Category: H.R. 1

June 23, 2021

Pressure to End Filibuster Mounts After Republicans Block Voting Rights Debate

Republicans voted to block Democrats’ landmark voting rights bill, the For the People Act or S.1, on Tuesday. The bill that many have touted as a package that could save American democracy would have massively expanded access to voting and targeted corruption in politics.

Senate Republicans blocked debate on the bill in a party line, 50-50 vote. Due to the filibuster, the legislation needed 60 votes to advance to a debate. The House passed a version of the bill earlier this year.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) promised after the vote that he and his caucus would continue fighting for the legislation. “Republican senators may have prevented us from having a debate on voting rights today,” he said. “But I want to be very clear about one thing: the fight to protect voting rights is not over. By no means. In the fight for voting rights, this vote was the starting gun, not the finish line.”

Schumer added that the Democrats will “explore every last one of our options” to pass the legislation and combat voter suppression.

The obstruction of the bill has already reignited calls for the abolition of the filibuster; if the Senate could pass most bills with a simple majority vote, S.1 could have passed with Vice President Kamala Harris casting the tie-breaking vote. Democrats had even managed to get Sen. Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia), a holdout on the bill, to vote in favor of advancing its passage.

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki has said that the blocking of the debate on the voting rights bill would “prompt a new conversation about the path forward” on the filibuster, though the White House has not given specific direction for Congress on the archaic practice.

Progressive legislators, meanwhile, have expressed frustration with the bill’s blocking and the continued existence of the filibuster, which they view as a significant roadblock to progress.

“It is a disgrace that at a time when authoritarianism, conspiracy theories and political violence are on the rise not a single Republican in the United States Senate has the courage to even debate whether we should protect American democracy or not,” tweeted Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) on Tuesday night.

Here’s what Mitch McConnell just blocked. pic.twitter.com/KTLEodOB9A

— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) June 22, 2021

Lawmakers also pointed out the absurdity of the fact that Republicans can essentially implement minority rule with the filibuster. “Now is the time for majority rule in the Senate,” said Sanders. “We must end the filibuster, pass sweeping voting rights legislation, and protect our democracy.”

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) echoed that frustration, saying “Call me radical, but I do not believe a minority of Senators should be able to block voting rights for millions of people. But I guess I’m just from that far-left school of thought that legislation should pass when a majority of legislators vote for it.”

Most of the progressive and Democratic ire around the filibuster has been directed at centrist Senators Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Arizona). Sinema wrote an op-ed earlier this week defending the filibuster, and Manchin has been found to be colluding with billionaire campaign donors recently to preserve the practice.

As a result, activist groups have been focusing their efforts on Sinema and Manchin in particular to convince them to flip on the filibuster — which so far seems unlikely. Still, the Poor People’s Campaign has organized several marches to pressure Manchin and Arizona racial justice and labor groups similarly protested outside Sinema’s office in Phoenix on Tuesday.

State legislators are also urging Congress to pass the voting rights legislation as they make desperate attempts to block the onslaught of voter suppression bills being pushed by their Republican colleagues. Nearly 500 state lawmakers signed a letter pleading for congressional leaders to pass S.1 and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act to stem the Republican voter suppression tide.

“We have attempted again and again to work with our Republican colleagues to set policies that safely and securely expanded voting access — but they simply refuse to act in good faith,” the lawmakers say. “We are out of options. We need your help.”

The blocking of the bill comes as Republicans are on a tear, proposing and passing a profusion of bills aimed at suppressing the vote in nearly every state. Even as Republicans in the Senate were blocking debate on S.1, for instance, Republicans in the Pennsylvania House passed a bill that would enact tighter voter ID laws and restrictions to absentee voting. It now moves to the state Senate, though the Democratic governor Tom Wolf has vowed to veto it.

However, other attempts by Republicans to suppress voting have been more successful. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, Republicans have so far enacted 22 voter suppression bills in 14 states less than six months into this year. They have filed at least 389 restrictive bills across 48 states as of May.

This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
June 22, 2021

Democrats Introduce Bill to Combat Republican Voter Suppression Efforts

As part of their push to combat Republican voter suppression efforts sweeping the country, Democrats introduced bicameral legislation on Tuesday aimed at preventing Republicans from allowing local election officials to be removed or appointed through partisan efforts.

In states like Georgia, Republican state lawmakers have proposed and passed legislation that reforms state election boards to be more partisan and allow for officials in charge of administering elections to be removed by partisan interests in the state legislature. Because Republicans control the majority of state legislative chambers across the country, such bills could help the GOP have absolute control over election results, too.

The Democrats’ Preventing Election Subversion Act of 2021, introduced by Senators Raphael Warnock (D-Georgia), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minnesota) and Jeff Merkley (D-Oregon) and Representatives John Sarbanes (D-Maryland) and Zoe Lofgren (D-California), among others, is aimed at combating the GOP attempts to control election results. It proposes protections for local elections officials who may be subject to removal for any reason — or no reason at all.

The Democrats’ bill would require that elections officials could only be removed if they are found to be inefficient or neglectful of their duties, or if they have committed a malfeasance. The official subject to removal would also have the option of appealing to a federal court, where the court would be required to expedite their hearing.

Further, the bill seeks to protect election workers by making it a federal crime to harass or harm an election worker.

The Democratic legislators have also proposed protections aimed at preventing Republicans from launching widespread campaigns to invalidate peoples’ votes, which the GOP has attempted to do with the introduction of “challenger laws” in their voter suppression bills.

GOP legislators in several states have proposed allowing groups or individuals to challenge an unlimited number of voter registration qualifications, which experts say could lead to votes being hastily thrown away, especially in conjunction with Republican takeovers of election boards. Republicans had tried to get hundreds of thousands of votes questioned and thrown out last year, but largely failed in their mission because of existing state guidelines.

