions, but he does it after having it run through channels," the operative said. "There’s nobody that would have stopped him from endorsing Jody Hice or David Perdue," Georgia candidates who are trying to unseat Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger and Gov. Brian Kemp, both of whom rejected Trump's false claims of foul play in their state in 2020. "No process would have stopped that."

So what does the future hold for the Republican Party? While that remains uncertain, it does not look like Trump's endorsement process will end anytime soon since he's been allowed to exert so much power over the political party.

"There's a lot of other people milling around and keeping a room at Mar-a-Lago and finding a way to spin by the table, but I don't think those people, by and large, have any sway in the process," said the GOP operative. "Not everybody gets a meeting. If they're considering [an endorsement], they meet with everybody who they're considering."

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===

wtf? an 11 21 no lnx

https://www.eac.gov/

Chairman

Donald Palmer

Download Bio or

Vice Chair

Thomas Hicks

Commissioner

Christy McCormick

Commissioner

Ben Hovland

U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) announced Thursday that it has named Brianna Schletz as its next Inspector General. Brianna replaces former Inspector General Patricia Layfield, who retired from the post in March 2021, and will officially start at the EAC’s Office of Inspector General in November.

mayer https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/08/09/the-big-money-behind-the-big-lie**

cleta Mitchell, who helped then-President Donald Trump try to overturn the election results in Georgia and later helped funnel funds to the pro-Trump "fraudit" in Arizona, has been named to the Board of Advisors of the federal Election Assistance Commission.

:{

The Election Assistance Commission (not to be confused with the Federal Election Commission, or FEC,) works with states on voting system guidelines, redistricting, cybersecurity, state voter files, voting by mail, and recounts and audits.

:{

Mitchell, a "fiercely partisan Republican election lawyer" whose work in years past included anti-LGBTQ efforts, was on the infamous call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger when Trump asked him to "find 11,780 votes," recorded audio revealed in January. The release of that tape led to Mitchell's resignation from her law firm, Foley & Lardner.

The news of Mitchell's appointment was reported by the editorial director of Votebeat:

:{

The Guardian's Sam Levine adds that Mitchell was also "involved in efforts to coordinate new voting restrictions in states this year," pointing to this damning Guardian article from April.

As Huseman notes, Mitchell told The New Yorker's Jane Mayer in August, "I don't think we can say with certainty who won" the 2020 presidential election, which is false.

Mitchell is a member of the secretive and "shadowy" far right wing Christian nationalist and plutocratic Council for National Policy. Among the group's alleged other members are Turning Point USA's Charlie Kirk, Family Research Council's Tony Perkins, Liberty Counsel's Mat Stavers, and American Family Association's Tim Wildmon.

===

https://twitter.com/JessicaHuseman/status/1460647869904474114

apparently

@EACgov

Chairman Don Palmer and Cleta Mitchell spoke on a panel together at right wing elections conference this summer. :{https://:(style="border:0px solid black;box-sizing:border-box;display:inline;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;margin:0px;padding:0px;white-space:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;min-width:0px"):}:exposedbycmd.org/2021/11/16/ale:{c-academy-featured-a-whos-who-of-voter-suppression-leaders/:(style="border:0px solid black;box-sizing:border-box;display:inline;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;margin:0px;padding:0px;white-space:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;min-width:0px"):}:...

https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2021/11/16/alec-academy-featured-a-whos-who-of-voter-suppression-leaders/

The EAC does not have any direct control over who is on this board. The Help America Vote Act allows specific groups the ability to appoint them without review.

Quote Tweet

Election Asst. Comm.

@EACgov

· Nov 15

The @EACgov issued the following statement regarding the Board of Advisors. https://eac.gov/news/2021/11/15/eac-statement-regarding-board-advisors**

7:52 PM · Nov 15, 2021·Twitter Web App

Nov 15

Replying to

@JessicaHuseman

That said, it's not clear why this agency waited until 12 days after the appointment was official to tell anyone about it. United States Commission on Civil Rights didn't bother to announce it either.

Quote Tweet

Jessica Huseman

@JessicaHuseman

· Nov 15

2/ She was appointed effective November 3, but the EAC just announced her nomination today — 12 days later — in an email to stakeholders. Her term lasts until 2023.

The EAC does not have any direct control over who is on this board. The Help America Vote Act allows specific groups the ability to appoint them without review.

Quote Tweet

Election Asst. Comm.

@EACgov

· Nov 15

The @EACgov issued the following statement regarding the Board of Advisors. https://eac.gov/news/2021/11/15/eac-statement-regarding-board-advisors**

7:52 PM · Nov 15, 2021·Twitter Web Ap

Nov 15

Replying to

@JessicaHuseman

Quote Tweet

Jessica Huseman

@JessicaHuseman

· Nov 15

2/ She was appointed effective November 3, but the EAC just announced her nomination today — 12 days later — in an email to stakeholders. Her term lasts until 2023.

... The EAC does not have any direct control over who is on this board. The Help America Vote Act allows specific groups the ability to appoint them without review.

Election Asst. Comm.

@EACgov

· Nov 15

The @EACgov issued the following statement regarding the Board of Advisors. https://eac.gov/news/2021/11/15/eac-statement-regarding-board-advisors**

7:52 PM · Nov 15, 2021·Twitter Web App

Jessica Huseman

@JessicaHuseman

Nov 15

Replying to

@JessicaHuseman

Quote Tweet

Jessica Huseman

@JessicaHuseman

· Nov 15

2/ She was appointed effective November 3, but the EAC just announced her nomination today — 12 days later — in an email to stakeholders. Her term lasts until 2023.

The EAC does not have any direct control over who is on this board. The Help America Vote Act allows specific groups the ability to appoint them without review.

Quote Tweet

Election Asst. Comm.

