Chinese have most trust in institutions, Americans near bottom, and Russians dead last, new survey shows
Grayson Quay, Weekend editor January 18, 2022
U.S. Capitol Drew Angerer/Getty Images
A new survey suggests people living under authoritarian regimes increasingly trust their major institutions more than citizens of democratic countries trust theirs, Axios reported Tuesday.
According to the 2022 Edelman Trust Barometer, which surveyed 35,000 respondents across 28 countries, trust in NGOs, business, government, and the media fell most sharply in Germany, Australia, the Netherlands, South Korea, and the United States since 2021.
China and the United Arab Emirates saw the biggest gains. Average trust in institutions stood at 83 and 76 in the two nations, up 11 and nine points, respectively, from last year. Saudi Arabian institutions also improved on an already high score, with trust rising from 69 in 2021 to 72 in 2022
South Korean institutions scored a 42 in 2022. Institutions in the U.S. did only one point better.
Developed democracies, especially Western democracies, occupied most of the bottom two-thirds of the trust index rankings, but one authoritarian regime — Russia — finished dead last, with an average trust rating of only 32.
Those surveyed were asked, for each institution, to indicate on a nine-point scale “how much you trust that institution to do what is right.”
The survey spanned 35,000 respondents across 28 countries via online interviews held between November 1-24, 2021. The margin of error is 2.9 percentage points.
Dozens of former Trump officials including John Kelly and Stephanie Grisham are formulating plans to thwart their former boss in 2022 and 2024
Cheryl Teh January 18, 2022
President Donald Trump at the National Prayer Breakfast at a hotel in Washington, DC, on February 8, 2018.MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images
Dozens of former Trump staffers had a conference call to figure out how to thwart him, CNN reports.
The call was said to have included John Kelly, Anthony Scaramucci, and Alyssa Farah Griffin.
Stephanie Grisham had said the goal was to “do some things to try and stop” the ex-president.
About three dozen former US officials who served under President Donald Trump jumped on a conference call this week to figure out how to thwart Trump’s efforts in the 2022 and 2024 elections, according to CNN.
According to Tapper, Miles Taylor, a Trump official turned prominent Trump critic, helped lead the call and told CNN the participants were “overflowing with ideas” on how to stop Trump. Ideas, according to Tapper, included “shining a light” on the former president’s financial backers and figuring out how to defeat Trump-endorsed candidates running in 2022 and 2024.
“We all agreed passionately that letters and statements don’t mean anything,” Taylor told CNN. “The two operative words are ‘electoral effects.’ How can we have tangible electoral effects against the extremist candidates that have been endorsed by Trump?”
Taylor is best known for anonymously writing a scathing 2018 New York Times op-ed article titled “I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration.”
The group — which has not released its name or published a list of members — is among several GOP-linked organizations that have expressed opposition to Trump. In October, a Republican group called Republicans for Voting Rights put up several billboards across the US, including in Times Square, to remind the former president that he lost the 2020 election. The Lincoln Project, founded by current and former Republicans, also worked during the 2020 election to prevent Trump’s reelection.
Trump has not yet announced a 2024 presidential run and said in November that he would “probably” wait until after the 2022 midterm elections to confirm his decision on a 2024 presidential bid.
We Have Breached the Planetary Boundary for Plastics and Other Chemical Pollutants, Scientists Say
Olivia Rosane January 18, 2022
Plastic pollution on a Panama beach. Photo credit: LUIS ACOSTA / AFP via Getty Images
Humanity is currently releasing more chemical and plastic pollution into the environment than Earth can support.
That’s the conclusion of a first-of-its-kind study published in Environmental Science and Technology Tuesday, which argues that the planetary boundary for novel entities has been exceeded by human activity. The researchers defined “novel entities” as manufactured chemicals that do not appear naturally in large quantities and have the potential to disrupt Earth’s systems.
“There has been a 50-fold increase in the production of chemicals since 1950. This is projected to triple again by 2050,” study co-author Patricia Villarubia-Gómez from the Stockholm Resilience Centre(SRC) at Stockholm University said in a press release emailed to EcoWatch. “The pace that societies are producing and releasing new chemicals and other novel entities into the environment is not consistent with staying within a safe operating space for humanity.”
