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MADISON – The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and All Voting is Local, with its joint And Still I Vote campaign, will hold multiple events this week to mobilize voters and urge officials in Wisconsin to ensure fair, safe, and accessible elections in 2020. These activities are part of Turn Up Tuesdays, a weekly, national call to action that launched last month in the wake of Wisconsin’s April 7 election debacle.

In March, as congressional leaders worked to reach a deal on a COVID-19 relief package, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell shut down the Senate so he could attend the swearing-in ceremony for his political protégé, Justin Walker, who was confirmed to the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Kentucky last October.

WASHINGTON – Today the United States Supreme Court instructed a lower court to reconsider its ruling in a discrimination case involving National Association of African American Owned Media (NAAAOM) and Comcast. The decision issued by the Court weakens the reach of Section 1981, a core provision of the Civil Rights Act of 1866 – a historic statute that prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color and ethnicity when making and enforcing contracts – imposing a burdensome pleading standard on victims of discrimination.

Senate Republicans claimed that the impeachment trial blocked them from addressing their legislative agenda. Let’s not forget that the House of Representatives has passed plenty of bills to advance civil and human rights, but Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell continues to bury them in his legislative graveyard.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham kicked off 2020 right where he left off: by advancing to the Senate floor more extreme nominees who have egregious civil rights records for lifetime federal judgeships.

President Donald Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will stop at nothing to achieve through the courts what their party cannot accomplish legislatively: erasing the progress our nation has made to recognize and protect hard-fought civil rights. Indeed, instead of passing crucial legislation that would restore and safeguard our voting rights, for example, McConnell is actively installing nominees with demonstrated records of creating and defending the most egregious efforts to block access to the ballot box. Senate Republicans have confirmed lifetime nominees who defended Ohio’s notorious voter purge law and argued for some of the nation’s most restrictive laws that would deny voting rights to millions of people.

Trump promised to remake the federal judiciary in his image at a reckless rate by confirming more than 180 judges by the end of this year. With 164 judicial confirmations, Trump, enabled by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, are taking over our courts by installing unqualified and biased judicial nominees who jeopardize our civil rights. To date, Trump has filled nearly one-fifth of the entire federal judiciary, and one-quarter of all circuit court judgeships. Stymied by Congress, Trump and McConnell are trying to transform our courts in order to implement the party’s failing agenda. And the harm caused by this deliberate attempt to roll back our civil and human rights by filling the courts with anti-civil rights nominees will be felt for decades to come.

Trump and Senate Republicans continue to shamelessly stack our federal courts with more ideological extremists. The total number of confirmations to lifetime appointments on the federal bench under Trump is now 161— nearly one-fifth of the entire federal judiciary, and a terrifying one-quarter of all circuit court judgeships in less than three years.