@EACgov

· Nov 15

The @EACgov issued the following statement regarding the Board of Advisors. https://eac.gov/news/2021/11/15/eac-statement-regarding-board-advisors**

7:52 PM · Nov 15, 2021·Twitter Web App

Jessica Huseman

@JessicaHuseman

Nov 15

Replying to

@JessicaHuseman

Quote Tweet

Jessica Huseman

@JessicaHuseman

· Nov 15

2/ She was appointed effective November 3, but the EAC just announced her nomination today — 12 days later — in an email to stakeholders. Her term lasts until 2023.

---

david a no doc

Jessica Huseman

@JessicaHuseman

Nov 15

Also

@EACgov

appears to have put this out in a bit of a hurry. These are the Voluntary *Voting System Guidelines.

Jessica Huseman

@JessicaHuseman

Nov 15

It is honestly *quite* striking that this statement does not name Cleta Mitchell nor the organization who appointed her, and instead dances around her name entirely. The statement appears to be about nothing, read out of context of ... this obvious thing.

Jessica Huseman

@JessicaHuseman

Nov 15

Two democrats sit on the EAC commission and have the cover of a Democratic Congress and a Democratic President and they still have not said a *thing* about this.

It's a bit baffling?

Jessica Huseman

@JessicaHuseman

Apparently

@EACgov

Chairman Don Palmer and Cleta Mitchell spoke on a panel together at right wing elections conference this summer. https://exposedbycmd.org/2021/11/16/alec-academy-featured-a-whos-who-of-voter-suppression-leaders/**

8:36 AM · Nov 16, 2021·Twitter for iPhone

Retweets

Quote Tweet

Likes

Fallen leafMaple leafLeaf fluttering in wind Billed cap

@satirehat

Nov 16

Replying to

@JessicaHuseman

and

@EACgov

@arapaho415

@clearing_fog

Arapaho415

@arapaho415

22h

Links to Nov 16, 2021:

1/ "While the July 26-28 [2021] session was ostensibly led by the dark money group Honest Elections Project, it was organized, hosted, and bankrolled by ALEC, despite repeated claims by its CEO, Lisa Nelson...

exposedbycmd.org

ALEC “Academy” Featured a Who’s Who of Voter Suppression Leaders - EXPOSEDbyCMD

While the July 26-28 session was ostensibly led by the dark money group Honest Elections Project, it was organized, hosted, and bankrolled by ALEC, despite repeated claims by its CEO, Lisa Nelson,...

Show replies

David Armiak

@duboo

https://t.co/rl8UDI7vpj?amp=1

23h

Replying to

@JessicaHuseman

and

@EACgov

Christy McCormick is another EAC Commissioner who floats around these voter suppression circles. She is often attending Republican Secretaries of State Committee meetings. See these minutes that I published for the piece cited above.

documentcloud.org

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https://www.eac.gov/news/2021/11/15/eac-statement-regarding-board-advisors

for Immediate Release

November 15, 2021

The U.S. Election Assistance Commission issued the following statement:

The 2002 Help America Vote Act, which established the U.S Election Assistance Commission (EAC), also created a Board of Advisors to the EAC serving a variety of discretionary functions, including review of the Voluntary Voting System Guidelines and other advisory duties. The EAC does not make or approve appointments to the 35-member Board of Advisors. Board members are directly appointed by a wide variety of organizations, including but not limited to the National Governors Association, National Conference of State Legislatures, United States Conference of Mayors, and the United States Commission on Civil Rights.

For questions surrounding the appointment of a member to the EAC Board of Advisors, please contact the appointing organization directly.

===

race to the bottom is ampl fdbk sys:

Conservative pundit recently expressed concern about Republicans in Arizona, Texas, and Florida as he detailed what he describes as the "race to the bottom" to "see who can be the most MAGA."

On Friday, October 15, Charlie Sykes, founder of the conservative website The Bulwark, appeared on MSNBC where he specifically criticized the "absolutely batshit crazy" Republicans in Texas. "I know that Republicans in Texas have been conservative for a long time but there was a time when conservative Republicans in Texas were not absolutely batshit crazy," Sykes said to MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace.

He went on to compare the differences he sees between Texas Republicans of the past and present. He also highlighted common behaviors he's seeing in Republicans across three states: Texas, Florida, and Arizona.

Sykes' remarks came amid a discussion about Texas law requiring teachers to develop that offers "opposing perspectives on historical events," HuffPost reports. In fact, a school administrator was recently criticized for insisting educators "should 'make sure that if you have a book on the Holocaust, that you have one' with alternative viewpoints."

"Texas Republicans used to be respectable," Sykes continued. "And now we are almost in this competition … between Florida, Arizona, and Texas to see who can be the most MAGA, who can play the most hair-on-fire culture war games, because that seems to be this race to the bottom that we're talking about here."

Sykes, however, insisted that it is "easy to beat up on the administrator" but "the focus ought to be on the law and the fact that the teachers are terrified. They don't know what's going to happen."

"What is the other side of the Holocaust?" Sykes later asked. "Are you going to assign fourth-graders 'Mein Kampf'? Are you going to make them listen to Seb Gorka's radio show? I just don't know what she actually had in mind. But again, this is exactly what you get when you have politicians playing culture war and then trying to ram that into badly thought out draconian legislation."

===

1021 an

Michele Carew is the latest casualty in the Trumpist war on voting. The veteran elections administrator tendered her resignation to officials in Hood County, Texas, on Friday after a brutal campaign by Trump loyalists to oust her. Trump won 81 percent of the vote there, but Carew still found herself in the crosshairs of those seeking to entrench the GOP's control over election administration. They want to see Carew's duties reassigned to a county clerk, who is notorious for (what else?) sharing electoral conspiracy theories on social media.

Carew is one of many local election officials across the country who have chosen to quit rather than absorb right-wing abuse. Among 14 southwestern Ohio counties, one in four of election officials has already called it quits. Pennsylvania is grappling with a similar exodus.

