Government without barriers. This is our reality in Ohio and Washington.
Any constitutional checks and balances in our rapidly fading democratic republic have effectively disappeared in the state and federal government. There is no separation of powers as a bulwark against abuses of power. In Washington, as in Columbus, the executive, legislative, and judicial branches are part of the same group that holds power.
Evidence, if any was needed, of the imminent decline of our democracy in the Buckeye State and in the United States is coming rapid and furious. Ohio Republicans played the long game to secure political dominance through gerrymandering and partisan elections of state Supreme Court justices. They managed to exceed their wildest expectations. GOP majority. No limits. No sensible objection.
Ohio Democrats can only lament the Legislature’s piercing rightward turn into the MAGA abyss while their state party wanders in the desert of near irrelevance. House Republicans have the freedom to do whatever they want to do, and that’s what happened from the very start of the bad session: a raft of extreme, must-see legislation that will serve no one but upwardly mobile right-wingers.
But politicians who design voter-proof districts as a gerrymandered way to achieve total control are answerable only to their team. So well-intentioned Republican lawmakers seeking to strengthen their MAGA have rushed to propose more unjustified voter hurdles to suppress more votes, rushed to inflict more extreme cruelty on a petite segment of the population mercilessly demonized in 2024 Republican campaigns, and called for the creep of Christian nationalism along with requiring Bible breaks in the middle of public school classes.
The top priority for lawmakers returning from recess was not the health and well-being of Ohioans who are hungry and hurting and facing another rent raise, nor working parents desperate for high-quality, affordable child care, nor the state’s lowest-wage workers who do not afford necessities. NO. The urgent bill that Republicans needed to pass first and get to the governor’s desk quickly was a bill banning transgender students from using same-sex bathrooms – a pressing issue for anyone on Main Street in Ohio.
But exploiting fear of the petite transgender community in polling with a MAGA base and winning the election is all the encouragement Ohio Republicans needed to prioritize a fabricated bathroom access issue (based on nothing) and turn their heinous attack on vulnerable youth into an unrelated project quick passage bill – with the blessing of the most prominent and non-Christian religious right lobby in the state.
A series of last-minute Fox News-inspired follies will likely be passed before the session ends, and most Ohioans will be none the wiser – until it’s too behind schedule. But if you are still reading this, there is hope. Even without guardrails or institutional checks and balances in state government to stop runaway autocratic GOP rule, upheld by an even more partisan state supreme court, you still have freedom of action.
Even if Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court have committed to enabling and expanding Donald Trump’s unchecked plenary powers, affirming that the criminal president-elect is fundamentally divorced from the Constitution, you still have the freedom to act.
Even as the Republican trifecta ruling the nation pledges allegiance to the man, not the law, and gives a notoriously corrupt lawbreaker unilateral power over every part of the federal government (which currently operates independently of the White House), you have freedom of action.
In the immediate aftermath of the 2024 presidential election, Stacey Abrams, two-time Georgia gubernatorial candidate and Democratic leader, spoke directly to those who felt like throwing up their hands and remaining noiseless. She had a message for the discouraged, exhausted and rightly terrified: the fight for decency and humanity (despite failures) is not in vain. Remember the progress – not just the pain.
But, advised Abramsunlike before, it is not enough to simply oppose the nation’s slide into authoritarianism and the state autocracies that make their living on up-to-date voter suppression measures and stupid bathroom bans. We must do more than just organize and oppose racism, sexism and homophobia, and they would do each of us harm, she said. This time we must insist.
“We must insist that government and leaders respect us and our needs. And it’s not just about the president and our federal government. I’m talking about zoning boards that charge higher rents because they won’t comply, and school boards that deny books and truth to your children or your neighbors’ children…
“No more polite acceptance and justification of prejudice. We must demand more from ourselves and our leaders. We must insist on fighting for our rights, even if we think we will lose. Because the records show that we have tried, that we have filed lawsuits and complaints… We have prepared a historical report of our efforts.”
So believe in your own power to make changes. It happened on November 5. But so did the organic, grassroots effort by hundreds of thousands of Ohioans to end the blatant gerry gerrymandering that Republicans were perpetuating. For now. But, Abrams concluded, “we exist between these choices, between these moments, between these wrongs.” We are responsible.
We there are handrails. The last control of government, by and for the people. But, and this is key, only if we insist.
YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE.
