January 6 was practice
Across the country, election deniers and pro-Trump extremists are laying the groundwork to overturn the results of future elections in support of their idol.
Anyone who has cared to read factual reporting on the events of January 6 understands the point that a congressional committee has been making for the last two weeks: Donald Trump and his acolytes first spread lies about the 2020 election, then encouraged their supporters to act upon them in order to reinstate him as president.
But that is past. What the select committee simply doesn’t have time to cover is the larger — and what will become the more important — point to make about January 6: it was practice. A failed stunt to overturn the results of the election, Trump’s band of extremist zealots learned that their actions that day were too little, too late. And they have taken that lesson to heart.
This party-wide coalition of white supremacists, election deniers, Trump-worshiping wine moms, angry working class whites, ex-military and law enforcement, and past, current and would-be local elected officials failed to stop the certification on January 6. Instead, they simply learned that the next time they’ll have to secure a false victory in other ways.
What we’ve seen since that day is a slow-rolling insurrection being carried out in local government offices across the country. Insurrectionists have infiltrated every level of government — and are trying to infiltrate still more. They’re our next door neighbors, our mail ladies, the teller at the bank, tire shop owners, youth baseball coaches, plumbers and electricians. More importantly, they’re the leader of the neighborhood watch, our local alderman, our sheriff and beat cops. American life has always required that we live in harmony with those with whom we politically disagree. But since January 6 it now requires that we accept that we live alongside people who, if the right moment came, would enact violence upon us because of our political beliefs. The right argues this is a danger facing conservatives thanks to groups like antifa, but study after study have shown that it is the right that has a much higher proclivity for political violence. They also happen to be much more well-armed.
While the prospect of political violence is a very real concern — one backed by the Department of Homeland Security as a concrete threat — as we approach both the midterms and the 2024 presidential election, what’s more pressing at the moment are the non-violent ways that insurrectionists, election deniers and other right wing extremists are attempting to push their policies on a public that often doesn’t support them.
I’ve been documenting much of this in Georgia. Election deniers are both currently sitting on election boards as well as trying to get elected and appointed to those positions, possibly implementing policies based on the lies they believe. But Georgia is no outlier. As I reiterated last week, coverage of election deniers seeking offices as high as secretaries of state and governorships has been bountiful. But only recently has local and national media caught up to the same phenomenon happening in our backyards.
Below are just some of the ways that election deniers are attempting to take over the election process nationwide, all in the name of suppressing and calling into question Democratic votes, refusing to certify election results in which their preferred — read: Trump-backed — candidates do not win, and generally cause as much chaos in the election system to call the results of all elections into questions so the anti-democratic factions (all?) of the Republican party can achieve their ultimate goal: total control of government at all levels to push through policies that only an extremist minority of Americans agree with. Here’s how they’re doing it.
“Task forces” of election deniers to intimidate and harass voters. Just like they’re doing in Georgia, where thousands of people are demanding to illegally inspect ballots, right wing extremists nationwide are engaged in campaigns to infiltrate local election offices and insert themselves at polling places. Plus, similar to the 2020 debacle in Wayne County, Michigan, various election denier groups are recruiting and training thousands of fellow true believers to man polling places and be in direct contact with Republican lawyers should they see any phantom evidence of fraud they’ve dreamed up. This plan has its roots in Steve Bannon’s “precinct plan” that he’s been telling listeners about since pretty much as soon as it became obvious that Trump would not undo 2020’s election results.
The election denier takeover of local elections. Obviously we know about the election deniers currently working in local Georgia election offices (and there is much more coming on that, trust me), but it’s not just here that election deniers are already laying the groundwork to deny results in the midterms and in 2024. In New Mexico, a convicted insurrectionist and county official led a pressure campaign to refuse to certify the results of this month’s primary — despite no fraud being found by the group they contracted to conduct this bogus investigation. Elsewhere, an obscure and secretive QAnon influencer is recruiting fellow extremists to run for election positions in swing states. In Utah, a man who wants to dismantle the state’s vote-my-mail system (ostensibly based on election lies) will likely become Utah County’s chief election official. (On some good news in Northern California, a Democrat/normal human being was able to fend off several election deniers running to become the county’s chief election official.)
The extremist takeover of the Republican party. More than 800 elected officials serving in legislatures across the country are associated with far-right groups, according to a new study. An election denier is running for governor in Nevada, in addition to the election denier gubernatorial and secretary of state candidates across the country (and especially in major swing states). An Oath Keeper in Pennsylvania is now head of a GOP committee that vets and endorses candidates for state and local offices. Members of the Proud Boys have found a welcome home in the Miami-Dade Republican Party.
Straight-up violence. More than two dozen members of the white supremacist group Patriot Front were arrested over the weekend for allegedly planning to attack an LGBTQ pride event in Idaho. (Police involved in the arrests have received death threats from the group’s supporters and other far right extremists.) Self-described Christian fascists harassed a pride event in a gay Dallas neighborhood. Proud Boys also disrupted a drag queen reading event at a California library, hurling homophobic epithets. Not surprisingly, this lust for violence comes from the top of the GOP and its idol, Trump. Last month, Michigan’s top election official revealed that Trump suggested she be arrested and executed for treason for refusing to overturn election results in her state in favor of the former president.
That’s a roundup of all the various ways that our fellow Americans are trying to subvert democracy. It’s an incomplete list of links that I’ve been compiling since last week’s newsletter — so who knows how much I could have compiled if I actually did this full time. So, as always, if you appreciate this work, please subscribe and tell a friend. And feel free to donate to my Patreon so I can continue investigating election deniers with power over elections right now in Georgia. If the replies on Twitter to the last few pieces I’ve written are any indication, it looks like I could spend the rest of my days finding election deniers actively working to subvert democracy in pretty much every state in the country. So here’s to happy hunting!