Yesterday, Republican Florida governor Ron DeSantis called for a state military force that would not be “encumbered by the federal government.” National Guard units in Oklahoma have asked for, and been denied, exceptions to the Pentagon requirement that guard members must be vaccinated against COVID in order to participate in orders and to receive pay, and DeSantis has made his opposition to vaccine mandates his political cause. DeSantis has asked the state legislature for $3.5 million to train and equip 200 volunteers who would answer to him alone.
While other states have such forces for specific events, DeSantis simply says such a force in Florida would give him "the flexibility and the ability needed to respond to events in our state in the most effective way possible." At the same time, he has asked the legislature for $100 million for the state’s National Guard.
And yet, as Republicans around the country insist on the Big Lie, they are running up against reality, in the form of the legal system.
After World War II, Americans of all parties rallied around the idea of using the government for the good of the majority. But the idea that Americans who want the government to work for the good of the community were “socialists” regained traction with the rise of Ronald Reagan to the presidency. Republicans under Reagan focused on slashing regulations and the social safety net.
But Americans continued to support an active government, and to keep those voters from power, Republicans in the 1990s began to insist that the only way Democrats won elections was through voter fraud. Those false allegations have metastasized until we are at a moment when Republicans refuse to believe that a majority of Americans would vote for a Democratic president.
Although Joe Biden won the 2020 election by a majority of more than 7 million votes and by a decisive margin of 306 to 232 in the Electoral College (the same margin Trump had called a “landslide” in 2016), Republicans are doubling down on the idea that the election must have been stolen and they must declare independence from the “socialist” government.
Today, John Eastman, the author of the Eastman memo outlining a plan to throw out Biden’s electors and thus throw the 2020 election to Trump, has told the January 6 committee that he will plead the Fifth when he testifies before the committee. The Fifth Amendment to the Constitution protects U.S. citizens from self-incrimination. The Guardian revealed last week that Trump made phone calls to the so-called “war room” at the Willard Hotel before the January 6 insurrection and that Eastman was potentially associated with those calls.
“Dr. Eastman has a more than reasonable fear that any statements he makes pursuant to this subpoena will be used in an attempt to mount a criminal investigation against him,” his lawyer told the committee.
Yesterday, Jeffrey Clark, formerly a lawyer for the Department of Justice—one of those charged with enforcing the rule of law in this country—has told the committee that he, too, will plead the Fifth. Clark tried to involve the Justice Department itself in overruling the results of the 2020 election. Today he announced that he has a medical condition that will not allow him to testify before the January 6th committee tomorrow as planned.
The committee has postponed the deposition until December 16.