The report, a follow-up to CAP’s March 2013 report tracking national economic gains resulting from immigration reform, calculates the economic benefits of 24 states that contain roughly 88 percent of the United States’ undocumented immigrants. Across all of these states, the economic gains are significant. In California, for example, where approximately 2.5 million undocumented immigrants currently reside, immigration reform would lead to a $125.5 billion increase in the gross state product, or GSP, over a 10-year period. Furthermore, the state would see an additional $5.3 billion in tax revenues over a 10-year span and 18,200 new jobs created annually.

The state-by-state analysis also revealed:

• All of the 24 states included in this study would experience a 10-year cumulative increase in GSP—ranging from $510 million to $144.6 billion—once immigration reform is enacted.
• All 24 states would earn additional tax revenues exceeding $200 million over a 10-year period, while 10 of the states’ additional tax revenues will surpass $1.3 billion.
• Cumulatively, immigration reform will create an average 107,100 jobs annually in the 24 states included in this analysis.

With roughly 11.1 million undocumented immigrants currently living in the United States, providing these individuals legal status and a pathway to citizenship will yield significant economic benefits not just at the federal level but also within the states. The sooner we grant legal status and provide a pathway to citizenship to undocumented immigrants, the sooner all Americans will be able to reap these benefits.

Read the full analysis here.

To speak with an expert on this topic, contact Crystal Patterson cpatterson@americanprogress.org or 202.478.6350.

See also: Think Again: Worse than Watergate? by Eric Alterman

With the release of the Benghazi emails on Wednesday, the notion that any of it could have been “worse than Watergate” is difficult to countenance.

SOURCE: AP/Bebeto Matthews

Victoriano Del La Cruz, 36, a carpenter from Mexico, stands just outside a basement entrance as Sergio Ajche, 29, from Guatemala, finishes a painting job in New York, May 7, 2013. Providing undocumented immigrants with a pathway to legalization and citizenship would have many benefits for the U.S. economy,

Endnotes and citations are available in the PDF of this issue brief.

On April 16, 2013, the Senate’s “Gang of 8”—a bipartisan group of eight U.S. senators—filed the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act of 2013. At the core of the bill is a provision that will provide a pathway to earned legalization and citizenship for the 11 million undocumented immigrants in America.

The pathway to citizenship for these aspiring Americans will be neither short nor easy. Under the provisions of the bill, most undocumented immigrants will have to wait 10 years before they can apply for legal permanent residency—a green card. In addition, most will not be eligible for citizenship until at least 13 years after the bill is enacted.

Despite this long process, there are significant economic benefits to the U.S. economy and to all Americans when unauthorized immigrants acquire provisional legal status. Our prior research in a Center for American Progress report, “Economic Effects of Granting Legal Status and Citizenship to Undocumented Immigrants,” showed that legalization and citizenship bring large economic benefits to the nation as a whole. But as this brief will show, the economies of each state also stand to gain large benefits if immigrants are put on a path to legal status and citizenship. In this follow-up issue brief, we break down the economic gains for 24 individual states.

Both the acquisition of legal status and citizenship enable undocumented immigrants to produce and earn significantly more. These resulting productivity and wage gains ripple through the economy because immigrants are not just workers—they are also taxpayers and consumers. They pay taxes on their higher wages and they spend their increased earnings on the purchase of goods and services including food, clothing, and homes. This increased consumption boosts business sales, expands the economy, generates new jobs, and increases the earnings of all Americans.

Each state will experience significant economic growth as well. In this follow-up to the “Economic Effects of Granting Legal Status and Citizenship to Undocumented Immigrants,” we begin by recapping the national gains. We then provide estimates of the economic benefits for 24 states if their undocumented populations were legalized. Specifically, we estimate the increases over 10 years in gross state product, or GSP, as well as earnings, taxes, and jobs for these states if the Senate Gang of 8’s bill is enacted in 2013. We also explain why immigration reform is responsible for these specific economic benefits. The methodology for this brief relies upon estimates of the undocumented population in each state and replicates the methodology used in our previous report.

National economic benefits of legalization and a pathway to citizenship

If the 11.1 million undocumented immigrants currently living in the United States were provided legal status, then the 10-year cumulative increase in the gross domestic product, or GDP, of the United States would be $832 billion. Similarly, the cumulative increase in the personal income of all Americans over 10 years would be $470 billion. On average over 10 years, immigration reform would create 121,000 new jobs each year. Undocumented immigrants would also benefit and contribute more to the U.S. economy. Over the 10-year period they would earn $392 billion more and pay an additional $109 billion in taxes—$69 billion to the federal government and $40 billion to state and local governments. After 10 years, when the undocumented immigrants start earning citizenship, they will experience additional increases in their income on the order of 10 percent, which will in turn further boost our economy.

State-by-state economic benefits of legalization and a pathway to citizenship

The economic benefits of legalization have been calculated for 24 states where 88 percent of the 11 million undocumented immigrants reside. Across all of these states, the economic gains are significant. In Arizona, for example, the 10-year cumulative increase in GSP will be $23.1 billion, the increase in the earnings of state residents will be $15.3 billion, and immigration reform will create an average of an additional 3,400 jobs annually. In addition to these significant gains, undocumented immigrants themselves will experience significant increases in their income and pay more taxes to their states. In Arizona, for example, over the 10-year period they will earn $12.7 billion more and pay an additional $1.5 billion in state and local taxes on these increased earnings.

In each of these states, when the undocumented immigrants eventually gain citizenship, their earnings will increase an additional 10 percent, further improving the economy and prosperity of all residents in their state. But since the attainment of citizenship will occur outside of the 10-year window of analysis of this study, we do not include any of the economic benefits from the acquisition of citizenship. In addition, we do not include the $69 billion in additional federal taxes that the undocumented would pay on their increased earnings.

The table below provides a state-by-state breakdown of these benefits over 10 years.

Why legalization and citizenship improve economic outcomes and boost the earnings of undocumented immigrants

There are many reasons why receiving legal status and citizenship raises the incomes of immigrants and improves economic outcomes. Five main reasons are explained below.

Investment in education and training

Legalization and citizenship promote investment in the education and training of immigrants that eventually pays off in the form of higher wages and output. Legal status and citizenship provide a guarantee of long-term membership in American society and cause noncitizen immigrants to invest heavily in their English language skills and in other forms of education and training that raise their productivity and earnings.

