Virginia Representative's Staffers Attacked: The Rise of Political Violence and Its Chilling Effect on Free Speech

 Just a few days ago I posted an OP on Trump and the rise of political violence  in the US in recent years, especially on the far right. I mentioned the would-be assassin who broke into Nancy Pelosi's house to kill her, and while grilling the husband over her whereabouts struck him on the head with a hammer. Well, a few hours ago I read a news article in the WS Journal about what they described as "the latest in a string of violent episodes targeting congress members." What follows is a transcript of the short but disturbing article. -- PD

 

Two of Virginia Rep. Gerry Connolly’s Staffers Attacked With a Baseball Bat

The attacker went to the congressman’s Fairfax office and asked for him, the Democrat says

 WSJ: 5/15/23

An assailant armed with a metal baseball bat attacked two staffers at Virginia Rep. Gerry Connolly’s office, authorities said Monday, the latest in a string of violent episodes targeting Congress members.

Mr. Connolly, a Democrat, said staff members from his Fairfax, Va., office were taken to a hospital in non-life-threatening condition. The attacker is in police custody, he said.

“The thought that someone would take advantage of my staff’s accessibility to commit an act of violence is unconscionable and devastating,” Mr. Connolly said.

Mr. Connolly wasn’t at the office at the time of the Monday morning incident, the U.S. Capitol Police said.

The suspect was identified as 49-year old Xuan Kha Tran Pham of Fairfax, according to Capitol Police. He faces one count of aggravated malicious wounding and one count of malicious wounding.

Authorities said the suspect’s motivation wasn’t immediately clear.

The Capitol Police and the Fairfax City Police Department are investigating the attack, authorities said. Fairfax police responded and arrested the suspect.

Mr. Connolly and authorities didn’t name the injured staff members.

Mr. Connolly, 73 years old, has represented parts of Northern Virginia, outside Washington, D.C., since 2009.

The attack on Mr. Connolly’s staff members is the latest in a string of violent episodes involving members of Congress. U.S. lawmakers in recent years have said they are worried heated rhetoric has stoked rising violence against politicians.

The U.S. Capitol Police, which is responsible for protecting members of Congress, said it has investigated a record number of threats and concerning statements in recent years. The agency said it investigated more than 7,500 cases last year compared with about 3,900 in 2017.

Democratic and Republican members received a similar number of threats, the Capitol Police said.

“One of the biggest challenges we face today is dealing with the sheer increase in the number of threats against members of Congress,” said Capitol Police Chief Tom Manger. “Over the course of the last year, the world has continuously changed, becoming more violent and uncertain.”

Congress members have expressed concern about their security arrangements. The most senior legislative leaders, including the House Speaker, typically have security details while they are in the Capitol or traveling. Most of the 535 House and Senate members don’t have the same level of protection, nor do their family members.

An armed man broke into Democratic Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco house last year looking for the former House Speaker. She wasn’t home and the intruder instead attacked her husband, Paul Pelosi, with a hammer. Mr. Pelosi’s skull was fractured in two places. Federal prosecutors charged the intruder with assault and attempted kidnapping.

GOP lawmakers, including Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana, were shot at during a 2017 baseball practice in Virginia. Mr. Scalise, then the House majority whip, was shot once in the left hip and underwent multiple surgeries. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona was shot in the head by a gunman in 2011 during a community event. More than a dozen other people were shot and six of them were killed. Ms. Giffords, a Democrat, resigned from Congress a year later to focus on her recovery and is now a gun-control advocate.

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 The details  regarding motives, possible ties to a political group/groups that espouse violence, details about the suspect, et al., are not yet in. But it certainly sounds like yet another example of the disturbing rise pattern of political violence  on the Right, which has scared and intimidated our duly elected representatives. As the article points out, for every successful attack there are hundreds of threats. The Capitol Police, as stated above, investigated 7,500 threats and/or "statements of concern" in 2022-- a number that has been steadily rising since DJT's first year in office in 2017, when there were 3,900  threats and/or "statements of concern" credible enough to warrant Capitol Police investigations. I'm sure we'll learn more about the assailant  in the coming hours and days. At this point, I reprinted the piece here as a companion to the OP I wrote on political violence on the far right rising steeply in this country. Whether or not there will be another attempt to overturn the election, these acts of violence surely have  the potential to chill free and open exchange in Congress, and thus in the country. That is one of the objectives of such political violence-- and the security of our Reps is inversely related to the confidence we as a nation can have in the ability to speak about politically contested ideas without fear of retribution.

