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The Vice President of the United States, Joe Biden, gave a prime-time speech in front of Philadelphia’s Independence Hall, urging the people of the United States to “stop the assault on American democracy” by Republicans who refuse to accept the results of the 2020 election.
During his speech, former Vice President Joe Biden made several references to his predecessor, Donald Trump, warning that Trump’s politics were harmful to the country.
The fanaticism of “Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans” challenges “the very foundations of our nation,” Vice President Joe Biden stated on September 1. The MAGA movement and Trump’s “extreme ideology” are not shared by all Republicans, he said.
Depending on who you ask, “MAGA Republican” could signify a variety of things. (The acronym MAGA refers to Trump’s campaign slogan “make America great again” from the 2016 election.)
When asked by PolitiFact to define a “MAGA Republican,” the White House did not immediately respond. After the speech, though, Biden addressed the media and said, “In my opinion, Trump supporters as a whole pose no danger to the United States. I do believe that anyone who advocates violence, fails to condemn violence when it is used, refuses to concede that one candidate has won an election, or insists on altering the way we govern and tally votes poses a threat to our system of government.”
Dept. of Fact Check Preparation:
Despite its billing as a “battle” speech, Karine Jean-Pierre insisted Biden’s primetime address on Thursday will be “optimistic” but not “political,” nor will it be about “one political party” or “one person in politics.”https://t.co/sALDJJzvN5
— Spencer Brown (@itsSpencerBrown) September 1, 2022
Biden’s address, which was delivered roughly two months before the midterm elections, had the declared purpose of encouraging American citizens to exercise their right to vote and safeguard democracy.
While the threat to American democracy is serious, Biden emphasized that the United States is not helpless in the face of such challenges. We are not neutral observers of the assault on our democracy.
Based on our analysis of Biden’s remarks, we found two comments that may have benefited from some additional background.
“MAGA Republicans … refuse to accept the results of a free election. And they’re working right now, as I speak, in state after state to give the power to decide elections in America to partisans and cronies, empowering election deniers to undermine democracy itself.”
Approximately 70% of Republicans have consistently said they do not believe Biden to be the fair and rightful winner of the 2020 election. Despite many audits and recounts confirming a win for Biden in 2020, Trump has consistently and falsely claimed victory.
Multiple Republican candidates who dispute Biden’s victory have won their party’s nomination processes or primaries. These November’s gubernatorial and secretary of state candidates pose a threat to the integrity of elections if elected.
Jim Marchant, a Republican running for Nevada secretary of state, is at the helm of an “America First” alliance of candidates in Arizona, Nevada, Michigan, and other swing states. According to Marchant, he would not have given Biden his stamp of approval had he been a voter.
Moreover, these candidates have advocated for the abolition of early voting, the destruction of current voter registration lists, and the elimination of electronic voting equipment.
Six of the ten contested secretary of state elections this year, including the nominations in key swing states like Arizona, Nevada, and Michigan, have a Republican candidate who has echoed Trump’s election denial allegations, according to an analysis by the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics.
To me, it sounds like when Biden talks about giving “partisans and cronies” the power to undermine democracy, he’s talking about state bills that could allow tampering with election administration or results.
The White House gave the failed Arizona bill as an example, which would have given the state legislature the authority to accept or reject election results. State Representative Mark Finchem, who is currently a candidate for secretary of state, is one of the bill’s co-sponsors. We gave his assertion, that “fabricated ballots” are being flooded into the state from Arizona, a Pants on Fire rating.
The Arizona secretary of state is a Democrat who is also a gubernatorial candidate, but the state did approve a statute that gives the Republican attorney general jurisdiction over election-related disputes. This modification may allow for judicial nullification of prior outcomes.
Republican Doug Mastriano is running for governor of Pennsylvania, and if he wins, he will be able to pick the state’s top elections officer. In 2020, while serving as a state senator, he introduced a motion to have the state’s presidential electors appointed by the GOP-controlled Legislature rather than accepting Biden’s official certification of victory. The leading Republicans in the state legislature have publicly stated their opposition.
The Republican candidate for governor in Wisconsin, Tim Michels, has said that decertifying the results of the 2020 election is not a top priority, but that “everything will be on the table.” He has not addressed the speculation around whether or not he will refuse to certify the results of the 2020 presidential election. Michels has called for the dissolution of the Wisconsin Elections Commission.
The States United Democracy Center, a nonprofit based in Washington, D.C., has been monitoring legislation across the country that would allow state legislatures to interfere with elections by usurping control over election results, requiring partisan “audits” of results, or creating burdens for election officials, such as mandating that all ballots be counted by hand.
Lawmakers in a few states have proposed legislation that would allow them to overturn election results, but so far in 2022, nothing has passed.
“These proposals have a common theme: they would make it significantly easier for hyperpartisan actors to stir up the doubt, chaos, and confusion that may be used as a pretext for electoral subversion,” notes the report developed in collaboration with Law Forward and Protect Democracy.
A “right to choose,” “right to privacy,” “right to contraception,” and “right to marry who you love” are all things that “MAGA forces are determined to pull this country backward” from.
This is purely conjectural.
The same privacy rights that protected abortion under Roe could theoretically put in jeopardy the national guarantees of same-sex marriage and contraception if the Supreme Court were to decide to overturn the abortion decision.
The right to privacy was upheld by the court in Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), the landmark case that legalized the use of contraception by married couples. (In a separate case from 1972, individuals were given the freedom to use contraception.) The 2015 decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, which upheld the legality of same-sex marriage across the country, followed a similar line of reasoning.
A recent poll reveals overwhelming support for these liberties. The Public Religion Research Institute found that 68% of Americans backed same-s*x marriage in 2021. Furthermore, 61 percent of anti-abortion respondents in a YouGov America/The Economist survey conducted after the revelation of a draught opinion to overturn Roe indicated that birth control should be made free and widely available if abortion was prohibited. Ninety-one percent of respondents said they supported legal access to abortion.
The right to contraception and same-sex marriage could be at risk if the Supreme Court were to hear cases contesting these issues and the justices used the same reasoning that led to the overthrow of Roe this year.
An analysis by the nonpartisan National Conference of State Legislatures found that if Obergefell were reversed, same-sex marriage would remain illegal in at least 25 states and would almost certainly become unlawful in seven others.
Justice Clarence Thomas, in a concurring opinion when Roe was overturned, said the court “should reconsider” the 2015 ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, which guaranteed the national right to same-sex marriage, and this has caused a great deal of concern among those who support same-s*x marriage and contraception. One of the “demonstrably erroneous rulings” of the court, according to Thomas.
However, Thomas was the sole conservative who voted to overturn Roe and take such a strong position.
Justice Samuel Alito’s majority opinion makes clear that the justices who are in favor of overturning Roe are not targeting any other decisions. In the opinion’s view, same-s*x marriage is distinct from abortion in that it “does not destroy a ‘potential life.'”
Alito emphasized that the court’s ruling only dealt with the right to abortion and not any other constitutionally protected rights. To paraphrase the opinion, “nothing in this opinion should be considered to throw doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion.”
Just like Alito, Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in a concurring opinion, “I underline what the court today states: Overruling Roe does not mean the overruling of other precedents, and does not threaten or put doubt on those precedents.”
Meanwhile, the Democratically controlled House has passed the Respect for Marriage Act, which would mandate that all states recognize marriages that were legally valid in the states in which they were given, regardless of whether or not they involved same-sex couples. Some Republicans in the Senate have stated that they would be willing to support such a bill. While there are not now enough votes in the Senate to prevent a likely filibuster, experts predict that number might rise to 60 by the end of the year.