In 2009, a team of researchers identified nine planetary boundaries that have led to a stable Earth for the last 10,000 years. These include greenhouse gas emissions, the ozone layer, forests, freshwater and biodiversity. The new research builds on this foundation by quantifying the planetary boundary for novel entities.
The researchers concluded that the boundary had been breached because production and release of plastics and other chemicals now surpasses the ability of governments to assess and monitor these pollutants.
“For a long time, people have known that chemical pollution is a bad thing,” study co-author Dr. Sarah Cornell of the SRC told The Guardian. “But they haven’t been thinking about it at the global level. This work brings chemical pollution, especially plastics, into the story of how people are changing the planet.”
Scientists have previously concluded that humanity has exceeded the planetary boundaries for global heating, biodiversity loss, habitat loss and nitrogen and phosphorous pollution.
The researchers noted that there are around 350,000 different types of manufactured chemicals on the global market, with almost 70,000 introduced in the last decade. Among them are plastics, pesticides, industrial chemicals and pharmaceutical products.
Plastics are especially concerning, the study authors said. They now weigh more than double the mass of living animals and around 80 percent of all the plastics ever produced persist in the environment instead of being properly recycled. Further, plastics are made up of more than 10,000 other chemicals that can enter the environment in new combinations when they degrade.
In order to address the risk posed by plastics and other chemical pollutants, the study authors argued that it is important to curb their production and release into the environment.
“We need to be working towards implementing a fixed cap on chemical production and release,” study co-author Bethanie Carney Almroth from the University of Gothenburg said in the press release.
They also supported calls for a circular economy.
“That means changing materials and products so they can be reused not wasted, designing chemicals and products for recycling, and much better screening of chemicals for their safety and sustainability along their whole impact pathway in the Earth system,” Villarubia Gómez said in the press release.
Op-Ed: Arizonans need Kyrsten Sinema to stand up for their voting rights
Sonja Diaz January 17, 2022
Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) speaks on the floor of the U.S. Senate on Thursday, saying she would not support a change in the Senate’s filibuster rule. (Associated Press)
A little over a year ago, a violent insurrection, fueled by disinformation and hate, threatened to destroy our fragile democracy. Soon, our lawmakers may finish what the insurrectionists began if they cannot find a way forward on common-sense federal voting rights legislation.
The 2020 census made clear that America is at a demographic tipping point, and standing in the way of securing our democracy is a dysfunctional Senate that has failed to effectively govern for a generation. Even as we celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. — who was hated, brutalized and assassinated for his efforts to expand the vote — senators are faced with a critical decision that will determine the future of America and our standing as a representative democracy.
Republican senators are now set to use the filibuster to block the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which would protect voting rights for all Americans. Yet two Democrats, Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, along with West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, are refusing to put us on the road to progress by changing Senate rules to pass the legislation.
Since the Supreme Court’s 2013 Shelby County vs. Holder decision, which gutted a core provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, an avalanche of voter suppression tactics from closing polling places to purging voter rolls to passing restrictive voter ID laws have been employed across the country. In the face of unprecedented voter turnout amid a global pandemic, 49 state legislatures introduced 440 pieces of legislation in 2021 that sought to limit access to the ballot box. This year isn’t shaping up to be much better, with 152 billed carried over into 2022 legislative sessions and 72 bills pre-filed last month.
When it comes to anti-voter legislation, Arizona takes the cake for most creative. State lawmakers have passed bills — fueled by the big lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen — that discourage voting through various tactics, including expanding voter roll purges and making it harder for voters to fix a mail-in ballot. Some of their most audacious ideas were not signed into law last year, like Arizona House Bill 2720, which sought to allow lawmakers to overrule the state’s popular election results and choose its own slate of presidential electors, and House Bill 2792, which would have made it a felony for an election official to send a voter an early ballot unless that voter requested it.
The partisan nature of these efforts coupled with the increasing importance of voters of color, who lean Democrat, cannot be understated. But Sinema — who represents a state with a growing population of Latinos that helped to elect her in 2018 and to flip Arizona blue in 2020 — is refusing to take action that would not only support her reelection but would strengthen our democracy, starting with her home state.
