The president gave an impassioned defense of the right to vote, but while the 60-vote Senate rule is in place, reform looks a pipe dream
Joe Biden gave his most muscular defense of the right to vote yet on Tuesday, but offered few specifics on how Democrats could overcome Republican efforts to stymie federal voting reform.
Related: Governor vows to arrest Democrats who fled Texas to block voting restrictions
Continue reading...Jen Psaki said he will also ‘decry efforts to strip the right to vote’ as Republican state legislatures pass voter suppression bills
Joe Biden, who has been criticised for failing to use his “bully pulpit” to defend voting rights, is set to deliver on Tuesday an aggressive denunciation of Donald Trump’s “big lie” about a stolen election.
After months of sidestepping acrimony with his predecessor in a bid to lower the political temperature, Biden will argue that Trump’s false conspiracy theories led to the 6 January insurrection and a rash of voter restrictions, the White House said.
Continue reading...Texas Democrats fled the state as part of an all-out effort to block Republicans from passing new restrictions on voting in the state.
The move, first reported by NBC News, escalates one of the most high-stakes battles over efforts to make it harder to vote in America.
Continue reading...Texans from across the ideological spectrum flocked to testify in person at public hearings convened by governor Greg Abbott
Hailee Mouch woke up at 2am Saturday morning so she could drive to her state’s capital city of Austin and testify at two competing public hearings on Texas’s restrictive voting bills.
She knew she had to return to the Dallas area to be at work by 6am Sunday. But she was determined to stay as long as possible to tell state lawmakers how their proposals would hurt democracy in the small city where she goes to college.
Continue reading...Hervis Rogers became a national symbol of tenacity when he cast his ballot in last year’s presidential primaries
A Texas man who became a national hero after he waited seven hours in line to vote in last year’s presidential primary has been arrested and charged with voting illegally.
Continue reading...The court’s majority opinion unequivocally narrows the law and gives politicians ammunition to pass more restrictive voting laws
Happy Thursday,
In a hugely consequential ruling last week, the US supreme court upheld two Arizona voting restrictions and, in the process, significantly curtailed one of the most powerful provisions that remain of the Voting Rights Act.
Continue reading...The justice department is suing the state of Georgia over the new voting laws it says violate the Voting Rights Act and suppress Black Americans' right to vote.
Attorney General Merrick Garland made the announcement after the justice department scrutinized a wave of new laws in Republican-controlled states that tighten voting rules.
Under the bill, the legislature gave itself power to remove local election officials deemed to be underperforming and added a voter ID requirement for mail ballots. It will result in fewer ballot drop boxes in metro Atlanta
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Rising homicide rates and gun violence has become a major issue in local political races, including in the New York mayoral primary elections.
For Joe Biden, rising concern about crime has proved to be a politically convenient opportunity for him to boost gun control reforms he touted as a candidate. But the president’s wide-ranging policy proposals are sure to divide Democrats.
We can't let legitimate concerns about shootings and homicides undermine momentum to overhaul law enforcement. We can't repeat the mistakes of the past and think that we can arrest our way out of rising gun violence. https://t.co/0ifVpEJCFE
Biden is speaking at the White House to explain his administration’s plans to address crime and gun trafficking.
My colleague David Smith is covering the event live:
Joe Biden: “Crime historically rises during the summer.” As we open after the pandemic; the summer spike might be higher than usual. pic.twitter.com/XfWoQ0JGQd
Continue reading...The White House warned democracy was ‘in peril’ but while key Democrats stay committed to the filibuster, progress looks difficult
After nearly six months of watching Republicans relentlessly make it harder to vote in the US, Democrats suffered a major blow on Tuesday after GOP senators used a legislative maneuver to halt a sweeping voting rights and ethics bill.
The vote doesn’t kill the bill, but it marks one of the most significant setbacks for Democrats in Joe Biden’s presidency so far. Democrats heralded the legislation as their No 1 priority, even knowing they were unlikely to get any Republican votes for it. The bill would amount to the most significant expansion of the right to vote in a generation, requiring early voting and automatic and same-day registration, while prohibiting excessive manipulation of electoral district boundaries, a process often called gerrymandering.
Continue reading...Democrats demonstrated unity in the US senate as the West Virginia senator Joe Manchin said he would vote in favor of advancing voting rights legislation known as the For the People act to the debate stage.
The Republican Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, denied any voter suppression was happening despite around 400 bills introduced in more than 43 states which could restrict the right to vote. The legislation would remove hurdles to voting.
In the evenly split Senate, Republican votes mean the bill will not garner the necessary 60 votes to advance.
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Good morning, live blog readers. Yesterday may have been the longest day of the year but today may feel longer for Democrats as tension builds in Washington towards the big vote on whether to advance legislation on massive voting rights reforms. It’s going to be a lively day, so let’s get started.
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Vice-President Kamala Harris, who has been taking some criticism for her blunt speech in Guatemala to Central American migrants to “do not come” to US, is now getting some backlash from Republicans for an NBC interview she did on this same trip.
Reminder: Joe Biden tasked Harris in March with efforts to stem migration at the US-Mexican border. On her first foreign trip, NBC’s Lester Holt asked if she had any plans to visit the border.
