Oct 3, 2025
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Jack Ohmann, Sacramento Bee
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We cannot live in fear. ::: April 6, 2023
Robert B. Hubbell
Before all votes were counted in Justice Janet Protasiewicz’s commanding win in Wisconsin, Democrats began to worry that the GOP supermajority in the legislature would impeach and remove the newly elected justice from office. The panic was created by the election of a Republican to the Wisconsin senate on Tuesday, a victory that gives the GOP enough votes to convict Justice Janet Protasiewicz in an impeachment trial.
The details of the threat are described by The Guardian, as follows:
[Dan Knodl] has said he would consider impeaching Protasiewicz, who is currently a circuit court judge in Milwaukee, if she remained on the bench there. He did not say whether he would consider impeaching Protasiewicz as a supreme court justice.
Should we take the threat seriously? Of course, we would be fools not to! Should we live in fear of that prospect? Absolutely not! In the immortal words of Brendan Sullivan, “We are not potted plants.” If the Wisconsin GOP decides to disenfranchise the one million plus citizens of Wisconsin who voted for Justice Janet Protasiewicz, those one million voters will have something to say about that development—and it will not be good for Republicans. Indeed, it would be electoral suicide for Wisconsin Republicans.
Justice Janet Protasiewicz’s election demonstrated that Republicans in Wisconsin are hemorrhaging support in major suburbs, a previous GOP stronghold. See this discussion by Steve Kornacki on MSNBC. Disenfranchising the voters in the suburbs of Madison and Milwaukee will do nothing to bolster GOP prospects in those former strongholds.
And then there is this: Imagine for a moment that the Wisconsin GOP decides to overturn the mandate of the people by removing Justice Janet Protasiewicz. Would those voters “go gently into that good night?” Or would they, for example, call for a general strike? Or walk out of state, county, and municipal offices to shut down the government? Or hold continuous massive demonstrations in front of the state Capitol? Or all the above?
(Hint to Wisconsin Republicans about your future if you remove Justice Janet Protasiewicz: Look at ongoing protests in Tennessee over the GOP legislature’s callous and underwhelming response to the mass shooting in Tallahassee last week.)
If Republicans in Wisconsin want to tell Democrats they have no voice in running the state in accordance with democratic rules, there is no reason for Democrats to support an institution that exists merely to oppress them. Do I think it will come to that? I don’t.
But it doesn’t matter what I believe about the likelihood that the threat will materialize. My point is that we cannot live in fear. We are not powerless, we are not potted plants, and Wisconsin Democrats are shifting the electoral landscape by championing reproductive liberty, protection from gun violence, and fair elections. That is a powerful combination of issues on which Democrats have the high ground—politically and morally.
We should resist every effort and all talk of impeaching Justice Janet Protasiewicz. But no one should live in fear of that development. Indeed, post-Dobbs, Democrats have been on a winning streak in which reproductive liberty has been front and center. See NYTimes, Wisconsin Rout Points to Democrats’ Enduring Post-Dobbs Strength.
But even if Republicans remove Justice Janet Protasiewicz, the Democratic Governor Tony Evers fills the vacancy by appointment. Article VII, Wisconsin Constitution - Ballotpedia (“The vacancy shall be filled by appointment by the governor, which shall continue until a successor is elected and qualified.”)
Details aside, if Republicans decide that we must have a political fight over whether elections matter in Wisconsin, then we must not shrink from that fight or live in fear. Indeed, if Republicans insist on forcing the issue, the sooner the better. They will lose; we will win.
And the same logic applies to the indictment of Donald Trump, where similar angst is driving public handwringing and second-guessing by commentators. Republican prosecutors in red-state counties across the nation are grumbling about indicting President Biden. Should we take the threat seriously? Of course! We would be fools not to. Should we live in fear of that happening? Absolutely not!
The lunatic conspiracy theories on which Biden might be indicted would be litigated through the US Supreme Court—which, as of this writing, still recognizes Article II of the Constitution. The theories being bandied about include a ludicrous allegation that Biden has “opened” the southern border when, in fact, he has (unfortunately) reimposed many of the Trump-era policies. See, e.g., Los Angeles Times, Biden's new immigration strategy expands on Trump border policy and continues Title 42.
What about “Hunter Biden’s laptop? Be my guest! Or claims that Biden runs an international pedophilia ring? GOP prosecutors couldn’t do more to drive persuadable Independents away from their fringe political leader, Donald Trump. Or a claim that private citizen Joe Biden was (allegedly) on a single conference call with his son in 2017 that discussed a Chinese energy investment? Last time I checked, “conducting business” is not a crime.
