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Mr. Bannon, Mr. Lindell and Mr. Epshteyn have repeatedly promoted decertification at the state level on Mr. Bannons podcast, War Room, since last summer, pushing it as a steady drumbeat and at times claiming that it could lead to Mr. Trump being put back into office. They have described the so-called audit movement that began in Arizona and spread to other states as part of a larger effort to decertify electoral votes.

We are on a full, full freight train to decertify, Mr. Epshteyn said on the program in January. Thats what were going to get. Everyone knows. Everyone knows this election was stolen.

Weighing changes to the Insurrection Act. Some lawmakers on the Jan. 6 House committee have begun discussions about rewriting the Insurrection Actin response to the events that led to the Capitol riot. The law currently gives presidents the authority to deploy the military to respond to a rebellion, and some fear it could be abused by a president trying to stoke one.

Debating a criminal referral. The House panel has grown divided over whether to make a criminal referralof former President Donald J. Trump to the Justice Department, even though it has concluded that it has enough evidence to do so. The debate centers on whether a referral would backfire by politically tainting the expandingfederal investigation.

Continuing election doubts. More than a year after they tried and failed to use Congresss final count of electoral votes on Jan. 6 to overturn the election, some Trump allies are pushing bogus legal theories about decertifying the 2020 voteand continuing to fuel a false narrativethat has resonated with Mr. Trumps supporters.

Last fall, 186 state legislators from 39 states joined a letter written by Wendy Rogers, a Republican state senator from Arizona who has appeared at events hosted by Mr. Lindell, calling on each state to decertify its electors where it has been shown the elections were certified prematurely and inaccurately.

All the efforts have either failed to progress or been rejected for lack of legal grounds in the absence of any evidence of widespread voter fraud that could have affected the 2020 election. And even as elected Republicans have almost uniformly embraced Mr. Trumps claims that the vote was stolen, many have rejected the idea that states should decertify their results or argued that the effort was merely symbolic, noting that he could never be reinstated.

Still, Mr. Trump is now the front-runner in public opinion surveys of the possible Republican presidential field. While he has yet to declare his candidacy, he has privately told associates that he is planning to run again.

A spokesman for Mr. Trump did not respond to an email seeking comment.

The legal drive to reverse his 2020 loss has had ripple effects in the Republican Party. With midterm congressional elections less than six months away, the push has put pressure on candidates to either endorse it or risk the wrath of Mr. Trump and his supporters. In Alabama, Representative Mo Brooks said that the former president had repeatedly demanded that he rescind the election and remove Mr. Biden. When the congressman said that was impossible, Mr. Trump withdrew his endorsement in the states Senate Republican primary.

In Pennsylvania, Jake Corman, the top Republican in the State Senate who promised last year to review the 2020 election results, said he had dropped plans to end his bid for governor after Mr. Trump urged him to keep fighting. He then went on Mr. Bannons podcast, where Mr. Corman said there was no question about the need to investigate whether electors needed to be decertified in battleground states, and pledged to turn the Department of State upside down to find evidence of illegality.

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Trump Allies Are Still Feeding the False 2020 Election Narrative - The New York Times

Former President Donald Trump endorsed Sen. Mike Lee a couple of weeks ago, but the Utah Republicans reelection campaign hasnt made a peep about it.

Lee hasnt mentioned the endorsement in the numerous fundraising emails he sends. It hasnt turned up in a political ad. His campaign team seems to be going out of its way to keep it on the down-low.

The closest Lee comes to bringing the former president into his campaign is in reference to one of his opponents, independent Evan McMullin. Im being attacked by my Never Trumper opponent and he is raising millions of dollars in order to STOP our conservative campaign, the senator wrote in fundraising emails.

Meantime, text messages between Lee and Trumps chief of staff Mark Meadows released last week showed how deeply involved the senator was in the former presidents efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

How all of that plays out over the coming weeks and months will be interesting as Lee campaigns for a third term in the Senate, including having to face a June primary election involving two credible GOP challengers in community and business leader Ally Isom and former state legislator Becky Edwards.

Lee has not enjoyed a high job approval rating with Utah voters overall, though he remains strong among Republicans.

A new Deseret News/Hinckley Institute of Politics poll conducted April 5-12 found 44% of voters approve of Lees performance, two points higher than in a February survey. The poll found 36% of Utahns disapprove of the job he is doing, while 19% dont know. Overall, Lees approval rating has not changed much since January 2021.

The latest survey was done before CNN revealed a series of text messages from Lee to Meadows from November 2020 and January 2021 discussing ways to hand the presidential election to Trump.

