The January 6 Hearings Are About Way More Than What Happened on January 6
The key takeaway should be this: In the coming elections, elections are on the ballot.
The House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection held its first of six hearings scheduled for June this past Thursday. While the House’s investigation is important for the historical record, many people seem to believe the hearings will fail to stir the public. Most Americans have moved past the events of 1/6 and are more concerned about inflation and the economy. It’s not clear the hearings will break any major news. I also suspect most Americans’ opinions on what happened that day have calcified. Some have wondered if the committee waited too long to make its case, but it could also be argued that by waiting until now to hold hearings, the better the chance their findings will stick in voters’ minds come Election Day. If nothing else, and even if these hearings represent the last time the public dwells on the events of that day, maybe just maybe the sight of a bipartisan committee starring the daughter of a former Republican vice president defending democracy from a president of her own political party at her own political peril will finally and definitively convince a critical mass of voters that Trump is politically toxic and unfit for public office.
That would be no small achievement but it would not be enough. The Capitol riot was not merely the culmination of Trump’s efforts to stay in office. What Trump and his MAGA base learned on 1/6 is that their plan failed because they didn’t have the players in place to pull it off. They’ve spent the past year and a half addressing that problem. The next 1/6 won’t be a paroxysm of right-wing grievance but a series of parliamentary procedures and court rulings that will render elections meaningless. The House Select Committee needs to make sure Americans understand that the danger of election subversion in this country has only increased since January 6, 2021.
At the hearing Thursday, Republican committee member Liz Cheney of Wyoming stated, “President Trump oversaw a sophisticated seven-part plan to overturn the 2020 election and prevent the transfer of presidential power.” The committee later released an outline of that plan:
President Trump engaged in a massive effort to spread false and fraudulent information to the American public claiming the 2020 election was stolen from him.
President Trump corruptly planned to replace the Acting Attorney General so that the Department of Justice would support his fake election claims.
President Trump corruptly pressured Vice President Pence to refuse to count certified electoral votes in violation of the US Constitution and the law.
President Trump corruptly pressured state election officials and state legislators to change election results.
President Trump’s legal team and other Trump associates instructed Republicans in multiple states to create false electoral slates and transmit those slates to Congress and the National Archives.
President Trump summoned and assembled a violent mob in Washington and directed them to march on the US Capitol.
As the violence was underway, President Trump ignored multiple pleas for assistance and failed to take immediate action to stop the violence and instruct his supporters to leave the Capitol.
Points 6 and 7 are seared into the national memory, but I would argue a repeat of those events are the least of our worries. It’s more important to understand how Trump continues to use the Big Lie (point 1) to justify the manipulation of the electoral process (the spirit of points 2-5).
Ironically, Trump’s Big Lie did not originate as a way for Trump to steal an election but as an excuse for why he lost one. Trump has long crafted his image around “winning”; that image (and his fragile ego) would be shattered by losing. That’s why in February 2016, after coming in second to Ted Cruz in the Iowa caucuses, Trump took to Twitter to declare, “Ted Cruz didn’t win Iowa, he stole it. That is why all of the polls were so wrong and why he got far more votes than anticipated. Bad!” There is no evidence the Iowa caucuses were rigged. Citing imaginary foul play as an excuse for failure is just a Trumpian reflex.
Later, with polls indicating he would likely lose the 2016 general election to Hillary Clinton, Trump sought to preemptively save face by attributing his defeat to fraud. In October 2016, he wrote on Twitter, “The election is absolutely being rigged by the dishonest and distorted media pushing Crooked Hillary - but also at many polling places – SAD”. Despite winning the electoral vote, Trump did lose the popular vote that year, which took some of the shine off his victory. Trump had an excuse for that, too: “In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally”. There is no evidence millions of people cast their votes illegally or that Trump’s opponents attempted to rig the election against him.
Trump won the 2016 election fair and square, but by casting doubt on the legitimacy of the results, he let the election fraud genie out of its bottle. Now, rather than assume elections were conducted fairly absent evidence to the contrary, many Republicans were primed to believe the American electoral system was inherently corrupt. The circumstances surrounding the 2020 election—Trump’s decision to hold huge well-attended rallies during the pandemic while Biden arranged small events, voters’ (especially Democrats’) reliance on mail-in ballots, and the long time it took to count those ballots—contributed to the perception among Republicans that Trump had been robbed of a victory. (There is no evidence the election was rigged, and the outcome of the election is easily explicable given the way the pandemic shaped voter behavior.)
