The Big Lie, Con't

If it even possible for a state to do a worse job than Arizona did with its bogus "independent election fraud audit investigation", the "results" being made public next week because even Arizona Republicans are actively tired of the scam, well, we're about to find out as Pennsylvania Republicans are electing to do that even worse job by subpoenaing voter information on millions of voters, effectively ridding the state of secret ballots.

 

Republican lawmakers in Pennsylvania on Wednesday approved subpoenas for a wide range of data and personal information on voters, advancing a probe of the 2020 election in a key battleground state former president Donald Trump has repeatedly targeted with baseless claims of fraud.

The move drew a sharp rebuke from Democrats who described the effort as insecure and unwarranted and said they would consider mounting a court fight. Among other requests, Republicans are seeking the names, dates of birth, driver’s license numbers, last four digits of Social Security numbers, addresses and methods of voting for millions of people who cast ballots in the May primary and the November general election.

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf (D) called Wednesday’s vote “merely another step to undermine democracy, confidence in our elections and to capitulate to Donald Trump’s conspiracy theories about the 2020 election.”

Wolf added in a statement, “Election security is not a game and should not be treated with such carelessness. Senate Republican[s] should be ashamed of their latest attempt to destabilize our election system through a sham investigation that will unnecessarily cost taxpayers millions of dollars.”

But Sen. Cris Dush, the Republican chairman of the committee that approved the subpoena, argued during the hearing that the information is needed because “there have been questions regarding the validity of people who have voted — whether or not they exist.”

“Again, we are not responding to proven allegations. We are investigating the allegations to determine whether or not they are factual,” he said, adding that the vetting process for outside vendors will be “rigorous.”

Judges, including on the Pennsylvania and U.S. Supreme Courts, have denied bids by Trump and his allies to overturn President Biden’s win in the state or invalidate millions of ballots.

Yet in Pennsylvania and other battleground states, Republican legislators have bowed to pressure from Trump and his base to investigate the results, despite a consensus among judges, election officials and experts that there was no widespread fraud in the election.

 

An outside vendor is going to have full identifying information on as many as seven million Pennsylvania voters, and exactly how they voted, including name, SSN, and all registration info. The potential for abuse or for criminal action here through a security breach is catastrophically high.

This has to be stopped by Dems and the courts.

Hopefully they will be able to.

StupidiNews!

• France has canceled a Washington DC reception in protest of America's deal with Australia to buy US nuclear submarines rather than French technology.
• Justice Department Special Prosecutor John Durham has indicted Democratic party lawyer Michael Sussman in connection with Durham's investigation into the FBI's Trump probe.
• A US federal judge has granted an order for an alleged sexual assault victim of Britain's Prince Andrew to serve a court summons to the royal second son.
• The House January 6th Committee wants Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. Mark Milley to testify about his actions on that day involving Donald Trump and the Capitol insurrection.
• A new study confirms a 2006 theory that the reason a Stradivarius violin has such a unique sound is due to the chemicals in the instruments' varnish.

That's The Sound Of The Police, Con't

Tampa cops are evicting mass numbers of Black and brown folk from public housing because somebody in the household committed a midemeanor. They report the "offenders" to the Tampa Housing Authority who evicts them because of CRIME. And of course, this happens even after people are cleared by the courts and the charges dropped, and they still lose their homes.

The summation of law enforcement officers are comprised of corrupt blackguards.

Police apprehended the three teenage boys, their pockets bulging with coins, close to South Seminole Heights shortly before dawn.

The youngest was 16. His haul from a nighttime spree of stealing from cars was $4.44 in change, a glove, a flashlight, a hoodie and wireless headphones.

The boy was taken to a juvenile detention center. Make sure he goes to school and does not sneak out at night, police told his mother.

But under a Tampa police initiative, officers also notified the management of Robles Park Village, the public housing complex where he lived.

His entire family lost their home.

Since 2013, the Tampa Police Department has taken a hands-on role at more than 100 apartment communities, sending notices to landlords when their tenants are arrested or stopped by officers and encouraging their eviction.

The program, known as Crime-Free Multi Housing, was marketed to landlords as a way to keep violent crime and drug and gang activity off their properties.

