I will now go through a list of candidates from across the country and ask the question: “What? Are you insane?”

Case in point:

A Republican candidate for Congress in western New York said in a radio interview that U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland “should be executed” for authorizing a search former President Donald Trump’s home, before clarifying later in the show that he wasn’t being serious.

Buffalo-area businessman and consistent loser Carl Paladino made the comment in an interview with Breitbart News Saturday on Aug. 13. During the interview, Paladino was criticizing President Joe Biden for what he said was a lack of leadership and disengagement from government.

“So we have a couple of unelected people who are running our government, in an administration of people like Garland, who should be not only impeached, he probably should be executed,” Paladino said. “The guy is just lost. He’s a lost soul. He’s trying to get an image, and his image, his methodology is just terrible. To raid the home of a former president is just — people are scratching their heads and they’re saying, ‘What is wrong with this guy?’”

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U.S. Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart, on the fallout from his decision to approve a search warrant has been far from routine.

He has faced a storm of death threats since his signature earlier this month cleared the way for the FBI to search former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate as part of a probe into whether he inappropriately removed sensitive materials from the White House. Reinhart’s home address was posted on right-wing sites, along with antisemitic slurs. The South Florida synagogue he attends canceled its Friday night Shabbat services in the wake of the uproar.

Trump has done little to lower the temperature among his supporters, decrying the search as political persecution and calling on Reinhart to recuse himself in the case because he has previously made political donations to Democrats. Reinhart has also, however, contributed to Republicans.

The threats against Reinhart are part of a broader attack on law enforcement, particularly the FBI, by Trump and his allies in the aftermath of the search. But experts warn that the focus on a judge, coming amid an uptick in threats to the judiciary in general, is dangerous for the rule of law in the U.S. and the country’s viability as a democracy.

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Florida Democrats and Jewish leaders joined religious groups in Pennsylvania in condemning Gov. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., for his plans to appear Friday with Doug Mastriano, the Republican candidate for governor in Pennsylvania. Mastriano’s ties to Gab, a right-wing social media site that has become a hub of antisemitic and racist commentary, have come under fire for the last few weeks.

“Do not go to Pennsylvania and do this. Be bigger than this. Be better than this,” Democratic activist Fred Guttenberg appealed to DeSantis. The Florida governor, a likely contender for the GOP’s 2024 presidential nomination, is currently running for reelection.

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Election deniers are winning Republican primary races in critical battleground states. Their victories have raised the stakes for the November midterms, as the power to oversee elections could be granted to the same people who falsely claim the last one was fraudulent. There are 6 states that Donald Trump contested in 2020. And they are also the six states that decided the 2020 outcome for Biden. Biden won all six of those states. Those states were Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

The Republican nominees for certain offices in these states, people who repeated  the 2020 election lie, people deemed election deniers are on the Republican ballots.

For example, the Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate there, Kari Lake, who has said, A”Look, if I were in office in 2020, I would not have certified the results… despite the fact that Joe Biden won Arizona. “She’s actually said that those who did certify the result in Arizona should be in prison.

It seems denying the 2020 election has become a price of admission in the Republican Party. It’s gone beyond just loyalty to Trump. It’s really to the false statements about that election. Unfortunately, that’s what’s coming in this country.