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Some 100 tons (91 metric tons) of cocaine passed through the Caribbean in 2013,

at least 90 percent of the drugs that enter Puerto Rico end up in the U.S.

suspects relying on go-fast boats, ferries, yachts and even cruise ships to transport drugs.

Cash seizures at Puerto Rico's main international airport are at an all-time high, according to the plan.

Drugs are blamed for more than 80 percent of killings in Puerto Rico,

Tuesday’s manoeuvre, which saw the guided-missile destroyer USS Lassen sail close to artificial Chinese islands, came after Barack Obama and Chinese president Xi Jinping failed to find common ground over the issue during recent talks at the White House.

“The United States has been very irresponsible,” defense ministry spokesperson Yang Yujun said, according to Xinhua, China’s official news agency.

Lu Kang, a foreign ministry spokesperson, said China would “resolutely respond” to any deliberate provocations but declined to be drawn on any potential military response.

China’s military buildup in the South China Sea – including the construction of a 3km runway capable of supporting fighter jets and transport planes – has become a major source of tension between Beijing and Washi

Washington hoped Tuesday’s mission would encourage Beijing to step back from its controversial island building campaign, which China claims is for civilian purposes but critics believe is an attempt to use military power to cement its grip over the region.

Townshend said the US mission may have temporarily strengthened Washington’s hand. “[But] there’s an element of you win the battle but you lose the war if actually these freedom of navigation missions make China more determined to militarise these islands,” he added. “These islands are not going away – unless global warming takes them out.”

Among them are variations on a proposal that exploded in Indiana last year, when controversy over a so-called religious freedom law became a flashpoint in the ongoing debate over religious belief and legal equality. The Hoosier State’s measure led to an estimated $60 million in lost revenue, and after weeks of economic and political pressure, Indiana Governor Mike Pence approved revisions to the law clarifying that businesses couldn’t use it to turn away LGBT patrons.

To many supporters, these bills are necessary to protect deeply held religious beliefs and are worth the controversy and lost revenue. To critics, however, the measures seemed aimed at allowing people to treat LGBT citizens differently, based on moral opposition to homosexuality and transgenderism, and serve as a reminder that the lessons of the Indiana fight were fleeting.

The fight in South Dakota echoes earlier clashes over gender identity and bathroom use of transgender people. The sponsor of the South Dakota bathroom measure, state Rep. Fred Deutsch, has argued in committee testimony that it is necessary to protect the “bodily privacy rights” of “biologic boys and girls” and that transgender students should be offered alternate accommodations if they do not wish to use the facilities that correspond to their sex assigned at birth.

The fight has played out at the state level largely because there is no federal law that bans discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. The Equality Act, a federal bill that would create such protections, is unlikely to go anywhere in a Republican-controlled Congress.

Rebecca Dodds, the mother of a transgender son who recently graduated from high school in the state’s famed Black Hills, said compelling students to use a separate facility could force them to out themselves to their peers, which could lead to harassment or violence.

Though the bill does not specify what those accommodations would be, schools that have dealt with conflicts over bathroom use have often instructed transgender students to use staff or nurse facilities, or facilities in buildings separate from their peers. The Department of Justice has issued several rulings and opinions that say such treatment of transgender students amounts to sex discrimination under Title IX, though federal courts are still weighing the issue.

It extends protections for people with three moral beliefs that are laid out in the bill’s text: (1) Marriage is or should only be recognized as the union of one man and one woman (2) Sexual relations are properly reserved to marriage (3) The terms male or man and female or woman refer to distinct and immutable biological sexes that are determined by anatomy and genetics by the time of birth.

While critics worry about such bills being used to turn away LGBT people from housing, jobs or businesses, they also worry it could open the door to a broader insertion of personal morality in the public sphere. A pharmacist might, for instance, refuse to fill a birth control prescription for an unmarried woman or a child care agency might refuse to look after a boy or girl with gay parents, without risk of losing their state licenses.

Speaking in support of the bathroom bill, a representative from South Dakota Citizens for Liberty said the measure offers a good compromise: “It allows for the sensitive accommodation of students who are experiencing personal trials,” Florence Thompson testified at a hearing of the Senate education committee on Feb. 11. “And does so without giving preferential treatment to a tiny segment of the student population at the expense of the privacy rights of the vast majority.”

