Congressional Republicans Research Articles

Preventative Polarization: Republican Senators’ Positional Adaptation in the Tea Party Era

Republicans in Congress have, by almost any measure, become significantly more conservative over the last 25 years. We propose that the changing pressures they face when seeking reelection helps explain this trend. Rather than moderating towards the general election median voter as they had previously done, Republican senators became more conservative when seeking reelection to avoid the emergence of, or mitigate the threat from, a primary opponent after the Tea Party emerged. We also show that at the height of the Tea Party era—the 111th to 113th congresses—retiring senators moderated their voting behavior, suggesting that their personal preferences were more moderate than their expressed preferences. During the Trump era, we report mixed results, suggesting that the threat posed by primary challengers was not solely ideological, though the new dynamics and behaviors that emerged in the Tea Party era have continued to shape the Republican Party in the Senate.

Radiology in Central Asia (Kazakhstan) after independency

On 18th of February in 1977 at the First Republican Congress of Radiologists of Kazakhstan was adopted the statutes of the Kazakh Republican Scientific Society of Radiologists

Revisiting the Origins of Felony Disenfranchisement in the United States

Abstract We trace the origin of felony disenfranchisement from the colonial period through Reconstruction. On the eve of the Civil War, three-quarters of states had criminal disenfranchisement statutes. These laws were based on “legal moralism” principles, which limited the franchise to those in good standing with the community. Efforts at disenfranchisement grew as access to the ballot increased and criminal justice reforms replaced capital and corporal punishment for imprisonment. We highlight important transformations in felony disenfranchisement during Reconstruction, specifically in new state constitutions and the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments. All but one Southern state included felon disenfranchisement in their new constitutions that the Republican-controlled Congress ratified for readmission to the United States. Radical Republicans in Congress and state legislatures were in most cases advocates of felony disenfranchisement to exclude former Confederates from political participation.

Debt ceiling problems: is the US facing a technical default?

On January 19, 2023 political contradictions between Republicans and Democrats on the issues of the national debt ceiling and the growing budget deficit have once again brought the United States to the brink of a technical default. The article examines how the Treasury tried to push back the date of such a default. Two types of national debt (public debt and intragovernmental debt) and their role in maintaining the debt ceiling are analyzed. The paradoxes of decision-making in the budget process regarding the debt ceiling are considered. When adopting the budget, legislators already estimate the amount of the budget deficit that will be added to the debt, threats of technical default have become a bargaining chip in disputes about budget policy. This is especially evident in the conditions of divided government. Republicans with the majority in the House of Representatives actively played a card of budget deficit. After months of bitter struggle between the administration and republicans in Congress, the latter approved a bill that shifted the limit on the national debt to January 1, 2025. On June 3, the president signed it. The debt ceiling problem has been postponed, but not solved. Lawmakers did not go for the abolition of the "debt ceiling", which some budget experts consider necessary. Particular attention in the article is paid to how Congress has been trying for decades to legislate the problem of the budget deficit and the debt ceiling and how effective these attempts have been. The American decision-making mechanism in the budgetary sphere is increasingly coming to a standstill. Trust in treasuries allows the US government to attract the savings of its citizens and the world's savings. Each time, the protracted confrontations over the debt ceiling can make investors begin to doubt whether American treasuries are such a reliable asset.

Diplomatic Security Failure in Benghazi, Libya, September 11, 2012

AbstractTerrorists attacked the United States diplomatic compound and adjoining CIA Annex in Benghazi, Libya, on September 11, 2012. Despite repeated warnings from officials about the security risks in Tripoli and Benghazi, we argue that intelligence, security, and organizational deficiencies within the Department of State created vulnerabilities contributing to the deaths of four Americans, including Ambassador Christopher Stephens. Scholarly assessment of these failures has been precluded as a consequence of the incident’s use in partisan attacks. Republicans in Congress used investigations into the incident to damage presumed 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton, who was then President Obama’s secretary of state. Setting aside political considerations and examining the failures that led to the attack is important to protect diplomatic personnel abroad in the future.

