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Michael Bartiromo, Nexstar Media Wire

Republicans for Voting Rights (RVR) says they launched the campaign to put an end to sham audits, calling them a waste of time and money. (Republicans for Voting Rights)

(NEXSTAR) A Republican-led advocacy group is calling for high-ranking Republicans to end their audits of the 2020 election. And theyre doing it with huge billboards that read Trump Lost.

Republicans for Voting Rights, an organization operating under Defending Democracy Together, has launched a quarter-million-dollar campaign to erect dozens of these billboards in major markets across the country, including one digital billboard right in the heart of Times Square.

On Twitter, the Republican Accountability Project a sister organization of Republicans for Voting Rights (RVR) confirmed the Times Square billboard was up as of Wednesday. A representative for the group said dozens of similar digital billboards were already running as of Thursday. More traditional static billboards, too, are scheduled to follow.

Many of the billboards are, or will soon be, situated in states where theres discussion about an audit of the 2020 election, according to the Republican Accountability Project (RAP) website. Such billboards are going up in Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia and Wisconsin, per the RVR.

The 2020 election was secure and fair, said RVR Director Amanda Carpenter in a statement shared with Nexstar. These sham audits are a waste of time and money.

Trump himself has repeatedly urged Republican lawmakers to conduct audits of vote counts, despite allegations of voter fraud during the 2020 election having been dismissed by numerous state election officials and even Christopher Krebs, then-head of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) during the Trump administration.

Despite these certifications, Republican politicians and supporters of Donald Trump have called for audits in multiple states, many at the cost of taxpayers. A few of the most notable audits conducted in Georgia and Maricopa County, Arizona, confirmed President Bidens win, and in some cases increased his margin of victory.

Republican Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), has also called on Republicans to stop perpetuating the Big Lie in a recent tweet directed at Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.), who, during an appearance on Fox News, refused to say the election wasnt stolen from Trump.

Millions of Americans have been sold a fraud that the election was stolen, Cheney tweeted Sunday. Republicans have a duty to tell the American people that this is not true. Perpetuating the Big Lie is an attack on the core of our constitutional republic.

All of RVRs billboards both digital and static will be live as of next week, according to the group.

Defending Democracy Together, the anti-Trump advocacy organization under which the RVR and RAP operate, was founded amid the Trump administration by lifelong conservatives and Republicans including Bill Kristol, who served as chief of staff under Vice President Dan Quayle, and Sarah Longwell, a former chair of the Log Cabin Republicans.

We are Republicans, former Republicans, and conservatives committed to protecting every Americans right to vote, explains a message that appears on the Defending Democracy Together website.

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Trump lost: Republican-led group launches billboard campaign calling for end to election audits - NewsNation Now

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- With Republican Ohio Supreme Court Justice Pat DeWine under fire for not recusing himself in three redistricting lawsuits, his party is asking Democratic Justice Jennifer Brunner to step down from the case.

Ohio Republicans are arguing her history makes it impossible for her to consider the issue impartially. Were talking about the brazen claim, aimed at muddying the issue, on This Week in the CLE.

Listen online here.

Editor Chris Quinn hosts our daily half-hour news podcast, with editor Leila Atassi, editorial board member Lisa Garvin and me.

Youve been sending Chris lots of thoughts and suggestions on our from-the-newsroom text account, in which he shares what were thinking about at cleveland.com. You can sign up for free by sending a text to 216-868-4802.

Here are the questions were answering today:

Is the Ohio Republic Party really challenging a Democratic Ohio Supreme Court Justice on the gerrymandering case while Pat DeWine resists overwhelming pressure to get off the case where his father is a key player?

Weve had turnover among the leaders of Case Western Reserve University, the Cleveland Clinic, University Hospitals, the Greater Cleveland partnership and more. Whos the latest to head out the door?

Has all the wackiness going on with Republican legislators finally persuaded Ohio House Speaker Bob Cupp to give up on finding a compromise on a bill to regulate vaccine mandates in Ohio?

Were weeks away from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductions in Cleveland, and we still dont know who the presenters will be. But some information has been released about what to expect during induction week. Mike Norman, what do we know?

Should we be encouraged or discouraged that only 6 percent of people in Cleveland have opted in to the citys new recycling program?

