August, 06 2020, 12:00am EDT
Voting Rights Act Turns 55 and Must be Restored in Honor of John Lewis
Statement of Karen Hobert Flynn, President of Common Cause.
WASHINGTON
The right to vote is the very foundation of our democracy. Born of the horrible injustices and rampant voter suppression of the Jim Crow South, the Voting Rights Act, which turns 55 today, fully protected the right to vote for nearly five decades. That changed when the horribly misguided ruling by the United States Supreme Court in Shelby County v. Holder gutted the Voting Rights Act. In the wake of that decision written by Chief Justice John Roberts, voter suppression has flourished and Americans have been systematically stripped of their ability to cast a ballot in numbers not seen since the Jim Crow era.
It is time to stop that troubling and undemocratic trend and pass a new Voting Rights Act to protect the right of every American to cast a ballot and make their voice heard on Election Day. The House passed the bipartisan Voting Rights Advancement Act (HR 4) in December and it is time for the Senate to follow suit and pass this legislation to protect the franchise. The bill was renamed the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, shortly after the death of the civil rights legend who spent his entire life fighting injustice. It would be a fitting legacy to Rep. Lewis to enact this legislation in his name.
Senators from both sides of the aisle issued statements singing the praises of John Lewis and his lifetime of tireless work to protect the right of every American to cast a ballot. Even Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) was effusive in his praise for Rep. Lewis though McConnell has refused to even allow a vote on H.R. 4. It is time for Senator McConnell and his caucus to allow this bipartisan legislation to move forward. If there was any sincerity in their statements on the death of John Lewis, if their praise was anything more than lip service, they must bring the bill to a vote. They know full well that today Americans are once again being denied the right to vote in huge numbers, in many cases because of the color of their skin. It is time to put a stop to this injustice and once again strengthen the Voting Right Act to protect the franchise as Congress did repeatedly and by overwhelming majorities from 1965 to 2006.
Common Cause is a nonpartisan, grassroots organization dedicated to upholding the core values of American democracy. We work to create open, honest, and accountable government that serves the public interest; promote equal rights, opportunity, and representation for all; and empower all people to make their voices heard in the political process.
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‘Most Convoluted Bullshit I Ever Heard’: Dem Lawmaker Torches Hegseth for Boat Strike Rationale
"With each of these extrajudicial killings, the administration is pirating American values."
Apr 29, 2026
Rep. Bill Keating on Wednesday tore into Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's justifications for US strikes against alleged drug trafficking boats that many legal experts and humans rights organizations consider acts of murder.
During a hearing before the US House Armed Services Committee, Keating (D-Mass.) accused Hegseth of overseeing a lawless killing spree that is damaging the US military's reputation throughout the world.
"With each of these extrajudicial killings, the administration is pirating American values," the Massachusetts Democrat said. "We will continue to investigate this. We will. It'll come forward in the future."
Rep. Bill Keating on Hegseth's justification for the military's extrajudicial killings: "I found no justification. We were given classified information on the second strike. I can't discuss it, but I must tell you, it is the most convoluted bullshit I have ever heard in my life." pic.twitter.com/I8gvGaSMcj
— The Bulwark (@BulwarkOnline) April 29, 2026
Keating then said that, after receiving classified briefings on the administration's boat bombings, he found "no justification" for them whatsoever.
"We were given classified information on the second [boat] strike," Keating said. "I can't discuss it, but I must tell you, it's the most convoluted bullshit I ever heard in my life. This should be public. This is our honor. This is what makes America a difference maker."
Hegseth responded by accusing Keating of leveling "an incredible array of false accusations."
The boat strikes, which have been carried out by US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) since September, have so far killed at least 185 people. The Trump administration has not publicly released any evidence showing the targeted vessels were carrying drugs.
Before the Pentagon under Hegseth's leadership began conducting the lethal boat strikes last year, drug trafficking in international waters was treated as a criminal offense, with law enforcement agencies and the US Coast Guard intercepting boats suspected of carrying drugs and arresting suspects.
Trump’s bombings of boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific have been called “extrajudicial killings” by advocacy groups including Amnesty International.
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Demanding End to Unlawful US-Israeli Attacks, Amnesty Says 'International Community Must Now Draw a Red Line'
"Civilians cannot afford another partial, selective, or short-lived pause that leaves them living in fear and bracing for a repetition of the atrocities they have suffered," said the human rights group's leader.
Apr 29, 2026
A week after blasting US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for carrying out "their conquests for economic and political domination through destruction, suppression, and violence on a massive scale," Amnesty International on Wednesday demanded "an enduring, sustained, and comprehensive regional ceasefire" in the Middle East.
Trump and Netanyahu launched their war on Iran on February 28, with attacks that violated the United Nations Charter's "prohibition on the use of force," noted Amnesty International secretary general Agnès Callamard, "and they triggered unlawful acts by Iranian authorities in retaliation."
"Since then, more than 5,000 people have been killed," she continued, "and millions of civilians across the Middle East have had their lives upended as interrelated conflicts have escalated across the region and civilians and civilian infrastructure have come under attack."
