We’ve discussed repeatedly in recent months how poll results aren’t just “the numbers” in some hard, incontestable sense. They include a set of assumptions about the nature of the electorate. For most TPM readers, this is a fairly straightforward point that doesn’t require much convincing or explanation. But this post by a professor at Vanderbilt provides a really helpful real-world illustration. Josh Clinton takes sample data and shows that by using different reasonable and good faith assumptions about the electorate he can get results ranging from Harris +.9 to Harris +8. Don’t pay attention to the fact that these results are all still in her favor. The point is that the assumptions baked into the poll can yield results 7 points apart. It could as easily be Trump +3 to Harris +4. Again, it’s one thing to understand this in the abstract. But the specific explanation and the concrete outputs tell the story in a different way.
If nothing else, this is why that 7 point spread is just a bright flashing neon light that many of us are disregarding or not even seeing while we’re obsessing about win or loss margins of like half a percentage point.
This article was first published by ProPublica and Documented. ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.
A key ally to former President Donald Trump detailed plans to deploy the military in response to domestic unrest, defund the Environmental Protection Agency and put career civil servants “in trauma” in a series of previously unreported speeches that provide a sweeping vision for a second Trump term.
In private speeches delivered in 2023 and 2024, Russell Vought, who served as Trump’s director of the Office of Management and Budget, described his work crafting legal justifications so that military leaders or government lawyers would not stop Trump’s executive actions.
He said the plans are a response to a “Marxist takeover” of the country; likened the moment to 1776 and 1860, when the country was at war or on the brink of it; and said the timing of Trump’s candidacy was a “gift of God.”
ProPublica and Documented obtained videos of the two speeches Vought delivered during events for the Center for Renewing America, a pro-Trump think tank led by Vought. The think tank’s employees or fellows include Jeffrey Clark, the former senior Justice Department lawyer who aided Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election result; Ken Cuccinelli, a former acting deputy secretary in the Department of Homeland Security under Trump; and Mark Paoletta, a former senior budget official in the Trump administration. Other Trump allies such as former White House adviser Steve Bannon and U.S. Reps. Chip Roy and Scott Perry either spoke at the conferences or appeared on promotional materials for the events.
Vought does not hide his agenda or shy away from using extreme rhetoric in public. But the apocalyptic tone and hard-line policy prescriptions in the two private speeches go further than his earlier pronouncements. As OMB director, Vought sought to use Trump’s 2020 “Schedule F” executive order to strip away job protections for nonpartisan government workers. But he has never spoken in such pointed terms about demoralizing federal workers to the point that they don’t want to do their jobs. He has spoken in broad terms about undercutting independent agencies but never spelled out sweeping plans to defund the EPA and other federal agencies.
Vought’s plans track closely with Trump’s campaign rhetoric about using the military against domestic protesters or what Trump has called the “enemy within.” Trump’s desire to use the military on U.S. soil recently prompted his longest-serving chief of staff, retired Marine Gen. John Kelly, to speak out, saying Trump “certainly prefers the dictator approach to government.”
Other policies mentioned by Vought dovetail with Trump’s plans, such as embracing a wartime footing on the southern border and rolling back transgender rights. Agenda 47, the campaign’s policy blueprint, calls for revoking President Joe Biden’s order expanding gender-affirming care for transgender people; Vought uses even more extreme language, decrying the “transgender sewage that’s being pumped into our schools and institutions” and referring to gender-affirming care as “chemical castration.”
Since leaving government, Vought has reportedly remained a close ally of the former president. Speaking in July to undercover journalists posing as relatives of a potential donor, Vought said Trump had “blessed” the Center for Renewing America and was “very supportive of what we do,” CNN reported.
Vought did not respond to requests for comment.
“Since the Fall of 2023, President Trump’s campaign made it clear that only President Trump and the campaign, and NOT any other organization or former staff, represent policies for the second term,” Danielle Alvarez, a senior adviser to the Trump campaign, said in a statement. She did not directly address Vought’s statements.
Karoline Leavitt, his campaign’s national press secretary, added there have been no discussions on who would serve in a second Trump administration.
In addition to running his think tank, Vought was the policy director of the Republican National Committee’s official platform committee ahead of the nominating convention. He’s also an architect of Project 2025, the controversial coalition effort mapping out how a second Trump administration can quickly eliminate obstacles to rolling out a hard-right policy agenda.
