Washington (CNN) — Dianne Feinstein, whose three decades in the Senate made her the longest-serving female US senator in history, has died following months of declining health. She was 90.

Feinstein, a Democrat, died Thursday night at her home in Washington, her office said in a statement.

Her death hands California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom the power to appoint a lawmaker to serve out the rest of Feinstein’s term, keeping the Democratic majority in the chamber through early January 2025. Newsom has publicly pledged to appoint a Black woman if Feinstein were to vacate her office and told NBC’s “Meet the Press” earlier this month that he would make an “interim appointment” who wouldn’t be any of the candidates who are seeking the seat in next year’s election.

Feinstein’s death also comes as federal funding is set to expire and Congress at an impasse as to how to avoid a government shutdown, though Senate Democrats still retain a majority without her.

Feinstein, a former mayor of San Francisco, was a leading figure in California politics for decades and became a national face of the Democratic Party following her first election to the US Senate in 1992. She broke a series of glass ceilings throughout her political career and her influence was felt strongly in some of Capitol Hill’s most consequential works in recent history, including the since-lapsed federal assault weapons ban in 1994 and the 2014 CIA torture report. She also was a longtime force on the Senate Intelligence and Judiciary committees.

In her later years, Feinstein’s health was the subject of increasing speculation, and the California Democrat was prominent among aging lawmakers whose decisions to remain in office drew scrutiny, especially in an age of narrow party margins in Congress.

A hospitalization for shingles in February led to an extended absence from the Senate – stirring complaints from Democrats, as Feinstein’s time away slowed the confirmation of Democratic-appointed judicial nominees – and when she returned to Capitol Hill three months later, it was revealed that she had suffered multiple complications during her recovery, including Ramsay Hunt syndrome and encephalitis. A fall in August briefly sent her to the hospital.

Feinstein, who was the Senate’s oldest member at the time of her death, also faced questions about her mental acuity and ability to lead. She dismissed the concerns, saying, “The real question is whether I’m still an effective representative for 40 million Californians, and the record shows that I am.”

But heavy speculation that Feinstein would retire instead of seek reelection in 2024 led several Democrats to announce their candidacies for her seat – even before she announced her plans. In February, she confirmed that she would not run for reelection, telling CNN, “The time has come.”

Feinstein was fondly remembered by her colleagues on Friday.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi hailed her fellow Californian as a “champion for the Golden State” and Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois remembered her as “one of the great ones.” Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, also of California, began his remarks to reporters Friday morning by honoring Feinstein as someone who “blazed a trail for women.”

In emotional remarks on the Senate floor, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer asked for a moment of silence. Per Senate tradition, Feinstein’s desk was draped with a black cloth with a vase of white flowers atop it.

“Dianne Feinstein is not like the others. She’s in a class of her own,” Schumer said, later adding, “America is a better place because of Sen. Dianne Feinstein.”

And President Joe Biden, himself a longtime colleague of Feinstein’s for more than 15 years, called her a “cherished friend.”

San Francisco native and leader

Feinstein was born in San Francisco in 1933 and graduated from Stanford University in 1955. After serving as a San Francisco County supervisor, Feinstein became the city’s mayor in 1978 in the wake of the assassination of Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk, the first openly gay politician from California to be elected to office.

Feinstein rarely talked about the day when Moscone and Milk were shot but she opened up about the tragic events in a 2017 interview with CNN’s Dana Bash.

Feinstein was on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors then, and assassin Dan White had been a friend and colleague of hers.

“The door to the office opened, and he came in, and I said, ‘Dan?’ ”

“I heard the doors slam, I heard the shots, I smelled the cordite,” Feinstein recalled.

It was Feinstein who announced the double assassination to the public. She was later sworn in as the first female mayor of San Francisco.

Her political career was marked by a series of historic firsts.

By that time she became mayor in 1978, she had already broken one glass ceiling, becoming the first female chair of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.

