You don’t have to be a legal expert to know that it’s an abuse of power when unidentified federal forces snatch people off the streets into unmarked vans. The Trump administration is using federal law enforcement units as a paramilitary force to “restore order” in Portland against the city and state’s wishes, but the federal agents seem more interested in breaking laws than enforcing them. They’re arresting people without probable cause and are deliberately not creating arrest records so they can deny it ever happened. Trump has been itching for an excuse to do something like this since he was elected.

Every 10 years, based on the census count, the 435 seats in the House of Representatives are distributed according to the number of people living in the country. But this week, the Trump administration announced that it intends to exclude undocumented immigrants from any reapportionment of representatives. This is completely unconstitutional, and it definitely won’t help with response numbers for a census that is already at risk of undercounting the population.

An accurate count of our country’s population is essential — and this year, it’s especially important that we get an accurate count of Black communities in order to help correct the long-running racial inequities in power and money distribution. To help make Black lives matter, they must be counted. Right now, that count is at serious risk.

The House of Representatives passed the No Ban Act this week, which would repeal the Muslim ban and make it harder for future presidents to abuse their power by enacting biased bans. Watch this video and read this Twitter thread to learn more about how the No Ban Act came to be and what must happen next for it to go into effect.

Rep. John Lewis was one of the great heroes of American history and a powerful voice for the country’s ideals. At 21, he was chair of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and led the Freedom Rides. At 23, he gave the day’s most assertive address at the March on Washington, passionately vowing to keep marching “until the Revolution of 1776 is complete.” He led the voting rights march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma in 1965 and had his skull fractured by the police. One week after “Bloody Sunday,” President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Lewis was the “conscience of the Congress” and fought injustice wherever he saw it. Of course, the Edmund Pettus Bridge should be renamed after him. But the best way to honor John Lewis is to restore the Voting Rights Act, which would be achieved by a bill that currently sits in the Senate. The Senate must take up and pass the Voting Rights Advancement Act.

Even before the coronavirus crisis, election officials faced significant challenges in their preparations for this year’s elections, such as hostile foreign actors who are scaling up their disinformation campaigns and cultivating more ways to carry out cyberattacks. As officials from across the country describe in this video, providing safe polling places amid a pandemic and meeting the increased demand for absentee ballots takes time and money they don’t have. Thirty top former national security officials, including former Secretaries of State Madeleine Albright and John Kerry, wrote a letter urging Congress urging to provide more funding so that election officials can administer a free, fair, safe, and secure election.

You can help, too. The House passed the HEROES Act, which would provide the $3.6 billion in funding that local election officials desperately need. Now it’s in the Senate’s hands. Sign our petition today to send this urgent message to Congress.

Facebook is reportedly considering disallowing paid political ads for the remainder of the 2020 race. It’s difficult to know whether the company will go through with this or if it’s a trial balloon to see how the public reacts. But if they don’t proceed with the measure, expect a boatload of political lies in your Facebook feed this summer and through the election.

What We’re Reading
Elizabeth Goitein, co-director of the Brennan Center’s Liberty and National Security Program, recommends “America Gets an Interior Ministry.” The article explains how the federal paramilitary police presence in Portland is taking a form similar to other countries’ interior ministries, which are often misused and threatening to citizens.