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Editor's Note

A version of this editorial first appeared in the Aug. 18 edition of The Inquirer and Mirror, of Nantucket. It is republished with permission and modified for our local readership.

In the summer of 1943, as World War II raged, E.B. White wrote a small piece in the Notes and Comment section of the New Yorker magazine on the meaning of democracy. One item on his list of things that described democracy was a letter to the editor.

We could not agree more. It is as true today as it was back in 1943 that the letters to the editor section of the opinion pages is the marketplace of ideas. The very act of putting your thoughts in logical and readable order, keeping civil while you disagree and signing your name to it somehow pushes letter-writers above the social media fray of angry opinions.

Recent letters to the editor are like a cross-section of Berkshire concerns: a police chief flagging the need to invest in our youth; comments on the new contours of the annual Josh Billings RunAground; reader reactions to Eagle columnists commentaries; impassioned discussion of a residential tax exemption proposal in Stockbridge; praise for a Shakespeare in the Park production at The Common in Pittsfield.

The coming days opinion pages could very well have a series of letters arguing the opposite sides of all these issues. That is the whole point. Everyone gets their say. Nobody has to agree with us. Everybody, however, has to make their argument in a civil manner and sign their name to it.

And officials might be well served if they read the letters as the voice of the people. The controversial North Street redesign, the debate over where to house Berkshire women inmates, the localized effects of economic and political uncertainty all have been addressed thoroughly this summer in letters to the editor. Meanwhile, a massive influx of letters pertaining to a heated election season show a healthy share of Berkshire voters are engaged with these pivotal races that will shape the countys future. It also demonstrates a citizenry ready and willing to take up that great democratic tradition of civilly convincing their neighbors in the public square. Our leaders ought to be listening to those voices especially those seeking election or reelection to public office.

One type of letter is a reminder that life in a small community can often be different than life in other places: the letter of thanks. These simple thank-you notes for somebody who has helped the writer out in one way or another, often in some small way that did not seem small to the writer, are a reminder of how one should act and that life is not always about rabid political arguments.

E.B. White wrote his essay almost eight decades ago. It is easy enough to say it was a different time, but it is a helpful reminder of how we might still see ourselves reflected in the idea of democracy.

Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time, he wrote. It is the feeling of privacy in the voting booths, the feeling of communion in the libraries, the feeling of vitality everywhere. Democracy is a letter to the editor. Democracy is the score at the beginning of the ninth. It is an idea which hasnt been disproved yet, a song the words of which have not gone bad.

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Our Opinion: Letters to the editor are democracy in action - Berkshire Eagle

The North Carolina Supreme Court ruled decisively for the forces of democracy last week, setting the stage to invalidate illicitly proposed amendments to the state constitution. This immediately creates a remedy for voters targeted for exclusion by legislators the courts already determined to be illegitimately elected due to racially gerrymandered legislative maps.

Beyond North Carolina, the ruling provides a blueprint to advocates for democracy to challenge similar laws in their own states courts, where many more voting rights cases will be tried following the U.S. Supreme Courts ruling that partisan gerrymandering is beyond the reach of federal courts.

This case, North Carolina NAACP v. Moore, challenged two of the amendments proposed by a legislature elected from districts the Supreme Court deemed unconstitutional racial gerrymanders where redistricting maps are drawn to favor one party over the other before the amendments were even proposed. After being ordered to draw new legislative districts, the North Carolina General Assembly proposed six amendments to the state constitution, two of which were challenged in this case. One of the amendments added a photo ID requirement for in-person voting to the state constitution. The other reduced the maximum state income tax rate from 10% to 7%.

North Carolina is on the front lines of the battle between democracy and antidemocracy. The state has seen racial gerrymandering, partisan gerrymandering, unconstitutional voter ID laws, constitutional amendments proposed to entrench an unconstitutionally empowered legislative majority, a House of Representatives race rerun due to fraud, and a surprise special session to rewrite the relationship between the executive and legislative branches of the states government. The state legislature has found itself in court so often, it appealed to the Supreme Court to have counsel other than the democratically elected state attorney general.

That all stems from the 2010 midterm elections, when millionaire businessman Art Pope, the states own low-rent version of the Koch Brothers, funded a massive effort to win marginal state legislative seats to control the upcoming redistricting process.

