Liz Cheney Is Set on Keeping “Election Deniers” Out of Office—Including Donald Trump

“I’m going to work against those people. I’m going to work to support their opponents. I think it matters that much.”

Tom Williams/Getty

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After losing reelection in Wyoming this week, Rep. Liz Cheney has set her sights on a new target: keeping “election deniers” out of office, starting with former president Donald Trump.

In a wide-ranging interview with ABC’s This Week aired on Sunday morning, Cheney told host Jonathan Karl about her plans to start a political organization tasked with preventing a second Trump presidency and opposing other candidates who support his “Big Lie” about the 2020 election.

“I’m going to be very focused on working to ensure that we do everything we can not to elect election deniers,” Cheney said. “And I’m going to work against those people. I’m going to work to support their opponents. I think it matters that much.” She told Karl that some of those targets may include her Republican colleagues in Congress.

She also revealed that it would be “very difficult” for her to support a Trump-aligned presidential candidate in 2024. In Cheney’s eyes, Republican Sens. Josh Hawley of Missouri and Ted Cruz of Texas, both of whom have taken action to overturn the election results, have “made themselves unfit for future office.” And when asked about Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, another potential challenger to Trump, Cheney said, “DeSantis is somebody who is right now campaigning for election deniers. And I think that is something that people have got to have real pause about. Either you fundamentally believe in and will support our constitutional structure, or you don’t.”

Election denial is “dangerous broadly speaking,” Cheney said, and Trump, as the leader of the movement, is the “center of the threat.” After January 6, she said, “There’s just simply no way that the nation can, in my view, sustain itself if we excuse that and put him in a position of power again.” (As my colleague Tim Murphy writes, it should be noted that Cheney endorsed Trump in 2016 and 2020.)

In the near future, in her role as vice chair of the House January 6 committee, Cheney plans to use much of her remaining tenure in Congress to educate Americans about the aftermath of the 2020 election. “I think it’s really important for people really across the political spectrum of all ages to understand and recognize why what happened after the last election can never happen again,” she said.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

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