Inside a movement that aims to bring accountability and healing to the justice system.
What was happening in the courtroom that day in New York City was unusual. The judge was set to sentence a young man to prison for shooting a gun and killing a bystander. Court hearings for this type of crime are understandably charged: Typically, the relatives of the victim sit on one side of the gallery, as far away as possible from the family of the person who killed their loved one. Harsh words are often exchanged; sometimes, fights break out.
Besides that tension, there is almost no actual accountability. The defendant passively answers “yes” or “no” when asked if they plead guilty, while the victim’s family may at most have the chance to make a victim impact statement, which is the moment when victims can tell the court how the crime has affected them. (I’m using the terms “victim” and “defendant” for clarity, but in the restorative justice movement that I’m a part of, we avoid using such labels because they can obscure nuance. We also promise confidentiality to people who participate in the system, which is why I’ve made all parties in this case anonymous.)
Rarely, however, will a defendant take any meaningful responsibility for their actions, and rarely, too, will a victim’s family get any type of closure. Once the person has been found guilty, we simply send them to prison without a word.
On the day in question, it was different. I arrived at the courthouse with the husband of the person who had been killed, and remained glued to his side throughout the unbearable day. Soon after, the mother of the defendant arrived with her younger child in tow and other members of her family.
And this is where the court hearing became unusual. The defendant’s mother beelined over to us to hug me, and then she proceeded to hug the victim’s husband too. The man who had lost his husband received the mother of his killer with warmth and appreciation. When the lawyers finally arrived, they found us all standing together instead of in our respective corners.
The coming together of both parties before sentencing is nearly unheard of — particularly in violent cases of this kind. Our system is designed to be adversarial and combative; one side wins and one side loses. But in this case, I watched as the prosecutor spoke to the defendant’s mother, who profusely thanked him for the opportunity to participate in a restorative justice process, while the defense attorney spoke kindly with the victim’s husband.
When the judge was ready, we all walked inside and sat together — the families of the victim and defendant in one row. The prosecutor explained to the judge that through a restorative justice program, the defendant had taken real accountability for what he had done.
The origins of restorative justice
Over the last decades, many communities have been shifting to the promise of restorative justice as a way to respond to conflict and violence. Restorative justice is inspired by teachers from various Indigenous traditions such as peacemaking, who have been practicing a sacred approach to justice for generations. A prominent restorative justice thinker, the criminologist Howard Zehr, describes the approach as moving away from looking at which law is broken and toward an inquiry into who was harmed, what that person needs to heal, and whose obligation it is to meet those needs.
Over the last decade — after a brief foray as a prosecutor in Canada, which revealed to me so many of the insufficiencies of the conventional criminal justice system — I have been exploring how restorative justice can shift relationships, respond to conflict, and even help chart a path forward in the aftermath of devastating harm. My role in these cases is as a facilitator — working with both sides and their loved ones — to understand the needs at the heart of the matter and to help people find their own footing to move forward.
In the case above, I designed a restorative justice process that took the better part of a year. My first step — as it always is — was to meet with the victim’s husband to ask him what he needed to begin the healing process. He repeatedly expressed the need to meet with the defendant, a young man in his early 20s. He wanted to understand what had happened that day; he thought he may even want to forgive. Either way, the kind of faceless prosecution that is the norm in the criminal justice system wasn’t enough for him.
I then began to meet with the young man, to understand whether he would be open to this kind of process. This took time. Over many months, he and I, as well as my co-facilitator, tried to unearth how he had ended up at this terrible crossroads. We talked about all kinds of things, sharing information about our lives and developing a real connection. Eventually, we had built enough trust to begin the process of exploring how he might accept responsibility for his actions.
Finally, almost nine months after the start of the process, after he had pleaded guilty in court but before his formal sentencing, we all came together for a facilitated dialogue; one without any lawyers present, one where the young man was able to witness the husband’s grief and share his own remorse. The defendant’s mother was there too, supporting her son’s willingness to take responsibility and sharing her overwhelming regret for what had transpired.
