Emerging authoritarianism doesn’t look like an ideology

[Sixties Fan]

Is Tennessee a Democracy?

What happened when a Republican supermajority gained control—and wasn’t satisfied

www.theatlantic.com

 

[John Edgar Slow Horses]

The GOP House of TN does not believe in democracy.

 

[Sixties Fan]

Jen sits down with expert on authoritarianism Ruth Ben-Ghiat for a look at the mythic hold strongmen have on political systems around the world and how Trump took up that mantle here. They cover how he resurrected the spoils system, used divisive language to create a cult-like following, and his attempts to create disinformation that tears apart loyalty to anyone besides him. More importantly, they explore how deep the threat to democracy goes– and when our system is threatened, how can we fight back to restore equality and justice under the law?

 

[Sixties Fan]

Marcel Danesi is a professor of semiotics and linguistic anthropology at the University of Toronto. He is the author of the recent book, Politics, Lies and Conspiracy Theories: A Cognitive Linguistic Perspective.


Why do people believe some politicians’ lies even when they have been proven false? And why do so many of the same people peddle conspiracy theories?
Lying and conspiratorical thinking might seem to be two different problems, but they turn out to be related. I study political rhetoric and have tried to understand how populist politicians use language to develop a cult-like following, divide nations, create culture wars and instill hatred. This pattern goes back to antiquity and is seen today in leaders including former President Donald Trump, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán and Russia’s Vladimir Putin. These leaders are capable of using words and speeches to whip people into such an emotional tempest that they will do things like march on the seat of Congress or invade a neighboring country.

What makes this kind of speech worrying is that it is not just emotions like aggression they can manipulate; politicians can also use rhetoric to influence the public’s thoughts and beliefs, and spread lies and conspiracy theories. Those lies and conspiracy theories are stubbornly resistant to countervailing facts and can sow divisions that destabilize their own societies.

My research analyzes real speeches made by politicians past and present, including those of Trump, Orbán and Putin, using cognitive linguistics — a branch of linguistics that examines the relationship between language and the mind. What I have found is that throughout history, speeches by dictators and autocrats have one thing in common: they use dehumanizing metaphors to instill and propagate hatred of others.

It is well-documented that for example words like “reptiles” and “parasites” were used by the Nazi regime to compare outsiders and minorities to animals. Strongmen throughout history have referred to targeted social groups as “rats” or “pests” or “a plague.” And it’s effective regardless of whether the people who hear this language are predisposed to jump to extreme conclusions. Once someone is tuned into these metaphors, their brain actually changes in ways that make them more likely to believe bigger lies, even conspiracy theories.

These metaphors are part of a cognitive process that entraps some people in this kind of thinking while others are unaffected. Here’s how it works.

The first step to manipulating the minds of the public, or really the precondition, is that listeners need to be in the right emotional state.

In order to hack into the minds of the public, people need to feel fear or uncertainty. That could be caused by economic instability or pre-existing cultural prejudices, but the emotional basis is fear. The brain is designed to respond to fear in various ways, with its own in-built defense mechanisms which produce chemicals in the response pattern, such as cortisol and adrenaline. These chemical responses, which zip straight past our logical brains to our fight-or-flight reactions, are also activated by forms of language that instill fear, either directly (as in a vocal threat) or, more insidiously, by twisted facts which allay fears through lies and deceptive statements.


(full article online)

What Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and Viktor Orbán Understand About Your Brain

Why do some people who support Trump also wind up believing conspiracy theories? There’s a scientific explanation for that.

www.politico.com

 

[John Edgar Slow Horses]

Most MAGA know exactly what Donald is and is not.

They want revenge and power, and as such, will ride him to the bitter end.

 

[lennypartiv]

The GOP House of TN does not believe in democracy.

You're probably upset because they banned drag shows.

 

[Sixties Fan]

[ Following in the Trump footsteps promise of Carnage during his inauguration, De Santis is promising a similar bloody administration ]

According to The Hill, this isn’t the first time DeSantis has used this harsh rhetoric. A few weeks ago, the Florida man spoke to Real America’s Voice (you can tell how far right this outlet is by how “real” and “America” it is) for an interview. Speaking about the need to completely change the Department of Defense (where this mythical “deep state” resides), DeSantis explained:

“You know, they may have to slit some throats. And it’s a lot harder to do that if these are people that you’ve trained with in the past or that you know. So we’re going to have somebody out there, you know, be very firm, very strong, but they are going to make sure that we have the best people in the best positions, and there’s not going to be necessarily prior relationships that would cloud that judgment.”