Sinema said that her refusal to end the filibuster, even for the voting rights legislation, is in the name of democracy and an effort to reduce division. The reality is that her unwillingness to unite with her own party is holding back voting rights and election integrity practices that voters broadly support. Unfortunately, her inaction allows the will of a minority of the population to have an outsized influence on who can participate in our democracy.
We are facing an all-out assault on free and fair elections that coincides with the growth and consequence of voters of color. Communities that have historically been disenfranchised by poll taxes, vote dilution and voter identification laws are being left behind in the face of intersecting crises, including COVID-19, income inequality and climate change.
The 2020 census, flawed as it was, showed that these communities are the future of not only Arizona, but of all of America. The census found that while the country’s white population is declining, Latinos and Asian Americans — both youthful populations — are growing, driving a significant shift in the under-18 population. America’s future prosperity depends upon the very populations that far too many lawmakers are trying to cut out of our democracy. Sinema has a role to play in giving equal political voice to all Americans, not a minority of lawmakers who defy their constituents and subvert the U.S. Constitution.
Nearly 60 years ago, members of Congress put the will of the people first and answered a call to take courageous action to pass the 1965 Voting Rights Act. They did so in a nation at a crossroads with race, war and inequality. Congress went on to reauthorize that law five times, the last time in 2006. Each time, it acted to expand access to the ballot and take a step to fortify our democracy. Now, Sinema faces the same choice. She, too, has the power to take decisive action that puts Arizonians and the American people first. The question is, will she act?
Sonja Diaz is a civil rights attorney and the founding director of the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Initiative.
Martin Luther King Jr.’s family calls on Sen. Kyrsten Sinema to ‘ensure that the Jim Crow filibuster does not stand in the way’ of voting rights
Connor Perrett January 15, 2022
Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., arrives for a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee markup in Dirksen Building on Wednesday, October 6, 2021.Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call Inc. via Getty Images
Relatives of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. marched Saturday in Arizona.
They marched in support of expanding voting rights, a priority of Democrats.
Martin Luther King III called on Sen. Kyrsten Sinema “to urgently pass federal voting rights legislation.”
Family members of the civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr.’s organized in Phoenix, Arizona, on Saturday to call on Sen. Kyrsten Sinema to support efforts to expand voting rights.
Martin Luther King III, the late civil rights leader’s eldest son, was joined Saturday by his wife, Arndrea Waters King, and by his daughter, Yolanda Renee King. Several prominent lawmakers were also in attendance, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, and Rep. Joyce Beatty, an Ohio Democrat who serves as the chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, according to a press release from Deliver for Voting Rights.
“Arizona, in one sense, is near ground zero, I say near because unfortunately, there are 19 states that have passed regressive laws, including our own state of Georgia,” King III told MSNBC’s Vaughn Hillyard on Saturday ahead of the rally.
He added: “And we believe that as it relates to getting this, these bills passed, that Senator Sinema has been one of the challenges. And so it made sense to come to Arizona. Some regressive laws, we feel, have been put in place that make it harder for people to vote.”
Ahead of the march Saturday, King III in a press release said the Saturday event was organized “to call on Senator Sinema to urgently pass federal voting rights legislation and ensure that the Jim Crow filibuster does not stand in the way,” The Hill reported.
After speeches, the King family led a march through the city of Phoenix, CNN journalist Sara Boxer reported on Twitter.
As Insider previously reported, Sinema, a Democrat representing Arizona, on Thursday took to the Senate floor reaffirmed her support for her support of the 60-vote threshold and her opposition to making changes to the Senate rules on a party-line basis.
Democrats, including President Joe Biden, have called for the elimination of the filibuster to allow Democrats, who hold a narrow majority in the Senate, to pass key legislative priorities — like the expansion of voting rights — without interference from members of the GOP.
House Democrats this week passed a pair of bills to advance voting rights. One of the bills is a sweeping voting-rights and democracy-reform bill while the other aims to refortify parts of the Voting Rights Act that were struck down or weakened by federal courts, Insider previously reported.
“These bills help treat the symptoms of the disease, but they do not fully address the disease itself,” Sinema said on Thursday. “And while I continue to support these bills, I will not support separate actions that worsen the underlying disease of division infecting our country. The debate over the Senate’s 60-vote threshold shines a light on our broader challenges.”