Labor mobility and efficiency

Legalization and citizenship facilitate the labor-market mobility of the undocumented, which boosts wages and improves economic efficiency. Prior to legalization, unauthorized immigrants are subject to deportation if apprehended and, regardless of their skills, tend to pursue employment in low-paying, low-profile occupations—such as farming, child care, or cleaning services—where their legal status is less likely to be discovered. Thus, undocumented workers do not receive the same market returns on their skills that comparable but legal workers receive. In other words, the productivity of the legalized improves in part because workers move to sectors where their skills and education are both valued and relevant to the work being conducted. Therefore, legalization and citizenship improve the efficiency of the labor market by ensuring that people are working in fields where their skillsets and training are being used to the fullest extent.

Legal protections

Providing legal status and citizenship to undocumented immigrants gives them legal protections that raise their wages. Legalization allows the newly authorized to invoke employment rights and increases their bargaining power relative to their employers. This means that newly legal immigrants are better equipped to contest an unlawful termination of employment, to negotiate for fair compensation or a promotion, and to file a complaint if they are being mistreated or abused.

Access to better jobs

Legal status and citizenship provide access to a broader range of higher-paying jobs. Many jobs, including many public-sector and high-paying private-sector jobs, are available only to legal residents or citizens. In addition, employers often prefer to hire citizens over noncitizens.

Fostering entrepreneurship

Legal status and citizenship make it easier for immigrants to start businesses and create jobs. These facilitate entrepreneurship by providing access to licenses, permits, insurance, and credit—all of which make it easier to start businesses and create jobs. Despite the legal obstacles to entrepreneurship that noncitizens currently face, immigrants are more likely to own a business and start a new business than are native-born Americans. Thus, immigration reform that unleashes this creative potential of immigrant entrepreneurs promotes economic growth, higher incomes, and more job opportunities.

Conclusion

Undocumented immigrants are currently earning far less than their potential and therefore paying much less in taxes than they otherwise would be. Overall, they are contributing significantly less to the U.S. economy than they potentially could. With legalization and citizenship, undocumented immigrants will produce and earn more, pay more in taxes, boost the American economy, increase the incomes of all Americans, and promote job growth. This analysis of the economic impact on 24 states, many with the largest undocumented populations, demonstrates that it is not just the nation but also each individual state that will benefit from immigration reform. The sooner we grant legal status and provide a pathway to citizenship to undocumented immigrants, the sooner all Americans will be able to reap these benefits.

Robert Lynch is the Everett E. Nuttle professor of economics at Washington College. Patrick Oakford is a Research Assistant at the Center for American Progress.

President Barack Obama’s political opponents are trying once again to manufacture a scandal out of the tragic deaths of four American government personnel at a U.S. facility in Benghazi, Libya, last September. Among those killed was the U.S. ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens. The current political and media feeding frenzy surrounding the Benghazi attacks is no more than a parsing of interagency debates on postattack talking points, and it is based on what former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates called “cartoonish” views of U.S. military capabilities.

This Washington convulsion may serve the political interests of President Obama’s domestic opponents, but it obscures two far more important issues: the deterioration of the overall situation in Libya, and the longer-term challenge the United States faces of managing security risks when conducting diplomacy in insecure locations. The mindless political debate over Obama administration talking points from last fall harms efforts to come to grips with both of these issues and shows how superficial our debates on national security have become.

For more on this topic, please see:

• The Real Scandal in Libya: A Security Vacuum and New Terrorist Threats by Brian Katulis and Peter Juul

SOURCE: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

An email from then-CIA Director David Petraeus is among the 99 pages of emails regarding Benghazi released by the White House on Wednesday, May 15, 2013.

In a new poll from Public Policy Polling, 74 percent of Republicans polled said they think the actions of the Obama administration during the crisis in Benghazi were worse than Watergate. The results, however, might be taken with a grain of salt as half of that 74 percent appear to have no idea whatsoever where—or even what—Benghazi is. According to the poll, “10% think it’s in Egypt, 9% in Iran, 6% in Cuba, 5% in Syria, 4% in Iraq, and 1% each in North Korea and Liberia with 4% not willing to venture a guess.”

While those folks review their old high school geography textbooks, they might also wish to reserve a little time to answer the question: What was Watergate?

One possible answer—an apartment/hotel complex in Washington, D.C., not far from the Kennedy Center—will not help much. Neither will an almost equally concise—but narrowly true—answer: the break-in that occurred at 2:30 a.m. on June 17, 1972 at Democratic headquarters by a bunch of crooks hired by Richard Nixon’s cronies. Perhaps, given one of those definitions, the events related to Benghazi will turn out to be worse, though this remains an open question at best. But if we take the word “Watergate” to mean what nearly everyone has understood it to mean for the past four decades—the series of crimes discovered as a result of said break-in at the complex—then it becomes rather difficult to justify even mentioning the two in the same sentence.

One can find thousands of books on the topic—and tens of thousands of scholarly articles. But on the 40th anniversary of the Watergate break-in last year, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein—The Washington Post reporters who originally broke the story—outlined the main elements of the multiple scandals and crimes that led to President Nixon’s forced resignation. Space precludes a full recounting of their article, “40 years after Watergate, Nixon was far worse than we thought,” but among the lowlights were:

• President Nixon personally approved a plan that authorized the CIA, FBI, and military-intelligence units to intensify electronic surveillance of individuals identified as “domestic security threats.” It also allowed the interception of mail, and unauthorized break-ins by government agents of the homes of law-abiding citizens.
• The Nixon “Plumbers” unit was also unleashed against perceived adversaries of the administration in an ultimately criminal fashion. Among its actions was the break-in into the headquarters of former RAND analyst Daniel Ellsberg, who had leaked the Pentagon Papers to The New York Times. “You can’t drop it, Bob,” Nixon instructed top aide Bob Haldeman. “You can’t let the Jew steal that stuff and get away with it. You understand?” In addition, in 1969, Henry Kissinger, President Nixon’s national security advisor—and later secretary of state—demanded that the FBI spy on 17 journalists and White House aides without court approval.
• President Nixon’s Attorney General John Mitchell approved a $250,000 criminal plan offered by G. Gordon Liddy to spy on and sabotage Democratic candidates during the 1972 election using wiretaps and burglaries, with “at least 50 operatives … involved in the espionage and sabotage.” The chauffeur of then-leading Democratic presidential contender, Maine Sen. Edmund Muskie, received $1,000 a month to spy on the candidate and to steal campaign documents for President Nixon’s campaign staff. In a memo to Haldeman and Mitchell dated April 12, 1972, While House aide—and later conservative commentator—Pat Buchanan explained, “Our primary objective, to prevent Senator Muskie from sweeping the early primaries, locking up the convention in April, and uniting the Democratic Party behind him for the fall, has been achieved.” President Nixon also instructed his aides to order the IRS to investigate the tax returns of all potential Democratic presidential candidates.
• President Nixon approved and directed a criminal conspiracy to try to hide his own role and that of his aides in all of the above. Six days after the Watergate break-in, Haldeman informed the president that Mitchell had suggested that the CIA be used to demand that any investigations be stopped lest they threaten “national security.” President Nixon approved it and instructed Haldeman to tell then-CIA Director Richard Helms to “Play it tough.” The president also instructed his aides to buy the silence of the criminals working for him. “They have to be paid,” he said. “That’s all there is to that.”

