US Politics

With less than 7% of Texans fully vaccinated and another Covid-19 surge potentially imminent, Texas is flinging open businesses to full capacity while simultaneously ending its highly politicized mask mandate, the state’s governor, Greg Abbott, announced on Tuesday.“It is now time to open Texas 100%,” a maskless Abbott declared to cheers at a crowded restaurant in the city of Lubbock.When Abbott’s policy changes go into effect next week, Texas will be the most populous state in the country that does not require residents to wear masks. Restaurants and other businesses can choose to maintain their own mask policies, but without government backing to do so.“We had a chance maybe by the end of the summer of getting a handle on this pandemic. This governor is just going to throw all of that out and put us back to the stone ages,” said Gilberto Hinojosa, the chair of the Texas Democratic party. “This is crazy.”Other states and cities have likewise started rolling back precautions. In Mississippi – another Republican stronghold – Governor Tate Reeves also announced on Tuesday that the state was lifting rules for businesses and doing away with county mask mandates.In other states and cities, including Michigan, Louisiana, and the city of San Francisco, California, officials are also lifting some restrictions, albeit not with the sweeping approach of Mississippi or Texas.Abbott’s announcement – which comes after about 43,000 Texans have died from the virus, and while many Texans are still ineligible for the vaccine – sparked immediate and vehement backlash, from Democratic mayors to workers’ advocates infuriated that Texans of color will once again be the hardest hit.“I think this is a slap in the face of working people, especially frontline workers, who have been risking their lives,” said Emily Timm, the co-executive director of Workers Defense Action Fund.Local leaders in Houston, Dallas, San Antonio and Austin – Texas’s biggest cities – called on Abbott “not to create any ambiguity or uncertainty about the importance of wearing a mask by changing the rules at this time”, Austin’s mayor, Steve Adler, said in a statement.“We as a state should be guided by science and data, which says we should keep the mask mandate. Too much is at stake to compromise the positive outcomes we have seen with over-confidence,” Adler said.The policy changes also follow a devastating winter storm that pummeled Texas mere weeks ago, in a crisis made worse because of the state’s bungled emergency management.Some critics say Abbott is using this moment to distract from that catastrophic failure, while also playing politics with lives to curry favor with a far-right Republican base that turned against him after he implemented coronavirus restrictions last summer.“He’s made a decision based upon politics,” Hinojosa said.As most meaningful coronavirus-related restrictions disappear from Texas, the state is simultaneously staring down what could easily be a series of super-spreader events over spring break.South Texas beach towns in Corpus Christi and the already hard-hit Rio Grande Valley have long been popular destinations among party-going college students from around the country, and as tourists pack into bars and restaurants, none of them will have to wear masks or socially distance.“You think we had a horrible spike on Memorial Day, and the Fourth of July, and during the holidays?” Hinojosa said. “The spike that this state will experience in coronavirus cases will be extremely high – and will cause many, many more deaths than any responsible governor should have allowed.” More

As the U.S. Senate proceeds with its business, split 50-50 between Republicans on one side and Democrats and independents on the other, lawmakers and the public at large are concerned about the future of the filibuster.
Under the rules of the U.S. Senate, if just one lawmaker doesn’t want a bill to progress, they can attempt to delay its passage indefinitely by giving a principled speech, or even just reading “Green Eggs and Ham,” as Ted Cruz did in 2013. A supermajority of three-fifths of the senators, or 60 of the 100, is required to stop the filibuster – or signal that one would not succeed – and proceed to a vote.
As a result of the current Senate split, the majority party – the 48 Democrats and two independents who generally caucus with them, plus Vice President Kamala Harris – cannot unilaterally decide to block filibusters and end debate on a bill. This effectively prevents most bills from ever being voted on without a sizable number of Republicans also agreeing to end debate.
Many critics have called for the filibuster’s elimination. Its continued use was briefly in question during negotiations between the parties over how to run an evenly split Senate. But the filibuster has survived, and it will likely continue to be a major obstacle to passing legislation.

As a comparative politics scholar, I have come to the conclusion that because many democratic constitutions already include so many other checks and balances, giving the minority party veto power over widely supported legislation is unnecessary, which is why most U.S. states and most democratic countries do not allow their legislators to filibuster.
