Speaking Truth To Power

Nothing says you’re a racist like cutting off the microphone of a person who suggests you might be racist.

Just as Pennsylvania Democrat Congressman Brian Sims.’

The heated exchange came during a debate over a GOP proposal to regulate the disposal of fetal remains, one that Democrats say forces women to bury or cremate a miscarried fetus. After a number of Democratic women spoke against the measure by highlighting their own traumatic experiences with miscarriages, Sims lamented the fact his colleagues were forced to share such testimony in the state's GOP-controlled House:

"This is just another act in a political theater that has plagued this chamber for far too long. We are a legislature that has met more to remove mask mandates, strip executive emergency powers, and overturn free and fair elections than we have to make strategic investments in Pennsylvania's women, children, and families."

Sims then noted the demographic makeup of the GOP by saying this new bill was just another line item in "a grossly, predictably misogynistic agenda—an agenda pursued by a party that is 100% white, in a chamber that is 70% male."

And that’s when House Majority Leader Bryan Cutler, a Republican, because of course, cut Sims' microphone. "That's enough," he said amid booing from other GOP lawmakers.

Sims, though, was unrepentant:

"Your boos mean nothing to me. I've seen what you cheer for."

Yes, they cheer for Thing #45, for an insurrection masked as a tour group, for being a group of old white men telling women what they can, and cannot do with their own bodies.

We need more Brian Sims and less GOP in politics today.

Cast a goddamned vote.