I'm Brian Lehrer. This is my daily politics podcast from WNYC Studios. It's Friday, March 26th.

Let's get right to Senator Kirsten Gillibrand. New Yorkers are invited to call your senator.

Anyone else may call to from blue states, red states, purple states, and any otheribrand. New Yorkers, you're invited to call your senator. Anyone else may call to from blue

states, red states, purple states, and any other color states, just make your calls relevant to things

that the U.S. Senate is dealing with. I'm going to start with voting rights and the filibuster that

stands in the way. And you think the COVID relief bill was big. Here comes the Biden

infrastructure bill, we're told,

which could be a trillion dollars or more bigger. And hello, Senator Gillibrand. Welcome back to WNYC.

Hello. How are you? I'm good. Thank you for asking. I'm going to get right to it. Are you ready

to vote to abolish the filibuster so that only 51 votes are needed to pass voting rights or civil rights legislation?

I personally am prepared, and the reason why is because we have so many urgent areas of crisis

that have to be addressed immediately, and frankly, all we've seen from Mitch McConnell has been obstruction. I think

we will continue to see that obstruction. And I've been working on this voting rights bill with

John Lewis before he passed for over five years. And what's happening in these states across the

country to truly take away people's civil rights and civil liberties and making it much harder to vote is so anti-democratic that we may have to respond in this way.

I would love us to be able to govern effectively with a 60-vote threshold and have bipartisanship in all things.

But I've really seen Mitch McConnell close ranks, and you saw it in the first COVID-release

package that should have been widely bipartisan, and we are likely to see it in the next COVID

package, which is probably why we'll do that again through reconciliation.

Well, you mentioned McConnell. Republicans object to a variety of provisions in the For the People

Voting Rights Act that they don't want the federal government to impose on the states.

Here is Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell with two of them.

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