Republican leaders reject ending the Senate filibuster despite Trump's call to nuke it

[ificandream]

Source: CNN

The top two Republicans in Congress are showing no interest in taking the unprecedented step of ending the legislative filibuster, just hours after President Donald Trump made a fresh demand for the Senate to do so to end the government shutdown.

In perhaps the clearest possible signal to the White House that Senate Majority Leader John Thune would not change Senate rules to end the already 31-day stalemate, a spokesman said the Republican leader remained unmoved. “Leader Thune’s position on the importance of the legislative filibuster is unchanged,” Thune spokesperson Ryan Wrasse told CNN, reiterating the long-time view of Thune and many others in Senate leadership.

Even House Speaker Mike Johnson — who rarely breaks with Trump in public — offered a cautious warning about keeping the filibuster intact. “The filibuster has traditionally been used as a very important safeguard,” Johnson said, noting that his own opinion is “not relevant” given it is a Senate-only issue. But the GOP speaker warned that Democrats would use the move to pass extreme measures the next time they control the upper chamber.

“They would pack the Supreme Court, they would make Puerto Rico and DC states. They would ban firearms. They would do all sorts of things that would be very harmful to the country,” Johnson said, stressing that Trump’s late-night Truth Social post on the filibuster was an “expression of the president’s anger at this situation.”

Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2025/10/31/politics/senate-filibuster-trump-republicans