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Gosar and Rittenhouse are the Republican Party of 2021

In a sick and twisted sense, it’s fitting that white supremacists celebrate the Kyle Rittenhouse verdict the same week that House Republicans stood with Representative Paul Gosar for fantasizing about murdering AOC.

If you haven’t been following the news recently, you may not have heard that far-right Congressman Paul Gosar tweeted a doctored video of him murdering Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and striking President Joe Biden. While both of those points have rightly gotten considerable media attention, the video also featured undocumented immigrants crossing the border. The not-too-subtle suggestion from the video is that immigrants crossing the border should be treated with violence.

Apparently, those messages are A-OK with Gosar’s Republican colleagues in the House. After all, only two Republicans voted to censure him: Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) and Representative Adam Kinzinger (R-IL). Cheney and Kinzinger are the same Republican representatives who voted to impeach Donald Trump for his coup attempt and currently sit on the 1/6 Committee investigating the insurrection.

The kid-glove approach to Gosar contrasts sharply with how House Republicans are treating other members of their conference. They have already punished Liz Cheney (formerly the third-ranking Republican in the House of Representatives) for daring to tell the truth about 1/6. They are threatening to punish the 13 moderate Republicans who voted for Biden’s infrastructure bill. (Those same members are also receiving death threats.) Yet all but two House Republicans stood with Representative Gosar when he all-but-encouraged violence against a colleague.

Gosar – who has already been implicated in the insurrection and whose six siblings were featured in an extraordinary ad opposing his re-election – took note of that support. After initially deleting the tweet, he retweeted the video after the censure vote in an act of defiance. The lesson that he apparently learned was that his Republican colleagues had his back and that he should double down.

To be sure, not all of his Republican colleagues agree with Gosar’s extremism; some have mildly condemned it while opposing the censure on weak procedural grounds, arguing that it went too far in stripping him of committee assignments. Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) expressed concern with the precedent that the censure would set. Oddly, he had less concern about the precedent set from doing little to nothing when a member of Congress threatens another member.

Aside from Cheney and Kinzinger, everyone else in the House Republican conference is either sympathetic to Gosar or too cowardly to stand up to him. They either outwardly support violence or refuse to condemn it in a meaningful way.

What does that tell us? The fascist takeover of the House Republican conference is all but complete.

Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore, Flickr

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Republicans who voted for bipartisan infrastructure bill receive death threats

Republican members of Congress who helped pass the bipartisan infrastructure bill are receiving death threats from far-right extremists.

The Washington Post reports:

Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.) has received multiple death threats in the days since he voted for President Biden’s $1.2 trillion infrastructure deal, with the overwhelming majority of the calls coming from outside the congressman’s district.

In a CNN interview Monday night, Upton played the audio of one of the calls, which he said came from a man in South Carolina.

“You’re a f—ing piece of s— traitor. I hope you die,” the man can be heard saying. In the expletive-filled call, he goes on to say he hopes Upton’s family and his entire staff die.

An Upton spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.

Upton told CNN his office has received several such calls after a House colleague tweeted the names and office phone numbers of the Republicans who voted in favor of the bill. The measure passed the House on Friday with a 228-to-206 vote, two months after it was approved by the Senate on an overwhelming 69-to-30 vote.

It’s worth noting that Upton was among those who voted to impeach Donald Trump for the January 6 attack on the US Capitol.

Trump leads the far-right attack

Donald Trump took direct aim at the thirteen House Republicans who voted with Democrats to pass the bipartisan bill, calling them “RINOs” for supporting the measure. The bill passed 69-30 in the Senate back in June.

Meanwhile, some of the most conservative Republican members of the House lambasted their colleagues, promising recriminations in the form of primary challenges.

“I can’t believe Republicans just gave the Democrats their socialism bill,” Representative Matt Gaetz tweeted.

“Insanity”

Republican Representative Adam Kinzinger, a member of the 1/6 Committee, says that “a party with leaders like Kevin McCarthy, that cannot stand up to the insanity from people like Greene, Gaetz, Gosar, etc, is going to have a hard time standing up to countries like China.”

