The DOJ sues Georgia; unmarked graves of Indigenous children are found in Canada.
Biden's Justice Department sues Georgia over new voting laws; another mass Indigenous gravesite was found in Canada. Tonight's Sentences was written by Gabby Birenbaum.  - Attorney General Merrick Garland announced today that the Department of Justice will sue the state of Georgia over its new restrictive voting laws. [WSJ / Aruna Viswanatha and Cameron McWhirter]
- The federal lawsuit alleges that Georgia is in violation of the Voting Rights Act because the law intentionally targets Black Americans to keep them from voting. [The Hill / Rebecca Beitsch]
- The Georgia Election Integrity Act, signed into law by Republican Gov. Brian Kemp in March, prohibits passing out food or water to lined-up voters, limits the use of absentee voting, and gives the state legislature greater authority over the election process. [The Washington Post / David Nakamura]
- The lawsuit comes as Democrats have been urging the Biden administration to be more forceful with the issue of voter rights, after Democrats' election law and voting expansion bill, the For the People Act, was struck down by Senate Republicans. [NYT / Katie Benner and Nicholas Fandos]
- Georgia Republicans have immediately come out against the suit, with Kemp saying it came from the "lies and misinformation" the Biden administration has propagated regarding the law. [AP / Michael Balsamo and Christina A. Cassidy]
- In 2013, the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act by deciding that laws must have been created with the intent to discriminate against minorities, rather than just proving a discriminatory effect. Garland acknowledged that under the prior standard, the Georgia law likely never would have happened. [Guardian / Sam Levine]
- The lawsuit is further complicated by a pending Supreme Court case brought by the Republican Party of Arizona, challenging the statute under which the DOJ is bringing its case. [CNN / Devan Cole, Christina Carrega, Fredreka Schouten, Evan Perez, Ariane de Vogue, and Dianne Gallagher]
Cowessess First Nation finds hundreds of unmarked graves - Saskatchewan's Cowessess First Nation found 751 unmarked graves of mostly Indigenous children at the site of a former school, the second such discovery in less than a month in Canada. [NYT / Ian Austen and Dan Bilefsky]
- From 1883 to 1996, about 150,000 Indigenous children were forced to attend schools, mostly run by the Catholic Church, in order to assimilate into white Canadian society. They often faced abuse, and the practice was deemed a "cultural genocide" by a Canadian commission. [Axios / Rebecca Falconer]
- First Nations leaders say they expect to find more gravesites on the properties of these schools, and asked for listening and understanding from Canadians. [Indian Country Today and APTN National News]
- Leaders also called on the Canadian government and the Catholic Church to release records they hold about these schools, an independent, public inquiry into the deaths, and a formal apology from Pope Francis. [Battlefords News-Optimist / Larissa Kurz]
- The 2015 Canadian commission that investigated the legacy of these schools estimated that over 4,000 children died while in attendance, though the commission acknowledged the true number would be difficult to ascertain. [CNN / Paula Newton and Nicole Chavez]
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