Alright, so we now know Trump's Justice Department is threatening election officials across the country with federal prosecution, based on fascist conspiracy theories about voting systems integrity; a redux of "The Big Lie" that fueled Trump's political rebirth after losing the 2020 US Presidential election and the failed coup (autogolpe specifically) on January 6th, 2021. Whether the Trump regime fascists ever charge anyone with this nonsense or not, we know they're actively trying to take over election boards and the election process more broadly, all over the country. All that's left is to watch them put that control into practice, and I think this Common Dreams story is a good enough place to start on that front.

As recently reported in the Washington Post, Trump's Justice Department lead by Attorney General Pam Bondi, "has taken the unusual step of asking at least nine states for copies of their voter rolls, and at least two have turned them over." These efforts appear to be particularly focused on Colorado, a former battleground state that has been increasingly shifting towards Democrats, where a local Republican operative is pushing to allow the federal government to physically inspect their voting equipment.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/trump-state-voter-datta

'The 2020 Playbook on Steroids': Trump DOJ Requests for State Voter Data Spark Alarm

"Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, a Democrat, called the Trump administration's efforts "the 2020 playbook on steroids."

"This all is part of a bigger ploy to further undermine our voting in this country," warned Griswold. "They are actively in a power grab."

Even some Republican election officials responded with alarm to the Trump administration's requests for voter data and access to voting equipment.

"To me, it felt like they were wanting to intervene before 2026," Justin Grantham, the Republican clerk in Colorado's Fremont County, told the Post, referring to the upcoming midterms.

Carly Koppes, a Republican clerk in Weld County, Colorado, said she rejected requests for a federal inspection of election equipment.

"That's a hard stop for me," said Koppes. "Nobody gets access to my voting equipment, for security reasons."

So, if you were wondering why Pam Bondi and the Trumpenreich Justice Department were looking for ways to prosecute election officials who don't go along with Trump's fascist conspiracy bullshit, even though the fascist right has already been quite successful at stacking election boards, including in many deeply blue counties, with Trump-humping Republicans, folks like Justin Grantham and Carly Koppes are the answer.

I think however the larger point to remember here is that absolutely none of this is actually about maintaining election integrity, and therefore none of the regime's actions have to be moored to the truth in any tangible way. For example, they're not asking to look at Colorado's voting equipment because they think they'll find something fishy. Rather, they intend to point to the investigation itself and any possible charges against Colorado election officials brought by Pam Bondi, which the Trump regime itself is creating whole cloth, as evidence that there is something fishy about a Colorado that doesn't go full fascist in the next cycle of elections. The ultimate results of those investigations and potential trials are largely irrelevant to the Trump regime's current goals of interfering with, and ultimately rigging the US electoral process.

This then brings us to the regime's ongoing obsession with obtaining access to voter rolls; attempts the Trump administration has made through a wide variety of methods, including the Department of Government Efficiency, formerly run by Elon Musk. Obviously, analysis isn't prophecy, but both the Trump regime and the larger Republican Party have aggressively been pushing conspiracy theories about undocumented migrants or deceased Democrats voting, so it doesn't really take a genius to figure out they want to use those voter rolls to generate trumped up accusations of widespread voter fraud, and then use that as a justification to purge or otherwise disqualify huge numbers of people likely to vote against them in upcoming elections. The fact that they can also feed all that data into the digital panopticon Palantir is building so Trump can find all his political enemies, is pure gravy for the Trumpenreich and Downmarket Mussolini.

For much of the past month and a half, we've all partaken of an American political discourse openly asking "why doesn't the Republican Party care about harming their own voters" in the face of an upcoming election cycle? I fear the answer to that question may well be that the Trump regime feels pretty confident about its ability to ensure they can't lose political power in rigged elections.