The Preventing Election Subversion Act is aimed at preventing Republicans from being able to challenge and throw out votes en masse and requires any challenges to an individual’s voter registration be backed up with personal knowledge of the voter and the action defended under penalty of perjury.

This push comes as the Senate is considering a debate over the For the People Act, or S.1, on Tuesday. The sweeping bill to protect elections and help remove corruption is slated to be blocked by a Republican filibuster. When the bill comes to the Senate again, the lawmakers plan to add the Preventing Election Subversion Act as an amendment.

The push also comes as Republicans are already in the process of removing election officials from their posts in Georgia, where the GOP rushed an omnibus voter suppression package into law earlier this year. Georgia Republicans have already removed many Democrats from their positions and even replaced a Republican who had opposed their voter suppression bill with someone more amenable to their agenda.

“The dangers of the voter suppression efforts we’re seeing in Georgia and across the nation are not theoretical, and we can’t allow power-hungry state actors to squeeze the people out of their own democracy by overruling the decisions of local election officials,” Warnock said in a statement. “This legislation is critical to ensuring the federal government has the tools to make sure every eligible voter’s voice is heard and their ballot is counted to help decide the direction of our country.”

Rep. Nikema Williams (D-Georgia), one of the legislators introducing the bill in the House, reiterated the danger of the GOP’s efforts to suppress voters in a statement, according to HuffPost.

“Republicans across the country continue to invent new tricks to give themselves control over our elections,” Williams said. “Their latest efforts seek to remove protections for the non-partisan election officials who ensure the integrity of our democracy. Protecting election officials from partisan interference is one way Congress can secure free and fair elections for everyone, no matter their zip code.”

This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
June 16, 2021

Schumer and Pelosi Are Urging Fellow Democrats to Go Easy on Joe Manchin

With frustration against Sen. Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia) mounting among a wide swath of the Democratic party and the left, Democratic leadership is evidently asking advocates and fellow lawmakers to lay off the senator.

Manchin has come under fire over the past months for his opposition to filibuster abolition and, more recently, his opposition to the Democrats’ landmark voting rights bill, the For the People Act. Progressives have had strong words for the senator, calling him “the new [Sen.] Mitch McConnell,” and suggesting that Manchin is “intertwined” with right-wing Koch-funded dark money organizations.

But Democratic leadership is evidently defending Manchin, despite the fact that he is one of the largest and most stubborn roadblocks to passing their agenda.

According to Politico, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) is telling advocacy groups to lay off criticism of the senator ahead of a Senate vote on the For the People Act, or S.1. Meanwhile, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) told lawmakers in a meeting on Monday night to not go after individual senators on voting rights legislation — without overtly naming Manchin, though he is the only Democratic senator to publicly announce his opposition to the bill.

Progressives, increasingly frustrated with congressional Democrats and their failure to pass legislation, have suggested that Democratic leaders are actually using Manchin as a scapegoat for blocking voting rights. Both leaders have been pushing for the legislation, yet are reluctant to whip votes within their own party for it.

Schumer and Pelosi’s push for Democrats to lay off Manchin, however, may end up working against them. As progressives have pointed out, Manchin is already facing pressure from the right to oppose proposals like S.1 and climate bills.

Last week, CNBC uncovered campaigns from Koch-affiliated organizations like Americans for Prosperity, a Koch advocacy group, that are aimed at pushing Manchin to continue obstructing the Democratic agenda and upholding right-wing values. Sans pressure from Democrats like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York), who recently panned Manchin for his ties with “corporate money,” the only pressure left on Manchin would be that from the right.

Regardless, Manchin already seems ready to ignore the advice of his own party on voting rights.

On Tuesday, Texas Democrats held a lunch with Senate Democrats to emphasize the importance of passing S.1 to stop the wave of voter suppression bills that Republicans are filing across the country. Last month, Democratic lawmakers in Texas had walked off the State House floor to kill a voter suppression bill their Republican colleagues were trying to jam through.

Though state Democratic lawmakers are fighting their hardest against these bills, “we need federal intervention,” one Texas representative told reporters. “We came here because the future of Texas voting depends on action from Congress.”

But Manchin, the person whom Democrats most need to persuade on the issue, didn’t bother to attend the luncheon. Neither did Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Arizona), who like Manchin is also deeply opposed to reforming or abolishing the filibuster.

This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
June 10, 2021

Corporations That Paid Zero Federal Income Tax Spent $400 Million in Lobbying

A new report by Public Citizen has found that the 55 corporations that paid zero dollars in federal income taxes in 2020 spent a combined nearly $450 million in lobbying and campaign contributions over the past three election cycles.

Since 2015, the 55 large corporations, including companies like FedEx and Nike, have spent $408 million in lobbying and $42 million in campaign contributions, Public Citizen finds. On average each year, the companies collectively send 526 lobbyists to D.C. in attempts to influence federal lawmakers. Only eight of the companies in the analysis didn’t disclose any spending on lobbying in this time frame.

Of these corporations, FedEx spent the most over the past years, shelling out $71 million on lobbying and campaign donations since the 2016 election cycle. FedEx is closely followed in spending by Charter Communications, which operates internet and communications company Spectrum, at $64 million. The two companies were similarly the top spenders in the group for the 2020 election, spending over $20 million each.

Of the political contributions, Republicans were more often on the receiving end than Democrats. Twenty of the top 25 officials who received contributions from these companies were Republicans — though moderate House Majority Leader Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Maryland) received the most at $408,000.

