There is no bottom – by Jay Kuo

After a Haitian immigrant rights group filed criminal charges against Donald Trump and JD Vance for knowingly defaming and criticizing their community, Louisiana Congressman Clay Higgins decided to address racism.

In a now-deleted tweet, Higgins called Haitians “savage,” repeated the false claim that they “eat pets,” misspelled “voodoo,” called Haiti the “dirtiest country in the Western Hemisphere,” and referred to Haitians as a whole as “thugs” and “slapstick gangsters.”

Even more menacing, he threatened them directly, telling them to “get their heads together and leave our country by January 20.”

It’s tempting to say, “This doesn’t shock me,” because we’ve collectively become desensitized to the daily horror show that is the GOP. But when a sitting member of Congress crosses a significant line, we need to call it out. And in the meantime, we all need to learn more about the House member who would make such a disgusting and dangerous statement.

Today I will review the immediate condemnation and fallout, as well as the hasty cleanup by the GOP, over Higgins’ statement. It is crucial to understand how the current GOP leadership is actively protecting him and how this opens the door wide for more of this behavior.

Then I’m going to point my finger at Higgins for his astonishingly disturbing past, because we all need to know who we’re dealing with here.

Finally, I’ll place Higgins’ hateful and disturbing tweet in the broader context of the Republican Party’s decades-long embrace of racism and white nationalism.

A censored censorship

It didn’t take long after Higgins tweeted for Democrats to get wind of it and demand action, according to Rep. Steven Horsford (D-NV), the chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus interviewed by CNN, his colleagues confronted Higgins on the House floor after the tweet, trying to get him to understand how his actions affected the lives of real people, “people who contribute to our communities, who are entrepreneurs, nurses and doctors, people who do not deserve to be targeted.”

“Just do the right thing and stop this hateful rhetoric,” Horsford said he demanded of Higgins. “He told me no. And then I said, ‘If you refuse, I will take this to the floor, we will introduce a resolution to censure you, and that’s exactly what we did.”

Cooper noticed that Higgins showed no remorse. Higgins told CNN he stood by his comments, adding: “It’s all true. I can make another controversial post tomorrow if you want. I mean, we have freedom of speech. I say whatever I want. He also said, it’s not a big deal to me, it’s like there’s something stuck to the bottom of my boot. Just scrape it off and move on with my life.”

Here is the moment Horsford stood up to Higgins, with the Congressional Black Caucus adding in a statement: “We stand against hate in all its forms. Hate has no place in the House of Representatives or anywhere in America.”

The House Democratic leadership also moved quickly to condemn Higgins. Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries issued a statement calling the tweet “vile, racist, and beneath the dignity of the House of Representatives” and calling Higgins to account. Jeffries further linked Higgins to other extremists in the party. “Republicans are the party of Donald Trump, Mark Robinson, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Clay Higgins, and Project 2025. The extreme MAGA Republicans in the House are unfit to govern,” he said.

On the GOP side, it didn’t take long for Republican leaders to close ranks. Speaker Mike Johnson called Higgins a “dear friend” who “prayed over” his statement before removing it. “We believe in redemption here,” Johnson said.

When Rep. Horsford asked for unanimous consent to censure Higgins, the No. 2 Republican in the House of Representatives, Steve Scalise, objection made. “First of all, the tweet has already been deleted and taken down,” Scalise argued, as Democrats erupted in cheers. He then tried to convince both sides of the moment. “If we want to go through everything the other side has said, we will!” Scalise declared.

It’s notable that all three players on the GOP side of this mini-drama — Speaker Johnson, Majority Leader Scalise and Rep. Clay Higgins — are from Louisiana.

A disturbing history

It was likely a strong indication that Higgins was a white supremacist from the blue when he endorsed former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke for governor of Louisiana in 1992. This is an excerpt from a news item Higgins was identified at the time as an “Army policy officer” who attended a rally for radical extremist Pat Buchanan, who was running for president that year. Even after admitting that Duke was a Nazi, and “that’s a problem” for his candidacy, Higgins voted for Duke for governor.

Higgins also has a telling, troubling history in law enforcement, having been forced to resign twice from different police departments, the first time being from the Opelousas Police Department in 2007 after he assaulted an unarmed black man and lied about it. As Mother Jones reports reported,

The victim stated that Higgins and another officer, John Chautin, attacked him after he refused to consent to a search of his car, according to an internal investigation. “(The victim) stated that while he was on the ground, Officer Higgins grabbed him by the hair and turned his head and told him to get his attorney and called him a wimp,” the report explains. “(He) stated that he was then kicked while he was still on the ground but could not see who kicked him.” The report also says that Higgins “grabbed (the victim) by the neck and slammed him against his car” and “punched him in the jaw.”