California’s first woman sent to the US Senate racked up many other firsts in Washington. Among those: She was the first woman to sit on the Senate Judiciary Committee, the first female chairwoman of the Senate Rules and Administration Committee, and the first female chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Feinstein also served on the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee and held the title of ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee from 2017 to 2021. In November 2022, she was poised to become president pro tempore of the Senate – third in line to the presidency – but declined to pursue the position, citing her husband’s recent death.

Feinstein reflected on her experience as a woman in politics in her 2017 interview with Bash, saying, “Look, being a woman in our society even today is difficult,” and noting, “I know it in the political area.” She would later note in a statement the week she became the longest-serving woman in US history, “We went from two women senators when I ran for office in 1992 to 24 today – and I know that number will keep climbing.”

“It has been a great pleasure to watch more and more women walk the halls of the Senate,” Feinstein said in November 2022.

Led efforts on gun control and torture program investigations

Though she was a proud native of one of the most famously liberal cities in the country, Feinstein earned a reputation over the years in the Senate as someone eager to work across the aisle with Republicans, and at times sparked pushback and criticism from progressives.

“I truly believe that there is a center in the political spectrum that is the best place to run something when you have a very diverse community. America is diverse; we are not all one people. We are many different colors, religions, backgrounds, education levels, all of it,” she told CNN in 2017.

A biography from Feinstein’s Senate office states that her notable achievements include “the enactment of the federal Assault Weapons Ban in 1994, a law that prohibited the sale, manufacture and import of military-style assault weapons” (the ban has since lapsed), and the influential 2014 torture report, a comprehensive “six-year review of the CIA’s detention and interrogation program,” which brought to light for the first time many details from the George W. Bush-era program.

Feinstein’s high-profile Senate career made its mark on pop culture when she was portrayed by actress Annette Bening in the 2019 film “The Report,” which tackled the subject of the CIA’s use of torture after the Sept. 11 attacks and the effort to make those practices public.

In November 2020, Feinstein announced that she would step down from the top Democratic spot on the Senate Judiciary Committee the following year in the wake of sharp criticism from liberal activists over her handling of the hearings for then-President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett.

While Democratic senators could not block Barrett’s nomination in the Republican-led Senate on their own, liberal activists were angry when Feinstein undermined Democrats’ relentless attempt to portray the process as illegitimate when she praised then-Judiciary Chairman and South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham’s leadership of it.

Feinstein said at the time that she would continue to serve as a senior Democrat on the Judiciary, Intelligence, Appropriations, and Rules and Administration panels, working on priorities like gun safety, criminal justice and immigration.

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 (CNN) — Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp has a message for his fellow Republicans looking to win back the White House: “We cannot get distracted.”

“We have to tell people, No. 1, what we’re for. No. 2, that we’re going to be focused on the future and what we’re going to do for the voters in our state or the American people. And then, No. 3, we have to do a simple thing: We have to win,” Kemp told CNN’s Jake Tapper Sunday on “State of the Union.”

The governor’s remarks came a day after he’d told donors at a Republican National Committee retreat in Nashville that the GOP needed to move on from the 2020 presidential election. In his speech, Kemp offered a thinly veiled dig at former President Donald Trump and his continued election grievances, without naming him, saying, “Not a single swing voter will vote for our nominee if they choose to talk about the 2020 election being stolen.”

Trump, currently seen as the front-runner for the 2024 Republican nomination, has repeatedly argued since leaving office that Republicans cannot succeed — either at the ballot box or legislatively — if they turn a blind eye to the past. But candidates who backed his false election claims did poorly in the midterm elections last fall in key swing states Trump will need to win back the White House in 2024.

Trump is also under a cloud of legal woes. In New York, a hush money payment to an adult-film star shortly before the 2016 election has resulted in his indictment by a Manhattan grand jury over his alleged role in the scheme. And in Atlanta, a select grand jury has investigated efforts by Trump and allies to overturn his election loss in Georgia in 2020.

