Driving the Day:
"Election denialism is now so mainstream that it has become a kind of Republican purity test." https://t.co/uY5IzdsckG
— Defend Democracy Project (@DemocracyNowUS) November 1, 2022
Must Read Stories
Republicans Continue To Spread Lies About The Assault On Paul Pelosi And Attempted Kidnapping Of The Speaker Of The House
- Politico: Prominent Conservatives Share Online Disinformation About Paul Pelosi Assault: Even as Republican leaders condemn the brutal assault on Speaker Nancy Pelosi‘s husband, other GOP figures are broadcasting a much different message on social media — at turns downplaying, mocking and trading in disinformation about the attack. Former Republican President Donald Trump has so far remained silent online about the Pelosi home invasion, but his son Donald Trump Jr. retweeted a proposed “Paul Pelosi” Halloween costume featuring men’s underwear and a hammer, saying “The Internet remains undefeated.” Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.), who sits on the House Homeland Security Committee, embraced a false anti-LGBTQ conspiracy surrounding the attack, tweeting and then deleting a post suggesting the perpetrator was a “male nudist hippie prostitute.”
- New York Times: Republicans Continue To Spread Baseless Claims About Pelosi Attack: Donald Trump Jr., the former president’s son, continues to post jokes about it. Dinesh D’Souza, the creator of a discredited film about the 2020 election called “2000 Mules,” accused the San Francisco Police Department on Monday of covering up the facts. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, wrote that the “same mainstream media democrat activists” who questioned former President Donald J. Trump’s ties to Russia were now silencing the new owner of Twitter, Elon Musk. The reason: Mr. Musk deleted a post linking to a newspaper that once claimed Hillary Rodham Clinton was dead when she ran for president in 2016. In the days since Paul Pelosi, the 82-year-old husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, was attacked by an intruder asking, “Where is Nancy?”, a litany of Republicans and conservatives have spread baseless conspiracy theories about the assault and its motives. Although the police have not yet detailed all the circumstances of the crime, these theories have already seeped into the Republican mainstream. While many Republican officials have denounced the violence, others have at the very least tolerated, and in some cases cheered, a violent assault on the spouse of a political rival.
- Associated Press: Musk Boosts Surge In Misinformation About Pelosi Attack: Within hours of the attack on Paul Pelosi, conspiracy theories deflecting blame for the assault on the husband of U.S. Speaker Nancy Pelosi were already swirling online. It didn’t matter that authorities said Paul Pelosi was alone when the suspect broke into the couple’s San Francisco home. Or that investigators said they didn’t believe the two men knew one another. It didn’t even matter that the suspect, David DePape, confessed to investigators that he broke into the Pelosi home to target the speaker. Misleading claims about the assault spread rapidly anyway, and not just thanks to trolls in obscure internet chatrooms. The claims received a major boost from some prominent Republicans and Elon Musk, now the owner of Twitter, one of the world’s leading online platforms.
- NBC: Arizona GOP Nominee Kari Lake Mocks Attack On Paul Pelosi At Campaign Event: The Republican nominee for governor of Arizona, Kari Lake, made light of the attack on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband in remarks at a campaign event Monday, drawing laughter from the audience. Asked about school security, Lake suggested the protection afforded to federal lawmakers should be available to students, as well. “Nancy Pelosi, well, she’s got protection when she’s in D.C. — apparently her house doesn’t have a lot of protection,” Lake said at a campaign event in Scottsdale, Arizona, sparking laughter from many in attendance. Lake then said, “If our lawmakers can have protection, if our politicians can have protection, if our athletes, then certainly the most important people in our lives — our children — should have protection.”
Election Denying Secretary Of State Candidates Are Closing In On Victory
- Politico: Ringleader Of Trump-Aligned Election Officials Nears Nevada Takeover: A leading proponent of the false claim that the 2020 election was stolen is on the verge of becoming the chief elections official in Nevada — which would put him in charge of running the vote in the critical swing state for the 2024 presidential election. If Republican Jim Marchant wins his close secretary of state race, he could fundamentally reshape elections here, with enormous ramifications for how they are run in Nevada. He has called for eliminating mail voting, curtailing early voting and pushing for hand counts of ballots — despite evidence that the practice is more error-prone than using machines — and could generally make it more difficult to vote in the state. If he refused to certify accurate election results down the road, it could sow chaos in the state and nationally. And Marchant is not alone: He is a leader of a group of hard-right, election-denying candidates in Michigan, Arizona and elsewhere who have similar beliefs. At a rally with former President Donald Trump last month, Marchant promised that his class of pro-Trump secretaries of state would “fix the whole country and President Trump is going to be president again in 2024.” Despite that, Marchant’s Democratic opponent, Cisco Aguilar, says he’s still not getting the help he needs to win.
