'Going to Make Their Lives Hell': Trump Plans All-Out Pressure Campaign on GOP Senators to Kill Filibuster
"Republicans are rubber stamps for Donald Trump on everything else," said Sen. Chris Van Hollen. "This may be the one area where they've decided not to play ball."
President Donald Trump is reportedly planning to escalate his campaign to eliminate the filibuster in the US Senate.
According to a Tuesday report from Axios, Trump plans to relentlessly harass Republican senators until they accept his demands to kill the filibuster, which imposes a 60-vote threshold for closing debate on most legislation in the Senate ahead of a final vote.
One Trump adviser told the publication that the president plans to be relentless in lobbying Republicans to end the filibuster in a way he never was before.
"He will call them at 3 o'clock in the morning," they said. "He will blow them up in their districts. He will call them un-American. He will call them old creatures of a dying institution. Believe you me, he's going to make their lives just hell."
Another adviser told Axios that Trump is "really mad" about Democrats being able to force a government shutdown—now tied for the longest in history—even when Republicans have control of the US House, Senate, and presidency.
The official White House account on X even got into the action on Tuesday with an all-caps post demanding that GOP senators "TERMINATE THE FILIBUSTER!!!"
Even so, there so far is no indication that enough Republican senators are going to obey Trump's orders on this issue, especially since three of them—Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Bill Cassidy (R-La.), and Susan Collins (R-Maine)—voted to convict him at his second impeachment trial in 2021.
Many Republicans, including former Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), have long taken the view that the filibuster is a net benefit for their party given that it gives them the ability to indefinitely stall most progressive legislation.
In fact, Fox News reported on Tuesday that current Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) believes there are at most a dozen Republican votes in his caucus in favor of scrapping the filibuster.
In an interview with Axios, Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) expressed confidence that Republicans wouldn't really walk the plank for Trump on this issue.
"Republicans are rubber stamps for Donald Trump on everything else," he said. "This may be the one area where they've decided not to play ball."
During former President Joe Biden's term, 49 Senate Democrats voted to eliminate the filibuster but were blocked from getting to the majority by then-Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), both of whom would eventually leave the Democratic Party to become independents.
Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) delivers a speech on the Senate floor on May 8, 2025. (Photo: Sen. Alex Padilla)