Senate expected to vote on Violence Against Women Act; Republicans won't filibuster

(ThinkProgress)

The Violence Against Women Act is expected, though not actually scheduled, as of the writing of Today in Congress, to be voted on in the Senate today. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell announced Thursday morning that Republicans would not filibuster the bill'awfully big of them, considering it has 61 cosponsors.

Republicans were planning to offer their own version of the bill as an amendment; it's not clear whether forgoing attempts to block the bipartisan VAWA means they will also drop this amendment:

Their alternative would cap visas available to legal and illegal immigrants who suffer abuse at 10,000 a year, compared to 15,000 proposed by the Democratic bill offered by Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt. It does not specify, as the Democratic bill does, that violence against gays, lesbians and transgenders are part of the act. The Leahy bill expands the authority of Native American officials to handle cases of abuse of Indian women by non-Indians. The Republican substitute permits tribal authorities to go to federal court for protective orders on behalf of abused Native American women.

In any case, those provisions are important, since House Republicans don't yet have a complete bill, but it's expected to be similar to the Senate Republican plan'in other words, responding to violence against women is all very well as long as they're straight, citizens or legal residents, and not Native American. The House Republican effort is led by Sandy Adams of Florida, one of about a dozen friendly female faces of how this is totally not a war on women.

Since the original Senate bill, including LGBT, Native American, and undocumented immigrant protections, is clearly expected to pass, focus is shifting to the House. Send an email to your member of the U.S. House of Representatives, telling him or her to pass the expanded, bipartisan Senate reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act.