- Washington Post: Election Denier Mark Finchem’s Sleeper Campaign Closes In On MAGA Prize: Finchem is running a virtually nonexistent campaign for statewide office, with little paid advertising, scant public events and even rarer media interviews. In his bid for a position that hasn’t historically been especially prominent, Finchem — frequently donning a cowboy hat and a “Sunday go-to-meeting tie” — appears to be betting that he can ride the coattails of flashier Republicans on the ballot, notably Lake and Senate candidate Blake Masters. It’s a gamble that might pay off. A CNN poll conducted Sept. 26 through Oct. 2 found 49 percent of likely voters supported Finchem and 45 percent supported Democrat Adrian Fontes, within the poll’s margin of sampling error. The stakes are enormous, as it would elevate Finchem to second in line of succession for governor and hand him the power to upend how elections are run in a key swing state that decided the 2020 election and could tip the electoral college again in 2024. Finchem, who has repeatedly denied the legitimacy of the 2020 election results, has already said he would not have certified Biden’s win in 2020 and suggested he might use his power to reject Democratic victories in the future. As secretary of state, Finchem could refuse to certify vote counting machines in use across the state, forcing counties to conduct hand counts that experts say would take longer and be less accurate. He also could rewrite the guidelines on where to place voting locations, side with litigants trying to restrict ballot access and work with allies in the state legislature to curtail early voting and voting by mail.
Election Lies And Disinformation Flood Pennsylvania
- New York Times: Letters, Tweets, TV: How Midterm Disinformation Has Washed Over Pennsylvania: Disinformation has long been a feature of American politics. Mudslinging, smear campaigns, dirty tricks. Yet wading through the muck ahead of this year’s midterm elections in one fiercely contested state, Pennsylvania, shows just how thoroughly it now warps the American democratic process. In July, a tweet made the rounds spreading a falsehood about voting. “BREAKING: Pennsylvania will not be accepting mail-in ballots,” declared someone using an account called the Donald J. Trump Tracker. In September, mysterious letters began arriving in mailboxes in Chester County, on the old Main Line west of Philadelphia, falsely telling people that their votes might not have been counted in the last election. No, the Democratic candidate for United States Senate, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, does not have tattoos of the Crips, the notorious street gang from Los Angeles, as Newt Gingrich said on Fox. Nor did the Republican candidate for governor, Doug Mastriano, say that Iran’s supreme leader had “the right idea of how women should be treated,” as a post on Twitter claimed. He did falsely accuse the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia of kidnapping homeless and foster children and “experimenting on them with gender transitioning.” Pennsylvania, with about 13 million people, is by no means unique when it comes to the problem, but as a swing state narrowly won by President Biden in 2020, it has become a disinformation battleground ahead of the midterms on Nov. 8. The result has hardened the state’s partisan divide and deepened distrust not only of politicians but of the political process itself since the way ballots are cast and counted has been at the heart of much of the disinformation swirling around.
- New Yorker: How Election Subversion Went Mainstream in Pennsylvania: In this year’s midterm elections, much hangs on how Pennsylvanians vote. “What’s at stake is faith in the legitimacy of democracy,” Ari Mittleman, who runs the bipartisan nonprofit Keep Our Republic, told me. The race between John Fetterman and Mehmet Oz could determine the balance of the U.S. Senate, and is currently a tossup. The shape of the Pennsylvania legislature could decide the future of reproductive access and voting rights in the state. And one of the gubernatorial candidates—who, if he wins, will oversee future elections—is an election denier. “This is my fear,” Malcolm Kenyatta, a Democratic state representative, told me. “Republicans are going to a place of only accepting elections when they win, and that’s dangerous as hell.”
Judge Dismisses Mark Meadows’ Challenge To January 6 Committee Subpoena
- CNN: Judge Dismisses Mark Meadows’ Challenge To House January 6 Committee Subpoena: A federal judge on Monday night dismissed the challenge former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows brought to a House January 6 select committee subpoena. US District Judge Carl Nichols wrote that the Constitution’s Speech or Debate clause, which shields legislators from being targeted by certain legal actions in circumstances tied to their legislative duties, shielded the select committee from Meadows’ lawsuit. “At the time it issued the subpoena to Meadows, the Select Committee had evidence that Meadows was in contact with President Trump on January 6th and participated in efforts to challenge the election results,” Nichols wrote. “Meadows is therefore a proper subject of the Select Committee’s investigation, and the Court cannot say that the Committee’s demands for his testimony, documents, and cell phone records are irrelevant to its investigative task,” he added. Meadows can appeal Nichols’ ruling
In The States
ARIZONA: Justice Department Says Drop Box Monitoring Is Most Likely Illegal
- Washington Post: Justice Dept. Says Ballot Drop Box Monitoring In Ariz. Is Likely Illegal: The Justice Department stepped in to an ongoing Arizona election lawsuit Monday, supporting a claim by the League of Women Voters of Arizona that monitoring ballot drop boxes can amount to illegal voter intimidation. The department said such “vigilante ballot security measures,” including filming voters at drop boxes, probably violates the federal Voting Rights Act. “When private citizens form ‘ballot security forces’ and attempt to take over the State’s legitimate role of overseeing and policing elections, the risk of voter intimidation — and violating federal law — is significant,” the department said in a “statement of interest” filed in the case.
