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Defend Our Country Digest

Defend Our Country Digest — November 17, 2022

By November 17, 2022No Comments

Driving the Day: 

Must Read Stories

Why Far Right Election Deniers Are Still A Threat

  • The Atlantic: ‘Stop the Steal’ Isn’t Conceding:  If any state was going to devolve into chaos after a disappointing election for Republicans, it would have been Arizona—ground zero for election denial in 2020, and where this year, primary voters nominated an entire slate of fringe election cranks to all of the state’s major offices. Instead, the midterms delivered a sure blow to the election-denial movement, both there and everywhere else: The most prominent conspiracists, such as the Arizona secretary-of-state candidate Mark Finchem and Pennsylvania’s Doug Mastriano, lost by significant margins; some of these candidates even acknowledged their losses by—surprise!—actually conceding. On Monday night, Lake was declared the loser in her race for Arizona’s governorship, adding a final note to what has seemed like a comprehensive repudiation of the denialists. And where experts and reporters had anticipated widespread election-fraud mayhem, nothing close to it has yet emerged. It would be foolish, though, to pronounce “Stop the Steal” dead. The movement may have fizzled without Donald Trump, but if he runs again in 2024, we haven’t seen the last of it. Even if Trump isn’t on the ballot, an entire swath of the Republican Party is now open to the idea that any narrow loss can be blamed on fraud. Trust in elections among rank-and-file GOP voters remains low, and in some respects has gotten worse, according to a recent survey from the Pew Research Center. The damage inflicted in 2020 endures. “He’s broken the seal,” Sarah Longwell, the publisher of The Bulwark, told me. Election denial “is part of our politics now.”
  • Daily Beast: Far-Right Statehouse Candidates Won Big—Unopposed: While Democratic candidates exceeded expectations in last week’s primary elections, state legislators with far-right ties amassed a quiet series of victories. In May, the social justice nonprofit Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights (IREHR) released a troubling study of the country’s statehouses. IREHR’s survey identified 875 state legislators as members of far-right Facebook groups—21.74 percent of the country’s Republican state lawmakers. The midterm election did little to oust them from office. As of Monday afternoon, 97 percent of the fringe candidates who were up for election won their races. Devin Burghart, IREHR’s executive director, said the win rate (currently 497 victories and 15 losses) represents “a pretty remarkable winning percentage. I think that’s larger than incumbency, generally.” (In 2020, 93 percent of incumbents won re-election, according to Ballotpedia.) Those statehouse victories cut against the national-level narrative of the 2022 midterms as a Democratic win.

Mike Pence Refuses To Testify Before The January 6 Committee 

  • Reuters: Pence says he will not testify before U.S. House Jan. 6 panel: Former U.S. Vice President Mike Pence said he would not testify before the House of Representatives panel probing the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol because Congress “has no right to my testimony.” In an interview with CBS News, Pence said it would establish a “terrible precedent for the Congress to summon a vice president of the United States to speak about deliberations that took place at the White House.”
  • CNN: January 6 Committee Pushes Back On Pence ‘closing The Door’ On His Potential Testimony:  The House select committee investigating January 6, 2021, on Wednesday pushed back on former Vice President Mike Pence’s recent comments that Congress has “no right” to his testimony and that he was “closing the door” on it. “The Select Committee has proceeded respectfully and responsibly in our engagement with Vice President Pence, so it is disappointing that he is misrepresenting the nature of our investigation while giving interviews to promote his new book,” said Reps. Bennie Thompson and Liz Cheney, who serve as the panel’s chair and vice chair, in a joint statement. “The Select Committee has consistently praised the former Vice President’s refusal to bow to former President (Donald) Trump’s pressure to illegally refuse to count electoral votes on January 6th. But his recent statements about the Select Committee are not accurate,” they added.

Trump’s Legal Jeopardy From Attempts To Overturn The 2020 Election Complicates His 2024 Run 

  • Bloomberg: Trump’s Presidential Run Faces Legal Challenges Over His Role in Jan. 6 ‘Insurrection’: Donald Trump faces an unprecedented effort to disqualify him from being on the ballot again over his role in the Jan. 6 attack on the US Capitol, raising the specter of legal chaos in the 2024 election long before voters go to the polls. Advocacy groups have vowed to challenge Trump’s third presidential bid in multiple states under a post-Civil War measure that bars individuals from holding office if they pledged to uphold the US Constitution and then “engaged in insurrection or rebellion.” It’s a relatively untested area of law. Conflicting decisions from election officials and state and federal judges could mean Trump doesn’t appear on the ballot in every jurisdiction, leaving the outcome of the Republican primary or even the general election in limbo.

Republicans In Disarray As Far Right MAGA Caucus Demands Concessions 

  • New York Times (Analysis): Republicans Barely Won the House. Now Can They Run It?: Republicans managed to make their victory in the House seem like a loss by underperforming so badly. But while they did not win control by anywhere near the margin that they anticipated, they did win. And in the House, even the barest majority can work its will if it can hold together to produce 218 votes. The main question going forward is whether Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, who was nominated on Tuesday to lead the new Republican majority, can achieve the unity necessary to perform fundamental tasks such as funding the government, or whether unyielding far-right members will make the new speaker’s life miserable and the House an unmanageable mess. The likely single-digit-seat victory will allow Republicans to claim power — including subpoena power — set the agenda, run the committees and try to hold President Biden’s feet to the fire with a string of promised investigations. Despite their underwhelming showing, Republicans are unlikely to be chastened into cooperating with Mr. Biden and no doubt will plunge ahead aggressively once they get their hands on the gavels. For many, that was the point of the election. Their agenda is investigative, not legislative. […] The only results that interest many in the House majority are those that inflict political pain on Mr. Biden and congressional Democrats, as demanded by their MAGA constituents. In a closed-door meeting of Republicans on Monday, right-wing lawmakers including Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia extracted a promise that their leaders would investigate Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Justice Department for their treatment of defendants jailed in connection with the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
  • Politico: GOP Civil War Spreads To Georgia Runoff:  A GOP civil war is underway, and Republicans in Georgia are caught in the middle of the skirmish. Dueling Republican factions are openly competing for relevance as a Dec. 6 Senate runoff approaches, arguing about which wing of the party is best positioned to help Herschel Walker net a victory. The election is the GOP’s last shot at maintaining its current 50 seats in the Senate, rather than losing one to Democrats. But Senate Republican infighting isn’t the only dispute affecting the Peach State race. Georgia GOP activists are worried about the potential effect of Donald Trump launching his 2024 run on Tuesday, an announcement that local party leaders fear could depress turnout among moderate Republicans — votes that Walker needs to beat Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock, who finished just ahead of him in last week’s election. Despite even some of Trump’s own allies urging him to delay an announcement until after the runoff election, Trump declined to wait.