The resulting gerrymander has consistently handed legislative supermajorities to Republicans elected with only minority support from voters. You see, the will of the people of North Carolina frequently favors the Democrats, and so the antidemocrats in the state Republican party work tirelessly to prevent the popular will from controlling the political process.

None of that should happen in a democracy.

Black and Brown people targeted by racially manipulated maps designed to weaken their voting power shouldnt still have to fight for their right to vote year in and year out. Yet, antidemocratic forces would rather rely on the old habits of segregation than come up with an inclusive political message. There should be a remedy when antidemocratic legislators abuse the democratic process to entrench their power; the people should have a means of clawing back their sovereign power other than simply voting out the bad actors in an unfair contest.

Ultimately, the North Carolina Supreme Court did not rule on whether the amendments were validly enacted; they were remanded for further consideration. But the process of getting to that result was a master class in political law from one of my favorite movement judges, Anita Earls. Prior to joining the bench, Justice Earls spent two decades as a civil rights advocate in both government and nonprofit organizations.

While the trial court accepted the NAACPs arguments, ruling the two amendments void due to the unconstitutional composition of the legislature that enacted them, Earls took a more nuanced approach. She grounded her ruling in the equitable principle that when someone holds a position illegitimately, it may not be practical to replace them immediately, and so courts tend to treat their official acts no differently than if they were legitimate. But because its an equitable principle, the court needs to consider whats fair and allowing legislators elected using racist maps to entrench a racist voting restriction in the state constitution is anything but fair.

As consequential as it is, Earls opinion is a narrow one. While the amendments in question may be challenged, their validity must be evaluated on equitable principles. A constitutional amendment proposed by an invalidly selected legislature is only subject to challenge if it either entrenches the political power of its proponents against democratic accountability, perpetuates the ongoing exclusion of some category of voters from the political process, or intentionally discriminates against a category of citizens who were also discriminated against in the election of the illegitimate legislature.

This doctrine is likely sufficient to defeat the voter ID amendment but may not be broad enough to defeat the income tax restriction, if the matter even heads back to the trial court now.

In his dissent, Justice Philip Berger Jr. invoked two federal constitutional provisions, providing a clear invitation for an appeal to the Supreme Court. And while his claim that this matter is a political question courts cant review rings hollow, his constitutional arguments may give the courts Republican supermajority enough ground to interfere.

The Supreme Court is acutely aware the U.S. Constitution is not a democratic document. The defense of such an appeal almost relies on the hope that Chief Justice John Roberts, who authored the opinion in Shelby County that dismantled the Voting Rights Act, will accept the argument that Earls opinion is entirely a matter of state law. This hinges on whether hell be able to convince one of his conservative colleagues to respect states rights when it actually benefits marginalized people.

We should recognize Justice Earls opinion for what it is: An extraordinary remedy for the extraordinary act of attempting to amend the state constitution to solidify partisan gains. While ordinary legislation can simply be reversed by a later legislature elected fairly, constitutional amendments are more permanent, and courts must be able to void them when they are illegitimately enacted toward illegitimate ends.

Brandon Hasbrouck is a Washington and Lee University School of Law assistant professor who researches and teaches in the areas of criminal law, criminal procedure, movement law, and abolition. Find him on Twitter at @b_hasbrouck.

Originally posted here:
Checked and balanced: North Carolina Supreme Court clinches a win for democracy - The Boston Globe

Conspiracy theorists are unlikely to enter Parliament. Photo / George Heard

OPINION:

This week's anti-whatever protest outside Parliament was a fizzer.

The march was trailered with much hand wringing that it might spiral into the occupation that disfigured Pipitea in February and March this year, or at least descend into the violence and aggression of the camp's last days - or even the kind witnessed at last year's anti-vaxx marches.

Sadly, the crowd was peppered with misogynist slogans directed at the Prime Minister, but it would be misleading to suggest these are particularly novel. One slogan - "ditch the bitch" - has been used on multiple woman politicians in this country, and I'm sure abroad.

This doesn't excuse it, but it would be misleading to suggest the venom of this protest is in any sense peculiar to our own time.

New Zealand has always had a lunatic fringe. Members of John Key's office will tell stories of fairly violent and conspiracist anti-TPP protesters trailing the prime minister through the regions.

There are perfectly good reasons to dislike the TPP (and its successor the CPTPP), but it is not, as one marcher proclaimed, a "conspiracy to commit treason".

We have changed as a country since the TPP marches. The conspiracy fringe does appear to have grown, and it appears to have grown more violent.

