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      Democrats rush to find strategy to counter Texas abortion law

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      US CongressDemocrats rush to find strategy to counter Texas abortion lawBiden administration’s options are limited and filibuster poses roadblock to federal legislation Hugo LowellFri 3 Sep 2021 02.00 EDTLast modified on Fri 3 Sep 2021 02.02 EDTJoe Biden and top Democrats are scrambling for a strategy to counter Republican restrictions on women’s reproductive rights amid the fallout from a Texas statute that has banned abortions in the state from as early as six weeks into pregnancy – but the options available to the administration are thin.The conservative-dominated supreme court in a night-time ruling refused an emergency request to block the Texas law from taking effect, in a decision that amounted to a crushing defeat for reproductive rights and threatened major ramifications in other states nationwide.Even as the US president on Thursday accused the court of carrying out an assault on vital constitutional rights and ordered the federal government to ensure women in Texas retained access to abortions, the future of reproductive rights remains in the balance.The challenges facing Biden and Democrats reflect the deep polarization of Congress, and the difficulty in trying to force bipartisan consensus on perhaps the most controversial of issues in American politics.Now, top Democrats in Congress have developed a multi-part strategy to roll back restrictions pushed by Republican-led states that rests on attempting to codify abortion rights protections into federal law – and potentially to reform the supreme court.The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, announced on Thursday that Democrats would vote within weeks to pass the Women’s Health Protection Act, a bill that would ensure the right to access an abortion and for medical providers to perform abortions.“Upon our return, the House will bring up congresswoman Judy Chu’s Women’s Health Protection Act to enshrine into law reproductive healthcare for all women across America,” Pelosi said in a statement that also admonished the court’s decision.Separately, liberal Democrats led by progressives including the New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are urging Biden to strike down other restrictions on access to abortions and the Hyde amendment, a measure that prohibits federal funding for most abortions.Seizing on the Texas decision, liberal Democrats have also called anew for an expansion of the supreme court from nine to 13 seats, which would enable Biden to appoint four liberal-leaning justices to shift the politics on the bench.The legislative response is aimed at reversing more than 500 restrictions introduced by Republican state legislatures in recent months and “trigger laws” that would automatically outlaw abortions if the supreme court overturned its ruling in the landmark Roe v Wade case that was supposed to cement abortion rights in the US.How does someone in Texas get an abortion now and what’s next?Read moreBut while such protections are almost certain to be straightforwardly approved by the Democratic-controlled House, all of the proposals face a steep uphill climb in the face of sustained Republican opposition and a filibuster in the 50-50 Senate.The Senate filibuster rule – a procedural tactic that requires a supermajority to pass most bills – was in part why the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, focused on stacking the supreme court with conservative justices rather than pursue legislation to enact abortion restrictions at a federal level.Forty-eight Democrats currently sponsor the Women’s Health Protection Act in the Senate. Two Republicans – Senators Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski – have previously indicated support for abortion rights, but the numbers fall far short of the 60-vote threshold required to avoid a filibuster.Against that backdrop, a majority of Senate Democrats have called for eliminating the filibuster entirely. But reforming the filibuster requires the support of all Democrats in the Senate, and conservative Democratic senators including West Virginia’s Joe Manchin and Arizona’s Kyrsten Sinema are outspoken supporters of the rule.The broad concern demonstrates how urgent the issue has become for Democrats, and with the Texas law in effect after the failure of the emergency stay, many reproductive rights advocates worry that Democrats will be unable to meet the moment with meaningful action.TopicsUS CongressUS SenateUS politicsAbortionTexasWomenanalysisReuse this content More

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      ‘Democracy will be in shambles’: Democrats in last-ditch effort to protect voting rights

