Welcome back my friends to the coup that never ends

I’ll probably have more about the Trump baby judge unilaterally taking on the nation’s public health policy later, but in the meantime let’s check in with the other Republican coup:

A group of President Donald J. Trump’s allies and associates spent months trying to overturn the 2020 election based on his lie that he was the true winner.

Now, some of the same confidants who tried and failed to invalidate the results based on a set of bogus legal theories are pushing an even wilder sequel: that by “decertifying” the 2020 vote in key states, the outcome can still be reversed.

In statehouses and courtrooms across the country, as well as on right-wing news outlets, allies of Mr. Trump — including the lawyer John Eastman — are pressing for states to pass resolutions rescinding Electoral College votes for President Biden and to bring lawsuits that seek to prove baseless claims of large-scale voter fraud. Some of those allies are casting their work as a precursor to reinstating the former president.

The efforts have failed to change any statewide outcomes or uncover mass election fraud. Legal experts dismiss them as preposterous, noting that there is no plausible scenario under the Constitution for returning Mr. Trump to office.

But just as Mr. Eastman’s original plan to use Congress’s final count of electoral votes on Jan. 6, 2021, to overturn the election was seen as far-fetched in the run-up to the deadly Capitol riot, the continued efforts are fueling a false narrative that has resonated with Mr. Trump’s supporters and stoked their grievances. They are keeping alive the same combustible stew of conspiracy theory and misinformation that threatens to undermine faith in democracy by nurturing the lie that the election was corrupt.

The last graf Gets It — the point is not to retroactively install Trump but to prepare Republicans to steal the next one if necessary. And it very well might work. Frankly, I’m surprised Eastman hasn’t gotten his sinecure at the Kennedy School yet.

Having said that, there are some Trotskyists in the legal community who think that this floating electoral theft game is bad:

“At the moment, there is no other way to say it: This is the clearest and most present danger to our democracy,” said J. Michael Luttig, a leading conservative lawyer and former appeals court judge, for whom Mr. Eastman clerked and whom President George W. Bush considered as a nominee to be the chief justice of the United States. “Trump and his supporters in Congress and in the states are preparing now to lay the groundwork to overturn the election in 2024 were Trump, or his designee, to lose the vote for the presidency.”