 So, the Republican Party has always been evil, but they've really been on a roll this year. In particular, zero House Republicans voted to crack down on oil and gas price gouging back in May after complaining about the high cost of gasoline. Senate Republicans predictably blocked a bill to codify Roe v. Wade ahead of the Supreme Court's decision to reverse Roe v. Wade, and zero Republicans in the House voted in favor of abortion rights after Roe v. Wade was overturned, knowing that even many Republicans are pro-choice. All but 12 House Republicans voted against a bill intended to ease the baby formula shortage and in July, 25 Senate Republicans blocked a bill that they previously supported that would provide health care to veterans exposed to toxic burn pits, that is, until mass backlash forced them to backtrack. But 10 Republicans voted against the right to contraception, which I didn't even know was still controversial in 2022, even among conservatives. And also a majority of House Republicans voted against same-sex marriage in 2022. And not even 10 Republicans in the Senate would vote for marriage equality, causing the bill to be delayed until the Senate can try to find more support in order to bypass a filibuster. Now in August, 43 Senate Republicans voted against capping the cost of insulin, even knowing that their own constituents would be harmed by this. And this month, Republican senators blocked the Disclose Act, which would bring dark money political donations to light. And last, but certainly not least, only 9 Republicans in the House voted in support of legislation that would prevent another coup attempt. Now let's pause right there, even as embarrassing as their stances on all of those other policies are, that last vote was the most egregious. Because as bad as your policy positions may be, at a minimum, there's this expectation that you at least support democracy minimally. But here they're saying, actually in the event we have a future Republican president or Democrat possibly, this is what they're allowing, we want to allow them to contest the results of the election in the way that Trump did and try to get the Vice President to unilaterally overturn the results of the election. Now, they're not thinking this through because in the event they wanted to give the VP power, which they currently don't have to overturn the results of elections, then like what if Ron DeSantis won in 2024? What's stopping Kamala Harris from just doing what they wanted Mike Pence to do? Like she doesn't have the power and the Vice President doesn't have the power. But they're saying here, we don't want to clarify that the Vice President doesn't have this power because we want to appease Daddy Trump. It's truly ridiculous that they can't even support democracy in the most minimal way in 2022. And this is one of two major political parties. Now, for more details, we've got a Brett Wilkins of Common Dreams who explains the Presidential Election Reform Act written by representatives Liz Cheney and Zoe Laughgren seeks to prevent presidents from manipulating the electoral count act like former President Donald Trump attempted to do as part of his effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election and prevent the peaceful transfer of power to President Joe Biden. The measure passed by a vote of 229 to 203 with every House Democrat president voting in favor, only nine House Republicans joined them. All nine are leaving Congress after this term, either because they lost primary challenges or are retiring. Now, this is astonishing, the only nine Republicans that they could find to vote in favor of this legislation that would protect democracy. Like it's the bare minimum. They're all Republicans who are retiring or they've lost their GOP primaries. Again, this is one of two major political parties saying we actually don't care about democracy. And we think that presidents should be able to force their vice president to illegally and unilaterally subvert the will of the people. It's insane. Now, for those of you wondering, the nine Republicans who supported this include unsurprisingly, Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, Anthony Gonzalez, Jamie Herrera Butler, Chris Jacobs, John Katko, Peter Mayer, Tom Rice and Fred Upton. That's it. Not a single Republican who's going to remain in Congress voted in favor of this. Now, this doesn't really do anything. It simply clarifies that the vice president indeed does not have the legal authority to overturn the will of voters, but they couldn't support this because they don't want to piss off Donald Trump. And he is pissed that this passed to be clear. But just like think about that for a moment and how dangerous a time this is for democracy, the de facto position of the Republican Party is to be against democracy because they're saying that a president who loses an election or a presidential candidate who loses an election, who illegitimately cries fraud with no evidence should be able to pressure the vice president to overturn these elections. Now, imagine for a second if Kamala Harris in 2024 shows to try to not certify the election. If Ron DeSantis won, what would they do then? They'd say, oh, no, the vice president doesn't have the power to do this. This is insane. And they'd be correct then. But because it's Donald