Meanwhile, the majority of states lack LGBT non-discrimination laws, although a bill in Pennsylvania will likely add sexual orientation and gender identity to the state’s non-discrimination protections.

In Georgia, where lawmakers are considering at least four religious freedom bills, a group of businesses—including Coca-Cola, AT&T and Delta—has formed to promote “inclusive” policies, explicitly mentioning sexual orientation and gender identity as qualities that should be respected.

In South Dakota, dollars and cents may determine whether the bathroom bill passes too, with the ACLU arguing that the passage of such a law would put the state in direct conflict with federal policy—and therefore all but guarantee costly litigation for school districts that are forced to choose to follow one or the other. Failing to comply with guidance from the Department of Education, which has said that students’ gender identities must be respected, could run the risk of costing local districts hundreds of millions in federal funds.

Yet supporters like Deutsch say that the guidance coming from the federal government is the reason such bills are needed, so that South Dakota won’t be pressured into providing facility access for transgender students that is not yet explicitly laid out in federal law.

The order set off a furious public battle on Wednesday between the Obama administration and one of the world’s most valuable companies in a dispute with far-reaching legal implications.

This is not the first time a technology company has been ordered to effectively decrypt its own product. But industry experts say it is the most significant because of Apple’s global profile, the invasive steps it says are being demanded and the brutality of the San Bernardino attacks.

Law enforcement officials who support the F.B.I.’s position said that the impasse with Apple provided an ideal test case to move from an abstract debate over the balance between national security and privacy to a concrete one

The F.B.I. has been unable to get into the phone used by Syed Rizwan Farook, who was killed by the police along with his wife after they attacked Mr. Farook’s co-workers at a holiday gathering.

Magistrate Judge Sheri Pym of the Federal District Court for the District of Central California issued her order Tuesday afternoon, after the F.B.I. said it had been unable to get access to the data on its own and needed Apple’s technical assistance.

Mr. Cook, the chief executive at Apple, responded Wednesday morning with a blistering, 1,100-word letter to Apple customers, warning of the “chilling” breach of privacy posed by the government’s demands. He maintained that the order would effectively require it to create a “backdoor” to get around its own safeguards, and Apple vowed to appeal the ruling by next week.

Apple argues that the software the F.B.I. wants it to create does not exist. But technologists say the company can do it.

pple executives had hoped to resolve the impasse without having to rewrite their own encryption software. They were frustrated that the Justice Department had aired its demand in public, according to an industry executive with knowledge of the case, who spoke on the condition of anonymity about internal discussions.

The dispute could initiate legislation in Congress, with Republicans and Democrats alike criticizing Apple’s stance on Wednesday and calling for tougher decryption requirements.

His vote of confidence was significant because James Comey, the F.B.I. director, has at times been at odds with the White House over his aggressive advocacy of tougher decryption requirements on technology companies. While Mr. Obama’s national security team was sympathetic to Mr. Comey’s position, others at the White House viewed legislation as potentially perilous. Late last year, Mr. Obama refused to back any legislation requiring decryption, leaving a court fight likely.

The Justice Department and the F.B.I. have the White House’s “full support,” the spokesman, Josh Earnest, said on Wednesday.

Donald J. Trump, the Republican presidential contender, also attacked Apple on Fox News, asking, “Who do they think they are?”

But Apple had many defenders of its own among privacy and consumer advocates, who praised Mr. Cook for standing up to what they saw as government overreach.

Many of the company’s defenders argued that the types of government surveillance operations exposed in 2013 by Edward J. Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor, have prompted technology companies to build tougher encryption safeguards in their products because of the privacy demands of their customers.

Privacy advocates and others said they worried that if the F.B.I. succeeded in getting access to the software overriding Apple’s encryption, it would create easy access for the government in many future investigations.

The Apple order is a flash point in a dispute that has been building for more than a decade. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Advertisement Continue reading the main story

The F.B.I. began sounding alarms years ago about technology that allowed people to exchange private messages protected by encryption so strong that government agents could not break it. In fall 2010, at the behest of Robert S. Mueller III, the F.B.I. director, the Obama administration began work on a law that required technology companies to provide unencrypted data to the government.

Lawyers at the F.B.I., Justice Department and Commerce Department drafted bills around the idea that technology companies in the Internet age should be bound by the same rules as phone companies, which were forced during the Clinton administration to build digital networks that government agents could tap.