As ProPublica and Documented reported, Project 2025 has launched a massive program to recruit, vet and train thousands of people to “be ready on day one” to serve in a future conservative administration. (Trump has repeatedly criticized Project 2025, and his top aides have said the effort has no connection to the official campaign despite the dozens of former Trump aides and advisers who contributed to Project 2025.)
Vought is widely expected to take a high-level government role if Trump wins a second term. His name has even been mentioned as a potential White House chief of staff. The videos obtained by ProPublica and Documented offer an unfiltered look at Vought’s worldview, his plans for a Trump administration and his fusing of MAGA ideology and Christian nationalism.
A Shadow Government in Waiting
In his 2024 speech, Vought said he was spending the majority of his time helping lead Project 2025 and drafting an agenda for a future Trump presidency. “We have detailed agency plans,” he said. “We are writing the actual executive orders. We are writing the actual regulations now, and we are sorting out the legal authorities for all of what President Trump is running on.”
Vought laid out how his think tank is crafting the legal rationale for invoking the Insurrection Act, a law that gives the president broad power to use the military for domestic law enforcement. The Washington Post previously reported the issue was at the top of the Center for Renewing America’s priorities.
“We want to be able to shut down the riots and not have the legal community or the defense community come in and say, ‘That’s an inappropriate use of what you’re trying to do,’” he said. Vought held up the summer 2020 unrest following George Floyd’s murder as an example of when Trump ought to have had the ability to deploy the armed forces but was stymied.
Vought’s preparations for a future Trump administration involve building a “shadow” Office of Legal Counsel, he told the gathered supporters in May 2023. That office, part of the Justice Department, advises the president on the scope of their powers. Vought made clear he wants the office to help Trump steamroll the kind of internal opposition he faced in his first term.
Historically, the OLC has operated with a degree of independence. “If, all of a sudden, the office is full of a bunch of loyalists whose only job is to rubber-stamp the White House’s latest policy directive, whose only goal is to justify the ends by whatever means, that would be quite dangerous,” said an attorney who worked in the office under a previous Republican administration and requested anonymity to speak freely.
Another priority, according to Vought, was to “defund” certain independent federal agencies and demonize career civil servants, which include scientists and subject matter experts. Project 2025’s plan to revive Schedule F, an attempt to make it easier to fire a large swath of government workers who currently have civil service protections, aligns with Vought’s vision.
“We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected,” he said. “When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains. We want their funding to be shut down so that the EPA can’t do all of the rules against our energy industry because they have no bandwidth financially to do so.
“We want to put them in trauma.”
Vought also revealed the extent of the Center for Renewing America’s role in whipping up right-wing panic ahead of the 2022 midterms over an increase in asylum-seekers crossing at the U.S.-Mexico border.
In February 2022, Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich released a legal opinion claiming the state was under “invasion” by violent cartels and could invoke war powers to deploy National Guard troops to its southern border. The legally dubious “invasion” theory became a potent Republican talking point.
Vought said in the 2023 speech that he and Cuccinelli, the former top Homeland Security official for Trump, personally lobbied Brnovich on the effort. “We said, ‘Look, you can write your own opinion, but here’s a draft opinion of what this should look like,’” Vought said.
The nonpartisan watchdog group American Oversight later obtained an email in which Vought pitched the “invasion” framework to Brnovich.
Brnovich wrote in an email to ProPublica that he recalled multiple discussions with Cuccinelli about border security. But he added that “the invasion opinion was the result of a formal request from a member of the Arizona legislature. And I can assure you it was drafted and written by hard working attorneys (including myself) in our office.”
In the event Trump loses, Vought called for Republican leaders of states such as Florida and Texas to “create red-state sanctuaries” by “kicking out all the feds as much as they possibly can.”
“Nothing Short of a Quiet Revolution”
The two speeches delivered by Vought, taken together, offer an unvarnished look at the animating ideology and political worldview of a key figure in the MAGA movement.
Over the last century, Vought said, the U.S. has “experienced nothing short of a quiet revolution” and abandoned what he saw as the true meaning and force of the Constitution. The country today, he argued, was a “post-constitutional regime,” one that no longer adhered to the separation of powers among the three branches of government as laid out by the framers.
He lamented that the conservative right and the nation writ large had become “too secular” and “too globalist.” He urged his allies to join his mission to “renew a consensus of America as a nation under God.”
