Ilyse Hogue and Ari Melber: The GOP’s Unabashedly Partisan Voter ID Laws

Ilyse Hogue and Ari Melber: The GOP’s Unabashedly Partisan Voter ID Laws

Ilyse Hogue and Ari Melber: The GOP’s Unabashedly Partisan Voter ID Laws

GOP Representative Mike Turzai’s casual acknowledgement that voter ID laws would “allow Governor Romney to win” is much more than a political gaffe. 

Copy Link
Facebook
X (Twitter)
Bluesky
Pocket
Email

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

This weekend, Pennsylvania GOP Representative Mike Turzai was cheerily going down a list of achievements made by his party in the state congress this session when he dropped this line: “Voter ID, which is going to allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania, done.” It’s been bouncing around the news media ever since. 

Gaffe or otherwise, Representative Turzai seemed to have finally laid out plain the GOP’s motives for the rollback of voting rights.

“We’re looking at a party where the ends justify the means,” said Nation writer Ilyse Hogue, speaking on The Ed Show last night. “This is positively anti-American.”

Hogue and Nation writer Ari Melber sat down with Republican strategist Susan Del Percio, who didn’t hesitate to concede her party has, “in certain circumstances,” gone too far.

—Zoë Schlanger

Support independent journalism that does not fall in line

Even before February 28, the reasons for Donald Trump’s imploding approval rating were abundantly clear: untrammeled corruption and personal enrichment to the tune of billions of dollars during an affordability crisis, a foreign policy guided only by his own derelict sense of morality, and the deployment of a murderous campaign of occupation, detention, and deportation on American streets. 

Now an undeclared, unauthorized, unpopular, and unconstitutional war of aggression against Iran has spread like wildfire through the region and into Europe. A new “forever war”—with an ever-increasing likelihood of American troops on the ground—may very well be upon us.  

As we’ve seen over and over, this administration uses lies, misdirection, and attempts to flood the zone to justify its abuses of power at home and abroad. Just as Trump, Marco Rubio, and Pete Hegseth offer erratic and contradictory rationales for the attacks on Iran, the administration is also spreading the lie that the upcoming midterm elections are under threat from noncitizens on voter rolls. When these lies go unchecked, they become the basis for further authoritarian encroachment and war. 

In these dark times, independent journalism is uniquely able to uncover the falsehoods that threaten our republic—and civilians around the world—and shine a bright light on the truth. 

The Nation’s experienced team of writers, editors, and fact-checkers understands the scale of what we’re up against and the urgency with which we have to act. That’s why we’re publishing critical reporting and analysis of the war on Iran, ICE violence at home, new forms of voter suppression emerging in the courts, and much more. 

But this journalism is possible only with your support.

This March, The Nation needs to raise $50,000 to ensure that we have the resources for reporting and analysis that sets the record straight and empowers people of conscience to organize. Will you donate today?

Ad Policy
x