The draft legislation would have covered app developers like WhatsApp and large companies like Google and Apple, according to current and former officials involved in the process.

There is no debate that, when armed with a court order, the government can get text messages and other data stored in plain text. Far less certain was whether the government could use a court order to force a company to write software or redesign its system to decode encrypted data. A federal law would make that authority clear, they said.

But the disclosures of government surveillance by Mr. Snowden changed the privacy debate, and the Obama administration decided not to move on the proposed legislation. It has not been revived.

The legal issues raised by the judge’s order are complicated. They involve statutory interpretation, rather than constitutional rights, and they could end up before the Supreme Court.

As Apple noted, the F.B.I., instead of asking Congress to pass legislation resolving the encryption fight, has proposed what appears to be a novel reading of the All Writs Act of 1789.

The law lets judges “issue all writs necessary or appropriate in aid of their respective jurisdictions and agreeable to the usages and principles of law.”

Another important goal of the era, creating “Kurdistan,” never actually happened. The 1920 Treaty of Sevres left an opening for a referendum on Kurdish independence. Problem one: the referendum only included plans for Kurds outside of Syria and Iraq. Problem two: the referendum never happened, a victim of fighting that saw the Turkish people separate themselves from the remains of the Ottoman Empire and fight for two years to prevent the dismantling of what is now modern Turkey. The result was 20 million Kurds scattered across parts of modern Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Syria.

Out of the new negotiations will have to emerge a Kurdistan, with land from Turkey, Iraq, perhaps Iran, and Syria. Assad will stay in power as a Russian proxy. Iran’s hold on Shi’ite Iraq will strengthen. A Sunni homeland, to include the political entity Islamic State will morph into, will need to be assured via a strict hands-off policy by Baghdad.

At risk for not acting: an empowered Islamic State, thriving on more chaos. An explosive dissolution of Iraq. A Russian-Turkish fight that could involve NATO. The shift from a Saudi-Iranian proxy war to a straightforward conflict between the two countries. A spark that forces Israel to act. A mini-world war, in the world’s most flammable region, that will create its own unexpected and uncontrolled realignment of power, and leave behind a warehouse of the dead.

Israel’s habitual exclusion is ostensibly based on sound logic

An invitation to join this coalition would demonstrate to the world that Israel is not a pariah state

the Middle East is no longer preoccupied with the straw man that is the Israeli-Arab conflict.

Fighting the Islamic State is tough, but getting rid of old habits seems to be tougher.

The official told CNN that the Air Force has requested additional funding for Hellfire missiles and is developing plans to ramp up weapons production to replenish its stocks more quickly.

"B-1s have dropped bombs in record numbers. F-15Es are in the fight because they are able to employ a wide range of weapons and do so with great flexibility. We need the funding in place to ensure we're prepared for the long fight," Welsh said in the statement. "This is a critical need."

The Air Force's publication of the number of missiles and bombs dropped comes amid continued criticism from Republicans -- in particular those running for president -- who insist the Obama administration has been too timid in the fight against ISIS, with many on the right calling for the U.S. to loosen the rules of engagement and lead a more aggressive fight against the militant group.

American pilots have fired weapons in less than half of the nearly 18,000 sorties they have in the first 10 months of 2015, according the latest figures available.

in the far abroad.” Russian warplanes began bombing sorties in Syria on Sept, 30.

have been killed in the campaign.

“the experience of our fathers and grandfathers,

their strength of spirit is a great example for us.”

“Sanders statements portend that he would outsource U.S. foreign Policy in the Middle East to Iran,” Pregent said. “Iran is not in Iraq and Syria to defeat ISIS—they are there to grow influence and ensure their proxies are emboldened and empowered.”

What they find is that most states respond sensibly to relative decline, undertaking prompt, proportionate retrenchment, because they seek strategic solvency—they don’t want to go bankrupt (and thus lose their independence). That is, the sensible policy choices that helped make them powerful also help them cope with straitened circumstances and decide to reduce their military and avoid armed conflicts.

Parent and McDonald survey power transitions since 1870 (when data on gross domestic product first started being reliably collected) to explore the behavior of both the top states in the order and the lesser but still powerful states. They examine 16 cases of relative decline, some by hegemonic powers and some by mid-level states.

A hegemon is the rule setter and enforcer in the international order. It is typically (but not necessarily) the strongest power, because states fight for the right to establish terms favorable to their interests—so Britain after the Napoleonic Wars, which “ruled the waves,” could waive the rules; and the United States in the 20th century and especially after World War II became the architect of what is called the liberal international order, or the rules-based international order.

