Voting rights drive collapses in Senate

Voting legislation that Democrats and civil rights leaders said was vital to protecting democracy collapsed late Wednesday when two senators refused to join their own party in changing Senate rules to overcome a Republican filibuster.

The outcome was a stinging defeat for President Joe Biden and his party, coming at the tumultuous close to his first year in office.

Despite a day of piercing debate, Democrats could not persuade holdout senators Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Joe Manchin of West Virginia to change the Senate procedures on this one bill and allow a simple majority to advance it.

“I am profoundly disappointed,” Biden said in a statement after the vote.