The Awful Keeps Coming
By It’s not just disaster relief — the House Republican leadership continues to find a variety of appalling-in-themselves excuses to refuse to renew the Violence Against Women Act:
But House Republicans insisted the bill is too supportive of immigrants, the LGBT community, and Native Americans — and they’d rather let the law expire than approve a slightly expanded proposal. Vice President Biden, who helped write the original law, tried to persuade House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) to keep the law alive, but the efforts didn’t go anywhere.
And so, for the first time since 1994, the Violence Against Women Act is no more.
In a bad commerce clause/14th Amendment holding, a bare majority of Supreme Court conservatives struck down one provision of the VAWA; the Court’s allies in Congress appear poised to finish the job.