Tuesday, April 4 was cathartic for many Americans who had the impression that former President Donald Trump would never face any accountability for his actions due to his power and status. The New York District Attorney's 34-count indictment – all class E felonies for falsification of business records – marks the first time a former US president has ever been charged with a crime, and he faces a maximum sentence of 136 years in prison if found guilty on all counts.
The chance of Trump doing that much prison time from this case is, of course, highly unlikely, but regardless, at 76 years of age, Donald Trump may very well spend the rest of his life in a prison cell given the three other ongoing criminal investigations against him. Georgia is investigating him for allegedly trying to rig the 2020 election following a phone call in which Trump pressured Georgia’s top elections official to “find 11,780 votes” in order to give him Georgia’s haul of electoral college votes. No indictment has yet been unveiled as of this writing, but it’s believed the Georgia investigation is coming to its conclusion this spring.
Still more consequential are the two Washington, DC grand juries, which are investigating him for both allegedly mishandling classified documents pertaining to national security, and for his role in instigating the deadly attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. Former Vice President Mike Pence, who is presumed to be weighing his own campaign for the presidency in 2024, has been compelled by a federal judge to testify against Trump in that investigation. If those cases also result in indictments, that will mean Trump – who is currently the 2024 frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination – will be in and out of courts in three separate jurisdictions during the peak of the presidential primary season early next year.
While it’s tempting for those wishing for criminal accountability to celebrate, multiple serious threats to democracy will continue to persist even if Donald Trump goes to prison for the rest of his life, and those who seek to protect democracy must remain vigilant.
Far-right Republican fringe figures now going mainstream
Across the United States, there are signs the Republican Party is only doubling down on the extremism that produced Donald Trump, with new far-right political figures eager to step up and be the new standard-bearer of the GOP. Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) was recently given a national platform on 60 Minutes to introduce her odious brand of far-right extremism to a mainstream audience with little pushback.
Greene – a QAnon believer who was stripped of her committee assignments in 2021 after trafficking in racist and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories – told Semafor she expected the interview to be a “hit job,” but remarked after its airing that she thought “it was pretty good.”
In one notable exchange, 60 Minutes’ Leslie Stahl asked Greene about her claim that the Democratic Party is full of pedophiles and child groomers, prompting Greene to restate the claim with emphasis. Stahl’s only response was to make a surprised face and utter “wow” while Greene smirked. Stahl failed to counter that the Republican Party has an overwhelmingly worse record concerning pedophiles and sexual predators within its ranks:
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Former Congressman Mark Foley (R-Florida) was eventually forced to resign after it was revealed he frequently sent sexually inappropriate messages to House pages who were underage.
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Former Republican House Speaker Dennis Hastert’s history of preying on boys on the wrestling team he coached led to a 2015 guilty plea, in which the judge presiding over his trial called him a “serial child molester.”
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Congressman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) has been repeatedly accused by former Ohio State University wrestlers of turning a blind eye to the team’s doctor sexually abusing them for years.
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Former Alabama Republican Senate Candidate Roy Moore, who was endorsed by then-President Trump, was accused by multiple women of sexually predatory behavior toward girls as young as 14.
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Last year, a former Republican National Committee staffer was sentenced to 12 years in prison for his role in a child pornography ring involving babies.
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Two of Donald Trump’s county-level campaign surrogates in Kentucky and Oklahoma are currently serving time in prison for child sex trafficking.
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Trump himself was accused by teenage beauty pageant contestants of barging into their dressing rooms while they were changing.
Stahl’s failure to counter Greene’s extremism arguably only served to sanitize her image and further secure the far-right Congresswoman’s place as a rising leader within the Republican Party.
Trumpian extremism proliferating at the local level
On Thursday – on the heels of a deadly mass shooting carried out by a shooter being treated for an emotional disorder who legally obtained the firearms used to kill three nine-year-old children and three school staffers – the Republican-controlled Tennessee House of Representatives voted to expel two Democratic members of the body. The vote to expel the Democrats was put on the docket after they demonstrated on the floor of the House with a bullhorn for new firearm regulations.
