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Biden also said that both the White House and the Justice Department were looking into potential action related to voting rights in Georgia.

On Thursday, Biden expressed an openness to scrapping the filibuster for “certain things that are just elemental to the functioning of our democracy, like the right to vote.”

Georgia’s broad new elections law will add an ID requirement for voters requesting an absentee ballot, cut the length of runoffs, and effectively turn the election board over to the legislature. It also limits drop boxes and prohibits people from giving voters in line food or beverages. Voters in Georgia’s primaries faced several-hour lines at times, particularly near and in Atlanta, a heavily Democratic area in the closely divided state.

Vice President Kamala Harris echoed Biden’s support for Congress to pass election reform, telling reporters Friday that the recent Georgia law was intentionally designed to block “whole populations from voting.”

In a statement, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger criticized characterizations of the law as intending to restrict voter access, saying that it instead implements new security measures and expands access.

“The cries of ‘voter suppression’ from those on the left ring as hollow as the continuously debunked claims of ‘mass voter fraud’ in Georgia’s 2020 election. … Their cataclysmic predictions about the effects of this law are simply baseless. The next election will prove that, but I won’t hold my breath waiting for the left and the media to admit they were wrong,” he said.

The changes passed by Republicans in the state legislature and signed by Republican Gov. Brian Kemp Thursday come after Democrats swept a pivotal Senate runoff election in January, giving Democrats a majority in the chamber.

Republicans in and out of Georgia, especially those backing former President Donald Trump, have pushed new voting restrictions, citing “election integrity” despite no evidence of widespread voter fraud. Democrats and voting rights advocates have called the efforts “voter suppression.”

On Friday, Trump congratulated the state and its legislature for “changing their voter Rules and Regulations.”

“They learned from the travesty of the 2020 Presidential Election, which can never be allowed to happen again,” he said in a statement. “Too bad these changes could not have been done sooner!”

Biden had slammed efforts to constrain voting access at his first formal news conference Thursday, calling them “sick.”

“What I’m worried about is how un-American this whole initiative is,” Biden said.

Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) also slammed Georgia’s new voting restrictions on Friday.

“What the state Legislature did yesterday is to try to arrest the voices and the votes of the people,” Warnock said.

Benjamin Din contributed to this report.