Whichever way one looks, one important relationship to keep in mind is the one between the unprecedented violent interruption of the peaceful handover of political power and the months-long campaign President Trump waged to discredit the 2020 election, and his defeat.
Which gets us to Republican election denialism since the riot. As The Daily 202 wrote nearly one year after the insurrection, false claims of voter fraud have fueled frequently successful GOP efforts at the state level to take control of the country’s electoral processes.
Whitewashing Jan. 6, putting either-we-won-or-it’s-fraudulent officials in positions to decide the outcome of elections (or even trying to give a state legislature a veto over the outcome) and Trump championing candidates who deny 2020 are all reasons to worry about the midterms.
Will they or won’t they concede?
My colleagues Amy Gardner, Hannah Knowles, Colby Itkowitz and Annie Linskey documented this weekend how a majority of Republicans they surveyed in important battleground races are refusing to say they will accept the November election outcome.
“In a survey by The Washington Post of 19 of the most closely watched statewide races in the country, the contrast between Republican and Democratic candidates was stark. While seven GOP nominees committed to accepting the outcomes in their contests, 12 either refused to commit or declined to respond. On the Democratic side, 17 said they would accept the outcome and two did not respond to The Post’s survey,” they reported.
Strategists of both parties still see Republicans retaking the House. But the Supreme Court’s decision to overrule the Roe v. Wade precedent that protected access to abortion, and Republicans’ subsequent efforts to implement bans in various states, have reduced their expected margin of victory, and left control of the Senate to something akin to the political equivalent of a coin flip.
And, my colleagues reported, “[m]ore than half of all Republican nominees for federal and statewide office with powers over election administration have embraced unproven claims that fraud tainted Biden’s win, according to a Washington Post tally.”
It’s entirely possible that, in two months, multiple losing candidates could refuse to accept their defeats — notably some seeking governorships or Senate seats from Arizona, Florida, Kansas, Michigan, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Texas.
“All but two — incumbent senators Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Marco Rubio of Florida — have publicly embraced Trump’s false claims about 2020, according to a Post analysis.”
(My colleagues noted that Georgia Democratic gubernatorial nominee Stacey Abrams cited voter suppression in 2018 when she refused to concede defeat to Republican opponent Brian Kemp. “But unlike Trump, Abrams never sought to overturn the certified result or fomented an insurrection.”)
What would happen if these candidates lost on Nov. 8 but contested their defeats would depend on the state. In 2000, George W. Bush and Al Gore went to court to settle the question of who won Florida. The Supreme Court ultimately handed Bush the presidency.
After 2020, Trump acolytes battled it out in the court of public opinion, where they seem to have won over vast swaths of the Republican Party, and in actual court, where their lawsuits were dismissed or defeated with metronomic regularity.
“In many of the battleground states, election officials who have not embraced Trump’s false claims about widespread election fraud continue to [have] the power to certify election results — or the power to ask a judge to order a state or local election board to do so. In other places, the potential for chaos is hard to predict because election deniers now hold positions such as county clerk or electoral board member,” my colleagues reported.
And we know Trump isn’t afraid to personally lobby or pressure local officials to overturn results. He did so in Arizona. And in Michigan. And The Washington Post obtained and posted audio of a telephone call in which he did so in Georgia.
There’s another possibility my colleagues didn’t really include: Jan.-6th style violence at the state level.
After all, Trump has increasingly embraced the Q-Anon conspiracy cult, which the FBI has warned could turn violent. And he has offered full pardons to Jan. 6 rioters if he is reelected.
What was unthinkable the day after Trump’s 2020 defeat isn’t unthinkable anymore.
Biden announces release of U.S. hostage abducted in Kabul more than two years ago
“President Biden announced the release of U.S. hostage Mark Frerichs, a civilian contractor who was abducted in Kabul over two years ago. In a statement, Biden made no mention of the swap for an Afghan detainee held in U.S. federal prison, Bashir Noorzai, a warlord and drug trafficker with ties to the Taliban,” Haq Nawaz Khan and Susannah George report.
“Bringing the negotiations that led to Mark’s freedom to a successful resolution required difficult decisions, which I did not take lightly,” Biden said.
Iran says no nuclear deal without U.S. guarantees it won’t walk out again
“Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, in his first U.S. media interview, said that the Biden administration’s promise to adhere to a new nuclear agreement was ‘meaningless’ without guarantees that the United States would not again unilaterally withdraw from the deal in the future,” Karen DeYoung reports.
Kyiv alleges ‘terrorism’ after Russian strike near second nuclear plant
“Ukrainian officials accused Russia of ‘nuclear terrorism’ on Monday after a rocket reportedly hit just hundreds of yards from the reactors at Ukraine’s second-largest nuclear power plant, disabling three high-voltage electricity lines and a hydropower unit, and blowing out windows,” David L. Stern reports.
Lunchtime reads from The Post
Pentagon opens sweeping review of clandestine psychological operations
“The Pentagon has ordered a sweeping audit of how it conducts clandestine information warfare after major social media companies identified and took offline fake accounts suspected of being run by the U.S. military in violation of the platforms’ rules,” Ellen Nakashima reports.