But the deep state isn’t the only target of his conspiracy theories and threats. DeSantis recently unveiled his 10-point “Declaration of Economic Independence” plan. It is basically the same plan as Trump’s. The Florida governor blamed big tech for the financial strains being experienced by the middle class. But before you go and call DeSantis a pinko, it is important to know that he wasn’t saying cutting taxes for the wealthy, taking away consumer protections, and not holding the richest corporations accountable helped lead to growing economic disparity.

No, DeSantis blames middle-class economic struggles on COVID-19 lockdowns.

“This was a major transfer of wealth, from middle-class people and small businesses, to a handful, maybe six or seven major corporations. You know, Apple’s market cap is $3 trillion now. Amazon, massive growth. Facebook, all these companies. You wonder why Facebook was censoring dissent about COVID lockdowns? Because they benefited from doing this.”

This version of MAGA-mollifying is the new normal for Republican candidates. The days of being able to simply say you don’t believe women should have rights (while not expecting to be held accountable) are over. DeSantis is simply one of the grosser iterations of this phenomenon.


(full article online)

DeSantis says he will start 'slitting throats on day one' if elected president

Florida governor�and raging anti-education autocrat Ron DeSantis is still running for president. In recent weeks, the DeSantis campaign has run into some predictable problems: People don’t really ...

www.dailykos.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

Part 1

While it may be satisfying to call Trump and his enablers “fascists,” there’s a deeper truth here, with which America must come to terms: the Trump/MAGA faction of the GOP has declared war on democracy itself.

Funded by rightwing billionaires who, themselves, view democracy as an inconvenient pain-in-the-ass and — when Democrats talk about them “paying their fair share” — an actual threat, these MAGA Republicans have also joined forces with wealthy international elements dedicated to ending democracy all around the world.

They’re supported by a media machine itself largely created by rightwing billionaires — Murdoch’s Fox “News,” over 1500 rightwing radio stations, and think-tanks and publications based in every state in the union — dedicated to tearing down democracy in our country and promoting the interests of oligarchs, the fossil fuel industry, and autocrats.

They gin up suspicion of racial, religious, and gender minorities to replace the natural distrust working class people have historically had of corporate bosses and the morbidly rich.

Their assertion that Jews and Blacks are colluding to “replace” working class white people has already sparked a racial war whose victims include eleven Jews killed at the Tree of Life Synagogue, nine Blacks slaughtered at Mother Emmanuel Church, and twenty-three Hispanics murdered in El Paso (among others).

The main weapon they’re using in this war against democracy is distrust. After 247 years, they want Americans to believe that our form of government is unreliable, feeble, and has been taken over by “weak” liberals bent on feminizing our nation’s men.

This then becomes the foundation of the homophobic and transphobic hate we’re seeing displayed across our nation literally every day.

From Tucker Carlson’s testicle tanning to Josh Hawley’s new book on masculinity to groups terrorizing public school teachers and trans kids, their sales pitch is that only “strong, forceful” leadership can “restore” America (and American white men) to a mythic greatness.

This obsession with virility and strength — the calling card of fascists and dictators worldwide and throughout history — has even transformed a large portion of American Christianity. Russell Moore, Editor of Christianity Today, shared his concerns with NPR in an interview earlier this month:

“[My concern] was the result of having multiple pastors tell me, essentially, the same story about quoting the Sermon on the Mount, parenthetically, in their preaching — ‘turn the other cheek’ — [and] to have someone come up after to say, ‘Where did you get those liberal talking points?’
“And what was alarming to me is that in most of these scenarios, when the pastor would say, ‘I'm literally quoting Jesus Christ,’ the response would not be, ‘I apologize.’ The response would be, ‘Yes, but that doesn't work anymore. That’s weak.’ And when we get to the point where the teachings of Jesus himself are seen as subversive to us, then we’re in a crisis.”

Trump's Crimes Against Democracy Tower Far Above His 4 Indictments

While it may be satisfying to call Trump and his enablers “fascists,” there’s a deeper truth here, with which America must come to terms: the Trump/MAGA faction of the GOP has declared war on democracy itself. Funded by rightwing billionaires who,...

www.dailykos.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

Part 2

This is nothing new. From Greece’s Alexander the Great, to Rome’s various Caesars, to Napoleon, Mussolini, and Hitler, autocrats have gained popular support by declaring themselves the saviors of a nation’s men and their strength, virility, and potency.

