Voter suppression just had a bad night in Texas

Ian Millhiser/Think Progress

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) signed a law last night which significantly rolls back the state’s efforts to make it harder to cast a ballot. Though the state’s new voter ID law is not a total victory for supporters of voting rights, it is a major shift in the state’s law — brought about by the fact that the state repeatedly lost its efforts to defend its previous law in court.

All voter ID laws are, to some extent, voter suppression laws. They make it harder to vote, while addressing a problem — voter impersonation fraud at the polls — that is virtually non-existent. Twenty million Texas votes were cast in the ten year period before the state enacted its voter ID law in 2011, but only two people were convicted of the kind of fraud that is supposedly targeted by such a law.

Indeed, Texas’ 2011 voter ID law doesn’t even try very hard to pretend that it exists for some purpose other than keeping certain people from casting a ballot. The law permitted voters to cast a ballot if they showed a gun permit(something Republicans are more likely to carry than Democrats), but it didn’t allow someone to vote with a student ID (students are especially likely to favor Democrats). A federal court also found that the law was “passed, at least in part, with a discriminatory intent in violation of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.”

That law, however, has now been significantly watered down.

After a conservative federal appeals court rejected Texas’s 2011 law, Texas agreed to be bound by a court order limiting its ability to enforce the law during the 2016 election. Under that court order, registered voters who “present a valid voter registration certificate, a certified birth certificate, a current utility bill, a bank statement, a government check, a paycheck, or any other government document that displays the voter’s name and address” may cast a regular ballot if they “sign a reasonable impediment declaration” — a document stating that the voter was not reasonably able to obtain the forms of ID mandated by the 2011 law.

The bill signed into law by Gov. Abbott on Thursday night mirrors much ofthis court order, making similar restrictions on the Texas voter ID law permanent.

Again, this is not a total victory for voting rights. The law still imposes an ID requirement on most voters, and some voters may be intimidated by the fact that they risk jail time if they make a false statement on their declaration of reasonable impediment.

Texas also filed court documents Thursday night claiming that its changes to its voter ID law should erase the federal court’s finding that the state acted with racially discriminatory intent. If the courts ultimately agree with this argument, that will limit the remedies available to voting rights advocates who want to ensure that Texas does not engage in additional voter suppression.

But the new Texas law also locks in place restrictions on the state’s voter suppression efforts that it could have just as easily fought in court. The Supreme Court, which once again has a Republican majority, signaled that it is eager to expand states’ ability to enact voter suppression laws. Texas could have fought for their 2011 law in the Supreme Court, and there’s a very good chance that the state would have won.

Instead, the state elected to take a partial loss rather than pushing on for a full victory. It’s unclear whether it will retain that posture if the Supreme Court eventually does legalize new forms of voter suppression. For the time being, however, Texas’ efforts to suppress the vote are hobbled, if not entirely dead.

White Woman Used Racial Slurs, Slapped Her, Texas Pool Party Host Says

BY CARIMAH TOWNES/Think Progress

After a viral video of police brutalizing black teenagers in swimsuits in Texas sparked national outrage, a second video has surfaced of a party host detailing a violent encounter before the cops arrived at the scene.

According to 19-year-old community member Tatiana, who put together the event to celebrate the end of the school year, several white people at the pool hurled racial slurs at her friends, calling one a “black f-er” and talking about Section 8 public housing. When 14-year-old friend Grace Stone stood up for the group, saying the comments were racist, the man and woman started berating her. Tatiana alleges she stepped in to tell the white couple that they shouldn’t verbally attack a young girl, at which point they told her to “go back to [her] Section 8 home.” One woman, identified as Kate, allegedly slapped Tatiana in the face, before attacking the teenager with the help of another woman.

Tatiana’s mother, who was also featured in the YouTube video, responded, “I’m just upset that we couldn’t have a peaceful event. [If] it was any issue that they truly had, they should’ve came to me, the adult that was here at the event…and not go to that extreme.”

