This week, we are faced with the fact that the House of Representatives is run by election deniers, subpoena defiers, and underminers of democracy. But they are not just in Congress, MAGA Republicans are filling state governments and legislatures with their extremist agendas – restricting voting rights, spreading conspiracy theories of voter fraud, and doing the dirty work of Donald Trump. The fight to put a stop to these threats to democracy is ongoing.
Here’s what you need to know for the weekend:
Main Points for the Weekend:
1. MAGA Members of Congress are leading some of the most influential committees, including Oversight, Homeland Security, and Judiciary. The most extreme members, the ones who incited a mob to storm the Capitol on January 6, those who were the most hands-on in the attempt to overturn the 2020 election, election deniers, subpoena defiers, and underminers of democracy are the ones calling the shots.
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- Top point to make: MAGA Members of Congress have already shown they will stop at nothing to secure more power for themselves and their leader, Donald Trump, all to undermine our rights
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- If you read one thing: New York Times, 1/18/23: Right-Wing Trump Allies Win Seats on Oversight, Reflecting G.O.P. Priorities. “From that perch, they are poised to shape inquiries into the Biden administration and to serve as agents of Mr. Trump in litigating his grievances as he plots his re-election campaign. Their appointments are the latest evidence that the new Republican majority is driven by a hard-right faction that has modeled itself in Mr. Trump’s image, shares his penchant for dealing in incendiary statements and misinformation, and is bent on using its newfound power to exact revenge on Democrats and President Biden. Many of the panel’s new Republican members — including Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Paul Gosar of Arizona, Lauren Boebert of Colorado and Scott Perry of Pennsylvania — are among Mr. Trump’s most devoted allies in Congress. Their appointments underscore that, while the former president may be a shrunken presence in the current political landscape, he still exerts much control over the base of his party.”
2. Donald Trump is preparing for his return to Twitter, a platform he used to spread disinformation, and give aid and comfort to violent white nationalist groups. The former president abused the platform to inspire violent attacks against our Capitol and his opponents – all to try to overturn an election he knew he lost.
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- Top point to make: Donald Trump’s return to Twitter is a threat to democracy.
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- If you read one thing: NBC News, 1/28/23: Donald Trump prepares for his return to Facebook and Twitter. “Facebook and Twitter banned Trump a day after a mob of his supporters — many of whom have admitted in federal court that they were whipped up by his lies of a stolen election — stormed the Capitol and interfered with Congress as it was counting the electoral votes to certify Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential victory… ‘Trump has continued to post harmful election content on Truth Social that would likely violate Facebook’s policies, and we have every reason to believe he would bring similar conspiratorial rhetoric back to Facebook, if given the chance,’ Schiff wrote in a letter to Meta signed by three Democratic colleagues.”
3. Over two years after Donald Trump lost a fair and free election, officials in Lycoming County, Pa. re-counted the 2020 presidential votes just last week. Only to uncover, once again, that President Biden is the rightful winner of the 2020 election, and find no evidence of voter fraud.
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- Top point to make: Donald Trump and election-denying MAGA Republicans have spearheaded a campaign of distrust in our election system – and they are not done yet.
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- If you read one thing: New York Times, 1/15/23: Driven by Election Deniers, This County Recounted 2020 Votes Last Week. “Under pressure from conspiracy theorists and election deniers, 28 employees of Lycoming County counted — by hand — nearly 60,000 ballots. It took three days and an estimated 560 work hours, as the vote-counters ticked through paper ballots at long rows of tables in the county elections department in Williamsport, a place used to a different sort of nail-biter as the home of the Little League World Series. The results of Lycoming County’s hand recount — like earlier recounts of the 2020 election in Wisconsin, Georgia and Arizona — revealed no evidence of fraud. The numbers reported more than two years ago were nearly identical to the numbers reported on Thursday… Did that quell the doubts of election deniers, who had circulated a petition claiming there was a likelihood of ‘rampant fraud’ in Lycoming in 2020? It did not. ‘This is just one piece of the puzzle,’ said Karen DiSalvo, a lawyer who helped lead the recount push and who is a local volunteer for the far-right group Audit the Vote PA. ‘We’re not done.’”