“We have to deal with what's happening at the border.”@VP Kamala Harris spoke exclusively with @LesterHoltNBC on her first trip overseas, how the administration is addressing the immigration crisis, and if she plans to visit the southern border herself. pic.twitter.com/sA4We7peeR
LESTER HOLT: You haven't been to the border.
KAMALA HARRIS: And I haven't been to Europe. pic.twitter.com/Vj6M261Nx3
Vice-President Kamala Harris is in Mexico now, meeting with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
President Lopez Obrador shows Vice President Harris a Diego Rivera mural at the national palace. Asked if he will do more about border enforcement, Lopez Obrador said “We will touch on that subject but always addressing the fundamental root causes” pic.twitter.com/URiJdWaUM9
Continue reading...Joe Biden will use his visit to Europe this week to “rally the world’s democracies” in a reset of US foreign policy after four turbulent years under Donald Trump – all while threats to American democracy, stoked by Trump, proliferate at home.
Related: After Trump: Biden set to outline US policy to Johnson, Putin and more
Continue reading...Governor Greg Abbott plans to call special session after Democrats block 11th-hour attempt to ram through bill to make voting harder
Republicans in Texas are already plotting to resurrect their fight for sweeping voting restrictions after Democratic lawmakers walked out of the state capitol and blocked an 11th-hour attempt to ram through legislation that would have made it harder to cast a ballot.
Texas governor Greg Abbott – who leads the state’s domineering Republican majority – has announced he will include the high-stakes issue on his agenda when he reconvenes the legislature for a rapid-fire special session. He called the failure of the bill “deeply disappointing”.
Continue reading...SB7 bill that would introduce restrictions making it harder to vote fails to pass before midnight deadline after Democrats leave House
Texas Republican have failed in their efforts to push through one of the most restrictive voting measures in the US after Democrats walked out of the House at the last minute, leaving the bill languishing ahead of a midnight deadline.
The exodus came at the instruction of Chris Turner, the House Democratic chairman, who told colleagues at 10.35pm to “take your key and leave the chamber discreetly”, referring to the key that locks the voting mechanism on their desks, the Washington Post reported.
Continue reading...Democrats have yet to convince their entire Senate caucus to back the House-passed For the People Act – let alone beat the filibuster
After six months of aggressive Republican efforts to restrict voting access, Democrats are facing new questions about how they will actually pass voting rights reforms through Congress.
The most recent hand-wringing comes as Joe Manchin, the West Virginia Democratic senator, made clear earlier this month he still is not on board with the For the People Act, which would require early voting, automatic and same-day registration, and prevent the severe manipulation of district boundaries for partisan gain.
Continue reading...Leaked video published by Mother Jones shows executive director of Heritage Action bragging about crafting voting restriction bills
A top official at one of America’s most influential conservative groups bragged about playing a key role in crafting voting restrictions across the country, according to leaked video published by Documented, a watchdog group, and Mother Jones on Thursday.
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Mike Jordan reports for the Guardian:
Idaho’s governor, Brad Little, has a bill signed into law that aims to restrict critical race theory from being taught as a subject in schools and universities.
The bill, H377, prevents teachers from “indoctrinating” students into belief systems that claim that members of any race, sex, religion, ethnicity or national origin are inferior or superior to other groups. Signed into law last week, H377 also makes it illegal to make students “affirm, adopt or adhere to” beliefs that members of these groups are today responsible for past actions of the groups to which they claim to belong.
Related: Idaho governor signs bill to ban critical race theory from being taught in schools
Continue reading...The new Georgia voting rights law makes it harder to vote, especially for communities that tend to vote for Democrats – and that's what Republicans want. But it's not just Georgia: these restrictive voting laws are being considered in nearly every state in America, from Arizona to Texas to Florida.
These efforts come on the heels of the 2020 presidential election, which Republicans lost by slim margins in several states. Many Republicans claimed they lost because of voter fraud – because people who were ineligible to vote found a way to skirt the rules and cast ballots. Election officials around the nation said there was no widespread fraud, but Republicans are using this argument to push for a wide array of laws that will skew election in their favor.
If enacted, Americans will have to ask a hard question: is the US still a democracy?
Alvin Chang and Sam Levine explain this Republican effort to suppress voting rights as part of the Guardian's Fight to Vote series
Continue reading...When Coca-Cola and Delta backed bigoted lawmakers, we organized, rose up, used our voices to make change – and it worked
In the last general election, Georgians delivered our country from the hands of fascism by securing Democrats in the White House and the Senate. As payback for doing so, Republicans are waging an unholy war against voting rights in the state, pushing Jim Crow-style measures like SB 202 into law, which will make it harder for hundreds of thousands of Georgians to cast their ballots. This dangerous bill impacts specific communities the most: Black, brown, young, and new voters in Georgia.
Many voters don’t know that Republicans aren’t working alone to disenfranchise us. Their accomplices were some of the most powerful corporations in our state. In fact, Georgia-based companies like Delta, Coca-Cola and Home Depot previously bankrolled the backers of voter suppression bills to the tune of over $7.4m.
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