After the majority party failed to pass a major voting bill when a few members of the party opposed changing the rules around the Senate filibuster, Sen. John Thune of South Dakota’s wiry legs descended the stairs as he told The Independent Republicans would not change the body’s key voting rule.
“Obviously, the filibuster is the feature of the Senate that protects the rights of minority and gives a voice to minority in this country,” Thune said. He noted that Republicans had resisted the temptation to ditch the filibuster when Donald Trump had called on Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to kill it in 2017.
The year was 2022, Thune was minority whip and Democrats controlled the Senate. Four years later, Thune is now majority leader, succeeding his mentor, McConnell and Trump is back in the White House.
Back then, Democrats had hoped to ditch the filibuster in a last-ditch effort to pass a reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act. But now, Republicans in the House and a handful of insurgents there want the Senate to expeditiously pass the SAVE America Act, which would require proof of citizenship when registering to vote.
And they now have Trump, who called for the termination of the filibuster, leading that charge ... very forcefully.
Early Friday morning, Thune and his Democratic counterpart Chuck Schumer dodged a bullet when they brokered a deal to fund most of the Department of Homeland Security save for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection.
But the majority leader now finds himself in a Wes Craven meets Marty Scorsese political horror show mashup. Call it, “The Last Temptation of June Thune.”
Ever since he took the mantle from McConnell, the South Dakotan has had had to deal with a glaring fact: that Trump clearly prefers the majoritarian House of Representatives to the more stately Senate.
“Well, that's not, that's not a new message from him, and I got a call to that effect this morning,” he told The Independent when asked about Trump’s earlier morning rant-cum-demand that his Senate majority “TERMINATE THE FILIBUSTER.“
Thune knows when to take a massive risk, such as when he decided two years after losing a tight Senate race in South Dakota to run against then-Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle, whom he beat in 2004.
But the fitness freak, whose cheekbones and toothy smile make even some Democratic staffers and reporters swoon from time to time, also knows when to walk away, as was the case when he chose not to run for president against his Senate classmate Barack Obama in 2012.
Still, the filibuster will be his ultimate temptation, as it has been for almost every majority leader this century. In 2013, sick of Republican obstruction, Democratic Leader Harry Reid invoked the so-called “nuclear option” and killed the filibuster for cabinet officials and lower court nominees.
That decision echoes to this day as Trump officials like Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and FBI Director Kash Patel were confirmed along party-line votes.
Following suit, McConnell then upped the game and eliminated it for nominees to the Supreme Court. That opened the floodgates for Trump to pack the court with conservatives Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, and ultimately overturn the landmark Roe v. Wade abortion decision.
But it also led to the confirmation of Ketanji Brown Jackson to the court with only three Republican votes in Joe Biden’s presidency rather than a consensus pick.
Now, Thune and the believers of the old tradition of the Senate are facing two battering rams: one from the House and one from the other side of Pennsylvania avenue.
Still, Republicans this week expressed confidence the filibuster will survive.
“It’s not within Senator Thune's control, it's within the control of members, and he simply doesn't have the votes,” Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina told The Independent. Tillis, of course, is leaving the Senate at the end of the year after repeated clashes with the Trump administration.
Thune’s fellow South Dakotan Mike Rounds also insisted the filibuster would survive.
“Sen. Thune has shared that in the United States Senate today, there is not support for ending the filibuster among Republicans,” he told The Independent.
Rounds also pointed out what Trump may not realize: killing the filibuster benefits Democrats more than Republicans.
“Democrats would like to do it right now, because they would like to get Puerto Rico and DC states in the coming years. As long as the filibuster works, that won't happen,” Rounds said.
And therein lies the rub. The whole point of the Senate is to provide advice and consent and temper the hottest impulses of the president and the House of Representatives.
The Senate was ostensibly built as a bulwark against someone like Trump who wants to make his word edict. The GOP ostensibly has to look years ahead to make sure that a weapon they want to use today will not be wielded by the opposition party.
But it’s not clear that the filibuster can outlive either Trump or Trumpism. If that’s the case, Republicans will have made a short-term gain to open the door not only to statehood for Puerto Rico and Washington, DC, but also to abortion rights, a $15 minimum wage, voting rights and universal health care the next time Democrats take back power.
Thune’s job is now to keep the sledgehammer away from Trump ... at least for as long as he can.
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