Watch the video of Tatiana:

Brandon Brooks, a white teenager who filmed first video of the police encounter, explained to Buzzfeed News that many of the black kids had special passes to swim in the community pool, although some did jump the fence. “I think a bunch of white parents were angry that a bunch of black kids who don’t live in the neighborhood were in the pool,” he said. However, he maintains, many of the kids who were handcuffed and told to get on the ground were ‘innocent bystanders.’

Having seen the original video on YouTube, Tom Fuentes, a former assistant director for the FBI told CNN that the officer’s actions were unjustified, and that the main officer was “running around and escalating” the situation. “He’s out of control. He clearly has no self-discipline. He lost control of his temper. Nothing good can happen at that point. Thankfully he didn’t shoot somebody,” he concluded.

But local homeowners defended the officers’ actions, arguing the officers’ safety was threatened. “I feel absolutely horrible for the police and what’s going on… they were completely outnumbered and they were just doing the right thing when these kids were fleeing and using profanity and threatening security guards,” an anonymous woman told Fox4. Notes thanking the officers were also hung on the pool fence.

Texas Family Will Sue Hospital For Keeping Pregnant, Brain-Dead Woman On Life Support

BY TARA CULP-RESSLER/Think Progress

The family of Marlise Machado Munoz is preparing a legal challenge against a Texas hospital that is forcing them to keep Munoz on life support because she’s pregnant, even though she has been pronounced brain dead and the grieving family wants to say their goodbyes. An attorney who specializes in family law confirmed to the Star-Telegram that litigation will be filed soon, but declined to give more details in order to protect the strategy in the upcoming legal fight.

Munoz was pronounced brain dead in November after losing consciousness unexpectedly. She was 14 weeks pregnant at the time. Munoz’s family members say she would never want to be kept alive by a machine — but hospital officials are still preventing them from removing Munoz from a ventilator. The hospital is citing a decades-old state law that states, “A person may not withdraw or withhold life-sustaining treatment… from a pregnant patient.” Texas is one of 12 states that invalidate women’s end-of-life wishes if she is pregnant.

In Munoz’s case, the hospital could actually be applying the law incorrectly.

“I think the Texas law cannot apply to the dead,” Art Caplan, the director of medical ethics at New York University’s Langone Medical Center, explained to the Star-Telegram. “I think the hospital is wrong to insist that it does.”

The issue at hand results from a misunderstanding of the medical definition of death. As theNew York Times notes, it’s important to make the distinction between individuals who are “brain dead” — like Munoz — and individuals who are in a “persistent vegetative state.” The most high-profile battles over life support, like the one that centered on Terri Schiavo, involved people who were in vegetative states. That means they could breathe on their own; although they may have been severely brain damaged, they weren’t considered to be brain dead.

Brain death, on the other hand, is one of the two medical definitions of death. In all 50 states, once a person is declared to be brain dead, they are considered to be deceased. In every state except for New York and New Jersey, hospitals don’t need to consult families to decide how to terminate care after a brain death diagnosis.

Laurence McCullough, a professor at the Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy at Baylor College of Medicine, told USA Today that there shouldn’t be any ethical issues about providing care to someone who is brain dead because that patient is now a corpse. Most medical professionals actually believe it is highly unethical to keep a brain dead person hooked up to ventilators or feeding tubes, because medical interventions shouldn’t be performed on a dead body.

Even when an individual is brain dead, their heart may remain beating. That can give the illusion of life. In another high-profile controversy currently swirling around this area of medical practice, the family of 13-year-old Jahi McMath is fighting to keep her hooked up to life support even though she is brain dead, because they say her body functions prove she is still alive. But that heartbeat is only temporary. With ventilation, the heart can continue to beat for up to a week even without brain function. With more aggressive intervention, it could keep beating for months after brain death. It’s confusing to receive a death certificate for someone whose heart is still beating, but doctors ultimately say that it doesn’t change the fact that they’re not alive any longer.

