FREEPORT, N.Y. — A prime Home Democrat stated this week that if the get together wins the bulk, its first precedence within the subsequent Congress shall be election integrity — a problem that’s been front-and-center all through a marketing campaign by which former President Trump has floated baseless claims of voter fraud and laid the groundwork to problem the outcomes if he loses.
In a sit-down interview with The Hill on the marketing campaign path on Lengthy Island, Rep. Katherine Clark (Mass.), the Democratic whip, laid out the contours of an formidable legislative agenda if Democrats seize the gavel subsequent yr, together with restoring authorized protections for abortion entry that had been eradicated by the Supreme Court docket in 2022.
However she emphasised that the entire Democrats’ coverage priorities stem from the core constitutional concept that People, by way of voting, maintain the keys to authorities and self-determination. With that in thoughts, she stated Democrats would make efforts to guard democracy their first legislative proposal out of the gate in 2025, with a voting rights invoice receiving the coveted H.R. 1 title.
“We know that everything flows from the right to vote and having voter security, and what we have seen are attacks on that right to vote — undermining, through misinformation, Americans’ belief in the integrity [of elections],” Clark stated. “We have fair and secure elections in this country. … Donald Trump and JD Vance are still denying the 2020 election, which is outrageous.”
Below former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Democrats promoted sweeping election reforms — designed to develop voting entry and curb the affect of cash on elections — as their first invoice launched in each the 116th and 117th Congresses, after they final managed the decrease chamber.
Pelosi and her management workforce have since stepped apart. However Clark, the No. 2 Home Democrat, stated the brand new get together brass would observe go well with in the event that they win the bulk in November, making election integrity and marketing campaign finance the highest precedence.
She didn’t reveal what voting rights invoice a possible majority would cost forward with, although she provided two choices.
One is the For the Folks Act, which received the H.R. 1 denomination prior to now two congressional phrases when Democrats held the bulk. The laws — sponsored by Rep. John Sarbanes (D-Md.) — sought to develop voter entry, make it more durable for states to purge voting rolls, overhaul the marketing campaign finance system to cut back the facility of well-heeled pursuits, and require presidential candidates to launch 10 years of tax returns. Every of the problems has surfaced this yr within the contest between Trump and Vice President Harris.
The measure cleared the Home in 2019 and 2021, however it floundered within the Senate.
Clark additionally pointed to the John Lewis Voting Rights Development Act, which might reinstate a portion of the 1965 Voting Rights Act nullified by the Supreme Court docket in 2013. The axed provision had required states with confirmed information of voter discrimination — most of them within the South — to win federal approval earlier than altering their election procedures. The Democrats’ invoice, sponsored by Rep. Terri Sewell (D-Ala.), would restore these preclearance protections by updating the system that had decided which states had been topic to the additional scrutiny.
“It is gonna be voting rights, whether it’s John Lewis or the Sarbanes,” Clark stated. “But H.R. 1 will be a voting rights bill.”
Home Minority Chief Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), who’s in line to develop into Speaker if Democrats win the bulk in November, has been reluctant to disclose specifics surrounding his get together’s agenda ought to Democrats take the higher hand within the decrease chamber subsequent yr. Along with reproductive rights, he has pointed to efforts to decrease housing prices and develop household tax credit as preeminent on the get together’s early to-do record.
However throughout his final press convention within the Capitol earlier than the lengthy marketing campaign recess, he advised reporters he wants to speak to his caucus earlier than committing to what payments they’d carry to the ground within the first 100 days of a Democratic majority.
At a rally on Lengthy Island in help of Laura Gillen, who’s working to unseat Rep. Anthony D’Esposito (R) in New York’s 4th Congressional District, a key battleground space, Jeffries underscored the significance of defending People’ proper to vote — and talked about the John Lewis invoice.
“This is one of just four seats that we need to win in order to flip control of the House of Representatives. No pressure on y’all, but one of four seats that we need to win,” Jeffries stated. “When you send Laura Gillen to the United States Congress, we’re gonna make sure that we pass the John Roberts Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act so we can end the era of voter suppression in the United States of America once and for all. No one can take away your voice, your power, your ability to determine your future.”
The feedback arrive as each events are racing frantically, within the closing stretch of the marketing campaign, to shore up voter help within the parallel contests for management of the Home and the White Home, each of which stay too near name.
Democrats have centered a lot of their marketing campaign message on Trump’s actions following the 2020 election, when he promoted false allegations that he received the race towards Joe Biden, solely to have it “stolen” by a conspiracy of corrupt Democrats, state election officers, overseas governments and tech corporations. That unfounded narrative, and Trump’s refusal to concede defeat, led on to the assault on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, when a mob of Trump’s supporters sought unsuccessfully to maintain him in workplace by blocking Congress from certifying Biden’s victory.
Home Democrats, joined by 10 Republicans, impeached Trump for his position within the rampage. However the Republican-controlled Senate, led by then-Majority Chief Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), declined to convict him, empowering Trump to run for a second time period.
The saga stays an explosive concern on this yr’s marketing campaign, the place Trump has continued to insist that he received the 2020 contest, and his closest GOP allies — from working mate Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) to Home Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) — have declined quite a few alternatives to right the report.
As a substitute, they’ve adopted Trump’s warnings that armies of undocumented immigrants are poised to vote illegally and flip this yr’s race towards Harris and Democrats — one other false declare that nonetheless resonates among the many GOP’s conservative base.
“We all know, intuitively, that a lot of illegals are voting in federal elections,” Johnson stated earlier within the yr. “But it’s not been something that is easily provable.”
Whereas voting rights would be the prime precedence for Home Democrats in the event that they take the bulk subsequent yr, ladies’s reproductive rights are poised to observe carefully behind as frustrations stay excessive after the autumn of Roe v. Wade.
Democrats have additionally sounded the alarm about residual impacts of the Supreme Court docket determination, together with efforts to limit entry to in vitro fertilization.
Requested what different issues a Democratic majority would take up instantly, Clark, with out skipping a beat, cited “reproductive freedom.”
“We will take votes to make sure that the stories we are hearing about women being denied fundamental health care when they are in a crisis,” the whip stated. “This is a national horror show that is playing out for women. It is a denial of health care.”
“This focus on health care and making sure that we restore parity for women in his country, that we have protection so that pregnant women can get the care that their doctors recommend when they need is, is going to be a top priority of this Congress going forward,” she added.
Clark wouldn’t say if ladies’s reproductive rights would obtain the H.R. 2 denomination — “these will be decisions that Speaker Hakeem Jeffries will make with his leadership team” — although Democrats have constantly mentioned the Ladies’s Well being Safety Act, which might codify protections afforded by Roe v. Wade.
Democrats have to choose up a web 4 seats to take management of the chamber, a feat that may take the get together out of the minority wilderness, the place it has been for 2 years, and empower Jeffries, Clark and Rep. Pete Aguilar (Calif.), the chair of the Home Democratic Caucus.
Clark stated that troika has been hatching plans for a possible majority. For now, nevertheless, the group is concentrated squarely on the duty simply earlier than them: Successful a minimum of 218 seats to imagine nearly all of the Home.
“We are making plans for the future. We will be ready,” Clark stated. “But we are also, our priority is winning on Nov. 5. And that is the first step in the critical process of ending the chaos, ending this extremism, and restoring the people’s voices to the process.”
