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For Immediate Release
August, 05 2020, 12:00am EDT
Contact:
Email:,press@civilrights.org,Phone: (202) 869-0398
Advocates Call on Congress to Fund Elections Immediately
Rep. Sewell, Calif. Secretary of State Padilla join civil rights leaders to mark the 55th anniversary of Voting Rights Act
WASHINGTON
Civil rights advocates hosted a press briefing call today to outline the need for immediate election funding in the new COVID-19 relief package to protect the integrity of the general election. Speakers included Rep. Terri Sewell and Calif. Secretary of State Alex Padilla, as well as leaders from The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, NAACP, American Association of People with Disabilities, and the Georgia Coalition for the People's Agenda.
To hear a recording of the call, click here.
"The Senate must immediately include $3.6 billion in the next COVID-19 package to ensure safeguards for our democracy during the pandemic and beyond. That includes mandating that states establish vital protections for voters and a range of options to ensure every person can safely cast a ballot in a way that works for them. Without a functional democracy in which everyone is included, heard, and represented, we cannot make real progress on civil and human rights issues like affordable health care, fair wages, educational equity, and justice reform," said Vanita Gupta, president and CEO, The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.
Congresswoman Terri Sewell said, "It would be impossible to commemorate the 55th anniversary of the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 without acknowledging the passing of my dear friend and voting rights hero, John Lewis. Not only must Mitch McConnell take up and pass the John Robert Lewis Voting Rights Act of 2020 -- which has been sitting on his desk since December 2019 -- he ought to support the VoteSafe Act that requires states to permit no-excuse mail-in absentee voting for the 2020 elections and an early in-person voting period of at least 20 days for the 2020 elections. Ensuring free and fair elections is the cornerstone of our democracy and, right now, too many Americans are being left behind. We must recommit ourselves to John Lewis' vision of America, and restore the promise of voter equality!
"Congressman John Lewis -- and many others -- marched and bled so that every citizen could exercise their right to vote. This November, we must not force American citizens into having to choose between exercising their right to vote or protecting their health and that of their loved ones. We must honor the spirit of Congressman Lewis and the spirit of the Voting Rights Act by offering voters safe options for casting their ballot, beginning with no-excuse vote-by-mail. And Congress must act to provide the funding necessary for state and local elections officials to administer accessible, secure, and safe elections," said Alex Padilla, California secretary of state.
"The onslaught against protections for voters of color continues to intensify as we move closer to November," said Derrick Johnson, president and CEO, NAACP. "Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic and civil unrest across the country, it has been made abundantly clear that the people's voice and vote require immediate restoration. The disintegration of voting rights has disproportionately affected Black voters; we must work diligently to curtail the consequences and place the power back in the hands of the electorate."
Maria Town, president and CEO, American Association of People with Disabilities, said, "People with disabilities frequently encounter barriers to our participation in the democratic process -- from inaccessible polling places to inoperable accessible voting machines to discriminatory voter ID laws. During the pandemic, a shift to vote by mail presents additional barriers and will not be accessible to many in the disability community. States need funding to ensure they can execute accessible vote by mail programs and maintain safe, accessible and fair in person early and election day voting."
"As evidenced by the many problems with vote by mail, lack of poll workers, insufficient polling locations, equipment problems, and long lines that happened in the June 9 primary in Georgia, it is imperative that Congress provide funding for elections in November so that both voters and election officials have sufficient personal protective equipment and voting can be conducted in a safe, accessible, and secure manner. A few of the critical needs for funding are drop boxes, recruitment of poll workers, scanners that can handle large numbers of paper ballots, postage for vote by mail ballots, increased funding for the postal service to be able to deliver voters' ballots in a timely manner, and security of voting systems," said Helen Butler, executive director, the Georgia Coalition for the People's Agenda.
In addition, to commemorate the 55th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act, the following groups are joining The Leadership Conference in engaging in a day of action tomorrow, August 6, as they continue advocating for congressional funding to ensure safe and accessible elections this year:
ACLU
Action Group Network
ADL (Anti-Defamation League)
Alaskans Take A Stand
American Federation of Teachers
Americans for Democratic Action (ADA)
Andrew Goodman Foundation
Arab American Institute
Black Women Rising
Blue Future
Brady
Campus Vote Project
Center for American Progress
Center for Disability Rights
Clean Elections Texas
Climate Reality Action Fund
Color Of Change
Common Cause
Communications Workers of America
Daily Kos
Declaration for American Democracy
Demcast USA
Democracy 21
Democracy Initiative
End Citizens United / Let America Vote Action Fund
Franciscan Action Network
Generation Progress
Greenpeace USA
HAZMAT America
Impact Fund
In Our Own Voice: Black Women's Reproductive Justice Agenda
Indivisible
Lawyers for Good Government
Let Nevadans Vote
Little Lobbyists
MALDEF
Missouri Voter Protection Coalition
Movement Advancement Project
NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc.
