Voting equipment seized

Primary season officially began in earnest this week, and the Republican battles are being sold as a test of Donald Trump’s grip on the party. But the real test won’t be which Trumpy candidates win; it’s whether rational right-leaning candidates can defeat them. Our political parties are moving to the extremes in part because their candidates are chosen by a small, heavily partisan primary electorate. In many states and “safe” districts across America, primary voters will essentially choose their representatives rather than the general electorate. So we can expect some, if not most, Trumpy candidates to succeed this spring and summer. However, in some places, independent, pro-democracy candidates are giving moderate and center-right voters another option come November—Evan McMullin in Utah (U.S. Senate), Clint Smith in Arizona (U.S. House), and Chris Vance in Washington (State Senate), for example. From federal to state to local offices, democracy is on the ballot again in 2022, and the primary is the best chance to defend it. But while the pro-democracy movement will have wins and losses this primary season, keep an eye out for these independent candidates in the general. And most importantly, vote. Every chance you get. —Miles Taylor, Executive Director, Renew America Movement

• Senate to vote next week on codifying Roe v. Wade into law, but obstacles remain —U.S. News & World Report

• High fence erected outside Supreme Court as abortion-related protests continue —ABC News

• U.S. intel helped Ukraine sink Russian flagship Moskva, officials say —NBC News

• Russia ambassador to U.S. says NATO not taking nuclear war threat seriously —Newsweek

• Judge: Marjorie Taylor Greene is qualified for re-election —Associated Press

Compromised?

That’s what Michigan State Police are trying to determine. They raided Irving Township Hall in Barry County, an hour west of Lansing, on April 29, and seized its ballot-processing tabulator as part of an ongoing investigation into unauthorized access of election equipment. The seizure adds to the tally of potential voting equipment breaches in the U.S. Last week, Reutersreported on eight known attempts to gain unauthorized access to voting systems in five U.S. states, all involving local Republican officeholders or party activists promoting false claims of widespread voter fraud and conspiracy theories about rigged voting machines in the 2020 presidential election. The Michigan investigation was launched in February at the request of Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson. Stay tuned. —U.S. News & World Report

• “I’m frankly amazed.” On Wednesday, a second judge in Wisconsin ordered Republicans to prevent the destruction of public records as they review the 2020 election at taxpayer expense. Dane County Circuit Judge Valerie Bailey-Rihn said she was compelled to issue the order but was astonished she had to do it because the review is being overseen by a former state Supreme Court justice, Michael Gableman. Gableman is an election denier who has consorted with election conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell. —Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

• “The real problem that you have gets down to basic honesty.” The Big Lie that President Biden stole the 2020 election is having an impact on primary elections—and perhaps nowhere more than Georgia. Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s incumbent secretary of state, is in a tough re-election battle after refusing Donald Trump’s request to “find 11,780 votes” to overturn the election results. Trump is backing his opponent Jody Hice, who has embraced the myth of a stolen election. It’s the first major test of whether a Republican who defends democracy—and stands up to Trump—can withstand the wrath of his own party. Georgia’s primary is on May 24. —The Guardian

• “There’s not enough pushback, because everyone is afraid of a primary.” Another state where election denialism is taking center stage in the primary is Arizona. Two forces have kept it a core issue: the GOP-sponsored review of the vote in Maricopa County, and Trump’s continued attacks on Republican Gov. Doug Ducey for rebuffing his efforts to block election certification. According to States United Action and Pro-Democracy Republicans, more than three dozen Republicans running for office in Arizona have made denying the 2020 results a centerpiece of their campaigns. Ugh. —The New York Times

MORE: Republicans in Michigan have replaced election officials who certified Biden's win —NPR

Norman: Trump's influence over the GOP holds

“During his victory speech, J.D. Vance wrapped his arms around the entirety of Donald Trump’s ‘America First’ agenda without a scintilla of embarrassment. His transformation into America’s least authentic politician was complete. He needed Mr. Trump’s endorsement, raced to the bottom against determined primary foes to get it, and now has an excellent chance of being elected to a six-year term in the U.S. Senate in November.” —Tony Norman in Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Tony Norman is a columnist at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

MORE: What went down during Ohio’s and Indiana’s primary elections —FiveThirtyEight

Zuboff: Turning the tide on disinformation

“This structural blindness to information integrity has produced an eternal Christmas morning for every autocratic power, oligarch, political bad actor, troll farm, state-sponsored or grassroots disinformation campaign now able to inject whatever they please into the global information bloodstream without sanction. Thus empowered, they refuse to let journalists stand in their way, as machine systems drive revenue by vaulting corrupt information into the very center of social discourse, extinguishing all vestiges of an autonomous public square. No democracy can survive these conditions.” —Shoshana Zuboff in TIME

Shoshana Zuboff is the Charles Edward Wilson Professor Emeritus at Harvard Business School and a faculty associate at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Carr Center for Human Rights. She is the author of three books, the most recent being “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism.”

