(Elie Mystal) Meet RAGA--One of the Scariest GOP Groups You've Never Heard Of

[In It to Win It]

The Nation

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Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt (C) talks to reporters with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (2nd L), both active members of the Republican Attorneys General Association. ( Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images)


If you sit down and talk with Republicans, which I advise against doing, you will notice that they justify nearly every one of their awful policies with a call to states’ rights. They say they want to take power away from national representatives in Washington, D.C., and redistribute it to state and local governments, which, they claim, are best equipped to determine the best policies for their constituents’ particular, parochial concerns. They use this appeal to “federalism” to shield them from moral accountability for their disastrous actions. Republicans will say, for instance, that their intention is not to take away abortion rights but merely to let the states decide when a person can be forced to give birth against their will.

They are lying, of course. We know this because whenever Republicans get the power to impose their views by national fiat, they happily do so, states’ rights be damned. Republicans are for local control right up until a local prosecutor declines to deport an immigrant or a city council decides to ban assault weapons.

Still, “states’ rights” remains their battle cry, and few things expose the full measure of their antipathy toward democratic norms and civil rights than what they do with the power they’ve given to the states.

Most people are aware of the horrors that await when Republicans take control of statehouses and governors’ mansions. For recent examples, consider Greg Abbott’s murder moat in Texas, or Glenn Youngkin’s crusade against abortion rights and Pornhub in Virginia. Fewer, however, recognize the horrors that lie in store when Republicans commandeer the machinery of the law. Put simply, whichever rights the Supreme Court does not succeed in obliterating, Republican-controlled state courts and Republican attorneys general eagerly chisel away, state by state.

Republican AGs play the critical role. They are the people who, under their own authority, can bend the law to their will and weaponize it against vulnerable communities. There are currently 27 of them, and they include future Newsmax hosts like Kansas AG Kris Kobach, who finds his joy in suing to stop Joe Biden’s student debt relief program; Florida AG Ashley Moody, who spends her days fighting whatever “wokeness” conspiracy exists in her head at any given moment; and Texas AG Ken Paxton, who has effectively decided to make up his own immigration laws and enforce them at the point of a gun.

[live love laugh]

1. AG and Secretary of State are two of THE most important elected offices.

More people need to be educated about local politics.