14 Jan 2023 Christopher Arps: Education and Crime Concerns Are Sending Black Voters to the Republican Party As another Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday approaches, our nation has much to celebrate as we strive toward King’s dream of a colorblind society. Christopher Arps Since his assassination in 1968, our nation has elected and re-elected its first African-American president. We’ve also sworn in our first African-American woman as associate Supreme Court justice, who joins fellow African-American Clarence Thomas on the nation’s highest court. There are now African-American billionaire entrepreneurs and African Americans who have reached the pinnacle of the business world as CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. The substantial progress many African Americans have made since the 1960s civil rights era is genuinely momentous and should be celebrated. Unfortunately, not every member of the African-American community, especially those living in impoverished and underserved areas, has experienced the upward mobility many of their Black brothers and sisters have enjoyed. According to a CNN article, “The typical Black American family is virtually no closer to equal footing with its white peers in terms of income and wealth than it was 50 years ago.” The bipartisan Joint Economic Committee, which consists of Republicans and Democrats from the Senate and House, released a study in 2020 titled “The Economic State of Black America in 2020.” The study found some troubling statistics. ▪ The typical Black household earns a fraction of white families — just 59 cents for every dollar. The gap between Black and white annual household incomes is about $29,000 per year. ▪ The median wealth of Black families ($17,000) — is less than one-tenth that of white families ($171,000). ▪ Black Americans are more than twice as likely to live in poverty as white Americans. ▪ Black children are three times as likely to live in poverty as white children. ▪ The wealth gap between Black and white households increases with education. The Democratic Party traditionally has relied upon African Americans for loyal and consistent votes. They typically vote 90% to 96% for the Democratic choice on the ballot. But we witnessed a significant change in that pattern, starting with the election of Donald Trump in 2016. Trump received a whopping 20% of the African-American male vote in 2020, and he also increased his vote percentage with African-American women. This trend was not just an anomaly for Trump. Other Republican officeholders also made gains. The most striking was in Georgia. The Associated Press’ AP VoteCast performed an extensive national survey of the electorate after the 2020 midterms, and what it found should be cause for alarm for the Democratic Party. AP found that Republican candidates were backed by 14% of African-American voters. In the 2018 midterm elections, Republicans only won 8% of the Black vote. In Georgia, Gov. Brian Kemp more than doubled his percentage of the African-American vote, increasing to 12% from 5% just four years earlier. There are two reasons for the exodus of African-American voters from the Democratic Party: quality education and inadequate schools; and the rising crime rate disproportionately affects inner-city communities. The COVID pandemic opened the eyes of many parents to the “wokeness” their children were being taught in their schools, and because of that, more Black families turned to homeschooling during the pandemic. As ABC News reported: “Census shows the proportion of Black families homeschooling recently quintupled. Homeschooling, once a relatively niche form of education that has been growing steadily in the past decades, has seen a big uptick due to the COVID-19 pandemic with Black families adopting the practice at a notably high rate.” Violent crime is at levels we haven’t seen since the 1970s. FBI statistics show a significant spike in crime (a 30% increase in violent crime in 2020 compared to the previous year) occurred after the George Floyd murder in 2020. That was the largest single-year increase since the FBI started tracking those numbers in the 1960s. Education and crime are universal concerns that appeal to every voter. Most voters don’t want to be pandered to with insulting, shop-worn campaign tactics supposedly geared toward them. The political party or movement that understands this and plans accordingly will make further inroads with voting blocs with whom they have traditionally not done well. Christopher Arps is a member of the Project 21 black leadership network and a managing partner with the public affairs and communications consulting firm Red Tail Strategies. This was originally syndicated through InsideSources.com. Project 21 commentaries reflect the views of their authors and not necessarily those of other Project 21 members or the National Center for Public Policy Research, its board or staff.

Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia speaks after being sworn in for a second term during a ceremony in Atlanta, Ga., on January 12, 2023. AP Photo/Brynn Anderson Gov. Brian Kemp in a new Politico interview critiqued former President Trump's 2020 reelection bid. Kemp told the outlet that Trump "didn't do a good enough job of telling people what he had done." Kemp, who was inaugurated to a second term this week, has been floated as a potential 2024 presidential contender. Top editors give you the stories you want — delivered right to your inbox each weekday. Loading Something is loading. Thanks for signing up! Access your favorite topics in a personalized feed while you're on the go. download the app Email address By clicking ‘Sign up’, you agree to receive marketing emails from Insider as well as other partner offers and accept our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. .inline-newsletter-signup.loading { width: 100%; max-width: 640px; margin: 0 auto; visibility: hidden; } For nearly two years, former President Donald Trump criticized Republican Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia for not helping him overturn now-President Joe Biden's victory in the Southern swing state in the 2020 election.In advance of the 2022 midterms, Trump even recruited former Sen. David Perdue to run against Kemp in the GOP gubernatorial primary, but the governor defeated him landslide — a reflection of his strength among Peach State conservatives.And in the November general election, Kemp defeated his Democratic archrival Stacey Abrams by nearly eight points, winning by nearly 300,000 votes — a marked improvement over his roughly 55,000-vote victory against the former state lawmaker in the 2018 gubernatorial contest.During last year's campaign, Kemp — who was once an ally of Trump — largely avoided talking about the former president. But in a recent Politico interview, Kemp critiqued Trump's 2020 presidential campaign, echoing earlier statements that the GOP could not simply fight against the Democratic Party but had to "be for something.""President Trump and his reelection didn't do a good enough job of telling people what he had done and what he wanted to do in a second term," the governor told the outlet.Trump, who lost to Biden in the 2020 presidential election, has continued to allege that voter fraud was the culprit behind his ejection from the White House.However, Kemp, who was inaugurated to a second term on Thursday, has sought to move the GOP forward — rebuffing the election grievances still spouted by many in the party. The breadth of Kemp's victory in Georgia — which was once firmly Republican but has taken on a tinge of purple in recent years — has led to him being mentioned as a potential GOP presidential contender in 2024.When asked if he would serve out the entirety of his second term in the Governor's Mansion, Kemp said he planned to do so — but used a less definitive choice of wording."My intention is to serve four more years," the governor told the outlet. .content-lock-lock .hidden { display: none; } Sign up for notifications from Insider! Stay up to date with what you want to know. Subscribe to push notifications Close icon Two crossed lines that form an 'X'. It indicates a way to close an interaction, or dismiss a notification.

SIOUX CITY — Prior to the 2020 general election, a Woodbury County voter attending Iowa State University visited the Iowa Secretary of State Office's website to request an absentee ballot.After entering her voter identification information, the student was informed she'd already voted. The same thing happened to her brother, also an ISU student.Both called Woodbury County Auditor and Election Commissioner Pat Gill to report that someone had cast ballots in their name.Gill's office reviewed the signatures on the students' absentee requests that had been submitted before the general election, then compared them with those on absentee requests filed in the students' names before the primary. All four forms appeared to have been signed by the same person."Those ballots during the primary, that stepped it up for me," Gill said at a Friday press conference. People are also reading… Pat Gill, Woodbury County Auditor and Election Commissioner, speaks Friday at a press conference about his office's role in an FBI investigati… Gill said both the Secretary of State and then-Woodbury County Attorney Patrick Jennings advised him to report the incident to the FBI. Gill's report touched off an FBI investigation that came to light Thursday, when Kim Phuong Taylor, the wife of Republican Woodbury County Supervisor Jeremy Taylor, was arrested on 52 counts of election fraud. She has pleaded not guilty and is scheduled to stand trial in federal court in Sioux City in March.The indictment alleges Kim Taylor fraudulently filled out absentee ballot requests and voter registration forms and cast absentee ballots on behalf of others during Taylor's unsuccessful run for Congress in the 2020 primary election and his election to the county board in that fall's general election.Kim Taylor's name had been linked to suspicious election activity before.Gill said he had received complaints about her during previous elections. Her husband successfully ran for the Iowa House in 2010 and lost his re-election bid in 2012. He was elected to the