"These conspiracy theorists are in it for the long haul," county clerk Barb Byrum told the Associated Press. "They're in it to completely crumble our republic, and they're looking at these election administrator positions. They're playing the long game."

It all keeps coming back to the Big Lie. The Big Lie of voter fraud is a classic stabbed-in-the-back narrative. These fantasies crop up whenever fascists need to reconcile their conviction that they're strong and special with the reality that they've been shut out of power. They convince themselves that they would have won, if it hadn't been for the treacherous Other who denied them their glorious birthright.

In the most famous stabbed-in-the-back narrative, it was the German Army of World War I that supposedly could have triumphed had the craven politicians not betrayed them. Today, Donald Trump's supporters console themselves with the fantasy that they won the 2020 election, but Democrats, unions, Black people and the Chinese Communist Party cheated them out of power.

A good stabbed-in-the-back narrative also suggests a target at which to direct resentment and even violence. "Stop the Steal" was the rallying cry that Trump used to sic a mob on the Capitol on Jan 6.

Local elections officials are still bearing the brunt of Trumpist fury. A special investigation by Reuters documented 102 threats of death or violence against 40 local election officials. Those are a fraction of the true number of threats. Milwaukee election official Claire Woodall-Vogg estimated she'd received 150 threats since a Gateway Pundit, a massively popular conspiracy blog, published lies about her.

Election administration skews disproportionately female, like education and public health — two other spheres where GOP radicals have directed their ire. The California Voter Foundation, a watchdog group, estimates that 75 percent of local election officials are women.

"The common thread is that no one has any respect from women […]," Milwaukee elections official Woodall-Vogg said in an interview with CNN in which the mother of two small children recounted how her harassers delight in calling her a cunt and a whore.

In Georgia, Republicans are using a new state law to purge Democrats of color from local elections boards. At least 10 board members have been removed under the new state law or by local ordinances. Of these, at least 5 of the ousted members are people of color.

"I speak out and I know the laws," Ms. Lonnie Hollis, an ousted Black board member told the Times. "The bottom line is they don't like people that have some type of intelligence and know what they're doing, because they know they can't influence them."

Michigan Republicans are busily replacing local election board members with pliant functionaries who, they hope, will refuse to certify future Democratic victories. The state's former elections director warned that it would create "a mess" if 10 or 15 counties refused to certify the election. It would be more than "a mess." It would be yet another procedural coup attempt. The GOP is organizing to steal the next election in plain sight, but the Department of Justice has done little more than convene a task force to study the problem. The Big Lie must not be allowed to cast a shadow over our democracy.

===

no lnx many

GOP pushes strategy to prolong the pandemic

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott feels the heat: analysis

Amanda Marcotte and Salon October 12, 2021

Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas, a Republican, has once again proven his stalwart commitment to aiding the virus that causes COVID-19 in its goal of spreading as far as possible. Late Monday, the Republican state leader issued an executive order banning all entities in the state — including private businesses — from requiring employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19. (All other vaccine requirements remain untouched, because the "principled opposition" to vaccine mandates is an inch deep.)

As many folks who wish hypocrisy still mattered have pointed out, Abbott's ban violates his party's supposed commitment to a low regulatory environment for businesses by interfering with private businesses who wish to institute vaccine requirements. When it comes to the conflict between being pro-business and pro-virus, however, it was never any contest with Republicans. All other GOP principles fall before the newfound Republican commitment to making sure COVID-19 infects as many human bodies as it can.

Abbott, of course, did not admit that he was preventing businesses from enacting basic health and safety standards. Instead, he presented the ban as a defense of business, accusing President Joe Biden of "bullyingmany private entities into imposing COVID-19 vaccine mandates, causing workforce disruptions that threaten Texas's continued recovery." That's is just a small taste of the doublespeak that the entire executive order is written in.

Abbott is not standing up for businesses or the economy.

Biden's vaccine mandate was quietly welcomed by many businesses who want to have normalcy-returning mandates but want someone else to blame when Trumper employees whine about it.And their worry about worker shortages was unfounded, as most vaccine resistant workers will get the shot rather than lose their job. Abbott's claims about economic recovery are also hot air. The sluggish recovery is due to the ongoing pandemic and will only bounce back if more people get vaccinated.

No, it's quite clear what's going on and has been going on with Republicans fighting every effort to get the pandemic under control: The GOP wants to prolong the pandemic because they think doing so will help them in the 2022 midterms.

Abbott himself is up for reelection in 2022, and, at first blush, it might seem a weird strategy to practically make the virus his running mate. (Though the coronavirus has tough competition in an "ew, gross" contest with Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick.) But Abbott is making a smart, if deeply evil and downright murderous, bet. Voters, especially fairweather voters, tend to blame everything on the party that controls the White House, even if the blame for any problem actually falls on the opposition. If the pandemic is still a problem in November 2022, then there's a very real chance that large numbers of Democratic voters, already demoralized by the lack of legislative progress on other fronts, simply won't show up to vote. That will make it easier for Republicans to sweep the midterms.

A new Axios-Ipsos poll demonstrates that the "prolong the pandemic" strategy is working for Republicans. Trust in Biden on the pandemic has fallen to 42%, down 10 points from where it was 6 months ago. Most of the trust has slipped with Democrats and independent voters. Americans are also getting depressed, with 30% saying it will be more than a year before life returns to normal, which is triple what the number from June.

The COVID-19 culture war isn't just demoralizing Democratic and potential Democratic voters. It appears GOP leadership sees this issue as a way to invigorate their own base, whose entire political reason for existing is increasingly just to "own the liberals."

Anti-vaccine and anti-mask protests, which are getting rowdy and even violent, started off as a classic right-wing Astroturfed phenomenon, but it's since gained a lot of traction among ordinary conservatives who aren't getting paid to throw tantrums at perplexed school board members. Culture war provocations over Dr. Seuss and Mr. Potato Head floated earlier this year by Fox News weren't getting the job done — but freaking out over masks and shots really gets the juices going for the worst Americans, i.e. the people the GOP needs to turn out at the polls.

