Wisconsin: far-right group bids to recall speaker for resisting Trump’s big lie

Photograph: Andy Manis/AP

A far-right group in Wisconsin has launched a long-shot bid to oust the Wisconsin assembly speaker Robin Vos – the latest salvo in a running feud between the powerful Republican lawmaker and conspiracy-minded hardliners.

The recall campaign is the newest attempt by election-denying activists to punish politicians and state officials who they view as insufficiently loyal to Donald Trump and his attempt to overturn the 2020 election. Vos has become a particular target for refusing to accept their claims that 2020 was rigged.

Jay Schroeder, a conservative activist who has promoted elections misinformation online and who ran a failed campaign for Wisconsin secretary of state in 2022, is leading the effort.

“The whole system has been putting doubt in people’s minds,” said Schroeder, who pointed to Vos’s refusal to aggressively pursue impeaching Meagan Wolfe, the state’s top elections official, as a primary motivation for the recall campaign.

The recall announcement was received with fanfare by Wisconsin conspiracy theory groups on the messaging app Telegram, some of whom used the language of the QAnon conspiracy community to promote its efforts. One post included the phrase “WWG1WGALL”, shorthand for “Where we go one, we go all”, the slogan of the movement.

Vos fired back at the recall attempt, calling it “a waste of time, resources and effort” in a statement on Wednesday.

“The effort today is no surprise since the people involved cannot seem to get over any election in which their preferred candidate doesn’t win,” he said.

The push also marks the latest mobilization by the conspiracy-theory fueled far-right movement in Wisconsin which is animated by Christian nationalism, misinformation about elections administration, and unwavering support for Trump. Vos barely survived a primary challenger after Trump endorsed his primary opponent in the 2022 elections.

Since then, Wisconsin’s far right has mobilized frequently against Vos. Their fury was triggered most recently by his decision not to push hard to impeach Wolfe, the state’s nonpartisan elections administrator who has been the target of harassment and a failed legislative effort to oust her.

Vos has tried to tread an impossible path between appeasing the state’s election-denying activists and defending his own conviction that trying to overturn the 2020 election – a proposition Trump pushed on him personally – would be illegal and unconstitutional.

In a bid for rightwing support, Vos called for an investigation into the 2020 election, appointing former Wisconsin supreme court justice Michael Gableman, a Stop the Steal promoter, to lead it. The investigation routinely generated scandals and produced no evidence of widespread fraud in the Wisconsin presidential election. Vos eventually fired Gableman, said he regrets the effort, and has been increasingly critical of Trump over the past year.

“Donald Trump’s unhealthy obsession with 2020 is not what Americans want to hear about in 2024,” Vos told the Guardian in December.