I'm Brian Lehrer. This is my daily politics podcast from WNYC Studios. It's Wednesday, January 12th.

Just a few days ago, we talked about up in the Congress in the White House the event coming up shortly to celebrate Dr. King's birthday.

And Americans of all stripes will praise him for the content of his character.

But as Dr. King's family said before, it's not enough to praise their father. They even said,

on this holiday, don't celebrate his birthday unless you're willing to support what he lived for

and what he died for.

President Biden from his speech yesterday, as he and almost all of his fellow Democrats, almost all,

are trying to get voting rights legislation passed by Martin Luther King Day next Monday.

One big irony, Senator Joe Manchin is behind one of the main bills in play,

but is supporting the filibuster of his own bill by not supporting

suspension of the filibuster for voting rights legislation. We'll talk to civil rights leader and

MSNBC host Reverend Al Sharpton in just a minute after one more clip from the President's

Atlanta speech. It's 250 years of history in about 30 seconds. Black Americans were denied full citizenship voting rights until

1965. Women were denied the right to vote

for just 100 years ago.

The United States Supreme Court in recent years is weak in the Voting Rights Act. And now, the defeated former

president and as supporters used a big lie about the 2020 election to fuel torrent and torment

and anti-voting laws. New laws designed to suppress your vote to subvert our elections.

And with that, we welcome Reverend Al Sharpton, civil rights leader, founder of the National Action Network,

host of Politics Nation, Saturday and Sunday afternoons on MSNBC, and he has a new book called

Righteous Troublemakers, Untold Stories of the Social Justice

Movement in America. In addition to the book and the condition of the nation, we'll also get

...