National Association of Social Workers
National Council of Jewish Women
National Urban League Young Professionals
NETWORK Lobby for Catholic Social Justice
Oxfam America
PFAW
Planned Parenthood Action Fund
Poligon Education Fund
Progressive Turnout Project
Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism
Service Employees International Union (SEIU)
Stand Up America
Texas Progressive Action Network
UnidosUS
Union of Concerned Scientists
United Methodist Church - General Board of Church and Society
When We All Vote
YWCA USA
The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights is a coalition charged by its diverse membership of more than 200 national organizations to promote and protect the civil and human rights of all persons in the United States. Through advocacy and outreach to targeted constituencies, The Leadership Conference works toward the goal of a more open and just society - an America as good as its ideals.
(202) 466-3311LATEST NEWS
Slamming 'Fascist Tactics' of Trump, Mahmoud Khalil Fights Judge's Deportation Decision
A member of his legal team noted that "the immigration prosecutor, judge, and jailer all answer to Donald Trump, and that one man is eager to weaponize the system in a desperate bid to silence Mahmoud Khalil."
Sep 17, 2025
Mahmoud Khalil and his lawyers on Wednesday affirmed their plan to fight an immigration court ruling that paves the way for his deportation, months after plainclothes agents accosted the lawful permanent resident and his US citizen wife outside their home in New York City.
"It is no surprise that the Trump administration continues to retaliate against me for my exercise of free speech. Their latest attempt, through a kangaroo immigration court, exposes their true colors once again," Khalil said in a statement.
"When their first effort to deport me was set to fail, they resorted to fabricating baseless and ridiculous allegations in a bid to silence me for speaking out and standing firmly with Palestine, demanding an end to the ongoing genocide," he continued. "Such fascist tactics will never deter me from continuing to advocate for my people's liberation."
While President Donald Trump has a broad goal of mass deportations, his administration has targeted Khalil, a former Columbia University graduate student with a valid green card, and other foreign scholars in the United States for criticizing Israel's US-backed genocide in the Gaza Strip.
"We have witnessed a constant lack of humanity and allegiance to the law throughout proceedings in this farcical Louisiana immigration court."
Federal agents arrested Khalil, an Algerian citizen of Palestinian descent, in March. He wasn't released from a federal immigration facility until June. During his 104-day detention, his wife, Noor Abdalla, gave birth to their son. Over the past six months, he has been a part of multiple legal battles: his challenge to being deported in a Louisiana immigration court; a civil rights case before US District Judge Michael Farbiarz in New Jersey; and a fight for $20 million in damages.
In a Wednesday letter to Farbiarz—an appointee of former President Joe Biden who has already blocked his deportation while the civil rights case proceeds—Khalil's legal team explained that on September 12, Jamee Comans, an immigration judge (IJ), "issued three separate orders denying petitioner's (1) motion for an extension of time, (2) motion to change venue, and (3) application for a waiver, without conducting an evidentiary hearing."
"In denying petitioner's request for a waiver absent a hearing, as well as his motions for extension of time and for change of venue, the IJ ordered petitioner removed to Algeria or Syria... while reaffirming her decisions denying petitioner any form of relief from removal," the letter says. Khalil now has 30 days from September 12 to start an appeal with the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA).
Noting "statements targeting petitioner by name for retaliation and deportation made by the president and several senior US government officials," Khalil's lawyers "have ample reason to expect that the BIA process—and an affirmance of the IJ's determination—will be swift," the letter continued. "Upon affirmance by the BIA, petitioner will lose his lawful permanent resident status, including his right to reside and work in the United States, and have a final order of removal against him."
"Compared to other courts of appeals, including those in the 3rd and 2nd Circuits, the 5th Circuit almost never grants stays of removal to noncitizens pursuing petitions for review of BIA decisions. As a result, the only meaningful impediment to petitioner's physical removal from the United States would be this court's important order prohibiting removal during the pendency of his federal habeas case," the letter points out, referring to Farbiarz's previous intervention.
Khalil is represented by Dratel & Lewis, the Center for Constitutional Rights, Creating Law Enforcement Accountability & Responsibility (CLEAR), Van Der Hout LLP, Washington Square Legal Services, and the national, New Jersey, New York, and Louisiana arms of the ACLU.
"When the immigration prosecutor, judge, and jailer all answer to Donald Trump, and that one man is eager to weaponize the system in a desperate bid to silence Mahmoud Khalil, a US permanent resident whose only supposed sin is that he stands against an ongoing genocide in Palestine, this is the result," CLEAR co-director Ramzi Kassem said Wednesday. "A plain-as-day First Amendment violation that also puts on sharp display the rapidly free-falling credibility of the entire US immigration system."
