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Leadership Conference On Civil And Human Rights And 53 Other Groups, Including Democracy 21, Urge Congress To Remain Focused On The Fight For Voting Rights
Reforms to the Electoral Count Act (ECA) are “needed and welcome, but they simply are not adequate to meet the current moment.”
WASHINGTON
As Congress considers the next steps in the fight to move voting rights forward, The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, a coalition of more than 230 national organizations, and 53 individual groups, including Democracy 21, today urged Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and the Members of Congress who supported voting rights legislation "to remain extremely focused in the weeks ahead on the core issue of racial discrimination in voting."
In a letter sent today, the groups thanked Majority Leader Schumer for his leadership on the issue. The debate and vote on the Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act "mark progress on our journey towards becoming a truly inclusive, multiracial democracy. Yet we have far to go, and we must fight on," the groups wrote in the letter.
"Voters of color are facing the greatest threat to voting rights since Jim Crow, and this threat is targeted," the groups wrote. "As civil rights and community leaders have said many times, we cannot out-organize or litigate past attacks on our freedom to vote. Therefore, we must have a legislative solution, and that solution must address racial discrimination head on."
Conversations "regarding reforms to the Electoral Count Act (ECA) are needed and welcome," the groups wrote, "but they simply are not adequate to meet the current moment. We should certainly make sure that votes duly cast are reflected in the ultimate presidential count. But we also must address the discriminatory barriers to the ballot that prevent votes from even being cast, or we will retreat and retrench from our aspirations as a multiracial democracy -- just as we did after Reconstruction."
According to Democracy 21 President Fred Wertheimer, "The ECA by itself has no impact on House and Senate races. The ECA does nothing to overturn the numerous state voter suppression and election sabotage laws enacted in 2021, with more coming in 2022. The ECA is in need of repair, but fundamental voting rights must be part of that repair if we are to truly protect our nation's elections and our democracy."
The letter urged Majority Leader Schumer to ensure "that any revised legislation also includes components of the Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act that are necessary to address the problems faced by eligible voters in their attempts to cast votes and have those votes counted. Further, while seeking narrow reforms that can garner 60 votes is useful, we must continue the conversation -- in the Senate and across the country -- about the imperative to no longer allow an arcane rule with a racist history to block urgently needed protections for the freedom to vote."
Read the full letter online or below.
Democracy 21 is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization dedicated to making democracy work for all Americans. Democracy 21, and its education arm, Democracy 21 Education Fund, work to eliminate the undue influence of big money in American politics, prevent government corruption, empower citizens in the political process and ensure the integrity and fairness of government decisions and elections. The organization promotes campaign finance reform and other related political reforms to accomplish these goals.
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House Progressives Demand Pentagon Answer for Alleged Abuse in US-Ecuador Operation
"The United States cannot continue to be complicit in abuses abroad. There must be accountability," said Rep. Chuy García, who co-led a letter to the Pentagon.
May 13, 2026
Backed by anti-war and human rights organizations, 20 "deeply concerned" progressives in the US House of Representatives sent a letter to the Pentagon on Wednesday demanding answers about "reports of serious human rights violations and the bombing of what appear to have been civilian facilities during joint US-Ecuador military operations conducted in northern Ecuador."
While bombing Iran and boats allegedly running illegal drugs through the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean, President Donald Trump deployed US troops to Ecuador in March for a joint campaign combating "narco-terrorists" in the South American country.
Led by Democratic Reps. Greg Casar (Texas), Jesús "Chuy" García (Ill.), and Sara Jacobs (Calif.), the lawmakers called for "an explanation of the administration's legal justification for the involvement of US armed forces in these operations, which have not been authorized by Congress," as well as their immediate suspension "until these incidents are fully investigated."
The Democrats' letter to US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth cites reporting that one target "appears to have been a civilian dairy and cattle farm with no known links to armed groups or drug trafficking," where witnesses said "Ecuadorian military personnel interrogated and assaulted unarmed civilians, burned homes and infrastructure, and subjected detainees to torture."
"Beyond these recent incidents, we are concerned that our military is deepening its ties with the government of Ecuador, even as it undergoes an alarming authoritarian and anti-democratic drift," the Democrats wrote, pointing out that "President Daniel Noboa has overseen the violent repression of Indigenous-led protests, publicly threatened the Constitutional Court, and frozen the bank accounts of civil society organizations."
Noboa's allies "have also pursued questionable cases against his political opponents," as "Ecuadorians have endured more than two years of a prolonged state of emergency, marked by the military's domestic deployment to combat so-called 'narco-terrorists," the letter continues. "With investigative reporting now linking President Noboa's family business to drug trafficking and the same illicit networks he claims to be fighting, an independent and transparent investigation into these allegations is warranted."
