Wendy Davis Responds To Perry’s Inevitable Second Special Session

Kimberley Johnson/Liberals Unite:

Gov. Rick Perry announced there will be a second special session in an attempt to pass a sweeping  Texas style abortion ban. It’s back to the drawing board for the SB5 bill. Evidently Wendy Davis pissed him off, and he will NOT allow a woman to thwart the GOP plan to take away a woman’s right to choose!!!

We’ll see.

Wendy responded to Perry in a statement:

“Misplaced priorities of legislative leaders squandered a tremendous opportunity to make much needed improvements in our transportation infrastructure and help create good jobs and bring businesses to Texas. Despite urging by responsible members of the Senate to bring up the matter of transportation, Lt. Governor David Dewhurst derailed as much as much as $1 billion per year in transportation funding by stubbornly pushing divisive, failed legislation attacking women’s health care options.

If leaders are serious about using this second called special session to improve the lives of Texans by repairing and expanding our transportation networks, they will find no greater ally than me. If they intend to keep pushing their extreme personal political agenda ahead of the interests of Texas families, I will not back off of my duty to fight on their behalf.”

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:

Texas’ Abortion Restrictions Failed, But Other States Are Successfully Advancing Them

By Tara Culp-Ressler/Think Progress

After a battle that stretched throughout Tuesday night and into Wednesday morning, state Sen. Wendy Davis (D)successfully blocked a stringent anti-abortion bill from winning approval in the Texas legislature. Davis noted that defeating SB 5 — which would have criminalized abortion after 20 weeks and forced 90 percent of the abortion clinics in the state to close their doors — represented an “incredible victory for Texas women and those who love them.”

Nevertheless, women in other states haven’t won the same kind of victories. The same provisions included in Texas’ SB 5 are already laws on the books in several other states. Here’s where supporters of reproductive freedom could turn their attention to next:

NORTH DAKOTA: Women in North Dakota have the unfortunate distinction of living in the state with the harshest abortion ban in the nation. Last session, North Dakota criminalized abortion after just six weeks — before many women even know they’re pregnant. But they didn’t stop there. The state legislature also enacted harsh restrictions on abortion clinics, identical to the ones included in SB 5, that threaten to shut down the last abortion clinic left in the entire state. Women’s health advocates are fighting back in court, and North Dakota’s lone abortion clinic filed yet another lawsuit earlier this week in an attempt to stay open. But women’s reproductive freedom hangs in the balance.

MISSISSIPPI: Like North Dakota, Mississippi is another state that has just one abortion clinic left for all of its residents — and Republicans are working to shut it down with the same type of restrictions included in SB 5. After Republicans successfully enacted harsh abortion clinic restrictions last year, the clinic fought back — and won a temporary reprieve in April from a federal judge. That ruling blocked the state law and prevented Mississippi officials from closing the clinic, but it’s not final. And abortion opponents in the state are finding other methods to limit women’s reproductive freedom, too, like blocking access to medicine-induced abortion care.

ALABAMA: In April, Alabama’s Republican governor approved stringent clinic rules that threaten to shut down the last handful of abortion clinics in the state. Similar to the warnings about SB 5, Planned Parenthood’s Cecile Richardsexplained that the new restrictions could “essentially ban abortion statewide.” Alabama’s new anti-abortion law takes effect on July 1, and the state’s four licensed abortion clinics will have 180 days after that point to meet the new, unnecessary standards.

WISCONSIN: Just like Texas, Wisconsin lawmakers are trying to fast-track abortion restrictions before the legislative session ends. Gov. Scott Walker (R) has already thrown his support behind the package of bills, which would mandate invasive ultrasounds for women seeking abortions and shut down abortion clinics. Even though they’re purportedly about women’s health, the measures don’t have the endorsement of any of the major medical groups in the state. But Republicans have advanced them anyway. Lawmakers in the state have complained that other priorities are “languishing” because of the recent focus on anti-abortion bills.