Three Democrats – Reps. Gloria Johnson, Justin Jones and Justin Pearson – faced expulsion over a violation of decorum by speaking before being publicly recognized. Johnson (the lone white Democrat facing expulsion) was not expelled. However, expulsion is extremely rare, as Tennessee has only expelled members twice since 1866. According to the Tennessean, Republican state representative Jeremy Durham was expelled in 2016 on a 70-2 vote after nearly two dozen women accused him of sexual misconduct. And in 1980, Republican state representative Robert Fisher was expelled for accepting a $1,000 bribe. Prior to that, the last expulsions were of six representatives who tried to prevent Tennessee from recognizing the citizenship of former slaves in 1866.
It’s important to note that the two representatives who were expelled have since been reinstated, and according to TNLookout reporter Adam Friedman, representatives can’t be expelled for the same thing twice. But the cost of conducting those representatives being expelled and reinstated will nonetheless fall on local taxpayers.
While the Tennessee expulsions were shocking, they’re perhaps not quite as shocking as the ongoing far-right power grab taking place in Florida. Governor Ron DeSantis, who easily won reelection last year, notably signed an extreme measure into law that bans books in schools that are not approved by a state-appointed “media specialist.” Teachers can be prosecuted with a felony charge if non-approved books are found in classrooms.
DeSantis also last year signed the so-called “Don’t Say Gay” bill into law, which prohibits discussion of LGBTQ+ related issues in elementary schools, specifically from kindergarten through third grade. Florida’s Republican-controlled legislature also passed the “Stop WOKE Act” last year, which restricts how certain topics pertaining to race, gender, and social justice are taught in public universities. However, federal courts have so far rejected Florida’s attempts to enforce it.
As of 2023, Gov. DeSantis wants to expand the Don’t Say Gay law to include all K-12 grades, which LGBTQ+ advocates say is designed to stigmatize and isolate LGBTQ+ kids. And a new bill introduced in the Florida House would take the Stop WOKE Act further by banning students from majoring or minoring in gender studies, ethnic history, intersectionality, and other social justice-related fields. According to Them, an LGBTQ+ news site, the legislation – Florida House Bill 999 – is also causing some extracurricular organizations on college campuses to question whether or not it could be broadly interpreted to target them as well.
Two other bills, House Bill 1069 and House Bill 1223, would restrict sex education in public schools to emphasize abstinence, and to prohibit the use of pronouns that don’t match a child’s assigned gender at birth, respectively. The bills are all expected to pass, given Republicans’ large advantage in the Florida legislature. And while he hasn’t yet declared his candidacy, Gov. DeSantis is expected to run for president in 2024 on his record in Florida.
Vigilance pays off in a democracy
Even though threats to democracy are persisting across the country, there’s one recent positive example of democracy enduring as a result of the vigilance of local residents. In Wisconsin, Milwaukee County Judge Janet Protasewicz recently won election to the state supreme court, which would give the court’s liberal judges a 4-3 majority for the first time in 15 years. Protasewicz is replacing a retiring conservative justice and will serve a ten-year term.
Protasewicz’s election is particularly notable given its timing. The Badger State’s highest court is set to hear a challenge to an abortion ban dating back to 1849 that went unenforced prior to the US Supreme Court’s overturning of the Roe v. Wade decision in 2022. With liberals in the majority, the right to abortion care is expected to prevail in Wisconsin, and it’s possible the court could reject Republican-drawn Congressional maps that were designed to be overly favorable to the GOP. Protasewicz and the three other liberal-leaning justices are also now in a position to reject the Republican-controlled Wisconsin legislature’s curtailing of voting rights and a slew of other bills that will require judicial review. All of this was made possible because Wisconsin residents came out to vote – the most recent election was the highest ever for a supreme court seat in a year that it didn’t share a ballot with presidential candidates.
Juicing turnout in heavily Democratic areas is likely what led to Protasewicz’s victory. She carried liberal-leaning Dane County by an 82-18 margin, winning nearly 200,000 votes in that county alone. This is significant, as Protasewicz’s statewide margin of victory was roughly 203,000 votes. Blue dots in a sea of red can indeed make a difference in statewide elections.
It seems simple, but the best way to preserve democracy is to remain vigilant. Voting alone won’t save democracy, but by combining the vote with other powerful tools like public protest, getting certain messaging to circulate throughout the media, and shoe-leather grassroots organizing, the most anti-democratic elements in society can be held at bay.
Carl Gibson is an independent journalist whose work has been published in CNN, The Guardian, The Washington Post, The Houston Chronicle, Barron’s, Business Insider, the Independent, and NPR, among others. Follow him on Mastodon @crgibs@mastodon.social.
