‘An Indelible Stain’: How the G.O.P. Tried to Topple a Pillar of Democracy

On Saturday, Mr. Trump misplaced yet one more court docket case, as a federal choose in Wisconsin, Decide Brett H. Ludwig, who was appointed to the court docket by Mr. Trump this 12 months, mentioned his claims “fail as a matter of legislation and truth.” The case was dismissed with prejudice, that means Mr. Trump is barred from bringing instances on related grounds in that district.

However civil rights attorneys noticed the potential for long-lasting injury outdoors of the authorized realm the place the Republican efforts — and the lie that Mr. Biden’s win was the results of widespread fraud — have so definitively failed.

Republican state legislators throughout the nation are already considering new legal guidelines to make voting more durable, as they proceed to falsely painting the growth and ease of mail-in voting throughout the pandemic as nefarious. A lot of them view this 12 months’s expanded voting ranks as unhealthy for his or her get together, despite Republican successes further down the ballot. Their consideration of recent voting restrictions quantities to an ongoing assault on the integrity of the voting system, involving still more false and debunked claims.

“There’s an anti-democratic virus that has unfold in mainstream Republicanism, amongst mainstream Republican elected officers,” mentioned Dale Ho, director of the Voting Rights Undertaking on the A.C.L.U. “And that lack of religion within the equipment of democracy is a a lot larger drawback than any particular person lawsuit.”

Certainly, after the Supreme Courtroom’s ruling, the Texas Republican Occasion successfully referred to as for secession by pink states whose attorneys basic joined within the Texas go well with.

“Maybe law-abiding states ought to bond collectively and kind a Union of states that may abide by the Structure,” a statement from its chairman, Allen West, learn. It adopted an statement Rush Limbaugh made earlier within the week, when he mentioned, “I truly suppose that we’re trending towards secession.”

The discuss of secession got here throughout per week by which election officers throughout the nation, from each political events, mentioned they’d change into the themes of menacing threats of violence, together with to members of the family, for standing by Mr. Biden’s victory.