Schumer says he plans to meet with Texas Dems
Schumer says he plans to meet with Texas Democrats today to “plot strategy”
From CNN’s Ali Zaslav
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on Tuesday spoke at length about the importance of protecting voting rights as Texas Democrats are at the US Capitol today after leaving the state on Monday in an effort to block GOP from passing restrictive new voting laws.
Schumer said he plans to meet with the Democratic Texas lawmakers today “to plot out strategy and to praise them for what they are doing.”
Schumer slammed former President Donald Trump in his floor remarks for perpetuating the “Big Lie” and argued Republicans across the country are actively dismantling all the barriers that prevented Trump from subverting the 2020 election.
He touted how Democrats were “united for the first time this Congress” on a sweeping voting and elections bill, that Republicans blocked from advancing. He reiterated how he reserves the right to bring it up for another vote.
Why Texas House Democrats are vowing to stay out of the state until the special session ends in early August
Analysis by CNN’s Chris Cillizza
The visuals were powerful. Two chartered planes taking off from Texas — and landing in the nation’s capital — filled with Democratic legislators fleeing a Republican attempt to pass one of the nation’s most stringent voting bills.
But the political reality for those Democrats — and for voting rights advocates around the country — is significantly grimmer: There is almost no way for this strategy to succeed.
What Democrats did in leaving the state is rob Republicans in the Texas legislature of a quorum — a term signifying when there are enough members present for the legislative body to do its business.
Texas Republicans pledged to do everything they could to find a legislative workaround for the lack of a quorum, but it’s possible that if Texas Democrats stay in DC that the clock will run out on the special session Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, called to pass this election bill (and a few other measures).
That would mean that that these Texas Democrats would spend almost a month away from home — and the state. (If they returned to Texas, Abbott could have them arrested and forced back to the state House.) Which is a long time!
But let’s say they do it. Stay away from Texas until the special session expires. What happens next? Abbott simply calls another special session.
Abbott has the power to just keep calling special sessions for the foreseeable future. Which would force the Texas House members who fled the state on Monday to stay away from the state for, potentially, months. Which is simply not practical. You can’t stay away forever, and Republicans are well-positioned — they control the governorship as well as both state legislative chambers — to wait Democrats out.
Texas (and national) Democrats know that, of course. What their flight to Washington on Monday is really about is a) drawing national attention to the voting bill in the state b) buying themselves some time to strategize and c) giving themselves the only sort of leverage they can have in a state legislature totally dominated by the opposing party.
Read the full analysis here.
More than a dozen states have enacted 28 new laws since the 2020 election that restrict ballot access
From CNN’s Janie Boschma
State lawmakers have enacted nearly 30 laws since the 2020 election that restrict ballot access, according to a new tally as of June 21 by the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law.
The 28 total laws in 17 states mark a new record for restrictive voting laws since 2011, when the Brennan Center recorded 19 laws enacted in 14 state legislatures.
More than half of these new laws make it harder to vote absentee and by mail, after a record number of Americans voted by mail in November.
The legislative push is part of a national Republican effort to restrict access to the ballot box following record turnout in the 2020 election. Republicans currently control both chambers of 30 state legislatures.
State lawmakers are expected to attempt enacting additional laws this year.
NOW: Texas House Democrats hold news conference after leaving state to block GOP voting bill
From CNN’s Eric Bradner, Dianne Gallagher and Paul LeBlanc
Texas House Democrats are holding a news conference on Capitol Hill after they left the state Monday in an effort to block Republicans from passing a restrictive new voting law in the remaining 27 days of the special legislative session called by Gov. Greg Abbott.
Two chartered planes carrying the majority of the Democrats who left Texas for Washington, DC, landed at Dulles International Airport on Monday evening, a source familiar told CNN. They have largely kept their planning secret because they can be legally compelled to return to the state Capitol and believed law enforcement could be sent to track them down, two sources familiar with the Democrats’ plans had told CNN earlier Monday.
The group is “hoping” to meet with US Senate Democrats, according to a source familiar with their plans.
Their move places Texas at the heart of the national fight over voting rights, with GOP state lawmakers turning former President Donald Trump’s lies about widespread voting fraud into a push for new laws that limit mail-in voting, early voting and more.
Read more here.
A SCOTUS decision limited the ability of minorities to challenge state voting laws they say are discriminatory
From CNN’s Paul LeBlanc
Additional pressure on President Biden to act on voting rights came earlier this month when a Supreme Court decision limited the ability of minorities to challenge state laws they say are discriminatory under the Voting Rights Act.