William Warren Rogers Jr. Reconstruction Politics in a Deep South State: Alabama, 1865–1874.

In this new study, Reconstruction Politics in a Deep South State: Alabama, William Warren Rogers Jr. argues that with the end of slavery, political conflict in the state became a struggle to define the place of African Americans in the new order of things. He deftly analyzes conflicts over education, railroad financing, and other internal improvements, but it was the race “problem” that ultimately shaped the contours of partisanship during the period. Before emancipation, there had been no question about white domination of Alabama, and even the poorest of whites enjoyed rights, political and otherwise, denied the enslaved and the small number of free African Americans. After the war, how white domination might be restored was, to say the least, an open question. As across the south, Rogers argues, most white Alabamians hoped to sharply limit the citizenship rights of Blacks. In the months immediately following the war, political leaders feared that President Andrew Johnson might impose the transformative plan of Reconstruction many congressional Republicans had been demanding. Johnson, however, soon announced a plan that left the fate of freed people largely in the hands of former enslavers. Alabama joined other southern states in producing constitutions that fulfilled the Johnson plan’s requirements. Because the Johnson plan did not mandate Black enfranchisement, the election of the first government after the war was a typical all-white affair, and the first legislature convened under the new constitution did not disappoint its constituents. It quickly moved to approve measures that sought to reestablish white control of Black labor and define Blacks as second-class citizens. As Rogers clearly demonstrates, other than some expansion of educational opportunity for freed people thanks to the efforts of the American Missionary Association and other organizations, freedom fell far short of African Americans’ and their Republican allies’ expectations.

Whose Work Counts? Congressional Republicans and the Battle over Employment Status, 1947–48

AbstractConflicts over the employment status of Uber, Lyft, and other gig workers have made headlines in recent years. I argue that the conditions facing these workers and other independent contractors today are in many respects the result of policy decisions made seventy-five years ago, in hard-fought battles over which workers would—and which would not—be protected by New Deal social programs and labor laws for employees. In 1947–48, New Deal Democrats were poised to establish a more expansive definition of “employee,” extending eligibility to a range of workers excluded by more restrictive common law standards. The Republican-led 80th Congress thwarted the attempt to expand coverage, however, by blocking administrative initiatives, reversing court rulings, and redefining employment-based eligibility for federal labor and social protections. Their actions redirected policy on employment relations, restricting the reach of New Deal protections in the post–WWII economy and shaping the terms of subsequent conflicts over employment status in ways that have left broad power and discretion in the hands of employers.

