This Week in Statehouse Motion: Frosted Takes version

Chex: Final week, I wrote on this area about Arizona GOP Rep. Mark Finchem, certainly one of our favourite lawmaker-insurrectionists.

Marketing campaign Motion

You might recall that Finchem was each

• One of many contributors within the violent occasions in DC on Jan. 6 (he denies sacking the precise Capitol, however he did put up a photograph of the gang within the strategy of invading the constructing on the Capitol steps), and
• One of probably the most outspoken Republican state representatives pushing for his legislature to overturn the election outcomes and hand the state’s electors to Trump.

Final week, we discovered that the Trump marketing campaign apparently paid Finchem for his bother.

• The Trump marketing campaign paid Finchem-owned “Mrk Finchem PLLC” over $6,000 in December for “recount: authorized consulting.”

However it seems that wasn’t practically sufficient cash to cowl the bills Finchem incurred on Trump’s behalf as he inspired his colleagues to steal the election.

• On Nov. 30, Finchem hosted a so-called “election integrity” “listening to” (it was not an precise legislative listening to) on the Hyatt Regency in downtown Phoenix.
  • Rudy Giuliani attended this “listening to” (it was a glorified press convention), the place they and different Trump supporters aired lies and conspiracy theories about Biden supposedly “stealing” Arizona (he didn’t).

However lodges don’t make a behavior of letting individuals use their area and stuff without spending a dime.

• In response to Finchem, the occasion price $15,500—a bit north of the $6,000 the Trump marketing campaign paid him in December.
  • So Finchem has turned to Trump supporters on-line to cowl the price of his fantasy “listening to.”
    • By way of Telegram and Gab, Finchem is asking supporters to donate to his “Make Arizona Secure Once more” PAC by way of PayPal and Venmo.
• Finchem claims that he raised greater than $12,000 as of Feb. 16.
  • … which, should you issue within the $6,000 already paid to him by the Trump marketing campaign, implies that his seditious and anti-democratic lies are already making him a tidy little revenue.

In the meantime, GOP lawmakers throughout the nation who participated within the Jan. 6 violence on the Capitol proceed to face nearly no penalties.

Suggestions Loops: I’ve written quite a bit in latest weeks concerning the nation-spanning effort by GOP lawmakers to focus on the voters and voting strategies that helped Joe Biden win the presidency final fall.

And so they hold doing it, so I’ll write extra:

• In Kansas, Republicans are pushing laws that will make it a goddamn FELONY to return an absentee poll that’s not your personal (except you’re a member of the family or caregiver).
  • The measure will make it more durable for individuals of colour, individuals with disabilities, and older voters to solid ballots and can have the best influence on nonprofits, church buildings, and neighborhood teams that historically present this useful service.

Bear in mind, Republicans lawmakers within the Sunflower State are nonetheless mad {that a} Democrat had the temerity to get herself elected governor a number of years again.

• In Iowa, Republican lawmakers are ramming by way of payments that will
  • Slash the early voting window by 11 days (from 29 days to 18),
  • Cut back the absentee poll request window from 120 days to only 70,
  • Create new prison fees for any county election officers who take steps to make voting simpler in unforeseeable circumstances (like many did throughout the pandemic) with out getting the okay from state officers or the legislature, and
  • Make it unlawful for anybody outdoors of your quick household or family to return your absentee poll.

Enjoyable truth! The early voting interval in Iowa was 40 days till the GOP hacked it down to only 29 again in 2017

• In Tennessee, GOP lawmakers have launched payments to utterly abolish early voting and to require all voters be fingerprinted.
• In Georgia, Republicans have launched an anti-democratic omnibus invoice that will
  • Prohibit early voting on Sundays (focusing on “Souls to the Polls” occasions organized by many Black church buildings),
  • Create a brand new picture ID requirement for absentee ballots
  • Shrink the window for voters requesting an absentee poll and limiting the timeframe throughout which county officers can mail them out
  • Restrict the variety of safe poll drop packing containers and restrict the times and instances they can be utilized to the times and instances early voting takes place (which type of defeats the purpose, which is … properly, the purpose)
  • … and extra!

This omnibus consolidates numerous the payments already floating by way of the Georgia legislature, conveniently wrapping them up in a tidy bundle for the GOP-controlled legislature to go and the GOP governor to signal.

• However what’s worse than only a GOP-controlled state right here or there proscribing voting?
  • GOP-controlled states replicating as many voting restrictions as they’ll all throughout the nation in a coordinated approach.