The authors also find that states experiencing decline are not generally seen as inviting targets for aggression by others. So rising states are not generally tempted to attack a weakening rival. Parent and McDonald’s research suggests this is because the states experiencing decline steer clear of conflicts—war being the unsentimental arbiter of state power, declining states would rather not risk demonstrating their diminution.

Their research also suggests that these states tend to prevail in the conflicts they do choose to initiate. Parent and McDonald conclude, “This suggests that declining powers are flexible and formidable.”

For all the talk of China’s leaders as brilliant strategists with a hundred-year time horizon in their planning, their choices in the past decade would seem to conform to Parent and McDonald’s description of a premature bid for hegemony.

This is all good news for the United States in a time of waning relative power in the international order. If the future conforms to the data, we can expect a United States that gets its house in order while avoiding wars, as the Chinese activate antibodies against their continued rise, and thereby allow the U.S. to regain its former standing

two things not apparent in the numbers may prove much more important than the findings from Parent and McDonald’s study.

countries do care whether they hold the top spot, the hegemon, because that gives them the ability to set the rules of the game. If China becomes the hegemon, it will change the rules from what they have been in the time of American hegemony: Preference will replace law, small states will be dictated terms by strong states—patterns we have already begun to see in China’s intimidation of regional neighbors and predatory trade and business practices. The United States and its liberal allies may well fight to prevent those changes.

What we may be seeing in their study is less a generalizable theory of the behavior of declining powers than a demonstration of British and German strategic cultures. They may both be anomalous, which makes them poor examples on which to build a theory.

Regime type may also matter much more because it speaks to a state’s resilience

Authoritarian states tend to be more brittle than their democratic counterparts. Lacking free media to publicize failures and challenge polices, lacking distributed power and civil society to experiment with alternatives and check excess, and lacking elections as competitions among different possible directions for policy, authoritarian governments tend to remain committed to failing policies longer.

Twilight of the Titans is a meaningful contribution to the debate about whether the decline of a great power is to be feared as a cause of war in the international system

they make a very strong case that fighting preventive wars is self-defeating for declining powers. Rather than fight to prevent a rising challenger, states losing their relative power should retrench and compromise to avoid conflict.

Adopting Parent and McDonald’s policy recommendations, though, would be learning to live with “democracy with Chinese characteristics.” Which, interestingly enough, is also the policy recommendation Graham Allison makes in Destined for War.

Business as usual is robbing people of hope, white-anting the promise of change

The message implicit in our governments’ refusal to act is that we should all just suck it up – as in “climate change is bullshit, and even if it’s not there’s nothing you can do about it”

It’s a licence for nihilism, a ticket to hell in a handbasket

the cohort responsible for this mixture of denial and fatalism is far removed from the daily experience of the ordinary citizen, especially the youngest and poorest of us. They have become a threat to our shared future and we must hold them to account, immediately and without reservation.

I’ve noticed a bruised attitude of beleaguerment in individuals and within groups that’s increasingly hard to ignore, a mounting grimness in the faces and language of people barely holding on in the face of steady, cumulative and unrelenting losses

some are clinging to the last tendrils of hope, others are falling into despair. And that worries me.

It’s expressed as grief, and the most palpable, widespread and immediate expression of it is now brewing over climate change. Beneath that grief there’s rage.

I worry that this widely-shared grief and unfocussed rage may become the signal human disposition of our time, that the Anthropocene will be marked by fury and hopelessness

Younger people in particular have begun to feel abandoned by their leaders and elders. They suspect they’ll be left without food or ammunition to stage a fighting retreat in which every battle is a defeat foreseen and every bit of territory was surrendered in advance by politicians and CEOs who deserted them long ago to hide in their privileged bunkers and silos

the reason humanity survived the cold war is because world leaders paid attention. They took emergent crises seriously. And in each instance of utmost danger, arguments of ideology and nationalism eventually fell away before the sacred importance of life itself

the four great capacities of humanity to solve a crisis – ingenuity, discipline, courage and sacrifice – these seem to be reserved for more important enterprises

Our governments and corporations are ensnared in a feedback loop of “common sense” and mutual self-preservation that’s little more than a bespoke form of nihilism. Ideology, prestige, assets and territory are now tacitly understood to be worth more than all life, human or otherwise

We can no longer wait patiently for our leaders to catch up. We cannot allow ourselves to be trained to accept hopelessness. Not by business, nor by governments. Both have subjected us to a steady diet of loss and depletion. It’s sapped us and left us mourning a future we can see fading before it even arrives

There’s no good reason to submit to this. No sane purpose in putting up with it. Because grief will paralyse us, and despair renders doom inevitable. We can afford neither.

we’ll need to get our house in order – and fast. That means calling bullshit on what’s been happening in our name for the past 15 years.