The companies, Public Citizen finds, also contributed millions to super PACs and party committees. This makes sense, Public Citizen explains, because “these committees can accept unlimited amounts compared to the campaign committees and leadership PACs of elected officials.” Among the top six recipients, four are affiliated with Republicans — the House and Senate Republican national committees, the Republican National Convention host committee and a Republican-aligned Super PAC.

The top two Democratic organizations, the House and Senate committees, together received about the same amount as the top receiver, the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC). The Democratic committees hauled in about $1.45 million, while the NRSC received $1.3 million in the last three election cycles.

Evidently, the lobbying and contribution efforts pay off quite literally for these corporations. Though it’s unclear exactly what they’ve lobbied for, earlier this year, the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) found that these companies paid zero dollars in federal income taxes in 2020 — less than the vast majority of the American public, most of whom make far less than these companies do in profits.

Meanwhile, those companies made back far more than their nearly $450 million. ITEP found that these companies not only paid nothing in federal income tax, they also received billions in tax rebates — meaning, with $8.5 billion in avoided taxes and $3.5 billion in rebates, they came out ahead by $12 billion. That’s over 26 times their lobbying and political contribution “investment,” in just one year.

“The corporations keep winning while the American public loses,” Public Citizen concludes. By tax time, “these corporations have used every break and loophole on the books to ensure their pockets have nothing left but lint. But when it is time to influence federal policy, they find a whole bunch of money under the mattress. Adding insult to injury, the federal government shovels money back out to these companies that pay zero in corporate taxes in the form of rebates, money they can turn around and spend to influence policy for decades to come.”

Indeed, part of what’s frustrated progressives about corporate and wealth taxes of late in the fact of new revelations is that the most egregious examples of tax avoidance are completely legal. “Outrageous,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) on Twitter. “We must get big money out of politics and create an economy that works for all of us, not just the top 1%.”

The 55 corporations that avoided paying federal income tax in 2020 used loopholes and low statutory rates set by the 2017 Republican tax cuts. Those same tax cuts likely also helped super wealthy people like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk avoid paying all taxes altogether in some recent years, though tax loopholes established before 2017 probably contributed as well.

This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
May 3, 2021

Sanders Accuses McConnell of Hypocrisy & Corruption in Scathing Kentucky Speech

In a rally for the progressive movement in Kentucky on Sunday, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) criticized Minority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) for “working overtime” for corporations and the wealthy, while working to “undermine” the lower and middle classes.

“I’m here today because Mitch McConnell is working overtime to represent the needs of the wealthy and the powerful and to undermine the needs of working families,” Sanders said, while drawing attention to McConnell’s leadership in opposing proposals like the American Rescue Plan, a $15 federal minimum wage, universal child care, the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act and the For the People Act.

“The question, I think, that people should be asking is, ‘why is Mitch McConnell doing what he does?’” in blocking legislation that would improve the lives of working Americans while working to help the wealthy, Sanders said. “The answer is pretty simple: follow the money.”

Sanders pointed out that McConnell often receives large sums of money from Wall Street, health care companies, pharmaceutical companies, the National Rifle Association and fossil fuel companies. These groups oppose proposals like raising the minimum wage and reducing the cost of pharmaceutical drugs, among many things, he points out.

“Mitch McConnell’s top campaign contributors want to do exactly the opposite of what the American people want and need. And so does Mitch McConnell,” said Sanders.

Sanders went on to criticize McConnell’s hypocrisy in whingeing over government spending for the working class while working to provide tax breaks for the rich.

“This I will never forget: on New Year’s Eve, Mitch McConnell blocked legislation I was offering to provide working class Americans with a $2,000 direct payment because, get this, he claimed it was ‘socialism for the rich,’” said Sanders.

“In Mitch McConnell’s world, if you are a multi-millionaire campaign contributor, it’s okay to receive a $1.4 billion tax break,” as the Koch family received as a result of Republican tax cuts in 2017. “But if you are a working class person, apparently, it’s not acceptable to get the help you so desperately need,” Sanders said. “If you are a teacher or a construction worker who makes 75,000 [dollars] a year, a 2,000 [dollar] direct payment is, according to McConnell, ‘socialism for the rich.’”

Sanders pointed out that the ideology of the GOP as a whole is not actually about limiting government, as they claim — rather, it’s about who can help them raise more money on the campaign trail.

“The difference in ideology between Senator McConnell and myself, between the Republican Party and the progressive movement, is not a question of big government versus small government,” the senator went on. “It’s a question of whose interests the government represents. It’s a question of whether you fight for the needs of the wealthy and large corporations who fund your campaigns, or the working families of our country.”

By contrast, Sanders said, the progressive movement is fighting for the interests of the working classes, who have suffered during the pandemic.

“What I want to do now — which, I think, as a nation, we don’t do enough — is to simply compare Senator McConnell’s ideology, his Republican ideology, his votes, his actions, and his vision for America with the progressive vision for America,” said Sanders. “And our vision is that the government should represent all of the people, not just the 1 percent. Our vision believes that the foundations of government should rest on the pillars of justice — economic justice, racial justice, social justice, environmental justice.”

“While tens of millions of Americans have been living in economic desperation, the wealthiest people in this country have become obscenely richer,” Sanders noted. “We have a worse level of income and wealth inequality today than we’ve had since the 1920s. In America today, two people now own more than the bottom 40 percent of our nation, while the top 1 percent owns more wealth than the bottom 92 percent.”

Indeed, economists have shown that the top 1 percent of households own a hugely disproportionate share of wealth in the U.S., and that share has continually been growing over many decades. A recent study showed that the billionaires’ profits from just the pandemic alone amount to over $1.6 trillion combined, or a growth of 55 percent in a little over a year.

