Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

It's been a rough start to 2022 for Texas election officials

Texas voter registration form
Bryan R. Smith/AFP via Getty Images

Texas, which remains a Republican stronghold despite Democratic efforts to turn the state blue in recent election cycles, has come under the microscope for its voter registration practices.

An ongoing dispute over efforts by the second most populous state to clean its voter rolls took yet another legal turn Tuesday when a collection of voting rights organizations filed a lawsuit demanding access to relevant documents.

In 2019, Texas' secretary of state kicked off a process to remove non-citizens from the list of registered voters and claimed to have found 100,000 such people. But people who had become naturalized citizens got caught up in the sweep, leading to multiple federal lawsuits, resignations and a scaled-back approach that may still be sweeping up eligible voters.

The latest lawsuit responds to the revised plan for cleaning the rolls.


While the state believed the new approach, launched in the second half of 2021, would do a better job protecting citizens from a purge, local officials and voting rights advocates remained skeptical and found that errors were still being made.

The Campaign Legal Center, Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Texas, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and Demos requested records from the state, including data used to determine citizenship status. Having failed to receive any records, those groups filed a lawsuit against the state Tuesday.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

“It seems that Texas is incapable – or worse, unwilling – to learn from the past. Racial and ethnic discrimination in voting has been a sad part of Texas’s history continuing in the present. And discriminating against naturalized citizens falls into this unfortunate pattern,” said Ezra Rosenberg, co-director of the Lawyers’ Committee’s Voting Rights Project. “We need to shed light on precisely how Texas is identifying voters it wants to purge from the rolls in order to ensure that the precious right to vote is not snatched from eligible voters, whose only ‘crime’ is that they are naturalized and not native-born citizens.”

Texas elections officials were already scrambling to deal with concerns about new voter registrations in the wake of news that the state was facing a shortage of paper applications. It’s just one of nine states that do not offer online voter registration.

With the Texas primary coming up on March 1, new registrations were due by Jan. 31.

But Secretary of State John Scott sought to reassure Texans prior to the deadline: "This year alone, the SOS has provided tens of thousands of voter registration applications to counties, libraries, schools, and private entities. The SOS has also made a .pdf version of the voter registration application available to anyone who requests it, including private entities. Additionally, Texas voters can fill out an online application form, print, sign and send the completed application to their county voter registrar.”

Other organizations, including the Democratic Party, also took steps to assist new voters.

On a more positive note, a recent report found that Texas libraries have made significant improvements in meeting voter registration requirements after failing to meet state and federal standards in 2020.

Read More

Innovative Local Solutions Can Ease America’s Housing Crisis
aerial photography of rural
Photo by Breno Assis on Unsplash

Innovative Local Solutions Can Ease America’s Housing Crisis

Across the country, families are prevented from accessing safe, stable, affordable housing—not by accident, but by design. Decades of exclusionary zoning, racial discrimination, and disinvestment have created a housing system that works well for the wealthy but leaves others behind. Even as federal cuts to public housing programs continue nationwide, powerful, community-rooted efforts are pushing back and offering real, equity-driven solutions led by local voices.

Historically, states like New Jersey show what’s possible when legal advocacy and grassroots organizing come together. In 1975, the New Jersey Supreme Court’s Mount Laurel ruling established that every municipality in the state has a constitutional obligation to provide its fair share of affordable housing. This landmark legal ruling reshaped housing policy and set a national precedent. Today, organizations like Fair Share Housing Center continue to defend and expand this right, ensuring that local governments are prohibited from using zoning laws to exclude working-class families or people of color.

Keep ReadingShow less
Trump Welcomes Salvadoran President, Continuing To Collaborate With Far-Right World Leaders

WASHINGTON, DC - APRIL 14: U.S. President Donald Trump meets with President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador in the Oval Office of the White House April 14, 2025 in Washington, DC.

(Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Trump Welcomes Salvadoran President, Continuing To Collaborate With Far-Right World Leaders

WASHINGTON D.C. - President Donald Trump on Monday said that he would try to deport “as many as possible” immigrants or criminals to El Salvador. Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele met with Trump at the White House to discuss the ongoing deportations of MS-13 and Tren de Aragua gang members to El Salvador’s notorious Center for Terrorism Confinement (CETOC).

Trump has now deported 238 individuals to El Salvador under the 1879 Alien Enemies Act without notice or due process of law. President Bukele has agreed to help Trump with his deportation goals and received $6 million from the White House to continue these efforts.

Keep ReadingShow less
Quiet Death of Dissent
woman in black hijab holding white and black printed board
Photo by Justin Essah on Unsplash

Quiet Death of Dissent

There is something particularly American about the way we're dismantling our democracy these days – we are doing it with paperwork. While the world watches our grand political theater, immigration agents are quietly canceling visas, filling out deportation orders, and reshaping the boundaries of acceptable speech without firing a single shot.

I think about Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian activist and Columbia graduate who committed no crime beyond speaking his mind. I think about Rumeysa Ozturk, a doctoral student at Tufts whose academic career hangs by a thread. I think about the estimated 300 international students whose visas are under review or already revoked for daring to participate in First Amendment exercises on campus across the United States. These stories are not just about immigration status but about who is American enough to participate in its democracy and under what conditions.

Keep ReadingShow less
hundred dollar bills.
Getty Images, boonchai wedmakawand

Congress Bill Spotlight: Donald J. Trump $250 Bill Act

The Fulcrum introduces Congress Bill Spotlight, a weekly report by Jesse Rifkin, focusing on the noteworthy legislation of the thousands introduced in Congress. Rifkin has written about Congress for years, and now he's dissecting the most interesting bills you need to know about but that often don't get the right news coverage.

Trump reportedly tips his Mar-a-Lago groundskeepers with $100 bills. What if his own face appeared on them?

Keep ReadingShow less