Police pledged to create a database of “documented violent offenders, gang members or career criminals involved in your community.” It alerted landlords to tenants arrested for armed robbery and drug dealing.

But the program also swept up more than 100 people who were arrested for misdemeanors — and dozens more whose charges were later dropped, a Tampa Bay Times investigation has found.

Tenants were reported to their landlord for matters as small as shoplifting; two were reported for driving with a suspended license. Entire families lost their homes after the arrest of a child or a relative who didn’t live with them.

And roughly 90 percent of the 1,100 people flagged by the program were Black, police records show. That’s despite Black residents making up only 54 percent of all arrests in Tampa over the past eight years.

The Times first approached the Tampa police about the program in 2017. Since then, the department has operated the program less aggressively, sending fewer letters to landlords and toning down wording that instructed landlords to take action. But police are continuing to report tenants to their landlords.

Mayor Jane Castor, who launched the initiative when she was police chief, remains bullish about the program. She said it has significantly reduced crime rates in tough-to-police neighborhoods, improving the quality of life for lawful tenants. That includes a 39 percent drop in serious crime reports at Robles Park, police said.

“In some of the lower-income complexes, they were just like the O.K. Corral,” Castor said. “People were hostages in their apartments and couldn’t let their kids out to play.”

Police officials said they had no say in whether a tenant was evicted — they were just sharing information.

“I don’t think that the landlords are evicting somebody based on a notice of arrest,” Castor said.

The police department’s biggest landlord partner was the Tampa Housing Authority, which provides housing to some of the city’s lowest income families. It received roughly one-quarter of the notices.

Bill Jackson, the authority’s director of public safety, said that his agency supports the program — and that he wasn’t concerned that people were evicted even when the State Attorney’s Office declined to prosecute.

That happens sometimes because those who are arrested turn informant, he said, adding that judges issue an eviction only if they are satisfied there are grounds. The authority conducts its own investigation, too, he said.

“We don’t need a conviction,” Jackson said. “We just need reasonable suspicion.”

National experts, however, said the city’s program violates federal housing law and noted that the ACLU is suing similar programs in other cities.

“This is an example of expansive police power going under the radar,” saidDeborah Archer, a professor at New York University School of Law and faculty director of the school’s Center on Race, Inequality and the Law. “We shouldn’t be attaching these kinds of consequences to arrests.”

This infuriates me. You get kicked out of your home for a misdemeanor, or even being charged with one? Jesus hell, the Justice Department and HUD need to come down on Tampa like an asteroid and clear the entire place out.

Screw these assholes.

The Default Fault Halt

Senate Republicans are licking their chops at the prospect of cratering the US economy to score points by blocking a rise in the debt limit, and forcing the US into a recession-creating default, and as Greg Sargent reminds us, it'll be 100% the GOP's fault if it happens.

The current position held by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and most Republican senators is that this fall they will vote in favor of the United States defaulting on its debts, leading to economic Armageddon.

You don’t hear their position described this way in many press accounts, to be sure. But that is functionally their position: They are threatening to withhold all GOP support when Congress votes to suspend the debt limit, probably sometime in October.

If the debt limit is not suspended or raised, the United States will default, with horrible consequences, and Republicans are threatening to vote no.

McConnell spelled out his position in new detail in an interview with Punchbowl News. He says Democrats must suspend or raise the debt limit as part of their multi-trillion-dollar reconciliation bill, where they can do so by simple majority, without any Republicans.

If they do not, McConnell says, no Republicans will support suspending it or raising it as part of some other process, say, via a “clean” debt limit bill, or as part of a continuing resolution funding the government at the end of September (which would require 60 votes to overcome a GOP filibuster).

This is being widely portrayed as creating a dilemma for Democrats. And that’s true, if only in the sense that epic Republican bad faith is creating a dilemma for the more responsible party.

Democrats joined with Republicans to suspend the debt limit under President Donald Trump, and a good deal of debt was racked up during that period. Given this, Democrats are insisting that Republicans must join them to suspend the debt limit this time — suspending it would effectively render it inoperative until a future date — and they are daring Republicans to vote no.

