Background Briefing: July 12, 2021

 

Texas Democrats Head Out of Town Again to Stop Republican Voter Suppression

We begin with the second walkout of the Texas Legislature by Democrats to deny a quorum and stop an even more pernicious set of voter suppression bills from being passed and speak with Jeremy Suri, the Distinguished Chair for Leadership in Global Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin where he is also a professor of history and public policy. The author of The Impossible Presidency: The Rise and Fall of America’s Highest Office, we discuss how the 58 Democratic legislators snuck out of Austin on private planes headed to Washington D.C. where they will join Democratic House members and Senators, along with President Biden, to find a way to stop the steal of the next elections by Republicans who are pulling out all the stops in their brazen and cynical effort to cheat rather than compete.

 

Popular Demonstrations Erupt in Cuba

Then we look into the popular demonstrations all over Cuba against the government from ordinary citizens fed up with the shortages of food, electricity, vaccines and the lack of basic freedoms who have taken to the streets in an authoritarian country where anti-government demonstrations are not tolerated. Arturo Lopez Levy, Professor in the School of Business and Applied Social Sciences at Holy Name University who was previously a political analyst for the Cuban government and is the author of Raul Castro and the New Cuba: A Close-Up View of Change, joins us to discuss how concern expressed by Biden for the Cuban people does not resonate with them because Cubans largely blame the American blockade for their troubles.

 

White Evangelicals Double Down in Their Support For a Violator of Seven of the Ten Commandments

Then finally we speak with Robert Jones, the CEO and Founder of Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) who is a contributing columnist for The Atlantic and the co-author of White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity. He joins us to discuss the shrinking number of white Protestants in the country due to young Americans turning away from religion and how white evangelicals are doubling down in their support for Trump with a quarter of them believing that “true American patriots may have to resort to violence to save our country.”