Do we finally have an issue upon which some of the Republicans seeking the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate do not stand with Donald Trump?

We got a behind-the-scenes peak at the return after more than 18 months of the Cleveland Orchestra to Severance Hall Music Center, or whatever it is called now. What did we see, and what is ahead for Clevelands renowned cultural institution.?

What did reporter Marc Bona learn in speaking with Jordan Chiles of the Gold Over America Tour of female gymnasts, which is touring the country?

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Is anyone buying the Republican Partys diversion tactic on Justice Pat DeWines conflict of interest? This W - cleveland.com

Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has been saying some certifiably zany stuff these days, from promising to eliminate rape in the Lone Star State to launching an all-out assault on gender-neutral childrens toys. But the real weirdness is brewing in the primary candidate pool, where a comedian, a fail son from a car dealership family and an accused war criminal are taking turns casting Abbott as a "Demonrat" in sheeps clothing.

Following the states abortion ban, many liberals threatened to flee Texas for good. Still, nothing would send them packing sooner than if an Abbott challenger were to move into the governors mansion. (It may sound like a long shot, but a recent poll by the Texas Politics Project found that only 41% of Texans approve of the governor's performance, the lowest number throughout his time in office.) Chad PratherComedian Chad Prather told Texas Scorecard that he has the solution to the states border crisis: detect, deter, detain, deport and defend. Ah yes, the alliterative five-D method will solve it all.

Likening border-crossers to an invasion, Prather said as governor, hed gladly give the mounted border agents a hand and be the first guy down there on horseback. (The cowboy didnt say whether hed be shirtless when mounting the stallion, but the Western revenge-fantasy does conjure images of another politician.)

When discussing the state's abortion ban, which doesn't include exemptions for rape, Prather told Texas Scorecard that the guilt of murder on top of the ignominy of rape does not help a woman. Perhaps most notable, though, was his sound, science-based understanding of biology during an attempt to poke holes in the pro-choice argument.

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[After conception], the DNA of a human being is immediately imprinted on that person; that DNA is there for the rest of their life, he said. If we were to discover that on Mars, we would spend tens of trillions of dollars trying to protect that life.

Don HuffinesHis family may have gotten you a deal on your Hyundai, but Don Huffines is applying his salesmanship to the governors race. Now, hes set on persuading Texans that Abbott is allied with the LGBTQ-loving left.

On Tuesday, The Texas Tribune reported that the states child welfare agency had deleted a page providing LGBTQ youth with resources. The move came after Huffines slammed the agency in a video posted to Twitter, accusing them of promoting transgender sexual policies to kids.

As governor, I will ensure this predatory grooming of Texas kids ends, he wrote. Any adult who pushes the perverted LGBTQ agenda on our children will be promptly removed from all positions within Texas government agencies. Allen WestAllen West, the former Florida congressman who also served as chair of the Republican Party of Texas, is known for making memorable copy. This year, he scorned a New York Times reporter for wearing a mask, telling her she could remove her face diaper during their interview. Hed also railed against vaccine mandates even after West, who is unvaccinated, was hospitalized for COVID-19.

On Saturday, Wests social media account tweeted that hed been taking the horse dewormer ivermectin, an antiparasitic drug that public health officials have begged people to refrain from eating. Hed also taken the antimalarial medication hydroxychloroquine. Medical experts say neither should be usedto treat coronavirus.

But on Tuesday, West issued a statement saying hed been released from the hospital. He also wrote that hed gone on a 2-mile jog that morning: Neither a high-speed motorcycle crash nor COVID-19 can keep an old soldier down.

He again took the opportunity to vow that hed crush anyone who forced vaccine mandates in Texas.

Our bodies are our last sanctuary of liberty and freedom, West wrote. I will defend that for everyone, even the progressive socialist jackasses who must be saved from themselves.

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Ahead of the 2022 Republican Primary, Texas' Gubernatorial Candidates are Saying Some Weird Stuff - Dallas Observer

Last week, the Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee published their report on new revelations into Donald Trumps efforts to discard the election results and remain in power. The important takeaway, Republicans conclude, is that Trumps interest in using the Justice Department to secure an unelected second term was based on legitimate complaints and reports of crimes. And anyway, he decided not to go through with the full Saturday Night Massacre coup plan that Justice Department lawyer Jeffrey Clark had urged upon him.

