A Dangerous Anti-Democracy Movement In The U.S. Is Growing Stronger
Fred Wertheimer’s Weekly Note | April 13, 2023
A dangerous anti-democracy movement is rapidly growing in the ranks of Republican officeholders and activists.
It was unleashed when former President Donald Trump refused to engage in the peaceful transfer of power after he lost the 2020 presidential election – a first by a U.S. President.
Instead, Trump attempted the nation’s first presidential coup and has continued to attack the honesty and credibility of our elections ever since. This has given birth to the “election deniers movement,” in which tens of millions of Americans have accepted Trump’s attacks and lies.
Election deniers were mostly unsuccessful in last year’s midterms, but they are undeterred and are now organizing to play an active role in the local administration of elections for 2024.
“As the nation barrels toward the next presidential election, the election conspiracy movement that mushroomed after the last one shows no signs of slowing down,” Christina Cassidy of Associated Press reported last month.
Election deniers are continuing their harassment of election officials with their baseless voting fraud conspiracies and pushing forward voter suppression efforts aimed at making it much harder for minority and marginalized communities, the disabled, and perceived Democrats to vote.
The right to vote and to have your vote properly counted goes to the heart of our democracy.
Meanwhile, anti-democracy actions by Republicans are popping up in red states all over the country.
Last week, the Tennessee State House voted to expel Reps. Justin Jones and Justin Pearson – both Black Democrats – for “breaching decorum” when they spoke out on gun control following the tragic school shooting in Nashville.
This was an absurd penalty and both were reinstated by unanimous votes by their local city/county councils this week. A third Representative – Gloria Johnson, a white woman – said she avoided expulsion by one vote because “it might have to do with the color of our skin.”
This extraordinary abuse of power in Tennessee is an ominous sign of what may lie ahead in other state legislatures.
In Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis abused his power by removing an elected prosecutor because he didn’t like his policy positions. A federal judge said DeSantis acted unconstitutionally, but the judge said he did not have the power to reinstate the prosecutor. DeSantis is now considering removing a second prosecutor.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), the poster child for extremist MAGA House Republicans, has promoted conspiracy theories, suggested Democrats are pedophiles, and defended the January 6 rioters.
In February, Greene called for a “national divorce” of red and blue states. Red states are embracing that red/blue divide.
In Texas, the state legislature will soon take oversight of the Houston school system away from the elected school board and superintendent. The takeover, an ACLU Texas attorney explains, “is not about public education but about political control of an almost entirely Black and brown student body in one of the country’s most diverse cities.”
This week, a judge temporarily blocked an effort by Tennessee’s Republican state legislature to cut the Nashville City Council in half. One quarter of Nashville’s current council seats are held by Black members, half by women, and five members who identify as LGBTQ+.
Republican extremists also control the House of Representatives.
Trump’s agents in the House, led by House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-OH), are brazenly attempting to obstruct the ongoing Trump investigations, initially harassing Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg with a subpoena and threats.
Last week, Jordan said Republicans might consider legislation to “insulate” current and former Presidents from state prosecutions. And, by “current and former Presidents,” he meant, of course, Presidents whose last names start with “T.”
Both Reps. Jones and Pearson, the Black Tennessee legislators expelled last week for representing their constituents, spoke of how Tennessee is veering from a democracy toward an autocracy.
The danger is in more than just Tennessee. It is, to use a movie title, “Everything, everywhere, all at once.”
“We will not sit down,” Pearson wrote this week. “We will not move to the back of the bus or the back of the house. We will march forward.”
Like Reps. Jones and Pearson, citizens must stand up and push back against the growing, dangerous attacks on our democracy.
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Fred’s Weekly Note appears each Thursday in Wertheimer’s Political Report, a Democracy 21 newsletter. Read this week’s and other recent newsletters here. And, subscribe for free here and receive your copy each week via email.