In June 2013, Texas State Sen. Wendy Davis filibustered an anti-abortion bill. While a version of the bill was eventually enacted, in 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the abortion restrictions as unconstitutional. AP Photo/Eric Gay
Plenty of checks and balances
According to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, the filibuster ensures “that slim majorities can’t ram through half-baked ideas.” But even without the filibuster, it’s actually quite hard to pass legislation in the U.S., thanks to the Constitution’s robust separation of powers.
Bills need to pass both chambers of Congress with majority support, which can be a huge hurdle. Founder James Madison argued that having two chambers was beneficial, as it prevents the passage of “improper acts of legislation.” Not every government has two legislative chambers, however. There is only one chamber in Nebraska’s legislature – just like the national legislatures of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Luxembourg, New Zealand and Norway.
Even if the bill has the support of the majority in both the Senate and the House, it still faces a potential presidential veto, which can be overridden only by a two-thirds supermajority in both congressional chambers. Yet, at the state level, many legislatures can override vetoes by their governor with a simple majority, which is the same threshold needed to override presidential vetoes in Estonia, France and Italy. Other democracies, such as Austria and Germany, don’t even have a presidential veto.
If a bill somehow gets passed by Congress and is signed by the president, the Supreme Court can still declare it unconstitutional and strike the law off the books. Not all democracies give their highest court this power: The Constitution of the Netherlands, for instance, explicitly prohibits this. In Switzerland, the highest court can strike down laws passed by the cantons, which are similar to U.S. states, but cannot overturn federal legislation.
In August 1957, Sen. Strom Thurmond, then a South Carolina Democrat, attempted to prevent the passage of the Civil Rights Act by filibustering for a record 24 hours and 18 minutes. Bettman via Getty Images
The creation and weakening of the filibuster
McConnell argues that the filibuster plays a crucial role in our constitutional order. Yet, it’s important to point out that the founders did not include the filibuster in the U.S. Constitution, and the filibuster became part of the Senate’s rules only by mistake when then-Vice President Aaron Burr recommended that the Senate clean up its rulebook by removing redundant language.
One of the rules that was axed in 1806 at Burr’s behest empowered a simple majority to cut off debate. Eventually, this mistake was realized and exploited when the Senate endured its first filibuster in 1837.
Since that time, there have been many efforts to restrict the use of the filibuster. A frustrated Woodrow Wilson – the only U.S. president to have earned a Ph.D. in political science – once noted that the “Senate of the United States is the only legislative body in the world which cannot act when its majority is ready for action.” In 1917, he successfully curbed the use of the filibuster by pressuring the Senate to adopt a rule that allowed for a two-thirds supermajority to end debate.
In 1974, the Senate further limited the use of the filibuster by agreeing that when using a process called “reconciliation” to pass a budget-related bill, debate in the Senate is limited to 20 hours. Effectively this means that reconciliation bills cannot be filibustered, as debate cannot continue in perpetuity.
After the maximum allotted time for debate has elapsed, reconciliation bills require only the approval of a simple majority. This process was used in 2017 to pass Donald Trump’s tax cuts with only 51 votes. This same process is being used to try and pass President Joe Biden’s coronavirus relief package.
In 1975, senators reduced the two-thirds supermajority required to end debate to the present three-fifths, thereby creating the current 60-vote threshold.
In 2013, the filibuster was again weakened when Democrats, then in the majority, eliminated its use on all presidential nominees except those to the Supreme Court, in response to the repeated Republican obstruction of Barack Obama’s nominees.
In 2017, Republicans, having retaken the Senate, went one step farther by eliminating the use of the filibuster on Supreme Court nominees. All three of Trump’s nominees to the nation’s highest court – Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett – were confirmed with fewer than 60 votes.
After senators changed the rules in 2017 to prevent the filibustering of Supreme Court nominations, three justices, including Amy Coney Barrett in 2020, were confirmed to the court with fewer than 60 votes. Senate Television via AP
The obstruction of progress
In recent years, the filibuster has not hurt Republicans as much as Democrats because the GOP has focused on cutting taxes and confirming judges, both of which can now bypass the filibuster thanks to Senate rule modifications.
Democrats, on the other hand, are going to have a hard time making major health care changes or enacting immigration reform, as both would be vulnerable to a Republican filibuster.
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The U.S. system has been designed with more checks and balances than many other successful democracies. Eliminating the filibuster would bring the federal government in line with the majority of U.S. states and democratic countries around the world. More

Sen. Elizabeth Warren says it’s time to tax wealth.
