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      Biden's no LBJ but he must protect voting rights. What else is the presidency for? | Robert Reich

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      In 1963, when the newly sworn in Lyndon Baines Johnson was advised against using his limited political capital on the controversial issue of civil and voting rights for Black Americans, he responded: “Well, what the hell’s the presidency for?”The US is again approaching a crucial decision point on the most fundamental right of all in a democracy: the right to vote. The result will either be the biggest advance since LBJ’s landmark civil rights and voting rights acts of 1964 and 1965, or the biggest setback since the end of Reconstruction and start of Jim Crow in the 1870s.The decisive factor will be President Joe Biden.On one side are Republicans, who control most state legislatures and are using false claims of election fraud to enact an avalanche of voting restrictions on everything from early voting and voting by mail to voter IDs. They also plan to gerrymander their way back to a US House of Representatives majority.After losing the Senate and the presidency, they’re determined to win back power by rigging the rules against Democrats, disproportionately Black and brown voters. As a lawyer for the Arizona Republican party put it baldly before the supreme court, without such restrictions Republicans are “at a competitive disadvantage relative to Democrats”.On the other side are congressional Democrats, advancing the most significant democracy reform legislation since LBJ – a sprawling 791-page For the People Act, establishing national standards for federal elections.The proposed law mandates automatic registration of new voters, voting by mail and at least 15 days of early voting. It bans restrictive voter ID laws and purges of voter rolls, changes studies suggest would increase voter participation, especially by racial minorities. It also requires that congressional redistricting be done by independent commissions and creates a system of public financing for congressional campaigns.The legislation sailed through the House last week, on a party line vote. The showdown will occur in the Senate, where Republicans are determined to kill it. Although Democrats possess a razor-thin majority, the bill doesn’t stand a chance unless Democrats can overcome two big obstacles.The first is the filibuster, requiring 60 votes to pass regular legislation. Notably, the filibuster is not in the constitution and not even in law. It’s a rule that has historically been used against civil rights and voting rights bills, as it was in the 1960s when LBJ narrowly overcame it.Democrats can – and must – finally end the filibuster now, with their 51-vote majority.But if they try, they face a second obstacle. Two Democrats – Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona – have said they won’t vote to end the filibuster, presumably because they want to preserve their centrist image and appeal to Republicans in their states. A few other Democrats are lukewarm to the idea.Well, I’m sorry. The stakes are too high. If Democrats fail to enact the For the People Act, Republicans will send voting rights into retreat for decades. There’s no excuse for Manchin and Sinema or any other Senate Democrat letting Republicans pull America backwards towards Jim Crow.And no reason Biden should let them. It’s time for him to assert the kind of leadership LBJ asserted more than a half-century ago on civil and voting rights.Johnson used every tool at his disposal, described by the journalist Mary McGrory as “an incredible, potent mixture of persuasion, badgering, flattery, threats, reminders of past favors and future advantages”.He warned the Georgia senator Richard Russell, a dedicated segregationist: “Dick, I love you and I owe you. But … I’m going to run over you if you challenge me on this civil rights bill.” He demanded his allies join him in pressuring holdouts. Senator Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota, later Johnson’s vice-president, recalled: “The president grabbed me by my shoulder and damn near broke my arm.”Historians say Johnson’s importuning, bribing and threatening may have shifted the votes of close to a dozen senators, breaking the longest filibuster in history and clearing the way for passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965.We are once again at a crucial juncture for civil rights and voting rights that could shape America for a half-century or more. Joe Biden is not LBJ, and the times are different from the mid-1960s. But the stakes are as high.Biden must wield the power of the presidency to make senators fall in line with the larger goals of the nation. Otherwise, as LBJ asked, “what the hell’s the presidency for?” More

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      Biden hails 'giant step' as Senate passes $1.9tn coronavirus relief bill

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      Joe Biden hailed “one more giant step forward on delivering on that promise that help is on the way”, after Democrats took a critical step towards a first major legislative victory since assuming control of Congress and the White House, with a party-line vote in the Senate to approve a $1.9tn coronavirus relief bill.After a marathon voting session through the night on Friday and into Saturday afternoon, Democrats overcame unified Republican opposition to approve the sweeping stimulus package. The final tally was 50-49, with one Republican senator absent.One of the largest emergency aid packages in US history now returns to the House for final approval before being signed into law by Biden. Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker, has said she expects to approve the measure before 14 March, when tens of millions of Americans risk losing unemployment benefits if no action is taken.The House majority leader, Steny Hoyer, said the Senate version of the American Rescue Plan would be considered “on Tuesday … so that we can send this bill to President Biden for his signature early next week”.Biden and Democrats will look to move on to other priorities, including voting rights reform and an ambitious infrastructure package.The bill aimed at combating the Covid-19 pandemic and reviving the US economy will provide direct payments of up to $1,400 to most Americans; extend federal unemployment benefits; rush money to state, local and tribal governments; and allot significant funding to vaccine distribution and testing.Republicans attacked the bill as a “liberal wishlist” mismatched with an improving economic and public health outlook as more are vaccinated and infections plateau.“Our country is already set for a roaring recovery,” said Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, on Friday, citing a jobs report that showed 379,000 jobs added in February. “Democrats inherited a tide that was already turning.”But Democrats and the White House were quick to push back, pointing to more than 9 million Americans out of work and millions more struggling to pay for rent and food.On Saturday, with Vice-President Kamala Harris looking on, Biden spoke to reporters at the White House.“I want to thank all of the senators who worked so hard to do the right thing for the American people during this crisis and voting to pass the American rescue plan,” he said. “It obviously wasn’t easy, wasn’t always pretty, but it was so desperately needed. Urgently needed.”Biden has been criticised for not holding a press conference since taking office. On Saturday he attempted to leave without taking questions. To shouted questions, he avoided direct criticism of Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia or Republicans.The marathon “vote-a-rama” session on amendments that preceded the final vote featured the longest vote in Senate history, just shy of 12 hours, on Friday, as Democrats scrambled to strike a deal with Manchin, a moderate who mounted a last-minute push to scale back unemployment benefits.Bowing to Manchin, a compromise kept benefits at $300 a week instead of $400, as proposed by Biden and approved by the House. However, the benefits will be extended until October rather than August, and Democrats added a provision to provide up to $10,200 in tax relief for unemployed Americans.Speaking to reporters on Saturday, the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, repeatedly hailed his caucus and deflected invitations to criticise Manchin, the target of anger among House progressives.“People have new differences all the time,” he said, when asked why Manchin had not levelled his demand earlier, adding: “Unity, unity, unity. That’s how we got this done.”Schumer was asked if another bill might be needed.“It’s a very strong bill,” he said, “part of it will depend on Covid. How long will it last, will there be a new strain.”Experts have warned of a potential fourth surge as variants emerge and predominantly Republican states reopen their economies and abandon basic public health measures.“Part of it will depend on the economy,” said Schumer. “It has some underlying weaknesses that need bolstering. How deep and weak are those. Our No 1 lodestar is going to be helping the American people and if they need more help, we’ll do another bill. If this bill is sufficient, and I think it’s going to help in a big way, then we won’t.”At the White House, Biden praised Schumer: “When the country needed you most you lead, Chuck, and you delivered.”Despite deep political polarization and staunch Republican opposition, the legislation has broad public appeal. A poll by Monmouth University found that 62% of Americans approve of the stimulus package, including more than three in 10 Republicans.In tweets on Saturday, former president Barack Obama said: “Elections matter … this is the kind of progress that’s possible when we elect leaders across government who are devoted to making people’s lives better.”Yet the endeavor tested the fragile alliance between progressives and moderates as Democrats attempt to wield their power with only the barest control of Congress.Early on Friday, the Senate rejected a proposal by the Vermont senator Bernie Sanders to include a $15-an-hour minimum wage increase, a top liberal priority and a key plank of Biden’s economic agenda. The Senate parliamentarian had deemed the provision inadmissible under the rules of a special budget process Democrats are using to bypass Republican opposition.Despite widespread public support for raising the federal minimum wage, Democrats remain divided. On Friday, eight joined Republicans in blocking the amendment, which would have required 60 votes to pass.“Let me be very clear: we are not giving up on this,” Sanders said. “We are going to come back with vote after vote. And one way or the other we are going to pass a $15 minimum wage. That is what the American people want and that is what the American people need.”The approval of the bill in the Senate came after hours upon hours of voting on a torrent of amendments, most offered by Republicans with the goal of forcing Democrats to take a position on measures designed to be politically troublesome.Proceedings had already been much delayed on Thursday, when the Republican Ron Johnson, of Wisconsin, forced Senate clerks to read the 628-page bill in its entirety – a task that took nearly 11 hours.At the White House, Biden quoted Sanders as he hailed the bill as “progressive” and delivered a familiar appeal for national – and party – unity, if with a shot at his predecessor, Donald Trump.“When I was elected,” Biden said, “I said we’re going to get the government out of the business of battling on Twitter and back in the business of delivering for the American people, of making a difference in their lives, giving everyone a fighting chance, of showing the American people that their government can work for them, and passing the American Rescue Plan, we’ll do that.“You know it may sound strange but … I really want to thank the American people … quite frankly, without the overwhelming bipartisan support of the American people this would not have happened.“… Every public opinion poll shows that people want this, they believe it is needed. And they believe it’s urgent.” More

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      Trump reportedly told Republican party to stop using his name for fundraising

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      Sign up for the Guardian’s First Thing newsletterDonald Trump has told the Republican National Committee and other party bodies to stop using his name and likeness in fundraising efforts, it was reported on Saturday.“President Trump remains committed to the Republican party and electing America First conservatives,” Politico quoted an unnamed adviser to the former president as saying about the legal cease-and-desist notice, “but that doesn’t give anyone – friend or foe – permission to use his likeness without explicit approval.”The website previously reported that Trump’s ire was stoked by bodies including the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) and the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) using his name while fundraising for Republicans who voted for his impeachment.The former president felt “burned and abused”, Politico said, detailing the House minority leader Kevin McCarthy’s struggles to manage the former president, even after a January trip to kiss the ring in Florida.Liz Cheney, the House No 3 Republican, was the most senior of 10 Republican representatives to back Trump’s second impeachment, for inciting the Capitol riot on 6 January. She has faced protests stoked by elected officials and will be challenged for her seat from the right. Others who voted for impeachment are also facing primary fights.Seven senators voted to convict Trump at trial. That meant he was acquitted a second time, as the 57 guilty votes fell 10 short of the necessary super-majority.The verdict left Trump, 74, free to run for office again. Though he continues to baselessly claim his defeat by Joe Biden was the result of massive voter fraud, a lie repeatedly thrown out of court and now the subject of legal investigations, he has toyed with running in 2024. He remains the clear favourite in party polls.His own fundraising based on the “big lie” about electoral fraud proved lucrative, raking in at least $175m. At the Conservative Political Action Conference last week, Trump told attendees they should only donate to his own political action committee, Save America. In the CPAC straw poll, 55% backed Trump to be the next nominee.The Republican National Committee is led by Ronna McDaniel, a niece of the Utah senator Mitt Romney who dropped Romney from her name after Trump won the White House, reportedly at Trump’s request. Mitt Romney, the 2012 nominee for president, is the only Republican who voted to impeach Trump twice.Politico said the RNC sent out two emails on Friday, asking donors to put their name on a “thank you card” for Trump.On Saturday morning, an email trumpeting a “March Fundraising Blitz” claimed “we’ve NEVER been the Party of Elite Billionaires and we NEVER will be” and asked “hard working everyday Americans” to “continue to DEFEND President Trump’s ‘America FIRST’ policies”.Forbes rates Trump’s net worth at $2.5bn.“Privately,” Politico reported, “GOP campaign types say it’s impossible not to use Trump’s name, as his policies are so popular with the base. If Trump really wants to help flip Congress, they argue he should be more generous. His team, however, sees this differently.”Later on Saturday, the New York Daily News reported that Trump would on Sunday return to the city he called home until 2016 for the first time since losing power. The former president planned to stay till Tuesday, the paper said, though Trump adviser Jason Miller refused to confirm or deny the plans. More

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      The only Republican to vote in favor of George Floyd bill said it was an accident

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      When the US House of Representatives tallied up lawmakers’ votes on Wednesday for the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, all but a single Republican had opposed the bill.No, that Republican representative was not taking a stand against the tide of his party. Instead, he says now, his fingers slipped.“I accidentally pressed the wrong voting button and realized it too late,” wrote Lance Gooden, a Republican representative from Texas who is known to be a staunch conservative and supporter of Donald Trump, in a tweet that has since been deleted. “I have changed the official record to reflect my opposition to the partisan George Floyd Policing Act.”As the votes were still being cast, three of Gooden’s Republican colleagues tried to change his vote while it was still being counted, but the House clerks rejected the change, and the bill went on to pass 220-212.Gooden said on Twitter that he had since changed the official voting record to reflect a “no” vote, though it ultimately does not change the outcome of the bill’s passage.“I have arguably the most conservative/America First voting record in Congress! Of course I wouldn’t support the radical left’s, Anti-Police Act,” Gooden wrote on Twitter.The act, which was passed with the support of all but two Democratic representatives, is the most ambitious police reform legislation in decades. The sweeping bill covers a ban on chokeholds and “qualified immunity” for law enforcement, which would make it easier to prosecute instances of police misconduct, as well as national standards for police accountability.The bill is named in honor of George Floyd, who was killed by police in Minneapolis in May and whose death sparked nationwide protests for racial justice and against police brutality. Jury selection begins next week in the trial of Derek Chauvin, the former officer facing murder charges over Floyd’s killing.A similar bill was passed by the House last year but was never taken up by the Senate, which was controlled by Republicans at the time. Even though Democrats now have a slim advantage in the Senate, the bill would require 60 votes to pass, which would entail getting the support of 10 Republican senators – an unlikely prospect.Gooden is not the first lawmaker to accidentally vote in favor of a bill – in fact the lawmaker is, in a way, lucky that his vote was not the tie-breaker for the legislation.In 2012, a Democratic state representative in North Carolina accidentally voted “yes” for a bill that legalized fracking in the state, according to the Washington Post. Meanwhile, a Democrat representative in Montana helped keep a bill that would have expanded Medicaid coverage off the floor with an accidental vote. More

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      Millions in the US still don't feel seen by either political party. My dad is one of them | Jessa Crispin

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      A few days after the insurrection at the Capitol, my father Jack started sending emails from his Lincoln, Kansas, home to his representative and senators in Congress. For some reason, he was also cc-ing me on these exchanges.There was a new email almost every day, and the tone swung between pleading, angry, bewildered and frustrated. There were emails asking his senators to vote to impeach Trump, emails demanding proof supporting the allegations that the election had been stolen, emails trying to untangle their twisted logic.One such email read, in part: “Your actions, and the actions of other Republicans like you, are destroying the Republican party. As I have been a lifelong Republican, I hate what has happened to the party of Lincoln and Reagan and the ideals of the past, to see it reduced to a personality cult.”The politicians’ responses made it absolutely clear no one was taking my father’s criticisms seriously. Kansas representative Tracey Mann sent a form letter response, saying “we must unify as a nation”, which presumably meant moving on, forgetting the extravagant misdeeds of the Trump administration and voting against impeachment. When I asked my father if he had any expectation that his representatives would take responsibility for their involvement in the insurrection (Kansas junior senator Roger Marshall joined with those who claimed there was fraud during the election), he said, “No. Well … no.”My father’s frustration with the Republican party had been building for years, but something seemed to break with him after the insurrection. The riot at the Capitol was, he believed, stoked by unscrupulous politicians who for four years cared more about power than rule of law and who, when that power slipped, would rather let the country continue to fall apart than work to rebuild.The Republican party is in the midst of an identity crisis, brought on by a big shift in voting demographics and a new generation of more radical and paranoid politicians. As Democrats move away from their historically working-class constituency to become instead the party of the urban, college-educated liberal, Republicans find themselves attracting the loyalty of the religious, those not formally educated and the rural. The institutions which previously cultivated Republican voters – the university system and white-collar employment – now lead Americans to the political left, leaving conservative leaders and thinktanks scrambling to figure out how to accommodate their new, more blue-collar base. Many Republican politicians clearly find it easier to appeal to their base’s fears and resentments than to provide working-class Americans with stability and resources. This has led to some strange pageantry, like the Yale Law graduate and Missouri Republican senator Josh Hawley cosplaying as a man-of-the-people populist.The Bulwark podcast, which is one of the few conservative media outlets my father still listens to, and which prides itself on its “civil” discourse, has been monitoring this identity crisis daily. In its episode “Post-Impeachment GOP”, host Charlie Sykes described the slow decline that seemed to accelerate once Republican voters believed the lie that the Trump’s re-election had been stolen and their politicians refused to deny or disavow it. “The Republican party has been willing to look the other way over lies, racism, all the corruption and xenophobia, but now it’s willing to look the other way [on] violence, extremism and anti-democratic authoritarianism.”My father Jack likens his estrangement from the Republican party to the rise of the recently deceased Rush Limbaugh. He had listened to him in the 80s for about a year, at first finding funny his jokes about the hypocrisy of Democrats. But soon Rush’s tone changed. “He had been saying outrageous things about people and then laughing – but then he started to sound like he was really believing it. He wasn’t entertaining any more; he was vicious.” He was further turned off from Limbaugh, who exploded in popularity during the Clinton administration, by his reliance on cheap misogynist and homophobic jokes.The Republican party as a whole was going down a similar path – choosing culture war battles over ideological integrity, and warmongering over supporting the institutions of family, religious freedom, strong communities, and small business the party professed to value. This was particularly visible in the politics of our home state of Kansas, which is often portrayed as hardline conservative, but whose local politics are far more nuanced than outsiders perceive. It’s worth remembering that the state has a strong local Democratic party, a history of far-left progressive politics, and that the current governor is Democrat Laura Kelly.But back in 2011, Sam Brownback was elected governor and decided to make the most radical tax slashes the state had ever seen. This decimated the budgets of hospitals, schools, and other agencies, and they began to fall apart. Politicians ran against Brownback promising to raise taxes, something almost unheard of. The “Kansas experiment”, as it was called, revealed the emptiness of Republican rhetoric and their lack of new ideas beyond “cut taxes”.He was further turned off from Limbaugh by his reliance on cheap misogynist and homophobic jokesClearly my father is not the only conservative feeling estranged from the Republican party. Gerald Russello, editor of the conservative cultural journal the University Bookman, echoed the feeling. “The political conservatives you see on TV or in Congress are either Trump clowns or Reagan-era old guys who believe the free market solves everything,” he told me recently. “Who speaks for me? I can’t associate myself with clownish racists.”It’s not yet clear how extensive the fallout from Trumpism will be, but a larger number of Republicans are changing their official political affiliation than Democrats, and there is talk of the possibility of forming a splinter political party, called the Integrity party. (The Lincoln Project founders were involved in this idea before the organization was racked by sexual harassment accusations and larger questions about its financial and political purpose.) Building a new political party into something that can attain power and influence is a long-term goal, but it would strive to give a voice to fiscal conservatives and social moderates, occupying a center-right position, left of where the Republicans currently sit.When I asked my father if he could ever be persuaded to vote Democratic, he thought for a while. “I doubt it. I get this feeling from the Democrats of ‘We’re from the government and we’re here to help you’ that I don’t like. I want to know how can we best solve [a] problem instead of just throwing money at it.” What he considers problems – things like the national debt and overspending on military – the Democrats don’t seem to acknowledge, nor do the Republicans acknowledge what my father believes are looming disasters, like climate change and the broken healthcare system. But my father has no faith in the ideas Democrats have put forth to solve these issues.Both my father and Russello expressed frustration with Republicans claiming to be a pro-family party while allowing families to suffer on their own through a pandemic.“Give the people money!” Russello said. “It’s not socialism – that’s an argument from the 80s.” And he’s worried about the future if the party continues to abandon what should be its primary concern. “There’s a strain of conservatism with men and women in their 20s and 30s who have given up on politics. They say, you don’t know how bad things are for us.” The Republicans have little to offer them, as small towns and the middle of the country are allowed to decay into unemployment, de-industrialization and addiction, but these places are also Republicans’ strongholds.For now, change looks unlikely to come from the top. Conservatives are still intellectually reliant on thinktanks in Washington, which have been spitting out the same ideas about the free market for decades. There are writers and intellectuals on the right who are trying to plot a course forward, but they are frequently drowned out by media personalities on Fox News and alt-right podcasts. Russello pointed out that after the media was so surprised by the election of Donald Trump in 2016, many publications pledged to go into these neglected regions and give coverage to their concerns. Very little of that coverage materialized; there have been few big splashy books on so-called “Trump country” apart from, say, Strangers in Their Own Land or Hillbilly Elegy. The focus has mostly remained on the more sensational side of Trumpism, like the QAnon conspiracy and insurrectionists, and less the outlook of the average conservative voter.As for my father’s plans, he is still involved in local government, where he has served for decades now. He recently fought off an attempt by a committee to invite a Robert E Lee impersonator to the Lincoln Days festivities in honor of the town’s namesake, pointing out the general was a traitor who was lucky he wasn’t hanged. And despite the lack of results, he’s still sending those emails. Another one went out this morning. More

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      Texas governor lifts mask mandate and declares: 'It's time to open 100%'

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      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

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      Republicans want to make it harder to pass ballot initiatives. That should alarm us | David Daley

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      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

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      The Guardian view on the return of Donald Trump: plotting a hostile takeover | Editorial

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      In the United States, the Republican party has been unmistakably corrupted by power. Its leadership did not call out Donald Trump for his “high crimes and misdemeanors”, his savage politics, his cruelty, his lies and his conspiracy theories. Voters had to wait until Senate Republicans had refused to convict Mr Trump of impeachable crimes before their leader, Mitch McConnell, would speak truth to power. By then, the question was not whether there was a war over the soul of the party but whether Republicans had a soul worth fighting for.At the weekend Mr Trump revealed that there would be payback for Mr McConnell and other Republican lawmakers for their “disloyalty”. In a speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference, Mr Trump flirted with running again in 2024 and took swipes at the Biden White House. But he reserved his punches for his own side – targeting “Republicans In Name Only” who voted to impeach him and criticised his incitement of the mob that stormed Capitol Hill in January.Mr Trump has radicalised the base of his party to a troubling degree by restricting and distorting their view of the world, patterns of thinking and value systems. In a forthcoming paper, Professor Gary Jacobson of the University of California San Diego, writes that Republican politicians who humoured the former president’s “seditious urgings put protection of their own futures within the party above concern for that party’s collective future if devotion to Trump remains its defining feature”.Nationally, Mr Trump’s a vote loser. There’s no question that Republicans would be better off without him. Polls suggest a majority of Americans want him convicted and barred from holding future office. But he has a vice-like grip over the party rank and file. A recent survey by the American Enterprise Institute found that 79% of Republicans view Mr Trump favourably; two-thirds agreed with his disproven belief that Joe Biden’s win was illegitimate; a majority “support the use of force as a way to arrest the decline of the traditional American way of life”; and almost a third sympathise with the QAnon conspiracy theory that insists Mr Trump was fighting a global child sex-trafficking ring.Mr Trump, perhaps more than any other post-war US leader, has been helped by a rightwing news media that trades in contrived alternatives to unwelcome truths. Governing becomes almost impossible without adherence to norms such as truth-telling. Mr Trump’s would-be successors peddle a populist narrative of fears and grievances aimed at consolidating support in a predominantly white evangelical base. They are building what appears to be an extreme rightwing political party in plain sight.The Republican leadership has for decades given a monstrous politics a thin veneer of respectability. But Mr Trump is a monster they could not contain. No doubt some think that without his Twitter megaphone and facing lawsuits Mr Trump might give up. Teasing the voters with a 2024 run suggests this is a forlorn hope.Republicans may come to their senses. US demographics point to a more younger and diverse population, while Trumpism festers in shrinking parts of the electorate. Gerrymandering and voter suppression are not long-term strategies to win. Mr Trump aims to be a force within the party. Republicans have a good chance at retaking both the House and the Senate in 2022. Failure in two years’ time might spell the end of the Trump insurgency. A victory might spark its rebirth. However the Republican leadership responds, it reveals them – with consequences not just for the US but the rest of the world. More