The Parliament occupation is remarkable because, while deluded, paranoid, vulnerable, and violent people have always existed here and abroad; we've never seen so many of them all at once, and so empowered to bring their worldview to the heart of power (Wellington is not the heart of our democracy, by the way - call me sentimental, but the heart of democracy, in my view, is disbursed, like a benign horcrux, across everyone privileged enough to enjoy the franchise).

You can't come away from watching the excellent Fire and Fury documentary, or read the equally excellent reporting from across the media of the people at the heart of this movement and conclude they don't present some kind of threat, first to themselves, and then to public figures, including politicians and the members of the media.

The most frightening aspect of the protest wasn't the slogans, but the fake court that convicted all MPs of crimes against humanity, but this wasn't frightening because it represented a threat to the real judicial system, but because of the potentially sinister and violent motivations of the people associated with it.

There's a tendency to draw the wrong lesson from these sorts of events. One of the fears, articulated earlier this year and capitalised upon by Brian Tamaki on the forecourt on Tuesday is that this fringe will enter Parliament and disrupt the political system.

This seems overblown.

Based on the turnout of the 2020 election, a new party would need to win a seat or poll 145,953 in the election to enter Parliament. The combined tally of every party that could be considered roughly conspiracist, (including the New Conservatives who scored 42,600), totalled just under 90,000 votes.

The only way into Parliament for these parties, as Tamaki knows, would be an Alliance-style tie-up.

This isn't unique.

Jami-Lee Ross self-consciously tried to emulate the Alliance with Advance New Zealand, and sought parties to join him. Unsurprisingly, fringe groups who cannot even agree on basic science, found it difficult to come together under a single leader. The two parties that went into Advance NZ, Jami-Lee Ross himself and Billy TK's Advance, eventually fell apart.

The Alliance is remarkable because it was so unique. It held together in no small part thanks to the skill and personality of leader Jim Anderton - and even then, the party couldn't survive long in Parliament into the new millennium.

It would take a miracle of political organisation and turnout for these groups to unify and make it into Parliament. The notion of them entering Parliament is a fun hypothetical but one better suited to the pub than the newspaper.

There's a sad irony that this debate is playing out at a time when New Zealanders might be talking about lowering the barriers to parliamentary representation. One of the Government's election reviews is currently looking at lowering the 5 per cent threshold to 4 per cent (still high enough to block any formulation of conspiracist parties from entering Parliament in 2020).

The debate about lowering the 5 per cent threshold is one worth having (as is lowering the voting age).

Since the election of Donald Trump, much ink has been spilled agonising over how "it" could happen here. We jump at every Trumpian shadow cast by our politicians - no matter how fine those shadows may be, or how infrequently they are cast. We wilfully neglect the immense electoral, political, and cultural differences between here and the United States.

Much less time is spent thinking about actual lessons that might be learned from overseas and applied here. One of the problems in the United States has not been that the wrong people get elected, as is the case with Trump, but that too few people vote and their electoral college system distorts the value of what (relatively) few votes are cast.

One lesson worth drawing is to think more about reducing the threshold for entering Parliament, or to consider the case made by the Make It 16 campaign to lower the voting age by two years.

One of the areas where the conspiracy fringe is most likely to obtain elected office is in local government, where apathy and low turnout lower the barrier for entry. It could be worth asking whether local government elections should be reformed so that local body elections more closely resemble general elections, drowning out the lunatic fringe with the electoral equivalent of the denominator effect.

There's a risk we learn the wrong lesson from conspiracy theorists. They are a clear danger to themselves and others, but there's no evidence yet they pose any threat to our democracy or the smooth functioning of Parliament.

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Thomas Coughlan: Conspiracy theorists not yet threat to democracy - New Zealand Herald

Northwest Public Schools administrators eliminated its journalism program in June in what some former students and press freedom advocates call an act of censorship.

While working on the school year-ending issue of the Saga newspaper, staffers had little idea its student-written content would mark a 54-year-old publications abrupt end. The edition included student editorials on LGBTQ topics, along with a news article titled, Pride and prejudice: LGBTQIA+ on the origins of Pride Month (June) and the history of homophobia. Other articles explained registering for classes, highlighted achievements by the Future Business Leaders of America chapter and told the story of a group of siblings adoption.

