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In a Dear Colleague letter this week, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer warns that if Republicans refuse to support the Democrats' unconstitutional efforts to nationalize elections, he will move to eliminate legislative checks and balances by blowing up the filibuster. "As former Senator Robert Byrd famously said, Senate Rules 'must be changed to reflect changed circumstances,'" Schumer argued. "Put more plainly by Senator Byrd, 'Congress is not obliged to be bound by the dead hand of the past.'" And by the "past," Schumer means only a couple of years ago, when he led a record 300-plus filibusters during Donald Trump's...

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) has been the one to pretty much deliver the bad news to Democrats concerning their plan to nuke the filibuster. He’s already seen as public enemy number one on Build Back Better after he went on national television to announce he’s killing it because it’s an expensive communist venture. It’s a 50-50 Senate. I don’t get what Chuck is trying to do here. Is it to ward off a potential primary challenge from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez? Maybe—but she’ll be coming after you no matter what, Chuck. That’s her character. Period. You could pass Build Back Better-plus, and...

A new year is here and Congress will no doubt be in a hurry to pass pivotal legislation in the early months of the year. Much of the summer and fall will be spent campaigning for the November elections. And, in the run-up to campaign season, congressional leadership will do everything in their power to protect vulnerable members from making tough votes. The window to get anything of significance done is already narrowing. For congressional Democrats – who hold slim majorities in both chambers of Congress, as well as the White House – the sting of defeat is still fresh...

Chuck Schumer, the Inspector Clouseau of Senate Majority Leaders in comparison to Mitch McConnell’s Sherlock Holmes, has decided to try to strong-arm Joe Manchin and Kristin Sinema into dropping their opposition to killing the filibuster by making a big public show of it. Hey, that’s plan has worked great so far. I sure hope he succeeds – for once – for three reasons. Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett. As so often happens with the Dems, Napoleon’s injunction to never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake comes to mind. So does Br'er Rabbit’s plea to Br'er Fox not to...

Rep. Conor Lamb (D-PA) who has been considered a so-called moderate, on Monday also indicated he supports getting rid of the filibuster. He's running for the Senate to replace outgoing Sen. Pat Toomey, a Republican.Republican opponent Jeff Bartos was among those who quickly picked up on Lamb's threat to get rid of the filibuster, and Lamb engaged right back.

The latest proclamation from King Joe runs counter to the buzz promoted by the media. Supposedly, Joe Manchin had returned to negotiations on Joe Biden’s Build Back Better plan, and might even have signaled a willingness to do a nuclear-option carve-out on the filibuster for the election-federalizing SB1.Not so fast, Manchin said a few minutes ago. First, no one’s changed positions at all on BBB and there haven’t been any new talks so far:

Democrats in Congress are conspiring and plotting to federalize elections to make it easier for them to retain control of the federal government. They are pushing unconstitutional legislation that violates the power of states to run elections. To do this, Democrats need to blow up the filibuster. This desperate act by Democrats is nothing more than an insurrection against federalism. Democrats see cratering poll numbers for President Biden and are in panic mode about the fall midterm elections. If Republicans want to protect the integrity of elections, they need to fight the Democratic plan to put unelected federal bureaucrats in...

Reid, Democrats trigger ‘nuclear’ option; eliminate most filibusters on nominees

Democrats are barreling toward a showdown over voting rights and changes to the Senate rules, after months of growing frustration from within the caucus. The party is under pressure, from both outside groups and lawmakers, to pass federal election legislation as GOP-run state legislatures debate new voting rules and as the start of the 2022 midterm election is fast-approaching. After watching Senate Republicans block election and voting bills via the filibuster, which requires 60 votes for most legislation to advance, Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) is vowing to bring the fight to a head in January. “The Senate will...

President Biden has said he backs creating a carveout in the Senate filibuster to pass sweeping election reform legislation over united Republican opposition. ​​ “The only thing standing between getting voting rights legislation passed and not getting passed is the filibuster. I support making an exception on voting rights for the filibuster,” Biden ​told ABC “World News Tonight” anchor David Muir in an interview.