“This is a pivotal moment in American history,” Sanders said. “In the coming months, we have a fundamental decision to make. Will we build a government, an economy and a society that works for all of us and not just the 1 percent? Or will we continue the drift towards oligarchy and authoritarianism in which a small number of incredibly wealthy and powerful billionaires own and control a significant part of the economy and exert enormous influence over the political life of our country?”

This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
April 22, 2021

Nearly 100 House Democrats Send Letter to Schumer Demanding End to Filibuster

Representatives Cori Bush (D-Missouri) and Pramila Jayapal (D-Washington) are leading an effort with nearly 100 of their fellow House members to end the Senate filibuster. The lawmakers join many progressive and Democratic advocates in saying that the filibuster is a roadblock to progress.

“In today’s hyper-partisan climate, there is simply no avenue for bold legislation that meets the needs of everyday Americans without ending the filibuster,” the representatives wrote in a letter to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York). “We must end the gridlock that has become common practice in Washington and govern boldly and transformatively to improve the lives of millions of people, children, and families all across the country.”

The lawmakers say that getting rid of the filibuster, which forces bills to have 60 votes to be able to pass, is essential to passing things like a $15 federal minimum wage, voting rights bills like the For the People Act, climate bills, and reforms on immigration and gun rights, among other proposals.

“For too many people in our communities, their very survival is at stake. Republicans are well aware that removing barriers to passing legislation will have a transformational impact on these communities,” the lawmakers write. “It is why they are passing legislation at the state level across the country in an attempt to suppress the votes of Black, brown and Indigenous people. It is also why they are preventing the Senate from advancing critical legislation that can meet the needs of the people we represent.”

The letter notes that lawmakers from both sides of the aisle have tried to get rid of the filibuster before. In fact, lawmakers got rid of the House’s filibuster 130 years ago because it was preventing progress.

The Senate filibuster, as the lawmakers point out, is a relic of the Jim Crow era and has a history of being used to block civil rights. Advocates have said that filibuster abolition is thus an issue of racial equality and justice.

“Filibuster reform is critical for advancing racial justice,” said Senior Director of Democracy and Criminal Justice for Color of Change Scott Roberts in a statement. “Democratic Senators who defend the filibuster are protecting a legacy of racism, and are choosing to let an outdated rule block progress that would begin to address the challenges facing Black communities across the country.”

In more recent times, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) has made himself an expert in wielding the filibuster as a weapon against Democrats, as he did under Barack Obama.

McConnell knows that he can continue to wield that power in his newfound minority; at the beginning of this congressional session, McConnell held up the Senate by insisting on protecting the filibuster. Last month, he threatened to go “scorched earth” if Democrats got rid of the filibuster, saying that he’d make the Senate look like a “100-car pileup.”

But filibuster abolition faces opposition from both sides of the Senate. Democrats like Senators Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Arizona) have opposed getting rid of the filibuster even though it is a significant roadblock to progress. Though Democrats, including President Joe Biden to a small extent, and progressives have been working on changing the minds of Sinema, Manchin and other Democrats about holding on to the arcane rule, they have so far not been very successful in their efforts.

Bush and Jayapal, along with fellow letter leaders Representatives Jason Crow (D-Colorado) and Sean Casten (D-Illinois), hope that highlighting Democratic policies that are held up by the filibuster can help sway the Senate their way.

“It’s LGBTQ+ equality or the filibuster. It’s DC Statehood or the filibuster. It’s voting rights or the filibuster. It’s the Dream Act, gun safety reforms, campaign finance reform, and equal pay or the filibuster,” tweeted Jayapal on Thursday. “The choice is clear. We must eliminate the filibuster.”

Casten highlighted the urgency and timeliness of the matter as Republicans attempt to pass hundreds of voter suppression laws at the state level. “Republicans proposed at least 250 voting restriction laws at the state level. Georgia has already passed a voter suppression bill. H.R. 1 is waiting to be passed in the Senate and it would protect our right to vote,” he wrote. “This is an urgent crisis. We must end the filibuster and pass it.”

This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
April 5, 2021

35 States at Risk of “Rigged” Districts Due to Gerrymandering, Report Finds

A new report has found that 35 states are at risk of having their election districts “rigged” to unfairly favor one party during this year’s redistricting cycle, with over half of the country at “extreme” risk.

“The redistricting laws in these states provide little protection against politicians manipulating district maps for partisan or personal gain,” read the report by RepresentUs, a non-partisan organization that aims to fight political corruption. “Unless these systems change in the next few months, more than 188 million people will live with the threat of gerrymandering and rigged maps for the next 10 years.”

The U.S. is conducting its redistricting this year and next, and the results of that redistricting will remain until the next census 10 years later. This year’s redistricting cycle is already looking to be chaotic due to the census delays caused by the pandemic and Republicans’ direct attacks on voting across the country.

In many places, the state legislature draws the maps which are approved by the governor. If one party controls the House, Senate and governor’s office, they have enormous power to control whose votes count and which party gets an unfair advantage for the next decade. Currently, Republicans control 61 state legislative chambers, as opposed to Democrats’ 37, and control the House, Senate and governorship in 23 states as opposed to Democrats’ 15.

Many of the states at “high” or “extreme” risk of gerrymandering according to RepresentUs are crucial battleground areas like Texas, Nevada and most of the South. Over 188 million voters will be affected by these unfair redistricting efforts, the report finds. Only seven states like California and Colorado received a “minimal” risk rating.

High risk states, the report finds, are at such risk of partisan influence because of procedural factors in the redistricting process that allow politicians to control how election maps are drawn. Many states have legal and procedural protections that grant politicians free reign over how districts are drawn without public input or oversight. Additionally, the report says, 20 states make it very difficult to challenge the maps in court.