The Massachusetts senator on March 1 introduced a bill to tax households worth over US$50 million and up to $1 billion at a rate of 2%, and anything over that at 3%. She first proposed the idea of a wealth tax during the Democratic presidential primary in 2019.
The legislation, which could raise an estimated $3 trillion over a decade, is meant to reduce inequality by using revenue from the wealthiest Americans to pay for new federal programs to lift up some of the poorest.
There’s at least one problem: It may be unconstitutional.

As an expert on tax policy, I know firsthand how America’s system has exacerbated inequality. Fortunately, there are other ways to tax the rich.
Income and wealth inequality
Concerns about inequality have increased in recent decades.
Americans enjoyed substantial economic growth and broadly shared prosperity from the end of World War II into the 1970s.
But in the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan dramatically slashed taxes on the wealthy – twice – cutting the top rate on wages from 70% to 28%.
Studies have shown that the drop in tax rates, combined with other “trickle-down” policies such as deregulation, led to steadily rising income and wealth inequality.
The wealthiest 1% controlled 39% of all wealth in 2016, up from less than 30% in 1989. At the same time, the bottom 90% held less than a quarter of America’s wealth, compared with more than a third in 1989.

Currently, the federal government taxes all income above $518,400 at 37% with an additional 3.8% investment tax on incomes over $250,000.
The problem with a wealth tax
Warren’s wealth tax aims to change that.
Her tax on estates worth over $50 million would affect an estimated 100,000 families, or fewer than 1 in 1,000, according to University of California, Berkeley economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman. The tax wouldn’t start until 2023.
Unlike an income tax, a wealth tax reaches the root of both wealth and income inequality.
There’s only one snag: There are strong arguments that a federal wealth tax is unconstitutional. Wealth taxes violate Article I, Section 2, Clause 3, of the U.S. Constitution, which forbids the federal government from laying “direct taxes” that aren’t apportioned equally among the states.
A direct tax is a tax on a thing, like property or income. An indirect tax is a tax on a transaction: for example, a sale or a gift.
The income tax is a direct tax and constitutional because of the 16th Amendment, which specifically allows income taxes without apportionment. As for property, you may notice that only states levy real estate taxes. In almost every case, the federal government cannot tax real estate or any other form of wealth absent a transaction.
Warren cites a small group of law professors who back her claim that a wealth tax passes constitutional muster. But the argument against constitutionality is strong enough that a lawsuit before the Supreme Court is sure to follow any attempt to enact a wealth tax.
Barring a victory before a conservative Supreme Court or an arduous amendment to the Constitution, the federal government is shut out of taxing wealth.
Two other proposals
Two other proposals to tax the rich also emerged in 2019.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York wanted to create a new “60% to 70%” tax bracket for income earned from labor over $10 million. She estimated that her plan would catch about 4,000 people and raise $720 billion over 10 years.
One problem with that idea was that the wealthy can avoid or lower that tax by choosing when they receive the income. A second is that the rich earn most of their money from capital gains, which are taxed at a much lower rate than wage income.
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who has since signed on to Warren’s plan, in 2019 proposed going after wealth but targeted instances when it’s being transferred to someone else – which is what makes it constitutional. He wanted to lower the threshold at which the estate tax applies from $11 million – which touches just 1,000 estates a year – to $3.5 million, where the threshold stood in 2009. He would also levy a new 77% rate on estates over $1 billion. Sanders estimated that his plan would raise $315 billion over 10 years.
Although this would bring in significantly less than his colleagues’ proposals, it is far superior because it both addresses the root of the problem – wealth disparities – and can be implemented immediately. And it wouldn’t pose a constitutional problem.
A rising tide
I agree with all three lawmakers that the United States should return to economic policies that seek to lift all boats.
Although American wealth and productivity has surged in the last 40 years, most Americans have not fared nearly as well as the richest have. In 2020 alone, America’s billionaires saw their wealth increase $560 billion, even as tens of millions were unemployed or depended on food donations to get enough to eat.
The U.S. tax system is at least partly responsible for these gaps. A wealth transfer tax – rather than one that taxes wealth – seems to be the best approach to both pass legal muster and help solve the problem.
This is an updated version of an article first published on April 2, 2019. More

The FBI director, Chris Wray, has condemned the 6 January riot at the US Capitol as an instance of “domestic terrorism”, while defending the bureau’s handling of intelligence indicating that violence was likely.