Higgins later falsely claimed that He was the one who was attacked, something Higgins later admitted was a lie.

The second incident bears a striking resemblance to his tweet yesterday, which caused a political firestorm. As the Washington Post reportedIn 2016, Higgins, the “brazen, outspoken captain of the St. Landry Parish Sheriff’s Office” in Louisiana, resigned after appearing in a video in which he called a group of mostly black gang members “animals,” “thugs” and “heathens.”

“We have a warrant for your arrest for a felony,” Higgins said, looking straight into the camera while holding a semi-automatic assault rifle. “You’re being hunted. You’re being trapped. And when you point your weapon at a guy like me, we’re going to return fire with superior fire.”

The Post noted that Higgins had made a name for himself online with such statements.

Higgins, a God-fearing lawman with a deep Southern drawl, had appeared in a series of widely popular “crime stoppers” videos that attracted millions of views. His tough, straight-talking, wall-to-wall approach made him a folk hero in Opelousas, La., and earned him a cult following online.

“You can run, but you can’t hide,” Higgins said in a video, addressing his prey with one hand resting on the grip of his pistol. “We’re going to find you.”

The video went viral and caught the attention of the local ACLU. “We live in a system of laws, and there are legal rights that apply to everyone,” the ACLU wrote in a statement. “It is the job of law enforcement to protect those rights while keeping our communities safe. Nothing Mr. Higgins said will make his community safer, but there is much that points to violations of the fundamental rights of everyone. . . In doing so, he must respect the laws of this country or he is unfit to serve.”

Higgins resigned, but remained stubborn. “I will not kneel to violent street gangs,” Higgins said. “I will not kneel to murderers or the parents who raised them. . . I would rather die than sacrifice my principles.”

Higgins’ behavior is part of a long pattern of using his office to promote racism, violence and lies, as local Louisiana media outlet The Gambit reported toldHiggins “continues to maintain that Trump won the 2020 election and believes violent insurrectionists are heroes.” Further,

In 2020 he threatened to shoot black civil rights activists. In 2022 he referred dismissively to Raya Salter, a black female lawyer, as a “boo” during a Congressional hearing. In 2023 he attacked a progressive activist during a press conference at the U.S. Capitol. In April, he advocated for the arrest of EPA director Michael Reganwho is black, and send him to the Angola prison.

From Southern Strategy to White Minority Governance

The intellectual devoted a whole part today about how Higgins’ overt racism is part of the transformation of the modern GOP into a party of overt white supremacy, writing:

This transformation, decades in the making, has shifted from covert whistle blowing to blatant displays of racial hostility….

What was once subtle and coded has now become an explicit endorsement of white grievance. Figures like Higgins represent the modern face of this ideological shift.

As the article explained, Nixon began the transformation of the GOP by embracing the so-called “Southern Strategy” to win over angry, racist white voters who were upset about the progress of the Civil Rights Era. Republicans began using coded language, including “states’ rights” and “law and order,” to promote white minority rule. As Lee Atwater, who was a political adviser to Nixon, explained:

You start in 1954 saying ‘n*****, n*****, n*****.’ In 1968 you can’t say ‘n*****’ anymore, it hurts, it’s counterproductive. So you say things like forced busing, states’ rights, all that kind of stuff.

Reagan’s “war on drugs” was in fact a war on black communities and a major step toward the mass incarceration of black people in the United States. By the time Trump rode down the golden escalator and announced his candidacy in 2015, he understood that the Republican base was ready for someone who wasn’t afraid to say what many of them were feeling. In his first campaign speech, he called Mexicans “rapists” and “criminals,” yet he went on to thrash his opponents in the GOP presidential primaries. Anti-immigrant racism was no longer a bug, but a feature.

Higgins calls himself a “Cajun John Wayne,” which is code for “willing to commit violence in the name of white justice.” The GOP is now openly racist and proud of it, but the hatred and violence were always at boiling point, ready to boil over as soon as the heat could be turned up by a demagogue like Trump.

The United States is now at a critical juncture. In six weeks, voters will decide whether we will be ruled by a white supremacist minority or whether we will embrace democratic pluralism. The middle ground is now gone and the hoods are off. If we don’t stop Trump now, the world of Clay Higgins will be our new reality base, and the American experiment and the dream of a multiracial society based on the rule of law and constitutional rights and guarantees will be threatened in ways not seen in 150 years.