A former police officer who defended the U.S. Capitol against rioters on Jan. 6 has announced he is running for Congress in Maryland.

Democratic U.S. Rep. John Sarbanes of Maryland will not seek reelection in 2024, choosing to depart his seat after 18 years.

A group of people gathered near downtown Denver on Sunday to call attention to what brought Major League Baseball's All-Star Game to the city in the first place: voting rights.

Congressional Democrats are facing renewed pressure to pass legislation that would protect voting rights after a Supreme Court ruling made it harder to challenge Republican efforts to limit ballot access.

The Democrats' sweeping attempt to rewrite U.S. election and voting law has suffered a major setback in the U.S. Senate.

The White House says the Senate’s work on an elections overhaul and changes offered by Sen_ Joe Manchin are a “step forward.”.

Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin says he wasn't swayed by civil rights leaders who implored him to back his party's sweeping voting rights bill.

Democrats are rethinking parts of their legislation to overhaul U.S. elections.

A new survey measuring the popularity of major pieces of sweeping legislation in Congress finds solid support from Americans for Democrats’ proposals to overhaul voting in the U.S. The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll found about half of Americans support expanding access to early and mail voting, while about 3 in 10 opposed the ideas and the rest had no opinion.

The bill would mandate early voting, same-day registration and other long-sought changes that Republicans reject. For decades, it had required certain states and jurisdictions with large minority populations and a history of discrimination to get federal approval for any changes to voting procedures. In a speech Sunday, Trump branded the bill as “a disaster" and a “monster” that “cannot be allowed to pass." Ultimately, though, the biggest obstacle Democrats face in passing the bill is themselves. “We may not get the opportunity to make this change again for many, many decades,” said Sarbanes, the bill’s lead sponsor.

But there was no widespread fraud, as has been confirmed by election officials across the country and then-Attorney General William Barr. Dozens of legal challenges to the election put forth by Trump and his allies were dismissed, including by the Supreme Court. The bill would stymie state GOP efforts by mandating early voting, same-day registration and other long-sought reforms that Republicans reject. But daunting challenges lay ahead in the Senate, which is split 50-50 between Republicans and Democrats. Under pressure from the party’s left flank, Democrats have proposed eliminating the filibuster but lack the votes to do so.

Democrats plan to move quickly on one of the first bills of the new Congress, which would set federal election standards. Advocates say the bill is the most consequential piece of voting legislation since the Voting Rights Act of 1965. House Democrats vowed two years ago to make the bill a priority, and they reintroduced it this month as H.R. That bill would restore a key provision of the Voting Rights Act that had triggered federal scrutiny of election changes in certain states and counties. In general, state election officials have been wary of federal voting requirements.

WASHINGTON – Former Sen. Paul Sarbanes, who represented Maryland for 30 years in the Senate as a leader of financial regulatory reform and drafted the first article of impeachment against Republican President Richard Nixon during the Watergate scandal as a congressman, has died, his son said. Rep. John Sarbanes, the late senator's son, said his father died peacefully Sunday night in Baltimore. Sarbanes entered politics in 1966 with a successful run for Maryland’s House of Delegates before reaching Congress four year later. Known for his cerebral and self-effacing manner, Sarbanes focused during much of his career on complex and seemingly humdrum economic issues. Sarbanes, the son of Greek immigrants, was a native of Salisbury on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.