It’s been 40 years since Watergate, and members of the insider media are apparently allergic to all forms of historical knowledge, especially when it means putting contemporary “scandals” in the context of those in the past. What’s more, President Nixon’s partisans have been conducting a never-ending war in an attempt to minimize his crimes and those of his aides since the day of the original break-in. Among the most entertaining of these, if perhaps the most obvious, was former Nixon speechwriter and later powerful New York Times pundit William Safire’s efforts to attach a “gate” suffix to every minor morsel of malfeasance to occur in subsequent administrations beginning with “Koreagate,” “Lancegate,” “Billygate,” “Oilgate,” and perhaps least tastefully, “Waterquiddick.”

With the release of the Benghazi emails on Wednesday, it is clear that whatever the problems may have been regarding the administration’s response before or after the attack on the embassy, the notion that any of it could have been “worse than Watergate” is, to put it politely, difficult to countenance. And yet, judging by recent poll results, and stoked by malevolent media hysteria, we are likely to endure this comparison in the coming months, or even years.

Were Safire alive today, he might be tempted to declare victory.

Eric Alterman is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress and a CUNY distinguished professor of English and journalism at Brooklyn College. He is also “The Liberal Media” columnist for The Nation. His most recent book is The Cause: The Fight for American Liberalism from Franklin Roosevelt to Barack Obama.

Fueled by a growing tide of anti-Muslim sentiment, these bans have gained momentum in recent months, morphing from restrictions on Islamic religious laws and customs—known as Sharia law—into broader bans on foreign, international, and religious laws in U.S. courts.

Over the past two years, lawmakers in 32 states have introduced and debated such bills. Five states—Oklahoma, Kansas, Louisiana, Tennessee, and Arizona—have already enacted foreign law bans. This past week the Missouri legislature sent a similar measure to its governor for signature, and at least four more states—Texas, Alabama, South Carolina, and Iowa— are poised to pass foreign law bans in the next two years.

”Supporters of foreign law bans openly advocate an anti-Islamic agenda,” said Faiza Patel, co-director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice. “In addition to spreading fear about Muslims and their faith, they also create legal uncertainties for many American families and businesses and jeopardize how American courts have applied foreign and international law for centuries.”

“Foreign law bans are clearly a solution in search of a problem. Proponents of foreign law bans have completely failed to show that Sharia or foreign laws pose a threat to the American legal system,” said Matthew Duss, Policy Analyst at the Center for American Progress. “The bans send a clear message that states are unreceptive to foreign businesses and individuals, especially Muslims and other minority faiths.”

Courts currently use international and foreign law without much fanfare in ordinary cases, including in cases where the dispute involves a right under a treaty or when the parties choose the law of another country to govern a business dispute. But many of the bans seem to require judges to reject any foreign law or judgment that comes from a country that does not protect rights in the same way the United States does—even if the laws in question do not raise any concerns about rights.

“Foreign law bans end up creating confusion about how courts should treat marriages, divorces, and premarital agreements with religious or foreign origins,” said Amos Toh, fellow at the Brennan Center. “They could also complicate international commercial transactions, limit the bargaining ability of American businesses, and dissuade foreign parties from conducting business in the United States.”

If these bans become law, states will soon be searching for solutions to the problems they have created. Instead of discriminating against religious groups and creating unnecessary complications for courts, families, and U.S. businesses, state legislators should reject and repeal these bans.

Read the full report: “Foreign Law Bans: Legal Uncertainties and Practical Problems” by Faiza Patel, Matthew Duss, and Amos Toh

Watch a video of the panel discussion.

For more information or to speak to an expert, contact Seth Hoy at 646.292.8369 or seth.hoy@nyu.edu, or Anne Shoup at 202.481.7146 or ashoup@americanprogress.org.

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I commend the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works for approving the nomination of Gina McCarthy. Not only is she a seasoned civil servant with decades of experience, she is clearly a bipartisan nominee, having worked as an environmental advisor for both Republican and Democratic governors. The Senate already confirmed her once for her current role at the EPA, and I hope they move forward expeditiously with her current confirmation so that she can continue her lifelong work of protecting children and families from air pollution and other hazards.

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Fifty years ago when Betty Friedan published The Feminine Mystique, unmarried women in more than half of the United States were not allowed access to contraception. Married women in some states couldn’t sit on juries, get a job without their husband’s permission, or keep control of their property and earnings.

That world is now a distant memory. And yet the revolution in women’s lives that Friedan’s controversial book helped launch remains woefully incomplete. Individual women have made great strides professionally, and some have made it to the very top of their chosen professions. But for the vast majority of women, the larger scope of Friedan’s dream—that our society might evolve in ways that would permit women to reach their “full human potential” at work and at home—remains unrealized.

WHO:

Introduction by:
Neera Tanden, President, Center for American Progress

Featured speakers:
Gail Collins, best-selling author; columnist, The New York Times
Anna Quindlen, best-selling author; former columnist, The New York Times and Newsweek

Moderated by:
Judith Warner, Senior Fellow, Center for American Progress; columnist, Time.com

WHEN:

Thursday, May 23, 2013
12:30 p.m. ET – 1:30.p.m. ET
A light lunch will be served at 12:00 p.m.

WHERE:

Center for American Progress
1333 H St. NW, 10th Floor
Washington, D.C. 20005

RSVP:

To RSVP, please contact Madeline Meth at mmeth@americanprogress.org or 202.741.6277.

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SOURCE: AP/Erik Schelzig

The Rev. Daniel Rosemergy, a minister with the Greater Nashville Unitarian Universalist Congregation, speaks in Nashville, Tennessee, in opposition to a legislative proposal that would make it a felony in Tennessee to follow some versions of Sharia law.

Endnotes and citations are available in the PDF of this report.

See also: No Justice for the Injured by Billy Corriher

An analysis of state supreme court rulings shows that an influx of corporate campaign cash is influencing judges to rule against those injured while on the job or by business entities such as hospitals.