So, we cannot permit ourselves to be dissuaded from upholding the law because Republicans threaten to break the law. This point is made in a brilliant essay by Josh Marshall in his Editor’s Blog,
But let’s address the argument head on. Will all future presidents now face a gauntlet of post-presidential judicial scrutiny?
It’s worth remembering that Donald Trump is the first and only president in American history to attempt a coup d’etat to remain in office illegally and that was before any history of presidential prosecutions. The problem isn’t incentives. It’s Donald Trump.
It amounts to the same specious argument . . . “Don’t follow the law because we’ll break the law”.
We have no choice but to enforce the law; indeed, it is our duty if we want to maintain a civilized society governed by laws rather than brute force. So, can we please stop the collective handwringing about prosecuting Trump for something that every other American would be prosecuted for if they engaged in the same conduct? I, too, regret that the Manhattan indictment was first, but that is not Alvin Bragg’s fault.
After the rash of articles on Tuesday explaining how weak the case against Donald Trump is, supporters of the case made strong arguments that it is no different than other cases successfully prosecuted by Bragg. And on the key question of whether state or federal election crimes can be used to leverage misdemeanors into felonies, commentators with extensive experience in New York responded, “Of course, they can!” See Karen Friedman Agnifilo and Norman Eisen op-ed in NYTimes, We Finally Know the Case Against Trump, and It Is Strong.
With the release of the indictment and accompanying statement of facts, we can now say that there’s nothing novel or weak about this case. The charge of creating false financial records is constantly brought by Mr. Bragg and other New York D.A.s. In particular, the creation of phony documentation to cover up campaign finance violations has been repeatedly prosecuted in New York. That is exactly what Mr. Trump stands accused of.
So, depending on which legal commentator you cite, the case is “novel” and “weak,” or “routine” and “strong.” Here’s my advice: Let Alvin Bragg do what prosecutors do and stop worrying about bad faith attacks on the prosecution. Will Kevin McCarthy succeed in forcing Alvin Bragg to appear before a House committee? Maybe, but I doubt it. If he does, my money is on Alvin Bragg being able to handle himself.
But, as in Wisconsin, if House Republicans believe their path to victory in 2024 involves “defunding the FBI and DOJ” to rescue an indicted, twice-impeached, failed coup plotter who is raging against the trial judge, his family, and the prosecutor, Republicans have made the wrong bet. We should be confident in that assessment. After all, Trump lost in 2018, 2020, and 2022 using the same grievance-based script he repeated at Mar-a-Lago after his indictment.
So, let’s not obsess over the bad-faith, self-defeating tactics Republicans are using. If Republicans decide that we must have a political fight over whether former presidents are above the law, then we must not shrink from that fight or live in fear. Indeed, if Republicans insist on forcing the issue, the sooner the better. They will lose; we will win.
[Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter]
While everyone was distracted, 217 House Republicans moved to roll back gun regulations.
Outrage continues over the Uvalde massacre of last Tuesday, May 24, in which 21 people were killed and 17 wounded. The assault on this elementary school stands out for many reasons: the youth of the victims, the apparent mishandling of the situation by law enforcement officers, and the heroism of the parents, for example. After all, there have been at least 14 mass shootings in the U.S. since the Uvalde murders, killing at least 10 people and wounding another 61, and they have gotten much less attention.
LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN
May 30, 2022
Heather Cox Richardson
Outrage continues over the Uvalde massacre of last Tuesday, May 24, in which 21 people were killed and 17 wounded. The assault on this elementary school stands out for many reasons: the youth of the victims, the apparent mishandling of the situation by law enforcement officers, and the heroism of the parents, for example. After all, there have been at least 14 mass shootings in the U.S. since the Uvalde murders, killing at least 10 people and wounding another 61, and they have gotten much less attention.
But the response to the Uvalde massacre reminds me of the response to the murder of George Floyd under the knee of then-officer Derek Chauvin on May 25, 2020, almost exactly two years before the crisis at Uvalde.
Caught on video by then-17-year-old Darnella Frazier, Mr. Floyd’s murder represented more than the killing of one man: it illustrated the abuse of power by the government.
After almost four years of an administration in which the president and his advisors had openly uprooted governmental guardrails and claimed the right to impose their will on the country unchecked, the message that the government was abusing its power was one that lots of Americans were ready to hear. That new awareness included those who might not have paid particular attention to the longstanding abuse of power by police officers toward Black people, or to the dramatic militarization of our police forces since the government began transferring unneeded or outdated military equipment from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to police departments. Mr. Floyd’s murder seemed to personify that societal anger.
The fury of the response to the Uvalde murders, after many years in which many in the country seemed to move on from dramatic mass murders seems to me a reflection not only of the unspeakable carnage in this country, but also of the political corruption that permits it to take place.
