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© Caitlin O'Hara for The New York Times
Effort is latest attempt to pass bill that seeks to ban mail-in ballots and imposes voter identification requirements
House Republicans on Wednesday made another attempt to answer Donald Trump’s demand for new restrictions on voting nationwide by linking the measure to an unrelated spending bill and passing both largely along party lines.
The effort was the latest attempt by congressional Republicans to pass the Save America Act, which would ban mail-in ballots and impose new identification requirements on voters when they register and cast ballots. While the Trump administration has cast the bill as necessary to prevent non-citizens from voting and combat election fraud, voting rights advocates say there’s no evidence of widespread election tampering and warn the bill could disenfranchise swaths of eligible voters ahead of November’s midterm elections.
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© Photograph: Hannah Beier/Getty Images
© Photograph: Hannah Beier/Getty Images
© Photograph: Hannah Beier/Getty Images
The White House is working to change electoral rules in its favor. Protectors of democracy must have a counterplan
The second Trump administration is systematically eroding the institutional foundations of competitive elections without formally abolishing them. They have a plan to achieve what scholars of democratic backsliding call “electoral subversion”: changing electoral rules in their favor. Protectors of democracy must have a counter-plan of their own.
The White House’s approach to electoral subversion has multiple fronts. The administration has rewarded those who used violence to disrupt the last transfer of power, disabled the federal agencies charged with protecting election integrity, moved to extend executive control over voter registration, and threatened to withhold terrorism prevention funding from states who do not change their voting rules.
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© Photograph: Leonardo Muñoz/AFP via Getty Images
© Photograph: Leonardo Muñoz/AFP via Getty Images
© Photograph: Leonardo Muñoz/AFP via Getty Images
President says he would refuse to sign housing bill without passage of voting legislation, but without veto it will still become law
A major housing bill has automatically become law without Donald Trump’s signature, after the president said he would refuse to sign the legislation because Congress has not approved new restrictions on voting nationwide.
The measure, known as the 21st Century Road to Housing Act, is the biggest change to federal policy for buyers, renters and homebuilders in decades, and Congress approved it with large margins last month after lengthy negotiations between Democrats and Republicans.
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© Photograph: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
© Photograph: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
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The Trump administration plans to erect new fences outside the White House, in the latest bid to boost presidential security, the Washington Post (paywall) reports, citing three people who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the plans.
According to the people, the White House and Secret Service would be able to close the new fences, planned where Pennsylvania Avenue intersects 15th and 17th streets NW, and prevent pedestrian access in front of the White House if they determine there are security risks.
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© Photograph: Brian Krista/TNS/ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstock
© Photograph: Brian Krista/TNS/ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstock
© Chris Carlson/Associated Press
Bipartisan Election Assistance Commission maintains mail-voter registration form, among other duties
Donald Trump has terminated the remaining members of the independent, federal commission that assists election administration officials nationwide just a few months before the midterm elections, multiple outlets reported on Thursday.
The remaining three commissioners of the four-member bipartisan commission were forced out on Thursday in different ways. The one Republican appointee resigned and the other two, Democratic, appointees were notified of their terminations via email from the White House presidential personnel office.
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© Photograph: Beata Zawrzel/NurPhoto/Shutterstock
© Photograph: Beata Zawrzel/NurPhoto/Shutterstock
© Zack Wittman for The New York Times
America’s founding 250 years ago was a warning cry against leaders like Trump. Our past is a guide for how to handle our present
As the United States marks the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, marking the official birth of the new nation, it is worth remembering some of the reasons the document offers as just cause for making war on the British monarchy.
“No taxation without representation” is the slogan that is best known as the core complaint of the colonists, a reference to the colonists’ objections to the 1765 Stamp Act and a series of taxes levied by the British crown thereafter over which Americans had no means of objecting in parliament. But such taxes were not the only provocation to war.
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© Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images
© Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images
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