Progressives Every Day: Now Impeach These Motherf***ers
National and local lawmakers flocked to the insurrection
Welcome to a Wednesday evening edition of Progressives Everywhere.
There are two big news items to report tonight:
The puck drops on the new NHL season tonight
Some non-hockey stuff happened in Washington.
They Impeached the Motherfucker
President Donald Trump was impeached by the House of Representatives for the second time today, which gets him halfway to the number of times his businesses have declared bankruptcy. Democrats were fired up on the House floor today as they gave their 30-second government battle rap speeches against Trump, who must have been gripped by painful withdrawal as he watched the proceedings and couldn’t tweet venomous nonsense responses at each member of Congress.
It was actually somewhat bittersweet that Trump wasn’t on Twitter today, because it would have been incredibly cathartic for tens of millions of people to log-on and brutally mock him in real-time; in the end, we lose no matter what.
I give House Democrats credit for getting this done, even if Mitch McConnell is going to delay the Senate trial until the beginning of the Biden administration (he’s Majority Leader until Warnock and Ossoff are sworn in). But most of that credit goes to the progressive left and The Squad, who kept the pressure on both in private and public all through the weekend, forcing Nancy Pelosi and company to pull the trigger, so to speak. Remember, Democratic leaders were saying they had “no appetite” to impeach late last week and went silent all through the weekend while floating trial balloons about fearing the “optics” of impeachment and not wanting to interrupt Biden’s first week or two in office.
As I wrote last week and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said in her extraordinary Instagram live stream last night, there needed to be consequences. And they can’t just apply to Donald Trump — there have to be consequences for all the Republicans who aided and abetted him. Clearly, they’re not used to being held to account for anything, judging by their pitiful calls for unity and utterly pathetic hissy-fits over metal detectors, and that makes it even more important that those who engaged in treason answer for their actions.
Sens. Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, and Ron Johnson should be expelled for spreading so much election misinformation and inciting the riots (not to mention how many people they got killed with their Covid lies), but it’s a half-dozen or so of the mutants on the House side — and many more in state governments, which we’ll get to soon — that need more immediate and harsh repercussions.
There is a new class of fringe radical right-wing trolls entering Congress this year, including Reps. Madison Cawthorn, crime enthusiast Lauren Boebert, QAnon fanatic Marjorie Taylor Greene. They were all not only complicit in the insurrection, it’s becoming increasingly clear that they helped facilitate it, coordinating with terrorists even intimately than Reps. Andy Biggs, Paul Gosar, and Mo Brooks.
Reports earlier this week indicated that the latter three were in close contact with some of the planners of the insurrection, encouraging them and recording rally hype videos for their followers. Boebert seems to have played an active role on the day of the coup attempt, which is a whole new level of treason. Rep. Mikie Sherrill, a moderate Democrat from New Jersey and a Navy veteran, suggested that she saw Republicans giving rioters tours of the Capitol the day before the insurrection took place.
Sherrill isn’t one to exaggerate or resort to hysterics or hyperbole — I’ve watched her races over the last two cycles. And while I’m generally uncomfortable sharing #resistance videos from Twitter, this seems to confirm that they knew what they were doing:
That QAnon and these far-right conspiracy lunatics have infiltrated the national government is terrifying, but what’s even scarier is the fact that so many more of them have wormed their way into state and local governments. At least we can identify and somewhat discredit the high-profile Congressional extremists; the lower-level freaks are going to largely fly under the radar, poisoning communities across the country with little pushback thanks to the demolishing of local newspapers.
The last thing we need is more extremists in state and local government, so I’m taking it upon myself to document as many of these QAnon, Proud Boy, and ultra-right-wing lawmakers and bureaucrats as I can, at all levels of government. The names below include those who were directly involved in last week’s rallies and insurrection, and I’m sure it’ll continue to grow. I also plan on starting to track QAnon lawmakers more generally, which is a more ambitious project that I’ll get started after this one is complete.
Rep. Paul Gosar (Arizona)
Rep. Andy Biggs (Arizona)
Rep. Lauren Boebert (Colorado)
Rep. Mo Brooks (Mississippi)
Rep. Madison Cawthorn (North Carolina)
State Rep. David Eastman (Alaska)
State Rep. Mark Finchem (Arizona)
State Rep. Anthony Kern (Arizona)
State Rep. Richard Champion (Colorado)
State Rep. Ron Hanks (Colorado)
State Rep. Chris Miller (Illinois)
Del. Daniel L. Cox (Maryland)
State Rep. Mike Maddock (Michigan)
State Rep. Justin Hill (Missouri)
Assemblywoman Annie Black (Nevada)
State Sen. Doug Mastriano (Pennsylvania)
State Rep. Justin Price (Rhode Island)
State Rep. Terri Lynn Weaver (Tennessee)
State Sen. Amanda Chase (Virginia)
State Del. Dave LaRock (Virginia)
State Del. Derrick Evans (West Virginia)
State Sen. Mike Azinger (West Virginia)
Councilwoman Jessica Martinez (Whittier, California)
City Commissioner Kristyn Arnold (Richmond City, Kentucky)
Councilmen Greg Stuchell and Robert Socha (Hillsdale, Michigan)
Councilman Aaron Carpenter (Marysville, Ohio)
Councilwoman Angelita Sanchez (Sweet Home, Oregon)
All these police
I’ll have more news for you later this week — things are still happening in state legislatures and there’s some policy movement in Washington, as well.
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