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      The fight to voteUS voting rights‘Democracy will be in shambles’: Democrats in last-ditch effort to protect voting rightsParty members say their control of both the House and Senate is at risk if they do not pass new legislation to protect elections The fight to vote is supported byAbout this contentSam Levine in New York and Ankita Rao in WashingtonTue 31 Aug 2021 06.00 EDTLast modified on Tue 31 Aug 2021 08.40 EDTSign up for the Guardian’s Fight to Vote newsletterDemocrats are pushing what may be their last chance to hold off voter suppression efforts by Republicans, and say that their control of both the House and Senate is at risk if they do not pass their new legislation to protect elections.Their bill, which cleared the US House on a party-line vote last week, has now been taken up by a bitterly divided Senate. It would ensure that states with a recent history of voter suppression must obtain federal approval before making any changes to their election systems, while also undoing a recent supreme court decision that makes it harder to challenge laws under the Voting Rights Act.Will America’s latest redistricting cycle be even worse than the last? Read moreBut Democrats appear unlikely to get more than a handful of GOP votes in the Senate on the bill. They need the support of 10 Republicans to overcome the filibuster, the procedural rule requiring 60 votes to advance legislation. Just one Senate Republican, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, has said she supports reauthorizing the provision, an early signal of how difficult it will be to get Republicans to sign on at a time when state party members are pushing more voting restrictions.Outside groups continue to escalate pressure on members of Congress to pass the bill, which is named after John Lewis, the civil rights icon. They held marches in Washington on Saturday – the 58th anniversary of the historic march on Washington, where Martin Luther King Jr gave his I Have A Dream Speech.Theodore Dean, 84, attended the 1963 march and drove 16 hours from Alabama to attend the march for voting rights in Washington on Saturday.“I’m here because I got grandchildren and children,” he said. He added that the fight over voting rights “gets worse every year. Sometimes it feels like it goes down instead of up. My children and grandchildren need to be able to vote too.”Democrats have highlighted the importance of passing voting rights legislation since the beginning of the year, but the bill arrives in the Senate at a moment when the stakes are uniquely high. State lawmakers are currently drawing maps for electoral districts that will be in place for the next decade. Unless the bill passes, it will be the first time since 1965 certain states with a legacy of racial discrimination won’t have to get their district approved before they go into effect. That could encourage state lawmakers to draw districts that make it harder for Black and other minority voters to elect the candidate of their choice, critics say.The blockade also underscores how Democrats have not yet found a way to deal with the filibuster. Even amid loud calls to do away with the process, a handful of moderate Democrats, led by Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, have refused, holding up Democratic efforts to pass voting rights protections, among other measures.“The same people who are suppressing the vote are also using the filibuster to block living wage – it’s not about one issue,” said the Rev William Barber, a co-leader of the Poor People’s Campaign and a civil rights leader. “Anyone who tries to make this about one issue like voting rights, you’re misleading the people. You have to draw this line and connect the dots.”There are also fraught political stakes for Joe Biden. Amid growing concern the White House wasn’t taking the fight for voting rights seriously enough, the president gave a public speech on the topic in July. Still, White House advisers have said they believe they can “out-organize” voter suppression, an idea that has infuriated civil rights leaders.“You said the night you won that Black America had your back and that you were going to have Black America’s back,” the Rev Al Sharpton, the civil rights leader, said at the rally in Washington on Saturday. “Well, Mr President, they’re stabbing us in the back. In 49 states, they’ve got their knives out stabbing us in the back.“You need to pick up the phone and call Manchin and others and tell them that if they can carve around the filibuster to confirm supreme court judges for President Trump, they can carve around the filibuster to bring voter rights to President Biden,” he added.“We have a problem here. We have Republicans on one side saying the bill isn’t needed,” said Derrick Johnson, the president of the NAACP. “And then we have far too many Democrats who lack the sense of urgency that it’s going to be absolutely critical to protect the rights of voters.”Republicans successfully filibustered a different voting rights measure earlier this year – one that would prohibit partisan gerrymandering, as well as require same-day, automatic and online voter registration. But Derrick Johnson, the president of the NAACP, said he was confident this bill would actually pass.“I don’t think we’re gonna have the same fate with this piece of legislation that we’ve seen, being stalled in the Senate. I do believe there will be the necessary political will to pass it,” said Johnson, who has met with the White House and members of Congress to push for the bill. Pressed on whether he believed 10 Republicans would sign on to the bill, Johnson suggested Democrats could do away with the filibuster to pass the bill.“I’m not suggesting it’s gonna require 10 Republicans. I am suggesting the legislation will pass,” he said. “I don’t see a doomsday. I see a reality that voting rights protections must pass before the end of this year … Our democracy will be in shambles if it’s not done.”A Republican filibuster of the John Lewis bill could offer Democrats wary of getting rid of the rule one of the clearest examples to date of how it has become a tool of obstruction. The last time the Senate voted to reauthorize the Voting Rights Act in 2006, it passed 98-0 before being signed by George W Bush, a Republican.“This iteration of the Voting Rights Act, this should be something that should garner bipartisan support. And if it garners none, and if there’s not even a serious conversation about tweaks to get to a deal, then I think that tells us something,” said Damon Hewitt, the president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, a group that strongly supports the bill.“It tells us that there was never really an attempt to play ball. Or, even if there was some attempt, there was just insufficient political will,” he added.Texas Democrats also heightened the stakes when they fled the state capitol last month to thwart Republican efforts to pass new sweeping voting restrictions. The Texas lawmakers spent much of the last month in Washington lobbying to pass federal voting protections. The standoff ended last week when the Texas bill passed; if Congress fails to act on its own legislation now, it could make the effort from Texas lawmakers look futile.In Washington on Saturday at the march, there was a sense of history and an awareness of how the fight for voting rights now mirrored the struggle of the civil rights movement.“Our ancestors did these marches and did these walks and talk – so this is like something that I’m supposed to do,” said Najee Farwell, a student at Bowie State University.“It’s kind of changed but you still can see the same stuff going on. If you look at pictures back from 1950 it’s still the same stuff going on right now,” said Jemira Queen, a fellow student.TopicsUS voting rightsThe fight to voteDemocratsRepublicansUS SenateUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

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      in World Politics

      Congress Adjourns While the Nation Burns

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      While the fate of many in Afghanistan hangs in the balance, at least Americans at home can breathe a sigh of relief. Both the US House of Representatives and the Senate are on vacation for weeks to come. Citizens of the nation’s capital can recapture their identity from the out-of-town blowhards who give Washington a bad name. The trick now will be to encourage as many Republicans as possible to stay away for good. Admittedly, this may take another election to accomplish, but it is important to get to work on it now.

