A police crackdown on students protesting Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza. An attorney general throwing the book at the antiwar activists. Reckless accusations of antisemitism against anyone who disagrees. Protesters’ doors kicked down and raided by armed police. It’s just another day in Donald Trump’s America.
Except in this case in question, none of it was done by Trump or even happened while he was president. All of these things happened in a Democrat-controlled state, at the hands of a Democratic attorney general, almost all of it while a Democrat was president.
Felony charges were brought against seven antiwar student protesters by Michigan attorney general Dana Nesssel last year, charges that have been criticized as an assault on the rights to free speech and protest — and which were, fortunately and unexpectedly, dropped by Nessel earlier this week. The whole episode is a reminder that as much as the Democratic Party rightly charges Trump and other right-wing political opponents with authoritarianism, its own officials have often acted indistinguishably from the president in defense of Israel’s bloody war on Gaza.
The reasons behind the dropped charges are complicated, but it’s clear that public outrage played a role. In her statement on Monday, Nessel complained that even though she was sure a jury would have convicted the students, the case had “become a lightning rod of contention,” and that “baseless and absurd allegations of bias” helped lend “a circus-like atmosphere to these proceedings,” leading her to conclude that continuing to pursue the charges was not “a prudent use of my department’s resources.”
Nessel has been the target of sustained public pressure for prosecuting the activists. The bias charges Nessel complained about partly referred to the words of Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib, who alleged “bias” within Nessel’s office. Nessel never brought charges against right-leaning…
Auteur: Branko Marcetic