Northwest Public Schools board Vice President Zach Mader said that in the past, I do think there have been talks of doing away with our newspaper if we were not going to be able to control content that we saw (as) inappropriate.

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He cautiously explained the apparent reason for the Sagas demise.

The very last issue that came out this year, there was a little bit of hostility amongst some, the school board member said. There were editorials that were essentially, I guess what I would say, LGBTQ.

On Sunday, May 22, a Northwest School District employee emailed the Grand Island Independent press and advertising teams to cancel the companys Northwest Viking Saga printing services. Notification of staff and students of the programs elimination came May 19, according to the employee. The June issue was printed on May 16.

The Northwest employee said in the email they were informed the (journalism and newspaper) program was cut because the school board and superintendent are unhappy with the last issue's editorial content.

The Saga staff was also reprimanded in April 2022 after publishing preferred pronouns and names in bylines and articles, according to students. District officials told students to use only birth names going forward.

The Saga had been published since 1968, thriving in its final year. Northwest student media, including Saga staffers, earned third place at the 2022 Nebraska School Activities Association (NSAA) State Journalism Championship. Individual winners included Emelia Richling, Emily Krupicka, Audrianna Wiseman, Kiera Avila and Treasure Mason.

District officials have declined to give an exact date when the decision to eliminate the program was made and why. Northwests 2021-2022 journalism teacher declined interview requests for this story.

It sounds like a ham-fisted attempt to censor students and discriminate based on disagreement with perspectives and articles that were featured in the student newspaper, surmised Sara Rips, legal counsel for ACLU of Nebraska.

Mader said of the student newspapers final issue: There (were) some things that were

The school board member paused, thinking.

He continued: If (taxpayers) read that (issue), they would have been like, Holy cow. What is going on at our school?

Dan Leiser, president of the Northwest Public Schools Board of Education, said of the stories in question, most people were upset they were written, though he didnt specify who most people consisted of.

Leiser questioned whether eliminating the paper based on editorial content in this case, the June 2022 issue mattered.

If 90% of people say the (stories) shouldnt have been written in the first place, they weren't happy with reading it in the newspaper Im not talking me, I'm talking high school students why do you think this is newsworthy?

Former Viking Sage newspaper staff members Marcus Pennell (left) and Emma Smith (right) display a pride flag outside of Northwest High School.

The freedom for print media to determine its own editorial content is constitutionally protected, a result of the U.S. Supreme Courts ruling on Miami Herald Publishing Co. v. Tornillo (1974).

The decision by the administration to eliminate the student newspaper violates students' right to free speech, unless the school can show a legitimate educational reason for removing the option to participate in a class that publishes award-winning material, said Nebraska Press Association attorney Max Kautsch.

Kautsch specializes in media law in Nebraska and Kansas.

It is hard to imagine what that legitimate reason could be, he added.

Emma Smith, Sagas assistant editor in 2022, said the staffers tried to have their fingers on the pulse of what Northwest students were talking about.

Rips said, Student journalism teaches students how to discern and investigate, build effective work based on verifiable facts, and policies.

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression is a nonpartisan, nonprofit civil liberties group advocating for student free speech. Lindsie Rank, a FIRE student press counsel, said even if legal, censoring student expression will almost always run counter to democratic values.

As (Supreme Court) Justice (Stephen) Breyer pointed out, Americas public schools are the nurseries of democracy, Rank said.

Initially, Northwest Superintendent Jeff Edwards said the district was looking at some different curriculum. Edwards said principals, the director of teaching and learning and he are the primary decision makers in axing or adding classes.

Jeanette Ramsey, Northwest Public Schools director of teaching and learning, confirmed Edwardss referral, saying that yes, she was the primary curriculum decision maker, assisted by a team of people.

However, when the Sagas elimination was brought up, Ramsey said, firmly, I was not involved in that decision at all. I was zero involved in that decision.

Ramsey said the decision to end the Saga and related journalism class was made between PJ Smith, the principal, and Dr. (Jeff) Edwards, our superintendent.

Smith directed questions about the journalism programs elimination to Edwards.

The process to change programs and curriculum is not necessarily governed by administrators, said David Jespersen, communications administrator for the Nebraska Department of Education. School boards have the autonomy to exercise different procedures, Jespersen said.

Some districts are heavily involved and would need to grant approval; many districts let the superintendent handle it. As far as the state is concerned both are fine it is a local decision.

