*This article is part of a series on the rise of the far right from the April/May issue of the magazine. Read more here.
In September 2020, just one month before thirteen men with militia ties were charged with an alleged plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, the majority leader of the Michigan senate, Mike Shirkey, met with militia group leaders to advise them on messaging.
“I was in Lansing and members—the leaders, the so-called leaders—of three of the groups met in my office, and we talked about their messaging, their purpose, what they are trying to accomplish, and how they could improve their message,” Shirkey explained to a local radio host. “They’re not uniquely different than you and I. They bleed red, white, and blue, but they feel like they are not being heard.”
After members of one of the militias were charged in the Whitmer plot, Shirkey changed his tune, claiming he was just asking the militia leaders whether “they have codes of conduct, so they can hold themselves accountable and so the public can hold them accountable.”
For all of the attention given to the notion that the Republican Party is having some sort of existential crisis or civil war to determine its future, the activity of Republicans at the state and local level suggests that any battle for the soul of the party has already been lost.
In fact, Shirkey has multiple ties to militia groups in the state, as The New York Times reported. The paper found that Shirkey had been advising militia groups as early as April 2020 on the “optics” of coming armed to the #Reopen protests at the state’s capitol. Shirkey went on to speak at some events with the same groups, saying at one: “Stand up and test that assertion of authority by the government. We need you now more than ever.”
Shirkey’s militia ties are hardly unique. Across the nation, state Republican parties have become pro-Trump safe spaces that welcome militia members, conspiracy theorists including QAnon believers, and those with white supremacist and other extremist views. Donald Trump lost the presidency and cost his party a majority in the U.S. Senate, but the far-right white and male supremacist takeover of Trump’s Republican Party is secure.
Michigan Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey.
The same forces within these parties have pushed out more moderate Republican voices and even censured Republican elected officials and prominent commentators in their states for offenses such as acknowledging that Biden won the election and voting for the second impeachment of Donald Trump.
This takeover has led to the election of even more Republicans with these radical political ideologies at the federal, state, and local levels. Two QAnon believers, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Lauren Boebert of Colorado, now serve as members of Congress, while militia members are running and winning municipal offices across the land. But nowhere is this takeover more obvious than in state legislatures and state parties.
While there’s no metric for how many extremists currently serve in America’s statehouses, the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee keeps a running list of state legislators who participated in Trump’s efforts to overturn the election. It has found that:
More than 400 state legislators have signed on to letters or resolutions calling to overturn the results of the election;
Fifty-five state legislators have spread conspiracies and disinformation, claiming to their supporters that Joe Biden stole the election;
Nineteen state legislators were at Trump’s rally in Washington, D.C., on January 6 and at least one has resigned his office for storming the Capitol.
I am a former digital strategist for Democratic campaigns and advocacy groups who has tracked the interactions of far-right groups online for the past several years. Two years ago, I wrote an article for The Progressive warning of such a takeover of the GOP, starting at the local level. I warned that this development “puts American democracy in danger, makes America vulnerable to attack from hostile foreign actors, and leaves the American public less safe.”
At the time, my warnings seemed dire, but now, in a post-insurgency United States, they feel inadequate. Looking at the current landscape, I now wonder how U.S. democracy can continue to function when so many people holding elected office seek to destroy it from within and have the infrastructure in place to do substantial damage, especially at the state level.
However shocking it may be, Shirkey’s high comfort level with Michigan militias should come as no surprise. Michigan has a long history of self-organized militia groups that neither national nor local law enforcement can explain.
The Michigan Militia and armed protesters at the Michigan state capitol in Lansing, Michigan, on January 17, 2021.
The notorious Michigan Militia made national news in 1995 because Oklahoma City bombers Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols had attended its meetings. That militia group has since broken up into several groups, some of which were involved in the anti-lockdown protests at the state capitol in April and May of last year.
Shirkey has claimed that his own meeting with militia groups was arranged by Michigan State Police. This could very well be, given what we know about the U.S. militia movement’s success at recruiting law enforcement into its ranks.
A 2019 study by Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting “identified almost 150 current and retired cops who were members of Facebook groups run by and for Oath Keepers, Three Percenters, and other militias. These law enforcement officers are a subset of a larger contingent of cops we identified as members of Confederate, anti-Islam, misogynistic, or other extremist groups on Facebook.”
Dar Leaf, the sheriff of Barry County, Michigan, made national news last year when he defended Governor Whitmer’s would-be kidnappers, saying he knew some of the accused and, if they were only trying to perform a citizen’s arrest on a public official, then no laws had been broken. Leaf’s remarks were condemned by others in local law enforcement, but he remains in his position. He has used his county email address to spread conspiracy theories about voter fraud, and recently filed a federal lawsuit claiming that the 2020 election was stolen.
Like Shirkey, Sheriff Leaf is an elected official, as are many state Republicans with extremist ties and views. Others include Matt and Meshawn Maddock, a far-right power couple with growing clout in Michigan GOP politics. Matt Maddock, a longtime bail bondsman, was elected to the Michigan House of Representatives in 2018. His wife, Meshawn, was recently elected co-chair of the Michigan Republican Party. (Meshawn was also tapped by the Trump campaign to serve on the advisory board of its Women for Trump coalition.)
