π΅οΈββοΈπ°π³οΈπ ProPublica Goes Inside Trumpβs Effort to βTake Overβ the Midterm Elections | Amanpour and Company
π€ AI Summary
- π³οΈ President Trump continues to claim he won the 2020 election and has introduced executive orders designed to change election rules since his second inauguration.
- π New proposals include creating federal lists of citizens eligible to vote and instructing the Postal Service to send mail ballots only to those featured on those lists.
- π‘οΈ The administration has dismantled the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) teams that were created after 2017 to protect election systems from hacking.
- π More than 30 experts focused on election security have been reassigned to unrelated projects, leaving a void in national oversight of election cyber threats.
- π The Department of Justice has been directed to reinvestigate past results, recently requesting ballots from the 2024 election in Michigan.
- ποΈ White House special counsel Kurt Olsen has been identified as a key figure influencing law enforcement to pursue search warrants for election records in Georgia.
- π A top official in a US attorney office was reportedly pressured to retire or resign after refusing to draft a memo supporting a ballot search warrant.
- π« Courts have blocked attempts to mandate proof of citizenship on federal forms, ruling that the president cannot unilaterally control that portion of elections.
- π Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has dismissed concerns about placing ICE agents near polling places, despite warnings of intimidation in minority communities.
- π The administration is using a tool called SAVE to identify non-citizens on voter rolls, though reports indicate it often incorrectly identifies citizens as ineligible.
- π Local election officials now view the federal government as an adversary and are war-gaming ways to defend their constitutional authority over elections.
- π This top-down dictation of election rules from the presidency marks a significant departure from historical shifts managed by Congress or state legislatures.
β Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
π§ Q: What is the Save America Act mentioned in the report?
π§ A: The Save America Act is a legislative proposal championed by Donald Trump that mandates voter ID and proof of citizenship for all federal elections.
π₯οΈ Q: How has CISA changed under the current administration?
π₯οΈ A: The administration has reassigned over 30 cybersecurity experts and dismantled the teamβs mission to monitor election-related disinformation and hacking threats.
βοΈ Q: How does the new executive order affect mail-in voting?
βοΈ A: The order seeks to give the US Postal Service authority to determine voter eligibility based on federal lists rather than following state-managed lists.
π Book Recommendations
βοΈ Similar
- π The Big Lie by Jonathan Lemire explores the origins and persistence of claims regarding the 2020 election.
- π How Democracies Die by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt examines the erosion of political norms and institutional guardrails.
π Contrasting
- π The Voter Fraud Myth by Christina Walsh argues that systemic fraud is non-existent and focus on it serves to suppress turnout.
- π Our Broken Elections by John Fund and Hans von Spakovsky details arguments for stricter voting laws to prevent potential fraud.
π¨ Creatively Related
- π On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder offers twenty lessons from the twentieth century on how to preserve democratic institutions.
- π Prequel by Rachel Maddow investigates historical efforts to undermine American democracy from within during the mid-twentieth century.