The Party of Rape

The rape of a Democratic candidate in Arizona is not a fluke

There was a truly horrifying story out of Arizona yesterday. Bernadette Greene-Placentia, candidate for Congressional District 8 there, was repairing a damaged campaign sign in August when an attacker dealt her a concussive blow to the back of her head, and proceeded to rape her. Her fragmented memories of the incident include him calling her a “Democratic bitch.” Morgan Fischer reports for the Phoenix New Times:

Another man came over. Greene-Placentia felt his weight nudging her left leg further apart. She began swinging her foot at him. ‘Not even worth it,’ she heard the man say as he moved away. …The two men left Greene-Placentia face down in the parking lot. The hatch of her silver Jeep Grand Cherokee was still open. The car was still running.

Republicans always attempt to pin any incident of violence aimed in their direction on liberals, who have done nothing more than point to the objective fact of Trump’s authoritarianism. Republicans, meanwhile, are openly the party of rape and domestic abuse. We have published on this extensively at Liberal Currents and indeed this very week Alan Elrod reprised his work on the subject to talk about the conservative response to the Cornell rape case.

The Republican Party is the party of Andrew Tate, of Richard Hanania, and, more than anything, of Donald Trump—a rapist, an open misogynist, and all-around avatar of male supremacism.

Consider Victor Marx, the current candidate for governor in Colorado. Marx has recently come under fire for a story from early in his marriage in which he slammed his wife against a door. His response? “I’d do it again.”

Marx plays it off as though he and his wife simply have a combative relationship that both are comfortable with, and she attempts to help him sell this idea by appearing on camera briefly. 

Colorado Democrats released a statement in response:

In a campaign call last night first reported by 9News’ Kyle Clark, Marx was caught on tape telling donors that ‘I’d do it all again…except for the part where I got close enough for her to kick me,’ about the incident.

The podcast episode where Marx originally recounted the story of pushing his wife, while laughing with a co-host, was unearthed and published by The Daily Beast last week. They also reported on additional incidents, where Marx also said he threw his toddler son across a room, threatened a psychiatrist with a knife and has a ‘gift for violence.’ Marx confirmed these stories in a Friday radio interview.

You read that correctly: this entire scandal happened in the first place because Marx himself bragged about the incident in an interview. 

If any Republicans in Colorado or at the national level have denounced Marx for bragging about beating his wife and child, I have not seen it. But why would they? This is who they are.

In Arizona, Greene-Placentia has bravely told her story and continued her campaign. We can only hope for a future when women who confront abusers and rapists are in power, rather than men who abuse and rape.

Degrading our institutions and democracy

Yesterday we covered the fact that the Trump administration has refused to allow international observers in for the midterms, the first time we will go without them in over twenty years. U.S. News then reported that “US President Donald Trump is sending $2.35 ⁠billion ⁠in direct payments to millions of ⁠Americans just weeks before the November 3 elections that will determine whether his Republicans will ​maintain control of the US Congress.”

In other words, Trump has shut out independent review of our election results and is practically bribing voters to try to win them over.

Gallup has a poll that they found curious and which I found troubling: “In 2026, 63% of Democrats are confident in the honesty of elections, higher than either Republicans (37%) or political independents (35%).” The curious thing about it is that it’s quite unusual globally for the partisans of the incumbents to mistrust elections and the partisans of the opposition to trust them. The troubling thing to me is that this appears to be a case of Republicans mistrusting a projected loss in advance.

Beyond elections Trump keeps on degrading our democracy and government all over. For example, he has forced the FBI to focus almost entirely on immigration, leading to a lack of resources for its more traditional work in areas like counterintelligence. Throughout the mass deportation his administration has refused to allow members of Congress to inspect detention facilities, but they have now extended that logic to the war and the military as well:

The forgotten children

Sometimes it’s important to stop fixating on the authoritarianism of the present to face the legacy of the authoritarianism of the past.

Jenny Abamu at NPR had a shocking, if not precisely surprising, story yesterday, about precisely that history.

The story opens with Veronica Spears, a black American who learned that her grandfather had had a brother who died while incarcerated at age 12.

Spears' family is one of 16 that researchers with Georgetown University's Center for Youth Justice have linked to children who died at the House of Reformation and Instruction for Colored Children in Cheltenham, Md. The center has been working since February to identify children who died at 40 reform schools and youth detention centers across the country, as well as any surviving family members, as part of its Forgotten Children Initiative.

To date, the researchers have identified the graves of over 1,000 children across 29 states. The largest burial site is located near the House of Reformation, now the Cheltenham Youth Detention Center. More than 230 Black boys were found buried in the woods across the street from the facility.

The second Trump term has seen aggressive attempts to literally whitewash our history, to erase black history per se but also to erase any evidence of white atrocities. The Forgotten Children Initiative and outlets like NPR are helping to keep that history out in the public.

Other revelations

And so on

• A Mysterious Nonprofit Run by SpaceXAI’s Top Lawyer Is Paying the Salaries of Government Workers, by Vittoria Elliott at Wired
• At least 32 Killed in Ukraine, Zelenskiy Condemns One of Russia's Most 'Vile Strikes', by Olena Harmash and Vladyslav Smilianets at Reuters
• Trump Pick’s Campaign Hit With Explosive Staff Revelations, by Laura Esposito at the Daily Beast
• Mayor Mamdani Attends Oct. 7 Vigil Amid Protests in Union Square, by Giulia Heyward at Gothamist
• ‘Honey Please’: Kimberly Guilfoyle Pushed Donor to Wire $100,000 to Her Amex Account, by Dana Mattioli, Drew Hinshaw, Rebecca Ballhaus and Joe Parkinson in the Wall Street Journal