W³P Lives: 01/01/24

Monday, January 1, 2024

Do You Live in an Anti-Free Speech State? Jonathan Turley Lays Out the List

I used to live in a blue state that had a lot of issues. In addition to the bad policies and the incredible taxes, they couldn't seem to get the concept of proper governance right -- serving the people, not lording their power over them.

That's why I fled my blue state for the free state of Texas. Texas isn't perfect any more than any other place is, but they do appear to have a deep belief, at least in the area I'm in, in leaving you alone to live your life as you choose. There's also a greater sense that everyone is your neighbor that I hadn't fully appreciated before which is a wonderful thing to experience. There are so many differences from speech to gun rights, along with a fundamental difference in approach to governance -- they believe in limited government and staying out of your way as opposed to constantly attempting to control you. They hold true to the belief that you have inherent rights upon which the government cannot infringe. Blue states will say that but then seem to do what they want, regardless of what rights they infringe upon.

I talk about my move in the context of something George Washington University Law School professor Jonathan Turley wrote about -- which states are "anti-free speech" states. Our friends at our sister site Twitchy pointed out his list, and I wanted to share it with you. Now, you could probably figure out some of the states that might be on the list -- there's an amazing synchronicity between blue states and the people who want to control your speech.

Turley notes:

The 5th Circuit previously ruled in Missouri v. Biden that administration officials “likely violated” the First Amendment and issued a preliminary injunction banning the government from communicating with social media companies to limit speech.

As we noted, the injunction was stayed pending a decision by the Supreme Court on the merits of the case.

Good News/Bad News From the Supreme Court on Missouri v. Biden

But 23 states and the District of Columbia have now signed on with the Biden administration as "amici states" to combat "harmful content" on the internet and "misleading information." That's the list Turley is talking about.

NEW YORK, ARIZONA, CALIFORNIA, COLORADO, CONNECTICUT, DELAWARE, HAWAI‘I, ILLINOIS, MAINE, MARYLAND, MASSACHUSETTS, MICHIGAN, MINNESOTA, NEVADA, NEW JERSEY, NEW MEXICO, OREGON, PENNSYLVANIA, RHODE ISLAND, VERMONT, WASHINGTON, WISCONSIN, AND THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

That's a pretty concerning list of states that don't seem perturbed by what the Biden team did and don't seem to fully appreciate the point of the First Amendment. It's also a pretty significant chunk of the country. That should scare anyone. They seem to think such government action is cool, and they'll do it, insisting it's for your own good to protect you from "harm." Who gets to decide what is "harmful" or "misleading" when you start going down this road? Maybe I don't need the state to decide what speech is somehow harmful to me.

Yes, my old state is on the list. You can check and see if the state you live in made the roster.

On the Fringe, Red Pill News, and more- January 1st, 2024 🥳

Happy New Year!

Stepping Up the War of Words for 2024

posted by D. Parker at American Thinker

Election year 2024 will be like no other in history. The pro-freedom community on the right is now locked in a death struggle with the authoritarian fascists of the far left. We are on the edge of a precipice that was unimaginable even a few years ago, and we cannot afford to make any mistakes. This means that we must center all our actions on logical thinking instead of the “business as usual” approach that brought us into this crisis.

The best place to start the selection process is to evaluate each term we used based on an objective criterion. How much does each annoy the authoritarian leftists or go against the grain of political correctness? What is its impact on the political debate?

The proper term can change the landscape of the battlefield of ideas and make the fascist far left explain themselves for once.

Each criterion will add or subtract one point to indicate which words should be used. This will be a presentation of our recommendations for the best replacements, based on these scores, utilizing the basic labels we use for the far left.

1. Does the left use or apply a particular term to itself? Yes -1/No +1

Authoritarian leftists love to refer to themselves as Marxists, progressives, socialists, and liberals, so in this example, these terms would score a -1.

2. Is the word in question politically correct? Yes -1/No +1

Leftist words and phrases are “woke” or politically correct, to ram the collectivist ideology down our throats. Our example of their self-labeling as Marxists, progressives, socialists, and liberals is “woke” or politically correct. Thus, these terms would be rated here at -1.

3. Is it a positive propaganda term, or is it likely they will adopt it as their own? Yes -1/No +1

Again, our example words have their positive connotations — as is the case with most leftist BS — and therefore the rating for these words based here is -1.

The point in all of this is to objectively evaluate leftist propaganda to show why it should be rejected as well as point a way toward replacement terms that have a positive score — at least for those of us on the pro-freedom right.