county board in 2014 and was re-elected in 2018. Gill didn't say what years he received complaints about Taylor, but said he dismissed them because many candidates and their spouses go door to door during campaigns seeking support.Taylor did not respond to requests for comment on Thursday and Friday. His wife's attorney also has declined to comment on the charges. Pat Gill, Woodbury County Auditor and Election Commissioner, speaks Friday at a press conference about his office's role in an FBI investigati… The night of the 2020 primary election, Gill saw compelling evidence someone was casting fraudulent ballots.Election workers who were processing absentee ballots and tallying write-in votes found several ballots in which the handwriting appeared similar. Jeremy Taylor received numerous write-in votes for county board and county auditor in the election."You could tell by looking at them they were all filled out by the same person," Gill said.Because the ballots had already been fed though the scanner, they had been separated from the voter's affidavit, so it was impossible to tell who had submitted the ballots, so Gill was unable to take action.When processing absentee ballots during the fall general election, workers noticed similar-looking signatures on affidavits as they opened the envelopes containing the ballots."The staff told me there were a lot of signatures coming in on affidavits that looked like they were signed by the same person," Gill said. "There were quite a few," but he didn't count how many.Gill said his office provided FBI investigators with all the suspicious ballots, absentee request affidavits and voter registration forms. The FBI didn't seek records from previous elections, he said. Pat Gill, Woodbury County Auditor and Election Commissioner, speaks Friday at a press conference about his office's role in an FBI investigati… The FBI investigation continues, and a Justice Department official on Friday declined to comment on it.Gill said he couldn't give an opinion if the actions affected the outcome of any races.In Jeremy Taylor's primary challenge of Iowa 4th District Rep. Steve King, Taylor received 18.5% of the votes cast in Woodbury County, far behind Randy Feenstra and King. District-wide, Feenstra won the primary with 37,329 votes, King received 29,366 and Taylor was a distant third with 6,418.County Republicans that summer nominated Taylor to run for county board against incumbent Democrat Marty Pottebaum in November, and Taylor won election by nearly 2,000 votes.Taylor had resigned from the board earlier in the year after Gill determined he could no longer hold office because he was not living at the address listed on his voter registration and was living outside his district, violating a state law requiring county supervisors to live in the district in which they are registered to vote.According to the indictment, Kim Taylor, whom Jeremy Taylor met while teaching in Vietnam, approached Sioux City residents with Vietnamese backgrounds who had limited ability to read and understand English and offered to help them vote. She is accused of signing absentee ballot request forms for residents who were not present or told residents they could sign the forms for other family members, a violation of the registration affidavit in which applicants swear they are the person named on the form. In some cases, the indictment said, Taylor filled out the ballot and signed the accompanying affidavits for people who were not present or telling family members they could sign on their behalf. She then delivered the ballots to the auditor's office.Gill on Friday recalled a few occasions when he observed Kim Taylor dropping ballots in a drop box outside the courthouse and saw Jeremy Taylor sitting in their car waiting for her. Kim Taylor voted her own ballots in both elections. Kim Taylor holds a Bible while her husband, Jeremy Taylor, is sworn in as a Woodbury County Supervisor by Judge Duane Hoffmeyer on Jan. 2, 201… Though Jeremy Taylor has not been charged, speculation swirls about his future on the county board.Board chairman Matthew Ung, a Republican, said he received a call Friday morning from a county resident asking him to fire Taylor. Ung said board members can't remove fellow supervisors.Ung said he's spoken with Taylor about the allegations, and it's up to Taylor to address them."He has every right to speak for himself," Ung said. "It will no doubt impact the work of the board as we navigate one of the most challenging budgets in years."Ung said the board agenda at each weekly meeting provides time for supervisors to raise concerns. Time also is allotted for members of the public to address the board or individual supervisors about any issue. The next board meeting is 4:30 p.m. Tuesday in the courthouse basement.According to Iowa Code section 66, an elected county official may be removed from office by a district court judge after hearing evidence after receiving a petition for removal. The code says the county attorney must file the petition when it involves a county official.Woodbury County Attorney James Loomis said he hadn't received any communications from the board or the public about Taylor's status on the board. Loomis, who was elected this past November, said he's not familiar with the process to remove a board member, but noted Taylor currently faces no