Happy Thursday Democrats!
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Olympic Medal Count - Top Ten
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FEDERAL
Filibuster, Filibuster, Filibuster
“What is the filibuster, and where did it come from?” Senator Elizabeth Warren has a great explanation of the filibuster:
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Here's what it is, and here's why it stinks:
For a vote on a bill to take place in the Senate, a few things have to happen.
- A bill is brought to the Floor.
- Senators debate the bill.
- Senators end debate
- Senators vote on the bill, majority wins.
That’s the way the Founders intended it to go, at least. Here’s the hitch: In 1806, Aaron Burr — yes, the one who killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel — said the Senate had too many rules and should get rid of some.
One rule that got tossed in the trash can? The rule that said any senator could propose a vote that would cut off debate. Senators didn’t see a need to keep this rule on the book, so they tossed it.
That means step #2 (Senator’s debate the bill) could, in theory, go on forever — if enough Senators were willing to speak long enough on the floor in debate.
For years, business generally went on as usual. No one wanted to be “that guy.” But then, Senator John Calhoun realized he could exploit this rule change to seize more power for southern slave-holding states. He was the first to attempt to stop the Senate from voting on legislation by filibustering.
In 1917, President Wilson — tired of a Senate that was obstructing more than voting — pressured the Senate to pass a rule to make sure debate wouldn’t hold up voting forever and ever.
The Senate responded with a rule, called Rule 22 — also called a “Cloture Vote.” It looked like the other rule Aaron Burr had thrown in the trash can, except for one enormous difference: To end debate, Rule 22 required a supermajority or two-thirds of the Senate.
Rule 22 didn’t solve the problem of endless filibustering. It encouraged gridlock. Because now, a small minority in the Senate could force a bill to get through two votes. A supermajority vote to end debate, and then a simple majority vote to pass the bill. It made no sense.
The effects were almost immediate. The year after the Senate established Rule 22, an Anti-Lynching bill was introduced. A small group of Senators hell-bent on upholding white supremacy decided to flex the new rule and filibuster the legislation.
The law — which would make the heinous act of hanging Black Americans by trees a crime — took 100 years to break a filibuster and still isn’t law. It didn’t pass the Senate until 2018 — and it’s still not law.
During the Jim Crow era, southern Senators continued to use the filibuster as a tool to block civil rights legislation — and only civil rights legislation.
Today, the filibuster is more common than ever. There are some loopholes, for court appointments and bills on the budget. And Mitch McConnell can use it as a veto on almost every other bill Democrats want to pass.
Here’s the kicker in all this — today, the filibuster has become so common that it practically happens automatically, whether or not senators actually come to the floor to insist on it.
Right now, HR1 is sitting before the Senate. It expands voting rights, reforms campaign finance laws, and limits partisan gerrymandering. It already passed the House, and it deserves a vote in the Senate.
But because of Rule 22, a bill has to get through two votes in the Senate. A supermajority vote to stop debate (even though debate is not required or even happening) and then a simple majority vote to pass a bill. Like I said before, it makes no sense.
Even after a historic election where Americans voted for Democrats to control the White House, the Senate, and the House, the filibuster gives Mitch McConnell a veto on policies that the majority of Americans support. That’s why we need to fight as hard as we can to end the 60-vote threshold and get rid of the filibuster once and for all. |
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The Unending Conservative Assault on Voting Rights
At the beginning of the month, the 6-3 conservative-majority US Supreme Court essentially gave Republicans carte blanche to racially discriminate against voters.
Through its ruling in Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, the Court mangled the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act, whose protections had already been eroded in 2013.
The case was a sobering reminder that, while some Democrats like to respond to Republicans’ maneuvering to block access to the polls by saying that voters just need to, well, vote, the problem isn’t that constituents aren’t turning out.
After all, in the 2020 presidential election, Joe Biden won a record 81 million votes, even as the US was in the thick of the coronavirus pandemic.