Always remember that leftists are masters at lying with language, so they’ve developed the nastiest of terms to label the pro-freedom right, while they cast themselves as positively as they can.

Now is the time to return the favor. This will be a presentation of our recommendations for the best replacements based on these scores.

Leftists love the “woke” or P.C. terms Marxists, progressives, socialists, and liberals, and that should be enough for everyone on the pro-freedom right to reject these labels for the left. They also have positive connotations as a third strike.

The label progressive falsely implies that leftists favor progress — but does anyone seriously believe that, with what they are doing to destroy the country? The same holds for liberal in that it falsely implies that those authoritarians favor liberty, since both have the same root word. Leftists have always wanted to restrict rights, but somehow they still want to lie and falsely claim they are “liberal.”

Authoritarian leftists try to make the label for an ideology that has led to the deliberate mass murder of millions into a positive term by comparing collectivism with individualism. They assert that individuals are individualist (individual+ist), while collectivists are for society and being social or socialist (social+ist).

Even Marxism has its issues — it wrongly praises good old Karl as the creator of collectivist ideals, even though they are over 2,000 years old, from the time of Plato. Even the Marxists themselves have noted that the book Utopia, the first “genuinely socialist position,” published more than 500 years ago in 1516 by Sir Thomas More, has the following passages:

[A]ll things being there common, every man hath abundance of everything. ...
I hold well with Plato, and do nothing marvel that he would make no laws for them that refused those laws, whereby all men should have and enjoy equal portions of wealth and commodities.

That was published more than 330 years before Marx, and it sounds suspiciously like “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.”

Note that even in the quotation about all men having equal portions of wealth and commodities, it references the discussions from ancient Greece and Plato from 2,000 years ago.

So now that we’ve established the evaluation criteria, we are going to present the replacement terms that will score positively with the Pro-freedom right about the terms that need to be replaced.

Authoritarian far-left/Fascist far-left/National Socialist left instead of Marxists, progressives, socialists, and liberals.

Leftists are the authoritarians and fascists of the political spectrum, given their obsession with restricting liberty and economic freedom.

Self-defense rights instead of gun rights

Remember that these terms are meant to change the debate on an issue. In this case, the idea is to direct it away from arguing about inanimate objects — which is what the authoritarians would prefer — to a discussion on the commonsense civil right of self-defense.

Authoritarian left/Pro-freedom right instead of liberal/conservative and anti-gun/pro-gun

We’ve already made the case for using the “authoritarian left” formulation. The same holds for the ridiculous anti-gun/pro-gun narrative.

The fact is that leftists love guns — they just don’t want them in the hands of their political opposition.

They also love to play a little word game where they say they are anti-gun violence, turning that term against us with the obvious implication we are pro-gun violence.

Grabbie or Grabbies instead of anti-gunner

These could be applied to other controlling types from the authoritarian left, but we set aside the term “anti-gunner” because it’s such a ridiculous term all on its own.

Illegal invader instead of migrant

This one should be self-explanatory. “Migrant” obscures what is taking place and is one of the worst cases of lying with language.

These are just a few of the words and phrases that need to be considered as replacements for the propaganda terms of the fascist far left.

Remember that we are in a war of words with the authoritarian left, and these are stand-ins for weapons in that war. This is why we must choose them wisely.

The Pitfalls of Benevolence: Unpacking the Toxic Mix of Universal Good Intentions and Political Correctness in the New Year

Benevolence is a curious creature. Its operation tends to be more beneficent the more specific it is.

by Roger Kimball for American Greatness

New Year’s is traditionally a time for reassessment and meditation. Wise sayings and saws are dredged up for reconsideration even as the chorus is getting ready to reprise “Auld Lang Syne.” It is easy to dismiss such scraps of wisdom, especially as they tend to come glazed with an unpalatable frosting of sentimentality, not to mention familiarity.

But it is important to note that many clichés are clichés precisely because they articulate important truths. Consider, for example, the admonition, which you probably first heard from your mother or father, that “the road to hell is paved with good intentions.”

Why should that be the case? Regular readers will not be surprised to hear that I believe a large part of the answer involves the metabolism of benevolence.

