After five years spent bullying the Republican Party into submission, President Donald Trump finally met his match in Aaron Van Langevelde. People were raising objections—such as to the transferring of military absentees onto ballots that could be read by machines, a standard practice—that betrayed a lack of preparation. “When half the votes in our state believe we just had the most secure election in U.S. history, and the other half believe they were cheated, we have a problem.”. What was going on? Only in the late stages of the race, when Republican state senator (and former secretary of state) Ruth Johnson suggested a meager concession—allowing 10 hours of absentee ballot processing before Election Day—did the GOP throw a bone to election workers. In preparation for producing Spanish choreography, Diaghilev and Leonid Massine enlisted the services of dancer Félix Fernández García, who accompanied the two men with de Falla on a tour of Spain in July 1917, introducing them to dancers and performances in Zaragoza, Toledo, Salamanca, Burgos, Sevilla, Córdoba, and Granada. Perhaps most important, Trump’s allies in Michigan proved to be more career-obsessed, and therefore more servile to his whims, than GOP officials in any other state he has cultivated during his presidency, willing to indulge his conspiratorial fantasies in ways other Republicans weren’t. Look no further than John James. Ron Weiser, the former party head who’s made it known that he wants to reclaim his old post, was thought to have a strong case against Cox, who has been viewed as unsteady by some GOP elders. Tapped by the president-elect to take over the Republican National Committee—on the not-so-subtle condition that she remove “Romney” from her professional name—McDaniel morphed into an archetype of the Trump-era GOP sycophant. Whitmer and Benson warned the GOP leaders that a protracted counting process, especially in the scenario of a competitive election, would invite chaos. The indifference to ideas as a vision for governing. He's proudly from Alief and occasionally sits alone in his four-cornered room staring at candles. But the circumstances surrounding the Michigan GOP leadership’s secret huddle with Trump were anything but normal. “The unfortunate reality within the party today is that Trump retains a hold that is forcing party leaders to continue down the path of executing his fantasy of overturning the outcome—at their own expense,” said Jason Cabel Roe, a Michigan-based GOP strategist who once worked as a vendor for McDaniel, and whose family goes back generations with hers. But Trump, perhaps sensing the nervous reticence of his guests, did not make the ask they feared. But errors are not fraud. That contours of that identity—what it means to be a Trump Republican—have gained clarity over time. Why did the battleground state that dealt Trump his most decisive defeat—by a wide margin—become the epicenter of America’s electoral crisis? Finally, he catches her, and the miller jumps out of a bush with a stick. Just days earlier, a meeting of the Wayne County canvassing board had devolved into pandemonium after the two GOP members initially refused to certify the county’s results. Van Langevelde did little to disappoint. When I served on the Ingham County board of canvassers, we never had a problem in Lansing. Because of the overflow, election officials ultimately decided to lock down the complex, starting with the glass-encased canvassing room where the tabulation work was being done. In the 36 hours preceding Monday’s vote, he was inundated with calls and emails and text messages from high-ranking Republican luminaries around the state. “The people outside that room were doing exactly what the law says you would eject people for doing—they were disrupting the election,” Thomas said. Four Lions is a 2010 British satirical dark comedy film, directed by Chris Morris in his directorial debut, and written by Morris, Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong. But Trump shows no sign of ceding the spotlight: He is already making noise about running for president in 2024. There was some relief, then, when in recent weeks McDaniel told multiple confidants that she doubted there was any scalable voter fraud in Michigan. But there is no denying the advent of a pattern. He gives legal guidance to advance Republican causes and win Republican campaigns. He requested permission to use de Falla's already-completed Noches en los jardines de España (Nights in the Gardens of Spain) and the work-in-progress El corregidor y la molinera for future choreographies, but only managed to secure permission for the latter. This is relatively easy for Chatfield to admit—he’s term limited and leaving office soon. All for doing his job. You can unsubscribe at any time and you can contact us here. Just before 9:30 a.m., Biden overtook Trump in the tally of Michigan’s votes—and suddenly, a switch flipped on the right. Was the 1 p.m. meeting really going ahead as scheduled? There was no dramatic, made-for-Hollywood collision of cosmic egos. To protect the workers, TCF officials covered some of the windows with cardboard—a decision Thomas said he was not consulted on, but absolutely agreed with. At the time of her tweet, several