This Week: Federal Prosecutors Made Progress in the Investigation of Trump’s Efforts to Subvert Democracy, While MAGA Supporters in State Legislatures Attempt to Suppress the Vote
After being charged last week with dozens of felonies, former President Donald Trump continues to face numerous investigations and lawsuits, including into his involvement in the attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election at the federal level. A federal appeals court ruled that Trump’s “top advisers” must testify before a grand jury “investigating Trump and his allies’ attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election,” and former Vice President Mike Pence said he will not appeal an “order compelling him to testify” on Trump’s role in the effort.
Last week, MAGA supporters in Tennessee voted to expel three elected legislators for participating in a nonviolent protest calling for stricter gun laws in “a frightening echo of Jan. 6.” The vote “drew accusations of racism” after two of the three legislators, who are both Black, were expelled, while the third lawmaker who survived the vote is white.
In Florida, MAGA supporters introduced voter suppression legislation that would make it more difficult to vote by mail, put up roadblocks for organizations that register people to vote, and make it more difficult for college students to vote.
North Carolina House Speaker and MAGA supporter Tim Moore announced that the supermajority in the state House plans to re-gerrymander legislative maps, while MAGA supporters in the state House pushed a bill through committee to make it harder to vote by mail. The anti-vote by mail bill “is tied directly to former President Donald Trump’s call to ‘stop the count’ in key swing states in 2020.”
In Arizona, Gov. Katie Hobbs vetoed MAGA-inspired bills to make it more difficult to vote by mail and effectively “prohibit the use of machines to tabulate votes.” The Arizona Senate also passed a bill based on conspiracy theories to “bar the secretary of state from overseeing elections in which he (or she) is on the ballot.”
Meanwhile in Arizona, failed governor candidate and election denier Kari Lake is teasing a U.S. Senate bid as failed Senate candidate Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania, who also ran a campaign based on election conspiracy theories, is also reportedly considering another run for U.S. Senate.
In Nevada, MAGA supporters opposed a bill to prohibit firearms at polling locations. One conservative legislator claimed he was concerned that voting locations would “become targets for those wishing to perpetrate violence because the locations would be gun free zones.”
An ongoing probe in Michigan into an election-denying “small-town election clerk accused of stealing election equipment” continued this week. The clerk embraced conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election and “claimed she was trying to preserve election data to prove fraud.”