Benevolence is a curious creature. Its operation tends to be more beneficent the more specific it is. This was a point that James Fitzjames Stephen, the great nineteenth-century critic of John Stuart Mill, made in his book Liberty, Equality, Fraternity. “The man who works from himself outwards,” Stephen wrote,

whose conduct is governed by ordinary motives, and who acts with a view to his own advantage and the advantage of those who are connected with himself in definite, assignable ways, produces in the ordinary course of things much more happiness to others… than a moral Don Quixote who is always liable to sacrifice himself and his neighbors. On the other hand, a man who has a disinterested love of the human race—that is to say, who has got a fixed idea about some way of providing for the management of the concerns of mankind—is an unaccountable person . . . who is capable of making his love for men in general the ground of all sorts of violence against men in particular.

“A moral Don Quixote”: that is a line worth remembering. Political correctness tends to breed the sort of unaccountability that Stephen warns against. At its center is a union of abstract benevolence, which takes mankind as a whole as its object, with rigid moralism. It is a toxic, misery-producing brew.

The Australian philosopher David Stove got to the heart of the problem when he pointed out that it is precisely this combination of universal benevolence fired by uncompromising moralism that underwrites the cult of political correctness. “Either element on its own,” Stove observed in a powerful essay called “Why You Should be a Conservative,”

is almost always comparatively harmless. A person who is convinced that he has a moral obligation to be benevolent, but who in fact ranks morality below fame (say), or ease; or again, a person who puts morality first, but is also convinced that the supreme moral obligation is, not to be benevolent, but to be holy (say), or wise, or creative: either of these people might turn out to be a scourge of his fellow humans, though in most cases he will not. But even at the worst, the misery which such a person causes will fall incomparably short of the misery caused by Lenin, or Stalin, or Mao, or Ho-Chi-Minh, or Kim-Il-Sung, or Pol Pot, or Castro: persons convinced both of the supremacy of benevolence among moral obligations, and of the supremacy of morality among all things. It is this combination which is infallibly and enormously destructive of human happiness.

Of course, as Stove goes on to note, this “lethal combination” is by no means peculiar to Communists. It provides the emotional fuel for utopians from Robespierre on down. That is the really sobering thing about Will Smith’s remark: not that he mentioned Hitler, but that the capacity for evil so easily cohabits and feeds upon the emotion of virtue.

In The Social Contract, Rousseau warned that “Those who dare to undertake the institution of a people must feel themselves capable… of changing human nature… of altering the constitution of man for the purpose of strengthening it.” Robespierre & Co. thought themselves just the chaps for the job. The fact that they measured the extent of their success by the frequency with which the guillotines around Paris operated highlights the connection between the imperatives of political correctness and tyranny—between what Robespierre candidly described as “virtue and its emanation, terror.”

That is the conjunction that should give us pause, especially when we contemplate the good intentions of the politically correct bureaucrats who preside over more and more of life in Western societies today. They mean well. They seek to boost all mankind up to their own plane of enlightenment. Inequality outrages their sense of justice. They regard conventional habits of behavior as so many obstacles to be overcome on the path to perfection. They see tradition as the enemy of innovation, which they embrace as a lifeline to moral progress. They cannot encounter a wrong without seeking to right it. The idea that some evils may be ineradicable is anathema to them. Likewise, the traditional notion that the best is the enemy of the good and that many choices we face are, to some extent, choices among evils—such proverbial wisdom outrages their sense of moral perfectibility.

Alas, the result is not paradise but a campaign to legislate virtue, to curtail eccentricity, to smother individuality, and to barter truth for the current moral or political enthusiasm. For centuries, political philosophers have understood that the lust for equality is the enemy of freedom. That species of benevolence underwrote the tragedy of Communist tyranny. The rise of political correctness has redistributed that lust over a new roster of issues: not the proletariat, but the environment, not the struggling masses, but “reproductive freedom,” gay rights, the welfare state, the Third World, diversity training, and an end to racism and xenophobia.

It looks, in Marx’s famous mot, like history repeating itself not as tragedy but as farce.

As we get set to say farewell to 2023, however, it is worth reflecting that it would be a rash man who made no provision for a reprise of tragedy.

More than 7,000 German Women Raped and Sexually Assaulted by Immigrants Since 2015

Sundance reporting for Conservative Treehouse

It is well known that amid all violent crimes, rape and sexual assault are underreported by victims; so, the latest statistics from Germany are even more alarming than would appear on the surface. [REPORT HERE]

Overall, “irregular migrants” the term given to those who illegally enter Germany and then gain asylum, represent approximately 2.5% of the overall population from the period of 2015 through 2022. However, that same group represented 13.1% of all rape and sexual assault cases. An irregular migrant is four to five times more likely to commit a sexual crime against a German women.