“While Sen. Sinema remains stubborn in her ‘optimism,’ Black and Brown Americans are losing their right to vote,” said Martin Luther King III in a statement. “She’s siding with the legacy of Bull Connor and George Wallace instead of the legacy of my father and all those who fought to make real our democracy.”
MSNBC guest: Manchin and Sinema ‘are the white people Martin Luther King Jr. warned us about’.
David Edwards January 17, 2022
Manchin and Sinema finally feel the heat as Democrats battle over Biden’s agenda
Elie Mystal, a justice correspondent for The Nation, asserted over the weekend that Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) “are the white people that Martin Luther King Jr. warned us about.”
During a Sunday interview on MSNBC, Mystal reflected on Democrats’ failure to pass voting rights legislation.
“People like Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, these are the white people that Martin Luther King Jr. warned us about,” Mystal explained. “These are the white liberals who have no sense of urgency, commitment or integrity when it comes to the progress of justice in the country. And that’s just a fact.”
“I don’t know if they can live with themselves with that, but that is the reality,” he added.
Mystal also called Supreme Court Justice John Roberts the “chief architect of this assault on voting rights” because he helped to strike down parts of the Voting Rights Act.
“It is he that has been an enemy of voting rights and racial equality from his very first job out of law school, which was to oppose the 1982 amendments to the Voting Rights Act,” he observed. “This has all been done by Federal Society conservatives that have been put on the Supreme Court.”
Breivik, a far-right extremist, killed 77 people in Norway’s worst peacetime atrocity in July 2011. He killed eight with a car bomb in Oslo and then gunned down 69, most of them teenagers, at a Labour Party youth camp.
With a shaven head and dressed in a dark suit, Breivik made a white supremacist sign with his fingers before raising his right arm in a Nazi salute to signal his far-right ideology as he entered the court.
He also carried signs, printed in English, including one that said “Stop your genocide against our white nations” and “Nazi-Civil-War”.
He was later told to stop displaying them as the prosecution presented its case.
“I don’t want to see anything of the kind when the prosecution speaks,” Judge Dag Bjoervik said.
Breivik shook his head several times as the prosecution made its case, which included a passage from the original 2012 verdict which said that even after serving for 21 years in prison the defendant would still be a very dangerous man.
Breivik will address the court later on Tuesday. His lawyer Oeystein Storrvik has said Breivik is intent on eventually securing his release.
Miami Florida will be under water within 10 years, so huckster
trump plans on building 2,300 new homes at the struggling Doral resort
Benard Condont. January 18, 2022
FILE – In this Nov. 20, 2019 file photo, the entrance to the Trump National Doral resort is shown in Doral, Fla. Donald Trump plans to build thousands of new luxury homes at his struggling Doral golf club in hopes of reviving the fortunes of the Miami-area property. The club is the biggest revenue generator in his golf business, but has suffered from a one-two punch of a divisive presidency that led groups to cancel events followed by coronavirus shutdowns. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee, file)
NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump plans to build 2,300 luxury homes at his Doral golf resort in the Miami area, part of a flurry of recent moves to revive a family business suffering from the one-two punch of a divisive presidency and coronavirus shutdowns.
In a news release Monday, the 45th president called the plans for his sprawling Trump National Doral resort “perhaps the most exciting development in the country” but was short on details such as the size of the homes and what they may cost. The release said the plans called for the construction of retail and commercial space as well.
The Doral, the biggest revenue generator among Trump’s 17 golf properties, has been a drain on the business in recent years.
In 2019, Trump announced plans to hold the global meeting of Group of Seven leaders at the resort, a potential big money maker for hosts. But he had to cancel after a bipartisan outcry over self-dealing and a possible violation of a constitutional ban on presidents receiving gifts or payments from foreign leaders.
The resort had hoped to regain ground after the PGA and other organizations pulled events there, but finances have only gotten worse since. Revenue plunged more than by $33 million over the next two years, down more than 40%, according to financial statements filed with a federal government ethics office. As of last year, the Trump company had $125 million borrowed on the property.
The Trump Organization did not reply to requests for comment.