Coincidentally, at a medical appointment on Monday, the topic of aggression and threats over political issues in the news came up. "At this point," my Doctor volunteered, "I've simply chosen to keep my opinion to myself, because almost any topic in the news often gets politicized, tempers flare and things get out of hand. I value my peace and safety." I understood that response, but held back my own thought which was "Yeah, but to the extent that you feel the need to self-censor to avoid potential conflicts, your free speech which is constitutionally guaranteed has been effectively chilled."

While some of this chilling effect comes from the proliferation of censorious bans and legal codifications of  "traditional" morality, the foot-soldiers, as it were, reinforce this climate of fear by issuing unprecedented numbers of threats to (mostly) Democrats in Congress, and also at state and local levels.  The combination has the potential (should it increase) to stifle the health of our polity which is based very fundamentally on a commitment to free and open exchange of views, values, policies and the  like-- the very heart and soul of liberal democracy (not "Liberalism" as a "Left Wing" ideology, but foundational classical liberalism of the kind John Stuart Mill in England and our own John Dewey in the 20th century championed. This was a time when their faces graced postage stamps, and free speech did not mean "stuff I agree with and am willing to tolerate." 

Nor is the Left completely innocent in all of this. Though there is nothing close to an equivalence when it comes to the use of violence and threats aimed at shutting down discourse, there really is an uptick in  intimidation of and threats against Right  Wing culture warriors while hypocritically, some self-described "progressives" assume that their own values and beliefs are politically and legally privileged/protected while much of what Right Wing culture warriors say is not protected free speech. This reveals a poor understanding of the principles undergirding the first amendment imo. But again,  there is really no comparison between the admittedly misguided progressives (which is not to say all progressives are misguided and intolerant; only some of them are that way). I mention it not only in the name of fairness, but because I believe that in different ways and to different extents, both the Left and Right have become too rigidly dug in to their positions, and act as though these aren't just "positions" but sacrosanct beliefs and laws. The chasm between the zealots on each side continues to widen with each passing year, and though there are still  some fairly tolerant and Dems committed to open exchange, there are also an increasing number of zealous and intolerant Dems who contribute in their own way to the stifling of democratic discourse-- the free and open exchange of ideas and policy preferences -- without fear of being harassed,  threatened,  and/or  stymied in the process. 

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What are your thoughts?

Related readings: 

Experts say attacks on free speech are risig across the US (PBS 3/23)

The Rise in Political Violence in the United States and Damage to our Democracy  (Prof. Rachael Kleinfeld's Congressional testimony before the 1/6  Select Committee to Investigatr the Jan. 6 Attack on the United States Capitol:  published by the Carnegie Endowment to for International Piece)

 

News bits: Republican scofflaws; Republican liars; An abortion-related murder

Azcentral newspaper writes about a radical right Republican who continues to refuse to turn over thousands of emails a judge ordered him to turn over. That this thug is not in jail is evidence of the weak and failing rule of law. Azcentral writes:

Thousands of texts from Trump allies stay hidden 

in Arizona a year after judge's order on 'audit'

More than a year after a judge ordered the leader of the controversial Arizona "audit" to turn over his texts and other electronic messages, thousands still remain inexplicably hidden.

Cyber Ninjas CEO Doug Logan has released more than 39,000 messages, available to anyone who wants to try to make sense of the disordered, sometimes duplicative documents. But his refusal to let go of an estimated 3,000 more raises questions about what's in them, and why they remain secret despite a court order.

The Arizona Republic has fought for public records of the review of the 2020 Maricopa County general election for almost two years from the Arizona Senate and from the Cyber Ninjas. Reporters have reviewed what has been released and noted the redactions. The news organization's attorneys have raised objections where they believe information was improperly withheld.

“It has been like pulling teeth getting these records from the defendants,” said attorney David Bodney, who represents The Arizona Republic.  

The Arizona Senate ordered an "independent" review of Maricopa County election results. The documents show the partisanship baked into Logan's project as he worked for the Senate. They detail how former President Donald Trump's loyalists were involved, proving the exercise was anything but independent.  

