Aiming at Trump, Democrats Lay Out Agenda for a Post-Shutdown Congress

House Democrats unveiled on Friday the details of ambitious legislation devised to lower barriers to the ballot box, tighten ethics and lobbying restrictions and, in a swipe at President Trump, require presidents and candidates for the nation’s highest offices to release their tax returns. Singling out Mr. Trump and his administration, Democrats said that they were making good on promises to voters across the country who vaulted them into the majority with demands to clean up corruption and influence-peddling in Republican-controlled Washington…. But Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, called much of it “probably” unconstitutional. He has been one of the Senate’s fiercest opponents of tightening campaign finance laws and forcing donor disclosures, and has generally opposed federal intervention in elections. After the Supreme Court struck down the heart of the enforcement provisions within the Voting Rights Act in 2013, Mr. McConnell said it was not necessary to offer an alternative. At a Wall Street Journal event in early December, he predicted that the House bill was “not going to go anywhere in the Senate.” Conceding the majority leader’s view could be a death knell for now, Representative John Sarbanes, Democrat of Maryland, who oversaw the drafting of the legislation, predicted that Republicans would lose in the court of public opinion. “If he wants to ultimately stand with his arms folded between the American people and their democracy, then he should go right ahead,” Mr. Sarbanes said. “But I think he is going to get knocked over by the sentiment of the country right now.”