Gerrymandering disenfranchises voters by either using them for partisan advantage or sidelining them in order to gain an advantage in other places. The practice is often racist — Republicans tend to “pack” nonwhite voters who lean Democratic into strangely-drawn districts and then draw other districts with a more balanced slate of voters, who are usually white. Racial gerrymandering is illegal, but gerrymandering is very difficult to prove in court.

Both parties benefit from gerrymandering in one way or another, but the last redistricting process led to four times as many states with Republican-skewed districts than Democratic ones. The 2011-2012 redistricting process, which gave Republicans 16 to 17 seats in the House, also led to some of the most gerrymandered and racially discriminatory maps in the U.S.’s history.

Some states have reformed their processes since the last redistricting process, but, according to a recent report by the Brennan Center for Justice, some states now have even more room for unfair processes. Not only that, but “it’s getting easier to draw discriminatory maps,” said the Brennan Center’s Michael Li. Computer programs can spit out thousands of maps in minutes, and politicians simply have to choose which one they like best. “It’s deeply undemocratic because it basically renders elections meaningless,” said Li.

The answer to such dire redistricting threats, RepresentUs concludes, is the For the People Act, or H.R. 1. “This report makes it clear that gerrymandering is a national crisis that needs an urgent and bold solution,” said RepresentUs co-founder Josh Silver in a statement. “Politicians are already preparing to pick their voters during this year’s redistricting. But with the For the People Act, Congress has a chance to stop them before they get started.”

H.R. 1 is a major election reform bill supported by the Democrats that, among many other things, aims to prevent gerrymandering by making it easier to show when a map gives unfair partisan advantage. If a map is shown to be unfairly biased, H.R. 1 forces it to be redrawn. The legislation also has provisions protecting nonwhite communities, including increased transparency for redistricting and independent commissions to draw maps rather than politicians.

Republicans are staunchly opposed to H.R. 1, which also has proposals to make it easier to vote like automatic voter registration in every state. But the reform bill is so popular — and gerrymandering is extremely unpopular — that Republicans haven’t been able to sway voters against it. Despite its popularity, however, the bill, which has passed the House, has very little likelihood of passing the Senate while the filibuster is in place.

This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
March 29, 2021

Republicans Can’t Figure Out How to Get People to Dislike the For the People Act

Republicans are concerned that the Democrats’ voting rights bill is too popular, according to a leaked call between a senior policy adviser to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) and members of prominent conservative groups.

In a recording of the call obtained by The New Yorker, conservative political operatives were upset that H.R. 1. — known as the For the People Act and, recently, S. 1 — has wide bipartisan support. They particularly took issue with provisions within the bill that would require disclosure of dark money donors, which they think could harm Republicans in particular.

Kyle McKenzie, research director for the Koch brothers-backed Stand Together, said that, “the most worrisome part” about the wide support for the bill “is that conservatives were actually as supportive as the general public was when they read the neutral description,” according to The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer report. Instead, McKenzie recommended Republicans focus on killing the bill within Congress because it’s “incredibly difficult” to sway voters against it.

The message that the legislation fought back against the influence of billionaire donors was especially hard to campaign against, the Republican operatives found. “Not even attaching the phrase ‘cancel culture’ to the bill, by portraying it as silencing conservative voices, had worked,” Mayer wrote. The Koch-affiliated organization has invested “substantial resources” into honing conservatives’ message on the bill.

The only messaging that Stand Together was able to find that worked was based on disinformation. McKenzie said that, if they told voters that the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Planned Parenthood were against the legislation, they could sway them the Republicans’ way. But the ACLU only opposes part of the legislation, and Planned Parenthood is in full support of it, The New Yorker reported.

Steve Donaldson, a senior policy adviser to McConnell, noted the minority leader’s concern about how the provisions to increase donor transparency in the For the People Act would affect his fundraising efforts. “When it comes to donor privacy, I can’t stress enough how quickly things could get out of hand,” Donaldson said in the call.

Nick Surgey, executive director of the watchdog group Documented, told The New Yorker that, while it tracks that McConnell might oppose H.R. 1 for this purpose, it’s still strange to see this amount of coordination between his staff and technically nonpartisan groups on the call.

Currently, an organization or individual with an interest in influencing politics can use dark money channels enabled in part by things like 2010’s Citizens United. Big money donors can take their donations — potentially while being bankrolled by or affiliated with large corporations — to nonprofit organizations that can then donate to politicians and their political action committees. The For the People Act seeks to make those donations public, making it easier to trace and track where campaign money is coming from.

H.R. 1 has the backing of every Democrat in the House, which passed the bill earlier this month. Polling on H.R. 1 back when it was first introduced in 2019 and from earlier this year shows that the bill is popular across a majority of Democrats, Republicans and independents.

The nearly 800-page bill seeks to end the influence of dark money on politics by requiring more thorough political donation disclosures and makes it easier to register to and cast a vote. It attempts to generally fix democracy, which House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) has noted is in “deep disrepair” in the country.

It’s been clear for months that Republicans are vehemently opposed to the bill. They’ve launched misinformation campaigns against it and called it “anti-democratic.” But they just can’t figure out how to get people to dislike the bill as much as they do.

Influencing politicians through dark money is a tactic favored by groups like the fossil fuel industry. Billionaire Charles Koch and his late brother in particular were instrumental in constructing far-reaching dark money networks across the country.

Out of the top 10 dark money groups that have spent the most since 2008, nine are conservative or right-leaning, according to a list compiled by OpenSecrets. While both parties benefit from dark money groups, only Democrats are trying to end their influence.

Republicans have been working for months to make it harder to vote ever since they lost the White House and the Senate in the 2020 elections. Republicans want to keep dark money flowing to their coffers and exert more control over elections so they can guarantee they won’t lose elections again.

