‘I Will Not Flinch’: Here’s What President Biden Will Say in Voting Rights Speech Today

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President Joe Biden will speak out on the issue of voting rights Tuesday afternoon, and the White House has released details of the speech in advance.

The president and Vice President Kamala Harris will each speak at the Atlanta University Center Consortium on the grounds of Morehouse College and Clark Atlanta University, Atlanta, Georgia in support of the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.

According to an excerpt provided to Mediaite by The White House, President Biden will say that “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 stand. I will not yield. I will not flinch. I will defend your right to vote and our democracy against all enemies foreign and domestic. And so the question is where will the institution of United States Senate stand?”

A White House official additionally provided Mediaite with the following detailed bullet points on the president’s speech, including a look at what Vice President Kamala Harris will say in her own remarks:

• In a place with profound civil rights history, the Atlanta University Center Consortium on the grounds of Clark Atlanta University and Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, the President will forcefully advocate for protecting the most bedrock American rights: the right to vote and have your vote counted, in a free, fair, and secure election that is not tainted by partisan manipulation.

• He’ll make clear – in the former district of the late Congressman John Lewis – that the only ways to do this is for the Senate to pass the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.

• And he will follow on his remarks from last week on the anniversary of January 6th, when an unprecedented insurrection sought to violently overturn the results of what the Trump Administration’s top election security officials confirmed was the most secure election in history, by saying that he will stand in the breach and keep fighting for the soul of America.

• Vice President Harris will also reaffirm that securing the right to vote is essential to safeguarding and strengthening our democracy. Drawing on the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Vice President Harris will call on the United States Senate to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the Freedom to Vote Act.

• The President will describe this as one of the rare moments in a country’s history when time stops and the essential is immediately ripped away from the trivial, and that we have to ensure January 6th doesn’t mark the end of democracy but the beginning of a renaissance for our democracy, where we stand up for the right to vote and to have that voted counted fairly – not undermined by partisans afraid of who you voted for.

• He’ll use Georgia as an example, highlighting that after Georgians decisively voted for new leadership in 2020, Republicans in the legislature decided that they could not win on the merits of their ideas and instead passed a voter suppression law that targeted mail-in voting, limited precincts in areas that didn’t vote the way they wanted, and empowered partisans in the state legislature to manipulate local boards of election.

• He will point out that Georgia is not an outlier – Republican legislators in 19 states passed 34 bills that restrict access to voting. These new measures include provisions that make it harder for people to register to vote, curtail mail-in voting and early voting, and make it easier for state officials to simply delete your voter registration.

• And he’ll emphasize that 21st Century Jim Crow is about voter suppression and election subversion: who gets to vote, whether your vote is counted, and who counts it.

• He’ll also show that while this trend is rooted in some of the worst episodes in our history when it comes to racial discrimination in voting – in the tradition of literacy tests – these extreme, radical laws are targeting the rights of everyone, of any race, who they are afraid might vote against them.

• And he’ll call for Republicans to once again, as they did for decades, get behind the policies we’re fighting for now. It was in 2006 that the Voting Rights Act extension passed the Senate 98-0, with Mitch McConnell voting for it.

• Citing the January 6th attack, he’ll say that it’s time for Republicans who support the rule of law to stand up for democracy.

• But after the repeated obstruction, after the GOP’s support for state attempts to undermine the rule of law based on simple majority votes around the country, he supports – as an institutionalist – changing the Senate rules to ensure it can work again and be restored and this basic right is defended.

• Because abuse of what was once a rarely used mechanism that is not in the Constitution has injured the body enormously, and its use to protect extreme attacks on the most basic constitutional right is abhorrent.

The speech comes as voting rights activists have been pressuring Biden to do more, and shortly on the heels of the president’s most recent expression of support for changing Senate rules to allow a simple majority to pass voting rights — which he will underscore in his speech.