In The States 

ARIZONA:  Elections In Arizona Were A Decisive Victory For Democracy 

  • Washington Post: A Decisive Vote For Democracy In Arizona: In the waning weeks of Arizona’s midterm election campaign, from the red rocks in the state’s north to the desert border in its south, one word reverberated: democracy. Democrats warned that the stakes for the nation were life-or-death, that the country’s system of governance itself was on the ballot, while Republicans doubled-down on their attacks against the rule of law and democratic norms. In the end, after nearly a week of ballot counting, voters here returned a resounding verdict. Rather than picking for governor a Trump-endorsed election denier who wanted to remake voting in this crucial swing state ahead of the 2024 presidential cycle, they chose the Democrat who oversaw the 2020 election and emerged as a voice for the people’s will while she weathered an avalanche of attacks from ousted president Donald Trump. In the U.S. Senate race, voters rejected a first-time candidate who declared in a campaign ad that “Trump won in 2020” and instead reelected a Democrat who ran on bipartisanship and evacuated the U.S. Capitol as rioters overtook it on Jan. 6, 2021. And for secretary of state, who oversees elections, they jettisoned a state lawmaker who was on the Capitol grounds that day in favor of an outspoken liberal who pledged to protect and expand voting rights.

PENNSYLVANIA:  As They Lose Their House Majority, PA GOP Moves To Impeach Philadelphia DA Larry Krasner 

  • Philadelphia Inquirer: Philly DA Larry Krasner was impeached by the Pa. House, advancing the GOP-led effort to remove him from office: The Pennsylvania House on Wednesday impeached Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner, accusing him of “misbehavior in office” and advancing the extraordinary and rarely used process of trying to remove the city’s top prosecutor. Although the move had been telegraphed for months by the Republican-led chamber, debate on the House floor was deeply divided and fiery before a 107-85 vote, almost exclusively along party lines. The chamber hasn’t impeached an officeholder in nearly 30 years, and the Pennsylvania legislature has sought to remove someone from office only a handful of times over the last three centuries. Republican lawmakers said the action was necessary because Krasner, a Democrat, has implemented criminal-justice reform policies that they say have exacerbated the city’s gun violence crisis. 

What Experts Are Saying

Harry Litman, former US attorney: “You could pare the entire Fulton County case against Trump down to two witnesses. Raffensberger on the call w/ Trump’s saying he just wants 11780 votes and Hutchinson w/ Trump’s admissions he knows he lost. What reasonable doubt remains after that? And Raffensberger just has to authenticate (testify it’s legit) the audio tape of the call, which nails Trump completely on its own!” Tweets 

Norm Eisen, a Brookings Institute Senior Fellow and counsel in Trump’s first impeachment trial: “‘Trump’s audio tape demanding Brad Raffensperger to find 11,780 votes that did not exist, is a smoking gun. So are the false electoral certificates,’ said Norm Eisen, a  Brookings Institute Senior Fellow and counsel in Trump’s first impeachment trial. ‘The door is going to be slammed on him in court, as it has been over and over again already. The law and facts are not on his side and we believe he will likely be charged.’” Georgia Recorder 

Joyce Vance, former US attorney, re: VP Mike Pence saying Congress has no right to his January 6 testimony: “The American people do. They have a right to have a VP live up to his oath of office, to serve them, to protect our laws & our Constitution. And, if he can put it in a book, he can testify to it.” Tweet 

Headlines

The MAGA Movement And The Ongoing Threat To Elections

New York Times: Trump’s Drag on Republicans Quantified: A Five-Point Penalty

Politico: Two anonymous $425 million donations gives dark money conservative group a massive haul

Trump 2024

New York Times: Key Allies Are Inching Away From Trump

Washington Post: Trump’s early 2024 launch fails to rally GOP around him

January 6 And The 2020 Election

CNN: Georgia DA floats immunity deals for fake electors as investigation into Trump hits roadblock

NBC: Far-right extremist guided ‘army’ of rioters to Pelosi’s office on Jan. 6 , prosecutors tell jury

Talking Points Memo: Jan. 6 Rioter Barred From Holding Office For Life Under Insurrection Clause After His Appeal Is Dismissed

Washington Post: Ex-intel officer downplays Jan. 6 violence as Oath Keepers defendants testify

Washington Post: Air Force combat veteran convicted of felony role in Jan. 6 riot

Opinion

Daily Beast (David Rothkopf): GOP Authoritarianism Isn’t Going Away After the Midterms

Politico (Renato Marriotti): This Is What’s Going to Happen If Candidate Trump Gets Indicted

In The States 

Rolling Stone: MAGA Media Is Melting Down Over Kari Lake’s Loss

Washington Post: As next Arizona governor, Katie Hobbs vows to defend election rules