Cory Booker, Tim Scott spar over comparing voting restrictions to Jim Crow laws
Catherine Garcia,Night editor – January 20, 2022
Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.). Ethan Miller/Getty Images
Things got heated on the Senate floor Wednesday during debate on a voting rights bill, with Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) and Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) at odds over whether the strict voting restrictions being put in place by Republican-led state legislatures can compare to Jim Crow laws.
Jim Crow laws were first enacted in the late 1800s in order to segregate and disenfranchise Black people, especially in the South. Poll taxes and literacy tests, plus intimidation, were deployed to stop Black Americans from voting. The landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act outlawed discriminatory voting practices, which in turned increased voter registration and turnout.
Democrats have been trying to pass voting rights legislation that would, among other things, reinstate parts of the 1965 law, make Election Day a national holiday, and ensure access to early voting and mail-in ballots.
Scott, the Senate’s only Black Republican, stated that when Democrats refer to these state laws as “Jim Crow 2.0,” they are putting forward “a negative, false narrative of what is happening in America.” The comparison is “offensive not just to me or Southern Americans, but offensive to millions of Americans who fought, bled, and died for the right to vote,” he said.
Scott noted that he defeated the son of late GOP segregationist Sen. Strom Thurmond when he first won a House seat, and referring to himself and Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.), said it’s “hard to deny progress” when two of three sitting Black senators “come from the Southern states that people say are places where African American votes are being suppressed. Not to mention the fact that 2020 was a banner year for minority participation.”
Democrats have argued that the higher minority participation is exactly why Republican-led state legislatures have enacted voting restrictions since the 2020 election. “Don’t lecture me on Jim Crow,” Booker said, speaking after Scott. “I know this is not 1965. That’s what makes me so outraged — it’s 2022 and they’re blatantly removing more polling places from the counties where Blacks and Latinos are overrepresented. I’m not making that up. That is a fact.”
Booker also said data shows that on average, Black voters have to wait in line at polling places twice as long as white voters. “In the United States today, it is more difficult for the average African American to vote than the average white American,” he stated. “That is not rhetoric, that is fact.”
Home prices rose faster than ever in 2021. The typical home gained $50,000 in value
Chris Arnold January 20, 2022
New homes under construction in Mebane, N.C., earlier this month. A historic shortage of homes for sale has been pushing prices sharply higher. So builders are trying to ramp up projects.Gerry Broome/AP
Home values rose faster than ever in 2021. The median sales price for an existing home was $346,900, up a whopping 17% from the prior year.
That made things tough for people looking to buy a house for the first time.
But for those who already own the roof over their head, the typical American homeowner saw a gain of $50,200 in home equity, or housing wealth, in just a single year.
“The price increase is a record,” says Lawrence Yun the chief economist for the National Association of Realtors which just came out with the new numbers. He adds that the rise in home values is “even stronger than the days of subprime lending.”
Yun is referring to the ruinous lending practices that fueled the housing bubble and led to the financial crisis 15 years ago. Back then prices were getting artificially boosted because people were paying more than they could actually afford.
But Yun says reforms put in place by Congress since then insure that people can afford the home loans they get. So something very different is happening now.
“We are facing a major housing shortage,” Yun says. “In December, we saw record low inventory, an all time low, there’s simply not enough homes available for sale.”
Meanwhile, during the pandemic, millions of people working from home have wanted more space and have been trying to buy homes. Record low supply, coupled with strong demand, has pushed prices up quickly and dramatically. But Yun expects price gains to moderate this year, perhaps to around 4% to 5%.
“The price gains will begin to normalize,” he says. “And people should not anticipate another year of this double digit rate of appreciation.”
Still, the housing market will remain out of balance so long as the supply of homes is so constricted. After the financial crisis, many homebuilders went out of business, and for a decade the builders that were left did not build enough homes given population growth.
In fact, estimates are that the U.S. is short several million homes. And building more won’t happen overnight.
Homebuilders say they are facing major headwinds including, in many places, a lack of available land, labor, building materials, and overly restrictive zoning.
“Policymakers could help by reducing lumber tariffs,” says Robert Dietz, the chief economist of the National Association of Homebuilders. He says local and state governments could also help get more affordable homes built by, “enacting zoning reform to allow builders to build with greater density.”