Putting Politics Aside: The Congressional Baseball Game

Putting Politics AsideThe Congressional Baseball Game Dylan Garvin (bio) and Rick Burton (bio) overview For many Americans, watching representatives from the two major US political parties locked in fierce political battles is nothing new. And while legislative disagreements and challenges have traditionally taken place inside the US Capitol in Washington, DC, the two parties that have dominated American politics for more than 150 years have annually taken their combative spirit to nearby settings (most recently Washington Nationals Park) to settle their perceived and very real differences via competitive baseball. This contest, the Congressional Baseball Game (CBG) played between Democrats and Republicans in the nation’s capital, stands as an American cultural tradition unlike almost any other. Despite receiving limited national media coverage, this annual baseball event serves as a symbolic strand in America’s foundational and social DNA. From a historical standpoint, the Congressional Baseball Game started as a friendly competition between the two opposing parties. It has since grown into a significant public fundraising event raising millions of dollars for various charitable causes. It has also enjoyed visitations from sitting American presidents, including Woodrow Wilson, the first to attend the game in 1917. Years later Dwight D. Eisenhower threw out the first pitch for the 1953 contest.1 The most recent presidential attendee was Joe Biden, who made a brief appearance during the 2021 game.2 The CBG has also showcased three future presidents. Both the thirty- eighth president, Gerald Ford, and forty- first, George H. W. Bush, played for the Republican team during their time in the House of Representatives. Ford is credited with hitting the first recorded grand slam in the game’s history in 1957.3 Bush, who captained Yale’s baseball team during his time in New Haven, Connecticut, was a mainstay in the Republicans’ infield during his two terms [End Page 89] in Congress (1967–71).4 The third future president to play in the game, Joe Biden, is the only Democratic president to do so. Biden made three appearances during his time in the Senate and during the 1974 matchup wore a Philadelphia Phillies uniform, which he described as having been “stolen” from the team. The uniform happened to be the number forty- six, the same number as his future presidency.5 Interestingly, since its inception more than 112 years ago, the game has built a distinct political legacy filled with numerous narrative twists and turns, perhaps befitting of a game that has often been described as America’s national pastime. The game has also featured former professional baseball players, including a National Baseball Hall of Fame member, widely celebrated as one of the greatest major league pitchers ever. But of all the politicians to ever play the game, the best player ever to compete in the congressional game (by a wide margin) never played past the inter-collegiate (NCAA) level. the father of the game The first game between congressional Democrats and Republicans took place in 1909. This initial contest was organized by John Tener, a first-year congressman from Pennsylvania and former Major League Baseball (MLB) player. The event was designed as a change of pace for the lawmakers, who were used to contesting legislation within the walls of the Capitol, but as the proposed game date drew closer, members became more excited.6 At the price of seventy-five cents per ticket, more than one thousand attendees filed into Washington’s American League Park to watch something far removed from an elite baseball game. In staging the game, however, the modestly talented politicians could suggest their patriotism (by playing America’s symbolic game) but also show a “down- home” linkage to their constituencies (by rolling up their figurative sleeves and taking turns in the batter’s box). This first game ended after a full seven innings with the Democrats’ 26– 16 victory. The Associated Press summed the game up by claiming, “More varieties of baseball were played in that game than [were] ever crowded into seven innings before.”7 The game included fourteen errors in total, nine by the Republicans. The Washington Times (which was published between 1894 and 1939 and should not be confused with the contemporary conservative...

The Interplay between Right-Wing Alternative Media, Mainstream Media, and Political Elites in the United States

Right-wing anti-establishment sentiment has enabled the mainstreaming of alternative media outlets across Europe and the United States. Earlier research has quantified the public recognition of these media actors through web traffic rankings, direct social media engagement (e.g., reactions, comments, shares), and topic overlap with establishment counterparts. We demonstrate a computationally scalable approach which (1) sharpens the analytical unit from topic (e.g., “immigration”) to specific news event (e.g., “migrant caravan traveling from Honduras”) and (2) enables the temporal ordering of the same news event appearing among media and politicians. Our method uses a combination of URL matching, word embedding similarity metrics, and network-based eventdetection techniques. We draw two main findings from a dataset of articles from 13 U.S. right-wing media outlets and (re-)tweets by congressional Republicans from 2016 to 2020. First, we identify a clear shift in politicians’ media consumption from left- to right-wing outlets. While established-right outlets made the largest gains (30% to 42% of all (re-)tweets), alternative-right outlets also grew from 2% to 5%. Second, we identify increasing content alignment among established- and alternative-right outlets as the URL-to-dyad ratio is almost halved over the time period. Finally, we present a proof-of-concept for detecting media outlets’ indirect political alignment.

Populism, democracy, and the post‐2020 Republican Party in Congress

AbstractPopulist chief executives tend to weaken democracies by undermining the rule of law and horizontal accountability. For insight into the resilience of American democracy against such threats, this article takes a close look at how the Republican Party in Congress responded to President Donald J.Trump's attack on the legitimacy of American elections following his loss in the 2020 elections. It examines post‐2020 congressional Republicans’ decisions about party positioning, legislative party leadership and membership, and Trump's status as party leader. In each set of decisions, congressional Republicans pursued their own interests rather than echoing Trump's claims or taking direction from him. Congressional Republicans, however, largely declined to criticize Trump directly in light of their voters’ continued support for him, support that was evident in the 2022 Republican primaries. The overall conclusion is that the self‐interest of separately elected members of Congress offers a significant, albeit imperfect defense against a populist chief executive's bid for hegemony.