NYU’s Caplan believes that when it comes to both Munoz and McMath, the cases have been handled very badly. “They’re giving the impression that dead people can come back to life,” he explained. Caplan encouraged the Munoz family to sue over the hospital’s interpretation of Texas law.

Texas Attorney General Almost Disenfranchised By His Own Voter ID Law

BY AVIVA SHEN/Think Progress

As early voting begins in Texas, the state’s new, strict voter ID law has thus far flagged a judge, gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis, and another state senator as potentially illegitimate voters. Attorney General Greg Abbott (R), voter ID’s most strident defender, was also flagged as a suspicious voter under his own law’s strict criteria.

Abbott was flagged because his license lists his name as “Gregory Wayne Abbott” while his voter registration record simply calls him “Greg Abbott.”

Longtime voters, particularly married women who have taken a spouse’s name, are being stopped at the polls because their names on their drivers’ licenses differ from their voter registration forms. Thanks to an amendment added by Wendy Davis, voters who clearly have “substantially similar” names can still cast a regular ballot by signing an affidavit affirming their identity. If the law had gone through unmodified as Abbott originally supported, he would have disenfranchised himself.

Though Davis’ amendment will allow many legitimate voters to vote, the process to determine “substantial similarity” and organize affidavit-signing will inevitably clog up Texas electoral processes with unnecessary confusion. Come November 5, Texas’ polling places may resemble Florida’s in 2012, where Republicans’ election law changes created marathon lines and pollworker confusion.

The law has also affected countless ordinary Texans who do not attract as much media coverage as Davis or Abbott. People of color, low-income voters, seniors, and students are most likely to lack the required ID and may not have their votes counted as a result. While Texas officials claim it is easy for these people to get a free voter ID, just 41 out of 1.4 million eligible Texas voters have received one as of the middle of last month. ThinkProgress interviewed one 84-year-old woman who was denied the ID three times despite providing extensive proof of her identity.

Justice Department Will Ask Court To Reinstate Voting Rights Act In Texas

By Ian Millhiser/Think Progress

Attorney General Eric Holder announced on Thursday the first step the Justice Department will take to restore the voting rights gutted by a Supreme Court decision neutering a key prong of the Voting Rights Act. In remarks prepared for the National Urban League’s annual conference, Holder announced that the Justice Department “will ask a federal court in Texas to subject the State of Texas to a preclearance regime similar to the one required by Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act” — effectively restoring the safeguards against voter suppression in Texas that were stripped by the five Republican justices’ decision in Shelby County v. Holder.

Prior to the justices’ decision in Shelby County, states and counties with a history of racial voter suppression were required to “pre-clear” any new voting laws with the Justice Department or a federal court in D.C. Shelby County essentially shut this pre-clearance regime down by declaring the formula used to determine which states are subject to pre-clearance unconstitutional.

The Republican justices’ decision left another provision of the law intact, however. Under section 3 of the Voting Rights Act, a state can be brought back under the pre-clearance requirement if a court find that “violations of the fourteenth or fifteenth amendment justifying equitable relief have occurred within the territory of such State or political subdivision.” Essentially, states with a recent record of attacks on the constitutional right to be free from race discrimination in voting can be brought back under federal supervision.

As Holder notes in his remarks, Texas is a particularly strong candidate for such federal supervison due to “the evidence of intentional racial discrimination” in Texas that the Justice Department presented to a federal court last year. Among other things, this federal court found that Texas Republicans charged with drawing the states’ legislative maps “consciously replaced many of [a] district’s active Hispanic voters with low-turnout Hispanic voters in an effort to strengthen the voting power of [the district's] Anglo citizens. In other words, they sought to reduce Hispanic voters’ ability to elect” a candiate of their choice.

Section 3 lawsuits, often known as “bail-in” suits, are rare. Since 1975, bail-in has been used to extend the Voting Rights Act to “two states, six counties, and one city.” So the judges deciding whether Texas should once again be subject to federal supervision will have little precedent to guide their decision. Nevertheless, Holder is absolutely correct that Texas is a strong candidate for a bail-in. Just two hours after the Supreme Court neutered much of the Voting Rights Act, Texas Attorney General Greg Abott (R) announced that the state would implement plans that will suppress minority voters.

