This dangerous and un-American behavior can not be allowed to continue.

Former President Donald Trump on Saturday flat-out called for the "termination" of the United States Constitution so that he could be returned to the presidency.

Reacting to the news that Twitter in the runup to the 2020 election removed tweets that featured pornographic photos of Hunter Biden, Trump declared that the entire election had been stolen from him and demanded to be returned to the presidency.

"So, with the revelation of MASSIVE & WIDESPREAD FRAUD & DECEPTION in working closely with Big Tech Companies, the DNC, & the Democrat Party, do you throw the Presidential Election Results of 2020 OUT and declare the RIGHTFUL WINNER, or do you have a NEW ELECTION?" Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform. "A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution. Our great 'Founders' did not want, and would not condone, False & Fraudulent Elections!"

This is not the first time Trump has called for his reinstatement as president, although this is the first time he has acknowledged that doing so would require the United States to shred its own Constitution on his behalf.

New York Times reporter Peter Baker wrote on Twitter that this seems like a dangerous new milestone for Trump.

"Needless to say, can't think of a time in the United States when a former president (and would-be future president) has called for suspending the Constitution to let him seize power," he wrote. "Even after all the shocks of the last few years, this one is remarkable."

Sarah Jones and Jason Easley at PoliticusUSA's The Daily Substack:

The Trump and Mike Johnson press conference at Mar-a-Lago barely lasted 20 minutes, and what the event might be remembered for isn’t Trump’s various lies about abortion, immigration, or even the value of Mar-a-Lago. Something Mike Johnson said in just a few minutes signaled how Trump plans to handle a potential 2024 election loss.

Johnson said: [You need to understand something, since the 1993 National Voter Registration Act, the motor voter law, allows people to sign up to vote. If an individual averts or states they are a citizen, they don't have to prove it, they can register that person to vote in a federal election. States are prohibited from asking someone to prove that they are a citizen. The federal voter registration form has a check box. If you do that, you're good. That is a serious problem. And what we are going to do is, house Republicans are introducing a bill that will require proof of citizenship to vote. It seems like common sense. All of us would agree we want U.S. Citizens to vote in U.S. Elections. But there are some Democrats who don't want to do that. One of their reasons for this open board that everyone asked, why would they do this? Why the violence? They want to turn these people into voters. Right now, the administration is encouraging illegals to go to the local welfare office to sign up for benefits. When you go to the welfare office they ask you if you would like to register to vote. Many people, we think are going to do that. If the numbers are so high, so many millions of illegals in the country, one out of a hundred, they would cast thousands of votes, that could turn an election. This could impact congressional elections in the country. It could affect the presidential election.] [...]

Johnson and Trump Are Going To Claim That Illegal Immigrants Stole The Election For Biden

Johnson was the architect of the House scheme to block the certification of the 2020 election. He likely won’t be the Speaker of the House when the next election is certified, but what he is doing is creating a path for Trump to challenge the 2024 results in every swing state that he loses. Trump will claim that any swing state that uses motor voter registration that he lost was full of illegal votes for Biden. Trump will demand that the election not be certified, and that all of the swing states that Biden won be thrown out. Johnson knows that a national voter ID law will make it much more difficult for some Democratic leaners to vote, and that the bill that he and Trump are proposing is dead in the water, so the tactic will be to challenge every state that Biden won that is considered a swing state by claiming that illegal voters voted for Biden.

On Friday, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and 2024 GOP nominee Donald Trump trafficked in the lie motor voter registration caused "illegal votes" for President Joe Biden to be tallied in a bid to cause 2020 2.0 in which Trump lied about the election results to falsely declare himself the victor.

« The truth is that Donald Trump undermined faith in our elections in his false bid to retain the presidency. He sparked an insurrection intended to overthrow our government and keep himself in power. No president in our history has done worse.

