Month: September 2022

And he gets away with it again and again

Trump said he couldn’t release his tax returns because he was under audit. We all knw that was a lie. But it’s interesting to see how he came up with it. (And it’s pretty clear Chris Christie is the source of this story.)

In her eagerly awaited book, Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America, the New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman describes the scene on Trump’s plane just before Super Tuesday, 1 March 2016.

Trump, she says, was discussing the issue with aides including Corey Lewandowski, then his campaign manager, and his press secretary, Hope Hicks. The aides, Haberman says, pointed out that as Trump was about to be confirmed as the favourite for the Republican nomination, the problem needed to be addressed.

Haberman writes: “Trump thought for a second about how to ‘get myself out of this’, as he said. He leaned back, before snapping up to a sudden thought.

“‘Well, you know my taxes are under audit. I always get audited,’ Trump said … ‘So what I mean is, well I could just say, ‘I’ll release them when I’m no longer under audit. ‘Cause I’ll never not be under audit.’”

She writes that Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor who became a Trump surrogate after dropping out of the primary himself, “looked puzzled”, then told Trump there was no legal prohibition against releasing tax returns under audit.

“‘But my lawyers,’ Trump said. ‘I’m sure my lawyers and my counsel will tell me not to.’ He then told his bodyguard, Keith Schiller, to coordinate with his assistant, Rhona Graff, once they landed.”

It is not clear Trump received any legal advice before starting to use the excuse.

“Almost immediately,” Haberman writes, Trump “began citing the claim that he couldn’t possibly release his under-audit taxes”.

No lawyer was consulted, I’m sure. If they were they would have told him that the audit excuse was bs. But all Trump ever needs is just something to say, even if it makes no sense. He’s gotten away with doing this his entire life.

Trump didn’t invent right wing perfidy and he certainly didn’t invent the underhanded politics practiced by the Republican party. But he has modeled for the country a new kind of shamelessness that had been rewarded by millions of people, many of whom also know he’s lying but admire him for being so smart and devious.

Citing his phony election, Putin does it

CNN reports:

The US is imposing what it describes as “swift and severe costs” on Russia, including sanctions on a figure the Biden administration says is key to Russia’s economy, after President Vladimir Putin announced the annexation of regions of Ukraine following what the West casts as “sham referenda.”

Putin signed documents on Friday to formally begin the process of annexing four regions of Ukraine during a ceremony in the Kremlin, a clear violation of international law amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that began seven months ago.

US officials have been working behind the scenes to coordinate their response with allies over the course of the last several days and deploy it immediately after Putin’s official action, people familiar with the process said. The response marks an escalation and expansion of the most sweeping sanctions regime ever to target a major economy, one that has been steadily ramped up throughout the more than seven months since Russia’s invasion.

Here’s some informed analysis of Putin’s speech today announcing the annexation:

This morning, Vladimir Putin more or less declared war on the West. Probably a second Cold War, and not a hot war. But honestly, who can say.

Here’s the deal:

A week ago, Putin staged “referendums” in four of the occupied regions of Ukraine. I say staged because the results were straight out of the bad old days of Soviet “elections”:

Results reported Tuesday by Russian state media allegedly showed over 98% voting in favor of the measure in the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics; while 93% voted for it in the Zaporizhzhia region and 87% in the Kherson region.

Over 98 percent of a voting public agreeing on something. Sure. Sounds legit.¹

The voting ended on September 27 and three days later Putin gathered a bunch of commissars at the Great Kremlin Palace in Moscow to sign treaties formally incorporating these four regions into the sovereign state of Russia.

As a matter of statecraft, this act pushes Russia’s confrontation with the West into a place from which there is no climbdown.

When these regions were only occupied, then you could have had a resolution to the war that left their status somewhat ambiguous, or kicked the can down the road for a few years. The West could have normalized relations with Russia and Russia could have left open the possibility that, at some indefinite point in the future, perhaps these regions would decide to become part of their territory.

