National

For years, Tennessee Democratic Senate Minority Leader Jeff Yarbro’s call to require the state’s voting infrastructure to include a paper record of each ballot cast has been batted down in the Republican-dominated Legislature. But as false claims still swirl around the 2020 presidential election — and some GOP voters remain distrustful of voting machines — Tennessee Republican lawmakers who have held off are coming around on a paper-backed mandate. A similar scenario is playing out in some of the five other states — four of which are Republican-led — that do not currently have a voting system with a paper record. The Tennessee GOP bill that is gaining traction would set a 2024 deadline for Tennessee to join the vast majority of states that already have voting systems that include a paper record of every ballot cast, so any disputed results can be verified. Yarbro said he’ll take the change, even if he doesn’t love the impetus for it. “I’m disappointed that it’s taken this long, and somewhat concerned over the rationale,” the Nashville lawmaker said. “But at the end of the day, this is good public policy.”

Full Article: Amid false 2020 claims, GOP states eye voting system upgrade | AP News

National: ‘Defend democracy’: Democrats launch massive recruiting push for local election officers | Elena Schneider/Politico

A Democratic candidate recruiting group is pitching donors on an ambitious three-year program to find, train and support 5,000 candidates for local offices in charge of election administration, a sprawling national effort intended to fight subversion of future election results. The program would recruit candidates in 35 states for everything from county probate judges in Alabama to county clerks in Kansas and county election board members in Pennsylvania — all offices that handle elections and will be on voters’ ballots between now and 2024. Spearheading the effort is Run for Something, a Democratic group that launched soon after Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential victory to recruit candidates for local elections. Now, the group plans to raise $80 million over the next three years for this push, which would include at least a hundred staffers to support those candidates in-state, according to details and donor memos first shared with POLITICO. Amanda Litman and Ross Morales Rocketto, Run for Something’s co-founders, call the project “Clerk Work” — a way-down-the-ballot effort of the type that Democratic donors and national groups have traditionally struggled to focus on. But as Trump continues to promulgate election conspiracy theories, the role of little-known election administrators — charged with planning, implementing and certifying election results in a hyper-localized system — has suddenly emerged as a key part of safeguarding American democracy. The move is part of a broader Democratic Party shift toward increasingly prioritizing state-based races, a shift from the massive attention and financing that go toward federal campaigns. “Election subversion in 2024 is not going to be a mob storming the Capitol, it’s going to be a county clerk in Michigan or a supervisor of elections in Florida who decides to fuck the whole thing up,” Litman said. “The only way to make long-term democracy protection is by electing people who will defend democracy.”

Full Article: ‘Defend democracy’: Dems launch massive recruiting push for local election officers – POLITICO

National: Lawmakers worry 2020 will provide a blueprint for stealing a future election | Peter Nicholas/NBC

Both a federal judge and the top Republican on the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot have now reached the same stark conclusion: There is evidence to suggest Donald Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election could be a crime. Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., said last weekend that her panel had compiled enough facts to refer Trump to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution, while U.S. District Judge David Carter wrote last month that Trump and others undertook “a coup in search of a legal theory.” Neither has the power to bring charges against the former president. That’s up to Attorney General Merrick Garland, whose focus to date has largely been on the people who stormed the Capitol in a violent effort to keep Trump in power. Trump denies any wrongdoing, and his allies contend that Cheney has lost credibility as any sort of fair broker. Pointing to Cheney’s persistent criticism of Trump, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, a Republican, told NBC News: “I couldn’t see the point in it other than that she was angry and bitter.”

Full Article: Lawmakers worry 2020 will provide a blueprint for stealing a future election

National: What Can Happen When An Election Official Believes The Big Lie | Kaleigh Rogers/FiveThirtyEight

Nine months after the 2020 election, the call came in. The Colorado secretary of state’s office was on the phone and wanted to know why the passwords for Mesa County’s election equipment were on the internet for anyone to see. But the powers that be in Mesa County didn’t even know the passwords had leaked. “We’re saying, ‘What are you talking about?’” recalled Mesa County Commissioner Scott McInnis. Images of screens displaying the passwords had been shared a few days earlier on the chat app Telegram by a QAnon leader. The Colorado secretary of state launched an investigation and issued an order for Tina Peters, the county clerk, to let them inspect the equipment and try to get to the bottom of what happened. But there was a problem. Peters wasn’t in Mesa County. She was on her way to South Dakota for a “Cyber Symposium” hosted by Mike Lindell, the CEO of MyPillow and one of the most prominent peddlers of the Big Lie. Data from Mesa County election equipment hard drives were later displayed at the symposium. The man talking about them was that same QAnon leader — Ron Watkins — the former administrator of the message board where Q, the shadowy figure behind the QAnon conspiracy movement, posted the bulk of their posts. Watkins is so deeply entangled with QAnon that many experts believe he may have been Q himself.