The Republican Senate and Cyber Ninjas have followed a familiar pattern in response to requests for records under the Arizona Public Records Law. First, they released thousands of innocuous messages, such as emails from supporters. Then, after continued pressure through the courts, more documents have come out.

Logan has turned over records in different formats, making them time-consuming to cross reference. On top of that, they were initially released in non-chronological order.

At this point, one can reasonably believe the illegally withheld information incriminates themselves, Trump and other prominent fascist election deniers in illegal activities. All that the scofflaw thugs have to do to dispel that belief is release all the information they are legally required to release.

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Newsweek reports about a prominent House Republican "loosing track" of a key witness who would testify that Joe Biden broke a law(s) and committed whatever other horror(s) that Republicans were planning slander Biden with. Newsweek writes:

Republican Admits Key 'Informant' Against Joe Biden Now Missing

Representative James Comer, a Kentucky Republican, admitted on Sunday that his fellow Republicans lost track of a key witness in an investigation about the Biden family being involved in an alleged bribery scheme.

On Wednesday, House Oversight Committee Republicans released a 36-page memo accusing members of the Biden family of earning millions of dollars during Joe Biden's term as vice president under former President Barack Obama from a number of Chinese and Romanian companies they claim posed "potential threats" to the United States.

The memo, a copy of which was obtained by Newsweek, includes redacted images of transactions involving a number of bank accounts purportedly belonging to members of the Biden family. It outlines a network of secretive bank accounts connected not only to Biden's son, Hunter, but to a number of other family members, all of whom Comer, the committee's chairman, accused of using Biden's position to curry favor with foreign governments and peddle influence on U.S. foreign policy.

The documents released Wednesday provide no evidence that President Biden was ever directly involved in the alleged schemes—or even if the payments in question resulted in tangible impact on U.S. policy.

"Well, unfortunately, we can't track down the informant," Comer responded on Sunday. "We're hopeful that the informant is still there. The whistleblower knows the informant. The whistleblower is very credible."

Comer also criticized the FBI's efforts to investigate the allegation, before Bartiromo asked him again about the informant, "Did you just say that the whistleblower or the informant is now missing?"

"Well, we're hopeful that we can find the informant," Comer responded, adding that the informant was in the "spy business" and therefore "they don't make a habit of being seen a lot."

He continued: "The nine of the 10 people that we've identified have very good knowledge with respect to the Bidens. They're one of three things, Maria, they're either currently in court, they're currently in jail, or they're currently missing.

This smells like another radical right GOP crackpot conspiracy theory to smear Biden and his family. All the radicals have to do to dispel that belief is show the American people the evidence they have that undeniably proves their case. Until that happens, one can reasonably believe that this is another of many unfounded fascist Republican attacks on democracy, political opposition, inconvenient truth and the rule of law.

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Abortion wars: There is more than one way that forced birth laws and beliefs can kill a woman. The AP writes about one of them:

A Texas woman was fatally shot by her boyfriend after she got an abortion, police say

A man who didn’t want his girlfriend to get an abortion fatally shot her during a confrontation in a Dallas parking lot, police said.

He was jailed on a murder charge as of Friday.

Texas banned abortions after roughly six weeks of pregnancy in September 2021. But nearly all abortions have been halted in Texas since Roe v. Wade was overturned last summer, except in cases of medical emergency.

Gabriella Gonzalez, 26, was with her boyfriend, 22-year-old Harold Thompson, on Wednesday when he tried to put her in a chokehold, according to an arrest warrant affidavit. She had returned the night before from Colorado, where she had gone to get an abortion. 

Surveillance video from the parking lot shows Gonzalez “shrugs him off,” police said, and the two continue walking. Thompson then pulls out a gun and shoots Gonzalez in the head. She falls to the ground and Thompson shoots her multiple times before running away, the affidavit said.

This death is on the hands of people who support forced birth laws and/or beliefs. It is reasonable to put significant blame on the toxic influence of anti-abortion, pro-gun, pro-violence Christianity and religion in America. The shooter bears most of the blame. But society's beliefs and norms do influence morals and behavior, whether religious people believe it or not. 

