Most Republicans In Key Battleground Races Refuse To Say They Will Accept Mid-term Results
State-wide races set the stage for election chaos, which is now the foundation of MAGA-Republican election strategy
A dozen Republican candidates in competitive races for governor and Senate have declined to say whether they would accept the results of their contests, raising the prospect of fresh post-election chaos two years after Donald Trump refused to concede the presidency. As reported by The Washington Post, “The reluctance of many GOP candidates to embrace a long-standing tenet of American democracy shows how Trump’s assault on the integrity of U.S. elections has spread far beyond the 2020 presidential race. This year, multiple losing candidates could refuse to accept their defeats.” Trump, who continues to claim without evidence that his loss to Joe Biden in 2020 was rigged, has attacked fellow Republicans who do not agree — making election denialism the price of admission in many GOP primaries. More than half of all Republican nominees for federal and statewide office with powers over election administration have embraced unproven claims that fraud tainted Biden’s win. Faced with the prospect of losing elections, the MAGA-Republicans are positioning themselves to dispute or overturn any races that they lose. Not exactly the spirit of democracy, but refusal to accept any of their losses as legitimate now characterizes the core strategy of the MAGA-Republican party as the mid-terms approach…
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/18/republicans-refuse-accept-results/
‘The threat is real’: Key state and local offices that will certify election results (and write voting rules) are where MAGA-Republicans are focused
Loyalists to Trump haven’t been chastened by the failed bid to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Rather, as reported by Politico, they have learned valuable lessons about the importance of installing Trump allies in positions of authority — such as overseeing elections administration or writing the rules governing voting — in battleground states. As a result, the most current fundraising efforts by Democrats focuses on getting big Democratic donors to recognize the importance of state and local elections and shift their gaze away from House and Senate races, where Democrats already hold a fundraising advantage. “At the statehouse level, the Republican State Leadership Committee, which mainly works to elect GOP state lawmakers, has spent nearly twice as much in the current election cycle as its Democratic counterpart, the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, according to the Center for Political Accountability.” At least 600 GOP state legislators who held office in 2021 lied about the 2020 election, or supported legal efforts challenging its integrity, according to the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee…
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/09/18/democrats-big-donors-target-election-deniers-00057338
Meanwhile, Trump’s Cronies Are Getting Slammed With Subpoenas
It’s as though we’re witnessing a race between a non-partisan justice system intent on holding Trump’s MAGA-league of “semi-fascists” accountable for their misdeeds, and the same MAGA-Republicans doing their best to take over statewide election mechanisms across the country, before they can be held accountable. As the process heats up, the Department of Justice has significantly ramped up the pace of its activities. As reported by VICE, “The Jan. 6 criminal investigations got a hell of a lot more real this week. Suddenly it seems like the feds are everywhere. Some 40 subpoenas were blasted out at top MAGA-world figures by a federal grand jury in Washington, D.C., which is reportedly seeking answers on practically every aspect of the insurrection.” The feds want to know about the so-called “fake electors” scheme. They also want to learn more about the planning of former President Donald Trump’s rally on the Ellipse on January 6th, and even fundraising for Trump’s Save America political action committee. Some 40 subpoenas were blasted out at top MAGA-world figures by a federal grand jury in Washington, D.C. Even Trump’s lawyers are now under scrutiny…
https://www.vice.com/en/article/z34y3a/trumps-cronies-are-getting-slammed-with-subpoenas
Trump's Former Accounting Firm Now Turning Over His Financial Records To Congress
Mazars USA, Trump’s longtime accounting firm, cut ties with Trump and his businesses in February after the firm said it could “no longer stand behind financial information that had been provided” by Trump and his operations. Consequently, financial statements Mazars prepared for Trump from mid-2011 to mid-2020 “should no longer be relied upon,” the company had warned. Now, following a legal settlement regarding various financial information from 2014 to 2018, the House Oversight Committee has received a first batch of documents from Mazars, with more documents expected in the near future. As reported by Huffington Post and others, financial records that must be turned over to Congress under the settlement with the House Committee include “any document that indicates false or undisclosed information about Trump or his companies’ assets, income or liabilities.” House Committee Chair Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) stated that “These documents will inform the committee’s efforts to get to the bottom of former President Trump’s egregious conduct and ensure that future presidents do not abuse their position of power for personal gain”…
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/accounting-firm-mazars-usa-trump-financial-documents-congress
Finally, a billionaire willing to smack back at capitalism
Yvon Chouinard is the founder of the outdoor apparel brand Patagonia — valued at $3 billion. He has now given his company away for the cause of protecting the Earth. There has been various reporting on this unique development. In an excellent OpEd piece in The Washington Post, columnist Christine Emba looks at Chouinard’s background and compares his philanthropic outlook to that of his billionaire peers. “In the United States, which runs on a mythology of self-creation and individual achievement, money and status intertwine at a deep level. We mistakenly equate wealth with worth, assuming the more of it you have, the smarter and more special you must be…While we nominally celebrate generosity, we goggle at the Forbes billionaires list every year…even if those billions have been accumulating basically without anyone’s help, we tend to assume that the rich have some innate expertise as to how that money might best be spent…For once, a billionaire is doing something worthy of our applause”…
NASA probe ready to slam into an asteroid this month in landmark planetary defense test
In an announcement reminiscent of science-fiction movie fare, NASA has announced that its Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission, which launched just last fall, will slam a spacecraft headfirst into a small asteroid, in a rare case when a spacecraft's destruction is the desired outcome. As reported by SPACE.com, “The mission is in the name of planetary defense, which seeks to protect Earth from any potential asteroid impacts; scientists hope that should a dangerous asteroid threaten the planet in the future, a mission like DART could avert the disaster.” According to Andrea Riley, a program executive at NASA working with the agency's Planetary Defense Coordination Office, "If it misses, it still provides a lot of data. This is a test mission. This is why we test; we want to do it now rather than when there is an actual need."
https://www.space.com/dart-asteroid-mission-1st-planetary-defense-test
