The president traveled to the Capitol on Thursday for a meeting with Democratic senators, hoping to advance his electoral reform.
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Joe Biden was fighting, Thursday, January 14, to save his vast electoral reform from parliamentary wreckage, after seeing the Supreme Court block his vaccination obligation in business. “I hope we will get there but I’m not sure”, he admitted, visibly tense, about his bill to protect the right to vote, especially for African-Americans. Extremely rare fact: the president moved to the Capitol for a meeting with the Democratic senators, devoted to the bill. “If we fail the first time, we can try a second time”, he added, however.
Joe Biden had promised to protect access to the ballot boxes for minorities and the transparency of voting operations in the face of a multitude of reforms undertaken by conservative states. NGOs assure that these laws discriminate in particular against blacks, who very largely voted for the democrat in 2020. To block this, the president wants to harmonize voting practices and give the federal state a right of scrutiny over local initiatives. He received Thursday evening senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, two moderate Democrats who are currently blocking his reform. The meeting lasted just over an hour, according to a White House official.
Joe Biden, on the other hand, cannot do anything after the decision of the Supreme Court, which blocked the obligation for companies with more than 100 employees to be vaccinated against Covid-19 or to submit to regular tests. The measure, dear to the Democrat, was denounced as an abuse of power by elected Republicans. In a country where only 62% of the population is fully vaccinated, the issue reveals deep political divisions. The high court has however validated the vaccination obligation for employees of health structures who benefit from federal funds. This succession of setbacks undermines the political credit of Joe Biden, whose popularity rating has plunged since the summer.