The determination of too many elected Republicans around the country to hold power by any underhanded means necessary has been demonstrated with distressing clarity recently — and not just on Jan. 6, 2021.

Two more recent examples, both involving the judiciary, drive home what should be an alarming message to Americans of any political persuasion who still believe in democracy: These folks don't care how they retain power, and how thoroughly they trample citizens' rights to keep it. They really don't.

In Alabama, the Republican-controlled Legislature is bluntly ignoring a U.S Supreme Court order to redraw its congressional districts to fairly represent the state's minority population. Last week, the Legislature effectively said to the high court, Make us.

And in Wisconsin, where a Democratic-leaning public has lived under the yoke of a blatantly gerrymandered Republican Legislature for more than a decade, a ray of hope — in the form of a liberal state Supreme Court justice elected by an overwhelming margin — is likely to be snuffed out soon by GOP lawmakers angling to impeach her before she's heard her first case.

Does any fair-minded American of any party really believe these kinds of tactics are OK?

The Alabama case harkens to the state's shameful Civil Rights-era stance of ignoring the Supreme Court's school desegregation mandate to the point of forcing President John F. Kennedy to send in federalized National Guard troops to enforce it.

The current case hasn't gotten to that point (yet), but the underlying legislative petulance in defense of racism is familiar.

Alabama should, based on its racial makeup, have two majority-Black congressional districts. But the Legislature's Republican majority created just one, gerrymandering away the voting rights of the state's minority citizens.

In July, the U.S. Supreme Court — to the surprise of pretty much everyone familiar with the current bench's hard-right tilt — ordered Alabama to redraw the district map to create a second Black district or something "close to it."

The Legislature went back to the drawing board and last week offered up a new map that ... is effectively the same as the old map, with one Black district.

As one lower-court judge involved in the case put it: "What I hear you saying is that the state of Alabama deliberately disregarded our instructions."

Make us.

If it's possible to be more brazenly insolent toward democracy than the Alabama Legislature has been, the Wisconsin Legislature is making a go of it.

Wisconsin Republicans have gerrymandered themselves into a permanent legislative majority for years, evidenced by the fact that Democrats keep winning when elections are statewide. That's what happened earlier this year, when voters put liberal state Supreme Court Justice Janet Protasiewicz on the bench with an 11-point margin, flipping the court's 4-3 conservative majority.

So Republicans are now moving to impeach her. She has yet to issue a single ruling from the bench, but they claim (with no legal rationale) that statements she made during the campaign against the state's gerrymandered system disqualify her.

Disqualify the majority of voters who supported her, is what they really mean.

It's not just Donald Trump, and it's not just about Jan. 6. Large, putatively mainstream swaths of the GOP have effectively decided that democracy doesn't work for them anymore. And to avoid democracy's judgment, they're now willing to undermine not just the sanctity of the vote, but the authority of the courts. Anyone who thinks that level of anti-democracy obstinance will stop before it tramples their owns rights should think again.

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