He says workforce development programs to train construction workers are needed too.
At this point in the pandemic, you’ve likely spent a hefty chunk of time over the past 22 months (!!) researching the best face masks and scrolling through sites such as Amazon to purchase the recommended pick(s). And with the varying guidance (i.e. first cloth masks were okay and now they’re not), odds are your wallet’s gotten quite the workout. But soon you should be able to give your bank account a bit of a break while still securing those much-needed face coverings.
On Wednesday, the Biden administration announced that it will make 400 million nonsurgical N95 masks available free of charge to Americans starting late next week. “This is the largest deployment of personal protective equipment in U.S. history,” a White House official told CNN, adding that the program will be “fully up and running by early February.”
The N95 masks will come from the government’s Strategic National Stockpile — essentially a federal repository or warehouse of drugs and supplies ready for deployment in the case of a national emergency — and will be given out at local pharmacies and community health centers nationwide. But don’t expect to leave distribution locations with a tote bag full of masks. There are only three masks available per adult. As for children? “We anticipate making additional, high-quality masks for children available in the near future,” an official told The Washington Post.
The administration’s announcement comes as the highly-transmissible Omicron variant continues to sweep the country and just days after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated its guidelines for face masks. While the agency continues to recommend that you “wear the most protective mask you can that fits well and that you will wear consistently,” it now notes that certain masks and respirators (e.g. N95s approved by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health or NIOSH) provide “the highest level of protection” against COVID-19 compared to cloth coverings. (Related: Here’s the Latest CDC Mask Guidance for COVID-19)
So, How Do You Get Your Free N95 Masks?
Unlike with the free COVID-19 tests (which you can order online), in order to actually get your free masks, you’ll have to pick them up in person at a federal community health center or pharmacy, according to The Washington Post. Although specifics on exact distribution locations are still TBD, it appears that Walgreens is part of the program. “We are pleased to partner with the administration to make N95 masks in varying sizes available free of charge at select Walgreens locations nationwide while supplies last,” a company spokesperson told NBC News Chicago. (Related: Can An N95 Mask Actually Protect You From the Coronavirus?)
As for when exactly you’ll be able to pick up your three N95s? That’s also somewhat TBD. U.S. officials are starting to ship masks at the end of this week, meaning they’ll likely be available at your local pharmacy and health center late next week, reports The Washington Post. But the keyword here is “likely,” as, again, a concrete timeline has not been made available to the public.
Officials also haven’t addressed how (if at all) they’re going to prevent someone from visiting pharmacies frequently and getting masks as each visit. But please don’t get any ideas — just be a good citizen and stick to your allotted three free masks, as there should be more than enough to go around. After all, the 400 million nonsurgical N95s being distributed amount to more than half of the 750 million stored in the Stockpile, according to CNN. Plus, special surgical N95 masks will be reserved for health care workers and not given out alongside the nonsurgical respirators, so know that these pandemic warriors (and, TBH, heroes) are getting ample PPE, too.
What If You Need More N95 Masks or Need One ASAP?
While the opportunity to receive three respirators free of charge is undeniably exciting, there are some limitations. For starters, N95 masks are meant to be single-use. That being said, each covering can be used more than once if necessary but no more than five times, according to the CDC. Given this info, odds are you’re going to still need to purchase additional masks to ensure optimal protection (research suggests that performance and efficacy decrease with use of the masks) as this pandemic continues.
And then, of course, there’s the possibility that you need to restock your face covering collection now and, thus, can’t wait for the government’s rollout. If this is the case, know that there are plenty of options available for purchase online and in stores. But buyer beware: There’s an increasing number of fake N95 and KN95 masks out there, so you want to be sure you know what to look for when shopping for PPE. (Related: How to Spot Fake COVID Test Kits)
Before whipping out your wallet, make sure the N95s in your cart have been tested and certified by NIOSH. Both the mask and its packaging should be labeled as “NIOSH-approved,” meaning they meet a specific set of criteria to guarantee a certain level of protection and performance, Stella Hines, M.D., associate professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, told USA Today. You can also refer to the NIOSH-Certified Equipment List on the CDC’s website to see if your N95 mask’s manufacturer and approval number (both of which should be on the respirator).