Trump, they can't admit that. And to be clear, I don't want the vice president Kamala Harris. I don't want anyone to have the ability to overturn the will of the voters. Like even the Electoral College itself, it's completely inherently undemocratic because they do subvert the will of voters. Like it should be one person, one vote just because of a state that you live in. You shouldn't have a vote that is weighed more heavily. But either way, like that's already part of our institution. Having the vice president be able to overturn the will of voters. That's not something that we allow. That's not legal. But they're saying here, we won't even clarify that that is indeed not something that the vice president can do. It's truly astonishing here. And anyone who supports the Republican Party, I mean, by default, you're supporting a party that is against democracy, which is extremely alarming in a democratic system. Now, Donald Trump responded fuming about this. And I think that he is making a point that will be persuasive to his supporters who believe his lies about the election. So he wrote this on Truth Social. The House just passed a bill which prohibits the vice president from doing what all the great Democrat and Ryan O'Lego scholars said he couldn't do under any circumstances regarding sending election results back to state legislatures. If the VP couldn't do it, then why are they passing legislation saying he can't do it because he could have done it and should have based on large scale fraudulent election results would have been a different result. Republican senators should vote no. So he's commanding Republicans to vote no. And on top of that, he's making the point that, well, OK, if really the vice president doesn't have the power to do this, then why is this necessary? And if you really don't know any better, I think you'll find that point persuasive. But the reason why this is necessary is to make it even more abundantly clear to codify the fact, the legal fact that a vice president cannot overturn the will of voters unilaterally. I mean, I don't know if they realize that if this was actually a thing right now, anyways, Democrats could just never cede power back to Republicans if the vice president had this power because if Trump wins in 2024, well, according to them, Kamala Harris can just contest the results, cry fraud, send it back to state legislatures and they could stay in power in perpetuity. Do they really want to do this? I mean, this is why democracy is so important because it goes above partisan lines. Every single person, Democrat, Republican, independent should support democracy at the bare minimum, because we all benefit from having a minimal level of democracy as flawed as our democracy is. We have to fight to preserve what we have. But Republicans are saying, no, we think vice presidents should be able to overturn democracy. They wouldn't be saying this if Kamala Harris tried to do it. It's just it's ridiculous. Now, this current version that was sent to the Senate reportedly isn't going to have the votes to pass, right? But apparently not all hope is lost if and this is a big if we can take mention of all people at his word, at least his assessment of what he believes this bill can do in terms of mustering support. So Politico reports that some House Republicans could be open to supporting a Senate version of the legislation introduced in July by Senators Joe Manchin and Shelley Moore Capito, which might include provisions of the lower chamber's bill. Manchin's office said Wednesday that his bill has 10 Republican co-sponsors enough GOP votes for a filibuster free passage. So look, my response to that is we'll have to wait and see. But if the reports are true and I believe they are that Republicans are frustrated with Donald Trump's election lies, then they should pass this bill to clarify that the vice president can't do that. The Electoral Account Act does just that. But at the same time, if they do that, then they know that they'll be targeted by Donald Trump. They'll be called rhinos and he'll attack them. But if they stop being cowards and they all bind together, then Trump can't really single out any one Republican. But the problem is that they are all spineless. So none of them want to do this. None of them want to stand up. It just takes one person to be courageous and you've got zero. I mean, the only Republicans again who support this are the ones that are leaving. So this is where we're at in American politics in 2022. We have one party so terrified of this demagogue that they refuse to do the bare minimum and just say, yeah, the vice president obviously doesn't have the legal and constitutional authority to overturn the will of millions of voters. But they won't do that because they will piss off a deranged madman. So that's where we're at. Again, all of the bad things that Republicans do and say all of the horrible votes that they take, all of the ways that they embarrass themselves. None of that is as egregious as this right here. Their unwillingness to support democracy even in the most basic sense. It's truly appalling and I worry about the future of democracy given the state of the Republican Party. And we all should be worried. His videos before everyone else is tremendous. Many people are saying this. Join today, folks. You won't regret it.