There is a lot of talk about the fate of the filibuster after President Donald Trump called on Republicans to eliminate the vote threshold required to advance legislation in the U.S. Senate.
Amid the ongoing government shutdown, the president made his feelings about the parliamentary procedure known on Truth Social earlier this month:
“Remember, Republicans, regardless of the Schumer Shutdown, the Democrats will terminate the Filibuster the first chance they get. They will Pack the Supreme Court, pick up two States, and add at least 8 Electoral Votes. Their two objectors are gone!!! Don’t be WEAK AND STUPID. FIGHT,FIGHT, FIGHT! WIN, WIN, WIN! We will immediately END the Extortionist Shutdown, get ALL of our agenda passed, and make life so good for Americans that these DERANGED DEMOCRAT politicians will never again have the chance to DESTROY AMERICA! Republicans, you will rue the day that you didn’t TERMINATE THE FILIBUSTER!!! BE TOUGH, BE SMART, AND WIN!!! This is much bigger than the Shutdown, this is the survival of our Country!”
He renewed the call in the aftermath of GOP losses in last Tuesday’s elections, imploring Republican senators during a breakfast meeting at the White House to terminate the filibuster so that they can better accomplish his legislative agenda.
Under the current rules, ending the filibuster requires 60 votes. Eliminating it all together would allow bills to move through the Senate more quickly and pass with a simple majority. With the Republicans currently holding a 53-47 advantage, it would bypass the need for any Democrat support.
The Debate
As reported on Thursday’s AM Update, many high-profile Democrats regularly pushed to kill the filibuster in order to pass key agenda items – including making Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico states to effectively add four more Democratic senators and adding seats to the U.S. Supreme Court – during the Biden administration.
Those bids were thwarted by then-Democrat Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, who both insisted on maintaining the filibuster and establishing bipartisan consensus. With neither Manchin nor Sinema still in the Senate, President Trump has argued the filibuster is as good as dead once Democrats regain power.
Vice President J.D. Vance echoed the president’s sentiment on X. “Many of my friends (and former colleagues) in the senate are against eliminating the filibuster because they don’t think the Democrats will do it. This is just obviously wrong,” he wrote on Friday. “The reason the filibuster exists is because of democratic senators Manchin and Sinema. Both of them had their careers destroyed by the far left for protecting the filibuster, and you better believe every senate Democrat internalized that lesson.”
Even so, key Republican senators are still resisting the call. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) told local South Dakota outlet KELO on Thursday that “getting rid of the filibuster is not the answer here, and, frankly, there aren’t the votes to do it even if we tried.”
The Case for Keeping It
With all that in mind, Megyn asked her National Review’s Rich Lowry and Charles C.W. Cooke for their take when they joined her at the ‘Megyn Kelly Live’ show in Duluth, Georgia, on Saturday. Both were in favor of keeping the filibuster intact.
Lowry said it “would be a mistake” to get rid of it. “What big things does Trump want legislatively? What he really wanted was the ‘One Big, Beautiful Bill, and he got it. Most of the other stuff that he wants to do, he can do unilaterally – whether it’s tariffs or blowing up drug boats off the coast of Venezuela,” he noted.
That is why the GOP should, in his view, be more forward-looking. “[If] Republicans eliminate it and still lose the House next year… it doesn’t matter what the vote threshold is in the Senate. And then, God forbid, if you get unified control by Democrats in 2028, you’ve taken out the one check to them,” Lowry explained. “Yes, the left will be desperate to eliminate the filibuster, but it doesn’t mean they will be able to do it. There are probably about 10 Democrats who think this is a bad idea and don’t want to do it in the Senate. So, I just think that the upside is very small as a practical matter; the downside could be huge.”
Cooke said the “biggest reason not to do it” comes from the U.S. Constitution. “The Constitution is supposed to allow a lot of room for the states,” he said. “I think Georgia is a much better run state than, say, California… Let’s assume [Gov.] Gavin Newsom becomes president, and then everyone’s other favorite, [Rep.] Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, becomes a senator. What they want to do more than anything is to essentially litigate Georgia out of existence with federal law.”
As Cooke explained, the filibuster is “one of the things that stops… the federal government from taking too much power.” While he acknowledged that encroachment has already occurred, he said this would be on an even greater scale. “The filibuster has proven very good at preventing the federal government from taking too much power,” he said. “I know it’s done it anyway, but [it would be] too much power that you would really, really notice and I don’t want to lose.”
Megyn believes there is also a political case to be made. “Republicans don’t have the votes, but let’s say they did it soon and Trump started pushing through legislation boom, boom, boom. There is no chance there wouldn’t be a bloodbath in the midterms,” she posited. “I mean, Americans tend to like divided government. They don’t want any one branch or one party to have too much power, and I think the Republicans would definitely lose the House and the Senate if they pushed it through. So, it would be a very short joyride for not that much return.”
“The loss of the Senate seats could go dangerously high. People are going to want to send a message that they do like minority rights,” she added. “I just think you are playing with fire. So, I am not in favor of it, personally – not yet. I haven’t seen a case.”
Possible Compromise?
At the ‘Megyn Kelly Live’ tour stop in Jacksonville, Florida, Thursday night, Ben Shapiro floated a possible compromise that he said was put forward by former Daily Wire CEO Jeremy Boreing about a year ago.
“What he suggested is that what Republicans should do… is they should say to Democrats, ‘Let’s do a constitutional amendment to enshrine the filibuster permanently. And if you won’t do it, then we’ll nuke it,'” he explained.
Shapiro called it “quite smart” because it puts everyone on the record. “Either we’re all on board or nobody’s on board,” he noted. “We’re not going to play this kind of take-them-on-faith game.”
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