Before the abandoned federal attempt to prosecute Donald Trump for trying to overturn his 2020 election loss, state and local prosecutors brought cases against his fake electors.
The term referred to the people who, in several of the swing states won by former President Joe Biden, declared themselves to be the rightful electors who would vote for Trump in the Electoral College. It was part of Trump’s long-shot bid to push Congress to reject Biden’s electors and throw the election to him.
Democratic prosecutors filed indictments against them before Trump himself was charged by a special prosecutor appointed by Biden’s Department of Justice, making the fake electors the most prominent example of how those who helped Trump faced consequences for their attempt to reverse the election results. Many of those cases have now hit a dead end or are just limping along.
The charges against Trump were dropped after he won the election, following last year’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling granting presidents immunity for much of their conduct in office. While the fake elector cases ground on, several have hit legal roadblocks — most dramatically on Tuesday when a Michigan judge dismissed charges against 15 Republicans who had been charged by that state’s Democratic attorney general, Dana Nessel.
Judge Kristen Simmons said prosecutors had not shown that the defendants intended to defraud the public.
“Right, wrong or indifferent, it was these individuals and many other individuals in the state of Michigan who sincerely believed — for some reason — that there were some serious irregularities with the election,” said Simmons, who was originally appointed by the state’s Democratic governor and then won reelection to the bench.
….Marian Sheridan, one of the people charged in Michigan whose case was dismissed, said Tuesday that the group’s plan was to act as a “backup” or “lifeboat” in case the election results were overturned.
“We were not fake,” she said. “We were alternate.”
Rick Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, said such arguments were part of the reason he viewed the fake elector cases as some of the “weaker” criminal ones filed after the 2020 election.
But he said the combination of the failures of those prosecutions, coupled with Trump’s avoiding liability and his pardons of more than 1,500 people convicted of crimes in the cases stemming from the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, are a grim combination.
“All of it fits together to create really bad incentives for a system of free and fair election and peaceful transitions of power,” Hasen said.
All posts by Rick Hasen
“Why some longtime gerrymandering opponents are reconsidering their strategies”
Hansi Lo Wang for NPR.
“Trump Administration Quietly Seeks to Build National Voter Roll”
The Justice Department is compiling the largest set of national voter roll data it has ever collected, buttressing an effort by President Trump and his supporters to try to prove long-running, unsubstantiated claims that droves of undocumented immigrants have voted illegally, according to people familiar with the matter.
The effort to essentially establish a national voting database, involving more than 30 states, has elicited serious concerns among voting rights experts because it is led by allies of the president, who as recently as this January refused to acknowledge Joseph R. Biden Jr. fairly won the 2020 election. It has also raised worries that those same officials could use the data to revive lies of a stolen election, or try to discredit future election results.
The initiative has proceeded along two tracks, one at the Justice Department’s civil rights division and another at its criminal division, seeking data about individual voters across the country, including names and addresses, in a move that experts say may violate the law. It is a significant break from decades of practice by Republican and Democratic administrations, which believed that doing so was federal overreach and ripe for abuse.
“Nobody has ever done anything like this,” said Justin Levitt, an election law expert at Loyola Marymount University’s law school and a former Justice Department official.
The Justice Department has requested data from at least 16 Republican-controlled states, including Mississippi, Alabama and Texas. It has also sent more formal demands for data to at least 17 mostly Democrat-controlled or swing states, including Pennsylvania, Nevada, Wisconsin and New York.
Nearly every state has resisted turning over voter files with private, personally identifiable information on voters like driver’s license numbers or Social Security numbers. Last week, a local judge blocked South Carolina from releasing private voter information to the Justice Department.
In a private meeting with the staff of top state election officials last month, Michael Gates, a deputy assistant attorney general in the civil rights division, disclosed that all 50 states would eventually receive similar requests, according to notes of the meeting reviewed by The New York Times. In particular, he said, the federal government wants the last four digits of every voter’s Social Security number….
Mr. Levitt likened the effort to sending federal troops to bolster local police work. “It’s wading in, without authorization and against the law, with an overly heavy federal hand to take over a function that states are actually doing just fine,” he said, adding that “it’s wildly illegal, deeply troubling, and nobody asked for this.”
In a statement, a Justice Department spokesman, Gates McGavick, said, “Enforcing the nation’s elections laws is a priority in this administration and in the civil rights division.”…
“Democrats pick members for new GOP-led committee on Jan. 6 Capitol attack”
WaPo:
Democrats named the members of their caucus to serve on a new subcommittee reinvestigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol — a Republican-led probe that threatens to reignite tensions over one of the most divisive events in American political history.
Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-New York) announced Monday that Reps. Eric Swalwell (D-California), Jared Moskowitz (D-Florida) and Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) will participate in the eight-member committee and Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland) will serve as an ex officio member….
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) is tasked with choosing the Republican members who will serve on the subcommittee, but has yet to announce who will represent the GOP on the panel. Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-Georgia), who spearheaded a report as a subcommittee chair under the House Administration Committee last Congress is expected to lead the new subcommittee.
The new subcommittee will have subpoena power and is “authorized and directed to conduct a full and complete investigation” of the events on Jan. 6, when a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol to prevent the certification of Biden’s election.
It is intended to be a response to the 117th Congress’s original Jan. 6 select committee, which held high-profile public hearings and released an 845-page report after 18 months of work including reviewing emails, text messages, call logs and White House records, and conducting more than 1,000 interviews….
“White House may discuss mid-decade redistricting with Nebraska lawmakers this week”
A handful of Nebraska lawmakers are set to travel to Washington, D.C., this week for a “state leadership conference” at the White House’s invitation.
But, if what happened with delegations from other states is an indication, another reason for the trip might be for President Donald Trump and his team to lay groundwork for asking another red state to redistrict congressional boundaries to Republican advantage before the 2026 election.
At least four Nebraska lawmakers confirmed with the Examiner that they are headed to Capitol Hill on Tuesday. The official reason is the leadership conference organized by the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs….
“Missouri House Set to Vote on Map That Boosts Republicans”
The Missouri House of Representatives is poised to vote on Tuesday on new congressional boundaries that would create an additional Republican-leaning district, part of President Trump’s national push to redraw maps to favor his party ahead of the midterm elections.
As lawmakers gathered at the Missouri State Capitol this week, Democrats, who are outnumbered, decried the new boundaries as “brazen,” “shameless,” cheating or “all to protect Trump,” and questioned whether drawing a new map now was even legal. States generally pass new congressional boundaries once a decade, after the results of the census are published.
“If we sanction this midcycle redraw, we will be joining the long and shameful line of the states that have used legal language to silence voters rather than to protect them,” said State Representative Kem Smith, a Democrat from the St. Louis area.
But Republicans used their large majority on Monday to advance the new map, which would split a Kansas City-based district now held by Representative Emanuel Cleaver, a Democrat who has held a congressional seat for two decades. The proposed boundaries would favor Republicans in seven of Missouri’s eight districts, up from the six seats they currently hold. The new boundaries would splice Kansas City’s core into districts with large rural areas….
“Thune Moves to Speed Trump Nominees Past Democratic Blockade”
NYT:
Republicans took the first step on Monday toward changing the Senate’s rules to speed the confirmations of Trump administration nominees being slowed by Democratic opposition, touching off the latest in a yearslong tit for tat between the two parties that has weakened the filibuster.
The move is a response to Democrats’ refusal to allow President Trump’s nominees to be considered, which has slowed their confirmations and frustrated the president. But its consequences will reach beyond Mr. Trump’s tenure, effectively whittling down the ability of the minority to register any opposition to executive branch nominees below the cabinet level.
Senator John Thune of South Dakota, the majority leader, made the first move on Monday by introducing a resolution that would group 48 of Mr. Trump’s nominees together to allow them to be considered and voted on as a group. That will queue up a complex series of floor votes this week and next that, if successful, would create new Senate precedents meant to help Republicans clear a growing backlog of nominees.
Republicans, who hold 53 seats, will try to muscle through the rules change using a simple majority, a tactic known as “going nuclear,” in part because of the charged partisan cloud it can leave over an institution that once prided itself on operating according to consensus.
t is the latest change to chip away at longstanding Senate precedent in the face of an increasingly polarized political environment.
Speaking on the Senate floor, Mr. Thune framed the rules change as a necessary response to what he framed as an unprecedented Democratic blockade against fast confirmation of any of Mr. Trump’s nominees, including lower-level picks that have traditionally been confirmed by voice votes or by unanimous consent.
Democrats, staunchly opposed to Mr. Trump’s efforts to reshape the executive branch and insisting more attention be paid to nominees they say are unqualified, have insisted on formal votes for each person, delaying approval of the president’s picks for dozens of jobs….
Changes to the Senate’s precedents, which govern how the chamber works, are supposed to require the approval of 67 senators, a barrier meant to make them more difficult to adopt. In using what is known as the nuclear option, members of the majority party instead attempt to take an action that has never been allowed before and then hold a number of procedural votes to overrule any objection by the minority and proceed, thus setting a new precedent that replaces what has been done in the past.