Q: Is it unreasonable, irrational or unfair to partly blame Christianity and it's rigid intolerance of deviation from anti-abortion, pro-forced birth dogma for this murder?

OPINION: Political burnout is hurting our generation

 

Written By Julianna Rittenberg

Julianna Rittenberg is a freshman studying political science and an opinion writer for The New Political.

https://www.thenewpolitical.com/opinion/w8fn6i8ojr573o4zgvd6qgrlx1y4zx

Political burnout, or politics fatigue syndrome, has been an issue in America for years.

In 2011, former President Barack Obama remarked that people are tired of politics. In 2014, 15 of the 25 states that held primaries reported record low turnout. This flipped during the 2020 election, when there was record high voter turnout because people were outraged by Donald Trump’s presidency and therefore paying attention. Those in the field of politics are anxiously awaiting to see if 2022 will have a drop in turnout. (Clearly this OP is a bit dated, BUT is it still relevant?)

In 2018, a Pew Research Center study found that 68% of Americans felt worn out by the amount of news content there was and much fewer, 30%, felt that they liked the amount of news they received. When the study was reconducted in 2019, these numbers stayed roughly the same; 32% liked the amount of news while 66% felt burnt out.

Broken down by political parties, Republicans tended to feel more burnt out at 75%, and 59% of Democrats felt burnt out. Across all parties, burnout was more common in those who pay less attention to the news. 

Conservative political strategist and lobbyist Diana Banister sees four main causes of political burnout: widespread uneasiness with the government, media becoming more sensationalized and polarized, frustration with the political process, and disillusionment with politicians. 

Activists in particular feel a certain brand of political burnout. Activism work can be agonizing because so much of it is being told “no” or “not now,” working long hours and dealing with defeat after defeat. Activists are attempting to dismantle systems, and with that comes exhaustion, stress and many disappointments. As a result, roughly 50% of activists end up leaving their professions entirely. 

This is a problem. We need people to continue fighting for reforms, dismantlement and change. 

College students also deal with political burnout in a unique way. For a generation marked with rising mental health issues and the COVID-19 pandemic, changing media styles, and all of the other political issues on top of that stress, is a lot to manage and work through. 

In 2020, a study found that 75% of college students were stressed out by the election. Factors such as race, gender, class and sexual orientation also played into this. Those in minority and marginalized groups also felt more stressed out by politics because the stakes were higher. Minorities and other marginalized groups are more affected by the decisions politicians make about their lives, as they tend to target groups that are less able to defend themselves in the court system. 

For example, there are currently dozens of bills targeting transgender people across the country. Transgender people are a minority group in this country and have a harder time finding and affording a lawyer to represent them. Additionally, there is much debate over whether or not the constitution applies to their rights. 

There are systemic factors built against minorities in the political process. Black people and people of color have been barred from voting for as long as this country has existed.

Minorities’ way of life can be determined by those voted into office, people who do not believe they deserve the same rights and deny their existence. Of course this leads to higher stress and more frustration and disillusionment with our political system. 

With the COVID-19 pandemic, society has seen a positive shift towards prioritizing self-care. If self-care can invade our workplaces and continue to be prioritized by employers, then self-care and mental health may help combat political burnout.

Colleges should be doing more to help college students who are experiencing political burnout. Classes could be canceled on Election Day to make it easier for students to participate in the political process. 

Inside the classroom, particularly in politically aligned courses, professors should discuss political burnout and offer strategies to combat it. They can play an active role in prioritizing positive mental health practices. 

There is a lot of guilt that comes with experiencing political burnout. People feel the need to always pay attention, especially with the rise of social media activism. There is always something to be outraged about, fighting against and fighting for. Many of my friends and I feel guilty for taking social media breaks because we know how much is at risk.

However, not everything is on the shoulders of each individual. Taking periodic breaks from social media and the news can be healthy. Rest will allow yourself to reset; you will not make the change you are looking for if you are exhausted and burnt out. 

Activism is important. Paying attention to politics is important. Taking care of your mental health is important. These pieces fit together, and as a society, as well as college students, we need to do a better job at finding the balance — our future depends on it. 

