Biden to tout successful passing of infrastructure law after voting rights defeat – live

Even as Democrats filed into their caucus meeting with Biden about changing Senate rules to reform federal elections, a response to GOP-backed state laws designed to restrict ballot access, a good portion of them were unaware they had already lost. Just minutes before the group’s meeting with Biden, [Kyrsten Sinema] slammed the door on weakening the filibuster during a speech on the Senate floor Biden once called home.

‘People were just surprised when we went in there. Because no one knew she was on the floor speaking’ in defense of the filibuster, said a Democratic senator who missed Sinema’s remarks. ‘There were probably 20 people in there that didn’t even know that she had said anything.’

Biden had prepared remarks for the meeting but instead opted to speak off-the-cuff, recalling that he got the late Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.) to support the Voting Rights Act while they were both in Congress and arguing that a majority of today’s Republicans today wouldn’t support that landmark bill. Biden told senators he couldn’t remember a time in U.S. history where a party had been so enthralled to one person as the GOP is to former President Donald Trump.



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