OHIO: This week, the Ohio legislature is set to consider a proposed state budget — but, since abortion opponents have attached budget amendments that seek to limit abortion access, it will likely turn into a fight over preserving women’s reproductive freedom. Ohio’s budget would defund Planned Parenthood, close abortion clinics, and redirect state funding to right-wing “crisis pregnancy centers.” And state lawmakers hope to attack abortion rights in other ways, too. Another bill put forth by Ohio Republicans would mandate invasive ultrasounds, require doctors to mislead their patients about abortion risks, extends the waiting period for women seeking abortions, and imposes harsh punishments on medical professionals who don’t follow the new rules. Doctors have already warned about the “disastrous effects” the proposed legislation would have on their patients.

Of course, the above list doesn’t include the states that already criminalize abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy, as SB 5 sought to do. According to the Guttmacher Institute, eight states currently have 20-week abortion bans based on the scientifically-disputed theory that fetuses can feel pain after that point. In several of those states — Idaho, Georgia, and Arizona – that type of ban has been blocked in court for violating women’s constitutional protections underRoe v. Wade.

Republican Senator Calls For Abolishing The Minimum Wage

By Bryce Covert/Think Progress

On the 75th anniversary of the landmark bill that established a minimum wage, Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) called for abolishing it completely, the Huffington Post reports.

At a Health Education Labor and Pensions Committee meeting to mark 75 years since the signing of the Federal Labor Standards Act, which set a minimum wage and mandated overtime pay, Alexander, the ranking Republican on the committee, jumped into a discussion between a witness from the Heritage Foundation and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) to say of the minimum wage, “I do not believe in it.” Sanders followed up, asking,

“So you do not believe in the concept of the minimum wage?”

“That’s correct,” Alexander responded.

“You would abolish the minimum wage?”

“Correct.”

Alexander went on to call instead for a higher Earned Income Tax Credit for the working poor and referenced a negative income tax.

Watch the exchange:

Despite claims by conservatives, studies have shown that raising the minimum wage would not kill jobs or hurt small businesses. In fact, raising the wage can actually help businesses in a variety of ways. Nor is a raise going to mostly impact teenagers working for spare change: Nearly 90 percent of minimum wage workers are 20 years old or older, and more than a quarter are parents. And even worse, there is evidence that making such a low wage can harm a worker’s child.

While millions of workers would see a boost from a raise in the wage, it is women and people of color who stand to benefit most of all.

Raising the wage to $10.10 an hour, as Democrats have proposed, would actually bring the wage in line with its historical purchasing power. Had it been indexed to inflation in 1968, it would be $10.40 today.

While Republicans like Alexander stand in opposition to a raise after President Obama called for it, many Republicans supported it when President Bush proposed a hike, including 65 who are still serving in Congress.

Right-Wing Media Cover Up Supreme Court's Unprecedented Blow To Voting Rights

SERGIO MUNOZ/Media Matters For America

Right-wing media marked the Supreme Court's devastating Shelby County v. Holder decision by ignoring, trivializing, and downright misrepresenting its dire consequences for one of the most effective civil rights laws of all time, as well as for millions of American voters.

Tossing aside history, legal precedent, and congressional intent, the conservative bloc of the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act (VRA) of 1965 in Shelby County, a sharply split 5-4 opinion by Chief Justice John Roberts. In a twisted reading of this crown jewel of civil rights law, the conservative majority invalidated the provision within the VRA that prevents states and local jurisdictions from enacting racially discriminatory election practices, reasoning that this vital protection against voter suppression is instead an impermissible restriction on the highly dubious "equal sovereignty" of southern states.

Rather than acknowledge the documented voter suppression that the VRA has effectively and consistently kept at bay from the voting rights struggles of the civil rights era through the 2012 elections, right-wing media are echoing the Supreme Court's blow to the VRA, misrepresenting Shelby County as something other than an attack on the American right to vote.

Fox News host Jon Scott, in a Happening Now segment leading off Fox's coverage of the decision, chose to trivialize and confuse the radical decision as "the president took another shot you might say, a bit of a smackdown" by the Supreme Court. The consequences stretch much further than that.

Contrary to this horserace description, the VRA has never been a political manifestation of the executive. The VRA is rather Congress' chosen bipartisan method to effectuate the right to vote in the Fifteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, repeatedly updated and reauthorized because of incessant and ongoing voter suppression, and upheld as constitutional four separate times by the Supreme Court.

Nevertheless, later in the day, Fox News senior legal analyst Andrew Napolitano continued in the vein of his colleague by astonishingly asserting "nobody is seriously claiming today...that there is systematic efforts on the part of the government in the south to keep people of color from voting."