Please tell me what I should be saying, Lee wrote to Meadows on Nov. 22, followed by another text that day reading, There are a few of us in the Senate who want to be helpful (although I sense that number might be dwindling).

In 2016, Lee called for Trump to drop out of the presidential race and tried everything in his power to prevent him from getting the GOP nomination. After Trump won the election, Lee embraced the new president. He headed Trumps reelection campaign in Utah. He doggedly pursued avenues to keep him in office after Trump lost to Democrat Joe Biden.

Trump publicly expressed his displeasure at Lee for ultimately concluding Congress only had the power to open and count Electoral College votes. Lee did not vote to challenge states electoral votes. About six weeks later, Lee held a high-priced campaign fundraiser at Trumps Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.

Chris Karpowitz, co-director of the Center for the Study of Elections and Democracy at Brigham Young University, said Trumps endorsement might help and hurt Lee.

For Republicans in the state who embrace the former president, the endorsement will further confirm their preference for Lee, he said.

Given Lees increasing alignment with the MAGA movement over the course of the previous administration, Im not sure the news of the endorsement will surprise those voters, but it may cement their support of Lee, Karpowitz said.

On the other hand, Donald Trump is also a divisive figure. Some Utah Republicans have reservations about him, and for those voters, the endorsement may not help. For a few, the endorsement may be a signal to explore competing candidates.

Karpowitz said the bigger question is whether the endorsement indicates that Lee agrees with or is willing to accept Trumps false claims about election fraud in 2020. Those claims seem increasingly important to the former president and his supporters, and have been a source of some disagreement between Trump and Lee in the past, he said.

One important question is whether Mike Lees perspectives of the 2020 election and its aftermath have changed in some way or whether he now embraces Donald Trumps actions and rhetoric about this issue, he said. This is clearly a campaign issue his opponents want to raise, and the endorsement brings those questions front and center.

The thing to watch is how Lee is doing with Republicans, said Jason Perry, director of the Hinckley Institute of Politics at the University of Utah. He has stayed very, very strong with the segment of the GOP that says theyre going to vote and do show up to vote.

Thats a very strong base for him, he said. That isnt likely to change, even in light of the stories that have come out recently.

But, Perry said, its worth watching to see if Lee starts losing support among more moderate Republicans.

Thats where he may see some of his support change. But what I expect to see is that his approvals will stay close to the same, but it is his disapprovals that have the possibility of going up, he said.

Among Republicans in the new poll, Lees approval rating jumps to 58%, though more than a quarter disapprove of his performance. His approval rating soars to 80% with Utahns who identified themselves as very conservative, dips to 53% for somewhat conservative voters and plummets to 28% among moderate voters.

Dan Jones & Associates conducted the poll of 840 registered Utah voters from April 5-12. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.46 percentage points.

Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, talks to Kenworth Sales employees before a tour of the company in West Valley City on Friday, Nov. 12, 2021. During the tour, Romney talked about supply chain issues.

Shafkat Anowar, Deseret News

Interestingly, Utah Republican Sen. Mitt Romney has the same job approval rating in the new poll as Lee, though a lot more Utahns dont approve of Romneys performance than Lees.

Half of voters disapprove of Romneys work in the Senate, compared to Lees 36%.

The survey was conducted as the Senate voted to confirm Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court on April 7. Romney voted to confirm Jackson, while Lee voted against. A Deseret News/Hinckley poll released last week found less than half of Utahns wanted the Senate to confirm Jackson.

Romney has not weighed in on Lees text messages. He was one of the first Republican senators to acknowledge Biden as the winner of the 2020 election and has called Trumps fraud claims the big lie.

Utahns, for the most part, have an opinion of Romney with only a small percentage of those surveyed saying they dont know if they approve or disapprove of the job he is doing. Nearly one-fifth of respondents, though, said they dont know about Lee.

Democrats continue to give Romney a much higher approval rating than Republicans in the state, 71% to 37%. The poll also found 60% of Republicans disapprove of the senators job performance.

Correction: In a previous version, the graphic showing the job approval ratings for Sen. Mitt Romney transposed the disapprove and dont know numbers. Fifty percent of respondents say they disapprove of the way he is doing his job and 6% dont know.

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Donald Trump endorsed Mike Lee. Will it help or hurt his reelection bid? - Deseret News

Former President Donald Trump endorsed Rep. Ted Budd for a Senate seat in North Carolina, one of 17 candidates for U.S. Senate to get Trumps endorsement thus far in the election cycle.