It’s why rape has been used as a weapon of war by every one of those leaders throughout history, why Putin is using rape against Ukrainian civilians today, and why Republicans today rally around a man recently convicted of one rape and credibly accused of dozens of others including raping a 13-year-old girl.

Violence is antithetical to democracy, but is a favorite tool of authoritarian leaders like Putin and Trump. Putin’s use of state violence has successfully cowed most of Russia; Trump’s call to violence on January 6th was answered resoundingly and is today being justified by his Republican followers in and out of Congress.

The key to inciting that violence and then using it as a political weapon is to claim victimhood: for the leader to declare he is getting revenge for all the slights inflicted on his followers by those he considers his political enemies.

As Nicolo Machiavelli noted, in 1532, in his masterpiece on political manipulation, The Prince, when a leader convinces his followers that they’re victims and he’s the one who will get revenge on their behalf:

“Words can’t express the loving welcome such a savior would get…: the thirst for revenge, the unswerving trust, the devotion, the tears. What doors would be closed to such a man? Who would refuse to obey him? What envy could stand in his way? What [man] would not bow his knee?”

Indeed, just this past weekend a Republican member of Congress called for more violence — he used the synonym “force” — in the service of today’s GOP’s autocratic vision.

Florida Republican Matt Gaetz told the crowd at a Trump rally, with Trump proudly standing next to him, that they must be willing to be “a hundred times” more aggressive (“harder”) than even Trump himself:

“Mr. President, I cannot stand these people that are destroying our country. They are opening our borders. They are weaponizing our federal law enforcement against patriotic Americans who love this nation as we should. …
“We love standing with you. But we know that only through force do we make any change in a corrupt town like Washington, D.C.
“And so, to all my friends here in Iowa, when you see them come for this man, know that they are coming for our movement and they are coming for all of us. And as hard as you see him work, I need you working 10 times harder, a hundred times harder.”

Trump’s actions in 2020 led to a half-million unnecessary American deaths from Covid; his followers shrug at the violence implicit in that. After all, hard men don’t cry.

But elevating masculinity and violence above democracy is just one part of today’s Republican war against our form of government. Other aspects, long embraced by authoritarian leaders, include:

— Hatred of a free press and the eventual destruction of same, replacing it with a press that claims to be news but in fact only parrots the party’s line.
— Distrust of democratic governments (like ours and members of the EU).
— Embrace of autocrats like Hungary’s Viktor Orbán and Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
— Corruption of public officials with promises of money and power.
— Seizure of the “stabilizer” of a democracy: it’s court system.
— Impoverishing a middle class that may rebel against autocracy.
— Training young people to hate the same minorities the party used as foils to seize power.
— Rewriting history and blurring its meaning.
— Ending our constitutional form of government in favor of a Trump-like strongman rule-by-decree.
— Threatening law enforcement when they don’t bend their knee to the strongman.

While rightwing billionaires have been rehearsing for a re-write of the Constitution for about a decade, trying to get enough states to go along with calling a constitutional convention, Trump has gone so far as to call for an end to our system of government altogether.

Just eight months ago, he explicitly laid it out, calling “for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.”

Trump's Crimes Against Democracy Tower Far Above His 4 Indictments

While it may be satisfying to call Trump and his enablers “fascists,” there’s a deeper truth here, with which America must come to terms: the Trump/MAGA faction of the GOP has declared war on democracy itself. Funded by rightwing billionaires who,...

www.dailykos.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

Part 3

Trump is not alone in this; he’s succeeded, in seven short years, in transforming virtually the entire GOP and thus much of America. Vivek Ramaswamy proclaimed last week that:

“Most Republicans favor reform. I’m on the side of Revolution.”

Trump has taught his GOP acolytes well: if violence is necessary, do it and get it over and done with quickly. As Machiavelli counseled would-be leaders:

“It’s worth noting that when you take hold of a state, you must assess how much violence and cruelty will be necessary and get it over with at once, so as not to have to be cruel on a regular basis. When you’ve stopped using violence your subjects will be reassured and you can then win them over with generosity.”

A 2021 survey found that almost 40 percent of Republicans agree that “if elected leaders will not protect America, the people must do it themselves, even if it requires violent actions.”
Fully 12 million Americans believe violence would be justified today to return Trump to the White House.