Public-school students in the world’s largest city, Shanghai, China, are academically outperforming their counterparts across the globe and becoming the talk and envy of education experts worldwide. Using an innovative partnering approach that matches successful schools with low-performing schools, Shanghai has valuable lessons to teach on turning around public-school systems—lessons that transcend several of the unique characteristics of the Chinese educational system, as well as the country’s rich pedagogical traditions.

In development for more than a decade, Shanghai’s empowered-management program aims to improve student achievement in all of its schools by contracting high-performing schools to turn around the academic outcomes of low-performing schools. Chinese officials regard the program as highly successful and have extended its reach across school districts and to other parts of China.

For more on this topic, please see:

• School Turnaround in Shanghai by Ben Jensen and Joanna Farmer

SOURCE: AP/Gerald Herbert

Xavier University student Triton Brown studies in a common area on campus before going to one of his part-time jobs in New Orleans.

It seems as though everyone from homeowners to state and local governments are refinancing their debt. Refinancing allows the borrower to replace his or her existing debt with a new loan that has a lower interest rate and better conditions. Doing so would allow borrowers to lower their monthly payments, freeing up income for other necessities such as groceries or gas and creating a ripple effect, putting money back into the economy.

For former students, however, that is not currently an option. Student-loan debt in the United States now exceeds $1 trillion, and borrowers of color are disproportionately affected. Refinancing is just one option to address the looming student-debt crisis, but for borrowers of color it is one that could significantly ease the student-debt burden that drags on individuals and on our economy as a whole.

Students of color have higher loan debt

Today’s average college graduate holds $26,600 in debt when he or she graduates, and the numbers for borrowers of color are more severe. A 2010 study by the College Board Advocacy & Policy Center found that 27 percent of black bachelor’s degree recipients had student-loan debt of $30,500 or more, compared to just 16 percent of their white counterparts. Additionally, 69 percent of black students who did not finish their college degree cite the high cost of tuition, compared to 43 percent of their white peers.

These borrowers will be affected for years to come as they attempt to buy homes, open businesses, and begin families. The burden of student debt is one that is carried long after graduation, forcing borrowers to delay homeownership and retirement savings in order to pay off their loans. Since fewer workers now have access to traditional pensions, maintaining long-term savings is crucial to a secure retirement for many Americans.

The option to refinance can especially help Latinos, who continue to face an achievement gap. In 2011 only 13.2 percent of all U.S. Latinos over the age of 25 had bachelor’s degrees, compared to 31.8 percent of their white peers. A 2009 Pew Hispanic Center survey found that the most common reason for this gap was pressure to support their families financially, which forces many Latinos to choose between attending college and caring for their families. Low-interest-rate loans would therefore help open doors for Latinos to be able to go to college without having to make that difficult choice.

According to our calculation, refinancing student loans would save borrowers roughly $14 billion in 2013 alone, creating a boost of about $21 billion for the nation’s economy. For borrowers of color who face higher interest rates from private loans, refinancing is a vital option to reducing their student debt. If a student with $30,000 of student-loan debt, for example, were allowed to refinance his or her loan and reduce the interest rate on it from 6.8 percent to 3 percent for repayment over 10 years, he or she could save $6,667.05 in interest payments over the life of the loan.

The burden of student debt on borrowers of color puts communities of color at a disadvantage when compared to their white peers and exacerbates pre-existing socioeconomic inequalities.

The burden of debt on borrowers of color

About 20 million Americans attend college each year, and about 60 percent use loans to help offset the costs. About 81 percent of black students borrow money, compared to 65 percent of their white peers. The impact of student debt on borrowers of color is twofold: Students of color tend to borrow more, and when they do borrow, they often face higher interest rates than their white counterparts. Coupled with lower graduation rates and higher levels of youth unemployment, borrowers of color face unique burdens.

Higher interest rates

Students of color take out private student loans at a higher rate than white students, making them more financially vulnerable to risky interest rates. Private-loan distribution trends differ by students’ race or ethnicity, meaning that students of color take out more risky unregulated private student loans. In 2008 black students had the highest private student-loan participation rate despite the fact that only four years earlier, they had a smaller percentage than both white and Latino students. Mounting levels of high interest rates on student loans leave borrowers of color struggling to make payments on time, often resulting in unforeseen fees for deferment or forbearance—processes that can prevent or delay loan payments. Though these processes may make it easier month to month for borrowers of color, they also make loans more expensive in the long term once tacked onto the increasing interest rates that may have accrued.

Enrollment in for-profit institutions

Students of color are also more likely to enroll in for-profit schools—the payments for which currently account for nearly half of student-loan defaults. For-profit colleges and universities tend to have higher tuitions, higher dropout rates, and higher occurrences of insurmountable debt for students. This puts economic and academic barriers on students of color by reducing college affordability and shifting more of the financial burden onto students and away from college institutions.

High youth unemployment rates

Youth unemployment—defined as the unemployment rate for those ages 16 to 24 years old—is higher among people of color. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in August 2012 youth unemployment was 28.6 percent for blacks and 18.5 percent for Latinos, compared to 14.9 percent for their white counterparts. Given this high youth unemployment, more young people are realizing that leaving the labor force to go to school has never been a better option. But once they graduate and are faced with significant student debt—often from predatory financial institutions offering high-interest loans to students—they are faced with a double whammy: a lot of debt and a staggering economy.

The impact of long-term debt on borrowers of color

More than 13 percent of the students whose loans came due in 2009 defaulted within three years as a result of their long-term failure to make payments. Since borrowers of color tend to take out more money at a higher interest rate to finance their college expenses and have higher rates of unemployment, it is no surprise that students of color have higher default rates as well. The long-term impact of student debt is crippling, hindering youth and inevitably preventing future generations from home ownership and a secure retirement.

Debt not only holds individuals back, it also holds back their families, communities, and the economy at large. Past-due payments on loans lead to plummeting credit ratings, lower wages, and loss of federal benefits such as tax refunds that offset loan debt. Borrowers are losing money out of their own pockets, using more of their income to pay back their student-loan debt instead of saving to buy a home or for retirement. This causes a ripple effect throughout the economy: If fewer people have money to spend throughout the greater economy, less growth will occur and industries will stagnate.

One example of this is in the housing market. First-time homebuyers are essential to the recovery of the housing market. According to the Federal Reserve, however, fewer young people are getting mortgages. Only 9 percent of 29- to 34-year-olds got a first-time mortgage from 2009 to 2011, compared to 17 percent in 2001. For those with significant student debt, the debt-to-income ratio puts homeownership out of reach.

