While Senate Republicans strategize about how to protect Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh from sexual assault allegations, the Violence Against Women Act is still on track to expire on Sunday. The Senate has passed a short-term extension in its spending bill keeping the government open past the end of the month, but the House has yet to act. VAWA is supposed to be included in the House short-term spending bill, kicking the can down the road another two months, but while that’s better news than if the law expired altogether, it’s not great news:
“Republicans’ decision to include only a short-term VAWA reauthorization in the must-pass minibus spending bill is nothing short of an abdication of our responsibilities to women in our country,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi wrote in a letter to Speaker Paul D. Ryan on Sept. 17.
Even some Republicans have come forward to press for a full reauthorization or at least a longer-term extension. But Republican leadership is keeping VAWA where it keeps most issues of concern to women: on the back burner. Unless, of course, the issue involves protecting a powerful man from facing consequences for his treatment of women, and in those cases, Republicans usually have the “of concern to women” part exactly backward.
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