The U.S Senate has renewed the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), with 78 votes in favor and 22 against. According to Think Progress, all of the 22 votes against renewing the Act were Republican men, including rising GOP star, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio (R).

Republicans had threatened to obstruct VAWA, which is renewed every five years, over new provisions that would enshrine protections for LGBT people, immigrants and women on Native American reservations into the law. House Republicans proposed their own, watered down version of the legislation in 2012, but the House and Senate, unable to reconcile their versions of the legislation, allowed the VAWA to expire for the first time since its inception.

The VAWA was first passed in 1994 to address violence against women through stiffer sentences for violent perpetrators, guaranteeing women access to civil proceedings should prosecutors decline to press charges in a domestic violence case and by otherwise buttressing protections for women within the law. It was renewed without controversy in 2000 and 2005, but came up against Republican resistance this year.

Senators Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and John Cornyn (R-TX) each attempted to tack amendments on to the Act that would annul the protections for undocumented immigrants, Native Americans […]