When Arizona Democrat Kyrsten Sinema last week reiterated her opposition to changing Senate filibuster rules, helping to doom her party’s efforts to pass voting rights legislation, it only added to the frustrations of progressives in her home state.

Arizona progressives had spent months trying to convince Sinema that voting rights are important enough to alter the Senate’s legislative filibuster.

The rule requires a 60-vote majority to move most legislation forward through the chamber. Republicans have used it for the length of President Biden’s time in office to block voting bills that Democrats — including Sinema — argue are needed to combat voting restrictions passed at the state level by Republicans.

“We really are in a situation where our freedom to vote is at stake,” said Emily Kirkland, executive director of Progress Arizona.

EMILY’s List steps in

Unable to change Sinema’s mind on their own, Kirkland and dozens of other Democratic women in Arizona sent a letter to an organization they hoped would have more influence: EMILY’s List, a decades-old national campaign group focused on electing female Democrats who support abortion rights.

Historically, abortion advocates like EMILY’s List have resisted calls to change or eliminate the filibuster. It’s been used in the past to defend women’s access to health care, a point frequently noted by Sinema in her defense of the Senate rule.

Kirkland said the stakes are too high for groups like EMILY’s List to stay on the sidelines.

“We’re in a moment where, given the threats to our democracy, we can’t afford for people and organizations to be staying in their lane and focused only on one issue,” she said.

On Tuesday, EMILY’s List heeded the call.

In a statement, President Laphonza Butler said if Sinema “can not support a path forward for the passage of this legislation, we believe she undermines the foundations of our democracy, her own path to victory and also the mission of Emily’s List.

“Right now, Sen. Sinema’s decision to reject the voices of allies, partners and constituents who believe the importance of voting rights outweighs that of an arcane process means she will find herself standing alone in the next election,” Butler added.

Amid mounting calls in Arizona for a primary challenger to Sinema in 2024, when she’s next up for reelection, the statement marked a turning point — from speculation to concrete action, not just locally, but by an organization that’s steadfastly supported Sinema over the years and holds broad, national influence.

“EMILY’s List is a very powerful, trusted messenger to Democrats, and to pro-choice women,” said Tony Cani, a political strategist who served as deputy director of the Biden campaign in Arizona.

And it’s no hollow threat. From 2015 to 2020, while Sinema was running for the Senate, no one contributed more to her campaign than EMILY’s List — over $400,000, according to OpenSecrets.

On Thursday, after the bid to change Senate rules officially failed, Butler made clear that EMILY’s List won’t endorse Sinema in the future.

EMILY’s List seemed to set a tone for other organizations as well. On Tuesday, the abortion-rights group NARAL Pro-Choice America issued its own statement that, without mentioning Sinema by name, made its target clear: “We will not endorse or support any senator who refuses to find a path forward on this critical legislation,” the organization said of the two voting rights bills stuck in the Senate.

And organizers with Stand Up America and Living United for Change in Arizona, also known as LUCHA, released a statement vowing to challenge Sinema in 2024 if she won’t change her mind.

Sinema’s defense

In her own statement ahead of Wednesday night’s vote — when she and West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin joined all 50 Senate Republicans in blocking a proposed change to the filibuster — Sinema brushed aside the criticism, as she had a week earlier, chalking it up to honest disagreements over policy and strategy.

Sinema later issued a statement touting her vote for voting rights legislation, but also explained why she blocked the only path forward at the time to actually pass the bills.

“I also maintained my long standing opposition to separate actions that would deepen our divisions and risk repeated radical reversals in federal policy, cementing uncertainty and further eroding confidence in our government,” she said.

Arizona strategist Cani said Sinema may believe she’s doing the right thing by preserving the filibuster. But if the senator is making a political calculation, Cani said she’s mistaken.

“I think that what she’s missing here is that her brand is somebody who gets things done,” Cani said. “And the problem right now is … she’s becoming someone who is a symbol for the type of obstruction that exists in Washington, D.C., in the Senate that is preventing reasonable laws from getting passed that the American people want.”

For some Arizona progressives, Sinema’s speech a week ago in defense of the filibuster had already confirmed she’s a part of the problem, not the solution.

“I think she is showing the American public and Arizonans very clearly who she is standing with,” said Alejandra Gomez, co-executive director of LUCHA. “And she is not standing with voters.”

Sinema did help craft the bipartisan infrastructure law, and has made her mark in the Senate working across the aisle.

Arizona is a tightly contested state where centrist candidates have found success in general elections. But to win reelection in 2024, she’ll first have to survive a primary.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-NY, is defending his decision to hold failed votes on changing the filibuster and voting rights legislation as a necessary step in holding Republicans and members of his own party accountable for their votes.

