From New York Times, I'm Michael Obaro. This is a daily.

Today, the most sweeping expansion of federal voting rights in a generation

died last night in the U.S. Senate.

I spoke with my colleague, Congressional reporter Nick Fandos, about what we learned from its demise.

It's Wednesday, June 23rd.

Where are you? Looks like you're in a radio studio.

Yeah, isn't this nifty? I'm in an audio booth in the House Daily Press Gallery right outside the House Chamber.

Come here because it's nice and quiet.

So basically the House of Representatives has like podcast studios.

Something like that.

Yeah, you've never sounded better. In fact, you've always sounded worse.

Yeah, no, it's better. I'm like jealous because it actually sounds better than I do.

Okay, so let's just jump in. Can you describe what just happened in the U.S. Capitol?

So after months of debating and promising and fighting over it, the United States Senate finally held a vote on Democrats' big gargantuan election overhaul bill called the Four of the People Act.

So I rise, Mr. President, with what I think is a simple request of my colleagues. Let's do our job.

And let's have a principled conversation about voting rights. Let's have that conversation right here, right now. How could we do otherwise?

This wasn't even a vote on the merits of the bill. It was a vote just to start debate, to consider it and potentially consider alternatives to it.

The Senate will vote on whether to advance Democrats transparently, parties are applying to tilde permanently in their favor.

And what we saw happen, which was not entirely surprising, is that Republicans stood firm on a vow that they've made for months now to block this bill.

By now, the rotten inner workings of this power grab have been thoroughly exposed to the light.

And they all voted to prevent debate from moving forward.

Today, the Senate is going to fulfill our founding purpose. Stop the parties in power grab and reject S1.

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