“That attack, that siege, was criminal behavior, plain and simple, and it’s behavior that we, the FBI, view as domestic terrorism,” Wray told the Senate judiciary committee on Tuesday. He also said the bureau was pursuing about 2,000 domestic terrorism investigations, up from 1,400 at end of 2020.
Donald Trump incited the Capitol attack, telling supporters at a rally near the White House to “fight like hell” in an attempt to overturn his electoral defeat based on the lie, repeatedly thrown out of court, that Biden won thanks to electoral fraud.
Five people including a Capitol police officer were killed. Trump was impeached on a charge of inciting an insurrection but acquitted when only seven Republican senators voted to convict.
Wray told senators the attack had “no place in our democracy, and tolerating it would make a mockery of our nation’s rule of law”.
The FBI was aggressively pursuing those who carried out the attack, he said, adding that investigations were under way in 55 of 56 FBI field offices. More than 200 people have been charged.
His comments in his first appearance before Congress since the Capitol attack amounted to the FBI’s most vigorous defense against the suggestion it did not adequately communicate to police the distinct possibility of violence as lawmakers gathered to certify presidential election results.
Wray told lawmakers information was properly shared before the riot, even though it was raw and unverified.
A 5 January report from the FBI field office in Norfolk, Virginia, warned of online posts foreshadowing a “war” in Washington the following day. Capitol police leaders have said they were unaware of that report and received no intelligence from the FBI that would have led them to expect the sort of violence which ensued.
Wray said the Norfolk report was shared though the FBI’s joint terrorism taskforce, discussed at a command post and posted on an internet portal. Ideally the FBI would have had more time to try to corroborate it, he said.
“Our folks made the judgment to get that to the relevant people as quickly as possible,” Wray said.
He was also pressed on how the FBI is confronting a national security threat from white nationalists and domestic violent extremists and whether it has adequate resources to address those issues. Wray described white supremacist extremism as a “persistent, evolving threat” that has grown since he took over the FBI in 2017.
White supremacists make up “the biggest chunk of our domestic terrorism portfolio overall”, he said, adding that such people “have been responsible for the most lethal attacks over the last decade”.
The violence at the Capitol made clear that a law enforcement agency that remade itself after the 11 September 2001, attacks to deal with international terrorism is now scrambling to address homegrown violence from white Americans. The Biden administration has asked its national intelligence director, Avril Haines, to work with the FBI and Department of Homeland Security to assess the threat.
In his opening statement, Wray said: “6 January was not an isolated event. The problem of domestic terrorism has been metastasizing across the country for a number of years now, and it’s not going away any time soon.”
The committee chairman, Dick Durbin, asked if the FBI believed the insurrection was carried out by “fake Trump protesters”. The Illinois Democrat’s question came two weeks after the Republican Wisconsin senator Ron Johnson amplified baseless claims that leftwing provocateurs carried out the Capitol attack.
“We have not seen evidence of that at this stage,” Wray said. In answer to Patrick Leahy of Vermont, another Democrat, he said: “We have not to date seen any evidence of anarchist violent extremists or people subscribing to antifa [antifascist groups] in connection with [6 January].”
Wray has kept a low profile since the Capitol attack. Though he has briefed lawmakers and shared information with law enforcement, Tuesday’s hearing was his first public appearance before Congress since before the election.