Resuscitating a Forgotten Fourteenth Amendment

Punish Treason, Reward Loyalty, Mark Graber’s landmark new book, upends our understanding of the Fourteenth Amendment and the Republican Congress that drafted it. Although today we consider Section 1 to be the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, Graber shows that, at the time it was framed, Sections 2-4 were the primary focus. Motivated by the threat of resurgent rebel rule and the need to protect those who had been loyal to the Union cause, the majority in the Thirty-Ninth Congress set about crafting an amendment that would configure constitutional politics in such a way that secured the contin-ued supremacy of their own party and ensured that Republicans, not a revived Slave Power, would control constitutional meaning and inter-pretation. The novelty and utility of Graber’s approach becomes especially plain when placed alongside three leading accounts of Re-construction and constitutional reform: those offered by Michael Les Benedict, William Nelson, and Eric Foner.

JAMES BUCHANAN, GORDON TULLOCK, AND THE “RADICALLY IRRESPONSIBLE” ONE PERSON, ONE VOTE DECISIONS

James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock took a keen interest in the United States Supreme Court’s reapportionment decisions of the 1960s, which established a “one person, one vote” standard for state legislative apportionment. This paper traces the long arc of Buchanan and Tullock’s opposition to the “one person, one vote” standard.The Calculus of Consentoffers a highly qualified efficiency argument against “one person, one vote,” but over time Buchanan and Tullock grew even more vocally critical of the decisions. Buchanan ultimately advocated a constitutional amendment overturning “one person, one vote” in a private set of recommendations to Congressional Republicans. This paper additionally assesses Tullock’s 1987 complaint that scholars and judges neglectedThe Calculus of Consent’s analysis of reapportionment. A review of the reapportionment literature between 1962 and 1987 demonstrates that whileThe Calculus of Consentwas frequently cited, the literature generally ignored its analysis of the efficiency of apportionment standards.

Review: The Republican Party and the War on Poverty: 1964–1981, by Mark McLay

Mark McLay’s The Republican Party and the War on Poverty is an important addition to scholarship on the War on Poverty. McLay’s work is a political history that examines the role of Congress and Republican presidents in opposing the War on Poverty. Throughout his book, the author convincingly argues for the direct connection between the rise of modern conservative Republicanism and the Republican Party’s evolving opposition to President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty.McLay argues that in the early years of the War on Poverty, the Republican Party was divided in its response to both the Economic Opportunity Act and some of the antipoverty programs it created. While most Republicans in Congress firmly opposed the legislation on the principle of limited government, some liberal Republicans, mostly in the Senate, voted for the Economic Opportunity Act in 1964 and supported most of the programs created by the Office of Economic Opportunity. Those Republicans were in the minority of their party, however, and Republican opposition only grew through the 1960s and 1970s, as the number of conservative Republicans in Congress increased.McLay also explores the presidencies of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan and their approaches to the War on Poverty. McLay contends that in the first two years of his presidency, Nixon made efforts to “save Johnson’s antipoverty war and then attempt to launch his own” through his Family Assistance Plan (p. 167). But, after the failure of FAP and the 1970 midterm elections, in which more conservative Republicans were elected to Congress, Nixon became much more aggressive in his opposition to the War on Poverty, in part due to the increasing popularity of Ronald Reagan.McLay paints Reagan as much more consistent in his opposition to the War on Poverty than was Nixon. Reagan adamantly opposed the War on Poverty from the beginning and made that opposition central to his campaigns for the governorship of California and the presidency. McLay successfully argues that Reagan was able to unite the Republican Party, in part through his opposition to the War on Poverty. Reagan’s presidency then, according to McLay, led to the end of the War on Poverty.McLay’s central argument—that opposition to the War on Poverty was a galvanizing factor in the rise of conservative Republicanism—is a convincing one. Indeed, this book nicely complements Emma Folwell’s The War on Poverty in Mississippi, which connects the Mississippi Republican Party’s growing power to its opposition to the War on Poverty.There are a few shortcomings, though. McLay’s narrative of the War on Poverty as a failure that ended in 1981 ignores some newer scholarship that has extended that period well beyond 1981 and reframed some of those narratives. Overall, though, this book makes important contributions to our understanding of the significant and ongoing Republican opposition to the War on Poverty and to the importance of the War on Poverty in the rise of conservative Republicanism.