“I can’t control what the judicial branch is doing or what a local prosecutor is doing in many ways, but what we can control … is what we’re focused on,” Kemp said Sunday.

“If we get distracted and talk about other things that the Democrats want to talk about, like these investigations — regardless of what you think about the politics of those — if we get distracted every day and let the media just talk about that, that only helps Joe Biden,” he added. “It does not give us a path for Republicans to win.”

Asked by Tapper if Trump was unelectable nationwide, Kemp demurred.

“That’s for the people to decide,” he said.

Tension between Trump and Kemp has been simmering for years. When Kemp refused to overturn Biden’s 2020 win in Georgia, Trump made the governor his No. 1 enemy, publicly railing against him throughout 2021 and recruiting former US Sen. David Perdue to challenge Kemp in a GOP primary. Through it all, Trump failed to draw Kemp into a fight, and the governor won his 2022 primary overwhelmingly before handily defeating Democratic opponent Stacey Abrams in the November general election.

Kemp said Sunday that Republicans will need to draw a distinction with what he referred to as “the disaster of the Biden administration” to win next year, pointing to border security, high inflation and energy policy.

“I think we’re going to have a lot of good candidates that, if they focus on those things, we have got a great chance of winning the White House in 2024,” the governor said.

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(CNN) — House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries on Sunday declined to criticize President Joe Biden‘s decision to allow Congress to potentially nix reforms to the criminal code of Washington, DC, even as many in the party are breaking with the White House.

A Senate vote to scrap the DC law is expected this week. It passed last month in the Republican-controlled House with the backing of 31 Democrats.

Asked by CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union” if Biden had pulled the rug out from under House Democrats with his announcement, Jeffries, who voted against the GOP bill, said, “Not at all.”

“Depending on what the Senate does, the president will have to respond one way or another. I haven’t had an opportunity to talk to the White House yet about the president’s views. So I’m not going to characterize his position one way or the other until we’ve had a chance to talk about that issue,” the New York Democrat said.

Many Democrats, including Jeffries, oppose overriding the law on principle, arguing that local officials should make their own laws free of congressional interference.

“In terms of my particular reasons for voting the way that I did, one, I believe that local government should have control over local matters. And that’s a principle that I’ve supported from the moment that I arrived in Washington, DC. It’s one of the reasons why I believe in DC statehood,” Jeffries told Bash.

Biden’s announcement that he would sign the GOP-led legislation if passed reflects a rising desire among more moderate Democratic lawmakers to avoid being seen as soft on crime. But the move has angered many progressives and DC residents, who say the president is letting Congress step on the ability of Washington’s citizens to govern themselves.

The White House hasn’t said whether the president had spoken to DC’s Democratic mayor, Muriel Bowser, before he talked to Senate Democrats about his decision not to veto the Republican legislation.

Bowser opposed the DC criminal code overhaul, but the DC Council overrode her veto of the proposal earlier this year.

Nevertheless, in an interview Friday with local radio station WAMU, Bowser said that what the district is “dealing with is the effects of limited home rule, and we know that our legislative process is one that doesn’t end with my signature or veto.”

She added that “until we are the 51st state, we live with that indignity” and that it is “infuriating” for the district to be in that position.

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(CNN) — Vice President Kamala Harris on Wednesday mourned the death of Tyre Nichols, calling his death at the hands of police a moment that demands congressional police reform.

“Was he not also entitled to the right to be safe? So when we talk about public safety, let us understand what it means in its truest form. Tyre Nichols should have been safe,” Harris said in her brief remarks at his Memphis funeral service.

The vice president expressed hope that Nichols’ death might “shine a light on the path toward peace and justice” as she called on Congress to pass police reform legislation.

Nichols’ funeral service took place less than a week after footage of his arrest was made public, shaking a nation accustomed to videos of police brutality, especially against people of color. The five officers charged with Nichols’ death are Black.

