 Well, as I've been saying a lot lately democracy in the United States may not belong for this world And certainly if it survives it will go through a very rocky period over the course of the next couple of years And the midterm elections are going to I think test how strong American institutions are and whether or not Democracy can be protected by these institutions when you have a number of people who are trying to tear it apart from within But before we get to the really horrifying news I want to first start out with some hope him because the very first Insurrectionist who stormed the Capitol on January 6th is facing political consequences not jail time, but political Consequences and they are being removed from office I'm of course talking about Coy Griffin the founder of Cowboys for Trump and as HuffPost reports a New Mexico judge has ordered a Donald Trump supporting County official to be immediately removed and barred from office for participating in the deadly Capitol Insurrection on January 6th 2021 in his ruling on Tuesday district judge Francis Matthews said that Otero County commissioner and Cowboys for Trump founder Coy Griffin is disqualified from holding office under the 14th amendment because he engaged in the insurrection After taking an oath to support the Constitution as an executive officer of the state now This is a really big deal because the last time that somebody was actually removed from office under the Constitutions insurrection related clauses was 1869 and You know at some point you'd think that somebody would face some political ramifications For participating in the January 6th insurrection Marjorie Green didn't so far Trump hasn't But this individual who's currently holding office He's out now He was really let off easy up until now because he got arrested on January 17th Convicted in March and he was sentenced to just 14 days 14 days in jail and A $3,000 fine all this after storming the Capitol bringing guns and ammunition calling for war He got 14 days in jail and a $3,000 fine and this is a sitting public official So the fact that he's now barred from running for office that is really important However, here's where we get to the bad news He's just the tip of the iceberg if we were to Bar every single insurrectionist and charge all of them like bar all of them from running from for office and charge all of them with crimes That still wouldn't necessarily protect democracy from election truthers because 538 just released a report and what they found is genuinely Astonishing more than one in two Americans will have an election denier on the ballot this fall now We're gonna dive into the details here, but this doesn't necessarily mean that Most of these election deniers will win But enough of them will win to sufficiently change the composition of the Republican Party at least in the house of representatives and Now we're going to have one of two parties effectively be hostile to the very simple notion of Democracy so let's get to the breakdown here. So out of 529 GOP primary winners 195 are full blown 2020 election truthers who either falsely claimed that the election was stolen from Trump or they tried to overturn the election Themselves by taking action to do just that by either voting or not voting rather to certify the results or joining lawsuits Intended to overturn the election now an additional 61 have concerned trolled about the election either Questioning its integrity or refusing to state whether or not they believe that the election was legitimate another 17 Just refused to answer a question about it when they were asked and 98 didn't have comments Which implies that they're possibly writing the fence or deliberately trying to avoid stating their position because it could be unpopular Within the GOP's base, which is a problem and now here's the total breakdown So just 30% of Republicans running for office who won their GOP primaries either fully Accepted the results of the 2020 election or they accept it with some reservations now Here's where the data gets really disturbing in the house 126 election deniers and doubters are poised to win their house races now in the Senate at a minimum Three election deniers seem poised to win and when it comes to governor's races Six election deniers and doubters are either poised to win or they have a great shot at actually winning individuals like Kerry Lake out Of Arizona now, I'll link you to their page where you can look at the data in your own state This is my state of Oregon now as you can see here It looks a little bit better because the election deniers that we have that won their GOP primaries They have a very small chance of winning But that's not necessarily the case in all states and currently as it stands now this could change But Republicans are poised to take back the house. So we're gonna have one branch of Congress be dominated By election deniers who have power There's a lot that they can do to put their election denialism into practice They could impeach Biden for claiming that he stole the election. They can conduct investigations form special committees To investigate election fraud There's a lot that they can do and even if they fail at all of these things on a practical level They can still elevate the salience of this issue by focusing on this since all of them believe it now I don't necessarily know if they're just pandering to the GOP's base and they don't really believe this It doesn't matter though It's a distinction without a difference because we have a lot of election truthers who are going to Congress That's something that is a definite possibility is a reality and we have to grapple with that as a society What do we do if they didn't participate in the insurrection? Then there's not really a way to bar them from running for Congress short of passing laws Saying you are disqualified from running for office if you you know are are an election truther or something like that The constitutionality of a law like that would be dubious, right? So there's really nothing you can do you can hold all of the January 6th insurrectionists like Coy Griffin Accountable, but that's not gonna stop all of these election truthers from taking power and that right there is The thing that we're grappling with as a country What do we do about this? Can we try to educate them that doesn't really seem to work because their minds are riddled with conspiracy theories Do we try to educate the GOP's base? Well, that's difficult too because they are plugged into Fox News Newsmax and they're getting constant misinformation. So what do we do and there's no easy answers? We can't make a difference on a micro level Changes have to be made societal changes have to be made on the macro level But certainly I think that we should start by talking to our family members who deny the results of the election But either way a wave of election truthers is going to flood Congress And what does that mean for the long-term health of democracy? I don't know but it seems bad if you ask me You could support the humanist report at patreon.com Slashed humanist report But trust me, I'd have way more supporters at patreon if that was my podcast said