Won’t throw the first pitch so nyah

In baseball news

Texas governor Greg Abbott said on Monday that he won’t throw the ceremonial first pitch as planned at the Texas Rangers’ home opener, the latest jab in a fight that is pushing corporate America into the political battle over voting rights.

I suppose “home opener” means the first game of the season which is being played in the home town of the Texas Rangers. I guess we’re all supposed to be fluent in Baseball.

The Republican governor informed the Rangers via a letter, citing Major League Baseball’s decision to move the MLB All-Star Game from Atlanta in response to Georgia’s sweeping new voting laws, which include new restrictions on voting by mail and greater legislative control over how elections are run. Critics of the law say it will make it more difficult for minority groups to vote in Georgia.

Because it will. Closing voting sites and drop boxes will of course make it more difficult for people to vote, especially people without much money, without cars, without the ability to take time off work whenever necessary, without someone to watch the kids, without the stamina needed to stand in a line for five hours. That’s the whole point. Put up obstacles that will be obstacles to the people who vote Democratic as opposed to the people who vote Republican.

“It is shameful that America’s pastime is not only being influenced by partisan political politics, but also perpetuating false political narratives,” Abbott said.

It’s not false at all. Voting laws in Georgia (and Mississippi and Alabama and the rest of the former slave states) were intended to impede black people from voting, and they did so. That’s why the Voting Rights Act was passed. These new post-Shelby laws are the same kind of thing, albeit slightly more subtle.

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