charges."That bridge will get crossed when it needs to be crossed," Loomis said. "I can't comment on what-ifs."After redistricting in the wake of the 2020 census, Taylor now represents District 5 and currently serves as the board's vice chairman. He's up for re-election in 2024.As for the election process, Gill said the system of checks and balances in place caught the fraudulent activity that led to the investigation."I want to make sure people understand the system works," he said.Voter fraud also is rare, Gill said, noting he'd seen few cases during his 26 years overseeing the county's elections.His assessment matches what experts have observed nationwide."Voter fraud and election fraud are both incredibly rare," said Sean Morales-Doyle, director of the voting rights program at the Brennan Center for Justice, a New York-based nonpartisan law and policy think-tank.It's typical, Morales-Doyle said, for a defendant to be charged with one count for every vote impacted, so it's not uncommon to see an individual charged with multiple counts, as Kim Taylor has been, though her total is uncommonly high."Someone being charged with 52 counts is rare," Morales-Doyle said. "It rarely happens because it's hard to run a scheme that will impact a large number of votes." 0 Comments #lee-rev-content { margin:0 -5px; } #lee-rev-content h3 { font-family: inherit!important; font-weight: 700!important; border-left: 8px solid var(--lee-blox-link-color); text-indent: 7px; font-size: 24px!important; line-height: 24px; } #lee-rev-content .rc-provider { font-family: inherit!important; } #lee-rev-content h4 { line-height: 24px!important; font-family: "serif-ds",Times,"Times New Roman",serif!important; margin-top: 10px!important; } @media (max-width: 991px) { #lee-rev-content h3 { font-size: 18px!important; line-height: 18px; } } #pu-email-form-politics-email-article { clear: both; background-color: #fff; color: #222; background-position: bottom; background-repeat: no-repeat; padding: 15px 0 20px; margin-bottom: 40px; border-top: 4px solid rgba(0,0,0,.8); border-bottom: 1px solid rgba(0,0,0,.2); display: none; } #pu-email-form-politics-email-article, #pu-email-form-politics-email-article p { font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; } #pu-email-form-politics-email-article h2 { font-size: 24px; margin: 15px 0 5px 0; font-family: "serif-ds", Times, "Times New Roman", serif; } #pu-email-form-politics-email-article .lead { margin-bottom: 5px; } #pu-email-form-politics-email-article .email-desc { font-size: 16px; line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 5px; opacity: 0.7; } #pu-email-form-politics-email-article form { padding: 10px 30px 5px 30px; } #pu-email-form-politics-email-article .disclaimer { opacity: 0.5; margin-bottom: 0; line-height: 100%; } #pu-email-form-politics-email-article .disclaimer a { color: #222; text-decoration: underline; } #pu-email-form-politics-email-article .email-hammer { border-bottom: 3px solid #222; opacity: .5; display: inline-block; padding: 0 10px 5px 10px; margin-bottom: -5px; font-size: 16px; } @media (max-width: 991px) { #pu-email-form-politics-email-article form { padding: 10px 0 5px 0; } } Get Government & Politics updates in your inbox! 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A new round of private grants to local election offices not only should be investigated but be grounds for legislation, congressional Republicans say.  As reported previously by The Daily Signal, the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence provided grants to 10 jurisdictions ranging from $500,000 to $1.5 million.  A total of 24 states banned or restricted taking private money to pay for election operations after the controversy erupted over some $400 million in election grants from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife in 2020. The new round of non-Zuckerberg election grants, however, were to cities and counties in states that didn’t enact such a ban.  The biggest recipient of Zuckerberg grants in 2020 was the Center for Tech and Civic Life, which leads the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence along with several other organizations–including those sponsored by Arabella Advisors, a dark money group that sets up liberal nonprofits.  Rep. Claudia Tenney, R-N.Y., co-chairman of the House Election Integrity Caucus, was a lead sponsor of a 2021 bill titled the End Zuckerbucks Act to amend the Internal Revenue Code to prohibit 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organizations from directly funding official administration of elections. The bill was referred to the House Ways and Means Committee, where it died.  Tenney linked the continuation of private funding of local election offices with President Joe Biden’s executive order in March 2021 to push federal agencies to promote voter registration and turnout in partnership with private entities.  “This is a concern and it is part of the executive order that allowed some of this to go forward on the so-called Zuckerbucks. The Center for Tech and Civic Life has come back,” Tenney told The Daily Signal during a press conference Thursday. “The Biden administration has actually given power to federal agencies beyond departments of election boards in states to actually engage in vote harvesting and voter registration.” The Biden administration hasn’t released specifics on what private entities federal agencies are working with on voter turnout, ignoring requests from members of Congress, media outlets, and watchdog groups.  