Footage of the brutal attack sparked largely peaceful protests from New York to Los Angeles as well as renewed calls for police reform and scrutiny of specialized police units that target guns in high crime areas.

“As vice president of the United States, we demand that Congress pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act. Joe Biden will sign it and we should not delay,” Harris said Wednesday.

That legislation, originally introduced in 2020 and again in 2021, would set up a national registry of police misconduct to stop officers from evading consequences for their actions by moving to another jurisdiction.

The bill twice cleared the House under Democratic control — in 2020 and 2021 — largely along party lines. But it never went anywhere in the Senate, even after Democrats won control in 2021, in part, because of disagreements about qualified immunity, which protects police officers from being sued in civil court.

And the road for police reform has only become more challenging in the new Congress now that House Republicans, who have placed their priorities elsewhere, are in the majority.

Senate Democrats picked up one more seat in last year’s midterm elections to pad their majority, but they’re still far short of the 60 votes that would be need for such an effort to succeed. That means any policing overhaul that can find meaningful support in Congress will likely be stripped of the kind of measures for which protesters are calling.

“We have a mother and a father who mourn the life of a young man who should be here today. They have a grandson who now does not have a father. His brothers and sister will lose the love of growing old with their baby brother,” Harris said in her remarks.

“And when we look at this situation, this is a family that lost their son and their brother through an act of violence at the hands and the feet of people who have been charged with keeping them safe.”

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 (CNN) — Eleven of the “fake electors” who participated in a plan to subvert the Electoral College have asked a judge to disqualify Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis from her probe into the Republican effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election in Georgia.

The group argued in a new court filing that they are each “inextricably intertwined” with Republican state Sen. Burt Jones, a fake elector who Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney recently ruled cannot be investigated by Willis after she hosted a fundraiser for Jones’ Democratic opponent.

Last month, Willis’ office revealed that all 16 fake Trump electors in Georgia who signed on to an “unofficial electorate certificate” that was ultimately sent to the National Archives in late 2020 are targets of an ongoing criminal investigation.

The fake GOP electors specifically requested that the court “reconsider its order limiting the scope of the DA and her office’s disqualification and instead order that the disqualification applies to the entire investigation and all subsequent proceedings,” according to a court filing from their attorneys.

“Indeed, because Senator Jones has been removed from this investigation, there is arguably an even greater likelihood that the officers of his campaign partners, his running mates, his financial supporters, and his key political allies could be treated even more harshly,” the court filing continued.

If the judge is unwilling to disqualify Willis from the entire investigation, the electors have asked him to limit Willis’ power to investigate them as he limited her powers to investigate Jones.

The court filing is just the latest fallout from Willis’ fundraiser for Democrat Charlie Bailey, who is challenging Jones to be lieutenant governor in Georgia. In a hearing last month, McBurney called the decision a “‘What are you thinking?’ moment,” with “horrific” optics.

Counsel for Willis has said in previous court filings that her political support for Bailey’s campaign provides no basis for disqualification nor amounts to a conflict of interest in overseeing the grand jury.

Still, this latest court filing comes at a critical moment in Willis’ investigation. Prosecutors from her office have spent months presenting evidence and witness testimony to a special grand jury empaneled to investigate the aftermath of the 2020 election.

Giuliani’s status became public on Monday alongside other developments in the Georgia investigation — with a court ruling that Sen. Lindsey Graham must testify — as well as in several other criminal probes touching upon the ex-President and his advisers.

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 (CNN) — President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris will deliver remarks on Thursday to mark the one-year anniversary of the January 6 attack on the US Capitol, the White House said Sunday.

Their remarks will come alongside a slate of events prepared by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to commemorate the insurrection, including a moment of silence on the House floor and a prayer vigil on the steps of the Capitol.

The White House had said last month that it would mark the anniversary, but did not provide further details. “January 6 was one of the darkest days in our democracy,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said at the time. “It was a day when our nation’s capital was under attack, and I think there’s no question you’ll see us commemorate that day.”