When we had finished, the police officer in charge outside the door — who had, earlier that day, rolled his eyes at our “kumbaya meeting” — said to my co-facilitator and me, “In nearly 40 years of working homicides, I’ve never seen anything like this.”
Back in the courtroom, at the moment of sentencing, the prosecutor suggested that the court impose a lower sentence in light of the defendant’s efforts toward transformation. But first he invited the victim’s husband to share his victim impact statement. The husband walked to the podium and began to speak:
“I would like the court to know that I forgive this young man. Not because I’m a minister, not because I have to, but because of the heartfelt conversation that we had in the restorative justice program.”
The judge imposed a lower sentence, and that was it.
Bringing reconciliation to the courtroom
The softening we had witnessed between the parties will never change what happened, nor make it okay in any way. And this process cannot be used for victims who choose not to seek that type of connection, nor for people who choose not to accept any responsibility for their actions. Of course, some could try to use it to manipulate people and systems in their favor. But in my experience, it takes an unparalleled level of grit and bravery to sit and face the person you harmed, or their deepest loved one, and tell the truth about yourself.
Despite the enormity of the loss at issue in this case, the question animating a restorative process is not about trying to change the past; rather, in the words of the Navajo peacemaking tradition, it asks: What do we need to move forward in a good way?
In the criminal legal system, many defendants deny what they’ve done. They deny it throughout the legal proceedings, where they’re advised to remain silent and plead not guilty. Over time, this may even encourage them to believe they didn’t do anything wrong. But this course of action, even if it’s an accepted part of the criminal justice system, does nothing for a person’s growth or capacity to change, which requires at minimum an honest acknowledgment of how one behaved in the first place.
Meanwhile, the private, searing pain felt by victims of harm becomes an object of the state, which gets to determine the method of resolution. But victims, like everyone else, are individuals. Some of them need answers to burning questions. Others want to understand the circumstances that sparked the moment of harm. And for many, the unending incarceration of the defendant does little to bring them peace, especially given the glaring racial disparities in the prison system that tend to undermine the system as a whole.
It doesn’t have to be this way. We know that mass incarceration at the gargantuan annual cost of $270 billion in the United States has done little to reduce violent crime or create healthy communities; in fact, for the most part, it has done the opposite. Yet politicians capitalizing on overhyped fears of violent crime are pushing for a return to an even more punitive criminal justice system.
Undeterred, in communities around the country, people are working to build new strategies for responding to harm focused on safety, healing, and accountability. There are opportunities to create dialogue centered in community, without any system involvement, and others that create off-ramps for people embroiled in the justice system, all while centering — not forgetting — the victims of crime in the process.
After the sentencing was over and we had all turned to leave, the victim’s husband was stopped at the door by two family members of the defendant. They thanked him for what he’d said to the court and hugged him.
“I didn’t do anything,” he replied. “It’s just the truth.”
How Germany’s far right is making a comeback using an old playbook.
BERLIN — In Germany, as in a number of European countries, support for the far right is surging.
Buoyed by discontent over the economy and energy policy, Alternative for Deutschland (AfD) has been gaining in the polls ahead of regional elections in East Germany in 2024 and in Bavaria later this fall. An anti-migration, climate change-denying party, AfD won its first district council election in Sonneberg — a town in eastern Germany — this past June and holds 78 seats (a little more than 10 percent) in the national legislature.
The backing it has picked up is notable: National polling averages currently show the party with 21 percent support, higher than that of the 18 percent held by Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democratic Party (SPD). And in recent polls of specific German states, AfD has become one of the most popular political parties in some regions, getting up to 34 percent support in Thuringia, for example.
AfD’s gains have raised alarms among historians and political leaders, given the country’s history with Nazism. The AfD says it is not interested in neo-Nazism and has publicly tried to distance itself from neo-Nazi organizations. Its ties to right-wing extremists are deep, however, and, as with the Nazis, nationalism and the scapegoating of minorities — including Muslim migrants — are key to its ideology.