Conservative pundits have embraced this happy-ending interpretation. The story of Trump and the Justice Department, then, is not one of the presidents relentless pressure campaign on the nations top lawyers. It is, rather, a story of the president taking those lawyers advice and then, tragically, turning elsewhere, argues Byron York. Trump decided against it, insists Brit Hume. It is not to his credit that he even considered it, but his rejection should be part of any story on it.

That Trump decided against Clarks plan is certainly part of the story. But is it the important part of the story? That depends on his reasons for rejecting the plan. It would be one thing if Trump rejected the proposal on moral grounds but not even a Byron York could manage to type the words Donald Trump and moral in the same sentence. Instead, he simply judged the plan unlikely to succeed, much like a bank robber deciding not to crack a vault because its security system is too tough.

The important issue going forward is what Republicans will decide about the idea of overturning Democratic election victories. Here, the evidence is overwhelmingly negative. The Republican impulse is to rehabilitate all the participants in Trumps attempted coup.

An instructive episode is the protective cordon forming around John Eastman, the lawyer whose memo gave Trump his step-by-step playbook for using Mike Pence to discard the election results on January 6. Eastmans plan hinged on an extremely tenuous constitutional argument that the vice-president has unilateral power to discard any election result he decides is wrong, and throw the election to the House, which would decide the result on the basis of which party controlled the most state delegations. Even if Eastmans argument was valid and hardly any scholars take it seriously it would mean he had discovered a loophole that would allow the presidents party to retain power forever.

Eastmans effort to end American democracy has resulted in some professional blowback. If conservatives wanted to prove that the real takeaway from Trumps coup is that he decided against it, they would cut Eastman loose. Instead, they are rallying to his defense.

The Claremont Institute, a formerly highbrow cog in the conservative movement, defended Eastman against what it called a recent combined disinformation, de-platforming, and ostracism campaign. Claremonts defense is aggressively misleading:

Contrary to almost universally false news accounts, which have done great damage, John did not ask the Vice President, who was presiding over the Joint Session of Congress where electoral votes were to be counted on January 6, to overturn the election or to decide the validity of electoral votes. John advised the Vice President to accede to requests from state legislators to pause the proceedings of the Joint Session of Congress for 7 to 10 days, to give time to the state legislatures to assess whether the acknowledged illegal conduct by their state election officials had affected the results of the election.

Translated into English, Claremont is insisting that Eastman didnt ask Mike Pence to overturn the election he asked Mike Pence to refuse to certify the result and then throw the question over to the House, which would overturn the election. Its a bit like getting furious when people say Stalin executed millions of people, when the real story is that he ordered other people to do the executions but never fired a shot with his own hands.

Joining Eastmans pro bono defense team is J. Christian Adams. In a new column, Adams argues that Eastman did nothing wrong and is the victim of an oppressive orthodoxy.

Adams argues that Eastman merely fulfilled the highest ideals of the legal profession by representing a client in need of counsel. Calling Eastman a victim in the campaign to cancel attorneys who committed the sin of representing former president Trump, Adams reasons that Eastman was merely representing a client in need. Back in the old days of representing GITMO detainees, we called that the sacred right to legal counsel. In olden days, lawyers representing terrorists were allowed to fill their terrorist-clients heads full of reasons they werent guilty of trying to kill Americans, he pleads.

This would be a good argument if Trump were a criminal defendant. Actually, Trump is a criminal defendant. Hes facing charges in Manhattan and New York State for a lengthy list of alleged financial crimes. And, in fact, nobody is proposing to sanction the lawyers representing Trump in these cases, a fact that disproves Adamss claim that Eastman is merely being bullied for his unpopular client.

The finer points of legal ethics obviously do not interest Adams. He is closing ranks with Eastman out of a broader desire to rehabilitate the legal insurrection. And Adams is hardly some insignificant nut. He is a nut, all right, but one who possesses impeccable conservative-movement credentials. He worked in George W. Bushs Justice Department, served on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, writes op-eds in the Washington Examiner, is invited by Republicans to testify in Congress as a credentialed expert, and is one of his partys leading voices on election security.