The press release had an official U.S. government seal with an American eagle at top, an unusual use given the release was promoting a private business venture. Former presidents can use the seal for matters involving their former office, but are not allowed to profit from it. Under federal law, the seal can only be used for official government business.
The Trump Organization’s plans for Doral are part of a string of recent business moves after months of relative quiet.
In September, several news outlets reported that the company had struck a preliminary deal to sell the lease underlying its Washington, D.C., hotel to Miami-based CGI Merchant Group for $375 million, much more than many hotel experts had expected for the money-losing property.
In October, Trump announced a new rival to Twitter, Facebook and other social media platforms that had banned him after his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 last year. The business said it is will give voice to others who’ve been taken off social media sites as part of “cancel culture.” Last month, it said it had raised $1 billion from unnamed investors and plans to launch the messaging app called Truth Social early this year.
Biden administration takes action on toxic coal ash plaguing Kentucky and Indiana
James Bruggers January 17, 2022
The Biden administration is making its first significant move toward corralling lingering and widespread problems with toxic ash from coal-fired power plants, one of the nation’s most prominent environmental health legacies from more than a century of coal-fired electricity generation.
The agency’s action could have major implications in states such as Kentucky, Indiana and Tennessee, each of which has been wrestling with the consequences of huge volumes of waste products left behind by burning coal.
It is also where decisions are being made on whether coal ash can be safely entombed where it was once-storied in watery pits, or whether the waste should be removed and sent to modern, dry landfills with liner systems and other measures to protect groundwater.
In 2015, the EPA under the Obama administration put forth the first national rules on coal ash, which required most of the nation’s approximately 500 unlined coal ash surface impoundments to stop receiving waste and begin closing by April 2021.
Those ash dumps, laced with contaminants like mercury, cadmium and arsenic, often pollute groundwater and send particulate air pollution into nearby communities.
While the Trump administration allowed utilities to request extensions, the Biden EPA announced Tuesday it is taking action on nine of 57 extension applications filed.
The agency denied three, including one filed by the Clifty Power plant in Madison, Indiana. It approved one, at East Kentucky Power’s Spurlock power plant in Maysville, Kentucky, and it found four incomplete and one ineligible.
More determinations, EPA officials said, are coming.
EPA deems retired Gallagher plant in Indiana out of compliance
The EPA also said it was putting several power plants on notice regarding their obligations to comply with rules, and it was working on plans for future changes to regulations aimed at making sure coal ash dumps meet strong environmental and safety standards.
One of those plants to get a letter saying it was out of compliance was the now-retired Gallagher plant in New Albany, owned by Duke Energy, which had stored millions of tons of coal ash near the banks of the Ohio River across from western Louisville.
The plant, whose twin stacks sent air pollution to Louisville for six decades, prompting prolonged regulatory battles, has two surface impoundments with ash sitting in 20 feet of groundwater, according to EPA. If Duke wants to avoid removing the ash, it will have to demonstrate how it can keep it in place without causing contaminants in the ash from getting into the groundwater, EPA said.
Duke Energy told the IndyStar it believes its current work was done in full compliance with regulations and industry standards. Still, “we have a shared interest with federal and state regulators to ensure customers and communities continue to remain protected in the future,” said utility spokeswoman Angeline Protogere.
In the agency’s actions, environmental lawyers who have been fighting for coal ash regulations saw a reason for optimism.
Abel Russ, a senior attorney with the group Environmental Integrity Project, said EPA’s proposed actions show it understands utilities are not properly monitoring groundwater in ways that can preclude cleanup requirements.
Tennessee Valley Authority riddled with leaky coal ash pits
The Southern Environmental Law Center, which has litigated and won coal ash cleanup cases in states like North Carolina and South Carolina, said EPA’s determinations set a precedent for compliance nationwide, including in Tennessee, where the law center says tens of millions of tons of coal ash remains in leaky coal ash pits at Tennessee Valley Authority power plants.
“The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has stepped up to offer communities hope and to protect clean water, rivers, and drinking water supplies from the threats posed by coal ash,” said Frank Holleman, a senior attorney at the law center. “With EPA’s leadership, we now have the opportunity to put coal ash pollution and catastrophes behind us and to restore common-sense protections for communities across the South who have lived with coal ash contamination for far too long.”