In addition to calling out the Trump administration for its unconstitutional conduct, Khalil's lawyers expressed some optimism.
"We have witnessed a constant lack of humanity and allegiance to the law throughout proceedings in this farcical Louisiana immigration court, and the immigration judge's September 12 decision is just the most recent example of what occurs when the system requires an arbiter that is anything but neutral to do the administration's bidding," said Johnny Sinodis, a partner at Van Der Hout LLP. "As with other illegal efforts by the government, this too will be challenged and overcome."
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"The Trump administration has taken a sledgehammer to our capacity to hold sex offenders to account and undermined support and services for crime victims," said Rep. Jamie Raskin.
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Congressional Democrats and victim advocates took aim Tuesday at President Donald Trump's gutting of federal programs combatcing human trafficking, belying campaign promises to aggressively target perpetrators of such crimes.
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, on Tuesday released an 18-page memo "detailing how the Trump administration has repeatedly sided with sex offenders and human traffickers over their victims—often rewarding sexual predators and elevating them to positions of power within the US government while crippling key offices, programs, and grants that combat sex crimes and support survivors."
This seemingly flies in the face of Trump's "Agenda 47" campaign platform, which vowed to aggressively crack down on human traffickers, and the groundswell of Trump supporters' unheeded calls for action and accountability in the Jeffrey Epstein case. Fighting child sex trafficking—both real and imagined—has long been an issue of passionate importance for the MAGA movement.
"Trump began his second term promising to 'make America safe again.' But safe for whom? Law-abiding citizens or dangerous criminals?"
Noting that "Trump and his supporters have gone from demanding the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files to doing everything in their power to prevent their release, openly tampering with potential witness Ghislaine Maxwell and calling the matter a 'Democrat hoax,'" the memo—titled Epstein Is the Tip of the Iceberg—begins by asking: "Trump began his second term promising to 'make America safe again.' But safe for whom? Law-abiding citizens or dangerous criminals?"
The memo notes that in the past seven months, Trump has:
- Gutted federal offices designed to combat human trafficking, domestic violence, and sexual violence against women and children.
- Terminated the programs and grants designed to support the victims and survivors of human trafficking networks and crimes of sexual violence.
- Made it systematically harder for law enforcement to prosecute sex offenders and dismantle sex trafficking networks.
- Repeatedly used the powers of his office to pardon individual sexual predators and give official protection, aid, and comfort to accused rapists and child pornographers.
- Rewarded numerous individuals who have a personal history of sexual predation and domestic violence by appointing them to his administration and elevating them to senior positions within the government.
Senior administration officials including Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr, Education Secretary Linda McMahon, and former de facto Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) chief Elon Musk have been accused of either committing or enabling sexual crimes or misconduct.
Trump has also been found civilly liable for sexual abuse and has been accused of rape, sexual assault, or harassment by more than two dozen women.
"President Trump in office has repeatedly taken the side of criminal sex predators and violent abusers against their victims, and this pattern goes well beyond his strenuous efforts to bury the Epstein Files," Raskin said Tuesday in a statement. "Trump is systematically dismantling the offices and programs we rely on to combat human trafficking and prosecute sex crimes."k
"Our memo shows how the Trump administration has taken a sledgehammer to our capacity to hold sex offenders to account and undermined support and services for crime victims," the congressman added. "Far from aiding victims and survivors, President Trump consistently sides with their abusers. His all-of-government policy to aid traffickers and sex criminals and abandon survivors has made American women dramatically less safe."
Following whistleblower claims "that the Trump administration concealed information about the safety of unaccompanied Guatemalan children they tried to deport in the dead of night," Sens. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) and Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) on Tuesday called for an oversight hearing to examine the US Office of Refugee Resettlement's "mass child deportation efforts and apparent lies under oath."
"The urgent call for a hearing comes after the disclosure alleged that at least 30 of 327 unaccompanied Guatemalan children the administration attempted to deport without due process 'have indicators of being a victim of child abuse, including death threats, gang violence, human trafficking, and/or have expressed fear of return to Guatemala,'" Padilla's office said in a statement Wednesday.
An investigation published Wednesday by The Guardian also detailed how the Trump administration "has aggressively rolled back efforts across the federal government to combat human trafficking."
Jean Bruggeman, executive director of the advocacy group Freedom Network USA, told The Guardian that “it’s been a widespread and multipronged attack on survivors that leaves all of us less safe and leaves survivors with few options."
Numerous critics have warned of the dangers of Trump's diversion of federal resources and personnel dedicated to combating human trafficking to enforcing mass deportations.
