Vice President Kamala Harris met with fugitive lawmakers who fled Texas to dam the state’s Republican majority from passing election-security laws, evaluating them to suffragettes and different previous champions of voting rights.
“Defending the best of the American individuals to vote is as American as apple pie,” Harris advised the Democrat legislators on Tuesday, a day after 51 of them flew to Washington on personal jets to forestall the Texas Home from having the quorum essential to vote on payments.
.@VP Kamala Harris to Texas Democrats: "Defending the best of the American individuals to vote is as American as apple pie." pic.twitter.com/WpfhL1hV7u
— The Hill (@thehill) July 13, 2021
Harris praised the politicians for his or her “brave stand” and “patriotism,” saying that they made nice sacrifices to guard voting rights. She stated she wished to place their efforts in historic context, noting pivotal incidents that helped advance voting rights, together with an 1867 attraction to Congress by abolitionist Frederick Douglass, arguing that black males ought to be allowed to vote, and the 1913 suffragette march down Washington’s Pennsylvania Avenue.
“And 2021, the Texas Legislature got here to Washington, DC,” Harris stated. Whereas talking on Monday at an occasion in Michigan, she stated the Texans had been “marching within the path that so many others earlier than did, once they fought and lots of died for our proper to vote.”
The vice chairman’s newest feedback got here hours after Texas Governor Greg Abbott vowed to arrest the absconding lawmakers upon their return to the state and Texas Home Republicans voted to approve warrants to spherical up their Democrat colleagues by drive, if vital.
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Texas is one in all a number of Republican-controlled states through which lawmakers have launched or handed payments to shore up election safety within the aftermath of the 2020 vote, when former president Donald Trump alleged that he misplaced due to huge fraud.
President Joe Biden and different Democrat politicians have framed the state payments as an try and preserve non-white individuals from voting. “We’re dealing with probably the most important check of our democracy because the Civil Struggle,” Biden stated on Tuesday. “That is not hyperbole – because the Civil Struggle.” He known as the state laws “an unfolding assault” and “an try and suppress and subvert the best to vote.”
It isn’t altogether clear how the Texas laws would cease black individuals or anybody else from voting. The Home invoice’s main provisions embrace identification necessities for voting by mail, elevated entry for ballot watchers to watch the counting of votes, and bans on prolonged hours and drive-through service for early voting. It additionally would prohibit the sending of vote-by-mail purposes to individuals who have not requested them.
A Senate model of the invoice, which has largely the identical provisions, was handed on Tuesday in a party-line vote. However neither that invoice nor the Home model can change into legislation if the Home cannot collect a quorum earlier than a particular legislative session ends subsequent month. Abbott has stated he’ll name extra particular classes till votes are held. Two-thirds of the 150-member Home have to be current, and Republicans maintain an 83-67 majority.
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Social media customers identified the irony of many Democrats calling for the elimination of the Senate filibuster rule, which permits the minority Republican caucus to stall partisan payments, whereas praising the Texas Democrats for maintaining their state Home from voting on laws.
“Let’s have a look at now, Democrats denying a quorum in Texas to forestall laws they can not defeat is sweet,” creator Richard Paolinelli stated. “GOP denying debate on a invoice they can not defeat through the use of the filibuster is dangerous. If you happen to agree with each of the above statements, you could be a hypocrite.”
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