The insurrection, which began as members of Congress worked to certify the results of the 2020 presidential election, commanded the nation’s attention as violent scenes of rioters attacking officers and destroying parts of the Capitol were broadcast live across the country. The ensuing chaos led to the deaths of multiple people the day of the attack or shortly thereafter, while several officers who responded to the Capitol during the attack later died by suicide.

As the attack unfolded, Biden called on then-President Donald Trump to immediately go on national television and demand an end to the “siege.”

“At this hour, our democracy’s under unprecedented assault, unlike anything we’ve seen in modern times. An assault on the citadel of liberty, the Capitol itself,” Biden said at the time, speaking from Wilmington, Delaware. “This is not dissent, it’s disorder. It’s chaos. It borders on sedition, and it must end now. I call on this mob to pull back and allow the work of democracy to go forward.”

More than 700 people have been charged by the Justice Department in connection with the riot, and the House select committee investigating the attack has interviewed scores of Trump’s allies with a goal of providing an interim report with initial findings by the summer.

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Pfizer is expected to seek authorization from the US Food and Drug Administration for its vaccine booster shot for those who are ages 16 and 17, a source familiar with the plan told CNN on Monday.

Currently only those 18 and up are eligible for booster shots six months after their second dose of the Pfizer vaccine.

Pfizer didn’t immediately respond to CNN’s request for comment.

The development comes as scientists in the US and around the world are racing to learn more about a new coronavirus variant called Omicron. President Joe Biden urged Americans earlier Monday not to panic over the new variant, and encouraged those who have not yet gotten a booster but are eligible to do so.

“We have the best vaccine in the world, the best medicines, the best scientists, and we’re learning more every single day. And we’ll fight this variant with scientific and knowledgeable actions and speed — not chaos and confusion,” the President said.

Biden had hoped to have boosters made widely available months ago, but emergency booster authorization ultimately didn’t happen until October, and widespread booster shots have not been available until this month. Asked on Monday if making boosters available to everyone sooner could have helped with the current dynamic, press secretary Jen Psaki referred the question to medical experts.

In a sign of the potential threat from Omicron, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention strengthened its recommendations for booster shots earlier Monday, saying all adults should get boosted six months after the second dose of Pfizer’s or Moderna’s vaccine or two months after the single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

“Today, CDC is strengthening its recommendation on booster doses for individuals who are 18 years and older,” CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said in a statement. “The recent emergence of the Omicron variant (B.1.1.529) further emphasizes the importance of vaccination, boosters, and prevention efforts needed to protect against COVID-19,” she added.

Previously, the CDC had said people should get boosters if they are 50 and older, or 18 and older and living in long-term care facilities. Otherwise, it advised that anyone 18 and older may get a booster. Now the word “should” applies to everyone 18 and older.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious disease expert, said Sunday that hopefully scientists will be able to determine soon whether the Omicron variant is resistant to current Covid-19 vaccines. Fauci said he doesn’t think it’s possible that Omicron could completely evade the vaccines’ protection but that it may diminish the level of protection.

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Chansley has been charged with six federal crimes in connection with the January 6 insurrection, including felonies for civil disorder and obstructing congressional proceedings. The court docket doesn’t indicate to which charges Chansley is expected to plead guilty. His attorney Al Watkins declined to say.

“The path charted by Mr. Chansley since January 6 has been a process, one which has involved pain, depression, solitary confinement, introspection, recognition of mental health vulnerabilities, and a coming to grips with the need for more self-work,” Watkins said in a statement.

Chansley’s defense attorneys have pushed several times for his release from jail, where he has been held since his arrest in January. The judge in his case has repeatedly ruled that Chansley is too dangerous for release.

“Defendant characterizes himself as a peaceful person who was welcomed into the Capitol building on January 6th by police officers. The Court finds none of his many attempts to manipulate the evidence and minimize the seriousness of his actions persuasive,” DC District Judge Royce Lamberth wrote in March.

