Since proclaiming his opposition to the For the People Act, Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin has drawn a lot of ire from voting rights advocates, including some from his home state of West Virginia.
Former Secretary of State Natalie Tennant and five other West Virginia advocates vowed during a press call Wednesday to keep the pressure on Manchin in the coming weeks. The the sweeping election reform bill is scheduled to be brought to the Senate floor later this month.
In an opinion piece published over the weekend, Manchin did not say he was opposed to specific elements of the For the People Act. Rather, he said he wouldn't vote for the bill unless Republicans were also on board — a nearly impossible standard. The moderate Democrat also reaffirmed his opposition to weakening or eliminating the filibuster, dealing another critical blow to the bill's chances of success.
The group of West Virginia voting rights advocates pushed back on Manchin's claim that there was no bipartisan support for the For the People Act.
"Sen. Manchin has an idea of bipartisanship that is not formed or based on reality. Bipartisanship is not how many Republican senators you can get to vote for a bill," said David Fryson, pastor-elect of The New First Baptist Church of Kanawha City in Charleston. Bipartisanship, he added, is demonstrated by the broad support the legislation has among West Virginians of all political affiliations, much like it does across the rest of the country.
An April poll conducted by Global Strategy Group and ALG Research for End Citizens United, a liberal democracy reform group, found that 79 percent of West Virginians overall, including three-quarters of Republicans, supported the For the People Act.
"So to be quite frank, it is Sen. Manchin who is not being bipartisan. What he is doing is being political. I don't see how protecting the sacrosanct of voting rights could be anything but a positive," said Fryson.
While many voting rights advocates were disheartened by Manchin's announcement, Tennant said she's not going to let it stop them from pushing forward on this issue. As she's been advocating for the For the People Act in the Mountain State, Tennant has also been actively combating misinformation and misconceptions around the bill. For instance, one falsehood she said she hears often is that the legislation would lead to a federal takeover of elections. In response to that, she emphasizes how it would actually help set minimum standards for states to make voting and elections more fair, transparent and accessible.
"When the facts aren't stated correctly or fairly, or there is this intention to mislead, that is what is so hurtful," Tennant said. "Our West Virginia voters are the ones that are going to be hurt by people just making up stuff."
Following the 2020 election, hundreds of restrictive voting measures have been introduced in nearly every state legislature. Fourteen states have already enacted a collective 22 laws limiting access to the ballot box and imposing stricter voting rules.
The For the People Act has been billed as the ultimate remedy to this wave of restrictive voting legislation. Another landmark bill being considered in Congress, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, would also help combat future restrictive voting measures. Advocates say both are necessary to protect voting rights across the country.
Manchin wrote that, instead, he supports the Voting Rights Advancement Act, claiming it has bipartisan support. And while Republican Lisa Murkowski of Alaska has joined him in backing that bill, it appears unlikely that enough lawmakers from her party will sign on to prevent the GOP from blocking the legislation.
The West Virginia senator is receiving heat not only from his home state, but also on a national scale. On Wednesday morning, a coalition of national political reform advocacy organizations and several of Manchin's congressional colleagues gathered for a rally outside the Supreme Court. Advocates and elected officials reiterated the importance of both bills and implored Manchin to choose democracy over politics.
But it remains to be seen if any of this outside pressure will convince Manchin to change his mind on the reform legislation. Even a meeting this week with civil rights leaders did not seem to sway his stance.
The voting rights advocates from West Virginia said whatever Manchin decides on this issue will not only reflect on his legacy as a senator but also the entire state's reputation.
"I don't want us to be the state that said 'no,'" Tennant said. "We are fighting stereotypes all the time that we're backward, that we don't understand. But we do understand [...] and we could lead the way on this."
image of U.S. President Donald Trump is displayed on a digital billboard in Times Square in New York on April 8, 2026.
Trump is stuck between two realities. Neither serves the American people
Normally, I worry that events may overtake a column. But not so with the Iran war.
I don’t worry about running afoul of a headline or Truth Social post from the president because what is said about the situation is no longer very relevant to the reality.
On April 8, Nick Catoggio, my Dispatch colleague, dubbed an earlier stoppage with Iran “Schrödinger’s ceasefire.” This was a reference to the famous thought experiment by the physicist Erwin Schrödinger, who was trying to explain the weirdness of “superpositionality” in quantum physics. A cat in a box is both dead and alive at the same time until you open the box. Schrödinger meant to illustrate the absurdity of the idea that particles aren’t any one thing, but a “cloud of probabilities.”
The Trump administration is stuck in a word cloud of probabilities of his own making. The war is over. The war is on. The war isn’t a war. We have a deal, but we don’t have a deal, but we’re about to have a deal. We destroyed Iran’s military. No, we left it intact. We want regime change. No we don’t. We already accomplished it. We “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program a year ago. We had to go to war in February to prevent nuclear war. The Strait of Hormuz is open, closed, or something in-between. No deal without “unconditional surrender.” Let’s make a deal!
This everything-all-at-once vibe can be disorienting, particularly since most Americans didn’t have a war with Iran on their bingo cards until the shooting had already started. President Trump didn’t prepare the country or consult with Congress beforehand because he thought it would all be a smashing success in a matter of weeks.
The miscalculation that started it all: killing Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and much of Iran’s senior leadership, on the first day of the war. To “the great proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand,” Trump announced on Feb. 28. “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations.”
I support regime change in Iran and shed no tears for Khamenei or his goons. But when you start a war by killing the regime’s top leaders, it’s not unreasonable for the remaining ones to conclude that you really intend regime change.
Khamenei was a murderous fanatic, but he was a fairly cautious one. He liked to threaten closing the Strait of Hormuz or attacking our regional allies, but he was reluctant to actually do it, fearing it would invite a regime change war. The mullahs and IRGC goons believed, not unreasonably, that if they lost their grip on power, they’d be lynched by the Iranian people they’ve brutalized for decades.
By starting with a regime change war, Trump removed any reason for the regime not to go for broke. When you have nothing to lose — particularly when you are a millenarian religious fanatic — a Persian Alamo strategy makes a lot of sense.
So Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz and attacked its neighbors.
But it turns out this wasn’t the Alamo. In the contest of wills, Trump blinked. The Iranian regime’s tolerance for punishment proved — so far — to be greater than Trump’s and that of our gulf allies. Militarily we could finish the job, but that would require ground troops and much greater economic turmoil. In a conflict Trump launched unilaterally without the prior support of Congress, NATO or the American people, Trump doesn’t have the political capital for that.
But that’s only half the problem. Trump wants the war over, but he doesn’t want to pay — militarily, economically, politically — what that would cost. So he wants to make a deal that ends it. But there is no deal available that wouldn’t come at an equally undesirable cost. Any deal that looks like what President Obama struck with the Iranians would be too embarrassing to bear. But the Iranians are convinced that they can get just such a deal, and they’re willing to drag things out as long as it takes.
The result: Trump’s in a box of his own making. He thinks he can talk his way out by simply asserting a reality that doesn’t exist. When the financial markets get nervous, he announces a breakthrough that is, at best, a possibility. When the Iranians agree to a deal that looks similar to one Obama might negotiate, Trump goes back to his threats.
It can’t go on forever. But I’m sure it’ll last until long after this column is forgotten.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.