That the modern-day Republican Party has managed repeatedly to stop the commonsense gun regulations that the vast majority of us want, even when their stubbornness means our children die at school, seems finally to have sparked a reaction against the party’s skewing of the political system across the board.
Texas governor Greg Abbott boasted last year of signing at least 7 new laws to make it easier to get guns, including a law allowing people to carry handguns without permits. When Abbott visited Uvalde on Sunday, people booed him. Abbott and Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, both Republicans, pulled out of personal appearances at the National Rifle Association conference meeting in Houston on Friday.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) seems to fear the power of this fury. He told CNN on Thursday that he has encouraged Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) to meet with Democrats to try to hash out a bipartisan solution in response to the Uvalde school shooting. If I had to guess, I’d say McConnell is simply trying to buy time until the furor calms a bit, just as he did with Trump’s second impeachment. As Ashley Parker and Michael Scherer detailed on Saturday in the Washington Post, McConnell “has spent his career working to delay, obstruct or prevent most major firearms restrictions from being approved by Congress.” His approach has consistently been to suggest vague support for a solution, then to undercut any action. And Cornyn boasts an A+ rating from the National Rifle Association, suggesting his enthusiasm for gun safety reform might be well under control.
But regardless of what happens with gun safety regulation in the next few weeks, Americans unhappy with Republican manipulation of our political system are unlikely to be reassured. On June 9, the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol will begin six televised hearings to explain to the American people what happened on and around that day.
That story is unlikely to reflect well on Republican leadership, who are trying to discredit the committee itself by claiming it is illegitimate. Their wiggling doesn’t look great for those who are supposed to be responsible for writing our laws.
The story is that the House tried to set up a bipartisan commission, and Senate Republicans used the filibuster to kill it (almost exactly a year ago today, actually). Then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi used precisely the same model Republicans had used to set up their 2014 Benghazi probe. Pelosi had the power to name the chair and 13 members, five of them in consultation with Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA). McCarthy’s picks included Representatives Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Jim Banks (R-IN), both of whom were closely linked to Trump and had already expressed opposition to the committee. When Pelosi refused to add Jordan and Banks to the roster, McCarthy withdrew all the Republicans he had chosen. Pelosi then added Republicans Liz Cheney (R-WY) and Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), and kept the committee at 9 people.
When asked to cooperate with the committee or respond to subpoenas, Republicans have since tried to argue that it is illegitimate. But early this month, U.S. District Court Judge Timothy Kelly—appointed by former president Trump—dismissed all those claims.
That decision came in a case about a committee subpoena for the Republican National Committee’s email marketing data from Salesforce, Inc., the company that handled fundraising emails in the weeks after Trump lost the election. The committee asked for the emails in February, wanting to determine to what degree they asked for donations by claiming that the election results were fraudulent. It could have seen who coordinated the emails, how many people opened the emails that spread false information, and whether any of those folks were eventually among those who stormed the Capitol. The RNC sued Salesforce, its own email vendor, in March to stop the production of those documents. Yesterday, though, the committee said that the case has been held up so long that it recognizes it no longer has time to analyze the information before the hearings, even if it were to get that data.
There are other subpoenas also being stonewalled. The committee subpoenaed Representatives McCarthy, Jordan, Andy Biggs (R-AZ), Scott Perry (R-PA), and Mo Brooks (R-AL) earlier this month. Their responses are coming in now, and they indicate that these members of Congress continue to reject the legitimacy of the committee.
On Wednesday, May 25, Biggs’s lawyers said his subpoena had not been properly served, the committee is not valid, and anything Biggs did is protected because it was part of his legislative duties. Jordan told the committee the same day that he would not comply with a subpoena until it told him all the evidence—documents, videos, or anything else—it has about him beforehand.
On Friday, McCarthy’s lawyer sent an 11-page letter to the committee denying its legitimacy and attacking the ability of Congress to investigate a potential crime because its mandate is only to make laws. And on Sunday, Brooks claimed to Fox News Sunday guest host Sandra Smith that he had not been served with a subpoena, and he said he wanted to talk with his subpoenaed colleagues before responding.
Meanwhile, Perry has simply said the whole committee effort is a charade, but on Thursday, May 26, he was in the news when someone told Politico reporters Betsy Woodruff Swan and Kyle Cheney what Cassidy Hutchinson, who worked under then–White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, had told the committee. Hutchinson apparently testified that Meadows burned papers in his office following a meeting there with Perry after Election Day 2020.
The New York Times had previously reported that Meadows had burned papers in his office fireplace.