Needless to say, death threats over a bill that funds roads, bridges, and public transit is not normal. It’s yet another sign of the ugliness in our politics and the fascist impulses of a growing number of Republicans.

The unhinged comments from Gaetz et al and the death threats from their supporters come within days of Representative Paul Gosar tweeting a threatening video at Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

As the AP puts it:

In the past week, Republican Rep. Paul Gosar tweeted a video showing a character with his face killing a figure with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s face. Several of the 13 House Republicans who backed a bipartisan infrastructure bill said they faced threats after their vote. In one profanity-laced voicemail, a caller labeled Rep. Fred Upton a “traitor” and wished death for the Michigan Republican, his family and staff.

The response from Republican leaders? Silence.

Extremist members of Congress like Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Paul Gosar are no longer outliers in a radicalized Republican Party. Worse yet, they’re giving cover to the most violent elements in the party’s base, which already staged an insurrection as part of an attempted coup.

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Joint Chiefs Chairman notes attempt to ‘overturn the Constitution’ on January 6

General Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the highest-ranking military officer in the United States, acknowledged during Congressional testimony this week that the insurrection on January 6 was an attempt to – in his words – “overturn the Constitution.”

According to USA Today:

“What is it that caused thousands of people to assault this building and try to overturn the Constitution of the United States of America?” Milley said of the Jan. 6 attacks on the U.S. Capitol by a mob of supporters of former President Donald Trump. “What caused that? I want to find that out. I want to maintain an open mind here, and I do want to analyze it.”

Milley’s remarks came in response to Republican attacks on the study of structural racism in the United States, specifically at West Point.

“I’ve read Mao Tse-tung. I’ve read Karl Marx. I’ve read Lenin. That doesn’t make me a communist,” Milley is quoted as saying. “So, what is wrong with understanding … having some situational understanding about the country for which we are here to defend? And I personally find it offensive that we are accusing the United States military — our general officers, our commissioned and non-commissioned officers — of being, quote, ‘woke’ or something else because we’re studying some theories that are out there.”

Sugarcoating the insurrection is dangerous. Milley understands that perhaps more than anyone.

More important though are the comments acknowledging that Trump supporters attempted to overturn the Constitution on January 6 – some of whom were both active-duty or retired police and military.

Some of us have accurately called the insurrection a coup attempt since January. It plainly was: Trump lied to his supporters for weeks about bogus election fraud claims, summoned them to Washington DC on January 6, and then unleashed his mob of supporters on the Congress of the United States to prevent the certification of the Electoral College.

Milley’s comments are the highest-ranking acknowledgment of what happened on January 6. They come from a decorated general who holds a respected and completely nonpartisan position.

Granted, he didn’t outright call it a coup. But what else do you call a mob of Trump supporters attempting to “overturn the Constitution” at the behest of the then-president of the United States?

Now we just need others – especially elected officials and the news media – to call January 6 what it was and do everything in our power to prevent it from ever happening again.

Photo Credit: Flickr

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Cheney removed from House Republican leadership

Republicans in the House of Representatives followed through with their expected removal of Representative Liz Cheney from party leadership over her refusal to embrace the Big Lie.

The AP reports:

House Republicans ousted Rep. Liz Cheney from her post as the chamber’s No. 3 GOP leader on Wednesday, punishing her after she repeatedly rebuked former President Donald Trump for his false claims of election fraud and his role in inciting the Jan. 6 Capitol attack.

Meeting behind closed doors for less than 20 minutes, GOP lawmakers used a voice vote to remove the Wyoming congresswoman from her leadership post, the latest evidence that challenging Trump can be career-threatening.

We do not have a roll call of who voted to remove her because it was a voice vote, although Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Minority Whip Steve Scalise both publicly supported her removal. If Republicans were to regain control of the House after next year’s elections, McCarthy would likely become Speaker of the House and Scalise Majority Leader.

The vote was expected, but the result is nonetheless startling. One of America’s two major political parties just instituted a litmus test requiring its members to either advance Donald Trump’s lie that the election was stolen or else remain silent. If they speak the truth, they will be punished.

