The Democratic Party’s relentless drive to prevent former President Donald Trump from running again in 2024 stepped up a gear starting June 9 with hours of televised House Select Committee hearings probing the Jan. 6, 2021, incursion at the Capitol building. These hearings are key for the Democratic Party’s 2022 election campaign, as President Joseph Biden has failed to accomplish anything of note to relieve the blows working people are taking today, and his popularity is plummeting.
Armed with mounds of data, graphics, videos and hundreds of photos, the committee is hoping something will stick in their efforts to bar Trump from holding office and, if possible, send him to prison. All nine members of the committee were appointed by Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who rejected Republican Party nominations and instead hand-picked seven Democrats and two Republicans who oppose Trump.
The committee takes aim at others they think will fit in with their claims of a conspiracy to destroy American democracy. They smeared Republican Georgia Rep. Barry Loudermilk, saying he gave protesters a “reconnaissance tour” of the Capitol Jan. 5. Capitol police cleared him after reviewing security footage.
The committee is demanding testimony from Virginia Thomas, a private citizen and wife of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Her offense? She is accused of sending texts and emails to Trump attorney John Eastman, former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and others expressing her opinion that Trump won the vote in 2020.
“I have no interest in that show,” Ron Collins, a distribution center worker in Madison Town Park, Georgia, told the Washington Post about the Senate hearing, expressing sentiments held by millions of workers. “I wish they would focus on the things this country is dealing with.”
Blow to political rights
The Republican and Democratic parties both rule on behalf of the U.S. capitalist class. But by treating their political differences as crimes, they deal a blow to political debate and set a dangerous precedent that can and will be used against working-class parties, like the Socialist Workers Party. This threatens the rights all working people need as we organize to defend ourselves and fight for our own class interests.
Trump released a statement on the hearings June 13. It’s a rehash of his unsubstantiated claims that the 2020 election was stolen. Nearly 800 people who marched on the Capitol Jan. 6, 2021, have been arrested for assault and other crimes, at what the congressional committee and liberal press call an “insurrection” or “attempted coup.” Almost 40% of the first 163 sentenced have been given prison time, ranging from one month for a student who took a photo in the Capitol to five years for a man who scuffled with the police.
As undemocratic as these hearings are — and the Democrats have plans for more of them — they are only part of the damage liberals and left-wing radicals are doing to political rights.
Since the May 2 leak of the Supreme Court’s draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade, some 24 violent assaults have been carried out on pregnancy centers.
A group called Jane’s Revenge said it carried out some of the attacks, leaving graffiti on site reading, “If abortion isn’t safe, you aren’t either.” On June 14 the group vandalized the Minneapolis center of the Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life.
On June 10 pro-abortion activists threw an incendiary device through the window of the Gresham Pregnancy Resource Center near Portland, Oregon. The center provides counseling and medical services to women and new mothers.
In a press statement, Jane’s Revenge threatened more violence that “may not come in the form of something so easily cleaned up as fire and graffiti.… Any anti-choice group who closes their doors, and stops operating will no longer be a target.” It added, “But until you do, it’s open season.”
Protesters seeking to resurrect the fatally flawed Roe decision — which cut off needed debate on how to win women’s rights — released maps of the homes of conservative Supreme Court justices and are organizing pickets there. A group called Ruth Sent Us published the details of the church that conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett goes to and the name of the religious school her children attend, targeting them for attack and undermining the right to worship.
Walls were put up around the Supreme Court June 9, a day after Nicholas John Roske was arrested outside the home of Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Roske was armed with a Glock handgun, ammunition, knife, zip ties and pepper spray. He told the police he planned to kill Kavanaugh and then commit suicide. Roske’s arrest received little coverage in much of the liberal press.
“These types of actions do nothing to advance women’s rights,” Candace Wagner, Socialist Workers Party candidate for governor of Pennsylvania, told the Militant. “They are the opposite of what working people need — the opportunity to discuss and debate how we can join together to protect ourselves and our families, fight for jobs, better wages and working conditions and the many other things we need, such as access to family planning, including contraception as well as safe and secure abortion.”
A sign of the intensity of the factional warfare between Democratic and Republican parties was the decision by 27 House Democrats to vote against a bill to provide 24-hour security at the homes of all Supreme Court justices.