Vaccine mandates are a threat to the "victory through infecting our own voters with COVID-19" strategy for Republicans, for one simple reason: They work. As a White House report released last week details, "organizations with vaccination requirements have seen their vaccination rates increase by more than 20 percentage points and have routinely seen their share of fully vaccinated workers rise above 90%." Despite conservatives floating threats of mass walkouts, the paper-thin "principled" opposition to vaccines disappears the second that conservatives face an actual consequence for refusing to vaccinate.

The Biden administration has fallen far short of where it should be in terms of vaccine mandates, both slow-walking the employer mandates and completely sidestepping the possibility of banning the unvaccinated from planes before the holidays. Still, even the threat of vaccine mandates is starting to have an impact. As the report notes, the rate of unvaccinated Americans has been cut by one-third since Biden first started issuing mandates.

Republicans are in a race against time in their efforts to reduce vaccination rates to the point where the pandemic is still a live issue next November. COVID-19 rates are falling, down 24% in the past 14 days nationally and down 39% in Abbott's home state, which continues to have one of the highest COVID death rates in the nation. This is mostly because of vaccination, but also because so many Americans have been infected that it's adding to herd immunity. It's still unclear if there will be another winter surge or if the virus is finally running out of the unimmunized bodies it needs to remain a serious threat. There is a strong possibility that the end of the pandemic is closer than many Americans think.

So by making it as hard for Biden to get shots into arms faster, Republicans are keeping COVID-19 cases high to keep Biden's approval ratings low.

If that doesn't change — or if it gets worse with another surge — there's a very real chance that this pandemic makes the already dim prospects for Democrats in 2022 even worse. And that, in turn, sets the stage for Donald Trump to cheat his way back into the White House in 2024. So it's no wonder that power-hungry Republicans are betting big on their prolong the pandemic strategy, even if it comes at the cost of killing their own voters. Big risks lead to big rewards. For the Republicans, setting themselves up for permanent one-party minority rule is the biggest prize.

===

https://www.alternet.org/2021/09/election-deniers/

no lnx

Election deniers organize to seize control of the GOP — and reshape America’s elections

Steve Bannon speaking at the 2017 Conservative Political Action Conference in National Harbor, Maryland, Gage Skidmore]

ProPublica September 05, 2021

by Isaac Arnsdorf, Doug Bock Clark, Alexandra Berzon and Anjeanette Damon

ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom.

One of the loudest voices urging Donald Trump's supporters to push for overturning the presidential election results was Steve Bannon. “We're on the point of attack," Bannon, a former Trump adviser and far-right nationalist, pledged on his popular podcast on Jan. 5. “All hell will break loose tomorrow." The next morning, as thousands massed on the National Mall for a rally that turned into an attack on the Capitol, Bannon fired up his listeners: “It's them against us. Who can impose their will on the other side?"

When the insurrection failed, Bannon continued his campaign for his former boss by other means. On his “War Room" podcast, which has tens of millions of downloads, Bannon said President Trump lost because the Republican Party sold him out. “This is your call to action," Bannon said in February, a few weeks after Trump had pardoned him of federal fraud charges.

The solution, Bannon announced, was to seize control of the GOP from the bottom up. Listeners should flood into the lowest rung of the party structure: the precincts. “It's going to be a fight, but this is a fight that must be won, we don't have an option," Bannon said on his show in May. “We're going to take this back village by village … precinct by precinct."

Precinct officers are the worker bees of political parties, typically responsible for routine tasks like making phone calls or knocking on doors. But collectively, they can influence how elections are run. In some states, they have a say in choosing poll workers, and in others they help pick members of boards that oversee elections.

After Bannon's endorsement, the “precinct strategy" rocketed across far-right media. Viral posts promoting the plan racked up millions of views on pro-Trump websites, talk radio, fringe social networks and message boards, and programs aligned with the QAnon conspiracy theory.

Suddenly, people who had never before showed interest in party politics started calling the local GOP headquarters or crowding into county conventions, eager to enlist as precinct officers. They showed up in states Trump won and in states he lost, in deep-red rural areas, in swing-voting suburbs and in populous cities.

In Wisconsin, for instance, new GOP recruits are becoming poll workers. County clerks who run elections in the state are required to hire parties' nominees. The parties once passed on suggesting names, but now hardline Republican county chairs are moving to use those powers.

“We're signing up election inspectors like crazy right now," said Outagamie County party chair Matt Albert, using the state's formal term for poll workers. Albert, who held a “Stop the Steal" rally during Wisconsin's November recount, said Bannon's podcast had played a role in the burst of enthusiasm.

ProPublica contacted GOP leaders in 65 key counties, and 41 reported an unusual increase in signups since Bannon's campaign began. At least 8,500 new Republican precinct officers (or equivalent lowest-level officials) joined those county parties. We also looked at equivalent Democratic posts and found no similar surge.

“I've never seen anything like this, people are coming out of the woodwork," said J.C. Martin, the GOP chairman in Polk County, Florida, who has added 50 new committee members since January. Martin had wanted congressional Republicans to overturn the election on Jan. 6, and he welcomed this wave of like-minded newcomers. “The most recent time we saw this type of thing was the tea party, and this is way beyond it."

Bannon, through a spokesperson, declined to comment.

While party officials largely credited Bannon's podcast with driving the surge of new precinct officers, it's impossible to know the motivations of each new recruit. Precinct officers are not centrally tracked anywhere, and it was not possible to examine all 3,000 counties nationwide. ProPublica focused on politically competitive places that were discussed as targets in far-right media.

The tea party backlash to former President Barack Obama's election foreshadowed Republican gains in the 2010 midterm. Presidential losses often energize party activists, and it would not be the first time that a candidate's faction tried to consolidate control over the party apparatus with the aim of winning the next election.

