a senate debate scheduled for tuesday. a vote all but certain to fail. we are going to keep pressing this issue. reporter: democrats don t have enough support for legislation, including the freedom to vote act. the bill would expand voter registration, designate election day as a federal holiday, establish protections against gerrymandering, and restore voting rights to formerly incarcerated americans. i hope we can get this done. the honest to god answer is, i don t know. reporter: since the 2020 election critics say a number of states have taken action making it more difficult to cast a ballot. last year, at least 19 states passed 34 laws restricting access to voting. arizona is one of them. in the spirit of his father, martin luther king iii led a rally in phoenix over the weekend. [ crowd chanting ] reporter: earlier today linsey spoke with king and his wife andrea. it is said that a people who do not remember history are doomed to make the mistakes of the past. why i
nonpartisan group committed to providing voting rights. i spoke to a couple of your colleagues who were also doing this hunger strike. i mean, they were losing so much weight. i think one of them was down 13 pounds. some people within the group had to stop based on doctor s recommendations. why was it so important for you to be a part of this? absolutely. and thank you so much for having us here. it was important that i participated in a hunger strike, and i unfortunately also lost several pounds. our democracy is absolutely everything. and it impacts everything we do and everything we love. it impacts all our futures. it is the crux of this entire country. and without passing this bill, the freedom to vote act, our democracy is guaranteed to crumble, and in that, our entire
organizations putting pressure on majority leader schumer, on senate democrats to do something about it, and just this upcoming tuesday, president biden will actually devote an entire speech in atlanta to voting rights. now, the freedom to vote act, as i mentioned senator joe manchin co-authored it, but it still requires a rules change in order to get it across the finish line because it needs just democratic votes. they don t have ten republicans needed to pass it. i want you to take a listen to what majority leader schumer said on the floor yesterday about what they re going to do moving forward. democrats are currently exploring the paths we have available to restore the senate, so it does what the framers intended, debate, deliberate, compromise, amend and vote. as i said in my dear colleague earlier this week, if republicans continue to hijack the rules of the chamber to prevent us from protecting our democracy, then the senate will debate and consider changes to the rules on or
today together along with jesse jackson, al sharpton, many leaders from georgia. and we stand united with with all the voting rights leaders in georgia about the need for the words today to lead to actions. clear on that. what i hear from manchin in those comments i think is different maybe than what you heard. he said he is open to rules changes. manchin is a very sophisticated speaker. you got to remember he was for sorry, he was against what is now called the freedom to vote act. before he helped author this current version, and now is for it. he is somebody who is already moved on the arc and i believe he will move further. today wouldn t have happened without hundreds of thousands of activist demanding the president do it. wouldn t have happened without hundreds going to jail outside the white house, including martin luther king iii who was there today who reminded all of us many times that his father had to make johnson president
to organize teams, prepared and willing to force and transport firearms into washington, to come to the capitol grounds, to breach an attempt to take capitol grounds and building on january 6th. so it appears, chuck, from my initial reading that this is the first time the federal government has ever alleged there are specific plans to enter the capitol. up until just now all the conspiracy charges have said that these people communicated, planned to come to washington, planned to be armed, stayed together, planned to travel to capitol hill, planned to attend the rally, planned to go to the capitol, but there s never been an allegation by the government that there was a plan a well-developed plan in advance to enter the capitol and try to stop the vote. so so this appears to be the first of these. pete, i don t want to presume anything there and i know you want to get to reading, i m going to bring in joyce vance to