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Five Democratic State Senators in Missouri discovered large, orange crosshair stickers over their office nameplates on Tuesday in the Capitol Building in Jefferson. The targets included all four Democratic women in the state senate, as well as the Democratic minority leader. One Republican state representative also found a similar sticker outside his office.
Capitol police are still investigating the matter, and some of the senators took to the senate floor to express their concerns:
“Many of us when we came back to our office this afternoon had gun targets on our nameplates. A few of the senators removed them, only to have them replaced by larger stickers later,” said Jolie Justus, a Democrat from Kansas City.
None of the senators who were affected reported any kind of note or any other message. Capitol police have stepped up security, but they have yet to report any leads on a possible suspect.
The Columbia Daily Tribune reports that the senate on Tuesday was debating a Republican-sponsored bill that would seek to block the implementation of the health care reform that President Obama and congressional Democrats passed in 2010.
The controversy in Missouri comes in the same week that U.S Representative Gabrielle Giffords formally resigned from Congress. Giffords’ Arizona district was one of several marked by crosshairs on a map that Sarah Palin’s SarahPAC had used to highlight vulnerable Democratic districts. After the Giffords shooting last January in Tucson, the Palin map became the subject of a wave of criticism.
Holding Trump accountable for his illegal war on Iran
The devastating American and Israeli attacks have killed hundreds of Iranians, and the death toll continues to rise.
As independent media, what we do next matters a lot. It’s up to us to report the truth, demand accountability, and reckon with the consequences of U.S. militarism at this cataclysmic historical moment.
Trump may be an authoritarian, but he is not entirely invulnerable, nor are the elected officials who have given him pass after pass. We cannot let him believe for a second longer that he can get away with something this wildly illegal or recklessly dangerous without accountability.
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