Wednesday, November 13

I wrote and rewrote this edition of Eye On The Right many times in the past week. Like so many of you at this moment, words have escaped me in trying to say something significant about the election. But one thing is clear for me and my Democracy Docket colleagues: there’s never been a more important moment for a newsroom covering voting rights and democracy.

And so that’s what we’ll do. As for me? This edition of the newsletter should give you a good idea of where my head is at and what I’ll be devoting my time and energy to in the coming years: the anti-democratic agenda of Project 2025, voter suppression efforts and how right-wing extremists in power are attempting to thwart democracy. Same as it ever was.

As always, thanks for reading.

— Matt Cohen, Senior Staff Writer

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Project 2025 Is The Agenda

In the early morning hours of Nov. 6, after it became clear that Donald Trump was projected to win the election, right-wing commentator Matt Walsh posted on X: “Now that the election is over I think we can finally say that yeah actually Project 2025 is the agenda. Lol.”

For months on the campaign trail, Trump bent over backwards to distance himself from Project 2025 — the Heritage Foundation’s massive, sprawling blueprint to usher in an authoritarian government. “I know nothing about Project 2025,” he wrote on TruthSocial. “I have no idea who is behind it.” We all know that was a lie and now, in the coming months, we’ll see just how much of Project 2025 Trump plans to implement. 

In July, I spoke to a handful of policy experts, civil rights advocates and extremism researchers about what Project 2025 means for voting rights and democracy. The consensus across the board was uniform: Really bad! From the proposal to completely overhaul the U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Elections Commission, to excising the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency (CISA) — which is essentially the agency fighting disinformation in elections — Project 2025 stands to be a real threat to democracy. 

But there’s one aspect of it that has me very concerned: the plan to replace the federal workforce with Trump sycophants and civil service employees loyal to the administration. Can Trump actually do this? It’s not exactly clear but experts are nonetheless worried. Expect more from me in the coming weeks on what aspects of Project 2025 might come to fruition and what that could mean for the country. 

Election Deniers Won Big Down Ballot

Votes are still being tallied in some states, but a clear picture has emerged in the wake of the 2024 election: Republicans won big in the presidential and federal elections. But what about down the ballot? Back in September, I published an investigation looking at the sheer number of election deniers running in down ballot races in battleground states. My investigation identified more than 200 election deniers on ballots — and acknowledged that much more were probably running. 

So how did they fare? Unfortunately, pretty well. Though I’ve just begun to survey all the races I identified, the results were not great: election deniers, for the most part, won last week. Including in the 42 races where Contest Every Race — a project by the progressive, anti-fascist incubator and consulting firm Movement Labs — recruited and endorsed candidates. In all but one race, which is too close to call, their endorsed candidates lost or are projected to lose. 

But these candidates knew they were facing an uphill battle. For many of them, the point wasn’t necessarily to win — though that would’ve been nice — but to show voters in deep red districts they deserve to have a choice on the ballot. 

Here’s what Cameron Schroy, who lost his race to unseat Pennsylvania state, and notorious election denier, Rep. Doug Mastriano, told me: “Locally, at least, we see a lot of apathy, which is quite unfortunate. It seems like a lot of people don’t want to be part of the process. And so what comes along with that? What I’ve seen is the loudest voices in the room are the ones that get heard more often because they tend to be more engaged. So part of what I am doing is trying to encourage people, even if, when people with progressive views are the minority in our district and our county, we still at least deserve to be heard.”

Russia’s Alleged Bomb Hoaxes Are Voter Suppression

Unlike in 2020, the results from Election Day were swift and decisive: Trump won. There’s no allegations of mass voter fraud, no contested results. (Though conspiracy theories are starting to spread, it should be noted.) 

But a disturbing series of events happened on Election Day that we aren’t talking about enough: The apparent Russian effort to disenfranchise voters in key swing states through fake bomb threats. 

We don’t really know where exactly these bomb threat hoaxes came from, though the FBI says that they came from email addresses with Russian domains. What we do know is that a series of fake bomb threats were called into polling places in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — five of the key battleground states in the election. Polling places were evacuated — until authorities were able to determine that the bomb threats were a hoax — shutting down voting for a period of time.

Some polling places had their hours extended, thanks to court orders. But not all. How many voters had to leave and couldn’t make it back? We may never know, but the sobering truth is that a foreign adversary might have intervened to disenfranchise voters. It probably didn’t affect voting in any material way — Trump’s victory was by a pretty decisive margin — but the fact that it happened should shake anyone who believes in democracy and the right to vote to their very core.