News Roundup: The Battles for the Last Election and the Next One
* Suing to Get Answers about January 6
* Trump’s War on Diversity Trainings

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The Big Story

After former President Donald Trump lost the November election, he and his allies launched an effort to illegally overturn the outcome.

New details of that effort emerged this week, including two files obtained by American Oversight through public records requests. The first was an audio recording of Trump's Dec. 23 phone call with the lead investigator heading up Georgia's review of the November election. The file was released to American Oversight on March 10 and is available here along with a transcript ([link removed]) . The Wall Street Journal separately obtained and reported on a copy of the recording ([link removed]) the same day.

In the call, Trump falsely insists that he won the election in Georgia "by hundreds of thousands of votes, it wasn’t close" and then presses the investigator, saying "whatever you can do Frances, it would be uh– it’s a great thing, it’s an important thing for the county, so important."

Trump also specifically indicates that it was his then-chief of staff, Mark Meadows, who had asked him to call, saying: "Mark asked me to do it, he thinks you’re great and you know, just you have the most important job in the country right now."

That's important, because the second new piece of information we obtained this week was an email sent by one of Meadows' aides ([link removed]) to the deputy secretary of state in Georgia, Jordan Fuchs, following-up on a meeting that Meadows had had with Fuchs the previous week. The email was sent on Dec. 30, just a week after Trump's phone call to the election inspector and only three days before Trump's infamous Jan. 2 call to Georgia's secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, pressuring him to "find 11,780 votes ([link removed]) ."

But the effort to keep Trump in power went beyond the White House and beyond Georgia. Pro-Trump lawmakers in multiple states filed dozens of court challenges ([link removed]) attempting, without a valid legal basis, to reverse the election results. More than a dozen Republican state attorneys general supported a lawsuit brought by Texas ([link removed]) that ultimately asked the Supreme Court to throw out the results in four battleground states that Trump had lost. Trump supporters in seven states even submitted to Congress fake electoral certificates ([link removed]) , which we obtained and posted, seeking to replace the real presidential electors that had been chosen by voters.

All of those attempts failed to keep Trump in power, but the forces behind them are still active and have shifted their focus to the future. As the Washington Post highlighted on Thursday, and as numerous reporters have documented in recent weeks, right-wing lawmakers across the country are pushing new restrictions on voting — many citing Trump’s false claims of election fraud as a justification.

From the Washington Post report ([link removed]) :

“In 33 states across the country, Republican lawmakers have proposed at least 250 laws that would limit mail, early in-person and Election Day voting with such constraints as stricter ID requirements, limited hours or narrower eligibility to vote absentee, according to data compiled as of Feb. 19 by the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice….

“…The measures are likely to disproportionately affect those in cities and Black voters in particular, who overwhelmingly vote Democratic — laying bare, critics say, the GOP’s true intent: gaining electoral advantage.”

American Oversight has been actively investigating attacks on voting rights in the states for more than two years, and we're expanding that work now. We're closely tracking the situation, and we will be continuing to send public records requests to uncover the facts about efforts to erect new barriers to voting. You can stay up to date with our investigations into voting rights here ([link removed]) , and you can follow all of our latest actions here ([link removed]) .

Suing to Get Answers about January 6
The effort to overturn the 2020 election reached its most visible peak on Jan. 6 with the mob attack on the U.S. Capitol building which left five people dead, sent lawmakers and the vice president into hiding, and disrupted the peaceful transfer of power. We still don't have the full story of what went wrong that day, and this week we went to court to compel the government to respond to our records requests.

Among other documents, the three lawsuits we filed are seeking the release of:
* Communications or directives sent to or from senior law enforcement and military officials on Jan. 6 or during the preceding week.
* Communications on Jan. 6 between key leaders in the Pentagon or the Army and Trump, Meadows, or former Vice President Mike Pence.
* Top military and law enforcement officials' call logs from Jan. 6.

Read more about those ([link removed]) lawsuits ([link removed]) and track our progress here ([link removed]) .

On the Records
Trump’s War on Diversity Trainings
In September, the Trump administration banned federal agencies from conducting racial sensitivity trainings, claiming they were “anti-American propaganda.” Records we obtained ([link removed]) from the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative show that the directive — which was later that month expanded to include federal contractors — caused confusion among USTR employees about how to implement the order. In one email thread ([link removed]) , officials discuss whether existing courses focus on allegedly “divisive” concepts like white privilege.

Headlines You Might Have Missed

Trump’s former fixer Michael Cohen to meet again with Manhattan DA in Trump probe (Reuters ([link removed]) )

Supreme Court rejects another Georgia election lawsuit (Atlanta Journal Constitution ([link removed]) )

Even Trump’s defense secretary during the Capitol riot blames him for inciting it (Vice ([link removed]) )

'I was speechless': Law firm investigated its own ex-client for Trump VOA chief (NPR ([link removed]) )

RNC moves portion of its spring donor retreat to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club (Washington Post ([link removed]) )

Democratic lawmaker releases social media report on GOP members who voted to overturn election (The Hill ([link removed]) )

Officers maced, trampled: Docs expose depth of Jan. 6 chaos (Associated Press ([link removed]) )

Arkansas governor signs near-total abortion ban into law (Associated Press ([link removed]) )

South Dakota lawmakers vote to halt impeachment against attorney general (Reuters ([link removed]) )

After 2020 fraud claims, Donald Trump requests mail ballot (Palm Beach Post ([link removed]) )

Gov. Kim Reynolds signs law shortening Iowa’s early and Election Day voting (Des Moines Register ([link removed]) )

Georgia Senate Republicans pass bill to end no-excuse absentee voting (NPR ([link removed]) )

Bill to remove people from early voting list gets new life, passes Arizona Senate (Arizona Republic ([link removed]) )

Coronavirus Pandemic
* We expect 300,000 fewer births than usual this year (New York Times ([link removed]) )
* DeSantis, Cabinet take 41 seconds to decide to waive fines from COVID citations (Miami Herald ([link removed]) )
* Hospital system contradicts DeSantis on Covid vaccine delivery to luxury Keys enclave (South Florida Sun Sentinel ([link removed]) )
* Variant’s spread in Florida shows threat to U.S. Covid recovery (Bloomberg ([link removed]) )
* WHO: Coronavirus variants are driving another surge across Europe (Axios ([link removed]) )
* Yellen says Covid-19 having ‘extremely unfair’ impact on women’s income, jobs (Reuters ([link removed]) )
* ‘An essential service’: Inside Biden’s struggle to meet his school reopening promises (Washington Post ([link removed]) )
* Beyond big cities, independent pharmacies ‘begging’ for vaccine (Bloomberg ([link removed]) )

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