IREHR’s newest report, Breaching the Mainstream, was cited in Michigan Advance.
Kira Lerner, democracy reporter, writes “The institute’s report, titled Breaching the Mainstream, lists all of the legislators identified as being part of far-right Facebook groups and detailed their legislative impact.”
She continues, “The legislators who have joined far-right groups made up 21.74% of all Republican legislators and 0.09% of all Democratic state legislators in the 2021 and 2022 legislative sessions, according to the report.”
The Institute’s Executive Director, Devin Burghart, was quoted by the Michigan Advance;
“We knew we had a problem on our hands, but we hadn’t been able to quantify the depths of it. This was a first attempt on our part to wrap our heads around it, and it was pretty striking in terms of the various pipelines that have opened up to pump disinformation and far-right ideas into legislatures.” Said Burghart
“It’s a nationwide phenomenon,” Burghart said. “Far too often, people think of this activity as being relegated to the deep South or the Pacific Northwest, but there are legislators in all 50 states who have joined these different far-right Facebook groups.”
“There was a very high level of support and sponsorship of bills coming from this cluster of legislators that we’d identified,” Burghart said.
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