Pressure mounts on corporations to denounce GOP voting bills
ATLANTA — Liberal activists are stepping up calls for corporate America to denounce Republican efforts to tighten state voting laws, and businesses accustomed to cozy political relationships now find themselves in the middle of a growing partisan fight over voting rights.
Pressure is mounting on leading companies in Texas, Arizona and other states, particularly after Major League Baseball’s decision Friday to move the 2021 All-Star Game out of Atlanta. A joint statement from executives at nearly 200 companies, including HP, Microsoft, PayPal, Target, Twitter, Uber and Under Armour, took aim at state legislation “threatening to make voting more difficult” and said “elections are not improved” when lawmakers impose new barriers to voting.
The outcry comes a week after Georgia Republicans enacted an overhaul of the state’s election law that critics argue is an attempt to suppress Democratic votes.
Other companies have, somewhat belatedly, joined the chorus of critics.
Delta Air Lines and The Coca-Cola Co., two of Georgia’s best-known brands, this past week called the new law “unacceptable,“although they had a hand in writing it. That only angered Republicans, including Gov. Brian Kemp and several U.S. senators, who accused the companies of cowering from unwarranted attacks from the left.
The fight has thrust corporate America into a place it often tries to avoid — the center of a partisan political fight. But under threat of boycott and bad publicity, business leaders are showing a new willingness to enter the fray on an issue not directly related to their bottom line, even if it means alienating Republican allies.
“We want to hold corporations accountable for how they show up when voting rights are under attack,” said Marc Banks, an NAACP spokesman. “Corporations have a part to play, because when they do show up and speak, people listen.”
Kemp said at a news conference Saturday that baseball “caved to fear and lies from liberal activists” and moving the game means ”cancel culture” is coming for American businesses. Kemp said state leaders worked in good faith with leaders in the business community on the legislation, including some of the same companies that have now “flip-flopped on this issue.” He added: “We shouldn’t apologize for making it easy to vote and hard to cheat.“
Civil rights groups have sued to block the new Georgia law, which was passed after Democrats flipped the once-reliably Republican state in an election that Donald Trump falsely claimed was rife with fraud. Some activists have called for consumer boycotts of Delta, Coca-Cola and others. They dismiss business leaders’ assertions that they helped water down the bill to ease earlier, more restrictive proposals; those leaders, they argue, should have tried to block the plan altogether.
In Texas, the NAACP, League of Women Voters and League of United Latin American Citizens, among other organizations, are urging corporations in the state to speak out against a slate of Republican-backed voting proposals. “Democracy is good for business,” the campaign says.
Nine organizations took out full-page ads in The Houston Chronicle and The Dallas Morning News, the state’s leading newspapers, urging corporate opposition to the plan. The Texas proposal would limit some early voting hours, bar counties from setting up drive-thru voting and prohibit local officials from proactively sending applications for mail ballots before voters request them.
Unlike their Georgiabased counterparts, American Airlines and Dell Technologies didn’t wait for the Texas measure to pass. “To make American’s stance clear: We are strongly opposed to this bill and others like it,” American said in a statement.
Arizona, which Biden flipped from Trump in November, hasn’t seen high-profile corporate players engage yet. But 30-plus groups sent a joint letter to Allstate Insurance, CVS Health and Farmers’ Insurance, among others, urging their public opposition to proposed voting restrictions. Emily Kirkland, executive director of Progress Arizona, a progressive group that signed the letter, said there’s been no response yet.
Other groups are demanding that corporations focus on Washington, where congressional Democrats are pushing measures intended to make it easier for Americans to vote, regardless of state laws. Among the changes, Democrats would enact automatic voter registration nationally and standardize access to early and mail voting.
Democrats also want to restore parts of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that require the federal government to approve all election procedures in states and locales with a history of discrimination. The Supreme Court struck down those provisions, which applied to Georgia and Arizona, among other states, in 2013.
