“Statistically impossible to have lost the 2020 Election. Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!”
— President Donald Trump via Twitter/X on Dec. 19, 2020
The big lie just got bigger.
Last week, we watched a sitting president declare war on America in a prime-time speech that reputable media outlets chose not to air out of their journalistic responsibility to defend the truth.
In a tangential rant about voter fraud, the president bounced from one outlandish lie to the next, with his focus zeroed in on the outcome of the 2020 election. The same election that his own party certified six years ago. Unlike the 2016 election, in which he was the victor, the FBI found no evidence of meddling.
Despite lacking evidence, the president lied to millions of Americans, stating that China and other foreign adversaries “likely” influenced Americans. He claimed that voting machines were vulnerable to hacking and unreliable, a lie that cost the one network that aired his speech unedited, Fox News, $787 million in a settlement with Dominion Voting Systems for pushing lies about the 2020 election.
According to CBS, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the government’s top cyber defense body protecting U.S. election systems, saw nearly 1,000 CISA personnel — or nearly one-third of the agency’s workforce — leave or be removed from active service by mid-2025.
The president recently fired the last three members of the Election Assistance Commission, the independent federal commission that assists election administration officials nationwide. And in the hours leading up to the speech, his nominee for attorney general set the stage for the siege on our voting rights.
During the confirmation hearing of Todd Blanche, President Trump’s personal lawyer and nominee for U.S. attorney general, he was asked whether he would uphold the constitutional right to vote by blocking the deployment of ICE agents to polling places. He sidestepped the question by stating that he would “follow the law.” He also avoided answering the simple question of who won the 2020 presidential election.
You read that right.
Blanche, who in his role as acting attorney general proposed creating a $1.8 billion slush fund to pay criminals, including Jan. 6 insurrectionists, refused to commit to preventing an untrained army of masked agents, who have claimed two lives in the last two weeks, from monitoring our elections.
It is unconscionable that the next person to lead the U.S. Department of Justice, the agency responsible for defending Americans from assaults on their personal liberties, upholding civil rights and defending the Constitution, would propose using U.S. taxpayer dollars to compensate people for committing crimes and denying election results. But that is where we are a year and a half into this administration.
Just like the gutting of the Voting Rights Act in Louisiana v. Callais and Shelby County v. Holder, this investigation, the nomination of Todd Blanche and last week’s speech are part of a broad effort to suppress the Black vote. This suppression effort is also a ploy to strip all Americans of our right to vote for candidates who represent us and against entities determined to walk us back to a time when violence and discrimination against minorities were sanctioned under U.S. law.
This week, we are on the ground in Nashville, Tennessee, an epicenter of voter dilution and suppression. Trump’s remarks will embolden our coalition to strengthen the tools in our resistance against this administration and its assault on our rights.
This is not the election to sit out or remain silent. This is the moment our ancestors who were shot, maimed and strung up from trees marched for. This is the day John Lewis and countless others marched for on the Edmund Pettus Bridge 61 years ago.
This is not a new fight, but a renewed call to action. The Urban League movement is calling on your strength, your resilience, your reverence for our past and your hopes for our future this November. Vote as though your lives depend on it, because they do.
Marc Morial is National Urban League president and CEO.