The Violence Against Women Act lapsed in February, after it was left out of a funding bill that ended the partial government shutdown. The House passed a reauthorization of it back in early April, and since then it's been languishing in Moscow Mitch McConnell's legislative graveyard.
One of the very few women in the Senate Republican conference happens to be up for reelection in 2020 and happens to not be terribly comfortable about it. That's Iowa's Sen. Joni Ernst, who spent much of her last week before Thanksgiving recess blocking Democratic efforts to bring the bill to the floor. That's because she's been working on own version of the bill, part of her reelection campaign. One that's very friendly to McConnell's masters at the NRA and very unfriendly to Native and LGBTQ women.
The House reauthorization contains a provision that eliminates the "boyfriend loophole" by expanding a current ban on firearm purchases for all abusive romantic partners. The current ban applies to spouses or formerly married partners convicted of domestic violence or who are under a restraining order. The expansion would include dating or live-in partner who were not legally married. The House bill also makes it explicit that grant money under VAWA can be used by recipients' staff to train how to respond to and stop discrimination against LGBTQ victims of violence.
Ernst's version of the bill does none of these things and makes the law worse in a significant way. It would provide less protection for Native American women from their abusers, weakening tribal courts and infringe on tribal sovereignty by putting restrictions on tribal courts. It rolls back tribes' jurisdiction to prosecute crimes by non-Native people who abuse Native American women on tribal lands. "Tribal courts prosecuting non-Indian defendants already provide the same―if not more―due process rights than state and federal courts," Mary Kathryn Nagle, a partner and counsel at National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center, told HuffPost. "Placing paternalistic restrictions on tribal courts in the name of 'due process' is nothing more than a disguise for prejudice."
Ernst and McConnell made the bill—again, the Violence Against Women Act—unfriendly to women in order to appease the NRA, white supremacists, and anti-LGBTQ bigots. That it would actually endanger more women than the currently (lapsed) version of the bill makes it an absolute non-starter with Democrats and the House. McConnell knows that, and he doesn't care. He's fine, perfectly fine, with the law never being reauthorized.
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