From Taegan Goddard's Political Wire today:
In a leaked video of a private meeting with big-money donors, the head of a top conservative group “boasted that her outfit had crafted the new voter suppression law in Georgia and was doing the same with similar bills for Republican state legislators across the country,” Mother Jones reports. Said Jessica Anderson of Heritage Action: “In some cases, we actually draft them for them or we have a sentinel on our behalf give them the model legislation so it has that grassroots, from-the-bottom-up type of vibe.” She added: “Honestly, nobody even noticed. My team looked at each other and we’re like, ‘It can’t be that easy.'”
According to the Mother Jones article in question:
The Georgia law had “eight key provisions that Heritage recommended,” Jessica Anderson, the executive director of Heritage Action for America, a sister organization of the Heritage Foundation, told the foundation’s donors at an April 22 gathering in Tucson, in a recording obtained by the watchdog group Documented and shared with Mother Jones.Those included policies severely restricting mail ballot drop boxes, preventing election officials from sending absentee ballot request forms to voters, making it easier for partisan workers to monitor the polls, preventing the collection of mail ballots, and restricting the ability of counties to accept donations from nonprofit groups seeking to aid in election administration. All of these recommendations came straight from Heritage’s list of “best practices” drafted in February. With Heritage’s help, Anderson said, Georgia became “the example for the rest of the country.”
These new voter restriction laws are the result of former president Donald Trump's whining that he was cheated out of a second term last year.
Republicans across the country have seized upon his lies to push these laws through state legislatures They claim the laws are about preserving "election security," but the truth is that these laws play a huge part in suppressing black voters, a key constituency of the Democratic party
Vox said the following about Georgia's bill:
The bill, known as SB 202, gives state-level officials the authority to usurp the powers of county election boards — allowing the Republican-dominated state government to potentially disqualify voters in Democratic-leaning areas. It criminalizes the provision of food and water to voters waiting in line, in a state where lines are notoriously long in heavily nonwhite precincts. It requires ID for absentee ballots and limits the placement of ballot drop boxes.. . .The greatest area of concern here for Democrats is Fulton County, home to Atlanta and a disproportionate number of Black voters. Republicans have baselessly alleged that this Democratic bastion was a major site of fraud, citing (among other things) a purported video of ballot-stuffing in the county. Though official investigations, court cases, and independent fact-checks found no evidence of such fraud — in the video or otherwise — the myth that it happened persists. The new bill would allow Republicans to seize control of how elections are administered in Fulton County and other heavily Democratic areas, disqualifying voters and ballots as they see fit.
While the Heritage Action for America has been busy with this, its sister organization, the Heritage Foundation, have been busy pushing some legislation of its own. But this legislation has been against LGBTQ people. Or more specifically, the transgender children.
According to The American Independent:
Republican state lawmakers have introduced bills across the country that would make transgender children's lives harder. Advocacy groups say a small number of influential and well-funded anti-LGBTQ groups are driving the efforts to enact the legislation, as they did with similar bills last year.. . . The right-wing organizations Alliance Defending Freedom, Eagle Forum, Concerned Women for America, and the Heritage Foundation were behind many of the anti-trans bills introduced last year, according to the Human Rights Campaign. The group said they are likely driving many of the bills introduced in the current legislative sessions.
And as it turns out, the Heritage Foundation was laying the groundwork for this mess as far back as 2019 by hosting anti-transgender panel discussions. The group held found in that year.
According to Media Matters:
Each of the four panels focused on a different aspect of trans equality, such as comprehensive nondiscrimination measures, affirming medical care for transgender youth, trans inclusion in international policy, and trans participation in athletics. The panels also featured biased anti-trans figures -- whom Heritage characterized as subject experts -- who pushed right-wing narratives about transgender people.
Also in 2019, according to Media Matters:
Heritage’s panels are just one aspect of its work against trans equality. Heritage’s Anderson organized an anti-trans conference reportedly attended by 250 attendees at the Franciscan University of Steubenville from April 4 to 5. The conference was called “Transgender Moment: A Natural Law Response to Gender Ideology,” and it focused on so-called “corruption and flawed science driving an increase in gender ‘transitioning’ and ‘reassignments’” and compared transgender equality to the dystopian novel 1984.Additionally, Heritage’s Monica Burke penned an April 10 anti-trans op-ed for the Chicago Tribune, and the group’s work this year has been consistently picked up and parroted by several right-wing and evangelical media outlets. And though mainstream and queer outlets have written about Heritage’s January 28 TERF panel, the right-wing has dominated coverage of the rest of the anti-trans panels.
Taking all of this into account puts forth a new question concerning the debate/argument of comparing the African-American and LGBTQ civil rights movement. And that question is does it really matter? Certainly there are nuances of similarities and differences, but both groups are very similar in a most important way.
They have the same enemies.
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