Democrats used the tactic in 2013 to lower the vote threshold on most nominees to a simple majority rather than 60 votes, a response to Senate Republicans systematically blocking a series of Obama administration judicial appointees.
Republicans then retaliated in 2017 to lower the threshold for Supreme Court nominees, allowing Mr. Trump to install three justices during his first term….
Register for Free Sept. 16 Webinar from Safeguarding Democracy Project: “The Risk of Federal Interference in the 2026 Midterm Elections”
The Risk of Federal Interference in the 2026 Midterm Elections
Tuesday, September 16, 12:15pm-1:15pm PT, Webinar
Register here.
Ben Haiman, UVA Center for Public Safety and Justice, Liz Howard, NYU Law Brennan Center for Justice, and Stephen Richer, Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, Harvard Kennedy School
Richard L. Hasen, moderator (Director, Safeguarding Democracy Project, UCLA)
UCLA School of Law is a State Bar of California approved MCLE provider. This session is approved for 1 hour of MCLE credit.
“Russia Steps Up Disinformation Efforts as Trump Abandons Resistance”
Since returning to the White House in January, President Trump has dismantled the American government’s efforts to combat foreign disinformation. The problem is that Russia has not stopped spreading it.
How much that matters can now be seen in Moldova, a small but strategic European nation that has since the end of the Cold War looked to Europe and the United States to extract itself from Moscow’s shadow.
The Trump administration has slashed diplomatic and financial support for the country’s fight against Russian influence, even as the Kremlin has conducted what researchers and European officials described as an intense campaign to sway that country’s parliamentary elections, scheduled for Sept. 28.
The Russians have flooded social media with fake posts, videos and entire websites that are created and spread on TikTok, Telegram, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube using increasingly effective artificial intelligence tools.
One post impersonated OK!, the celebrity magazine based in New York, in an attempt to smear Moldova’s president, Maia Sandu, with a preposterous accusation involving celebrity sperm donors.
A year ago, when the country last held elections, Biden administration officials pushed back against such campaigns, urging platforms like Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, to do more to identify trolls or inauthentic accounts. No more.
“The Russians now are able to basically control the information environment in Moldova in a way that they could only have dreamed a year ago,” said Thomas O. Melia, a former official at the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development….
“Republicans brace for redistricting ‘catastrophe’ in California”
Republicans wield almost no power in California. But as a moribund state party gathered here over the weekend, it confronted an even grimmer reality now suddenly settling in: If the state gerrymanders its congressional map, they’ll practically be an endangered species.
“It’s a guillotine,” said Dale Quasny, a party delegate and real-estate broker from suburban Los Angeles County. “We won’t be able to pick up the pieces and move forward. I mean, we were making a little headway, but this would be a catastrophe.”
ong locked out of power in Sacramento, one thing that Republicans here and nationally have counted on for years from California was influence in U.S. House races — and the ability to help deliver Republican majorities by winning battleground races in the state’s Central Valley and Orange County.
Now they’re on the brink of losing even that — a consequence of the redistricting wars that could cost the GOP as many as five House seats in California.
It is in part the Republican president, Donald Trump, who got them here. The GOP base in the state is as ardently MAGA as anywhere. But it was Trump’s push for a Republican gerrymandering in deep-red Texas that sparked a national battle over redistricting, provoking Gov. Gavin Newsom and Democratic leaders to respond with a Nov. 4 ballot measure to gerrymander California’s lines.
Even Republicans here, while chiding Newsom, were critical of Trump’s redistricting effort. And as rank-and-file members of the GOP gathered in Orange County for their annual convention, the festivities were overshadowed by angst over the consequences of redistricting in a deep-blue state.
“I’m certainly frustrated that our party’s leadership has not been more proactive in trying to stop a redistricting war,” said Republican Rep. Kevin Kiley, whose seat in the Sacramento suburbs is at risk of being drawn out of existence. “We shouldn’t be having mid-decade redistricting in any state.”
If there is any bright spot for Republicans, it’s that the left has had some difficulty recently with ballot measures. Voters last year rejected statewide proposals to ban forced prison labor, raise the minimum wage and expand rent control. [Non-partisan line-drawing is overwhelmingly popular in California.] And if Republicans can defeat Newsom’s redistricting effort, they would hand him a significant setback on the cusp of a likely 2028 presidential campaign.