One way Democrats might do this — which is favored by the White House — is to bundle the debt limit suspension with a government funding bill that would also include huge amounts of disaster aid, much of it for red states. The thinking is this disaster money should make it harder for Republicans to vote against it.

But Politico reports that Republicans are still threatening to withhold their votes, even if that disaster money is in that package, and blasting the White House and Democrats for even considering this approach.

Remarkably, Sen. John Neely Kennedy (R-La.) insists not only that this won’t pass but also the mere fact that Democrats might do this shows they’re operating “in bad faith” and don’t actually have the “back” of disaster-sufferers.

Just try to fathom how deranged that position truly is. Republicans insist Democrats must deal with the debt limit themselves, with no Republican support, and if Democrats package this with other things that must be done — such as disaster aid or funding the government — that’s somehow placing unfair pressure on Republicans to join in raising it.

But Republicans themselves agree the debt limit must be suspended or raised. Kennedy agrees with this. So does McConnell! As McConnell puts it, “America should never and never will default.”

So why shouldn’t they feel obliged to actually vote to suspend or raise the debt limit for the good of the country, just as Democrats did under a Republican president, when this also had to be done for the good of the country?

 

So while I expect the Dems to indeed raise the debt limit through budget reconciliation, or at least suspend it, Republicans figure they can tie that around the necks of Dems for good. Thing is though, people like it when the government actually doesn't shut down, and the GOP has had so many shutdown tantrums in the last 25 years that nobody's going to buy they're arguing in good faith.

Bring it, I say.

StupidiNews!

• Commercial spaceflight company SpaceX has successfully launched four space tourists into orbit, the flight financed by billionaire Jared Isaacman, for a three-day mission.
• Mecklenburg County, NC has suspended nearly 600 county employees without pay for failing to produce COVID-19 vaccination results.
• The US and Britain are partnering with Australia to give the island nation nuclear submarine technology in order to counter China's presence in the South Pacific.
• UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has rearranged his cabinet, including replacing Foreign Minister Dominic Raab with the first woman to hold the position, Liz Truss.
• US hospitals in COVID-19 crisis red states are collapsing, with fully a quarter of ICUs across the nation 95% full.
  

Last Call For Winning The Popularity Contest

Right-wingers are ripping their hair out over TIME Magazine's 100 Most Influential People for 2021. Sure, Trump and Tucker are on the list, but so are Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Stacey Abrams, and Nikole Hannah-Jones, author of the 1619 Project as director Barry Jenkins explains.

Nikole Hannah-Jones is larger than life. She must be, for how else can one describe a journalist who catalyzes the debate over how a nation teaches its history?

This may be the sum effect of Nikole’s greatest work—The 1619 Project, an analysis of the legacy of slavery in the U.S.—but it is certainly not the sum of her. The journalist from Waterloo, Iowa, contains multitudes. She is the most emphatic laugh, the consummate ally, the staunchest critic. On Twitter, she is Ida Bae Wells, an allusion to her most direct antecedent, the trailblazing journalist Ida B. Wells. In 1892, Ms. Wells spoke across millennia of Ms. Hannah-Jones when she said, “The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them.”

The light Nikole wields is titanic, a blinding beam that illuminates and scorches. In her light, the wounds of America’s original and subsequent sins are laid bare. With her light, the serrated flesh of this country’s past is both subject and predicate, a light wielded to both identify wounds and cauterize flesh.

In considering Nikole, my mind drifts to images of James Baldwin and Nina Simone smoking and smiling in an overly bright den. My mind goes here because like Nikole, Mr. Baldwin and Ms. Simone also wielded light and made plain a truth Nikole has lived—in shining her powerful and painful light in the preservation of Blackness, this wonderful woman is proof and testament to the unshakable spirit of Blackness.

 

In fact, there are an awful lot of Black folks on the list this year, Simone Biles, Meghan Markle, Naomi Osaka, Ben Crump, N.K. Jemisin, Sherrilyn Ifill, Shonda Rhimes, Tracee Ellis Roo, Lil Nas X, and more.

I'm glad to see things looking up.

