It’s a heavy week: Anti-Asian hate and discrimination has been on full display following the massacre last week of six Asian women in the Atlanta area. That bigotry has always been there—there have been nearly 4,000 documented attacks against Asians nationwide since March 2020—but it’s now impossible to ignore. Kerry and I will be talking to California Rep. Ted Lieu about the Georgia tragedy, and where the Asian community goes from here. We’ll also discuss his work on the American Rescue Plan, as well as his efforts to reform America’s broken bail system.
Also joining us will be Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon, who will talk about a topic near and dear to us: filibuster reform. We are dead in the water without eliminating the ability of Republicans to block most pieces of legislation over the next two years. Democracy-saving legislation such as HR1, otherwise known as the For The People Act, will never survive Republican obstruction. Furthermore, efforts to address problems via executive action face an uncertain future given the ill-gotten 6-3 Supreme Court conservative majority.
We need to reform and expand the courts. We need to grant Washington, D.C. statehood. We need to protect everyone’s right to vote. None of that can happen with a filibuster. Merkley has been a top Senate proponent of filibuster reform, so we’ll check in on his efforts and whether there’s any hope of success this year.
The show begins at 4:30 ET, 1:30 PT, and runs for an hour. You can watch it here.
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