Texas’ Anti-Abortion Bill Threatens To Increase ‘Flea Market Abortions’

By Joseph Diebold/Think Progress

While media coverage of the ongoing debate on a bill to restrict the ability of women in Texas to get abortions has centered around a provision banning abortions after 20 weeks, parts of the bill that would likely reduce the number of clinics in the state from 47 to five have gone underreported.

Very few abortions actually occur after 20 weeks. But the closing of clinics would affect the ability of all Texas women to get safe, affordable abortions at any stage in their pregnancies.

And even now, without the proposed restrictions, Texas already imposes many barriers to reproductive care. Bloomberg reports on the scary options women are turning to with their access to abortion restricted:

At an open-air flea market outside McAllen, Texas, near the Mexican border, shoppers can buy a goat and get their car windows tinted. Tables with handwritten signs touting Viagra are stocked with herbal remedies promising to burn fat and boost breast size. You can also find pills to end a pregnancy.

Bazaars like this have become home to a thriving black market, where women too poor to afford an abortion at a clinic or deterred by state mandates such as a 24-hour waiting period can buy drugs to induce a miscarriage on their own, a dozen area residents and doctors said in interviews.

Hundreds of miles north in Austin, the capital, lawmakers may inadvertently increase this illegal trade. Rules set to pass as soon as this week might result in the closing of most, if not all, abortion facilities in the state. If the law — promoted as a way to improve women’s health — makes legal abortion unavailable in Texas, more women may turn to markets such as the one near McAllen and risk their lives.

Texas women have turned to Cytotec, a pill used to prevent stomach ulcers, to induce abortions for much cheaper than they can be obtained at a clinic. But they are also significantly more dangerous: Bloomberg’s story centers on Erlinda Dasquez, who took a second pill after her first attempt failed, and then bled for a month.

The report focuses on women — many of whom are poor and Hispanic — in the lower Rio Grande Valley, at the southern tip of the state. If the bill passes, those women would be forced to travel well north, likely to Austin or San Antonio, to access the nearest abortion clinic. “Only people with money go to clinics,” a community health instructor told Bloomberg. If the two clinics currently serving the lower Rio Grande Valley close, it will take even more money to get to one.

Conservatives have seized on the case of illegal abortion provider Kermit Gosnell, attempting to equate the Philadelphia doctor’s crimes with all safe, legal abortions. In fact, under bills like the one advancing in Texas, more and more women will be forced to turn to dangerous options like Gosnell and Cytotec.

Why, Against Long Odds, Pro-Choice Protesters Continue To Fight In Texas

By Scott Keyes/Think Progress
AUSTIN, Texas — With the entire month of July available for Texas Republicans to pass the stringent new abortion restrictions that Democrats successfully blocked last month, most analysts assume passage is a foregone conclusion.

“With 30 days and the majority of state lawmakers on their side, Republicans are almost assured success this time around,”writes Becca Aaronson in the Texas Tribune about legislation that would criminalize abortion after 20 weeks and force most of the state’s abortion clinics to shut down.

And yet, despite the odds stacked against them, more than 5,000 Texans took time off on midday Monday to come down to the State Capitol and protest as the legislature opened its second special legislative session.

ThinkProgress spoke with many of the individuals who showed up at the rally to ask what’s motivating them to keep protesting, even if their chances of stopping Republican lawmakers from passing new abortion restrictions are slim. Some held out hope to defeat the legislation, others took a long-term approach, and still others said it was important to set an example for the next generation.

Here’s what they told us, in their own words:

SUSIE MILAM: “I don’t see any reason to assume the bill will definitely pass. I think the gathering here today shows there’s a lot of disfavor with this bill. I think the legislators might just get a message that this is not what the people of Texas want. I’m sick and tired of people acting like if you just make abortion illegal again, there won’t be any. There certainly were plenty of abortions before it was legal, and there will be abortions again.”

