Copyright Newsweek
Frustrated by the ongoing government shutdown, President Donald Trump has repeatedly called on Senate Republicans to go for the “nuclear option” and get rid of the filibuster in recent days. “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!” the president wrote on Truth Social last week. Trump is pushing his party to scrap the filibuster—the longstanding Senate rule that requires 60 votes to overcome objections. The Senate is currently split 53-47, with the GOP having the majority. Democrats have enough votes to keep the government closed while demanding an extension of health care subsidies that are slated to expire at the end of the year if Congress doesn’t extend them. Republicans, however, say those negotiations can happen after the government is funded. If the GOP acquiesces and does away with the filibuster, long been viewed as a way to encourage bipartisanship and guard against political dominance by slim majorities in the upper chamber, they can immediately end the shutdown, now the longest in the nation’s history, and advance their policy priorities. However, Republican leaders have been resisting Trump’s calls, wary that eliminating the filibuster would dilute their power if and when they are in the minority again. The president's "Make America Great Again" (MAGA) supporters have split on the issue, with some cautioning against scrapping the filibuster because of what it would mean if Democrats regain power. Trump has dismissed those concerns, writing in a Truth Social post on Thursday that Democrats would scrap the filibuster the moment they have the chance and that Republicans “should do it, NOW, and have the greatest three years in History!” Experts explained to Newsweek how eliminating the filibuster could be a double-edged sword for Republicans, giving them immediate legislative wins but less power in the event that Democrats regain control of Congress in the future. “The Senate filibuster exists because of the traditional view that Senate Rule XXII requires a supermajority to vote to end debate on a bill (‘cloture’), and requires a supermajority vote to change the cloture rule,” Catherine Fisk, a professor of law at the University of California, Berkeley, who has written extensively about the filibuster, told Newsweek. She continued: “When the Senate has eliminated the filibuster in the past (e.g., on the confirmation of judges), it has done so by securing a majority to vote to change Rule XXII and then appealing the procedural objection about the vote to the Vice President, acting as presiding officer of the Senate, who rules that a majority vote is sufficient to change Rule XXII.” Fisk said that if Republicans vote to end the legislative filibuster, it "will be a step toward making the Senate more majoritarian.” She said that “in the current political climate, the GOP benefits from nonmajoritarian rules because Democrats outnumber Republicans, and small states are benefitted by the structure of the Senate. But if Democrats get a majority in the Senate, and the House, and the White House, it will enhance their power. Of course, if Republicans hold onto a narrow majority in the Senate, it will enhance their power.” Grant Davis Reeher, a professor of political science at Syracuse University, told Newsweek that the resistance from Republican Senate leaders is a reassuring sign that institutional guardrails still hold. “The fact that Republican Senate leaders have made it clear that they are not interested in making that change is what causes me to say this,” he said. “One of the questions I ask my colleagues who argue that Republicans are hell-bent on crippling democracy is: If that’s the case, why haven’t they just eliminated the filibuster, and then they could ram through everything they want, all across the board? Now the president has called this question, and they are standing firm, so far.” Senate Majority Leader John Thune, a South Dakota Republican who began his tenure with a pledge to preserve the filibuster, recently said there were not enough votes among Senate Republicans to change the rules and scrap the legislative filibuster. In 2013, then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat, took what’s known as the “nuclear option” by eliminating the filibuster for all nominations except for Supreme Court nominations. Republicans returned the favor in 2017 by eliminating it for Supreme Court nominees and confirmed Trump’s nominee Neil Gorsuch to the nation’s highest court. Democrats came close to eliminating the legislative filibuster when they had full power in Washington four years ago but ultimately didn’t since enough Democratic senators opposed the move, warning that doing so would come back to haunt them. Reeher argued that Trump is “playing with fire” by calling for getting rid of the legislative filibuster now. “If the Republicans now eliminate it completely, it is hard to imagine that Democrats would re-institute it when they retake the Senate (which will happen one day),” he said, adding that even if Republicans bring back the filibuster before they lose control of the Senate, it's “unlikely that Democrats won’t just remove it again when they have power.” That would fuel a cycle where narrow majorities in the Senate could alternate between enacting and repealing sweeping policies every time power changes hands, Reeher said. Reeher added that although the filibuster is “undemocratic on its face—you need to get a supermajority of 60 in order to have a vote—given that we have the system of separated political institutions that we do, our political process depends on some level of cooperation and compromise.” He said it “forces compromise within the Senate and therefore helps to sustain compromises across both chambers and the White House. It’s frequently not pretty and it can lead to deadlock as it has here, but eliminating it is not going to fix the broader political problems we’re dealing with at the moment. Rather, it would create big lurches and back and forth between more extreme policy changes that are constantly cancelling each other out, depending on who is in power at the moment.” Costas Panagopoulos, a professor of political science at Northeastern University, agreed, noting that Republicans and Democrats have resisted getting rid of the filibuster because of concern about the political ramifications. Abolishing it now “could backfire on Republicans in several ways,” he told Newsweek. “Most importantly, it could shoot the GOP in the foot in the future when the party is no longer in the majority.” Panagopoulos said it could also cost Republicans at the polls in next year's midterm elections. Earlier this week, Democrats won big in the first major Election Day since Trump returned to the White House. The president blamed the ongoing shutdown for Democratic wins and argued that Republicans will endure "brutal" losses in next year's elections unless they eliminate the filibuster to end the shutdown and pass legislation. But doing so “could also calcify the perception that Trump and congressional Republicans are willing to dismantle American institutions designed to protect minority rights in order to steamroll their agenda through Congress,” Panagopoulos said. “It may be viewed as overstepping and can potentially exact a price at the polls from voters who value institutions that promote compromise and cooperation more so than partisan interests,” he added.