Life. It’s worth the fight. But, by God, after decades of appeasement, defeatism and denialism, it’s going to take a fight. Time’s short. So, let’s give our grief and fury some shape and purpose and reclaim our future together. Enough cowardice. Enough bullshit. Time for action.

In the governor's race, Newsom has styled himself as the candidate with the courage to stand up to Trump and demand change. On Wednesday, he hosted a "Facebook Live" from his office in Sacramento with several immigrants who felt shielded by the state's immigration policies.Newsom invoked the racist, nativist rhetoric around Proposition 187, the 1994 ballot measure that would have barred immigrants from getting basic state services. (The measure passed overwhelmingly, but was ultimately struck down by the courts).

Pointing to some of the state's vanguard legal battles, Chiang argued that Californians "are the visionaries; we're the fighters. And we're employing an argument that Republicans and conservatives will understand. We're fighting for states' rights. We get to decide who we are and what we believe in."

“People in the Air Force who are in space sometimes view themselves as failed fighter pilots, because the real ethic there has been to be a fighter pilot, and that’s the way to get promoted to general,” he told me. Cooper said the Air Force was even unenthusiastic about drones initially, “because they didn’t like aircraft that were not piloted.”

“Have you ever been around someone who has to be in charge, who has to be the one that everybody looks up to?” said Danice Bowers, who now works in a school library in Shawnee, Okla. “That was Betsy Herring.”

Her mother pressed for the family to move from Norman to Oklahoma City so their daughter could attend what she saw as the best school around. That was Northwest Classen, a modern building of glass and brick that had a reputation for academic excellence. It had a German club, a Spanish club and a Great Books club, even its own amateur radio station. The Herring family settled just a few blocks away.

“The Summer of Love hadn’t reached us,” Mr. Pryor, a high school debate teammate, said of Oklahoma in the 1960s. “When you saluted the flag, it was emotional. You believed we were right to fight the Communists in Vietnam. It was not right to doubt the government. This was the era we grew up in. We were true believers at that point.

The experience at age 12 left Ms. Warren with the belief that honest people help themselves — that when trouble arrives, they tug on the dress, blow their nose, and walk to Sears. That assumption guided her research on personal bankruptcy in her early years as a law professor.

When she was 12, her father had a heart attack. Ms. Warren describes what happened next in “A Fighting Chance.” He came home from the hospital changed. He ate poached eggs with the yolks taken out and got yelled at if he tried to lift grocery bags. His job as a salesman for Montgomery Ward was downgraded to commission-only. Pauline, who was 50 then, had to go to work for the first time in her married life

The dominant culture, regardless of political party, was conservative — a pride in country and an emphasis on family that Ms. Warren was steeped in

“She was extremely conservative at the time,” said Dr. Cochran, whose father was working in Democratic politics. She said Ms. Warren would joke about her friend’s Democratic leanings. “She would ask me what other subversive organizations I was a member of besides the Democratic Party.”

By Ms. Warren’s own account, her parents were not the types to talk politics around the dinner table. As for the war, it was personal for them in another way: Don Reed, Ms. Warren’s oldest brother, was flying combat missions in Vietnam.

By her senior year, her classmates recalled, she was a debate team star. Her exceptional ability to focus, rare among the teenage boys she was going up against, had made Northwest Classen one of the best teams in the state. Ms. Warren and her partner, Mr. Johnson, would go on to win the state championship their senior year. She was particularly good at rebuttal — taking apart the other side’s argument in four minutes.

But she took her home economics studies seriously, too. As a senior, she won the Betty Crocker Homemaker of Tomorrow Award, memorizing the butterfat content of heavy cream and how to tie off a lazy daisy stitch, according to “A Fighting Chance.”

