Dear Progressive Reader,

Wednesday August 6 marked the sixtieth anniversary of the signing of the Voting Rights Act by then-President Lyndon Johnson. The power of that Act was curtailed by the U.S. Supreme Court in its 2013 decision in Shelby County v. Holder, but now the very essence of voting rights is being called into question by the plan in Texas to redistrict in order to secure five additional Congressional seats before the 2026 midterm elections. The move by Republicans in the state legislature spurred Democrats to leave the state, thereby denying the body a quorum to vote on the proposed measure. Texas Governor Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton in return have threatened to replace the rogue Democrats and have enlisted the help of the FBI to arrest them.

While mid-decade redistricting is an unusual move, legislators leaving the chamber to avoid quorum for crucial votes is a tactic that has been used numerous times. Notably, in 2011, Democrats left the State of Wisconsin to delay the implementation of Governor Scott Walker’s notorious “Act 10” union-busting legislation. The Wisconsin legislators fled to nearby Illinois to hide out (as did the Texas Democrats this past week). But one of the most famous people to “jump ship” in order to avoid a quorum was the state representative who would eventually become the nation’s first Republican President, Abraham Lincoln, who, as a member of the Whig Party in 1839, climbed out a window in order to deny Democratic legislators a quorum in a vote he felt was wrong. Writing in an op-ed this week for The Progressive, Jeffrey A. Mandell of Law Forward and the Wisconsin Fair Maps Coalition notes, “Nothing good can come from President Donald Trump’s redistricting arms race. What’s happening in Texas is a travesty for democracy.” But, as Mandell continues, “There is a better way. Districts can and should be drawn both to avoid significantly advantaging one political party over another and to increase electoral competition. Whenever it is otherwise, elected officials have less incentive to be responsive to voters.”

This week on or website, as the humanitarian tragedy in Gaza continues to unfold, Nourdine Shnino tells the story of the effects on older adults, including his own father; Andrea Umbrello interviews attorney Gheed Kassem on the situation faced by Palestinian detainees; Sam Stein remembers his friend and colleague Awdah Hathaleen (also the co-director of the Oscar-winning film No Other Land), who was recently shot and killed by an Israeli settler in the West Bank; and Shoaib Mir reports from a hospital in Amman, Jordan, that treats people wounded in the current conflict and others in the region. “We are asking all countries to be on the side of the Gazan people by allowing more and more [patients] to have access to their health care systems, participating in the medical evacuations, and saving the lives of people,” one doctor tells him.

Also this week, Ann Toback pens on oped on the importance of standing up to ICE when they seek cooperation from local authorities. “We can resist by disrupting ICE's dependence on local law enforcement. Every sheriff who refuses to cooperate weakens Trump’s machine,” she opines. Also, Bill Lueders reviews a new book that examines the history and shortcomings in the First Amendment; Giles Clasen looks at the importance of rye as a grain that could help support agriculture in the West; and Ed Rampell describes the new film Atomic People, which premiered this week n public television.

This week marked the eightieth anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Reporter Jim Carrier recently traveled to Nagasaki to report on the victims and survivors of those bombings. In two pieces for our website, and a longer feature in the August/September issue of the magazine, Carrier tells some of these stories and the stories of the scientists continuing to document for the world the longterm effects of the radiation released by those bombs, but also the radioactive exposure that affected countless workers and residents at or near the uranium mines and atomic test sites. The lessons are clear. As five of the world’s nine nuclear powers (the United States, Israel, Russia, India, and Pakistan) are all currently involved in tensions or outright wars that could, at any time, result in a release of nuclear radiation: This madness must stop, we must put an end to the threat of nuclear weapons now.

Please keep reading, and we will keep bringing you important articles on these and other issues of our time.

Sincerely,

Norman Stockwell
Publisher

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