When President Donald Trump attempted to overturn the 2020 election, the institutional guardrails of American democracy held — but just barely.
If faced with the same tests today, those guardrails and the people who held the line would largely be missing, a ProPublica examination found.
At least 75 career officials who once held roles at federal agencies related to election integrity and safety are gone. Two dozen appointees — including many who either actively worked to reverse the 2020 vote or are associates of such people — have been hired to replace them. And once-fringe actors now have access to vast powers.
But Trump can’t run again. What are they planning here? A coup that looks kind of sort of legal?
Mind you, Trump won’t be on the ballot in two years anyway; he hasn’t got that long.
Since the start of his second term, Trump and his appointees have made significant changes at federal agencies tasked with helping to safeguard elections. In all, at least 75 career officials who’d played important roles in elections work at DHS, the Department of Justice and other agencies have left, been fired or been reassigned, ProPublica found.
In their place are roughly two dozen people Trump has installed in positions that could affect elections. Ten of them actively worked to reverse the 2020 vote, and the rest are associates of those people. In some cases, ProPublica found, officials have been hired from activist groups that are pillars of the election-denial movement.
So who is the Trump Chosen Successor?
It won’t be anyone Trump chose or endorsed, because he clearly thinks he will live forever, but his enablers must have someone in mind, to go to all this trouble.
Officials at DHS’ Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency had provided research to the first Trump White House that disproved many theories claiming that the 2020 election had been hacked. CISA also played a crucial part in publicly countering these claims by producing a “Rumor Control” website to rebut them.
Then, only weeks into Trump’s second term, DHS leadership put employees focused on countering disinformation and helping safeguard elections on leave. They also froze CISA’s other election security work, which included assessing local election offices for physical and cybersecurity risks. Eventually, all CISA employees specializing in elections were fired or transferred.
Get all the truth-finders out. Replace them with liars. Result: Trump in the job for all eternity.
FBI Director Kash Patel dismantled the agency’s public corruption team, which had previously been deployed to help monitor possible criminal activity on Election Day. The Foreign Influence Task Force, which aimed to combat foreign influence in U.S. politics, was also disbanded.
(An FBI spokesperson said the bureau “remains committed to detecting and countering foreign influence efforts by adversarial nations.”)
The voting section of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division had enforced federal laws that protect voting rights, particularly those that combat racial discrimination. But now, nearly all of the section’s roughly 30 career lawyers have resigned or been moved. Trump then filled the section with conservative lawyers, including at least four who participated in challenging the 2020 vote or have worked with people who helped Trump try to overturn the 2020 election.
Conservative lawyers are one thing and Trump-assisting lawyers are quite another. There’s nothing conservative about Trump. He’s destructive rather than conservative, and corrupt more than he’s anything else.
We’re so screwed.
H/t Mostly Cloudy
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