SARA LEVINE: “I hope that this shows support and will change the tide of Texas politics and get us on our way to a more women-friendly, minority-friendly place. I’m wearing this shirt because she’s going to be a sixth-generation Texan and she has every right to her constitutional rights and I’ll make sure she gets them.”

GOLIA STARGHILL HOWARD: “I am out here to stand with Texas women. I believe that we should have the right to choose. Also, I’m a retired Texas teacher so I have the means and the time to participate in this activity, and shame on me if I didn’t do it. I think there’s enough women in Texas to make a difference on this bill.”

TASCA SHADIX & JIM BEDNAR: “I want to teach these two little ones [her children] right here. I told them it’s very likely it’s going to pass anyway, but we go, we have our say, we make our voice heard anyway.”

BEYRL ARMSTRONG: “I don’t know if we have the votes to defeat it, but I want there to be a line in the sand. I want there to be a notice that we noticed. That what we have to do is change the makeup of the Senate and change the makeup of the House. If we get the right people out to vote, we can do that.”

KATHY MCCAFFERTY: “When I was young I didn’t pay attention. Things like this happened because I wasn’t paying attention. I have the time and the resources now, and I belong here, and I’ll be here.”

LYNN SCHLUNS: “I had wanted to go to the Million Mom March that was in DC however many years ago and I really regretted not going. So when I heard about this I was like, I have to be there. I’m from Dallas so we drove down.”

Texas Lawmaker Calls Wendy Davis A Terrorist For Blocking Anti-Abortion Bill

By Rebecca Leber/Think Progress

Late last night, a Republican lawmaker compared Texas state Sen. Wendy Davis (D) and the crowd of her supporters to terrorists. Davis gained national attention and admirers overnight for launching an epic 13-hour filibuster that successfully blocked a restrictive abortion bill from becoming law. Once Republicans failed to pass SB 5, an omnibus bill to ban abortion after 20 weeks and shut down most of the state’s abortion clinics, Rep. Bill Zedler (R) tweeted:

In addition to voting for the 20 week abortion ban in the Texas House, Zedler’s record includes requiring women to undergo an ultrasound and report their education history before being able to have an abortion.

Meanwhile, Lt. Gov David Dewhurst described the crowd that cheered Davis on as “an unruly mob, using Occupy Wall Street tactics” that “disrupted the Senate from protecting unborn babies.” For the record, this is what the protests in the capitol building looked like:

Two Hours After The Supreme Court Gutted The Voting Rights Act, Texas AG Suppresses Minority Voters

By Aviva Shen/Think Progress

Just two hours after the Supreme Court reasoned that discrimination is not rampant enough in Southern states towarrant restrictions under the Voting Rights Act, Texas is already advancing a voter ID law and a redistricting map blocked last year for discriminating against black and Latino residents. Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott issued a statement declaring that both measures may go into effect immediately, now that there is no law stopping them from discriminating against minorities.

In 2012, the Justice Department blocked these measures under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. Federal courts agreed that both the strict voter ID law and the redistricting map would disproportionately target the state’s fast-growing minority communities. Still, Texas filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court over the Voting Rights Act case complaining that the DOJ had used “abusive and heavy-handed tactics” to thwart the state’s attempts at voter suppression.

In the case of the new electoral map, a panel of federal judges found that “substantial surgery”was done to predominantly black districts, cutting off representatives’ offices from their strongest fundraising bases. Meanwhile, white Congress members’ districts were either preserved or “redrawn to include particular country clubs and, in one case, the school belonging to the incumbent’s grandchildren.” The new map was also drawn in secret by white Republican representatives, without notifying their black and Latino peers. After the court blocked the map, the legislature approved small changes to appease Democratic lawmakers last week. Now that they are free to use the old maps, however, Gov. Rick Perry (R) could simply veto the new plan and use the more discriminatory maps.

