Good morning. It is Sunday, July 25th. I'm Ali Velshi. With each passing day, more Americans are realizing that voting rights in this country are under siege.

It's still a surprise to some, but it shouldn't be. This has been a long time coming.

Right now, Republican legislators are leading a wave of anti-democratic efforts

to strip Americans of one of their primary constitutional rights. The most prominent case right

now is in Texas. Democrats from that state are now entering their third week in Washington, D.C.,

having left Texas to stave off the passage of restrictive voting laws.

Part of the reason Republicans are able to get away with voter suppression laws

stems from the fact that, and this is hard to believe,

millions of Americans do not believe voting is a right at all.

A brand new Pew Research Center survey finds that 67% of Republicans believe that voting is a privilege that can be limited.

78% of Democrats believe voting is a fundamental right for every U.S. citizen.

And while this breaks down along partisan lines, it does so along racial lines as well.

77% of black Americans believe voting is a fundamental right.

66% of Asian Americans and 63% of Hispanics do as well.

But white people are more evenly split, saying that voting is a right.

If you think about it, those numbers make sense.

Minorities, most of whom are Democrats, have had to fight very hard for their right to vote in this country.

There's a hyper awareness about this subject that a lot of white people don't share, mainly because it hasn't affected them or their recent predecessors in the same way.

There needs to be more urgency around the protection of voting rights for everybody.

And we've seen urgency from some as protests and acts of civil disobedience, direct action, as some people call it, have unfolded in various parts of the country.

But arguably, the fight against voter suppression needs to be as active and effective as the racial justice protests were last summer.

When George Floyd was killed by a Minneapolis cop on video, tens of millions saw his death

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