Putting the annexation in writing and declaring that these regions are now part of the Motherland leaves no room for ambiguity. Either the West will accept Russia’s right to annex its neighbors, or not.

And if not, then conflict.

Putin underscored the nature of this escalation in a speech he gave before signing the treaties. In it, he spent much of his time explicitly stating that his Russia is now in an existential conflict with the West.

There was a lot of culture war baked into his talk—complaints about same-sex marriage and religious freedom and trans stuff. I imagine that a certain kind of TradCon will read this speech and start vibrating in ecstasy: ZOMG BASED PUTIN IS SPEAKING FOR US!

Putin also had some red meat (yswidt?) for the Tankies: denouncing Western colonialism and the opium wars and America’s use of nukes. So Glenn Greenwald will feel serviced, too.

But in terms of actual geopolitical importance, these are the important excerpts:

I want the Kyiv authorities and their real masters in the West to hear me, so that they remember this. People living in Luhansk and Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia are becoming our citizens. Forever.

We call on the Kyiv regime to immediately end hostilities, end the war that they unleashed back in 2014 and return to the negotiating table.

We are ready for this . . . But we will not discuss the choice of the people in Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson. That has been made. Russia will not betray them.” . . .

We will defend our land with all the powers and means at our disposal.

Translation: Putin wants a ceasefire, the only condition of which is that the formal annexation of territories is recognized.

Maybe he thinks this is achievable. Maybe he thinks that his own grip on power in Russia can outlast Western and Ukrainian resolve to impose pain on Russia.

But that seems like a miscalculation. Two reasons.

(1) Europe has seen this movie before. They did not like the world in which Russian annexation was a thing.

(2) Here is the news from the battlefield yesterday:

The town in question is Lyman and this is what the encirclement looks like, courtesy of the ISW:

In other words, Putin has wagered that the pain Russia incurs in trying to hold its territory will not be sufficient to topple him before the pain he imposes on the West convinces the democracies to give up on these four regions.

This equation is now the only way in which the conflict will be settled.

yikes.

The right wing is in the grip of a very dangerous virus

That’s the man who claims credit for “Stop the Steal” Big Lie campaign to overthrow the election. I can’t tell if he thinks he’s being cute or if he really believes this. It could be either but I actually think it may be a combination of the two which, amazingly, doesn’t make his head explode.

Is this a nightmare from which I can’t awaken — a Dadaesque world filled with bizarre and grotesque people who don’t make any sense? Honestly, some days, I really feel that way.

But only if he wins …

I took some criticism for saying right after the election last year the impeachment of Joe Biden was almost inevitable. To me this seemed like a no-brainer. They live for payback. It’s really all they do. Well:

House Republicans have introduced more than a dozen impeachment resolutions against President Biden and his officials, far outpacing Democrats’ formal impeachment efforts at this point in former President Trump’s term.

The failed impeachment efforts provide a roadmap for the investigations that Republicans — eager to make the rest of Biden’s term a living nightmare — will likely pursue if they retake the majority after the midterms.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), one of the most right-wing members of Congress, introduced a new article of impeachment against Biden last week for selling oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to foreign nations — a practice the Trump administration also engaged in.

House Republicans (mostly, but not all, members of the right-wing Freedom Caucus) have introduced a staggering 14 impeachment resolutions since Jan. 3, 2021.

Biden has been the target of nine, with two aimed at Attorney General Merrick Garland and one each against Vice President Kamala Harris, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas.

The most common charges have been mishandling the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan and failing to secure the U.S.-Mexico border.

Greene alone has introduced five resolutions.

Though Democrats in the 115th Congress talked a big game about impeaching Trump for everything from accepting emoluments to firing FBI Director Jim Comey, they only introduced four impeachment resolutions in his first two years.

The impeachment efforts ramped up in the second half of his term, when Democrats took control of the House and introduced another eight resolutions — two of which ended in successful impeachment in the House and acquittal in the Senate.

