Politics | Voter.org

The Election Reform That Could Help Republicans in a Swing State

November 1, 2023 state, Republicans, could, Election, Help, reform, swing0 comment

When Governor Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania announced in September that the nation’s largest swing state would implement automatic voter registration, Donald Trump threw a conniption. “Pennsylvania is at it again!” the former president posted on Truth Social, his social-media platform. The switch, Trump said, would be “a disaster for the Election of Republicans, including your favorite President, ME!” Trump’s panic is consistent with his (baseless) view that any reforms designed to increase voter turnout, such as expanding mail balloting and early voting, are part of a Democratic conspiracy to rig…

Dean Phillips Has a Warning for Democrats

October 28, 2023 Democrats, Phillips, Warning, Dean0 comment

This article was featured in One Story to Read Today, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a single must-read from The Atlantic, Monday through Friday. Sign up for it here. To spend time around Dean Phillips, as I have since his first campaign for Congress in 2018, is to encounter someone so earnest as to be utterly suspicious. He speaks constantly of joy and beauty and inspiration, beaming at the prospect of entertaining some new perspective. He allows himself to be interrupted often—by friends, family, staffers—but rarely interrupts them,…

Calls for a Cease-Fire—But Then What?

October 24, 2023 calls, CeaseFire—But0 comment

The protest began with a prayer. Several thousand Muslims knelt in rows before the Capitol building yesterday afternoon, their knees resting on the woven rugs they’d brought from home. Women here and men over there, with onlookers to the side. Seen from the Speaker’s Balcony, this ranked congregation would have looked like colorful stripes spanning the grassy width of the National Mall. “We are witnessing, before our eyes, the slaughter of thousands of people on our streets,” Omar Suleiman, the imam who led the prayer, had said beforehand. “We are…

The Threat to Democracy Is Coming From Inside the U.S. House

October 20, 2023 Inside, U.S., House, from, Threat, coming, Democracy0 comment

Representative Jim Jordan may or may not break down the last few Republican holdouts who blocked his election as House speaker yesterday. But the fact that about 90 percent of the House GOP conference voted to place him in the chamber’s top job marks an ominous milestone in the Republican Party’s reconfiguration since Donald Trump’s emergence as its central figure. The preponderant majority of House Republicans backing Jordan is attempting to elevate someone who not only defended former President Trump’s efforts to subvert the 2020 presidential election but participated in…

Black Success, White Backlash

October 16, 2023 black, Success, backlash, White0 comment

This article was featured in One Story to Read Today, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a single must-read from The Atlantic, Monday through Friday. Sign up for it here. For more than half a century, I have been studying the shifting relations between white and Black Americans. My first journal article, published in 1972, when I was a graduate student at the University of Chicago, was about Black political power in the industrial Midwest after the riots of the late 1960s. My own experience of race relations in…

The Israeli Crisis Is Testing Biden’s Core Foreign-Policy Claim

October 12, 2023 crisis, Claim, Israeli, ForeignPolicy, CORE, Testing, Biden's0 comment

President Joe Biden’s core foreign-policy argument has been that his steady engagement with international allies can produce better results for America than the impulsive unilateralism of his predecessor Donald Trump. The eruption of violence in Israel is testing that proposition under the most difficult circumstances. The initial reactions of Biden and Trump to the attack have produced exactly the kind of personal contrast Biden supporters want to project. On Tuesday, Biden delivered a powerful speech that was impassioned but measured in denouncing the Hamas terror attacks and declaring unshakable U.S.…