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1. Republican Wave of Voting Restrictions Swells  The Pew Charitable Trusts
2. Georgia Governor Signs Republican-backed Election Bill Amid Outcry  Voice of America
3. Georgia General Assembly Approves Sweeping, Republican-Led Voting Bill | 90.1 FM WABE  WABE 90.1 FM
4. Georgia G.O.P. Passes Major Law to Limit Voting  The New York Times
5. Georgia Republicans speed sweeping elections bill restricting voting access into law  CNN
6. View Full Coverage on Google News

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Republican Wave of Voting Restrictions Swells - The Pew Charitable Trusts

Led by U.S. Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) and U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), a group of Republican senators will be in McAllen Friday on the border.

They'll take a first-hand look at the backlog at the border, and the scramble to find space for all migrants stopped trying to get into Texas.

Until we get this current crisis under control I dont see an avenue for doing other immigration reform. I have said previously that I would like to provide a permanent legal solution for DACA recipients. I think they have been used as a political football for too long, said Senator John Cornyn.

The latest news from around North Texas.

A group of Democratic congressmen and women, led by U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-TX), will travel to Carrizo Springs to tour the facility holding more than 700 teenage boys.

The trips are happening as pressure increases on the Biden administration to take action.

Vice President Harris will be the point person on the border.Former U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro, who has been active in border issues, calls this a great move.

With Vice President Harris you have somebody who is very familiar with this issue, from the time that she was attorney general of California back in 2014 when we saw a wave of unaccompanied minors, she actually led the effort in California to respond to unaccompanied minors, said Secretary Castro.

It is a big project with more than 11,000 now in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services custody.

More:
Texas-Led Republican and Democratic Delegations Head to Border Friday - NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth

President Joe Biden scoffed when asked during a press conference on Thursday whether he expects to run for reelection against former President Donald Trump in 2024. He suggested the GOP might not even exist in three years.

"Oh, come on. I don't even think about I have no idea," Biden said when asked whether he'll be facing off against Trump. "I have no idea if there will be a Republican Party. Do you?"

Biden wouldn't promise that he'll run for reelection in 2024, but said it's his "expectation" that he will do so and that Vice President Kamala Harris will be on his ticket, calling Harris "a great partner."

"I've become a great respecter of fate in my life," he said during the first formal press conference of his presidency. "I've never been able to plan ... three and a half years ahead, for certain."

More here:
Biden says he has 'no idea if there will be a Republican Party' in 2024 - Business Insider

There was an era when New Jersey Republicans could be proud of their partys role in furthering the cause of ending discrimination against African-Americans. And the high-water mark of that era in Garden State politics was the election of 1985.

That was the year in which incumbent Republican Governor Tom Kean scored a landslide reelection victory over Democrat Essex County Executive Peter Shapiro. Going into 1985, Shapiro was viewed as THE coming superstar in the Democratic firmament of New Jersey politics.

In the 1985 gubernatorial general election, however, the Shapiro supernova was irrevocably extinguished, as Tom Kean carried every county in the state and actually won an astounding 60 percent majority of the African-American vote. In the words of that great political sage, Lorenzo Pietro Berra, a/k/a Yogi Berra, it never happened before, and it hasnt happened since.

The GOP 1985 triumph among Black voters was a tribute to three individuals: Governor Tom Kean, the then Department of Energy Commissioner Lennie Coleman, and the late New Jersey GOP State Chair Frank B. Holman, Jr. In the second Kean term, Coleman served as the Commissioner of the Department of Community Affairs.

Each of these three individuals served separate distinguishable roles in that memorable 1985 campaign. Since the passage of the Civil Rights Acts of the 1960s, no Republican trio in any state has more effectively conducted outreach to and dialogue with the African-American community in any state in the nation.

Tom Kean set the tone of this relationship with his slogan, The Politics of Inclusion. For Tom, this was more than a mantra: it was a determination to have government decision making include in its process those ethnic groups and economic sectors that had been traditionally excluded. This was a key factor as to why Kean will rank in history as New Jerseys greatest governor of the Twentieth Century.

To me, Lenny Coleman is an authentic New Jersey hero. He is a proud African-American who overcame the most severe obstacles of racism to achieve outstanding success in the arenas of academia, government, and business. He was the ideal ambassador of the Kean administration to and from the African-American community.

My only regret: Lenny Coleman was a superb president of baseballs National League, but he should have been the Commissioner of baseball as well.