Corporate giants were mostly quiet when Trump falsely claimed he lost because of fraud. Business leaders largely maintained that caution as Republican state lawmakers used Trump’s lie to justify a flood of new bills to make it more cumbersome to vote.
The reticence was a stark contrast to how chambers of commerce reacted six years ago when Republicanrun states pushed “religious freedom” measures. Indiana, under then-Gov. Mike Pence, the future vice president, saw immediate corporate backlash. After North Carolina passed a “bathroom bill” limiting LGBTQ rights in 2016, PayPal scuttled expansion plans there and the NBA moved its all-star game from Charlotte. An AP analysis in 2017 found the reaction would eventually cost North Carolina at least $3.76 billion in lost business.
Then, Georgia’s corporate lobbying groups — with Delta’s and CocaCola’s backing — took no such chances, speaking out forcefully against Georgia conservatives’ version of a “religious freedom” bill. Lawmakers passed it anyway but Kemp’s predecessor, Republican Nathan Deal, vetoed it amid the chamber outcry.
Today, Delta and CocaCola’s response to the Georgia voting fight is standing as a cautionary tale for other businesses.
Ed Bastian, the airline’s chief executive, initially released a statement noting the business lobby’s role in altering the bill as it moved through the General Assembly. Officials at the Atlanta Metro Chamber, where Bastian currently serves as president, detailed how corporate lobbyists spent weeks at the Capitol on mitigating provisions.
Some Georgia Republicans wanted to roll back the state’s no-excuse absentee voting law, end automatic voter registration and ban Sunday early voting used heavily by Black churches. They also wanted to require photocopies of state IDs to receive and submit absentee ballots, while banning “drop boxes” as ballot collection receptacles.
The final law preserved no-excuse absentee voting and automatic registration. The new ID requirement for absentee ballots allows a voter to write their state ID number, rather than produce a photocopy, and the legislature included funding for free state IDs. The law also codifies in-person early voting on weekends, although it allows counties to choose whether to be open for voting for up to two Sundays. And it made drop boxes of mail ballots a permanent fixture in Georgia, but limited the number.
Business leaders’ philosophy, according to Democratic state Sen. Jen Jordan, was “basically, Republicans are going to pass something, so they might as well try to keep from being awful.”
But by Wednesday, the same day 72 Black business executives published a letter in The New York Times urging corporate leaders to speak out, Bastian was more direct. He sent a companywide memo declaring the law “unacceptable” and “based on a lie” — though he didn’t mention Trump.
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Dinner reservations are gleefully being made again. Long-canceled vacations are being booked. People are coming together again, in some of the ways they used to.
But not everyone is racing back.
Their stories are emerging as the world begins to reopen — people secretly dreading each milestone toward normalcy, envisioning instead anxiety-inducing crowds and awkward catch-up conversations. Even small tasks outside the home — a trip to the grocery store, or returning to the office — can feel overwhelming.
Psychologists call it re-entry fear, and they’re finding it more common as headlines herald the imminent return to postpandemic life.
“I have embraced and gotten used to this new lifestyle of avoidance that I can’t fathom going back to how it was. I have every intention of continuing to isolate myself,” says Thomas Pietrasz, who lives alone and works from his home in the Chicago suburbs as a content creator. His alcohol and marijuana use also increased during the pandemic.
Pietrasz says his anxiety has grown markedly worse as talk of postvaccine life grows. He says he got used to “hiding at home and taking advantage of curbside and delivery in order to avoid every situation with people.”
As the world edges back toward some semblance of normal life, many report challenges like Pietrasz’s playing out in their own lives. The time at home — lockdown, dread, fear, isolation — has changed them and made existing worries worse or created new ones entirely.
“It’s been a mix of reactions,” says Amy Cirbus, Director of Clinical Content at Talkspace, an online mental health group with nearly 50,000 current clients. “Some people are very relieved about going back to normal. Others are struggling. Many people are experiencing spikes in anxiety as they feel they aren’t ready for re-entry.”
