What to Know

• President Joe Biden, who will speak about voting rights in Philadelphia, defeated former President Donald Trump in Pennsylvania by more votes than Trump beat Hillary Clinton in 2016.
• The speech comes amid a mostly Republican-led push in numerous states, including Georgia, Florida and Texas, to enact voting rules changes that critics call restrictive and discriminatory.
• His visit comes only days after a Republican state lawmaker and fervent Trump ally began trying to launch what he calls a “forensic investigation” of Pennsylvania’s 2020 presidential election.

President Joe Biden will visit Philadelphia on Tuesday to deliver an address about the actions his administration is taking to “protect the sacred constitutional right to vote,” White House officials said.

The speech comes amid a mostly Republican-led push in numerous states, including Georgia, Florida and Texas, to enact voting rules changes that critics call restrictive and discriminatory.

Pennsylvania is one of the battleground states buffeted by former President Donald Trump’s baseless conspiracy theories that attribute his loss to Biden in last year’s election to widespread election fraud. Biden defeated Trump in Pennsylvania by more votes than Trump beat Hillary Clinton in 2016.

The Department of Justice last month sued Georgia over its recently passed election law, alleging the changes violate federal voting protections for minorities.

The Biden administration has taken other steps in the fight over voting rights in the weeks leading up to the Philadelphia speech.

In a speech in Tulsa, Oklahoma, last month, Biden said that voting rights are “under assault with an incredible intensity like I’ve never seen.”

The president met last Thursday met with leading civil rights groups on the issue. The same day, Vice President Kamala Harris announced that the Democratic National Committee would invest $25 million to expand its get-out-the-vote efforts for the upcoming midterm elections.

Biden’s visit to Philadelphia comes only days after a Republican state lawmaker and fervent Trump ally began trying to launch what he calls a “forensic investigation” of Pennsylvania’s 2020 presidential election, similar to what is happening in Arizona.

Meanwhile, Republican lawmakers have mounted an effort to overhaul Pennsylvania’s election laws. Last week, Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, vetoed their bill, calling it “voter suppression.”

With about 10 months until next year’s primary election, Republicans are crowding into 2022’s races for Pennsylvania’s open U.S. Senate seat and governor’s office, and in many cases are backing an audit of the 2020 election or calling for a repeal of the state’s expansive mail-in voting law.

In Congress last month, Democrats’ sweeping attempt to rewrite U.S. election and voting law was blocked by a Republican filibuster.

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