General Override

Fox News and the right-wing noise machine want to do to Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. Mark Milley what should have actually been done to former Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn: court-martial and prosecute him for treason.

When Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley goes before Congress on Sept. 28, he may face some of the most hostile questioning of any modern four-star general.

Driving the news: Newly released excerpts from "Peril" by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa — detailing secret moves by the nation's highest-ranking military officers to manage national security risks that he perceived Donald Trump posed in the final days of his presidency — are driving questions about whether Milley went too far.

The big picture: Republicans were already irate with Milley for playing a starring role in a string of recent Trump books. Even some of his friends are cringing over his extensive and high-profile scenes in these books and perceptions that he's participated on "deep background" with multiple authors. Extensive direct quotes attributed to Milley have led Republicans to accuse him of personally leaking to authors.

Details: The most explosive Woodward/Costa excerpts report on two phone calls the authors say happened between Milley and his Chinese counterpart — on Oct. 30 and Jan. 8. In the account, Milley reportedly assures the Chinese general that Trump would not attack China and that if Trump did decide to attack then Milley would give his Chinese counterpart a secret heads up. Milley has yet to respond to this latest reporting.

What they're saying: Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who serves on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, cited Woodward's and Costa's reporting in calling for President Biden to fire Milley, accusing him of working to "actively undermine the sitting Commander in Chief of the United States Armed Forces." 

"General Milley has attempted to rationalize his reckless behavior by arguing that what he perceived as the military's judgement as more stable than its civilian commander," Rubio said, calling that "a dangerous precedent" that "threatens to tear apart our nation's longstanding principle of civilian control of the military."

Behind the scenes: In mid-October 2020, top Pentagon officials grew concerned about intelligence they'd seen. It showed the Chinese were consuming their own intelligence that had made them concerned about the possibility of a surprise U.S. strike against China, three sources familiar with the situation tell Axios. 

One of the sources said: "I think they [the Chinese] were getting bad intelligence... a combination of 'wag the dog' conspiracy thinking and bad intel from bad sources."

 

Now frankly, Gen. Milley is a hero. But Republicans want his head, and they are pulling out all the stops to get it.  Multiple Republicans want him to resign, and a few are going so far as to want him court-martialed and sent up on treason charges.

 

Needless to say, the September 28th hearing is going to be vicious and ugly.

Empire State Gerrymandering

New York, unlike other blue states like California, isn't unilaterally disarming when it comes to redrawing congressional districts for 2022. The state is losing a district due to the census, but the GOP may soon find itself all but locked out of the US House delegation.

Seven years ago, New Yorkers voted decisively to empower a new bipartisan commission to do what self-interested politicians could not: draw new congressional district lines that were not gerrymandered to favor a particular party.

But as the panel prepares to unveil its proposed maps for the first time on Wednesday, Democratic lawmakers in New York and Washington are already laying the groundwork to cast them aside — plotting to use their supermajorities in Albany to draw new district boundaries for the next decade that might eliminate as many as five Republican-held seats.

The end result could drive one of the most consequential shifts in power in the country this redistricting cycle, the first since New York voters approved a 2014 ballot measure to curb gerrymandering.

Under the most aggressive scenarios, Democrats could emerge from 2022’s midterm elections with control of as many as 23 of New York’s 26 House seats in an all-out effort to prop up their chances of retaining control of Congress. For the first redistricting cycle in decades, Democrats control the Legislature and governor’s office, giving them the freedom to reshape districts without having to compromise with Republicans, who long held a lock on the State Senate.

“New York might be the biggest redistricting weapon for either party in the country,” said Dave Wasserman, a national elections analyst with the Cook Political Report.

Wielding it will almost certainly raise howls of protest from Republicans and expose Democrats to legal challenges and political charges that they are hypocritically turning their backs on the party’s promise to end gerrymandering, the practice that allows politicians to draw legislative lines in their party’s favor.

Just Monday, Chuck Schumer, the state’s senior senator and the Democratic majority leader in Washington, sought to rally senators on Capitol Hill in favor of a sweeping national elections bill that would override state laws like New York’s and outlaw “vicious gerrymandering, which further threatens to divide our politics.”

