What in the hell were FBI agents doing in an election facility in Fulton county, Georgia, last week? They surely weren’t investigating a crime. Nor were they serving the public.

Justifying Donald Trump’s “big lie” about winning the 2020 election may seem like his own lost cause – but like his Confederate forebears, he is weaponizing it, damage be damned. Not even his subsequent election victory has quieted Trump’s appetite for more power, earned or otherwise.

As their ICE compatriots in Minnesota were laying siege to the Twin Cities, the FBI removed ballots and election records from a majority-Black jurisdiction that helped deliver Trump’s defeat in Georgia more than five years ago. He lost – and has admitted as much. Nevertheless, he persists.

Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, was present in Fulton county at Trump’s request. Upon that revelation, what could have been explained as routine oversight became a piece of suspicious political theater. Lacking any evidence of fraud, the objective could not have been law enforcement. It was power – and a reminder of who is presumed suspect when elections produce the “wrong” result.

A movement that still believed in persuasion would be making an argument to voters; this one is preparing to manage them. Days after the Fulton county raid, Trump openly called for Republicans to “nationalize” elections in multiple states, recycling the false and long-debunked claim that undocumented immigrants – including Somalis in Minnesota – had helped Democrats steal past contests. Republican leaders largely responded with careful hedges, if at all, gesturing toward states’ authority while sidestepping the real issue: elections are being questioned not because of evidence, but because of outcomes.

The pattern is........

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