Allison Joyce / Getty Images

UPDATE (April 19, 10:05 a.m.): Late Monday, former President Trump announced two more endorsements in a pair of South Carolina House races. With these endorsements, Trump has endorsed 103 candidates for U.S. Senate, U.S. House and state governorships so far.

Read more from Jean and Nathaniel on Trumps 2022 endorsement strategy.

Normally, a one-term presidency would be a sign for a political party to move away, regroup and pivot away from a losing brand. But Donald Trump is not a conventional former president. With the 2022 primary season beginning to pick up in earnest not counting Texass runoff elections, 12 more states will be holding their primaries in May Trumps continued influence in the GOP is again being put to the test.

Its tricky for Trump, though, as he must thread the needle of maintaining his hold on the party while at the same associating his name with winning in other words, not reminding voters of his 2020 election loss. Hes largely done this by backing some candidates who seem sure bets to win their primaries as well as supporting his fiercest allies, those who advocate the Big Lie (the idea that he actually won the 2020 election). We last looked at Trumps endorsements back in December, and while many parts of his strategy appear to be the same namely, hes still endorsing a lot of candidates there are signs that Trump is being more selective in who he backs.

When we took a look at Trumps endorsements last year, we observed he was endorsing more candidates early on in the cycle. By Dec. 7, 2021, he had endorsed 46 candidates for U.S. Senate, U.S. House and state governorships more than three times as many as he had endorsed at that point in the 2020 election cycle. It wouldnt have been surprising, then, to see the former president take an endorsement breather but thats not what happened.

Instead, Trump has continued to endorse at a furious pace. As of April 18, he has endorsed 103 Senate, House and gubernatorial candidates whereas by April 18, 2020, he had endorsed only 42 candidates for those offices.

After a brief plateau in January Trump endorsed only six Senate, House or gubernatorial candidates Trump really ramped up his endorsements in the new year. He endorsed more such candidates in February (20) than he has in any other month this cycle. Then he endorsed nine candidates in March, and 14 more in the first 18 days of April. In total, hes now made almost as many endorsements for Senate, House and gubernatorial candidates in the first few months of 2022 (49) than he did in all of 2021 (55).

Trump may not be slowing down in his endorsements, but we have observed a change in strategy. Back in December, we noted that almost half of the endorsements Trump had made to that point carried political risk: 43 percent (20 out of 46) of his Senate, House and governor endorsements were of non-incumbents in contested Republican primaries, meaning they werent necessarily locks to win. But since then, only 22 percent (13 out of 59) of Trumps Senate, House and governor endorsements have been of non-incumbents in contested Republican primaries.

In other words, Trump has been loading up on safe endorsements, like on April 6 when he endorsed seven incumbent Republican representatives, none of whom are especially likely to lose their primaries. (Incumbents rarely lose in primaries.)

In many ways, this was a return to form for Trump, who endorsed only 25 non-incumbents in contested Senate, House and governor primaries in the 2020 cycle 22 percent of his total endorsements for those offices. Perhaps he realized that, after endorsing so many candidates who may very well lose, he needed to bet on some safer horses in order to maintain the appearance that he is still a kingmaker in Republican primaries. After all, we know he still cares about that perception because he boasted just last month about his 100 percent win rate in the Texas primary (if you ignore that five of his endorsees were forced into runoffs).

But as weve written in the past, Trumps high win rate has always been artificially inflated by easy wins, and Texas was no exception: Seven of the 19 Republicans Trump endorsed for House or governor in the Lone Star State were running unopposed.

In fact, Trump may even be selectively changing his endorsements after making them to keep his win rate up and distance himself from candidates hes afraid might lose. Take Rep. Mo Brooks, who in April 2021 earned Trumps endorsement for U.S. Senate in Alabama but has been languishing at a distant third in the polls. Reports began to emerge that Trump was unhappy with Brookss performance, and on March 23, he officially rescinded his endorsement.

Trumps abandonment of Brooks is interesting, as Trump has largely been endorsing Republicans who agree with his false claims that the 2020 election was stolen. On that front, Brooks is one of the Big Lies biggest supporters. Brooks was the first member of Congress who said he would challenge the election results, and he also spoke at the Jan. 6 rally before the attack on the U.S. Capitol.

But what it means to support the Big Lie is an ever-evolving litmus test, and Brooks seems to have made a grievous miscalculation in telling his supporters to put Trumps 2020 election loss behind them at an August 2021 rally. Trump cited this as the reason for why he was no longer supporting Brooks, though of course its impossible to disentangle the role Brookss sagging poll numbers played in Trumps decision, as we know Trump loves a winner.