In an interview with NPR, Schumer downplayed the risks of holding such a public demonstration of the rift within his own party ahead of this year’s midterm election. Schumer said the failed votes will help Democrats move forward, but did not offer a specific plan for how to enact the rest of President Biden’s agenda.

“Senators are here to vote, they should be put on record,” Schumer said in defense of the failed votes. “Those who are opposed to advancing voting rights and who support suppression of voting rights — the public should know who they are.”

There has been intense pressure on Schumer and Biden to find a way to negotiate with the two consistent holdouts in their party, Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz. They tried public meetings, private meetings, trips to the White House and public shaming — all without success.

Schumer said the votes that failed this week in the Senate forced every lawmaker to take sides in front of the country, including activists and members of the party’s base.

“Now, the public knows where people stand,” he said. “I think those who voted against it will feel a lot of heat.”

Schumer also defended Biden’s negotiating strategy on voting rights, in particular.

“He has made it clear how he felt he gave three very powerful speeches,” Schumer said. “He spoke individually to Senators Manchin and Sinema. So he’s he’s working alongside us because both of us feel that this is a vital issue to the Republic.”

The blame, he said, lies with two Democrats who who ignored the rest of the party who viewed Senate rules as “less important than the right to vote.”

Despite setbacks, Schumer finds some success in his first year as Majority Leader

Schumer is marking his own first anniversary as Senate Majority leader. In that time Democrats passed the nearly $2 trillion American Rescue Plan to address the ongoing coronavirus crisis and a separate $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill. But the vast majority of Biden’s domestic agenda, including addressing climate change, voting rights and an expansion of the social safety net, continues to languish in the Senate.

Speaking Thursday in his office in the Capitol, Schumer echoed the words Biden used a day before at his own press conference marking his first year in office.

“We’ve had a successful year,” Schumer said. “We haven’t had it completely successful, but you keep fighting.”

“We’re in the week of MLK Day, the inspiration of Dr. King who never gave up, who didn’t let setbacks set him back and who didn’t shy from tough fights, even though the outcome was not clear at the beginning,” he said. “That’s our inspiration.”

Democrats are preparing for what could be a brutal election in November. Historically, it is common for the party of the president to lose seats in a midterm election. Plus Democrats have to contend with newly drawn congressional lines that could reduce their numbers on their own.

But Democrats have also failed to follow through on some of the most basic promises to voters, like passing new voting rights protections.

Schumer focused instead on what Democrats did achieve.

“We put more judges in these are lifetime appointments, “The [American Rescue Plan] bill is one of the most progressive and important pieces of legislation in decades,” he said. “We put more judges in all in office in the first year of a president’s term or a majority leader’s term than anyone since…40 or 50 years.”

He said those achievements, paired with the work Democrats were able to complete with the help of Republicans, make for a significant record.

“We got a big bipartisan bill done, the bipartisan infrastructure bill done, and many other things as well,” Schumer said. “Are we going to continue to fight on voting rights? Yes.”

The Smithsonian Institution has tapped Cynthia Chavez Lamar to become the director of the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C., which has one of the largest collections of Native and Indigenous items in the world.

She will be the first Native woman to serve as a Smithsonian museum director, the institution announced Wednesday.

Currently the museum’s acting associate director for collections and operations, Chavez Lamar said in a statement that she was excited to begin her new job and work with the museum’s experienced staff.

“Together, we will leverage the museum’s reputation to support shared initiatives with partners in the U.S. and around the world to amplify Indigenous knowledge and perspectives all in the interest of further informing the American public and international audiences of the beauty, tenacity and richness of Indigenous cultures, arts and histories,” she said.

Chavez Lamar is an enrolled member at San Felipe Pueblo, and her maternal ancestry includes Hopi, Tewa and Navajo.

She’ll be the third director of the National Museum of the American Indian. Kevin Gover, a citizen of the Pawnee Tribe, served as director from 2007 to 2021, and W. Richard West Jr., who is Southern Cheyenne, became the museum’s founding director in 1990.

Chavez Lamar interned for the museum in 1994, worked there as a curator in the early 2000s and then returned for her most recent stint in 2014.

The curator, author and scholar also previously served as director of the Indian Arts Research Center at the School for Advanced Research in Santa Fe and the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center in Albuquerque.

In her new role, Chavez Lamar will oversee three facilities: the National Museum of the American Indian, the George Gustav Heye Center in Lower Manhattan and the Cultural Resources Center in Suitland, Md.