Pascrell Op-ed Urges Fight for American Democracy
Pascrell Op-ed Urges Fight for American Democracy
On anniversary of January 6th, sounds alarm on growing threat to the nation
PATERSON, NJ – U.S. Rep. Bill Pascrell, Jr. (D-NJ-09) today published an op-ed in the Bergen Record of New Jersey laying out how America must continue to defend our democracy against creeping authoritarianism.
Text of Rep. Pascrell’s article is below.
Jan. 6: We cannot cease our defense of American democracy
By Rep. Bill Pascrell, Jr.
On the one-year anniversary of the insurrection on the United States Capitol, I am not simply mourning.
Because Jan. 6 never ended. Our democracy remains under attack today and I fear we are sleepwalking in the face of danger.
I was there at the Capitol. What I saw haunts me. But I don’t want to use this opportunity to recount the violence of that day.
Because what I remember most about Jan.6, 2021 isn’t what happened during the insurrection, but what happened after it.
When the seditionists were finally cleared from the building by law enforcement, our members returned to complete our duty: to certify the Electoral College.
Hours after the riot, 138 House Republicans — 68% of their entire caucus — voted to throw out the results and overturn the presidential election.
That is not hyperbole. More than two-thirds of the Republicans in the House of Representatives tried to finish the job of the rioters who ransacked our own Capitol.
With the tragedy fresh their minds, with shards of glass literally crunching under our feet, Republicans moved to dismantle our democracy.
That was only a prelude.
Since that vote, Republican Party leaders have not apologized or retreated but expanded their open push for ending democracy.
At present there are more than 440 bills offered and dozens passed across the union seeking to restrict Americans’ votes and rig elections for Republicans. Systemic voter fraud does not exist, period; Republican attempts to cheat are a pretext to crush any democratic opposition to Republican rule.
Perhaps even more ominous is that support for the Big Lie is not just a half-hearted rhetorical device but it is now an outright requirement for any person seeking office as a Republican.
You can see it on the floor of Congress where GOP representatives baselessly impugn the integrity of the 2020 elections or on debate platforms where Republican candidates won’t acknowledge President Joe Biden’s legitimacy. Just look at how conservatives Rep. Liz Cheney and Rep. Adam Kinzinger have been disavowed by their Republican Party.
And former President Donald Trump has spent the last year lying that Biden lost. Trump even planned a Jan. 6 press conference to continue the lies. This would be little different than if the ringleaders of the Munich Beer Hall Putsch held an anniversary party.
I understand the instinct of my colleagues to mark this day in a subdued way. The lives lost that day, particularly of our police, will not be forgotten.
But Jan. 6 never ended. It cannot be put under museum glass, glossed over with historians’ mythologies, and wished away like some bad dream.
Jan. 6 must be treated like a virulent infection, a cancer on the body politic that can only be stopped with aggressive action.
What is that action?
To start, the House has prioritized democracy protection. The Senate must follow our lead and reauthorize the Voting Rights Act to stop the avalanche of Republicans’ anti-democratic measures. I value tradition enormously. But if the choice before us is preserving a parliamentary gimmick in the filibuster or saving American democracy, I know where I stand.
Similarly, our judiciary bears grave responsibility for where we are now. The Supreme Court’s invalidation of the Voting Rights Act opened the floodgates to Republicans’ suppression and rightwing jurists routinely rubber-stamp suppression. President Biden has begun the work of revitalizing the federal bench with diverse judicial appointments but all options must be on the table to balance our courts.
We can no longer talk about the threat to our democracy with detachment or half-truth.
Refusing to acknowledge that only one party is assaulting democracy is cowardly and robs the threat of its urgency. This includes our free press, which is abdicating its responsibility.
Weeks before Jan. 6, a group of 126 House Republicans joined a lawsuit seeking to invalidate the presidential election by judicial fiat.
I formally invoked section three of the Fourteenth Amendment which bans insurrectionists from government service and asked the Speaker to refuse to seat those 126 Republicans — the first member to sound this alarm.
Some of my colleagues mocked my calls. But I saw Republicans’ behavior as an attack on America and a provocation to organized violence. I was sadly right. Elected officials or candidates who openly oppose American democracy are not fit to serve.
On Dec. 11, 2020, I demanded Donald Trump’s criminal prosecution for his direct incitement of Jan. 6, as well as other treachery. I echo these calls every day.
If we fail to hold Trump and his enablers accountable, our country will continue lurching toward fascism. And yes, Trump should be disqualified from ever seeking public office again.
Most of all, we must discuss out loud what we are facing: our democracy has not been this imperiled since the Civil War.
As a history teacher, I know the past may not repeat itself, but it does rhyme. The Weimar Republic in Germany was extinguished over many years and many events. Because the strangulation of democracy crept so slowly, its protectors stood entranced, sleepwalking to their republic’s destruction.
I will not sleepwalk. I am awake and fighting for American democracy.
Rep. Pascrell has led the fight in Congress against the rising threat of illiberalism. On December 11, 2020, Pascrell invoked section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment which forbids seditionists from holding public office urged Speaker Nancy Pelosi to refuse to seat 126 House Republicans who supported a lawsuit seeking to overturn the election – weeks before January 6, 2021.