Only recently, Arizona was a bastion of Americanism, home of the great Barry Goldwater. Then came colonization by California. Currently, the state is ruled by the likes of Attorney General Kris Mayes, who like her New York equivalent Letitia James is plunging the state into banana republic territory and trying to take the rest of the country with it by criminalizing opposition to Democrats in the runup to the November elections:

An Arizona grand jury indicted several important allies of former President Donald Trump — including former Trump attorney and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, former Arizona Republican Chair Kelli Ward, and former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows — for their roles in disputing the results of the 2020 presidential election. …

Meadows, Giuliani, [former Trump attorney Jenna] Ellis, and [former Trump campaign adviser Boris] Epshteyn are among those who were indicted for allegedly attempting to help Trump receive Arizona’s electoral votes in the 2020 presidential election, which was more than three years ago.

They are being indicted now because a major fork in the road is approaching:

The indictment of several Trump allies and members of Arizona’s Republican Party comes as a Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll conducted between April 8 and 15, found that President Joe Biden is trailing Trump in several key swing states such as Arizona…

If you are going to work on the Trump campaign, make sure you win. Otherwise, you might land in prison.

Typically of Democrats, Mayes takes the Orwellian approach of claiming that she is snuffing out democracy because she “will not allow American democracy to be undermined.”

If Democrats win after using these tactics, they will only become more arrogant. The last resistance to authoritarian single-party rule will be quickly extinguished. The coming election is a referendum on whether this will be America or a very different kind of country.

On tips from Varla and Wiggins.