"We are witnessing a continued dangerous erosion of the global international legal order and of respect for international humanitarian law," Callamard warned. She declared that "the international community must now draw a red line: There must be a durable and genuine ceasefire; this requires a full halt in armed hostilities by all parties, across all affected countries."
Amnesty's leader further called for investigations of all crimes and ensuring that "states and individuals are held accountable."
On the first day of the war, the United States' bombings across Iran included an "egregious" strike on a school in Minab that killed at least 155 people, mostly children. As Amnesty pointed out, subsequent US-Israeli attacks have "caused extensive destruction and damage to civilian infrastructure, including power plants, bridges, universities, schools, residential buildings, medical centers, steel factories and petrochemical facilities, endangering the lives and livelihoods of millions and harming the environment."
The strikes on Iran killed at least 3,375 people, and injured another 25,000, while Israel's renewed targeting of Hezbollah in Lebanon killed more than 2,200 and wounded over 7,500. Retaliation from Iran and Hezbollah killed at least 21 civilians in Israel, four Palestinians in the illegally occupied West Bank, and 29 people across the Gulf, including 13 US service members.
"All parties, including the USA, Israel, Iran, and Hezbollah, have launched unlawful attacks displaying a chilling disregard for human life," Callamard said, "while the US president has issued brazen threats to commit war crimes and even genocide, threatening to wipe out 'a whole civilization' in Iran."
Just hours after Trump's genocidal threat against Iran on April 7, the involved parties reached a ceasefire agreement regarding Iran, which has since been extended. Despite Pakistani negotiators' claims that the initial deal was supposed to include Lebanon, Israel ramped up its attacks on that country, killing and wounding over 1,400 people on April 8 alone.
An existing truce was also ultimately reached for Lebanon. However, like a November 2024 deal related to Hezbollah's support for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip suffering a genocidal Israeli assault, and an October 2025 agreement with Hamas in Gaza, Israel has repeatedly violated it.
"The so-called ceasefire agreements reached in Gaza in 2025 and Lebanon in 2024 demonstrably failed to stop Israeli attacks on civilians, with as many as 765 Palestinians killed since then, and near-daily airstrikes and extensive destruction of civilian property in southern Lebanon," said Callamard. Overall, Israel has killed more than 72,000 Palestinians in Gaza since October 2023.
"In a region long scarred by conflict, amidst long-standing impunity for crimes under international law, and the constant threat of renewed violence, civilians cannot afford another partial, selective, or short-lived pause that leaves them living in fear and bracing for a repetition of the atrocities they have suffered," she stressed.
Amnesty described the current ceasefire agreements in the region as "fragile, temporary, and in danger of collapse at any moment."
US-Iran talks are "stalled," and Trump has both maintained a naval blockade over Iranian restrictions on ship traffic through the Strait of Hormuz and signaled that he's willing to resume the war. Just after 4:00 am ET on Wednesday, Trump posted on his Truth Social platform an image created with artificial intelligence that shows him holding a gun, as bombs fall on what appears to be Iran, and wrote: "Iran can't get their act together. They don't know how to sign a nonnuclear deal. They better get smart soon!"
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said last week that his country is "prepared to resume the war" and is "awaiting a green light from the United States." He pledged a "far more lethal" assault that would "push Iran back into a dark age."
Callamard said that "a ceasefire that is not accompanied by long-term solutions that safeguard human rights and address root causes is little more than a temporary patch over a deep wound. This is particularly true in Iran, where the population remains at risk of further atrocities at the hands of the Islamic Republic authorities, and in Lebanon, where civilians face the prospect of renewed conflict, indefinite displacement of civilians, and destruction of their homes."
Alongside her remarks, Amnesty on Wednesday released a brief detailing how "people in Iran are trapped between unlawful US and Israeli attacks and deadly domestic repression." The publication emphasizes the need for not only a ceasefire, but also "international engagement to actively support Iranian civil society calls for a rights-respecting constitution-making process."
As Callamard summarized: "In a country reeling from the combined impact of devastating US and Israeli bombings and state-orchestrated massacres, the risks of atrocity crimes by the Iranian authorities against the people in Iran remain significant. They face the threat of renewed airstrikes and mass killings if the truce collapses and the prospect of a deadly repression and another severe wave of killings by 'trigger-ready' security forces targeting protesters and dissidents they label as 'enemies.'"
"The international community must recognize that Iran's human rights and impunity crisis, now compounded by the US-Israel[i] unlawful attacks and vast suffering of civilians, requires a dual, people-centered diplomatic response," she said. "This means combining efforts to investigate the UN Charter violations, protect civilians, and uphold international humanitarian law with action to prevent atrocity crimes by the Iranian authorities, and support Iranian civil society's calls for a rights-respecting constitution. It also means establishing pathways for international justice, including the UN Security Council's referral of Iran's situation to the International Criminal Court."
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‘We’re Going to Come After You’: Casar Puts Corporate Interests on Notice With Affordability Agenda
“We need to fight against Trump, but we need to do more than that and fight against the big corporations that are screwing you over," says the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.
