Category: Republican Reality

Former Trump campaign staffers file lawsuit in Ohio on the strength of the former president’s Big Lie

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In Stark County, Ohio, a continuation of the fight over the 2020 presidential election is in full swing although the right-wing arguments are founded on a Big Lie. According to Talking Points Memo, former Trump campaign staffers have filed a new lawsuit focused on allegations of “misconduct by the county board of elections.”

The problems began back in December when the Stark County Board of Elections voted in favor of investing $1.5 million for the purchase of new voting equipment from Dominion Voting Systems. However, in March the Republican-led Stark County Board of Commissioners pushed back with a vote opposing the purchase of 1,450 machines after received an influx of complaints from Trump supporters.

“They believe the election was stolen from Trump and we should stand by Trump and the Dominion machines have been known to be hacked,” Commissioner Richard Regula said to the Canton Repository. “It’s been the most calls I’ve ever received as a county commissioner. … I had 17 voicemails in one day.” Continue reading.

Texas’ divisive bill restricting how students learn about current events, history, and racism passed by Senate

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Ater hours of passionate debate about how Texas teachers can instruct school children about America’s history of subjugating people of color, the state Senate early Saturday morning advanced a new version of a controversial bill aimed at banning critical race theory in public and open-enrollment charter schools.

Sen. Bryan Hughes, R-Mineola, introduced a reworked version of House Bill 3979 that also requires the State Board of Education to develop new state standards for civics education with a corresponding teacher training program to start in the 2022-23 school year. The Senate approved the bill in an 18-13 vote over opposition from educators, school advocacy groups and senators of color who worry it limits necessary conversation about the roles race and racism play in U.S. history.

The bill now heads back to the Texas House, which can either accept the Senate’s changes or call for a conference committee made up of members from both chambers to iron out their differences. Continue reading.

In echo of Arizona, Georgia state judge orders Fulton County to allow local voters to inspect mailed ballots cast last fall

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A Georgia state judge on Friday ordered Fulton County to allow a group of local voters to inspect all 147,000 mail-in ballots cast in the 2020 election in response to a lawsuit alleging that officials accepted thousands of counterfeit ballots.

The decision marks the latest instance of a local government being forced to undergo a third-party inspection of its election practices amid baseless accusations promoted by President Donald Trump that fraud flipped the 2020 contest for President Biden.

The inspection in Fulton County, home to Atlanta, is likely to proceed differently than an audit underway in Maricopa County, Ariz., where Republican state senators ordered county election officials to hand over equipment and ballots to a private company called Cyber Ninjas for examination. That process has come under widespread criticism for lacking security measures and failing to follow the rigorous practices of government recounts. On Thursday, Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs (D) urged local officials to toss their machines after the audit is complete because their security is now in doubt. Continue reading.

Republicans Move to Limit a Grass-Roots Tradition of Direct Democracy

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Through ballot initiatives, voters in red states have defied legislators’ wishes and produced liberal outcomes in recent years. Republicans want to make the practice harder, or even eliminate it.

In 2008, deep-blue California banned same-sex marriage. In 2018, steadfastly conservative Arkansas and Missouri increased their minimum wage. And last year, Republican-controlled Arizona and Montana legalized recreational marijuana.

These moves were all the product of ballot initiatives, a century-old fixture of American democracy that allows voters to bypass their legislatures to enact new laws, often with results that defy the desires of the state’s elected representatives. While they have been a tool of both parties in the past, Democrats have been particularly successful in recent years at using ballot initiatives to advance their agenda in conservative states where they have few other avenues.

But this year, Republican-led legislatures in Florida, Idaho, South Dakota and other states have passed laws limiting the use of the practice, one piece of a broader G.O.P. attempt to lock in political control for years to come, along with new laws to restrict voting access and the partisan redrawing of congressional districts that will take place in the coming months. Continue reading.

Greene calls Pelosi ‘mentally ill,’ compares her House mask policy to the Holocaust

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Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) on Friday blasted Speaker Nancy Pelosi(D-Calif.) over her mask policy for the House floor, likening it to the Holocaust. 

“This woman is mentally ill,” Greene said on Real America’s Voice. “You know, we can look back at a time in history when people were told to wear a gold star, and they were definitely treated like second-class citizens, so much so that they were put in trains and taken to gas chambers in Nazi Germany. And this is exactly the type of abuse that Nancy Pelosi is talking about.”

The comments mark the latest in a string of controversial remarks for Greene. Continue reading.