What's different this time is an uncompromising focus on elections themselves. The new movement is built entirely around Trump's insistence that the electoral system failed in 2020 and that Republicans can't let it happen again. The result is a nationwide groundswell of party activists whose central goal is not merely to win elections but to reshape their machinery.

“They feel President Trump was rightfully elected president and it was taken from him," said Michael Barnett, the GOP chairman in Palm Beach County, Florida, who has enthusiastically added 90 executive committee members this year. “They feel their involvement in upcoming elections will prevent something like that from happening again."

It has only been a few months — too soon to say whether the wave of newcomers will ultimately succeed in reshaping the GOP or how they will affect Republican prospects in upcoming elections. But what's already clear is that these up-and-coming party officers have notched early wins.

In Michigan, one of the main organizers recruiting new precinct officers pushed for the ouster of the state party's executive director, who contradicted Trump's claim that the election was stolen and who later resigned.In Las Vegas, a handful of Proud Boys, part of the extremist group whose members have been charged in attacking the Capitol, supported a bid to topple moderates controlling the county party — a dispute that's now in court.

In Phoenix, new precinct officers petitioned to unseat county officials who refused to cooperate with the state Senate Republicans' “forensic audit" of 2020 ballots. Similar audits are now being pursued by new precinct officers in Michigan and the Carolinas. Outside Atlanta, new local party leaders helped elect a state lawmaker who championed Georgia's sweeping new voting restrictions.

And precinct organizers are hoping to advance candidates such as Matthew DePerno, a Michigan attorney general hopeful who Republican state senators said in a report had spread “misleading and irresponsible" misinformation about the election, and Mark Finchem, a member of the Oath Keepers militia who marched to the Capitol on Jan. 6and is now running to be Arizona's top elections official. DePerno did not respond to requests for comment, and Finchem asked for questions to be sent by email and then did not respond. Finchem has said he did not enter the Capitol or have anything to do with the violence. He has also said the Oath Keepers are not anti-government.

When Bannon interviewed Finchem on an April podcast, he wrapped up a segment about Arizona Republicans' efforts to reexamine the 2020 results by asking Finchem how listeners could help. Finchem answered by promoting the precinct strategy. “The only way you're going to see to it this doesn't happen again is if you get involved," Finchem said. “Become a precinct committeeman."

Some of the new precinct officers were in the crowd that marched to the Capitol on Jan. 6, according to interviews and social media posts; one Texas precinct chair was arrested for assaulting police in Washington. He pleaded not guilty. Many of the new activists have said publicly that they support QAnon, the online conspiracy theory that believes Trump was working to root out a global child sex trafficking ring. Organizers of the movement have encouraged supporters to bring weapons to demonstrations. In Las Vegas and Savannah, Georgia, newcomers were so disruptive that they shut down leadership elections.

“They're not going to be welcomed with open arms," Bannon said, addressing the altercations on an April podcast. “But hey, was it nasty at Lexington?" he said, citing the opening battle of the American Revolution. “Was it nasty at Concord? Was it nasty at Bunker Hill?"

Bannon plucked the precinct strategy out of obscurity. For more than a decade, a little-known Arizona tea party activist named Daniel J. Schultz has been preaching the plan. Schultz failed to gain traction, despite winning a $5,000 prize from conservative direct-mail pioneer Richard Viguerie in 2013 and making a 2015 pitch on Bannon's far-right website, Breitbart. Schultz did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

In December, Schultz appeared on Bannon's podcast to argue that Republican-controlled state legislatures should nullify the election results and throw their state's Electoral College votes to Trump. If lawmakers failed to do that, Bannon asked, would it be the end of the Republican Party? Not if Trump supporters took over the party by seizing precinct posts, Schultz answered, beginning to explain his plan. Bannon cut him off, offering to return to the idea another time.

That time came in February. Schultz returned to Bannon's podcast, immediately preceding Mike Lindell, the MyPillow CEO who spouts baseless conspiracy theories about the 2020 election.

“We can take over the party if we invade it," Schultz said. “I can't guarantee you that we'll save the republic, but I can guarantee you this: We'll lose it if we conservatives don't take over the Republican Party."

Bannon endorsed Schultz's plan, telling “all the unwashed masses in the MAGA movement, the deplorables" to take up this cause. Bannon said he had more than 400,000 listeners, a count that could not be independently verified.

Bannon brought Schultz back on the show at least eight more times, alongside guests such as embattled Florida congressman Matt Gaetz, a leading defender of people jailed on Capitol riot charges.

The exposure launched Schultz into a full-blown far-right media tour. In February, Schultz spoke on a podcast with Tracy “Beanz" Diaz, a leading popularizer of QAnon. In an episode titled “THIS Is How We Win," Diaz said of Schultz, “I was waiting, I was wishing and hoping for the universe to deliver someone like him."

Schultz himself calls QAnon “a joke." Nevertheless, he promoted his precinct strategy on at least three more QAnon programs in recent months, according to Media Matters, a Democratic-aligned group tracking right-wing content. “I want to see many of you going and doing this," host Zak Paine said on one of the shows in May.

Schultz's strategy also got a boost from another prominent QAnon promoter: former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, who urged Trump to impose martial law and “rerun" the election. On a May online talk show, Flynn told listeners to fill “thousands of positions that are vacant at the local level."

Precinct recruitment is now “the forefront of our mission" for Turning Point Action, according to the right-wing organization's website. The group's parent organization bussed Trump supporters to Washington for Jan. 6, including at least one person who was later charged with assaulting police. He pleaded not guilty. In July, Turning Point brought Trump to speak in Phoenix, where he called the 2020 election “the greatest crime in history." Outside, red-capped volunteers signed people up to become precinct chairs.