The strict photo ID requirement blocked by the DOJ and a federal court would require Texans to show one of a very narrow list of acceptable photo IDs. Expired gun licenses from other states are considered valid, but Social Security cards and student IDs are not. If voters do not have an ID — as many minorities, seniors, and poor people do not — they must travel at their own expense, produce their birth certificate, and in many cases pay a fee to get an ID.

Thanks to the Supreme Court, the DOJ no longer has any power to block these laws, even with the backing of federal judges who found blatant discrimination. Under the remaining sections of the Voting Rights Act, individuals may sue to kill these measures, but only after they have gone into effect and disenfranchised countless Texans of color.

According to the 2010 Census, non-Hispanic whites have become a minority in Texas, down from 52.4 percent to 45.3 percent of the population. Latinos have accounted for 65 percent of the state’s population growth over the past decade. Projections show that the eligible voter pool will shift to roughly 44 percent white voters and 37 percent Hispanic voters by 2025. Faced with this demographic reality, conservatives have alternated between changing their messaging to appeal to Latino voters, who overwhelmingly supported Democrats in 2012, and making it harder for them to vote.

It is only a matter of time before other states with voter ID laws and other election law changes blocked by the DOJ last year follow Texas’ example. Besides Texas, the attorney generals of Alabama, Arizona, South Dakota, and South Carolina argued that the Voting Rights Act was getting in the way of their ability to enact discriminatory laws.

UPDATE

North Carolina and Mississippi also plan to pass strict voter ID laws

Court lets Texas pull Planned Parenthood funds

 By Stephen C. Webster/Raw Story

A federal appeals court ruled Thursday that Texas may proceed to pull funding for more than half of the women’s health clinics across the state due to their affiliation with privately funded clinics that perform abortions.
As a result of Thursday’s decision by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Gov. Rick Perry (R) said that state officials will “immediately” begin defunding clinics operated by Planned Parenthood, most of which do not actually perform any abortions in the state.
Perry announced earlier this year that he’d made defunding Planned Parenthood a priority for his administration, triggering months of legal wrangling with the clinics and the federal government. Federal law requires that states not discriminate against health providers in distributing federal funds, but a court ultimately ruled that Texas could forgo federal assistance entirely and set up its own health program.

That’s precisely what Perry is doing, passing on more than $40 million in federal assistance and directing the state to exclude Planned Parenthood, which provides health care services to more than 130,000 low-income women in Texas. Planned Parenthood has 49 health centers across Texas, many of which will be forced to close due to Perry’s decision.
As an experiment, pro-choice activist Andrea Grimes said in September that she spent six hours trying to locate a women’s health clinic in Austin that isn’t Planned Parenthood but does accept Medicaid. Despite a list of 181 clinics on the state’s website, Grimes said she found just 13 actual doctors in the whole state who perform the necessary procedures and accept Medicaid, explaining that the other listings were repeats, radiology centers, labs and doctors who didn’t take Medicaid at all.
To make matters worse for many low-income women, the Kaiser Family Foundation says that Texas has one of the most restrictive Medicaid programs in the country, requiring that a family of three earn less than $188 a month to qualify for assistance. Under the president’s Affordable Care Act, however, Medicaid was slated to expand dramatically to cover nearly all low-income Americans, but Perry also said he will turn down more than $164 billion in federal money that would have been used to provide health care to 1.2 million Texans through 2023.
In a prepared statement published to the governor’s website, Perry said the 5th Circuit Court’s ruling on Thursday “affirms yet against that in Texas the Women’s Health Program has no obligation to fund Planned Parenthood and other organizations that perform or promote abortion. In Texas we choose life, and we will immediately begin defunding all abortion affiliated to honor and uphold that choice.”
The clinics have the option of seeking an appeal before the U.S. Supreme Court, but the 5th Circuit’s ruling effectively denied a rehearing.
“This case has never been about Planned Parenthood — it’s about the Texas women who turn to us every day,” Kenneth Lambrecht, president of Planned Parenthood of Greater Texas, told Bloomberg News. “Politics should never come between a woman and her health care, but in this decision, which conflicts with Supreme Court precedent, it appears it has.”

