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The time has come for the Senate to decide just how fucked we are, when Democrats either force a debate on critical voting rights legislation this week, or give up in the name of bipartisanship and head off on a two-week vacation. Fingers crossed!
- In a filibuster-free world, Tuesday would be a red-letter day for democracy. The Senate will hold its first procedural vote on the For The People Act, opening up debate on potential modifications, and a Senate committee will hold a hearing on DC statehood for just the second time in history, featuring testimony from such radical leftist emissaries as, uh, Joe Lieberman. Both efforts are supported by a majority of Americans and the party in power, in a country where the majority ostensibly rules: What could go wrong?
- Here in the wacky world of Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), the answer could easily be “all of it.” It now seems likely that Manchin will at least vote with Democrats to debate whether to save American democracy, but no wave of GOP support for his proposed compromise materialized over the weekend, if you can believe it, and on Monday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell once again ruled it out: “The Senate will give this disastrous proposal no quarter.”
- Will Manchin revisit his defense of the filibuster if and when Republicans use it to block the Senate from even debating democracy reforms, including his own overwhelmingly popular voter-ID offering to the GOP? Any reasonable person would, which of course means we have no idea. But President Biden invited both Manchin and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) to the White House on Monday to stress the importance of getting a bill passed, and progressive groups have ramped up their full-court press to end the filibuster with new Arizona ads targeting Sinema, and direct appeals to Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA).
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In the meantime, Republicans have been perfectly happy to continue undermining future elections in GOP-led states with no bipartisan cooperation whatsoever.
- In Georgia, Republican-controlled county commissions have made use of the state’s new voting law and local ordinances to remove members of at least 10 county election boards—primarily Democrats of color. In Arkansas, Republicans have passed legislation that allows a GOP-controlled state election board to override local Democratic election authorities.
- And while Republicans will gerrymander their way to a House majority unless the Senate passes redistricting reforms, Democrats have spent the last decade setting a righteous and self-defeating example by ceding their redistricting control to independent commissions in key states where they’ve swept elections. It’s another reason to heed Barack Obama’s latest warning that Democrats must pass election reforms before the midterms: "We can't wait until the next election because if we have the same kinds of shenanigans that brought about Jan. 6, if we have that for a couple more election cycles, we're going to have real problems in terms of our democracy long-term.”
The Republicans who sought to install an authoritarian leader over the will of the voters naturally have no problem dismantling democratic institutions on a purely partisan basis, and they’ll do considerable damage unless Democrats suck it up and end the filibuster to protect our elections. If you haven’t yet given your senators a call, now is the time: votesaveamerica.com/forthepeople.
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Following record voter turnout in the 2020 election, politicians are drumming up false concerns and baseless conspiracies about widespread voter fraud to justify suppressing the right to vote. Nearly 400 voter suppression bills have been introduced across almost every state. These bills seek to make it more difficult for people to register to vote, vote by mail, or vote in person. The ACLU won’t stop fighting until every eligible voter can cast their ballot. Are you with us? Click here to add your name today.
Join the ACLU in demanding no excuse absentee voting, same day registration, automatic voter registration, and access to in-person early voting for every eligible voter. We won’t stop fighting until every eligible voter can cast their ballot.
The ACLU needs supporters like you to help us stop these voter suppression efforts. Click here to add your name today to defend voting rights with the ACLU.
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The Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the NCAA can’t limit education-related benefits for student athletes, and opened the door to future challenges to the NCAA's business model. The Court upheld a lower court’s decision that would allow colleges to offer greater (but still relatively meager) compensation to student athletes, like scholarships for graduate degrees and free computers. The decision didn’t touch on NCAA rules that restrict any kind of direct payment as compensation, but Worst-Person-You-Know-Making-A-Great-Point Brett Kavanaugh wrote a concurring opinion suggesting that those rules might not fare so well in future antitrust lawsuits: “Nowhere else in America can businesses get away with agreeing not to pay their workers a fair market rate on the theory that their product is defined by not paying their workers a fair market rate. And under ordinary principles of antitrust law, it is not evident why college sports should be any different. The N.C.A.A. is not above the law.”
