Trump news today: Donald to share stage with election deniers at Arizona rally

Steve Bannon says Trump’s rally signals the beginning of the “decertification process” of Biden electors in several battleground states that elected Biden in the 2020 presidential election. A number of GOP officials in several states have demanded audits into the results, with baseless claims of fraud and manipulation, in an attempt to re-litigate the election that the former president definitively lost.

“You cannot interpret this as anything but a declaration of war on democracy,” said US Rep Eric Swalwell. “We are in the endgame. We can resurrect democracy or lose it forever.”

Virginia’s incoming Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin signed 11 executive orders after he was sworn into office on Saturday, including a repeal of a mask mandate and revoking a Covid-19 vaccine requirement for state workers.

He also banned “critical race theory” in schools and pledge to investigate “wrongdoing” in Loudon County, which has been ground zero for right-wing culture wars over the teaching of racism in public schools.

He also is withdrawing the state from an 11-state agreement to curb emissions.

Hillary Clinton has invoked Martin Luther King Jr’s criticisms of “the white moderate “ in what appeared to be a thinly veiled rebuke of Democrats Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema after they rejected President Joe Biden’s urgent demands to change Senate filibuster rules that block passage of federal voting rights legislation.

She added: “This is a subtweet.”

Her tweet comes as voting rights advocates rally over the weekend in advance of the federal holiday recognising the late civil rights leader’s birthday.

America’s biggest satellite television provider has said it will cut the pro-Trump news channel One America News Network from its service, dealing a severe blow to one of the former president’s most stalwart cheerleaders.

DirecTV, a distributor with about 15 million subscribers that is 70 per cent owned by the US telecoms giant AT&T, announced on Friday that it would not renew its contract with OANN when the current one expires. following “a routine internal review”.

The former president will hold his first rally of 2022 in Florence, Arizona, a state that has become a hotbed of election fraud conspiracy theories with a host of candidates for several public offices vying for his endorsement, as midterm campaigns are well underway.

8chan administrator Jim Watkins and QAnon influencer Michael Protzman – who has amplified the conspiracy theory that the resurrection of JFK Jr is instrumental to Trump’s return to office – are attending Trump’s rally in Arizona on Saturday night, where a crowd started lining up overnight.

Other familiar Trump rally faces are documenting their visit, which is being broadcast by far-right media networks like One America News Network and Right Side Broadcasting Network.

In his proclamation recognising 2022’s Martin Luther King Jr Day, the president told Americans to reflect on the achievements of the civil rights movement and “continue his unfinished struggle.”

“That is why the Congress must pass federal legislation to protect the right to vote – a right that is under attack by a sinister combination of voter suppression and election subversion,” the president wrote, echoing his remarks against the wave of restrictive legislation passed by GOP state legislators in 2021.

“Just as in Dr King’s time, there are those who now say that change would be too disruptive and that these urgent needs can wait,” Mr Biden wrote. “But we must resist complacency, summon new resolve to advance the cause of freedom and opportunity, and do our part to bend the arc of the moral universe toward justice. This is the cause of our time. … We all must find the courage to keep pushing forward in our struggle to realize Dr King’s dream for a freer, fairer, and more just society.”

As a host of election deniers and conspiracy theorists prepare to take the stage in rural Florence, Arizona, voting rights advocates are rallying about 70 miles away in Phoenix to push the state’s Democratic Senator Kyrsten Sinema to adopt filibuster reform to pass federal legislation to protect the right to vote.

Activists also led a march and heard from Martin Luther King III, the oldest son of the late civil rights leader.

The march demands Arizona residents “call on Senator Sinema to urgently pass federal voting rights legislation and ensure that the Jim Crow filibuster does not stand in the way,” Mr King said in a statement.

The US recognises Martin Luther King Jr Day on Monday.

The day before his appearance in the state, Trump hit out at Arizona Governor Doug Doucey, a frequent target of the former president after he signed off on the results of the 2020 presidential election, while Trump allies continue to baselessly insist the results were fraudulent.

“Rumors are that Doug Ducey, the weak RINO Governor from Arizona, is being pushed by Old Crow Mitch McConnell to run for the U.S. Senate,” Trump said in a statement. “He will never have my endorsement or the support of MAGA Nation!”

Doucey has not indicated whether he plans to run for a Senate seat. He has no plans to attend Trump’s event.

In an op-ed in The Washington Post, former VP Mike Pence condemned the mob that “ransacked the Capitol, largely to try to get Congress and me, as the president of the Senate, to use federal authority to overturn results of the presidential election that had been certified by all 50 states.”

He then characterised Republican attempts to restrict ballot access and consolidate electoral oversight into the hands of GOP-dominated legislatures as “measures to try to restore confidence in the integrity of our elections” in the wake of the attack.

He then accused Biden and congressional Democrats of leading “another power grab” with federal voting rights legislation, by using the “memory of Jan 6” to defend breaking up the filibuster.

That federal legislation would create national framework for voter registration, mail-in ballots, early voting and voter ID laws. It would also make Election Day a holiday, combat attempts to strip oversight from nonpartisan election authorities, and protect election workers from harassment and violence.

He compared such efforts to an attack on the Capitol that sought to stop the certification of votes representing millions of Americans, as a mob chanted that they were there to “hang” him.

He also falsely claimed that “the notion that Congress would break the filibuster rule to pass a law equaling a wholesale takeover…