Judy Garrett, Ms. Warren’s sophomore English teacher, who remembers her as “the smartest student I ever had,” went on Ms. Warren’s website after she realized what her star pupil had gone on to do.

“Great teachers inspire students in so many ways,” she wrote. “I was skinny and young (I’d skipped a grade) and so sure everyone else had something I didn’t have and didn’t understand. I remember how you taught foreshadowing and how you said I didn’t have to go steady with a boy to be someone (a lesson I didn’t learn for about another 15 years). You were pretty and confident and calm. I so much wanted to be a teacher, and you were part of the reason.”

GOP leaders justify the voter suppression measures by arguing that they are needed to crack down on fraud and to restore the public's faith that US elections are fair. But multiple courts and Trump's own Justice Department found there was no widespread electoral fraud in 2020.

The Georgia bill is only one example of GOP efforts in multiple states -- including many crucial electoral battlegrounds -- to hold back a diverse demographic tide in cities that favor Democrats, which critics see as an attempt to cement minority rule in the United States.

Georgia Republicans also lost two US Senate seats that handed Democrats control of the 50-50 chamber on the basis of huge Black turnout in runoff elections in January.close dialogSign up for CNN's CNN's Chris Cillizza cuts through the political spin and tells you what you need to know. Sign Me UpNo ThanksBy subscribing, you agree to ourprivacy policy.Sign up for CNN's CNN's Chris Cillizza cuts through the political spin and tells you what you need to know. Please enter above Sign Me UpNo ThanksBy subscribing, you agree to ourprivacy policy.You're on the list for CNN'sCNN's Chris Cillizza cuts through the political spin and tells you what you need to know. close dialog/* effects for .bx-campaign-1245919 *//* custom css .bx-campaign-1245919 *//* custom css from creative 47804 */@-ms-keyframes bx-anim-1245919-spin { from {

"This should be marked as Exhibit A in making the case that discriminatory voter suppression is alive and well, and makes clear why we need federal voting rights legislation to stop these laws in their tracks," Hewitt said. "We stand ready to take action and protect the fundamental right to vote through the courts."

as a remnant of the Jim Crow era that institutionalized racism and hinted that he could ultimately back abolishing the Senate filibuster to get the Democrats' House-passed bill through the chamber. But Biden declined to reveal his strategy for getting the voting rights bill into law.

Georgia's action threw a political grenade into the debate over a Washington campaign by many Democrats to abolish Senate supermajority rules that Republicans could use to block their sweeping election bill, known as the For the People Act.

In a statement to CNN, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican who defied Trump's pleas in a telephone call to find votes to overturn Biden's victory, said he would still stand up for voter freedoms but did not criticize the law."In implementing this law, I will ensure that no eligible Georgia voter is hindered in exercising their right to vote, and I will continue to further secure our elections so that every Georgian can have confidence in the results of our elections," Raffensperger said

"As the FBI continue to round up seditionists who spilled blood to defend a lie about our elections, Republican state leaders willfully undermine democracy by giving themselves authority to overturn results they do not like," Abrams said in a statement. "Now, more than ever, Americans must demand federal action to protect voting rights as we continue to fight against these blatantly unconstitutional efforts that are nothing less than Jim Crow 2.0."

Black voters hampered by the restrictions of voting in urban areas have often found themselves lining up for hours to vote in inclement weather. The clear targeting of African American voters in Georgia and elsewhere recalls some of the ugliest racial episodes of America's past, and is fueling claims of open Republican racism.

Former President Donald Trump's campaign of lies about a stolen election just delivered a huge victory with a new Georgia law that could suppress the votes of many of the citizens who helped eject him from the White House.

Republican state lawmakers rushed through a broad law Thursday making it harder to vote that disproportionately targets Democratic and Black voters

The move confirms the Peach State as the epicenter of the fight for American democracy

The Georgia law raises the question of whether election safeguards that prevented Trump's energetic efforts to rig the 2020 White House race after the fact in the state will stand firm in future elections amid false claims of electoral fraud by a president.

"What I'm worried about is how un-American this whole initiative is. It's sick. It's sick," President Joe Biden

Republicans in multiple states pursue new laws to limit voting.

