North Carolina Republicans are smooth operators. They often manage to insert a far right agenda into legislation, without exhibiting the same theatrics as many of their Deep South neighbors. The state’s Republicans haven’t proposed siccing bounty hunters on drag shows, for instance, nor have they passed laws that display a hostility for the Constitution as blatant or gleeful as Louisiana’s new diktat requiring public school classrooms to display the Ten Commandments. Mark Robinson — a MAGA star, Holocaust denier and North Carolina gubernatorial frontrunner — is bucking this trend, but otherwise, the state’s rightward lurch in recent years has happened with relatively little scrutiny. When North Carolina’s Republican lawmakers try to demolish basic civil liberties, they do so with a chisel, not a hammer.

But in the dark, dirty coal mine of the far right’s national agenda, North Carolina bills are often little canaries. After all, it was the North Carolina GOP that pushed the absurd independent state legislature theory all the way from the fringes to the Supreme Court. And then, of course, there was HB 2 — the infamous bathroom bill — which sparked a massive wave of backlash when it debuted in 2016, but has since become the blueprint for anti-trans legislation across the country.

Now, North Carolina Republicans have slipped a new troubling nugget into their latest budget proposal. Amid mass demonstrations against Israel’s genocide in Gaza, including high-profile protests at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, lawmakers are attempting to crack down on district attorneys who exercise leniency in cases against protesters.

Under the new provision, prosecutors would be required to submit detailed explanations for any decision to dismiss “civil disorder” cases or reduce defendants’ charges. This includes a report of the defendant’s prior convictions, a state database check and a “list of those elements” of the case that the prosecutor believes can or cannot be proved. “Interests of justice” and........

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