In a floor speech before the vote, Cheney warned her party about the danger to American democracy.

“Remaining silent and ignoring the lie emboldens the liar,” she said. “I will not sit back and watch in silence while others lead our party down a path that abandons the rule of law and joins the former president’s crusade to undermine our democracy.”

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Biden backs filibuster reform

In an important shift, President Biden now appears to be on board with reforming the filibuster.

According to Vanity Fair:

Biden indicated in an interview Tuesday that while he remains set against eliminating the filibuster entirely, he will support efforts to reform it, making the procedure what he says it was originally “supposed to be.” “I don’t think that you have to eliminate the filibuster. You have to do it what it used to be when I first got to the Senate back in the old days,” Biden told George Stephanopoulos in an ABC News interview. “You had to stand up and command the floor. You had to keep talking.”

Biden, who spent decades in the upper chamber, reveres the body’s traditions and, both as senator and vice president to Barack Obama, was known for his knack for bipartisan dealmaking. In ascending to the presidency after four years of polarization under Donald Trump, Biden expressed confidence that cooperation between Democrats and Republicans would be possible and that he could work within the existing system to deliver for the American people. He’s by no means abandoning those aspirations. But, he acknowledged to Stephanopoulos, the filibuster has helped bring the Senate to the point where “democracy is having a hard time functioning.”

That should be a welcome line for the growing number of Democrats who have called for the filibuster to be eliminated or reformed, particularly with Mitch McConnell and the GOP threatening to exploit the tool to thwart efforts to fight back against their disenfranchisement crusade in states across the country. (McConnell on Tuesday blasted efforts to reform the filibuster, saying it was the only thing preventing a “scorched-earth Senate.”) “He’s being vague about it, but that’s alright…As a student and creature of the Senate, he certainly knows how to choose his words carefully on this subject,” said Senator Dick Durbin of the interview. “But I think he’s acknowledging the obvious: the filibuster has really shackled the Senate.” Biden isn’t going as far as some progressives would like, but reforming the filibuster to make it more difficult to use is something that could still make a difference in terms of the power McConnell’s minority party can wield. 

If you follow us regularly, you’ll know that we are supporters of reforming or eliminating the filibuster. The filibuster stands in the way of pro-democracy reforms like the For the People Act and Washington DC statehood. The filibuster is also stymying efforts to combat state-level voter suppression.

Having the president of the United States as an ally to your cause is important, especially if you want to convince members of his party to change the rules in the Senate.

Watch the relevant part of the interview below:

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For the People Act aims to build a real American democracy

US Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (C), Democrat of California, speaks alongside Democratic members of the House about H.R.1, the "For the People Act," at the US Capitol in Washington, DC, January 4, 2019. - Democrats announced their first piece of legislation to reform voting rights provisions, ethics reforms and a requirement that presidential candidates release 10 years of tax returns. (Photo credit: SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images)

Praised by many as a sweeping and historic reform to US democracy, House Democrats passed H.R. 1, also known as the For The People Act. The bill passed the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives on March 3, 2021. This is the second time the bill has been voted on by the House. The bill was first introduced and then passed in the newly-Democratic House in March of 2019 but was quickly blocked from ever receiving a vote in the Republican-controlled Senate. The current bill, which aims to greatly expand voting rights, develop a strategy to lower the influence of money in politics, end gerrymandering, foster government transparency, and more, will again face hurdles in the Senate, but this time because of the filibuster. 

So, what’s in the bill? Below, we’ll take a look at a few of the bill’s most important components. 

Voter registration modernization

All states would be required to begin Automatic Voter Registration for federal elections. Eighteen states, plus DC, have already implemented AVR. Voter registration in every state would become opt-out as opposed to the opt-in system most states have. In this case, eligible citizens would need to indicate that they don’t want to be registered to vote. This is likely to be a very insignificant number of people. Some 50 million eligible voters would be added to the rolls.