Southern Republicans in Congress during the pre-Reagan era: An exploration

We examine the composition, background, and voting behavior of Republican members of Congress from the ex-Confederate states in the 1952–1980 period—a time during which Southern GOP membership in Congress began to increase steadily. We find that this new generation of Southern Republicans were often born in the South, came from the private sector—where they previously worked in business like much of the non-Southern wing of the Republican Party—and had few meaningful prior connections to the Democratic Party. In terms of voting behavior, Southern Republicans behaved similarly to non-Southern Republicans—generally voting with their party, and more conservatively on most issues than the Southern Democrats they replaced. However, we find that Southern Republicans and Democrats voted alike in one important way: against civil rights legislation. This latter finding of racial conservatism is consistent with other recent work arguing that the Southern GOP had to become a “White party” to win elections in the former Confederacy.

“Let Our Ballots Secure What Our Bullets Have Won”: Union Veterans and the Making of Radical Reconstruction

After the Civil War, congressional Republicans used sweeping powers to expand and enforce civil rights for African Americans. Though the electoral benefits of African American suffrage were clear, Republicans had to overcome party divisions and racist voters. This paper argues that the war imbued Northern veterans with the belief that true victory required renewing the Union by abolishing slavery and establishing (imperfect) legal equality. This made veterans more receptive to Radical Reconstruction and ignited activism for it from below. Using difference-in-differences, I show that greater enlistment increased Republican vote share, particularly in pivotal postwar elections. Moreover, “as-if” random exposure to combat deaths increased Republican partisanship among soldiers after the war. Finally, I show that veterans became more likely to vote for African American suffrage. The paper concludes that Union veterans, through their votes and their activism, were a decisive part of the white coalition that backed America’s “Second Revolution.”

Family Capitalism and the Small Business Insurrection

Family Capitalism and the Small Business Insurrection Melinda Cooper (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution Donald Trump delivers remarks at a meeting with small businesspeople at the White House on January 30, 2017. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) [End Page 96] For much of the 2016 presidential campaign, progressive commentators struggled to comprehend the foundations of Trump's popular support. Many assumed that the strident right-wing populism he unleashed was a long overdue reaction to the decades of wage stagnation endured by the industrial working class. True enough, Trump assiduously targeted this demographic during his campaign. Guided by Steve Bannon, he selectively presented himself as an advocate for a blue-collar welfarism of the kind briefly entertained by Richard Nixon—;erstwhile friend of the hard-hat worker—;and later embodied by Nixon adviser Pat Buchanan. It was this incarnation (one of several personae Trump adopted in 2016) that explains much of the early confusion regarding his political intentions. But while Trump's pandering to Rust Belt Democrats won him critical margins in Ohio and Pennsylvania, the few hundred thousand industrial workers who voted for him were hardly sufficient to constitute a long-term advantage. Nor were they representative of Trump's crusaders as a whole, the most passionate of whom were first politicized by the Tea Party movement. Arising in the aftermath of the housing crash of 2007, the Tea Party targeted a perplexing range of enemies, from subprime mortgage holders, unemployed workers, and public-sector unions to investment banks and corporate giants. In the eyes of Tea Partiers, who saw themselves as quintessential producers and taxpayers, these heterogeneous enemies were united in their dependence on government welfare, be it in the form of public assistance, state-funded wages, or corporate bailouts. As with Trumpian populism, the eclecticism of Tea Party animosity confounded progressive critique. If Tea Partiers were so enraged by the bailouts of AIG and General Motors, could they not be reeducated as leftists? The specificity of Tea Party grievances makes more sense if we understand it as a movement of small business owners, many of whom saw the values of their housing and business assets depreciate overnight as a result of the subprime crisis. The Trump diehards who cut their teeth in the Tea Party were not wage workers, nor even misclassified independent [End Page 97] contractors, but small businesspeople concentrated in the blue-collar residential construction sector and its white-collar satellite professions of homeware retail, real-estate services, mortgage brokerage, and accounting. It was the meteoric rise and fall of the small business sector—;not the long saga of deindustrialization—;that gave birth to the current cycle of far-right populism. When the first wave of Tea Party Republicans swept into Congress in the 2010 midterm elections, some of the most prescient observers pointed to the growing rift between the small and big business wings of the Republican Party and pondered its implications for the future of American capitalism. Writing for Bloomberg BusinessWeek, the journalists Lisa Lerer and John McCormick observed that established trade associations such as the Business Roundtable were distancing themselves from Tea Party candidates, fearing that their willingness to sabotage the basic workings of government risked destabilizing the entire American economy. A group of leading corporations including General Electric, DuPont, Alcoa, and Duke Energy expressed their support for an emissions reduction bill in 2009, only to be faced with a barrage of invective from congressional Republicans accusing them of colluding with big government. Tea Party candidates saw big government and big business as acting in unison to suppress the freedoms of the small business owner. In the words of Dick Armey, chair of the Koch-funded organization FreedomWorks, "Big Business is sitting there on fat, pushy duffs looking for government to keep them in business." Only "incompetent companies need bailouts. People who run corporations are basically taking care of themselves. They're not very reliable people and they're very comfortable with Big Government that greases the skids for them." This same cleavage between small and big business can be seen in Republicans' current war against "woke capitalism"—;the stakeholder-driven expression of political preferences on the part of large...

