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The 60-vote threshold stops bad bills, but it also makes it impossible for the GOP to pass good ones. I’ll admit that the 60-vote cloture threshold has prevented many bad bills from becoming law, and that without it bad bills would become law more easily. But it also prevents good bills from getting passed. Before 1917, when senators established the cloture vote in Senate Rule 22, there was no formal way of ending debate (a filibuster) in the Senate. Because unlimited debate was the tradition of the Senate, cloture was invoked only five times in the first approximately 50 years...

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., plans to bring a Republican elections reform bill to the floor next week and kickstart a marathon debate that could potentially last days.

President Trump’s allies are planning to take over the Senate floor this week in a bid to pass the SAVE America Act, setting up a major test for Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) who is under pressure from Trump and the MAGA base to extend the debate over voting reform for as long as possible. GOP senators are playing their cards close to the vest ahead of this week’s marathon debate over the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) America Act, which would require people registering to vote to show documented proof of citizenship. But they’re bracing for long hours...

Democratic senators say Republicans controlling both houses and presidency voted down multiple resolutions to fund TSA, Coast Guard and FEMA Sens. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and Cory Booker, D-N.J., deflected blame when pressed whether their party should vote to end the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) shutdown on Sunday, which has left workers without paychecks for weeks. "We saw terror attacks in West Bloomfield, Michigan, in Norfolk, Virginia. This morning, the CEOs of the nation's major airlines and cargo carriers have written a letter to Congress calling for them to end the shutdown, talking about the importance of American security in...

Let me begin by putting all my cards face-up on the table. No one wishes the SAVE Act, requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote and a photo-ID in order to cast a ballot, to become law more than I. Currently, in my home state of California, it's actually illegal here to both ask for ID at polling places and to show ID. Elections are held open for weeks until enough stray mail-in ballots, which for some reason break for Democrats every single time, flow in to swing a total that at one point showed promise of sanity in...

Sen. John Cornyn threw his support behind scrapping the filibuster to pass a voting restrictions bill President Donald Trump has called his “No. 1 priority” in Congress, as the Texas Republican continues to seek the president’s endorsement and stave off a bruising primary runoff election. Trump has held off on endorsing Cornyn, the pick of top Senate Republicans, over Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in a bid to pressure leadership to lower the threshold of votes needed to pass the SAVE America Act, which would enact citizenship and photo ID restrictions in elections while also targeting transgender rights. Paxton has...

Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, reversed himself on the Senate filibuster Wednesday after years of unflinching support for the 60-vote threshold to pass most bills. Now, locked in a competitive Republican runoff for his Senate seat and eyeing President Donald Trump's endorsement, Cornyn says he'll support "whatever changes to Senate rules that may prove necessary" to pass the SAVE America Act, a sweeping election overhaul bill that Trump has called his No. 1 priority. Cornyn's comments are part of an op-ed he wrote in the New York Post published Wednesday, titled: "Why the SAVE Act matters more than the filibuster." The...

It’s time to employ the “nuclear option” on John Thune’s inbox. Last week, the Senate Republican Leader announced that he would NOT force Democrats to conduct a Talking Filibuster on the SAVE America Act. This means Thune will NOT try to pass election integrity legislation this year. Instead, he plans to debate the SAVE America Act under a rigged process that requires 60 votes, knowing he does not have them. This is not fighting. It’s gaslighting. It’s “failure theater.” Thune wants to create the illusion of Republicans all supporting voter ID without any chance of it actually passing. This is...

Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) sent a letter Monday to senators laying out a simple way the Safeguarding American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) America Act can be brought to the floor for a vote without “nuking” the filibuster. The SAVE Act would require both documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote and voter ID to cast a ballot. The legislation passed the House, but is stalling in the Senate, despite 50 Republican senators who co-sponsor or support the SAVE America Act, according to Roy’s letter, which was exclusively obtained by The Federalist. As Roy pointed out, Senator Majority Leader John Thune...

Key Points Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., on Tuesday said he supported the SAVE America Act, but that there is not enough support in the Senate to change the filibuster and clear a path for the controversial bill. .The House is expected to vote this week on the legislation, which would require people to prove their citizenship to register to vote and show ID at the ballot box. .GOP hardliners have called for a return to the “standing filibuster,” which requires Congress members to be physically present and talking on the Senate floor to delay legislation.

