I'm Brian Lehrer. This is my daily politics podcast from WNYC Studios. It's Monday, January 10th.

Next Monday, one week from today, is Martin Luther King Day, right? The national holiday honoring the civil rights icon

comes this year amid tremendous concern about voting rights, especially for black Americans,

with the voting law changes that many Republican states are enacting that are expected to make

turnout in cities, harder to achieve, and election results easier to overturn by Republican state legislatures,

as Donald Trump wanted them to do with Joe Biden's election.

So Senate Democrats are making Martin Luther King Day their deadline day for enough Republicans to agree to some kind of voting rights bill,

or the Democrats might vote to

abolish the filibuster, at least for this topic. Here is Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer,

speaking on the Senate floor on Friday. If Republicans continue to hijack the rules of the chamber

to prevent us from protecting our democracy, then the Senate will debate and consider changes

to the rules on or before January 17th, Martin Luther King Jr. Day. As we hold this debate,

I ask my colleagues to consider this question. If the right to vote is the cornerstone of our

democracy, then how can Democrats permit a situation in which Republicans can pass voter suppression laws at the state level with only a simple majority vote, but not allow the United States Senate to do the same?

Interesting contradiction that he points out, double standard maybe, right?

State legislatures can enact voting restrictions with a simple majority.

The U.S. Senate needs 60 votes out of 100 to pass voting rights legislation because of the

filibuster rule.

But remember, the filibuster isn't in the Constitution. It's just something the

Senate itself decided to have and could decide with 51 votes not to have anymore. But will they?

We will start there today and also talk about other aspects of the 22 midterm elections, the

2022 midterm elections, and the daunting challenge for the Biden administration

...