The issue is that, all across the country, Republicans continue to enact legislation that restricts voting for those Americans—largely people of color—they don’t believe deserve political representation.
See, for instance, Georgia, which is facing a lawsuit from the Department of Justice over state voter suppression laws that activists and Democratic lawmakers say target Black Americans.
“Just saying ‘I will vote’ was not enough following slavery & Reconstruction; nor is it an adequate response to current historic systemic attacks on voting rights,” Black Voters Matter co-founder Cliff Albright wrote in a recent tweet.
Put a little differently, Republicans have made clear their eagerness to abuse and twist voting rights to their advantage—and without legislative action and meaningful court reform to defend the sanctity of the ballot box, the party will eventually insulate itself from voters.
Here are a few major voting rights stories that underscore the stakes of this history-making political moment.
Texas Democrats’ Drastic Move
What’s happening: Earlier this month, Texas Democrats suddenly left the Lone Star State for Washington D.C., in an extraordinary attempt to deny their Republican counterparts the quorum necessary to pass anti-voting rights legislation.
Why you should care: Already, Texas is the most difficult state to vote in, according to a 2020 analysis from Northern Illinois University. Together, the two voting bills of concern—SB 1 and HB 3—would increase that difficulty by imposing mail-in ballot restrictions, banning drive-thru voting and empowering partisan poll watchers (who, notably, have a fraught racial history), among other things that would disproportionately disadvantage people of color and other Democratic-leaning groups.
“The secretary of state’s office in Texas told us that our elections ran smoothly, securely, and were a success,” Texas Democratic state Rep. John Bucy III told CNN’s Erin Burnett. “So, you have to question what is the problem these bills are trying to solve? Clearly, all they are trying to do is make it harder for the people of Texas to vote, specifically individuals with disabilities, women and people of color.”
As the journalist Adam Serwer recently put it, “Public feedback is necessary for democracy to function. If politicians can get elected without regard for what the public thinks of them, then they have no reason to hew to the public’s preferences or respect their rights.”
Native Americans’ Fight for Political Representation
What’s happening: In South Dakota, Native Americans are suing the state.
The reason is that the state, they say, has repeatedly violated the National Voter Registration Act, aka the Motor Voter Act, a federal law that requires state governments to help people register to vote when they’re seeking services through the Department of Motor Vehicles or other offices that provide public assistance.
Why you should care: In violating the act, South Dakota has made it disproportionately harder for Native Americans to cast their ballots.
The plaintiffs have minced no words in pointing out how their voting experiences in deep-red South Dakota echo a Republican-fueled trend across the country—including in states such as Arizona and Montana—toward shrinking the power of Democratic-leaning groups.
“We see routine violations of federal law,” Chase Iron Eyes, lead counsel for the Lakota People’s Law Project, said. “That’s why we’re joining this suit. We’re battling a long history of racism and current nationwide efforts to install new Jim Crow-style laws,” he added.
The Unsettling Foundation Being Set in Arizona
What’s happening: Republicans aren’t inflicting all this damage on voting rights on their own. The US Supreme Court’s conservatives are helping.
“Tragic”: That’s how Justice Elena Kagan described the Court’s July ruling in Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee that clobbered what remained of the Voting Rights Act following 2013’s Shelby County v. Holder.
“The Court decides this Voting Rights Act case at a perilous moment for the nation’s commitment to equal citizenship,” Kagan wrote in a withering dissent. “It decides this case in an era of voting-rights retrenchment—when too many states and localities are restricting access to voting in ways that will predictably deprive members of minority groups of equal access to the ballot box.”
Why you should care: While at issue in Brnovich were two Republican-backed restrictive voting laws in Arizona—where the Navajo Nation played a crucial role in helping Biden put the reliably red state in the Democratic column for only the second time in 68 years—the Court’s decision will certainly embolden Republicans far and wide.
Kagan’s conservative colleagues are playing the long game. And it ought to be obvious which constituents they’re setting up to be the biggest losers.
(Source: CNN Race Deconstructed)
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