Thus far, the major German political parties — the center-left SPD, the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the environmentalist Greens — have declined to work with AfD at the federal level. But there is concern that mainstream parties may begin to normalize the AfD in order to build governing coalitions and to consolidate power.
“One thing is: never underestimate [the AfD]. Never,” says Christoph Kreutzmüller, a Holocaust historian and former curator at the Jewish Museum in Berlin.
Vox sat down with Kreutzmüller, who now chairs the Aktives Museum, which is dedicated to confronting the history of Nazis in Berlin, to discuss the lessons we should take from Germany’s past and the reasons the right is seeing this resurgence now.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Li Zhou
Could you start by talking about some of the political and economic factors that fueled the rise of the Nazis?
Christoph Kreutzmüller
I think the most important is a general wariness, dissatisfaction of a huge part of the population with … the Republic, seen as the one who kind of lost the war.
[And] in the mid-1920s, the feeling, “Hey, we are getting somewhere, we are moving,” was quite broad. But then, of course, came the economic catastrophe. And this small party, which had been tolerated by too many for far too long, became a serious threat.
This is something we want to think about because, in 1923, this small radical party tried to putsch. And instead of, you know, prohibiting this party, which was against the rule of law, which was against the Constitution, they were only disbanded for a short time. Adolf Hitler, the head of the putsch, was given a very honorary prison treatment, in which he was able to write his fake news book, which became an international bestseller.
They missed the chance in 1923 to say “full stop.” They missed a chance in saying “full stop” when … the Nazis rose to power with brawls and violence. [There were] a series of lost chances to enforce the rule of law. And, of course, then it’s the Depression. And in times of fear, anxiety, and millions unemployed, lots of people look for a strong figure.
[Additionally], anti-Semitism was one of the core political messages. After World War I, a quite big portion of the population seemingly needed something like a scapegoat. And Jews were then in Europe, in a Christian-based society, the easy scapegoat to pick.
Li Zhou
Was there a sense that other parties helped normalize Nazi leadership?
Christoph Kreutzmüller
In the state of Thuringia, there was a Nazi minister in a coalition party as of 1931. There were quite a few of those states Germany consisted of then that had established the Nazi form of government or had let Nazis come to power. So that normalized it, of course.
And that’s the question that is debated [about the AfD] right now. Can you form a coalition with those people and make them accepted as normal partners? And there’s a huge understanding right now, or was a huge understanding: No, you may not, because they don’t play according to the rules. And the rules are the content of our Constitution and the rule of law.
There’s real concern. And the head of the CDU right now is not as adamant as his predecessors.
Li Zhou
What parallels do you see now with the rise of AfD and the current far right and that of the Nazis?
Christoph Kreutzmüller
In times of anxiety, people tend to become more extreme because they’re afraid to lose [what they have].
We all know now that there’s big changes coming [on climate and other issues] and we are afraid of these big changes. The other thing you got now … is you [have] this fascist revival all over Europe. They are supporting each other, of course.
[There is also] scapegoating again, and it’s forgetting that … Germany needs the influx of new people because we are a dying society, we are too old. And without people coming in, it will be an even huger recession. And in 10 years, we don’t have the workforce anymore. So we do need them now. We do need everyone who wants to come right now. And every economist will tell you that.
[It’s] a very, very old pattern. Antisemitism was rooted in this Christian society. Now it’s against foreigners, and of course, it’s connected to this anti-Muslim attitude that lots of people share.
Li Zhou
In a way, it felt somewhat surprising to see the resurgence of the far right in Germany given the country’s recent history and attempts to reckon with it. I’m curious if you have found it surprising.
