Rep. John Lewis was one of the great heroes of American history. He was an inspiration for the Brennan Center and a powerful voice for our country’s ideals. Lewis was the “conscience of Congress” and fought injustice wherever he saw it. At 21, he was chair of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and led the Freedom Rides. At 23, he gave an address at the March on Washington, passionate and authentic, vowing to keep marching “until the Revolution of 1776 is complete.” In that speech, he was the first major figure to call for “one man, one vote.”

It’s still possible to be shocked by the photo of Lewis leading the voting rights march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma in 1965. With his hands in his raincoat, Lewis stood still as the Alabama state troopers charged at him. The police fractured his skull but not his spirit. A week after “Bloody Sunday,” President Lyndon B. Johnson introduced the Voting Rights Act of 1965. To his last days, John Lewis was an urgent voice to restore the Voting Rights Act, which was gutted by the Supreme Court seven years ago. To really honor John Lewis, the Senate must take up and pass the Voting Rights Advancement Act. // Read More

America’s Reconstruction efforts after the Civil War and during the civil rights movement were not without their flaws, but without them, the country would not have made what racial progress it has. Today, another Reconstruction is needed to avoid wasting the promise of its predecessors. “A Third Reconstruction will require many things, three of them vital: truth, reconciliation, and recompense,” Brennan Center Fellow Wilfred U. Codrington III writes. “At no point in American history has there been a major national effort toward achieving any of these things separately, much less collectively.” // The Atlantic

Facebook is reportedly considering disallowing paid political ads for the remainder of the 2020 race. This would be a huge change in light of the role Facebook has played in recent elections. Brennan Center Fellow Ciara Torres-Spelliscy walks through the events that made Facebook come to consider this decision, including pressure from civil rights organizations and commercial advertisers. If Facebook doesn’t go through with this change, expect a boatload of political lies in your Facebook feed through November. // Read More

The recent protests against racial inequality have led to a surge in donations to bail funds — and brought bail reform issues to the forefront. “Research has shown that individuals of color, particularly Black and Latinx men, are charged significantly higher rates of bail than their white male counterparts, even when charged with the same offenses,” Taryn Merkl tells CBS News. // CBS News

Protests are nothing new to Portland, and over the last two or three years the police response to them has been aggressive. But when federal officers arrived in Portland in early July, the demonstrations grew more heated and made matters much, much worse — with the Trump administration pointing to “antifa” and property damage as justification for the federal response. “They are equating terrorism to vandalism,” says Brennan Center Fellow Michael German. “You can wash spray paint off a wall. You can paint over it. It’s not that serious of a crime. And why that would ever justify the government’s use of violence is hard to understand.” // The Washington Post

Meanwhile, as the White House spreads disinformation about antifa, law enforcement offices across the country have shared detailed reports of far-right extremists seeking to attack protesters and police. These reports were recently hacked and posted online, providing an unprecedented look at the communications between state, local, and federal law enforcement in the face of nationwide protests. As German tells the Intercept, these documents give a sober and fair assessment of the violent threat coming from far-right extremists yet sensationalize the threat from antifa, President Trump’s favorite boogeyman. // The Intercept

• Lauren-Brooke Eisen on the rise of mass incarceration over the last 50 years // America Magazine
• Liz Howard on election officials' need for more resources // PBS
• Michael Li on New York’s independent redistricting commission // Times Union
• Lawrence Norden on the security of vote by mail // USA Today
• Faiza Patel on law enforcement and disinformation // National Interest
• Myrna Pérez on long lines at the polls // New York Times
• Thomas Wolf on the Trump administration’s efforts to seek citizenship data via driver’s license records // USA Today
• Wendy Weiser on mail ballot rejection rates // Washington Post