Sen Slotkin threatened students like me. Senate needs an ethics probe

Michigan Senator Elissa Slotkin recently came to my campus, the University of Chicago, to join Vox editorial director Astead Herndon for a live program of America before a crowd of students. Believing she was speaking to a group of friends, she let her intentions be known should Democrats win back power in November. She wanted young conservatives interested in serving their country in its government to think, "Lord, that might be buying myself a ton of problems I don’t want, so let me avoid participating in that. I want that deterrence message sent." My friends and I received her "deterrence message," as did millions of patriotic Americans across the country.

Unfortunately for Senator Slotkin, our team with the Chicago Thinker was there and listening to her every word. Now the walls are closing in. Members of Congress and President Trump have condemned her remarks. The Article III Project referred her to the Department of Justice’s Office of Civil Rights for inquiry and potential investigation. And a government watchdog filed an ethics complaint against her. Yesterday, I joined them by filing my own ethics complaint as the student reporter who originally broke the story.

It’s time for the Senate Ethics Committee to open an investigation into Senator Slotkin for her remarks. The Ethics Manual is clear: "Conduct [that] has been characterized as ‘improper conduct which may reflect upon the Senate,’ … has provided the basis for the Senate’s most serious disciplinary cases in modern times." The question before the Committee, then, is whether threatening young conservatives would reflect poorly on the Senate and set a dangerous precedent for the future.

SLOTKIN WANTS GOP PROSECUTIONS TO DETER YOUNG PEOPLE FROM TRUMP ADMINISTRATION JOBS

It would. Senator Slotkin’s statement was clearly meant to intimidate one side of the aisle from serving their country in government by way of investigations and prosecutions. She did not merely send a deterrence message — she sent a threat to Americans who dare dissent from her liberal orthodoxy. Whatever your opinions of Senator Slotkin’s own politics, such threats are unbecoming of a member of the United States Senate.

Senator Slotkin’s defense so far has been unconvincing. She claims all she really meant was that those who violate the law should be prosecuted for doing so. It’s hard to see how that’s the case when we reexamine her comments and put them in context. She wanted to send a "deterrence message" to those interested in serving in government, not to those interested in breaking the law. As the host remarked to her immediately after her comments, "You could make them a pariah socially, politically, maybe even legally," as she quietly nodded along in front of an audience of college students. If all she wanted to do was prevent those interested in breaking the law from joining the government, she could have said as much. But she did not.

MIKE DAVIS: SEN SLOTKIN REVEALS HER INSIDIOUS SCHEME TO TARGET YOUNG CONSERVATIVES

Let’s suppose the sides were reversed. Suppose a Republican senator said they would investigate and prosecute so many members of another’s staff that young public servants would be deterred from working for them out of fear of legal retribution. One can already imagine Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and his Democratic colleagues rushing to the Senate floor to condemn such comments and calling for an ethics investigation, censureship, or even expulsion.

They would be right to do so, and I would join them in such calls.

This is not about partisan games. Those who love this country, share its values and seek to serve it should be allowed — indeed, encouraged — to do so, no matter their political background.

Many of our nation’s finest moments have come with the help of young staffers. Ted Sorensen began working as John F. Kennedy’s speechwriter when he was twenty-four. Peggy Noonan was in her early thirties when she did the same for President Reagan. And it was a team of young staffers, many in their twenties, who were dispatched in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations to document the oppression of Black Americans during the Civil Rights Era.

Should Senator Slotkin’s remarks go without formal condemnation from the Senate, or at the very least some form of investigation, I fear the consequences for our country. The world is rapidly changing. Artificial intelligence is shocking the economy, the global order and the minds of millions of Americans all at once. Wars rage on around the globe. Our body politic is more divided than at any point since the Civil War. Now is the time to be encouraging more political participation among our best and brightest youths, not less.