Tag: election results
Are Social-Media Companies Ready for Another January 6?
In January, Donald Trump laid out in stark terms what consequences await America if charges against him for conspiring to overturn the 2020 election wind up interfering with his presidential victory in 2024. “It’ll be bedlam in the country,” he told reporters after an appeals-court hearing. Just before a reporter began asking if he would rule out violence from his supporters, Trump walked away.
This would be a shocking display from a presidential candidate—except the presidential candidate was Donald Trump.
15 Readers on Trust in American Institutions
“My trust is more fragile than 10 years ago,” one reader writes, “because I can see very easily how our institutions could be completely destroyed in a matter of months.”
Welcome to Up for Debate. Each week, Conor Friedersdorf rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Later, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.
Last week,
Trump’s Threat to Democracy Is Now Systemic
The long-awaited federal indictment of Donald Trump for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election may be necessary to contain the threat to American democracy that he has unleashed. But it’s unlikely to be sufficient.
The germ of election denialism that Trump injected into the American political system has spread so far throughout the Republican Party that it is virtually certain to survive whatever legal accountability the former president faces.
With polls showing that most Republican voters still believe the
They Are Still With Him
Come November of next year, Donald Trump might be elected president of the nation whose democracy he attempted to overthrow. Although it’s early, Trump is polling strongly against his successor, President Joe Biden, despite having been indicted for state and federal crimes, including a conspiracy to keep himself in power after his 2020 election loss.
The indictment, filed by Special Counsel Jack Smith yesterday, offers a detailed recounting of Trump’s effort to “overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential
The Trump Indictment Puts the GOP on Trial
Updated at 7:45 p.m. ET on August 1, 2023
Earlier today, Donald Trump was indicted for a third time, on the charge that he attempted to subvert the 2020 presidential election. The indictment, filed by Special Counsel Jack Smith, accuses Trump of a conspiracy to defraud the United States by “using dishonesty, fraud, and deceit”; a conspiracy to “corruptly obstruct and impede” an official proceeding of the U.S. government and for actually partaking in that obstruction; and a
A Brazen, Dead-Serious Attack on American Democracy
More than two and a half years after Donald Trump attempted to steal the 2020 presidential election, a grand jury in Washington, D.C., has indicted the former president on four felony counts related to the plot.
This is the third time that Trump has been charged with felonies in 2023, but it is also the most significant case against him. Although other charges allege serious misconduct, this cuts to the gravest act he committed: his lengthy, concerted effort to subvert
Donald Trump Fights Indictments – The Atlantic
The dilemma for the Republican Party is that Donald Trump’s mounting legal troubles may be simultaneously strengthening him as a candidate for the GOP presidential nomination and weakening him as a potential general-election nominee.
In the days leading up to the indictment of the former president, which Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg announced two days ago, a succession of polls showed that Trump has significantly increased his lead over Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, his closest competitor in the race for
How to Fix America’s Elections Problem
Aaron Van Langevelde was probably surprised to find himself in the middle of a battle for the future of American democracy. But at the November 23, 2020, meeting of the Michigan Board of State Canvassers, there he was. A staff attorney for the Michigan legislature’s Republican caucus, he held one of four seats on a board that, as he emphasized that day, was meant to take the certified results from each of the state’s counties, “look at the math, and
The Weight of Trump – The Atlantic
This is an edition of Up for Debate, a newsletter by Conor Friedersdorf. On Wednesdays, he rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Later, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.
Last week, I asked readers to discuss how they’re thinking about the upcoming midterm elections in the United States. I am disappointed that I didn’t hear from many current Republican voters, something that I’ve found informative in the past and
Are Latinos Really Realigning Toward Republicans?
Once the backbone of the Democratic base, working-class white voters have been migrating toward the Republican Party since the 1960s, largely out of alienation from the Democrats’ liberal stands on cultural and racial issues. Half a century later, those working-class white voters—usually defined as having less than a four-year college education—have become the indisputable foundation of the Republican coalition, especially in the era of Donald Trump.
Now a chorus of centrist and right-leaning political analysts are claiming that the