Trump seized on the Big Lie not merely to save face but to stay in power. By claiming Democrats had stolen the election, Trump hoped to convince officials to throw out the results or even manipulate the tallies to his advantage. Thankfully, Republicans in official positions of power resisted the president. Yet many Republican leaders stood by as Trump and his minions undermined Republicans’ faith in the electoral process. Some were true believers and actively aided him. Others likely chose not to defy Trump to avoid drawing the wrath of the president and the Republican base on the assumption the process would affirm Biden’s victory and eventually blow over. It did not. Unsurprisingly, people misled into believing the game they’re playing is stacked against them may look for a way to win beyond the bounds of the game. That’s a big part of what happened on 1/6.
The Big Lie did not die that day, however. A year after the Capitol insurrection, a large majority of Republicans still do not consider Biden’s victory legitimate. State Republican leaders have used that suspicion to propose changes to state election laws that would potentially allow them to subvert future elections. A recent report co-authored by States United Democracy Center, Protect Democracy, and Law Forward broke these laws into five categories:
Seizing power over election responsibilities: Such laws are designed to shift power over the administration of elections from professional non-partisan election administrators to partisans in the legislature or partisan-controlled boards. For instance, in Georgia—where Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger resisted calls by Trump to manipulate the state’s final vote count—the Republican legislature altered the state election board so that a legislative appointee rather than the secretary of state chaired theboard. It then empowered the board to remove local election officials for cause, which some fear will be used to gain influence over the administration of elections in heavily-Democratic counties in the Atlanta area. This has already happened in Fulton County, where the legislature has started investigating county election administrators, and in a number of rural counties with large Black populations, which has resulted in a restructuring of those counties’ election boards along partisan lines, which in turn led to changes in local election laws.
Creating unworkable burdens in election administration: Rather than build trust in election systems, these laws are designed to foster distrust in the electoral process. For example, one such proposal that has thankfully yet to be enacted in any state would require election officials to count votes by hand rather than rely on machine tallies. This may sound benign, but besides being extremely time consuming, it introduces a high degree of human error to the process, which can in turn cast doubt on the accuracy of results. Additionally, a law enacted in Texas would prevent election administrators from keeping partisan poll watchers from interfering in the electoral process. Poll watching is a common practice and most poll watchers generally do just that—watch (and report any problems they do see to their local party)—but these new laws seem designed to empower poll watchers to intimidate voters and election workers, meddle in routine electoral procedures, and create conditions that cast the legitimacy of the entire process in doubt.
Imposing disproportionate criminal or other penalties: These bills, which are often vague, extraordinarily punitive, and ripe for abuse by partisan actors, are designed to intimidate both officials and citizens who help people vote. In Arizona, for example, a law would require officials to disclose all “voting irregularities” even though the bill does not specify what constitutes an “irregularity.” Texas has made it illegal to help someone fill out a ballot application form. Auditors in Iowa could be charged with a felony for not following the guidance of the Secretary of State and fined up to $10,000 for “technical infractions.” Perhaps the most disturbing example comes from Florida, which has created a law enforcement agency to police potential violations of electoral law even though such instances are rare. Because of these bills, officials may either feel overburdened by the strictures of their job or hesitant to help citizens exercise their right to vote at all.
Requiring partisan or unprofessional “audits” or reviews: State election officials often audit their elections using practices developed by professional election officials. A batch of new state laws would open that process up to unprofessional auditors whose own sloppy work is more likely to undermine trust in the electoral process. Arizona, Wisconsin, and Texas had direct experience with this following the 2020 election after partisan, unprofessional auditors not only made a mockery of the vote-counting process while promulgating wild conspiracy theories about election malfeasance but left ballots and voting equipment less secure as a result.
Usurping control over election results: In a lot of ways, this is what the election subversion movement is building to. These laws would enable state legislatures to override the will of voters in presidential elections and allocate their state’s electoral votes to the candidate of their choice. Only three states have even considered such legislation, but the three that have—Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin—were some of the most closely contested states in the 2020 election. Each voted for Biden, but Republicans control all six houses in the three state legislatures.
