Monday, April 28

GOP bid to limit women’s rights depends on suppressing democracy

• Blocking people from voting and rigging the legislative maps is a big part of how state lawmakers have passed abortion bans opposed by the majority of voters, Susan Rinkunas writes for Democracy Docket.
  
  
• In 2011, Mississippi voters considered ballot measures on both fetal personhood and voter ID; the former failed, but the latter passed. Seven years of voter suppression later, the governor signed into law the 15-week ban that anti-abortion advocates designed to topple Roe v. Wade.
  
  
• “The fight for reproductive freedom is intertwined with the fight for democracy,” said Reproductive Freedom for All President and CEO Mini Timmaraju in response to the SAVE Act’s passage. “And both are built on the simple idea that every American has the right to vote.”

SCOTUS could get chance to disenfranchise voters whose ballots arrive after Election Day 

• Mississippi plans to ask the Supreme Court to review the state's mail-in ballot return rules. If the court takes the case, it could dramatically change election rules in nearly two dozen states. 

North Carolina court strikes down GOP power-grab law

• A three-judge panel in a North Carolina court blocked a Republican scheme to gain power over the state’s election board — the agency charged with running elections and enforcing campaign finance laws. Marc and Paige Moskowitz explain in a new video.
  
  
• Today a North Carolina trial court denied Republicans' request to pause last week's order blocking the state law that would've shifted authority over the state election board appointments to the GOP state auditor.

As we approach 100 days of the Trump administration…

• Here's your reminder that liberal and conservative judges ruled against Trump in 11 different lawsuits last week. And lower courts are saving the rule of law — which is why Republicans are out to undermine them.