A federal court in Florida held a hearing Thursday in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by the Foundation for Government Accountability, a Florida-based watchdog group, regarding how the Justice Department is complying with Biden’s get-out-the-vote executive order.  Tenney said the House Election Integrity Cacucus, which now has more than 60 members, likely will expand.  “More intervention from private entities like the Center for Tech and Civic Life is not going to be good for maintaining election integrity,” Tenney said. “We are going to continue to go forward with the Election Integrity Caucus that I founded with my colleague Mike Garcia from California. We’ve got a number of new members who are interested in joining and always would love to have a Democrat join us, because we think this is an issue that should be bipartisan.” Congress should investigate the use of private money to run elections, said Rep. Kevin Hern, R-Okla., chairman of the Republican Study Committee, the largest GOP caucus in the House. Hern said the subject is likely something the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, chaired by Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., could probe.  “These are the very kind of things that are really interesting,” Hern told The Daily Signal in an interview. “Whether the grant program is something—whether it’s internal or external—[has] come with a lot of controversy because there really is no legislative oversight.”  “I think this is one of the things we are going to look at from the accountability at OGR [the Oversight and Government Reform Committee] from Congressman Comer, as he’s looking at a lot of these issues out there. We have election integrity issues,” Hern said. “We can’t have this start again, particularly with what we learned about the money put in by Zuckerberg. It caused a lot of consternation after the fact about private money engaged in the election process.” Other Hosue Republicans, including Rep. Jim Banks of Indiana, who was among the original co-sponsors with Tenney of the End Zuckerbucks Act, also backed reintroducing that legislation.  Stewart Whitson, legal director for the Foundation for Government Accountability, said his organization identified the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence as “Zuckerbucks 2.0.”  Although Zuckerberg stopped funding the Center for Tech and Civic Life, other private interests now are doing so.  “When they announced this, it looked like they were trying to continue the same scheme in an effort to work around the states that banned Zuckerbucks. They failed,” Whitson told The Daily Signal in a phone interview. “We pointed out that even this new scheme would be illegal under state laws.” Two big questions that congressional investigators should consider are whether it’s appropriate for private institutions to exert influence over how election officials run their system, Hayden Ludwig, senior investigative researcher with the Capital Research Center, a Washington-based investigative think tank, told The Daily Signal.  “After nearly half the states either restricted or banned Zuckerbucks after the CTCL’s last scandal, this is just a repeat of the same scheme,” Hayden Ludwig told The Daily Signal.  “The problem is that this is almost identical to what we saw in the 2020 election when private, tax-exempt nonprofits, taking money from partisan donors, were redirecting the money to public agencies to influence their budgets and internal policies,” Ludwig said.  Last month, Ludwig flagged two organizations in the alliance that are part of the New Venture Fund, a nonprofit funded by the liberal Arabella Advisors.   An announcement from the city of Madison, Wisconsin, which got a $1.5 million alliance election grant, lists both the Center for Secure and Modern Elections and the Institute for Responsive Government as partners in the Alliance for Election Administration. Both organizations are under the umbrella of the New Venture Fund.  The Center for Tech and Civic Life, which fields media inquiries for the Alliance for Election Excellence, didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment for this report from The Daily Signal.  The Alliance for Election Excellence is a five-year, $80 million project. Its largest funder is The Audacious Project, which is financed largely by those connected with the Big Tech sector, including Microsoft and Amazon. Inside Philanthropy described The Audacious Project as “a tech-heavy group of funders that lean liberal in their grantmaking.” The Alliance for Election Excellence selected 10 jurisdictions to be part of its program for election-related grants and training. Some are in battleground states such as Wisconsin, North Carolina, Michigan, and Nevada, but others are in solidly blue states, including two counties in California, two counties in Illinois, and one city (Greenwich) in Connecticut. Have an opinion about this article? To sound off, please email [email protected] and we’ll consider publishing your edited remarks in our regular “We Hear You” feature. Remember to include the url or headline of the article plus your name and town and/or state.

