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This really may be the political end for Trump

This really may be the political end for Trump

USA, Washington D.C., Supreme Court building and blurred American flag against blue sky.

The Supreme Court Has a Legitimacy Problem—But Washington’s Monopoly on Power Is the Real Crisis

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Trump allies eye top election jobs in battleground states

Pro-Trump protestors

Trump supporters who attempted to overturn the 2020 election results are now seeking influential election oversight roles in battleground states.

Andrew Lichtenstein/Getty Images
Sara Swann
By Sara SwannMay 26, 2021
Sara Swann

As a staff writer, Sara covers a variety of democracy reform issues, including voting rights, money in politics, gerrymandering and civic education. Prior to joining The Fulcrum in May 2019, Sara reported on local government on Maryland's Eastern Shore for the USA Today network. She is a native West Virginian and a graduate of Syracuse University.

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Secretary of state elections are not usually top of mind for voters, but that could change next year.

Republicans who have called the legitimacy of the 2020 election into question or sought to overturn the results are already eyeing secretary of state campaigns in key states. Twenty-six states will hold contests for their top election official during the 2022 election cycle.

The campaigns of these pro-Trump conservatives threaten to continue the spread of misinformation and conspiracy theories about election fraud, of which there was no widespread evidence. And if elected, they could wield a huge amount of power over the 2024 presidential race.

The duties and responsibilities of the secretary of state vary across the country. But typically, the position manages how elections are conducted and oversees maintenance of voter rolls. In some jurisdictions, county clerks and other local officials also play important roles in administering elections.

A handful of conservatives have already thrown their hats into the ring for secretary of state in potential battlegrounds, Politico first reported.

  • Rep. Jody Hice of Georgia, who voted against certifying the election results, is running against incumbent and fellow Republican Brad Raffensberger, who has defended his management of the 2020 election.
  • Jim Marchant, who sued unsuccessfully to overturn his failed bid for Nevada's 4th congressional district, is now campaigning for secretary of state. Republican Barbara Cegavske currently holds the position and is under fire from the party for her management of last year's election.
  • In Michigan, Kristina Karamo is running for secretary of state after falsely claiming Trump won and repeatedly challenging the election results when she served as a poll watcher in Detroit. Democrat Jocelyn Benson currently holds this position.
  • And Arizona state Rep. Mark Finchem, one of the biggest proponents of the controversial election audit in Maricopa County, is vying for the top election official spot currently held by Democrat Katie Hobbs.

Last week, Hobbs advised Maricopa, the most populous county in Arizona, to replace all the voting machines involved in the audit conducted by Cyber Ninjas, a private contractor. Republicans in the state Senate ordered the recount of more than 2 million ballots in an effort to subvert the 2020 election results.

"I have grave concerns regarding the security and integrity of these machines, given that the chain of custody, a critical security tenet, has been compromised and election officials do not know what was done to the machines while under Cyber Ninjas' control," Hobbs wrote in a letter to the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors.

Now, there is growing momentum from Trump supporters to replicate Arizona's election audit in other parts of the country. A judge in Georgia recently approved an audit of Fulton County's 147,000 mail-in ballots. This follows three separate state-run election audits, including a hand recount, all of which found no evidence of voter fraud.

A CNN survey conducted at the end of April found that five months after the election, nearly two-thirds of voters who lean Republican still believe that Joe Biden did not legitimately win enough votes to win the presidency.

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DCF Commissioner Jodi Hill-Lilly speaks to the gathering at an adoption ceremony in Torrington.

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What’s Behind the Smiles on National Adoption Day

In the past 21 years, I’ve fostered and adopted children with complex medical and developmental needs. Last year, after a grueling 2,205 days navigating the DCF system, we adopted our 7yo daughter. This year, we were the last family on the docket for National Adoption Day after 589 days of suspense. While my 2 yo daughter’s adoption was a moment of triumph, the cold, empty courtroom symbolized the system’s detachment from the lived experiences of marginalized families.

National Adoption Day often serves as a time to highlight stories of joy and family unification. Yet, behind the scenes, the obstacles faced by children in foster care and the families that support them tell a more complex story—one that demands attention and action. For those of us who have navigated the foster care system as caregivers, the systemic indifference and disparities experienced by marginalized children and families, particularly within BIPOC and disability communities, remain glaringly unresolved.

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Framing "Freedom"

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Framing "Freedom"

The idea of “freedom” is important to Americans. It’s a value that resonates with a lot of people, and consistently ranks among the most important. It’s a uniquely powerful motivator, with broad appeal across the political spectrum. No wonder, then, that we as communicators often appeal to the value of freedom when making a case for change.

But too often, I see people understand values as magic words that can be dropped into our communications and work exactly the way we want them to. Don’t get me wrong: “freedom” is a powerful word. But simply mentioning freedom doesn’t automatically lead everyone to support the policies we want or behave the way we’d like.

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Amid headlines about Epstein, survivors’ voices remain overlooked. This piece explores how restorative justice offers CSA survivors healing and choice.

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Jeffrey Epstein is all over the news, along with anyone who may have known about, enabled, or participated in his systematic child sexual abuse. Yet there is significantly less information and coverage on the perspectives, stories and named needs of these survivors themselves. This is almost always the case for any type of coverage on incidences of sexual violence – we first ask “how should we punish the offender?”, before ever asking “what does the survivor want?” For way too long, survivors of sexual violence, particularly of childhood sexual abuse (CSA), have been cast to the wayside, treated like witnesses to crimes committed against the state, rather than the victims of individuals that have caused them enormous harm. This de-emphasis on direct survivors of CSA is often presented as a form of “protection” or “respect for their privacy” and while keeping survivors safe is of the utmost importance, so is the centering and meeting of their needs, even when doing so means going against the grain of what the general public or criminal legal system think are conventional or acceptable responses to violence. Restorative justice (RJ) is one of those “unconventional” responses to CSA and yet there is a growing number of survivors who are naming it as a form of meeting their needs for justice and accountability. But what is restorative justice and why would a CSA survivor ever want it?

“You’re the most powerful person I’ve ever known and you did not deserve what I did to you.” These words were spoken toward the end of a “victim offender dialogue”, a restorative justice process in which an adult survivor of childhood sexual abuse had elected to meet face-to-face for a facilitated conversation with the person that had harmed her. This phrase was said by the man who had violently sexually abused her in her youth, as he sat directly across from her, now an adult woman. As these two people looked at each other at that moment, the shift in power became tangible, as did a dissolvement of shame in both parties. Despite having gone through a formal court process, this survivor needed more…more space to ask questions, to name the impacts this violence had and continues to have in her life, to speak her truth directly to the person that had harmed her more than anyone else, and to reclaim her power. We often talk about the effects of restorative justice in the abstract, generally ineffable and far too personal to be classifiable; but in that instant, it was a felt sense, it was a moment of undeniable healing for all those involved and a form of justice and accountability that this survivor had sought for a long time, yet had not received until that instance.

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