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Gutting the filibuster was once a taboo notion among Senate Republicans, but the idea is gaining traction thanks to President Donald Trump’s repeated calls to throw out the longstanding procedure.
The Senate filibuster is the 60-vote threshold that applies to most bills in the upper chamber, and given the nature of the thin majorities that either party has commanded in recent years, that means legislation typically has to be bipartisan to advance.
It proved a key barrier to reopening the government and advancing several other Republican priorities in recent weeks, like the GOP’s Obamacare fix that was torpedoed by Senate Democrats.
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For years, it’s been viewed as a tool of the minority party in the Senate meant to prevent majorities from ramming through partisan legislation that both Republicans and Democrats have taken advantage of.
But near-monthly prodding from Trump and recent frustration with the 43-day government shutdown has some Republicans rethinking their position on the filibuster.
“It’s something I’m giving serious consideration to now,” Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., told Fox News Digital.
Marshall previously told Fox News Digital, “Never, never, ever, never, none,” when asked if he would consider changing the rules after Trump called on Republicans to nuke the filibuster in October.
Just a few months later, Marshall is reconsidering his position.
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“I think between the last government shutdown and the threat of this one, it makes me pause,” he said. “It seems like the appropriations process is being slowed down. It feels like, with healthcare, that the Democrats, really the Democratic Party, doesn’t want to get anything done. So eliminating the filibuster ends all that.”
He echoed Trump, who on Monday told reporters that he wanted Senate Republicans to “knock out” the filibuster.
“You wouldn’t have January 30th looming, because you have the 30th of January looming, you know that, right? And if we knocked out the filibuster it would be just a simple approval,” he said. “But you have some Republicans — they’re unable to explain why, you know if you ask them why they’re unable to explain, they cannot win the debate, but they should knock out the filibuster.”
The likelihood that such a change crosses the floor in the Senate is low, given that Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., has routinely remained rooted in his position that the filibuster shouldn’t be touched.
Still, Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., a member of Thune’s leadership team, said that his position had also changed on the filibuster.
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Mullin told Fox News’ Will Cain that during a recent meeting with Senate GOP leadership, he asked the room if they truly believed that Senate Democrats wouldn’t try to get rid of the procedural safeguard when they regained a majority again.
“If we believe that they’re going to do it, then why don’t we just go ahead and get it done,” he said.
Other Republicans are more skeptical about the odds of the filibuster getting axed. Some, like Mullin, think it could be narrowly tailored to only apply to spending bills, while others see the move as fantasy.
“That’s not gonna happen,” Sen. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, told Fox News Digital.
And Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., said that lawmakers weren’t even “using the tools we have right now” to pass Republicans’ agenda.
Kennedy has pushed for another round of budget reconciliation, given that Republicans have two more attempts at the grueling process, to tackle the growing affordability issues in the country.
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He argued that’s how Republicans passed Trump’s signature legislation, the “one, big beautiful bill,” earlier this year.
“Yes, you can’t do everything, but you can do a lot, and that’s what I would be concentrating my energies on,” Kennedy said. “And I’ve said respectfully to the president that I don’t think the United States Senate is going to give up the filibuster or the blue slip. He obviously disagrees, and I respect that reasonable people disagree sometimes, but I’m a pragmatist. I deal with the world as it is, not as I want it to be.”
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