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- Early in the pandemic, disgraced former one-term president Donald Trump suggested sending infected American tourists to Guantanamo, according to a new book by Washington Post journalists Yasmeen Abutaleb and Damian Paletta.
- The White House announced its plan to distribute 55 million more vaccine doses abroad, including roughly 41 million doses to be shared via COVAX with countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, Asia, and Africa.
- The Supreme Court declined to hear Alex Jones’s appeal in a defamation lawsuit brought by Sandy Hook families.
- A federal judge ruled the CDC can’t enforce its coronavirus restrictions for cruise ships sailing from Florida ports, in a win for Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) and the Delta variant.
- Iran’s hard-line president-elect Ebrahim Raisi has ruled out meeting with President Biden or negotiating Iran’s ballistic missile program, and his election will likely complicate the Biden administration’s goal of revamping the nuclear deal.
- The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops voted to advance a plan to deny President Biden communion over his support of abortion rights. Only the Pope and Biden’s local bishop could actually deny him communion, but the statement would help Republicans mobilize the religious right ahead of the midterms.
- Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) has come under fire for his family’s continued membership to an exclusive, possibly all-white Rhode Island beach club, which he reportedly pledged to leave in 2006. On Monday, Whitehouse’s office said that the club has “no such restrictive policy.”
- Professional Enemy of the Press Tucker Carlson spends his free time gossiping with political reporters, which might help explain why political reporters have been slow to dig up proof that Professional Anti-Vaxxer Tucker Carlson is himself fully vaccinated.
- Champ Biden, a very good boy, has died at age 13.
- A California man stole more than 42,000 pounds of pistachios. Reject modernity (ransomware), embrace tradition (nut heists.)
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New York City’s precarious rollercoaster of a mayoral primary will wrap up on Tuesday, but between late-arriving absentee ballots and the city’s new implementation of ranked choice voting, we may not know who won until the week of July 12. Only the first-choice votes will be counted right away, and with 13 Democrats on the ballot, it would be shocking if any one of them managed to win a majority of votes in that first round. The race is still up for grabs—Eric Adams, a Clickhole-generated neural network whose favorite concert was the one where Curtis Mayfield got paralyzed, has held the lead in recent polling. As the election lurches to a close, Adams has doubled down on his characterization of an alliance between Kathryn Garcia and Andrew Yang as racially motivated voter suppression, Yang has highlighted Adams’s suspicious lack of a Brooklyn bathtub, and Maya Wiley has made a late surge among progressives.
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In 2021 mental health is finally a thing, especially as people are not feeling like their normal selves. Let’s support one another and talk openly. Whether or not therapy is your thing, knowing it’s available and affordable is important, for you or perhaps a loved one.
Millions of people are trying and loving online therapy. It doesn’t have to be sitting around just talking about your feelings.
So, what is therapy, exactly? It’s whatever you want it to be.
You can privately talk to someone if your stress is too much to manage, you’re battling a temper, having relationship issues, anxiety, depression, etc… Whatever you need, there’s no more shame in these normal human struggles. We take care of our bodies, why not our minds, too? Without a healthy mind, being truly happy and at peace is HARD.
BetterHelp is customized online therapy that offers video, phone and even live chat sessions with your therapist, so you don’t have to see anyone on camera if you don’t want to. It’s much more affordable than in-person therapy and you can start communicating with your therapist in under 48 hours.
It’s always a good time to invest in yourself, because you are your greatest asset. See if online therapy is for you by heading to BetterHelp.com/crooked for 10% off your first month.
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Las Vegas Raiders defensive lineman Carl Nassib has become the first active NFL player to come out as gay.
The Department of Veterans Affairs will move to offer gender affirmation surgery to trans veterans.
Virginia has become the 16th state to vaccinate at least 70 percent of its adult population.
The Biden administration will endorse legislation to end the disparity in sentences between crack and powder cocaine offenses.
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