The Northwest Public Schools Board of Education had little if anything to do with the Sagas elimination, Leiser indicated.

From my standpoint, (from) a board standpoint, Dr. Edwards filled me in on the situation a little bit. He didn't tell me everything. I guess I'm trusting the way he's handling it. He's got it under control.

The front page of the June 2022 issue of the Viking Saga.

After Northwest Public Schools regular-session school board meeting on July 7, The Independent again asked Edwards why the Saga and its class had been cut. He was also for the first time presented with the alleged basis for the programs elimination: the Pride Month issue.

He repeatedly responded only that it was an administrative decision, but did not address the reason.

Mike Hiestand, senior legal counsel for Student Press Law Center, said ending student newspaper programs is becoming a more common form of censorship. The center is a nonpartisan group that advocates for student journalism press freedom.

You can't censor a student newspaper you no longer have.

The Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit has been working directly with the Sagas most recent staff on potential recourse.

By far, the number one thing that will get student media censored is a story that criticizes the school or that administrators somehow think makes them look bad, Hiestand said.

First Amendment rights in public high schools were affirmed in the Supreme Court case Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District in 1969. The school argued a 13-year-old student could not wear a black armband in protest of the Vietnam War.

In the Tinker case, the Supreme Court said that students and teachers don't lose their First Amendment and freedom of expression rights at the schoolhouse gates, said Hadar Harris, executive director of the Student Press Law Center. We believe that that should apply to student journalists as well.

In the Supreme Court case Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier (1988) journalism students at Hazelwood East High School in St. Louis, Missouri, wrote stories about teen pregnancy and the impact of divorce on their peers. The principal deleted pages containing those stories prior to publication without notifying students.

Because the student newspaper was sponsored by the school, the Supreme Court ruled the principal was not violating the First Amendment.

Referring to the Hazelwood case, Harris said, The Supreme Court created a carve out of First Amendment rights, specifically applying to student journalists, which allows school administrators to censor students work for any quote-unquote, legitimate pedagogical reason.

Censorship in the name of Hazelwood is a vague standard, but it allows for a large amount of discretion by administrators who apply it rather broadly, Harris said.

But, she added, When student journalists are censored, we are teaching them that facts and truth even when they are uncomfortable are not acceptable.

On his birth certificate, former Saga staff member Marcus Pennells first name is Meghan. Marcus is a transgender man. In the June 2022 Saga, Pennell had his name reverted to Meghan in his byline.

The (name) thing was the first big blow, he said.

Pennell said he has been subject to adversity because of being transgender, but hearing directly from the school administrators was different.

It was the first time that the school had officially been, like, We don't really want you here, Pennell said of his regulated byline. You know, that was a big deal for me.

Alison Gash, an associate professor at the University of Oregon, said deadnaming calling someone by their birth name as opposed to their preferred name is a form of erasure.

Gash is an academic expert in United States courts, gender, race, sexuality, same-sex marriage, constitutional rights and public policy.

The pointed targeting of erasing somebody's pronoun, of erasing somebody's gender is erasing somebody's identity in such a hostile way, she said. It can't be read as anything but I don't value you.

Hiestand said that until recently, few controversies over using preferred names in student media have been reported to the Student Press Law Center.

The concept of banning preferred names was new to Michelle Hassler, an assistant journalism professor at UNL.

I think we're getting into some additional rights here, Hassler said, noting institutions like the Associated Press recognize the practice. Hassler is also the executive director of the Nebraska High School Press Association.

Hiestand said he was unaware of any formal U.S. Department of Education opinions concerning preferred names.

I can say with certainty there is no law that would require the use of a legal name instead of a preferred name, he added.

Emma Smith graduated in 2022. She said her class was informed the decision to ban preferred names was made by the Northwest Public Schools Board of Education.

Students, including Emma Smith, said district Policy 6391 was referenced when an administrator handed down the districts preferred name decree.

The policy advises teachers to teach only age-appropriate controversial topics, present them with objectivity (do not include your own biases) and not expect students to reach an agreement, according to documents on the district website. The documents do not define controversial.

The policy also states, Remember that the policy of the board is designed to protect you as well as your students from unfair or inconsiderate criticism whenever your students are studying a controversial subject.

The school board last reviewed and revised the policy in December of 2017. In an email, Edwards said no public records exist when asked for documentation concerning 6391s development.

The Independent submitted a series of public records requests to Northwest Public Schools in July, asking for information relating to the elimination of the journalism program and the possible reasons for its end.