Yet with Republicans preparing to use their control of states like Texas, Florida and Georgia to pile up a dozen or more new red seats, Democrats seem intent on using New York’s laws to their advantage. Mr. Wasserman said that New York’s gains would likely be greater than others whose process was under single-party control, such as Texas, because those states have already been more thoroughly gerrymandered.

 

N ew York is doing what Texas, Georgia, and Florida are planning to do, which is exactly what the US Supreme Court ruled two years ago. Federal Courts have no business deciding state redistricting unless there's obvious voter suppression based on race, as in North Carolina. And even then, federal courts have no authority -- none -- to draw maps.

This is the GOP reaping what they have sewn.

Last Call For Orange Meltdown, Con't

Another Villager book on Trump, this one "Peril" from Bob Woodward and WaPo conservative whisperer Robert Costa, and we discover yet another heart-stopping moment that our country was almost destroyed by.

Two days after the January 6 attack on the US Capitol, President Donald Trump's top military adviser, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley, single-handedly took top-secret action to limit Trump from potentially ordering a dangerous military strike or launching nuclear weapons, according to "Peril," a new book by legendary journalist Bob Woodward and veteran Washington Post reporter Robert Costa. 

Woodward and Costa write that Milley, deeply shaken by the assault, 'was certain that Trump had gone into a serious mental decline in the aftermath of the election, with Trump now all but manic, screaming at officials and constructing his own alternate reality about endless election conspiracies.' 

Milley worried that Trump could 'go rogue,' the authors write. 

"You never know what a president's trigger point is," Milley told his senior staff, according to the book. 

In response, Milley took extraordinary action, and called a secret meeting in his Pentagon office on January 8 to review the process for military action, including launching nuclear weapons. Speaking to senior military officials in charge of the National Military Command Center, the Pentagon's war room, Milley instructed them not to take orders from anyone unless he was involved. 

"No matter what you are told, you do the procedure. You do the process. And I'm part of that procedure," Milley told the officers, according to the book. He then went around the room, looked each officer in the eye, and asked them to verbally confirm they understood. 

"Got it?" Milley asked, according to the book. 

"Yes, sir." 

'Milley considered it an oath,' the authors write. 

"Peril" is based on more than 200 interviews with firsthand participants and witnesses, and it paints a chilling picture of Trump's final days in office. The book, Woodward's third on the Trump presidency, recounts behind-the-scenes moments of a commander in chief unhinged and explosive, yelling at senior advisers and aides as he desperately sought to cling to power. 

It also includes exclusive reporting on the events leading up to January 6 and Trump's reaction to the insurrection, as well as newly revealed details about Trump's January 5 Oval Office showdown with his vice president, Mike Pence. 

Woodward and Costa obtained documents, calendars, diaries, emails, meeting notes, transcripts and other records. 

The book also examines Joe Biden's decision to run for office again; the first six months of his presidency; why he pushed so hard to get out of Afghanistan; and how he really feels about Trump. CNN obtained a copy of "Peril" ahead of its release on September 21.

 

Couple observations, one, this tracks with what we know about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi calling on Milley to do exactly this on January 8th, two days after the insurrection, that Pelosi-Milley meeting detailed in yet another Washington Post reporter book in July. Now we know Gen. Milley did indeed act upon it.

 

I don't know how difficult that's going to make things for Milley, the Joint Chiefs chair telling his senior staff to not take orders from anyone but him about America's nuclear arsenal is frightening at best, no matter how you look at it. Republicans will no doubt want Milley fired, court-martialed, shot out of a cannon, forced to watch terrible movies, I don't know. Biden will just ignore them, but it depends on if Democratic party hawks seize on this as a way to go after Milley over Afghanistan too.

Second observation: why the hell wasn't this front page news on January 8th? I mean we knew Pelosi talked to Milley on January 8th, well, on January 8th. It's not like Trump wasn't aware. So why not also report that's what Milley did?

Let's ask these questions, shall we?

The Manchin On The Hill, Con't

The Democrats will get 50 Senate votes for their voting rights bill, finally getting Sen. Joe Manchin on board. But the bill isn't expected to get any Republican votes, and changing the filibuster still won't happens, so I'm not sure what the point is.