A well-known figure in the QAnon conspiracy community, Chansley was one of many QAnon believers who have been charged in the Capitol riot. Watkins said Thursday that Chansley is now “seeking, as part of his reconciliation of where he is today, to step away and distance himself from the Q vortex.”

Earlier this week, the Justice Department secured its 50th guilty plea in the insurrection.

Nearly 600 people from 44 states and Washington, DC, have been charged in federal court, according to CNN’s latest tally, with authorities announcing new arrests on a near-daily basis.

Prosecutors are working to resolve many of the lower-level cases, and most of the 50 guilty pleas are for nonviolent rioters.

Meanwhile, cases are progressing against defendants who allegedly attacked police or are members of right-wing extremist groups, like the Proud Boys.

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Twitter on Monday evening temporarily suspended Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene after she shared misinformation about Covid-19 and vaccines, a company spokesperson told CNN.

The Georgia Republican, who has a track record of incendiary rhetoric, will not be able to tweet for 12 hours due to Twitter’s policy against people who repeatedly share misinformation.

The social media platform had labeled two tweets from Greene as “misleading” in recent days. If she continues to share misinformation about Covid-19 through her Twitter account, Greene could be suspended from the platform permanently.

The temporary suspension comes as the White House has struck a confrontational posture with social media platforms over the prevalence of misleading claims about coronavirus vaccines as cases tick up nationwide.

“I am urging all Americans to help slow the spread of health misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond,” US Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy wrote in a 22-page advisory released last week. “Health misinformation is a serious threat to public health. It can cause confusion, sow mistrust, harm people’s health, and undermine public health efforts. Limiting the spread of health misinformation is a moral and civic imperative that will require a whole-of-society effort.”

President Joe Biden has specifically called out Facebook over the dissemination of Covid-19 vaccine information, but he backed off his recent accusation that the company was directly responsible for “killing people” and suggested it was merely allowing misinformation to spread.

“My hope is that Facebook, instead of taking it personally, that somehow I’m saying Facebook is killing people, that they would do something about the misinformation, the outrageous misinformation about the vaccine. That’s what I meant,” the President said Monday following a speech at the White House about the state of the economy.

Greene had received a 12-hour suspension from Twitter earlier this year following a conspiracy-laden thread about the Georgia Senate elections. Some of those tweets earned labels from Twitter noting: “This claim about election fraud is disputed, and this Tweet can’t be replied to, Retweeted, or liked due to a risk of violence.”

The Georgia Republican has tried to make a name for herself being an outsider and a rabble-rouser and routinely uses parliamentary procedures to slow down House floor business, much to the dismay of her colleagues.

But the tactics have helped her win support on the far right. In April, her campaign announced she had raised $3.2 million in the first three months in office — an astonishing amount for a freshman member.

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President Joe Biden issued a dire and angry warning Tuesday that the very underpinnings of American democracy were under threat, calling an ongoing assault on voting rights the gravest challenge to American democracy since the Civil War.

But he stopped short of embracing changes to Senate procedure that might open the door to new laws protecting those rights, a step activists have said is essential as they urge the President to say and do more on an issue he’s said is the most important of his presidency.

The President’s speech in Philadelphia, the birthplace of American democracy, was meant as an opening salvo in what officials say will be an ongoing push against restrictive voting laws being passed around the nation.

In it, Biden took particular aim at his predecessor Donald Trump and other Republicans who have refused to accept the results of the 2020 presidential election, accusing them of fomenting a pattern of denial that is fracturing the country’s foundations.

“In America, if you lose, you accept the results,” Biden said inside the soaring atrium of the National Constitution Center. “You follow the Constitution, you try again. You don’t call facts ‘fake’ and then try to bring down the American experiment just because you’re unhappy. That’s not statesmanship. That’s selfishness.”

It was the most forcefully Biden has inveighed against Trump since taking office. At one point, accusing Republicans of shirking truth and responsibility for upholding the Constitution, he bellowed: “Have you no shame?”