And in one of his most dramatic flourishes, he likened the 2024 election to moments in America’s history when the country was facing all-out war.
“We are here in the year of 2024, a year that very well [could] — and I believe it will — rival 1776 and 1860 for the complexity and the uncertainty of the forces arrayed against us,” Vought told his audience, referring to years when the colonies declared independence from Britain and the first state seceded over President Abraham Lincoln’s election. “God put us here for such a time as this.”
Vought said that independent agencies and unelected bureaucrats and experts wield far too much power while the traditional legislative process is a sham. He extended that critique to agencies like the Department of Justice and the Federal Reserve, whose independence from the White House had long been protected by both political parties.
“The left in the U.S. doesn’t want an energetic president with the power to motivate the executive branch to the will of the American people consistent with the laws of the country,” he said in the 2024 speech. “They don’t want a vibrant Congress where great questions are debated and decided in front of the American people. They don’t want empowered members. They want discouraged and bored backbenchers.”
He added, “The all-empowered career expert like Tony Fauci is their model, wielding power behind the curtains.” Fauci was one of the top public health experts under Trump at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and a key figure in coordinating the national response.
What sets Vought apart from most of his fellow conservative activists is that he accuses powerful organizations on the right of being complicit in the current system of government, singling out the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies, the conservative and libertarian legal network co-chaired by activist Leonard Leo. The society is widely seen as an instrumental force in cultivating young conservative lawyers and building a bench of future judges whose embrace of legal theories like originalism and textualism have led to decisions overturning abortion rights, environmental protections and social welfare policies.
Yet in his 2024 speech, Vought accused the Federalist Society and “originalist judges” of being a part of the problem, perpetuating the “post-constitutional structure” that Vought lamented by not ruling more aggressively to weaken or dismantle independent regulatory agencies that Vought and his allies view as illegitimate or unconstitutional.
It was “like being in a contract quietly revoked two decades ago, in which one party didn’t tell the other,” he said. “At some point, reality needs to set in. Instead, we have the vaunted so-called Federalist Society and originalist judges acting as a Praetorian Guard for this post-constitutional structure.”
Echoing Trump’s rhetoric, Vought implicitly endorsed the false claim of a stolen 2020 election and likened the media’s debunkings of that claim to Chinese Communist propaganda.
“In the aftermath of the election, we had all these people going around saying, ‘Well, I don’t see any evidence of voter fraud. The media’s not giving enough [of] a compelling case,’” he said. “Well, that compelling case has emerged. But does a Christian in China ask and come away saying, ‘You know, there’s no persecution, because I haven’t read about it in the state regime press?’ No, they don’t.”
Vought referred to the people detained for alleged crimes committed on Jan. 6, 2021, as “political prisoners” and defended the lawyers Jeffrey Clark and John Eastman, who have both faced criminal charges for their role in Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election. Federal law enforcement agencies, he added, “are keeping political opponents in jail, and I think we need to be honest about that.”
The left, Vought continued, has the ultimate goal of ending representative democracy altogether. “The stark reality in America is that we are in the late stages of a complete Marxist takeover of the country,” he said, “in which our adversaries already hold the weapons of the government apparatus, and they have aimed it at us. And they are going to continue to aim it until they no longer have to win elections.”
When Democrats called Trump an “existential threat to democracy,” they were not merely calling for his defeat at the ballot box, he said, but were using “coded language the national security state uses overseas when they are overthrowing other governments” to discourage the military from putting down anti-Trump protests should he win.
“They’re making Trump out to be a would-be dictator or an authoritarian,” he said. “So they’re actively working now to ensure, on a number of levels, that the military will perceive this as dictatorial and therefore not respond to any orders to quell any violence.”
Trump, Vought insisted, has the credibility and the track record to defeat the “Marxist” left and bring about the changes that Vought and his MAGA allies seek. In his view, the Democratic Party’s agenda and its “quiet revolution” could be stopped only by a “radical constitutionalist,” someone in the mold of Thomas Jefferson or James Madison. For Vought, no one was in a better position to fill that role than Trump.
“We have in Donald Trump a man who is so uniquely positioned to serve this role, a man whose own interests perfectly align with the interests of the country,” Vought said. “He has seen what it has done to him, and he has seen what they are trying to do to the country.
“That,” he added, “is nothing more than a gift of God.”
