Biden and Harris travel to Atlanta to meet with Asian American leaders following mass shooting



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They also visited the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which is headquartered there, as part of the fight against Covid-19.

“The president will offer his support to the community in Georgia and across the country and will underline his commitment to fight xenophobia, intolerance and hatred,” White House deputy press secretary Karine Jean said on Friday. Pierre to reporters aboard Air Force One.

Jean-Pierre said Biden “understands and knows last year that the community has been vilified, that it has been scapegoated and that it has been attacked.”

Biden will deliver remarks at Emory University later in the evening.

“You can expect the president to meet the moment we are,” Jean-Pierre said of Biden’s speech.

Biden to meet Stacey Abrams in Atlanta

The president issued a statement on Friday urging Congress to pass the Covid-19 hate crimes law, which he said would “speed up the federal government’s response to the rise in exacerbated hate crimes during the pandemic.”

Biden said the measure would also help states and local governments improve hate crime reporting and make hate crime information more accessible to Asian-American communities.

Before meeting with Asian American leaders, Biden and Harris received an update on the Covid-19 pandemic from medical and medical experts at the CDC.

“It’s a war and you are the frontline troops,” Biden told CDC staff. “I have come here to thank you.”

Biden and Harris were initially traveling to Georgia to tout the benefits of their $ 1.9 trillion Covid-19 economic relief program, which Biden enacted last week, as part of a “Help is Here” tour. But White House officials called off the rally they had planned following the shooting.

Georgia has also become a key political state for Democrats. Biden narrowly won there in the presidential race and Democrats went on to win two Senate seats earlier this year, giving the party control of the chamber – allowing the passage of the Covid-19 law. by Biden.

Biden and Harris will meet with those Democrats, Georgia Senators Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, during their trip, Jean-Pierre said, as well as Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms and former Democratic gubernatorial candidate of Georgia and voting rights champion Stacey Abrams.

Abrams has spent years expanding the electorate and increasing voter turnout in Georgia, a generally reliable Red state. Biden was the first Democratic presidential candidate to win Georgia since 1992.

Georgia is the ground zero for one of the country’s biggest struggles for voting rights. Georgia Republicans are trying to pass new laws to make voting more difficult – a new expansive voting bill unveiled on Wednesday would give the state broad powers over local election officials, set limits on early voting on weekends -end and add voter identification requirements for postal votes.

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