Vice President Kamala Harris has repeatedly espoused opposition to voter I.D. laws, yet her campaign recently required that attendees present a valid identification to RSVP for one of her rallies.
The event took place Friday at the Desert Diamond Arena near Phoenix, Ariz. Ahead of the event, the campaign distributed an email requiring attendees to RSVP and to present a government-issued I.D.
The requirement drew rebuke from conservatives online in light of Harris’s past opposition to voter I.D. laws and other election integrity measures.
“Democrat Principles In Action: Requiring a government-issued ID to vote? Racist voter suppression!!! Requiring a government-issued ID to get into a Kamala Harris rally? Perfectly reasonable,” former Arkansas Gov, Mike Huckabee wrote on X.
President Joe Biden in 2021, tapped Harris to lead the administration’s voting rights initiatives, a role in which she often criticized legislative efforts to ensure that only valid voters cast ballots.
While running for president in her first campaign, however, she espoused support for paper ballots as the best way to safeguard elections, making the remarks in the context of Russian interference in the 2016 election.
“We have proposed that part of the investment in infrastructure has to be upgrading the infrastructure of states around elections,” she said in 2019. “Because, guess what? As it turns out, for all that technology has brought us, good and bad, the best and most secure way to conduct elections? Paper ballots.”
“‘Cause, the way that I say it, kind of half-joking, ‘Russia can’t hack a piece of paper,’” she added.
While on the campaign trail as Biden’s running mate, Harris maligned “suppressive voter ID laws, racial gerrymandering, voter roll purges, precinct closures and reduced early-voting days”, contending that those measures had been “laser-targeted toward communities of color,” according to Fox.
Since her appointment from Biden, moreover, Harris has heavily scrutinized state-level efforts to limit mail-in voting and to otherwise verify the legitimacy of a ballot or voter. Georgia, in particular, fell into her crosshairs.
When the law was passed in 2021, Harris derided it as a “renewed attempt to suppress the ability of people to vote” in an interview with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
More recently in January, Harris met with voting rights advocates in Atlanta, Ga., during which she advocated for the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, a proposed expansion of federal voting rights protections that ultimately did not become law.
While there, she pointed to what the White House called a “full-on assault on the freedom to vote” from “extremists,” referring to Republican-driven efforts to secure Georgia elections driven, in part, by Trump’s criticisms of alleged irregularities.
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Sen. Grassley Questions Immigration Parole For New Alleged Trump Assassination Plotter
Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) posed a series of questions to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) seeking clarity on the recent arrest of a Pakistani national regarding his attempts to assassinate high-ranking U.S. government officials, allegedly including former President Donald Trump, in light of the fact that he was flagged on a federal watchlist and recently granted immigration parole.
The alleged Pakistani plotter, Asif Raza Merchant, 46, was apprehended on July 12, 2024, when he attempted to leave the United States. Currently in federal custody in New York, Merchant’s plot was foiled when he allegedly conspired with undercover agents, who posed as assassins, to attempt to murder high-ranking U.S. citizens.
The alleged scheme was conducted as part of a larger Iranian ploy to retaliate against the killing of General Qasem Soleimani, Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said, according to an Aug. 6 Justice Department (DOJ) statement that revealed the incident. Soleimani was taken down in 2020 during the Trump administration for aiming to blow up the U.S. Embassy in Iraq.
On Aug. 9, Grassley wrote a letter to DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas asking him for more information regarding Merchant’s immigration parole status. Citing media reports, Grassley said that Merchant was interviewed by the Joint Terrorism Task Force upon his arrival in the United States on April 13 because he was flagged in the federal database as a “Lookout Qualified Person of Interest.”
Despite this, Merchant was granted Significant Public Benefit Parole on April 13 by the DHS, which he overstayed after it expired on May 11, Grassley said. He asked the DHS to provide answers to the following:
- Did the DHS grant Merchant Significant Public Benefit Parole before or after his placement on the terrorist watchlist and being listed as a “Lookout Qualified Person of Interest”?
- On what basis was Merchant granted Significant Public Benefit Parole?
- Provide the entire Alien Registration File (A-File) for Asif Raza Merchant.
- How many individuals on the Terrorist Screening Database have DHS granted parole and allowed entry into the United States?
Following Merchant’s arrest, Garland said, “The Justice Department will spare no resource to disrupt and hold accountable those who would seek to carry out Iran’s lethal plotting against American citizens and will not tolerate attempts by an authoritarian regime to target American public officials and endanger America’s national security.”
FBI Director Christopher Wray said of the incident: “This dangerous murder-for-hire plot exposed in today’s complaint allegedly was orchestrated by a Pakistani national with close ties to Iran and is straight out of the Iranian playbook.
“A foreign-directed plot to kill a public official, or any U.S. citizen, is a threat to our national security and will be met with the full might and resources of the FBI.”
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