Tag: GOP now the fascist party

The GOP push to revisit 2020 has worrisome implications for future elections

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Donald Trump’s “big lie” has spawned a movement that under the guise of assuring election integrity threatens to do the opposite, potentially affecting the election process with questionable challenges that could block or delay the certification of results and undermine an essential pillar of democratic governance.

Trump’s refusal to accept the 2020 results has kept alive the fiction that the election was stolen or the process was deeply corrupted. That fiction — fueled by conspiracy theories — has encouraged members of his party, elected officials and ordinary citizens, to take steps to address this; these actions could lead to worse outcomes in the future.

For some Americans, the 2020 election isn’t over, as unsubstantiated claims of fraud or widespread irregularities prompt continuing efforts to reexamine ballots and voting machines. Continue reading.

The GOP’s brazen move to strip power from a fraud-narrative-busting secretary of state — again

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Georgia Republicans earlier this year passed new voting restrictions, leading corporations including Major League Baseball to protest. What followed was a big to-do about whether that was an overreaction. The bill didn’t exactly match up with Democrats’ claims of a modern-day “Jim Crow,” and many of the new provisions were within the mainstream of even blue states.

But the bill was also watered-down from much-bolder proposals that had previously passed, including one transparently targeted at limiting voter drives by Black churches. Mix in the effort’s proximity to Republicans losing the state for the first time in 28 years — and to similar efforts in other GOP-controlled states despite no proof of actual, significant voter fraud — and it wasn’t difficult to draw conclusions about why this was done.

And there was perhaps one part of the law that best drove home how much this was aimed at gaming the system. It removed Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) from the state election board. This effectively allowed the GOP-controlled state legislature to appoint a majority of the board. Continue reading.

Trump supporter pleads guilty to attacking elderly couple with a golf club over their Biden sign

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A Minnesota man has pleaded guilty this Tuesday to attacking an elderly couple over a Joe Biden campaign sign, CBS Minnesota reports.

Mark Anthony Ulsaker took a plea deal, dropping the second-degree assault with a dangerous weapon and assaulting a peace officer charge against him. He instead is guilty of two counts of making threats of violence.

On Nov. 8, 2020, Ulsaker allegedly stopped his pickup truck at a street corner in White Bear Lake, Minnesota, where the couple stood with the Biden sign and swore at them. After parking his truck, he ran at the couple with a golf club. Continue reading.

He Called FBI Agents Nazis. The Feds Just Arrested Him For Storming The Capitol.

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In multiple tweets, Adam Weibling defended the Capitol riot and described its participants as “patriots” and “brave.”

Adam Weibling, a 38-year-old Texas man, made no secret in recent months of his contempt for the FBI, likening its agents to Nazis and “terrorists” in a series of conspiracy-laden tweets. His dislike for them surely grew on Tuesday when they arrested him for storming the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.

FBI agents arrested Weibling in Katy, Texas, on charges of unlawfully entering restricted grounds and engaging in disorderly conduct inside the Capitol, according to court records. His first virtual appearance in D.C. court is scheduled for June 3.

According to an affidavit filed May 19 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia and signed by an FBI task force officer, Weibling can be seen in video recorded by a reporter pushing his way past police in riot gear to get inside the Capitol around 2:30 p.m. on Jan. 6.

Arizona secretary of state slams ‘highly partisan,’ ‘fringe’ election audit

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PHOENIX — Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs (D) is raising new concerns about the way auditors hired by the Republican-controlled state Senate have handled more than 2.1 million ballots from the 2020 election that sat for more than a week in hot and humid trailers waiting to be counted.

The auditors, overseen by a Florida firm that has no experience auditing elections, earlier this month left ballots cast in November in Maricopa County in a trailer outside Phoenix Memorial Coliseum, a few blocks from the state capital, after their count took longer than expected.  

Temperatures neared 100 degrees in Phoenix last week as auditors paused the count to allow previously scheduled high school graduation ceremonies to take place in the building.  Continue reading.

They tried to overturn the 2020 election. Now they want to run the next one.

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Trump supporters who back his claim that the 2020 vote was rigged are running to become the top election officials in key states.

Republicans who sought to undercut or overturn President Joe Biden’s election win are launching campaigns to become their states’ top election officials next year, alarming local officeholders and opponents who are warning about pro-Trump, “ends justify the means” candidates taking big roles in running the vote.

The candidates include Rep. Jody Hice of Georgia, a leader of the congressional Republicans who voted against certifying the 2020 Electoral College results; Arizona state Rep. Mark Finchem, one of the top proponents of the conspiracy-tinged vote audit in Arizona’s largest county; Nevada’s Jim Marchant, who sued to have his 5-point congressional loss last year overturned; and Michigan’s Kristina Karamo, who made dozens of appearances in conservative media to claim fraud in the election.

Now, they are running for secretary of state in key battlegrounds that could decide control of Congress in 2022 — and who wins the White House in 2024. Their candidacies come with former President Donald Trump still fixated on spreading falsehoods about the 2020 election, insisting he won and lying about widespread and systemic fraud. Each of their states has swung between the two parties over the last decade, though it is too early to tell how competitive their elections will be. 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.

The Party Of Surrender…To Tyranny

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When the violent mob finally dispersed from the Capitol late on January 6, it left behind a troubling choice that Republican congressional leaders are only now being forced to make.

This week, they had to decide whether to fulfill their constitutional oath by supporting a full and independent investigation of that day’s terrible events, which inevitably will reveal all the dimensions of former President Donald Trump’s responsibility for the insurrection, or to surrender to Trump by attempting to kill that investigation while muttering excuses that only underline their cowardly dereliction.

We know how that went. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, along with a majority of their caucuses, showed abject obedience to the would-be dictator, who now rules the Republican Party with a clenched fist. He publicly ordered the pair of them to oppose the National Commission to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the United States Capitol Complex, as the legislation is titled, and they heeled like whipped dogs. Continue reading.

Opinion: The threat of violence now infuses GOP politics. We should all be afraid.

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American politics is being conducted under the threat of violence.

Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), who has a talent for constructive bluntness, describes a political atmosphere within the GOP heavy with fear. “If you look at the vote to impeach,” she said recently, “there were members who told me that they were afraid for their own security — afraid, in some instances, for their lives.” The events of Jan. 6 have only intensified the alarm. When Donald Trump insists he is “still the rightful president,” Cheney wrote in an op-ed for The Post, he “repeats these words now with full knowledge that exactly this type of language provoked violence on Jan. 6.” And there’s good reason, Cheney argued, “to believe that Trump’s language can provoke violence again.”

Sometimes political events force us to step back in awe, or horror, or both. The (former) third-ranking Republican in the House of Representatives has accused a former president of her party of employing the threat of violence as a tool of intimidation. And election officials around the country — Republican and Democratic — can attest to the results: Death threats. Racist harassment. Armed protesters at their homes. Continue reading.