This theme of violence against those who have wronged white MAGA Republicans is as real as Hitler’s assertion that Jews had “stabbed Germany in the back” at the end of World War I. As Trump promised his followers in Waco, Texas this past March:

“In 2016, I declared, ‘I am your voice.’ And now, I say to you again tonight, ‘I am your warrior. I am your justice.’ And I took a lot of heat for this one, but I only lead it in the proper way. For those who have been wronged and betrayed, of which there are many people out there that have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution. We will take care of it. We will take care of it.”

More recently, he’s issued thinly veiled threats of violence against the prosecutors, judges, and even grand jurors who’ve participated in holding him to account for his many crimes against our nation.

Yesterday, on his Nazi-infested social media site, Trump referred to the Black judge in DC and the Black prosecutors in New York and Atlanta as “Riggers.” That one doesn’t even take a secret decoder ring.

And, as you’re reading these words, the names of Georgia grand jurors are being passed around on neofascist bulletin boards with an eye to revenge, intimidation, and even murder.
Marjorie Taylor Greene, who said if she’d been running the January 6th insurrection it would have been armed and “we would have won,” is now using pictures of herself in a military vehicle before the Capitol building carrying an assault weapon to gin up political support among those who would embrace political violence.

Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott are experimenting in their states with SS-style armed militias loyal and answerable exclusively to the governors. Other Red states are almost certainly considering the same. When citizens complain about these types of gestapo tactics, they’re attacked as being “weak.”

As astonishing as it may seem, this war against democratic ideals has gone so far that many members of the GOP have actually taken the side of Russia in their terrorist war against the citizens of Ukraine. So much for the GOP’s Nixon-era slogan, “Better dead than red.”
As Senator Chris Murphy noted:

“Trump’s admiration for Putin, it’s turned into a collective right wing obsession. Turn on [Fox News] virtually any night and you’re going to hear him lionizing Putin, and pushing often line for line Russian disinformation. Elon Musk uncritically blasts out Russian propaganda about the war to his 120 million plus followers.
“Steve Bannon says that Putin is the leader of the anti-woke fight globally. Donald Trump Jr., I follow him on social media, he’s relentlessly making fun of Zelensky online. QAnon sites say that Russia’s war in Ukraine is righteous because it’s just the next front of the war against these global sex traffickers that apparently are operating out of pizza parlors in Northwest DC and Ukraine.”

Rightwing billionaires have taken over the training and grooming of young lawyers for our court system, packing a Supreme and Appeals court system to their liking. They run political operations in every state and at the federal level: they’ve become the tail wagging the dog of Republican politics. The billionaire network in America has, according to Politico, three times more employees and a larger budget than the GOP itself.

In this, these billionaires would be wise to read German industrialist Fritz Thyssen’s apologetic book I Paid Hitler. He tells how he pressured German President von Hindenburg to appoint Hitler as chancellor, and then lobbied the Association of German Industrialists, that country’s and era’s version of the US Chamber of Commerce, to donate 3 million Reichsmarks to the Nazi Party for the 1933 election. It brought Hitler to power — and eventually Thyssen himself had to flee Germany for his life.

Like Thyssen’s story, history is littered with examples of elites and average people who supported populist strongman movements, only to rue the day they worked to end democracy.

Which brings us to the most pressing question of our era: will today’s Republican politicians and their billionaire funders also repeat history and succeed in turning America into the fascist hellscape of Greene’s picture?

Hopefully, the GOP will regain its sanity, ideally after a severe drubbing in the polls in 2024. But nothing can be taken for granted: we all must do everything we can to wake up friends, neighbors, and relatives and work to reestablish and strengthen democracy in our now-badly-wounded republic.

Trump's Crimes Against Democracy Tower Far Above His 4 Indictments

While it may be satisfying to call Trump and his enablers “fascists,” there’s a deeper truth here, with which America must come to terms: the Trump/MAGA faction of the GOP has declared war on democracy itself. Funded by rightwing billionaires who,...

www.dailykos.com

 

[lennypartiv]

The GOP House of TN does not believe in democracy.

Tennessee doesn't believe in drag shows. I bet that upsets you and your liberal friends.

 

[Sixties Fan]

Tennessee doesn't believe in drag shows. I bet that upsets you and your liberal friends.