In response, the district said the majority of those requests couldnt be fulfilled until Sept. 1, with costs ranging from just shy of $3,000 for an initial request and $1,140 for a narrowed-down request.

Harris seemed dubious. (SPLC is) very troubled by what's been going on in the school district, and the lack of transparency and the censorship that's taking place.

Someone in administration needs to be really clear about the reason (the Saga was eliminated)... they are getting really close to violating some First Amendment rights, Hassler said, though she said she hasnt heard an official reason for the elimination of the Saga and its related class.

Hassler said, That's even more problematic: the reasoning isn't out there.

In the realm of higher education, the same scenario would violate the First Amendment, Rank said. For high school journalists the answer isn't as clear-cut.

The FIRE attorney added that the Hazelwood ruling calls for a legitimate instructional reason for regulation.

I struggle to think of a legitimate educational reason for punishing student journalists for discussing Pride Month, but the bar can unfortunately be low, Rank said.

At this moment in our democracy, Harris said, we need people asking hard questions and reporting facts.

Rips, ACLU of Nebraskas LGBTQIA+ counsel, said simply having an environment like the Sagas newsroom can have a big impact.

Kids need to feel safe when kids are bullied knowing that the school has their back, knowing that their parents have their back can make things like that more tolerant, Rips said.

Gash said, There's a compounding effect, being a young, queer person, having to confront adults who are supposed to be on your side, in your corner, helping you to grow and develop to be a valued member of our society.

Emma Smith is firmly planted in her classmates corner.

Seeing them go through that, especially after being able to go by (preferred names)... having it taken away from them was really upsetting.

In an editorial, The Dont Say Gay bill: Making students existing controversial, Pennell wrote:

...most LGBT students are scared to even show up to class most days. If the concern was really for the quality of education for our children, why not ban all discussion (concerning sexuality) if we arent saying gay, why can we say straight?

It was printed in the final issue of the Saga.

The end of the Northwest Saga is not the first time student censorship issues have cropped u

Jessica Votipka is the education reporter at the Grand Island Independent. She can be reached at 308-381-5420.

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'Nurseries of democracy': Northwest student journalism elimination a 'Saga' - Grand Island Independent

Rusty Bowers is headed for the exit. After 18 years as an Arizona lawmaker, the past four as speaker of the states house of representatives, he has been unceremoniously shown the door by his own Republican party.

Last month he lost his bid to stay in the Arizona legislature in a primary contest in which his opponent was endorsed by Donald Trump. The rival, David Farnsworth, made an unusual pitch to voters: the 2020 presidential election had not only been stolen from Trump, he said, it was satanically snatched by the devil himself.

Bowers was ousted as punishment. The Trump acolytes who over the past two years have gained control of the states Republican party wanted revenge for the powerful testimony he gave in June to the January 6 hearings in which he revealed the pressure he was put under to overturn Arizonas election result.

This is a very Arizonan story. But it is also an American story that carries an ominous warning for the entire nation.

Six hours after the Guardian interviewed Bowers, Liz Cheney was similarly ousted in a primary for her congressional seat in Wyoming. The formerly third most powerful Republican leader in the US Congress had been punished too.

In Bowerss case, his assailants in the Arizona Republican party wanted to punish him because he had steadfastly refused to do their, and Trumps, bidding. He had declined to use his power as leader of the house to invoke an arcane Arizonan law whose text has never been found that would allow the legislature to cast out the will of 3.4 million voters who had handed victory to Joe Biden and switch the outcome unilaterally to Trump.

Bowers has a word for that kind of thinking. The thought that if you dont do what we like, then we will just get rid of you and march on and do it ourselves that to me is fascism.

Come January, Bowers will no longer be an Arizona politician. He can now speak his mind. He did just that, for more than two hours in an interview with the Guardian this week.

He spoke his mind about the phone conversations he had with Trump and his lawyer Rudy Giuliani at the height of the stolen election mayhem in 2020. He spoke about the clown circus of Trump loyalists who tried to bully him into subverting the election, and about the emotional violence that has been embraced by increasingly powerful sections of the Republican party in Arizona and nationally.

He spoke his mind too about the very real danger facing democracy in America today to his astonishment, at the hands of his own party.

The constitution is hanging by a thread, he told me. The funny thing is, I always thought it would be the other guys. And its my side. That just rips at my heart: that we would be the people who would surrender the constitution in order to win an election. That just blows my mind.