The letter stresses that "if US forces provide new or continued security assistance to units that engaged in acts such as torture, extrajudicial killings, or enforced disappearances, and there is no credible investigation or prosecution underway, this would constitute a violation of the Leahy Laws, which prohibit assistance to foreign security forces credibly implicated in gross human rights violations without effective steps to bring those responsible to justice."
The Democrats—supported by Amnesty International USA, Center for Civilians in Conflict, Center for Economic and Policy Research, Friends Committee on National Legislation, Human Rights First, Latin American Working Group, Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns, StoptheDrugWar.org, Washington Office on Latin America, and Win Without War—demanded "a prompt and complete response" to their list of questions by May 22.
"The United States cannot continue to be complicit in abuses abroad. There must be accountability," García said on social media.
As El País reported Wednesday, the letter was made public as Noboa began a two-day trip to Washington, DC, during which he is set to meeting with US Vice President JD Vance and Organization of American States Secretary General Albert Ramdin.
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Antisemitism Watchdog Rips 'Blood Libel' Smear Against NYT for Reporting Israeli Rape of Gazans
"To weaponize the term 'blood libel' to dismiss Kristof's thorough reporting is dangerous. It's insulting to the term's violent history and hinders our community's ability to call out actual blood libels when they occur."
May 13, 2026
A Jewish-led organization dedicated to fighting antisemitism was among the groups and individuals who on Tuesday condemned attacks on The New York Times and one of its most prominent columnists, who published accounts by alleged Palestinian victims of sexual abuse perpetrated by Israeli soldiers and settlers.
Nicholas Kristof's column, "The Silence That Meets the Rape of Palestinians," combines interviews with 14 former Palestinian detainees and information from reports published by United Nations experts and human rights groups to highlight documented rape and other systemic sexual abuse of Palestinians jailed by Israel Defense Forces (IDF) troops, as well as sexual assaults and other abuses allegedly committed by Israeli settler-colonists. The column features the controversial claim by one former prisoner that he was raped by a dog unleashed upon him by Israeli soldiers.
The Israeli Foreign Ministry responded to the column in a social media post alleging that the Times "chose to publish one of the worst blood libels ever to appear in the modern press."
"In an unfathomable inversion of reality, and through an endless stream of baseless lies, propagandist Nicholas Kristof turns the victim into the accused," the ministry said.
Responding to the ministry's post, the Nexus Project—a group "made up of individuals deeply committed to the fight against antisemitism"—said on Bluesky: "To weaponize the term 'blood libel' to dismiss Kristof's thorough reporting is dangerous. It's insulting to the term's violent history and hinders our community's ability to call out actual blood libels when they occur."
"Kristof's article is a challenging and important read," the group added. "It takes courage and care to expose sexual violence."
On Tuesday, the Israeli Foreign Ministry accused the Times of serving "a Hamas-driven narrative," claiming the newspaper "deliberately timed its piece to undermine today’s horrific Civil Commission report documenting Hamas’ preplanned, systematic sexual atrocities on October 7, [2023] and against hostages thereafter—attempting to create false equivalence and belittle documented crimes."
The Times refuted a claim by the ministry that the newspaper "said it was not interested" in reporting on Hamas sexual violence on and after the October 7 attack. In fact, the Times updated its earlier reporting on Hamas sex crimes after Israeli investigator called said critical details were "false."
Critics of the column also cast aspersions upon the alleged Palestinian victims and rights groups that documented the sexual violence they suffered, linking them to Hamas. The Times and other US media have been accused of accepting Israeli claims at their word but treating Palestinian testimonies with skepticism or outright dismissal.
Numerous other pro-Israel accounts, including the American Jewish Committee and EndJewHatred, have either repeated the "blood libel" accusation against Kristof or amplified social media posts that did so.
Many—including the American Israel Public Affairs Committee—denied or questioned the veracity of Kristof, his sources, and the Times.
Well documented reporting about abuses committed by a particular nation-state is not a “blood libel,” and misusing Jewish history to protect the state of Israel from criticism like this is ultimately going to make people take all of Jewish history less seriously.
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— Joel S. (@joelhs.bsky.social) May 12, 2026 at 1:21 PM
This, despite numerous reports by United Nations experts, as well as Israeli and international human rights groups, of Israeli rape and sexual violence against Palestinian men, women, and children in both Gaza and the illegally occupied West Bank—a pattern that goes back to the Nakba ethnic cleansing of Palestine during the establishment of the modern state of Israel.
Senior Israeli officials including Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir have defended soldiers accused of gang-raping a Palestinian prisoner in an attack caught on camera at the notorious Sde Teiman prison. The IDF is investigating the deaths of dozens of Palestinians at Sde Teiman, including one man who died after allegedly being sodomized with an electric baton.
Right-wing Israeli politicians, pundits, and others publicly argued that IDF troops should have free rein to rape, torture, and murder Palestinians as revenge for the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.