He was also likely to face questions about a massive Russian hack of corporations and US government agencies, which happened when elite hackers injected malicious code into a software update. More

FBI director Christopher Wray has said the bureau views the Capitol insurrection as a clear act of domestic terrorism. Speaking during a Senate hearing on the 6 January riots, Wray said: ‘That attack, that siege, was criminal behaviour, plain and simple, and it’s behaviour that we, the FBI, view as domestic terrorism’
FBI director Christopher Wray testifies over Capitol insurrection – live More

Vernon Jordan, a leading civil rights activist who became a close adviser to President Bill Clinton, has died. He was 85.Jordan worked for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and campaigned for voting rights before becoming president of the National Urban League.“Today, the world lost an influential figure in the fight for civil rights and American politics,” said Derrick Johnson, president of the NAACP, in a statement.“An icon to the world and a lifelong friend to the NAACP, his contribution to moving our society toward justice is unparalleled. In 2001, Jordan received the NAACP’s Spingarn Medal for a lifetime of social justice activism. His exemplary life will shine as a guiding light for all that seek truth and justice for all people.”In their own statement, Bill and Hillary Clinton said: “From his instrumental role in desegregating the University of Georgia in 1961, to his work with the NAACP, the Southern Regional Council, the Voter Education Project, the United Negro College Fund, and the National Urban League, to his successful career in law and business, Vernon Jordan brought his big brain and strong heart to everything and everybody he touched. And he made them better.“He was never too busy to give good advice and encouragement to young people. And he never gave up on his friends or his country. He was a wonderful friend … in good times and bad. We worked and played, laughed and cried, won and lost together. We loved him very much and always will.”Jordan advised Bill Clinton in his run for the presidency in 1992, while governor of Arkansas. He also endorsed Hillary Clinton in her run for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008 and her run for the White House in 2016.In 1999, Jordan became entangled in the impeachment drama over Bill Clinton’s sexual liaison with Monica Lewinsky, a White House intern whom Jordan helped find a job.Alongside Lewinsky and Sidney Blumenthal, another close adviser to Clinton, he became a key witness in impeachment proceedings which ended in acquittal.On Tuesday, the Rev Al Sharpton, another leading civil rights activist, said he was “saddened at hearing of the passing of Vernon Jordan, a true civil rights giant. He made a difference. I’ll always treasure his guidance.”Stacey Abrams, the former Georgia gubernatorial candidate who now campaigns for voting rights, wrote on Twitter: “Mourning the passage of my friend, the extraordinary Vernon Jordan. He battled the demons of voter suppression and racial degradation, winning more than he lost. He brought others with him. And left a map so more could find their way. Love to his family. Travel on with God’s grace.”The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, said Jordan’s “leadership took our nation closer to its founding promise: all are created equal. May it be a comfort to his family that so many across America mourn with and pray for them at this time.”Jaime Harrison, chair of the Democratic National Committee, said: “From civil rights to business, Mr Jordan demonstrated the highest quality of leadership and created a path forward for African Americans where there were none. He will be missed.”CNN first reported Jordan’s death. Jordan’s daughter, Vickee Jordan Adams, told CBS News: “My father passed away last night around 10pm surrounded by loved ones, his wife and daughter by his side.” The cause of death was not immediately known.“We appreciate all of the outpouring of love and affection,” NBC News quoted Jordan Adams as saying.Following roles as field secretary for the Georgia NAACP and executive director of the United Negro College Fund, Jordan became leader of the National Urban League and thus the face of Black Americans’ fight for justice and jobs.Having grown up in the Jim Crow south, under segregation, he was the first attorney to lead the Urban League, which prior to his tenure was mostly led by social workers. During his time in this role, the League expanded by 17 chapters and its budget increased to more than $100m. It also expanded its work to include voter registration efforts and conflict resolution between the Black community and law enforcement.“My view on all this business about race is never to get angry, no, but to get even,” Jordan told the New York Times in 2000. “You don’t take it out in anger; you take it out in achievement.”In 1980, Jordan was shot outside a hotel in Fort Wayne, Indiana, after a speaking engagement. He underwent five operations. During a three-month recovery at hospital, he was visited by President Jimmy Carter.Joseph Paul Franklin, a white supremacist who attacked African Americans and Jews in a killing spree across the US from 1977 to 1980, ultimately admitted the shooting. More

On 24 February, Vice reported that McDonald’s has, for years, spied on activists and employees engaged in labor organizing and the Fight for $15 campaign. Internal McDonald’s corporate documents obtained by Vice confirmed that the company has been concerned with gathering “strategic intelligence” on workers involved in efforts to secure higher wages, better working conditions and a union. This includes using data collection software to monitor employees and their networks through social media and “a team of intelligence analysts in the Chicago and London offices”.
This comes after years of reporting on similar efforts by Amazon to prevent the unionization of their own employees. Job postings for intelligence analysts to monitor and report on “labor organizing threats”; social media monitoring; interactive “heat mapping” tools to anticipate and pre-empt strikes or union drives; Pinkerton operatives; and, most recently, coordinated efforts with county officials to change the traffic lights outside Amazon’s facility in Bessemer, Alabama to prevent organizers from speaking to workers during shift changes – all have been deployed to secure the company’s bottom line.
As Vice points out, surveillance against labor organizers is nothing new. What’s new is the use of technology to aid in these efforts, which may also be in violation of federal labor law.