hundred of her party’s poll challengers, attorneys and representatives were already inside the TCF Center monitoring the count. The miller is trying to teach a pet blackbird to tell the time. This same principle applies to Chatfield and Shirkey, the state legislative leaders who were summoned to Washington last week for a meeting with Trump. If people don’t do that—if they no longer trust how we elect the president of the United States—we’re going to be in real trouble.”, The Election That Broke the Republican Party. They’ve leapt from some human error to massive fraud. But it was Weiser who, while chairing the party in 2018, recommended Van Langevelde to then-Governor Snyder—a fact Cox and her allies are already sharpening for attack. There were no documented instances of voter intimidation. “This is not some whacked-out fringe,” James said in one taping. ... kiddie-cornered in your yard. But there are obvious incremental steps to take in the name of transparency and efficiency. There was no lie too outlandish to parrot, no behavior too unbecoming to justify, no abuse of power too flagrant to enable. Large numbers of people gathered to join in the Stop the Steal protest, on Nov. 7 in Lansing, which was organized to show opposition to Biden winning the presidency. (Not everyone bothered contacting Shinkle: That his wife served as a plaintiff’s witness in Trump’s ill-fated lawsuit against Detroit struck many people not just as a conflict of interest, but as a clear indication he would never vote to certify.). When Monday morning arrived, the Michigan MAGA coalition hoped to wake up to news of a postponed meeting on account of Van Langevelde’s resignation. El sombrero de tres picos (The Three-Cornered Hat or Le tricorne) is a ballet choreographed by Léonide Massine to music by Manuel de Falla. “In terms of voters getting the ballots processed and counted in a reasonable time period, I thought they did a marvelous job. That was before a daily deluge of dishonest allegations and out-of-context insinuations; before the conservative media’s wall-to-wall coverage of exotic conspiracy theories; before the GOP’s most influential figures winked and nodded at the president of the United States alleging the greatest fraud in U.S. history. The miller leaves, dressed as the magistrate, and the magistrate soon wakes up. She is anxious to keep her job. Wayne County Board of Canvassers discuss a motion to certify election results during a board meeting in Detroit on Tuesday, Nov. 17, 2020. Given how close it was, there is no one to blame but Trump.”, “Principled conservatives who respect the rule of law and speak out suddenly find themselves outcasts in a party that is no longer about conservativism but Trumpism.”, Roe added, “But if they want a future within the party, it is required of them to demonstrate continued fealty. Our election workers are badly undertrained. As a Republican, his mandate for Monday’s hearing—handed down from the state party chair, the national party chair and the president himself—was straightforward. This sign-up form is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. The next generation of Republicans will have learned how to sow doubts about election integrity in one breath and in the next breath bemoan the nation’s lack of faith in our elections, creating a self-perpetuating justification to cast suspicion on a process that by raw numbers does not appear conducive to keeping them in power. Van Langevelde, a deputy legal counsel to the Michigan House GOP, had been appointed to the board less than two years earlier by Governor Rick Snyder. The remaining men, with … At one point (the farruca), he quotes the opening of Beethoven's 5th Symphony. Some, such as former congressman and House Intelligence Chair Mike Rogers, urged him to certify the results in accordance with Michigan law. Astral (アストラル Asutoraru) is a being from the Astral World in Yu-Gi-Oh! The Inside Story of Michigan’s Fake Voter Fraud Scandal. ... whenever cornered, attacking the media in absurd assertions of whataboutism. Truly egregious was Cox’s dishonesty. At one point, around 3:30 in the morning, Thomas supervised the receiving of Detroit’s final large batch of absentee ballots. Spooked by Trump’s continued assault on mail voting, and aware that their own members in the Legislature were distrustful of the new “no-excuse-absentee” rules, Chatfield and Shirkey weren’t inclined to do the process any favors. Laura Cox, chair of the state party, began dialing prominent lawmakers, attorneys and activists, urging them to get down to the TCF Center, the main hub of absentee vote counting in Detroit. The common expectation was that the president would lose comfortably, by at least 4 or 5 points, a margin that would render any controversy about absentee voting meaningless. Why were Republicans who privately admitted Trump’s legitimate defeat publicly alleging massive fraud? Massine, Pablo Picasso, and de Falla worked separately on the choreography, sets/costumes, and music for the ballet over subsequent months; after some delays, the ballet was eventually premiered in London at the Alhambra Theatre on 22 July 1919. And I’m the only guy that loses?”