President Joe Biden said he supports changing the Senate filibuster rules to pass voting rights legislation. In an interview with ABC News, Biden was asked if he were prepared to accept fundamental changes to the filibuster rules in order to pass a voting rights bill. "Yes," Biden said. "That means whatever it takes. Change the Senate rules to accommodate [a] major piece of legislation without requiring 60 votes. "If the only thing standing between getting voting rights legislation passed and not getting passed is the filibuster, I support making the exception of voting rights for the filibuster." Biden's comments to...

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, poses a "direct challenge" to former President Donald Trump and has "betrayed" the GOP, former White House strategist Steve Bannon believes. Bannon, who served as the CEO of Trump's 2016 campaign and then as a chief strategist in the former president's administration, slammed McConnell during the Friday episode of his War Room podcast. His remarks came after McConnell gave an interview to Spectrum News this week in which he spoke favorably of the work being done by the House select committee investigating the pro-Trump January 6 attack against the U.S. Capitol, calling...

So they're shelving the bolshevikization of the economy, but will instead "aggressively" focus on the bolshevikization of elections instead. I hope -- pray, really -- that Republicans have forty-one votes to filibuster that nightmare. But who knows what the "reasonable" Republicans might decide to in the service of Collegiality. And I have to tell you: I think the "rules change" discussed here is a suspension of the filibuster rule for a vote on a federal takeover of state election laws. "Schumer is still holding out hope for action on voting rights this year, multiple sources tell us. They are hoping...

The Senate passed a $2.5 trillion debt ceiling increase that will push the ceiling past the 2022 midterm elections by temporarily bypassing the Senate’s filibuster. It passed, 50-49, with solely Democrat votes. The measure moves to the House, where it is quickly expected to pass and get sent to President Biden. The federal government may face a default on its debt if Congress fails to raise the debt ceiling by December 15. The Senate passed the debt ceiling increase after members created a one-time carveout to the Senate’s rules, allowing Democrats to pass the bill with a simple majority. Sen....

Senate breaks filibuster on framework bill to allow Senate to raise debt ceiling with a simple majority. This required 60 yeas. The vote was 64-36. 14 GOP yeas: Thune McConnell Barrasso Wicker Capito Collins Blunt Tillis Murkowski Burr Ernst Cornyn Romney Portman

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-KY) efforts to fast-track the debt ceiling is a tactic to protect his own “ego,” a former senior GOP aide told Breitbart News. McConnell has pushed to fast-track the adoption of legislation to raise the debt ceiling. His proposal would allow the Senate to consider the debt ceiling legislation with only a 51-vote majority or to allow it to pass with mainly Democrat votes.

At the end of the day, senators care more about protecting themselves and their colleagues from unpredictable, inconvenient floor votes than they do about passing legislation.Official Washington’s conventional wisdom about the Senate filibuster is a fairy tale. It is utterly unmoored from the choices being made by individual senators, party caucuses, and the body as a whole. Every person who has ever told you that the mean, nasty, outdated legislative filibuster is the source of Senate gridlock and the obstacle to common-sense legislating in Congress has either swallowed, or is peddling, a lie. In an op-ed in the Washington Post...

Brian Murray knows just how fierce an opponent Arizona's Sen. Kyrsten Sinema can be. The Republican strategist saw his candidate lose to Democrat Sinema in their 2012 race for the House. Calling the experience "unpleasant," Murray admits his candidate, Vernon Parker, was flawed, but "flawed candidates win all of the time. Kyrsten, however, was an absolute machine." Sinema, along with fellow centrist Democrat Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, has recently become the epicenter of American politics largely because she insists on siding with the interests of her constituents instead of the demands of her party. Over the past few...

A coalition of nearly 70 California progressive grassroots groups urged Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) either to call for the "swift passage" of both the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act by the end of this month or to resign. In a letter released on Tuesday, the 69 civic and environmental groups asked that Feinstein call for the two pieces of legislation to be passed and express her willingness to "abolish or create an exception to the filibuster" in order to get them through the Senate. "If you are unwilling to take these steps to...

Senate Republicans on Nov. 3 filibustered an election bill put forward by Democrats, continuing a longstanding division between the two parties on voting-related legislation. The mostly party-line vote saw only one defection, as Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) joined Democrats in support of the bill, and is now the only Republican lawmaker to lend support to any of Democrats’ election bills. Vice President Kamala Harris presided over the vote. “After today’s vote, it’s clear that the modern Republican Party has turned its back on protecting voting rights,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said after the legislation failed to advance. Schumer...