Instead, right-wing media figures like Rush Limbaugh chose to tout the decision as a victory against people who allegedly discriminate against whites, such as the "civil rights community" that wants "perpetual discrimination."

National Review Online turned to "voter fraud" mythmaker John Fund who made the stunning claim that Shelby County was "actually a victory for civil rights" that only "overturn[ed] a small part" of the VRA. From the NRO:

The Supreme Court's decision today to overturn a small part of the 1965 Voting Rights Act is actually a victory for civil rights. As the court noted, what made sense both in moral and practical terms almost a half century ago has to be approached anew.

Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act forced states that had poor minority registration or turnout numbers in the 1960s to remain in a permanent penalty box from which they were forced to seek Justice Department approval for the most basic of election-law decisions. Its consideration of state requests for election changes was often arbitrary and partisan, as witnessed by the recent smackdown that the DOJ got from a federal court when it tried to block South Carolina's voter ID law.

The rest of the Voting Rights Act remains in place and will be used to ensure minority voting rights.

Fund's description of both the decision and the law is not only inaccurate, it's ridiculous.

The Voting Rights Act was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson in the wake of the bloody attack on voting rights supporters in Selma, Alabama. Because of the repeated and incorrigible voting suppression by states in the south, the Voting Rights Act has a provision - Section 5 - that requires states with a demonstrated history of infringing on voting rights to "preclear" any election changes with the Department of Justice. Although the covered states were originally those that practiced Jim Crow, another provision - Section 4 - contained a flexible formula that allowed these states to "bail out" if they stopped illegally discriminating and could "bail in" new states that suppressed the vote.

Working in tandem, these sections have been extremely effective at preventing voting changes that have an unconstitutional effect of voters of color. They have been repeatedly upheld by the Supreme Court and have been consistently updated and reauthorized by overwhelming bipartisan majorities in Congress, most recently in 2006, because of continued and entrenched voter suppression. In fact, not only has the Department of Justice not suffered "smackdown[s]" in its application of its preclearance powers, as falsely claimed by Fund, it has successfully prevented more than700 illegal attempts at voter suppression since 1982 and its ability to stop similar racial discrimination during the 2012 election cycle was upheld by both conservative and liberal justices.

The right-wing narrative of an inconsequential decision is therefore completely upside down. Sections 4 and 5 are no more a "small part" of the VRA than the equal protection clause is a "small part" of the Fourteenth Amendment. As even Napolitano admitted on Fox Business' Varney & Co., the conservatives in Shelby Countyhave struck down the very "core" of the VRA by invalidating Section 4.

Sadly, the damaging results of Shelby County to fair elections and the American right to vote will be predictable, especially given right-wing media's insistence on pushing the Republican Party's unending efforts at enacting voter ID laws. These laws, rather than "fix" a problem of in-person voter fraud that is "virtually non-existent," instead have been recognized - both intentionally and unintentionally - as blatant forms of voter suppression. After the decision was announced, Texas lost no time in announcing that its racially discriminatory voter ID law, previously blocked by Section 5, is now a requirement.

Thanks to Shelby County, the floodgates for these racially discriminatory laws will now be open and the right to vote for millions of Americans will be at risk in a way that hasn't been seen since Rep. John Lewis (D-GA)and the many other heroes of the civil rights era awoke the conscience of the country to this "deadly wrong," half a century ago. ABC News interviewed a "shocked, dismayed, disappointed" Lewis shortly after Shelby County was announced. From the interview:

"What the Supreme Court did was to put a dagger in the heart of the Voting Rights Act of 1965," Lewis told ABC News. "This act helped liberate not just a people but a nation."

Lewis, 73, who is among the last living leaders of the civil rights movement, called the decision "a very sad moment" for the nation. He stood in his congressional office, surrounded by black-and-white photographs from a bygone era and watched with ABC News as the Supreme Court released its ruling.

"I'm in disbelief that members of the Supreme Court would take this position," Lewis said.

[...]

"President Barack Obama wouldn't be the president of the United States if it hadn't been for the Voting Rights Act of 1965, so we have made progress," Lewis said, but he feared that a weakened Voting Rights Act would allow local election officials "to go back to another period.

