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The Republican party is building a grassroots army to target and potentially overturn election results in Democratic precincts, the Politico website reported on Wednesday, citing video evidence.

The alleged scheme includes installing party-trained volunteers prepared to challenge voters at Democratic-majority polling places, creating a website to put these workers in touch with local lawyers and establishing a network of district attorneys who could intervene to block vote counts.

Many Republicans still believe Donald Trumps lie that he lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden because of widespread voter fraud. At state level the party has passed laws that make it harder to vote while pro-Trump candidates are running for positions that would give them control over future elections.

Politico obtained a series of recordings of Republican meetings between the summer of 2021 and May this year.

It said one from November shows Matthew Seifried, the Republican National Committees (RNC) election integrity director for Michigan, urging party activists in Wayne county to obtain official designations as poll workers.

Seifried says: Being a poll worker, you just have so many more rights and things you can do to stop something than [as] a poll challenger.

Some of the would-be poll workers complain that fraud was committed in 2020 and that the election was corrupt.

At another training session last October, Seifried promises support for such workers: Its going to be an army. Were going to have more lawyers than weve ever recruited, because lets be honest, thats where its going to be fought, right?

Politico also obtained Zoom tapings of Tim Griffin, legal counsel to the Amistad Project, a self-described election integrity group that Trumps former lawyer Rudy Giuliani once portrayed as a partner in the Trump campaigns legal efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

Griffin is seen meeting with activists from multiple states and discussing plans for identifying friendly district attorneys who could stage interventions in local election disputes.

He says during one meeting in September: Remember, guys, were trying to build out a nationwide district attorney network. Your local district attorney, as we always say, is more powerful than your congressman.

Theyre the ones that can seat a grand jury. Theyre the ones that can start an investigation, issue subpoenas, make sure that records are retained, etc.

Politico added that installing party loyalists on the board of canvassers, which is responsible for certifying election results, also appears to be part of the Republican strategy.

The revelations are sure to intensify concerns about fresh assaults on American democracy in 2022 and 2024.

Nick Penniman, founder and chief executive of Issue One, an election watchdog group, told Politico: This is completely unprecedented in the history of American elections that a political party would be working at this granular level to put a network together. It looks like now the Trump forces are going directly after the legal system itself, and that should concern everyone.

The RNC insisted that it is simply trying to restore balance to election oversight in heavily Democratic cities such as Detroit. Gates McGavick, an RNC spokesperson, was quoted as saying: Democrats have had a monopoly on poll watching for 40 years, and it speaks volumes that theyre terrified of an even playing field.

The RNC is focused on training volunteers to take part in the election process because polling shows that American voters want bipartisan poll-watching to ensure transparency and security at the ballot box.

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Republican party building an army to overturn election results report - The Guardian US

In a sane country that actually valued human lives, last weeks mass shooting in Texasor, the one before that in Buffalo, or thousands before that in the years priorwould have marked the moment the elected officials whove refused to pass gun control legislation looked in the mirror and decided to stop being part of the problem.

Unfortunately, the U.S. is not a sane country, and instead of actually doing something to prevent these atrocities from occurring all the timein case you missed it, there have been 17 mass shootingssince Uvalde, TexasRepublicans have launched a competition in which they duke it out to see who can come up with the most ridiculous thing to blame mass shootings on besides guns. So far, thats included too many doors; not enough God; pot; single moms; unarmed teachers; and schools being designed without trip wires and man traps.

Obviously, the competition is fierce. But that didnt scare Missouri representative and Senate candidate Billy Long, who rolled up to Wednesdays interview with a local radio station withand excuse the phrase though we assume hell appreciate itthe big guns. Asked by host Branden Rathert if Is there any appetite in D.C. amongst Republicans to look at doing some things differently as it relates to guns, Long responded that No one has been able to come up with any kind of suggestion that would have helped in any of these situations fact-check: false! and that passing gun control measures is not the solution to the epidemic of gun violence. Unfortunately, theyre trying to blame inanimate objects for all of these tragedies,he said. Then he added: When I was growing up in Springfield, you had one or two murders a year. Now we have two, three, four a week in Springfield, Missouri, so something has happened to our society and I go back to abortion. When we decided it was okay to murder kids in their mothers wombs, life has no value to a lot of these folks.