News & science: Deepfake political non-profits; Immigration gridlock - some history

The NYT writes about some of those annoying robocalls we all get bombarded with from The people claiming to be working for American Police Officer's Alliance, the National Police Support Fund and other groups allegedly supporting firefighters and veterans: 

A group of conservative operatives using sophisticated robocalls raised millions of dollars from donors using pro-police and pro-veteran messages. But instead of using the money to promote issues and candidates, an analysis by The New York Times shows, nearly all the money went to pay the firms making the calls and the operatives themselves, highlighting a flaw in the regulation of political nonprofits. 

Amount raised and spent since 2014

The target who picks up the phone hears this sincere sounding robocall:

“This is Frank Wallace calling for the American Police Officers Alliance. Very quickly, we’re mailing out the envelopes to help fight for our officers who protect our nation’s citizens, just like yourself. Once you receive your card in the mail, you can send back whatever you think is fair this time. That’s all.”

This is not a policeman. This is not even a human. This is a computer, making thousands of robocalls with the same folksy voice.

About 90 percent of the money the groups raised was simply sent back to their fund-raising contractors, to feed a self-consuming loop where donations went to find more donors to give money to find more donors. They had no significant operations other than fund-raising, and along the way became one of America’s biggest sources of robocalls.

Killing robocalls is an issue that congress should be working on, but it can't because it is broken as intended by Republican government and regulations haters. Caveat emptor people!

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The NYT writes about why American immigration law and policy is a mess and has been for years:

For nearly a quarter century, as successive waves of migrants have tried to enter and work in the United States, presidents have appealed to Congress to address gaps in an immigration system nearly everyone agrees is broken.

Yet year after year, congressional efforts to strike a wide-ranging bipartisan deal — one that would strengthen border security measures while expanding avenues for people to immigrate to the United States in an orderly and lawful way — have fractured under the strain of political forces.

Immigration has proved to be a potent political messaging tool, particularly for Republicans, who have rallied voters behind campaigns to close the border with Mexico — and denounced anything other than stringent security proposals as amnesty. And Democrats have long resisted border security initiatives without measures to grant legal status to millions of undocumented immigrants residing in the United States and to expand immigration in the future.

While many lawmakers have tried to bridge the gap, not once in the 21st century has Congress managed to send a comprehensive immigration bill to the president’s desk.

The NYT points out that in 2006 the McCain-Kennedy bill passed the Senate, but died in the Republican House. In 2007 after congressional Republicans suffered defeats in the 2006 midterms, new Democratic majorities in the Senate and House tried to fix immigration again. The 2007 bill failed to clear procedural hurdles in the Senate in June 2007 and never received a final vote in either chamber. In December of 2010, Democratic congressional leaders held votes on the DREAM Act that provided an opportunity to gain legal status for immigrant children who grew up here and stayed out of legal trouble. Not surprisingly, Democrat-led Senate fell five votes short of breaking a filibuster blocking it from a vote. Again in 2013, the Democrats managed to get a filibuster-proof bill passed in the Senate, but House Republicans blocked it and the bill died. In 2018 another bill died in congress because Republicans and some Democrats opposed it. (the Dems opposed because of harsh measures in the bill)

So there we have it. Again and again, bigoted and racist Republican politicians refuse to reasonably compromise and that's the end of it. All we get is finger pointing and toxic dark free speech. This issue plays into the Republican hands. They demagogue the hell out if it and foment fear of the Great Replacement and rage at messes at the border. The GOP is incentivized to leave immigration a stinking mess so they can whine and complain about immigration being a stinking mess. 

Q: Should Democrats compromise by caving in to what the bigots and racists want, such as no citizenship pathway, or is that not a meaningful compromise?

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Science: Researchers have discovered that in addition to electrical imbalances across cell membranes, electrical imbalances are present in and around cell structures called biological condensates (BCs). A BC is akin to a drop of vegetable oil floating on water. BCs form spontaneously inside cells. 

Cell membranes are used maintain an electrical charge imbalance to   

drive chemical reactions -- neurons use this to communicate information

with other neurons

Science Daily writes:

The human body relies heavily on electrical charges. Lightning-like pulses of energy fly through the brain and nerves and most biological processes depend on electrical ions traveling across the membranes of each cell in our body.

