Morning Briefing: Right-Wing Legal Group Advocates for Judges Overturning Election Results Over ‘Failures or Irregularities’
Morning Briefing: Right-Wing Legal Group Advocates for Judges Overturning Election Results Over ‘Failures or Irregularities’
America First Legal Foundation, a nonprofit right-wing litigation group, is reportedly advancing the legal theory that judges can throw out election results over 'failures or irregularities.'
Morning Briefing: America First Legal Foundation, a nonprofit right-wing litigation group, is reportedly advancing the legal theory “that judges can throw out election results over ‘failures or irregularities’ by local officials,” as “Republicans have launched an aggressive legal campaign laying the groundwork to challenge potential losses.”
Sen. Denny Hoskins, the GOP candidate for Missouri’s secretary of state, has reportedly been promoting conspiracy theories such as claiming to have “uncovered clandestine algorithms used to anoint President Joe Biden,” and has been accused by political opponents of “stoking militia groups to take matters into their own hands, encouraging them to police polling places, canvass voters at home to uncover fraudulent ballots, and disregard election law.”
In Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, local law enforcement is reportedly investigating “several Nazi banners were strung from Pittsburgh bridges,” and the incident occurred a day after a “University of Pittsburgh student was attacked off campus in an alleged antisemitic assault.”
In South Haven, Michigan, an unidentified individual reportedly passed out “hundreds of flyers with swastikas on them to South Haven residents,” and local law enforcement is “working with prosecutors on whether or not to press charges on the man who handed out the flyers.”
Jaime Tran, who pleaded guilty to shooting and wounding two Jewish men as they left synagogues in California, “was sentenced today to 35 years in prison,” and one of the victims expressed disappointment in a sentence they felt was “very lenient for an attempt on two people’s lives.”
Despite the decrease in violent crime, the “number of hate crimes reported rose by 2% to 11,862 from 11,634,” according to data published this week by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The data “relating to incidents targeting members of the LGBTQ+ community once again show disturbing, record-breaking numbers.”
Must Reads
Kiera Butler writes that “for all their youthful modishness, this group is actually more conservative than their older counterparts. Many TheoBros, for example, don’t think women belong in the pulpit or the voting booth—and even want to repeal the 19th Amendment. For some, prison reform would involve replacing incarceration with public flogging. Unlike more mainstream Christian nationalists, like House Speaker Mike Johnson, who are obsessed with the US Constitution, many TheoBros believe that the Constitution is dead and that we should be governed by the Ten Commandments. In American Reformer, their unofficial magazine, hagiographies of Spanish dictator Francisco Franco appear alongside full-throated defenses of countries that execute gay people. On podcasts, the TheoBros unpack ‘the perils of multiculturalism,’ expose ‘Burning Man’s wicked agenda,’ and peel back the nefarious feminist plot of Taylor Swift. In Wolfe’s The Case for Christian Nationalism, one of their seminal texts, he writes that in an ideal Christian nation, heretics could be executed. The rise of the TheoBros worries more mainstream religious conservatives.” [Mother Jones]
James Risen writes that “Donald Trump doesn’t try to campaign on any real issues. Instead, he traffics in racist tropes and conspiracy theories as he tries to get Americans to go down a rabbit hole into a dark alternate reality where immigrants kidnap and eat cats, the 2020 election was stolen, vaccines are poison, and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris is not really Black. He has filled his third campaign for the presidency with a team that peddles conspiracy theorists, including Laura Loomer, JD Vance, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Racism, misogyny, and anti-intellectualism are at the heart of many of Trumpworld’s conspiracy theories, but it is up to Trump’s most loyal MAGA cultists to sort out the political meaning of each new harebrained idea they are told to believe. Meanwhile, the nation’s political press corps lags far behind trying to fact-check Trump and his minions, like King Canute trying to hold back the tide. Above all, Trump has built his campaign around conspiracy theories designed to stoke racist fears of immigrants and minorities, exploiting the hysteria that grips many white Americans over the demographic changes of the last few decades that have transformed the U.S. into a more diverse nation.” [The Intercept]
Martin Skladany writes that “some Republican voters who are ethically against abortion do recognize the necessity of legally protecting it. Recent votes to defend abortion access in places such as Nebraska make sense when put in this context. Politicians are beginning to realize that for the fate of their own careers and the success of their party, forcing a 10-year-old rape victim to flee your state to get an abortion turns the public against you… Historically, abortion restrictions are correlated with authoritarian regimes. While the direction of causation likely runs both ways, the arc of history shows that the democracy movement works in parallel with the expanding freedom of bodily autonomy. This should not come as a surprise given the similarities to robust free speech protections, which are also strongly associated with democracies. Few democracies have stood the test of time in the way that the United States has; few, notably, have such strong First Amendment rights. Most European, Asian, African, and South American countries have had authoritarian regimes in the last century, while only roughly a dozen countries have been democracies for more than 90 years. No dictator allows free speech. Permitting it is too slippery a slope to democracy. Similarly, no autocrat respects the bodily autonomy of those he rules over. Jailing dissidents is a necessary tool to retain power. The abortion rights movement must broadcast this until citizens understand what abortion bans are putting at stake: the future of a free people.” [The New Republic]
What to expect from Radical Reports: Morning Briefing provides a daily round-up of reporting on the Radical Right; Extremist Links offers a weekly round-up of extremists activities including the white supremacist and militia movements; Narratives of the Right delivers weekly analysis of the current narratives in far right online spaces and promoted by right-wing media; and Research Desk provides monthly highlights research and analysis from academia on the Radical Right.
