Editorial

GOP Stoops to New Lows

As if the indictment of Donald Trump by a Manhattan grand jury on 34 felony counts wasn’t enough to reveal the dark side of the Republican Party, the backlash by Republican leaders against Democratic legislators in Nashville who dared to side with protesters demanding gun reforms at the Tennessee state Capitol demonstrated Republicans are done putting up with dissent and are headed to one-party rule, wherever they can pull it off.

Republicans howled at the temerity of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg who brought in the former president to answer charges that he illegally engineered payments to porn actress Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal, as well as a doorman who may have known about an illegitimate child, to keep them quiet before the 2016 election, which would have violated state and federal election laws.

The charges may seem trivial when compared with investigations in other jurisdictions of Trump’s attempts to subvert the 2020 presidential election results in Georgia, his efforts to obstruct the transfer of power, including his role in organizing the Jan. 6, 2021, riots, and his efforts to obstruct the return of classified documents he took from the White House and kept at his resort in Florida, even after federal authorities demanded their return. Trump likely will be answering more felony charges. But back in New York, falsification of business records to hide damaging information from the voting public during the 2016 presidential election would be a felony under state law, and district attorneys are not supposed to overlook felonies.

Trump had allowed his lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, to go to prison on a federal charge relating to the same activity. Trump wasn’t prosecuted for the federal offense because the federal statute of limitations expired while he was president and his Department of Justice gave him a pass. The New York statute of limitations for felonies is five years, but it can be suspended if the suspect is living outside the state, as Trump was while he was in the White House.

But now Republicans are suggesting it’s open season for local prosecutors to engage in malicious prosecution of national Democratic officials, including President Joe Biden, in retaliation.

Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., House Oversight Committee chair, said county attorneys from Tennessee and Kentucky have asked him how they can “go after” the Bidens following Trump’s indictment. “They were Republican, obviously, both states are heavily Republican. They want to know if there are ways they can go after the Biden’s now,” Comer said, adding that Democrats have “opened a can of worms.”

Comer apparently didn’t try to talk the prosecutors out of the malicious prosecutions. Meanwhile, House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) is trying to figure out how to put Alvin Bragg on trial.

Then a shooter in Nashville on March 27 used two assault rifles and a pistol to kill three children and three staff members at the Covenant Christian school which the shooter had attended. Republicans appeared to be more concerned with the shooter being transgender than that s/he was able to obtain seven weapons while under care for emotional disorder and s/he used assault rifles and a pistol to shoot his/her way through the locked doors to gain entry to the school.

It was the 13th school shooting with casualties in 2023, according to Education Week, and the 130th mass shooting in the US this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive, but Republican members of Congress and the Tennessee statehouse, who are closely aligned with the gun lobby, said there was nothing they could do beyond “thoughts and prayers.”

US Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Nashville), bluntly said, “We’re not gonna fix it.” He added, “I don’t see any real role that we can do other than mess things up.” He said he didn’t worry about his own daughter, because, “We homeschool her.”

Three days after the Covenant School massacre, thousands of protesters, including school-age children and their parents, gathered at the state Capitol to urge restrictions on gun use. When their demands were ignored by the leadership, three Democratic representatives in the Tennessee House of Representatives joined them symbolically by walking to the “well” on the House floor, using bullhorns when their microphones were cut off. The capitol protest was boisterous but peaceful, and forced a 45-minute recess in the House, during which Democratic leadership persuaded the legislators to stand down. After the disruption, the House was gaveled back into order and continued the session. Democratic leaders later called what the three reps did “good trouble,” but Republicans decided to teach the troublemakers a lesson.

Tennessee’s Republican House Speaker Cameron Sexton compared the legislators to the Jan. 6th rioters at the US Capitol: “What they did … was equivalent, at least equivalent, maybe worse, depending on how you look at it, of doing an insurrection in the Capitol.” He also called the protesters “insurrectionists.”

But no arrests were made, no use of force incidents were reported and no property was damaged in the Nashville protest, TennesseeLookout.com reported. Rep. John Ray Clemmons, chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, noted that many schools let students out to join in the rally for stricter gun laws after the Covenant shooting incident. Protesters were removed from the Senate and House viewing areas after they disrupted proceedings with chants of “shame on you” and “children are dead, and you don’t care.”

The expulsion proceedings against the “Tennessee Three” took place April 6, and state Rep. Andrew Farmer (R-Sevierville), who sponsored the expulsion resolution against Rep. Justin Pearson (D-Memphis), set the tone with his patronizing lecture: ”Just because you don’t get your way, you can’t come to the well, bring your friends and throw a temper tantrum with an adolescent bullhorn,” Farmer scolded.

“Now you all heard that,” Pearson responded from the well. “How many of you would want to be spoken to that way?” Crickets.

The Greedy Oligarchs’ Party supermajority held up to expel Pearson and Justin Jones (D-Nashville), who are both Black. Gloria Johnson (D-Knoxville) was the only one of the Tennessee Three to beat the ouster, as seven Republicans supported her. She admitted that might have been because she is a White woman.

Nashville’s Metropolitan Council April 10 unanimously reappointed Jones to serve as interim representative until a special election can be held. Pearson was expected to be sent back to the House by the Shelby County Commission, despite reported threats from legislative leaders to cut funding for the county if it sends him back.

A spokesperson for House Speaker Sexton said he would not stand in the way of the reappointment of Jones and Pearson. But there was no assurance the supermajority would consider Jones and Pearson to be anything but background noise.

Republicans have veto-proof majorities in 20 state legislatures, including four with Democratic governors, whose powers the legislatures have tried to limit. The GOP means to impose its will where it can. Overturning the 2024 election is not out of the question. — JMC

From The Progressive Populist, May 1, 2023

Populist.com