The information in this story is accurate as of press time. As updates about coronavirus COVID-19 continue to evolve, it’s possible that some information and recommendations in this story have changed since initial publication. We encourage you to check in regularly with resources such as the CDC, the WHO, and your local public health department for the most up-to-date data and recommendations.
States with looser gun restrictions have higher number of homicides, suicides: study
January 20, 2022
States with more relaxed gun laws have higher rates of firearm-related homicides and suicides, according to a new study from the nonprofit advocacy organization Everytown for Gun Safety.
California, Hawaii, New York and Massachusetts were all among the eight states with the tightest gun laws and the lowest rate of gun-related deaths. California came in the number one spot for restrictive gun laws, and Hawaii and Massachusetts reported the lowest number of gun deaths.
On the other end of the spectrum, the study listed 13 states as falling significantly below the national average on both gun deaths and restrictive gun laws. Louisiana, Missouri, Wyoming and Mississippi were rated as the states with the highest rate of deaths caused by gun violence. Mississippi was rated as the top state for both the weakest gun laws and the highest death rate.
Everytown said they compiled the study by analyzing the 50 most important policies in each state and categorizing those laws from the highest level of impact to the lowest. They also analyzed figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), National Center for Health Statistics and WONDER Online Database.
“What this project does, is show what we’ve been saying for years: Gun laws save lives,” Nick Suplina, senior vice president of law and policy at Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund, told CNN. “We think this is going to be a really important tool for lawmakers, reporters and advocates that have been looking for the kind of visual tool that can make that case clearly.”
The study also notes that even states that have highly restrictive gun laws are seeing firearm deaths going up due to guns coming across state lines. It notes that when guns from another state are found at crime scene, four out of five come from states with weak background check laws.
The study comes after the United States reported over 20,000 gun deaths in 2021, making it one of the deadliest years on record, according to investigate organization
Earth’s Core Cooling Faster Than Scientists Thought
Cristen Hemingway Jaynes January 18, 2022
The structure of Earth’s crust seen in a 3D rendering with elements furnished by NASA. Photo credit: Rost-9D / iStock / Getty Images Plus
The Earth of 4.5 billion years ago was covered in hot magma that had to gradually cool for the planet to become habitable. This happened over millions of years, as the surface formed the hard rocks of the crust that is our home. The interior of our planet still emanates geothermal energy that causes plate tectonics to move, resulting in earthquakes and volcanoes. But how fast did Earth cool and how long will it continue to cool before the effects of its hot interior stop?
Professor Motohiko Murakami of ETH Zürich and colleagues from the Carnegie Institution of Science have developed a system to measure how well a mineral — bridgmanite — conducts heat. Bridgmanite makes up the boundary layer between the iron-nickel core of Earth and its mantle layer, and its thermal conductivity influences how fast heat flows through the core into the mantle.
From their experiments, Murakami and the other scientists suspect that Earth may be cooling faster than previously thought. Their study, “Radiative thermal conductivity of single-crystal bridgmanite at the core-mantle boundary with implications for thermal evolution of the Earth,” was recently published in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters.
“This measurement system let us show that the thermal conductivity of bridgmanite is about 1.5 times higher than assumed,” Murakami said, as ETH Zürich reported. This finding suggests that core to mantle heat is also higher than was once believed, which accelerates the cooling of Earth.
Earth’s interior will eventually cool and solidify, and its plate tectonics will cease as well, possibly turning Earth into a sterile rock similar to Mercury or Mars, ScienceAlert reported.
Another factor in the rate at which Earth loses its heat is that when bridgmanite cools down it transforms into post-perovskite, a mineral that is more efficient at conducting heat and therefore increases the rate of heat loss from Earth’s core to its mantle.
“Our results could give us a new perspective on the evolution of Earth’s dynamics,” Murakami said, as reported by ScienceAlert. “They suggest that Earth, like the other rocky planets Mercury and Mars, is cooling and becoming inactive much faster than expected.”
Additional research is needed to determine how long it will be before the convection currents in Earth’s mantle stop, Earth.com reported. “We still don’t know enough about these kinds of events to pin down their timing,” Murakami said.
Nobody’s senator but theirs: Ron Johnson’s backroom dealing shows who he’s working for. It’s not you.
USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin Editorial Board January 19, 2022
A blockbuster scoop by ProPublica on Wednesday makes crystal clear who Ron Johnson represents: He is the senator for the ultra-wealthy.
