Jennifer VenisWednesday 9 June 2021
Since high-profile Republicans warned that mail-in voting had to be limited for the party to ever win the presidency again, hundreds of restrictive bills have been introduced across state legislatures. But rights advocates are battling voter suppression and corporate America is being pulled into the fight.
Eight years ago, the United States Supreme Court made it easier for state legislatures to pass discriminatory voting laws. In the majority opinion for
Shelby County v Holder, Chief Justice Roberts argued that the provision of the Voting Rights Act requiring states with a history of entrenched racial discrimination to seek judicial or government approval for any voting reform was no longer needed.
BISMARCK, N.D. - As redistricting takes shape in North Dakota, lawmakers are pressured to give tribal communities a fair shake in the process. Those trying to establish more inclusion say the impact of previous maps still is being felt, and worry it will happen again. .
For most of her life, Neets’aii Gwich’in leader Sarah James has worked to protect her homelands, including the coastal plain of the nearby Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. But, now the U.S. government wants to lease some of the area for oil exploration and drilling. In this story from The Spiritual Edge we hear how the Gwich’in tribal government is challenging those plans, which threaten land that they call sacred.