It’s Getting Serious, Folks.

Georgia Republicans Go Even Farther Right.

While Georgia’s Republican governor Brian Kemp was signing the now-known-around-the-world 98-page anti-democracy Republican voter suppression bill, state Representative Park Cannon knocked on his closed office door hoping to ask questions about the bill so to be informed when later she would have to expalin the new law to her constituents.

That this new extreme anti-democracy bill was being signed into law behind closed doors, being witnessed by a handful of white men, is a story for another day.

Kemp’s office door was being guarded by police and when Representative Cannon, a Black female state legislator knocked on the door, she was arrested, handcuffed, and hauled away – dragged backwards – out of the bulding by a squad of white State police. Representative Cannon was charged with felony and misdemeanor obstruction.

Rep Cannon’s arrest was completely illegal according to Georgia’s constitution:

Paragraph IX. Privilege of members: The members of both houses shall be free from arrest during sessions of the General Assembly, or committee meetings thereof, and in going thereto or returning therefrom, except for treason, felony, or breach of the peace. No member shall be liable to answer in any other place for anything spoken in either house or in any committee meeting of either house.

Representative Cannon was released from jail hours later and said she is prepared to fight the legitimacy of the arrest and charges.

Michigan Republicans Go For The Georgia Playbook.

Two weeks ago, Michigan Republicans joined Georgia and at least 43 other states by adding to an already growing number of bills across the country designed to restrict voting – over 250 at last count – their own anti-democracy voting restrictions.

The slew of bills pushed hard by Michigan Republicans include restrictions on ballot drop box hours, recquire voters to provide photo ID when applying for an absentee ballot and block unsolicited absentee ballot applications from being mailed out en masse.

Unlike Georgia’s new law, Michigan Republicans have not yet added a bill making it a felony to give water or food to people standing in line to vote, nor have they included Georgia’s law giving lawmakers power over election officials and election outcomes. But, hey, stay tuned.

Florida House Passes Republicans’ Anti-Protest Bill.

That’s right folks, last week Florida Republicans passed House Bill 1 which would make it a crime for residents of Florida to peacefully protest, a crime to exercise their First Amendment rights.

The House bill and the Senate version, SB484, moves pushed by Governor Ron DeSantis, the governor who thinks coronavirus is no big thing, “represent a blatant attempt to silence and criminalize speech that runs counter to the political agendas of those currently in power in Florida,” said Micah Kubic, ACLU of Florida.

Missouri Republicans Block Medicaid Expansion Approved by Voters.

At the beginning of August, 2020, voters in Missouri approved adding an amendment to the state’s constiution making Medicaid available to people between the ages of 19 and 65 if their income is at or below 138 percent of the federal poverty level. The voter-approved change would cover at least 230,000 Missourians.

The state’s portion of the expense would be minimal as the federal government expansion funds would be $1.6 billion. But, 20 Republican legislators in Missouri’s House Budget Committee rejected the bill, killing the choice of voters. Deadline for implementation of the 53.2 to 46.7 percent voter-approved legislation is 1 July 2021.

These are but a small sample of what anti-democracy Repubicans across the country are doing. They can’t win elections with ideas or policies – they have none (they’ve lost the popular vote in eight of the past nine presidential elections) – so they are pushing really hard with lies, with cheating, with clear intentions of tearing apart our democracy.

image 1: from Inside Nazi Germany, Detlev J.K. Peukert. Yale University Press, New Haven, 1982,1987.

image 2, 3: screen grab.

image 4: from Repression and Power, in Hitler, Ian Kershaw. Longman Group UK Limited, 1991.