The narcissism, the rancid “jokes,” the racism, the misogyny, and every other major element of Donald Trump’s neo-fascist movement to retake the White House was on ugly display in Manhattan Sunday night in his closing incitement to the American people.
A sampling of the coverage:
NYT: A Closing Carnival of Grievances, Misogyny and Racism
Axios: MAGA speakers unleash ugly rhetoric at Trump’s MSG rally
Politico: Trump’s New York homecoming sparks backlash over racist and vulgar remarks
WaPo: Trump rally speakers lob racist insults, call Puerto Rico ‘island of garbage’
As Heather Cox Richardson noted: “It turns out that the 2024 October surprise was the Trump campaign’s fascist rally at Madison Square Garden, a rally so extreme that Republicans running for office have been denouncing it all over social media tonight.”
Perhaps the best analysis came from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) who properly places the MSG rally in the context of what comes next (4:00 mark):
“This was a hate rally. This was not just a presidential rally, this was also not just a campaign rally. I think it’s important for people to understand these are mini January 6 rallies, these are mini Stop the Steal rallies. These are rallies to prime an electorate into rejecting the results of an election if it doesn’t go the way that they want.”
AOC’s assessment is backed by experts like Ruth Ben-Ghiat, who pointed specifically to rally speakers claiming an unspecified “they” tried to assassinate Trump: “The purpose of this is to conjure a threat environment sufficient to justify authoritarian action if they win. Old trick of those planning coups as well.”
The MSG rally was a harbinger of what’s to come, not just in a Trump II presidency, but as soon as election night next week. Consider yourself warned.
Fascism Watch
NYT Magazine: Is It Fascism? A Leading Historian Changes His Mind.
CBS News: Elon Musk says people accusing Trump of endangering democracy are the real danger
WaPo: Vance defends Trump on using U.S. military against Americans
TPM: Trump Is Not A Fascist, Insists Man Who Called Him ‘America’s Hitler’
EXCLUSIVE
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – OCTOBER 27: Tesla and X CEO Elon Musk raises his hands as he takes the stage during a campaign rally for Republican presidential nominee, former U.S. President Donald Trump, at Madison Square Garden on October 27, 2024 in New York City. (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
WaPo: “Long before he became one of Donald Trump’s biggest donors and campaign surrogates, South African-born Elon Musk worked illegally in the United States as he launched his entrepreneurial career after ditching a graduate studies program in California, according to former business associates, court records and company documents obtained by The Washington Post.”
The Backlash To Billionaire Newspaper Owners
The separate 11th hour decisions by the billionaire owners of the LA Times and WaPo not to issue endorsements in the presidential race was another indicator of creeping authoritarianism. WaPo owner Jeff Bezos took the brunt of the backlash over the weekend:
WSJ: Washington Post in Turmoil After Opting Against 2024 Presidential Endorsement
Politico: Second Post columnist resigns while others defend publication
NYT: Inside The Washington Post’s Decision to Stop Presidential Endorsements
Former WaPo editor Marty Baron: “This is cowardice, with democracy as its casualty.”
TPM’s Josh Marshall: Trust, Bewilderment and Billionairedom: Understanding the Backlash Against Bezos
Do Not Obey In Advance
Yale historian Timothy Snyder on how the acquiescence of the billionaire owners of the LA Times and WaPo to the Trump threat violates the first rule of the fight against tyranny:
The NYT has obtained recordings of more than 400 meetings, including over 400 hours of conversations, of longtime GOP election law bamboozler Cleta Mitchell’s Election Integrity Network.
Election Threats Watch
If he wins election next week, Donald Trump is promising anew to prosecute “Lawyers, Political Operatives, Donors, Illegal Voters, & Corrupt Election Officials” who “CHEATED” in the 2024 election.
CNN: US intelligence assesses Russian operatives behind fake video showing Pennsylvania ballots being destroyed
WSJ: Democrats Ready Thousands of Lawyers for Final Days of Race
What many Americans may not realize is that U.S. elections are an outlier, especially compared to other industrialized democracies. Canada’s campaign typically lasts between 36 and 50 days. The total campaign bill for its 2021 election: $69 million in today’s dollars—about 1/27th the price tag per voter south of the border. U.S. elections cost about 40 times more per person than the U.K. or Germany.
Senate In The Balance
TX-Sen: Sen. Ted Cruz (R) leads Rep. Colin Allred (D) 50%-46% among likely voters, according to the new NYT/Siena College poll.