Christoph Kreutzmüller
No, I mean, there’s more than one factor. One is that history is long gone now. People have forgot what it really [was] like in Europe. The witnesses are dying — the eyewitnesses — and so the impact is dying. It’s not just like the witnesses of the persecuted, it’s the people… who can say, “Look, my village has been bombed, and it was dreadful.” That is kind of receding, this acute knowledge of destruction and murder.
And the other thing is that you can certainly see that the AfD is stronger in the East, and one of the reasons for it is that in West Germany, the talk, like the bottom up talk about Nazi perpetrators, about Nazi ideology, about the persecution of the Jews. This bottom-up process is really grassrooted in society, and … that really helped. And that process didn’t happen in the GDR (German Democratic Republic, occupied by the Soviet Union), [at least not until] much later, and then … not so rooted in society.
Li Zhou
What are the arguments you’re seeing AfD make that are resonating with voters?
Christoph Kreutzmüller
One of the main arguments of the AfD is that they are not a real party. They are different: “We don’t do it like the big ones.” [They say that to] voters forgetting that after [existing for] 10 years, they are an established party.
The other is a very strong nationalistic argument, that us Germans have to find ourselves again, and that resonates quite well, especially in the East, because as strange as it may, it’s something that still lingers in the corners there, which has got something to do with not really talking about the perpetratorship in Nazi Germany.
In the course of the reunification, the people in the East tend to think that they have been neglected and not heard, and they should be heard. And that’s another bit of it, which I find quite understandable because they were really not heard in the early years and lost lots of their lives. I see that. But of course, it’s not a justification to supporting Nazis or neo-Nazis.
And, of course, [they support] disbanding the EU because people don’t understand what the EU is and that one of the greatest benefactors of the EU is Germany.
But the main argument is nationalism, and we are different.
Li Zhou
Was there more Germany, either politically or societally, could have done to stop the progression of AfD?
Christoph Kreutzmüller
The Office of the Protection of the Constitution [which is meant to protect the German government from anti-democratic extremism] actually opened an investigation. And it’s becoming clearer and clearer that [the AfD] is in huge parts, or in part, against the Constitution, and could [therefore] be prohibited. And you know, the case hasn’t been solved yet. (Editor’s note: German law has a formal process for banning political parties found to be a danger to the state, in order to prevent anti-democratic extremists from using parties to take control of the country.)
But this is a question that is widely debated right now in Germany. And maybe it comes a bit late. I think if you think about the chances we. as a society, missed in saying, full stop, “You are not playing according to the rules, so you don’t play with us anymore. You are fascist and you are against our Constitution, and our beliefs on how to live together, you are to be prohibited.”
Those chances are kind of fading, even though the arguments are growing. [It’s] ever more difficult to really prohibit this party because they’re gaining so much support. I mean, how do you then prohibit a party that has got, and will gain 30 percent of the votes?
Li Zhou
What lessons do you think are important for people watching the rise of the AfD to keep in mind from German history?
Christoph Kreutzmüller
One thing is: Never underestimate them. Never. And do enforce the rule of law. I mean, that’s what we’ve got, for God’s sake. That’s the only thing we’ve got as a society.
We’ve got the Constitution, which I see as part of the rule of law. Apply it. And that applies for the Federal Republic of Germany, as well as the United States of America.
The right-wing warrior may soon see his legal issues catch up with him. It could shape the future of the Texas GOP.
Ken Paxton, Texas’s Republican attorney general and an ally of former President Donald Trump, may soon see his long-running legal problems catch up with him.
The Texas House voted to impeach Paxton in May, and on Tuesday, the Republican-controlled Texas Senate began Paxton’s impeachment trial, which focuses on allegations including dereliction of duty, bribery, and disregard of official duty. The trial represents an opportunity for moderate state Republicans to neutralize the powerful far-right wing that Paxton represents, and the result could help decide the state party’s trajectory in one of the nation’s biggest GOP trifectas.
Paxton, who made his name filing high-profile lawsuits against the Obama and Biden administrations, has rallied some prominent Republicans behind him, including US Sen. Ted Cruz, former Trump White House adviser Steve Bannon, and the former president’s son, Donald Trump Jr.