Five resolutions were introduced in the days after the Capitol riot — four on Jan. 11, and another a day later.

Senior Republicans would likely draft their own articles if leadership ultimately decided to pursue impeachment after the midterms. But these toothless back-bench resolutions serve another valuable function: fundraising.

Just one day after her filing her latest article, Greene blasted out a fundraising email urging donors to “sign on as a citizen co-sponsor of my articles of impeachment.”

Greene, a darling of the GOP’s grassroots, has raised more than $10 million this cycle, making her the top fundraiser among freshman House members. She told Axios in an interview that she’s working to rally public support for impeachment: “I’ll be echoing what the American people are saying, and they’ll be demanding it. I think the Republican-controlled majority, if they want to be successful, especially going into 2024, they’ll definitely make that a priority.”

If they take back the majority this year, don’t expect conservatives’ fervor for impeachment to subside. Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.), in an interview with Axios, floated using impeachment threats as leverage in policy negotiations: “A fair trade off: we won’t pursue impeachment, but you go back to Trump border policies that were working.” [That’s actually called blackmail, not “leverage.” ]

The powerful Republican Study Committee is already laying the groundwork for an effort to impeach Mayorkas, Axios reported in April.

 Leading Republicans are still wary of rushing hastily into an impeachment effort without a clear basis.

“When we get control, we need to launch investigations and let that lead us to the appropriate conclusion and repercussions,” said RSC Chair Jim Banks (R-Ind.).

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, asked last week how he would handle calls for impeachment as speaker, deflected, telling Axios: “We just put out the Commitment to America, that’s what we’re focused on.”

The problem is that Kevin McCarthy will only be the titular Speaker. Donald Trump will be the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party and will demand impeachment. The MAGA caucus will push it through regardless and McCarthy will not have the power to stop it.

I suspect Trump will demand several impeachments. If they had enough time they would do it. It’s about the record and Trump doesn’t want to go down as the only president to be impeached twice.

It’s playground politics but that’s where we are. If they win it’s going to be a three ring circus for the next two years.

Somebody needs to cut back on the Diet Cokes

Maybe…

The devastation in Florida from Hurricane Ian is staggering in scope. The massive storm churned across the state leaving wrecked homes and ruined lives in its wake, and it’s frankly hard to watch the footage, knowing the depth of the misery people must be feeling. And we don’t know the half of it yet. The scope of death and destruction will only become clear as time passes.

Over the next few days, that’s all we’ll be thinking about, and understandably so. But soon the focus will turn to whether or not the authorities are doing everything they can to mitigate the crisis. After a disaster of this scale there will almost certainly be fingers pointed and backs stabbed in the days to come. Natural disasters, and especially hurricanes, are often political disasters as well and the future of those in charge can be changed in an instant.

Any state that is prone to hurricanes is therefore also politically hazardous for any governor who happens to be in charge when it hits. Florida Gov. Lawton Chiles, a Democrat, saw his poll numbers drop to 22% after Hurricane Andrew, one of the most destructive storms in the state’s history, hit Miami-Dade County in 1992. South Carolina Gov. Jim Hodges, also a Democrat lost his re-election campaign in 2002 largely because he was perceived as mishandling the evacuation procedures ahead of Hurricane Floyd in 1999. Every governor of a hurricane state knows they need to have their windbreaker handy and be ready to get out there and show people they’re doing everything they can to handle the emergency.

This challenge doesn’t only confront governors, of course. Presidents must also do everything they can to summon resources and aid or they too will pay a price. The most infamous example of this, without a doubt, was the calamitous response after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005. It was truly dreadful. From the Red Cross to the police to the local and state and federal government, the failures were monumental up and down the line. But the one who rtook the greatest share of the blame among the public, and rightfully so, was the president of the United States, George W. Bush. From the first days when he largely ignored the crisis while running around the country to the infamous photo-op where he told his hapless FEMA director, Michael Brown, “You’re doin’ a heckuva job, Brownie,” Bush failed to project any sympathy for the victims or display the slightest competence, even as the country watched the widespread suffering unfold on television. His presidency never recovered, and Republicans up and down the ballot paid the price in 2006 and 2008.

