What s True
In 1861, the House and Senate expelled a combined total of 14 members for taking part in Southern secessionist efforts or supporting the Confederacy. What s False
None of the House and Senate motions to expel the 14 members cited their attitude toward Lincoln s election, which since the men were attempting to secede from the Union was of little relevance anyway. Comparisons with present-day political events were therefore stretched.
Origin
Voting in the 2020 U.S. Election may be over, but the misinformation keeps on ticking. Never stop fact-checking. Follow our post-election coverage here.
In December 2020, 126 Republican members of the U.S. House of Representatives signed on to an effort led by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to persuade the U.S. Supreme Court to suspend the certification of electoral college votes in four states where President-elect Joe Biden won Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
Forsaken by the Supreme Court and defeated in the Electoral College, President Donald Trump has seized on a new basis for overturning the 2020 election: public opinion. On Tuesday night, he tweeted, “Poll: 92% of Republican Voters think the election was rigged!” The number was bogus, but there’s a deeper reason to reject Trump’s argument: It’s circular. For weeks, the president and his allies have been spreading lies about election fraud. Now, having manufactured distrust among Republican voters, they’re spinning that distrust as a basis to throw out the election.
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Every fact-finding body has rejected Trump’s lies. He’s been stiffed by Trump-appointed judges, Trump-endorsed governors, pro-Trump election officials, and Republican state legislators. But in the court of public opinion, he has found an audience. In polls taken last month, 59 percent of Republicans attributed Trump’s defeat to “illegal voting or election rigging,” 74 percent blamed it
Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., discusses Bill Barr’s resignation, Swalwell Chinese spy scandal on ‘Fox & Friends.’
A group of 17 Republican House members sent a letter to Speaker Nancy Pelosi Tuesday urging her to “immediately remove” Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell from the House Intelligence Committee.
It comes in response to reports over his past ties to a spy from China, who posed as a college student, networked with up-and-coming American officials and allegedly slept with a pair of Midwestern mayors.
“Because of Rep. Swalwell s position on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, his close interactions with Chinese intelligence services, however unintentional they may be, are an unacceptable national security risk,” the letter reads.
HOUSTON (AP) More than half of House Republicans, including their top two leaders, are backing a Texas lawsuit seeking to invalidate President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in an extraordinary display of the party s willingness to subvert the will of voters.
Seventeen Republican attorneys general and 126 members of Congress have joined Texas and President Donald Trump in urging the U.S. Supreme Court to throw out millions of votes in four battleground states based on baseless claims of fraud. On Friday, House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy of California and Minority Whip Steve Scalise of Louisiana signed onto a brief backing the longshot bid, demonstrating Trump s remarkable political power even even as he spreads false claims that many Democrats and others fear risk deeply damaging democracy.
House Republicans on Tuesday sent a letter to Nancy Pelosi blasting Swalwell
Said his position on Intel Committee posed unacceptable national security risk
Swalwell was revealed to be close to Chinese spy Fang Fang from 2012 to 2015
Refuses to say whether they had an intimate relationship, saying it is classified
Pelosi has already said that she is not concerned by Swalwell s ties to Fang