Is the SEC captured? Evidence from political connectedness and SEC enforcement actions

AbstractThis study examines the impact of political connectedness (PC) on enforcement actions by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Our analysis confirms that SEC is not captured and shows that firms or executives with stronger PC are more likely to be criminally charged or face bar or suspension than firms or executives with weaker PC. In addition, we document that imposed fines are relatively higher for prosecuted firms and executives with stronger PC. These findings are robust to inclusions of controls for Republican Congress, Republican President, and recent regulatory reforms and are not driven by endogeneity concerns and sample selection bias.

Authors’ Response

Authors’ Response

Regulatory requirements and assessment of scientific research by a psychiatrist when considering the issue of assigning a qualifying doctor`s category

Introduction: In accordance with the requirements for the preparation of a report, a physician must provide information on scientific research in the following sections to obtain a qualification category of a specialist: 6. Scientific and practical work (participation in scientific and practical conferences, medical scientific societies, presentations, publications); 11.2. List of publications of the attested in scientific journals and collections, abstracts and 11.3. List of speeches at international, all-Russian and republican conferences. Material and methods: The analysis of 5 qualification works of a psychiatrist (1997, 2002, 2008, 2013 and 2018) for the scientific component as part of the mandatory requirements for the processing of documents when they are submitted to the Attestation Commission on the assignment of a qualifying medical category in psychiatry . The depth of the study was 24 years. When working on the material, the following methodical approaches were used: system, complex, dynamic, normative, quantitative and situational. Methods of analysis included: historical, analytical and comparison. For the analysis, methods were used: groupings, absolute values, continuous and selective observations. Results: The psychiatrist GAUZ “KDC” independently or in co-authorship published 223 scientific and educational-methodical publications (total volume of 182.65 conventional author’s sheets), including 90 scientific (39.81) and 143 educational-methodical (142.84) works, in including one monograph and eight textbooks (two of them with the stamp of the Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation). In the e-library (www.e-library.ru) of the Russian Scientific Citation Index (RINC): publications - 31; citations - 123; Hirsch index - 3, publications in the journals of the VAK - 13. (https://elibrary.ru/author). Discussion: The scientific work of a practicing outpatient psychiatrist is assessed both quantitatively and qualitatively, the integral indicator of the psychiatrist’s own participation in each publication of 0.78 conventional printed sheets can be considered as a serious personal contribution to scientific research. In the regulatory framework of indicators and requirements for registration of the report there is no synchronization in the daily work of a practical doctor, his job duties with the statements of the report. When concluding an employment contract with the employer, there is no mention in it that the doctor should engage in scientific work, and it is an integral part of his functional duties and qualification requirements. The scientific work does not mention the “Unified qualification directory of positions of managers, specialists and employees, the section “Qualification characteristics of the positions of employees in the field of health care” for a psychiatrist. Conclusion: The attitude to the Administrative Regulations on the provision of a public service for assigning a qualification category to specialists engaged in medical and pharmaceutical activities should be reviewed in terms of synchronization with the duties of a doctor. The Regulation on the compulsory conduct of scientific research should be introduced, substantiated and provided by the employer or be excluded from the administrative regulations as an independent section and be exclusively recommendatory in nature. Publications of physicians in scientific journals and collections, theses of reports should motivate their interest, and within the limits of the possibilities of the medical institution to have reasonable financial support, fixed in the employment contract. An example of a practical doctor who speaks at international, all-Russian or republican congresses, congresses and conferences is an important indicator of his professional growth, an incentive for the disclosure and development of the potential of the medical institution team and the result of proper administrative and organizational-methodological guidance. The scientific work and publications of a psychiatrist’s practical doctor should be a weighty additional argument in favor of a positive decision on awarding the qualification category he has declared.