The high court upheld two provisions of an Arizona voting law:
- The first provision says in-person ballots cast at the wrong precinct on Election Day must be wholly discarded.
- Another provision restricts a practice known as “ballot collection,” requiring that only family caregivers, mail carriers and election officials can deliver another person’s completed ballot to a polling place.
“In a span of just eight years, the Court has now done severe damage to two of the most important provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 — a law that took years of struggle and strife to secure,” Biden said in a statement reacting to the decision. “After all we have been through to deliver the promise of this Nation to all Americans, we should be fully enforcing voting rights laws, not weakening them.”
Beyond pushing for a sweeping voting rights package and denouncing restrictive state-level laws, Biden’s Tuesday speech will also take aim at Trump’s continued election lies. During a rambling Sunday address to the Conservative Political Action Conference in Dallas, Trump returned again and again to election-related lies.
Texas House Democrats left the state yesterday to block GOP from passing voting restrictions
From CNN’s Eric Bradner and Dianne Gallagher
Ahead of President Biden’s remarks on voting rights, Texas state House Democrats left the state Monday in an effort to block Republicans from passing a restrictive new voting law in the remaining 27 days of the special legislative session called by Gov. Greg Abbott.
Two chartered planes carrying the majority of the Democrats who left Texas for Washington, DC, landed at Dulles International Airport on Monday evening, a source familiar told CNN.
They have largely kept their planning secret because they can be legally compelled to return to the state Capitol and believed law enforcement could be sent to track them down, two sources familiar with the Democrats’ plans had told CNN earlier Monday.
The group is “hoping” to meet with US Senate Democrats, according to a source familiar with their plans.
Their move places Texas at the heart of the national fight over voting rights, with GOP state lawmakers turning former President Trump’s lies about widespread voting fraud into a push for new laws that limit mail-in voting, early voting and more.
Some more context: Already this year, Republican-controlled states including Florida, Georgia and Iowa have enacted restrictive new voting laws. Democrats in Congress have pushed measures that would expand access to the ballot box nationwide — but GOP opposition in the Senate has kept them from clearing the 60-vote threshold necessary to break a filibuster.
In Texas, minority House Democrats walked out of the final hours of this year’s legislative session, blocking Republicans from approving Senate Bill 7 — the controversial measure that would have made casting mail-in ballots harder; banned drive-thru voting centers and 24-hour voting — tactics Harris County, the home of Houston, used in the 2020 election; empowered poll watchers, made it easier for courts to overturn election results; effectively outlawed Black churches’ “souls to the polls” get out the vote push and more.
Biden will lay out “moral case” for voting rights in speech Tuesday, White House says
From CNN’s Betsy Klein
White House press secretary Jen Psaki offered a broad preview of President Biden’s anticipated major address on voting rights in Philadelphia set for today at 2:50 p.m. ET, saying he will lay out “the moral case” and also call out the “irony of the big lie.”
“He’s very focused on this speech tomorrow,” Psaki told reporters Monday. “He’ll lay out the moral case for why denying the right to vote is a form of suppression and a form of silencing.”
Biden, she said, will “redouble his commitment” to protect Americans’ right to vote amid efforts in some states and localities to enact restrictive voting measures. She also specifically pointed to former President Trump’s “big lie” about the 2020 election.
“He’ll call out the greatest irony of the big lie is that no election in our history has met such a high standard, with over 80 judges including those appointed by his predecessor, throwing out all challenges,” she said.
Biden will also “decry efforts to strip the right to vote as authoritarian and anti-American as and stand up against the notion that politicians should be allowed to choose their voters or to support our system by replacing independent election authorities with partisan ones, and he will highlight the work of the administration against this,
Biden will make another push for the sweeping voting rights legislation, which was blocked by Republicans last month and currently has no clear path forward toward passage with a 50-50 Senate.
The speech comes days after Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, who has been tasked with leading the administration’s charge on voting rights, met with legacy civil rights group leadership at the White House, who told them legislation was urgently needed. Harris also listening session on the topic during a trip to Detroit Monday.
Pressed by CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on whether Biden gave that group of leaders any specific assurances after that meeting, Psaki declined to say, suggesting broadly that Biden is “committed” to signing voting rights legislation into law.
Tuesday’s speech, Psaki added, “is an opportunity for him to make the case to the American people about how this is a fundamental right,” calling it “a fight of his presidency.”
Biden will “continue to talk about it out around the country,” Psaki said, but declined to preview any specific forthcoming visits on the matter.
Source: http://rss.cnn.com/~r/rss/cnn_topstories/~3/-iVJ5AtRHbI/h_f31c943e8d8441e27549f7f61143897e
