I have a collection of sources I can pull from to use here at Angry Bear. Joyce @ Civil Discourse is one of them. Prof Heather Cox Richardson @ Letters from an American is another. Robert Reich, Merrill Goozner @ GoozNews, Lloyd Alter @ Carbon Upfront, etc. It allows me to present information I would have to hunt for and then edit it to fit. There are others too. I think they are pretty interesting.

PS: I joined these sites to read and gather information. Some do not like my straightforward commentary.

Five Questions with WAPO Columnist Jen Rubin

by Joyce Vance

In 2020 it was the Big Lie, Trump’s claim the election was stolen from him. That was the match Trump used to try and light the country on fire that time. With the 2024 election getting underway, we’re all gearing up to understand what Trump and MAGA Republicans’ strategy will be this time if he loses. Trump has not, in the past, been one to accept a loss and move on graciously.

Washington Post columnist and my dear friend Jen Rubin has been ahead of the pack in thinking about this issue. She wrote a column earlier this week about new trends in Republican claims about voter fraud. It caught my attention because of something that’s underway in Alabama—a false claim by our secretary of state that “illegal immigrants” are voting in our elections. I’ve talked with you before about the “Alabamization of America,” my sense that ideas for new ways to suppress voting rights get tried out here first to see if they’ll fly. I’d been wondering about that here. Jen has a lot more to say about the new focus on immigrant voting that Republicans are starting to advance.

It turns out, not surprisingly, that this idea that noncitizens are voting, and voting in sufficient numbers to impact the outcome of the presidential election, is a fiction. But fiction, in the hands of Donald Trump and his followers, can be dangerous. It’s important to understand now, before this new big lie gets in wide circulation, what the falsehood is about and what the ultimate strategy is here. Could this be used to try to steal this election if Trump loses?

No one better than Jen, who is also a lawyer (she says, a lawyer in recovery), to help us understand this development.

“Five Questions” is a feature for paid subscribers, my way of thanking people who are able to support this work so that I can devote the necessary time and resources to it. I appreciate having all of you here. Free subscriptions, with access to my other posts, will always be available. Thank you for reading the newsletter and engaging in the hard but essential work of civil discourse.

Joyce: Recently, we’ve seen Republicans begin to claim that noncitizen undocumented immigrants are voting illegally in elections and that if Trump loses, their votes will be to blame. Is there any truth to this argument, and how does the argument, which doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense since you have to be an American citizen to vote, work?

Jen: It is illegal for noncitizens to vote. Period. There are criminal penalties for those who attempt to do so. If you recall, after Trump lost the popular vote in 2016, he claimed millions of illegal votes had been cast. He convened a commission. It found no evidence to support his sour grapes claim. Recent claims that undocumented immigrants have registered to vote have fizzled under closer inspection. For example, Alabama officials cited individuals initially given noncitizen ID numbers as evidence for their illegal voting claims. It turned out these individuals were subsequently naturalized and fully entitled to vote.

Joyce: Has this kind of voting by noncitizens been a problem in the past? Is there any reason to give credibility to Trump’s claims?

Jen: This is a non-problem. Study after study has shown that undocumented immigrants do not vote. When you think about it, why in the world would people risk deportation (plus criminal penalties) to vote? The Brennan Center’s 2016 study looked at 23.5 million votes. It found a grand total of 30 votes cast by undocumented immigrants. Even the Heritage Foundation (the driving force behind Project 2025 and long-time advocates for voter ID) could only find 100 illegally cast ballots between 2020 and 2022 out of billions cast.

Joyce: Why pursue these allegations if they aren’t true? What’s the political endgame? What does Trump hope to gain?

Jen: This is the makings of the big lie of 2024. In 2020, his excuse for attempting to overthrow the election was fraud. There wasn’t any. This time it is the bogeyman of undocumented immigrants casting illegal votes. If he loses, he will raise the specious and unsupported claim, try to get courts to buy into it, rally his supporters to declare the election “rigged” and enlist his lackeys in Congress to challenge electoral votes on Jan. 6, 2025.

It serves another purpose as well. His campaign is increasingly focused on demonizing immigrants, whether it is the baseless accusation that legally present Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, are eating pets or his equally baseless claim that immigrants are responsible for a crime wave.

(There is no crime wave. Crime is down. Immigrants statistically commit fewer crimes than native born Americans.)

It’s a dangerous campaign of hate that puts a target on the backs of black and brown people.

Joyce: Something that we’ve learned about Trump is his baseless claims about people have a way of harming them. Like what happened to Georgia poll workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss in 2020. What is the impact of this kind of rhetoric?

Jen: We are already seeing what his vile propaganda can do. Bomb threats, school and hospital closings and cancelled public events in Springfield. During Covid, his anti-Chinese rhetoric resulted in an upswing in hate crimes (including violent attacks) on Asian Americans. His antisemitic claim that Jews will be responsible if he loses has the potential to unleash more antisemitic attacks (already on the rise since Oct. 7). Trump has always targeted immigrants, particularly those who aren’t documented. It’s unlikely he’s concerned with their safety.

Joyce: Ultimately claims that noncitizen voting is impacting the election will end up in court and possibly in the Supreme Court. In 2020, the courts held and refused to aid Trump’s false claims. What are your expectations for this election?

Jen: I am cautiously optimistic that lower courts, as they did in 2020, will demand hard evidence to support his claims. When none is presented, they will dismiss the cases and consider sanctions against attorneys who bring such bogus suits. The Supreme Court’s egregious partisanship, ethical sloth and contempt from precedent naturally give rise to the fear it will hand the election to Trump. But even that court needs facts. There simply is no evidence to support this line of attack. However, if the election is super close, as it was in 2000 when the court stopped the vote recounting in Florida in Bush v. Gore, I would not put it past this court to pull out all the stops to aid Trump. That means people need to get out to vote to ensure not only a Harris win, but a win by a comfortable margin.

This is a sobering but important assessment of where we are. We’ve seen the attacks on certification of the vote going on in states like Georgia, where Republicans are trying to convert that purely ministerial process into one where state election officials, partisan boards, and perhaps even legislatures, might call votes into question with an endgame of preventing them from being counted. In its most extreme form, we might see them argue the entire process is tainted and try to throw out the results if Trump loses. It’s a Hail Mary of a strategy, but for someone as desperate to hold onto power—and avoid prosecution—as Donald Trump is, it may be where he turns.

Many thanks to Jen for educating us. Now take this knowledge and put it to use. As people start talking about “illegal aliens” voting, make sure you let them know what the truth is and what’s really going on here. And most importantly, register, make sure your registration is active, and make a plan to vote with your friends. Overwhelming turnout is the best protection against an effort by Trump to challenge the outcome if he loses.

We’re in this together,

Joyce

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