Additionally, young people who are swimming in education-loan debt are less likely to participate in wealth building mechanisms such as 401(k)s and other retirement savings plans. Refinancing their student debt would give students of color the opportunity to save more over their lifetime, allowing them to spend more on long-term savings and leading to wealth accumulation. In fact, the wealth gap among communities of color and their white counterparts is astonishing. In 2007, the latest year for which data are available, the median wealth for married or cohabitating white non-Hispanic couples was $167,500, compared to $31,500 for blacks and $18,000 for Latinos. The numbers are bleaker for single women: White single women have a median wealth of $41,500, compared to $100 for single black women and $120 for single Latino women.

Asset and wealth building occurs over generations, providing communities with economic stability. When barriers such as significant debt hinder young people from saving and building wealth, it can have a long-term effect on their children and grandchildren. In fact, from 1999 to 2007 the Urban Institute estimates that the median net worth of black families was $18,181 and that it was $33,619 for Latino families, compared to $122,927 for whites. These gaps stem from lower asset holding over generations for communities of color.

Long-term loan debt puts entire communities at risk, especially those of color, who have historically faced higher levels of unemployment and barriers to achieving wealth over time. While programs for refinancing student debt are just one of many options to address our nation’s student-loan crisis, the need for reasonable interest rates is crucial for borrowers of color.

Sophia Kerby is a Research Assistant for Progress 2050 at the Center for American Progress.

SOURCE: AP/Carolyn Kaster

Then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, March 31, 2011, before the House Armed Services Committee hearing on military operations in Libya.

President Barack Obama’s political opponents are trying once again to manufacture a scandal out of the tragic deaths of four American government personnel at a U.S. facility in Benghazi, Libya, last September. Among those killed was the U.S. ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens. The current political and media feeding frenzy surrounding the Benghazi attacks is no more than a parsing of interagency debates on postattack talking points, and it is based on what former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates called “cartoonish” views of U.S. military capabilities.

This Washington convulsion may serve the political interests of President Obama’s domestic opponents, but it obscures two far more important issues: the deterioration of the overall situation in Libya, and the longer-term challenge the United States faces of managing security risks when conducting diplomacy in insecure locations. The mindless political debate over Obama administration talking points from last fall harms efforts to come to grips with both of these issues and shows how superficial our debates on national security have become.

Militias and the deteriorating security situation

The security situation in Libya is getting worse, not better. In the last month alone, car bombs have hit the French embassy in Tripoli and a hospital in Benghazi. Earlier this year unknown assailants attacked five British activists near the Egyptian border, and U.S. and European governments have warned of “imminent” threats in Libya.

Due to the deteriorating situation, a few days ago the U.S. military put its forces in Europe on a heightened state of alert. Also in the past week, the United States and Britain withdrew some of their diplomatic staff from Libya due to the increased threats there. Clearly, the security situation inside Libya—and what the United States and other countries can do to help Libya stop the downward spiral—should be the focus of the debate.

This deterioration is due in large part to the continued power that militias wield in Libya. By laying siege to the foreign and justice ministries in Tripoli and attacking those who protested their actions, the militias forced the government to pass a draconian “political isolation law.” What’s more, militias continue to run their own prisons—and continue to detain Saif al-Islam Qaddafi, the highest-ranking survivor of the Qaddafi regime, who is wanted for crimes against humanity. The Libyan government’s capitulation to brazen coercion by militias and their political allies severely undermines its halting efforts to build national-level security services and establish the rule of law in Libya.

In short, these groups continue to sow instability throughout the country by preventing the government from establishing credible security institutions and the rule of law. Worse, they have openly used the threat of violence to force a democratically elected government to bend to their wishes, and they have employed violence against those with whom they disagreed. This lack of stability and security also gives violent Islamist extremist groups such as Ansar al-Sharia, which attacked the Benghazi facility last September, freedom of movement and action. It also facilitates the spread of weapons and militants from and through Libya, as was apparently the case in the January 2013 Algerian gas-facility attack.

The United States, its partners, and international institutions could help rectify this situation by providing training, equipment, and other forms of security assistance to the Libyan government. This support could help the government consolidate its security sector and establish public order and the rule of law. However, the zero-risk mentality produced by the scandal mongering currently dominating the debate is likely to prevent any new security-sector reform initiatives in Washington. The United States and its partners are now stuck in a vicious circle: They cannot offer requisite levels of assistance to the Libyan government because they are unwilling to risk the poor security situation, and the poor security situation is not likely to improve without the requisite level of international help.

Managing diplomatic risk in insecure locations

More broadly, the furor over the Benghazi attack talking points could do severe damage to U.S. national security and diplomatic efforts. For several decades the United States has been hampering its diplomats’ ability to shape and influence the situations in countries that are vital to U.S. interests by imposing increasingly rigid security restrictions. Numerous independent assessments have noted the negative impact these measures have had on the State Department’s ability to advance its mission.

In 2009 the Government Accountability Office warned that security procedures:

… for State’s diplomatic corps [have], at times, been in tension with State’s diplomatic mission. For example, Diplomatic Security has established strict policies concerning access to U.S. facilities that usually include personal and vehicle screening. Some public affairs officials—whose job it is to foster relations with host country nationals—have expressed concerns that the security measures discourage visitors from attending U.S. embassy events or exhibits. In addition, the new embassies and consulates, with their high walls, deep setback, and strict screening procedures, have evoked the nickname, “Fortress America.”

The effort to turn the Benghazi attack into a political albatross for current and former Obama administration officials has done and will do significant damage to American diplomatic efforts in hostile environments. Policymakers may become even more reluctant to take risks with diplomatic personnel in these situations for fear of a political boomerang if something goes wrong.

As a result, the default policy may be to retrench behind the walls of so-called fortress embassies, take few if any risks with nonmilitary personnel, and surrender potential American influence on the ground in dangerous parts of the world. By flogging the phantom scandal of Benghazi, Obama administration critics who demand more direct intervention in Syria ironically are undermining their own argument. And if something goes wrong and Americans die, the administration will likely be rewarded with scandalmongering by advocates of the very policy that put American personnel at risk in the first place. The State Department’s Accountability Review Board, convened in the event of loss of life or destruction of property at U.S. diplomatic facilities abroad, recommended the administration “work more rigorously and adeptly to address” the security challenges inherent in diplomacy and to discuss its recommendations. Instead, congressional investigators have chosen to impugn the integrity of the board’s leaders, with Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) accusing respected former diplomat Thomas Pickering of having “heard what the administration wanted to hear” in his investigation. In addition, they focused their attention on postattack debates and unrealistic rescue scenarios. None of these approaches help stimulate a debate on the proper level of risk that diplomats should assume, sending instead the implicit message that the answer should be none at all.