And the Republican State Management Committee is stepping as much as assist make this nightmare a actuality.

• The RLSC, which occurs to be the umbrella org for the Republican Legislative Marketing campaign Committee and the Republican Secretaries of State Committee, introduced the launch of a so-called “Fee on Election Integrity” this week, and, properly, it’s simply as Orwellian because it sounds.
  • The Fee plans to convene GOP legislative leaders to “share and focus on” so-called reforms designed to “restore the American individuals’s confidence within the integrity of their free and honest elections.”

Sure, the RSLC is explicitly promulgating the Massive Lie of a fraud-riddled and stolen election to advertise its efforts to systematically enact new voter suppression legal guidelines throughout the nation.

• The Fee’s “key ideas” are a laundry listing of GOP voter-suppression fantasies:
  • “Empowering States” is a transparent preemptive strike in opposition to the landmark H.R. 1 making its approach by way of Congress, which might make it simpler to vote in federal elections, finish congressional gerrymandering, overhaul federal marketing campaign finance legal guidelines, improve safeguards in opposition to international interference, strengthen authorities ethics guidelines, and extra.
    • Clearly, GOP state lawmakers favor to retain their present energy on the state stage to rig election legal guidelines of their favor.
• “Making certain Voter Roll Accuracy” is solely a Republican euphemism for purging voter rolls.
• “Securing Absentee/Mail-in Voting” is Orwellian newspeak for the myriad new restrictions on absentee and mail-in voting we’re already seeing in lots of legislatures (a number of are described above).
• “Rising Transparency for In-person Voting” is a spit-shined approach of claiming that Republicans wish to improve the chance for voter intimidation. 
• “Streamlining the Canvassing Course of” is simply one other approach for Republicans to say “VOTES COUNTED AFTER ELECTION DAY ARE FRAUDULENT WHICH MEANS DEMOCRATS STOLE THE 2020 ELECTION.”

Anyway, yeah, this shit is fucked up sufficient taking place piecemeal throughout the nation. A coordinated effort selling legislative voter suppression will, in truth, be worse.

Honey Bunches of Zygotes: However lest you suppose Republican lawmakers are centered on voter suppression to the exclusion of different horrible laws, I’m right here to dump chilly milk on that notion.

• Now {that a} conservative-dominated, Roe-hostile U.S. Supreme Courtroom has gone from a GOP moist dream to a really actual horror, Republican lawmakers are amped to resume their assault on reproductive freedom.
  • In South Carolina, the GOP-controlled legislature rammed by way of (and the governor shortly signed) a invoice that will successfully ban abortions at about six weeks right into a being pregnant, or when cardiac exercise can first be detected in a fetus (however earlier than many ladies even know they’re pregnant).
    • However regardless of this clear win for conservatives, one fucking child Republican lawmaker threw a bona fide tantrum when he wasn’t allowed to introduce amendments making the measure even extra prohibitive, flinging his stack of amendments to the ground and storming out.
  • Texas will doubtless quickly go an analogous invoice.
    • “Set off” measures are additionally being thought-about by the legislature—so known as as a result of they’d “set off” an automated absolute ban on abortion within the state if Roe v. Wade have been ever overturned.
    • One other proposal would appoint a goddamn lawyer to signify the fetus when minors go earlier than a decide to get permission to acquire an abortion with out their mother and father’ consent.
  • A measure being thought-about in Utah would require a girl searching for an abortion to finish an internet course, through which she’ll be compelled to see “medically correct” photos of the process, hear audio of a fetal heartbeat, see ultrasounds from six completely different phases of being pregnant, after which attest beneath penalty of perjury that she accomplished the course from begin to end, no skipping or fast-forwarding.
  • A slew of anti-reproductive freedom payments are additionally making their approach by way of the Montana legislature, together with measures outlawing abortions after the 20th week of a being pregnant and establishing a 24-hour ready interval.

Welp, that’s about all of the ire I’ve in me this week. I ought to go about accumulating extra, although. It helps hold me heat.

Keep protected on the market, expensive readers. Not each cereal field has a cool prize in it, and typically you end up munching on some All-Bran with out noticing the fiber content material (which is someplace round DEFCON 2)

please don’t make me spell out the DEF a part of this joke right here

However whether or not you eat breakfast or not, care for your self. Be your personal Fortunate Attraction and the Apple Jack of your personal eye, do what you have to to Cheerios your self up.

As a result of bear in mind: You’re gr-r-reat!