On Capitol Hill, President Biden is holding a lunchtime meeting today with the Senate Democratic Caucus. The White House is pressuring Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema to support a change to Senate rules that would allow Democrats to pass a pair of major voting rights bills with a simple majority, circumventing a Republican-led filibuster.
On Wednesday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer outlined a plan to bring the voting bills to a debate using a parliamentary maneuver. The move would still leave room for Republicans to filibuster final passage of the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the Freedom to Vote Act.

On Wednesday, Senate Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell blasted President Biden over his voting rights speech in Georgia earlier this week, when Biden accused Republicans of siding with Jefferson Davis over Abraham Lincoln.

Minority Leader Mitch McConnell: “Twelve months ago, this president said disagreement must not lead to disunion. Ah, but yesterday he invoked the bloody disunion of the Civil War — the Civil War — to demonize Americans who disagree with him.”

In 2015, an old photo emerged showing McConnell posing in front of a large Confederate flag at a Sons of Confederate Veterans event in the early 1990s.