Apr 29, 2026
The leader of the Congressional Progressive Caucus sent a message on Wednesday to corporations that are hiking prices on American consumers at the gas pump, the grocery store, the medicine counter, and elsewhere: "We're going to come after you."
In an interview with Common Dreams shortly after the CPC unveiled its New Affordability Agenda, Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) said he believes American voters across the political spectrum are hungry for a concrete policy platform that takes aim at the corporate forces driving price increases across the economy, from the for-profit utility companies raking in huge profits off the backs of struggling families to oil titans reaping massive windfall gains thanks to war-driven oil price surges.
"Look, I smell blood in the water," Casar said of the current political moment, marked by rising public anger against corporate price gouging that's fueling the nation's cost-of-living crisis.
"Let's take this opportunity to finally build a new consensus within the Democratic Party that we should be uninvited from those lobbyist dinners and instead do what the voters are asking us to do," added Casar, who is partnering with Rep. Josh Riley (D-NY)—a swing-seat representative and member of the centrist New Democrat Coalition—on a new bill to crack down on utility giants' price increases.
That's just one element of the CPC's new 10-plank agenda, which aims to unify Democrats behind a set of popular policy demands ahead of the 2026 midterms. The agenda includes legislation to challenge the pharmaceutical industry's monopoly control over medicine production, confront price-fixing schemes by large grocery chains, profiteering by oil giants, and prohibit unlimited election spending by corporate groups and billionaires hell-bent on maintaining the status quo that enriched them.
"I welcome their hatred," Casar, in a nod to Franklin D. Roosevelt's famous line, said of corporations and their allies standing in the way of the affordability platform.
"In my lifetime," Casar continued, "a populist anti-corporate message has not been the priority of most of the Democratic Party, and this has to be our chance to change it, because the past has failed us. And that's why we have this new agenda."
Casar stressed that the 10th and final plank of the New Affordability Agenda—"Getting Big Money Out of Politics"—is critical because "corporations being able to buy politicians and buy elections is a huge driver of what's made things more expensive."
The plank calls for passage of Rep. Summer Lee's Abolish Super PACs Act, which would cap contributions to super PACs at $5,000 per calendar year. Super PACs, an outgrowth of the Supreme Court's notorious Citizens United decision, can currently raise and spend unlimited sums on political campaigns, giving them massive sway over elections.
Casar said Lee's bill would effectively render super PACs "useless, and no different from any other PAC."
"There are going to be a lot of corporate interests who just want Democrats to say the word 'affordability,' but not do much about it. And we have to recognize it's been many of those corporate interests that have gotten us into the problem here in the first place," Casar told Common Dreams. "We've got to have a plan that wins over the voters, because I would rather have the voters than the money."
"This is our chance to move the party. We can’t wait until we’re in the majority to start taking on these interests."
The bills that make up the CPC's agenda stand no realistic chance of passage as long as Republicans control at least one chamber of Congress or the presidency. This is true despite the popularity of the progressive platform among voters across the ideological spectrum—including among those who backed President Donald Trump in the 2024 election.
New polling by Data for Progress shows that every plank of the New Affordability Agenda won "majority support from at least 3 in 5 voters." Among Trump voters, the CPC's proposals to guarantee at least two weeks of paid vacation to all full-time workers and combat price hikes by for-profit utility companies enjoy at least 75% support.
The broad appeal of the policy agenda makes sense, said Casar, given that much of it grew out of "progressives doing town halls in Republican-controlled districts where voters say that they're already sick and tired of Trump's lies, but they want to know whether the Democratic Party's really going to fight for them."
"We need to fight against Trump, but we need to do more than that and fight against the big corporations that are screwing you over," said Casar. "Trump voters and progressive voters want to see us crack down on the utility companies that are jacking up your bills. They want to see us crack down on Big Pharma, which is driving up the cost of prescription drugs. And so we're using this agenda to say that Democrats have to get away from big donors and fancy parties and start doing something to take on the billionaires and corporations who are ripping people off."
The New Affordability Agenda is already facing some opposition with entrenched elements of the Democratic establishment, such as the corporate-funded centrist think tank Third Way. Jim Kessler, the group's executive vice president for policy, told The New York Times that "there’s obvious things to do on affordability that they ducked," such as repealing Trump's far-reaching tariffs. (Casar responded that "of course progressives have been for getting rid of" Trump's "reckless" tariffs.)
The Times reported that Kessler also claimed the CPC agenda was missing "more ambitious changes necessary to reduce costs, such as overhauling regulations."
"I understand that corporate funded think tanks have to try to say something negative here," Casar replied, "but [Kessler] didn't sound like he opposed anything in the agenda."
The criticism from Third Way underscores another obstacle in the way of enacting the New Affordability Agenda, even if Republicans are swept from power: corporate-friendly congressional Democrats.
Asked if the CPC agenda has garnered support from the upper ranks of the Democratic Party, Casar said he is "talking to leadership and rank-and-file members about changing not just our message, but also our priorities as a party."
"This is our chance to move the party. We can't wait until we're in the majority to start taking on these interests," said Casar. "We have to organize across the party to get all kinds of Democrats onto these bills. We have to campaign on these ideas and then push to get them on the House floor and passed next year under a Democratic majority."
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