“The choice is the republic or the filibuster — there is no third option,” said Ezra Levin, co-founder of Indivisible, a national network of progressive activists. “We are at an inflection point in American history. Down one path is a Trump-inspired white plutocracy, and down the other is a representative democracy.”

Levin said he will consider it a “personal, organizational and movement-wide failure of historic, catastrophic proportions” if the voting rights bills, along with making Washington, D.C., a state, don’t pass this year…

“If they want a fight, they’re going to get a fight,” Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said in an interview, calling the legislation an “incredibly radical power grab” by Democrats.

“It’s an existential threat, I think, to our election system and to our democracy,” said Cornyn, a close ally of McConnell, also an ardent opponent of the bill. “Basically what they want to do is install a permanent partisan advantage and run all the elections out of Washington, D.C., and eliminate ballot integrity measures like voter ID.”