Full Article: What Can Happen When An Election Official Believes The Big Lie | FiveThirtyEight

National: 3 Existential Threats to Our Elections | Amisa Ratliff and Michael Beckel/Issue One

America’s elections face three existential threats in the coming years: An exodus of election officials, the potential of election manipulation, and inadequate funding of our critical election infrastructure. Congress and the states can help reduce these threats if they act now. In the wake of a massive and coordinated disinformation effort during the 2020 elections, election officials and election workers — who do the behind-the-scenes work of running our elections and ensuring their safety and accuracy — have faced threats of violence and harassment, which has led to an exodus of good people from these positions. At the same time, we’re seeing a wave of anti-democracy, conspiracy-minded candidates running for positions as election officials, and statehouses across the country are considering or passing bills that would place election administration under greater partisan control for their own political gain.

Full Article: 3 Existential Threats to Our Elections – Issue One

National: Midterms raise fears of Russian cyberattacks | Ines Kagubare/The Hill

Russia is likely to deploy a range of cyber weapons on the United States and its election systems during this year’s midterm election cycle, as tensions continue to escalate amid the ongoing war in Ukraine. Moscow has so far shown cyber restraint against the U.S. despite escalating sanctions that have damaged Russia’s economy, but experts predict the Kremlin will unleash a range of cyber weapons in an attempt to interfere in the 2022 midterms — from disinformation campaigns to efforts to hack into the election system. “I do think that the chances are higher that we see a ramp up in cyber activity by the Russians as the conflict drags on; it’s less of what I would have expected at this point, but the elections are certainly in play,” said Jamil Jaffer, founder and executive director of the National Security Institute at George Mason University. Russia’s overarching goal is to pit Americans against each other and micro-target specific voters, especially those living in swing states, with information that aligns with their preconceived beliefs. “The Russians’ goal is to create internal discord in the United States,” Jaffer said.

Full Article: Midterms raise fears of Russian cyberattacks | The Hill

‘We control them all’: Donald Trump Jr. texted Meadows detailed plan for overturning 2020 election before it was called | Ryan Nobles, Zachary Cohen and Annie Grayer/CNN

Full Article: CNN Exclusive: ‘We control them all’: Donald Trump Jr. texted Meadows detailed plan for overturning 2020 election before it was called – CNNPolitics

Two days after the 2020 presidential election, as votes were still being tallied, Donald Trump’s eldest son texted then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows that “we have operational control” to ensure his father would get a second term, with Republican majorities in the US Senate and swing state legislatures, CNN has learned. In the text, which has not been previously reported, Donald Trump Jr. lays out ideas for keeping his father in power by subverting the Electoral College process, according to the message reviewed by CNN. The text is among records obtained by the House select committee investigating January 6, 2021. “It’s very simple,” Trump Jr. texted to Meadows on November 5, adding later in the same missive: “We have multiple paths We control them all.” … Immediately before his text to Meadows describing multiple paths for challenging the election, Trump Jr. texted Meadows the following: “This is what we need to do please read it and please get it to everyone that needs to see it because I’m not sure we’re doing it.”

National: Why hand-counting ballots is such a bad idea | Amber Phillips/The Washington Post

