THE LOST CAUSE:

The Justice Department has stepped up its criminal investigation into the creation of alternate slates of pro-Trump electors seeking to overturn President Biden's victory in the 2020 election, with a particular focus on a team of lawyers that worked on behalf of then-president Donald Trump, according to people familiar with the matter.

A federal grand jury in Washington has started issuing subpoenas in recent weeks to people linked to the alternate elector plan, requesting information about several lawyers, including Trump's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani and one of his chief legal advisers, John Eastman, one of the people said.

The subpoenas also seek information on other pro-Trump lawyers including Jenna Ellis, who worked with Giuliani, and Kenneth Chesebro, who wrote memos supporting the elector scheme in the weeks after the election.

Trump faced a series of setbacks in Tuesday's primary elections as voters rejected his efforts to unseat two top targets for retribution: Georgia's Republican governor and secretary of state, both of whom had rebuffed Trump's extraordinary pressure to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. But the magnitude of defeat in the governor's race -- more than 50 percentage points -- was especially stunning and raised questions about whether Republican voters are beginning to move on from Trump.

Nearly six years after the onetime reality television star launched what seemed to be an improbable campaign for the White House, the "Make America Great Again" movement Trump helmed isn't going anywhere. But voters are increasingly vocal in saying that the party's future is about more than Trump.

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