Another big hurricane damaged the political ambitions of another top Republican. That would be Chris Christie, who was governor of New Jersey when Hurricane Sandy destroyed much of that state’s famous shoreline back in 2012. Christie suffered for quite different reasons. Behaving as governors of both parties had always done, he welcomed Barack Obama to New Jersey and thanked him for his quick, dedicated commitment to the state’s recovery — and was excoriated by his fellow Republicans for ostensibly giving Obama a political boost ahead the 2012 election. Christie was eventually done in by a scandal of his own making a couple of years later but the lesson was made clear to potential rising stars in the GOP: Avoid giving any Democratic president credit for anything.

One of the new Republicans elected to Congress in that 2012 election was a young Florida hotshot who helped create the hard-right Freedom Caucus. His name was Ron DeSantis. On the day after he was sworn in to the House, he made his first big splash by voting against relief funds for Hurricane Sandy, saying, “This ‘put it on the credit card’ mentality is part of the reason we find ourselves nearly $17 trillion in debt.”

Flash forward a decade and DeSantis is now governor of Florida. Apparently he has seen the light. Joe Biden’s administration declared a state of emergency in Florida days ahead of Hurricane Ian hitting landfall. Despite some goading by Fox News celebrities and a bit of waffling, DeSantis has generally been gracious toward Biden. The two elected officials who must face this crisis seem to be working together toward the greater good. This is one case where the GOP’s total abandonment of intellectual consistency may redound to the benefit of the public..

In this single instance, DeSantis appears not to be emulating Donald Trump’s model, which was to insult any state leader who didn’t vote for him and threaten to withhold aid from blue states suffering from natural disasters. His treatment of California during the catastrophic wildfire seasons during his term& was especially odious, as he publicly insulted the state’s leaders, claiming they refused to obey his nonsensical (and nonexistent) edict to “rake the forests,” which he claimed would have prevented disaster. His handling of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico was an epic disaster all its own, as he delayed $20 billion in desperately needed aid, insisted that the death toll was a fraction of what it actually was and denigrated local officials in public. (In fairness, Trump never seemed to comprehend that Puerto Rico was part of the United States.) Of course it’s true that Trump’s performance in all moments of crisis was appalling, and any ambitious politician with an instinct for self-preservation would be a fool to follow his example.

Speaking of Florida’s most famous resident, he has posted nothing about Hurricane Ian on his own homemade social media platform. Not one word. I have to assume that he’s waiting to see where the advantage to him in this crisis might lie — and that’s during the recovery effort. We can only imagine how much he’s currently hoping to see failure so he can cast his own disgraceful performances as superior. If things go well he can always flip a coin and decide whether to stab DeSantis in the back and give Biden the credit, or claim that Sleepy Joe was saved by his former protégé — or both at once.

Using disasters to make cheap political points has become a commonplace Republican tactic. If Ron DeSantis, of all people, is able to resist the temptation to follow Trump’s lead, then good for him. Here’s hoping everyone works together to save lives and get the people of Florida back on their feet. It would be one of the first positive signs in ages that America’s partisan polarization isn’t a terminal disease. 

Salon

Twenty-seven 8 x 10 colored glossy pictures (or the Mar-a-Lago equivalent)

If you are into that sort of thing, Just Security compiled “a comprehensive account of the publicly available information” on Donald Trump’s theft of public records:

We compiled every DOJ doc, Trump legal brief, DJT social media post and news report for this.