There’s a small but forceful push in right-wing circles to have ballots in upcoming elections entirely counted by hand. Lawmakers in at least six states have proposed switching to hand-counted paper ballots, The Washington Post’s Rosalind Helderman, Amy Gardner and Emma Brown report. The idea is derived from accusations, made out of whole cloth, that the 2020 election was stolen — and that voting machines are easily hacked and can’t be trusted. That’s false. Voting machines have been proved safe and accurate, especially when combined with audits to check their accuracy. And tallying results without machines could open up future elections to more chaos, even fraud. Here’s how our ballots are counted now, and why going back to voting and counting entirely by hand is such a bad idea. Most jurisdictions use voting machines to tabulate results. Voters either fill out a paper ballot and then feed it into a machine, or they make their choices on a touch screen that prints a paper ballot. (States spent a lot of money after the 2000 presidential election to revamp voting machines to ensure none would leave “hanging chads” — the center of the dispute about whether Republican George W. Bush or Democrat Al Gore won Florida.) But the voting process does not entirely rely on machines. The machines create a paper copy of a ballot for officials to keep. After elections, officials review a statistically significant portion of those ballots by hand to make sure that their results mirror what the machines got. The process has been in place for decades, and it works.

Full Article: Why hand-counting ballots is such a bad idea – The Washington Post

National: ‘Smoking rifle’: Trump Jr texted Meadows strategies to overturn election – report | Martin Pengelly/The Guardian

Two days after the 2020 election, Donald Trump Jr texted the White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, with strategies for overturning the result, CNN reported. “This is what we need to do please read it and please get it to everyone that needs to see it because I’m not sure we’re doing it,” Trump Jr reportedly wrote, adding: “It’s very simple … We have multiple paths[.] We control them all.” One leading legal authority called the text “a smoking rifle”. CNN said the text was sent on 5 November 2020, two days before Joe Biden was declared the winner of the election and the next president. Two months after 5 November, on 6 January 2021, supporters Trump told to “fight like hell” in his cause attacked the US Capitol. A bipartisan Senate report connected seven deaths to the riot. According to CNN, in his texts to Meadows, Trump Jr laid out strategies the Trump team went on to pursue as they disseminated lies about election fraud and pressured state and federal officials. Such tactics included lawsuits in swing states, the overwhelming majority of which were rejected, and “having a handful of Republican state houses put forward slates of fake ‘Trump electors’”.

Full Article: ‘Smoking rifle’: Trump Jr texted Meadows strategies to overturn election – report | Donald Trump Jr | The Guardian

National: Jan. 6 Panel Has Evidence for Criminal Referral of Trump, but Splits on Sending | Michael S. Schmidt and Luke Broadwater/The New York Times

The leaders of the House committee investigating the Capitol attack have grown divided over whether to make a criminal referral to the Justice Department of former President Donald J. Trump, even though they have concluded that they have enough evidence to do so, people involved in the discussions said. The debate centers on whether making a referral — a largely symbolic act — would backfire by politically tainting the Justice Department’s expanding investigation into the Jan. 6 assault and what led up to it. Since last summer, a team of former federal prosecutors working for the committee has focused on documenting the attack and the preceding efforts by Mr. Trump and his allies to reverse his defeat in the 2020 election. The panel plans to issue a detailed report on its findings, but in recent months it has regularly signaled that it was also weighing a criminal referral that would pressure Attorney General Merrick B. Garland to open a criminal investigation into Mr. Trump. Despite concluding that they have enough evidence to refer Mr. Trump for obstructing a congressional proceeding and conspiring to defraud the American people, some on the committee are questioning whether there is any need to make a referral. The Justice Department appears to be ramping up a wide-ranging investigation, and making a referral could saddle a criminal case with further partisan baggage at a time when Mr. Trump is openly flirting with running again in 2024. The committee’s vice chairwoman, Representative Liz Cheney, said on CNN on Sunday that the committee had not reached a final decision about making referrals and downplayed any divisions on the committee, but acknowledged there was significant evidence of criminality.

Full Article: Jan. 6 Panel Has Evidence for Criminal Referral of Trump, but Splits on Sending – The New York Times

National: Senators push for details on protecting election officials amid threat concerns | Jordain Carney/The Hill

Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), the chairwoman and ranking member of the Senate Rules Committee, are pressing a federal agency for details on how it is working to support election workers facing a growing number of threats following the 2020 election. Klobuchar and Blunt sent a letter this week to the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) that was first obtained by The Hill saying they had “heard about a number of challenges” election workers are facing in the lead up to the midterm elections. “The EAC plays a critical role in ensuring that election officials have the necessary information and resources to administer secure and successful elections, and it is important for the EAC to be prepared to support election officials as they work to address these obstacles,” they wrote in the letter. The two senators pointed to myriad potential hurdles that election workers face, including cybersecurity, misinformation, increased threats and the ability to recruit election workers.

