There’s a new elections bill in the Senate that the majority loves but the minority hates. So now the filibuster fight must begin anew. Sound familiar? It should. It’s the mirror image of the January 19, 2022, failed vote to end the filibuster to pass the Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act.
But this time the Republicans are the ones weighing the nuclear option, or something very like it, to pass a voting bill – the SAVE America Act, which would require proof of citizenship to register to vote and showing ID when voting in person in federal elections nationwide. Can the filibuster survive this push – and should it?
Fickle Feelings on the Filibuster
The House passed the SAVE America Act on Wednesday, February 11, almost entirely along party lines, with one Democrat – Henry Cuellar of Texas – voting for it and one Republican – Greg Murphy of North Carolina – abstaining.
The bill now faces a narrower majority and a greater threshold to pass in the Senate. Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) is leading the charge to get it through the upper chamber, and his plan to make that happen includes what many would consider a nuclear option: enforcing a talking filibuster.
“What’s next now that we have enough votes to pass the motion to proceed to the House-passed SAVE America Act,” Sen. Lee asked in a post on X. “In a nutshell, we now need to convince Senate Republicans to ditch the Zombie Filibuster & enforce the Talking Filibuster on this bill!”
“Enforcing the Talking Filibuster is NOT ‘eliminating’ the filibuster,” he said in a later post. Many of his colleagues agree. At least a handful, however, don’t.
Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) declared her support for the bill itself – making her the 50th senator to do so – but she said she would not support changing the filibuster rules. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) called changing the filibuster rules an idea “that doesn’t have a future.” Sen. Lee’s fellow Utah Republican, John Curtis, also opposes “skirting around the filibuster,” as does North Carolina’s Thom Tillis. And Alaska Republican Lisa Murkowski opposes the bill itself – never mind the rule change likely required to pass it.
With a majority of 51 – or 50 plus Vice President JD Vance as tiebreaker – needed to change the filibuster rules at all, Sen. Lee can only afford to lose three. So far, we’ve counted five – putting his attempt to change the rules at a likely 48-52 failure.
But if Republicans don’t eliminate – or at least change – the filibuster, are they simply planning to lose both now and in the future? That’s the argument made by those supporting this plan, and there’s some merit to it.
Democrats held the trifecta not that long ago, and they tried multiple times to eliminate the filibuster entirely, failing only because of two moderates who are no longer serving. It stands to reason that, eventually, Democrats will hold both chambers of Congress and the White House again. What then?
The Old Guard Is Gone
Only two Democrats stood in the way of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) killing the legislative filibuster the handful of times it came up in the first couple of years of Biden’s presidency. Two Democrat-led voting bills in 2021 and 2022 sparked an actual up or down vote on removing the filibuster, but then-Democrats Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Joe Manchin of West Virginia refused to allow it. Other issues came up, like enshrining abortion access in federal law, but they didn’t see a filibuster-killing vote – likely due to the knowledge that Sinema and Manchin wouldn’t toe the party line.
Both eventually went independent and then left the Senate, and both have since been replaced. Manchin’s replacement, former governor Jim Justice, is a Republican, so that vote is lost to Schumer.
But Sinema was replaced by yet another Democrat – Ruben Gallego – and he is all for nuking the filibuster, or at least he was while his predecessor opposed it. The last time such a vote came up in 2022, every Democrat but these two holdouts supported ending it. Eventually, it stands to reason, Democrats will hold a trifecta again. And as Schumer put it when it appeared Kamala Harris might win the presidency: “We got it up to 48, but, of course, Sinema and Manchin voted no; that’s why we couldn’t change the rules. Well, they’re both gone.”
Democrats of the Future
Some of those senators have since retired or resigned – or, in Dianne Feinstein’s case, died. So how do their replacements compare?
Angela Alsobrooks is the new Democrat from Maryland, taking over for Ben Cardin after his retirement. Where does she stand on the issue? “Angela firmly believes that the filibuster in the Senate should be eliminated,” it clearly states in her campaign material for the 2024 election.
Lisa Blunt Rochester replaced fellow Democrat Tom Carper in the Senate for Delaware. In July of 2023, she posted to X: “The filibuster is an archaic tool created to hinder America’s progress.” If that didn’t make her course of action clear, the next line certainly did: “As Delaware’s next United States Senator, you can count on my vote to abolish the filibuster once and for all.”
After Bob Menendez resigned, Andy Kim won the special election, keeping that New Jersey seat comfortably blue. When it comes to the filibuster, he advocates reform and a return to the “talking” version. How he’ll vote should his party try to go nuclear in the future, however, remains to be seen.
Adam Schiff won Dianne Feinstein’s old seat in California. He has called numerous times for the end of the filibuster – well, at least when his party is in the majority. He suggests that the occasional wild swing in policy is better than the current “democracy-defeating stalemate.”
Elissa Slotkin narrowly defeated Republican Mike Rogers to take over Debbie Stabenow’s seat for Michigan when she retired. During a campaign speech in 2024, she said: “I am like, um, loud and proud on reforming the filibuster so we can vote on gun laws, voter access, women’s rights. All those things could be voted on tomorrow if we only needed 51 instead of 60 to get an up or down vote.”
In Vermont, Peter Welch replaced longtime Senator Patrick Leahy. In June of 2022, Welch posted on X: If I’m elected to the Senate, I’ll vote to abolish the filibuster and codify Roe.”
Finally, we have John Fetterman of Pennsylvania. He has notoriously been a thorn in the side of his fellow Democrats – just as Sinema and Manchin were – but his stance on the filibuster is unclear. Like his fellow Democrats – and, it must be said, many Republicans – he was all for eliminating it when they’re in power. But where it gets interesting is when he also advocated for going nuclear in the minority.
“We ran on killing the filibuster, and now we love it. You know, it’s like, carve it out so we can move on,” Fetterman said when asked by a reporter if Republicans should go nuclear to end the shutdown last year. “I support it because it makes it more difficult to shut the government down in the future, and that’s where it’s entirely appropriate. And I don’t want to hear any Democrat clutching their pearls about the filibuster. We all ran on it.” Though he did more recently say they were wrong to take that stance – so who knows?
Of course, by 2029, the next time there’s a possibility of a Democrat trifecta in the swamp, some or even many of those Democrats might be replaced. Still, with only one or maybe two Democrats currently serving even remotely likely to defend some form of it, the filibuster doesn’t seem to have a bright future – whether it survives the SAVE America Act or not.
