Just days after Democrats swept to major victories in the midterm elections, a new state-level investigation is challenging one of their main allies, the Democratic Socialists of America, over potential foreign interference.
Democrats’ response? Literal laughter.
“That’s absurd,” said Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), who actively laughed in disbelief when HuffPost asked her about the criminal probe launched by Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier on Tuesday.
“This is just more of [Gov.] Ron DeSantis and the Republicans in Florida’s last-gasp efforts, since that’s one of the few states they still control,” Jayapal said.
Uthmeier, who was narrowly reelected last week as Florida’s top law enforcement official, said in a statement Tuesday that he’d issued a subpoena to the DSA for documents related to two foreign delegations the organization had sent to Cuba and China last year to provide aid and meet with local officials.
The state attorney general suggested that DSA, a major backer of progressive Democrats and one of the key institutional victors of the midterm elections, may have violated Florida law on unfair business practices and the solicitation of funds by accepting money from “foreign sources of concern.”
Jayapal told HuffPost in an interview Tuesday that she’d faced similar scrutiny from the GOP when she traveled to Cuba in April with Rep. Jonathan Jackson (D-Ill.), where she met with Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel.
Asked whether she thought the DSA investigation was related to Democrats’ and the DSA’s huge wins in backing socialist candidates who notched victories nationwide in the midterms, she was blunt: “Yeah, I think so.”
“I don’t think they’ve earned the benefit of the doubt when it comes to politically motivated attacks.”
- Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.)
DSA-backed candidates won more than 100 races across the country last week. A half dozen members of Democrats’ incoming majority are democratic socialists, including Reps.-elect Darializa Avila-Chevalier (D-N.Y.) and Melat Kiros (D-Colo.).
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), who renewed her own DSA membership over the summer, told HuffPost that she wasn’t familiar with Uthmeier’s investigation or Florida law, but said she was skeptical of what she framed as politically targeted policies coming out of the state’s Republican administration. She pointed to efforts to change Florida school curricula requiring lessons on the history of communism, which critics have framed as rehabilitation for Cold War-era anti-communist panic, as well as the state’s recent partisan gerrymander.
“I don’t think they’ve earned the benefit of the doubt when it comes to politically motivated attacks,” said Ocasio-Cortez.
But the most stinging indictment of Florida’s DSA probe came from Rep. Sarah McBride (D-Del.), who compared the investigation to the Red Scare tactics of the 1950s.
“It’s McCarthyism, plain and simple,” she said. “It’s one more example of the far right weaponizing both state and federal departments of justice to go after political opponents. It’s shameful.”
McBride added that the probe demonstrated that Republicans have not learned their lesson from last week’s midterms. “The Republicans are clearly incapable of actually focusing on the cost of living … they are never going to actually focus on the issues that matter most to their constituents.”
Still unclear are the exact contours of Uthmeier’s probe. A spokesperson for the Florida attorney general’s office declined to provide details of the subpoena to DSA, citing an ongoing investigation. The DSA itself told HuffPost it was aware of the situation but declined to comment.
Republicans, meanwhile, welcomed an investigation into the democratic socialists’ funding sources. Rep. Kat Cammack (R-Fla.) told HuffPost on Tuesday that Uthmeier had taken a “logical step” in probing what she framed as foreign influence in U.S. elections.
Even following the GOP’s staggering midterm losses, the party is tracking further to the right and has continued to hammer what Republicans describe as the march of “communism” in the Democratic Party. Outgoing House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) claimed during a news conference on Tuesday that a “rising number” of Democrats had “disdain for the founding principles of America.”
“[T]hat is going to be the contest in the days ahead,” he said. “Are we going to go down a dark, dangerous road to socialism and communism, which is a deadly road?”