Full Article: Senators push for details on protecting election officials amid threat concerns | The Hill

National: Intel: Putin may cite Ukraine war to meddle in US politics | Nomaan Merchant/Associated Press

Russian President Vladimir Putin may use the Biden administration’s support for Ukraine as a pretext to order a new campaign to interfere in American politics, U.S. intelligence officials have assessed. Intelligence agencies have so far not found any evidence that Putin has authorized measures like the ones Russia is believed to have undertaken in the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections in support of former President Donald Trump, according to several people familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive findings. But given Putin’s antipathy toward the West and his repeated denunciations of Ukraine, officials believe he may see the U.S. backing of Ukraine’s resistance as a direct affront to him, giving him further incentive to target another U.S. election, the people said. It is not yet clear which candidates Russia might try to promote or what methods it might use. The assessment comes with the U.S. electoral system already under pressure. The American public remains sharply divided over the last presidential election and the insurrection that followed at the U.S. Capitol, when supporters of Trump tried to stop the certification of his loss to President Joe Biden. Trump has repeatedly assailed intelligence officials and claimed investigations of Russian influence on his campaigns to be political vendettas.

Full Article: Intel: Putin may cite Ukraine war to meddle in US politics | AP News

How Trump allies are pushing to hand-count ballots around the U.S. | Rosalind S. Helderman, Amy Gardner and Emma Brown/The Washington Post

Some of the key architects and amplifiers of the false claim that voting machines were rigged to steal the 2020 election from Donald Trump traveled to the Nevada desert last month with a new pitch. Speaking at a commissioners meeting in deeply conservative, mostly rural Nye County, they argued the county should ditch all its voting machines. “The electronic voting machines are so vulnerable and so uncertifiable, I don’t see how we can trust them,” Jim Marchant, a Trump-supporting Nevada secretary of state candidate, told Nye County commissioners. Instead, they insisted, the county should adopt an old-fashioned and largely obsolete method: tallying the results by hand. … “It’s a recipe for some chaos,” said Pam Smith, president of Verified Voting, a nonprofit that promotes secure election practices such as post-election audits. “And I do think that’s potentially very damaging to public trust in the process.”

Full Article: Trump allies push hand-counted paper ballots in multiple states – The Washington Post

Biden budget calls for $10 billion over a decade to improve elections | Mary Ellen McIntire/Roll Call

The Biden administration called for spending $10 billion over the next decade to beef up the country’s elections infrastructure as part of the fiscal 2023 budget proposal released Monday. Along with providing “a predictable funding stream for critical capital investments and increased staffing and services,” the budget proposes to expand the Postal Service’s capacity in “underserved areas” and to increase vote-by-mail initiatives — including making ballots postage-free. Since they took full control of Congress and the White House at the beginning of last year, Democrats have tried several times to pass bills to expand voting rights and overhaul elections, but the efforts stalled in the Senate. The $10 billion proposal is less than the $20 billion the nonprofit Center for Tech and Civic Life urged Congress to provide last spring. Tiana Epps-Johnson, the group’s executive director, said costs for paper ballots, staffing and mail have surged since then. “Our recent polling shows bipartisan support for federal funding for local election officials. President Biden is showing leadership and making the case that we must invest in state and local election departments. He’s right and Congress should follow suit,” Epps-Johnson said in a statement. Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who last month led a group of 32 other Democrats calling on Biden to include $5 billion in election security grants for the next fiscal year, said it was “critical” to invest in elections.

Full Article: Biden budget calls for $10 billion over a decade to improve elections

National: Trump backers push election change that would make counting slower, costlier and less accurate | Zach Montellaro/Politico

Trump supporters are pushing to prohibit machine counting of ballots in future elections around the country, which election officials say could make vote-counting slower, more expensive and — most importantly — less accurate. Legislators in at least six states this year have introduced proposals to prohibit the use of ballot tabulating machines. Local jurisdictions in Nevada, New Hampshire and elsewhere have also been considering similar measures. The proposals stem from baseless conspiracy theories stoked by former President Donald Trump since the 2020 election, in which he and others contended that election machines around the country were hacked and votes were flipped. The push has gained some traction in the last month. In Arizona, a bill that would require hand counts of ballots for all elections passed out of a legislative committee. And in Nevada, a deep-red county’s board of commissioners — spurred on by a Trump-aligned candidate to be the state’s top election officer — formally urged its election clerk to abandon machine counting. … More than 90 percent of registered voters live in jurisdictions where in-person voters use a paper ballot of some form, but hand counting of ballots is extremely rare. A bit more than 800 jurisdictions nationwide — covering 0.6 percent of registered voters — primarily count either in-person or mail ballots by hand, according to Warren Stewart, a data analyst at the Verified Voting Foundation, which advocates for election security measures.

