Democratic Senator Elissa Slotkin recently said something truly shocking. Speaking at the University of Chicago, she argued that Trump administration officials should be prosecuted—not because they’d actually done anything wrong, but to send a “deterrence message” to young people who might otherwise work for the administration.

She’s not alone. Florida Democratic Senate candidate Angie Nixon has called for her Republican opponent to be “locked up” and “punished in jail.”

This is nothing more than mean-girl politics, but with real power behind it: vilify and ostracize anyone outside your group. Except now, instead of banishment from the cool kids’ lunch table, they’re threatening people with prison.

That’s sinister. In America, we don’t prosecute people simply because we disagree with them. We debate them out in the open, fair and square—and then let the voters decide.