Background Briefing: March 9, 2021

On By gram

 

Voter Suppression Laws in Georgia May Create a Bigger Backlash Against the GOP Than the Gains From Their Rigging

We begin with voter suppression laws aimed at Democrats passing in the Georgia Senate in response to losses in the last election that have Republicans nationwide implementing 253 bills aimed at reducing Democratic turnout in 2022 dressed up as “election integrity” measures. Alan Abramowitz, Professor of Political Science at Emory University and author of The Polarized Public: Why American Government is so Dysfunctional and The Great Alignment: Race, Party Transformation, and the Rise of Donald Trump, joins us to discuss whether this slew of voter-suppression laws in Georgia will become law. We assess whether the backlash against these nakedly partisan laws from minority voters incensed by the brazen nature of the attempts to undo the hard-fought gains for which many voting rights activists and civil rights leaders died, will overcome the obstacles created by shameless Republicans in what Georgia’s newly-elected Senator Jon Ossoff describes as, “this is the new Jim Crow.”

 

The Fight For the $15 Minimum Wage Continues

Then, with Bernie Sanders vowing that he will not back down in his quest to raise the federal minimum wage despite legislative setbacks in the Senate, we speak with Osita Nwanevu, a staff writer at The New Republic who previously wrote for The New Yorker and Slate. He joins us to discuss his latest articles at The New Republic, “The Democrats are Blocking a $15 Minimum Wage” and “Joe Manchin Wants to Pass a Popular Gun Control Bill That Will Save Lives, but He Loves the Filibuster More.”

 

Brazil’s Lula is Cleared for 2022 Presidential Race Against Bolsonaro

Then finally we look into the convictions of Brazil’s former popular President Lula being quashed, freeing him to run in the 2022 presidential elections against the far-right incumbent Bolsonaro. James Green, the Carlos Manuel de Cespedes Professor of Modern Latin American History and Portuguese and Brazilian Studies and Director of the Brazil Initiative at Brown University, joins us to discuss the ruinous Bolsonaro regime whose reckless ignorance over Covid and contempt for the environment as Brazil’s rainforests are voraciously clear-cut, may soon come to an end.