One of the fieriest speeches of Biden’s presidency to date, Biden’s remarks reflected the fury he and fellow Democrats have cultivated as Republicans follow Trump’s lead in denying the election results. He predicted it is likely Republicans will use a similar strategy in the 2022 midterms, saying “we have to prepare now.”

He called efforts to call the election in question “dark” and “sinister” on Tuesday, saying they reflected “human nature at its worst.”

“Bullies and merchants of fear, peddlers of lies, are threatening the very foundation of our country,” Biden said.

Still, his avoidance of the filibuster issue proved disappointing to some of the activists who want Biden to embrace changes that would allow new legislation in Congress.

“Supporters of democracy will continue to organize and advocate, but we cannot organize our way out of this threat. It is up to our elected officials to hear supporters and act to protect our democracy,” said Wade Henderson, president of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, after Biden’s speech.

Asked on his way out of the venue why he did not raise the filibuster, Biden told reporters only: “I’m not filibustering now.”

He began his speech by recounting the stories of Americans who voted in the last election, lauding them for their efforts to cast their ballots amid the Covid-19 pandemic. He noted the 2020 contest had the most votes cast in any election in American history.

But he quickly turned his focus to the attacks on the 2020 election process, calling it the most scrutinized in American history. He alluded to Trump’s complaints about the election results, saying those who would deny the election result are simply denying facts.

“The Big Lie is just that: A big lie,” Biden said.

Since the November election, state lawmakers have enacted 28 laws in 17 states that restrict ballot access, according to a June tally by the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law.

Biden decried Republican obstruction to a sweeping election reform bill that Democrats argue is a necessary counter to state-level efforts to restrict voting access. The President stressed that he would work to pass that legislation, the For the People Act, as well as the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.

But he seemed to quietly acknowledge the low likelihood that either bill becomes law, saying instead he would “engage in an all-out effort” to educate Americans about laws limiting voting across the country.

In recent days, the eyes of voting rights advocates have been fixed on Texas, where GOP lawmakers are mounting another push for restrictive voting laws during a 30-day special legislative session that Republican Gov. Greg Abbott says he wants to see focused in part on “election integrity.” Texas Democratic lawmakers have fled the state in an attempt to deny the special session a quorum, which would prevent any new laws from being passed.

Vice President Kamala Harris, who Biden has tasked with leading the administration’s voting right efforts, planned to meet with the Texas Democrats later Tuesday.

The President and his team had repeatedly previewed a major push on voting rights after Republicans in the US Senate blocked a sweeping election reform bill last month, but it remains unclear how much he can accomplish.

Passing new voting legislation in Congress will almost certainly require altering filibuster rules, since Democrats’ slim majority in the Senate isn’t enough to overcome GOP opposition — and it’s not clear Democrat have the votes to pass a bill anyway.

And Biden has said his efforts must go beyond simply limiting dark money in politics or making Election Day a federal holiday — two items included in the major bill blocked by Republicans last month. He said in June that Democratic efforts must expand to limit the ability of election boards to toss out results or replace officials based on ideology.

Civil rights advocates have pushed the President to do more, and one — the Rev. Al Sharpton — told CNN after the speech that Biden was non-committal when Sharpton asked about his stance on the filibuster.

“He said, ‘We’re working through, Rev, where we are going to be there.’ He didn’t commit Thursday or today, but that’s what he and I talked about. I waited to bring that up to him,” Sharpton said.

Additional pressure on Biden to act came earlier this month when a Supreme Court decision limited the ability of minorities to challenge state laws they say are discriminatory under the Voting Rights Act.

The high court upheld two provisions of an Arizona voting law. The first provision says in-person ballots cast at the wrong precinct on Election Day must be wholly discarded. Another provision restricts a practice known as “ballot collection,” requiring that only family caregivers, mail carriers and election officials can deliver another person’s completed ballot to a polling place.

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