Additional factors should be noted alongside this list. Not only exhausted by the stress of working during the pandemic but also faced with political intimidation and the threat of heavy penalties for mundane errors, a large number of state election officials have quit over the past year-and-a-half. One in three also reported feeling unsafe in their job. There are fears these professionals will be replaced by partisans determined to work the electoral process to their party’s advantage. Indeed, many election deniers are running for office in 2022. In Michigan and New Mexico, Republicans have nominated election deniers for Secretary of State, and the Republican nominee in Pennsylvania for governor (a post that oversees elections in that state) is not only an election denier but was at the Capitol on 1/6. A Republican candidate in Colorado for secretary of state has already been charged with endangering the security of election machines and is prohibited from overseeing elections in the county she currently serves. Another Republican candidate in Wisconsin for secretary of state has said he will take charge of the electoral process in his state even though secretaries of state in Wisconsin do not oversee elections. Those are just the most prominent cases. We were fortunate in the 2020 election that so many election officials did their duty and refused to yield to the MAGA mob’s demands. With the turnover that’s occurring in offices charged with overseeing our elections, we may not be so lucky next time.
The election subversion playbook is predicated on undermining faith in elections, sowing chaos in the electoral process, and pushing rules to their breaking point. By spreading the Big Lie, Trump and his cronies have convinced millions of Americans that their political opponents are cheating, which in turn gives them permission to play dirty as well and break political norms that keep this democracy functioning. The point of all these new and proposed laws isn’t to clean up the system but to seemingly confirm the Big Lie, stir up a crisis in the event voters deliver an unfavorable result, and then use the crisis to justify resorting to unconventional methods to produce a favorable electoral outcome. For example, the point of preventing election officials from responding to poll watchers who interfere in the electoral process isn’t just to allow poll watchers to potentially engage in voter suppression but to precipitate a confrontation with election officials that can cast a shadow over the legitimacy of the entire election. If it appears the results cannot be trusted, it becomes easier to justify deciding the election via unorthodox and legally dubious means.
To do that, Trump will need supporters in key positions willing to either enact these schemes or allow them to proceed. That list includes state and local election officials, state legislators, state attorneys general, friendly judges, and members of Congress. From what I’ve read, if Trump would try to steal the 2024 presidential election, it would probably go something like this:
Local election officials sympathetic to Trump would use recently passed election subversion laws as a pretense to cast doubt on the outcome of closely-contested state races. For example, officials in Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin—the decisive states in the 2020 presidential election—might claim election officials in Phoenix, Atlanta, and Milwaukee violated laws regarding the validity of mail-in ballots to imply widespread corruption in those cities.
With the results of the election in those states in doubt, Republican-led state legislatures in those states would follow the “independent state legislature” theory to refuse to certify the popular vote and appoint their own slate of electoral college electors. (The independent state legislature theory claims, in accordance with a provision in the United States Constitution that reads “Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors,” that the sole power to appoint electoral college electors resides in each state’s legislature and that legislators are not obliged to follow the will of the voters.) This was a plan floated by Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah in the months after the 2020 election. Such a plan could go forward if sympathetic state supreme courts refused to object.
Such a development would undoubtedly provoke a constitutional crisis. If the case ended up before the Supreme Court, we know there are at least three justices—Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neal Gorsuch—who have signaled support for the independent state legislature theory. But the Court wouldn’t even need to go that far. Rather than call out the plot and affirm the right of voters to have their votes counted, a conservative majority on the Court might instead punt the case back to the states and expect them to somehow resolve the matter, which state Republican leaders may refuse to do in a timely manner.
This mess would then fall into the lap of Congress, who has to certify the results of the election. Congress may find themselves with slates of electors submitted by three state legislatures that favor Trump even though the popular vote in those states did not favor him. Or Congress may find themselves with no slates submitted by three states, depriving the Democratic nominee of the 270 electoral votes necessary to become president. It would then fall to the House to elect the next president, but in this case, votes are cast by each state’s House delegation rather than the individual members themselves. Currently, 27 House delegations are majority Republican, 21 delegations are majority Democratic, and 2 are tied. If House delegations voted by party in this scenario (which is no guarantee) Trump would have the votes to become president.