NE-Sen: Sen. Deb Fischer (R) leads Dan Osborn (I) 48%-46% among likely voters, according to the new NYT/Siena College poll.
WSJ: Republicans Put Pressure on Democrats in ‘Blue Wall’ Senate Races
What You Need To Know About Salt Typhoon
WSJ: Chinese Hackers Targeted Phones of Trump, Vance, and Harris Campaign
WaPo: Chinese hackers said to have collected audio of American calls
NYT: What to Know About the Chinese Hackers Who Targeted the 2024 Campaigns
No Background Checks For Trump II Appointees
NYT: “A memo circulating among at least half a dozen advisers to former President Donald J. Trump recommends that if he is elected, he bypass traditional background checks by law enforcement officials and immediately grant security clearances to a large number of his appointees after being sworn in, according to three people briefed on the matter.”
The Merrick Garland Precedent
Would a GOP-controlled Senate confirm any Supreme Court nominee from President Harris?
NK Troops Deployed To Ukraine Front
NATO chief Mark Rutte told reporters Monday that North Korean soldiers assisting Moscow have been deployed to Kursk, the Russian region partly controlled by Ukrainian troops.
Michelle Obama On Fire
The former first lady lit it up in Michigan over the weekend, in a speech that was most fiery when she focused on abortion, women’s health, and sexism:
That speech Michelle Obama gave yesterday was one of the best of this entire cycle. She is unbelievable. Here’s how she brought it home.
Donald Trump’s antagonism towards the press has become so well-established as to be unremarkable.
In a recurring bit, he gripes about some reporter or coverage he doesn’t like, gestures to the press pen at the back of his rallies and encourages his followers to boo the journalists. He sends out all-caps screeds about reporters who have wronged him, assigns them dehumanizing nicknames (see: Maggot Haberman), vows to jail those who don’t disclose their sources, threatens to revoke cable news stations’ broadcast licenses.
I’ve made this point a few times in recent weeks, here and on the podcast. I’m going to make the point again because I think it’s critical for understanding this election nine days out. We keep hearing that this is the closest election in decades. Polls say that’s right. At least 5 of the 7 swing states are within a single percentage point — fairly meaningless margins statistically. National poll averages are between one and two points — right on the cusp of where most believe a Democratic Electoral College victory becomes possible. But I don’t think that’s the right way to look at it. What we have is a high uncertainty election. That’s not the same thing. There’s every chance that most or every race that looks close will veer more or less uniformly in one direction. And that wouldn’t necessarily be because of one late-breaking story, some great decision by one of the candidates or even undecideds all “breaking” in one way. It could simply be because the dominant understanding of the race and the electorate was just a bit off and had been all along.
It’s part of the stock in trade of liberal American discourse: threatening or claiming to cancel a subscription to this or that once-revered journalistic institution in response to bad behavior, bad reporting, failing to rise to this or that civic moment. But the rash of cancelations of The Washington Post, in response to the Bezos-driven non-endorsement seems very different, much more sizable in its scope. I should say here I’m not telling anyone to do that. I don’t like telling or pushing people to do things in general. On this whole push I’m genuinely agnostic, neither for or against it. And most importantly, I write in this case simply as an observer, not a cheerleader. But I think the brand damage to the Post may be greater even than people realize and go beyond whatever near-term hit they take on subscriptions. I want to share some thoughts on why I think that is.
A big slice of American is living in a climate of deepening bewilderment. That’s basically Blue America, civic America and the more politicized part of the group I’m describing. This bewilderment is tied to the role of billionaires in public life, the role of Donald Trump in our public life, but it goes beyond both.
The Wall Street Journal provided inside details on Thursday about Elon Musk’s ongoing phone calls with Russian leader Vladimir Putin.
There’s an obvious national security issue here, as the piece notes: Through SpaceX, Musk is a top defense contractor for the U.S. government. He gives the DoD access to space, where some of the country’s most sensitive technologies are employed. The vulnerabilities of that arrangement are, to some extent, already known: Federal intelligence agencies warned last year that Russian and Chinese spies are targeting SpaceX in an effort to steal sensitive technology.
But focusing on the narrow national security, espionage-related angles here somewhat undersells the story.
