WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump is pushing Senate Republicans to abolish the 60-vote filibuster rule to reopen the shuttered government without Democratic votes.
But, unusually for the president, he is encountering firm and immediate resistance from his own party.
“The time has come for Republicans to play their ‘TRUMP CARD’ and go for what is called the nuclear option: get rid of the filibuster and get rid of it, NOW!” he wrote in a pair of late-night social media posts on Thursday. “Well, WE are in power now, and if we did what we should do, we would IMMEDIATELY end this ridiculous ‘LOCKDOWN’ destroying the country.”
Senate Republican leaders have openly expressed support for the 60-vote rule to pass most bills. New Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., promised shortly after the 2024 election that the legislative filibuster would remain unchanged during his term.
“Leader Thune’s position on the importance of the legislative filibuster has not changed,” Thune spokesman Ryan Wrasse said Friday.
A spokesman for Senate Majority Leader John Barrasso, R-Wyo., said: “Senator Barrasso’s support for the filibuster has not changed.”
Sen. John Curtis, R-Utah, posted Friday that he was a “firm no” to getting rid of the filibuster.
“The filibuster forces us to find common ground in the Senate,” Curtis said, referring to a headline about Trump’s comments. “Power changes hands, but principles should not. I am adamant not to eliminate it.”
However, conversation about the filibuster intensified on Capitol Hill even before Trump’s comments, after Sen. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, appeared on Fox News days after the shutdown and called on his party to eliminate the filibuster.
But several Republicans have expressed opposition to that push, including Moreno’s fellow Ohio senator.
“I think that’s not a step we should take,” Sen. Jon Husted, R-Ohio, told reporters.
Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., who has said he would resign from the Senate the same day if Republicans abolished the filibuster, said he does not expect it to be rejected. He noted that Trump also asked the Republican Party to eliminate the 60-vote threshold during his first presidential term in order to pass his agenda.
“We held our ground there,” Tillis said earlier this month. “I can’t imagine anyone changing now.”
Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., said he “would not” be in favor of weakening the legislative filibuster to pass the funding bill.
“That’s impossible,” he said.
Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., said he would “absolutely” not favor abolishing the filibuster.
“If we want to do something very, extremely limited” to “avoid closures in the future, I can consider that,” he said. “But using nuclear weapons, resorting to the nuclear filibuster… we all know that the Senate comes and goes, and it’s in our favor when we have the minority.”
The Senate, under bipartisan control, has eliminated the 60-vote threshold for confirming executive branch staff and federal judges; these require a simple majority of the Senate.
The legislative filibuster has evolved over the years, but since 1975 it has required 60 votes to achieve “closure” in the Senate and ensure passage of most bills over minority objections. There are exceptions, such as the budget “reconciliation” process that Republicans used to pass Trump’s “big, beautiful bill.” Republican senators have expanded those exceptions this year, but have largely opposed eliminating the 60-vote threshold entirely.
That’s because they worry about what a future Democratic-controlled Washington could do without requiring Republican support for the legislation.
“The 60-vote threshold has protected this country, and frankly, I think that’s largely what this last election was about,” Thune told reporters on Oct. 10, arguing that if Democrats had won, they would have sought to get rid of the filibuster, make D.C. and Puerto Rico states with congressional representation, and expand the Supreme Court. “There would be abortion on demand, a lot of things that were on that list,” she said.
“There’s always pressure on the filibuster,” the majority leader said. “But I can tell you that the filibuster over the years has been something that has been a bulwark against a lot of really bad things happening to the country.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said he understands why Senate Republicans want to preserve the filibuster.
“It’s not my decision. I don’t have a say in this. It’s a Senate chamber issue. We don’t have that in the House, as you know,” he told reporters Friday. “But the filibuster has traditionally been seen as a very important safeguard. If the shoe was on the other foot, I don’t think our team would like it.”
Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., one of many Democrats running in 2024 to reject the filibuster, said Republicans should go ahead and “remove” it from government funding bills.
“We continued to kill the filibuster and now we love it,” he said. “I support it because it makes it harder to shut down the government in the future, and that’s where it’s completely appropriate. And I don’t want to hear any Democrats clutching their pearls on the filibuster. We all follow it.”
Democrats have all but dared Republicans to end the filibuster and fund the government on their own if they don’t want to negotiate to secure bipartisan support. On NBC’s Meet The Press NOW, Rep. Chris DeLuzio, D-Pa., said Republicans “should have” bombed the filibuster if they didn’t want to negotiate with Democrats on a bill.
In his posts on Thursday, Trump noted that Democrats attempted to surpass the 60-vote threshold in 2022 in an attempt to pass a sweeping voting rights law. But they failed to get the majority of votes needed to change the rules in the Senate, and the effort failed.
“If the Democrats ever return to power, which would be easier for them if the Republicans do not use the great force and policies we have at our disposal by ending the filibuster, the Democrats will exercise their rights and they will do so on the first day they take office, regardless of whether we do it or not,” the president added.
Two weeks after his proposal, NBC News asked Moreno if he had managed to convince his Republican colleagues to reject the filibuster.
“Not yet,” Moreno responded.
