Author: Common Dreams

While lawmakers convened for an historic hearing on establishing statehood for Washington DC, a study by the Gender Equity Policy Institute demonstrated how giving full federal representation to the district’s roughly 700,000 residents is a matter of racial and gender justice. As a number of advocacy groups pointed out on social media as the hearing of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs got underway — only the second Senate hearing on the matter and the first since the current momentum regarding DC statehood began — the GEPI’s report highlighted how the system of taxation without full...

The Republican Party’s assault on constitutional democracy continues unabated. Over 20 restrictive voting laws have already been enacted this year (the Brennan Center’s Voting Rights Roundup is an indispensable resource for monitoring ongoing developments). And in the past two weeks two further Republican body blows were delivered to democratic equality. First, on June 22 Senate Republicans exploited archaic Senate filibuster rules to obstruct the For the People Act from even being discussed on the Senate floor. Then on July 1 the Supreme Court’s six conservative Justices ruled in Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee et al to uphold recently-passed Arizona...

Calling on election officials across the U.S. to recognize that the nation “is at a critical crossroads,” a non-profit legal advocacy group on June 30 cited the 14th Amendment as it demanded Republicans who aided the January 6 insurrection—including former President Donald Trump—be barred from holding public office in the future. The democracy watchdog Free Speech for People sent letters to the secretaries of state of all 50 states as part of its 14point3 campaign, calling attention to Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which states: No Person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of...

Photo by Gage Skidmore and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 Amid a deadly northwestern heatwave that scientists have described as “the most extreme” in recorded history, footage uncovered by CNN showed Wisconsin’s Republican Senator Ron Johnson flippantly dismissing the established science of human-caused climate change during an event hosted by a GOP-aligned advocacy group. “I don’t know about you guys, but I think climate change is—as Lord Monckton said—bullshit,” Johnson said, mouthing the expletive. “And by the way, it is.” Johnson — a member of the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee — was echoing the sentiment of British...

The Enlightenment was a time of intellectual ferment in the Western world following the Middle Ages. Its ideas gave birth to the modern world. We know the Enlightenment from the names of its most brilliant expositors: Francis Bacon, John Locke, Voltaire, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Adam Smith, and others. We know its ideas as the foundation of our social world: the social contract, the rule of reason, the rule of law, consent of the governed, natural rights, constitutionalism, separation of powers, checks and balances, and others. The Republican agenda is a direct assault on all of that. It literally aims to...

Progressives responded with disgust on June 7 after Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed a law establishing the so-called “1836 Project,” which the Republican official said “promotes patriotic education and ensures future generations understand Texas values.” “To keep Texas the best state in the nation, we can never forget why our state is so exceptional,” Abbott tweeted. “Together, we’ll keep our rich history alive.” As Dean Baker, co-founder of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, pointed out: “Of course, if they actually did talk about the reasons Texas declared independence from Mexico, it would be a very radical course.”...