While some felt restricted by the confinement of home, others found safety, comfort and even enjoyment there, internalizing the isolation into what some psychiatrists consider a dysfunctional baseline of behavior.
Like many others, Pietrasz said his anxiety is largely unrelated to catching COVID and more about social interactions. Psychologists say fears about leaving home have little to do with reasonable concerns about spreading the virus and sometimes can’t be pinpointed or aren’t based in reality.
In some cases, psychologists say the manifestation is subtle, like someone who begins making repeated excuses to avoid meeting up with friends, even within a safe, socially distanced setting or if they’ve been vaccinated. But some cases are more extreme, says Dr. Arthur Bregman, a psychiatrist who noticed this phenomenon in his Miami practice and dubbed it “cave syndrome.”
“The people who have the most anxiety disorders in my practice, they are the worst-affected. They can’t even get out,” says Bregman, who has been studying the 1918 influenza pandemic’s psychological impact on the world.
After that lockdown, roughly 40% of the population would be diagnosed with what we now call PTSD, Bregman says. “It took 10 years for the people to get out of this,“he says.
The pandemic exacerbated issues for those already struggling with anxiety, depression and other mental health issues. But some patients are experiencing these symptoms for the first time.
Dr. Julie Holland, a New York psychiatrist, says the pandemic triggered new trauma for some, especially in the unpredictable early weeks of lockdown as people questioned whether there would be enough food or if it was even safe to touch their mail.
According to a survey in February by the American Psychological Association, nearly half the respondents said they felt uneasy about adjusting to in-person interactions once the pandemic ends. Shockingly, vaccination status had little impact on people’s responses, with 48% of vaccinated adults saying they still felt uneasy.
“You’ve been taught for an entire year to distance yourself from people and you’ve learned to be afraid of people because they could make you sick or kill you,” Holland says. “There’s no question that it’s easier to learn to be afraid than to be unafraid.“
The fight-or-flight physical manifestations like racing heart, trouble breathing and feeling dizzy can be terrifying.
“People who are really free and they’re planning their vacations are really upsetting my patients because they’re challenging their level of fear and risk tolerance,” says Dr. Sharon Batista, a New York psychiatrist who has noticed a spike in patient referrals since the holidays.
Children and teens are especially vulnerable. Before the pandemic, 17-yearold Erin had lots of close friends, but said those interactions slowly waned while on lockdown in the DC suburbs. Now she barely talks to them.
She’s dreading “having to catch up and go through all that small talk stuff that nobody likes,” said the high school junior, who has been on anxiety medication for several years. The Associated Press is only using her first name because she is a minor.
“A year ago, I went outside hoping I’d run into a friend from school and go on an adventure,” she recently posted on social media. “Now, I’m terrified to leave the house because I’m afraid I’ll run into a friend from school and go on an adventure.”
Nicole Russell became so fearful of leaving her Miami home that she retreated to her bedroom for days at a time, unable to interact with others inside the home, including her 11-year-old daughter. It got so bad that she was often up all night, sleeping during the day, checking social media obsessively and cleaning constantly, even scrubbing the floor with a toothbrush .
“I would not leave my little corridor for days at a time because I could not deal with the pressures of talking to other people,” says Russell, who left notes to remind herself to shower and brush her teeth. “I wasn’t living, that’s for sure.”
Last Month, Russell even waved off family and friends when they tried to plan something small for her birthday last month. “We were forced into isolation,” she says, “and now we’ve grown accustomed to it.”
Experts say taking small steps over time is one of the most effective treatments. The more patients go to the store or see friends, the more they’ll discover the forgotten enjoyment of social interactions and learn that much of the world is unchanged, making it easier to venture out again. Others may need medication.
Russell, who described herself as “nonfunctional,“took some steps in that direction recently. She forced herself to take a terrifying trip to the grocery store. She saw people laughing and talking, and she was inspired.
She started therapy along with an antidepressant. It worked, she says, and within a week things were far better. Now, “I’m up and moving around and I want to start catching up with everybody.”