President Donald Trump has turned up the heat on Senate Republicans to abolish the filibuster rule, which requires 60 votes to advance most legislation, as the government shutdown drags into record territory. At a breakfast meeting with GOP senators on Wednesday, the president said, as quoted by Reuters:
We have to get the country open. And the way we’re going to do it this afternoon is to terminate the filibuster.
The call followed a string of anti-filibuster posts that started last week. On Tuesday, in one of the posts, the president wrote:
REPUBLICANS, TERMINATE THE FILIBUSTER! GET BACK TO PASSING LEGISLATION AND VOTER REFORM!
An hour later, he added:
Pass Voter Reform, Voter ID, No Mail-In Ballots. Save our Supreme Court from “Packing,” No Two State addition, etc. TERMINATE THE FILIBUSTER!!!
In one of his posts last week, Trump addressed the issue with his usual flair, declaring that Democrats had gone, in his word, “crazy.” For a man decrying madness, the symmetry was hard to miss:
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!
According to his advisors, Trump is prepared to pressure his fellow Republicans relentlessly. As reported by Axios on Tuesday, the president “will make their lives a living hell”:
He will call them at three o’clock in the morning. He will blow them up in their districts. He will call them un-American. He will call them old creatures of a dying institution.
“[Trump’s] really mad about this,” said a source.
Democrats’ Wins
Trump’s rhetorical escalation and pressure campaign followed a string of Democratic victories in Tuesday’s elections. As summarized by The Hill:
Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-N.J.) defeated former New Jersey General Assembly member Jack Ciattarelli (R) to be elected governor in the state; former Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.) beat Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears in Virginia’s gubernatorial race, and Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani became mayor-elect over former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who ran an independent campaign. In the past few days, Trump threw his support behind Cuomo.
Trump, The Hill noted, also renewed his attacks on the filibuster after California voters approved a mid-decade redistricting measure expected to give Democrats as many as five new House seats in 2026. The initiative, championed by Gov. Gavin Newsom, was framed as a counterweight to Republican redistricting drives in states such as Texas, publicly backed by Trump.
“The Smart Party”
Earlier on Tuesday, Trump laid out his case for eliminating the filibuster in a characteristically emotional post. His message was simple: Abolish the rule, and victory will take care of itself:
The Democrats are far more likely to win the Midterms, and the next Presidential Election, if we don’t do the Termination of the Filibuster (The Nuclear Option!), because it will be impossible for Republicans to get Common Sense Policies done with these Crazed Democrat Lunatics being able to block everything by withholding their votes.
The tone alternated between warning and certainty:
FOR THREE YEARS, NOTHING WILL BE PASSED, AND REPUBLICANS WILL BE BLAMED. Elections, including the Midterms, will be rightfully brutal.
The post then unfolded into a catalog of policy goals and grievances.
If we do terminate the Filibuster, we will get EVERYTHING approved, like no Congress in History. We will have FAIR, FREE, and SAFE Elections, No Men in Women’s Sports or Transgender for Everybody, Strong Borders, Major Tax and Energy Cuts, and will secure our Second Amendment, which the Democrats will also terminate, IMMEDIATELY.
The president closed his post with the call to Republicans to be “smart”:
TERMINATE THE FILIBUSTER NOW, END THE RIDICULOUS SHUTDOWN IMMEDIATELY, AND THEN, MOST IMPORTANTLY, PASS EVERY WONDERFUL REPUBLICAN POLICY THAT WE HAVE DREAMT OF, FOR YEARS, BUT NEVER GOTTEN. WE WILL BE THE PARTY THAT CANNOT BE BEATEN — THE SMART PARTY!!!
The post captured familiar logic: Problems stem not from disagreement or complexity, but from rules that slow momentum. Compromise, in this framework, is not a tool but a defect. What Trump misses is an obvious fact that killing the rule won’t cement victory — it will simply arm his successors with the same weapon aimed in the opposite direction.
GOP
Despite growing pressure, many Senate Republicans remain hesitant to ditch the filibuster. Majority leader John Thune of South Dakota reaffirmed the party’s resistance, noting there is no clear vote count to support scrapping the rule.
Mike Rounds, also of the Mount Rushmore State, said the chamber’s design demands patience, not speed:
[T]here’s a lot of us that really think the Senate was designed in the first place to find a long-term, stable solution to problems.
Meanwhile, the office of Wyoming Senator John Barrasso, the Senate Republican Conference chairman, told The Associated Press that he is opposing ending the rule.
Utah Republican John Curtis also pushed back. “The filibuster forces us to find common ground in the Senate,” he posted. He warned:
Power changes hands, but principles shouldn’t.
Some more junior Republicans, however, are wavering. As reported by The Hill, Senator Josh Hawley (Mo.) signaled that “all options may be on the table.” He framed his stance in moral rather than procedural terms:
At a certain point, people have to be able to go to the VA and get health care. They have to. People have to be able to get their food stamp benefits. They won’t be able to live.
Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, once a fierce defender of the procedure, described Trump’s proposal as “probably a viable option.” Echoing Hawley, he alluded that the filibuster hurts people:
So it’s going to be a stalemate, and the loser is going to be the American people.
Outside of the Senate, Representative Buddy Carter of Georgia implied the filibuster is an “outdated swamp tradition.” He said bluntly in a Wednesday statement:
The filibuster is killing our country. Democrats have turned it into a weapon to block America First policies.
His view captures the frustration of those who see the rule as an obstacle to action. But to its defenders, that obstacle is the point.
The Case for the Filibuster
Though not written into the Constitution, the filibuster reflects its spirit — to restrain power and steady the pace of lawmaking. It remains one of the few mechanisms that prevents a single election from rewriting the American order.
As documented in The New American article “The Case for the Filibuster,” the rule embodies the Senate’s original purpose: to deliberate rather than rush, to cool the passions of the moment, and to force cooperation where division comes easily. The Founders designed the upper chamber to resist the pull of immediate politics — a safeguard against both mob impulse and executive overreach.
Trump’s demand to “terminate the filibuster” mistakes deliberation for weakness. The Senate was never meant to act on command or to serve as an echo chamber for presidential will.
In a republic built on the separation of powers, disagreement is not a flaw — it is a safeguard against unrestrained power.
