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U.S. House lawmakers narrowly pass John Lewis voting rights bill

24 August 2021
 Dan Ackermann

House lawmakers on Tuesday narrowly passed a voting rights bill named in honor of the late Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), an effort to combat a wave of new voting restrictions in Republican states.

Why it matters: H.R. 4, the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, passed by a party-line vote of 219 to 212, with no Republican support. If passed in the Senate, it will restore portions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, giving the federal government the ability to block changes to state election laws found to be discriminatory.

  • The bill faces an uphill battle in the Senate, where Republicans have blocked previous House-passed voting measures.
  • The vote would need 60 votes to overcome a filibuster in the Senate.

Of note: "That bottleneck puts Democrats right back where they started with a slim chance of enacting any voting legislation before the 2022 midterm elections, when some in the party fear new GOP laws will make it harder for many Americans to vote," Associated Press reports.

Background: The Supreme Court in 2013 invalidated the "preclearance" provision of the Voting Rights Act that allowed for the regulation of new election laws.

  • In July, the Supreme Court upheld a pair of voting restrictions in Arizona, making it more difficult for the Justice Department to challenge new voting laws.

Transcripts show George Floyd told police "I can't breathe" over 20 times

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Newly released transcripts of bodycam footage from the Minneapolis Police Department show that George Floyd told officers he could not breathe more than 20 times in the moments leading up to his death.

Why it matters: Floyd's killing sparked a national wave of Black Lives Matter protests and an ongoing reckoning over systemic racism in the United States. The transcripts "offer one the most thorough and dramatic accounts" before Floyd's death, The New York Times writes.

The state of play: The transcripts were released as former officer Thomas Lane seeks to have the charges that he aided in Floyd's death thrown out in court, per the Times. He is one of four officers who have been charged.

  • The filings also include a 60-page transcript of an interview with Lane. He said he "felt maybe that something was going on" when asked if he believed that Floyd was having a medical emergency at the time.

What the transcripts say:

  • Floyd told the officers he was claustrophobic as they tried to get him into the squad car.
  • The transcripts also show Floyd saying, "Momma, I love you. Tell my kids I love them. I'm dead."
  • Former officer Derek Chauvin, who had his knee on Floyd's neck for over eight minutes, told Floyd, "Then stop talking, stop yelling, it takes a heck of a lot of oxygen to talk."

Read the transcripts via DocumentCloud.