Night Owls is a themed open thread appearing at Daily Kos seven days a week.
Kenny Stancil at Common Dreams writes—'Downright Scary': In 2021 Alone, GOP Introduces 100+ Voter Suppression Bills in 28 States: “”
Since former President Donald Trump failed to reverse the outcome of the 2020 presidential election, Republicans in more than two dozen states have introduced over 100 bills to restrict voting access, an alarming development that voting rights advocates have pointed to as yet another reason for Democrats to abolish the filibuster, an anti-democratic tool currently allowing the GOP minority to block the enactment of a suite of popular pro-democracy reforms.
Mother Jones journalist Ari Berman on Thursday reported on the GOP's ongoing nationwide push to make voting more difficult—particularly for communities of color and other Democratic-leaning constituencies—and in some cases to empower state legislatures to overturn election results. He called state-level Republicans' efforts "a huge scandal that should be getting as much attention as Trump's plot to overturn the election."
Republicans across the country, Berman said, are "weaponizing Trump's lies" about fraud in an attempt to roll back voting rights after last year's historic turnout and expansion of mail-in ballots.
"Democrats have a clear choice," Berman continued. "They can get rid of the filibuster to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act and the For the People Act to stop GOP voter suppression, or they can allow the GOP to undermine democracy for the next decade."
"The stakes," Berman added, "couldn't be higher." That's because, according to an analysis conducted by the Brennan Center for Justice in late January, Republicans at the state level have introduced three times as many bills to chip away at voting rights compared to the same point last year.
Already this year, 106 bills have been introduced in 28 states—including 17 under complete GOP control, where passage is more likely—to undermine access to the franchise. According to the Brennan Center's report, "These proposals primarily seek to: (1) limit mail voting access; (2) impose stricter voter ID requirements; (3) limit successful pro-voter registration policies; and (4) enable more aggressive voter roll purges."
"These bills," the report argues, "are an unmistakable response to the unfounded and dangerous lies about fraud that followed the 2020 election."
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On this date at Daily Kos in 2010—Operation Rescue Offers $10,000 Bounty for Doctors:
We saw how this strategy played out in Kansas, with tragic consequences. Operation Rescue collects "evidence" of wrongdoing by abortion providers. It then lobbies law enforcement to investigate the "evidence." In the case of Dr. Tiller, the organization found its ally in Phill Kline, now under investigation for ethics violations, who spent years investigating and intimidating Dr. Tiller and his clinic. Dr. Tiller was tried and acquitted of all charges, but that didn't stop Operation Rescue from continuing to claim that Dr. Tiller had performed illegal abortions.
When the law fails to hold abortion providers accountable for performing a legal medical procedure, Operation Rescue supplies information to an extremist who appears willing to take the law into his own hands, as Scott Roeder did.
In his murder trial, Dr. Tiller's assassin, Scott Roeder, claimed that his decision to murder Dr. Tiller was, in part, a result of the unsuccessful prosecution of Dr. Tiller.