Tracker: Evidence of Trump's Knowledge, Involvement in Retaining #MarALago Docs

The bulleted list of key findings is alone strong evidence for a prosecution.👇https://t.co/Y1OaannbIg pic.twitter.com/lGuu1QKXsX

— Ryan Goodman (@rgoodlaw) September 29, 2022

Readers should decide for themselves what conclusions they reach based on the record below. On our view, the record as a whole points to Trump’s culpability based on evidence that

• • Trump was warned in late 2021 by his former White House lawyer that it was unlawful to retain the documents, especially classified information;
  • Trump personally sorted through the documents in late 2021;
  • Trump’s personal knowledge and possession, access, and control of the documents is indicated by the quantity, content, and location of documents with classified markings (including intermingled with personal belongings) and by his admissions on Truth Social;
  • Trump repeatedly stated privately that the documents were his to possess and he was not willing to deliver them to the government;
  • Trump aides repeatedly tried to get him to return the documents to the government;
  • Trump was repeatedly put on notice by Archives and Justice Department that his retention of the documents were unlawful and a potential threat to national security; 
  • Trump was apparently involved in obstructive acts of trying to conceal documents from the government after receiving a subpoena.

But you knew that.

Marcy Wheeler hosts her own archive of similar materials at emptywheel.

Here's a collection of resources on the Trump document theft case. Still VERY much a work in progress. https://t.co/1xpy6I5ine

— emptywheel (@emptywheel) September 12, 2022

“Yesterday [Wednesday], Trump filed the complaints he had originally filed under seal as well as another bid to delay the Special Master process,” Wheeler explains. His attorneys now claims the FBI removed 200,000 documents from Mar-a-Lago and so Plaintiff will require much, much, more time, etc., etc.

Wheeler writes:

This universe of documents reflects the contents of 27 boxes plus the contents of Trump’s desk drawer (ignoring the 520 pages of potentially privileged documents, some of which came from the desk drawers, and all but one email of which Trump has had for 13 days). If the 200,000 number were accurate, every box and the drawer would have, on average, over 7,000 pages of documents, which is far more than even a large case of paper would include (10 reams of paper at 500 pages each, or 5,000). And some of these boxes include books (33 altogether) and clothing or gifts (19 total), which would fill space really quickly.

But even assuming that someone in government told him that the 27 boxes of documents plus the contents of Trump’s desk drawer amount to 200,000 pages of material, even assuming Trump would need to review every page of every government document he stole, this is still misleading.

This is Trump’s latest attempt to delay his rendezvous with justice. Endless delay has worked for him for decades. No reason he would change his stripes now.

● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

Request a copy of For The Win, 4th Edition, my free, countywide get-out-the-vote planning guide for county committees at ForTheWin.us

Lies, smears, and distortions all the way down

“If you want people to vote for progressives you can’t get them to do that by repeating right wing ideas,” my friend Anat Shenker-Osorio advised on Twitter yet again on Thursday. Debunking lies by repeating them back simply reinforces the lies. “You have to get the people who already support you to repeat why progressive things are good for all of us & the alternative is to cede our freedoms, families and futures.”

It’s not enough to say why the other guy is bad, hideous even. You have to offer voters a more attractive alternative based in what they truly value.

Allies of both major parties are guilty of selling more fear than hope. It’s just that the GOP, with nothing to sell but fear itself, sells fear more relentlessly.

The Senate Leadership Fund, a Republican-party aligned super PAC, has been running attack ads against North Carolina Democrat Cheri Beasley in the race to replace outgoing Republican Sen. Richard Burr.

Be afraid. Be very afraid. She’s one of THEM. And she’s coming for YOU. More “deranged apocalypticism” of the sort Joshua Tait cited this week. Like other propaganda, the ads are patsiches of lies, smears, and distortions.

These involve Beasley’s taking corporate PAC money she didn’t, “support” for tax hikes that weren’t, and Beasley siccing legions of nonexistent IRS agents on Jane and Joe Average. Beasley has never been a legislator. But the ads never let the truth get in the way of the Othering.

The PAC is running similar ads with similarly debunked talking points wherever there is a competitive Senate race: Wisconsin, Georgia, Nevada, New Hampshire, and Ohio.