The surveillance and intimidation of workers is a feature, not a bug, and one that has come to define American capitalism at home and abroad. As Vox noted last June, “the creation of urban police forces was largely spurred by a desire to contain union activism and protest.” While police in southern cities are largely a vestigial outgrowth of slave patrols, in northern cities like Chicago, elite businessmen pushed for the development of municipal police forces to suppress labor organizing around demands like an eight-hour workday. The concept of policing as “public safety” came later.
There is no evidence to suggest government involvement in the surveillance of workers at either Amazon or McDonald’s. Yet the failure on the part of past administrations to condemn these egregious labor violations – or condemn the yawning wealth gap between megacorporations and the underpaid workers whose labor they depend on – amount to tacit approval of business-as-usual by any means necessary.
This Sunday, Biden broke this awful trend by releasing a surprisingly strong statement in support of unions. While he stopped short of calling out Amazon by name, his video address was directed at “workers in Alabama” and represents the strongest pro-union statement of any president in modern US history.
“You should remember that the National Labor Relations Act didn’t just say that unions are allowed to exist, it said we should encourage unions,” Biden said. “There should be no intimidation, no coercion, no threats, no anti-union propaganda. Every worker should have a free and fair choice to join a union. The law guarantees that choice.”
Under an economic system that enriches CEOs by underpaying workers for the value of their time and pocketing the profits, there is a direct connection between the dystopian anti-labor tactics used by the likes of McDonald’s and Amazon and the $1.3tn transfer of wealth to the country’s 664 billionaires over the course of the pandemic. Bezos’s path to becoming the world’s first trillionaire is precisely because of his successful efforts at preventing unions from taking hold in his private empire.
As Marx put it: capital is dead labor, which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labor, and lives the more, the more labor it sucks.
Biden now has a choice to make: Amazon or unions. He can’t fight for both.
On the campaign trail, Biden sent conflicting messages by cultivating the image of a blue-collar union man and simultaneously promising a room full of corporate donors that under his presidency “no one’s standard of living will change, nothing will fundamentally change.”
Biden adopted a $15 minimum wage as one of his few concessions to the left, in an effort to win over Bernie Sanders supporters, and later changed his tone by saying he didn’t believe the provision would last in the most recent Covid-19 stimulus package. The statement amounted to a shrugging off of one among a number of campaign promises that look less likely to be fulfilled by the day. Democrats are now dishonestly pointing the blame at a single and little-known Senate parliamentarian, though Kamala Harris could easily overrule the decision and lift nearly a million people out of poverty.
We can and should give credit to Biden for his recent statement on unions while also recognizing that words alone are not enough. Biden has the power to immediately pass a federal $15 minimum wage, raise corporate taxes, call on the National Labor Relations Board to investigate companies like McDonald’s and Amazon which unlawfully spy on their employees, and take a trip to Bessemer to show support for the facility’s 5,800 workers.
This is a David-versus-Goliath fight and the stakes are simply too high to stop short of executive action. Until he proves otherwise, we need to remember Biden’s message to corporate America: nothing will fundamentally change.
