On Monday, House Democratic Caucus Chairman Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), who was named one of seven impeachment managers by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in the Senate impeachment trial of former President Trump, ripped Republicans for their efforts to restore election integrity across the nation while smearing them as racists, tweeting, “The Civil War ended in 1865 and the racists lost. Get over it.”
The Civil War ended in 1865 and the racists lost.
Get over it.
— Hakeem Jeffries (@RepJeffries) July 13, 2021
Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) fired back on Twitter with a blunt reminder of exactly which party had the history of racism, snapping, “You’re right, the Democrats lost.”
You’re right, the Democrats lost. https://t.co/fapklELoeh
— Dan Crenshaw (@DanCrenshawTX) July 14, 2021
Crenshaw also offered some evidence to buttress his assertion:
— Dan Crenshaw (@DanCrenshawTX) July 14, 2021
Appearing on Spectrum News NY1, Jeffries was asked if President Biden had exaggerated when he stated on Tuesday, “The assault on free and fair elections is just such a threat, literally. I’ve said it before: We’re are facing the most significant test of our democracy since the Civil War. That’s not hyperbole. Since the Civil War. The Confederates back then never breached the Capitol as insurrectionists did on January the 6th. I’m not saying this to alarm you; I’m saying this because you should be alarmed.”
“He’s not exaggerating at all,” Jeffries replied. “The Republican party has adopted voter suppression as an electoral strategy. Which is a shame because the modern history here in America post the enactment of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 has largely been — this was a settled question. The right to vote was a sacred thing, an important part of our democracy.”
Then Jeffries implied that Republican efforts stemmed from racist reaction to the election of Barack Obama, fulminating that the GOP efforts were part of a “voter suppression epidemic,” saying, “Every time the Voting Rights was reauthorized and signed back into law, it happened four times since 1965, it was signed into law by a Republican president; Richard Nixon, 1970, 1975, Gerald Ford, 1982, Ronald Reagan, 2006, George W. Bush. So what happened? Many of us believe the election of Barack Obama in 2008 began to change the perspective of some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle when they saw what was possible with America changing. And all of a sudden, the bipartisan nature of the right to vote dissipated and the voter suppression epidemic began. So this is a constitutional crisis.”
While Jeffries attacks Republicans’ efforts and calls them a “constitutional crisis,” his own party, led by President Biden, is pushing the so-called “For the People Act,” also known as H.R. 1. In March, the editors of National Review issued a scathing editorial in which they elucidated the goals of the Democratic Party as delineated in H.R. 1.. which had been passed in the House last Wednesday night.
Prior to the bill’s passage in the House, former Vice President Mike Pence had published an op-ed for the Heritage Foundation in which he noted:
The bill would force states to adopt universal mail-in ballots, early voting, same-day voter registration, online voter registration, and automatic voter registration for any individual listed in state and federal government databases, such as the Department of Motor Vehicles and welfare offices, ensuring duplicate registrations and that millions of illegal immigrants are quickly registered to vote.
States would be required to count every mail-in vote that arrives up to 10 days after Election Day. States must also allow ballot harvesting—where paid political operatives collect absentee ballots from places such as nursing homes—exposing our most vulnerable voters to coercion and increasing the risk that their ballots will be tampered with.
At the same time, state and local election officials would be stripped of their ability to maintain the accuracy of voter rolls, barred from verifying voter eligibility, and voter ID would be banned from coast to coast.
Congressional districts would be redrawn by unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats. Illegal immigrants and law-abiding American citizens would receive equal representation in Congress. Felons would be able to vote the moment they set foot out of prison.
Leftists not only want you powerless at the ballot box, they want to silence and censor anyone who would dare to criticize their unconstitutional power grab.
National Review’s editors echoed many of Pence’s concerns, writing:
It would be an understatement to describe H.R. 1 as a radical assault on American democracy, federalism, and free speech. It is actually several radical left-wing wish lists stuffed into a single 791-page sausage casing. … The first target is to wipe out state laws that allow voters to be checked against a preexisting list of registrations. H.R. 1 mandates that states provide same-day registration and allow people to change their name and address on the rolls at the polling place on Election Day, then forbids states from treating their votes as provisional ballots that can be checked later. It mandates online registration without adequate safeguards against hackers. It mandates automated registration of people who apply for unemployment, Medicaid, Obamacare, and college, or who are coming out of prison. The bill’s authors expect this to register noncitizens: They create a safe harbor against prosecution of noncitizens who report that they have been erroneously registered.
H.R. 1 bars states from checking with other states for duplicate registrations within six months of an election. It bars removing former voters from the rolls for failure to vote or to respond to mailings. … H.R. 1 bars anyone but an election official from challenging a voter’s eligibility to vote on Election Day — thus insulating Democrat-run precincts from scrutiny.
State voter-ID laws are banned, replaced simply by a sworn voter statement. The dramatic expansion of mail-in voting during the COVID pandemic is enshrined permanently in federal law. States are banned from the most elementary security methods for mail-in ballots: They must provide a ballot to everyone without asking for identification and may not require notarization or a witness to signatures. States are compelled to permit ballot harvesting so long as the harvesters are not paid per ballot. Curbside voting, ballot drop boxes, and 15 days of early voting are mandated nationwide, and the bill micromanages the location and hours of polling stations, early voting locations, and drop boxes. …
The editorial summed up this “assault on American democracy” by declaring that “not since the Alien and Sedition Acts has one political party in Congress sought to bend the power of the federal government, on partisan lines, toward crushing political opposition to this extent. H.R. 1 is not merely a bad idea; it is a scandal.”