Just because Donald Trump no longer occupies the Oval Office doesn’t mean he’s not a threat to America.

He is.

He may be out of sight and off Twitter and Facebook, but he is still top of mind for Republicans who shamelessly line up to kiss his hem, thinking some of his cult-like power will rub off on them.

It will not.

What they really are afraid of is the shifting demographics of America and the growing political power of Black and brown people that gave Democrats Joe Biden and Kamala Harris a victory in November and booted their demigod out of office and back to a sham lifestyle at Mar-a-Lago in Florida.

Without any real platform or substance, the former president and his followers are eager to hold on to a base of supporters energized by the false notion of white supremacy in order to maintain power. And they are willing to destroy our democracy to do it.

We are witnessing this dangerous precedent with the attack on voting rights in at least 43 states. Already, measures to make it harder for people to vote have been passed recently by legislatures in Georgia, Florida and Arizona and signed into law by Republican governors in those states.

Texas is set to follow suit, with its state House and Senate working out minor differences in bills approved by both chambers that would block people from accessing the polls.

We thought our lives and the country had calmed down with former President Trump out of office. But like Hydra, this monster has sprung back with many heads, all working to return him to the White House in 2024 or to put his minions back in control of the Congress and state legislatures.

On Wednesday, they even turned on one of their own – Congresswoman Liz Cheney of Wyoming – whom they booted from her leadership role as House GOP conference chair because she voted to impeach the former president in January after he incited the insurrection and riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.

While we don’t agree with most of her political positions, Rep. Cheney publicly has rejected the former president’s false claims that he actually won the November 2020 election and would still be in office if it weren’t for election fraud perpetrated by the Democrats.

No neophyte to politics, Rep. Cheney criticized former President Trump for mounting the insurrection in which hundreds of his treasonous backers mobbed and vandalized the U.S. Capitol with the stated goal of blocking Congress from certifying the Electoral College votes and declaring President Biden the winner of the election. Five people died in the attack, including a U.S. Capitol Police officer, and more than 100 people were injured in the rioting.

Despite her ouster on Wednesday, Rep. Cheney continues to stand up and publicly say that President Biden won the election fair and square and that she will not sit back and remain silent while the Republican Party is led down a path that “abandons the rule of law and joins the former president’s crusade to undermine our democracy.”

“We cannot both embrace the big lie and embrace the Constitution,” she said.

From his base in Florida, the former president continues to hack away at pillars of our democracy by threatening the very core – voting. Already, he has put his mark on Virginia with an endorsement of GOP gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin, who ran for the Republican nomination as a Trumper. He sees himself as cut from the same cloth as former President Trump, touting himself as a conservative, Christian businessman and “outsider” with no previous political experience.

Should Republicans win the Virginia governor’s office and legislature in November, there is no telling how far they will carry us back.

If progress is to be made and democracy to be shored up, we must do our part and vote – no matter the impediments.