A hand recount of 2020 election ballots in Lycoming County, Pennsylvania this week yielded only slight variations in the final numbers. In Lycoming, former President Donald Trump still beats President Joe Biden, with the new totals: Trump at 41,455 with seven voters fewer than the 2020 count, and Biden at 16,956 with 15 voters fewer than the original count. “The results confirm that the electronic voting system produces consistently accurate results; they confirm that the outcome of the presidential election in Lycoming County was correct; and they confirm that the vote totals were not inaccurate by thousands of votes as was claimed,” a press release from the Lycoming County Board of Elections said. Of the nearly 60,000 paper ballots recounted across seven candidates, the county was off by 35 votes, compared to the 2020 results. This is what Lycoming County Director of Elections Forrest Lehman predicted before the recount. “We don’t expect that any recount of that many ballots is going to match one-to-one with the voting system,” Lehman told The Epoch Times in December. “We expect that there will be human errors committed during that hand count.” The county dedicated 31 total staff to the task, with 28 counting. While they thought the counting could go on for the rest of the month, it only took three days from Jan. 9–11. Public Request After the 2020 election, citizens started attending the county commissioners’ meetings with questions about the results. Some were convinced that there were thousands of uncounted votes. Ultimately, citizens brought in a petition with 5,000 signatures, asking for a recount. Lycoming County has about 70,000 registered voters and a population of around 120,000. Commissioners granted the request. The Board of Elections will host a meeting to review the outcome of the hand recount in finer detail on Jan. 24 at 10 a.m. in the Commissioners’ Board Room, 330 Pine Street in Williamsport. Results The county hand-counted results of the presidential and the auditor general races. This way they could see if there was a glaring difference between races. Also, the auditor general race was on the front of the ballot along with the presidential, saving time by eliminating the need to flip every ballot over. Here is what they found: “This is not something we want to do after every election, but we need to do it once, at least, in order to prove once and for all that our voting system counts the votes accurately and that there were not thousands of uncounted votes that were hidden by an algorithm or some other nonsense like that,” Lehman said in December. Beth Brelje is a national, investigative journalist covering politics, wrongdoing, and the stories of everyday people facing extraordinary circumstances. Send her your story ideas: [email protected] SHARE

Updated, 10:32 a.m., 1/14/23 Several Republican legislators are protesting their committee assignments in the Michigan House as they continue to adjust to the fact that the GOP is now in the minority. Democrats are in control of the House for the first time since 2010 and have taken charge of the Senate for the first time since 1984. Three of those House members initially denied initial committee assignments have helped, in varying degrees, to perpetuate the false claim that the 2020 election was stolen: State Reps. Angela Rigas (R-Hastings), Mike Hoadley (R-Au Gres) and Matt Maddock (R-Milford). However, all three were later added to the House Committee on Housing, which Rigas complained was “an obscure housing subcommittee with no clear direction.” After multiple attempts by Republicans to overturn the 2020 election President Joe Biden won over former President Donald Trump, Democratic lawmakers repeatedly called for investigations and resolutions condemning the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection. The GOP majority House last term took no action. Rigas attended the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol where pro-Trump protesters sought to stop Congress’ certification of President Joe Biden’s win. Rigas claims she had a weapon and was tear-gassed within the Capitol grounds. She has said she considers being called an “insurrectionist” and “terrorist” a “compliment.” The riot left more than 140 police injured and five people dead. A Stop The Steal is posted inside of the Capitol Building after a pro-Trump mob broke into the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. A pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol, breaking windows in the deadly insurrection attempt aimed at stopping Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s win in the November election. | Jon Cherry | Getty Images Maddock was one of 11 Republican House members to put their names to briefs in a failed lawsuit that sought to overturn election results and one of five GOP legislators who attempted to enter the Michigan Capitol on Dec. 14, 2020, with a slate of 16 fake Republican electors — one of whom was his spouse, Michigan GOP Co-Chair Meshawn Maddock. The Maddocks also were in Washington, D.C., for pro-Trump protests over the 2020 election and were at a Jan. 5, 2021, rally. Rigas called her initial lack of an assignment “an apparent act of retribution” for her vote against Rep. Joe Tate (D-Detroit) as House speaker. Rigas was one of eight Republican House members, all members of the newly declared far-right Freedom Caucus, who voted against Tate in what in the past had been mostly a ceremonial procedure that produced a unanimous tally. Some members who voted against Tate did get assignments. Tate, who is Black, is the first person of color to serve as House speaker in Michigan.  “Committee is a forum for respectful debate and discussion and some representatives made clear they are most focused on partisan games and division,” Tate spokesperson Amber McCann told the Advance. Rigas said on Thursday she received word from Tate that she would not be serving on any committees along with two other legislators who voted against the new speaker, Hoadley and Maddock. Hoadley is a freshman who was endorsed in his House run by Trump because he saw “the greatest crime in American history–the theft of the 2020 presidential election.”  This is not the first time that Maddock has clashed with leadership. Last term when Republicans were in the majority, Maddock was booted from the GOP caucus for allegedly failing to keep discussions private. The Advance first reported after the November election that Maddock had been welcomed back into the smaller Republican caucus for the 2023-24 term. Committee is a forum for respectful debate and discussion and some representatives made clear they are most focused on partisan games and division. – Tate spokesperson Amber McCann   Maddock took to Facebook to complain about his initial lack of a committee assignment, also explicitly connecting it to his vote against Tate.  “I’ve been kicked out of the caucus in the past, given bad committees, removed as chair of committees, because I try to fight for the things I believe in, the things I campaigned on, and the things that will help everyone in Michigan,” said Maddock. “I have a lot of great colleagues, but its hard to stand strong in Lansing. I don’t think many appreciate how powerful leadership is, how influential the lobby is, how many decisions are made by unelected staffers, and how the dishonest Lansing media operates to police dissenters more than it tries to inform readers. It’s going to be a long two years if this week is any indication.” Rigas called the decision “cheap political theater.”  “It won’t work,” she said. “I won’t be silenced and won’t back down. I will continue to fiercely advocate for my constituents.” Despite her contention that her vote against Tate was the rationale for her initial lack of a commitment assignment, the other five GOP legislators who also voted against Tate received committee assignments: State Reps. Steve Carra (R-Three Rivers), James DeSana (R-Carleton), Joseph Fox (R-Tecumseh), Neil Friske (R-Petoskey) and Josh Schriver (R-Oxford). However, one of them says it wasn’t good enough. Friske decried his seating on only a single committee, the Families, Children, and Seniors Committee, as “clearly a reprimand for conservative defiance on the vote for Speaker of the House,” adding that he felt “completely disrespected” that his “voice has been actively diminished due to the Democratic-majority.” Speaker Pro Tempore Laurie Pohutsky (D-Livonia) commented on Twitter: “Local man feels disrespected by the consequences of his own actions.” Local man feels disrespected by the consequences of his own actions. https://t.co/nerup2gLCs — Laurie Pohutsky (@lpohutsky19) January 13, 2023 Friske was involved in a lawsuit against Whitmer over her COVID-19 health restrictions. He is the son of former Rep. Richard Friske, who was a former community organizer for George Wallace’s presidential campaign and was embroiled in a scandal when it was discovered he was a pilot for Nazi Germany during World War II. State Rep. Andrew Fink (R-Hillsdale), who voted for Tate as speaker, complained that Appropriations subcommittee assignments had yet to be announced this week and took a shot at Democrats as being “disorganized.” Last session, then-Speaker Jason Wentworth (R-Farwell) sent a press release on Jan. 21, 2021, announcing committee assignments. PR House Committees 01212021.docx Advance Editor Susan J. Demas contributed to this story. GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX SUBSCRIBE

SIOUX CITY, Iowa — The wife of a northwestern Iowa county supervisor has been charged with 52 counts of voter fraud after she allegedly filled out and cast absentee ballots in her husband's unsuccessful race for a Republican nomination to run for Congress in 2020, federal prosecutors said.Kim Phuong Taylor, 49, was arrested Thursday and pleaded not guilty to the charges before being released on a personal recognizance bond, the Sioux City Journal reported. Her trial is scheduled to begin March 20.Prosecutors allege in an indictment unsealed Thursday that Phuong Taylor filled out voter registration forms or delivered absentee ballots for people in Sioux City's Vietnamese community who had limited ability to read and understand English.She filled out "dozens of voter registrations, absentee ballot request forms, and absentee ballots containing false information," and delivered absentee ballots, sometimes without the knowledge of the people whose names were used, according to the indictment.Pat Gill, who is Woodbury County's auditor and election commissioner, said Thursday that he notified the Iowa secretary of state's office after someone contacted his office because a ballot had been fraudulently cast in their name in November 2020. He said his office later provided the FBI with suspected fraudulent registration forms and absentee ballots.Phuong Taylor committed the fraud before the June 2020 primary, in which her husband, Jeremy Taylor, a former Iowa House member, finished a distant third in the race for the Republican nomination to run for Iowa's 4th District congressional seat, prosecutors allege. The winner of that race, Randy Feenstra, easily won election to Congress that November.Prosecutors contend that Phuong Taylor committed the same fraud before the November 2020 election in which Jeremy Taylor was elected to the Woodbury County Board, according to the indictment.Jeremy Taylor is not named in the indictment and is not accused of wrongdoing. Kim Phuong Taylor's attorney, John Greer of Spencer, Iowa, declined to comment on the charges, the Journal reported.