ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA – “Democracy itself is in peril – here at home and around the world,” U.S. President Joe Biden warned Monday in remarks to commemorate the Memorial Day holiday.
Biden made the comment after he, along with Vice President Kamala Harris and the nation’s top military officials, took part in a wreath-laying ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery.
“What we do now, how we honor the memory of the fallen, will determine whether or not democracy will long endure,” the president said, in a veiled reference to the January 6 siege of the U.S. Capitol by those seeking to overturn the results of last November’s election in which Biden, a Democrat defeated incumbent Republican President Donald Trump.
Senate Republicans on Friday blocked a House-approved bill to create a bipartisan commission to investigate the rioting.
Biden, as he has done numerous times, spoke of a struggle for the “soul of America” that “is animated by the perennial battle between our worst instincts — which we’ve seen of late — and our better angels.”
As the country observed the annual holiday honoring its war dead, Biden, at the cemetery located just south of Washington, also referenced “the right to vote freely…