As Raskin told Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Kash Patel during a charged Wednesday hearing, "When Trump decided that rounding up immigrants with no criminal records was more important that preventing crimes like human trafficking of women and girls, drug dealing, terrorism, and fraud, you ordered FBI’s 25 largest field offices to divert thousands of agents away from chasing down violent criminals, sex traffickers, fraudsters, and scammers to help carry out Trump’s extreme immigration crackdown."
"You ordered hundreds of FBI agents to pore over all the Epstein files," Raskin said, "but not to look for more clues about the money network or the network of human traffickers, pulled these agents from their regular counterterrorism, counterintelligence, or anti-drug trafficking duties to work around the clock, some of them sleeping on their office desks, to conduct a frantic search to make sure Donald Trump’s name and image were flagged and redacted wherever they appeared."
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"Trump promised to lower prices on day one and be 'the champion of the American worker,' yet his economic agenda has delivered higher prices, a stalled job market, and sluggish growth," said another economist.
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As working-class Americans contend with a stalled labor market and rising prices under US President Donald Trump, economist Alex Jacquez warned Wednesday that the Federal Reserve's "small rate cut will do little to address Trump's economic turmoil."
"Driven by a stagnant job market, the Fed's move offers no real relief to American households, consumers, or workers—all of whom are paying the price for Trump's economic mismanagement," said Jacquez, who previously served as a special assistant to former President Barack Obama and is now chief of policy and advocacy at the think tank Groundwork Collaborative. "No interest rate tweak can undo that damage."
Jacquez's colleague Liz Pancotti, managing director of policy and advocacy at Groundwork, similarly said Wednesday that "President Trump promised to lower prices on day one and be 'the champion of the American worker,' yet his economic agenda has delivered higher prices, a stalled job market, and sluggish growth. He's leaving families and workers high and dry—and no move by the Fed will save them."
The president has been pressuring the US central bank to slash its benchmark interest rate, taking aim at Fed Chair Jerome Powell, whom Trump appointed during his first term. Powell remained in the post under former Democratic President Joe Biden.
The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) voted to lower the federal funds rate by 0.25 percentage points, from 4.25-4.5% to 4-4.25%. It is the first cut since December 2024, and Powell said the decision reflects a "shift in the balance of risks" to the Fed's dual mandate of price stability and maximum employment.
Daniel Hornung, who held economic policy roles during the Obama and Biden administrations and is now a policy fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, said in a statement that "beyond the Fed's September cut, the main story from the Fed's projections is a cloudy outlook for the economy and monetary policy over the rest of the year."
The cut came after Trump ally Stephen Miran was sworn in to a seat on the Fed's Board of Governors on Tuesday—which made this FOMC gathering "the most politically charged meeting in recent memory," as Politico reported.
The new appointee "was the only Fed official to dissent from the decision," the outlet noted. "Miran called for twice as large a cut in borrowing costs, and the Fed's economic projections suggest that one official—likely Miran—would support jumbo-sized rate cuts at the next two meetings as well—an estimate that is conspicuously lower than the other 18 estimates."
Hornung highlighted that "an equal number of members favor hiking, no further cuts, or one cut to the number of members who favor two more cuts, and one outlier member—presumably, President Trump's current Council of Economic Advisers chair—favors the equivalent of five cuts."
"Besides Miran’s outlier status, which sends concerning signals about continued Fed independence," he added, "the wide range of views on the committee is a reaction to the real risks that tariff and immigration policy pose to both sides of the Fed's mandate."
Federal immigration agents across the United States are working to deliver on Trump's promised mass deportations, despite warnings of the human and economic impacts of rounding up immigrants living and working in the country. The president is also engaged in a global trade war, imposing tariffs that have driven up prices for a range of goods.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) announced last week that overall inflation rose by 2.9% year-over-year in August and core inflation rose by 3.1%. Jacquez said at the time: "Make no mistake, inflation is accelerating and American families continue to feel price pressures across the board from children's clothing, to groceries, to autos. Rate cuts will not ease the inescapable financial pain that the Trump economy is inflicting on households across the nation."
That came less than a week after BLS revealed in its first jobs report since Trump fired the agency's commissioner that the US economy added only 22,000 jobs in August, and the number of jobs created in July and June were once again revised downward.
Jacquez had called that report "more evidence that Trump’s promises to working families have fallen flat."
Recent polling has also exposed how working people are suffering under Trump's second administration. One survey—conducted by Data for Progress for Groundwork and Protect Borrowers—shows that "American families are trapped in a cycle of debt," with 55% of likely voters reporting at least some credit card debt, and another 18% saying they “had this type of debt in the past, but not anymore.”
The poll, released last week, also found that over half have or previously had car loan or medical debt, more than 40% have or had student debt, and over 35% are or used to be behind on utility payments. Additionally, nearly 30% have or had “buy now, pay later” debt through options such as Afterpay or Klarna.
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