Bowers will talk about all that, and much more. But first, he wants to show me around his spiritual home. He arranged to meet me at his familys ranch, so you can see a bit of why I think the way I do.

The ranch is nestled in a hollow among desert hills about 90 minutes drive east of Phoenix, at the end of five miles of dramatically snaking dirt road. Fifteen months ago a wildfire swept through the area, destroying majestic cottonwoods and sycamores and sending flames high up above the hills. The main house came within 10 feet of being destroyed and his art studio, replete with many of his landscape paintings and a large portion of his legislative papers, was burnt to ashes.

I ask him what this extraordinarily beautiful and harsh landscape reveals about his political character. Well, Im not a man of means, he said. We pay for things as we go. We are compelled to work, to do things with our hands. That gives you a different appreciation of life. Things have a bigger meaning.

Bowers said that his core values were instilled in him as a child growing up within a conservative Republican tradition. He is the father of seven children, one of whom, Kacey, died last year. Family, faith, community these are values at a very core level. You dont survive out here, on land like this, alone.

A fourth-generation Arizonan, Bowers, 69, grew up within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, better known as the Mormon church. His faith, along with his other great passion for art he is a painter and sculptor is visible all around. The front of the main house is lined with three large bronzes depicting the epic 1,100-mile journey across America that the Mormons undertook in 1846-47.

From the beginning, conservatism and the Republican party were interchangeable for Bowers. Belief in God, that you should be held accountable for how you treat other people, those were very conservative thoughts and the bedrock of my politics.

He identifies as pro-life, sees the US constitution as being inspired by God, and voted for Trump in the 2020 election. I campaigned for Trump, I went to his rallies, I stood up on the stage with him, he said.

Somewhere along the line, though, things started to come unstuck. A rift opened up between his old-school Republican values and those of a new cadre of activists who were energized by Trump and his embrace of conspiracy theories and strongman politics.

In hindsight, Bowers now recognizes that the opening shots of the conflict were fired not around the 2020 presidential election but earlier in the year, in the initial days of Covid. Trump-fanatical Republicans in the Arizona house displayed in their anti-mask antics the same disdain for the rules, the same bullying style, that was later to erupt in the stolen election furor.

It was like a prep show, he said.

Then came the first signs of Trumps refusal to accept defeat in the 2020 election. Bowers himself always expected that the presidential race in Arizona would be close. We were very much aware that a demographic of women, 18 to 40, college-educated, professional, with small children, were not voting for Donald Trump, he said.

When the results were confirmed, and Biden had won by 10,457 votes, the slimmest margin of any state, Bowers was unsurprised. But such was the brouhaha as armed Trump supporters protested outside counting centers in Maricopa county demanding audits that he decided to take a look for himself.

He gathered a group of trusted lawyers and went to investigate the counting process close up. I saw incredible amounts of protocols that were followed and signed off by volunteers Democrats, Republicans, independents. Yes, Republicans for crying out loud! And they did it by the book.

On 22 November 2020, two weeks after Biden had been declared the next president of the United States, Bowers received a call from the White House. Trump and Giuliani were on the line.

After exchanging niceties, they got down to business. Giuliani said they had found 200,000 illegal immigrants and 6,000 dead people who had voted in Arizona. We need to fix that, Giuliani told him, cajoling him to call a special committee of the Arizona legislature to look into the supposed fraud.

Bowers remembers vividly how Trump and Giuliani played good cop and bad cop on that call. Trump, you know, he wasnt angry. He wasnt threatening. He never said to me, Im going to get you if you dont do this. Giuliani, he was the bulldog.

In return, Bowers was polite but firm. He told the duo that they had to provide hard evidence. I said, Im not doing anything like this until you bring me something. Lets see it. Im not going to have circus time at the house of representatives.

Thats when Trump and Giuliani unveiled their second, even more incendiary, proposal. They had heard that there was an arcane Arizona law that would allow the Republican-controlled legislature under Bowers to throw out Bidens electors and send Trump alternatives to Congress in their place.

It took a moment for the penny to drop. Bowers was being asked to overturn the election through diktat.

Im not a professor of constitutional law, but I get the idea. They want me to throw out the vote of my own people, he recalls thinking. I said, Oh, wait a minute. Wait, wait, wait. So now, youre asking me to overthrow the vote of the people of Arizona?