BERLIN – Irregular migration to Germany has a negative impact on safety in public spaces. Women and girls are particularly affected. In addition to the violence they already experience at the hands of nationals, they are endangered by sex offenders who came to the country with asylum migration.

This is shown by the figures of the police crime statistics. Between 2015 and 2022, there were more than 8,590 reported cases of rape, sexual assault and sexual assault by immigrants. The Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) uses the term “immigrants” to describe people who have come to Germany via the asylum system. More than 90 percent of victims of sexual offences are female.

[…] The NZZ has asked all parties represented by parliamentary groups in the Bundestag for a statement on the number of cases. Despite several questions, including to members of the Committee on Internal Affairs, there was no reaction from the Greens.

CDU MP Christoph de Vries, a member of the Committee on Internal Affairs, states: “It is obvious that the risk for women to become victims of rape or other sexual offences in Germany has increased significantly in recent years due to asylum migration from the Arab world and the Maghreb states.”

The number of asylum seekers must be permanently reduced and criminals must be consistently deported – including to Syria and Afghanistan – the CDU politician demands. The protection of women must “take precedence over the protection of sex offenders and other criminals”. (read more)

In the past three years the United States has more than 10x the number of “irregular migrants” than Germany in the past eight years….

…. and our U.S border remains unsecured.

REPORT: Houthis Will Be Given Ultimatum to Stop Attacking Maritime Traffic or Else

The US, Britain, and possibly one European state are planning to launch air and missile strikes against Iran's Houthi proxies. According to a source within Britain's defense ministry, a statement will be released in the "coming hours" warning the Houthis to cease and desist in their attacks on maritime traffic in the Red Sea or face the consequences.

Ahead of the statement, Grant Shapps, the defence secretary, said: “If the Houthis continue to threaten lives and trade, we will be forced to take the necessary and appropriate action.”
The Whitehall source said the statement was a “last warning” and if the Houthis failed to stop the attacks, the response would likely be “limited” but “significant”. It is believed allies are currently trying to persuade other European countries to work with the US and the UK to stop the attacks amid fears there could be disastrous economic implications if shipping transiting through one of the world’s most important maritime trade routes continues to be disrupted.

This announcement comes as helicopters from the USS Gravely and USS Eisenhower intercepted four boatloads of Houthi pirates attempting to board the Singapore-flagged container ship Maersk Hangzhou, sinking three of them and killing the pirates aboard.

There are signs that this report may be true.

Engaging Houthi pirates in the process of boarding a container ship is a step up the escalation ladder from where we were two weeks ago when US ships seemed reluctant to render much in the way of assistance to ships under attack.

If you look at the number of surface combatants in the Red Sea area of operations on December 23 versus December 29, the general positions remain the same. The newcomer on the scene is a British minesweeping flotilla at the opening to the Suez Canal. This implies that the possibility of the Iranians using mines to close the Mediterranean is being treated seriously.

The Italian frigate Virginio Fasan has moved from the Arabian Sea to the Northern Red Sea while the French frigate Languedoc remains on anti-piracy patrol off the Horn of Africa. Conceivably, the Italians could be the "other" European nation mentioned, though we know how it turns out when Italy begins the war as your ally...

December 23

December 29

The USS Bataan and USS Carter Hall, which carry the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit, have departed the Red Sea and are back in the Eastern Mediterranean. This says that no ground operations are planned.

Protestations to the America-Only crowd to the contrary, the safety of maritime traffic everywhere in the world is America's business. We depend on marine traffic to sustain our economy, and allowing a major shipping lane to shut down isn't sound economic or diplomatic policy. A diversion around the Cape of Good Hope adds nearly three weeks to a trip and over a million dollars in extra expenses to a round trip. South Africa's ports are in much the condition you would imagine and are proving incapable of handling the increase in traffic; this further disrupts supply chains.

More to the point, if we aren't willing to use the Navy for its intended purpose (see the Barbary Wars for details), then we need to cut it up for scrap.

Houthi Rebels Finally Find Out After U.S. Navy Retaliates During Tanker Attack

After months of inaction aside from defensive shootdowns of drones and missiles, the United States Navy has finally started to take more direct action against the Houthi rebels terrorizing the Red Sea.

As RedState has previously reported, the Yemini terrorist group has been attacking and hi-jacking merchant ships following the October 7th attack by Hamas on Israel.