This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
March 22, 2021

Large Corporations Are Already Breaking Pledges to Not Donate to Republicans

Following the violent attack on the Capitol in January, dozens of corporations issued statements vowing to stop or pause political donations to Republicans who voted to overturn the 2020 election or to politicians at all. It seems some of those promises, however, were short lived.

On Monday, Popular Information reported that AT&T, Intel and Cigna appear to have already broken their pledges. In January, AT&T and Intel had vowed to suspend donations to the Republicans who voted against certifying the Electoral College vote, while Cigna said they would stop giving to those who “hindered the peaceful transition of power.”

New Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings show, Judd Legum of Popular Information reports, that it took roughly a month for the corporations to go back to making political donations to Republicans.

On February 26, Intel sent $15,000 to the National Republican Campaign Committee (NRCC), which Legum writes, is “the main fundraising vehicle” for House Republicans — 139 of whom voted to overturn the results of the election. On the February 22, AT&T donated $5,000 to a leadership PAC called the House Conservatives Fund that’s affiliated with Rep. Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana), who voted against certifying the Electoral College vote.

And on February 4, merely three weeks after their initial pledge, Cigna donated $15,000 to the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC). The NRSC is run by Sen. Rick Scott (R-Florida) who voted to overturn the results of the election and, as Legum notes, had indeed “hindered the peaceful transition of power” by perpetuating the notion fueled by former President Donald Trump that the election was fraudulent. Then, three weeks later, Cigna donated another $15,000 to the NRCC.

All three corporations told Popular Information that these donations didn’t violate their pledges, despite the fact that they donated to funds that support many of the politicians who advanced false and dangerous election narratives. For instance, Legum notes, Cigna’s NRSC donation will likely go toward helping Republicans like Senators Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Josh Hawley (R-Missouri), both of whom have continued to perpetuate the lie that President Joe Biden’s election was fraudulent.

In January, corporate PAC donations had plummeted. A Roll Call report finds that the corporations who vowed to stop or pause donations had donated a total of $2.7 million to politicians and PACs in January of 2019 versus only $50,150 in 2021 at the same point in the election cycle. (Some donations may have been made prior to the pledges following the Capitol attack.) That’s an over 98 percent drop.

Politicians definitely felt the dip in finances. Last month, The Wall Street Journal reported that politicians’ aides were scrambling to get corporations to start donating again — suggesting that lawmakers wouldn’t fight as hard against progressive policies if they were deprived of a corporate cash flow.

Political fundraisers for both sides of the aisle, including the NRCC and NRSC, are reportedly reaching out to corporations to try to win back their donations. These organizations are likely looking to fill their coffers for the 2022 election, which is shaping up to be contentious.

Still, the corporations’ decisions to renege on their vows isn’t entirely surprising, and more broken pledges may be revealed as more donations are subject to disclosure in 2021. Plus, corporate donations are only a small slice of the pie — individuals like corporate executives and employees often donate much more than the corporation itself does. That money, however, isn’t counted on behalf of the corporation. Corporate lobbyists, too, through dark money loopholes, can give money to influence candidates while avoiding corporate affiliations.

In fact, many of the corporations who vowed to halt political donations in some way also lobbied against the For the People Act, or H.R. 1, which would expose dark money influence in politics — and thus potentially expose other ways that these corporations will support politicians that their pledges renounced.

This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
March 11, 2021

“Everybody Shouldn’t Be Voting” Says GOP Lawmaker Pushing Voter Suppression Laws

Across the country, Republicans have been behind a flurry of over 250 laws introduced to suppress voting after their candidate lost the presidential election. One Arizona lawmaker on Thursday had an answer for why the GOP is pushing these laws: “[Republicans] don’t mind putting security measures in that won’t let everybody vote — but everybody shouldn’t be voting.”

Democrats, GOP Rep. John Kavanagh of Arizona explained to CNN, want everyone to be able to vote and are “willing to risk fraud.” Republicans, especially since former President Donald Trump lost the election, are more concerned about voter fraud — which is statistically insignificant according to voting officials — so they’re willing to suppress votes, Kavanagh said.

“Not everybody wants to vote, and if somebody is uninterested in voting, that probably means that they’re totally uninformed on the issues,” Kavanagh told CNN. “Quantity is important, but we have to look at the quality of votes, as well.”

CNN does not specify what Kavanagh means by the “quality” of votes, though it’s possible that Kavanagh may be referring to the party that the vote is for. After all, when asked to explain why the Republican Party wants to gut the Voting Rights Act last week, the attorney for the Arizona Republicans told the U.S. Supreme Court that allowing more people to vote “puts us at a competitive disadvantage relative to Democrats.”

Though it’s been clear to observers that the Republicans are trying to suppress votes — especially the votes of Black, Indigenous, and other people of color — with bills restricting voting access and challenging the Voting Rights Act, it’s rare that a lawmaker has said it as directly as Kavanagh has.

Kavanagh, it should be noted, is wrong in his sweeping statement about why people don’t vote. Some don’t vote in presidential elections in the spirit of protest; others may choose not to vote even if they are well informed on the issues because they don’t think their single vote makes a difference; and still others don’t vote not because they don’t want to, but because they cannot, owing to their inability to overcome the many barriers that have been created — largely with the underlying intention of suppressing their votes — such as those pushed by Republicans in many states where they control the government.

In Arizona alone, Republicans are targeting voting rights with two dozen measures. Several of them, CNN reports, impose new restrictions on voting by mail and limit mail-in ballots to a very narrow window.