“Today marks another milestone in Ken Paxton’s career of fighting the Austin Swamp and Establishment,” Trump Jr. tweeted Tuesday. “Ken will survive and will continue to combat the Swamp in Texas to put America First.”
Many of Paxton’s right-wing allies have sought to cast his impeachment in the same light as the prosecution of Trump, and while Paxton himself has not been so direct, he has warned about “the weaponization of state power” — against the former president and, implicitly, himself. In that sense, the trial could become a microcosm of the national discourse around Trump’s presidential candidacy and reveal just what it might take for Republicans to break with a leader plagued with legal and political problems.
While Paxton has his supporters, other Republicans — including former Bush administration adviser Karl Rove and former Texas Republican Gov. Rick Perry — have supported the impeachment trial given the evidence that has piled up against Paxton.
For years, the state party appeared willing to overlook Paxton’s legal problems so long as he was winning elections. That seems to have changed after he sought to use taxpayer funds to pay out a whistleblower settlement to his former deputies, respected Federalist Society lawyers who accused him of corruption. There have also been new revelations about Paxton’s alleged misdeeds that are difficult to defend: Lawmakers investigating him found that he took great pains to hide his mutually beneficial relationship with real estate investor Nate Paul, whom he allegedly helped shield from an FBI investigation using the powers of his office. Paxton has denied any wrongdoing and unsuccessfully petitioned the Texas Senate to dismiss all of the impeachment charges.
Paxton was suspended from his duties back in May after winning a third four-year term. Lawmakers (excluding his wife, state Sen. Angela Paxton) will decide whether to convict and permanently remove him from office in the coming weeks. They need a two-thirds majority in both chambers to do so following the trial.
But this is Texas, where there is an enthusiastic Republican base, and the impeachment trial is an inherently political proceeding. The outcome of the trial may therefore hinge more on Republican senators’ political calculus than on justice.
“Legislators are thinking about their electoral prospects, which is essentially their self-interest, and that is part of the process,” said Jim Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin.
Who is Ken Paxton?
Paxton is among the most prolific state attorneys general in the country, known for leading splashy, multi-state lawsuits against policies of the Obama and Biden administrations and wading into culture war battles. That includes lawsuits seeking to end the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program and challenging the Affordable Care Act, as well as an investigation he spearheaded into a hospital that provided gender-affirming care to trans youth for unspecified “potential illegal activity.”
Those lawsuits — some of which were successful — allowed him to rise to a level of national prominence that most state attorneys general do not have, earning him powerful allies. Last year, he won Trump’s coveted endorsement in his reelection fight, and also addressed a crowd of Trump’s supporters just before the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the US Capitol.
In June, Cruz told KETK that he thought the Texas House’s vote to impeach Paxton was a “travesty” and that the legal issues at stake should have been resolved in court instead: “We have a system in the court of law that can resolve those issues but every bit as importantly, these allegations were before the voters.”
Bannon also told listeners on his podcast that the impeachment trial was just another witch hunt akin to what he believes Trump is facing with the four criminal indictments against him. “We want the entire MAGA movement to understand that what’s going on in Texas is not just about Texas,” he said earlier this month.
These kinds of figures have long cocooned Paxton from the consequences of his alleged misdeeds, which span more than a decade. Indeed, the basic contours of the misconduct alleged by the Texas House panel that investigated him were already known to the public, well before any murmurs of impeachment. Voters still twice reelected him, albeit after a hard-fought primary last year.
The question is whether the impeachment trial will change their minds.
Why was Paxton impeached?
The impeachment charges center on Paxton’s improper quid pro quo with Paul, an Austin real estate mogul who was indicted in June on eight felony counts of making false statements to financial institutions to obtain billions of dollars in loans.
