US Senate sinks Biden push for major voting rights reforms

US senators dealt a death blow Wednesday to President Joe Biden's push to defend voting rights against what Democrats frame as an all-out assault by conservative states targeting racial minorities.

Faced with a blockade from Republicans complaining of federal overreach, the ruling Democrats were unable to push through the Freedom to Vote Act and John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act passed by the House of Representatives last week.

"I am profoundly disappointed that the Senate has failed to stand up for our democracy. I am disappointed -- but I am not deterred," Biden said in a statement posted to social media immediately after the vote.

"We will continue to advance necessary legislation and push for Senate procedural changes that will protect the fundamental right to vote."

Democrats and voting rights activists have championed the measures as a necessary response to Republican efforts to restrict voting, especially among Black and Latino Americans.

"I know this is not 1965. That's what makes me so outraged. It's 2022, and they're blatantly removing more polling places from the counties where Blacks and Latinos are overrepresented," New Jersey Democrat Cory Booker said on the floor of the Senate. 

"I'm not making that up. That is a fact."

Conservative states spent the last year leveraging ex-president Donald Trump's false claims of widespread election fraud to introduce a slate of regulations that make voting more difficult.