The exposé details how Wisconsin’s Republican senator ensured that his wealthiest donors made out like bandits in the massive 2017 tax bill that GOP leaders marketed as a “middle-class tax cut.”
Thanks to Johnson’s demands, it wound up delivering a huge portion of its billions in savings to just 82 of America’s wealthiest families. And the senator’s top donors — billionaires Diane Hendricks and Dick and Liz Uihlein — were with Michael Bloomberg at the very top of a short list of those who gained the most.
Though he tried to defend himself on Wednesday, Johnson’s secret, closed-door maneuvering on the tax bill is one more reason he’s unfit to represent Wisconsin citizens. The sooner he’s removed from office, the better for our democratic republic.
In 2017 as President Donald Trump’s administration was rushing to get the massive tax cut through Congress, Johnson surprised the president and other Republicans by saying he’d vote “no.” The tax cut wasn’t sweet enough for “pass-through companies,” he argued — businesses that pass their profits directly to owners, ProPublica found through emails and other records.
The pressure campaign worked. Trump personally begged Johnson for his support, and the authors of the legislation boosted the tax cut for pass-through businesses, allowing them to deduct up to 20% of their profits.
Johnson also carried water for real estate developers after another of his donors, Milwaukee businessman Ted Kellner, complained that developers like himself wouldn’t get a big enough tax break from the bill. Johnson forwarded Kellner’s letter to Kevin Brady, a Texas Republican, who chaired the House Ways and Means Committee, and in the final version of the bill, developers got the same generous tax break.
Diane Hendricks: Owner of ABC Supply in Beloit, Hendricks is among the richest women in the U.S., estimated by Forbes to be worth $2.1 billion.
Johnson’s deal-making showered eye-popping benefits on his two biggest donors — Hendricks, who owns ABC Supply Co. in Beloit, and the Uihleins, Schlitz Brewing heirs who own the Uline packaging company in Pleasant Prairie.
Using tax records it obtained of the wealthiest Americans, ProPublica, a nonprofit investigative news service, found that in 2018 alone, the tax deal helped deliver $215 million in deductions for the two families. Of that, Johnson’s intervention saved the Uihleins $43.5 million in 2018 and Hendricks about $36 million. The donors could reap more than a half-billion dollars in tax savings from his changes over the course of the tax cut’s eight-year life span.
In 2016, as Johnson faced a tough race against former Sen. Russ Feingold, the families had contributed a combined $20 million to groups supporting Johnson’s reelection.
They got quite a return on their investment — Johnson proved to be the best senator money could buy.
Republicans claimed that the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act — what Trump called his “big, beautiful Christmas present” — would goose economic growth and result in a simpler, fairer system.
What it actually did, according to a study by Treasury economists, is hand out most of the tax savings to the richest 1% of Americans. They got nearly 60% of the savings — and most of that went to the top 0.1%, ProPublica found. These are the people who benefit most from our interstate highways, our national defense, our financial system safeguards and our other shared public services — even as some do all in their power to pay as little as possible for them.
These are the people Ron Johnson truly represents and works for — even as he panders to people who are less well-to-do yet continue to believe in Trump and his promises to shake up the status quo and “drain the swamp.” Johnson knows he needs the former president’s less wealthy supporters in Wisconsin if he decides to break his earlier promises and run for a third term next year.
But what is more defensive of the status quo than secretly helping the very richest families get even richer? What is further from draining the swamp than writing laws that enrich yourself and your biggest campaign donors?
This is the same senator whose utter disregard for scientific evidence and responsible behavior led him to use his taxpayer-financed bully pulpit to repeatedly tout unproven treatments for COVID-19 and cast doubt on life-saving vaccines.
This is the same senator who after the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol claimed the insurrectionists were “people that love this country, that truly respect law enforcement, would never do anything to break a law.”
However, this same senator said he would have really been concerned about the violent Jan. 6 assault against police, Congress and our nation’s Capitol had the insurrectionists been members of the Black Lives Matter movement, rather than the white supremacists, Q-Anon conspiracy believers and Rebel flag-waving Trump supporters they were.
Johnson has never made a secret that he supports big business and the wealthy. Still, the audacious nature of the secret deal-making outlined by ProPublica is breathtaking.
