On Friday, the Republican party completed its journey from a normal conservative party into an outright fascist organization intent on overthrowing democracy. In censuring Republicans Rep. Adam Kinzinger and Rep. Liz Cheney for participating in the January 6 investigation, the Republican National Committee declared that the Capitol insurrection — which led to the deaths of four rioters and five police officers, as well as injuries to another 140 officers — is "legitimate political discourse." This affirms what close observers have been pointing out for a year now: Republican officials across the country are using Donald Trump's Big Lie as an excuse to rig the 2024 election, by rewriting laws to make it easier to throw out election results they don't like and running Big Lie proponents who are campaigning on unsubtle promises to steal the next election for Trump.
Democrats currently control Congress and the White House, but so far their efforts to stop the slow-moving coup have amounted to very little. To be certain, both President Joe Biden and the vast majority of congressional Democrats support legislation meant to block these Republican attacks on democracy, but their efforts to pass such bills through the narrow majority in the Senate have been blocked by two centrist Democrats, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Arizona's Kyrsten Sinema. Without a bigger majority in the Senate, Biden and other federal Democratic leaders have little power to stop the GOP's coup train.