Voter purging has been one of the main tactics employed by Republicans to suppress Democratic turnout. A state’s ability to purge voters from voter rolls would be greatly curtailed under  H.R. 1. H.R. 1 would not stop all cross-check purges, as there does need to be a system that identifies duplicate registrations, but it aims to stop the abuse of the system through voter suppression purges by putting in place needed protections or so-called conditions on removal of registered voters.

As it becomes harder for Republicans to win majorities, we’ve seen them engage in increasingly brazen voter intimidation tactics. One example, among dozens, is in Michigan in October 2020, where far-right actors were charged with felonies by the state’s Attorney General for voter intimidation where they used racist robocalls to target and intimidate Black voters from voting.  H.R. 1 would ban these and many other deceptive practices and all voter intimidation in federal elections.

H.R. 1 aims to end the disenfranchisement of individuals with previous felony convictions. States would be required to inform citizens of their restored voting rights in writing; however, this does not apply to those who are currently incarcerated. An amendment to H.R. 1 that would have restored the voting rights of those who are currently serving time in prison, failed in a 97-328 House vote. 

The Appeal explains:

Representatives Cori Bush of Missouri and Mondaire Jones of New York, who were both elected to the House last year, proposed an amendment to H.R. 1 that would have allowed those convicted of felonies to vote from within prison. Only Maine, Vermont, and Washington, D.C., enable anyone with a felony conviction to vote from prison, and other states are debating whether to join them. Some other nations, including Canada and Israel, have national mandates that extend voting rights to incarcerated people.

The amendment failed today in a 97-328 vote. Not a single Republican voted for the measure, and it also failed among Democrats. However, activists and lawmakers fighting to expand voting rights say they’re hopeful that the vote was the beginning, rather than the end, of a national debate on voting rights for prisoners.

“This fight is not over—it’s only the beginning,” Bush told The Appeal: Political Report. “The victory was in getting those 97. Look at who those 97 are. They’re a mixture of what our caucus is made of: not just progressives, not just people who claim to be progressive, not just people who look like me.”

Even with the failure of the amendment, this is a monumental step in the right direction and a sign that we are moving closer to voting rights for those who are currently incarcerated.

The end of gerrymandering

Under H.R. 1, partisan gerrymandering would effectively be banned, an extraordinary development for US elections and politics. Independent redistricting commissions would be created in states and they would be tasked with developing plans to redraw districts. The redistricting process would be open to participation and review of the public. Efforts would be made to ensure that the commission equally represents Democrats, Republicans, and even third parties. Most importantly, rules would be put in place to ensure that the political power of communities of color is not diluted, a current practice that ensures Republicans win far more seats than they should based on their vote share.

Limiting the power of big money in politics

The passing of Citizens United in 2010 was a crushing blow to democracy. 11 years and 6 federal election cycles later, we are seeing the consequences of this disastrous Supreme Court decision. Extremely wealthy individuals can now spend unlimited sums of money on Super PACs which can have large impacts on political races.

The intercept explains:

Under the bill, candidates for congressional office could opt into a system that would provide matching funds for small donations. To qualify, the candidate would need to raise $50,000 from at least 1,000 individuals; take no more than $1,000 from any contributor; and spend no more than $50,000 of their own money.

In return, all donations to the candidate up to $200 would be matched with public funds at a 6 to 1 ratio. Thus if you gave $10 to someone running for Congress, they would receive that plus another $60, totaling $70.

The Civil Rights Act of our time

We’ve only covered just a few of the historic components of H.R. 1. Just these components alone would make H.R. 1 one of the most important pieces of legislation in the history of this country besides the 1964 Civil Rights Act. H.R. 1 would not only repair the damage done to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by Republicans in the decades since its passing, but it would greatly expand access to voting and put in place protections against voter suppression in unprecedented ways. The act would help to build a political and electoral system worthy of the 21st century. 

The stakes in passing this historic legislation in the Senate are monumental. As Republican politics continue to become more unpopular with time and as demographics continue to trend against them, they have now completely jettisoned democracy for authoritarian measures even as they already have a structural advantage in the House and the Senate. Let there be no doubt that Republican attempts to further impair US democracy will continue and grow. 