These electrical signals are possible, in part, because of an imbalance in electrical charges that exists on either side of a cellular membrane. Until recently, researchers believed the membrane was an essential component to creating this imbalance. .... Like oil droplets floating in water, these structures [biological condensates] exist because of differences in density. They form compartments inside the cell without needing the physical boundary of a membrane.  

"In a prebiotic environment without enzymes to catalyze reactions, where would the energy come from?" asked Yifan Dai, a Duke postdoctoral researcher working in the laboratory of Ashutosh Chilkoti, the Alan L. Kaganov Distinguished Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Lingchong You, the James L. Meriam Distinguished Professor of Biomedical Engineering.

"This discovery provides a plausible explanation of where the reaction energy could have come from, just as the potential energy that is imparted on a point charge placed in an electric field," Dai said.  

After combining the right formula of building blocks to create minuscule condensates .... they added a dye to the system that glows in the presence of reactive oxygen species.

Their hunch was right. When the environmental conditions were right, a solid glow started from the edges of the condensates, confirming that a previously unknown phenomenon was at work. Dai next talked with Richard Zare, the Marguerite Blake Wilbur Professor of Chemistry at Stanford, whose group established the electric behavior of water droplets. Zare was excited to hear about the new behavior in biological systems, and started to work with the group on the underlying mechanism.

"Inspired by previous work on water droplets, my graduate student, Christian Chamberlayne, and I thought that the same physical principles might apply and promote redox chemistry, such as the formation of hydrogen peroxide molecules," Zare said. "These findings suggest why condensates are so important in the functioning of cells."

"Most previous work on biomolecular condensates has focused on their innards," Chilkoti said. "Yifan's discovery that biomolecular condensates appear to be universally redox-active suggests that condensates did not simply evolve to carry out specific biological functions as is commonly understood, but that they are also endowed with a critical chemical function that is essential to cells."

One of the mysteries, arguably a God of the Gaps thing, is how life could arise and evolve without cell membranes and the electrical imbalance needed to drive chemical reactions needed to create and sustain life. The energy needed to run biological chemistry requires energy. Despite lightening bolts, thermal hots springs and etc., until now there was no plausible source of that energy for life and cells to arise. 

These BCs could be the answer to the energy problem. If that turns out to be the case, this knowledge could close a major gap in our understanding of how life on Earth as we know it evolved from non-life either here on Earth or anywhere else.

Biological condensates include self-assembling structures 

called stress granules, Balbani bodies, paraspeckles, etc.

Green dots-blobs are paraspeckles in the

nucleus of a HeLa cell

From the Killing Democracy Files: The Viktor Orban redux

CONTEXT

After he was elected to power in Hungary in 2010, Viktor Orban moved quickly to kill democracy and neuter political and institutional opposition and dissent. Within a couple of years, he and his party were in firm control and voters could not dislodge them. Hungary ceased to be a democracy. A key tactic that Orban used to neuter pro-democracy government institutions was to purge the central government of competent professional bureaucrats. They were replaced by thugs chosen based on their loyalty to Orban, not their experience, competence or loyalty to democracy or the rule of law. 

I have pointed out here many times now that Republican Party elites greatly admire what Orban did to democracy and the rule of law in Hungary. Their actions are clearly aimed at doing the same to democracy and the rule of law in America. 

This 5 minute interview with Orban expert Kim Scheppele explains the American radical right's love affair with Orban.

THE AMERICAN ORBAN REDUX

Government Executive writes:

Feds Could Be Fired at Any Time for Any Reason 

Under a Bill That Was Just Reintroduced

The bill also would abolish the Merit Systems Protection Board and threatens to reduce former federal employees’ retirement benefits if they file “frivolous” appeals of adverse personnel actions

A group of 14 conservative lawmakers in both chambers of Congress last week reintroduced legislation that would make the federal government an at-will employer and abolish the Merit Systems Protection Board, effectively eviscerating federal workers’ civil service protections and chilling whistleblowing.

Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, and Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., are the lead sponsors of the Public Service Reform Act (H.R. 3115), which would make career federal workers at-will employees and get rid of most of the avenues currently available to appeal adverse personnel decisions. It also would abolish the MSPB and send most appeals directly to federal appellate courts, although it preserves a 14-day window for whistleblowers to allege retaliation before the Office of Special Counsel.

