Schumer makes major caveat ahead of Senate voting rights vote. He may have had Joe Manchin in mind.

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published 21 June 2021

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) on Monday announced that the upper chamber will vote Tuesday on whether to launch a debate on federal voting rights legislation.

Schumer was careful to make sure lawmakers understood that the vote was not on "any particular policy," and is merely aimed at beginning discussions on one of the more contentious issues in Congress at the moment, as Democrats try to move a sweeping reform bill toward President Biden's desk amid Republican opposition. "I want to say that again," Schumer said, for emphasis, after a pause.

The Washington Post's Igor Bobic suggested that Schumer's caveat about the vote was primarily directed at a member of his own party — Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), who has said he won't vote for the reform bill, but supports a narrower set of measures to expand voting rights.

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Even if Manchin is on board with Tuesday's vote, it seems likely to fail since there probably won't be enough, if any, GOP senators who will back debate on a bill they don't support, writes Politico's Burgess Everett.

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Tim is a staff writer at The Week and has contributed to Bedford and Bowery and The New York Transatlantic. He is a graduate of Occidental College and NYU's journalism school. Tim enjoys writing about baseball, Europe, and extinct megafauna. He lives in New York City.