The Washington Post explains the current, broad attack on US democracy in 43 states:

In 43 states across the country, Republican lawmakers have proposed at least 250 laws that would limit mail, early in-person and Election Day voting with such constraints as stricter ID requirements, limited hours or narrower eligibility to vote absentee, according to data compiled as of Feb. 19 by the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice. Even more proposals have been introduced since then.

The impact of H.R. 1 not passing the Senate will have immediate effects. It will likely impair Democrats’ chances of holding on to their very slim majorities in the House and Senate in 2022, making passing this type of legislation impossible for many years to come. 

What’s required is filibuster reform. Right now, current Senate rules require 60 votes to break a filibuster. It’s more likely that we will figure out interstellar space travel this year than it would be to find 10 Republicans to help break a filibuster for ground-breaking legislation. It’s also unlikely that we can even eliminate the filibuster outright since conservative Democrats such as Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema have both voiced that they are against eliminating the filibuster. Still, passing H.R. 1, or any other progressive legislation, doesn’t require the elimination of the filibuster. There are ways to reform the filibuster in a way that establishes majoritarianism in the Senate. Our recent article offers a fair compromise on the filibuster. The Washington Post article referenced above also offers proposals for filibuster reform.

We must pass H.R. 1 — for the people and for the survival of our democracy.

Photo Credit: SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images

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Liz Cheney, number three House Republican, backs impeachment

Liz Cheney dramatically became the highest-ranking House Republican to back the impeachment of President Donald Trump nearly a week after a deadly Trump-inspired insurrection at the US Capitol.

Cheney serves as Chair of the House Republican Caucus, which makes her the third-highest ranking Republican in the House of Representatives. She represents one of the most Republican states in the country: Wyoming. In fact, Donald Trump performed better in Wyoming than any other state during the 2020 presidential election. And if you are wondering, yes, she is the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney.

Here is Cheney’s full statement:

On January 6, 2021 a violent mob attacked the United States Capitol to obstruct the process of our democracy and stop the counting of presidential electoral votes. This insurrection caused injury, death and destruction in the most sacred space in our Republic.

Much more will become clear in coming days and weeks, but what we know now is enough. The President of the United States summoned this mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of this attack. Everything that followed was his doing. None of this would have happened without the President. The President could have immediately and forcefully intervened to stop the violence. He did not. There has never been a greater betrayal by a President of the United States of his office and his oath to the Constitution.

“I will vote to impeach the President.”

Photo Credit: Milonica, CC BY-SA 3.0

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Arnold Schwarzenegger compares Capitol coup attempt to Kristallnacht

Arnold Schwarzenegger, the former actor and two-term governor of California, offers perhaps the starkest portrait of Wednesday’s coup attempt from a leading Republican voice in the United States.

In a recording published on YouTube, Schwarzenegger offers his thoughts on the Capitol riot and reflects on life growing up in Austria shortly after the fall of the Nazi regime.

As an immigrant of this country, I would like to say a few words to my fellow Americans and to our friends around the world about the events of recent days.

I grew up in Austria. I’m very aware of Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass. It was a night of rampage against the Jews carried out in 1938 by the Nazi equivalent of the Proud Boys. Wednesday was the Day of Broken Glass right here in the United States. The broken glass was in the windows of the United States Capitol.

But the mob did not just shatter the windows of the Capitol. They shattered the ideas we took for granted. They did not just break down the doors of the building that housed American democracy. They trampled the very principles on which our country was founded.

I grew up in the ruins of a country that suffered the loss of its democracy. I was born in 1947, two years after the Second World War. Growing up, I was surrounded by broken men drinking away the guilt over their participation in the most evil regime in history.

Not all of them were rabid anti-Semites or Nazis. Many of them just went along step-by-step down the road. They were the people next door.

Schwarzenegger goes on to call Trump a “failed president” who will “go down in history as the worst president ever.” He is just as unsparing of other members of his own party – particularly Congressional Republicans – who he called “spineless” and “complicit.”

You can watch Schwarzenegger’s full comments below: