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      US Senate unanimously passes bill to make lynching a federal hate crime

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      US Senate unanimously passes bill to make lynching a federal hate crimeAn earlier version of the bill, which was blocked in the Senate, was passed by the House in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder The US Senate has unanimously passed the Emmett Till Antilynching Act, a bill to make lynching a federal hate crime. Such efforts had failed for more than a century.Bobby Rush, the Illinois Democrat who introduced the measure in the House, said: “Despite more than 200 attempts to outlaw this heinous form of racial terror at the federal level, it has never before been done. Today, we corrected that historic injustice. Next stop: [Joe Biden’s] desk.”Lynching Postcards: a harrowing documentary about confronting historyRead moreThe New Jersey Democrat Cory Booker, Senate co-sponsor with Tim Scott of South Carolina, a Republican, said: “The time is past due to reckon with this dark chapter in our history and I’m proud of the bipartisan support to pass this important piece of legislation.”Subject to Biden’s signature, the bill will make lynching a hate crime punishable by up to 30 years in prison.According to the Equal Justice Initiative, about 4,400 African Americans were lynched in the US between the end of Reconstruction, in the 1870s, and the years of the second world war. Some killings were watched by crowds. postcards and souvenirs were sometimes sold.The bill heading for Biden’s desk is named for Emmett Till, who was 14 when he was tortured and murdered in Mississippi in August 1955. Two white men were tried but acquitted by an all-white, all-male jury, then confessed. The killing helped spark the civil rights movement.The House passed Rush’s anti-lynching measure 422-3. Three Republicans voted no: Thomas Massie of Kentucky, Chip Roy of Texas and Andrew Clyde of Georgia.In 2020, in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd by a police officer in Minneapolis and amid national protests for racial justice, the chamber passed an earlier version of the bill with a similar bipartisan vote.Then, the measure was blocked in the Senate. Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican, said he did so because “the bill as written would allow altercations resulting in a cut, abrasion, bruise or any other injury no matter how temporary to be subject to a 10-year penalty”.Paul also called lynchings a “horror” and said he supported the bill but for its too-broad language.Kamala Harris, then a senator from California, now vice-president, called Paul’s stance “insulting”.Late last year, in another high-profile case, three white men were convicted in the murder of Ahmaud Arbery, a young Black man who went jogging in a Georgia neighbourhood.Will justice finally be done for Emmett Till? Family hope a 65-year wait may soon be overRead moreIn an interview published on Tuesday, Christine Turner, director of the Oscar-nominated short Lynching Postcards: Token of a Great Day, referred to the Arbery murder when she told the Guardian: “There are many what people refer to as modern-day lynchings that may cause some people to take our history of lynching more seriously.”On Monday, in a further statement, Rush said lynching was “a longstanding and uniquely American weapon of racial terror that has for decades been used to maintain the white hierarchy.“Perpetrators of lynching got away with murder time and time again – in most cases, they were never even brought to trial … Today, we correct this historic and abhorrent injustice.”He also cited a great civil rights leader: “I am reminded of Dr King’s famous words: ‘The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.’”TopicsRaceUS crimeUS CongressUS SenateHouse of RepresentativesUS politicsRepublicansnewsReuse this content More

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      ‘We must march forward’: Kamala Harris commemorates Bloody Sunday anniversary in Selma

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      ‘We must march forward’: Kamala Harris commemorates Bloody Sunday anniversary in SelmaUS vice president takes to Edmund Pettus Bridge in Alabama as congressional efforts to restore the 1965 Voting Rights Act falter US vice president Kamala Harris visited Selma, Alabama on Sunday to commemorate a defining moment in the fight for the right to vote, making her trip as congressional efforts to restore the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act have faltered.Under a blazing blue sky, Harris took the stage at the foot of the bridge where in 1965 white state troopers attacked Black voting rights marchers attempting to cross.Harris called the site hallowed ground on which people fought for the “most fundamental right of America citizenship: the right to vote”.The not-surprising, very bad defeat of Biden’s attempt to protect voting | The fight to voteRead more“Today, we stand on this bridge at a different time,” Harris said before a cheering crowd of several thousand.“We again, however, find ourselves caught in between. Between injustice and justice. Between disappointment and determination … nowhere is that more clear than when it comes to the ongoing fight to secure the freedom to vote.”The nation’s first female vice president – as well as the first African American and Indian American in the role – spoke of marchers whose “peaceful protest was met with crushing violence. They were kneeling when the state troopers charged. They were praying when the billy clubs struck.”On “Bloody Sunday”, 7 March 1965, state troopers severely beat and tear-gassed peaceful demonstrators, including a young activist, the late John Lewis, who later became a longtime Georgia congressman.The images of violence at the Edmund Pettus Bridge – originally named for a Confederate general – shocked the nation and helped galvanize support for passage of the Voting Rights Act.Fifty-seven years later, Democrats are unsuccessfully trying to update the landmark law and pass additional measures to make it more convenient for people to vote. A key provision of the law was tossed out by a US supreme court decision.“In a moment of great uncertainty, those marches pressed forward and they crossed,“ Harris said. “We must do the same. We must lock our arms and march forward. We will not let setbacks stop us. We know that honoring the legacy of those who marched then demands that we continue to push Congress to pass federal voting rights legislation.”In Selma, a crowd gathered hours before Harris was scheduled to speak. Rank-and-file activists of the civil rights movement, including women who fled the beatings of Bloody Sunday, were seated near the stage.The milestone of Harris becoming the nation’s first Black female vice president seemed unimaginable in 1965, they said.“That’s why we marched,” Betty Boynton, the daughter-in-law of voting rights activist Amelia Boynton, said.Is America a democracy? If so, why does it deny millions the vote?Read more“I was at the tail end and all of the sudden I saw these horses. Oh my goodness, and all of the sudden … I saw smoke. I didn’t know what tear gas was. There were beating people,” Boynton said.But Boynton said Sunday’s anniversary is tempered by fears of the impact of new voting restrictions being enacted.“And now they are trying to take our voting rights from us. I wouldn’t think in 2022 we would have to do all over again what we did in 1965,” Boynton said.The US president, Joe Biden, said the strength of the groundbreaking 1965 Voting Rights Act “has been weakened not by brute force, but by insidious court decisions”.The latest legislation, named for Lewis, who died in 2020, is part of a broader elections package that collapsed in the US Senate in February.“In Selma, the blood of John Lewis and so many other courageous Americans sanctified a noble struggle. We are determined to honor that legacy by passing legislation to protect the right to vote and uphold the integrity of our elections, including the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the Freedom to Vote Act,” Biden said in a statement.The US supreme court in 2013 gutted a portion of the 1965 law that required certain states with a history of discrimination in voting, mainly in the South, to get US Justice Department approval before changing the way they hold elections, with voting rights activists warning the action is emboldening states to pass a new wave of voting restrictions.TopicsUS voting rightsThe fight to voteKamala HarrisUS politicsAlabamaUS supreme courtUS SenatenewsReuse this content More

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      This time McConnell holds few cards to stop Biden’s supreme court pick

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      This time McConnell holds few cards to stop Biden’s supreme court pick Ketanji Brown Jackson can expect little support from across the aisle but Republicans are wary of overreach before midtermsThe photograph is a study in contrasts. On the left, standing stiffly and staring glumly, is Mitch McConnell, 80, the Republican minority leader in the Senate accused of committing professional fouls when confronting judicial confirmations.On the right, at a slightly awkward distance from McConnell, is Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, 51, chosen by a Democratic president to be the first Black woman on the US supreme court, smiling warmly at the camera, her posture more relaxed than the senator’s.Clyburn: supreme court nomination of Ketanji Brown Jackson ‘beyond politics’Read moreThis was one stop for Jackson this week when she began courting senators from both sides of the aisle ahead of nomination hearings that start on 21 March before a vote in the full chamber.For McConnell, who blocked President Barack Obama’s 2016 nominee Merrick Garland then oversaw the confirmation of three conservative justices under President Donald Trump, there are few options this time. Democrats can confirm Jackson without Republicans in a Senate that is divided 50-50 and where Vice-President Kamala Harris wields the tiebreaker vote.Experts predict that Republicans will use the process to score some political points – just as Democrats did in 2020 when they were powerless to block Amy Coney Barrett’s ascent to the court – but ultimately they will not resort entirely to scorched earth tactics.McConnell and colleagues know that Jackson is replacing a fellow liberal, the retiring Stephen Breyer, and so will not change the 6-3 conservative majority on the court. They are also aware that opinion polls suggest a thumping Republican victory in November’s midterm elections and do not want to risk an overreach that might change that trajectory.“It would be difficult for the Republicans to stop it and a very strong, aggressive effort to block her confirmation could be perceived as being racially motivated,” said Edward Fallone, an associate professor at Marquette University Law School. “They’re already in a favorable position for the midterm elections and the last thing they want to do is erode that by getting accused of being racist at this time. So they should just stay out of the way.”But that will not necessarily prevent some Republicans using racist dog whistles to rile up the Trump base, as they have before.At a confirmation hearing last November, for example, the Republican senator John Kennedy told Kazakh-born Saule Omarova, nominee for comptroller of the currency: “I don’t mean any disrespect: I don’t know whether to call you professor or comrade.” She replied: “Senator, I’m not a communist.”Fallone commented: “There are certainly going to be the Republican loose cannons but the question would be whether one of the more mainstream Republicans slips up and makes a comment that’s perceived as racist.”There was an early preview of the potential for bigotry this week when, after Biden championed Jackson in his State of the Union address as “one of our nation’s top legal minds”, Tucker Carlson, an influential host on the conservative Fox News network, remarked: “It might be time for Joe Biden to let us know what Ketanji Brown Jackson’s LSAT score was.”LSAT is the Law School Admission Test. Critics noted that Carlson never made a similar demand for the LSAT scores of white justices appointed by Trump.Jackson has served since last year on the US court of appeals for the District of Columbia circuit after eight years as a federal district judge in Washington and worked earlier as a supreme court clerk for Breyer. She is related by marriage to the former House speaker Paul Ryan, now a board member at the parent company of Fox News.Democrats hope to confirm her before the Easter recess starts on 11 April. She was accompanied this week by Doug Jones, a civil rights lawyer and former senator from Alabama. After a 40-minute meeting, the Democratic majority leader, Chuck Schumer, told reporters: “She deserves support from the other side of the aisle, and I am hopeful that a good number of Republicans will vote for her, given who she is.”But McConnell has raised questions about Jackson’s short record as an appellate judge, which includes only two opinions so far. “I am troubled by the combination of this slim appellate record and the intensity of Judge Jackson’s far-left, dark-money fan club,” the senator from Kentucky said.It was a clue that the days when supreme court justices were confirmed with more than 90 bipartisan votes are long gone and that most Republicans are likely to oppose Jackson, despite her receiving support from the Fraternal Order of Police and former judges appointed by Democrats and Republicans.Even so, few predict a bareknuckle fight that will dominate national headlines like the confirmation hearing for Brett Kavanaugh, who faced allegations of sexual misconduct from his teenage years.Christopher Kang, co-founder and chief counsel of the progressive pressure group Demand Justice, said: “They have nothing to turn it into a battle over. At the end of the day, Republicans still control a supermajority of the supreme court so the substantive stakes are not there for them.“There’s nothing in Judge Jackson’s record that they could turn into a rallying cry on their side either so I do think that it will be a somewhat muted battle. Or perhaps, as too often seen with women of color who are judicial nominees, unfortunately it may end up devolving into some racist and misogynist attacks. But it won’t be based on her record at all.”Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina were the only Republicans to vote to confirm Jackson to the appeals court last year. While Collins appears open to voting for Jackson again, Murkowski has said her previous vote did not mean she would be supportive this time. Graham had advocated for a different candidate from his home state, federal judge Michelle Childs, and expressed disappointment that she was not Biden’s pick.But, along with rightwing media, some outside advocacy conservative organisations are attacking Jackson’s nomination.The Judicial Crisis Network (JCN) has launched a $2.5m campaign trying to make the case that a “liberal dark money network” helped get Biden elected, pressured Breyer to retire and is now seeking to replace him with “a rubber stamp for their unpopular and far-left political agenda”.Curt Levey, president of the conservative Committee for Justice, said: “The strategy on our side is not to really try to stop her but to try to make some larger points. I think JCN is making a point about dark money groups pressuring Biden to choose the most progressive of the three choices [the other frontrunners were Childs and California supreme court justice Leondra Kruger].”Levey’s own group does not see it as worthwhile to spend money on TV adverts, however. “We can be effective on those larger points but I don’t think there’s any amount of commercials you could run that would stop her from being confirmed.”It is a pragmatic view shared by John Cornyn, a Republican member of the Senate judiciary committee, who is due to meet Jackson on 10 March and does not expect surprises. He told reporters: “She’s not new to us. Given the fact that she’s not going to change the ideological balance on the court … we all have a pretty good idea what the outcome is likely to be.”TopicsKetanji Brown JacksonUS supreme courtUS SenateRepublicansUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Clyburn: supreme court nomination of Ketanji Brown Jackson ‘beyond politics’

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      Clyburn: supreme court nomination of Ketanji Brown Jackson ‘beyond politics’South Carolina congressman extracted Biden’s promise to instal first Black woman on court

      Opinion: Jackson will be a superb addition to the court
      The supreme court nomination of Ketanji Brown Jackson should be placed “beyond politics”, the politician who extracted Joe Biden’s politically priceless promise to instal the first Black woman on the court said on Sunday.Tucker Carlson condemned for Ketanji Brown Jackson ‘Rwanda’ commentsRead moreBiden introduced Jackson as his pick to replace the retiring Stephen Breyer this week.Some Republicans have complained that nominations should not be made on grounds of race or gender – ignoring promises to put women on the court acted on by Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump.Others have complained about how Democrats treated one of Trump’s nominees, Brett Kavanaugh, who denied allegations of sexual assault. Others have objected on ideological grounds, for example Lindsey Graham, a member of the Senate judiciary committee, claiming the Jackson nomination was the work of the “radical left”.James Clyburn, the South Carolina congressman and House Democratic whip whose endorsement both propelled Biden to the presidential nomination and produced his promise to pick a Black woman, appeared on Sunday on CBS’s Face the Nation.He said: “This is beyond politics. This is about the country, our pursuit of a more perfect union, and this is demonstrative of another step in that pursuit.”Of 115 supreme court justices, 108 have been white men. Two have been Black men, five women. As well as being the first Black woman on the court, Jackson would be the fourth woman on the current nine-justice panel, joining liberals Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor and Amy Coney Barrett, a hardline conservative.Clyburn said he hoped “that all my Republican friends will look upon” the nomination of Jackson as being “beyond politics”.“Let’s have a debate,” he said. “Let’s talk to her about her rulings and about her philosophy. But in the final analysis, let’s have a strong bipartisan support to demonstrate that both parties are still in pursuit of perfection”.No supreme court nomination – or, most observers would argue, hearing or ruling – is ever above politics. If confirmed, Jackson will not alter the balance of a court tilted 6-3 to conservatives by Republican political hardball which gave Trump three picks.Before Biden made his decision, Clyburn and Republicans including Graham and the other South Carolina senator, Tim Scott, championed J Michelle Childs, a judge from their state. Clyburn said it would be important to instal a justice who did not go to Yale or Harvard. Jackson went to Harvard.“It’s more traditional, no question about that,” Clyburn told CBS. “This means that we will continue that tradition, and I am one, as you can see, that’s not so much for tradition. I want to see us break as much new ground as possible.“But … in the final analysis, I think this is a good choice. It was a choice that brings on to the court a background and some experiences that nobody else on the court will have. And I think when you look at not just [Jackson’s] background in the family, life, but also her profession, she was a public defender. That adds a new perspective to the court.”Steve Vladeck, a professor at the University of Texas, has pointed out that Jackson has more trial experience than four current justices combined – including the chief, John Roberts.Clyburn also said a successful confirmation process could help Biden politically with Black voters facing difficulties familiar to most Americans, particularly inflation.“When you have an opportunity to make an appointment like you just had,” he said, “and he made an African American appointment, I guarantee you, you see some of that move up. It may not move up with the people who are having income problems, but it will move up to those who have other reservations about the president.”Last year, Jackson was confirmed to the court of appeals for the DC circuit with support from three Republican senators: Graham, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski from Alaska.‘Leaders lead during crises’ – but Biden’s approval rating hits new low, poll findsRead moreThis year, Democrats will be able to confirm Jackson simply by keeping their 50 votes together and using Kamala Harris’s casting vote as vice-president.But on Sunday Mitt Romney of Utah told CNN’s State of the Union he could vote to confirm Jackson.“Yes,” the former presidential nominee said, “I’m going to take a very deep dive and had the occasion to speak with her about some of the concerns when she was before the Senate to go on to the circuit court.“Look, her nomination and her confirmation would or will be historic. And like anyone nominated by the president of the United States, she deserves a very careful look, a very deep dive. And I will provide fresh eyes to that evaluation, and hope that I will be able to support her in the final analysis.”TopicsKetanji Brown JacksonUS supreme courtUS constitution and civil libertiesLaw (US)US politicsRaceDemocratsnewsReuse this content More

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      The Republican party is abandoning democracy. There can be no ‘politics as usual’ | Thomas Zimmer

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      The Republican party is abandoning democracy. There can be no ‘politics as usual’Thomas ZimmerRepublicans could not be clearer about their cynicism, yet some establishment Democrats act as if politics as usual is still an option Over the past few weeks, President Joe Biden has repeatedly emphasized his friendship with Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell. At the National Prayer Breakfast in early February, for instance, he praised McConnell as “a man of your word. And you’re a man of honor. Thank you for being my friend.”Biden’s publicly professed affinity is weirdly at odds with the political situation. Going back to the Obama era, McConnell has led the Republican Party in a strategy of near-total obstruction which he has pursued with ruthless cynicism. It is true that he has, at times, signaled distance to Donald Trump and condemned the January 6 insurrection. But McConnell is also sabotaging any effort to counter the Republican party’s ongoing authoritarian assault on the political system.The distinct asymmetry in the way the two sides treat each other extends well beyond Biden and McConnell. Republicans immediately derided Biden’s pledge to nominate a Black woman to the Supreme Court – while Democratic leaders are hoping for bipartisan support; House Speaker Nancy Pelosi insists the nation needs a strong Republican party – meanwhile radicals like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Paul Gosar, who fantasize about committing acts of violence against Democrats, are embraced by fellow Republicans, proving they are not just a extremist fringe that has “hijacked” the Party, as Pelosi suggested. And when Texas senator Ted Cruz recently intimated that Republicans would impeach Biden if they were to retake the House “whether it’s justified or not,” the White House responded by calling on Cruz to “work with us on getting something done.” Republicans could not be clearer about the fact that they consider Democratic governance fundamentally illegitimate, yet some establishment Democrats act as if politics as usual is still an option and a return to “normalcy” imminent.There is certainly an element of political strategy in all of this. Democrats are eager to present themselves as a force of moderation and unity. But Biden’s longing for understanding across party lines seems sincere. He has been reluctant to make the fight against the Republican party’s assault on democracy the center piece of his agenda; Democratic leadership has proved mostly unwilling to focus the public’s attention on the Republican party’s authoritarian turn.One important explanatory factor is that many Democratic leaders are old. They came up in a very different political environment, when there was indeed a great deal of bipartisan cooperation in Congress. There is no reason to be nostalgic about this – the politics of bipartisan consensus more often than not stifled racial and social progress. But there was certainly an established norm of intra-party cooperation until quite recently. When California senator Dianne Feinstein hugged South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham at the end of the Amy Coney Barrett hearings in 2020, it was a bizarre throwback to those days of amity across party lines in the midst of a naked Republican power grab.Beyond institutional tradition and personal familiarity, this inability to grapple in earnest with the post-Obama reality in which Democratic politicians are almost universally considered members of an “Un-American” faction by most Republicans has deeper ideological roots. The way some establishment Democrats have acted suggests they feel a kinship with their Republican opponents grounded in a worldview of white elite centrism. Their perspective on the prospect of a white reactionary regime is influenced by the fact that, consciously or not, they understand that their elite status wouldn’t necessarily be affected all that much. The Republican dogma – that the world works best if it’s run by prosperous white folks – has a certain appeal to wealthy white elites, regardless of party.From that vantage point, it is rational to believe that the bigger immediate threat is coming from the “Left”: an agenda seeking to transform America from a restricted, white men’s democracy that largely preserved existing hierarchies to a functioning multiracial, pluralistic, social democracy is indeed a losing proposition for people who have traditionally been at the top. When Biden insists that “I’m not Bernie Sanders. I’m not a socialist”, and instead emphasizes his friendship with Mitch McConnell, he offers more than strategic rhetoric. Many establishment Democrats seem to believe that it is high time to push back against the “radical” forces of leftism and “wokeism.”The constant attempts to normalize a radicalizing Republican Party also have a lot to do with two foundational myths that shape the collective imaginary: the myth of American exceptionalism and the myth of white innocence. We may be decades removed from the heyday of the so-called “liberal consensus” of the postwar era, but much of the country’s Democratic elite still subscribes to an exceptionalist understanding that America is fundamentally good and the US inexorably on its way to overcoming whatever vestigial problems there might still be. This often goes hand in hand with a mythical tale of America’s past, describing democracy as being exceptionally stable. Never mind that genuine multiracial democracy has actually existed for less than 60 years in this country. What could possibly threaten America’s supposedly “old, consolidated” democracy? Acknowledging what the Republican party has become goes against the pillars of that worldview.Finally, the American political discourse is still significantly shaped by the paradigm of white innocence. Economic anxiety, anti-elite backlash, or just liberals being mean – whatever animates white people’s extremism, it must not be racism, and they cannot be blamed for their actions. The dogma of white innocence leads to elite opinion instinctively sanitizing the reasons behind the rise of rightwing demagogues, a common tendency in the commentary surrounding the success of George Wallace in the late 1960s, David Duke in early 1990s, or Donald Trump in 2016. The idea of white innocence also clouds Democratic elites’ perspective on Republican elites: Since they cannot possibly be animated by reactionary white nationalism, they must be motivated by more benign forces, fear of the Trumpian base perhaps, or maybe they are being seduced by the dangerous demagogue.“I actually like Mitch McConnell,” Biden said during a press conference a few weeks ago, providing a window into what he sees in Republicans: No matter what they do, underneath they’re good guys, they’ll snap out of it. Promise. It’s the manifestation of a specific worldview that makes it nearly impossible to acknowledge the depths of Republican radicalization – a perspective that severely hampers the fight for the survival of American democracy.
      Thomas Zimmer is a visiting professor at Georgetown University, focused on the history of democracy and its discontents in the United States, and a Guardian US contributing opinion writer
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