Full Article: Trump backers push election change that would make counting slower, costlier and less accurate – POLITICO

National: Midterm mess: States grapple with poll worker and paper shortages | Fredreka Schouten and Kelly Mena/CNN

For the first time in its history, Alaska will conduct a statewide election primarily by mail because officials worry they lack the time to gather the people and paper needed to conduct an in-person election in June. In Michigan, Ingham County Clerk Barb Byrum says she fears increased animosity toward election officials is contributing to the shortage of poll workers needed for local elections in May. And around the country, election officials are racing to place advance orders for ballot paper, registration cards and mail-in ballot envelopes. The supply chain and staffing shortages that have plagued the rest of the US economy have come to elections, putting a spotlight on the behind-the-scenes logistics of keeping democracy functioning. And experts warn the problem could grow worse as more elections crowd the calendar. “In November, everybody is going to need everything on essentially the same timeframe,” Amy Cohen, who runs the National Association of State Election Directors, said during a recent congressional roundtable discussion on the supply-chain problems.

Full Article: Midterm mess: States grapple with poll worker and paper shortages – CNNPolitics

National: New Right-Wing Conspiracies Threaten to Further Starve Local Election Systems | Spenser Mestel/Bolts

Michael Gableman, a former Wisconsin supreme court justice who said state election officials “stole our votes” days after Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential race, was granted wide latitude by Republicans to investigate voter fraud last year: a budget of $676,000, subpoena power, and months to pursue leads. But the report on the 2020 election that he presented to state lawmakers earlier this month was the usual hodgepodge of Trumpian recommendations, including decertifying the presidential results and outright eliminating the state’s election commission. Buried in the report was one proposal that has gone largely unnoticed, but is rapidly gaining steam as a new conservative cause celebre. Gableman called on Wisconsin to exit the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), which is a national organization that assists states in maintaining accurate voter rolls. Thirty states and the District of Columbia are part of ERIC, from Democratic Illinois to Republican Texas, but this bipartisan organization exploded on the radar for “Stop-the-Steal” activists after the far-right website Gateway Pundit published stories attacking it in January. The website falsely tied ERIC to George Soros, the billionaire philanthropist who supports an array of progressive causes, calling it a “left wing voter registration drive disguised as voter roll clean up,” even though ERIC is governed and financially supported by its member states.

Full Article: New Right-Wing Conspiracies Threaten to Further Starve Local Election Systems | Bolts

National: Election skeptics roil GOP contests for secretary of state | Christina A. Cassidy and Julie Carr Smyth/Associated Press

Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose was clear in the months after the 2020 presidential election. “Elections are run better and more honestly than really I think they ever have been,” he said in response to conspiracy theories being floated about the election. Months later, he said in an interview what has proved true in state after state – that voter fraud is rare. Fast forward to 2022, when Republican secretaries of state face a delicate test with voters: Touting their work running clean elections while somehow not alienating GOP voters who believe the false claims of fraud fueled by former President Donald Trump and his allies. LaRose has shifted his tone on Twitter, recently saying the “mainstream media is trying to minimize voter fraud to suit their narrative” and “President Donald Trump is right to say that voter fraud is a serious problem.” That tweet came a day after LaRose learned he had drawn not one but two primary challengers, both of whom have said they believe the 2020 election was stolen from Trump. All but one of the eight incumbent Republican secretaries of state seeking to continue as their state’s elections chief have drawn at least one GOP challenger who either outright denies Democrat Joe Biden won the presidency or makes unsubstantiated claims that elections are not secure.