As Jezebels Laura Bassett noted, thats a pretty rich explanation given that you dont typically hear about mass shootings being carried out by women whove undergone abortions, probably because mass shootings are almost exclusively the domain of men, a not insignificant number of which are violent misogynists (and racists and antisemites, etc). The U.K. legalized abortion five years before the U.S., yet strangely, it doesnt seem to have the same problem with mass shootings. If Long and his ilk were actually serious about preventing thousands of Americans being killed by guns every year, they might wonder why. Hint: It doesnt have to do with clotted cream or corgis. (Just so its clear: The actual reason that more mass shootings occur in the U.S. than any other wealthy country the answerthe only answeris the astronomical number of guns in this country.)

Elsewhere in conservative bullshit re: guns, on Wednesday, Doug Mastriano, the Pennsylvania GOP nominee for governor, shared and doubled down on a 2018 video of him likening gun control to the policies of Adolf Hitler. Its appalling to me any time theres a shooting, the left will jump on that as a way to advance an agenda to remove our right to bear arms, Mastriano says in the clip. We saw Lenin do the same thing in Russia. We saw Hitler do the same thing in Germany in the 30s. Where does it stop? Where do the tyrants stop infringing upon our rights?

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Republican Congressman Blames Mass Shootings on Women Having Rights - Vanity Fair

None were, though, as each Republican lawmaker on stage grinned ear-to-ear after DeSantis made the comment, some visibly signaling they were not upset. Those who joined DeSantis included Senate President Wilton Simpson (R-Trilby) and incoming GOP Senate leader Kathleen Passidomo (R-Naples) as well as Speaker Chris Sprowls (R-Palm Harbor).

After DeSantis remarks, a handful gave their own comments replete with praise of DeSantis.

How about Ron DeSantis, Americas governor, said Simpson, echoing the nickname conservatives across the country have bestowed upon Floridas governor.

Simpson, an industrial egg farmer, is currently running for agriculture commissioner and has secured DeSantis endorsement.

DeSantis vetoed several high profile budget items sought by Simpson and top Senate Republicans from the spending plan, which was sent to the governor at $112 billion but will take effect next month at $109 billion. It still remains the biggest spending plan in state history despite the massive vetoes.

DeSantis vetoed $645 million secured by the Senate during final budget negotiations for the Department of Corrections to build a new prison; $350 million for Lake Okeechobee aquifer storage wells that were a Simpson priority; $50 million for a new 6th District Court of Appeals in Lakeland, the home of Senate budget chief Kelli Stargel (R-Lakeland); $50 million to widen a county road in Simpsons district; $20 million for two new state planes that the Senate requested; and $20 million that was a Simpson priority for Moffitt Cancer Center to secure front-end financing so it can begin development of a planned 775-acre life sciences park.

During the March conclusion of the Legislation session, Simpson called the Moffitt project, which is in his district, transformative.

The House was not spared in DeSantis veto carnage.

The governor cut a $1 billion fund proposed by the House to help the state grapple with the cost of inflation. Under the proposal, the $1 billion would have been set aside to help fund increases in material costs for state projects as inflation continues to remain high. As proposed by the House, it would have been called the Budgeting for Inflation that Drives Elevate Needs Fund, or BIDEN fund, a nod to spiking inflation under the Biden administration. Senators did not agree to that name, but did sign off on $1 billion in funding for the program.

Hammering Biden on inflation has been one of DeSantis favorite pastimes in recent months, including during Thursdays budget signing press conference, which he opened up by referring to Biden as Brandon.