Tennessee is a Racist, Homophobic and Transphobic State. There are lots of people in that State who are decent and know how to treat others with respect even if they do not understand them.

Tennessee and all other Red States will have to change, or they are going to see their voters vote for Democratic candidates who do know how to respect all.

 

[Sixties Fan]

[ Christians begging to stop Trump and reclaim Christianity ]

Dear Faithful America member,

This has become a stunning era that our children and grandchildren will ask us about:

An ex-president now faces trial in four separate criminal cases, indicted by multiple grand juries made up of everyday Americans. Though this is a grave chapter in our history, these 91 charges are necessary to preserve democracy. No one is above the law, and Donald Trump and his co-conspirators must be tried like any other citizens.

Each indictment defends a different aspect of our democracy: Election results, civic institutions, checks and balances, and campaign finance laws. Yet despite the Christian moral imperative to support democracy and justice, the religious right has predictably rushed to support Trump, come hell or high water.

Evangelist and conspiracy theorist Franklin Graham told Newsmax the January 6 indictment is "an attempt to... inflict enough political wounds." Televangelist Mike Huckabee also politicized the charges, calling them an "abuse of government power that we are used to seeing in third-world dictatorships." Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and TPUSA Faith founder Charlie Kirk have even blasphemously compared arresting Trump to arresting Jesus.

The list goes on. We can't let far-right Christian nationalism represent Christianity in America. Let's show the prosecutors indicting Trump that they have our support.

Add your name: Christians support the indictments against Donald Trump, and we thank the prosecutors >>

Let's be honest about what the MAGA movement and its Christian nationalism truly are -- and about the nature of the threat facing democracy:

It is Christofascism.

According to Yale's Professor Jason Stanley -- the son of European refugees who fled Hitler -- fascism is not just a form of ultra-nationalist government, but also a set of authoritarian political strategies used to seize power for a select in-group.

In this case, that in-group is straight, white, conservative Christian men. And as Stanley writes in his book, "How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them,"

"Fascist politics includes many distinct strategies: the mythic past, propaganda, anti-intellectualism, unreality, hierarchy, victimhood, law and order, sexual anxiety, appeals to the heartland, and a dismantling of public welfare and unity."

Sound familiar?

There's no doubt that the MAGA forces of Christofascism are doing everything they can to prevent a fully multiracial, inclusive democracy in order to grow power for themselves. For democracy to prevail, we must first protect both the rule of law and the integrity of our elections by supporting these four indictments.

Throughout history, there have been Christian leaders and institutions who were complicit in fascism, like the Deutsche Christen under Adolf Hitler -- or the Russian Orthodox Church today under Vladimir Putin.

But there have also been many Christians who opposed fascism and authoritarianism -- like El Salvador's Archbishop Oscar Romero, or the German theologian, Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

As Trump rallies the religious right by claiming that his arrest represents an attack on all Christians, we now face a choice: Whose example will we follow?

Will we be silent and complicit in the hijacking of our faith, like the Third Reich's Deutsche Christen?





[Faithful America ]

 

[Remodeling Maidiac]

The right along with Lindsey is intent on who is allowed to live in our society and if they must they will kill those they see as malignant to their standards.

Dumbest post of the week.

We are supposed to control who comes in. It should be merit based not skin color based.

The last politician to kill citizens without a reason was Obama and his use of drones as weapons.

As to the op.
Number 1 is Biden to a T
Number 2 is every msm news network.
Number 3 is the Democrat party trying to stack the courts and let in new states for more power.

I didn't read beyond that because it's all hyperbolic bullshit that could apply to every politician we've ever elected.

It is funny that the op uses FEAR while decrying the use of FEAR in his op. Too funny watching hacks step in their own horseshit

 

[Remodeling Maidiac]

Tennessee is a Racist, Homophobic and Transphobic State. There are lots of people in that State who are decent and know how to treat others with respect even if they do not understand them.

Tennessee and all other Red States will have to change, or they are going to see their voters vote for Democratic candidates who do know how to respect all.

The use of the word phobic is RETARDED. You people are LOSING THE CULTURE WAR and the walls of your bubble are so thick that you don't even realize it. You the EX vp of marketing for Budweiser by chance?

 

[Moonglow]

Dumbest post of the week.

We are supposed to control who comes in. It should be merit based not skin color based.

The last politician to kill citizens without a reason was Obama and his use of drones as weapons.