The hue and cry over Benghazi simply detracts from the two fundamental issues going forward: the level of acceptable risk for American diplomats in dangerous environments and the ongoing deterioration of security in Libya. It will be impossible for the Obama administration—or any administration that comes after it—to make rational decisions on the latter without a shared consensus on the former. The politicization of Benghazi accomplishes nothing except to make the default acceptable level of risk for American personnel abroad zero. However defensible such a posture may be in political terms, it does not allow the United States to exercise sufficient influence abroad to deal with emerging security threats and address pressing foreign policy problems.

Brian Katulis is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress. Peter Juul is a Policy Analyst at the Center.

The report, titled “No Justice for the Injured,” analyzes 1,499 cases that came before the six state supreme courts that saw the most campaign cash from 2002 through 2012 and finds that these courts ruled in favor of corporate defendants and against injured individuals 70 percent of the time. In 2011 corporate defendants had an 83 percent success rate in the cases studied.

According to the report, the trend toward pro-corporate rulings is growing more pronounced in part because large corporations have spent millions of dollars over the past few decades to win the political battle over laws that limit damages in personal-injury suits. Through an enormously successful public-relations campaign, corporations have convinced the public that our system is suffering from an epidemic of frivolous lawsuits. In reality, however, no evidence exists of an explosion in the kinds of frivolous lawsuits that would make limits on personal-injury suits necessary. Thus, the move toward capping damages hasn’t eliminated unnecessary lawsuits, but it has limited Americans’ right to sue negligent corporations and hold wrongdoers accountable.

Big business has succeeded in electing judges who voted to limit liability for wrongdoers in Texas, Alabama, Ohio, Michigan, Mississippi, Wisconsin, and Louisiana. These victories for big business have real impacts on individuals seeking justice. “As a conservative Republican, I believed the ads that were constantly run over the airwaves,”  said Bill Putnam, an advocate from Texas whose father died because of a negligent health care provider at an event today at CAP. “But what we didn’t understand was that tort reform was really nothing about frivolous lawsuits, it was about protecting the interest of the lobbies that actually wrote them.”

As the report details, the impact of limiting liability on injured citizens has been immeasurable. But the trend of courts becoming increasingly unfriendly places for injured consumers and workers is not inevitable. To ensure that judges decide cases based on facts and the law—not politics or campaign cash—the report advocates for:

• Strong recusal standards that ensure that judges do not hear cases involving corporations or trial lawyers that donate to their campaigns
• Merit selection and retention election systems that minimize the opportunities to politicize and influence the judiciary
• Public financing of judicial races that holds judges accountable to the public, not wealthy campaign contributors

“Before big business declared war on the right to a jury trial, an individual who was injured by a defectively designed product or an industrial plant spewing a toxic substance could rely on the courts to hold the wrongdoer accountable,” said Billy Corriher, CAP legal expert and author of the report. “With unlimited corporate money pouring into judicial races, this principle is less true with each passing election.”

Related resources:

• Campaign Finance Laws Fail as Corporate Money Floods Judicial Races by Billy Corriher
• Public Financing of Judicial Races Can Give Small Donors a Decisive Role by Billy Corriher
• Strong Recusal Rules Are Crucial to Judicial Integrity by Billy Corriher
• Merit Selection and Retention Elections Keep Judges Out of Politics by Billy Corriher (CAP Action)

To speak with CAP experts, attorneys, or individuals impacted by the issues raised in this report, please contact Madeline Meth at mmeth@americanprogress.org or 202.741.6277.

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See also: Sequestration Nation: Congress Acts to Ease Sequestration’s Pain on Air Travelers by Kwame Boadi

This week we explore sequestration’s inconvenience on the nation’s air travelers, as well as some of the other effects it is having around the country.

SOURCE: AP/Rogelio V. Solis

Signs placed by abortion-rights activists are displayed on the front security gating of the Jackson Women's Health Organization Inc. in Jackson, Mississippi, Tuesday, January 22, 2013.

Two posters hang on my office wall. One says, “Jesus never shamed women.” The other says, “Pray to end sidewalk bullying.”

I got the posters from Faith Aloud, a counseling and advocacy group that connects faith with reproductive justice. It’s an important connection but one that is rarely seen in today’s political battles over women’s reproductive health, especially when the focus is abortion. Despite that invisibility on the public stage, religion is ever-present in the lives of most women who come to clinics for reproductive health care, including abortion.

More than 7 in 10 women who get an abortion in this country claim a religious affiliation such as Protestant or Catholic, according to the Guttmacher Institute. Furthermore, Catholic women have a higher abortion rate than Protestant women—22 for every 1,000 women, compared to 15 for every 1,000 women, respectively.

Faith Aloud works with health clinics across the country to provide spiritual counseling to women considering an abortion, as well as postabortion counseling for them and for their family and friends who come with them to the clinic. Through faith-specific videos, free confidential telephone counseling with clergy, events, and more, women receive compassionate and nonjudgmental care for their spirit and soul during a difficult time in their lives.

“Moral complexity is not a sin,” said Rev. Rebecca Turner, head of Faith Aloud, in an interview with me. But far too often religious institutions stigmatize and shame a woman for making the difficult decision to end a pregnancy, even if it is right for her and her family. The stigma and shame are so powerful that they can silence a woman and heap upon her an enormous load of guilt and fear.

To talk about her abortion in an honest way—one that reflects the contradictory emotions she might be feeling, from sorrow and regret to relief and hope—risks condemnation from her religious community and possibly her family. A woman who speaks honestly could be isolated, cast out, or condemned. It’s far easier to be silent—or to convict herself as a sinner and pledge penance in atonement for her “evil act.”

Faith Aloud’s counseling is a lifeline to sanity, healing, and health. Hearing compassionate rather than condemning words from a clergy person reminds a woman that God is with her in the clinic and that she is not alone. Clinics tell Faith Aloud that its clergy videos and counseling have been transformative for patients and extremely helpful for clinic staff who are grateful for the spiritual, medical, and psychological expertise of clergy counselors.

Faith Aloud is not alone in its outreach to women. Exhale, which describes itself as “pro-voice,” provides emotional support for women and men who have experienced abortion and aims to change the culture by elevating their voices. Now 10 years old, Exhale’s talkline has received more than 30,000 calls, provided training and materials to more than 2,500 clinic staff, and developed an “ethical story sharing” program that allows women’s voices to be heard around their abortion experience.