Taking Anat’s advice, I won’t copy the scripts or post the videos here. But Politifact’s assessment of the Senate Leadership Fund’s 2018-cycle ads makes my point (above).

Everytown for Gun Safety Victory Fund is running an ad in Georgia hitting Republican candidate for Senate Herschel Walker for stances on abortion and guns.

Paul Waldman and Greg Sargent consider the Everytown ad “an effort to connect with voters in a visceral, energizing way by linking abortion and guns around the shared theme of safety and security.”

People can agree on safety and security even if they disagree on particulars. It’s a good place to start. But what the ad lacks is a reason for voters to turn out to vote for the progressive candidate. Just “his extreme agenda puts us all at risk.” (I get it. As a PAC, Everytown does not want to campaign directly for Democrats.)

Shenker-Osorio continues, “Trump Republicans are incredibly vulnerable on the question of how we keep ourselves and our families safe. They block every popular commonsense gun measure out there. And they cheerlead a criminal conspiracy to overthrow our elections.”

“And they are trying to throw us off our storyline – protecting our freedoms – by attempting to distract voters with the exact same story they always tell: divide, scapegoat, fear monger. We need not take the (race) bait.”

The left has to sell itself as vigorously as it attacks its opponents. Start with shared values, identify the villains and pull back the curtain to reveal their actions and true motives, then offer a progressive alternative. Remember not to repeat the lies.

● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

Request a copy of For The Win, 4th Edition, my free, countywide get-out-the-vote planning guide for county committees at ForTheWin.us

When a moron is president

This is the kind of question he asks:

President Trump has suggested multiple times to senior Homeland Security and national security officials that they explore using nuclear bombs to stop hurricanes from hitting the United States, according to sources who have heard the president’s private remarks and been briefed on a National Security Council memorandum that recorded those comments.

Behind the scenes: During one hurricane briefing at the White House, Trump said, “I got it. I got it. Why don’t we nuke them?” according to one source who was there. “They start forming off the coast of Africa, as they’re moving across the Atlantic, we drop a bomb inside the eye of the hurricane and it disrupts it. Why can’t we do that?” the source added, paraphrasing the president’s remarks.

Asked how the briefer reacted, the source recalled he said something to the effect of, “Sir, we’ll look into that.”

Trump replied by asking incredulously how many hurricanes the U.S. could handle and reiterating his suggestion that the government intervene before they make landfall. 

The briefer “was knocked back on his heels,” the source in the room added. “You could hear a gnat fart in that meeting. People were astonished. After the meeting ended, we thought, ‘What the f—? What do we do with this?'”

Trump also raised the idea in another conversation with a senior administration official. A 2017 NSC memo describes that second conversation, in which Trump asked whether the administration should bomb hurricanes to stop them from hitting the homeland. A source briefed on the NSC memo said it does not contain the word “nuclear”; it just says the president talked about bombing hurricanes.

The source added that this NSC memo captured “multiple topics, not just hurricanes. … It wasn’t that somebody was so terrified of the bombing idea that they wrote it down. They just captured the president’s comments.”

The sources said that Trump’s “bomb the hurricanes” idea — which he floated early in the first year and a bit of his presidency before John Bolton took over as national security adviser — went nowhere and never entered a formal policy process.

White House response: A senior administration official said, “We don’t comment on private discussions that the president may or may not have had with his national security team.”

A different senior administration official, who has been briefed on the president’s hurricane bombing suggestion, defended Trump’s idea and said it was no cause for alarm. “His goal — to keep a catastrophic hurricane from hitting the mainland — is not bad,” the official said. “His objective is not bad.”

“What people near the president do is they say ‘I love a president who asks questions like that, who’s willing to ask tough questions.’ … It takes strong people to respond to him in the right way when stuff like this comes up. For me, alarm bells weren’t going off when I heard about it, but I did think somebody is going to use this to feed into ‘the president is crazy’ narrative.”

Trump called this story “ridiculous” in a Monday tweet from the G7 summit. He added, “I never said this. Just more FAKE NEWS!”

