#Max Flugrath

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Max Flugrath for Zeteo:

“In four years, you don’t have to vote again. We’ll have it fixed so good you’re not going to have to vote.” That’s what Donald Trump told a crowd in 2024. If we didn’t know what he meant then, we do now. One of his latest executive orders is a lawless power grab to seize control of elections and silence voters. The order reads like a MAGA fever dream – giving unprecedented and likely unlawful powers to the president, and bulldozing our Constitution. It requires showing documents like passports or Real IDs to use the federal voter registration form – things many don’t have or would have to pay for – despite courts ruling this is illegal. Even conservative legal experts are calling it an unlawful overreach. This would impact at least 21 million eligible Americans’ voter registrations. With Black, Latino, rural, low-income, and naturalized voters most impacted – folks who already face systemic voting barriers. New Hampshire lawmakers passed a similar citizenship-document law, and voters were turned away from a recent local election. Giving Elon Musk and his so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) power to comb through state voter rolls may be the most dangerous part. Trump wants an unelected oligarch – with roots in apartheid South Africa – to help him decide who’s American enough to vote. DOGE’s weaponized incompetence is a recipe for mass database errors and thousands – maybe millions – of Americans’ voter registrations being wrongly canceled. Here’s MAGA’s likely plan: DOGE stirs up chaos, then Trump points to the mess as proof of election law violations – and uses it to block eligible voters. States that count mail ballots after Election Day could lose federal funds under Trump’s order. That means overseas and military ballots could be tossed – even if mailed on time. The newly-corrupted Justice Department is being told to enforce this gross and “bonkers” misinterpretation of federal law. The DOJ was also told to prioritize investigations of votes that violate election law and Trump’s order proclaimed the agency has “failed to prioritize and devote sufficient resources” to stop voting by people who aren’t citizens. Data going back to 2002 from the Heritage Foundation (the right-wing group behind Project 2025) found just 85 examples. But facts don’t matter under the Project 2025 playbook.

Bypassing Congress and the Courts

This executive order is how Trump plans to get what Congress and the courts haven’t yet handed him: control over who gets to vote. With a massive voter suppression bill up for discussion in the House Rules Committee this week, but facing steep odds in the US Senate, this order takes its most dangerous provisions and makes the documentation aspects worse. It echoes North Carolina’s 2013 voter ID law – struck down for targeting Black voters “with almost surgical precision” by choosing ID types they’re less likely to have. This whole scheme reads like a follow-up to the infamous call where Trump demanded Georgia’s secretary of state “find” him 11,780 votes he didn’t earn. That call featured one of this order’s likely architects, Cleta Mitchell – who helped Trump plot to seize voting machines in 2020. [...]

Time to Organize

We can’t sit by and count on the courts to save us. We are the check. That means speaking up, organizing, and showing up in local and state elections. The Constitution is clear: Congress and the states run elections. MAGA knows it. That’s why Musk dumped massive donations behind the MAGA candidate in the fast-approaching and crucial Wisconsin Supreme Court race. Demand that Congress do its job and rein in this rambling, maniacal wannabe king. Urge your governor not to comply. Push your election officials to stand up.

Fair Fight's Max Flugrath wrote in Zeteo that the Trump/Musk co-presidency is following the Project 2025 and DOGE playbooks in dismantling what is left of our nation’s democracy.

[pjammann717]

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Philip Levine and staff for the opening of his new St. Pete office: Matthew Van Name, Campaign Manager (L); Courtney Whitney, Finance Director; Regional Director Jocelyn Mund; Levine; Communications Director Max Flugrath. #FlaPol (at Saint Petersburg, Florida)