Want to bring bipartisanship back? End the filibuster now

Monday night, Democrats in the Texas state legislature were forced to flee. As they did over Memorial Day weekend, when they fled the first attempt by Republicans to crack down on voting, Texas Democrats held a press conference to shame Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, the two Democratic holdouts who refuse to let a democracy reform bill be put up for a vote in the Senate, into changing their minds. "We need Congress to act now to pass the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act to protect Texans — and all Americans — from the Trump Republicans' nationwide war on democracy," the Texas Democrats said in a statement. Then they must start passing bills like the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, legislation meant to protect the right to vote and stabilize election systems so that Republicans cannot cheat their way towards more illegitimate power, with a simple majority vote. When Texas Democrats fled to deny Republicans quorum in May, that not only slowed down the assault on voting rights, but it forced Republicans, reluctantly, to strip out two unpopular provisions from the original bill: One to block "get out the vote" events at churches and one to give right-wing judges the ability to overturn election results they don't like.