A GOP Congress Could Roll Back Nationwide Freedoms

The preivious post looked at the sense of fear and foreboding that I - and I suspect many - have on the eve of the mid-term elections.    No doubt some Republican "friends" who will vote against my rights and safety will whine that I am over reacting.  On this point a piece in The Atlantic lays out the basis for my justified sense of foreboding and how many Americans could see their rights diminished or erased if Republicans win control of Congress and, worse yet, the White House in 2024.  The latter sets the window for emigrating at two years or a little longer depending on what happens in 2024.   Sadly, some of my gay Republican friends remain as blind to their own danger as many welthy Jews did as Hitler was rising to power.   One can be certain that to Christofascist extremists who dominate the GOP base the fact that gays are white and affluent will not save them for targeting and erasure.   Here are highlights from The Atlantic:

If Republicans win control of one or both congressional chambers this week, they will likely begin a project that could reshape the nation’s political and legal landscape: imposing on blue states the rollback of civil rights and liberties that has rapidly advanced through red states since 2021.

Over the past two years, the 23 states where Republicans hold unified control of the governorship and state legislature have approved the most aggressive wave of socially conservative legislation in modern times. In highly polarizing battles across the country, GOP-controlled states have passed laws imposing new restrictions on voting, banning or limiting access to abortion, retrenching LGBTQ rights, removing licensing and training requirements for concealed carry of firearms, and censoring how public-school teachers (and in some cases university professors and even private employers) can talk about race, gender, and sexual orientation.

Republicans in the U.S. House and Senate have introduced legislation to write each of these red-state initiatives into federal law. The practical effect of these proposals would be to require blue states to live under the restrictive social policies that have burned through red states since President Joe Biden’s victory in 2020.

None of the proposals to nationalize the red-state social agenda could become law any time soon. Even if Republicans were to win both congressional chambers, they would not have the votes to overcome the inevitable Biden vetoes. Nor would Republicans, even if they controlled both chambers, have any incentive to consider repealing the Senate filibuster to pass this agenda until they know they have a president who would sign the resulting bills into law—something they can’t achieve before the 2024 election.

But if Republicans triumph this week, the next two years could nonetheless become a crucial period in formulating a strategy to nationalize the red-state social-policy revolution. . . . And the 2024 Republican presidential candidates are also likely to test GOP primary voters’ appetite for writing conservative social priorities into national law. Embracing such initiatives “may prove irresistible for a lot of folks trying to capture” the party’s socially conservative wing, Patrick Brown, a fellow at the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center, told me.

It starts with abortion. Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina in September introduced a bill that would ban the procedure nationwide after 15 weeks of pregnancy. In the House, 167 Republicans have co-sponsored the “Life Begins at Conception Act,” which many legal analysts say would effectively ban all abortions nationwide.

In elections, Senator Rick Scott of Florida has proposed legislation that would impose for federal elections nationwide many of the voting restrictions that have rapidly diffused across red states . . .

In education, Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas has proposed to federalize restrictions on how teachers can talk about race by barring any K–12 school that receives federal money from using “critical race theory” in instruction. Several Republicans (including Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri) have introduced a “Parents’ Bill of Rights,” which would mandate parental access to school curriculum and library materials nationwide—a step toward building pressure for the kind of book bans spreading through conservative states and school districts.

Representative Mike Johnson of Louisiana, along with several dozen co-sponsors, recently introduced a federal version of the “Don’t Say Gay” legislation that Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida pushed into law. Johnson’s bill is especially sweeping in its scope. It bars discussion of “sexually-oriented material,” including sexual orientation, with children 10 and younger, not only in educational settings, but in any program funded by the federal government, including through public libraries, hospitals, and national parks. . . . . Johnson’s bill is only one of several Republican proposals to nationalize red-state actions on LGBTQ issues.

Meanwhile, Senator Steve Daines and Representative Richard Hudson of North Carolina have introduced legislation requiring every state to accept a concealed-carry gun permit issued in any state—a mechanism for overriding blue-state limits on these permits. . . . Ambler told me he expects that the NRA and congressional Republicans will eventually seek not only to preempt blue states and city limits on who can carry guns, but also to invalidate their restrictions on where they can do so, such as the New York State law, now facing legal challenge, barring guns from the subway.

[W]e’ve seen again and again in the states is that when they can, they have moved in these directions. Even when you take a look at more moderate states, when they have the power to do these things, they move these things forward.” That precedent eventually may apply not just to LGBTQ issues, but to all the red-state initiatives some Republicans want to inscribe into national law.

[T]he red states have moved to reverse that long trajectory toward a stronger national floor of rights by setting their own rules on abortion, voting, LGBTQ issues, classroom censorship, and book bans, among other issues. In that cause, they have been crucially abetted by the Republican-appointed Supreme Court majority, which has struck down or weakened previously nationally guaranteed rights (including abortion and voting access).

But the proliferation of these congressional-Republican proposals to write the red-state rules into federal law suggests that this reassertion of states’ rights was just a way station toward restoring common national standards of civil rights and liberties—only in a much more restrictive and conservative direction.

Like many students of the red-state social-policy eruption, Tillery believes that Republicans and social conservatives feel enormous urgency to write their cultural priorities into law before liberal-leaning Millennials and Generation Z become the electorate’s dominant force later this decade. “The future ain’t bright for them looking at young people, so they are acting in a much more muscular and authoritarian way now,” he said.

Be very afraid.