“It is far past time to reinstate accountability to the people for the federal bureaucracy by requiring that like any private sector employee, federal workers can be removed from their positions,” Roy said in a statement. “Notwithstanding the majority of federal workers who faithfully serve, especially our law enforcement personnel, we should not allow a wall of red tape to shield those engaged in noncompliance with the law and brazen political partisanship. Federal employees should keep their jobs based on merit, just like the people they serve.”  

The bill also allows for federal workers to appeal adverse personnel actions they believe were discriminatory to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, although the legislation requires EEOC to scrap its policies relating to the federal workforce and apply private sector rules to the proceedings.

And it creates a disincentive to federal workers filing appeals of their firings through a provision that says that if a court finds a complaint to be “frivolous” or otherwise “brought in bad faith,” the employee’s defined benefit annuity is automatically reduced by 25%.

“It’s clear that the bureaucracy of the federal government is both a waste of taxpayer dollars and inefficient,” Scott said in a statement. “Red tape and bloated federal agencies constantly slow down progress and hamper American innovation. It’s time to change Washington so it actually works for the American people. The public Service Reform Act will boost accountability and responsiveness across the federal government by making all executive branch employees at-will.”

Note the lack of good will here. Also note the hatred of the deep state that the radical right has been howling about for decades. The Republican fascist definition of a frivolous appeal is one that inconveniences their democracy and transparency killing agenda. The Republican Party clearly intends to do to American democracy the same as what Orban did to democracy in Hungary. There is no significant difference here. If the American radical right gets its way, America too will cease to be a democracy.

Commentary and a warning about the state of American politics

An opinion in The Guardian expresses grave concerns about the radicalized Republican Party and its cult leader: 

There is a clear and present danger of a new Trump presidency 

Democrats must act now to prevent it

We may come to remember this period as the interlude: the inter-Trump years. After the sigh of relief heard around the world when Donald Trump was defeated in November 2020, a grim realization should be dawning: the threat of a Trump return to the White House is growing.

His first task is to win the Republican party’s presidential nomination, but that hurdle is shrinking daily. Trump’s grip on his party remains firm, with none of his putative rivals coming close. Of course, the first round of primary voting is months away and much could change, but the shape of the race is already clear – and Trump is dominant. [cites E. Jean Carroll verdict as evidence of his unshakable political power]

That “makes me want to vote for him twice”, said Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama of the jury’s decision, articulating the view held by many millions of Republicans that this judgment – and any other legal finding against the former president – proves only that the elites are out to get him.

It means Democrats and those who wish to see Trump finished need to let go of the hope that the courts will dispatch him once and for all. .... on the current evidence, a slew of guilty verdicts would barely dent his standing with his own party. As Trump intuited back in 2016, he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and Republicans would still vote for him.

Plenty of Democrats concede that Trump is likely to win his party’s nomination. Indeed, many want him to win, so sure are they that he will lose to Biden in a rematch of 2020. And he may. But that contest will be far too close for comfort, at least in the electoral college that decides the outcome. In 2020, just 44,000 votes in three states stood between a Biden victory and an electoral college tie. Now the polls look much worse for him. .... Put simply, it was a photo finish last time and Trump’s prospects are better now than then.

What would a Trump restoration entail? He himself has promised “retribution”, and those who served under him warn that a returned Trump would be less chaotic, more focused, than he was first time around.

[Attacking the courts] has become a pattern, casting the justice system as merely another theatre in the partisan culture wars. Not content with destroying Republicans’ faith in electoral democracy in order to divert attention from the fact he lost an election, Trump is now doing the same to his followers’ trust in the law, this time to distract from the fact that he is a sexual predator.

A second-term Trump would set about finishing what he started, breaking any institution that might stand in his way, whether that be the ballot box or the courts. As Senator Mitt Romney, a rare Republican voice of dissent, put it after the CNN show: “You see what you’re going to get, which is a presidency untethered to the truth and untethered to the constitutional order.”

Democrats need to snap out of the complacency brought by victory in 2020 and work as if they are in a race against the devil and lagging behind – because they are. They need to address the Biden age issue fast: several party veterans urge the president to get out more, recommending the kind of closeup encounters with the public at which he thrives. They need to sell their achievements, not least a strong record on jobs. And they have to sound the alarm every day, warning of the danger Trump poses. Because it is clear and it is present.