On April 6, 2023, the Tennessee House voted to expel three State representatives from the House. Their offense? Participating in a protest on the floor of the Tennessee house with students from across Tennessee urging gun regulations after the murder of six people at a Nashville school. The vote for Representative Gloria Johnson fell short by one vote, 65-30. Justin Jones was expelled on a 72-25 vote. Justin Pearson was expelled on a 69-26 vote. All three were Democrats. Jones and Johnson were African Americans. Coincidence?
Janet Protasiewicz defeated Dan Kelly in the race for a Wisconsin Supreme Court seat by ELEVEN PERCENT, triggering one of the most bitter, vindictive, foaming-at-the-mouth rabid post election speeches ever filmed, in which Kelly said
Now this didn’t turn out the way that we were looking for. And I think there are a couple of reasons for it, and I think we need to address them head on. And it brings me no joy to say this; I wish that in a circumstance like this I would be able to concede to a worthy opponent. But I do not have a worthy opponent to which I can concede. This was the most deeply deceitful, dishonorable, despicable campaign I have ever seen run for the courts. It was truly beneath contempt. Now I say this not because we did not prevail. I do not say this because of the rancid slanders that were launched against me — although that was bad enough.
But that is not my concern. My concern is the damage done to the institution of the courts. My opponent is a serial liar. She’s disregarded judicial ethics. She’s demeaned the judiciary with her behavior. And this is the future that we have to look forward to in Wisconsin. I have been committed to the rule of law my entire career. I understand this to be the most fundamental basic promise of civilization. And in its heart, it lives in the judiciary, and if not there, nowhere at all. We’ve had this laid out plainly for us. We could have the rule of law. Or the rule of Janet. The people of Wisconsin have chosen the rule of Janet’s.
Now I respect that decision because it is theirs to make. So I’ve gone around this great state of ours. Everywhere I’ve gone, I’ve reminded the people that all the power to create and maintain governments in this state belongs to them. And all the power to decide who sits in the seats created by their Constitution belongs to them. And I’ve promised them that I would respect their decision in this race, regardless of what it is. Because that is what a servant does.
So I respect the decision that the people of Wisconsin have made. But I think this does not end well. As I look forward I hope, I hope it does end well. This has been a beautiful, beautiful life here in Wisconsin with all of you. And I wish Wisconsin the best of luck, because I think it’s going to need it.
As Molly Ivins once said about a similar oration years ago, I'm sure it sounded better in the original German.
Dan Knodl won a Wisconsin Senate seat in the same April 4 state election, restoring a Republican supermajority in the Wisconsin Senate, giving the Senate the ability to impeach any holder of statewide office… including the just-elected Supreme Court justice Janet Protasiewicz. Knodl was already on record prior to the election for being willing to impeach Protasiewicz in her current role on the Milwaukee County District Court, accusing her of leniency in sentencing contributing to skyrocketing crime in Milwaukee. Wisconsin's constitution does not define the actions that can / should trigger impeachment.
As of April 5, 2023, Missouri Republicans have fast-tracked review of a proposed Missouri Constitutional amendment that would require every county in the state to maintain an elected Sheriff Office and grant each Sheriff complete oversight of ALL law enforcement actions within the county -- both federal and state. This is part of Missouri Republicans' attempt to transform "Mizzour-ah" from the Show-Me State to the Me-Too State for bad government. This amendment reflects a perverse "constitutional sheriff" movement which turns each county sheriff into the final arbiter of all constitutionality at all levels of government. In this bizarro world, each sheriff has the right / duty to ignore any federal or state law they feel -- in their considered, learned opinion -- is unconstitutional. Of course, this concept is COMPLETELY unconstitutional as a violation of the Supremacy Clause in the US Constitution.
You'd think Missouri Republicans would be familiar with that concept because it was just cited by a federal judge when tossing a prior Missouri law, the Second Amendment Preservation Act passed in 2021. That law attempted to block any state law enforcement officer from aiding federal law enforcement from enforcing federal weapons laws conflicting with Missouri law. This new amendment was submitted by freshman Republican Senator Jill Carter immediately after that law was tossed. Of course, this new amendment is no less a violation of the Supremacy Clause than the prior law but Republicans seem to have limited familiarity with constitutions, laws, lawyerin' and such. They apparently think if similar poppycock is passed as a state constitutional amendment, THAT will make it constitutional.