#Fascism #Trump #Republicanparty #2028Election #VotingRights #DepartmentOfJustice #PamBondi #ConspiracyTheories #Colorado #RiggedElections #USPol #Democracy #TheBigLie

It's been a long while since we've checked in on Downmarket Mussolini's ongoing attempts to rig American elections, for either himself or other fascists in his party. I understand that many people are looking at a term limited, 79 year old fascist running a cult of personality and counting on time or circumstance to nip this problem in the bud, but that's pretty shortsighted in my opinion. This larger fascist movement's stated ambitions to permanently rig the American electoral process for fascists, as laid out openly in Project 2025, is a threat that exists beyond Trump's political career or lifespan.

As such, I think a recent New York Times report that Pork Reich officials have told Justice Department lawyers to explore whether or not they can criminally charge election officials for failing to "safeguard" their voting systems, should probably be generating more alarm than it is. And as it turns out, the extremely libbed up senior legal columnist at The New Republic, Harry Litman agrees with me.

https://newrepublic.com/article/197809/trump-doj-local-election-officials-scare (archive: https://archive.ph/fPQnQ)

The Little-Noted Trump-DOJ Move That Should Scare the Hell Out of You

"Democracy can weather a lot of damage and unlawful conduct at Trump’s hands, but if he succeeds in taking control of the machinery of elections, it could be a fatal blow.

That’s why a barely noticed story in The New York Times last week was so worrisome. As reported by the Times, unidentified senior administration officials have directed DOJ lawyers to explore the possibility of federal criminal charges against state or local election officials deemed to have failed to adequately safeguard computer systems.

Tellingly, the initiative isn’t grounded in any new evidence, data, or legal theory. It’s not about truth or justice. It’s a political and ideological ploy, reportedly incubated in the Project 2025 workshop—part of Trump’s broader effort to delegitimize democratic institutions and seize autocratic control."

I can literally hear you groaning "not this bullcrap again" through the screen dear reader, and I absolutely share your exhaustion - but yeah, as far as I can tell Trump is re-litigating the Big Lie to rig future elections for nazis. Furthermore, while I categorically reject Litman's assertion that a threat to democratic rights in an oligarchy lead by politicians almost universally owned by reactionary billionaires regardless of party, somehow supersedes all the other civil and human rights the regime is openly violating in importance (I imagine migrants being kidnapped and shipped to concentration camps in South Sudan might quibble with that statement too), I think we can all agree that sham elections that can only be won by Trumpenreich nazis would be a fucking disastrous outcome for American society. A good example of how such a political system would function in practice, would be Russia under Putin and I don't think there's anyone in the broader antifascist coalition in America willing to argue Russian elections are "democratic" in nature.

In terms of the operational mechanics, it's not hard to see that this whole scheme is basically a reanimation of every white supremacy-infused election conspiracy theory the larger right wing coalition behind the Republican Party has been pushing for decades, with a special emphasis on Trump's 2020 Big Lie propaganda. The regime is essentially arguing that corrupt election officials are rigging the computers for their opposition, and threatening criminal prosecution for nebulous enough crimes that they can pretty much target anyone who serves up an election result Trump does not like. No, that's not hyperbole - Litman agrees here too:

"Now, with the backing of a major-party nominee and the muscle of right-wing media, Trump is threatening to turn that isolated smear campaign into standard operating procedure. The message is simple: Help run an election that Trump loses, and we will come for you.

And, tragically, it may be working. Across the country, election officials have resigned in droves. Offices that were once nonpartisan and low-profile have become hotbeds of threats and suspicion. Trump has already browbeaten major law firms and entire universities into submission."

Please keep in mind that this intimidation and operational stacking of election boards is part of a much larger project, fueled by both the Big Lie and Project 2024, to control the election process across the country by this same fascist movement and political party. None of this is hypothetical, they're just now adding the full force of the fascist state and American legal system to the scheme. It's not MSNBC lib hysteria to say Trump is absolutely trying to rig US elections because Trump, the Republican Party, and the larger fascist movement in America have *been* trying to do precisely that - brazenly so, since January 6th, 2021.

These nazis are serious. Are we?

#Fascism #Trump #TheBigLie #JusticeDepartment #RiggedElections #Dictatorship #2028Election