The end of the filibuster -- no, really

Leaders of the burgeoning racial-justice movement are unequivocal in warning Senate Democratic leaders that they risk an eruption if they achieve unified control of government yet allow Republican filibusters to kill civil-rights initiatives that pass the House, as bills on police reform, voting, and other issues have in this session.

That “will be unacceptable,” Rashad Robinson, the executive director of Color of Change, a leading racial-justice organization, told me. “It will be unacceptable to people who have waited a long time. It will be unacceptable to people who are already skeptical of electoral politics. It will be unacceptable that a body that is deeply unrepresentative of a diverse America is telling people to wait more time.”

Aimee Allison, the founder of She the People, an organization that mobilizes women of color, sends the same blunt warning. “It’s unacceptable to say there is nothing we can do, that we must be held hostage by Republicans who have enabled a Trump presidency and a set of policies that have hurt us,” she told me. “We can’t be held hostage by the filibuster.”