Bowerss response to the good cop, bad cop routine was categoric. He told them: I took an oath to the American constitution, the state constitution and its laws. Which one of those am I supposed to break?

It didnt stop there. Bowers was pounded by wave after wave of demands that he subvert the election, some coming from the White House, some from America First politicians closer to home.

The speaker continued to be lobbied right up to the eve of January 6 when John Eastman, the conservative law professor advising Trump on his attempted electoral coup, rang him and exhorted him to decertify the electors. Just do it and let the courts figure it all out, Eastman said.

Bowers was direct on that occasion too. No, he said.

As January 6 approached, and the cries of stolen election reached fever pitch, the attacks on Bowers became personal. A Trump train of angry fanatics blaring their horns in pickup trucks festooned with Maga flags turned up at his home in Mesa, some bearing digital boards proclaiming him to be a pedophile.

To protect his family, he would step outside the house and confront the protesters. One man had three bars on his chest, signalling he was a member of the far-right militia group the Three Percenters. The man was screaming obscenities and carrying a pistol. I had to get as close to him as I could to defend myself if he went for the gun.

The worst of it was that during several of these menacing protests, his daughter Kacey was inside the house mortally ill in bed with liver failure. She would say, What are they doing out there? She was emotional. She told me, Im going to die. I said, Honey, youre not going to die. So she had feelings, we were trying to keep her positive.

Kacey Bowers did die, on 28 January, three weeks after the insurrection at the US Capitol.

I asked Bowers whether, through all this, he had ever doubted his strength to stand up to the onslaught. Were his values tested?

I never had the thought of giving up, he said. No way. I dont like bullies. Thats one constant in my life: I. Do. Not. Like. Bullies.

In July, the executive committee of the Arizona Republican party censured Bowers. Its chairwoman, Kelli Ward, a Trump devotee, said that he was no longer a Republican in good standing.

Then on 2 August, Bowers was effectively turfed out of the Arizona legislature when he was defeated in the primary by the Satan-evoking Farnsworth. That same night, the slate of election deniers standing for statewide positions won a clean sweep.

Republican nominations for governor, a US Senate seat, state attorney general and secretary of state all went to enthusiastic backers of Trump and his 2020 attempted coup. They included Mark Finchem, who was present at the attack on the US Capitol on January 6 and who continues to try to decertify Bidens presidency to this day.

Finchem is now the Republican candidate for secretary of state. Should he win in November, he would be in charge of Arizonas election administration through the 2024 presidential contest, in which Trump has indicated he is likely to be competing.

The ascent of election deniers across the board marks the final transformation of the Republican party in the state. Trumps grip is now complete; the strain of constitutional conservatism epitomized by Bowers is in the wilderness.

I think its a shame, was his rueful reflection on that transition. The suite of candidates that we now have representing what used to be a principled party is just like, wow Its like being the first colonizer on Jupiter.

In February, a mega election integrity bill was introduced into the Arizona legislature that was the culmination of the anti-democratic drift of the party. House bill 2596 would have given the Republican-controlled legislature the power to reject any election result that the majority group didnt like.

Bowers resoundingly killed off that bill by sending it to languish not in just one house committee, but in all 12 of them. I was trying to send a definitive message: this is hogwash. Taking away the fundamental right to vote, the idea that the legislature could nullify your election, thats not conservative. Thats fascist. And Im not a fascist.

Bowers said he remains optimistic that the party will one day find its way back on to the rails. He draws succor from the many people who have come up to him since his defeat telling him quietly, so that nobody can hear that they admire him and back him.

Its not like Im alone in the wilderness. Theres a lot of people from all over the United States thanking me.

But for now, he accepts that things are likely to get much worse before they get better. I ask him, at this moment, is the Republican party in Arizona lost?

Yeah, he said. Theyve invented a new way. Its a party that doesnt have any thought. Its all emotional, its all revenge. Its all anger. Thats all it is.

He held the thumb and digit finger of his right hand so close together that they were almost touching. The veneer of civilization is this thin, he said. It still exists I havent been hanged yet. But holy moly, this is just crazy. The place has lost its mind.

This article was amended on 24 August 2022. The primary in which Bowers was defeated by Farnsworth was held on 2 August, not 28 July as an earlier version said.

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Ousted Republican reflects on Trump, democracy and America: The place has lost its mind - The Guardian US