Republican Arizona State Sen. Michelle Ugenti-Rita claims that the reason she sponsored the law shrinking the early voting period is that she wants to ensure that mail-in ballots aren’t sent to the wrong people. The bill would automatically exclude people from receiving mail-in ballots if they haven’t voted in the last four elections and they don’t respond to a mailing from the state. “Allowing voters to sign up in perpetuity does increase the opportunity for things to go wrong,” Ugenti-Rita said.

The issue of ballots being sent to the wrong place is a vanishingly small issue since election officials can recognize if people have double voted. Since 2010, the Arizona attorney general’s office has only successfully prosecuted 30 counts of voter fraud.

Nevertheless, the Brennan Center’s February analysis of voter suppression bills across the country found that Arizona led the country in proposed bills that make it harder to vote — though, with bills filed since then, Georgia may be giving Arizona a run for its money. Georgia and Arizona are particular targets for Republicans since they surprisingly voted blue on Election Day last November, leading to the GOP losing control of Congress and the White House.

Many of the voter suppression efforts being waged by Republicans are almost explicitly racist. A bill that passed Georgia’s Senate last week, for instance, ends no-excuse absentee ballots in the state after Black voters turned out in droves with mail-in ballots. The state’s House has also passed legislation that severely limits early voting in the state on Sundays, which are typically huge days for Black voting due to church-led “souls to the polls” events.

Republicans are also waging challenges, as referenced earlier, to the Voting Rights Act in the Supreme Court. The Voting Rights Act was originally established to ensure that racial discrimination didn’t prevent Black and other nonwhite people from voting, but Republicans are going to bat to gut what’s left of the law.

Congressional Democrats have been fighting back against these efforts with H.R.1, the For the People Act. The House passed the act last week, and if it became law, would increase transparency in campaign financing, attempt to prevent gerrymandering and establish a nationwide automatic voter registration system. No Republicans voted for the bill.

This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
March 5, 2021

“Moderate” Democrats May Obstruct Fundamentally Essential Electoral Reform

One of the more revealing political moments of recent times was when the Republican Party decided they weren’t going to bother writing a platform for the national convention in 2020. They simply announced that they supported President Trump and pretty much left it at that. It’s not that platforms necessarily guide the party’s agenda, but they are an indicator of its priorities, philosophy, ideology, etc. Yet the erstwhile “party of ideas” didn’t think it was important enough to even make a half-baked stab at writing them down ahead of the last election. That’s because they don’t have ideas anymore, at least any that could possibly be translated into a legislative program.

Maybe it’s the influence of Donald Trump or the fact that the right-wing media’s culture war machine is permanently turned up to 11, 24 hours a day, but the right has clearly decided that turning politics into a non-stop circus is all they need to do. That’s why we have Republicans in Congress refusing to negotiate in good faith on the COVID relief bill and pulling stunts like forcing the clerk of the Senate to read the bill aloud for no good reason other than to delay the process.

And that’s just Congress.

Out in the states, Republicans are a beehive of activity, putting all of their energy wherever they have any power to roll back voting rights. This isn’t new, of course. Conservatives have been trying to suppress the vote of their political opponents and racial minorities literally for centuries. But we had made some progress in the latter half of the 20th century with the enactment of the Voting Rights Act, which the Supreme Court recently ruled meant that we no longer needed the federal government to protect the right of those who’ve traditionally been disenfranchised.

Democrats knew that would unleash a wave of voter suppression and in the last Congress, the House passed H.R. 1, the For The People Act, which would expand voting rights, change campaign finance laws to reduce the influence of money in politics, limit partisan gerrymandering, and create new ethics rules for federal officeholders. Needless to say, the Senate under the leadership of Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., never took it up because they weren’t in the business of doing anything but confirming judges, appearing on Fox News and golfing with the president if they were lucky.

Trump’s Big Lie that the election was stolen has now allowed Republicans across the board to go into overdrive, fatuously insisting that they must pass hundreds of laws all over the country making voting as difficult as possible for poor and working people, students, racial and ethnic minorities and people who live in dense population areas, in order to “restore faith” in our elections. Lie blatantly about a stolen election and then use that as an excuse to steal future elections. You have to admire the chutzpah.

H.R. 1 once again passed the House this week on a party-line vote and the Senate will take it up once the Republicans get tired of putting on a sideshow and the COVID relief package is finally finished. This bill cannot be dealt with through the reconciliation process that allows for only a simple majority to pass so it is subject to the filibuster and the Democrats are going to have to do a very serious gut check. This is an existential battle for the party and for American democracy. The Atlantic’s Ron Brownstein puts it this way.

If Democrats lose their slim majority in either congressional chamber next year, they will lose their ability to pass voting-rights reform. After that, the party could face a debilitating dynamic: Republicans could use their state-level power to continue limiting ballot access, which would make regaining control of the House or the Senate more difficult for Democrats—and thus prevent them from passing future national voting rules that override the exclusionary state laws.

Perhaps that’s why former Vice President Mike Pence popped his head up for the first time since he was evacuated from the U.S. Capitol on January 6th to argue against this bill, accusing Democrats of trying to “give leftists a permanent, unfair, and unconstitutional advantage in our political system,” which is laughable considering the state of our tattered democracy.

The Democrats currently hold 50 Senate seats but represent 41,549,808 more people than the 50 Senate Republicans. GOP presidents appointed six of the nine Justices of the Supreme Court while winning the popular vote only once in the past seven elections. Of course, the anachronistic Electoral College can grant a Republican president the White House even though he or she might actually lose by millions of votes, and partisan gerrymandering in red states consistently benefits Republicans.

