IREHR’s Executive Director, Devin Burghart, was quoted in MSN;
“At a state level, where the far-right candidates were challenged on their far-right participation, they tended to lose,” Said Burghart.
“I think it’s a reminder that while there’s been a lot of effort at the national level to deal with some of the more high-profile candidates, that over the past few years, the problem of the far right has burrowed into state legislatures,” Burghart said. “It’s a problem where people haven’t yet stepped up and engaged to the degree I think is necessary to grapple with this problem.”
IREHR’s report, Breaching the Mainstream, was featured in MSN;
Author Kelly Weill writes, “In May, the social justice nonprofit Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights (IREHR) released a troubling study of the country’s statehouses. IREHR’s survey identified 875 state legislators as members of far-right Facebook groups—21.74 percent of the country’s Republican state lawmakers. The midterm election did little to oust them from office. As of Monday afternoon, 97 percent of the fringe candidates who were up for election won their races.”
