The Troubling Rumblings from Next Door
How This Week in America Put Anti-Democratic Perils on Full Display
The United States of America has long been seen as the leaders of the democratic, free world. Other democracies around the globe have looked to the 50 states for leadership, aspiring to become stronger democracies themselves. Or so the story has always gone. Sure the US is not perfect and through out its history has had incidents and laws on their books that ran in the face of that trope. But on the whole, the US has been that example.
Living in Canada we know that all too well, as too often ideas and approaches creep across our long border and affect how we do politics here. Being a neighbour to the worlds democratic superpower also means that we always need to keep a close eye on what’s happening below us. Some call it “a mouse living next to an elephant.” Others more recently have called it “the tidy apartment living above a meth lab.” But it all has grains of truth, as worrying rumblings stateside can have outsized effects here at home.
This week we saw the arrest and arraignment of former President Donald Trump, and you might think that is what I am talking about today. But nope, because in the past week or so many other disturbing stories about the state of American democracy went on at the state levels, while most eyes were glued on New York. Here is just a sample for what I am referring to:
In Wisconsin, judge Janet Protasiewicz won over conservative Dan Kelly for a hotly contested seat on their Supreme Court, pushing the balance of power away from conservative hands. Yet despite Protasiewicz’s 11-point win, in the days after, state Republicans started talking about “impeaching” her, for the apparent wrongdoing of winning a democratic election with a clear majority.
In Idaho, the government there passed two dangerous new laws affecting the rights of women and the transgender community. In a two-day stretch, Republican Governor Brad Little signed one law making it a felony for anyone in Idaho to provide gender-affirming medical care for transgender youth. The next day he passed another law, making it illegal for helping a pregnant minor get an abortion, whether through medication or a procedure, in another state. That would be punishable by two to five years in prison. It’s little wonder that some Idaho hospitals are shutting down labour and delivery services and maternal health doctors are leaving the state.
In Indiana, they copycatted Idaho’s law on gender-affirming medical care for minors. While Republican Governor Eric Holcomb signed this medical care ban law this week, it should be noted that last year he vetoed a bad on transgender girls’ athletes. He tried to square that contradiction this week by saying that this was “entirely different.” Yeah, I’m sure it is.
Speaking of trans-gendered athletes, this week Republican legislators in Kansas passed a ban on transgender students participating in female categories in school and college sports, using their super-majority to override a veto by the state's Democratic governor. But in Kansas they took this bill a step further than Indiana’s. Under the new law, enforcement will require a “physical examination” of the student-athlete in question. In other words, a "genital inspection." So to recap, Kansas Republicans have passed a law that now authorizes genital inspections of children for kids to play school sports.
In Florida, their Senate Monday approved a bill to ban abortions after six weeks, a bill that Governor Ron DeSantis supports and is expected to sign to burnish his presidential candidate credentials. In that same spirit, he’s also gone after schools, books, history, Disney, journalists, the LGBT+ community and others, apparently with the same concern in mind.
In Tennessee, Republican members of their House of Representatives used their majority to expel two Black, Democratic members for using a bullhorn in the chamber to protest the lack of action on gun control after a recent local school shooting that left three kids dead. Those same Republicans also moved to remove a third Democrat but didn’t get enough vote to remove her. She is white woman in her older years might I mention.
It should be noted this was the first time in Tennessee history that an elected member was expelled for breaking decorum in the chamber. They weren’t given a warning or a reprimand, which would be the typical thing one would do in that situation. But nope, straight to booting them out on their asses. And as if to add to the naked contempt of their colleagues in that moment, the House Speaker Cameron Sexton likened the events to an "insurrection", going as far as to compare the peaceful protest that resulted in zero arrests to the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, riots at the U.S. Capitol. I would point out that not a single US Congressperson has been expelled from that chamber, even though there have been reports of some members of that place allegedly giving guided tours of the building to eventual-insurrectionists days before the event.
Finally, the unprecedented nature of what happened in Tennessee last night can’t be forgotten in the context of very recent history. In recent times, that same Republican-controlled Statehouse declined to act against a member accused of sexual misconduct. That accusation came from the members time as a high school basketball coach, allegedly involved teenaged victims and at that time, that same Mr. Sexton said it was up to that member if he should leave or not. He was quoted as saying this:
“You have to balance the will of the voters and overturning the will of the voters.”
One has to wonder what exactly happened to that balance yesterday. On top of that, these same Republican members in Tennessee recently have given a pass to members who have faced indictments or came under pressure for liking nearly nude social media posts. Yet if these three members speak out of turn? You’ve got to be kidding me.
I couldn’t help but notice all these stories in the context of growing anti-democratic behaviour coming from members of the further-right in the United States. We’re seeing acts of legislated political revenge-seeking, attacking the rights and very existence of minors in the LGBT+ community, the elimination of the rights of women over their own body to the point of laws straight out of “The Handmaids Tale” and the open willingness to remove elected officials of the other side because they had the gall to win a mandate from the people while disagreeing with them.
In that case in Wisconsin, it didn’t go unnoticed that the loser in that race, Mr. Kelly, refused to concede this week. He said he couldn’t because “I do not have a worthy opponent to which I can concede,” before going onto to say worse about the individual the voters of Wisconsin clearly chose over him. In Tennessee, some Republican members went on the record attacking the three they moved to expel, using language that not only demeaned them, but also showed they didn’t see those members as worthy of being in the same chamber as them.
These stories are troubling because in the United States, these ideas move from state to state fast. One state copies from another, hoping for the same headlines and chance to pump up their local bases. And there are organizations backed by big donors who help that along, providing carbon-copied legislation all ready to go and the bucks to back it up.
The language we’ve seen from Donald Trump over the past years and this week attacking our institutions has done a lot of damage. But it’s what we’re seeing play out in these states, further from the national gaze, that is more troubling to me for the future of democratic governance in general.
That Supreme Court election in Wisconsin was so hard-fought because if Mr. Kelly had won, there were serious concerns that that court would overturn the results of the next Presidential election in that state. Some Trump acolytes were admitting as much in the aftermath of the vote, which tells you the anti-democratic games that some on that side of the fence are trying to play. This is serious stuff.
Looking in from next door, stories like these are deeply concerning to me. It’s never a good thing to see the elephant right next to you stomping around erratically. It’s never comforting to see flames shooting out of the meth lab below, weakening the structural pillars that we both depend on. Because when the leading democracy in the world has elected, political leaders turning away from the basics of democracy because it suits their desires best, or because it punishes their perceived enemies, that is trouble for all of us. What we saw play out this past week were not the signs of a healthy democracy and while we need to pay attention to the legal consequences being levelled at the individual who sparked a lot of this recent psychosis, we also need to watch out for what’s happening below him. If the fall out from the last American Presidential election taught us anything, it was people of good will, supporting strong democratic structures, that stopped Trump in his path. And as we look at it today, these actions are doing their best to make sure neither of those things stop him or someone else next time.