      On the Senate side of the Capitol, both Democrats and Republicans are leaving town with their party balloons still in the air in celebration of a bill to fund repair and replacement of a portion of the nation’s hard infrastructure that has crumbled before their very eyes for decades. It has become so rare that both parties can agree on anything that the celebration far outweighs the accomplishment. After all that hard work, it seems that it is time for a “well-deserved” weeks-long vacation, the other topic that receives regular bipartisan support.

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      On the House of Representatives side, things are a little more complicated. That group of dedicated public servants adjourned on July 30 for seven weeks, although a short recall is possible for a symbolic vote or two along the way. To be fair, they did pass some meaningful legislation in the last few months. However, only one such piece of legislation has passed the Senate as well and been signed into law — Joe Biden’s initial COVID-19 relief bill (American Rescue Plan). But at least they tried to find legislative solutions on some significant issues, the most important of which are voting rights and police reform.

      With all those senators and representatives now vacationing, it would be easy to conclude from this casual approach to governance that the nation is smoothly sailing to its appointed destiny of renewed greatness. Nothing could be further from the truth.

      There is so much that is so obviously wrong at the moment in today’s America that even the appearance of a weeks-long hiatus should ethically disqualify those vacationing legislators from further service. A “grateful” nation should retire all of them. But that won’t happen, in part because each of them will have a spin machine at work full-time rolling out the tale of just how hard they are working on the issues of the day back in their districts.

      While You Were Vacationing

      Lest you think that I am being a little hard on these self-congratulatory public servants, let’s take a look at what is going on around the nation and around the world while the US Congress has freed itself of its legislative responsibilities.

      Embed from Getty Images

      First, and most obvious, COVID-19 is again ravaging the nation. So, instead of collectively working on urgent public health initiatives, like vaccination mandates, the vacationing legislators are individually on the stump creating more public health confusion. Much of the idiocy makes enough local news that it fortifies those in the caves, covens and churches in Republican districts and states as they go about their communities spreading the disease. The only upside is that many of the vacationing Republican congresspersons are spending their time hanging out with their unmasked and unvaccinated constituents.

      Meanwhile, a country that clings to the notion that the current version of universal suffrage has become a critical component of its “democratic” foundation is in the throes of an unrelenting Republican-led effort to do everything possible to make voting more difficult and less universal. The reasons for this are simple: racism and privilege. Universal suffrage to white conservatives is only a good thing if the “universe” is overwhelmingly composed of right-wing white people. Unfortunately for that dwindling crowd, the universe includes a lot of black and brown people, and a whole bunch of young people who see “universal” as a plus.

      There is an easy way to stop the reversal of the democratic process in America. It is to pass legislation at the national level that sets clear voting rights standards, that increases access to the ballot for all eligible voters and that provides fierce enforcement measures to ensure legal compliance. But you can’t do any of this on vacation.

      While many of those vacationing legislators may come face-to-face with constituents in places where everything is burning, and heatwaves, drought and smoke spread daily devastation, nothing can be done about this either while on vacation. Therefore, environmental laws, climate change legislation, and economic incentives and regulatory mandates remain on hold. The legal framework for cleaner energy production, research and use remains unchanged and woefully inadequate to meet today’s planetary challenges.

      While climate change is taking its deadly toll during the congressional vacation season, we should not forget about gun violence and police violence. Hardly a day goes by in America without multiple firearm deaths and some measure of police overreaction or undertraining resulting in the death or serious injury of someone in some community that the cops are supposed to be protecting. It will be hard to get a full tally from these events over the coming vacation weeks, but every congressperson knows that critically-needed federal legislation to address rampant gun violence and police reform will be on hold, as well.

      No matter how completely oblivious most Americans have become to gun violence (until it hits very close to home), America remains the most likely developed country in which at any moment someone is being killed or killing themselves with a firearm. Since it has been a few weeks now since the nation’s latest high-profile mass killing, it will be hard to make it to the end of this congressional vacation without another one. Thoughts and prayers are all we get when Congress is in session, so their absence shouldn’t change the landscape much on this one. But we should all be disgusted that these public servants can go on vacation while the gun carnage continues unabated and has remained unaddressed in meaningful federal legislation for decades.

      The List Goes On

      I could go on. The list is long. But so is the vacation. Think about how a functioning legislature might be able to make some legislative progress in the coming weeks on universal access to meaningful health care, child care and family leave, a living minimum wage, tax reform and access to quality education.

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      There might even be the opportunity to debate the crippling and continuing impact of America’s systemic racism and how to do something about it. And maybe if they weren’t all on vacation, they could do something constructive, instead of sound bites, about the implementation of America’s long-overdue withdrawal from Afghanistan and its human rights implications, about immigrants and refugees, and about ensuring that the vaccines that Americans are throwing away get into the arms of those begging for them elsewhere.

      They could be doing some of this, but they are doing none of it. They are on vacation.

      *[This article was co-published on the author’s blog, Hard Left Turn.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More