Updated at 8:12 a.m. ET

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell dropped his demand that Democrats maintain the Senate filibuster — ending an early stalemate in the Senate that prevented party leaders from negotiating a power-sharing agreement.

Late Monday, McConnell said he was ready to move forward after two Democrats signaled they would not vote to end the legislative filibuster, assuring him that it would stay in place. The position of the two moderate Democrats — Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema — also ensured that Majority Leader Chuck Schumer lacked the votes to end the filibuster, a key demand from his party’s left.

McConnell had demanded that the filibuster rule remain in exchange for his cooperation on reallocating power in the Senate, which is evenly divided for the first time in two decades. The Democrats control the chamber since Vice President Harris would break any tie.

For now, Democrats and Republicans will operate on a power-sharing deal that follows the model used in 2001 — the last time the Senate had a 50-50 split. That means the party with the vice presidency and tiebreaking powers has control of the floor agenda.

Still, both sides spun the development as a victory.

“The legislative filibuster was a key part of the foundation beneath the Senate’s last 50-50 power-sharing agreement in 2001,” McConnell said Monday, voicing his approval of the compromise. “With these assurances, I look forward to moving ahead with a power-sharing agreement modeled on that precedent.”

Justin Goodman, a spokesman for Schumer, said: “We’re glad Sen. McConnell threw in the towel and gave up on his ridiculous demand. We look forward to organizing the Senate under Democratic control and start getting big, bold things done for the American people.”

McConnell’s change of heart followed assurances from Manchin, D-W.Va., and Sinema, D-Ariz., that they would not vote to end the filibuster.

“They agree with President Biden’s and my view that no Senate majority should destroy the right of future minorities of both parties to help shape legislation,” McConnell said.

Now, McConnell and Schumer can negotiate an organizing resolution, which will lay out the terms of the power-sharing agreement.

Without such a deal, the Senate would have been essentially paralyzed with Senate Democrats unable to take full control of the chamber, despite being in the majority.

Democrats would have maintained control of the floor and the legislative agenda, but leadership of key committees would have been retained by Republicans. Committee assignments for newly sworn-in members could not have moved forward and key legislative priorities for the new Biden administration, including a $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package, would be stonewalled.

Still, the deal is likely to be tested. Senate Republicans could use the filibuster to stymie President Biden’s legislative agenda, increasing pressure on Schumer to end the legislative maneuver.

The Senate quickly confirmed Janet Yellen to be Treasury secretary on Monday, days after she won unanimous backing from both Democrats and Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee.

Yellen will be the first woman to lead the Treasury Department and will spearhead the Biden administration’s response to the coronavirus recession. The Senate confirmed her with an 84-15 vote.

At her confirmation hearing last week, Yellen urged lawmakers to “act big” in response to the pandemic, which has killed more than 400,000 Americans and put millions of people out of work.

President Biden has proposed a $1.9 trillion rescue package, which includes $1,400 relief payments for most Americans, extended unemployment benefits and substantial aid to cash-strapped state and local governments.

A labor economist by training, Yellen chaired the Federal Reserve from 2014 to 2018. She also led the Council of Economic Advisers in the Clinton administration.

“She’s extremely competent and experienced,” said Kathy Bostjancic of Oxford Economics, describing Yellen as the “right person at the right time.”

While Senate Republicans have questioned Biden’s economic proposals, they voiced few doubts about Yellen.

“There is no question she is qualified for this role,” said Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., a member of the Finance Committee.

Yellen’s confirmation comes 232 years after Alexander Hamilton took office as the nation’s first Treasury secretary.

Yellen was quicker to follow her predecessor in scoring her own, hip-hop musical salute.

Less than five years after the musical “Hamilton” debuted on Broadway, the public radio program Marketplace commissioned a similar tribute to Yellen from The Hamilton Mixtape contributor Dessa.

“She’s 5-foot nothing, but hand to God / She can pop a collar, she can rock a power bob,” Dessa raps — a nod to Yellen’s no-nonsense hairstyle and her diminutive stature.