Full Article: Election skeptics roil GOP contests for secretary of state – The Washington Post

National: Coordinated phishing campaign targeted election officials in nine states, according to FBI | AJ Vicens/CyberScoop

An invoice-themed phishing campaign targeted elections officials in at least nine states in October 2021, according to a warning the FBI issued Tuesday. The attackers sought to steal login credentials and could have had “sustained, undetected” access to election administrators’ systems, the notice said. The emails — sent in batches on at least three separate days — “shared similar attachment files, used compromised email addresses, and were sent close in time, suggesting a concerted effort to target US election officials,” the notice reads. It’s unclear whether any of the phishing attacks were successful. The FBI did not immediately respond to a request for comment. “The FBI judges cyber actors will likely continue or increase their targeting of US election officials with phishing campaigns in the lead-up to the 2022 midterm elections,” the notice reads. Phishing campaigns targeting election administrators through vendors, businesses, or other means was part of the Russian election interference campaign during the 2016 elections. In that case, emails purporting to be from Florida-based elections equipment vendor VR Systems was sent to 122 email addresses “associated with named local government organizations,” according to a National Security Agency assessment of the campaign. According to the new FBI warning, on Oct. 5, 2021, “unidentified cyber actors” sent emails originating from at least two email addresses to unidentified officials in nine unnamed states and to representatives of the National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS). The emails contained the same attachment titled “INVOICE INQUIRY.PDF,” which would redirect targets to a credential-harvesting website.

Full Article: Coordinated phishing campaign targeted election officials in nine states, according to FBI

National: Some states take steps to protect election workers as threats increase | Barbara Rodriguez/The 19th News

The people kept showing up at the small Northern California office where Natalie Adona and her co-workers help run elections. Three days in a row, they came to try to push a petition for recall elections, refusing to wear masks despite a mandate and physically pushing their way into the office, according to legal documents. Adona and her colleagues asked for a restraining order against the three people, worried about the trio who they say kept showing up to harass them at their jobs. A judge granted it, then later extended it for one of the people, finding “clear and convincing evidence” that the same person “engaged in unlawful violence or made a credible threat of violence.” An attorney for the trio has denied wrongdoing. The elections office briefly shut down walk-ins. Adona, who is an assistant clerk-recorder for the Nevada County Elections Office, said she has experienced several panic attacks. She still worries about her colleagues. “It was a really unfortunate incident that led to me and my staff feeling pretty afraid,” Adona told The 19th. “Certainly, I think that having a restraining order is an extreme way to settle a problem that I would have liked to have sort of settled by other means. But the circumstances and our county counsel felt it appropriate to go in that direction.”

Full Article: Some states take steps to protect election workers as threats increase

National: Jan. 6 White House logs given to House show 7-hour gap in Trump calls | Bob Woodward and Robert Costa/The Washington Post

Internal White House records from the day of the attack on the U.S. Capitol that were turned over to the House select committee show a gap in President Donald Trump’s phone logs of seven hours and 37 minutes, including the period when the building was being violently assaulted, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post and CBS News. The lack of an official White House notation of any calls placed to or by Trump for 457 minutes on Jan. 6, 2021 – from 11:17 a.m. to 6:54 p.m. – means the committee has no record of his phone conversations as his supporters descended on the Capitol, battled overwhelmed police and forcibly entered the building, prompting lawmakers and Vice President Mike Pence to flee for safety. The 11 pages of records, which consist of the president’s official daily diary and the White House switchboard call logs, were turned over by the National Archives earlier this year to the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack.

Full Article: Jan. 6 White House logs given to House show 7-hour gap in Trump calls – The Washington Post

National: New Focus on How a Trump Tweet Incited Far-Right Groups Before Jan. 6 | Alan Feuer, Michael S. Schmidt and Luke Broadwater/The New York Times

Federal prosecutors and congressional investigators have gathered growing evidence of how a tweet by President Donald J. Trump less than three weeks before Jan. 6, 2021, served as a crucial call to action for extremist groups that played a central role in storming the Capitol. Mr. Trump’s Twitter post in the early hours of Dec. 19, 2020, was the first time he publicly urged supporters to come to Washington on the day Congress was scheduled to certify the Electoral College results showing Joseph R. Biden Jr. as the winner of the presidential vote. His message — which concluded with, “Be there, will be wild!” — has long been seen as instrumental in drawing the crowds that attended a pro-Trump rally on the Ellipse on Jan. 6 and then marched to the Capitol. But the Justice Department’s criminal investigation of the riot and the parallel inquiry by the House select committee have increasingly shown how Mr. Trump’s post was a powerful catalyst, particularly for far-right militants who believed he was facing his final chance to reverse defeat and whose role in fomenting the violence has come under intense scrutiny. Extremist groups almost immediately celebrated Mr. Trump’s Twitter message, which they widely interpreted as an invitation to descend on the city in force. Responding to the president’s words, the groups sprang into action, court filings and interviews by the House committee show: Extremists began to set up encrypted communications channels, acquire protective gear and, in one case, prepare heavily armed “quick reaction forces” to be staged outside Washington.