"We don't want to go back. I'm shocked, dismayed, disappointed. I take it very personally," Lewis said. "I gave a little blood on that bridge for the right to vote, for the right to participate in a Democratic process."

Supreme Court guts Voting Rights Act

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How The Tea Party Spoiled A GOP Governor’s Plot To Appear Competent

@LOLGOP/The National Memo

Let’s be clear: Michigan’s Republicans can get things done quicky — especially when they’re doing the bidding of their big donors.

Since taking over the governorship and winning a supermajority in the state Senate in 2010, they’ve shifted the tax burden from big business to pensioners and the poor. They’ve cut a billion dollars from education and twice implemented an emergency manager law that replaces local elected officials — almost exclusively in African-American communities – with appointed bureaucrats.

And late in 2012, just after President Obama won the state by more than 9 percent, legislation designed to cripple labor unions supported by Amway heir and one of the state’s largest GOP donors, Rich DeVoss, passed both houses of Michigan’s legislature and was signed into law by Republican governor Rick Snyder in just a few days.

They got all that done. No problem.

But the issue of Medicaid expansion, which could cover 300,000-500,000 poor Michiganders who earn too much to currently qualify for subsidized health care, was left to the last minute — because saving lives and eventually lowering everyone’s health insurance rates just isn’t a priority for Michigan’s Republicans.

It began in February. After his sudden attack on unions made him one of the most vulnerable governors in the nation, Governor Snyder followed fellow Republican swing-state governors Brian Sandoval (R-NV), Jan Brewer (R-AZ) and John Kasich (R-OH) in announcing that he wanted his state to accept Medicaid expansion as offered to states through the Affordable Care Act.

The Tea Partiers who dominated the state legislature opposed expansion as if it were Obama himself and for months, nothing happened. As the end of the legislative session neared without the law the governor needed to give his state and the federal government the six months they would need to implement expansion, Snyder stepped up the pressure. He brought in Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius to beg Republicans to let the $1.5 billion Michiganders will be paying anyway go back into the state’s economy.

This was too much for the Tea Party.

“Governor Snyder has gone too far by seeking help from one of the most polarizing figures in modern history, a representative of the most destructive American President of our history as a nation,” local leaders wrote in a letter and vowed to sit out the governor’s re-election campaign in 2014.

But just days after Arizona’s Brewer overcame Tea Party opposition to pass expansion in her state, Michigan’s House of Representatives finally voted on the “Healthy Michigan” compromise.

About half of the Republican caucus joined Democrats in passing the bill.

Governor Snyder cheered the result and instructed the Senate to finish the deal while he made a week-long trip to Israel.

Of course, as the governor toured the Holy Land, Senate Republicans refused to take a vote.

Many of the same party funders who supported anti-union legislation  – including the Koch brothers’ Americans for Prosperity — came out against Medicaid expansion, encouraging the Tea Partiers who were flooding their reps with calls and visits.

With just hours remaining in the legislative session, Snyder — a former CEO of Gateway computers who ran as “one tough nerd” — flew back to Lansing in order to rally his troops.

And Senate Majority Leader Randy Richardville (R-Monroe) decided to adjourn for two months. He did this knowing the measure likely had the eight Republican votes it needed to pass.

LOL.

Except it isn’t funny at all. Because Republican governors and legislatures are turning down expansion, the Rand Corporation estimates that 19,000 Americans a year will die. And that number doesn’t even factor in the states like Michigan, Ohio and Florida where the governors are being blocked from implementing the program they want.

Smarting from the early end of his travels and his most public defeat as governor,  Snyder held a press conference to denounce his own party.

“Take a vote, not a vacation,” he said.

Democrats blame him for leaving the state at a crucial time. But the fact is, now that the Tea Party machine is fueled by GOP donors,  Snyder praying at the Wailing Wall would probably be as effective as him lobbying Republicans directly.

As someone who had never run for political office before, the governor has no real political constituency. He was elected in 2010 in the Tea Party wave by promising competence over divisiveness.

And the GOP said, “Tough, nerd.”

Recognizing that he’s probably lost, Snyder has taken to saying that he simply wants to resolve the issue, to get it off the agenda, one way or another.

This is what the Tea Party won in 2010, the ability to deny the working poor health care that their state will pay for anyway. And that they get to do it while humiliating a Republican who is trying to seem moderate is just a little bonus.