This is not subjective. We all saw it. Plenty of leaders today try to convince the masses we did not see what we saw, but our eyes don’t deceive. (If leaders began a yearslong campaign today to convince us that the Baltimore bridge did not collapse Tuesday morning, would you ever believe them?) Trust your eyes. Trump on Jan. 6 launched the most serious threat to our system of government since the Civil War. You know that. You saw it.

[ ... ]

As for those who equate Trump and Joe Biden, that’s false equivalency. Biden has done nothing remotely close to the egregious, anti-American acts of Trump. We can debate the success and mindset of our current president, as we have about most presidents in our lifetimes, but Biden was never a threat to our democracy. Trump is. He is unique among all American presidents for his efforts to keep power at any cost.

Personally, I find it hard to understand how Americans who take pride in our system of government support Trump. All those soldiers who died in World War II were fighting against the kind of regime Trump wants to create on our soil. How do they not see it? »

— Chris Quinn, editor of the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

Exactly. Our ancestors risked their lives to stop the sort of totalitarianism represented by Donald Trump and his mentor Vladimir Putin. The least we can do is risk some minor inconvenience by registering to vote and casting our ballots.

Be a voter | Vote Save America

As former Labor Secretary Robert Reich has reminded us, "History shows there are no “one day” dictatorships." And once a dictatorship is installed, people rarely have a chance to get rid of it by simply voting it out. Dictatorships are far easier to prevent than to end.

Led effort to overturn the last election, great choice traitors. Has no leadership experience either.

Links:

[1] https://www.aclu.org/issues/voting-rights/fighting-voter-suppression/fighting-voter-id-requirements

[2] https://spreadthevote.org/voter-id-states

[3] https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Tolson%20Testimony1.pdf

[4] https://www.aclu.org/documents/oppose-voter-id-legislation-fact-sheet

[5] https://www.educationnext.org/teachers-should-replace-the-soft-bigotry-of-low-expectations-with-the-suspension-of-disbelief/

[6] https://glennloury.substack.com/p/loury-vs-mcwhorter-voter-supression

Original research paper:

https://www.skeptic.com/research-center/data-briefs/Data-Brief_VoterID.pdf

==

See also:

Reasons given by college students for why voter ID is "racist":

Black people less likely to have ID, or particular type of ID

Black people can't get to the DMV

Black people can't afford the internet

Black people don't know how to use the internet.

Black people don't have data on their phones or don't know how to use it

Black people are uninformed

Black people are often felons

Most of them appear to just be regurgitating ACLU talking points as virtuous "antiracism" activism and have never actually considered how infantilizing and actually racist these beliefs about black citizens are. It was genuinely shocking to me to hear these things come out of their mouths as virtuous progressive beliefs, rather than from a white Southern sheriff from the 60s.

Where I'm from, voter ID is required. It's not always requested, and I've only had to show mine a couple of times ever. But they do random spot checks and nobody thinks any more of it than showing your ID when you open a bank account or collect a parcel from the post office. (Seriously, how do they think black people pick up a parcel from the post office?)

Now, it's possible that there could be racial profiling when asking for voter ID, and that should certainly be addressed. But the idea that black Americans can live their entire lives in their own country without having an ID, knowing where the DMV Is or how to get there, and without being able to figure out the most basic aspects of "the internet" is full-blown progressive racism. That is actual white supremacy.

You would think after the elections of 2000, 2016 and 2020, there would be bipartisan agreement to improve the integrity of elections. But apparently not.

RNC plan for 2020 denialist to head ‘election integrity’ unit raises alarms

The trouble with rule of law is that it only works if people participate in it.

