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'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."
Nov 04, 2025
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.
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Dems Failed to Scrap Filibuster Under Biden. Now Trump Wants 'Nuclear Option' to End Shutdown
"I hate to say I told you so but... I fucking told you so," wrote progressive journalist Mehdi Hasan, who repeatedly urged Senate Democrats to end the filibuster during Joe Biden's presidency.
Oct 31, 2025
US President Donald Trump late Thursday urged Senate Republicans to scrap the legislative filibuster to end the prolonged government shutdown without Democratic support—the kind of scenario progressives warned about when imploring Democrats to eliminate the 60-vote threshold during former President Joe Biden's term.
In an all-caps post to Truth Social, Trump wrote that "THE CHOICE IS CLEAR—INITIATE THE 'NUCLEAR OPTION,' GET RID OF THE FILIBUSTER AND, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!"
Trump noted Democrats' failure to terminate the filibuster when they controlled Congress under Biden, pointing specifically to the central role that Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema—both of whom have since left office and the Democratic Party—played in obstructing filibuster reform.
"Just a short while ago, the Democrats, while in power, fought for three years to do this, but were unable to pull it off because of Senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona. Never have the Democrats fought so hard to do something because they knew the tremendous strength that terminating the Filibuster would give them," Trump wrote. "Now I want to do it in order to take advantage of the Democrats."
With the filibuster intact, 60 votes are required to pass most legislation in the Senate. Republicans currently hold 53 Senate seats.
Progressives warned repeatedly during Biden's presidency that Republicans wouldn't hesitate to scrap the filibuster in the future should the 60-vote threshold become a severe hindrance to their agenda. Abolishing the legislative filibuster to end the shutdown would clear the way for other Republican policy proposals to get through the Senate with simple-majority support.
"I spent the entire Biden presidency warning idiotic establishment Senate Dems and Biden who opposed getting rid of the filibuster that Trump and the GOP would come back to power and do it themselves," journalist Mehdi Hasan wrote Thursday in response to the president's demands. "I hate to say I told you so but... I fucking told you so."
Adam Jentleson, former chief of staff for Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) and a vocal advocate of ending the filibuster, noted that "it's pretty easy" to initiate the "nuclear option" on the filibuster "because despite everything, the Senate is a majority rule institution, per the Founders' design."
"The rule that overrides all other rules is that a majority of senators can vote at any time to change the rules—including getting rid of the filibuster, which the Founders abhorred anyway," Jentleson wrote late Thursday. "They could do it tomorrow! No preparation needed."
Trump's demand comes as millions of people across the US are set to lose federal nutrition assistance due to the shutdown and the administration's illegal refusal to tap emergency funds to pay out the benefits.
Millions of Americans are also facing the prospect of skyrocketing health insurance premiums as Trump and congressional Republicans decline to support extending Affordable Care Act subsidies that are set to expire at the end of the year.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) said earlier this month that he would oppose scrapping the filibuster to end the shutdown, but he could change his position amid Trump's pressure campaign.
One progressive, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), has called for a filibuster carveout that would allow senators to keep the government open with a simple-majority vote.
"I've been consistent on this," Khanna said in an interview in early October. "I said this when Biden was president, and I'm now saying it when Trump's president."
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Senate Republicans Bypass Filibuster to Advance 'Brazenly Corrupt Handout to Big Polluters'
"Senate Republicans have now set the stage to potentially do the same thing in service of adding nongermane, devastating policy provisions to their horrific reconciliation bill," one watchdog warned.
May 22, 2025
Senate Republicans late Wednesday made use of arcane procedural maneuvers to bypass the chamber's 60-vote filibuster and move ahead with a measure to overturn federal waivers that allowed California to set tougher vehicle pollution standards.
The 51-46 party-line vote came after the Senate parliamentarian, the unelected arbiter of the chamber's procedures, said that the Environmental Protection Agency waivers issued at the tail-end of the Biden administration did not qualify as federal rules for the purpose of the Congressional Review Act (CRA).
The CRA gives lawmakers a limited window to overturn federal rules, and resolutions brought under the law are not subject to the Senate filibuster. The Republican-controlled House voted earlier this month to repeal the California waivers with a CRA resolution, paving the way for Senate action.
On Wednesday, Senate Republicans engaged in a procedural gambit that allowed them to skirt the filibuster while claiming they did not vote to overrule the parliamentarian. As The New York Times explained, Republicans "argued that the situation was 'novel'... allowing the Senate to establish its own course of action since no exact precedents existed."
Lisa Gilbert, co-president of the progressive watchdog group Public Citizen, warned in a statement that the GOP move sets a dangerous precedent, potentially laying the groundwork for Republicans to bypass parliamentarian rulings on provisions of the sprawling reconciliation package that the House passed Thursday morning.
"Tonight they voted to disregard clear legal requirements in their own statutes and rulebook, jettison the judgment of the Senate's referees, and sow long-term chaos so they could pass a brazenly corrupt handout to Big Polluters," said Gilbert. "It's outrageous, dangerous, and reckless in the extreme."
"Senate Republicans have now set the stage to potentially do the same thing in service of adding nongermane, devastating policy provisions to their horrific reconciliation bill of tax handouts for the wealthy and cuts to our social safety net," Gilbert added.
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