Rick Snyder is no Jan Brewer. And thanks to the Tea Party, Michigan is now less progressive than Arkansas.

With victories like these, the GOP will become the Whigs (Who? Exactly.)

by Liberal Librarian/The People's View

What does the Supreme Court's decision gutting the 1965 Voting Rights Act mean for the Republican Party? Follow me, if you will. 

Earlier, Spandan wrote an analysis of the decision and how the Democrats should respond to it. Basically, it's an opportunity to do in 2014 what we did in 2012 in the face of voter suppression.

But it's a bit more than that. Much more. To emphasize Spandan's point about demography being destiny: both he and I live in California. Up until Prop 187, the state was more or less reliably Republican, at least in presidential elections. Things were more complex lower down, but the GOP had a lock on our electoral votes. Prop 187 was the galvanizing force which turned a reddish state into pure cerulean blue. How much so? For the first time, Democrats control a two-thirds majority in both houses of the Legislature. And all statewide elected officials are Democrats. The two-thirds majority is big, because that's what you need to pass a budget. No more deals need to be made with the GOP. The governor, Jerry Brown, is from the fiscally conservative wing of the party; but he still supports making needed investments in both physical and human infrastructure, while living within the state's means. And for the first time since the 1990s, the state posted a budget surplus. That's what happens when Democrats run government.

Republicans look at what once was a bulwark and are scared out of their minds that the rest of the country is going that way.California had always been touted as the Shangri-La to which white Midwesterners could retire. In my own city of Los Angeles, we had race-baiting mayor Sam Yorty serving as recently as the late 1960's / early 1970's. Now we've had exactly one Republican mayor in the past 40 years, and he won by being the most moderate of Republicans, and making deals with the Democratic majority on the City Council. Within a generation, with massive foreign immigration, Los Angeles went from being "Indiana on the Pacific" to a true world city, as cosmopolitan and diverse as New York or London.

The Republican brand in California is at an all time low. And, keep in mind, this was down without gerrymandering. California has an independent commission, the California Citizens Redistricting Commission, drawing district lines both on the federal and state levels. So, no gerrymandering means that it will be a wash electorally, right? No. This commission drew the lines which gave Democrats a two-thirds majority in the Legislature, and increased the Democratic representation in the Congressional delegation. Unless Democrats muck it up, Republicans have no future in California. And as goes California, so goes the nation. Our state is the precursor of what the rest of the country will look like. Even Old Confederacy states like Georgia will have a large segment of minority voters, who will likely give their votes to Democrats, and joining with liberal whites will tip the balance of power across the south.


Look at what's happening in TX. Here it was Prop 187; there it will be the attack on women's health and voter ID laws. The mobilization over the abortion bill being filibustered by Democrats, led by Wendy Davis, is something TX hasn't seen in decades. The more white Republicans grasp to preserve their remaining power, the more they will lose. Demography already puts the White House out of their grasp, for the most part. And as in 2012, attempts to suppress the vote for 2014 will propel the Democratic electorate to stand in line for hours and obtain any ID required, especially with OFA as a ready-made organization.

Which brings me to my last point. To all the naysayers who are now wailing that "we will never win another election", I have a few questions: Where have you been for the past 12 years? More specifically, where were you in 2000, when Nader's 3% of the vote was enough to throw Florida into chaos and hand the Presidency to George W. Bush? There is a direct line from November of 2000 to Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito. To pretend otherwise is to ignore history. And where were you in 2010, when the 2008 voters stayed home and handed both the House and state governments across the nation to a radical Republican fringe? There is also a direct line from November 2010 to the SCOTUS ruling. To pretend otherwise is to lie to yourself. And where will you be in 2014? Will you donate to Democratic organizations? Will you drive voters to the polls? Will you make calls? Or will you sit at your computers gnashing your teeth and despairing because the mean nasty Republicans are mean and nasty?

A democracy is only as good as we make it. Without participation, the loudest voices will win. We have to be the loudest voices, voices that make the earth shake. Anything less, and we deserve what we get.

The GOP knows it's heading for history's dustbin. It's time for us to sweep them into it.

Arizona governor: Racial discrimination doesn’t ‘take place any longer’

By Eric W. Dolan/Raw Story

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (R) on Tuesday said the Voting Rights Act had “hampered” the state and was pleased to see a key provision of the civil rights law struck down.