It’s not clear when Moss and Freeman can expect to see a cent of the money they’ve been awarded. Giuliani is widely reported to have financial troubles and he is likely to use an appeal and every other legal maneuver to try to delay paying. And it’s not clear whether the case will even stop Giuliani from defaming them again. “I don’t regret a damn thing,” he said outside the federal courthouse on Friday. Giuliani had been far from repentant throughout the week. And since August, when Judge Beryl Howell entered a default judgment against Giuliani for defamation per se, intentional infliction of emotional distress and civil conspiracy, Giuliani has made at least 20 defamatory statements against Freeman and Moss, their attorneys said this week. The dynamic underscores the limits of defamation law to police misinformation. While it can force people to pay for their lies, it cannot force them to stop lying or persuade people not to believe the lies. RonNell Andersen Jones, a first amendment scholar at the University of Utah, said observers are concerned about instances in which defamers brush aside damages. In cases involving large media outlets, she said, it may simply be seen as the cost of doing business. And in others, like that of Giuliani, people may simply “be judgment-proof, bankrupt, or otherwise unwilling or unable to pay”, she said. “In both situations, we’re testing the outer boundaries of libel law’s ability to remedy the harm done by falsehoods and to deter defamers from telling future lies. We are also, more fundamentally, testing the rule of law,” she added. “If the incentive to lie to audiences eager to receive those lies is stronger than the power of any court proceeding, and if defamers have decided that they simply will not participate in cases brought against them and will avoid paying damages when they are issued, this raises far deeper concerns.”

Rudy Giuliani is a bag of flaming shit. He doesn't regret a damn thing because he knows he can escape the consequences of his own actions because Rich Old White Man. If he dropped dead tomorrow, rotted from the inside under the weight of his own corruption, I would throw a fucking party.

Wandrea Moss said in her testimony, “I literally felt like someone was going to come and attempt to hang me and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.”

This is the human cost of corruption. The rich and powerful step on everyone else, and everyone else suffers accordingly.

MAGA election denier.

CLAIM: The U.S. Supreme Court will hear a case to remove President Joe Biden from office and reinstate former President Donald Trump in his place.

AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. The Supreme Court has not decided to hear such a case. On Feb. 21, the Justices rejected for a second time to hear a case that cites baseless 2020 election fraud claims to call for the Court to oust from office hundreds of elected officials, including Biden, as well as to prevent them from holding any elected government position again. Several days later, a website published an article incorrectly stating that the case was going ahead, but the post has since been taken down.

THE FACTS: Nearly one week after the Supreme Court Justices doubled down on their decision not to hear the suit, social media users falsely claimed the opposite.

One Instagram post shared a screenshot of a headline reading: “Supreme Court To Hear Case To Reinstate Donald Trump Over ‘Rigged’ Election.” It had received nearly 1,400 likes as of Wednesday.

The full article, which was published on Feb. 26, four days after the decision, stated that the Court was “reconsidering hearing” the lawsuit “after previously dismissing it earlier this year.” It has since been taken down, and an article published on Feb. 28 by the same author correctly reports that the court rejected the case.

Other posts made days after the decision echoed the original article’s claim that the case still had a chance of being heard. They received tens of thousands of likes and shares on Twitter.

The suit — Adams v. Brunson, et al. — was previously dismissed by a lower court, and that ruling was upheld on appeal, according to court documents. It was then appealed to the Supreme Court in October 2022. The suit argues that Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, former Vice President Mike Pence and 385 members of Congress committed treason when they failed to probe baseless claims that the 2020 election was rigged.

Further, it calls for the removal of these officials and a ban on their future ability to hold elected office, as well as “the swearing in of the legal and rightful heirs for President and Vice President of the United States.” It does not specifically name Trump.

In January 2023, the Supreme Court declined to hear the case and an appeal was filed later that month. The Court rejected the case for a second time on Feb. 21.

Aziz Huq, a professor of law at the University of Chicago who is an expert on constitutional law, told The Associated Press that it is unlikely the Supreme Court will ever hear a case such as Adams v. Brunson, given that it relies on a false narrative.

“Certainly something that is founded upon the irresponsible conspiracy mongering fallacies that this petition is based upon seems to me an unlikely fodder for the Supreme Court,” he said.

