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Schumer blasts GOP over voting rights bill: 'A rot at the center of the modern Republican Party'

In anticipation of the Senate vote Tuesday evening on the For the People Act, a bill intended to expand voting rights and counter restrictive voting laws pushed by GOP lawmakers, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., denounced Republican efforts to stop the legislation from being passed.

In remarks on the Senate floor Tuesday morning, Schumer said, “Donald Trump, fresh off a resounding loss in the 2020 presidential election, cried foul and lied — lied — that the election was stolen from him, like a petulant child.”

Schumer focused on the former president’s role in the politicization of voting rights, which created Republican opposition that had not previously existed. He described how Act 77, the Pennsylvania law that legalized no-excuse mail-in voting, was passed by a Republican majority in the state Legislature in 2019. A year later, due to Trump’s baseless accusations of voter mail fraud, Republican lawmakers promptly proposed repealing the law.

Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., talks to reporters at the U.S. Capitol on June 15.
Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., talks to reporters at the Capitol on June 15. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

“There is a rot at the center of the modern Republican Party,” Schumer continued. “Donald Trump’s big lie has spread like a cancer and threatens to envelop one of America’s major political parties. Even worse, it has poisoned our democracy, eroded faith in our elections, which is so detrimental to the future faith people need to have in our democracy. And of course, it became the match that lit a wildfire of Republican voter-suppression laws sweeping across the country. Because of one man’s lie, Republicans are now doing the dastardly act of taking away voting from millions of Americans, making it much harder for them to vote, and many, many will not.”

Schumer launched a similar attack on Trump on Monday, taking to the Senate floor to call him “despicable” for spreading the “big lie” that he did not legitimately lose the 2020 election.

The For the People Act was passed in the House by a Democratic majority in March and now faces unanimous Republican opposition in the Senate. To pass the bill, 10 Republican senators would need to cross party lines to provide the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster and begin debate.

The legislation as it currently stands includes a number of provisions aimed at making it easier for people to vote, such as the expansion of early voting and automatic voter registration for federal elections.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., heads to the Senate floor June 21.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., has opposed the legislation since it was introduced earlier this year, but said last week that he would support a list of compromise measures, including 15 days of early voting and making Election Day a public holiday. Former President Barack Obama on Monday urged Republicans to back Manchin’s proposal, which he described as “a product of compromise.”

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has already promised that the Republican senators will not budge. “Democrats have made abundantly clear that the real driving force behind S. 1 is a desire to rig the rules of American elections permanently in Democrats’ favor,” McConnell tweeted, referring to the legislation by its bill number. “That’s why the Senate will give this disastrous proposal no quarter.”

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