Friday Night Owls: GOP using Trump’s false election claims as cover for new voter suppression laws

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Night Owls is a themed open thread appearing at Daily Kos seven days a week.

5 days until JOE BIDEN AND KAMALA HARRIS TAKE THE OATH OF OFFICE

Fred Wertheimer at Medium writes—Trump’s Blatantly False Claims Provide Cover for New State Voter Suppression Efforts:

In six days we will be rid of the worst, most dangerous, and most unhinged President in our nation’s history. But, that will not end the extraordinary damage Trump has done to the country. […]

Among other fundamental problems Trump has caused is the grave damage he has done to our democracy and the legitimacy of our elections, Trump has conned tens of millions of Americans into believing, through his blatantly false claims and lies, that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him through massive voter fraud.
Some Republican state officials already are using Trump’s Big Lie as cover to pursue new laws to make it harder to vote—in other words, new voter suppression laws.
That is why Congress must move quickly to enact H.R. 1, the For The People Act, and H.R. 4, the Voting Rights Advancement Act.

H.R. 1 incorporates the comprehensive voting rights reform legislation that the late iconic Rep. John Lewis began introducing in 2012. H.R. 1 is ready to go to the floor now for a House vote. (H.R. 4 will take more time in Congress because of the need to build an evidentiary record to overcome the Shelby County Supreme Court decision.)

Hearings were held on H.R. 1 in the last Congress and the legislation passed by a 234–193 vote. H.R. 1 in this Congress is basically the same bill as in the last Congress and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has labeled H.R. 1 a top priority for quick action in 2021.

Congress must move H.R. 1 fast if its provisions to ensure every eligible voter can vote and to protect the integrity of our election process are to be in place for the 2022 elections.

THREE OTHER ARTICLES WORTH READING

• The ‘Iran-al-Qaeda Axis’: Here we go again, by Belén Fernández. Two decades after invading Iraq for alleged links to al-Qaeda, the US now says Iran is the armed group’s ‘new home’.
   
• If Lawmakers Really Care About “Unity” They Should Support Policies Voters Actually Want, by Emily Galvin-Almanza and Sean McElwee. Americans largely support progressive policies—despite objections from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. Now is the time to pass them.   
   
• Looking Ahead: Enforcement For the Many, Not the Few, by Deepak Bhargava and Alexander Hertel-Fernandez. We need to allocate resources away from the carceral state and toward aggressive enforcement of plutocratic and discriminatory actors. 
   

TOP COMMENTS • RESCUED DIARIES 

TWEET OF THE DAY

QUOTATION

“There is something deeply hypocritical in a society that holds an inner-city child only eight years old “accountable” for her performance on a high-stakes standardized exam but does not hold the high officials of our government accountable for robbing her of what they gave their own kids six or seven years before.”
          ~~Jonathan Kozol, The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America (2005)

BLAST FROM THE PAST

On this date at Daily Kos in 2004—Do You Feel Safer Now?

As David Neiwert points out over at Orcinus, we’ve found more weapons of mass destruction in the hands of domestic terrorists than in Iraq, yet our government’s efforts to stop another Oklahoma City are haphazard at best:

It’s been largely speculation, up until now, that domestic terrorism is not a significant component of this administration’s “war on terror.” But in its handling of the Texas cyanide bomb case, it’s becoming especially apparent that this is precisely the case…

But what’s really problematic is the kind of intelligence-gathering gap this lack of communication actually represents. Certainly it raises questions about how thoroughly, and with what energy, the current investigation is being pursued. It’s especially important to determine whether there are more of these bombs out there, as several of the news reports so far have suggested. …

Notably, this is the second such case already this year, and both have been cracked due to sheer blind luck. Another would-be domestic terrorism attack  was recently prevented because relatives and friends grew concerned. One has to wonder how long we’re going to stay lucky.

While our government flouts international law and common sense with its handling of the non-POWs at Guantanamo and expends tens of billions of dollars and hundreds of American lives in Iraq, its anti-terrorist activities at home are sometimes, to put it charitably, downright pathetic.

Documents naming Winchester [Virginia] as one of 10 potential meeting places for suspected domestic terrorist conspirators were found a year ago, but most local law enforcement officials did not know about it until Thursday.