Matt Shuham at HuffPost:

Last summer, a candidate for the New Mexico state House showed up on Nathan Jaramillo’s doorstep. Jaramillo, the Bureau of Elections administrator in Bernalillo County, said Peña had previously sent threatening emails to both himself and to others in the county. Jaramillo brushed it off, annoyed at the personal intrusion but unconcerned. Five months later, Peña, a Trump supporter who lost his election and rejected the results, was arrested and charged with organizing a string of brazen drive-by shootings targeting public officials. Jaramillo thought back to five months earlier, when the man had shown up at his doorstep. The severity of the situation “really hit me,” Jaramillo told HuffPost. “In hindsight, it was a lot more scary.” Now, Jaramillo’s office assigns ticket numbers to emails they receive, organizing them by sender and keeping tabs on the office’s responses, in the hopes of anticipating anyone who could escalate their complaints into something more serious.

But the incident with Peña — who has pleaded not guilty, and whose attorney did not respond to a request for comment — is just one scene representative of an increasingly tense era of American politics. Fueled by Trump’s lies about election theft, supporters of his have spent years threatening election workers and the democratic process — and acting upon those threats. Now, as the 2024 presidential campaign charges toward November, election offices are taking steps they’d never dreamed could be necessary. Several election officials HuffPost spoke to laid out laundry lists of upgrades — everything from ballistic windows, doors and walls to new security cameras, electronic access badges and location trackers on ballot boxes. And as the Republican Party continues to push lies about election integrity — a scripted Republican Party call last month falsely claimed there was “massive fraud” in 2020 — election officials are gearing up to protect what promises to be an even more tense presidential contest this year.

[...] Around the country, election officials are working on evacuation and “quick containment” drills for future potential envelope attacks — even just using a bucket to contain a suspicious envelope — and stocking up on masks, gloves and naloxone, just in case, said Jennifer Morrell, a former elections official in Utah and Colorado and co-founder of an election consulting group during a recent call hosted by the National Task Force on Election Crises.

[...] “Prior to 2016, it was a pretty sleepy industry. People trusted their election officials and the process,” she said. Then, Hall said, “everything changed: When you have rhetoric coming from the top, it empowers and activates people all the way down the food chain.”

[...] But election workers’ preparations for 2024 are complicated by the sheer range of security issues that could come up: Since 2020, for example, Trump supporters across the country have tried — sometimes successfully — to copy data from sensitive equipment like voting machines and ballot tabulators. In Michigan, for example, several prominent Republicans, including a former GOP nominee for state attorney general, have been charged with felonies for their roles in an alleged conspiracy to improperly gain access to ballot tabulators. In Colorado, a former county clerk faces felony charges for allegedly allowing a computer technician to get into election machines under false pretenses; information from the machines was subsequently shared at an election fraud conspiracy theory summit. The answer to these growing threats, according to election officials, is a mix of background checks, digital protections like phishing training for staff and multi-factor authentication for accessing databases, in addition to physical measures like electronic badges that allow different levels of access to observers, volunteers, election workers and government employees.

[...]

Brain Drain

For veteran election administrators, the Trump era has brought with it a troubling wave of resignations. Workers at all levels have decided they’d rather not participate in a process that, in recent years, has led some of their neighbors to think they’re part of an anti-democratic cabal. What used to be considered sleepy “clerk work” is now heavily scrutinized — and, as the Republican attacks against Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss showed, may make people vulnerable to nationwide defamation campaigns. In North Carolina, there’s been a “huge increase” in directors of elections retiring, Bowens said. And Jaramillo described “individuals that were with our office for 20-plus years [who] made the determination that they weren’t in it for the 2024 ride.” Mast said he’d seen an “incredible” number of election workers retiring or changing fields. Among elected clerks, Mast said the position has gone from one filled largely by career administrators who served lengthy tenures to one with roughly 30% turnover every four years. After the “environmental changes” of 2020, experienced clerks have begun leaving the field more often, he said. “It’s incredible to see.”

Election administration was once a sleepy nonpartisan industry, but with rampant election denialism instigated by Donald Trump and fellow right-wing bad actors, election administrators are looking to make safety upgrades before this fall's election.