Tag: GOP voter suppression

The Memo: Politics upended as top Republicans slam corporate America

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Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has lashed out at corporations involving themselves in politics this week — a development that makes it seem as if politics has entered an alternative reality.

For his entire career, McConnell has been assiduous in courting big business and has been a staunch defender of corporate interests.

He has been a stalwart opponent of campaign finance reform and, roughly a decade ago, expressed approval of the Supreme Court’s decision in the Citizens United case. The court’s 2010 ruling bestowed upon corporations many of the rights to free speech enjoyed by individual citizens and loosened restrictions on political donations. Continue reading.

GOP proposals attempt to change how local officials conduct elections

WASHINGTON — Critics of Georgia’s new election law have focused on the new voter ID requirements, its ban on giving water and food to voters waiting in line, and its shortened timeframe for any runoff.

But the law also contains a less-noticed but much more controversial — and even radical — provision.

It curtails the authority of local elections officials and the state’s elected secretary of state — even though all of them performed their duties in 2020, and even though Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger resisted Donald Trump’s plea to find him 11,780 votes so he could carry the state. Continue reading.

Republican battle with MLB intensifies

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Republicans are spoiling for a high-profile fight with MLB as they ramp up pressure on the league’s commissioner to reverse a decision to pull the All-Star Game from Atlanta over Georgia’s new voting law.

GOP lawmakers are publicly scrutinizing Commissioner Rob Manfred’s membership at Georgia’s exclusive Augusta National Golf Club and threatening to take away MLB’s long-held antitrust exemption.

The fight is quickly spreading to other states as well, with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) saying he won’t throw out the first pitch at the Texas Rangers’ home opener after MLB adopted “what has turned out to be a false narrative about Georgia’s election law reforms.” Continue reading.

Republicans ramp up attacks on corporations over Georgia voting law, threaten ‘consequences’

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Republicans are attacking corporations over their decision to condemn the controversial Georgia voting law, part of the party’s embrace of the populism espoused by President Donald Trump even as it creates tensions with traditional allies in the business community.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Monday accused corporations of siding with Democrats’ portrayal of the law as the new Jim Crow, which he called an attempt to “mislead and bully the American people.” He argued that it would expand, not restrict, voter access to the polls, and his statement included a threat of unspecified “serious consequences” if companies continued to stand opposite Republicans on a variety of issues.

“From election law to environmentalism to radical social agendas to the Second Amendment, parts of the private sector keep dabbling in behaving like a woke parallel government,” McConnell said in his statement. “Corporations will invite serious consequences if they become a vehicle for far-left mobs to hijack our country from outside the constitutional order.” Continue reading.

BUSTED: Trump called for a boycott against Coca-Cola — but photos show he’s still drinking it

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Donald Trump’s Diet Coke addiction is well documented in history. His need to drink so many sodas was so intense that he apparently forced the White House to install a button on his desk he could hit when he wanted the beverage.

Trump announced his support for the state of Georgia and its voter suppression bill. He also announced his support to boycott Coca-Cola, Delta and Major League Baseball for their opposition to the bill. 

In a release, Trump said “radical left Democrats” have threatened to boycott products, and the left is “going big time with WOKE CANCEL CULTURE.” So, he ordered the three major companies be “canceled.” Continue reading.

Corporations gave over $50M to voting restriction backers

WASHINGTON — When executives from Coca-Cola and Delta Air Lines spoke out against Georgia’s new voting law as unduly restrictive last week, it seemed to signal a new activism springing from corporate America. 

But if leaders of the nation’s most prominent companies are going to reject lawmakers who support restrictive voting measures, they will have to abruptly reverse course.

State legislators across the country who have pushed for new voting restrictions, and also seized on former President Donald Trump’s baseless claims of election fraud, have reaped more than $50 million in corporate donations in recent years, according to a new report by Public Citizen, a Washington-based government watchdog group. Continue reading.

HP, Dow, Under Armour among nearly 200 companies speaking out against voting law changes in Texas, other states

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After Georgia, voting rights activists call for corporate pushback against proposed voting bills in Texas and dozens of other states.

Nearly 200 companies on Friday joined in a strong statement against proposals that threaten to restrict voting access in dozens of states, in a further sign of corporate willingness to speak out on social justice issues.

As Major League Baseball announced that it will be moving this summer’s All-Star Game out of Atlanta in response to the passage of Georgia’s restrictive voting law, executives from at least 193 companies — including Dow, HP, Twitter and Estée Lauder — urged the protection of voting rights across the country.

“There are hundreds of bills threatening to make voting more difficult in dozens of states nationwide,” executives wrote in the statement, which also included signatures from the CEOs of Under Armour, Salesforce and ViacomCBS. Continue reading.

Can GOP Autocracy Outlaw American Democracy?

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Hey, you, get away from those polling places! No trespassing! We don’t want your kind here! Scram!

How’s that for a winning political message? It is stupid, shameful and ultimately self-defeating, yet being blatantly anti-democratic and anti-voter is the official electoral strategy being enthusiastically embraced nationwide by Republican officials and operatives. Admitting that they can’t get majorities to vote for their collection of corporate lackeys, conspiracy theorists and bigoted old white guys, the GOP hierarchy’s Great Hope is crude repression — rigging the rules to shove as many Democratic voters as possible out of our elections.

They’re banking on a blitz of bureaucratic bills they’re now trying to ram through nearly every state legislature, using government red tape and the iron fist of government autocracy to intimidate, divert and otherwise deny eligible voters the ability to exercise their most fundament democratic right. The main targets of the GOP’s vote thieves are people of color, but they’re also pushing measures to keep students, senior citizens, union households and poor communities from voting. Continue reading.

Election expert pinpoints ‘the most sinister’ part of Georgia’s voting law that’s flying under the radar

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Georgia’s new voter suppression bill, which was signed into law by Republican Gov. Brian Kemp on Thursday, has been slammed by its critics for the many ways in which it will make voting more difficult in the Peach State. But journalist Ari Berman, during a Thursday night appearance on MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show,” zeroed in on what he considers the most disturbing part of the law: the fact that it gives Republican state officials in Georgia the power to take control of local election operations.

Maddow asked Berman, “If this law had been in place in Georgia in November 2020, when Trump came in and leaned on Georgia Republicans…. and said, ‘I need to have won Georgia — can you make that happen?’…. would they have been able to use Georgia law? Would they have been able to do it — do what Trump demanded, if this law had been in place?”

Berman responded, “Yes, if this law had been in place, Donald Trump absolutely might have succeeded in overturning the election in Georgia because his biggest Republican critic in Georgia was the secretary of state, (Brad Raffensperger)…. If the Republican legislature in Georgia had wanted to overturn the will of the voters, they could have done that through control of the State Board of Elections and through leaning on county board of elections. And this is why they have made this such a big part of the bill.” Continue reading.

Biden: Georgia law is ‘Jim Crow in the 21st century’

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President Biden on Friday sharply criticized a new restrictive voting law passed in Georgia, accusing the state’s Republicans of rushing to enact an “un-American law to deny people the right to vote.”

“This law, like so many others being pursued by Republicans in statehouses across the country is a blatant attack on the Constitution and good conscience,” Biden said in a statement issued by the White House Friday afternoon.

“This is Jim Crow in the 21st century. It must end. We have a moral and constitutional obligation to act,” he continued. Continue reading.