FLORIDA: Proud Boys Hired As Miami-Dade Poll Workers
- Miami Herald: 3 Ex-Proud Boys Hired As Miami-Dade Poll Workers. Insurrection Indictment Costs 1 The Job: Two former members of the Proud Boys — the far-right white nationalist extremist group that has become influential in Miami-Dade’s Republican Party — have qualified to serve as poll workers in Miami-Dade County and will be interacting with voters on Election Day. A third former member, who actually wears an ankle monitor following an indictment for his part in the Jan. 6 insurrection on the nation’s Capitol, also continues to appear on the county’s poll worker database. But the county on Monday said he was removed from the Election Day work schedule three weeks ago after Elections Supervisor Christina White learned he’d been charged with several felonies.
NORTH CAROLINA: Election Deniers Make Inroads In Rural NC County That Voted 70% For Trump
- ProPublica: A County Elections Director Stood Up to Locals Who Believe the Voting System Is Rigged. They Pushed Back Harder: On a Saturday in late March, the woman who runs elections in the rural hills of Surry County, North Carolina, was pulling another weekend shift preparing for the upcoming primary, when she began to hear on the other side of her wall the thunder of impassioned speeches. She was dismayed that the voices were questioning the election she’d overseen in 2020 and implying that corrupted voting machines had helped steal it. She also believed it was no coincidence that the Surry County GOP convention — the highlight of which was a lecture from a nationally prominent proponent of the stolen-election myth — was taking place in a public meeting room right next to her office. The elections director, 47-year-old Michella Huff, who’d lived in the county since high school and knew many voters by name, considered it ludicrous that anyone could think the election had been rigged in Surry County. Donald Trump had received upward of 70% of the roughly 36,000 votes cast. Huff, a registered Republican for most of her adult life, had personally certified the vote. Yet people had begun approaching Huff in church recently, saying things like, “I know you didn’t do anything, but that election was stolen.” In February, a longtime acquaintance of Huff’s cornered her in a bluegrass music store and berated her with complaints rooted in conspiracy theories. Huff started limiting her trips to town, even doing her grocery order online. “I didn’t want to have to deal with that,” she said of the election backlash. But it was hard to live in partial hiding. “I’m not that kind of person. I’m a people person.” Unbeknownst to Huff, a national network of election deniers had been making inroads in Surry County, on the fringe of Appalachia.
PENNSYLVANIA: Democratic Candidate For PA State House Assaulted Amid Warnings About Election-Related Violence
- Pennlive: Candidate For Pa. House Seat Assaulted Amid Warnings About Election-Related Threats And Violence: A candidate running for a state House seat on Monday morning called 911 after being assaulted at his Fayette County home in what would be the third time in two weeks he has had to call police to his residence. Democrat Richard Ringer said he was bloodied and knocked unconscious by an attacker in his back yard around 5 a.m. “A guy was standing with his back to me. I went and bear-hugged him, wrestled, ended up on the ground,” said Ringer, 69, who is running in a contested race for the open 51st state House District seat. “He was larger than I am and he pinned me down on my left side. I’m right-handed and he had my right arm pulled back and he hit me 10 to 12 times in the head, in the face and by the eye and he knocked me out.”