On Sunday, a Maersk tanker came under fire, with an attempt to board being fought off by onboard security forces. That's when U.S. Navy SH-60 helicopters arrived on the scene, sinking three Houthi vessels, killing multiple terrorists, and generally giving them something to think about regarding future attacks.

I do not think this is the start of full-scale hostilities against the Houthis, though that's how it's been played by more sensationalist social media accounts online. Rather, this feels like a defensive strike to keep the shipping lanes open. With that said, it is an escalation because, before this point, the Houthis were largely being given a pass to board ships and film cosplaying videos where they pretended to be operators.

What took Joe Biden so long? That's a question that everyone should be asking. There was never any real risk in blowing these terrorists out of the water because the Houthis have no real capability to respond. Their most offensive weapons are still cold-war technology missiles that the U.S. Navy has the technology to easily defeat. So why let them run rampant for over two months when this could have been settled very early on?

Even if the U.S. military chooses to carry out some air attacks on Houthi land-based positions, there's still little risk involved. You don't have to engage the Houthis in a ground war to make them irrelevant as a threat in the Red Sea, and that should be the goal. As Iran has shown throughout the increase in tensions during the Hamas-Israel war, they are good for little more than crying. The Mullahs aren't going to start a war with the United States because some of their proxies got blown up in Yemen.

Biden's weakness is how we even got to this point. A confident and capable president would have put a stop to Houthi attacks in the Red Sea the moment they began to occur.

What Happens If the Supreme Court Allows Trump to Be Taken off the Ballot?

posted by Jeff Charles at RedStateVIP

Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans have been hard at work trying to prevent former President Donald Trump from possibly occupying the White House after 2024. Aside from the inundation of politically motivated indictments and investigations, they have adopted a strategy that involves using a provision in the 14^th Amendment to remove him from the ballot.

In several states, anti-Trumpers have filed lawsuits seeking to keep Trump’s name off the ballot in an effort to suppress the votes of those who wish to support him and influence the outcome of the upcoming election.

Recently, Colorado and Maine have decided to remove the former president from contention. Although, in Colorado, it seems they have somewhat retreated from this position.

It is expected that this issue will eventually fall to the U.S. Supreme Court to decide. While many have speculated that the court will rule in Trump’s favor, the former president has expressed concerns about the opposite scenario manifesting.

Mr. Trump has privately told some people that he believes the Supreme Court will overwhelmingly rule against the Colorado and Maine decisions, according to a person familiar with what he has said. But he has also been critical of the Supreme Court, to which he appointed three conservative justices, creating a supermajority. The court has generally shown little appetite for Mr. Trump’s election-related cases.
Mr. Trump has expressed concern that the conservative justices will worry about being perceived as “political” and may rule against him, according to a person with direct knowledge of his private comments.
Unlike with the Colorado decision, which caught many on Mr. Trump’s team by surprise, the former president’s advisers had anticipated the Maine outcome for several days. They prepared a statement in advance of the decision and had the bulk of their appeal filing written after the consolidated hearing that Ms. Bellows held on Dec. 15, according to a person close to Mr. Trump.
The people who have filed ballot challenges have generally argued that Mr. Trump incited an insurrection when he encouraged supporters to whom he insisted the election was stolen to march on the Capitol while the 2020 electoral vote was being certified. The former president has been indicted on charges related to the eventual attack on the Capitol, but he has not been criminally charged with “insurrection,” a point his allies have repeatedly made.

I still believe it unlikely that the Supreme Court will allow the 14^th Amendment stratagem to move forward. However, in this current era of politics, anything can happen. The question is: What happens if the court refuses to block efforts to remove Trump from the ballot?

Let’s start with the legal precedent this could set. Democrats argue that Trump is disqualified under the 14^th Amendment, which prohibits those who have engaged in a rebellion against the government from holding office. The provision was originally intended for former members of the Confederacy after the conclusion of the Civil War. The anti-Trump faction contends that the former president incited the “insurrection” at the U.S. Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021, which means he should never hold office again.

If the campaign succeeds, it could have ramifications for others who wish to run for office. It would essentially disqualify anyone who was even present during the riot. Democrats could summarily eliminate their opponents by invoking the 14^th Amendment.

This would also incentivize Democrats to apply a broad and sweeping definition of the word “insurrection” to any demonstration involving conservatives. To put it simply, the left would milk this thing for all it is worth, and if they retain control of the government, it would be quite difficult for Republicans to do the same to their candidates.

