Trump Finally Demands Something the Senate GOP Isn’t Ready to Give: ‘Get Rid of the Filibuster’

In his second term, President Trump has grown accustomed to getting what he wants from a compliant Congress under unified Republican control. But as he approaches the end of his first year in office, he may have finally found an issue on which Republicans, at least those in the upper chamber, are unwilling to accommodate him.

Years after he called on the Senate GOP to nuke the filibuster during his first term, Trump is again urging Republicans in the upper chamber to do away with the Senate's 60-vote threshold for passing legislation — this time over Senate Democrats' refusal to pass a continuing resolution to fund the government.

This time around, he's likely to face resistance again from Senate Republicans, including Senate Majority Leader Thune (R., S.D.).

"It is now time for the 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 in a long social media statement on Thursday evening.

The president's renewed interest in nuking the old Senate rule came as no surprise to Thune, a stalwart defender of the filibuster who expressed doubt this week that there's much of an appetite in the Senate GOP conference to overturn the rule.

Pressed on the matter during a sit-down interview with National Review on Wednesday, Thune acknowledged that debates surrounding the filibuster are an "ongoing conversation" with Trump, and that "obviously the president’s very interested in that" given "how recalcitrant and unreasonable the Democrats are being" over government funding.

"I think he—like a lot of people—views it as sort of one of those creatures of Senate history that doesn’t fit the modern times," Thune said in the wide-ranging interview, one day before Trump called on Thune’s conference to scrap the filibuster. "But I do think that most of our members—and there aren’t more than probably a handful who would vote to get rid of it—believe that it does."

Thune has long said that nuking the filibuster is a "bad idea." Is there a world in which he'd ever support doing away with it? Barring "some national emergency… I can’t envision one," Thune told NR.

Not every Republican can say the same: Representative Chip Roy (R., Texas) said last week that the party should "look at" eliminating the filibuster for continuing resolutions. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R., Ga.) has also endorsed the idea.

In a Friday statement following Trump's Thursday evening post, Thune's office released a statement making clear that his "position on the importance of the legislative filibuster is unchanged."

For Trump, Senate Democrats' progressive legislative wish list is a reason to overturn the Senate rule. But for Thune, that wish list — not to mention the strong opposition to the filibuster that inevitably emerges among Democrats when they are in the majority — is a reason to protect it. "I don’t think any of our members want to be viewed as empowering that agenda if we get rid of it," Thune told NR.

The South Dakotan highlighted a series of progressive demands that a filibuster-free Senate Democratic caucus would capitalize on in a future Democratic-controlled Washington: Statehood for D.C. and Puerto Rico, packing the Supreme Court, federalizing elections, and "abortion on demand," to name a few.

"There are some things obviously, that the president may want to do," Thune told NR. "But I just think, when you look at it in the historical context, how the Democrats might use it, I just don’t think we want our fingerprints on that, and so I’ve been very clear and outspoken that, yes, I think it’s a bad idea."

If Senate Republicans were to eliminate the filibuster for continuing resolutions, they'd be further weakening the institution after changing Senate rules last month to get Trump's nominees past a Democratic blockade, lowering the 60-vote threshold required to consider a group of nominees to just a simple majority.

But Thune's desire to protect the filibuster from further erosion seems to be broadly shared across his caucus, even as pressure builds to reopen the government. Following the 2024 elections, when Republicans flipped the upper chamber, the vast majority of Senate Republicans interviewed by National Review made clear that overturning the filibuster is always a bad idea — even when the president demands it.

And several Senate Republicans — including other members of conference leadership — have reiterated their staunch opposition to any such effort this month in response to some GOP lawmakers' flirtation with the idea amid the shutdown.

"The Democrats would love for us to do that. They tried to do it last time because they wanted to add D.C. and Puerto Rico as states with more Democrat senators," Senate Republican Whip John Barrasso (R., Wyo.) said this month. "They wanted to expand the Supreme Court from 9 to 13, and they wanted to get rid of voter ID, so that's not something that we're going to entertain."

"We don't need to end the filibuster, we need 5 more Democrats to come to their senses and open the government," Senate Republican Conference Chairman Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) said earlier this week. "Senate Republicans will not be baited by nonsensical Democrat demands."

"That's not going to happen in your or my natural lifetime," Senator John Kennedy (R., La.) said this month.