Johnson couldn’t be bothered to support a bipartisan infrastructure investment this week, which aims to repair the nation’s deteriorating roads, bridges and ports; replace lead water pipes in cities like Milwaukee; and bring high-speed Internet to areas of Wisconsin and rural America that badly need it.
The senator is willing to work hard, and even stand up to his party’s leader, when it comes to doing the bidding of a few extremely rich patrons. When it comes to working for the good of the many more average Wisconsin citizens he represents? Not so much.
Johnson’s priorities are all wrong — and they’ve been all wrong for this entire term.
Former Sen. Herb Kohl, who financed his own campaigns, used to have a slogan: Nobody’s senator but yours.
Ron Johnson has put a new spin on that: Nobody’s senator but theirs.
It’s time to actually drain the swamp and fire Sen. Ron Johnson from public office.
About editorials
Editorials are written by the USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin Editorial Board, which operates independently from the network’s news departments across 11 state communities.
On Jan. 19, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said that African American voter turnout was “just as high” as for “Americans.” (C-Span)
By Greg Sargent, Columnist January 20, 2022
At the one-year mark in President Biden’s first term, there’s no sugarcoating it: A barrage of new polls are absolutely brutal for him. Surveys from NBC News and the Associated Press both put Biden’s approval at 43 percent, and CBS News puts it at 44 percent, in large drops since last summer.
In short: Everything is going pretty much as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has planned. We know this because the Kentucky Republican told us exactly how he planned it. In fact, he laid out the playbook more than a decade ago, and it has changed little since then.
At dark moments such as these, after Biden’s voting rights agenda fell to a Republican filibuster on Wednesday night, it’s worth revisiting a largely-forgotten, 11-year-old quote from McConnell. It captures a crucial insight about U.S. politics that helps illuminate the struggles Democrats are facing, and why they feel so frustrating and intractable.
At the time, McConnell was similarly wielding his role as minority leader to obstruct another Democratic president, by denying any and all GOP support for proposals like the 2010 Affordable Care Act. McConnell explained his thinking to journalist Joshua Green:“We worked very hard to keep our fingerprints off of these proposals,” McConnell says. “Because we thought — correctly, I think — that the only way the American people would know that a great debate was going on was if the measures were not bipartisan. When you hang the ‘bipartisan’ tag on something, the perception is that differences have been worked out, and there’s a broad agreement that that’s the way forward.”
The counterintuitive thought here runs as follows: Yes, Americans want the parties to cooperate in a bipartisan fashion. Yes, when the parties disagree, Americans might agree with one side more than the other. But in McConnell’s theory, those things don’t matter.
Instead, when government is seen as dysfunctional amid partisan fighting, the president and his party are blamed, because they run the place. When Republicans uniformly oppose the president’s policies, voters fault him for failing to secure bipartisan cooperation. That’s why McConnell wants to deny him “broad agreement.
With that in mind, we can be sure that McConnell chortled with glee as he watched Biden’s Wednesday news conference, where reporters hammered Biden for failing to achieve “unity” with Republicans. In those lines of questioning, they were effectively erased as a factor in that failure.
Every GOP senator voted to block the Democratic proposals — which would protect voting rights and restore federal preclearance of voting changes — from moving forward. Similarly, every congressional Republican opposes Biden’s Build Back Better agenda, which seeks to tackle generational problems facing our country, from profound economic inequality to looming climate catastrophe.
In this case, of course, two centrist Democratic senators also stand in the way: They’re withholding support for BBB and won’t nix the filibuster to protect democracy. But uniform GOP opposition on both fronts is a major factor, and should be something Democrats can exploit politically.
Biden certainly thinks McConnell’s strategy leaves Republicans vulnerable. At his presser, he declared that in the midterms, Democrats will stress what they’ve passed, such as the rescue package (which has driven a surprisingly robust recovery) and the infrastructure bill (where bipartisanship was achieved), and vowed to get some form of BBB done.
This, Biden said, will be relentlessly contrasted with lockstep GOP opposition. He vowed that Democrats will relentlessly ask: “What are Republicans for?”
A polling double-whammy
But those new polls illustrate why McConnell’s strategy nonetheless might work. The NBC poll shows double-digit slippage for Biden since last spring among independents and core Democratic groups such as Black people and Latinos, and abysmal approval numbers on the economy and covid-19. The CBS poll shows lackluster support among liberals and finds Biden underwater with young voters.