Paxton allegedly issued a last-minute legal opinion to help Paul avoid foreclosure sales on several of his properties during the pandemic and ordered his staff not to help law enforcement in investigating Paul’s business. He is also accused of sharing confidential records about a 2019 FBI raid on Paul’s properties with him. In return, Paxton allegedly got Paul’s help with a home remodel and with finding Paxton’s alleged mistress a job.
Paxton, meanwhile, allegedly sought to hide his relationship with his alleged mistress and with Paul, leaving behind his security detail and using a burner phone, secret email accounts, and an alias on his Uber account. Those sordid details could prove particularly damaging for Paxton among the religious conservative voters he has long relied on.
Lawmakers investigating Paxton have amassed almost 4,000 pages of evidence and promised additional revelations during the trial.
Nominally, Paxton’s trial is about corruption. But behind the scenes, it’s also a showdown between warring factions of the Texas GOP.
House Speaker Dade Phelan led more traditional Republicans in pursuing Paxton’s impeachment, perhaps perceiving that he could strike the state attorney general at a moment of weakness and reclaim power for himself and like-minded colleagues. How that power struggle plays out could determine whether the state party, which seems likely to maintain control in Texas for the foreseeable future, embraces the more moderate conservatism championed by the Texas speaker of the House, or Paxton’s far-right style of politics.
Paxton has many other legal troubles
The impeachment trial is only the latest episode in Paxton’s long list of legal troubles.
Perhaps the most pressing case against him involves a 2015 accusation leveled by Byron Cook, a former Republican state legislator, and Florida businessman Joel Hochberg. They claim Paxton encouraged them to invest $100,000 or more in a technology company called Servergy Inc., without notifying them that he would earn a commission if they did so. This is alleged to have happened in 2011, while Paxton was a member of the Texas House.
The indictment in that case alleges that Paxton “intentionally fail[ed] to disclose” that he had been given compensation in the form of 100,000 shares of Servergy stock, charging him with two counts of securities fraud. He was also charged with a failure to register with the state securities board. Paxton has denied the allegations in the case, which is still making its way through the courts all these years later.
In 2020, the FBI opened a criminal investigation into the whistleblower claims that are the subject of the settlement that Paxton has pushed in the legislature. Paxton has said that he’s done nothing wrong and has accused the FBI of infiltrating his office. No criminal charges have been filed yet, but a federal grand jury in San Antonio called witnesses close to Paxton earlier this month.
What the trial reveals about the Republican Party
Paxton’s approval ratings have fallen in recent months, though less so among Republicans, who are still on the fence about the impeachment trial, according to the latest August polling by the Texas Politics Project: 47 percent said investigations of Paxton were based “mostly on the facts,” 28 percent said they were based “mostly on politics,” and a quarter offered no opinion.
As far as the Republican state senators charged with deciding Paxton’s fate are concerned, those numbers create a problem: They don’t provide a slam-dunk political case for either removing him from or keeping him in office.
“Those calculations are very hard to make,” Henson said. “It would be one thing if you could say, ‘70 to 80 percent of Republicans in the state love Ken Paxton and say it was wrong to impeach him and would be wrong to remove him.’ That’s not what the data is telling them.”
That’s left state senators facing a conundrum in terms of determining what Republican voters actually want from the trial. Choosing wrong could mean facing an unwelcome primary challenger in the next election.
Complicating matters is Republicans’ broader “fundamental distrust of institutions,” said Brendan Steinhauser, a GOP strategist in Texas. “Republican voters and activists don’t trust the media that is covering the stories around Trump and Paxton. They don’t trust the investigative bodies, the Department of Justice, the FBI. They don’t trust the prosecutors or judges, even if some of those were appointed by Republican presidents or got elected in Texas.”
While Trump has been able to use that distrust to increase his base of support in the GOP primary, Paxton’s support hasn’t proved as durable in the leadup to the impeachment trial, Henson said. But the choices that Republicans, nationally and in Texas, make with respect to Trump and Paxton will reveal the extent to which the party is capable of holding its own to account.