State supreme court elections broke records in 2021–22.
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Adrià Fruitos
Officeholders Under Siege
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In recent years, elected officials in local and state governments across the country have faced a barrage of intimidation. A troubling new Brennan Center report compiles national surveys of state legislators and local officeholders, and the results are stark. These threats and attacks have made officials wary of freely interacting with constituents, taking controversial positions, and even continuing in public service at all. Unaddressed, the problem stands to endanger not just individual politicians but the functioning of representative democracy itself
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Judicial Politics Enters the Era of Big Money
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For years, the Brennan Center has been tracking spending in the 38 states that use elections to select or retain their high court judges. We’ve seen that big-money judicial races have become more frequent and more expensive over time. The 2021–2022 cycle of state supreme court elections saw more money and attention than ever before, with nearly twice the spending of any prior midterm cycle. Continuing these trends, the exorbitant spending in high-profile 2023 state supreme court races in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania confirms that this new era of judicial politics is here to stay
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A New Incentive for Politicians to Lie
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Deepfakes generated by artificial intelligence are a clear danger to democracy. Ironically, the growing concern over them is a problem too. A new installment in the Brennan Center’s AI and Democracy series
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explains how unscrupulous public figures may take advantage of increased public awareness of the power of AI to falsely claim that genuine audio content or video footage is fake. Establishing norms against these lies can deter politicians from trying to avoid accountability for real actions
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Inadequate Domestic Intelligence Reforms
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The Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis has long engaged in abusive domestic intelligence practices, using Americans’ First Amendment–protected views to drive its counterterrorism efforts. New provisions Congress included in the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act are a good first step toward addressing these long-standing problems, but they don’t go far enough. Lawmakers must do more to curb the office’s abuses and prevent it from broadly painting certain groups of Americans as terrorists
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Mississippi’s Indefensible Lifetime Voting Ban
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After a three-judge panel struck down Mississippi’s lifetime voting ban for people with past convictions, the case is now being reheard by the full Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. A new piece contributed by the board president of interfaith organization Working Together Mississippi, which filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the case, urges the court to reaffirm its prior decision. He argues that permanently revoking people’s right to vote isn’t just at odds with shared American and religious values — it’s unconstitutional
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Texas Law Punishes Voters
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In less than two weeks, the Brennan Center and co-counsel Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund will present closing arguments in our lawsuit against Texas’s 2021 voter suppression law, Senate Bill 1. As dozens of witnesses testified last fall in LUPE v. Texas, the complex set of new voting rules established by the law — including a burdensome ID requirement for mail voting — has had a detrimental impact, especially for voters of color and those with disabilities or limited English proficiency. Their stories speak to the antidemocratic effects of the historic torrent of laws enacted nationwide since 2020 that seek to keep millions of eligible voters from casting their ballots
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BRENNAN CENTER ON SOCIAL MEDIA
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Billionaires haven't had this much influence over politics since the 19th century. The Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling — which turned 14 last week — is to blame. Check out our two-part series on Instagram
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to learn what we can do to take back our elections >>
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Events
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A new book, Filibustered! How to Fix the Broken Senate and Save America
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, makes the case that Congress’s decline began 50 years ago with the introduction of the “no-talk” filibuster. The authors, Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) and his former chief of staff Mike Zamore (now at the ACLU), discuss the obstacles to making Congress a properly functioning body with the Boston Globe’s Kimberly Atkins Stohr. WATCH NOW
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Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law
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