The Politics of Pathology

Before facing felony charges for soliciting a minor, Senator Eichorn sought to diagnose Trump critics—and resurrected a dangerous historical tactic

The pickup truck eased into Bloomington's commercial district on a Monday in March, its driver unaware that police officers were watching.

Justin Eichorn, a forty-year-old Republican state senator from Grand Rapids, Minnesota, had come seeking what he believed would be an encounter with a sixteen-year-old girl. The encounter had been arranged through messages with someone Eichorn thought was a teenager offering sex for money.

The teenager was, in fact, a detective.

"As a 40-year-old man, if you come to the Orange Jumpsuit District looking to have sex with someone's child, you can expect that we are going to lock you up," Bloomington police chief Booker Hodges said in a statement, as reported by the New York Times.

Eichorn now faces a felony charge carrying up to five years in prison.