The Edison Electric Institute, a trade group that represents investor-owned utilities, has long maintained that electric companies are managing coal ash “in ways that put safety first, protect the environment, minimize impacts to the community, and manage costs for customers.”
Institute spokesman Brian Reil did not immediately return requests for comment on the EPA actions. Nor did Jim Roewer, the executive director of the Utility Solid Waste Activities Group, an association of more than 131 utilities.
Utilities have argued they can remove the surface water from a coal ash pit and cover it up to protect the environment.
One of the coal-ash ponds at the Gallagher power plant in New Albany, Ind. Industry officials say the settling ponds are designed to keep pollution from getting into the environment.
In announcing its proposed determinations, the agency said it was affirming its view that ash disposal pits or landfills cannot be closed with ash in contact with groundwater. Limiting contact between coal ash and groundwater after closure is critical to minimizing releases of contaminants into the environment and contamination of water for drinking and recreation, it stated.
“I’ve seen first-hand how coal ash contamination can hurt people and communities,” EPA administrator Michael Regan said in announcing Tuesday’s action. “Coal ash surface impoundments and landfills must operate and close in a manner that protects public health and the environment. Today’s actions will help us protect communities and hold facilities accountable.”
What is coal ash?
Coal ash and other combustion wastes are what remains after coal is burned to generate electricity.
The mercury, cadmium and arsenic contained in waste piles can pollute the air and groundwater and are associated with cancer and other health ailments. Over the last century, hundreds of power plants produced billions of tons of ash and other combustion wastes, including scrubber sludge.
Lisa Evans, a senior attorney specializing in hazardous waste law at Earthjustice, a national environmental law organization, described the new EPA proposed actions, taken together, as a potential “game-changer.”
She said they signal that the agency intends to use enforcement powers it has not previously employed to crack down on what she described as “blatant noncompliance” by utilities that has left what often are communities of color exposed to toxic pollution.
Still, Evans noted the EPA announcement does not address the problem of coal ash that was dumped and buried before the 2015 EPA regulations went into effect — perhaps as much as half of all the coal ash ever produced.
Inside Climate News is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news outlet that covers climate, energy and the environment.
Democracy under attack: how Republicans led the effort to make it harder to vote
Sam Levine in New York December 27, 2021
Photograph: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images
2021 was the year that America’s democracy came under attack from within.
Donald Trump’s effort to overturn the election results, an endeavor that culminated in the 6 January assault on the Capitol, ultimately failed. But the lies the former president spread about fraud and the integrity of the 2020 results have stuck around in a dangerous way. False claims about the election have moved to the center of the Republican party.
Republican lawmakers have seized on the fears created by those baseless claims and weaponized them into new laws that make it harder to vote. Between January and October, 19 states enacted 33 laws to restrict voting access, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.
But Republicans haven’t stopped there. There is now a concerted effort to take more partisan control of election administration. Trump is supporting election deniers in their efforts to take control of key offices that control the rules of elections and counting of ballots. That effort has elevated fears that Trump is laying the groundwork for another coup in 2024, when supporters in those roles could help overturn the election results.
All these actions are taking place against the backdrop of the once-per-decade redistricting process, which Republicans dominate in many states. Republicans are taking full advantage of that power, drawing districts that will entrench their control of state legislatures and win congressional seats for the next decade.
Joe Biden has described this attack as “the most significant test of our democracy since the civil war”. But Democrats in the US Senate have been unable to pass two bills with significant voting rights protections. Whether Biden and Senate Democrats can find a way to get those bills through Congress looms as a major test of his presidency.
Here are the ways that voting rights emerged as the most important story in American politics in 2021:
New voting restrictions
When state legislatures convened at the start of 2021, many moved quickly to enact new laws making it harder to cast a ballot. Many of these new measures targeted voting by mail, which a record number of Americans used in 2020.
One of the most high profile battles was in Georgia, a state Trump targeted with baseless claims of fraud after a surprising loss to Biden there. Republicans enacted a law that requires voters to provide additional identification information on both absentee ballot request forms and the ballot itself. They also restricted the availability of absentee ballot drop boxes, a popular method of returning ballots in 2020. The law also criminalized providing food and water to people standing in line within 150ft of a polling place.