Organizers from around the country started huddling with Schultz for weekly Zoom meetings. The meetings' host, far-right blogger Jim Condit Jr. of Cincinnati, kicked off a July call by describing the precinct strategy as the last alternative to violence. “It's the only idea," Condit said, “unless you want to pick up guns like the Founding Fathers did in 1776 and start to try to take back our country by the Second Amendment, which none of us want to do."

By the next week, though, Schultz suggested the new precinct officials might not stay peaceful. Schultz belonged to a mailing list for a group ofmilitary, law enforcement and intelligence veterans called the “1st Amendment Praetorian" that organizes security for Flynn and other pro-Trump figures. Back in the 1990s, Schultz wrote an article defending armed anti-government militias like those involved in that decade's deadly clashes with federal agents in Ruby Ridge, Idaho, and Waco, Texas.

“Make sure everybody's got a baseball bat," Schultz said on the July strategy conference call, which was posted on YouTube. “I'm serious about this. Make sure you've got people who are armed."

The sudden demand for low-profile precinct positions baffled some party leaders. In Fort Worth, county chair Rick Barnes said numerous callers asked about becoming a “precinct committeeman," quoting the term used on Bannon's podcast. That suggested that out-of-state encouragement played a role in prompting the calls, since Texas's term for the position is “precinct chair." Tarrant County has added 61 precinct chairs this year, about a 24% increase since February. “Those podcasts actually paid off," Barnes said.

For weeks, about five people a day called to become precinct chairs in Outagamie County, Wisconsin, southwest of Green Bay. Albert, the county party chair, said he would explain that Wisconsin has no precinct chairs, but newcomers could join the county party — and then become poll workers. “We're trying to make sure that our voice is now being reinserted into the process," Albert said.

Similarly, the GOP in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, is fielding a surge of volunteers for precinct committee members, but also for election judges or inspectors, which are party-affiliated elected positions in that state. “Who knows what happened on Election Day for real," county chair Lou Capozzi said in an interview. The county GOP sent two busloads of people to Washington for Jan. 6 and Capozzi said they stayed peaceful. “People want to make sure elections remain honest."

Elsewhere, activists inspired by the precinct strategy have targeted local election boards. In DeKalb County, east of Atlanta, the GOP censured a long-serving Republican board member who rejected claims of widespread fraud in 2020. To replace him, new party chair Marci McCarthy tapped a far-right activist known for false, offensive statements. The party nominees to the election board have to be approved by a judge, and the judge in this case rejected McCarthy's pick, citing an “extraordinary" public outcry. McCarthy defended her choice but ultimately settled for someone less controversial.

In Raleigh, North Carolina, more than 1,000 people attended the county GOP convention in March, up from the typical 300 to 400. The chair they elected, Alan Swain, swiftly formed an “election integrity committee" that's lobbying lawmakers to restrict voting and audit the 2020 results. “We're all about voter and election integrity," Swain said in an interview.

In the rural western part of the state, too, a wave of people who heard Bannon's podcast or were furious about perceived election fraud swept into county parties, according to the new district chair, Michele Woodhouse. The district's member of Congress, Rep. Madison Cawthorn, addressed a crowd at one county headquarters on Aug. 29, at an event that included a raffle for a shotgun.

“If our election systems continue to be rigged and continue to be stolen, it's going to lead to one place, and it's bloodshed," Cawthorn said, in remarks livestreamed on Facebook, shortly after holding the prize shotgun, which he autographed. “That's right," the audience cheered. Cawthorn went on, “As much as I'm willing to defend our liberty at all costs, there's nothing that I would dread doing more than having to pick up arms against a fellow American, and the way we can have recourse against that is if we all passionately demand that we have election security in all 50 states."

After Cawthorn referred to people arrested on Jan. 6 charges as “political hostages," someone asked, “When are you going to call us to Washington again?" The crowd laughed and clapped as Cawthorn answered, “We are actively working on that one."

Schultz has offered his own state of Arizona as a proof of concept for how precinct officers can reshape the party.The result, Schultz has said, is actions like the state Senate Republicans' “forensic audit" of Maricopa County's 2020 ballots. The “audit," conducted by a private firm with no experience in elections and whose CEO has spread conspiracy theories, has included efforts to identify fraudulent ballots from Asia by searching for traces of bamboo. Schultz has urged activists demanding similar audits in other states to start by becoming precinct officers.

“Because we've got the audit, there's very heightened and intense public interest in the last campaign, and of course making sure election laws are tightened," said Sandra Dowling, a district chair in northwest Maricopa and northern Yuma County whose precinct roster grew by 63% in less than six months. Though Dowling says some other district chairs screen their applicants, she doesn't. “I don't care," she said.

One chair who does screen applicants is Kathy Petsas, a lifelong Republican whose district spans Phoenix and Paradise Valley. She also saw applications explode earlier this year. Many told her that Schultz had recruited them, and some said they believed in QAnon. “Being motivated by conspiracy theories is no way to go through life, and no way for us to build a high-functioning party," Petsas said. “That attitude can't prevail."

As waves of new precinct officers flooded into the county party, Petsas was dismayed to see some petitioning to recall their own Republican county supervisors for refusing to cooperate with the Senate GOP's audit.

“It is not helpful to our democracy when you have people who stand up and do the right thing and are honest communicators about what's going on, and they get lambasted by our own party," Petsas said. “That's a problem."

This spring, a team of disaffected Republican operatives put Schultz's precinct strategy into action in South Carolina, a state that plays an outsize role in choosing presidents because of its early primaries. The operatives' goal was to secure enough delegates to the party's state convention to elect a new chair: far-right celebrity lawyer Lin Wood.

Wood was involved with some of the lawsuits to overturn the presidential election that courts repeatedly ruled meritless, or even sanctionable. After the election, Wood said on Bannon's podcast, “I think the audience has to do what the people that were our Founding Fathers did in 1776." On Twitter, Wood called for executing Vice President Mike Pence by firing squad. Wood later said it was “rhetorical hyperbole," but that and other incendiary language got him banned from mainstream social media. He switched to Telegram, an encrypted messaging app favored by deplatformed right-wing influencers, amassing roughly 830,000 followers while repeatedly promoting the QAnon conspiracy theory.