Unless Democrats can persuade centrist Sens. Joe Manchin, D-WV, Kyrsten Sinema, D-Az, and institutionalists like Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., that U.S. democracy is in dire straits and the filibuster has to either be eliminated or “reformed” in some way, H.R. 1 and the upcoming John Lewis Voting Rights Act will not pass and this barrage of voting restrictions and gerrymandering may very well cement GOP minoritarian rule permanently. Not passing these bills really isn’t optional.

The U.S.-funded NGO Freedom House, which has been around since 1941, recently released its annual report on democracy around the world. The outlook is not good.

Democratic governments have been on the decline for 15 years and it’s not getting any better. But the most startling finding is that the U.S., once the exemplar of modern democracy, has declined by 11 points on Freedom House’s aggregate Freedom In The World score, placing it among the 25 countries that have suffered the steepest declines over the past 10 years.

The report discusses the long term degradation of America’s democratic norms but focuses on the accelerating decline in U.S. freedom scores during the Trump years, “driven in part by corruption and conflicts of interest in the administration, resistance to transparency efforts, and harsh and haphazard policies on immigration and asylum that made the country an outlier among its Group of Seven peers.” But it reserves its harshest criticism for Trump’s attempt to overturn the election which it rightly characterizes as his most destructive act. And even more concerning was the fact that “nationally elected officials from his party backed these claims, striking at the foundations of democracy and threatening the orderly transfer of power.” That is not something any of us would have expected to read in a Freedom House report.

The Democrats have a small window of opportunity to prevent this undemocratic movement from gaining steam and securing minority rule for the foreseeable future. Trump himself is not out of the picture and his party is single-mindedly focused on attaining power by any means necessary. Democrats must act decisively now and make sure that all 50 Senators understand the stakes and do what is necessary to pass H.R. 1.

I would hope that neither Kyrsten Sinema or Joe Manchin want to be remembered as the Strom Thurmond of their time, but that’s exactly who they will be if they allow the filibuster to once more stand in the way of ensuring voting rights for all Americans.

This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
February 22, 2021

Democrats Unite Behind Election Reform Act to Counter GOP’s Voter Suppression

Rep. John Sarbanes (D-Maryland) announced on Monday that all House Democrats have now co-sponsored the 2021 version of the For the People Act, or H.R. 1. House Democrats have said that they will hold a vote on the legislation during the first week of March.

H.R. 1 is a sweeping election reform act that is a bundle of election- and voting-related laws, and it’s been favored by Democrats and progressives for several years now. The law targets corporate campaign finance by exposing “dark money” campaign contributions and ending the Citizens United ruling that unleashed massive amounts of corporate spending in politics.

It also greatly expands voting access by automatically registering eligible voters; making Election Day a holiday for federal employees and encouraging the private sector to do the same; and curbing partisan gerrymandering — which gives Republicans who are in control of a majority of state legislatures an advantage — and voter roll purging. In other words, as many journalists and political experts have said, it could save democracy.

Democrats passed the bill in the House in 2019, but then-Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to bring it to a vote in the Senate. Republicans — and many organizations that support them in their campaigns — are opposed to the bill.

“Our democracy is in a state of deep disrepair,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California), House Administration Chair Zoe Lofgren (D-California) and Democracy Reform Task Force Chair Sarbanes in a statement when they reintroduced H.R. 1 in January. “Across the country, people of all political persuasions — including Democrats, Independents and Republicans — are profoundly frustrated with the chaos, corruption and inaction that plague much of our politics.”

The lawmakers also point out in their statement that 2020 was a particularly fraught year for elections. Former President Donald Trump and the Republican Party fought hard to undermine and question the election and its results. Those unprecedented attacks on the election have now led to a huge wave of bills introduced in states by Republicans seeking to restrict voting rights.

The Brennan Center for Justice has found that, as of this month, over 165 bills that seek to limit voting have been filed in states, as compared to only 35 at this time last year. They are particularly aimed at limiting mail-in voting, imposing stricter voter ID requirements, restricting voter registration and expanding voter roll purging.

Efforts to limit voting have been particularly egregious in Georgia which turned blue in the most recent election and where Black voters, in particular, were instrumental in clinching the Democrats’ victory. Last month, a Republican lawmaker there attempted to pass a bill that would require voters to send in two copies of their ID when requesting an absentee ballot.

On Friday, Georgia Republicans filed legislation that proposes sweeping changes to election laws as well as further restrictions to absentee and early voting. It would impose more restrictions on voter IDs when requesting an absentee ballot and limit the window for voters to request and counties to send out the ballots. It also prohibits counties from conducting early voting on Sundays, which NPR reports is traditionally a day with more turnout from Black voters through “souls to the polls” events.

The Nation said that this drive from Republicans to limit voting is voter suppression that is, in many cases, specifically aimed at Black voters. “At the beating heart of the Big Lie — the deranged fantasy that the 2020 election was stolen from its loser, Donald Trump — is the Republican belief that the votes of Black people shouldn’t count,” wrote The Nation’s Elie Mystal. “The new laws cover everything Republicans could think of to make it harder for people to cast a vote.”

Republicans seem to be specifically targeting mail-in voting and early voting after many states opened both massively to avoid crowds and gathering on election day because of COVID-19. These bills follow the many attempts by Republicans to quash voting before the election last year where they tried every which way to limit who could vote, as well as when and where they could vote.

Polling shows, however, that the expanded voting access in the 2020 election due to COVID was quite popular among voters from both parties. Seventy percent of voters support the adoption of no-excuse absentee voting that many states allowed last year and two-thirds support expanding early voting periods before the election, according to a new poll by Strategies 360 and Voting Rights Lab.

H.R. 1 also enjoys wide support among the public; according to polling from Data for Progress and Equal Citizens, 67 percent of Americans support the legislation, including 77 percent of Democrats and 56 percent of Republicans.

This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.