Under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, the U.S. Department of Justice or a federal court is required to preclear laws affecting voters in jurisdictions with a history of racial discrimination. On Tuesday, the Supreme Court struck down Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act, which determined which states must receive preclearance.

When asked why Arizona shouldn’t be required to have its voting laws precleared, Brewer said racial discrimination was no longer a problem in the state.

“I think we were being punished by the Voting Rights Act for indiscretions, bad things that took place decades ago, and those don’t take place any longer,” she told reporters. “We have grown and so it was the right thing to do so I’m pleased.”

The Republican governor said the people of Arizona should “trust” that lawmakers wouldn’t write up racially discriminatory voting laws.

The Department of Justice has filed formal objections to racially discriminatory changes to Arizona law 22 times since 1973.

Watch video, courtesy of AzCentral, below:

[H/T: TPM]

Civil Rights Icon John Lewis Tears Into Supreme Court For Gutting Voting Rights

By Igor Volsky/Think Progress

Civil rights icon Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) urged Congress to enact legislation that would protect the freedom to vote on Tuesday, just hours after the Supreme Court struck down a portion of the Voting Rights Act that stopped discriminatory voting laws from going into effect in areas of the country with histories of disenfranchisement.

In a 5 to 4 opinion written by Chief Justice John Roberts, the Court ruled that Section 4, which establishes the formula that determines which jurisdictions are subject to federal “preclearance” of changes in election laws, is unconstitutional. Congress will now have to decide which areas of the country still deserve additional federal scrutiny.

“These men that voted to strip the Voting Rights Act of its power, they never stood in unmovable lines,” Lewis told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell. “They never had to pass a so-called literacy test. It took us almost 100 years to get where we are today. So will it take another 100 years to fix it, to change it?” he asked. Watch it:

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Congress voted to renew the Voting Rights Act in 1970, 1975, 1982, and 2006, each time with increasingly larger margins. Twenty Republican senators who are still serving in Congress supported re-authorization in 2006 and only 33 members in the House voted against it.

“It is going to be very difficult,” to pass legislation in this Congress, Lewis admitted, “but people said the same thing in 1965.” “I think what happened today with the Supreme Court will motivate hundreds and thousands of people, African American, latino, white, Asian American, Native Americans, men, women, students, to come out. The vote is precious.”

Indeed, in a press conference following the decision, Attorney General Eric Holder noted that federal courts relied on Section 4 of the Act to invalidate discriminatory voter laws in Texas and South Carolina as recently as last year and called on Congress to ensure that everyone’s vote is protected. Since 2010, at least eight of eleven states in the former Confederacy passed voting restrictions and just today, Texas Attorney General announced that the state will move “forward with a controversial voter ID law” in the wake of the ruling.

Progressive groups have kicked off a petition to amend the constitution to “protect our freedom to vote,” building on legislation proposed by Democrats in the House. The measure will have to be approved by Congress and ratified by three-fourths of the states.

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), however, argued that any Congressional action is unlikely, “As long as Republicans have a majority in the House and Democrats don’t have 60 votes in the Senate, there will be no preclearance.” “It is confounding that after decades of progress on voting rights, which have become part of the American fabric, the Supreme Court would tear it asunder,” he said.

“I didn’t think that on that day when President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act, that I would live to see five members of the United States Supreme Court undoing what President Johnson did with those pens,” Lewis added. “We must not forget our past. We must not forget our history. If we forget it, we will repeat it.”

UPDATE

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) told TPM that Congress should act to preserving voting rights: “My experience with John Lewis in Selma earlier this year was a profound experience that demonstrated the fortitude it took to advance civil rights and ensure equal protection for all,” Cantor said in a statement provided to TPM. “I’m hopeful Congress will put politics aside, as we did on that trip, and find a responsible path forward that ensures that the sacred obligation of voting in this country remains protected.”

Cable News Virtually Ignores Obama’s Major Climate Speech

By Annie-Rose Strasser/Think Progress

On Tuesday, President Obama rolled out a plan to cap carbon emissions at existing power plants, improve efficiency standards on automobiles, double the amount of electricity produced with renewables, and lead a global movement to address climate change. But the media virtually ignored it.

