As part of the annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day Peace March, the King family and more than 100 national and local civil rights groups marched across the Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge into downtown Washington.
The march followed a disappointing week for the president Joe Biden, who went to Capitol Hill to urge his colleagues in the US Senate to change House rules so he could overcome Republican opposition to the bill, only to be vigorously opposed by two conservative Democrats who have effective veto power.
At a rally Monday before the march, King’s son, Martin Luther King III, praised congressional Democrats for passing a sweeping infrastructure bill last year, but implored them to push through legislation on the right to vote.
The bill would expand access to mail-in voting, strengthen federal oversight of elections in states with a history of racial profiling, and tighten campaign finance rules.
Democratic supporters say it is necessary to counter a wave of new Voting restrictions approved in Republican-led states which, according to election observers, would make it difficult for minorities and low-income voters to vote.
The new restrictions have arisen after the false claims of the former president Donald Trump that his defeat in the 2020 election was the result of widespread fraud.
The top Democrat in the Senate, Chuck Schumer, has said the Senate would take up the bill on Tuesday, a delay from his earlier plan to hold a procedural vote on the bill on Monday, the federal holiday honoring King.
King III, his wife, Arndrea Waters King, and their daughter Yolanda Renee King led the march.
Republicans, who hold half of the 100-seat Senate, are united in their opposition to the bill, which they see as a partisan power grab.
That leaves Biden and Schumer only one way to pass it: convince conservative Democratic senators. Joe Manchin Y Kyrsten Cinema that they agree to change the upper house’s “filibustering” rule, which requires at least 60 senators to agree to a majority of the legislation.
Source From: Ambito
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