This plan would be difficult to pull off but not impossible, and the chaos it would engender would likely play to the advantage of the party most willing to embrace that chaos and press their institutional advantages. The thing is, though, that Republicans at the national, state, and local levels over the past year and a half have been moving the pieces they would need to execute this plan into place, and it’s not as though they haven’t tried to subvert an election before.
Of course, Trump’s plan didn’t work last time thanks to some well-placed figures with a sense of honor and duty. Some argue this is proof the system worked. I’d say we got lucky. Many Republican office holders were willing to go along with Trump’s plans, either to avoid the appearance of defying him or because they wanted him to succeed. I wouldn’t hang the hopes of the republic on the courage of Republicans who have Trump breathing down their neck. For every Liz Cheney, there’s a caucus of Republicans ready to cast her aside. Even Brad Raffensperger supports Georgia’s new voting laws.
What needs to happen then is for citizens to either vote the subverters out of office or keep them from taking office. The January 6 hearings can highlight this issue, but for that to happen, the committee will need to emphasize that what happened on January 6 was more than a violent riot. It was part of an ongoing effort by Trump and Republican officeholders to sow lies and manipulate the electoral process in order to subvert an election. Americans may not be moved by these hearings. They may consider 1/6 old news. They may be more worried about inflation and the economy. With all due respect, those are important issues, but not as important as the matter before the January 6 committee. In these coming elections, the very idea of elections is on the ballot. Democracy is at stake. No matter the price of gas or what our kids are being taught in school or what’s happening in Ukraine, the defense of democracy here at home is what matters most. Voters should act accordingly.
Signals and Noise
"January 6th was not simply a protest, it represented the greatest movement in the history of our Country to Make America Great Again."—Donald Trump, from a post on his social platform last Thursday prior to the House Select Committee’s prime time hearing.
How did FOX News cover Thursday’s hearing? It ran two hours (commercial-free, so viewers wouldn’t channel surf during breaks) of Tucker Carlson trashing the hearing and spinning conspiracy theories.
What’s in John Eastman’s emails? Eastman is the attorney who devised the plan Trump used to try to steal the 2020 election after it had been decided. A federal judge has ordered Eastman to turn over a number of documents in his possession to the 1/6 committee, including an email the judge considers evidence of a crime.
At least six former or current members of the Proud Boys—including some facing charges stemming from the 1/6 Capitol Riot—have gained seats on the executive committee of the Miami-Dade County Republican Party in Florida.
The new chairman of the Wyoming Republican Party is an Oath Keeper who attended Trump’s 1/6 rally at the White House and has admitted to being in the “vicinity” of the Capitol that day.
The redistricting process is pretty much complete. What are the big takeaways? According to Sabato’s Crystal Ball, 1.) The partisan breakdown of seats isn’t much different from the current breakdown, which means it has a small Republican lean (although Biden would have won most of the districts); 2.) There are more safe Republican seats than before; and 3.) There aren’t nearly as many competitive seats as before (only about 17% of all seats.)
By Reid J. Epstein and Jennifer Medina, for the New York Times: “Should Biden Run in 2024? Democratic Whispers of ‘No’ Start to Rise”
Jeff Stein and Tyler Pager had an article in the Washington Post this week about what caused Joe Manchin to pull the plug on Biden’s Build Back Better program back in December. The scoop: The White House released an anodyne statement about the state of the negotiations that mentioned Manchin by name. (“I had a productive call with Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Schumer earlier today. I briefed them on the most recent discussions that my staff and I have held with Senator Manchin about Build Back Better. In these discussions, Senator Manchin has reiterated his support for Build Back Better funding at the level of the framework plan I announced in September.”) Manchin wanted his name either excluded from the statement or paired with Senator Kyrsten Sinema. According to the article, someone close to Manchin described his anger at the statement as “explosive.” Three days later he went on FOX News to kill the bill. Maybe Manchin was looking for a reason to back away, but if this is the reason he couldn’t get a deal done, he’s basically got the temperament of a 4-year-old. If you can’t take the heat, Joe, stay out of the Senate. As Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research said, “It was not like this was the biggest insult in the world. The idea you would have done something good for the country, but instead will not do it because you think someone in the White House may have insulted you is kind of crazy.”
Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) said after Wednesday’s hearings on gun violence that, “Airplanes were used [on 9/11] as the weapon to kill thousands of people and to inflict terror on our country. There wasn’t a conversation about banning airplanes. There was a conversation about connecting the dots — how can we try to figure out if there are signs we can see to stop the next attack from happening?” Is this guy an idiot? They won’t let you bring box cutters onto airplanes anymore. They confiscate bottles of shampoo and soda at the checkpoints. You have to take off your shoes and put them through the metal detector. Pilots are locked into the cockpit. This country bent over backwards to prevent another 9/11 from ever happening again.
Oh, and by the way, the TSA confiscated a record 5,972 guns at airports in 2021, which is cray-cray given how few people were flying that year.
This is some useful perspective on the difference between the Democrats’ “Squad” and Republicans’ MAGA caucus from a high-ranking Republican staff member in Congress: “They are different in that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the ‘Squad’ seem to me to be more ‘idealist.’ They actually do want to legislate/accomplish the very far-left social ideas they propose. They are willing to cause Pelosi headaches, but they have shown they are not going to go so far as to jeopardize the government (operations) and safety net that so many families depend on from a working government. [T]he ‘MAGA Caucus’ members operate more like bullies — legislative bullies. If they have the opportunity, they will gladly hold bills/government funding hostage for the sake of populism and social media. They would take pride in ‘shooting the hostage’ as that would be very popular with their tribal base and their social media.”
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) has a new intern: Conservative media troll Milo Yiannopoulos. Yiannopoulos lost his job as an editor at Breitbart and was removed as a speaker at CPAC in 2017 after video surfaced of an interview in which he defended pedophilia.
I’m not from New York but I know who Carl Paladino is. Definitely not a guy to trust with power. He’s running for Congress now in New York and he’s been endorsed by the Chair of the House Republican Caucus, Rep. Elise Stefanik, who is most definitely from New York and most definitely knows who Carl Paladino is. Anyway, this past week, Paladino shared a Facebook post suggesting the shootings in Buffalo and Uvalde were false flags. Then a recording from a radio show surfaced from last year in which Paladino praised Adolf Hitler as “the kind of leader we need today. We need somebody inspirational. We need somebody that is a doer, has been there and done it.” Done it? Done what exactly? And just to reiterate, the third ranking House Republican has endorsed someone for Congress who regards Hitler as a role model.
“We are called to be led by men. God sent women out when they had to do their thing, but when it was time to face down Goliath, (he) sent David. Not Davita — David.”—Republican North Carolina Lt. Governor Mark Robinson, during a speech last month at a church in Charlotte.
We’re giving Ukrainians high-tech weapons but they don’t know how to operate them. Can they learn how to fast enough to make a difference? It matters, because Russia appears to have steadied its war effort as it makes slow but steady advances in the Donbass. Additionally, 200 Ukrainian soldiers are dying everyday and its military is running low on ammunition. Russia continues to bumble, but its military might appears to be making up the difference.
By Catherine Rampell, for the Washington Post: “We Already Achieved ‘Energy Independence.’ What Good Did It Do Us?” (“Despite this prized achievement, U.S. petroleum prices remain painfully high. That’s because even if we can meet all our consumption needs with domestic production, oil prices are still set by global markets. If a major world supplier such as Russia suddenly gets taken offline, that drives global prices up — including here in the United States. If we actually want to get energy costs down, if we want to completely insulate ourselves from global price shocks, what we ultimately need is the technological investments that keep energy cheap, reliable and, coincidentally, clean. That means investing in renewables, including: installing grid-scale solar wherever possible. Encouraging consumers and businesses to transition to electric vehicles, stoves and heat. And especially, developing better battery technology.”)
The wage gap between CEOs and the median worker in the United States jumped to an obscene 670-1 last year. The average CEO makes $10.6 million per year while the median worker earns $23,968. At forty-nine companies, the ratio topped 1,000-1. Amazon’s CEO earned 6,474 times the company’s median wage. This is my own back-of-the-envelope math here, but if you bump that 670-1 ratio to account for a $15 minimum wage, you’ll find CEOs making $10,050 an hour and $80,400 per eight-hour-day.
Inflation was up in May 8.6% from a year. The price of gas just crossed $5.00 and is expected to continue to rise over the summer. But might inflation be easing? Three key indicators—the price of semiconductors, the spot rate for shipping containers, and the price of fertilizer—suggests it might, but it may be months before consumers begin to notice.