As to the op.
Number 1 is Biden to a T
Number 2 is every msm news network.
Number 3 is the Democrat party trying to stack the courts and let in new states for more power.

I didn't read beyond that because it's all hyperbolic bullshit that could apply to every politician we've ever elected.

It is funny that the op uses FEAR while decrying the use of FEAR in his op. Too funny watching hacks step in their own horseshit

It has never been as such in the history of the US...So there is that.

 

[Moonglow]

The use of the word phobic is RETARDED. You people are LOSING THE CULTURE WAR and the walls of your bubble are so thick that you don't even realize it. You the EX vp of marketing for Budweiser by chance?

If they were losing the culture war it would revert back to those people being ostracized and killed like it used to be when they had to stay in the closet. It is going at the same rate and course as inter-racial marriages.

 

[lennypartiv]

I see we have the same people arguing for immorality.

 

[John Edgar Slow Horses]

The culture war for a white preference 1950s society is immoral.

 

[Sixties Fan]

[ Like Florida, Texas thinks it is its own country]

This story was produced in partnership with the Garrison Project, an independent, nonpartisan organization addressing the crisis of mass incarceration and policing.

On Sept. 1, a bill with the pithy title “An Act Relating to State Preemption of and the Effect of Certain State or Federal Law on Certain Municipal and County Regulation” will take effect in Texas. The bill —signed into law by Gov. Greg Abbott in June—was given a much zippier name by its opponents: “Death Star,” because it could obliterate whole swaths of city and county laws and regulations.

“Basically, it’s the greatest transfer of power away from the public and into the hands of a few people in Austin that we’ve ever seen,” said Texas state Rep. John Bryant. “This handful of people that want to control our state do not want cities acting in their own interests. They do not want any city making policies that get in the way of their ideological and financial objectives.” Maybe Bryant and other Death Star critics are right—but we’ll know how big the transfer of power truly is only after everyone figures out what the bill actually says and does, and only if it survives the legal challenges several of Texas’ biggest cities have already filed against it.

The goal of Death Star is simple. The deeply conservative Texas Legislature wants to effectively deny cities—the state’s large Democratic-leaning cities, Houston, San Antonio, and Austin in particular—the ability to pass local laws and regulations in eight major policy areas: agriculture, business and commerce, finance, insurance, labor, natural resource law, occupational law, and property law. And it does all this in a bill that is 10 single-spaced pages long, nearly one page of which is legislative findings, not actual law. Which is where the problems begin.

Death Star does not aim to affirmatively lay out regulations at the state level; it simply attempts to thwart local regulations. Thus, the entirely of the provision that denies local governments the ability to regulate the insurance industry is just this: “Unless expressly authorized by another statute, a municipality or county may not adopt, enforce, or maintain an ordinance, order, or rule regulating conduct in a field of regulation that is occupied by a provision of this code. An ordinance, order, or rule that violates this section is void, unenforceable, and inconsistent with this code.” That’s it. It then repeats this language across all the various other fields, although in a few cases it adds an extra clause or two to identify specific subfields it really wants to make sure are preempted.

Problematically, as the city of Houston points out in the lawsuit it filed last month challenging Death Star as violating the Texas Constitution, these provisions lack any clarity. The new law, for example, never defines what it means for state law to “occup[y] a provision of this code” outside of the few explicit provisions noted above, making it very hard for cities to know what regulations are at risk. Houston has argued that it is unconstitutionally vague and that the Texas Constitution and state Supreme Court decisions have made this sort of “field preemption”—in which the state does not replace local law with a state alternative but simply declares whole areas ineligible for local rule making—unconstitutional under Texas law. San Antonio joined the lawsuit late last month.

The sweeping language of Death Star is likely seen more as a feature than a bug by the bill’s drafter, state Rep. Dustin Burrows, who all but brags that it is going to fall to the courts to decide what regulations are actually preempted. Importantly, the bill contains a provision that allows any individual or trade association to challenge any local regulation in court—and, if they prevail, requires the county or city to pay all the challenger’s costs and “reasonable” legal fees. Those who challenge a regulation and lose have to pay those costs only if the court finds the challenge “frivolous,” leaving the city to pay its own costs (though not those of the challenger) if it wins cases the courts see as non-frivolous. So, county and city governments assume financial risk if they attempt to defend a regulation and clarify Death Star’s reach.




(full article online)

Texas Takes Attacks on Austin to New Level With “Death Star” Law

The goal of Death Star is simple.

slate.com