Both Maddocks belong to a Facebook group that openly discusses the possibility of a second American civil war. They also both traveled to Washington, D.C., for the January 6 Trump rally that turned into a violent attempted coup.
Meshawn, in her role with Women for Trump, organized nineteen buses to take Trump supporters from Michigan to the nation’s capital, and spoke to a rally of thousands on the evening of January 5. The next day, she tweeted that the attendees were the “most incredible crowd and sea of people I’ve ever walked with.”
Later, amid calls for Meshawn to withdraw from the state GOP chair election (where she ran unopposed), she claimed she had gone back to her hotel rather than walk with the crowd to the Capitol. Similarly, after Representative Maddock’s Democratic colleagues called for his removal, his wife stated that the coup attempt was “wrong and hurt the President and his legacy.”
President Donald Trump, in a desperate bid to overturn the election he’d lost, fixated on Michigan in his final days in office, taking extraordinary and unprecedented steps to interfere in the state’s certification of the election results. Trump praised Republican election canvassers in Wayne County who initially voted to block certification of the results. He even called one of them, ostensibly to express concerns about her safety.
Trump invited Shirkey and his counterpart, Michigan’s then-Speaker of the House Lee Chatfield, to the White House, lobbying them to overturn the popular vote and appoint an alternative slate of electors who would vote for Trump in the Electoral College. They attended the meeting but declined Trump’s ask, saying the legislature had no legal authority to do so.
Despite Biden’s win in Michigan, the GOP fared well in state elections. Michigan Republicans currently control both the state senate and state house. Mike Shirkey and Matt Maddock remain in office, supported by a state party that has grown more extremist, more pro-Trump, and has built stronger ties to militia groups.
Among those present at the U.S. Capitol for the January 6 insurrection were two Arizona state legislators, Mark Finchem and Anthony Kern. Social media posts from the day show both men just outside the Capitol building, though it’s not known if they ventured inside. Arizona Democrats sent a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray, calling for an investigation into whether these lawmakers, “through words and conduct, aided and abetted sedition, treason or any other federal crimes.”
Arizona state legislator Mark Finchem was spotted at the Capitol the day of the January 6 insurrection.
The letter also asks the FBI to investigate two of Arizona’s Congress members, Paul Gosar and Andy Biggs, both of whom were named as organizers of the January 6 event by “Stop the Steal” founder Ali Alexander. Alexander claimed he and the pair, along with Alabama Congressman Mo Brooks, “schemed up” a way to put “maximum pressure on Congress while they were voting” in order to “change the hearts and the minds of Republicans who were in that body.” Biggs has since denied Alexander’s claim.
When Fox News called Arizona for Biden unexpectedly early on Election Night, Donald Trump and his campaign set out to stop the count and ultimately to lobby the state government to overturn the results of Arizona’s election. Arizona’s state Republican infrastructure gave the Trump campaign plenty to work with. In addition to Gosar, Biggs, Kern, and Finchem, freshman state Senator Wendy Rogers is a charter member of the Oath Keepers militia group (and is already facing an ethics complaint for harassing a member of her staff, after less than a month in office).
The Arizona Republican Party is chaired by Kelli Ward, a former state senator who previously ran for the U.S. Senate. Ward made national headlines for her campaign bus tour with far-right influencer Mike Cernovich, running a Facebook group that spread racist conspiracy theories, and touting an endorsement from a fake news site that she might have also been running.
In December, the Arizona Republican Party sent a pair of tweets asking supporters if they would be willing to give their lives for Trump’s election fraud conspiracies. In January, the party voted to censure former Senator Jeff Flake, John McCain’s widow, Cindy McCain, and sitting Republican Governor Doug Ducey because they supported Joe Biden’s candidacy or refused to support an effort to overturn the popular vote from Biden to Trump.
Arizona freshman state Senator Wendy Rogers is a charter member of the Oath Keepers miliita group.
It’s worth noting that as the Arizona Republican Party descends further into the far right, the state itself has gone from being a reliable red state to a swing state. Besides Biden’s win in Arizona, both Senate seats are now held by Democrats. Since January 6, nearly 10,000 Republican voters in Arizona have changed their registration, a trend Democratic operatives on the ground tell me has been ongoing for the past decade.
This might explain why Arizona Republicans seem more invested in suppressing votes and overturning elections than trying to win them. In the weeks between the election and the Inauguration, several “Stop the Steal” protests took place around the state. Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani came to Arizona and held an unofficial hearing with GOP state legislators, presenting “evidence” of voter fraud in Arizona and other states. (Giuliani caused the Arizona statehouse to close when he tested positive for COVID-19, after having spent two maskless days in a room with legislators.) The Trump campaign also paid $6,000 to a business owned by Representative Finchem, for his efforts to overturn Arizona’s election results.
Now Arizona’s Republican-controlled state legislature is considering a host of bills that would make the state’s elections less free and fair, including one to allow the state legislature to “override the will of a majority of Arizona voters and appoint members of the Electoral College to back the presidential candidate lawmakers want elected.”