Federal Court Rejects Texas Voter ID Law

By Aviva Shen/Think Progress

A federal three-judge panel has struck downTexas’ restrictive voter ID law, finding it would suppress minority voting. The Department of Justice blocked the measure after it failed to get the pre-clearance required under the Voting Rights Act for states with a history of discrimination. The DOJ concluded that Latino voters would be disproportionately affected by the ID law.

Now, Judges Rosemary Collyer (a George W. Bush appointee), David Tatel, and Robert Wilkins have agreed, finding that the law “imposes strict, unforgiving burdens on the poor” and that “a disproportionately high percentage of African Americans and Hispanics in Texas live in poverty.”

Texas’ law is one of the most extreme of the voter ID laws that have become the new fad among Republican lawmakers in the past 2 years. Under its provisions, Texan voters who show up at the polls without ID would not even fill out a provisional ballot ; they would simply be turned away. The law also has a very specific list of allowed IDs. For instance, expired gun licenses from other states are considered valid, but student IDs and Social Security cards are not.

The court was careful to “emphasize the narrowness of this opinion,” noting it is possible to implement a photo ID law without discriminating against minorities. This leaves open the possibility that Texas could write a less blatantly discriminatory measure before the November election. This is the second Texas election law struck down this week for suppressing minority votes; another panel found the Legislature’s new redistricting map violated minority voting rights.

UPDATE

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott (R) says Texas will appeal the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court. He has also promised to appeal the redistricting decision to the Supreme Court. There are two explicit challenges to the Voting Rights Act already in the Supreme Court docket.

Protecting the right to vote

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Anita Perry Defends Her Husband’s Job Creation Record: ‘People Are Hungry For’ Minimum Wage Jobs

By Marie Diamond/Think Progress

Anita Perry, the wife of presidential contender and Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R), took to the campaign trail in Iowa today to defend her husband against a growing wave of criticism and scrutiny from the right. In between brushing away criticism of her husband’s debate performance and positions on immigration and the HPV vaccine, she made a surprising admission.

While parroting her husband’s jobs claims, she also conceded that not all the jobs Texas has created during her husband’s tenure are high-paying jobs — in fact, Texas has the highest percentage of minimum wage jobs in the country. But Perry says that’s the sort of job people are “hungry for”:

PERRY: He knows how to create jobs…We have 1,500 people moving to Texas every day to find a job. I’m not going to tell you they’re all high-paying jobs, but they’re a job, even if they’re a minimum wage job. And that’s what people are hungry for.

American Bridge captured the video:

Anita Perry’s claim that people are “hungry” for minimum wage job ignores the obvious truth that families are barely scraping by on those jobs and would much rather prefer higher wages.

As ThinkProgress has reported, the so-called “Texas miracle” of job creation Gov. Perry touts as a key reason to elect him is nothing but smoke and mirrors, built on a boom in government jobs, population growth and low wage jobs. Texas has by far the largest number of employees working at or below the federal minimum wage compared to any state.

In fact, Texas’ jobs numbers are moving in exactly the wrong direction. The unemployment rate in Texas has been steadily increasing throughout the recession, and went from 7.7 to 8.2 percent while the state was supposedly creating 40 percent of all the new jobs in the U.S. When you account for labor force growth, Texas ranks dead last in total job creation. Despite Perry’s claims that government can’t create jobs, he’s actually depended disproportionately on government jobs — between 2007 and 2010, 47 percent of government jobs were created in Texas.

As for Anita Perry, the Austin-American Statesman reports that she depends mostly on her husband’s backers for her $60,000-a-year salary. Her salary from the nonprofit where she works “comes indirectly from Gov. Rick Perry’s political donors, state contractors and companies that do business with the state or have issues before the Legislature.” In fact, contributing to Anita Perry’s nonprofit has become yet another legal way those looking to curry favor with Perry’s administration “pay to play.”