WASHINGTON — After weeks of anticipation, President Joe Biden will denounce Republican’s voting rights restriction in a major speech in Philadelphia on Tuesday, warning Americans the constitutional right to vote is under attack and urge them to fight those challenges.
Biden will deliver the remarks from steps of Independence Hall, Biden will make “the moral case” for the Voting Rights Act and say denying the right to vote is a form of suppression and silencing American voices, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said at Monday’s briefing.
“He is going to be calling on Americans to make sure they are informed, make sure they are informing their neighbors, and make sure they are fighting efforts to pass restrictive laws in their states,” she said.
The President will also commit to using every tool at his disposal to protect Americans against voter suppression laws, which he views as “the worst challenge to our democracy since the Civil War,” Psaki said.
Biden’s speech will come just 24 hours after Texas Democrats fled the state in an effort to block Republicans from enacting new voting restrictions in the state. As of this writing, 14 states have put laws in motion that would restrict voting access as conservative lawmakers continue to stand by former President Donald Trump and his baseless claims of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election.
Biden has faced growing pressure from his own party, including key allies, to be more aggressive and use his platform as the President to denounce Republican efforts to restrict voting access is “undemocratic, un-American and unpatriotic.”
“He’ll lay out the moral case for why denying the right to vote is a form of suppression and a form of silencing,” Psaki said. “He will redouble his commitment to using every tool at his disposal to continue to fight to protect the fundamental right of Americans to vote against the onslaught of voter suppression laws.”
Top Biden ally and House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn of South Carolina said over the weekend that he supports a carveout of the legislative filibuster in the Senate, urging Biden to get behind the idea. However, West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin and Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, two Moderate Democrats, have repeatedly opposed the idea of changing the Senate tradition.
As of now, the Democrats have the slim majority in the Senate with Vice President Kamala Harris breaking the tie after a 50-50 tie.
“I can see in a state like Georgia — where people stepped up in January in a way nobody thought they ever would — I can see the disappointment in the voters to the extent that [Sen. Rafael] Warnock would not be back,” Clyburn told Politico.
Last week, Harris announced a $25 million expansion of the Democratic National Committee’s “I Will Vote” campaign, aimed at voter education, voter protection, targeted voter registration, and new technology to increase voter access.
Psaki said Biden’s goal is to show Americans they have rights but must be aware of conservatives trying to eliminate their vote in efforts to silence them.
“He wants people across the country to not just look ahead to 2024, but be prepared and eyes wide open about 2022,” she said.