So there may be a double-whammy here. Independents may be alienated by Biden’s inability to achieve more bipartisanship (GOP obstruction works). Meanwhile, core Democratic voters may be demoralized by the failure to accomplish big achievements (GOP obstruction isn’t enough to get them to redirect blame; they hear more about Democratic infighting).
“The Democratic base wants things to get done on a whole host of important issues,” Nick Gourevitch, a Democratic pollster, told me.
Gourevitch noted that both Democrats and independents alike might be alienated by perceptions of dysfunction. “Voters don’t pay deep attention to how things don’t get done,” he said. “They just see that things don’t get done.”
Gourevitch added that GOP obstruction might not be weighing as heavily as one might hope. “It’s not like Republicans are popular,” he said, but it’s plausible that “the voters will pay attention to who’s in charge, as they have done historically in many elections.”
None of this is to absolve Biden of blame. His broken promises on immigration may be one reason for slipping base support. He took his eye off the ball on coronavirus testing and got caught off guard by the latest surge, which surely is hurting across the board. And despite the economic rebound, inflation and supply chain issues are tainting that picture.
It may ultimately prove possible to make Republicans pay a price for obstruction. If Biden can get a smaller BBB passed and the economy keeps recovering, casting Republicans as obstacles to ongoing progress might have potency. And as the new White House focus on free tests and masks shows, it now knows defeating covid is paramount for recovery — including political recovery.
But still: The next time McConnell unleashes one of those trademark chortles, remember that 11-year-old quote. It helps explain why he’s laughing in your faces.
Tucker Carlson gets called out by Alexander Vindman for ‘fanboying over authoritarianism’
Stephen Proctor – January 20, 2022
Retired Army Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, who served as director of European affairs for the National Security Council under former President Donald Trump, appeared Wednesday on All In With Chris Hayes and spoke about Russia’s possible invasion of Ukraine, which now appears imminent. Vindman believes there are a number of factors that caused the situation to escalate, one of those being his former boss.
Asked why Russian President Vladimir Putin chose to increase aggression against Ukraine now, Vindman answered, “It’s mainly because of a sense of opportunity, a sense of weakness within the United States. I have every reason to believe that if we had not had [an] insurrection on Jan. 6, because President Trump, President Putin would not believe that there’s an opportunity, there’s a vulnerability in the United States. The hyper-polarization that Trump continues to nourish in the United States helps.”
Vindman also blamed Fox News’s most popular opinion host, Tucker Carlson, who has defended the increased Russian aggression.
“He [Putin] has major talking heads on Fox News, like Tucker Carlson, pandering to his interests, pandering to — drawing false equivalencies between the U.S. and Russia,” Vindman said. “Really kind of fanboying over authoritarianism.”
In defending Putin’s actions on Tuesday, Carlson said, “Imagine if Mexico fell under the direct control of China. We would see that as a threat. There would be no reason for that. That’s how Russia views NATO control of Ukraine … and why wouldn’t they?”
While Carlson, who recently praised Hungary’s authoritarian leader Viktor Orbán, is no doubt correct about Putin’s feelings toward NATO pushing further east, the rest of his argument does not hold water. NATO does not militarily control its members because it is a defense alliance. Ukraine applied to join NATO in 2008 and has been awaiting admittance ever since. Vindman believes that Russia is threatening to invade Ukraine because it sees its influence over the former Soviet territory disappearing.
“I think we saw this buildup start to occur, really, at the beginning of 2021, and I think that it was on the expectation that Russia had to act,” Vindman said. “Back in 2014 when this confrontation started, when Russia launched its military offensive against Ukraine, it did so because it saw a country choosing its own destiny, asserting its sovereignty, choosing a path towards European integration, towards democracy. And, really, this is a continuing enterprise in a lot of ways.”
“Do I want American democracy to exist for our children, grandchildren, and future generations?”
This is the question our Senators must ask themselves today. We need more heroes in the Senate to do what is right and to shield future generations from anti-democratic extremism.
Please, we beg you, pass the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.
Senators Blunt, Burr, Collins, Cornyn, Graham, Grassley, Inhofe, Manchin, Murkowski, Portman, Romney, Shelby, Sinema, Thune, and Toomey, we are speaking to you, to anyone else in the Senate who will listen, and to those in their personal lives with the ability to influence their position.