ProPublica published a story on April 6, 2023 regarding nearly twenty years of cruises, resort vacations and private jet travel provided to Clarence Thomas by billionaire and Republican donor Harlan Crow, none of which were ever disclosed by Clarence Thomas in any ethics filings for gifts. The cost of just ONE of the trips identified by ProPublica would have exceeded $500,000. Thomas has refused to comment on the gifts and their implications but Crow did release a statement, readable at https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23741877-harlan-crow-statement.
The hospitality we have extended to the Thomas’s over the years is no different from the hospitality we have extended to our many other dear friends. We have been most fortunate to have a great life of many friends and financial success, and we have always placed a priority on spending time with our family and friends. Justice Thomas and Ginni never asked for any of this hospitality.
Of course, Crow completely misses the point. The point is not that this is usual for a billionaire and that he enjoys similar relationships with other powerful people. The point is that such fringe benefits are going undisclosed by a Supreme Court Justice whose track record of decisions are 100% aligned with the interests of Crow and fellow billionaires.
Republicans in North Carolina just regained a supermajority in their State House after a Democratic Representative announced her switch to the Republican Party. Representative Tricia Cotham won re-election in November 2022 with a nearly twenty percent margin and mentioned nothing about her concerns of policies or trends in the Democratic Party during the campaign and accepted the endorsement of Emily's List during the campaign. North Carolina has no mechanism within state law for recall of elected officials so Cotham will be able to serve the two-year term without any means for the voters to claw back her seat and repeat the election.
What are the takeaways from these stories?
Gerrymandering is the single biggest threat to representative democracy in America. It should be a giant neon danger sign when statewide offices can be won by PartyA yet district-level offices are won with 66-75 percent margins by PartyB. In a representative democracy, voters are supposed to pick their elected officials. In the world we live in, elected officials are picking their voters, creating defenses to protect themselves from voters, pulling up the drawbridges and proceeding to do whatever they want with zero accountability.
Election wins aren't enough. Gerrymandering allows an unrepresentative supermajority to protect and widen that unrepresentative supermajority by abusing procedures to kill legislative proposals, interfere with Executive branch functions and appointments and expel elected members of the opposition at will. The vindictive behavior described in these examples regarding expelling elected officials and impeaching judges for simply winning an election is not a one-off problem in the Republican Party, it is a DEFINING CHARACTERISTIC across the country. It's not enough for Democrats to win an election. In this climate, any win is triggering IMMEDIATE legal harassment to cripple the winner or toss them from office. It's not enough for Republicans to win either. They expect to win by ever wider margins and any loss to a Democratic candidate creates ever higher levels of paranoia, even when Republicans have won a majority in rigged districts.
We're all living in John Robert's world. The tenure of John Roberts as Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court has been a complete legal and ethical charade from his confirmation. Roberts has portrayed himself as a classic pro-business Republican with some leanings towards most of the conservative social positions while avoiding some of the more extreme conservative social positions. In reality, under his tenure, the Supreme Court abandoned federal efforts to enforce Civil Rights and Voting Rights protections won in the 1960s. After doing so, southern states immediately began adopting a variety of grossly discriminatory practices for managing voter rolls and further distorting district boundaries to eliminate toss-up seats at the state and federal level and widen Republican margins. In Robert's tenure, the court has become a ultra pro-life, ultra-conservative Catholic, Federalist society legal monoculture that has consistently cherry picked language from two centuries of legal decisions to overturn old and new Supreme Court precedents. Originalist rulings and interpretations have created a climate where words within the law only have whatever meaning a judge wants them to have, with no consistency across the country. Rather than equal protection under a consistently interpreted law, citizens face a "jackpot" legal system where the powerful attempt to pick their jurisdiction to shop for the outcome they want and the weak get outcomes based upon the judge randomly appointed to their case.
As if that track record wasn't horrific enough, Roberts has allowed the Supreme Court to to be tainted with a series of gross ethical failures which further cripple the moral authority required by the Court to perform its duties. Ongoing social meetings by a Justice (Alito, maybe others) with a lobbyist for organizations with abortion cases before the court and a leak of a pending decision to a favored lobbyist (Alito). Justices (Alito again?) and staff leaking draft opinions to the public in an attempt to bully other Justices into a preferred outcome and an internal follow-up investigation which magically found and disclosed NOTHING about the leak. A Justice (Thomas) participating in cases associated with insurrection at the US Capital without disclosing his wife was actively working with insurrectionist groups in MUTLIPLE STATES much less recusing himself from the case. And of course, the latest example of Clarence Thomas accepting easily millions in gifts over twenty years without disclosure.
WTH
