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(Trends Wide) — US President Joe Biden will travel to Atlanta on Tuesday to deliver a major speech on voting rights, ratcheting up pressure on reluctant senators as Democrats face pressure to pass two pending bills opposed by nearly every Republican on Capitol Hill.
Biden will travel to Georgia alongside Vice President Kamala Harris, whom he has appointed to lead the administration’s work on voting rights. While in Atlanta, the two will lay a wreath at the graves of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Coretta Scott King, and visit the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, according to the White House. Changing the filibuster rules in the Senate, which require 60 votes to end debate on the legislation, will be a major theme of the day, and specifically of Biden’s speech.
“The next few days, when these bills come to a vote, will mark a turning point in this nation. Will we choose democracy over autocracy, light over shadow, justice over injustice? I know where I am,” Biden will say. , according to an excerpt of his remarks released by the White House. “I will not give up. I will not flinch. I will defend your right to vote and our democracy against all enemies foreign and domestic. So the question is where will the institution of the United States Senate be located?”
The president’s speech in Atlanta is the latest in his recurring calls to strengthen the nation’s right to vote. Throughout the first year of his presidency, Biden has dedicated several speeches to the right to vote, including in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on the centennial of the racial massacre in that city; the South Carolina State University Commencement Ceremony; at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial in Washington; and at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia.
Other details of Biden’s speech and the defense of the vote
During his speech in Georgia, which will take place on the grounds of Clark Atlanta University and Morehouse College, Biden “will make a strong case for protecting America’s most fundamental right: the right to vote and to have your voice counted freely, fairly and safe election that is not tainted by partisan manipulation,” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said Monday.
“It will make it clear in (the late Rep. John Lewis’s) old district that the only way to do it is for the Senate to pass the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act,” Psaki added.
In his speech, Psaki said that Biden “will describe this as one of the rare moments in the history of a country when time stops and the essential is immediately separated from the trivial. And we have to make sure that on January 6th we don’t mark the end of democracy but the rebirth of our democracy, where we stand up for the right to vote and for that vote to be counted fairly, not undermined by supporters who fear who they voted for or try to reverse a result.”
Without changing the filibuster rules, it is unclear how any of the bills Biden wants to pass will be carried out. During remarks from Atlanta, Biden is expected to mention the rule change. He previously expressed support for making an exception to filibuster rules to pass voting rights legislation.
A White House official said changing filibuster rules to pass voting rights legislation is necessary to make sure “this basic right is upheld.”
“Because the abuse of what was once a little-used mechanism not in the Constitution has greatly injured the body, and its use to protect extreme attacks on the most basic constitutional right is abhorrent,” the official said.
Legislation on voting in the Senate
The Senate is expected to take over the voting rights in the coming days. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has set a deadline of Jan. 17, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, for the Senate to vote on a rule change if Republicans continue to block voting rights legislation. .
During Tuesday’s speech, Biden also plans to outline in detail what new laws in some states that restrict access to voting are doing.
“He’s very focused on making sure the American people understand what’s at stake here. Sometimes we’re all shorthand for legislation, shorthand for what we’re talking about,” Psaki said. “Protecting the fundamental right to vote means he will also talk about what the changes in states like Georgia have meant across the country.”
His visit to Atlanta, which comes less than a week before MLK Jr. Day, comes amid pressure from advocates calling on Biden to more clearly spell out a path for the rights bills to pass. electoral.
Several voting rights groups issued a letter saying that Biden and Harris should not visit Atlanta without a concrete plan to pass voting rights bills immediately. On Monday, a coalition of voting rights groups in Georgia announced they will not attend events related to Biden’s visit.
“We don’t need another speech. What we need is a plan,” Cliff Albright, co-founder of the Black Voters Matter Fund, told reporters Monday. “We will not attend the speech that the president will give tomorrow.”
It’s unclear whether prominent Georgia leader Stacey Abrams — arguably the Democratic Party’s leading voting rights advocate after using her 2018 gubernatorial loss to Republican Brian Kemp to raise the issue — will attend. After the election, Abrams founded Fair Fight, an organization that advocates for voter protection across the country, and is running for governor again this year.
Republicans seek to change electoral law
Biden discussed voting rights during his speech last week to recognize the one-year anniversary of the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol building, saying former President Donald Trump and his Republican allies are trying to subvert the US election.
“Right now, in state after state, new laws are being written, not to protect the vote, but to deny it; not just to suppress the vote, but to subvert it; not to strengthen or protect our democracy, but because the former president lost ”, Biden said last week.
“Instead of looking at the 2020 election results and saying they need new ideas or better ideas to win more votes, the former president and his supporters have decided the only way to win is to suppress your vote and subvert our elections,” he said. Biden. “That’s wrong. It is undemocratic. And frankly, it’s un-American.”
The president said later in the speech that “we have to be firm, determined and uncompromising in our defense of the right to vote and that vote be counted.”
Trump-aligned Republicans in several states are pushing at the state level to change voting procedures, conduct partisan investigations of the latest presidential contest and take more control over the election machinery.
The president plans to use Georgia as an example of these states, the White House official said.
In his speech, Biden will highlight “that after Georgians voted decisively for new leadership in 2020, Republicans in the legislature decided they couldn’t win on the merits of their ideas and instead passed a voter suppression law that focused on mail-in voting, limited precincts in areas that didn’t vote the way they wanted, and empowered supporters in the state legislature to manipulate local boards of elections,” the official said.
— Trends Wide’s Kevin Liptak, Dan Merica and Fredreka Schouten contributed to this report.
