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Not Just Trump: Fights For Democracy Are Happening Across The Country

We’ve been quiet these last few weeks. Many have offered their analyses for this country’s tremendous voter swings as well their predictions about what is to come under a second Trump presidency. We wanted to make sure we had something additive, and so we refrained from piling it on further with our own hot take.

One thing is clear: in the years to come, we will see a lot of horrible things happen. We will see our undocumented friends deported, political prosecutions increase, and surveillance over dissenters grow at an alarming pace. When there is such chaos federally, it becomes easy to ignore what is happening at the state level.

And that is where we come in. Events in Texas, Florida, Louisiana, and other parts of the country have been harbingers of what happens when power takes precedence over democracy. We ignore what is happening at the local level at our peril.

At the same time, these places are where many of the most heroic fights against the expansion of the criminal legal system and the protofascist state occur.

Every month, we will highlight some of the most important fights happening in states across the country. We will also feature the groups and individuals doing critical work, fighting for and with those impacted by our increasingly cruel policies– the community activists, faith leaders, and lawyers on the front lines.

We want to ensure that we don’t forget about all the key state and local fights that are happening, often relegated to the shadows. And we hope to provide some modicum of hope to those who still believe in a world where people are treated with dignity, where we all work together to build people up rather than tearing them down to preserve artificial power. One day, we’ll get there.

Current Fights To Keep An Eye On…

  • Forced Childbirth in South Carolina. Just weeks before South Carolina’s upcoming legislative session on January 14, 2025, Republicans reintroduced a bill that would empower prosecutors to classify abortions as homicides and seek the death penalty for anyone who has one–a very real possibility in a state that has already attempted to prosecute at least one woman for surviving a miscarriage.
  • Voting Rights on the Chopping Block in North Carolina. North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper and Gov.-elect Josh Stein filed a lawsuit on December 12th to “stop the legislature’s unconstitutional and dangerous power grab” after Republicans rushed to pass Senate Bill 382 during the state’s lame-duck session. The bill, disguised as a Hurricane Helene relief bill, would weaken the power of virtually all incoming Democratic officials who were just elected a month ago, and increase the power of the new state auditor, who just happens to be a Republican.
    • The troubling components  include stripping the governor-elect of his authority to fill judicial vacancies and appoint members of the state and county election boards, knee-caping the attorney general’s ability to mount legal challenges against the legislature, and limiting the authority of the state school superintendent and lieutenant governor–all of which effectively mounts a GOP coup in protest of this past November’s big victories for North Carolinian Democrats. 
    • If the bill stands, it will flip Democratic control over election boards and further intensify GOP disenfranchisement efforts. 
  • Texas Inches Towards Becoming a Christian Theocracy. On the eve of its 89th legislative session, Texas has a $20 billion dollar surplus, and the fighting and jockeying have already started even before the session begins.  So what more fun is to come in the Lone Star state?
    • The biggest fight will undoubtedly be over “school choice,” an issue that has  long been the priority for Texas’s Governor. Despite his enormous influence, vouchers have drawn opposition from both sides of the aisle, including rural legislators who worry about what it would mean for their own public school funding.
      • How does this issue relate to an attack on our democracy? It’s simple. Vouchers can powerfully reshape schools into racial and economic monoliths. Diversity of thought is essential to a functioning democracy, and school vouchers are an effective way to kill it. Its supporters– especially the big money ones– are explicit about this fact.   
      • And vouchers provide an easier pathway to criminalizing children. Private schools have fewer controls on school resource officers. Officers can discriminate against kids for things like hairstyle, and there is little oversight in terms of how these institutions rely on the police in lieu of teaching and reasonably disciplining their students.
    • Will Ken Paxton Get Even More Power?: Another bill– which falls squarely at the intersection of the expanding the criminal net and democracy––would give the Attorney General power to prosecute election- and abortion-related offenses. There is currently a state separation of powers law that restricts his ability to unilaterally prosecute cases, but there are also new judges on the  Texas Court of Criminal Appeals who could reverse course. 
    • And Speaking of the Attorney General: The Texas AG has filed suit against a New York doctor who prescribed abortion pills to a Texas resident. The suit raises numerous terrifying concerns about privacy, the scope of the AG’s information gathering resources, and the surveillance state, not to mention bodily autonomy and the increasing role the courts will play in policing it.
    • In better news: The removal petition against recently re-elected DA Jose Garza has finally been dismissed, months after the prosecutor assigned to the petition requested that the judge grant the dismissal.    

Recaps Of Legislative Sessions Across The Country…

Louisiana

Last month, Louisiana completed its third special legislative session of the year, as the new governor raced to push through as many anti-democratic, regressive proposals as possible:

  • More Children in Adult Prisons. In a session that was supposed to be about tax reform–where the state opted to lean heavily on regressive sales tax to account for cuts to the already low income taxes–the legislature passed a constitutional amendment to strip protections for children facing criminal charges. If voters approve the new amendment, the legislature is poised to greatly expand the already long-list of charges that would enable kids to be tried as adults. This comes just months after Louisiana had become the first state in the nation to reverse a “Raise The Age” bill, making 17-year-olds now automatically “adults” in the criminal system. 
  • Power Grab Over the Justice System. Louisiana locally elects judges for civil, criminal, and even juvenile court. That may also come to an end, as the legislature approved another amendment that would bypass local control by enabling appointed, regional courts–a frightening measure in a state known for targeting the few Black-majority city governments. Mississippi used this same maneuver to divest the people of Jackson from the political power over their own local justice system. 
California

On Nov 7, 2024, California’s governor called for a special legislative session to Trump-proof California against the president-elect’s looming attacks on “the freedoms we cherish in California,” with particular emphasis on reproductive freedom, immigration, and the climate. When the special session resumes in January 2025, legislators are set to mull over:

Michigan
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