Joe Biden asked senators Tuesday, pounding his palm for emphasis, to fight against voter suppression by amending Senate rules to approve voting rights legislation that Republicans are stalling from debate and vote.
In a speech aimed at reviving the struggle to enact federal voting rules and persuading skeptic Democrats of his commitment, US President Biden denounced many Republicans as cowards and pledged to end the Senate's "filibuster" in order to pass legislation.
Biden contrasted civil rights heroes
The Democratic president compared the voting rights struggle to Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s fight against segregation, describing it as a "war for the spirit of America." Despite investigations finding no proof, former President Donald Trump insists that Democrats stole the 2020 election through voting fraud.
Since then, Republican legislators in 19 states have passed hundreds of anti-voting measures. Critics claim that these policies are aimed against minorities, who tend to vote in higher numbers for Democrats. As he juxtaposed civil rights heroes with the country's most fervent white supremacists, Biden said on Tuesday that Republicans must pick which side of history they want to be on, as per The Telegraph via MSN.
Mitch McConnell, the Senate Minority Leader, slammed President Biden's speech in Georgia on the Democratic push for voting rights legislation, calling it profoundly unpresidential. McConnell slammed Biden for referring to millions of Americans as domestic adversaries and compared a bipartisan majority of senators to genuine traitors in a fiery speech on the Senate floor.
McConnell blasts Biden's voting rights speech
Biden's speech, according to McConnell, was a rant, nonsensical, inaccurate, beneath his position, and unworthy of a president of the United States, citing the recently sworn-in president's inaugural address from January, in which he declared every disagreement doesn't have to be a reason for utter war.
While the president chastised Georgia's tough voting regulations, Mayor Muriel Bowser of Washington, DC, warned citizens not to leave their homes without a photo ID and a vaccination card. He added that Georgia has more early voting days than both New York and Delaware, both of which are Democratic-controlled states.
Early voting in Georgia begins the fourth Monday before the election or runoff, but early voting in New York and Delaware is limited to ten days. Furthermore, early voting in Delaware was not available until this year, according to New York Post. Biden's connecting Republicans to Jim Crow-era law as an obstacle to electoral reform now irritated the Kentucky Republican., according to the Brennan Center for Justice, at least 19 GOP-led states have implemented legislation reducing voting access in the previous year.
Biden had spoken out strongly the day before in Atlanta in support of modifying the Senate filibuster rule so that Democrats could pass two major voting packages that had stalled in the Senate. In turn, McConnell ended his floor address on Wednesday by encouraging his colleagues to safeguard tradition in the Senate, Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., has been courted to switch parties, and he has made an indirect pitch to him.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer promised that the Democrats' voting bill will be voted on as soon as Wednesday. The Democratic leader met with Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema on Tuesday night - another Democrat who hasn't committed to a filibuster carveout but says she supports election reforms - Then, on Wednesday morning, for roughly an hour with Manchin as he attempts to find out how to get Biden's plan passed, ABC News reported.
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