Frank Holman, a great patriot, was a Brigadier General in the US Air Force, serving during the Korean War. He had a gruff voice and a tough way of presenting himself, but that was all a cover for a heart of gold. His heart and strength made him the greatest street politician I ever saw in either party during my nearly four decades of involvement in New Jersey politics.

And as Tom Kean put it in his book, The Politics of Inclusion, Frank Holman was absolutelycommitted to reaching out to the people Republicans have always ignored. This made Frank a beloved figure among all New Jersey racial and ethnic groups.

Frank was a dear friend of mine, and I have often compared him to my all- time favorite baseball manager, Leo Durocher. Leo was a virtual father figure to Willie Mays, and like Frank Holman, he didnt care what was your race or creed, as long as you helped his team win. When Southerners on the Brooklyn Dodgers in spring training in 1947 circulated a petition in opposition to Jackie Robinson playing, Leo awakened his teamat 1:00 amand screamed, I dont care what color Jackie Robinson is I dont care if he has stripes like a f__k__g zebra! The man is going to win us a lot of ball games! Then Leo proceeded to tell the racist players on the Dodgers, in most colorful terms, that they could use that petition for toilet paper.

I could have seen Frank Holman doing the same thing if he had been the manager of the 1947 Brooklyn Dodgers!

The triumvirate of Kean, Coleman, and Holman made me proud to be a New Jersey Republican. It was truly a party promoting racial and ethnic understanding.

Todays New Jersey Republican Party, however, under the leadership of Republican State Committee Chair Mike Lavery, is now marching in lockstep with the national Republican Party in a determined effort to suppress the African-American vote.

My hero of the 2020 presidential election was the African-American voter. The increased participation of African-American voters, men and women, was the key factor in the defeat of Donald Trump, an authoritarian racist who would have further destroyed the social fabric of America during his second term.

A major factor in the increased African-American vote was the passage of state statutes throughout the nation enhancing and protecting the ability to vote by mail. Republicans opposed passage of these statutes, claiming that they would result in voter fraud. This proved to be nonsense. Trumps owndirector of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, Chris Krebs, called this 2020 election the most secure in American history.

The leadership of the national Republican Party knows this, and they are hellbent on suppressing the African-American vote wherever possible. They are engaged in massive efforts to erect barriers to voting by mail, and they also are trying to get states to require voter ID, which severely impacts the ability of African-Americans to vote.

Minority voters disproportionately lack government issued identification cards. Nationally, up to 25 percent of all African-Americans lack government issued identification cards, compared to only eight percent of whites.

And requiring these African-American voters to obtain voter ID places a further impact on their exercise of the voting franchise. They have to bear the cost of obtaining the underlying documents necessary to support the application for the ID,the expense of travel to the place of filing of the application, and the decrease in income attributable to the lost time at work spent in pursuit of the application.

There was a time nationally when the Republican Party could well be proud of its effort to both protect and enhance the right of African-Americans to vote. In 1965, one of the truly good and great men of American history, Republican US Senate Leader Everett McKinley Dirksen of Illinois played a vital role in the shaping and passage of the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Today, the national Republican Party, massively infested with the racist cancer of Donald Trump, is led by a pusillanimous collection of morally myopic fools dedicated to the maximum possible vitiation of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. They are at war against the passage of House Resolution One, the For the People Act, a vitally needed set of measures that will honor the heritage of those who heroically marched on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama in 1965 and provide a permanent protection of the hard won African-American right to vote.

In the era of Tom Kean, the New Jersey Republican Party would have stood in firm opposition to the national Republican Partys effort to suppress the African-American vote by the erection of barriers to vote by mail and the implementation of voter ID requirements. Todays New Jersey Republican Party, however, has rejected Tom Keans Politics of Inclusion and replaced it with the Politics of Exclusion.

The new NJGOP Politics of Exclusion first manifested itself during the 2020 campaign when the New Jersey Republican State Committee, under the leadership of former Chair Doug Steinhardt, ina despicable act of blatant attempted racial voter suppression, joined Trump for President, Inc. and the Republican National Committee infiling suit to invalidate New Jersey Governor Phil Murphys Vote-by-Mail plan. I authored a column at that time denouncing the suit, No White Republican will be Elected Governor or U.S. Senator in N.J. for at Least a Decade.

https://www.insidernj.com/no-white-republican-will-elected-governor-senator-decade/

The lawsuit failed, and I hoped that the New Jersey Republican State Committee would thereafter refrain from further efforts to Suppress-the-African-American vote.