“Colin Kahl, the undersecretary of defense for policy, last week instructed the military commands that engage in psychological operations online to provide a full accounting of their activities by next month after the White House and some federal agencies expressed mounting concerns over the Defense Department’s attempted manipulation of audiences overseas, according to several defense and administration officials familiar with the matter.”
What an election denier could do if elected secretary of state
“A secretary of state can’t single-handedly change an election’s results. ‘It’s really hard to rig an election in America because it’s so decentralized,’ said Meredith McGehee, the former head of a nonpartisan government transparency advocacy group, Issue One,” Amber Phillips explains.
“But there are ways rogue secretaries of state could use their powers to throw a wrench in elections. Here are the ones election experts worry about:”
- Make it harder to vote
- Allow for endless audits of results
- Refuse to sign off on election results
- Sow distrust in results
Doctors rush to use Supreme Court ruling to escape opioid charges
A Supreme Court ruling has raised the bar to convict doctors accused of writing illegal prescriptions, Brett Kelman reports for Kaiser Health News.
“In a June decision, the court said prosecutors must not only prove a prescription was not medically justified ― possibly because it was too large or dangerous, or simply unnecessary ― but also that the prescriber knew as much.”
- What it means: “The court’s unanimous ruling complicates the Department of Justice’s ongoing efforts to hold irresponsible prescribers criminally liable for fueling the opioid crisis. Previously, lower courts had not considered a prescriber’s intention. Until now, doctors on trial largely could not defend themselves by arguing they were acting in good faith when they wrote bad prescriptions.”
Biden declares that ‘the pandemic is over’ in the U.S., surprising some officials
“While Biden’s comments were extemporaneous, they may complicate his administration’s so far unsuccessful efforts to secure additional funding from Congress for more coronavirus vaccines and treatments and to take other steps intended to combat the virus,” Dan Diamond reports.
Biden, in London, honors the queen and avoids diplomatic disputes
“White House officials said Biden’s trip would largely be a show of respect for the queen and the British people rather than a political or diplomatic mission, even as the gathering of hundreds of heads of state and dignitaries could surface a number of global flash points and highlight emerging tensions between London and Washington,” Toluse Olorunnipa reports.
An interesting note from Michael Beschloss: Biden is the “first incumbent American President to attend a British monarch’s funeral.”
Biden says he hasn’t decided on 2024 reelection run
“President Biden told 60 Minutes Thursday that while he intends to run for reelection in 2024, the decision is still up in the air,” CBS News reports. He made the remarks in an interview that aired Sunday evening on CBS’s “60 Minutes.”
- NYT: Biden calls Trump ‘irresponsible’ over Mar-a-Lago documents
- CBS: Biden tells 60 Minutes U.S. troops would defend Taiwan, but White House says this is not official U.S. policy
Watch the full interview here
The U.S.’s worker shortages, visualized
“While the railway dispute, which the White House helped resolve early Thursday, has garnered the most attention, a number of other strikes are spreading across the United States. Some 15,000 nurses walked out of the job in Minnesota this week, and health-care workers in Michigan and Oregon have recently authorized strikes. Seattle teachers called off a week-long strike, delaying the start of the school year,” Abha Bhattarai reports.
Cheney and Lofgren: We have a bill to help prevent another Jan. 6 attack
“This week we will propose reforms to the Electoral Count Act to protect the rule of law and ensure that future efforts to attack the integrity of presidential elections can’t succeed,” Reps. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) write in an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal. Here are some of the details:
- “The vice president (who acts as presiding officer for a joint session of Congress in a presidential election) has no authority or discretion to reject official state electoral slates, to delay the count in any material way, or to issue procedural rulings that have such an effect.”
- Congressional objections “would require one-third of each chamber to be entertained and majority votes to be sustained.”
- “Governors must transmit lawful election results to Congress.”
- “Federal law must make clear that the rules governing an election can’t change after the election has occurred.”
In Ohio, Vance scrambles to ramp up campaign after mounting GOP criticism
“On Saturday night, Vance tried to jump-start his candidacy in the competitive race by campaigning with Trump in Youngstown and tying his opponent to the president,” Annie Linskey reports.
“‘There’s two Tims out there,’ Vance said, a ‘D.C. Tim’ who votes with President Biden and a ‘campaign Tim’ who pretends to be a centrist. ‘We need to kick D.C. Tim to the curb,’ he told a mostly full arena filled with American flags and ‘Save America!’ signs.”
The Bidens left London at 9:25 a.m. Eastern time this morning and will arrive back at the White House at 5:05 p.m.
Can the Sunday morning talk show be saved?
“For decades, Sunday morning’s Big Four — NBC’s ‘Meet the Press,’ CBS’s ‘Face the Nation,’ ABC’s ‘This Week’ and ‘Fox News Sunday’ — were an integral part of the Beltway news ecosystem. Leading political figures, hungry for the big soapbox and establishment cred the shows conveyed, clamored for bookings and sometimes made agenda-setting news,” Paul Farhi writes.
“But while the four most highly rated shows still reach a relatively large audience — a combined average of about 9.3 million per week over the past year — there’s not nearly as much clamoring. Producers of the programs acknowledge that they often struggle to book the people who were once regulars in the greenroom on Sunday.”
Thanks for reading. See you tomorrow.
George is Digismak’s reported cum editor with 13 years of experience in Journalism