Full Article: New Focus on How a Trump Tweet Incited Far-Right Groups Before Jan. 6 – The New York Times

Editorial: Merrick Garland Has More Than Enough to Investigate Trump | Timothy L. O’Brien/Bloomberg

A federal judge thinks that former President Donald Trump likely committed fraud — and probably knew it — when he and one of his lawyers, John Eastman, plotted to block Congress’s certification of the 2020 presidential election so Trump could hold on to power. So how much longer will it take Attorney General Merrick Garland to draw the same conclusion about that attempted coup? Perhaps Garland has already gone down that path. But there are no outward signs that he is investigating Trump with an eye toward a possible criminal prosecution. He has every reason to be circumspect, of course, but he has no reason to ignore the mounting evidence of Trump’s crimes. The latest reminder of what’s at stake came in Monday’s ruling from David Carter, a U.S. District Court judge in California. “Dr. Eastman and President Trump launched a campaign to overturn a democratic election, an action unprecedented in American history,” Judge Carter noted in his Monday ruling. “The plan spurred violent attacks on the seat of our nation’s government, led to the deaths of several law enforcement officers, and deepened public distrust in our political process.” While ordering Eastman to turn over relevant email correspondence with Trump to the bipartisan House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, Carter was also clear-eyed about the scope of his and the committee’s powers.

Full Article: Merrick Garland Has More Than Enough to Investigate Trump – Bloomberg

Virginia Thomas urged White House chief to pursue unrelenting efforts to overturn the 2020 election, texts show | Bob Woodward and Robert Costa/The Washington Post

Virginia Thomas, a conservative activist married to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, repeatedly pressed White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows to pursue unrelenting efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election in a series of urgent text exchanges in the critical weeks after the vote, according to copies of the messages obtained by The Washington Post and CBS News. The messages — 29 in all — reveal an extraordinary pipeline between Virginia Thomas, who goes by Ginni, and President Donald Trump’s top aide during a period when Trump and his allies were vowing to go to the Supreme Court in an effort to negate the election results. On Nov. 10, after news organizations had projected Joe Biden the winner based on state vote totals, Thomas wrote to Meadows: “Help This Great President stand firm, Mark!!!…You are the leader, with him, who is standing for America’s constitutional governance at the precipice. The majority knows Biden and the Left is attempting the greatest Heist of our History.” When Meadows wrote to Thomas on Nov. 24, the White House chief of staff invoked God to describe the effort to overturn the election. “This is a fight of good versus evil,” Meadows wrote. “Evil always looks like the victor until the King of Kings triumphs. Do not grow weary in well doing. The fight continues. I have staked my career on it. Well at least my time in DC on it.”

Full Article: Virginia Thomas urged White House chief to pursue unrelenting efforts to overturn the 2020 election, texts show – The Washington Post

National: Biden administration to give federal employees time off to vote, work the polls | Niels Lesniewski/Roll Call

The Biden administration is directing federal agencies to let federal workers take leave to vote — and to serve as poll workers. Vice President Kamala Harris highlighted that new guidance from the Office of Personnel Management during a virtual event Thursday afternoon, delivering remarks from the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. “We believe the federal government should serve as a model employer — and, by the way, we’re the largest employer in the country, so we can do this and we should do this — and then therefore serve as a model employer when it comes to helping employees participate in their democracy,” Harris said. “And we’re going to therefore call on all employers to do the same.” The new policy for federal workers was one of several deliverables tied to the anniversary of President Joe Biden’s March 7, 2021, executive order on efforts to expand voting access. Thursday’s event also focused on two new reports stating what can be done to help support voting access for people with disabilities, as well as in tribal communities. “I’m proud to announce that the National Institute of Standards and Technology is releasing a report that lays out a comprehensive assessment of the barriers that disabled Americans face when they’re voting and offers specific recommendations for what we must do with a sense of urgency to break down those barriers — for example, including more disabled people in the design of election procedures because, of course, we should be having the leaders lead and — and not replacing what we think is, is important with what leaders can tell us is important,” Harris said.

