President Biden traveled to South Carolina State University on Friday and pledged to protect voting rights and to pass police reform in front of the historically black college.

Biden told graduates “This battle’s not over ... We’re going to keep up the fight until we get it done.” The president was joined by Rep. Jim Clyburn, D- S.C., whose endorsement helped him win the state’s primary election and catapult him over rival Sen. Bernie Sanders, I- Vt., on Super Tuesday propelling the former Vice President to the nomination.

Biden’s trip comes as he is losing ground with younger voters as he struggles to pass his legislative agenda less than a year away from the 2022 midterm elections where Republicans look to make big gains as they did during the 2010 Tea Party wave.

After the 2020 election Democrats have been looking to expand voting rights by making it easier to vote by mail and expand early voting after a 2013 Supreme Court decision gutted a key provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act and as red states like Georgia have made new laws requiring voters to present their ID, give voters less time to request an absentee ballot and have limited the number of drop boxes in highly populated areas. The law led to Major League Baseball pulling the 2021 All-Star Game out of Atlanta as critics argue it makes it more difficult for black people to vote.

“We have to protect that sacred right to vote, without the right to vote there is no democracy,” Biden told the graduates.

Biden also spoke of his plans to push for police reform as the summer of 2020 saw numerous Black Lives Matter protests in the wake of George Floyd’s murder by former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin.

"Your time here has come during a tumultuous and consequential moment in American history. ... Few classes every once in a few generations enter at a point in American history where it actually has the chance to change the trajectory of the country. I’m counting on you."

Biden has yet to voice a strategy to push the key pieces of legislation through as he approaches his second year in the White House.

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