Democrats have seized on new voting restrictions in Georgia to focus attention on the fight to overhaul federal election laws, setting up a slow-building standoff that carries echoes of the civil rights battles of a half-century ago.
In fiery speeches, pointed statements and tweets, party leaders on Friday decried the law signed the day before by the state’s Republican governor as specifically aimed at suppressing Black and Latino votes and a threat to democracy.
President Joe Biden released an extended statement, calling the law an attack on “good conscience” that denies the right to vote for “countless” Americans. “This is Jim Crow in the 21st Century,” Biden said, referring to laws of the last century that enforced heavy-handed racial