Identifying and Minimizing the Risk of Election Subversion and Stolen Elections in the Contemporary United States

The United States faces a serious risk that the 2024 presidential election, and other future U.S. elections, will not be conducted fairly, and that the candidates taking office will not reflect the free choices made by eligible voters under previously announced election rules. The potential mechanisms by which election losers may be declared election winners are: usurpation of voter choices for President by state legislatures purporting to exercise constitutional authority to do so, possibly blessed by a partisan-divided Supreme Court and acquiesced to by Republicans in Congress; fraudulent or suppressive election administration or vote counting by law- or norm-breaking election officials; and violent or disruptive private action that prevents voting, interferes with the counting of votes, or interrupts the assumption of power by the actual winning candidate. Until recently, it would have been absurd to raise the possibility of such election subversion or a stolen election in the United States. Few cases have emerged in at least the last 50 years in the United States of actual election subversion by election officials, leading to an election loser being declared the election winner, despite other unique pathologies of American election administration. Ironically, the conduct of former President Donald J. Trump in repeatedly and falsely claiming that the 2020 election was stolen has markedly raised the potential for an actual stolen election in the United States. Millions of Trump’s Republican supporters now believe the false claim of a stolen election, and some Republican elected officials have pursued bogus sham “audits” and taken other steps that undermine voter confidence in the fairness of the election process. Threats of violence and intimidation have led to unprecedented attrition among election administrators, and some exiting officials are being replaced by those who may not have allegiance to the integrity of the election system. Those Republican election officials who stood up to Trump in 2020 and saved the United States from a potential constitutional and political crisis have been censured, stripped of power, and challenged for office by those embracing the “Big Lie.” Together, these actions serve both to delegitimate the election of Democrats including President Joe Biden in 2020 and to open the door to election manipulation in future elections. Elected officials, election officials, and others believing or purporting to believe the false claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen may seek to justify subverting future election results in response to earlier purported fraud. The solutions to these problems are both legal and political. Legal changes should include: (1) paper ballot, chain-of-custody, and transparency requirements, including risk-limiting audits of election results; (2) rules limiting the discretion of those who certify the votes, including Congress through reform of the Electoral Count Act; (3) rules limiting the over-politicization of election administration, especially by state legislatures; (4) increased criminal penalties imposed on those who tamper with federal elections or commit violence or intimidation of voters, elected officials, or elected candidates; and (5) rules countering disinformation about elections, particularly disinformation about when, where, and how people vote. In addition, it will be necessary to organize for political action to reenforce rule-of-law norms in elections. This means advocating for laws that deter election subversion and against laws making stolen elections easier; politically opposing would-be election administrators who embrace false claims about stolen elections; and preparing for mass, peaceful protests in the event of attempts to subvert fair election outcomes. Part I of this Essay describes the path to this unexpected moment of democratic peril in the United States. Part II explains the three potential mechanisms by which American elections may be subverted in the future. Part III recommends steps that can and should be taken to minimize this risk. Preserving and protecting American democracy from the risk of election subversion should be at the top of everyone’s agenda. The time to act is now, before American democracy disappears.