Tag: Trump big lie
Top Dem lawyer blasts CBS News: ‘Do you really need to both-sides democracy?’
Attorney Marc Elias, who coordinates Democratic Party lawsuits to protect voting rights, blasted CBS News on Saturday.
“Senate committee to hold markup on controversial voting bill,” read a headline by CBS News.
“The Senate Rules Committee will hold a markup Tuesday of the For the People Act, a massive voting and elections bill. Democrats claim the bill is necessary to counter new voting restrictions being considered by multiple states, while Republicans decry it as federal overreach,” reported Grace Segers Continue reading.
Watch: A fake Trump supporter tricks Ted Cruz into bragging about his role in pushing the big lie
U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) was caught on camera bragging that he “led the objections” on January 6 to try to overturn a free and fair election. Cruz has been highlighted, along with U.S. Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO), as the top leaders who “amplified claims of election fraud” that “resulted in threats of violence against state and local officials around the country,” according to an ethics complaint filed by seven Democratic Senators.
Lauren Windsor, who describes herself as an undercover reporter for The Undercurrent and runs a site dedicated to helping victims of Project Veritas, pretended to be a far right wing voter and asked Senator Cruz why he “didn’t do more to fight for President Trump on January 6.”
Cruz on camera brags that he “led the objections but the Senate voted it down.” Continue reading.
The GOP’s fact-free world threatens the survival of democracy
The right-wing media apparatus, which is global in scale, has lately been making a fetish of something called “critical race theory” (CRT). This has prompted academics to defend it. It’s not a radical political ideology, they say. It’s merely a form of critical inquiry. It is not the boogeyman it’s being made out to be. There’s nothing to fear.
understand the need to defend critical race theory. Colleges and universities are beset on one hand by Republican fascists accusing scholars of indoctrinating students, on the other by anti-left liberals accusing the same of hostility toward freedom of speech. Meanwhile, administrations act more like corporations that privilege efficiency over research and teaching. It’s enough to think CRT is an appropriate hill to die on.
understand the need to defend critical race theory. Colleges and universities are beset on one hand by Republican fascists accusing scholars of indoctrinating students, on the other by anti-left liberals accusing the same of hostility toward freedom of speech. Meanwhile, administrations act more like corporations that privilege efficiency over research and teaching. It’s enough to think CRT is an appropriate hill to die on. Continue reading.
Liz Cheney secretly organized key move to block Trump from using military to overturn election: report
Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) was the organizer of an open letter by all living former Defense Secretaries against the military intervening in election disputes.
The revelation was made to Susan Glasser of The New Yorker by Eric Edelman, a friend of Cheney’s who served as an advisor to her father.
“Cheney’s rupture with the House Republican Conference has become all but final in recent days, but it has been months in the making. Edelman revealed that Cheney herself secretly orchestrated an unprecedented op-ed in the WashingtonPost by all ten living former Defense Secretaries, including her father, warning against Trump’s efforts to politicize the military,” Glasser reported. Continue reading.
Arizona Republicans push back against Justice Department concerns, setting up possible clash over Maricopa County recount
Arizona officials involved with a Republican-commissioned recount of the November presidential election in the state’s largest county on Thursday brushed off concerns raised by the Justice Department this week, raising the possibility of a clash between state and federal authorities over the audit.
Pamela S. Karlan, who heads the Justice Department’s civil rights division, wrote a letter to the president of the Arizona state Senate on Wednesday suggesting that the recount of nearly 2.1 million ballots in Maricopa County by a private contractor may not comply with federal law, which requires that ballots be securely maintained for 22 months following a federal election.
“We have a concern that Maricopa County election records, which are required by federal law to be retained and preserved, are no longer under the ultimate control of elections officials, are not being adequately safeguarded by contractors, and are at risk of damage or loss,” she wrote. Continue reading.
Florida’s new voting law immediately hit with lawsuits
Voting rights groups on Thursday filed a pair of lawsuits targeting a restrictive GOP-crafted voting bill, just moments after it was signed into law by Florida’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis.
The complaints, both filed in federal court in Tallahassee, claim the law, SB 90, illegally restricts access to the ballot box, with one of the suits alleging the measure will result in illegal discrimination against voters of color.
“SB 90 is a bill that purports to solve problems that do not exist,” reads one of the suits. “[It] caters to a dangerous lie about the 2020 election that threatens our most basic democratic values, and, in the end, makes it harder to vote without adequate justification for doing so.” Continue reading.
What? Arizona ‘Audit’ Observers Required To Sign Non-Disclosure Agreements
Volunteers who observed the Republican-backed audit in Maricopa County, Ariz., were required to sign non-disclosure agreements, according to ABC-15.
The news outlet reports that the terms of the agreement, provided by Cyber Ninjas, Inc., which is overseeing the audit, require volunteers to refrain from sharing details about anything they observed or heard while the audit was taking place. Volunteers are only allowed to speak under one condition: They are given permission to do so by the company.
“I agree that unless I am authorized in writing by Cyber Ninjas, Inc. and the Arizona State Senate, I will not disclose any Confidential Information to any person who is not conducting the Audit…,” the agreement reads. “Furthermore, I agree that during the course of the audit to refrain from making any public statements, social media posts, or similar public disclosures about the audit or its findings until such a time as the results from the audit are made public…” Continue reading.
In Turning on Liz Cheney, G.O.P. Bows to Trump’s Election Lies
House Republicans were lobbying to replace Representative Liz Cheney, who has vocally called out Donald J. Trump’s lies, with Representative Elise Stefanik, who has embraced them.
WASHINGTON — Top Republicans moved swiftly on Wednesday to purge Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming from their leadership ranks for vocally rejecting Donald J. Trump’s election lies, laying the groundwork to install a replacement who has embraced his false claims of voting fraud.
The move to push out Ms. Cheney as the No. 3 House Republican in favor of Representative Elise Stefanik of New York, a Trump loyalist who voted to overturn President Biden’s victory in key states, reflected how thoroughly the party’s orthodoxy has come to be defined by fealty to the former president and a tolerance for misinformation, rather than policy principles.
“The Republican Party is at a turning point, and Republicans must decide whether we are going to choose truth and fidelity to the Constitution,” Ms. Cheney wrote in a searing opinion piece published in the Washington Post on Wednesday evening. She framed her fate as a referendum on the party’s future and warned that Republicans must “steer away from the dangerous and anti-democratic Trump cult of personality.” Continue reading.
Biden sparked outrage calling Jan. 6 ‘the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War’ — he was right
In his first address to a joint session of Congress, President Joe Biden called the January 6 insurrection “the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War.” This is an apt comparison. The insurrection was the worst attack on our democracy since the shelling of Fort Sumter, because the president of the United States schemed to overturn a free and fair election and remain in power against the will of the people, a high crime for which he was impeached. It was pure luck that the insurgents didn’t assassinate the vice president for refusing the president’s order to steal the election.
Revisionists are already trying to memory-hole the full significance of the attack and cast it as a mere riot rather than as a coordinated assault on American democracy orchestrated by a sitting president. While the out-and-out hacks allege January 6 was a false-flag operation masterminded by BLM, the more intellectually respectable apologists are trying to muddy the waters with spurious historical objections.
Bloomberg Opinion columnist Eli Lake tweeted: “The Capitol Hill riot was terrible. All of this is true. At the same time, what happened on January 6 is not the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War. Some perspective would be nice here.” Continue reading.