All of the three major news networks spent mere minutes on the speech — which ran in total 49 minutes.

While the lack of coverage is shocking enough, perhaps the most astounding media failure of the day was by FOX News, who broke from Obama’s climate speech to interview climate denier Chris Horner. Horner works for the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute, and is largely funded by the oil money, including the Koch Brothers and Exxon-Mobil.

Of course, a media blackout on climate issues is nothing new. Even when outlets cover the devastating and very real affects of a changing climate, they are reluctant to mention “climate change” by name. Recently, the midwest experienced historic flooding, but only 3 percent of coverage used the term. When hurricane Sandy tore its way through New York, literally no newspapers mentioned a climate connection. Perhaps this comes from the shady, and undisclosed, connection between major news outlets and dirty energy interests.

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

Will The Media Acknowledge U.S. Chamber's Sweep Of Supreme Court's Decisions?

 LARA SCHWARTZ/Media Matters For America:

In less than one week, the Supreme Court has issued four decisions immunizing corporate defendants from liability for their wrongdoings and closing the courthouse door to individuals seeking redress. The Court handed victories to the pro-corporate U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which has an unprecedented success rate before the Roberts Court and which filed amicus briefs in all of the cases.

As The Wall Street Journal reported before the Court issued three pro-corporate decisions on June 24:

While business litigants often found themselves on the winning side of cases under the tenure of former Chief Justice William Rehnquist, they have made advances since Chief Justice John Roberts took the helm in 2005.

On June 20, the Court ruled in American Express v. Italian Colors Restaurant that class action waiver provisions would be enforced even if doing so would make it impossible for small businesses to protect their rights under federal law.  In spite of the fact that the decision could have a serious impact on individuals' ability to hold corporations accountable for wrongdoing, media coverage was scant.

On June 24, the Supreme Court handed down three more decisions that roll back individual rights to redress for corporate wrongdoing.

In an opinion by Justice Samuel Alito in Vance v. Ball State University the Court gave made it more difficult for an employee to hold an employer liable for workplace harassment under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  As Justice Alito explained:

Under Title VII, an employer's liability for such harassment may depend on the status of the harasser. If the harassing employee is the victim's co-worker, the employer is liable only if it was negligent in controlling working conditions. In cases in which the harasser is a "super- visor," however, different rules apply.

The majority opinion in Vance defined "supervisor" narrowly, leaving Vance, an African-American woman who sued her employer for creating a racially hostile work environment, without redress.

In her dissent, Justice Ginsburg wrote:

Exhibiting remarkable resistance to the thrust of our prior decisions, workplace realities, and the EEOC's Guidance, the Court embraces a position that relieves scores of employers of responsibility for the behavior of the supervisors they employ.

The Court struck another blow to enforcing civil rights laws with its decision in University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center v. Nassar.  In an opinion by Justice Anthony Kennedy, the Court limited employees' ability to prevail in cases alleging retaliation under Title VII. 

In her dissenting opinion in Nassar, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg drew attention to the Court's results-oriented decision-making in favor of employers: 

In this endeavor, the Court is guided neither by precedent, nor by the aimsof legislators who formulated and amended Title VII. In-deed, the Court appears driven by a zeal to reduce the number of retaliation claims filed against employers.

 Justice Ginsburg also delivered a statement about Vance and Nassar from the bench:

Both decisions dilute the strength of Title VII in ways Congress could not have intended. . . . Today, the ball again lies in Congress' court to correct this Court's wayward interpretations of Title VII.

Finally, the Court ruled against a woman who was severely injured by a generic drug and sued the manufacturer.  In Mutual Pharmaceutical Co. v. Bartlett, the Court ruled that federal law related to pharmaceuticals preempts a plaintiff's right to sue the drug company under state law.  The plaintiff, Karen Bartlett, had suffered severe injuries after she took a generic pain drug.

As Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) noted one week before the Court handed down its decision in Am Ex:

Data on the Supreme Court in recent years shows a heavy pro-corporate tilt.

[...]

Follow this pro-business trend to its logical conclusion, and sooner or later you'll end up with a Supreme Court that functions as a wholly owned subsidiary of the Chamber of Commerce.

These decisions continue the Roberts Court's track record of pro-corporate decisions.  The question is, will the media cover this trend or allow the decisions to go unnoticed?