Musk has spent the past several years building out his place as a sine qua non right-wing apparatchik. Conservative movement influencers praise his acquisition of Twitter because they see it as having seized the public forum where journalists, politicians, think tankers, and others discuss and form ideas, tilting the platform far to the right. (Take a look at your “For You” tab if you disagree with that diagnosis.) Others, on the even further right, have floated Musk as a supposed “man of destiny,” a figure capable of action that would rout the left once and for all.
As his influence grew in American domestic politics, Musk began to play a larger role internationally. He supplied Starlink terminals to Ukraine after Russia’s full-scale invasion, providing what soldiers there have described as a vital communications link for the military. But as the war went on in its first year, reports started to emerge that Musk had begun to speak with senior Kremlin officials. Late in 2022, Musk began to restrict access to Starlink for Ukrainian troops, and began to make pro-Russian statements online. He complained that SpaceX couldn’t afford the expense of running Starlink for Ukraine; geopolitical analyst Ian Bremmer said at the time on Twitter that Musk had told him that he spoke with Putin and other Kremlin officials. Since then, the WSJ reported, Musk has maintained contact with top Russians; at one point, the paper reported, Musk declined to activate Starlink in Taiwan. The Kremlin had asked for it as a favor to the Chinese regime.
There aren’t borders to political currents. You might, for good reason, think that Trump is an authoritarian at home; the facts suggest that Musk is engaging with its global axis. For him, the benefit is lower taxes, lax regulations, and (maybe) the chance to shape how the government treats his heavily regulated businesses. It’s an abdication in a way: he’s not acting as an independent businessman with interests apart from those of the government. Rather, he’s subordinating himself (and his interests) to those of a potential future leader. Be it for Trump or for Putin, the relationship is the same: the oligarch only gets to play so long as the king is happy.
— Josh Kovensky
Here’s what else TPM has on tap this weekend:
Khaya Himmelman details how state election administrators are already debunking a wave of election misinformation, some spread by members of Congress, as early voting gets underway.
Emine Yücel, meanwhile, takes note of the election violence we’re already seeing, and the violence law enforcement is readying itself for.
New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu acknowledges that when you support Trump, supporting authoritarianism is already kind of “baked in,” Emine Yücel writes.
Let’s dig in.
Election Officials Are Already Working Hard To Get Out Ahead Of MAGA Conspiracy Theories …
Still reeling from the dangerous aftermath of 2020, election officials across the country are bracing for an onslaught of election misinformation and conspiracy theories as Election Day draws nearer.
In Georgia, GOP Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has been working to dispel conspiracy theories about Dominion voting machines, freshly spread by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and far-right broadcaster Alex Jones. As my colleague Nicole Lafond pointed out this week, Greene appeared on Jones’ show to spread a false story about Dominion voting machines “flipping” votes during early voting in her state. Raffensperger, however, pointed out in a segment for CBS’s “Face the Nation” that it was the voter who accidentally filled out the wrong selection on a ballot and that the issue was quickly resolved while the voter was still on-site.
Democratic Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes is also preparing for another election misinformation battle. In 2020, the state was ground zero for conspiracy theories, and, in turn, for dangerous threats against election officials across the state. Fontes is trying to get out ahead of any potential damage that could be done at the hands of election deniers this cycle. In an interview for POLITICO’S Tech podcast, Fontes said: “We are the center of the storm when it comes to election denialism.”
He added: “Everybody’s just gotten a little more sophisticated, I guess, in this battle for the truth. But luckily, we’ve got the truth on our side, so those guys will lose eventually.”
And in Colorado state officials are educating voters on how to spot election misinformation and election intimidation ahead of time. Democratic Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold recently publicized information on a new Colorado law requiring political candidates to label content that is generated by AI, according to reporting from the Durango Herald.
But, for months now, well before the almost two-week lead up to Election Day, election officials have been preparing to prevent threats to election workers motivated by baseless conspiracy theories about the election system. Election offices have implemented mental health training, stronger partnerships for law enforcement, new security training, increased security measures around election facilities, and even, in some counties, the installation of panic buttons.
— Khaya Himmelman
… While Law Enforcement Braces For Potential Violence
Federal and local law enforcement and other officials in Washington, D.C., are ramping up preparations to ensure a safe and peaceful transfer of power on Jan. 6, 2025, and on Inauguration Day.
Although officials said there are no specific threats to the city at this time, they are planning ahead, including for problems that may grow out of the misinformation and disinformation that will flood social media about the outcome and the security of the election.
