Contributing Writers

Pressure is growing on Democrats to abolish the Senate filibuster in order to pass a major voting rights bill and other legislation. Republicans this week used the filibuster to prevent debate on the For the People Act, which would restore the protections of the 1965 Voting Rights Act gutted by the Supreme Court eight years ago.

Ahead of Vice President Kamala Harris’s visit to the U.S.-Mexico border, immigrant rights activists marched on the White House to call on the Biden administration to stop detaining trans asylum seekers, who often face severe abuse, discrimination and medical neglect in custody. Their actions included a service honoring and mourning the deaths of several trans people who died due to ICE negligence.

President Joe Biden has vowed to crack down on illegal gun dealers and to boost funding for police departments as part of an effort to combat a spike in gun violence across the country. Rejecting calls by activists to defund the police, Biden said cities could expand their police forces by diverting federal money allocated for the pandemic. He also pledged to strengthen enforcement of existing gun laws.

More than a thousand coal miners at Warrior Met Coal are now in the third month of their strike in the right-to-work state of Alabama. The miners walked off the job on April 1 after their union, the United Mine Workers of America, called the first strike to hit the state’s coal mining industry in four decades.

The White House says it will miss its goal of getting 70% of adults at least partially vaccinated by July 4. Vaccinations are available for anyone age 12 and up in the U.S., but just 45% of people in the U.S. are fully vaccinated, and only 16 states have fully vaccinated more than half of their populations. Epidemiologist Dr. Ali Khan says despite more than 150 million people in the U.S.

As Senate Republicans use the filibuster to block debate on the most sweeping voting rights bill considered by Congress in decades, we look at what is in the bill and the next steps forward. Elizabeth Hira, an attorney at the Brennan Center for Justice’s Democracy Program, describes the For the People Act as “a massive democracy reform package” that seeks to address systemic flaws in U.S. elections.

We look at the early results from New York’s highly anticipated primary election Tuesday. In the heated mayoral race, Brooklyn borough president and former New York police officer Eric Adams is leading, but it will likely take several weeks to announce a winner with the new ranked-choice voting system. Civil rights attorney Maya Wiley is currently in second place, followed closely by former Sanitation Commissioner Kathryn Garcia.

We look at the push to end what the World Health Organization is calling “vaccine apartheid,” as many countries have yet to see a single COVID-19 vaccine shot amid mounting infections.

More than a thousand coal miners at Warrior Met Coal are now in the third month of their strike in the right-to-work state of Alabama. The miners walked off the job on April 1 after their union, the United Mine Workers of America, called the first strike to hit the state’s coal mining industry in four decades.

As lawmakers in Washington continue to negotiate over an infrastructure bill that Democrats say needs to include major new funding to address the climate crisis, much of the U.S. is experiencing record heat, with many western states seeing record temperatures, drought and water shortages. “The climate crisis is here now,” says climate and energy researcher Leah Stokes, an assistant professor of political science at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Senate Republicans are expected to use the filibuster to block debate on the For the People Act, a sweeping bill that would protect voting rights across the United States and improve ballot access. The Senate vote comes as Republican state lawmakers are passing sweeping measures to suppress the vote. According to the Voting Rights Lab, 18 states have enacted more than 30 laws to restrict voting since the November election.

We look at the push to end what the World Health Organization is calling “vaccine apartheid,” as many countries have yet to see a single COVID-19 vaccine shot amid mounting infections.