A new message from your friends at People For the American Way.
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Friend,

Welcome to our weekly “Trumptastrophe” email series that serves to remind
us of the destructive policies, decisions, and actions we encountered
during the Trump presidency and the threats that he and others in the MAGA
movement still pose – and to keep those moments clear in our memory as we
fight to defeat Republican extremists during the upcoming elections.

This week’s Trumptastrophe sheds light on the various methods employed by
MAGA Republicans to allegedly bolster "election integrity," but were
really just trying to disguise their attempts to make it harder for
millions of Americans to vote – all in a desperate attempt to make it
easier for Republicans to win elections with an agenda not supported by
the voters.

On May 11, 2017, former President Donald Trump [ [link removed] ]signed an executive
order creating a commission charged with investigating alleged voter fraud
in the 2016 election. The commission was a sham from the beginning — a
platform for right-wing activists who have long made unproven claims about
voter fraud to justify voting restrictions and voter suppression.

The commission was also about Trump’s ego. After winning an Electoral
College victory but losing the popular vote by millions, Trump [ [link removed] ]claimed
without any evidence, “I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions
of people who voted illegally.” He also falsely claimed that he only lost
New Hampshire because out-of-state voters were illegally bused in to vote
against him.

Shortly after the launch, People For the American Way published
“[ [link removed] ]Trump’s ‘Election Integrity’ Commission: The Lies and the Cold, Hard
Facts.” An excerpt:

Vice President Pence chairs the Commission with Kansas Secretary of
State Kris Kobach, a notorious advocate of voter suppression laws.
Members include other arch voting rights foes: Hans von Spakovsky and
Ken Blackwell. …

Studies have [ [link removed] ]repeatedly found that there is [ [link removed] ]virtually
no individual voter fraud in the U.S. But false claims about fraud have
been used as justification [ [link removed] ]for a wave of voter suppression
laws passed by Republicans since Barack Obama was elected president,
building on [ [link removed] ]a concerted push during the George W. Bush
administration.

The commission spiraled from one embarrassment to another. In [ [link removed] ]a single
week in September 2017:

* Commission co-chair Kris Kobach published a column in Breitbart
claiming to have proof that Democrats had stolen the New Hampshire
Senate race. As Right Wing Watch noted, “Kobach’s claims were quickly
and easily debunked, and New Hampshire’s secretary of state himself
[ [link removed] ]told Kobach so” at a commission meeting.
* An email released by the Campaign Legal Center documented a Heritage
Foundation employee [ [link removed] ]arguing that the “election integrity”
commission should include no Democrats or “mainstream Republicans,”
apparently concerned that people not on board the voter-fraud
propaganda campaign would “guarantee” the commission’s “failure.” The
author was revealed to be Hans von Spakovsky.
* Unhappy about a reporter’s questioning of von Spakovsky, commissioner
J. Christian Adams falsely suggested that the journalist may have been
lying about teaching at Columbia University.
* The commission [ [link removed] ]invited a [ [link removed] ]questionable gun researcher to a
commission meeting “to propose that the federal government [ [link removed] ]perform
background checks on people trying to vote.”

By January 2018, the commission had proven itself to be a partisan farce
and Trump [ [link removed] ]disbanded it.

Of course, the campaign to make it harder for some people to vote never
went away. After right-wing Supreme Court justices gutted key sections of
the Voting Rights Act in 2013, Republican legislators across the country
passed new voting restrictions. The 2017 People For [ [link removed] ]report on Trump’s
bogus commission cited legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin calling voter
suppression “the real voting scandal of 2016,” noting that a new
restrictive voter ID law in Wisconsin contributed to the lowest turnout in
the state in two decades.

After Trump’s defeat in 2020, the MAGA movement and its Republican allies
went into overdrive, promoting lies and conspiracy theories about Trump’s
loss to justify a slew of new restrictions on voting meant to boost the
prospects for future right-wing candidates. Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer who
participated in the notorious phone call on which Trump tried to bully
Georgia’s Secretary of State into “finding” enough votes to overturn
Trump’s defeat, became [ [link removed] ]a key figure in a coordinated voter suppression
effort flying the same deceptive “election integrity” flag as Trump’s
commission.

Along with passing new voting restrictions at the state level, MAGA
Republicans have fought hard to prevent passage of stronger federal voting
rights protections, which von Spakovsky [ [link removed] ]called an “invasion of state
sovereignty.” In 2022, Republican senators reenacted shameful historical
[ [link removed] ]filibusters of civil rights legislation to defeat these measures.

After voters overcame new obstacles, turned out in 2022, and prevented the
“red wave” that MAGA activists were hoping for, Blackwell and his Family
Research Council colleague Tony Perkins [ [link removed] ]called for still more
restrictions on early voting and mail-in ballots. In 2023, the New York
Times [ [link removed] ]reported that “Republican-led legislatures have continued to
pass significant restrictions on access to the ballot.” Cleta Mitchell was
recorded telling right-wing activists, “I think you have got to figure out
what we have to do, where to fix the system that gives a Republican
candidate a potential chance to win.”

Trump’s ill-fated “election integrity” commission and MAGA Republicans’
ongoing attacks on voting rights remind us that lies about voter fraud
have a sinister purpose and harmful effect. They undermine Americans’
faith in our elections. And they fuel MAGA Republican campaigns to pass
restrictive voting laws, which actually do undermine the integrity of our
elections by making it harder or impossible for some people to cast a vote
and have it counted.

MAGA legislators who passed anti-voting laws after Trump’s defeat have
likely boosted his odds of winning this year. People For the American Way
will be working with other voting rights advocates to defend democracy and
empower voters to overcome new barriers to voting.

These are just some of the reasons we need YOU in this
fight. So, find your
favorite way to unwind after reading through this week’s recap, and then
make a plan for how you will fight back this week, this month, this
election cycle.

For members who are interested in sharing the weekly Trumptastrophe
series, [ [link removed] ]you can find all previous editions on our website! This post
will be published by Thursday so you can share with your friends and
family and remind them of the importance of ensuring that Trump is
defeated again this November.

[ [link removed] ]If you’d like to opt-out of this series but still continue receiving
our other email content, you can do so here >>

Thanks for all that you do to defeat Republican extremism.

– People For the American Way

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