. This wasn’t about indulging him, she said, but rather about demonstrating a willingness to fight—even when the fight couldn’t be won. She was met with some confusion; there were already plenty of Republicans there, as scheduled, working their shifts as poll challengers. They also brought along their general counsels. Nevertheless, McDaniel told friends and fellow Republicans that she needed to stay the course with Trump and his legal team. It’s helpful to understand the party’s logic. “And by the way, if you’re going to do an audit, you’d better do it statewide. Still, the drama in Lansing raised deeper questions about the health of our political system and the sturdiness of American democracy. Up until the final two weeks, he seemingly did everything possible to lose. These two maneuvers—one to soothe the outcry over Michigan lawmakers meeting with a president whose legal team was calling for them to overturn the state’s election results; the other to insulate them from improper discussions about doing exactly that—were sufficient to sidestep any major crisis. The bodyguard comes and sees the magistrate dressed as the miller and goes to arrest him. Get POLITICO Magazine's newsletter featuring the best stories of the week and our Friday Cover delivered to your inbox. “And one of the items where we should look at other states and see how they’ve done it well, is regarding the early processing of absentee ballots. Trump had built a lead of nearly 300,000 votes on the strength of same-day ballots that were disproportionately favorable to him. I think we can learn from that. The state had viral episodes of conflict and human error that were easily manipulated and deliberately misconstrued. Born into Michigan royalty—granddaughter of the beloved former governor, George Romney, and niece of former presidential nominee Mitt Romney—she knows the state’s politics as well as anyone. Heck, in the state’s biggest and busiest voting jurisdictions, there were no lines to complain about. They wanted Michigan’s board of canvassers to delay certification of Biden’s victory. No matter how obvious the outcome—to McDaniel, to the 168 members of the RNC, maybe even to Trump himself—any indication of surrender would be unforgivable. “Many of them—not all of them, but many of them—they were on a mission. Principled conservatives who respect the rule of law and speak out suddenly find themselves outcasts in a party that is no longer about conservativism but Trumpism. Others, including McDaniel and Cox and other state party figures, pleaded with Shinkle to stand his ground and insist on a two-week delay. They certainly are not priorities now. But precautions were taken. Actionable threats against him and his family began to be reported. That didn’t stop Trump from buying in. As the meeting went on, it became apparent to some people in the room that more than anything, Trump had called his Michigan allies to Washington to get an honest assessment of what had happened there. [3], There are many recordings of the complete ballet, as well as of the suites extracted from it. First, the Wayne board—after a heated period of comments from the public—reversed course the same night and voted unanimously to certify the results after Democrats agreed to an audit of the county’s numerical inconsistencies. “They have propagated this narrative of massive fraud, and it’s simply not true. How a state that was never in doubt became a "national embarrassment" and a symbol of the Republican Party’s fealty to Donald Trump. He invited them to the White House for a briefing on the state of play in Michigan. It should be something the Legislature fixes moving forward.”. No such luck. The body did not have power to audit or investigate or recount; that could be done only by distinct bodies after certification was complete. He tells the bird to chirp twice, but instead it chirps three times. Our elections are prone to a significant amount of human error—and any municipal or county clerk will tell you that concerns over not catching those errors keep them up at night. Monica Palmer, one of the GOP canvassers, caused an uproar when she offered to certify the rest of Wayne County—precincts like Livonia—without certifying Detroit. Now, in the early morning hours of Wednesday, things were going sideways. But not in 2020. Another very popular item that was displayed during the early 1920s (and perhaps later) is the very distinct wrought iron bridge lamp. But he succeeded in convincing America that a loss, no matter how conclusive, may never again be conclusive enough. The miller's wife sees the bodyguard fighting with what looks like her husband and joins in the fight. They had no idea what they were there for,” Thomas said. De Falla was called home to Granada at the last moment to see his dying mother; the premiere was conducted in his stead by Ernest Ansermet. But what they can change—where he can ultimately succeed—is in convincing unprecedented numbers of Americans that their votes didn’t count. The Republicans—House Speaker Lee Chatfield and Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey—were not interested. Like clockwork, one can always depend on controversies—sometimes mini-scandals—to spring up by noontime on any given Election Day. 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