In addition to Faith Aloud and Exhale, Emerge offers counseling and support to women in the Minneapolis area who have had an abortion. Support groups meet weekly for six weeks and are free. Emerge aims to provide a safe and respectful space for women to talk about their abortion experience, whether it took place recently or was years ago.

The work of groups such as these needs to get more attention. At a time when reproductive health clinics such as Planned Parenthood are falsely called “abortion mills” and when “crisis pregnancy centers” give women inaccurate medical information in order to pressure them to continue their pregnancies, it is important to hear women’s real stories, as well as the facts about the clinic providers and counselors who provide compassionate and quality care.

These facts are all the more important in light of the horrors of the Philadelphia abortion clinic run by Dr. Kermit Gosnell, who was arrested, tried, and found guilty for his crimes. Gosnell performed illegal late-term abortions, hired untrained staff, and ran an unsanitary and unsafe facility. Prosecutors rightfully called his clinic a “house of horrors.” He was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter in a patient’s death, first-degree murder in the case of three babies delivered alive that prosecutors said he killed, and a range of lesser crimes.

With the focus on Gosnell, it is just as important to look at the tactics of the antiabortion movement because it has provided an unfortunate opening for criminals, including him, to operate. Opponents have restricted access to safe affordable abortion care, made it harder for legitimate providers to operate, stigmatized abortion, and limited government support for abortion care for low-income women.

As my CAP colleague Jessica Arons wrote, “When you make legal abortion inaccessible, you may as well have made it illegal for the women cut off from legitimate care. In other words, it is not enough for abortion to be legal; it must also be available and affordable if it is to be safe.”

The counselors and staff at clinics such as Planned Parenthood are doing heroic work, serving women despite harassment and threats to their lives. And the compassionate, nonjudgmental counseling from groups such as Faith Aloud, Exhale, Emerge, and others serves as a reminder that virtue lives in unrecognized spaces.

“Your faith should help you feel better, not worse,” Turner said, regarding women who’ve had an abortion. “If your faith is all about shaming you, there’s something wrong with that faith.”

Sally Steenland is Director of the Faith and Progressive Policy Initiative at the Center for American Progress. Steenland, a best-selling author, former newspaper columnist, and teacher, explores the role of religion and values in the public sphere.

America is the only country in the world that elects its judges, and this unique feature of our government has allowed corporations to influence the law through judicial campaign contributions. The ability of ordinary Americans to find justice against powerful corporations may prove to be a historical anomaly rather than an irreversible progression of the law. For much of the 20th century, the courthouse doors were open to injured employees and consumers, but now these doors are being closed once again. Corporate-funded judges and legislators have distorted the law to keep corporations and other defendants from being held accountable. Over the past few decades, big business has spent millions of dollars to elect judges who voted to limit Americans’ right to sue negligent corporations.

Those who have been injured or wronged by the mistakes of someone else—a negligent hospital, an unsafe employer, or a callous insurance company—are finding it harder to hold these wrongdoers accountable in court. Injured plaintiffs are facing laws that have been distorted by campaign contributions from big business to state legislators and judges. To illustrate the impact that this corporate campaign cash is having on the law, the appendix to this report includes summaries of cases from the six state supreme courts that have seen the most money in their judicial elections from 2002 to 2012. The data include 1,499 cases in which an individual sued a health care provider or a business for an injury to their person or property. In 70 percent of these cases, the courts ruled against the individual and in favor of the corporate defendant. The trend toward pro-corporate rulings seems to be growing more pronounced. From 2007 to 2012 the Ohio Supreme Court ruled for defendants in 80 percent of the cases studied. The Texas and Alabama high courts, where big business has had great success in stacking the deck against injured plaintiffs, ruled for the defendants in 80 percent of the cases in 2011 and 2012.

For more on this topic, please see:

• No Justice for the Injured by Billy Corriher

SOURCE: AP/Paul Sakuma

An analysis of state supreme court rulings shows that an influx of corporate campaign cash is influencing judges to rule against those injured while on the job or by business entities such as hospitals.

Endnotes and citations are available in the PDF of this report.

At the turn of the 20th century, as America shifted from an economy based on farming to an industrial economy fueled by large corporations, the reformers of the progressive era sought to ensure that ordinary workers were not exploited or abused by their increasingly powerful employers in the new economy. On-the-job accidents became much more frequent as factories rapidly replaced farms and railroads were built to span the continent. Reformers and labor advocates fought for injured workers in state legislatures and courtrooms. The judiciary had always had a reputation for favoring corporate defendants, but reformers lobbied to expand tort liability and abrogate employers’ legal immunities. Their successes protected injured workers and encouraged employers to prevent workplace accidents.

The reformers held constitutional conventions to enshrine these protections in state constitutions. States across the country, including Ohio and Pennsylvania, saw constitutional amendments that prohibited state legislatures from limiting lawsuits against corporations or other negligent actors.

This expansion of tort liability changed the American economy. The progressive-era advancements brought safety standards to the workplace and the consumer market. Unfortunately, a reform championed in an earlier era—the shift from an appointed to an elected judiciary—is now jeopardizing the expansion of tort liability that protected consumers and employees.

America is the only country in the world that elects its judges, and this unique feature of our government has allowed corporations to influence the law through judicial campaign contributions. The ability of ordinary Americans to find justice against powerful corporations may prove to be a historical anomaly rather than an irreversible progression of the law. For much of the 20th century, the courthouse doors were open to injured employees and consumers, but now these doors are being closed once again. Corporate-funded judges and legislators have distorted the law to keep corporations and other defendants from being held accountable. Over the past few decades, big business has spent millions of dollars to elect judges who voted to limit Americans’ right to sue negligent corporations.

Those who have been injured or wronged by the mistakes of someone else—a negligent hospital, an unsafe employer, or a callous insurance company—are finding it harder to hold these wrongdoers accountable in court. Injured plaintiffs are facing laws that have been distorted by campaign contributions from big business to state legislators and judges. To illustrate the impact that this corporate campaign cash is having on the law, the appendix to this report includes summaries of cases from the six state supreme courts that have seen the most money in their judicial elections from 2002 to 2012. The data include 1,499 cases in which an individual sued a health care provider or a business for an injury to their person or property. In 70 percent of these cases, the courts ruled against the individual and in favor of the corporate defendant. The trend toward pro-corporate rulings seems to be growing more pronounced. From 2007 to 2012 the Ohio Supreme Court ruled for defendants in 80 percent of the cases studied. The Texas and Alabama high courts, where big business has had great success in stacking the deck against injured plaintiffs, ruled for the defendants in 80 percent of the cases in 2011 and 2012.