We know the story of Harry Burn, the young Tennessee state legislator who stood firmly in the anti-suffrage movement before changing his position and casting the deciding vote that would ratify the 19th Amendment and give women the right to vote after he received a letter from his mother encouraging him to support the bill. As he voted, he still wore the red rose pin, the symbol of the anti-suffrage movement, showing it is never too late to do the right thing.
Perhaps harsh, the reality is that many of you will not be alive 30 years from now. You will not have to live through the consequences of your decision, but your children, your nieces and nephews, your godchildren, your neighbor’s children, and your grandchildren will.
We understand the Senate was designed to be a slow deliberative body that takes the long view, but in doing so, Senators cannot afford to ignore what is right in front of them: a democracy that is crumbling. This isn’t about one election or the results of that election. This is about the strength of the institutions that uphold our democracy and faith in those institutions.
Once a rarely used tool to guarantee the minority was heard on the most controversial issues, the filibuster has become a tool of minority tyranny ensuring nothing ever gets debated or accomplished. Senators raise their hand to filibuster and go back to their states to raise more money. It is lazy and it is cowardly. Americans are tired of it.
There is a major difference between a slow deliberate debate to achieve compromise and avoidance of good faith efforts toward a negotiated solution. The U.S. Senate has bypassed the filibuster to make decisions on issues important to the American people, like trade and healthcare, 161 times. Bypassing the filibuster isn’t partisan: It’s the recognition that the system isn’t working the way it should and that it’s time to do right by the American people.
Districts are becoming less competitive with gerrymandering. Our political system increasingly rewards officials acting against the interests of their own constituency and the country. Foreign and domestic bad actors are spreading disinformation, creating chaos, and undermining confidence in our democracy. The reality is faith in our institutions is low. Faith in you and your ability to do what is right is low. That is why there is a rising acceptance of political violence across the political spectrum.
Right now, many Senators have allowed party politics to get in the way of doing what is right: defending and strengthening our democracy so that it survives for future generations.
This is a new game with new rules. Our democracy has changed. Consider that it was just over 15 years ago when the Voting Rights Act Reauthorization Act of 2006 passed the Senate 98-0 without a single dissenting vote. What would that vote be in today’s Senate?
We wish we could convey to young people that they can count on their elected leaders in Washington to protect and nourish our democracy, but the reality is we can’t. We can’t promise that politicians at the top will act in the best interest of all Americans when they refuse to protect our most sacred rights–voting rights.
It is hard for me to imagine elected officials serving in this body thinking this is ok. I can’t imagine it feels good to have their hands tied while state legislators slowly weaken our institutions until they are effectively powerless.
Please, find the courage, do the right thing. Pass the Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act and ensure democracy can continue for the next generation to vote, debate, and develop compromised, sophisticated solutions to the complex problems we face.
Carolyn DeWitt is the president and executive director of Rock the Vote.
Democrats lament — this time — that Senate rules give outsize power to the chamber’s minority. Yet they are hardly alone in their complaints about the tactic, known as the filibuster, which has been used since the 1800s to block legislation.
Here’s a look at the filibuster, what it does and how it works.
WHAT’S A FILIBUSTER?
Unlike the House, the Senate places few constraints on lawmakers’ right to speak. But senators can use the chamber’s rules to hinder or block votes.
Collectively called filibusters, these procedural moves were emblazoned in the public’s mind in part by the 1939 film, “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” in which James Stewart portrayed a senator who spoke on the chamber’s floor until exhaustion.
In a real-life version of that, Sen. Strom Thurmond, D-S.C., stood continuously by his desk for 24 hours and 18 minutes speaking against the 1957 Civil Rights Act. That’s the longest Senate speech by a single senator for which there are such records.
Democrats say the GOP’s current embrace of the tactic to block progress on their voting rights bill echoes that era. But there are key differences.
Most important, unlike in the 1960s, senators can usually tell Senate leaders or announce publicly that they will filibuster a bill and no lengthy speeches will be required. The system now allows the Senate to conduct other business even as a filibuster is waged.
HOW DID IT COME ABOUT?