Arizona and Michigan are battleground states, but they aren’t outliers. State Republican parties across the nation are feeling the increased influence of Trumpian/far-right extremists. At least fifty-seven Republican state and local officials from twenty-seven states were at the Capitol on January 6. Nearly all are facing calls to resign—but mostly from their political opposition, not other Republicans. As of mid-February, only two have stepped down.
State Republican parties in Wyoming, Louisiana, North Carolina, Oregon, and South Carolina and county Republican parties in Illinois, Kentucky, Nebraska, Michigan, and Washington State have all voted to censure their fellow Republicans for various offenses that come down to not showing loyalty to Donald Trump.
The Texas Republican Party, currently chaired by former Tea Party Congressman Allen West, has endorsed legislation to allow a vote on secession from the United States, following news that Texas state Representative Kyle Biedermann planned to introduce the bill at the statehouse.
Shirlene Ostrov resigned as chair of the Hawaii GOP after the party’s official Twitter account was used to promote the QAnon conspiracy theory. The party’s vice chair of communications also resigned. In addition to QAnon tweets, the account also promoted a Holocaust denier.
In Oregon, the state Republican Party in February elected as its chairperson state Senator Dallas Heard, a known far-right extremist. Just a few weeks prior, the Oregon GOP claimed in an official statement that the attempted coup on January 6 was a “false flag” attack carried out by people on the left to discredit Trump.
The GOP’s transformation is part of an intentional strategy that Trump’s allies have been optimizing since his 2016 presidential campaign.
Former Trump White House aide Steve Bannon recently had Dan Schultz, an attorney and a local GOP committee member from Arizona, as a guest on his popular far-right podcast. The two discussed how to take over state and local Republican parties through local precinct offices. “The delegates elect the national convention delegates directly, and then they also elect the national committeeman and the national committeewoman to a four-year term on the RNC,” Schultz told listeners. “That’s real political power. We can take over the party if we invade it.”
The Associated Press, in reviewing the social media accounts “of nearly 1,000 federal, state, and local elected and appointed Republican officials nationwide,” found many examples of officials supporting the attempted coup on January 6 or demanding that the 2020 election be overturned.
For all of the attention given to the notion that the Republican Party is having some sort of existential crisis or civil war to determine its future, the activity of Republicans at the state and local level suggests that any battle for the soul of the party has already been lost. Despite decisively losing the last presidential election, Trump and his far-right base are clearly in control.
The most immediate priority of this radicalized GOP is voter suppression. As of February 19, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, “state lawmakers have carried over, prefiled, or introduced 253 bills with provisions that restrict voting access in forty-three states.” These efforts will continue America’s history of primarily targeting Black voters and voters of color.
Redistricting, the process of redrawing Congressional and legislative districts that happens once a decade, will also be a focus. The maps in many states already favor Republicans, thanks to a hyper-partisan redistricting process from 2010 to 2011. Since Democrats did not fare better in 2020, Republicans will have complete control of redistricting in eighteen states, determining the map for 181 U.S. House seats, and the ability to entrench their power even further despite decreasing popular appeal.
But legislation and redistricting are only the most practical concerns. As legislators with ties to extremist movements, belief in conspiracy theories, and a complete lack of interest in governing continue to fill statehouses, how exactly are their colleagues supposed to work with them to govern? The mere presence of elected extremists makes statehouses toxic and unsafe workplaces. Yet state legislators with opposing political views, especially women and people of color, must still work every day alongside them.
Can U.S. democracy survive this current moment? It’s a question many of us have been asking since Donald Trump was first elected in 2016, and one that seems even more prescient as our country moves forward after a violent attempted coup where, so far, few of the elected officials who fanned the flames and incited the riot have been held accountable for their actions.
If Democrats want to reverse the nation’s current course, it’s clear that the next stages of the fight will be at the state and local level. As Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee President Jessica Post told me, “These attacks on our democracy underscore the high stakes of state and local elections—we cannot afford to ignore the races down the ballot. Democrats are going to stand up and fight voter suppression with every available tool, and we need strong grassroots support to show the GOP that they cannot attack our freedom to vote without a fight.”
I’d add that this fight is a marathon and not a sprint. Stacey Abrams, who led efforts to fight voter suppression and increase voter participation in her home state of Georgia, described in a New York Times op-ed with Lauren Groh-Wargo how this involved “years of planning, testing, innovating, sustained investment, and organizing.” The good news: “The lessons we learned can help other states looking to chart a more competitive future for Democrats and progressives, particularly those in the Sun Belt, where demographic change will precede electoral opportunity.”
The path to saving U.S. democracy might be rough and full of obstacles, but it does exist. Most Americans, regardless of their political views, don’t want to live in a nation with attempted coups, white supremacist violence, and the fear of a second civil war.
The Republican Party retains a lot of political power, but it has tied itself to a deeply unpopular former President whose continued presence will make it difficult for a new party leader to emerge. That gives pro-democracy Americans who are ready to fight back an opening.