The Politics of Exclusion reigns supreme at the New Jersey Republican State Committee, however, and on March 2, 2021, the New Jersey Republican State Committee issued a report drafted by its dubiously named Election Improvement Committee, which advocated both the enactment of Voter ID and making the exercise of vote-by-mail more burdensome. The report had the endorsement of both Chair Mike Lavery and National Republican Committeeman Bill Palatucci. The link to the report follows:

https://www.njgop.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/NJGOP-EIC-Report.pdf

I cannot say whether or not Doug Steinhardt, Mike Lavery, or Bill Palatucci are personally racist. Yet it strains credulity to believe that either the aforesaid lawsuit or this Election Improvement Committee Report is anything but a blatant effort to suppress the African-American vote, motivated by the fact that the African-American vote leans so heavily Democratic.

During the era when the Tom Kean Politics of Inclusion prevailed in the New Jersey Republican Party, the message to the New Jersey African-American community was a positive one: We want to facilitate the exercise of your right to vote, and we hope that you will vote Republican.

Under the Politics of Exclusion which now prevails in the Republican Party both nationally and in New Jersey,the message to the African-American community is a negative one: We know you vote Democratic, and we will do everything possible to suppress your right to vote.

The Republican Party has been irrevocably poisoned by Trumpian racism. The party of Lincoln is now the party of hate mongers like Ron Johnson, QAnon, and Marjorie Taylor Greene. In New Jersey, it is also the party of State Senator Mike Doherty, who denies the existence of systemic racism. The profoundly anti-racist brand of conservatism of a William F. Buckley is totally ignored in todays Trumpian-dominated Republican Party, both nationally and in New Jersey.

No thoughtful right-of-center voter who rejects racism can any longer maintain allegiance to todays Trumpian Republican Party. The creation of a new center-right political party is sorely needed,both nationally and in New Jersey. How this could come about will be a focus of my future columns.

Alan Steinberg served as Regional Administrator of Region 2 EPA during the administration of former President George W. Bush and as Executive Director of the New Jersey Meadowlands Commission.

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Under its New Politics of Exclusion, The New Jersey Republican State Committee Joins the National Republican Suppress-the-Black-Vote Effort -...

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There may be no politician better suited for a moment when democracy is under attack than Stacey Abrams. A decade ago, when few saw any chance of Georgia becoming a Democratic state, Abrams pushed to invest in turning out Black, Latino and Asian American voters, who had long been overlooked by politicians campaigning in the state.

And when she ran for governor in 2018, Abrams made voter suppression a centerpiece of her campaign, underscoring the way that America fails to live up to the promise of its democracy by denying the right to vote to so many eligible citizens.

Now many of the issues Abrams has been raising for years have exploded and are at the center of American politics. The Guardian spoke to Abrams, who is widely expected to run again for governor next year, about this uniquely dangerous moment in American democracy.

How is what were seeing now similar to and different from what weve seen in the past?

The coordinated onslaught of voter suppression bills is not the norm.

Whats happened over the last 15 years has been a steady build where weve seen bills passing in multiple state legislatures over time. It was absolutely voter suppression, but it was this slow boil. Its that terrible analogy of the frog in the water as the water starts to boil. Unless this is what you do and unless this is what you pay attention to, folks like me were watching, but it was fairly invisible to the untrained eye that voter suppression was sweeping across the country, especially beyond the boundaries of the south.

What is so notable about this moment, and so disconcerting, is that they are not hiding. There is no attempt to pretend that the intention is not to restrict votes. The language is different. They use the veil, they used the farce of voter fraud to justify their actions. Their new term of art is election integrity. But it is a laughable word or phrase to use. It is designed based on anything but a question of integrity. The truth of the matter is there is no voter fraud. The truth of the matter is we had the most secure election that weve had.

And therefore, their integrity is really insincerity. They are responding to the big lie, to the disproven, discredited and, sadly, the blood-spilled lie of voter fraud. And they are responding to it by actually doing what the insurrectionists sought, doing what the liars asked for.

In your view, how linked is this to race? Would we be seeing these kinds of restrictions if there wasnt that kind of explosion of turnout among Black voters that we saw in the election?

