Underscoring the extent to which the increasingly anti-democratic GOP has embraced former President Donald Trump's groundless and dangerous accusations of widespread voter fraud in last year's presidential race, a new analysis by the Washington Post shows that hundreds of Republican candidates expected to compete in upcoming contests have endorsed Trump's "big lie" that the 2020 election was stolen. "Of the nearly 700 Republicans who have filed initial paperwork with the Federal Election Commission to run next year for either the U.S. Senate or the House of Representatives, at least a third have embraced Trump's false claims about his defeat," the At the federal level, there are dozens of "current Republican officeholders, lining up to seek reelection, who have backed Trump's efforts over the past eight months by questioning the validity of the 2020 result, taking legislative votes, or signing on to official efforts to overturn it," the newspaper noted, adding that 136 of the GOP's candidates for next year's vital midterm races are current members of Congress who voted against the certification of President Joe Biden's Electoral College victory on January 6.