Next, there is the inevitable shift in the political landscape. If the Supreme Court rules in the left’s favor and they are able to successfully remove Trump from enough states – especially swing states – it could upend the Republican primary elections. Currently, the former president maintains a healthy lead over his opponents and it is almost certain that he will win the nomination.

If the ballot strategy works, this means that other candidates like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy will now be in play. These candidates could have a fighting chance at securing the nomination as the voting br concludes that Trump will not be able to win in the general election because he can’t compete in key states.

Lastly, this scenario will lead to even more division across the country. It will be bad enough if it happens during primary season. But if the Supreme Court makes its ruling after Trump has already secured the nomination, it will be even worse.

Political tensions could easily boil over. Folks on the right would be incensed – and rightly so. In recent memory, there has not been a situation in which one party used such a tenuous justification for removing a presidential candidate from the ballot. Even further, most people, including those supporting it, could see that this gambit is motivated solely by political concerns, not a desire to protect the Constitution. Democrats are currently engaged in a naked attempt to rig the 2024 election, which will anger half of the country.

It is not outside of reason to expect that such an outcome would inspire widespread protests and even violence that might make J6 look even tamer by comparison. This would be the Democrats engaging in the coup they accused Trump supporters of, just by different methods.

The Supreme Court will be grappling with these factors, as well as the Constitutionality of the strategy. But their ruling could have tremendous ramifications for the future of the nation.

Raskin's Disturbing Defense of Removing Trump From Ballot Includes Chilling Words About SCOTUS

CNN had Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) in on Sunday to talk about the efforts by Democrats to boot former President Donald Trump from the ballot using the 14th Amendment.

Raskin made some comments that a lot of people are talking about.

The first part was what he said about the disqualification process. He had the temerity to claim that what they were trying to do against Trump was the most "democratic" form of disqualification. This takes some kind of gall to attempt this level of spin;

Wow, what horse hockey.

"Is it undemocratic that Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jennifer Granholm can't run for president because they weren't born in the country?" he ridiculously said. "Of all the forms of disqualification we have, the one that disqualifies people for engaging in insurrection is the most democratic because it's the one where people choose themselves to be disqualified." He then claims that Trump disqualified himself.

First, the Constitution says you can't run if you aren't a citizen of the U.S. That's not questionable. But what does that have to do with the fact that you're trying to take away the rights of your political opponent and the rights of the millions who would vote for him (and defeat your weak, unpopular candidate)? What a laugh how they claim that they want to "protect democracy," yet they push for this.

Second, Sec. 5 of the 14th Amendment says Congress shall have the power to enforce the provisions, not every state making up their own minds and having all kinds of political decisions. I wrote about that in talking about the dissent of Colorado Supreme Court Justice Carlos Samour, in addition to all the other reasons the 14th Amendment doesn't apply, including that there was no insurrection and he wasn't charged under the applicable federal statute, 18 U.S.C § 2383.

Dissent in CO Case on Trump Lays Out Roadmap for SCOTUS to Overturn Decision

That was bad enough. But then Raskin went into an attack on the Supreme Court and specifically Justice Clarence Thomas, claiming he should "absolutely recuse himself" because of his wife being "involved."

"The question is, what do we do if he doesn't?" Raskin said.

There's a lot to unpack there. First, that's more horse hockey when it comes to Ginni Thomas. There's no evidence at all that she was involved with the riot, which wasn't an insurrection. Second, what was her crime? She believed the election was unfair and had problems, and pushed for people to look into whether it was fair. So?

Perhaps Raskin needs a reminder of what this guy did. This was him objecting to Trump in 2017. Why didn't Dana Bash ask him about this?

Bottom line? Democrats did all kinds of things to object and try to stop Trump from taking office, but they failed. Yet now Ginni Thomas is wrong? Oh, please. They demonize "election denialism" but were some of the biggest proponents of it for years.

But what is Raskin suggesting there at the end, "The question is, what do we do if he doesn't?"

SCOTUS is the final authority. Is he suggesting that they would try to undercut the authority of the Supreme Court if they don't like their decision on the matter? What does he think is the alternative here? The House GOP asked if he was threatening democracy with these remarks.

Many viewed Raskin's remarks as a concerning threat to Justice Thomas.

They want to control everything, and if they can't manipulate the Supreme Court, they want to smear it to undermine its role in society and/or assail the Justices they think they can't control. If the Court decides against them on this matter, they will then say the Court is compromised and you can't trust their decisions. Talk about "threats to democracy."