GOP efforts to downplay danger of Capitol riot increase

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Attempts to whitewash the violence of the Jan. 6 insurrection and cast the rioters as sympathetic characters are becoming increasingly common among Republican members of Congress.

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) this week said it was a “false narrative” to say “there were thousands of armed insurrectionists breaching the Capitol,” while Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) said the rioters charged with crimes were facing overly harsh treatment in jail and questioned why Congress isn’t also investigating liberal protests over racial justice last year that at times turned violent.

Other Republicans in recent days have falsely claimed the rioters weren’t armed and questioned whether people in the mob were really former President Trump’s supporters. One GOP lawmaker compared one image of the Capitol breach to a “normal tourist visit.”

New analysis reveals one key reason Trump lost Arizona — and deflates his claim of ‘rigging’

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About 75,000 Republican-leaning voters in Arizona’s two most populous counties did not vote to re-elect President Donald Trump in the 2020 election, according to an analysis of every vote cast by a longtime Arizona Republican Party election observer and election technologists familiar with vote-counting data.

The analysis from Maricopa and Pima Counties underscored that the Arizona state Senate’s ongoing audit of 2.1 million ballots from Maricopa County’s November 2020 election was based on a false premise—that Democrats stole Arizona’s election where Trump lost statewide to Joe Biden by 10,457 votes.

“I am continuing my analysis of why Trump lost in Arizona,” Benny White, a former military and commercial pilot who has been a Republican election observer for years in Pima County and was part of the research team, saidin a May 10 Facebook post. “Bottom line: Republicans and non-partisans who voted for other Republicans on the ballot did not vote for Trump, some voted for Biden and some simply did not cast an effective vote for President.” Continue reading.

Amazon suspends work on construction site after seventh noose is found

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Local and state police, and the FBI, are treating the incidents in Windsor, Conn., as potential hate crimes.

Amazon has suspended work on a fulfillment center in Windsor, Conn., after numerous nooses were found at the construction site in the past month, company officials and investigators say.

The site will remain closed until security measures have been implemented, Amazon told The Washington Post on Friday. The FBI and Connecticut State Police are helping local police with the investigation into the incidents, which are being treated as potential hate crimes. The e-commerce giant is offering a $100,000 reward for information that helps identify the responsible party.

Windsor police officers had been patrolling the site when the seventh noose was discovered early Wednesday afternoon, the department said in a news release. Employees in the area were interviewed, and the rope collected and taken to the state lab for analysis. The work site has no surveillance cameras, and hundreds of workers for various contractors come and go on-site each day. Continue reading.

‘The warning signs are all there’: Ex-Reagan aide fears Trump is leading the party to more political violence

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During Donald Trump’s presidency, long-time conservative activist Peter Wehner wrote a series of anti-Trump articles for The Atlantic. And although Trump has been gone from the White House for four months, Wehner remains a vehement critic of the GOP’s current direction. A former speechwriter under three Republican presidents — Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush — he discusses Trump’s unending stranglehold on the GOP in an article published by The Atlantic this week. And he warns that the potential for more political violence continues as long as so many Republicans maintain their unwavering devotion to Trump.

“The GOP remains fully in Trump’s thrall, with its leadership more committed than ever to spreading his foundational lies and conspiracy theories,” the 60-year-old Wehner laments. “Under Trump’s sway, the Republican Party is becoming more fanatical, venturing even further into a world of illusion…. No former president, and certainly no president defeated after only one term, has so dominated his party after he left office.”

The Never Trump conservative points to Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming as an example of a prominent GOP conservative who lost a leadership position for being openly critical of Trump and refusing to indulge his false claim of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election. Cheney formerly served as House Republican Conference chair, making her the third highest-ranking Republican in the U.S. House of Representatives. But Cheney, the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, lost that position, Wehner notes, for her “fireable offense” of “refusing to remain silent in the face of Trump’s ongoing efforts to undermine our constitutional system.” Continue reading.

Republicans lose patience with Arizona election audit

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PHOENIX — A growing chorus of Arizona Republicans is calling on the GOP-controlled state Senate to end an audit into Maricopa County’s 2020 election results that is increasingly relying on disproven conspiracy theories to challenge President Biden’s victory here.

The audit, ordered by a state Senate majority that has bought into former President Trump’s big lie about the results of the election he lost handily, is on hold until Monday. It has already dragged on well past the estimated time auditors said it would take to recount the county’s ballots.

But some Republicans say they hope it does not continue after embarrassing revelations that supposedly bombshell allegations by auditors who have perpetuated Trump’s lies were in fact errors made by the auditors themselves. Continue reading.