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Nebraska and West Virginia held their primary elections earlier this week, and the results were a mixed bag for those concerned about the health of U.S. democracy. In encouraging news, two controversial candidates for governor of Nebraska lost the Republican primary. One was Charles Herbster, a Trump-endorsed candidate who has been credibly accused of sexual abuse by multiple people. Herbster attended the “Stop the Steal” rally held outside the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and supported Rudy Giuliani’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. The other is Michael Connely, a fan of several conspiracy theories, including one that claims we’re in the midst of a “Great Reset,” and another that claims the Chinese paid George Floyd rioters. On the other hand, two incumbent congressmen who voted against certifying Joe Biden’s win in the 2020 presidential election and have spread false claims about voter fraud—Nebraska’s Adrian Smith and West Virginia’s Alex Mooney—secured victories in their primary races. Election deniers like Herbster, Smith, and Mooney; conspiracy theorists like Connely; and other candidates with extreme views are running throughout the country this cycle, and as these results show, some have achieved success early in the primary season. Keep track of them here [ [link removed] ]. And please, vote. —Melissa Amour, Managing Editor
Biden to announce $10 billion from American Rescue Plan for policing, public safety — [ [link removed] ]ABC News [ [link removed] ]
House Oversight opens investigation into baby formula shortage — [ [link removed] ]ABC News [ [link removed] ]
10 Republicans vote against giving military equipment to Ukraine — [ [link removed] ]Insider [ [link removed] ]
GOP lawmakers push for new immigration legislation to secure southern border — [ [link removed] ]The National Desk [ [link removed] ]
Democrats' effort to secure Roe v. Wade falls to filibuster — [ [link removed] ]Associated Press [ [link removed] ]
‘Several of our colleagues have information relevant to our investigation‘
The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol yesterday issued subpoenas to five House Republicans—Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Reps. Andy Biggs, Mo Brooks, Jim Jordan, and Scott Perry—all of whom have rejected the panel's requests to voluntarily cooperate. Lawmakers on the panel have been weighing whether to subpoena their colleagues for months, wrestling with whether they had the constitutional right to do so, and debating if they wanted to set such a precedent. But with hearings less than a month away, and the committee facing a ticking clock, they chose to make a move.
An extraordinary step. “Regrettably, the individuals receiving subpoenas today have refused [to testify voluntarily], and we're forced to take this step to help ensure the committee uncovers facts concerning Jan. 6,” Rep. Bennie Thompson, chair of the committee, said. “We urge our colleagues to comply with the law, do their patriotic duty, and cooperate with our investigation as hundreds of other witnesses have done.” Whether they do remains to be seen. —CNN [ [link removed] ]
"I think the committee is illegitimate.” Biggs has refused to say whether he will comply with the subpoena, instead blasting the committee on Fox News. “This has been a witch hunt from Day One; this is an attempt at going after political enemies instead of trying to get at the truth,” he said. “They don't really have the authority to issue subpoenas, in my opinion.” Actually, they do, and if Biggs and the others fail to comply, they could earn a contempt of Congress citation and potentially a referral for criminal prosecution. —Newsweek [ [link removed] ]
In related news… The Arizona Supreme Court has rejected an effort to disqualify three Republican lawmakers from this year's ballot because of their alleged roles in the insurrection. The ruling means Biggs, fellow Divider Rep. Paul Gosar, and State Rep. Mark Finchem, who is running for secretary of state, will remain on the primary ballot. The lawsuits alleged that the trio cannot hold office because they participated in an insurrection, citing a section of the 14th Amendment known as the “disqualification clause” that was enacted after the Civil War. —Yahoo! News [ [link removed] ]
MORE: ‘Provide some cover’: Batch of Eastman emails sheds light on contacts with state legislatures — [ [link removed] ]Politico [ [link removed] ]
Sargent: Will Pennsylvania get a pro-coup governor?
“If [Doug] Mastriano wins the general election, there is almost certainly no chance that a Democratic presidential candidate’s victory in Pennsylvania in 2024 would be certified by the state’s governor. Consider Mastriano’s own words. During Trump’s 2020 effort to steal the election, Mastriano explicitly endorsed the idea that the state legislature has ‘sole authority’ to reappoint new electors, given ‘mounting evidence’ that Joe Biden’s win was ‘compromised.’ It wasn’t actually ‘compromised,’ of course. But Mastriano continued to insist it was. He even pushed the Justice Department to accept this, at the moment when Trump wanted the department to announce fraud to create a pretext to overturn his loss. Mastriano is running for governor on the very idea that Trump’s loss was compromised.” —Greg Sargent in The Washington Post [ [link removed] ]
Greg Sargent is a columnist at The Washington Post and the author of "An Uncivil War: Taking Back Our Democracy in an Age of Trumpian Disinformation and Thunderdome Politics." 
