We have a President hostile to fixing the system and a Congress currently controlled by reform opponents. However, history makes clear that reform issues are cyclical in nature: the kind of scandalous system that exists today has led to major reforms in the past, and can do so again in the future.
View And Download This Report As A PDF By: Fred Wertheimer, President, Democracy 21 | December 2021 The United States Senate is facing a decision of historic consequence with the fate of our democracy at stake. Will 50 Senators plus the Vice President be able to pass the Freedom to Vote Act and override […]
As the White House prepares to host a Summit for Democracy on December 9, President Joe Biden is “failing in his efforts to restore faith in American Democracy at home and abroad by standing on the sidelines as The Freedom to Vote Act is being blocked by a filibuster in the Senate,” Democracy 21 Vice President Matt Keller writes in an […]
FRED WERTHEIMER’S WEEKLY NOTE | December 2, 2021 We need to be clear-eyed about what former President Trump, his acolytes, and state and congressional Republican officeholders are doing. Trump is a habitual liar who repeatedly claims the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him, without a shred of credible evidence to back that up. Since […]
In the months since President Joe Biden took office, “the prospects for improving American democracy have dimmed considerably,” Sue Halpern writes today on The New Yorker website. “It’s against this gloomy backdrop that the Biden Administration will be hosting a virtual Summit for Democracy in early December, with invitees from more than a hundred countries. […]
In a new op-ed, Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne Jr. lays out the urgent need to reform the filibuster: “[T]he core reason the filibuster must be reformed is the moral imperative of passing bills to defend democracy.” Reforming the filibuster, Dionne writes, is the only way to “undo the voter suppression and election subversion laws […]
FRED WERTHEIMER’S WEEKLY NOTE | November 18, 2021 On March 3, the House of Representatives passed the For the People Act, landmark legislation to establish fair voting rules for federal elections and to stop voter suppression efforts in the states. Now, some nine months later, the Senate has failed to act on – or even […]
FRED WERTHEIMER’S WEEKLY NOTE | November 11, 2021 One of the most famous Senate filibusters occurred in 1957, when South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond held the Senate floor for more than 24 hours in an effort to block passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1957. The filibuster ultimately failed, and the Act – though […]
FRED WERTHEIMER’S WEEKLY NOTE | November 4, 2021 For the fourth time this year, Senate Republicans have blocked essential voting rights legislation. Yesterday, their obstructionism blocked consideration of the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. They previously blocked consideration of the For the People Act in June and again in August, and then, in October, […]
Statement Of Democracy 21 President Fred Wertheimer Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT) has an op-ed in The Washington Post today in which he makes a disingenuous case for protecting the filibuster rules. He makes his case based on creating an incorrect impression that Senate Democrats are seeking to fully repeal the Senate filibuster in order to pass voting rights […]
FRED WERTHEIMER’S WEEKLY NOTE | October 28, 2021 The stage is now set for enacting historic voting rights, anti-corruption, and anti-gerrymandering legislation. This essential legislation – the Freedom to Vote Act – will overturn the unprecedented wave of voter suppression laws passed this year by Republican-controlled state legislature around the country and provide protections to […]
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