Indigo Olivier is a 2020-2021 Leonard C Goodman investigative reporting fellow at In These Times magazine More

They walked through Michigan college football games dressed as gerrymandered districts. They crisscrossed Idaho in a decades-old RV dubbed the Medicaid Express. In Florida, they united black and white, left and right, Trump-loving “deplorables” and radical criminal justice reformers into a mighty moral movement to end an ugly vestige of Jim Crow.Volunteers and regular citizens, determined to have a say despite gerrymandered legislatures or solidly one-party states, forced initiatives on to the ballot by collecting hundreds of thousands of signatures at highway rest areas, tailgates and small-town cheeseburger festivals. They door-knocked neighborhoods on mornings so bitter that the ink in their pens froze solid.Then, on election day in 2018 and 2020, these citizens scored overwhelming victories for popular proposals that had gone nowhere in intransigent legislatures: independent redistricting in Michigan and Missouri, Medicaid expansion in Idaho, ranked choice voting in Maine, felony reinfranchisement and a higher minimum wage in Florida, marijuana legalization and higher teacher salaries in Arizona.Now legislators are striking back with bills that would aggressively consolidate their power and make it decidedly more difficult for citizens to take action when their own representatives won’t.In Idaho, Missouri, Florida and Arizona – all states where citizens have successfully used ballot initiatives to pass popular reforms – Republican-dominated legislatures have advanced proposals that would place multiple new roadblocks before initiatives at nearly every point in the process. In total, Republican lawmakers in 24 states have introduced bills that would make it tougher for citizens to push initiatives to the ballot, according to the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center.The more than 165 Republican-sponsored bills in Georgia, Florida, Texas and elsewhere that would leverage baseless “voter fraud” claims from the 2020 election and establish new limits on mail-in voting, early voting and ballot drop boxes, among other new barriers, have rightly made national headlines. These quieter yet growing assaults on initiative rights, however, could be equally important in shutting down one of the last remaining paths for change in red and purple states.The Republican bills tend to take two general approaches. First, they increase the number of signatures necessary to qualify an initiative, or the number of counties or congressional districts in which names must be gathered. Then, they require majorities greater than 60%, even two-thirds, to pass – and even after that, sometimes require final approval by the legislature.Of course, if the legislature had been inclined to take that action, citizens would not have been required to undertake such an arduous procedure in the first place.In Idaho, where one rural hospital might serve a county the size of a New England state, an estimated 70,000 people were stuck uncovered between the Obamacare and state exchanges. Nevertheless, legislators for six consecutive years refused to accept Affordable Care Act monies from Washington to expand Medicaid and make health care more accessible.These are pure power plays by legislatures who want to rule without consent of the governedVoters, however, demanded change. In 2018, a statewide movement organized by Reclaim Idaho met the demanding requirements for a ballot initiative in this large but scarcely populated state: signatures from 6% of registered voters in 18 of the state’s 35 senate districts. It then passed, resoundingly, with more than 62% of the vote.Initiatives are uncommon in Idaho; Medicare expansion was the first statewide initiative to win there since 2013. Yet last week, a new bill advanced in the state senate that would require any initiative first receive signatures from 6% of registered voters in all 35 of Idaho’s districts. There isn’t another state that currently requires a minimum number of signatures in every district. Under this proposal, Idaho would have the most restrictive initiative laws in America.Lawmakers in Florida – who have made sport out of undermining citizen-led amendments to the state constitution that have aimed to end partisan gerrymandering, restore voting rights after the completion of a felony sentence, and raise the minimum wage – are now trying to raise the state’s already high bar for passage. Right now, a 60% supermajority is necessary to win, no easy feat in this state of 50/50 nail-biters. Republican legislators, however, have fast-tracked an effort to increase that number to 67%.Arizona Republicans want to increase the approval threshold from a simple majority up to a 60% supermajority, as do Republican lawmakers in North Dakota, South Dakota and Arkansas. Similar efforts are under way in Missouri, where citizens won victories for independent redistricting and medical marijuana in 2018, and expanded Medicaid in 2020. Right now, citizens need to collect signatures from 8% of voters in six of the state’s eight congressional districts. Bills pushed by House Republicans would increase that threshold to either 10 or 15%, and in all of the eight congressional districts. Missouri initiatives currently win with a simple majority. Various proposals would change that to either 60 or 67% approval to pass, or mandate a number equal to 50% of all registered voters, rather than a majority of voters who cast ballots.These are pure power plays by legislatures who want to rule without consent of the governed. California, certainly, offers a cautionary note of what can happen when initiatives run amok. Yet lawmakers who claim it is too easy for initiatives to reach the ballot should spend some time with the citizens who devoted months of volunteer time to knocking on doors. In all of these states, citizens have been forced into extraordinary efforts simply to win approval of popular policies because legislatures refused to act themselves.President Theodore Roosevelt, who helped expand the initiative at the beginning of the last century, said: “I believe in the initiative and referendum, which should be used not to destroy representative government, but to correct it whenever it becomes misrepresentative.” In wildly gerrymandered states like Michigan and Florida, the initiative is a crucial counter-measure against legislators who have drawn themselves districts where they can’t lose. And in Republican trifecta states like Missouri, Arizona and Idaho, where the most competitive legislative elections are Republican primaries, initiatives are a check on government lurching further to the right than the citizenry. This war on the initiative is nothing less than the latest front in the Republican war to cement long-term minority rule by the most radical reaches of the right.In too many states, voters face shrinking options for being heard at all. This is by design. Perhaps most disturbing: it’s their own representatives who seem most determined to silence them. More