If Americans are concerned that the Republicans have gamed the system, the January 6 committee hearings seem unlikely to provide much reassurance.
—
Notes:
https://www.npr.org/2022/05/29/1102017788/after-uvalde-mass-shootings-continue-over-the-weekend-across-the-u-s
https://www.newsweek.com/texas-gov-greg-abbott-booed-upon-arriving-uvalde-school-shooting-site-1711227
https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/26/politics/mcconnell-cornyn-democrats-bipartisan-effort-gun-violence/index.html
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/2053168017712885
https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/29/politics/january-6-committee-rnc-data/index.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/05/28/mcconnell-guns-mass-shootings/
https://www.msnbc.com/the-reidout/reidout-blog/rnc-salesforce-jan-6-committee-rcna20251
https://www.wsj.com/articles/pelosi-discloses-details-of-planned-jan-6-capitol-riot-committee-11624919608
https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/25/politics/jim-jordan-january-6-subpoena/index.html
https://january6th.house.gov/about/membership
Annie Grayer @AnnieGrayerCNNJim Jordan demands in response to 1/6 committee subpoena: Provide him with materials it plans on using ahead of any deposition Show him docs it has that references him Explain legal authority for issuing subpoena to member of Congress @ryanobles
GOP Rep. Jim Jordan pushes back on subpoena from January 6 committeeRepublican Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio is pushing back on a subpoena issued to him by the House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, contesting the constitutionality of the request and outlining a list of demands the committee must meet in order for him to even c…cnn.com
30 Retweets66 Likes
May 25th 2022
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/jordan-january-6-committee-evidence
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/biggs-objection-january-6-committee-subpoena-testimony
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/05/02/subpoena-rnc-records-capitol-riot-00029265
https://january6th.house.gov/sites/democrats.january6th.house.gov/files/2022-5-2.BGT%20and%20LC%20letter%20to%20Andy%20Biggs.pdf
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/brooks-demands-january-6-committee-testimony
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/25/us/politics/trump-pence-jan-6.html
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/22043832-0-navarro-v-pelosi-et-al-6-1-22-final
https://www.texastribune.org/2021/08/16/texas-permitless-carry-gun-law/
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hIAj4xhk2kRovPNWPImGTAvfSuoLJYpM/view
https://www.texastribune.org/2022/05/24/texas-gun-laws-uvalde-mass-shootings/
https://www.texastribune.org/2021/06/16/texas-constitutional-carry-greg-abbott/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/05/30/mass-shootings-memorial-day-weekend-taft-chattanooga-uvalde/
LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN
HEATHER COX RICHARDSON
[From Comments]
Michael Bales
Things are coalescing in a way that exposes Republicans in the harshest light ever. Renegade, contempt for citizens and the law, corrupt, and even monstrous.
The abortion ruling, Uvalde mass murders, J6 committee, the widening Justice Department investigation, Fulton County grand jury probe of Trump and the election, and more.
But the question hovering over it all is whether the people rise up and vote like never before. And restore democracy. + Darrin Giesy
If there was any remaining doubt about the degree of hypocrisy in the GOP response to gun violence the reactions to Uvalde and Buffalo should put it to rest.
Everything Abbott, McConnell, Gomhert, Jordan, and the rest of the Republican leadership say is just for distraction. It seems very much like they throw out ludicrous statements just so that people will waste time and effort refuting them.
Speaking in Uvalde the day after the massacre Greg Abbott had the nerve to start banging the "mental health crisis" drum. This is the same man who has diverted over $200,000,000 from TX Health and Human Services Commission to his border fortification farce.
The GOP continues to talk about mental health after every incident of domestic terrorism (unless it is perpetrated by a non-Christian or person of color). The GOP also consistently cuts mental health funding and kills any discussion of broadening access to health care in general. However, that's not the point. Because in the two sentences it took me to write that for a few moments I had to think about something other than how to vote them out of power.
The same is true of the talking points on hardening schools, adding more armed security in schools, and having more law enforcement with heavier weapons and more training. Uvalde had all those things. Multiple agencies that had recent training on how to handle this very situation completely ignored their training and SOP and did nothing while the shooter was killing more kids. But the GOP knows that, and they even know that everyone else knows it. They just want us to waste time talking about it. (Like I just did)
There is nothing about the GOP stance on gun violence, gun control, and the second amendment that is not utterly self serving and disingenuous. No matter what they say at this point it is not, in any way shape or form, discussion in good faith. It is all smoke and mirrors and that is why it is time to stop the conversation about how to work with GOP lawmakers on how to address gun violence and to focus entirely on how to vote them out of power.
I can only hope that this time it is so glaring that enough people will stop arguing and start voting that we can turn the tide.