You look at what he did in terms of fiscal and monetary policy, printing and printing trillions of dollars, DeSantis said. What did you get for that? Most sustained inflation this nation has seen in over 40 years.

Left unsaid was the more than $10 billion Florida has received from the Biden administration in Covid-19 relief funding over the past two years, including roughly $3.5 billion in the budget DeSantis just signed.

DeSantis also scrapped a House plan to take $200 million from school districts that defied the DeSantis administrations ban on mask mandates. Rep. Randy Fine (R-Palm Bay) wrote the plan, which would have blocked the money from being accessed by 12 counties that put in place school mask mandates against DeSantis order. But the governor blocked that idea freeing up the funding for all districts.

I direct the Department of Education to implement the Florida School Recognition Program consistent with this reading of the language, which is to reward eligible schools for their achievements, as districts actions have no bearing on a schools eligibility, DeSantis wrote in a letter accompanying his veto list.

I am somewhat befuddled by the letter, Fine told POLITICO in a text message. The language in the bill was explicit and clear.

Sprowls also took no issue with the vetoes, focusing his remarks on DeSantis decision to largely keep Floridas economy open during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, which has bolstered state coffers.

You guys have heard a lot of great news already about this budget, he said. This budget is as good as it is for the people of Florida for one reason and one reason only: and that is because our governor kept our state open.

The massive veto list does come as Florida is flush with cash. The newly signed budget includes more than $20 million in reserves, and just this month state economists revised revenue estimates up by more than $800 million compared with previous forecasts.

DeSantis also vetoed a request by Democratic Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried, who is running for governor, for 83 positions to process and review concealed carry permits, which is a function overseen by her office. Fried blasted the decision, which comes on the heels of a wave of mass shootings across the country, as reckless and another signal the governor wants open carry, or allowing people to carry firearms without a permit.

Ron DeSantis just vetoed my concealed carry positions because he wants open carry, Fried tweeted. This is so dangerous and a warning to every Floridian, tourist, and business. Do NOT allow him another term.

Andrew Atterbury contributed to this report.

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'Just the way it goes': DeSantis axes $3B from Legislature's budget in front of Republican leaders - POLITICO

Even more notable: The Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC that is aligned with Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the minority leader, and is devoted to making him speaker, has also jumped in, with even more ads attacking Raths.

The total anti-Raths spending is now around $1 million, according to AdImpact, the ad-tracking service a sign of the importance of the race, for which there has been scant public polling.

Following redistricting, Young Kim has a largely new district and its important voters know that shes the only credible conservative in the race, said Calvin Moore, a spokesman for the Congressional Leadership Fund. Its a must-win race for November, and were going to do all we can to make sure a standout leader like Kim prevails.

After years as a Republican stronghold, Orange County had already been shifting to the left before Donald Trump accelerated the change. In 2016, Kim lost her Orange County seat in the State Assembly to a Democrat.

In that campaign, she faced attacks comparing her to Trump, including an Auto-Tuned music video titled Young Kim Is Like Donald Trump. In 2018, she ran for Congress and fell short. That year, Democrats flipped all seven House seats in Orange County.

After the 2018 blue wave, however, Republicans recovered some of that lost ground. Kim and Michelle Steel, two of the first three Korean American women in Congress, were the only Republicans to flip Orange County seats in 2020.

It says a lot about how the times have changed, Kim, whose campaign declined to make her available for an interview, told The New York Times after she won her 2020 race. Our Republican Party has been very aggressive in recruiting quality candidates who happen to be women.

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Young Kim and Republicans Aim to Fend Off Rival to Her Right in California House Race - The New York Times

In theory, former Attorney General Bill Barr finds himself in a difficult position. The Republican tapped special counsel John Durham to investigate the investigation into the Russia scandal, and the entire three-year effort is proving to be a fiasco. Durhams failed and misguided prosecution of Michael Sussmann this week was the latest embarrassment, but it doesnt stand alone.