The House this week is set to take up the SAVE America Act (the SAVE Act 2.0), an election-integrity measure that some Senate Republicans can’t seem to get behind even though the vast majority of Americans already have. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise’s office confirms the SAVE America Act, which would require proof of U.S. citizenship to register and photo identification to vote in federal elections, will hit the floor on Tuesday. While Democrats will spend hours making a mockery of truth and reality in opposing it, the legislation is expected to pass mostly along party lines — as the...

While the mainstream media is trying to portray deporting illegal immigrants as an unpopular policy, a survey from Cygnal Polling indicates this policy is popular. Nearly two-thirds of voters think that illegal immigration is a serious problem. This includes 97% of Republicans, 71% of "swing" voters, 60% of independents, but only 33% of Democrats. Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-NY) discounted these results "because these polls only include registered voters. If elections were really restricted to this narrow constituency we would be worried. However, many states governed by our Party don't limit ballots to only those who are registered to...

Susan Collins (ME) Lisa Murkowski (AK) Rand Paul (KY) Mitch McConnell (KY) Thom Tillis (NC) Todd Young (IN) Chuck Grassley (IA) Jerry Moran (KS)

The United States Constitution did not create the filibuster. The practice exists entirely because of Senate rules and precedents developed over time.From early in the Senate’s history, the ability of Senators to speak for unlimited amounts of time was used as a tool to slow down legislation, as a bargaining chip to gain concessions on bills, or to block bills altogether. This extended use of “debate” became known as a filibuster.For decades, there was talk about changing the Senate rules to limit debate, but nothing was done until 1917. During the administration of President Woodrow Wilson, the Senate adopted Rule...

As the partial government shutdown drags into its third day, a critical deal has been struck that could finally deliver a long-overdue victory for election integrity. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, after direct talks with President Trump at the White House, announced that Senate Majority Leader John Thune is prepared to invoke a standing filibuster to bring the SAVE Act to the floor, sidestepping the 60-vote barrier that has stalled the bill for months.

The American people are just now emerging from the longest and most devastating government shutdown in U.S. history. And while the blame lies squarely with Senate Democrats, we cannot ignore the weapon they used to hold the country hostage: the legislative filibuster. In January, when spending considerations again come due, if Democrats once again choose to shut down the government, then Republicans should immediately end the filibuster.By wielding the filibuster, which requires a 60-vote Senate supermajority to pass legislation, Democrats inflicted tremendous harm on the nation, including: $11 billion in permanent economic damage; an estimated 1.5 percentage points in lost...

President Trump on Saturday, the 38th day of the government shutdown, President Trump demanded again that Republicans terminate the filibuster to reopen the government and send bills to his desk to secure elections as Republicans seek to end the stalemate on Sunday. The Senate held a rare Saturday session as Majority Leader John Thune keeps Senators in town and working this weekend to reopen the government.After a session of debate, the Senate is planning to vote on a “pure spending bill,” according to Fox’s Chad Pergram, as soon as Sunday. Despite previous concerns, the new bill will reportedly not give...

Nuking the filibuster is unprincipled, but it also makes little political sense: Trump would be doing Democrats a huge favor by greasing the wheels for exploiting fleeting one-party national majorities in the future, which will allow them to shove through massive generational “reforms” without any national consensus. And they would be able to do it without taking any political heat for nuking the filibuster. In recent years, they’ve coalesced around an argument that says the 60-vote threshold to cut off debate in the Senate is antiquated — a “Jim Crow relic,” said one-time filibuster champion former President Barack Obama —...

KANSAS (KSNT) – Kansas’ senators have given their position on the filibuster, a Senate rule that Trump has been pushing to scrap. The filibuster is a longstanding Senate Rule that requires 60 votes to pass most legislation. At a breakfast with Senate Republicans on Wednesday morning and again in a video posted Wednesday evening, Trump renewed his calls to end the government shutdown by getting rid of the filibuster and lowering the threshold to 51 votes for legislation. When Sen. Schumer proposed eliminating the filibuster, I opposed that idea, and my views on the importance of the filibuster have not...

With talk of ending the filibuster increasing, it's worth considering the effect that doing so may have on efforts to grant Puerto Rico statehood. The threat of adding two virtually guaranteed Democratic Senators to Congress via Puerto Rican statehood is often given as a reason to oppose the filibuster. On the other side of the argument are those who say that the Democrats will just eliminate the filibuster anyway, next time they come back into power so not doing so now is just a postponement of the inevitable. If ending the filibuster is inevitable, is granting Puerto Rico its independence...