An August 2025 investigation by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation featured Palestinian boys kidnapped by Israeli occupation forces in Gaza who said they suffered or witnessed sexual torture committed by their jailers.
Last year, Israel blocked a request from UN sex crimes experts to probe alleged sexual violence perpetrated by Hamas fighters during the October 7, 2023 attack, reportedly to avoid attendant scrutiny of rapes and other abuses allegedly committed by Israeli forces against imprisoned Palestinians.
Other Israelis and their defenders expressed incredulity or proclaimed the impossibility of dogs being trained to rape people.
"My brain does not know how to process the fact that The New York Times—the paper I grew up worshiping and hoping to work for one day—published, on the front page, that Israelis are training dogs to rape Palestinian prisoners," tech entrepreneur and anti-progressive commentator Michelle Tandler said Monday on X.
However, in addition to repeated Palestinian claims of such abuse, female Holocaust survivors have said they were assaulted by dogs specially trained by Nazi SS officer Klaus Barbie. Later, Ingrid Oderock, a Chilean raised in a Nazi colony in the South American country, became one of the most feared torturers during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. Her specialty, as noted in the Academy Award-nominated animated short film Bestia, was training dogs to rape jailed female dissidents.
Israel has repeatedly attempted to neutralize criticism of its crimes during the Gaza onslaught—from the deadly famine that's claimed at least hundreds of lives, to the apparently deliberate shooting of children, to attacks on aid workers and civilian "safe zones," to the torture of Palestinian prisoners—by smearing those who expose them with accusations of blood libel.
Responding to the common Israeli smear, socialist author Owen Jones said on Bluesky: "Israel's crimes are not a 'blood libel.' They are documented truth."
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Georgia Gov. Calls Special Session to Rig US House Map for GOP, SC Expected to Follow
"We will not sit back and watch while Gov. Kemp takes orders from a felon-in-chief to turn Dr. King's dream into a nightmare," said the head of Common Cause Georgia.
May 13, 2026
Republican state leaders are forging ahead with President Donald Trump's campaign to rig congressional districts for the GOP, with Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp on Wednesday signing a proclamation for a special legislative session and South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster expected to make a similar announcement soon.
While GOP policymakers facing pressure from Trump have pursued mid-decade redistricting in several states ahead of the November midterm elections—in which Democrats aim to reclaim majorities in both chambers of Congress—Kemp's proclamation explicitly states that any changes in Georgia would be for 2028, which is the next presidential cycle.
Kemp's proclamation cites the US Supreme Court's decision last month that a Louisiana map predating Trump's redistricting push was "an unconstitutional racial gerrymander," which gutted the remnants of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) of 1965.
In a statement condemning the proclamation, Common Cause Georgia director Rosario Palacios pointed to the late Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., a key figure in the movement that led to the VRA as well as the Civil Rights Act the previous year.
"We will not sit back and watch while Gov. Kemp takes orders from a felon-in-chief to turn Dr. King's dream into a nightmare. Too many civil rights leaders have done work in our state for us [to] take this sitting down," Palacios declared. "Common Cause is mobilizing thousands of people to stop state lawmakers from passing any new maps before 2030 that destroy Black voters' power for political gain. Voters should not have to rely on lawsuits to protect their right to fair representation. Congress must end this abuse once and for all so every voter can cast a ballot in free and fair elections, no matter their political party."
US Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.), who is up for reelection in 2028, similarly ripped the Georgia redistricting effort on social media Wednesday: "There is an extreme movement in this country that will stop at nothing to hold on to power, even if it means stripping representation away from millions. I will fight this with everything I have."
Republicans in various states have moved to "shamelessly capitalize" on the April ruling from the high court's right-wing supermajority. On Monday, as the Supreme Court cleared the way for the Alabama GOP to rescind the creation of its second Black-majority district, Memphis voters sued over a new map targeting Tennessee's only majority-Black congressional district.
On Tuesday, as the Missouri Supreme Court declined to strike down a new congressional map that state voters are working to challenge with a referendum, five Republican South Carolina senators joined Democrats in blocking a GOP effort to advance Trump's gerrymandering campaign in their state.
However, The Post and Courier's Nick Reynolds reported Wednesday that South Carolina Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey (R-25) believes the governor "will call legislators back into a special session amid the redistricting fight."
Also reporting on the anticipated move Wednesday, Politico's Andrew Howard and Alec Hernandez noted that "McMaster's plan—confirmed by four people familiar with the decision, who were granted anonymity to share private details—is a reversal of his position earlier this month and follows pressure" from the president and his allies.
A redistricting push in South Carolina is expected to target the seat held by Democratic Congressman Jim Clyburn—who last month warned that the Supreme Court ruling on Louisiana's map and the VRA "threatens to send our country deeper into the thicket of never-ending redistricting fights, with repeated aggressive map redraws, protracted legal battles, and relentless partisan tugs-of-war, all of which are destined to result in more regressive court decisions."
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