Well, the Republicans have really taken off their masks  wait, what am I saying, the GQP doesn’t wear masks – I mean, their Klan hoods this week at Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings.

Every time a Republican Senator stands up to question this brilliant Black woman, they can’t seem to help but say the quiet parts out loud.

First, you had Marsha Blackburn and Tom Cotton accusing her with no evidence of having a “personal hidden agenda” to indoctrinate Americans with the “racist vitriol” of so-called “Critical Race Theory,” just because she’s Black. (NOTE: No Senator has ever asked any white nominee about this fake “issue!”)

Next, you had Ted Cruz reading to her from a children’s book and asking her if she thinks babies are racist. (After the childish tantrum his GQP colleague Lindsey Graham threw yesterday, I wish she’d said, “The only racist baby I’ve ever met is Senator Graham.”)

Then there was Mike Braun, who actually said out loud to reporters yesterday that he believes the Supreme Court was wrong to strike down state laws banning interracial marriage!

These GQP jackaloons aren’t even trying to hide their racism anymore!

But racism isn’t the only thing the GQP has failed to hide during these hearings. They’re also giving us an inside look at what their agenda will be if they retake Congress and the White House, and it’s seriously scary stuff.

The GQP always starts these hearings with a bunch of calls to overturn Roe v. Wade and end legal abortion, and this time has been no different.

But what’s new this time is all the other landmark cases they now say they’d like to see overturned, plus all the other potential laws in the pipeline they want Judge Jackson to promise in advance to support or oppose.

Take Marsha Blackburn, for example, whose unhinged rants over the past few days have included:

• Her opinion that the 1965 Supreme Court decision that overturned state laws banning married couples from using contraception was “Constitutionally unsound.”
   
• Transphobic attacks on transgender women and girls – she called them “biological males” and claimed they are “stealing opportunities” from “biological females,” and has suggested they be banned from sports and bathroom/changing facilities.
   
• Her belief that teaching kids about the existence of racism, privilege, and differing gender identities and family structures is a violation of parents’ “rights” to keep their children ignorant about such things.

Or John Cornyn, who spent his time with Judge Jackson slamming the Supreme Court’s 2015 ruling that struck down state laws banning same-sex marriage.

Cornyn said legalizing same-sex marriage created a conflict “between what people may believe as a matter of their religious doctrine or faith and what the federal government says is the law of the land.”

To her credit, Judge Jackson answered perfectly: “That is the nature of a right. When there is a right, it means that there are limitations on regulation, even if people are regulating pursuant to their sincerely held religious beliefs.”

In other words, you can’t legislate your religious beliefs, no matter how sincerely held, onto other people.

Let’s recap – in the last three days alone, we’ve watched multiple Republican Senators say on the record that they believe states should be allowed to ban:

• Interracial marriages
• Same-sex marriages
• Abortion
• Contraceptives
• Teaching kids about racism and inequality
• Teaching kids about sexual orientation and gender identity
• Gender-affirming policies for trans people

… and that neither federal lawmakers nor the Supreme Court should be able to stop them.

Given the state-level attacks on all of these fronts happening in the nation’s Republican-run states right now, this is damned frightening stuff.

Especially because “let the states decide” argument is just a fallback measure or a first step toward what they really want:  To retake control of Washington and pass these bans at the national level.

If you think these authoritarian thugs will limit their assaults on racial and religious minorities, women, LGBTQIA+ people, and other marginalized folks to Florida, Texas, and the other red states, you’re dreaming.

No, they’ll stop at nothing until they put Trump, DeSantis or some other wannabe dictator in the White House and give him a rubber-stamp Congress to do his bidding – which really means the bidding of the radical Religious Right whack-jobs who fund their campaigns.

You and I have got to stop these people.

Please, will you rush $20.22 today to help No Dem Left Behind take the fight to the GQP right where they live, in America’s “red” states and districts?

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We have a winning plan to reach rural and working-class voters and flip their districts blue to protect and expand our Democratic majority and keep the GQP from destroying democracy as we know it.

But we’re up against BILLIONS in dark money from the shady corporate super-PACs, special interest groups, and billionaires who fund our opposition, so it’s going to take all of us pitching in to defeat them.

If you can afford more than $20.22 today, I really hope you’ll give it. But if you can’t afford that much, then whatever you can contribute, even if it’s just a few dollars, will be crucial to our chances of winning.

Whatever you can do today, I’m incredibly grateful for your support.

Sappers clear the way, Airborne all the way!

--Richard