MORE: Russian disinformation on the war in Ukraine crosses all red lines —The Brussels Times

Focus on the Jan 6 investigation

An Iowa man pleaded guilty yesterday to assaulting D.C. Metropolitan Police Ofc. Michael Fanone during the Jan. 6 attack at the U.S. Capitol. Kyle Young pleaded guilty to assaulting, resisting, or impeding officers and faces a statutory sentence of eight years and financial penalties. Young was among a group that approached a police line and dragged Fanone into the crowd. Fanone was then assaulted, tazed in the back of the neck, and had to plead for his life after a rioter said he should be killed. —The Hill

• “I just want to fight.” On Wednesday, William Todd Wilson of North Carolina became the third member of the extremist group the Oath Keepers to plead guilty to seditious conspiracy and obstruction of an official proceeding, and to agree to cooperate fully with the government. On Jan. 5, 2021, Wilson drove to a hotel in Tysons Corner, Va., with an AR-15-style rifle, a 9mm pistol, 200 rounds of ammo, body armor, pepper spray, and a large walking stick “intended for use as a weapon,” according to court records. The next day, he traveled from Tysons Corner to the Capitol with Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes, entered the building, and helped force open the Rotunda doors, enabling a column of fellow Oath Keepers to join the melee. —The Washington Post

• “That's just suspicious.” Rep. Bennie Thompson, chair of the House select committee investigating the attack at the Capitol, expressed his qualms this week about Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner's willingness to testify before the panel. "I think it's ironic that [Donald Trump] would tell some people not to come, and they follow his direction and get held in contempt of Congress," Thompson said. "Now we have four individuals [former Trump advisers Steve Bannon, Mark Meadows, Dan Scavino, and Peter Navarro] who are being held in contempt of Congress because they were directed by the president not to come. So they are under the bus, but his children are not. They came.” —Newsweek

• Odds and ends. In an interview last month between the committee and former Acting U.S. Attorney Michael Sherwin—who had been tasked with leading the early stages of the Justice Department’s criminal investigation into the attack—DOJ attorneys were highly sensitive to questions posed by the panel. At one point, interactions got so heated that Sherwin stepped out of the room so the discussion could continue in private. Meanwhile, Rudy Giuliani has canceled his interview with the committee after the panel rejected his demand that he be able to record it. —ABC News

MORE: Ray Epps Jan. 6 conspiracy theory undercut by new evidence —The New York Times

Goldstone: Can democracy rebound?

“Some Republican primary candidates in national, state, and local elections are campaigning on their embrace of lies, their willingness to overturn future elections, and their eagerness to disenfranchise legitimate voters. And invariably they do so with flag pins in their lapels, spouting their commitment to freedom and the Constitution, neither for which they appear to have any real appreciation. While Democrats are hardly blameless in what has often become political trench warfare, grousing over Hillary Clinton’s electoral vote loss (she beat Trump by 2.5 million popular votes) is hardly the same as pretending an 8 million vote loss did not occur.” —Lawrence Goldstone in The Fulcrum

Lawrence Goldstone is an author whose most recent book is "On Account of Race: The Supreme Court, White Supremacy, and the Ravaging of African-American Voting Rights."

MORE: Help us as we investigate threats to democracy —The Texas Tribune

Schmidt: Giving peace a chance for a change

“When politicians and elected officials spend their time engaging in culture war issues, they stop spending their time on the pragmatic tasks of governing. … So how can political culture war pacifists give peace a chance? We can refuse to engage in culture war combat, we can work to build back our local communities, start to trust our institutions again, encourage that trust to grow, and reward politicians who refuse to engage in culture war battles with our votes.” —Lynn Schmidt on St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Lynn Schmidt is a Renew America Movement Fellow and a member of the editorial board at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

MORE: Democrats punch back against GOP’s ‘culture war’ attacks —Axios

Sen. Marco Rubio said: “The next time you hear the far-left preaching about how they are fighting to preserve our Republic’s institutions and norms, remember how they leaked a Supreme Court opinion in an attempt to intimidate the justices on abortion.” This is so rich, so hypocritical, coming from people who downplay violence and an attempted coup to intimidate the Congress and Vice President of the United States on January 6, 2021. —Paul B., Pennsylvania

Setting aside (for brevity) the staggering dishonesty of Republicans—including Supreme Court justices—on Roe, it's instructive to look closely at the various reactions to the leak as you have reported them: Democrats angry and worried about constitutional issues, promises and precedents broken, and the potential damage to public trust in our most important institutions, specifically the Court itself; while Republicans, as they have done so many times in the past, trying to muddy the waters (confuse the public) by blaming "radical" Democrats, while projecting their own failures to "preserve our Republic’s institutions and norms" on their political opponents. Their hypocrisy is appalling, their gaslighting, colossal.

The truth, likely very uncomfortable for many to hear, is that in this 21st century, an excellent case can be made that it is the Democrats who most consistently model classic conservative values (as opposed to the divisive, not-so conservative "culture war" agenda of recent decades), and it is Republicans who are hell bent on a radical reorganization of the country we all share. As events continue to unfold, we'll see whether Republicans have finally gone too far; my fear is that they have enough of a framework in place to defy the will of the electorate and will end our noble experiment in representative democracy. I will be watching very closely, as I'm sure many of you will be as well. —Scott K., California

The views expressed in "What's Your Take?" are submitted by readers and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff, the Renew America Movement, or the Renew America Foundation.