MORE: Bipartisan push to prevent next Jan. 6 running out of time — [ [link removed] ]TIME [ [link removed] ]
Boot: No, this isn’t okay. Pay attention, America 
“Look at what just happened in Ohio’s U.S. Senate primary: J.D. Vance, who had been languishing in third place, won the nomination after Trump endorsed him. A fervent, born-again Trumpkin, Vance told a Vanity Fair reporter that Trump supporters ‘should seize the institutions of the left’ and launch a ‘de-woke-ification program’ modeled on de-Baathification in Iraq. (That worked so well, right?) He says that if Trump wins again in 2024, he should ‘fire…every civil servant’ and ‘replace them with our people.’ If the courts try to stand in the way, ignore them. As Vanity Fair noted, ‘This is a description, essentially, of a coup.’” —Max Boot in The Washington Post [ [link removed] ]
Max Boot is a Washington Post columnist, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, and the author of “The Road Not Taken: Edward Lansdale and the American Tragedy in Vietnam.”
MORE: Trump is still the GOP’s dominant force for primary endorsements — [ [link removed] ]Morning Consult [ [link removed] ]
Focus on voter fraud claims
A Georgia judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed by former U.S. Sen. David Perdue that alleged fraudulent or counterfeit ballots were counted in the state’s most populous county during the 2020 general election. Perdue filed the lawsuit, along with an individual voter, in December, a few days after announcing that he would be challenging Gov. Brian Kemp in the Republican primary. Among other things, the suit sought access to examine absentee ballots, saying that would allow the petitioners to prove that there had been fraud in Fulton County. Investigators with the secretary of state’s office have found no evidence to support Perdue’s fraud claims. —Associated Press [ [link removed] ]
Pennsylvania. Voter fraud is rare, almost always immaterial to the outcome of elections, and easily discovered. And, in a case in Pennsylvania, it was reportedly perpetrated by the GOP. Republican Party officials have fired two of their own operatives who are affiliated with the Republican Registration Coalition. The political action committee is behind an apparent ballot-harvesting operation in South Philadelphia. Looks like when Donald Trump said, “Bad things happen in Philadelphia,” he was talking about his own party. —PennLive [ [link removed] ]
Colorado. A Colorado district judge has ruled that Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters, along with her deputies, will not be allowed to oversee 2022 elections in the county, due to her involvement in a security breach of the county election system. “Clerk Peters' actions compromised Mesa County's voting equipment and election security, constituting one of the nation's first insider threats, where an election official risked the integrity of the election system in an effort to prove unfounded conspiracy theories," said Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold. Peters, a Trump-backed Republican, is now herself running for secretary of state. —CNN [ [link removed] ]
Texas. Crystal Mason was convicted of illegal voting in Texas for submitting a provisional ballot in the 2016 election while on probation. Even though the ballot was never counted, she could wind up in prison for five years for the offense. Mason insists she didn’t know that casting the vote was against the law, and now she’s getting another hearing on the matter. On Wednesday, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruled that her conviction deserves a re-evaluation, and the state must prove that Mason knew she was voting illegally. Stay tuned. —Dallas Observer [ [link removed]-- ]
MORE: Dinesh D'Souza's '2000 Mules' offers the least-convincing election-fraud theory yet — [ [link removed] ]The Washington Post [ [link removed] ]
Gould-Davies: Russia must pay a steep price
“The West needs a strategy that guarantees Russia will end up regretting its actions. A peace that for the second time since 2014 rewards a Russian invasion with Ukrainian territory would have severe consequences for Ukraine’s future, Western security and credibility, and the norms of sovereignty and nonintervention that underpin the international order.” —Nigel Gould-Davies in The New York Times [ [link removed] ]
Nigel Gould-Davies is the senior fellow for Russia and Eurasia at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
MORE: Finnish leaders say country should join NATO, moving closer to membership — [ [link removed] ]The Wall Street Journal [ [link removed] ]
Eyoel & Han: It's time for a global pro-democracy movement 
“From journalists to think tanks to Ukrainian freedom fighters, there is an outcry for resources and innovation to defend liberal democracy. In the same way philanthropic institutions, governments, and multilateral institutions galvanized in response to COVID-19, this is the moment to rise in global solidarity for democracy.” —Yordanos Eyoel & Hahrie Han in The Fulcrum [ [link removed] ]
Yordanos Eyoel is the founder of Keseb and a visiting fellow at the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University. Hahrie Han is the inaugural director of the Agora Institute and a professor of political science at Johns Hopkins.
MORE: Democracy might be in crisis. But Autocracy certainly is — [ [link removed] ]Financial Times [ [link removed] ]
Having successfully managed a unified alliance response to Russian aggression in Ukraine, the Biden Administration needs to exert greater discipline in its messaging on intelligence and all other forms of support to Ukraine. Adversaries learn from intelligence disclosures, not only to enact countermeasures and deception, but to respond in the public forum denouncing allied support and, whenever possible, strike operations against logistical supply lines. Such countermeasures challenge allied cohesion. 
It would be far more useful to reinforce public support internationally to continue citing whenever possible the specific artifacts of international law relevant to Russian aggression, namely the U.N. Charter, the Helsinki Accords, the Budapest Memorandum, and even the Status of Forces Agreement between Ukraine and Russia, governing Russian naval forces on the Crimean Peninsula—an agreement that recognizes Ukrainian sovereignty over Crimea. Russian outrage over tangible Western support for Ukraine must not be allowed to challenge, obfuscate, or drown out the legal and moral justification for allowing Ukraine to defend itself. —Steve J., Pennsylvania
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.

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