What Experts Are Saying
Noah Bookbinder, president of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW): “These attacks on our democracy are happening in plain sight. There are hundreds of candidates around the country running for Congress, for statewide offices and for offices that oversee elections who are maintaining the position that the 2020 election was stolen despite incontrovertible evidence that President Biden won. The claim that the last presidential election was invalid and that efforts need to be made to ‘secure’ future elections — which really means rigging the outcome so that Donald Trump or his allies always win — is being made out loud. If Trump and his allies don’t win, they simply want to be able to throw the results out. The evidence is voluminous that Donald Trump tried to overturn a presidential election to cancel out the results of millions and millions of votes. As part of that, Trump attempted to use the Department of Justice and the powers of the federal government to make that happen. Ultimately, when those efforts looked like they were not going to be successful, Trump incited a violent attack on the Capitol as part of his effort to stop the peaceful transfer of power. Trump continues to send public signals that he will do the same things again and commit obvious crimes against democracy.” Salon Interview: CREW’s Noah Bookbinder on the “very small step” from Trump’s corruption to authoritarian rule
Nathan P. Kalmoe, political scientist at Louisiana State University: “Demonization makes violence more likely. My book w/ @LilyMasonPhD analyzes extreme partisan vilification (i.e. mechanisms of moral disengagement: threat, evil, inhuman) & its strong link to violent party attitudes. My US Civil War book also shows the same…Interestingly, Lily & I find that, while both partisan moral disengagement & aggressive non-political personality traits strongly predict violent partisan views, it’s a combination of both traits that strongly drives each individual relationship…Our book also shows that leader rhetoric matters. In particular, exposure to a single anti-violence message from a top party leader can measurably reduce violent views in the public.” Twitter Thread
Lilliana Mason, political scientist at Johns Hopkins University: “‘Even with the Paul Pelosi situation,’ Mason told Vox, ‘they’re saying this is terrible, but no one is saying violence is never acceptable. The Republican leadership is not condemning violence as a tactic, they’re just saying, ‘Sorry Paul got hurt.’’…’We’ve kind of lost touch with what is legitimate’ in a democracy, Mason said. ‘The fact that we don’t have the same standards of democratic legitimacy across the two parties means that no rational conversations can occur when there are conflicts over the outcome.’” Vox
Erica Chenoweth, expert on political violence at Harvard Kennedy School: “‘What we are experiencing is a democracy problem,’ Chenoweth said. ‘The thing that could really help our democracy problem right now is for all our leaders, including our Republican leaders, to say over and over that this stuff has to stop.’” Los Angeles Times
Ruth Ben-Ghiat, an expert on authoritarianism at New York University: “‘Republicans and Fox News have long depicted Democrats as mortal enemies, and political violence happens in exactly these circumstances: when people feel that the political opposition poses an existential threat and must be eliminated through violence,’ Ben-Ghiat said. ‘Look for more such actions as the GOP continues to embrace violence and brings extremists from the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys into the ranks of the party.’” Business Insider
Julian Zelizer, professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University: “[My Pillow founder and CEO Mike Lindell] Lindell is an important figure, especially as our core democratic institutions and norms have come under sustained attack, and his impact is a vital reminder that election denialism is not an idea that simply took off on its own. Lindell is part of a much bigger story – one that reveals how a complex web of donors, party leaders, conservative organizations and media outlets has been essential to reinforcing extremism and helping it spread from the fringes to the mainstream.” CNN Op-Ed: Why My Pillow Guy is a central figure in the rise of right-wing extremism
Nancy MacLean, historian at Duke University, and Frank Clemente, executive director of Americans for Tax Fairness: “Billionaires have increasingly mobilized to gain even more influence in U.S. elections over the past decade, with this year’s midterms seeing an acceleration of that troubling trend…Billionaires are used to being able to buy what they want, whatever the cost. It’s up to us to make sure our democracy is not for sale.” WRAL
Headlines
The MAGA Movement And The Ongoing Threat To Elections
Axios: A first-of-its-kind database tracks threats against public officials
New York Times: In Close, Crucial Governor’s Races, Poll Finds Sharp Split on Elections
Texas Tribune: Two leaders of True the Vote jailed by federal judge for contempt of court
Vice: Trump Jr., GOP Push Homophobic Conspiracy Theory After Paul Pelosi Attack
Washington Post: Jewish leaders call on GOP candidates to reject antisemitic comments
January 6 And The 2020 Election
CNN: ‘I was acting like a traitor’; second cooperating Oath Keeper testifies in sedition trial
NBC: Capitol Officer Harry Dunn testifies Oath Keepers weren’t helping him on Jan. 6
Other Trump Investigations
ABC: Trump Organization fraud trial opening statements begin: ‘About greed and cheating’
CNBC: Trump asks Supreme Court to intervene in effort by Congress to get his tax returns
Opinion
Washington Post (Doug Heye): I helped run the ‘Fire Pelosi’ effort. Our toxic politics goes too far.
New York Times (Matthew Dallek): The Fading Line Between Rhetorical Extremism and Political Violence
Political Violence
New York Times: Intruder Wanted to Break Speaker Pelosi’s Kneecaps, Federal Complaint Says
Politico: Paul Pelosi’s alleged attacker charged with attempted kidnapping
Politico: Paul Pelosi assault spurs calls on the Hill for boosted lawmaker security
Washington Post: Accused Pelosi attacker’s history shows blurry lines of radicalization
In The States
Daily Beast: Arizona’s Vigilante Ballot Watchers Are Also Being Watched
Tampa Bay Times: After voter fraud arrests, Florida issues new forms that could bolster future cases
