Putting the AZ in crazy

Republicans in the Arizona State Senate are expected to unveil the results of the audit of Maricopa County's 2020 election tomorrow. Conducted by Republican loyalists and conspiracy theorists, some of whom previously called the election "rigged," the review has long since lost any pretense of being objective. The inquiry has been dogged by slipshod and sometimes bizarre conduct by audit manager Cyber Ninjas, and the funding of the effort is shady at best. It's also led to the resignation earlier this week of a member of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, after a recording emerged of him criticizing his GOP colleagues for opposing the audit. The results bear watching, however, because other states are following in Arizona's footsteps. —The New York Times

• — Wisconsin. Wisconsin Republicans are backing not one but three separate election investigations. The most high-profile probe, spurred by State Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, is being led by conservative former state Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman, who visited Arizona's election audit as well as a recent conference presented by conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell of MyPillow. Gableman sent an email to local election officials earlier this month, requesting they retain 2020 election records. This week, he said that if necessary he will subpoena officials who refuse to release the information.
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• — Pennsylvania. In Pennsylvania, an investigation led by State Senate Republicans has drawn a legal challenge from Democrats. Last week, the GOP-led Intergovernmental Operations Committee issued a wide-ranging subpoena for the personal information of millions of voters, including addresses, partial Social Security numbers, and driver's license numbers. They say it is to verify who those voters are, even though multiple court rulings, previous state-mandated audits, and election officials of both parties have all concluded that Pennsylvania's 2020 election results were accurate. —NPR
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• — Florida. Not an audit, but a lawsuit in the Sunshine State. The city of Sarasota is seeking a court judgment on whether it can use ranked-choice voting in its elections. Sarasota voters approved RCV way back in 2007, but at the time, the county didn't have the proper voting system to handle it. The county switched to a new voting system in 2015, but Elections Supervisor Ron Turner says there is no software package certified in the state that can tabulate a ranked-choice election. And so far, the state has been unwilling to certify one. Stay tuned. —Herald-Tribune

'It's time to kill the Biden presidency in the crib'

In a development that will surprise exactly no one, former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon has admitted that he had a hand in planning the rally that preceded the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. On his "War Room" podcast, Bannon played a clip from an MSNBC broadcast in which Washington Post journalists Robert Costa and Bob Woodward, co-authors of the book "Peril," discussed Bannon meeting up with Rudy Giuliani and other Trump allies at Washington's Willard Hotel on the evening of Jan. 5. Bannon confirmed that story and added that he met with Donald Trump as well to discuss how to "kill the Biden presidency" because of the supposed illegitimacy of President Biden's victory. "Never back down, never give up, and [the Biden presidency] will implode," he advised his listeners. —Newsweek

MORE: Jan. 6 investigation accelerates as it turns toward Trump —Politico

Serwer: A coup by any other name would smell as rotten

"American traditions of unfreedom always represent themselves as democracy's protectors, rather than its undertakers, and this one is no different. If Biden were allowed to take office, Eastman insisted in a longer version of his memo, 'we will have ceased to be a self-governing people.' The catastrophe is not only that Trump tried to overthrow an election. It is that so many Americans were cheering him on." —Adam Serwer in The Atlantic

Adam Serwer is a staff writer at The Atlantic, where he covers politics.

MORE: John Eastman's bad advice for Mike Pence —National Review

Pence cozies up to Orban

Former Vice President Mike Pence is dipping his toe in the 2024 waters, and to burnish his social conservative credentials, he spoke at the Budapest Demographic Summit in Hungary this week. Hungary under Prime Minister Viktor Orban is something of a political model for the far-right, and the biennial summit has become a popular platform for conservative leaders. Problem is, Orban is no principled conservative. His consolidation of Hungary's media, erosion of institutions, and discrimination against minorities is more autocrat than small-d democrat. In his speech, Pence praised how abortion rates have fallen under Orban's leadership, and decried "the erosion of the nuclear family, marked by declining marriage rates, rising divorce, widespread abortion, and plummeting birth rates," which he said "strike at the very heart of civilization itself." —ABC News

MORE: White Christian nationalism found fertile soil in post-9/11 America —The Washington Post

WaPo Ed Board: The border crisis has been a long time coming

"Many of the failings in the U.S. immigration system are reflected in the mess in Del Rio: the absence of any workable channel by which migrants could apply for asylum south of the border; the massive backlog and shortage of judges in migration courts, which means asylum applicants, once admitted, may wait two or three years for their cases to be heard; and the misalignment of high domestic demand for cheap immigrant labor with an inadequate legal supply of it. Successive administrations tried to address some of those problems. Partisanship in Congress doomed those efforts. No major immigration reform has been enacted since the Reagan Administration. Is it any wonder we've arrived at this juncture?" —The Washington Post

MORE: U.S. special envoy to Haiti resigns over migrant expulsions —Associated Press

Focus on Congress

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi say they've reached a deal with the Biden Administration on options for paying for the Democrats' massive plan to expand the social safety net. However, the deal lacks many specifics, and a number of high-profile Democrats were unaware of it until this morning. Meanwhile, the clock is ticking as party leaders hustle to negotiate a broad consensus in their fractured caucus.

• — "This is not about a price tag." At a news conference this morning with Treasury Sec. Janet Yellen, Pelosi and Schumer said they cut a deal on a "framework" to help pay for their plan. But there's still no agreement on a price tag for the proposal, which progressives and the White House want set at $3.5 trillion but will almost certainly be pared back at the insistence of moderates.
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• — "This is about what's in the bill." But what's in the bill still hasn't been settled either, as Democratic leaders and the White House furiously work to get key progressives and moderates behind an outline of an agreement by Monday. Progressives have threatened to sink the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure plan if the vote moves ahead without the larger spending package.

1. — "We take it one day at a time." Monday is the self-imposed deadline for the House to vote on the infrastructure deal, which passed the Senate last month. What Democratic leaders hope is that enough of an agreement will be reached within the caucus by then to convince progressives to send the infrastructure package to President Biden's desk. They have their work cut out for them. —CNN

BG Ed Board: PODA allows accountability in real time

"Ultimately, the Protecting Our Democracy Act can be perceived by presidents in two ways: One is a limit on presidential power; the other is a limit on a president's ability to abuse that power. And the public ought to be wary of any president who views it as the former. Given its focus on oversight and transparency, the bill's chief concern is preventing abuse. 'At the end of the day, I think the goal was to reestablish the guardrails we thought we had but have been broken down over the last four years,' [Rep. Adam] Schiff said." —The Boston Globe

MORE: Democrats quietly limit House GOP effort to press for probes into Biden Administration —CNN

I suspect Democrats hope Mitch McConnell's GOP filibusters the debt ceiling bill, giving Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema cover to modify Senate rules by instituting a talking filibuster. That would put the burden on the minority—something Manchin has already said he could support. —Roy L., via Twitter

Abetting treason is treason. Once again, Putin and Trump are on the same page in defending the Jan. 6 insurrectionists. As for the rest of the cowards who still quiver at Trump's feet, just because you are useful idiots, it is no excuse. Overthrowing the government of the United States was the goal of the traitors and their cheerleaders on Jan. 6. Many GOP useful idiots were not averse to accepting their own House and Senate victories in the 2020 election, but still voted against certifying the Electoral College result. Too bad there is no national medal that can be awarded for cowardice. All those chants of "USA! USA!" and flags being used to assault policer officers only proves the point about the culpability of useful idiots. —Bill M., Pennsylvania

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