Expert voices
Jennifer Dresden, policy advocate at Protect Democracy and former associate director of Georgetown University’s Democracy and Governance Program: “Brazil experienced a dangerous and lawless demonstration of political rage this week. It may even have been a quixotic attempt to provoke a military intervention and suspend democracy altogether. But unlike January 6, it was not a coordinated effort to block a constitutional transfer of power before it could take place. Conflating this week’s events in Brazil with January 6 deprives Americans of the chance to learn important lessons as we look ahead to the 2024 election in the U.S.” Talking Points Memo: January 8 Was A Terrible Day For Brazilian Democracy. It Was Not Another January 6.
Norm Eisen, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution: “Norman Eisen, the lead author of the Brookings report and former White House special counsel for ethics and government reform, said he thinks charges against Trump are ‘highly likely’. ‘The evidence is powerful and the law is very [favorable] to the prosecutors in Georgia,’ he said. ‘I believe the [special grand jury] report very likely calls for the prosecution of Trump and his co-conspirators.’ Eisen said that the federal case is not as far along but that the congressional committee investigating the events of January 6 laid out a ‘powerful case’ for charges against Trump. He said that the prosecution of a former president would be ‘momentous’. ‘But, of course, so was Trump’s decision to lead an attempted coup. That was momentous in a very negative way. This is momentous as a [defense] of the rule of law and American democracy,’ said Eisen.” The Guardian
Marc Elias, founder of Democracy Docket: “Republicans found themselves unable to persuade a majority of the electorate to support their candidates. This sparked a conviction among many on the right that their best hope to win elections rested on restricting who can vote and shaping the electorate. While Republicans and their allies filed more election-related lawsuits than Democrats and progressives in 2022, the results of those lawsuits tell a different story. According to Democracy Docket’s data, of the 175 total consequential orders handed down last year, Republican and anti-voting forces prevailed a mere 20% of the time. In fact, almost half of the victories for voters we saw last year were a result of failed lawsuits brought by anti-voting litigants. These lopsided results from 2022 speak to a longer-term trend in democracy-related litigation. Contrary to conventional wisdom, it is Republicans and their allies who are most often turning to courts. And, more often than not, courts are protecting democracy.” Democracy Docket: The Courts Protected Democracy in 2022
Ryan Goodman, Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Professor of Law at New York University School of Law, re: Trump Mar-A-Lago investigation: “Another incrimination admission. In a Truth Social post, former president Trump claims he held onto empty classified folders as a ‘cool keepsake.’ It’s an admission he knew they were there (46 of them). Notably found alongside 103 docs marked as classified.” Tweet
Richard L. Hasen, law professor at UCLA, in April 2022 Harvard Law Review: “The United States faces a serious risk that the 2024 presidential election, and other future U.S. elections, will not be conducted fairly and that the candidates taking office will not reflect the free choices made by eligible voters under previously announced election rules. The potential mechanisms by which election losers may be declared election winners are: (1) usurpation of voter choices for president by state legislatures purporting to exercise constitutional authority, possibly with the blessing of a partisan Supreme Court and the acquiescence of Republicans in Congress; (2) fraudulent or suppressive election administration or vote counting by law- or norm-breaking election officials; and (3) violent or disruptive private action that prevents voting, interferes with the counting of votes or interrupts the assumption of power by the actual winning candidate.” NYT’s Thomas B. Edsall Column: ‘You Don’t Negotiate With These Kinds of People’
Jacob Ware, research fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR): “Republican leaders too have often turned a blind eye to the party’s extreme fringe, perhaps reluctant to be seen as more interested in internecine criticism than battling political opponents on the left. But what they have failed to calculate is that the violent extremists are not easily controllable—and intend to stick to their demands…whether rank-and-file Republicans care about the safety of their leaders or supporters, about the future of the country and its constitution, about the reality that political opponents are successfully painting them with the same brush as this radical fringe, or about their own chances of victory in 2024, it is past time for them to vigorously denounce and excommunicate the violent far-right whenever and wherever it rears its ugly head.” CFR: The Violent Far-Right Terrorist Threat to the Republican Party and American Conservatism