But Brookss fall from grace aside, a belief in the Big Lie has been perhaps the most consistent part of Trumps endorsements since the 2020 election. Of the 111 candidates hes endorsed for governor, federal office, attorney general or secretary of state, at least 80 more than 70 percent believe that the 2020 election was fraudulent, according to our research. (To make our determinations, we checked whether Trumps endorsees had, if members of Congress, voted against certifying the election results, and whether they had taken a public stance on the issue via news reports and their social media pages. Candidates who more generally raised questions about voter fraud or wanted to increase scrutiny of voting practices werent included in our totals.)

Senate, House, governor, secretary of state and attorney general candidates running in the 2022 cycle endorsed by Donald Trump and their position on the legitimacy of the 2020 election, as of April 18, 2022

*Dropped out.

To determine whether a candidate supported Trumps false claims that he won the 2020 election, we checked whether Trumps endorsees had voted against certifying the election results and whether they had taken a public stance on the issue via news reports and their social media pages.

Sources: donaldjtrump.com, news reports

Support for the Big Lie is particularly prominent in the candidates Trump has endorsed for the House, as we identified that 81 percent (58 out of 72) of the candidates Trump has backed believe in the Big Lie. In Trumps endorsements for Senate and governors races, though, support for the Big Lie isnt quite as pronounced. Just six out of the 17 candidates Trump has endorsed for the Senate support the Big Lie, and nine out of 14 gubernatorial candidates do.

But as we wrote in December, whats really notable about Trumps endorsements this cycle is hes also taking the unusual step of endorsing election officials most notably, election officials who buy into Trumps lie that the election was stolen from him. So far, Trump has endorsed three secretary of state candidates (all Big Lie believers) in Arizona, Georgia and Michigan, states that flipped from Trump in 2016 to President Biden in 2020, and where all three incumbent secretaries of state certified their states results.

Trump has taken a similar approach in attorney general races, where four out of five of his endorsed candidates believe that the 2020 election was fraudulent. His two incumbent endorsees, Ken Paxton in Texas and Ashley Moody in Florida, both joined a failed lawsuit that tried to overturn the election results, and two non-incumbent endorsees also hail from states Trump narrowly lost in 2020, Georgia and Michigan. (The fifth endorsee, Tim Griffin, an attorney general candidate in Arkansas, hasnt taken a stance on the 2020 election publicly.)

These endorsements are notable, not only because these races dont usually attract national attention, but because they also most clearly break with Trumps pattern of choosing safer, incumbent candidates. Of the eight candidates Trump has endorsed so far for secretary of state or attorney general, six are non-incumbents.

Of course, its still an open question at this point about how consequential Trumps endorsements will be. Most Republicans still have a favorable view of Trump, but there are signs his popularity is slipping. Moreover, weve already gotten some mixed signals with his endorsement track record. In the three special elections Trump weighed in on last year,his preferred candidate lost in Texas, but won in Ohio and Louisiana. His endorsement record could be further complicated this year, too, if he continues to rescind endorsements as he did with Brooks or endorse competing candidates like he did with state Rep. Steve Carra and U.S. Rep. Bill Huizenga in Michigan.

Its too early at this point to conclude anything about Trumps endorsement track record, but as we keep moving through the primary season, well be keeping a close eye on what Trumps endorsements mean for the future of the Republican Party.

CORRECTION (April 19, 2022, 5:35 p.m.): An earlier version of the table in this article mistakenly listed Kristi Noem as the governor of North Dakota. Noem is the governor of South Dakota.

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More Than 70 Percent Of Trumps Endorsees Believe The 2020 Election Was Fraudulent - FiveThirtyEight

Between Texas Gov. Greg Abbott letting the state power grid collapse while hes busing migrants to D.C. to get himself on Fox News, Jared Kushner getting $2 billion from the Saudis, and Donald Trump bragging to Sean Hannity about how well he knows Vladimir Putin, theres no end to the fuckery.

But the focus on The New Abnormal this week is on Donald Trump Jr., as CNN reporter Zachary Cohen breaks down his reporting on the namesakes post-election text messages to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows scheming on how to steal the election: We either have a vote WE control and WE win OR it gets kicked to Congress 6 January 2021.

That, Cohen tells co-host Molly Jong-Fast, shows that even in those earliest days, while the election votes were still being counted, there were high-level people, very close to the former president, including his chief of staff and his namesake oldest son, talking through the details about what would happen over the next two months in the lead up to Jan. 6, as far as the strategy to overturn the election. It really puts an important timestamp on when this strategy was being drawn upeven as the votes were still being counted.

Subscribe to The New Abnormal on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon Music, or Overcast.

Whats interesting about Donald Trump Juniors text messages, Cohen explains, is that they refer to multiple paths that we control. There was an eye to Jan. 6 as sort of the backup plan where Junior alludes to a scenario where the House of Representatives can essentially vote to install Donald Trump as president, rather than Joe Biden. So Juniors lawyer told us, Look, this was given the date that this was sent. And, uh, he was, looks like he was forwarding along someone elses ideas, but weve also learned about a text that came immediately before that from Donald Trump, Jr. that says, Look, this is what we need to do. Please read it, please get it to everyone. We need to do it because Im not sure we're doing it. So he is clearly putting a stamp of approval on things.

Plus University of California Law professor Rick Hasen, the co-director of the universitys Fair Elections and Free Speech Center and the author of Cheap Speech: How Disinformation Poisons Our Politicsand How to Cure It, explains how if we had the same polarized politics of today, but the technology of the 1950s, we likely wouldn't have had Jan. 6 and the insurrection and millions of people believing the false claim that the 2020 election was stolen.

Listen to The New Abnormal on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon and Stitcher.

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Donald Trump Jr. Was Up to His Ears in the Plot to Steal the Election for His Daddy - The Daily Beast

Donald Trump Jr. called Taylor Lorenz, the Washington Post columnist who revealed the identity of the user behind the Libs of TikTok account, a "psycho" on Tuesday following the publication of her debate-inciting expose.

In a tweet, he mentioned a recent video showing a tearful Lorenz talking about the "isolating" and "horrifying" effects of online harassment.

"Wasn't this psycho on tv 2 weeks ago actually crying about the exact type of behavior that seems to be her exact business model. If only she tried to report on real bad actors rather than a random personalities on social... but we know that won't happen," Trump tweeted.

Trump is one of many conservatives who have expressed outrage over Lorenz's piece published by the Washington Post, with many accusing her of being guilty of harassment herself in her efforts to identify the previously anonymous user. Some also accused Lorenz of "doxxing" the user, or the act of publicly revealing private personal information about an individual or organization, according to Merriam-Webster's definition.

Lorenz identified the user behind Libs of TikTok as Chaya Raichik. The Twitter profile was opened in November of 2020 and has accrued more than 682,000 followers.

Lorenz reported that Raichik was working as a real estate agent in Brooklyn when she created the account. In the years since, the account has gained traction and popularity among right-wing figures, regularly taking aim at liberals, civil rights protesters and teachers it alleges teaches sexually sensitive content to children or promotes LGBTQ+ rights.

The Libs of TikTok account on Twitter retweeted Trump's post. Earlier Tuesday, the user tagged Lorenz in another Twitter post that read: "Hi @TaylorLorenz! Which of my relatives did you enjoy harassing the most at their homes yesterday?"

In a picture included with the post, Lorenz appeared to be shown standing outside a home.

Lorenz was accused on social media of appearing at the house of the Libs of TikTok user's relatives, though it has not been independently verified by her or the Washington Post. But the accusations have further fueled the criticism.

Right-wing political commentator Ben Shapiro tweeted that Lorenz is "a terrible journalist and worse human."

"Targeting a Twitter account that literally just posts Leftists owning themselves because that account damages the Left is pure Lorenz," he added.

New York Post writer Emma-Jo Morris criticized Lorenz for what she described as using her influence as a writer at the Post to "dox private people."

"Taylor Lorenz is a 43-year-old woman who has a byline at one of the most powerful outlets in mediawhich she uses to dox private people on twitterand then cries on MSNBC about her self-proclaimed victim status," she wrote, referencing the same video Trump mentioned.

Lorenz defended her expose in a Twitter thread Tuesday.

"Yes, an acct whose goal is driving LGBTQ ppl out of public life is bad. Gay/trans ppl targeted by the acct have had their lives destroyed, but the *point* of the story is actually a nuanced look at radicalization & how the right wing outrage cycle functions. That's worth covering," she wrote.

"This is ultimately a story about how online influence warps our political discourse and shapes policy, as well as the right wing media's symbiotic relationship w/ a massive political influencer," she added in another tweet.

Newsweek reached out to Lorenz via the Washington Post, a representative for Donald Trump Jr. and the Trump Organization for comment.

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Donald Trump Jr. Calls Taylor Lorenz 'Psycho' Over Libs of TikTok Article - Newsweek