Sinema says no to filibuster reform scuttling Democrats’ voting rights hopes

Joe Biden was in crisis talks with Senate Democratic rebels Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema at the White House on Thursday night after they thwarted his high-stakes efforts to push voting rights legislation through Congress, according to several reports.

Even before the US president arrived on Capitol Hill on Thursday afternoon to join Democratic senators for their regular lunch gathering, in a diplomatic public offensive, Sinema of Arizona bluntly reiterated that she would not support any change to filibuster rules to get voting rights passed.

Her surprise last-minute move with a speech effectively killed her party's hope of passing the most sweeping voting rights protections in a generation.

And in a stark joint demonstration of their opposition, Manchin of West Virginia later praised Sinema and released his own statement confirming he also would not vote to change the filibuster.

A clearly-exasperated Biden concluded after his senate lunch meeting: "I hope we can get this done, but I'm not sure."

Not long after, he suffered another blow when the supreme court blocked his administration from enforcing a requirement that employees at large businesses be vaccinated against Covid-19 or undergo weekly testing and wear a mask on the job.

By the evening, however, Biden was huddled back at the White House in last-ditch talks with Sinema and Manchin, CNN and Reuters reported, citing unnamed sources.