In Florida, Republicans enacted a new law that also restricts the availability of ballot drop boxes, imposes new rules around third-party registration groups, and requires voters to more frequently request absentee ballots.
The fight over new voting restrictions exploded in July, when Democrats in the Texas legislature fled the state for several weeks, denying Republicans the quorum they needed to pass new voting restrictions. Republicans eventually succeeded in passing a law that banned 24-hour voting, established regular citizenship checks for voter rolls, made it harder to assist voters, and empowered partisan poll watchers.
Undermining confidence in elections
A staggering number of Americans continue to deny the results of the 2020 election. A September CNN poll found 36% of Americans do not believe Biden was the legitimate winner of the election.
Trump has fed that disbelief by continuing to make claims of irregularities that have already been debunked. Republicans in several states continue to call for the “decertification” of elections, something that is legally impossible.
Republicans in some places have gone even further, authorizing unusual post-election inquiries into election results.
The most high-profile of those reviews was in Arizona, where Republicans hired a firm with no election experience, called Cyber Ninjas, to examine all 2.1m votes cast in Maricopa county, the most populous in the state. That monthslong effort, which included a hand count of every single ballot, was widely criticized by election experts, who noted that the firm had shoddy methodology and its leader had embraced conspiracy theories about the election. Ultimately, the Cyber Ninjas effort affirmed Biden’s win in Maricopa county.
Republicans elsewhere have embraced similar reviews. In Wisconsin, Republicans in the legislature have hired a former Republican supreme court justice to examine the election, but that effort has been marked by sloppiness and accusations of partisan bias.
“This is a grift, to be clear,” Matt Masterson, a former top official at the Department of Homeland Security, who works on election administration, said in December.
These efforts have been coupled with an even more alarming effort in Republican legislatures to empower lawmakers to alter election results. Lawmakers in seven states, including Michigan, Arizona, Missouri and Nevada, introduced 10 bills this year that would empower them to override or change election results, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. Some of the bills would allow partisan lawmakers to outright reject election results, while others would allow for post-election meddling in the vote count.
Attacks on election officials
Over the last year, there’s been a surge in election administrators who have left their positions because of threats and harassment. Experts are deeply concerned about that exodus and say that it could make room for more inexperienced, partisan workers to take over the running of elections. Ben Ginsberg, a longtime Republican election lawyer, said earlier this month the effort was an attempt to take election administration “from the pros” and give it “to the pols”.
Trump has endorsed several candidates who have embraced the myth of a stolen election to be the secretary of state, the chief election official, in many states. So far, he’s made endorsements in GOP primaries in Michigan, Arizona, Georgia and Nevada – all swing states that could play a determinative role in 2024.
Extreme partisan gerrymandering
At the start of each decade, state lawmakers across the US draw new congressional and state legislative districts. In 2020, Republicans dominated the down-ballot races that determine who gets to control the redistricting process. And this year, they’ve used their power remarkably powerfully.
In Texas, where 95% of the state’s population growth was from non-white people, Republicans drew maps blunting the political power of minorities. They drew no new majority-minority districts, instead giving Republicans an advantage at winning the state’s two new congressional seats. Republicans have also moved to shore up their advantage in politically competitive states like North Carolina, Ohio and Georgia. Democrats are gerrymandering the states where they have power, like Illinois and Maryland, but control the redistricting process in far fewer places than Republicans do.
These rigged districts will insulate Republicans from threats to their political power for the next decade.
Federal voting rights legislation
One of the biggest frustrations of the first year of Biden’s presidency has been that Democrats have not been able to pass two crucial pieces of voting rights legislation through Congress. One bill would set a minimum of access across the country, guaranteeing things like 15 days of early voting, as well as prohibiting partisan gerrymandering. The second bill would re-establish a critical piece of the 1965 Voting Rights Act requiring states where there is repeated evidence of voting discrimination to get voting changes approved by the federal government before they go into effect.
There is growing frustration that Biden has not pushed hard enough to get rid of the filibuster, which Republicans have relied on to stall those bills. Democrats have pledged to find a way around the filibuster next year.