Officials, this week, announced that fencing will be erected around the U.S. Capitol building from Jan. 5 through Jan. 21 for security purposes.
“I think that the United States Capitol Police are prepared to ensure a peaceful transfer of power at the Capitol, regardless of the victor,” D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser said.
This election has already seen some violent incidents.
Earlier this week, police arrested a 60-year-old man suspected of shooting at a Tempe, Arizona Democratic National Convention office that organizes and campaigns for Vice President Kamala Harris as well as state House and Senate candidates.
The suspect, identified as Jeffrey Michael Kelly, was arrested late Tuesday and charged with unlawful discharge of a firearm, shooting at a nonresidential structure, committing an act of terrorism and misdemeanor criminal damage.
The arrest comes after local police responded to shots fired at the DNC office on three separate occasions over the course of three weeks. Kelly is also suspected of hanging suspicious bags of white powder from political signs in a nearby village.
When arrested, Kelly was found with over 120 guns and over 250,000 rounds of ammunition in his home, prosecutors said.
“The state and law enforcement believes that this person was preparing to commit an act of mass casualty with the guns he had,” Deputy Maricopa County Attorney Neha Bhatia said at Kelly’s initial appearance in Superior Court.
Bhatia detailed that investigators found multiple machine guns, loaded firearms, silencers, long-range scopes and body armor in his home.
In light of the events, Tempe Police Chief Kenneth McCoy acknowledged the threat of political violence is heightened with the 2024 election just around the corner.
“I want to speak directly to those who would consider using political violence or intimidation to disrupt our upcoming election: We will hold you accountable and use every resource available to us to bring you to justice,” McCoy said.
— Emine Yücel
Words of Wisdom
“No … Look, we’ve heard a lot of extreme things about Donald Trump, from Donald Trump. It’s kind of par for the course. Unfortunately, with a guy like that, it’s kinda baked into the vote.”
That’s New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu (R) answering a question from CNN about whether Trump praising Hitler is making him reconsider his support for the former president.
It’s quite a rationalization for continuing to support a man who was described as an “an authoritarian” and someone who fits the “general definition of fascist” by his own chief of staff.
On top of that, the dismissal and downplaying from Sununu — who was so reluctant to support Trump in the first place — is a striking political performance that reveals the current state of the Republican Party.
If someone praising Hitler isn’t making you reconsider your support for them, you need to take a long, hard look at yourself. And maybe ask yourself, what does that say about me?
Let me share a few quick thoughts on newspaper endorsements. This comes after we learned that first the LA Times and now the Washington Post will break with tradition and not endorse a presidential candidate this year.
First, I’m not sure there’s any point these days in newspapers endorsing political candidates, especially presidential candidates. I don’t think much about it either way. But, especially in the case of the Post, this is a bad and cowardly development. We can’t know for certain what went into these decisions. But the most obvious explanation is that they have billionaire owners who, especially in the case of Jeff Bezos, have other business interests which are vulnerable to adverse regulatory and contracting decisions as well as government harassment of other kinds. Those are very real threats and ones that a lawless president has a lot of latitude to exact without much if any real prospect of redress. It’s not a habeas situation. These are just discretionary decisions in most cases.
Axios this morning leads with the email subject line: “Dems’ private panic.” And then inside the email “1 big thing: Dems fear they’re blowing it.” In this case I’m not really writing to criticize Axios, which I admittedly, and rightly, often do. Because what they’re describing here is real. This post is agnostic on what the result of the election is going to be. And for what it’s worth, I keep in close touch with numerous high level campaign operatives in the swing states and I do not sense panic or pessimism from them. They all know it could go either way but I don’t think they think they’re losing. My topic is this blame feature of Democrats’ mass psychology, which is strongly echoed in the press, and their tendency to panic and almost always think they’re going to lose unless the available evidence to the contrary is simply overwhelming. But it’s not the “bedwetting” that interests me most. It’s the second version of the headline, that blame feature: “Dems fear they’re blowing it.”
Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance (OH) on Thursday pushed back against John Kelly’s remarks describing former President Donald Trump as “an authoritarian” and someone who fits the “general definition of fascist.”
Vance in 2016 wrote in a Facebook group that he feared Trump might be “America’s Hitler.” But this week he defended his running mate, saying Kelly’s accusations are the words of a “disgruntled ex-employee.”
