Ahead of the midterms, Republicans have launched a full-scale assault on the election system. Fueled by the Big Lie, this attack relies upon a multi-pronged strategy of gerrymandering, voter suppression, and the takeover of election positions by ideologues who allege that the 2020 election was stolen. As I write in “The Coming Coup,” Georgia, where […]
Author: Ari Berman
GOP States Are Shredding Voting Rights and Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema Are Now Complicit
For the fifth time during the last year, Senate Republicans blocked Democrats on Wednesday from passing sweeping legislation that would roll back GOP efforts to make it harder to vote. Their justification: there is no GOP effort to make it harder to vote. “The big lie on the other side is that state legislatures controlled […]
Kyrsten Sinema Just Killed the Democrats’ Last, Best Chance to Protect Voting Rights
On the Senate floor on Thursday, just hours before President Joe Biden was set to meet with Senate Democrats, Kyrsten Sinema made clear her opposition to changing the Senate rules to pass voting rights legislation, effectively killing the Democrats last, best chance to protect American democracy. “There’s no need for me to restate my longstanding […]
The Coming Coup: How Republicans Are Laying the Groundwork to Steal Future Elections
A week before the ninth anniversary of her son’s murder, Rep. Lucy McBath (D-Ga.) discovered that Republicans had radically redrawn her district to oust her from Congress. A political novice, McBath had became a leading gun control advocate after her 17-year-old son, Jordan Davis, was shot by a white man in 2012 in an […]
It’s Now or Never for Democrats to Protect Voting Rights
At crucial moments in American history when democracy was under threat, Congress took decisive action to protect voting rights—the 15th Amendment, the 19th Amendment, the Voting Rights Act of 1965. This week is going to be a similarly pivotal time for American democracy. After failing to lawfully win the 2020 election and then unlawfully overturn […]
The January 6 Committee Has a Plan to Prevent Another Attempt to Steal an Election
Donald Trump had a plan to steal the 2020 election: he wanted GOP-controlled legislatures in key states Joe Biden won to override the will of their state’s voters and appoint their own electors for Trump, which Vice President Mike Pence would count when Congress met on January 6, nullifying Biden’s victory. This brazen attempt to […]
The Parents of the Michigan School Shooter Are In Deep, Deep Trouble
A judge in Michigan set a $500,000 bond each for James and Jennifer Crumbley, who have been charged with manslaughter after their 15-year-old son killed four students with a semiautomatic handgun at Oxford High School. Ethan Crumbley faces murder and terrorism charges. The Crumbley parents were supposed to turn themselves in yesterday after prosecutors announced […]
New Evidence Suggests Trump DOJ Official Conspired With White House to Overturn 2020 Election
Jeffrey Clark, an assistant attorney general in the Justice Department under Donald Trump, played a key role in Trump’s conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election. And new evidence obtained by the House committee investigating the January 6th insurrection suggests he was working more closely with the White House than was previously known. In late December […]
Republicans Are Rigging Elections for the Next Decade
In Georgia, Republicans passed a new congressional map on Monday giving their party 64 percent of US House seats in a state Joe Biden won with 49.5 percent of the vote. In Ohio, Republicans passed a new congressional map on November 18 giving their party at least 80 percent of seats in a state Donald […]
This Texas County Shows Exactly How Republicans Are Rolling Back the Clock on Voting Rights
It was a scene that brought to mind the disenfranchisement of Black voters in the Jim Crow South. For 22 years, Stephen Holmes has been the lone Black and minority county commissioner in Galveston County, Texas, a coastal area south of Houston. But under new redistricting maps adopted by the GOP-controlled commission on November 12, […]