Senate Democrats are proposing new legislation to overhaul voting laws after months of discussions to get all 50 of their members behind a single bill, allowing their caucus to speak with one voice on the issue even though it stands virtually no chance of becoming law. 

The proposal -- announced in a statement by a group of Senate Democrats on Tuesday -- comes in the aftermath of their party's failed effort to open debate on the issue in June. Even though they unified behind the procedural vote at the time, Senate Democrats were not on the same page over the policy, kicking off months of talks to get the party's factions behind the bill that they will propose on Tuesday. 

Yet the new proposal will almost certainly fall well short of the 60 votes needed to break a GOP-led filibuster. Plus Democrats lack the votes to change the rules and weaken the filibuster as many in their party want them to do, meaning the plan is expected to stall when the Senate casts a procedural vote on the matter next week. 

The proposal, which will be introduced by Senate Rules Chair Amy Klobuchar, also has the endorsement of Sen. Joe Manchin, the West Virginia Democrat who had been the lone member of his caucus to oppose his party's more sweeping overhaul -- known as the For the People Act -- which passed the House earlier this year. 

The other Democratic senators who are co-sponsors include Sens. Jeff Merkley of Oregon, Tim Kaine of Virginia, Jon Tester of Montana, Alex Padilla of California and Raphael Warnock, the Georgia freshman who faces a potentially tough reelection fight next year. Maine Sen. Angus King, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, has also signed onto the bill known as the Freedom to Vote Act, according to the statement. 

The new bill would make it easier to register to vote, make Election Day a public holiday, ensure states have early voting for federal elections and allow all voters to request mail-in ballots. In addition, the measure would bolster security on voting systems, overhaul how House districts are redrawn and impose new disclosures on donations to outside groups active in political campaigns.

 

So I guess the point is to get all the Senate GOP on record against voting rights, even the "moderates" like Murkowski, Collins, Romney and yeah that's really it.

However, that doesn't actually save our voting rights.

The Vax Of Life, Con't

A big majority of Americans approve of President Biden's vaccine mandate + testing rules for medium and large businesses, including independent voters. It's Republicans who hate it, and it's not like they were voting for Democrats anyway.

A majority of Americans — including suburban voters — support vaccine mandates for federal workers as well as private companies, according to the latest installment of the Axios/Ipsos Coronavirus Index.

Why it matters: The findings, on the heels of President Biden's mandates announcement last week, suggest that while his move was divisive, it may be politically safer than his opponents hope.

What they're saying: "From a political perspective, he especially reinforces himself with independents," said Cliff Young, president of Ipsos U.S. Public Affairs."The No. 1 issue for Biden has been COVID, and he’s been losing ground on it, especially among independents ... it should stanch the bleeding ... this is an initiative that could help bolster him there." However, "he wins no points with Republicans. He wins a lot of points with Democrats, but they already support him."

The big picture: Respondents were asked two separate questions: Do you support the federal government requiring all federal employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19? And do you support a federal government rule that requires all business with 100 or more employees to make all staff be vaccinated or undergo regular COVID testing?

Their overall responses were virtually identical: 42% strongly supported both; 18% somewhat supported both; 13%–14% somewhat opposed both; and 25%–26% strongly opposed both. In other words, respondents didn't draw major distinctions between mandates for public or private employees.

Between the lines: The high concentrations of strong support and strong opposition reinforce the depth of polarization.

 

But notice even a third of Republicans support mandates.  That's practically a victory for Biden right there. Vaccine mandates are a winner for the Dems, and the need to remember that. Also, you know, it's a winner because it's the right thing to do and should have been done six months ago.

StupidiNews!

• Tropical Storm Nicholas could dump up to 20 inches of rain on coastal Texas including Houston over the next 48 hours.
• Two Florida teens were arrested after allegedly plotting a Columbine-style massacre at their high school, police found firearms and pipe bombs.
• President Biden stumped in California to back Gov. Gavin Newsom last night as millions go to the polls in the state to determine Newsom's fate today in a recall election.
• Norway's opposition Labor Party led by Jonas Gahr Store is expected to form a coalition government, pushing aside Conservatives led by Premier Erna Solberg.
• Facebook has a VIP list of millions of people who can violate terms of service without consequence according to leaked documents published by the Wall Street Journal.
  

