Latest Stories By Amy Sherman

In a speech on voting rights in Philadelphia, President Joe Biden vowed that his administration would fight back against new voting restrictions pushed by allies of former President Donald Trump. State legislators are now engaged in a “broad assault against voting,” Biden said July 13. Among the threats he cited were efforts to move power […]

It started with a plea from the Republican governors of Texas and Arizona. “We respectfully but urgently request that you send all available law enforcement resources to the border in defense of our sovereignty and territorial integrity,” Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas and Gov. Doug Ducey of Arizona wrote June 10 in a letter to […]

If the Senate fails to pass voting rights legislation this week, as expected, it may not mean the end of federal election law changes this year. Democrats are already mulling several alternative strategies to protect voting rights nationwide.  If they fail to act at all, states will continue to hold the agenda-setting power for voting […]

Republicans in Arizona are still pushing the myth that President Joe Biden stole the 2020 election — a falsehood that ultimately culminated in the Jan. 6 violent attack on the U.S. Capitol. The falsehood lives on in the review of about 2.1 million ballots in Maricopa County, Arizona, launched in April. A report on its […]

Former President Donald Trump recently released a statement claiming he was “right about everything” that critics said he was wrong on. Is he right about being right?  We looked through the 10 points in Trump’s June 12 statement and found that in some cases what he claims is unproven or in dispute, in a few […]

Speaking before North Carolina Republicans, former President Donald Trump on June 5 rehashed a number of falsehoods about the 2020 election that we’ve heard before. He claimed that Democrats used “mail-in ballots to steal an election.” That’s wrong. Democrats did not steal the election. Trump lost, and Joe Biden won. There is no evidence of […]

A series of states have passed restrictive voting laws recently in the wake of Donald Trump’s loss. While Texas Democrats walked out  to prevent passage of a bill there, the new voting law in Florida passed easily with Republican support in late April. While Florida’s election officials and statewide leaders praised the November election as […]

Thousands of people protested in cities and towns across the U.S., day after day and night after night, demanding racial justice and police reform. George Floyd’s death on May 25, 2020, launched one of the loudest, most sustained national calls for lawmakers to reexamine decades-long practices that outraged critics say allow police to avoid accountability. […]

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, is pushing forward on a reworked civics education curriculum for K-12. For DeSantis, the new plan is as much on what it bans, as what it promotes. “Let me be clear, there’s no room in our classrooms for things like critical race theory,” DeSantis said at a March press […]

Since Jan. 6, calls for an independent commission to investigate Capitol insurrection have been growing. Recently, all House Democrats and 35 Republicans voted in favor of a bill that sets up a commission similar to the one that investigated 9/11. After House passage, the measure moved to the Senate, where Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., […]

As the U.S. Postal Service struggled and COVID-19 raged, millions of 2020 voters chose to return their mail ballots using official ballot drop boxes rather than risk unreliable mail delivery or crowded spaces. These drop boxes — often big, sturdy, slotted, steel receptacles — had been used in blue and red states for about two decades […]

The Republican Party’s crusade to enforce allegiance to former President Donald Trump claimed its most high-profile victim this week when Rep. Liz Cheney, Wyoming’s reliably conservative congresswoman and its sole representative in the House, was stripped of her leadership position in a swift voice vote. Her ouster provides a fresh answer to the question: Just […]