The term “filibuster” began appearing in the mid-19th century, derived from a Dutch term for “freebooter” and the Spanish “filibusteros,” which were used to describe pirates, Senate records show.
The filibuster isn’t in the Constitution and it wasn’t part of the Founding Fathers’ vision for the Senate.
It was created inadvertently after Vice President Aaron Burr complained in 1805 that the chamber’s rule book was redundant and overly complicated, according to historians. In a rules rewrite that followed, senators eliminated a provision that allowed for debate to be cut off. The filibuster was developed as a blocking tactic several decades later.
By the 1920s, it was part of an established playbook for stalling civil rights legislation.
HOW DO FILIBUSTERS END?
Complaints about the snail’s pace of the Senate are as old as the republic, with records from the first Congress in 1789 indicating senators were annoyed by long speeches holding up proceedings.
But after filibusters became a turned-to tactic for limitless debate, the Senate voted in 1917 to let senators end them with a two-thirds majority vote.
In 1975, the Senate lowered that margin to the current three-fifths majority, which in the 100-member chamber means 60 votes are needed to end filibusters against nearly all types of legislation. Only simple majorities are required to end the delays against nominations, thanks to recent years’ rule changes.
Filibusters have become routine against legislation in the past two decades, frustrating both parties. Before then, many of the most well-known filibusters dealt with voting rights.
—A 10-day filibuster in 1891 stopped a bill that would have appointed federal monitors to oversee all phases of elections, a measure vehemently opposed by senators from the South, where Blacks were denied the right to vote, congressional records show.
—Southern senators successfully filibustered an anti-lynching bill in 1922. They repeated that in 1938 with a 30-day filibuster.
—In 1942, a five-day filibuster by Southern senators killed a bill that would have eliminated poll taxes, which were used to disenfranchise Black voters. Similar legislation continued to spur filibuster challenges until poll taxes were eliminated in 1964.
—On Jun 10, 1964, after more than 14-hours of oration, Democratic West Virginia Sen. Robert Byrd brought a 60-day filibuster to a close. Minutes later, the Senate began to vote on the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to end segregation. It had become clear that backers had enough votes to cut off debate for the first time in Senate history for a filibuster of civil rights legislation.
WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH TODAY?
Characterizing debate on their current voting legislation as the civil rights fight of this era, Democrats say their bill is needed to counteract a Republican push for new state-level laws, which the Democrats say will make it more difficult to vote and in some cases make the administration of elections more susceptible to political influence.
The Democrats’ bill would create national election standards that would trump the state-level GOP laws, which are being enacted in the name of election security, such as restrictions on mail voting or strict photo ID requirements.
It also aims to reduce the influence of big money in politics and limit partisan considerations in the drawing of congressional districts. It would restore the ability of the Justice Department to police election laws in states with a history of discrimination.
IS THERE ANY WAY AROUND THE FILIBUSTER?
In the 50-50 Senate, Democrats don’t have enough votes to break a filibuster unless 10 Republicans join them.
But they could change Senate rules by invoking a so-called “nuclear option,” which would then allow them to make changes to the filibuster with a simple majority of 51 votes. Both parties have used it to change the filibuster rules around nominees.
Many Democrats have urged the party to take this path, though they lack unanimous support in their caucus to do so. Their two most conservative senators, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Arizona’s Kyrsten Sinema, oppose such changes, arguing the country is better served when Congress can find bipartisan solutions.
WHY ELSE ARE MANCHIN AND SINEMA OPPOSED?
Manchin and Sinema also argue changes to the filibuster would come back to haunt Democrats if Republicans gain control of Congress and the White House.
Someday soon, they warn, it could enable the GOP to pass an agenda with limited input from the minority — and herald an era of drastic reversals in federal policy any time one party gains control of the White House and both chambers of Congress.
WHY ARE REPUBLICANS AGAINST THE VOTING BILL?
Senate Republicans unanimously oppose the Democratic legislation, viewing it as federal overreach that would infringe on states’ abilities to conduct their own elections.
They ridicule as “fake hysteria” the Democrats’ claim that the bill is needed to repair electoral vulnerabilities exposed by Donald Trump’s attempts to overthrow the 2020 election. They note that much of the current legislation was written years before.
Republicans also have been quick to point out that Democrats stridently opposed changes to the filibuster when they were in the minority, using it routinely to block legislation when Trump was president.
