Free Republic

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...

Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., avoided answering whether he would support eliminating the filibuster, as he did under President Joe Biden on Wednesday. Raskin was asked by CNN’s Dana Bash about President Donald Trump’s recent comments regarding several Republican losses nationwide Tuesday night and the ongoing government shutdown. “One of the things that he has been talking about for the last couple of days more intensely is getting rid of the filibuster. That’s actually something that you wanted to do when Joe Biden was president. Things weren’t getting through the Senate. So is that an area where you agree with him?”...

Senate Republicans must agree to end the filibuster now, acting before Democrats potentially take control of the chamber and end the procedure themselves, Sen. Ron Johnson told Newsmax on Thursday, while agreeing with President Donald Trump. Democrats, the Wisconsin Republican told Newsmax's "Wake Up America," have "no respect for the filibuster" and will eliminate it "to acquire and maintain power." "I've always been a big supporter of the filibuster," Johnson said. "It has stopped America from going down a socialist path for decades." Still, he said that Trump is right, and "I told him at this point in time that...

President Donald Trump urged the Senate to end the filibuster as a means of ending the government shutdown and breaking deadlock on some of his key policy issues. The government shut down in early October after the Senate failed to approve a continuing resolution with 60 votes. Ending the filibuster would lower the procedural threshold for the chamber to pass bills to a simple majority. "Terminate the filibuster, not just for the shutdown but for everything else," he posted on Truth Social. "We will get all of our common sense policies approved (Voter ID anyone?) and Make America Great Again!"...

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., warned against President Donald Trump's demand for the Senate to invoke the "nuclear option" to end the government shutdown. Johnson was asked during his Friday press conference about a late-night Truth Social post in which Trump demanded the Senate get rid of the filibuster and its 60-vote threshold to ram through the GOP's federal funding bill by a simple majority. "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...

It is day 30 of the Schumer Shutdown with no end in sight. President Trump on Thursday night called on Republican Senators to initiate the nuclear option to get rid of the filibuster. It takes 60 votes to invoke cloture and end the filibuster. “….BECAUSE OF THE FACT THAT THE DEMOCRATS HAVE GONE STONE COLD “CRAZY,” THE CHOICE IS CLEAR — INITIATE THE “NUCLEAR OPTION,” GET RID OF THE FILIBUSTER AND, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!” Trump said. In a follow-up Truth Social Post President Trump said during his trip to Asia this week everyone kept asking him how the Democrats...

I don't know, man. This smells like a trap, even if Sen. John Fetterman offers this honestly. Ever since September 30, the Senate has had a clean continuing resolution on the table that will allow for several weeks of negotiations on the FY2026 budget. Senate Democrats refuse to end their filibuster, demanding well over a trillion dollars' worth of concessions, including the effective repeal of key parts of the GOP's reconciliation package that passed over the summer. For three weeks, Chuck Schumer has kept the government (mainly) shut down, and still refuses to consider ending the impasse. One big part...

On Friday’s broadcast of NewsNation’s “Cuomo,” Rep. Jonathan Jackson (D-IL) discussed the government shutdown and stated that he thinks that the U.S. Senate “Absolutely” should eliminate the filibuster and let Republicans pass a bill to re-open the government on a party-line vote without Democrats and said, “I could do away with that.” Host Chris Cuomo asked, “[I]t’s a little bit of a twist, though, right, Representative? Because, yeah, you’ve got the presidency is Republican, the House is Republican, Senate has this hair-thin margin. But because of the filibuster rule, they don’t control it, because, then, the Democrats, who are the...

Just one day after House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries wrapped up his self-indulgent “magic minute” marathon, the truth is starting to surface: Even many Democrats weren’t impressed. His hours-long fauxibuster—meant to stall the inevitable passage of the GOP’s One Big, Beautiful Bill—ended up accomplishing absolutely nothing for the Democrats’ cause. The only minds that were changed were Republicans who flipped from “no” to “yes.” Let’s not kid ourselves. This wasn’t some bold act of resistance or savvy legislative tactic. It was performative grandstanding, plain and simple—a desperate attempt to look like he’s fighting while doing absolutely nothing to stop the...

https://live.house.gov/ 🍿🍿🍿🍿

Let’s take some of the more common gripes, starting with the complaint that our Congress hasn’t passed anything. But, of course, Congress has passed several things. It passed the Laken Riley Act to keep Third World savages who are illegally here locked up. It just overturned the ridiculous California “no gas engines” law. So, the objection is not that the Republicans haven’t passed anything. It’s that the Republicans haven’t passed enough. But there’s a structural fact that frustrated conservatives refuse to admit exists. This is why most of our actions must be taken via executive orders. Because of the Senate...

Capitol Police arrested a staffer for Sen. Cory Booker who was carrying a gun Monday evening, hours after the New Jersey Democrat kicked off a marathon “filibuster” speech in the upper chamber. “Yesterday afternoon a Member of Congress led an IDed staff member around security screening at the Hart Senate Office Building. Later that evening, outside the Senate Galleries, the IDed staff member — who is a retired law enforcement officer — told our officers he was armed,” a rep for US Capitol Police said in a statement Tuesday. “The staff member, 59-year-old Kevin A. Batts of New Jersey, was...

2021: Filibusters are evil and a hinderance to progress.2025: Filibusters are a great way to stop the GOP agenda.Both those sentiments sums up the wildly varying attitude of New York magazine columnist Ed Kilgore. Although he hated Senate filibusters in 2021 he now loves them as a way to slow down or halt Trump's legislative program. To get an idea of just how much Kilgore hated filibusters when the Democrats held the Senate, let us look look at his February 6, 2021 article, "What the Filibuster Has Cost America."

Former Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) had a heated exchange with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and other Democratic party members who she said switched their stance on support for the filibuster in the upper chamber. “Change of heart on the filibuster, I see,” Sinema wrote in a post with a screenshot of a post from Ocasio-Cortez shaming the Arizona lawmaker for not supporting ending the filibuster in order to pass Roe v. Wade protections. Sinema’s comments come as Democrats urged their counterparts to use a filibuster to prevent the House-GOP led government spending bill from advancing. It requires the Senate to...

The US House of Representatives passed the Laken Riley Bill. The 216 Republicans present were joined by 48 Democrats in voting for the bill. All the opposing 159 votes were cast by Democrats. The legislation requires the Department of Homeland Security to detain illegal immigrants who have committed crimes other than illegally entering the country. Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn) argued for the bill, saying "the tragic and preventable murder of Laken Riley serves as a stark reminder of the consequences of failed leadership. The Laken Riley Act is a direct step toward ensuring that criminal illegal aliens are swiftly...

With Republicans projected to win the Senate majority in the 2024 election, "the filibuster will stand," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell noted on Wednesday. Even when one party controls a slim majority of Senate seats, the other party can still block legislation from advancing due to the significant threshold required for overcoming the filibuster. "In 1975 the Senate reduced the number of votes required for cloture from two-thirds of senators voting to three-fifths of all senators duly chosen and sworn, or 60 of the 100-member Senate," senate.gov notes.