Comment on In bits and pieces, the Swamp moves to elect Harris

On Tuesday, US District Judge R. David Proctor ruled in an injunction that part of Alabama’s voter suppression law SB1—state legislation that made it a felony to assist disabled people in requesting and filling absentee ballots—was an unenforceable violation of the federal Voting Rights Act. The rest of SB1, which nominally targets the practice of “ballot harvesting,” will remain intact for the time being. SB1, which was enacted in March, prohibited “any person fromordering, requesting, collecting, prefilling, obtaining, or delivering an absentee ballot application or absentee ballot of a voter.” The law also established criminal penalties for people who assisted others with absentee voting. In April, the Alabama NAACP, the state chapter of the League of Women Voters , Greater Birmingham Ministries, and the Alabama Disabilities Advocacy Program sued Alabama Attorney General William Adair and other state government officials, asking for an injunction. As their lawsuit points out, the US Code explicitly protects people’s rights to receive assistance while voting: Any voter who requires assistance to vote by reason of blindness, disability, or inability to read or write may be given assistance by a person of the voter’s choice, other than the voter’s employer or agent of that employer or officer or agent of the voter’s union. In his opinion, Proctor acknowledged that SB1 disproportionately affected disabled and low literacy voters: “SB 1 unduly burdens the rights of Section 208 voters to make a choice about who may assist them in obtaining and returning an absentee ballot,” the judge wrote. In a statement released after Proctor’s decision, the plaintiffs celebrated the injunction as a positive step in upholding democracy. We’re glad that the district court has sided with the rights of the voters and is committed to promoting voting accessibility.

A Texas bankruptcy judge ruled on Tuesday that a plan to sell the assets of Alex Jones’ company Free Speech Systems, the parent company of Infowars, can proceed. The profits from the conspiracy-powered media organization’s sale will be awarded to Jones’ creditors, most of whom are families who sued Jones after he repeatedly defamed them by claiming that the Sandy Hook mass shooting that killed their loved ones was a hoax.

One night in March of 2023, Amari Marsh went to the bathroom and suffered a miscarriage. “I screamed because I was scared, because I didn’t know what was going on,” she recently recalled. An at-home pregnancy test in late 2022 had come back positive. But the South Carolina college student said she continued to have her period—at least that’s how she interpreted the bleeding—so didn’t seek out prenatal care, figuring the test result must have been wrong. Then, a few months later, Marsh told a reporter from KFF Health News, she began to experience severe cramping, “way worse” than regular menstrual pain.

The Aurora City Council has tightened its rules for public input at its meetings, doing away with the option to call in with comments two weeks after a caller delivered a racist and antisemitic tirade that was broadcast in the chamber. Mayor Mike Coffman said before Monday’s vote that allowing live phone-in participation leaves the door open to vile content that the First Amendment does not permit the council, a government body, to curtail. “Somebody can call in from anywhere in the country and say whatever they want, and there’s nothing we can do,” he said.

WASHINGTON — Derided by Donald Trump as a “communist,” Kamala Harris is playing up her street cred as a capitalist. Attacked by Harris as a rich kid who got $400 million from his father on a “silver platter,” Trump is leaning into his raw populism. The two presidential candidates are set to deliver dueling speeches on Wednesday that reflect how they’re honing their economic messages for voters in battleground states.

By KEVIN FREKING WASHINGTON — Congress is expected Wednesday to give swift approval to a temporary spending bill that would keep federal agencies funded when the new fiscal year begins next Tuesday, avoiding a potential shutdown showdown just weeks before the Nov. 5 election. The stopgap measure generally funds agencies at current levels through Dec.