Asking a question like that is not only evidence of epic ignorance, it’s downright crazy. No, people do not want their president asking such questions. It’s demented.

The secretary of state races are vitally important this time

The excellent Bolts Magazine breaks down all the Secretary of State elections coming up in November. Normally nobody pays any attention to these races outside the state (and often not inside the state either) but now that a bunch of Big Liars are running for these seats that have jurisdiction over elections, it’s important to pay attention. The difference this could make in 2024 is profound:

In the weeks after his loss in the 2020 election, Donald Trump called the Georgia secretary of state and badgered him to “find” him more votes. Less than two years later, Trump’s infamous plea has morphed into a platform for a slate of Republican secretary of state candidates, who are vowing to bend and break the rules to influence future elections.

If they win in November, Trump-endorsed election deniers like Arizona’s Mark Finchem and Michigan’s Kristina Kamaro could seize the reins of election administration in key swing states on agendas built on disproven fraud claims and destabilizing changes like eliminating mail-in voting. But these high-profile candidates are just the tip of the iceberg: 17 Republicans are running for secretary of state—or for governor in states where the governor appoints the secretary—after denying the results of the 2020 election, seeking to overturn them, or refusing to affirm the outcome. A handful of additional Republicans haven’t outright questioned Biden’s win but have still amplified Trump’s false statements about widespread fraud.

Trump’s Big Lie, then, is defining the political stakes in most of the 35 states where the secretary of state’s office is on the line, directly or indirectly, in November. 

But beyond the threats of election subversion, secretaries of state affect voting rights in many more subtle ways. Long before Trump, they already featured heated debates around how states run their elections—and how easy or difficult it is for people to register and cast ballots. Secretaries of state may decide the scope of voter roll purges, instruct counties on how many ballot drop boxes to set up, or implement major policies like automatic voter registration. And their word carries great clout in legislative debates over voting. The Big Lie is overshadowing those functions, but in many places these broader issues remain at the forefront. 

This new Bolts guide walks through all of those 35 states, plus Washington, D.C., one by one. Voters are electing their secretary of state directly in 27 states; in another eight, the secretary of state will be selected after the election by public officials—the governor, or lawmakers—who are on the Nov. 8 ballot. (The 15 other states and Puerto Rico will either select theirs after the 2024 cycle or, in a few cases, don’t have a secretary of state at all.)

The stakes are highest in the presidential swing states that election deniers may capture, namely Arizona, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, and Pennsylvania (via the governor’s race). But many other states feature such candidates, from Alabama to Maryland; in Wyoming, a Trump-endorsed election denier is the only candidate on the ballot.

And other pressing voting concerns are also shaping these battles. In Ohio, for instance, voting rights groups have repeatedly clashed with the sitting secretary of state on voting access in jails or the availability of ballot drop boxes. In Georgia, the midterms are unfolding in the shadow of new restrictions adopted last year, with the incumbent’s support. In Vermont, the likely next secretary of state says she wants to support local experiments to expand voter eligibility. 

Not all secretaries of state handle election administration; in a few states such as Illinois and South Carolina, they have nothing at all to do with it. Even where secretaries of state oversee some aspects of the election system, the scope of their role can vary greatly. Arizona’s secretary of state, for instance, must certify election results; Michigan’s secretary, by contrast, plays no role in the certification process (that role is reserved to a board of canvassers) but does oversee and guide municipal officials on how to run their elections. 

To clarify this confusing landscape, Bolts published two databases this year. The first details, state by state, which state offices prepare and administer an election (Who Runs our Elections?). The second details, state by state, which state offices handle the counting, canvassing, and certification stages (Who Counts Our Elections?). 

For further reading, also dive into Louis Jacobson’s electoral assessment of all secretary of state races, and the FiveThirtyEight analysis of how each state’s Republican nominee is responding to questions about the 2020 elections.

Click over to Bolts read the full breakdown. There are some real nuts running for these important offices. God help us if they win.