Even internal polling from Democrats in the state Legislature suggests the GOP’s messaging on the initiative could be effective with some voters, including that “two wrongs don’t make a right” and that it “undermines democracy.”
While polling shared with Democrats in the state Assembly last week and obtained by POLITICO found a majority of voters support a redrawn map, it also suggests the plan could be vulnerable if Democrats don’t turn out in November, with many independent voters skeptical of the concept of gerrymandering….
“How Does the Gerrymandering Arms Race End?”
Alex Keena, Michael Latner, and Natasha Romero Moskala write at the Substack of the Houston Institute for Race & Justice.
Should Representative Ronny Jackson’s Lawyers Be Sanctioned for Filing a Frivolous Federal Lawsuit Attacking California’s Proposed Ballot Measure Redrawing Congressional Districts?
This ridiculous complaint went nowhere even before federal district judge Matthew Kascmaryk given that Rep. Jackson could not prove irreparable harm before the ballot measure even passes and given that Jackson failed to give notice to the other side. Here’s a news story on the rejection of the motion for a TRO.
But look at the complaint on the merits. The first claim purports to state a violation of the Elections Clause, which gives state legislatures the power to set the rules for conducting federal elections, subject to Congressional override. Jackson’s argument made me laugh out loud. It’s a reverse independent state legislature theory argument, that the CA legislature could not put a state constitutional amendment on the ballot to reverse the use of an independent commission for congressional redistricting for the rest of the decade because that would violate the state constitution. By definition, an amendment to the Constitution that overturns an old provision of the constitution cannot be unconstitutional, and in any case it does not violate the federal Elections Clause limiting the power of the state legislature.
This argument is a frivolous embarrassment.
“The Secret Bundlers Behind Eric Adams’ Campaign Fundraising Revealed”
In October 2023, Mayor Eric Adams showed up for the opening of a new office of a big personal injury law firm, Morgan & Morgan, smiling and posing for selfies in Manhattan’s South Street Seaport. The firm made sure to post photos of the mayor’s seemingly random visit on social media.
The visit, however, was anything but random.
A few months earlier, Adams himself had recruited one of the firm’s lawyers to raise campaign donations for his re-election bid and had granted the lawyer an exclusive in-person sit-down arranged by his chief fundraiser. The lawyer then bundled $21,000 worth of contributions for the mayor.
None of this was in the public eye.
That’s because of a loophole in the law that says campaigns do not have to disclose bundlers as intermediaries — money-raisers who choreograph multiple donations to campaigns — if they’re doing this fundraising in connection to an event paid for, in part or whole, by the campaign. In this case, it was a performance of the musical “New York, New York” the Adams campaign had arranged at the St. James Theater off Broadway, forking over some $75,000 for seats.
The personal injury lawyer was hardly alone. An investigation by THE CITY has found that Adams did not disclose an army of these secret bundlers to the city’s Campaign Finance Board — a lapse that is legal, but ethically dubious, campaign finance experts say.
Hundreds of pages of texts with Adams’ chief fundraiser Brianna Suggs covering both the 2021 and 2025 campaigns that were released recently reveal the identities of these apparent bundlers as they exchanged detailed lists of potential donors they had identified for her and, in some cases, promised to raise six-figures worth of donations.
“U.S. Is Increasingly Exposed to Chinese Election Threats, Lawmakers Say”
Democratic lawmakers warned on Friday that severe staff cuts at an intelligence office that monitors foreign threats to U.S. elections would leave the country vulnerable to interference and subversion from Beijing, as Chinese companies use artificial intelligence as a new weapon in information warfare.
In a letter to Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, Representatives Raja Krishnamoorthi of Illinois and André Carson of Indiana cited a New York Times story about technology developed by the Chinese company GoLaxy that aims to use artificial intelligence to make influence and information operations far more effective.
The representatives, who both serve on the House China committee, said the cuts at Ms. Gabbard’s office were “stripping away the guardrails that protect our nation from foreign influence.”
In recent weeks, Ms. Gabbard announced staff reductions that all but eliminated the Foreign Malign Influence Center, which tracks efforts by adversarial countries to manipulate U.S. elections and warp American dialogue.
Documents uncovered by Vanderbilt University and examined by The Times detailed new technology developed by GoLaxy that aimed to improve China’s ability to influence public debate. GoLaxy, according to the documents, had done work in Hong Kong and Taiwan and collected information about American lawmakers.
GoLaxy, according to the documents, was using artificial intelligence to track large numbers of people in order to generate pro-Chinese propaganda that could shape public debates, promote the views of China’s government and drown out voices opposed to its policies…..