Height was reportedly a factor when then-President Trump declined to nominate Yellen for a second term as Fed chair, picking Jerome Powell instead to head the central bank.

Dessa’s rhymes also note Yellen’s trailblazing role in three of the federal government’s most powerful economic jobs.

“She needs a three-sided coin that always comes up heads / To put the triple crown down when she goes to bed.”

Yellen has long been an overachiever. At her Brooklyn high school in New York City, she was both valedictorian and editor of the school newspaper — a dual role she captured by conducting a tongue-in-cheek interview with herself.

Updated at 4:58 p.m. ET

Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., will preside over former President Donald Trump’s trial in the Senate, a Senate source told NPR. Leahy, 80, is the president pro tempore of the Senate, a constitutional role given to the longest-serving lawmaker in the majority party. The president pro tempore is third in the line of presidential succession, after the vice president and House speaker.

When asked if he was concerned about remaining impartial, Leahy told reporters: “I have presided over hundreds of hours in my time in the Senate. I don’t think anybody has ever suggested I was anything but impartial in those hundreds of hours.”

Leahy added: “I’m not presenting the evidence. I am making sure that procedures are followed. I don’t think there’s any senator who over the 40-plus years I’ve been here that would say that I am anything but impartial in voting on procedure.”

Chief Justice John Roberts presided over Trump’s first impeachment trial, but now that Trump is a former president, Roberts is not constitutionally obligated to preside.

The Constitution says, “When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside.” And Roberts did that when Trump was tried last year. This time, however, the chief justice let it be known he did not want to preside now that Trump is no longer president. On Monday, a Supreme Court spokeswoman said Roberts would have no comment.

It is unclear whether Senate leaders ever consulted Roberts. More likely, Roberts, who has tried mightily to keep the Supreme Court out of politics, headed them off at the pass and made his views clear.

Indeed, the reason that the chief justice’s role in a presidential impeachment trial appears in the Constitution at all is the often-forgotten power given to the vice president as the presiding officer of the Senate. Thus, in any impeachment trial of an officer who is not president, the vice president may preside.

Vice President Thomas Jefferson presided at the impeachment trial of Sen. William Blount in 1799; Aaron Burr presided at the impeachment trial of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase in 1805.

In modern times, impeachment trial votes in the Senate — most often to remove federal judges — have been presided over not by the vice president either, but by the president pro tempore of the Senate.

And today that is Leahy, the well-respected chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, formerly chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and, as he likes to remind people, a former trial lawyer and state prosecutor.

The Senate, of course, could have asked Vice President Harris to preside, but that would have presented all the bad optics the Founders wanted to avoid.

Senate Democrats would likely have preferred to have Roberts be the apolitical referee of the proceedings, but even his largely ceremonial role in the first Trump impeachment drew complaints from the left on social media — something he almost certainly didn’t care for.

So, Democrats are stuck now with an impeachment trial that likely will not succeed. And some Senate Democrats are exploring alternative ways to keep Trump permanently from holding office.

The best option would appear to be Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, enacted in the Civil War’s aftermath, which allows Congress to bar any officer, civil or military, from holding future office if he is found to have “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the Constitution of the United States.

The Constitution does not specify how many votes it would take for such a bar on holding future office. Senate rules say it will take 60 votes, as opposed to 67 needed for conviction on impeachment action.

House impeachment managers were to deliver the article of impeachment to the Senate on Monday evening, and the trial is scheduled to begin the week of Feb. 8.

On Jan. 13, Trump became the only president in U.S. history to be impeached twice by the House of Representatives. House Democrats brought one article of impeachment — “incitement of insurrection” — related to remarks he made to a loyal crowd Jan. 6 that resulted in a deadly riot at the Capitol.

Trump, the first one-term president since George H.W. Bush in the 1990s, lost the November election to President Biden but has repeatedly and baselessly challenged the results, citing little or false evidence.