President Donald Trump wants Senate Republicans to gut the Senate filibuster, but it’s a request that puts his quick-fix desire to end the shutdown at odds with the GOP’s long-held defense of the filibuster.
The Senate filibuster is the 60-vote threshold that applies to most bills in the upper chamber, and given the nature of the thin majorities that either party has commanded in recent years, that means that legislation typically has to be bipartisan to advance.
It has also proven to be the main roadblock in reopening the government. Despite Republicans controlling the upper chamber, they have routinely come up a handful of votes short in their 13 attempts to end the shutdown.
Three members of the Democratic caucus have broken from Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and their colleagues to reopen the government, but Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., needs five more to hit the magic number.
Trump, in a late-night Truth Social post, said that on his return trip from Asia, he ruminated heavily over why the government had shut down despite Republicans being in control. His solution was for Senate 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,’ Trump said.
Senate Republicans have already gone nuclear this year to unilaterally change the rules to blast through Schumer’s and Democrats’ blockade of Trump’s nominees. But for many Senate Republicans, including Thune and his leadership team, nuking the filibuster is a proverbial third rail.
‘There’s always a lot of swirl out there, as you know from, you know, social media, etc., but no, we’re not having that conversation,’ Thune said earlier this month when asked about pressure to go nuclear on the filibuster.
And there isn’t much daylight between his sentiments from earlier in October to now.
‘Leader Thune’s position on the importance of the legislative filibuster is unchanged,’ Thune’s spokesperson Ryan Wrasse said in a statement.
Earlier this month during an appearance on Fox & Friends, Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso, R-Wyo., shared a similar outlook as Thune when asked if the filibuster was under consideration to be on the chopping block.
‘No, that’s not going to be the case,’ he said. ‘There aren’t the Republicans that would want to support it.’
The filibuster has come under fire in the last decade from Senate Democrats, a point that Trump noted in his lengthy post.
The last time the filibuster was put to the test was when Democrats controlled the Senate in 2022. Schumer, who was majority leader at the time, tried to change the rules for a ‘talking filibuster’ in order to pass voting rights legislation.
But the effort was thwarted when then-Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., joined Republicans to block the change. Both have since retired from the Senate and become independents.
Still, the stalemate in the Senate has shown no signs of shattering as the shutdown heads into November, though bipartisan talks among rank-and-file members have been on the rise as federal food benefits career toward a weekend funding cliff.
Across the building, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., also warned against turning to the nuclear option for the filibuster, even as a handful of House Republicans have demanded that the safeguard be erased.
‘Look, I’ll just say this in general, as I’ve said many times about the filibuster, it’s not my call. I don’t have a say in this. It’s a Senate chamber issue,’ Johnson said. ‘But the filibuster has traditionally been viewed as a very important safeguard. If the shoe was on the other foot, I don’t think our team would like it.’
