Here’s what we absolutely must do next

| 9:09 am EST March 12, 2021
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Last night President Biden gave a speech that put the exclamation point on his groundbreaking COVID relief bill and laid out the next steps in his ambitious vaccination program. Help is on the way. But now we have to tackle something just as important.

Even as you’re reading this, Republican state governments around the nation are passing voter suppression measures aimed at stealing the 2022 election. This is not cause for doomsday hysteria or hapless fretting. The Republicans pulled this same crap in 2020, and it clearly didn’t work out for them. But we can’t take anything for granted – which is why HR1 must be our next priority.

HR1 is the legislation that fights back against voter suppression and gives Americans an equal opportunity to vote. HR1 can’t override all of the damage that state legislatures are doing, but it can undo a whole lot of it, and it could be the deciding factor in whether the 2022 and 2024 elections are stolen from the Democrats.

HR1 has already passed the House, and President Biden supports it. So it simply has to get through the Senate. Here’s the good news. Everyone’s least favorite Democratic Senator Joe Manchin appeared on the Sunday morning talk shows this past weekend and threw his support behind HR1. He also signaled a willingness to alter the filibuster rules and/or reconciliation rules in order to make it happen.

In other words, we can get this done, and we don’t need sixty votes. We just have to lean on the most reluctant Democratic Senators like Manchin, and hold them to their word on this. We can do this. There are so many important and timely priorities right now, but HR1 has to be what we tackle next, because we have to get it done to make sure upcoming elections are free and fair.