Last Call For Gavin Versus The Big Lie

California Republicans, and national Republicans including The Former Guy™, are already claiming Gavin Newsom's recall victory tomorrow can only be the product of massive voter fraud, and are vowing not to accept the results, or to concede the race.

The results of the California recall election won’t be known until Tuesday night. But some Republicans are already predicting victory for the Democrat, Gov. Gavin Newsom, for a reason that should sound familiar.

Voter fraud.

Soon after the recall race was announced in early July, the embers of 2020 election denialism ignited into new false claims on right-wing news sites and social media channels. This vote, too, would supposedly be “stolen,” with malfeasance ranging from deceptively designed ballots to nefariousness by corrupt postal workers.

As a wave of recent polling indicated that Mr. Newsom was likely to brush off his Republican challengers, the baseless allegations accelerated. Larry Elder, a leading Republican candidate, said he was “concerned” about election fraud. The Fox News commentators Tomi Lahren and Tucker Carlson suggested that wrongdoing was the only way Mr. Newsom could win. And former President Donald J. Trump predicted that it would be “a rigged election.”

This swift embrace of false allegations of cheating in the California recall reflects a growing instinct on the right to argue that any lost election, or any ongoing race that might result in defeat, must be marred by fraud. The relentless falsehoods spread by Mr. Trump and his allies about the 2020 election have only fueled such fears.

“I very honestly believe there were irregularities and fraudulent activity,” Elena Johnson, 65, a teacher in Los Angeles County who was in the crowd at a rally for Mr. Elder last week in Ventura County, said of the presidential contest last year. “It was stolen.”

Because of her concerns about voter fraud in the 2020 election, Ms. Johnson said, she would be casting her ballot in person on Tuesday instead of by mail. She said she was supporting the Republican because she thought California, her adopted home after immigrating from the Philippines 40 years ago, was on the brink. “California is where I came, and California is where I want to stay,” she said.

Since the start of the recall, allegations of election fraud have been simmering on social media in California, with daily mentions in the low thousands, according to a review by Zignal Labs, a media tracking agency.

But singular claims or conspiracy theories, such as a selectively edited video purporting to show that people with a post office “master key” could steal ballots, have quickly ricocheted around the broader conservative ecosystem. The post office video surpassed one million views, amplified by high-profile Trump allies and members of the conservative news media.

Nationally, Republican candidates who deny the outcomes of their elections remain outliers. Hundreds of G.O.P. candidates up and down the ballot in 2020 accepted their defeats. But at the same time, many of them joined Mr. Trump in the assault on the presidential race’s outcome, and in other recent election cycles, candidates, their allies and the conservative news media have increasingly expressed doubts about the validity of the electoral process.

And while false claims of wrongdoing have long emerged in the days and weeks after elections, Republicans’ quick turn in advance of the California recall — a race that was always going to be a long shot for them in a deep-blue state — signals the growing normalization of crying fraud.

“This is baked into the playbook now,” said Michael Latner, an associate professor of political science at California Polytechnic Institute. As soon as the recall was official, he added, “you already started to see stories and individuals on social media claiming that, you know, they received five ballots or their uncle received five ballots.”

 

This is the GOP now. Every win is honest, every loss is a rigged election, even in a ridiculously blue state like California. The whole point of this is to justify the next round of violence. It worked on January 6th. It will work in other instances of political terrorism.

And why shouldn't Republicans claim voter fraud every single time? We refuse to give them a downside to doing so. There is no downside to claiming fraud for every single Republican loss, especially in states run by the GOP. And eventually in those states, elections where Democrats win are simply going to be overturned by Republicans in charge of states and elections.

I expect that in 2022, and I expect a lot of it, including entire state electoral slates, to simply be given to the Republican running in 2024.  You will see states throw out Democratic wins and replace them with Republicans, full stop.

That's where this is going, folks.