Georgia Republicans also lost two US Senate seats that handed Democrats control of the 50-50 chamber on the basis of huge Black turnout in runoff elections in January.close dialogSign up for CNN What Matters NewsletterEvery day we summarize What Matters and deliver it straight to your inbox.Sign me upNo thanksBy subscribing you agree to ourprivacy policy.By subscribing you agree to ourprivacy policy.Sign up for CNN What Matters NewsletterEvery day we summarize What Matters and deliver it straight to your inbox.Please enter aboveSign me upNo thanksBy subscribing you agree to ourprivacy policy.By subscribing you agree to ourprivacy policy.Sign up for CNN What Matters NewsletterEvery day we summarize What Matters and deliver it straight to your inbox.//assets.bounceexchang

After leaving office, Trump demanded that Republican state legislatures pass laws to ban mail-in voting and to prevent courts from weighing in on electoral disputes.

the former President has made the acceptance of his false conspiracy theories about voter fraud in 2020 a litmus test for Republican candidates

Iowa has already passed a measure to limit absentee balloting and voting hours. Texas is taking steps to cut voting hours and absentee balloting in big Democratic cities like Houston. New voting laws are being pushed by Republicans in another swing state Trump lost, Arizona.

GOP leaders justify the voter suppression measures by arguing that they are needed to crack down on fraud and to restore the public's faith that US elections are fair. But multiple courts and Trump's own Justice Department found there was no widespread electoral fraud in 2020.

voter mistrust was largely fueled by Trump's blatantly false claims

Georgia's action threw a political grenade into the debate over a Washington campaign by many Democrats to abolish Senate supermajority rules that Republicans could use to block their sweeping election bill, known as the For the People Act.

The drama in the Georgia Legislature unfolded as Biden condemned restrictive state legislation as a remnant of the Jim Crow era that institutionalized racism and hinted that he could ultimately back abolishing the Senate filibuster to get the Democrats' House-passed bill through the chamber.

The law allows any Georgian to make unlimited challenges to voter registrations, and, incredibly, makes it a misdemeanor crime for anyone to offer food and water to voters stuck in long lines to cast ballots.

The clear targeting of African American voters in Georgia and elsewhere recalls some of the ugliest racial episodes of America's past, and is fueling claims of open Republican racism.

The Georgia law was quickly signed by Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, who incurred the wrath of Trump last year for refusing to play along with his attempt to override Biden's victory by 12,000 votes in the state, which was confirmed by several audits.

"In implementing this law, I will ensure that no eligible Georgia voter is hindered in exercising their right to vote, and I will continue to further secure our elections so that every Georgian can have confidence in the results of our elections," Raffensperger said.

Kemp is up for reelection in 2022 and could face Democrat Stacey Abrams, a former state lawmaker and prominent voting rights advocate

"As the FBI continue to round up seditionists who spilled blood to defend a lie about our elections, Republican state leaders willfully undermine democracy by giving themselves authority to overturn results they do not like," Abrams said in a statement. "Now, more than ever, Americans must demand federal action to protect voting rights as we continue to fight against these blatantly unconstitutional efforts that are nothing less than Jim Crow 2.0."

the measure directly targeted voters of color who took part in record numbers in the 2020 election.

The For the People Act awaiting action in the Senate would create automatic voter registration nationwide and restore portions of the Voting Rights Act that were gutted by the Supreme Court. It would also strengthen mail-in voting and permit early voting across the country, while taking steps to cut wait times at the polls.

Republican grassroots activists mounted a weekend campaign to ensure the bill's passage

The efforts to restrict voting come after the traditionally red state backed Democrat Joe Biden for the presidency last year and sent two Democrats to the US Senate, Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff.

The ACLU of Georgia executive director Andrea Young said her group would use "every tool" available to block the voting restrictions, including taking the fight to the state's corporate interests.

Lauren Groh-Wargo -- the CEO of Fair Fight Action, the voting rights group founded by former Democratic gubernatorial nominee Stacey Abrams -- promised to "fight in Georgia, in the courts and in Congress to make sure that Georgians' voting rights are not infringed."

"The Lt. Governor has been crystal clear that he does not support the roll-back of absentee voting, and instead believes that modernizing and updating the system is more appropriate," McFall said in a statement to CNN.

The state's Republican Gov. Brian Kemp has not declared whether he would sign the bill in its current form into law

More broadly, Kemp wants to "ensure Georgia's elections are secure, accessible, and fair -- and that it must be easy to vote and hard to cheat in Georgia," Blount added, echoing Kemp's standard line about voting.Leading up to Monday's vote, Georgia Republicans faced pressure from grassroots GOP activists to pass voting restrictions. Former President Donald Trump has made repeated and baseless claims that election fraud contributed to his defeat in Georgia and elsewhere. And Trump has lashed out against Kemp, who is up for reelection in 2022, and other Republicans in the state who refused to back his fraud claims.

there's no evidence of widespread fraud that would have overturned the election's outcome in Georgia or anywhere else, federal and state officials have said.

