- Jan. 2015-Jan. 2017: The Republican Senate engages in an unprecedented embargo on most all federal district and appellate courtroom judges nominated by President Barack Obama.
- 2016: Multiple state and federal Republicans openly admit that voter ID necessities, and related voter suppression legal guidelines, are designed to hurt Democrats and allow specific Republican candidates to win.
- March 2016: After the demise of Antonin Scalia, Republicans block President Obama’s power to appoint Merrick Garland, or any Supreme Court nominee.
- September-October 2016: A number of Republican senators declare that they will not confirm any Supreme Court Justice if Hillary Clinton wins the presidential election.
- September 2016: Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell blocks any bipartisan effort to reveal and condemn Russian interference in the 2016 election.
- April 2017: Republicans eliminate the Supreme Court filibuster to appoint Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Courtroom.
- December 2018: After Wisconsin voters selected to interchange its Republican governor with a Democratic one, Republican state legislators meet in a lame-duck session to strip existing powers from the Democratic governor and state lawyer normal, and to restrict early voting procedures in an effort to scale back Democratic voting.
- Dec. 21, 2018–Jan. 25, 2019: Trump forces the longest-ever government shutdown as a result of Congress—on a bipartisan foundation—refused to fund his pet wall challenge on the southern border.
- Feb. 15, 2019: After Congress refused to fund Trump’s wall, and his subsequent and unsuccessful prolonged authorities shutdown, Trump declares a national emergency and pilfers funds from the military budget to pay for his pet wall challenge anyway.
- March 14, 2019: Trump threatens violence from his supporters against Democratic voters who don’t help him.
- Could 30, 2019: Pc laborious drives belonging to a deceased Republican operative are turned over by his daughter. They reveal nationwide Republicans’ efforts to use census data to suppress minority and Democratic voting power and representation.
- Sept. 11, 2019: North Carolina’s Republican state legislators inform their Democratic counterparts that the state legislature is not going to be in session on the 9/11 anniversary, however then secretly meet in a half-empty chamber to override the Democratic governor’s finances veto.
- Jan. 31, 2020: Republican senators vote to block hearing any witnesses or evidence within the impeachment trial of Donald Trump.
- Could 1, 2020: Trump tweets support for hundreds of gun-toting militia types who invade the Michigan State House in protest of COVID-19 response measures.
- July 21, 2020: Opposite to lots of of years of constitutional interpretation and apply, the Trump administration announces that it will not count undocumented immigrants in the decennial census; it’s an effort to scale back the variety of Home seats for Democratic states and to remove thousands and thousands of federal funds to such states based mostly on inhabitants.
- Oct. 5, 2020: Within the enamel of a historic pandemic threatening demise and harm to thousands and thousands, the Trump marketing campaign and compliant Republican state legislators embark on an astonishing marketing campaign to make voting extra harmful and troublesome. A concise overview is supplied by Mom Jones, in “29 Ways Trump and the GOP Are Making It Harder To Vote.”
- Oct. 18, 2020: Days after the FBI foiled a plot by militia males to kidnap and publicly execute Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer over COVID-19 security orders, Trump incites and encourages a Michigan crowd to engage in further violence in opposition to her.
- Oct. 26, 2020: Republicans confirm Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court one week earlier than a presidential election—regardless of blocking Garland or any nominee by a Democratic president to fill a seat that opened 9 months earlier than the 2016 election.
- Nov. 3, 2020: How might the 2020 election ever be summarized in a bullet level? Trump refuses to agree to a peaceful transfer of power. Trump sues unsuccessfully (over and over) to overturn the election he misplaced. Trump publicly lies concerning the election, seeks to subvert state election procedures, threatens retribution in opposition to different Republicans, and incites violence. And—that is essential—he does so largely with the complicity of the Republican party.
- Dec. 5, 2020: A month after Joe Biden gained the presidential election (by greater than 7 million votes), only 27 out of 249 Republican senators and House members will publicly admit that Biden gained the election.
- Dec. 8, 2020: The Arizona GOP sends out an appalling tweet—asking if persons are “prepared to present [their] life” in help of Trump’s efforts to overturn the election.
- Dec. 9, 2020: The Republican majority chief of the Pennsylvania Senate tells a New York Occasions reporter that she would have signed a Trump letter declaring fraud within the 2020 election as a result of “If I’d say to you, ‘I don’t need to do it,’ I’d get my house bombed tonight.”
- Dec. 10, 2020: The Trump administration continues to obstruct the transition to the Biden administration, whereas over 100 Republican Home members and 17 state attorneys normal signal onto Texas’ unprecedented and “seditious” lawsuit against four swing states.
Of us, that is insane. It’s an open, ongoing assault on the basic tenets of this nation, unseen because the run as much as the Civil Warfare.
Admittedly, defeating this Republican drawback is tough and complicated, and viable options will take discussions longer than this one publish. However permit me to suggest we rediscover a necessary idea: scandal.
The primary and vital step again requires that our nation, our politics, and our media rediscover methods to label, report, and resist scandalous conduct. Keep in mind Watergate? Whitewater? Benghazi? None of them compares to this menace to democracy (sure, not even Watergate).
Meaning reporting this for what it’s, and never inviting any co-conspirators on for well mannered interviews. It means having a panel of historians and civic leaders on, frequently, to debate the scandal, not a D-list of political hacks. It means constant entrance web page reporting on this disaster. It means not reporting this as “horse race” politics. And it implies that Democratic management must be preventing in opposition to this, brazenly and on a regular basis.
Shutting this down requires that, as a fundamental first step, all of us start to deal with this because the five-alarm hearth scandal that it’s.
I as soon as referred to as the Republicans’ starvation for energy a “darkish fact.” 5 years later, sadly, it’s an open, proud and largely unchallenged fact.
We are able to’t let this proceed.