Asked for comment about his political efforts, Wood responded, “Most of your 'facts' are either false or misrepresent the truth." He declined to cite specifics.

Typically, precinct meetings were “a yawner," according to Mike Connett, a longtime party member in Horry County, best known for its popular beach towns. But in April, Connett and other establishment Republicans were caught off guard when 369 people, many of them newcomers, showed up for the county convention in North Myrtle Beach. Connett lost a race for a leadership role to Diaz, the prominent QAnon supporter, and Wood's faction captured the county's other executive positions plus 35 of 48 delegate slots, enabling them to cast most of the county's votes for Wood at the state convention. “It seemed like a pretty clean takeover," Connett told ProPublica.

In Greenville, the state's most populous county, Wood campaign organizers Jeff Davis and Pressley Stutts mobilized a surge of supporters at the county convention — about 1,400 delegates, up from roughly 550 in 2019 — and swept almost all of the 79 delegate positions. That gave Wood's faction the vast majority of the votes in two of South Carolina's biggest delegations.

Across the state, the precinct strategy was contributing to an unprecedented surge in local party participation, according to data provided by a state GOP spokeswoman. In 2019, 4,296 people participated. This year, 8,524 did.

“It's a prairie fire down there in Greenville, South Carolina, brought on by the MAGA posse," Bannon said on his podcast.

Establishment party leaders realized they had to take Wood's challenge seriously. The incumbent chair, Drew McKissick, had Trump's endorsement three times over — including twice after Wood entered the race. But Wood fought back by repeatedly implying that McKissick and other prominent state Republicans were corrupt and involved in various conspiracies that seemed related to QAnon. The race became heated enough that after one event, Wood and McKissick exchanged angry words face-to-face.

Wood's rallies were raucous affairs packed with hundreds of people, energized by right-wing celebrities like Flynn and Lindell. In interviews, many attendees described the events as their first foray into politics, sometimes referencing Schultz and always citing Trump's stolen election myth. Some said they'd resort to violence if they felt an election was stolen again.

Wood's campaign wobbled in counties that the precinct strategy had not yet reached. At the state convention in May, Wood won about 30% of the delegates, commanding Horry, Greenville and some surrounding counties, but faltering elsewhere. A triumphant McKissick called Wood's supporters “a fringe, rogue group" and vowed to turn them into a “leper colony" by building parallel Republican organizations in their territory.

But Wood and his partisans did not act defeated. The chairmanship election, they argued, was as rigged as the 2020 presidential race. Wood threw a lavish party at his roughly 2,000-acre low-country estate, secured by armed guards and surveillance cameras. From a stage fit for a rock concert on the lawn of one of his three mansions, Wood promised the fight would continue.

Diaz and her allies in Horry County voted to censure McKissick. The county's longtime Republicans tried, but failed, to oust Diaz and her cohort after one of the people involved in drafting Wood tackled a protester at a Flynn speech in Greenville. (This incident, the details of which are disputed, prompted Schultz to encourage precinct strategy activists to arm themselves.) Wood continued promoting the precinct strategy to his Telegram followers, and scores replied that they were signing up.

In late July, Stutts and Davis forced out Greenville County GOP's few remaining establishment leaders, claiming that they had cheated in the first election. Then Stutts, Davis and an ally won a new election to fill those vacant seats. “They sound like Democrats, right?" Bannon asked Stutts in a podcast interview. Stutts replied, “They taught the Democrats how to cheat, Steve."

Stutts' group quickly pushed for an investigation of the 2020 presidential election, planning a rally featuring Davis and Wood at the end of August, and began campaigning against vaccine and school mask mandates. “I prefer dangerous freedom over peaceful slavery," Stutts had previously posted on Facebook, quoting Thomas Jefferson. Stutts continued posting messages skeptical of vaccine and mask mandates even after he entered the hospital with a severe case of COVID-19. He died on Aug. 19.

The hubbub got so loud inside the Cobb County, Georgia, Republican headquarters that it took several shouts and whistles to get everyone's attention. It was a full house for Salleigh Grubbs' first meeting as the county's party chair. Grubbs ran on a vow to “clean house" in the election system, highlighting her December testimony to state lawmakers in which she raised unsubstantiated fraud allegations. Supporters praised Grubbs' courage for following a truck she suspected of being used in a plot to shred evidence. She attended Trump's Jan. 6 rally as a VIP. She won the chairmanship decisively at an April county convention packed with an estimated 50% first-time participants.

In May, Grubbs opened her first meeting by asking everyone munching on bacon and eggs to listen to her recite the Gettysburg Address. “Think of the battle for freedom that Americans have before them today," Grubbs said. “Those people fought and died so that you could be the precinct chair." After the reading, first-time precinct officers stood for applause and cheers.

Their work would start right away: putting up signs, making calls and knocking on doors for a special election for the state House. The district had long leaned Republican, but after the GOP's devastating losses up and down the ballot in 2020, they didn't know what to expect.

“There's so many people out there that are scared, they feel like their vote doesn't count," Cooper Guyon, a 17-year-old right-wing podcaster from the Atlanta area who speaks to county parties around the state, told the Cobb Republicans in July. The activists, he said, need to “get out in these communities and tell them that we are fighting to make your vote count by passing the Senate bill, the election-reform bills that are saving our elections in Georgia."

Of the field's two Republicans, Devan Seabaugh took the strongest stance in favor of Georgia's new law restricting ways to vote and giving the Republican-controlled Legislature more power over running elections. “The only people who may be inconvenienced by Senate Bill 202 are those intent on committing fraud," he wrote in response to a local newspaper's candidate questionnaire.

