Thread by @amandacarpenter

There is a real “believability gap” regarding the authoritarian threat we are facing. But you don’t have to believe what COULD happen. Look at what IS happening right now. Could you stick with me for a thread? 🧵

Over the weekend Trump, once again, threatened to jail folks for supposedly committing election crimes.

It’s all based on nothing—he promises to jail people for actions they have not committed, based on activities that took place in 2016 that were not crimes.

Maybe you think this is an empty threat by Trump. It’s real and it’s not just from him. Look at what is happening in Texas. Attorney General Paxton’s “election integrity unit” keeps sending officers to raid homes and search people for alleged election fraud crimes. The results? A whole lot of fear, intimidation, and ONE judgment. One. washingtonpost.com/nation/2024/09…

(You may remember that Ken Paxton is the Attorney General who led the charge in corralling other GOP Attorney Generals to ask SCOTUS to cancel votes in the swing states Biden won in 2016. That seems pretty relevant here.)

Let’s move on to Florida, where DeSantis is using the power of state election police to target a ballot initiative he doesn’t like. Plainclothes police are knocking on the doors of people who signed a petition supporting the measure; one told a reporter he was “shaken” by the interaction.
tampabay.com/news/florida-p…

These unprecedented, authoritarian measures are being taken by powerful governors in big, important states. Texas! Florida! Americans are being impacted by the authoritarian threat right now. Believe it. This is what authoritarians want to put on steroids and enact on a federal level.

SO: It’s not a matter of what COULD happen sometime in the future if Trump performs well tomorrow night and wins the election.

The authoritarian playbook is being road-tested now. It has support. It has infrastructure.

2024 determines: “To what degree does American authoritarianism rise or fall?”

If Trump wins, this playbook goes national. If he loses, there remains work to be done. And either way, a lot of that work needs to happen NOW.

-end-

Edit to this sentence. It was 2020 (duh.) Thank youuuuuuu:

"You may remember that Ken Paxton is the Attorney General who led the charge in corralling other GOP Attorney Generals to ask SCOTUS to cancel votes in the swing states Biden won in 2020."

I'd like to add one more point to this thread.

The fact that Trump's Vice President, Mike Pence, led an unsuccessful commission to expose voter fraud and then was ultimately politically undone by voter fraud conspiracies is something worth taking note of in light of Trump's continued lies and the GOP's enabling of them.

(Ironic? A sad foreshadowing? A lesson in complicity? Leopards/face? Take your pick of points to make about this.)