It was against this backdrop that Barr turned to Fox News last night to brag about how very proud he is of the prosecutors work. The former attorney general added:

While he did not succeed in getting a conviction from the D.C. jury, I think he accomplished something far more important.... I think he crystallized the central role played by the Hillary campaign in launching as a dirty trick the whole Russiagate collusion narrative and fanning the flames of it.

In all likelihood, Barr knows better. Donald Trumps Russia scandal wasnt just some narrative, launched as a dirty trick; it was a genuine scandal about a Republican presidential candidate whose political operation sought, embraced, capitalized on, and lied about assistance from a foreign adversary and then took steps to obstruct the investigation into the foreign interference.

Whats more, as the former attorney general also probably knows, Hillary Clinton and her campaign didnt launch the scandal; federal law enforcement began scrutinizing the controversy on its own based on ample evidence.

But putting these relevant details aside, Barrs on-air rhetoric last night was jarring for a reason: The Republican effectively made the case that Durhams pointless prosecution doesnt matter because the politicized special counsel investigation contributed to a partisan smear of Hillary Clinton.

Sure, federal prosecutors obtaining convictions is nice, but for Barr, fueling anti-Clinton theories is far more important.

The former attorney general isnt the only one thinking along such ridiculous lines. Two weeks ago, the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal published a bizarre piece with an over-the-top headline Hillary Clinton Did It claiming that the former Democratic candidate approved a plan to plant a false Russia claim with a reporter.

Predictably, the piece was a hit in Republican circles despite being filled with painfully obvious falsehoods.

It might be tempting to think the humiliating demise of Durhams case against a former Clinton attorney might lead conservatives to shift their focus, but theres ample evidence pointing in the opposite direction. On Tuesday night, Sen. Marsha Blackburn published a tweet that read, simply, Investigate Hillary Clinton. The Tennessee Republican a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee didnt say why, exactly, Clinton should be investigated, but its likely that Blackburn and those who retweeted her missive werent overly concerned with sensible rationales.

A day later, former Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens, a leading Republican Senate hopeful, also called for an investigation into Clinton, suggesting GOP leaders with a backbone should agree with him.

None of this is healthy.

As regular readers probably recall, in Trumps first year as president, the Republican and his party couldnt shake their Clinton preoccupation. The then-president couldnt stop talking and tweeting about his 2016 rival. His aides appeared fixated on Clinton. Congressional Republicans even launched investigations related to Clinton.

By October 2017, the former secretary of state joked, It appears they dont know Im not president.

The conditions persisted. In 2019, when Trump launched his re-election campaign, he excoriated Clinton seven times over the course of 30 minutes in his kickoff speech, apparently indifferent to the fact that she wasnt running. As Election Day 2020 grew closer, the then-president called for Clintons incarceration, pushed then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to uncover and release Clinton emails, and lobbied then-Attorney General Barr to prosecute Clinton for reasons unknown.

She wasnt on the ballot. Trump seemed desperate to run against her anyway.

After Trumps defeat, it seemed plausible that Trump and his followers would finally move on if for no other reason than because they had fresh political targets, in the form a new Democratic president, a new Democratic vice president, a new Democratic Senate majority leader, et al. Clinton left office a decade ago, and it was finally time for obsessive GOP critics to find a new hobby.

And yet, here we are.

In February, Republican Sen. Josh Hawley suggested on Fox News that Clinton should be incarcerated. A month later, Trump filed an anti-Clinton lawsuit for reasons that defied comprehension.

Now, Barr, Blackburn, Greitens, et al. are reminding the political world that Republicans still cant shake their obsession, even when it would be in the GOPs interests to do so.

Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MSNBC political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "The Impostors: How Republicans Quit Governing and Seized American Politics."

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Republicans still cant shake their Hillary Clinton obsession - MSNBC