Seabaugh led the June special election and won a July runoff. Grubbs cheered the win as a turning point. “We are awake. We are preparing," she wrote on Facebook. “The conservative citizens of Cobb County are ready to defend our ballots and our county."

Newcomers did not meet such quick success everywhere. In Savannah, a faction crashed the Chatham County convention with their own microphone, inspired by Bannon's podcast to try to depose the incumbent party leaders who they accused of betraying Trump. Party officers blocked the newcomers' candidacies, saying they weren't officially nominated. Shouting erupted, and the meeting adjourned without a vote. Then the party canceled its districtwide convention.

The state party ultimately sided with the incumbent leaders. District chair Carl Smith said the uprising is bound to fail because the insurgents are mistaken in believing that he and other local leaders didn't fight hard enough for Trump.

“You can't build a movement on a lie," Smith said.

In Michigan, activists who identify with a larger movement working against Republicans willing to accept Trump's loss have captured the party leadership in about a dozen counties. They're directly challenging state party leaders, who are trying to harness the grassroots energy without indulging demands to keep fighting over the last election.

Some of the takeovers happened before the rise of the precinct strategy. But the activists are now organizing under the banner “Precinct First" and holding regular events, complete with notaries, to sign people up to run for precinct delegate positions.

“We are reclaiming our party," Debra Ell, one of the organizers, told ProPublica. “We're building an 'America First' army."

Under normal rules, the wave of new precinct delegates could force the party to nominate far-right candidates for key state offices. That's because in Michigan, party nominees for attorney general, secretary of state and lieutenant governor are chosen directly by party delegates rather than in public primaries. But the state party recently voted to hold a special convention earlier next year, which should effectively lock in candidates before the new, more radical delegates are seated.

Activist-led county parties including rural Hillsdale and Detroit-area Macomb are also censuring Republican state legislators for issuing a June report on the 2020 election that found no evidence of systemic fraud and no need for a reexamination of the results like the one in Arizona. (The censures have no enforceable impact beyond being a public rebuke of the politicians.) At the same time, county party leaders in Hillsdale and elsewhere are working on a ballot initiative to force an Arizona-style election review.

Establishment Republicans have their own idea for a ballot initiative — one that could tighten rules for voter ID and provisional ballots while sidestepping the Democratic governor's veto. If the initiative collects hundreds of thousands of valid signatures, it would be put to a vote by the Republican-controlled state Legislature. Under a provision of the state constitution, the state Legislature can adopt the measure and it can't be vetoed.

State party leaders recently reached out to the activists rallying around the rejection of the presidential election results, including Hillsdale Republican Party Secretary Jon Smith, for help. Smith, Ell and others agreed to join the effort, the two activists said.

“This empowers them," Jason Roe, the state party executive director whose ouster the activists demanded because he said Trump was responsible for his own loss, told ProPublica. Roe resigned in July, citing unrelated reasons. “It's important to get them focused on change that can actually impact" future elections, he said, “instead of keeping their feet mired in the conspiracy theories of 2020."

Jesse Law, who ran the Trump campaign's Election Day operations in Nevada, sued the Democratic electors, seeking to declare Trump the winner or annul the results. The judge threw out the case, saying Law's evidence did not meet “any standard of proof," and the Nevada Supreme Court agreed. When the Electoral College met in December, Law stood outside the state capitol to publicly cast mock votes for Trump.

This year, Law set his sights on taking over the Republican Party in the state's largest county, Clark, which encompasses Las Vegas. He campaigned on the precinct strategy, promising 1,000 new recruits. His path to winning the county chairmanship — just like Stutts' team in South Carolina, and Grubbs in Cobb County, Georgia — relied on turning out droves of newcomers to flood the county party and vote for him.

In Law's case, many of those newcomers came through the Proud Boys, the all-male gang affiliated with more than two dozen people charged in the Capitol riot. The Las Vegas chapter boasted about signing up 500 new party members (not all of them belonging to the Proud Boys) to ensure their takeover of the county party. After briefly advancing their own slate of candidates to lead the Clark GOP, the Proud Boys threw their support to Law. They also helped lead a state party censure of Nevada's Republican secretary of state, who rejected the Trump campaign's baseless claims of fraudulent ballots.

Law, who did not respond to repeated requests for comment, has declined to distance himself from the Las Vegas Proud Boys, citing Trump's “stand back and stand by" remark at the September 2020 presidential debate. “When the president was asked if he would disavow, he said no," Law told an independent Nevada journalist in July. “If the president is OK with that, I'm going to take the presidential stance."

The outgoing county chair, David Sajdak, canceled the first planned vote for his successor. He said he was worried the Proud Boys would resort to violence if their newly recruited members, who Sajdak considered illegitimate, weren't allowed to vote.

Sajdak tried again to hold a leadership vote in July, with a meeting in a Las Vegas high school theater, secured by police. But the crowd inside descended into shouting, while more people tried to storm past the cops guarding the back entrance, leading to scuffles. “Let us in! Let us in!" some chanted. Riling them up was at least one Proud Boy, according to multiple videos of the meeting.

At the microphone, Sajdak was running out of patience. “I'm done covering for you awful people," he bellowed. Unable to restore order, Sajdak ended the meeting without a vote and resigned a few hours later. He'd had enough.

“They want to create mayhem," Sajdak said.

Soon after, Law's faction held their own meeting at a hotel-casino and overwhelmingly voted for Law as county chairman. Nevada Republican Party Chairman Michael McDonald, a longtime ally of Law who helped lead Trump's futile effort to overturn the Nevada results, recognized Law as the new county chair and promoted a fundraiser to celebrate. The existing county leaders sued, seeking a court order to block Law's “fraudulent, rogue election." The judge preliminarily sided with the moderates, but told them to hold off on their own election until a court hearing in September.

To Sajdak, agonizing over 2020 is pointless because “there's no mechanism for overturning an election." Asked if Law's allies are determined to create one, Sajdak said: “It's a scary thought, isn't it."

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