"The Republican base is united in this, and I dare Brian Kemp to veto a strong election security bill that comes to his desk," she said. "He's in enough trouble as it is. I know a lot of Republicans that have pledged not to support him under any circumstance."

The bill aims to dismantle a 2005 Republican-backed law allowing no-excuse absentee voting. Georgia is one of 34 states that do not currently require an excuse to vote by mail, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Under the measure approved Monday, to qualify for an absentee ballot, voters must be 65 years old or older, absent from their precinct, observing a religious holiday, required to provide constant care for someone with a physical disability, or required to work "for the protection of the health, life, or safety of the public during the entire time the polls are open," or be an overseas or military voter.

"It's an example of how a 'race neutral policy' can end up having racially disparate impacts," said Kevin Morris, a Brennan Center researcher. "You don't have to use the word 'race' to carve up the electorate in racially disparate ways."

he hefty monetary enforcements are yet another example of the distrust that has deepened since the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Democrats say they can't count on certain Republicans to abide by safety measures, while GOP lawmakers argue the fines are an unnecessary power grab by the House majority.

The rules state that the fines will be deducted from the offending lawmaker’s salary and can’t be paid for with office budget or campaign funds

Mast further argued that the fine was unconstitutional and “unenforceable,” citing in part the Constitution’s 27th Amendment that prohibits any change in the salary of members of Congress from taking effect until after the next election.

While Mast, Miller-Meeks and Norman have all confirmed they are fully vaccinated, the other Republicans fined for going maskless have either declined to disclose their vaccination status or openly said they aren’t vaccinated.

The Capitol’s attending physician, Brian Monahan, explained in a memo that masks are still required in the House chamber unless members are recognized to speak during debate because it is “the only location where the entire Membership gathers periodically throughout the day in an interior space.” 

A recent CNN survey found that all Democrats in the House and Senate confirmed they are vaccinated.

Democrats also felt they had to impose fines to compel enforcement of security screenings enacted in the wake of the Jan. 6 riot after several Republicans refused to go through newly installed metal detectors outside the House chamber.

Democrats defending the penalties argue that rules enforcing metal detector screenings or masks enforce what they believe is ultimately a minor inconvenience.

Trump, for example, urged Republicans to stop fighting like a boxer "with his hands tied behind his back," saying, "We want to be so respectful of everybody, including bad people. And we're going to have to fight much harder."

Trump alleged that there would be dire consequences if his supporters did not take immediate action -- saying that, if Biden took office, "You will have an illegitimate president. That's what you'll have. And we can't let that happen." And he said, "We fight like hell. And if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore."

In sum: McClintock and other Trump allies are entitled to argue that all of these Trump comments are not impeachable, even that they are not incendiary. But he left a misleading impression when he posed the question, "but what did he actually say?" and did not mention the most contentious things Trump actually said.

"And I also want to thank my Democratic colleagues for finally joining Republicans in condemning mob violence after six months of refusing to acknowledge it."

Republicans are entitled to argue that Democrats should have issued such condemnations more forcefully or frequently, but it's just inaccurate to say or suggest they didn't issue the condemnations at all.

Mueller never said Trump did nothing wrong. In fact, Mueller's final report explains that there was strong evidence that Trump obstructed justice, on several occasions. But Mueller decided not to make a decision on whether to charge Trump, for many reasons, including Department of Justice policy that a president "cannot be charged with a federal crime while he is in office."

And according to figures released by the Justice Department, the investigation actually cost $32 million, not $40 million.

Jordan also said, as he has as far back as 2019, that the whistleblower who filed the primary 2019 complaint about Trump's dealings with Ukraine "worked for Joe Biden."

It's possible the whistleblower interacted with Biden in the course of their job duties in the government, but that's substantially different than working for Biden himself. The whistleblower's lawyers said in 2019 that "our client has spent their entire government career in apolitical, civil servant positions in the Executive Branch" and that "in these positions our client has come into contact with presidential candidates from both parties in their roles as elected officials -- not as candidates."