When J. Christian Adams shouts that Eastman is the victim of cancel culture, it signals what the Republican legal Establishment thinks about Trumps coup. Whatever regrets they have are dwarfed by their anger at the liberals for exposing the plot. They are going to try again.

Analysis and commentary on the latest political news from New York columnist Jonathan Chait.

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Republicans Are Rehabilitating the Participants in Trumps Attempted Coup - New York Magazine

Congress held its first hearing last week on Arizona's utterly bonkers election "audit," and House Republicans participating in the discussion put on a highly discouraging display. For example, Republican Rep. Andy Biggs, the chair of the right-wing House Freedom Caucus, insisted "we don't know" who actually won Arizona's presidential election last year, despite reality.

At the same hearing, Biggs' fellow Arizonan, Republican Rep. Paul Gosar, peddled an incoherent conspiracy theory, which appeared to be based on strange claims from secret sources the congressman seemed to make up after having already peddled equally strange conspiracy theories based on equally strange claims from different secret sources whom Gosar also apparently made up.

For those inclined to be generous when assessing the state of the contemporary Republican Party, the likely argument is that folks like Biggs and Gosar are fringe figures, known for voicing extreme views. It's not as if the GOP is putting irresponsible officials in leadership positions, right?

It's against this backdrop that House Minority Whip Steve Scalise, a Louisiana Republican, followed in the fringe figures' footsteps yesterday. The Associated Press reported:

The House's second-ranking Republican, Rep. Steve Scalise, repeatedly refused to say on Sunday that the 2020 election wasn't stolen, standing by Donald Trump's lie that Democrat Joe Biden won the White House because of mass voter fraud. More than 11 months after Americans picked their president and almost nine months since Biden was inaugurated, Scalise was unwilling during a national television interview to acknowledge the legitimacy of the vote, instead sticking to his belief that the election results should not have been certified by Congress.

Remember, Scalise isn't some random backbencher with a low profile and limited influence. On the contrary, if Republicans take back the House in next year's midterm elections, the far-right Louisianan will likely become the House majority leader.

And yet, there he was on Fox News yesterday, getting pressed by host Chris Wallace to acknowledge that President Joe Biden legitimately won the 2020 presidential election. Acknowledging his own country's electoral reality, however, was a step Scalise simply would not take.

This is not a situation in which the GOP congressman is a shrinking violet, lacking the temperament to denounce ideas with which he disagrees. During the same interview yesterday, Scalise said those who equate Georgia Republicans' new voter-suppression law with Jim Crow are pushing "flat-out lies."

In other words, Scalise is capable of condemning ideas he finds objectionable in no uncertain terms. When it comes to the Republican Party's Big Lie, however, Scalise repeatedly insisted that states didn't follow election laws last fall to his satisfaction, which in his mind justifies his skepticism about the results.

Three times, Wallace tried to get Scalise to acknowledge the truth. Three times, the high-ranking GOP lawmaker refused.

A tiny number of congressional Republicans were displeased. Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, for example, wrote via Twitter, "Millions of Americans have been sold a fraud that the election was stolen. Republicans have a duty to tell the American people that this is not true. Perpetuating the Big Lie is an attack on the core of our constitutional republic." Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois called Scalise's rhetoric "unacceptable."

The duo, however, was part of a vanishingly small minority. For most congressional Republicans, Scalise's nonsense reflected a new normal.

The bottom line is unavoidable: The line between the GOP fringe on Capitol Hill and the GOP leadership has been blurred to the point that it hardly exists at all. When the #2 House Republican isn't lending credence to his party's Big Lie, House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik is toying with a white-supremacist conspiracy theory and trying to blame House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for the Jan. 6 attack.

It was just last month, meanwhile, when House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy threatened private companies in the hopes of obstructing a bipartisan congressional investigation, which he soon followed by falsely claiming that the FBI had cleared Donald Trump of wrongdoing on Jan. 6.

There ought to be an important gap between the Republican Party's radicals and the GOP's leadership. In 2021, they appear to be reading from awfully similar scripts.

Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MSNBC political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "The Impostors: How Republicans Quit Governing and Seized American Politics."

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Why Steve Scalise's stance on the Republicans' Big Lie matters - MSNBC