One Texas plaintiff, Connie Spears of San Antonio, ran up against the state’s stringent medical-malpractice laws when she sought to hold a hospital accountable for failing to diagnose a blood clot, a problem she had previously experienced. The delay in discovering the clot led to the amputation of both of her legs. It took years for her to find a lawyer willing to take the case, due to Texas’ defendant-friendly laws, and once she did, she could not find an expert witness who met the state’s standards. Spears says that negligent medical care has impacted her family and “ruined all of our lives,” but she could not hold anyone accountable in Texas.

This report begins with a history of the effort by big business to limit liability. This effort began in state legislatures, and after some of the resulting statutes were struck down as unconstitutional, the battle moved to state supreme courts. This history includes a discussion of the news media’s role in convincing Americans that limits on liability were necessary because of a lawsuit crisis in America. The report then offers a discussion of seven state supreme courts—in Texas, Alabama, Ohio, Michigan, Mississippi, Wisconsin, and Louisiana—where big business has succeeded in electing judges who voted to limit liability for wrongdoers. In discussing each of these courts, this report tells the stories of injured plaintiffs who were denied relief by judges whose campaigns are funded by big business and proponents of limiting liability.

Legislators and judges in states around the country have limited the liability of negligent persons and corporations in the name of reform—a movement funded by big corporations that goes by the innocuous name of “tort reform.” (This report will generally not use this term. Instead, it will refer to the modern tort-reform movement as an effort to limit liability or cap damages.) This movement was funded by large corporations that were frequently the target of lawsuits such as insurance companies and tobacco companies.

Torts are wrongs committed by a person or entity that are recognized by courts as justifying monetary compensation. Torts arise when someone’s negligent behavior causes a physical injury or financial loss to another person, who then has the option to file a lawsuit against the responsible person or entity. Those guilty of violating tort rules must pay for their negligence through monetary compensation. Tort law makes society safer by encouraging corporations and others to exercise caution. It allows injured patients, consumers, and employees to recover from negligent actors that injure them. In these lawsuits, a jury traditionally decides whether the defendant is liable for the damages and allots the amount of damages.

The founders of our country enshrined a right to a jury trial in the Bill of Rights. John Adams said that without representative government and the right to a trial by jury, citizens have “no other indemnification against being ridden like horses, fleeced like sheep, worked like cattle, and fed and clothed like swine and hounds.” Many state constitutions include strong language protecting the right to a jury trial and the right to a legal remedy for wrongs committed by others. But in many of these same states, the right to a jury trial is being rendered meaningless by laws that restrict the right to sue and by judges who received millions of dollars from big business to uphold these laws.

Billy Corriher is the Associate Director of Research for Legal Progress at the Center for American Progress.

SOURCE: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

Audience members cheer as President Barack Obama holds a campaign rally at Centreville High School in Clifton, Virginia, on Saturday, July 14, 2012.

Sherrilyn A. Ifill opined in a column posted on CNN’s website in early October of last year that she was unsure whether black voters would turn out and vote in overwhelming numbers to re-elect President Barack Obama in the 2012 presidential election, but was dead certain they wouldn’t vote for his opponent, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R).

At that time, Ifill was a professor at the University of Maryland School of Law and chairwoman of the U.S. Programs Board of the Open Society Foundations. She was tracking the GOP nominee’s campaign, noting that his standing with black voters hit rock bottom even as a late summer NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll revealed Gov. Romney was rebounding nationally after a strong debate performance against the president.

“But Romney’s reinvigorated campaign is unlikely to move black voters,” she wrote.

Ifill’s prognostication was correct, even if she didn’t realize at the time how right she was. Definitive proof came last week in the form of a Census Bureau report that showed black voters turned out in enormous numbers, casting a higher percentage of votes than white voters for the first time on record.

According to the Census Bureau’s figures, 66.2 percent of eligible black voters cast a ballot in 2012, compared with 64.1 percent of eligible non-Hispanic white voters. Moreover, an estimated 2 million fewer white Americans voted in the election, while about 1.8 million more blacks surged to the polls. And, as exit polls suggested, an estimated 90-plus percent of black voters chose President Obama over Gov. Romney.

I called Ifill, who has since changed jobs and is currently the president and director-counsel for the Legal Defense Fund in New York, to find out what made her so prescient. How did she figure this out well before Election Day? She demurred, saying she didn’t know any more than what any other black person would have said at the time.

“There was a determination on the part of black voters to not allow the stories about voter-repression efforts to keep them from voting,” she said. “Those concerns, the fear that someone was trying to keep black people from exercising their rights, created a historic memory for black folks and they were determined not to let that happen.”

Postelection analysis seems to support that view. Political observers say black voters turned out partly in support of President Obama, who in 2008 became the first black American elected to the White House, and partly out of outrage at the efforts to keep them from voting.

“We are accustomed to people trying to deny us things, and I think sometimes you wake the sleeping giant, and that’s what happened here,” Marvin Randolph, the NAACP’s senior vice president for political campaigns, told a reporter writing about the Census Bureau report.

Michael Blake, who ran Operation Vote—the Obama campaign’s effort to energize black and minority voters—put it more colorfully. “In 2008, we changed the guard,” he recently told The New York Times. “In 2012, we guard the change.”

In her new job, Ifill directs an army of lawyers who fight in court for civil rights and she believes there are more voting-rights cases that require defending. “This is a key time for us because we’re nonpartisan, but deeply concerned about the black vote and any efforts to suppress the black vote,” she said.

In particular, Ifill and the Legal Defense Fund are monitoring the Supreme Court as it decides whether to eliminate a key section of the Voting Rights Act—Section 5—which requires Justice Department “preclearance” of any changes to districting or voting laws in jurisdictions with a history of racial discrimination.

“The Section 5 decision could be a game changer in whether black voting rights are suppressed, because the law is a key protection for minority voters,” Ifill said. “We’re watching this very, very closely.”

Just as Ifill knew before Election Day, she’s right once again. Even without knowing in advance how the Supreme Court will rule on Section 5, she’s clear about its importance to our democracy. And so should all of us. Above all else, voting is a fundamental right, and we should never waver in our efforts to defend and safeguard it for every American.

Sam Fulwood III is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress and Director of the CAP Leadership Institute. His work with the Center’s Progress 2050 project examines the impact of policies on the nation when there will be no clear racial or ethnic majority by the year 2050.

See also: Think Again: A Realistic Approach to Syria by Eric Alterman

Many conservatives have been quick to encourage U.S. intervention in Syria, without offering a responsible plan for our involvement.