Republicans are quickly tamping down President Donald Trump’s call to eliminate the Senate filibuster as they try to keep pressure on Democrats to end the 31-day government shutdown.
GOP leaders believed Thursday they were on track to reopen agencies as soon as next week. Then Trump threw a fresh complication into their laps overnight when he revived calls for Republicans to invoke the “nuclear option” and eliminate the 60-vote threshold for passing most legislation. Without it, Republican senators could reopen the government on their own.
But many GOP senators have vocally defended the filibuster, including Majority Leader John Thune, calling the 60-vote rule a fundamental feature of the Senate and one that works to conservatives’ benefit in the long run.
Thune has defended the filibuster multiple times during the shutdown, calling it a “bad idea” to suggest eliminating it. “The 60-vote threshold has protected this country,” he said earlier this month.
Ryan Wrasse, a spokesperson for the South Dakota Republican, said in a statement on Friday that “Leader Thune’s position on the importance of the legislative filibuster is unchanged.”
Kate Noyes — a spokesperson for Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming, the No. 2 GOP leader — said on Friday his position in support of the legislative filibuster also hasn’t changed.
Speaker Mike Johnson, who has no direct role in Senate affairs but occupies a key role in managing the shutdown, also struck a cautionary note in comments to reporters Friday.
He called the filibuster a “Senate chamber issue” but added that it “has traditionally been viewed as a very important safeguard.”
“If the shoe was on the other foot, I don’t think our team would like it,” Johnson said.
Trump’s demand — made in a pair of Truth Social posts — came just as GOP senators believed they were on the brink of convincing enough Senate Democrats to reopen the government. A bipartisan group of rank-and-file senators are planning to talk through the weekend, with some lawmakers believing a deal could be reached by the middle of next week.
“BECAUSE OF THE FACT THAT THE DEMOCRATS HAVE GONE STONE COLD ‘CRAZY,’ THE CHOICE IS CLEAR — INITIATE THE ‘NUCLEAR OPTION,’ GET RID OF THE FILIBUSTER AND, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!” Trump wrote.
He separately indicated he wanted the rules changed not only to reopen the government but to also pass other GOP priorities before Democrats regain power and eliminate the filibuster themselves.
“Democrats will exercise their rights, and it will be done in the first day they take office, regardless of whether or not we do it,” he wrote.
To change the chamber’s rules, Republicans would need 50 votes plus a tiebreak from Vice President JD Vance — meaning they could lose no more than three senators.
Republicans do not currently have the votes within the conference to nix the filibuster, four people granted anonymity to discuss internal deliberations told POLITICO Friday.
Beyond Thune and Barrasso, Trump is already getting other public defections.
“The filibuster forces us to find common ground in the Senate. Power changes hands, but principles shouldn’t. I’m a firm no on eliminating it,” Sen. John Curtis (R-Utah) wrote on X on Friday.
Daniel Keylin, a spokesperson for Sen. Thom Tillis, said Friday that the North Carolina Republican “would never vote to eliminate the legislative filibuster under any circumstance.”
Prior to Trump’s postings Thursday, more than a dozen GOP senators had rejected chatter about changing Senate rules as the shutdown dragged on in recent weeks. Those include Tillis and Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who both have an independent streak, as well as frequent Trump allies such as Sens. John Cornyn (R-Texas), Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) and James Lankford (R-Okla.).
And then there’s Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who as majority leader during Trump’s first term, repeatedly fended off the president’s previous attacks on the filibuster.
McConnell didn’t immediately respond on Friday to Trump’s comments. But his office pointed back to comments he made in a recent biography: “Trump asked me to go nuclear and I had a one word answer: ‘No.’”
Some of the GOP fervor to eliminate the filibuster is coming from the House, where some conservative hard-liners have raised the possibility of muscling spending legislation past Democrats by changing the other chamber’s rules.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), for instance, pressed Johnson on the idea during a House Republican Conference call this week, urging the Senate GOP to simply change the rules and pass the House-approved stopgap spending bill.
But other voices in the GOP aren’t sold, and Johnson’s wariness Friday reflects widespread sentiment in his ranks.
Johnson chalked up Trump’s comments to what some other Republicans speculated privately on Friday: That Trump, like GOP lawmakers, is growing frustrated by the weeks-long shutdown, which is on track to break the 35-day record next week.
“What you’re seeing is an expression of the president’s anger at the situation. He is as angry as I am and the American people are about this madness, and he just desperately wants the government to be reopened,” Johnson added.
Meredith Lee Hill contributed to this report.
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