Nancy Pelosi says the House will pass a bill combining both of Congress's voting rights measures TODAY as Biden heads to Capitol Hill to convince Manchin and Senate Democrats to get on board 

• The House held a procedural vote on the Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act on Wednesday night, which passed 220 to 201 along party lines 
• After passing the House Pelosi will send it as a 'message' to the Senate
• That allows Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to bypass a virtually certain GOP filibuster to bring the measure to the Senate floor for debate
• Meanwhile Biden will be at the Capitol this afternoon trying to convince Senate Democrats to get on board with voting rights and changing filibuster rules
• So far centrists Manchin and Sinema have been opposed to changing filibuster 
• Republicans condemned Biden's voting rights speech on Tuesday as 'divisive' 
• Mitch McConnell called his remarks 'profoundly unpresidential' and accused the President of calling millions of Americans 'domestic enemy' 
• Obama has backed Biden's bid to change Senate rules and called the filibuster a relic of the Jim Crow era  

President Biden will try and save his voting rights legislation from the brink of defeat by meeting Democrats face-to-face on Thursday - while Nancy Pelosi will jam a consolidated bill through the House in a bid to rush it to the Senate.    

Biden will head to the Capitol to convince all 50 Democrats in the upper chamber - including moderates Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema - to back his two voting rights bills and get support for eliminating the filibuster.

Senator Manchin has repeatedly said he won't back  changing Senate rules to pass voting rights legislation and bypass Republicans, who believe the Democrats' push to transform voting is a bid to federalize elections.

Biden will try and change Manchin's mind when he has lunch with the Democratic Caucus today. President Obama has also thrown his support behind Biden's plans and called the filibuster a relic of the Jim Crow era. 

The bill Pelosi hopes to pass combines the House's John R. Lewis Act and the Senate's Freedom to Vote Act.

A procedural vote for the Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act was held in the House on Wednesday evening and passed 220 - 201 along party lines, allowing it to come to the floor today.

'President Biden made it crystal clear that the Senate must find a path forward to enshrine critical voting rights legislation into law,' Pelosi said in her letter, adding that the House moving it forward quickly would get it before the Senate 'for urgent consideration.' 

Pelosi will then send the bill to the Senate as a 'message,' allowing Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to bring it to the floor for debate while side-stepping a Republican filibuster attempt.    

The John R. Lewis Act, which previously passed the House by itself in August, was aimed to restore key provisions of the Voting Right Act of 1965 that had been gutted by the Supreme Court and change the way election cases are handled in federal courts.

The Freedom to Vote Act would reverse election security enhancements passed by dozens of GOP-dominated legislatures last year and introduce a new federal standard for voting laws, including expansions to mail-in voting and early voting.  

Biden delivered an impassioned defense of voting rights in Georgia on Tuesday. The Peach State was one of 19 with GOP-held legislatures to pass bills last year enhancing election security. Critics say they suppress the right to vote.

Republicans included Mitch McConnell tore into his speech for being 'divisive' and accused him of labelling millions of Americans as 'domestic enemies'. 

In his first op-ed since since leaving the White House, Barack Obama said he backed Biden wanting to change the Senate rules and called the filibuster a relic of the Jim Crow era.

He wrote in USA Today that the filibuster has 'no basis in the constitution' and has been used by Republicans in the past to obstruct civil rights legislation. 

'In recent years, the filibuster became a routine way for the Senate minority to block important progress on issues supported by the majority of voters. But we can’t allow it to be used to block efforts to protect our democracy,' Obama said. 

'That's why I fully support President Joe Biden’s call to modify Senate rules as necessary to make sure pending voting rights legislation gets called for a vote. And every American who cares about the survival of our most cherished institutions should support the president’s call as well.' 

Biden criticized those bills as 'undemocratic.' 

Congressional leaders are attempting to press ahead on what appears to be an uphill battle for the majority party to pass voter reform ahead of the 2022 midterm elections.

It's unlikely that Schumer will have the 60 votes needed in the Senate to bypass Republican obstruction in the form of a filibuster.

Instead, he and Biden will lobby Democrats in the upper chamber on Thursday during their caucus lunch, around 1 p.m., to support a change to Senate rules that would allow them to pass it with a simple majority.

But it's proven a challenge with two key centrists, Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, so far opposed to scuttling the filibuster. 

On the House floor Wednesday night, Pelosi echoed longstanding Democrat concerns that their colleagues across the aisle are weaponizing the Senate stalling tactic.

'When somebody said they're going to filibuster something or they were engaged in a filibuster, you thought they were going to talk for a long time. Filibuster: to talk for a long time. Not to obstruct justice, not to obstruct debate, not to obstruct the majority to be able to take a vote, to discuss something,' she said. 

Vice President Kamala Harris also took aim at Republicans opposed to expanded voting access last night, as well as Democrats who are pushing to preserve the filibuster.

'I will not absolve the 50 Republicans in the United States Senate from responsibility, from upholding one of the most basic tenants of our democracy which is free and fair elections and access to the ballot for all eligible voters,' Harris told NBC News on Wednesday. 

When asked about Manchin and Sinema, she stood firm.

'I don't think anyone should be absolved from the responsibility of preserving and protecting our democracy especially when they took an oath to protect our Constitution,' Harris said.

Biden's full-throated defense of voting rights and opposition to the filibuster prompted a fierce backlash from Republicans.

Just after the president's speech on Tuesday, Utah Senator Mitt Romney tore into him on the Senate floor for 'dividing' the country and warned Democrats to consider 'what would it mean for them' if they changed Senate rules ahead of the likely event they lose control of Congress at the end of this year.

And on Wednesday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said Biden's speech was 'profoundly unpresidential.'