Headlines for March 18, 2021

Senate Democrats have introduced sweeping voting rights legislation passed by the House of Representatives earlier this month. The For the People Act aims to improve voter registration and access to the polls, ends partisan and racial gerrymandering, forces the disclosure of dark money donors, increases public funding for candidates and imposes strict ethical and reporting standards on members of Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court. Republicans have signaled they’ll use the filibuster to defeat the bill.

In his first speech from the Senate floor, Georgia Democrat Rev. Raphael Warnock condemned Republican voter suppression efforts as “Jim Crow in new clothes.”

Sen. Raphael Warnock: “Since the January election, some 250 voter suppression bills have been introduced by state legislatures all across the country, from Georgia to Arizona, from New Hampshire to Florida, using the big lie of voter fraud as a pretext for voter suppression, the same big lie that led to a violent insurrection on this very Capitol.”