Full Article: Biden administration to give federal employees time off to vote, work the polls – Roll Call

National: Contentious Fringe Legal Theory Could Reshape State Election Laws | Matt Vasilogambros/Stateline

The U.S. Supreme Court this month left open the possibility that it could endorse a fringe conservative legal theory that would give state legislatures unchecked powers over election rules before the 2024 presidential election. Republican officials cited the theory, which asserts that state courts do not have jurisdiction over election policy, in two key cases filed in North Carolina and Pennsylvania over congressional maps selected by their highest courts. Groups in those states—which included voters, Republican state senators and representatives, an election official and a congressional candidate—petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to throw out the respective maps. They argued in federal court filings that the U.S. Constitution gives state legislatures the sole power to set rules for federal elections. The high court rejected emergency requests to block the maps, allowing the ones chosen by state courts to stay in place for the 2022 midterm elections. But in a dissent to the North Carolina decision, three conservative justices endorsed the theory known as the “independent state legislature doctrine,” while another signaled he wanted to formally consider the question. That means there appears to be enough votes to put the issue—and the possible legitimization of the doctrine—on the court’s 2023 calendar.

Full Article: Contentious Fringe Legal Theory Could Reshape State Election Laws | The Pew Charitable Trusts

National: Where Does American Democracy Go From Here? | Charles Homans/The New York Times

Early last year, Freedom House, an American organization that since World War II has warned against autocracy and repression on the march around the world, issued a special report on a country that had not usually warranted such attention: its own. Noting that the United States had slid down its ranking of countries by political rights and civil liberties — it is now 59th on Freedom House’s list, slightly below Argentina and Mongolia — the report warned that the country faced “an acute crisis for democracy.” In November, the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, an influential Stockholm-based think tank, followed suit, adding the United States to its list of “backsliding democracies” for the first time. The impetus for these reassessments was Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election results and the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol that followed. But as the reassessments themselves noted, those shocks to the system hardly came out of nowhere; like the Trump presidency itself, they were both products and accelerants of a process of American democratic erosion and disunion that had been underway for years and has continued since. In states across the country, Republican candidates are running for office on the platform that the 2020 election was stolen — a view held by about three-quarters of Republican voters. Since the beginning of 2021, Republicans in at least 25 state legislatures have tried, albeit mostly unsuccessfully, to pass legislation directly targeting the election system: bills that would place election oversight or certification in the hands of partisan legislatures, for instance, and in some cases even bills specifically punishing officials who blocked attempts to overturn the 2020 election outcome in Trump’s favor. And those are just the new developments, happening against a backdrop of a decade-long erosion of voting rights and a steady resurgence of political extremism and violence, and of course a world newly at war over the principles of self-determination and democracy.

Full Article: Where Does American Democracy Go From Here? – The New York Times

National: Trump Just Endorsed an Oath Keeper’s Plan to Seize Control of the Republican Party | Isaac Arnsdorf/ProPublica

Former President Donald Trump has officially endorsed a plan, created by a man who has self-identified with the Oath Keeper militia, that aims to have Trump supporters consolidate control of the Republican Party. The plan, known as the “precinct strategy,” has been repeatedly promoted on Steve Bannon’s popular podcast. As ProPublica detailed last year, it has already inspired thousands of people to fill positions at the lowest rung of the party ladder. Though these positions are low-profile and often vacant, they hold critical powers: They help elect higher-ranking party officers, influence which candidates appear on the ballot, turn out voters on Election Day and even staff the polling precincts where people vote and the election boards that certify the results. “Just heard about an incredible effort underway that will strengthen the Republican Party,” Trump said Sunday in a statement emailed to his supporters. “If members of our Great movement start getting involved (that means YOU becoming a precinct committeeman for your voting precinct), we can take back our great Country from the ground up.”

Full Article: Trump Just Endorsed an Oath Keeper’s Plan to Seize Control of the Republican Party — ProPublica

National: Securing the Midterms: Smarter Tools Watch Over Voter Records | Jule Pattison-Gordon/Government Technology