Well, I would say its inexorably linked to race, but I want to be really clear. Black voters are of course at the center of the target, but what is happening in Arizona, what is happening in Florida is also attacking Latino voters. They are attacking the energy and enthusiasm of Native American voters. They are attacking Asian American voters. While Black voters are of course at the center because of the historical animus that seems to exist towards our participation in elections, this is also about attacking other communities of color. And we are seeing it being done with an assiduousness and an attention to detail that is, as we said before, unparalleled, except for when you look at the actions of Jim Crow.

And then the corollary is that they are also attacking young people. Because it wasnt just the increase in voters of color. It was the increase in young people and its that cross-pollination of young people of color that I think is also ginning up a great deal of this anger.

What we are seeing are also bills that are designed to thwart young people taking possession of the power that comes with their generational might. They are the largest cohort. And they showed signs of leveraging that in the 2020 election. And now we are seeing a reaction to that, a response, that is lumping them in with every other undesirable voter class, which primarily is driven by race, by age and by income.

What would the implications for our democracy be if these measures pass and are enacted and upheld by the courts?

It would be the exact intention of voter suppression. Which is that we shut duly eligible citizens out of participation in setting the course of the country.

We will not have effective responses to challenges that disproportionately harm communities of color. We will not tackle the existential crises that we face as a nation, as a world. We will not hear conversations in the legislative body about racial injustice, about climate action, about bodily autonomy.

When you can cordon off and extricate entire communities from participation, their voices are not only silenced, the policies that have allowed their participation in just our larger civic life are also chilled.

The larger ethos is this. There are those who say, Well, OK these communities get harmed, its a dismal reality, they will not be moved by that. But as I keep repeating, when you break democracy, you break it for everyone. Because while they may start with communities of color and young people and poor people, there are intersections in terms of policymaking that affect those who want to be benefited by these processes. And benefited by these policies. Theyre not going to stop with simply poor Latino voters. Theyre also going to attack wealthy Latino voters who may need to vote in a different way because of the way they make their money.

When you break the machinery, you break it for everyone. When that happens, the durability of our democracy is immeasurably weakened to the place where we become just as vulnerable to authoritarian regimes, just as vulnerable to majoritarian instincts and just as vulnerable to the collapse of democracy as any other nation state.

You were quoted the other day about the need for businesses to come in and play a larger role in taking a stand against some of these measures in Georgia and elsewhere. Have you been disappointed to see the muted stances companies have taken?

As someone who served in the legislature, I am very aware of the delayed engagement that tends to happen with the business community. And so Im not surprised by the current reticence to be involved. But I am challenging the intention to remain quiet.

We are obliged at this moment to call for all voices to be lifted up. And for the alarm to ring not only through the communities that are threatened directly, but by those businesses that rely on the durability of our democracy.

Thats my point, the fact that no one can escape the scourge. We know that the consequences of a disconnected democracy, the consequences of a lack of civic participation are that we have a weakened civil society. That costs money. When people arent invested, when they feel that they have been pushed out of participation, they have no reason to trust or to conform.

And so for the business community, it is a danger to their bottom line, to see a disconnection develop and be embedded in state laws that essentially say to rising populations that you are not wanted and therefore we are not going to countenance your participation. Because if you tell someone they arent wanted theyre going to assume you cant say anything else to them.

It is a dangerous thing for the business community to be silent.

We have a conservative supreme court, were about to undergo another round of redistricting where Republicans have a clear advantage in the states again, a green light to use partisan gerrymandering. The filibuster in the Senate. I think a lot of people look at that and its so hard for them to have hope that any of this is going to get fixed or that there is a path to fixing it. Im curious what you see when you look at those institutions and how people should think about them as obstacles to achieving full democracy?

Id begin with the most efficient tool. And that is the filibuster.

There is a credible argument to be made that the exceptions that have already been accepted for the filibuster should apply to protecting democracy.

It is unconscionable that given the visible and ongoing threat to our democracy, that had its most tragic example in the insurrection on January 6, it is unconscionable that we would not treat the protection of our democracy as an absolute good that should be subject to an exemption from the traditional filibuster rule.

Every other mechanism will take time. Every other mechanism will require the inevitability of demographic change. This is one piece that will ensure that rather than 100 years of Jim Crow, which is what we had to survive last time Congress abdicated its responsibility with regard to election law, that rather than 100 years of stasis and paralysis and ignominy, that this is an opportunity for us to get it right.

This interview has been condensed and edited

See the rest here:
Stacey Abrams on Republican voter suppression: 'They are doing what the insurrectionists sought' - The Guardian