The End of the Filibuster Is Inevitable – The American Spectator | USA News and PoliticsThe American Spectator

Trump’s poll numbers show him measurably more popular than he was during this phase of his first term, and he’s enjoying the country’s highest “Right-Track/Wrong-Track” numbers in over 20 years, while the Democrats’ approval ratings have sunk to somewhere between the basement and Beijing.

However, his agenda is still facing formidable headwinds from both district judges usurping his separated powers (for which there is an instant yet rarely used constitutional remedy), and Senate-minority Democrats utilizing the non-constitutional filibuster that requires 60 votes to get legislation passed. (RELATED: Elephant in the Courtroom)

Unfortunately, we cannot legislatively correct the former until the latter is neutralized.

Currently, Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) is putting forward a bill to curtail any district judge’s ability to stymie an executive’s time-sensitive agenda through bad-faith nationwide injunctions. (RELATED: Dictatorship of Obama Judges)

Since these injunctions eat up the clock, they can ensure that even an eventually favorable appellate ruling for the president can be rendered moot because the problem meant to be corrected by the challenged action might no longer be resolvable — such as when deporting certain illegal immigrants to specific countries can no longer happen because of the recipient nations’ own time constraints.  In other words, “Closed barn door meet already escaped horse.” (RELATED: This Mess Is of Your Own Making, Chief Justice Roberts)

Bizarrely impeding the ability to preempt these judges from violating the president’s separated powers in the name of exercising their own conjured ones, newly-minted Republican Senate Majority Leader John Thune insists that he will preserve the filibuster despite Democrats demonstrating that they’ll drop it once they’re again in the majority thus meaning that he’s proactively giving them the first bite at the apple — is he really this gullible?

His written remarks to the Hill in January 2025 were as follows:

One of my priorities as leader will be to ensure that the Senate stays the Senate. That means preserving the legislative filibuster — the Senate rule that today has perhaps the greatest impact in preserving the Founders’ vision of the Senate.

That is provably wrong since the Founders never included the filibuster in the very Constitution that defined the “Founders’ vision of the Senate.”

According to their vision, Article I, Section VII directs that, “the Votes of both Houses shall be determined by Yeas and Nays, and the Names of the Persons voting for and against the Bill shall be entered on the Journal of each House respectively.”

Demanding that legislation can’t pass the Senate unless it receives support from 60 members is tantamount to handing the minority party votes it never earned in the election.

The Constitution already has provisions for when super-majorities are required, such as with expelling a member, expelling a president, or passing a treaty. And while Article 1 Section V says that “Each House may determine the rules of its proceedings,” that’s a prerogative each has over process, not one to alter Section VII’s Yeas and Nays mandate standard predicated upon a simple majority vote.

Another one of Thune’s musings on this was, “We can’t go there. People need to understand that.”

But if enough Republicans do “go there,” would the fallout be so bad?

On-air I have consistently advocated extinguishing this monstrosity, even when Democrats had the majority last cycle but were stopped from removing it by then fellow Democrat Senators Krysten Sinema and Joe Manchin.

Unambiguously, the pain would be worth the gain, as majorities can always reverse the actions of previous majorities.

And no, it would not lead to rapidly changing on-again, off-again laws because all votes would then become provably more consequential by carrying with them all the corresponding grounds that are either necessary to defend or worthy of pride since they’re still ones for which every Senator ultimately becomes more answerable.

The net benefit of jettisoning this dysfunctional benchmark is that the Senate members become equally as accountable as those in the House, since they can no longer hide behind the filibuster when it comes to their real support (or lack thereof) for a given piece of legislation.

Currently, they can get away with voting for a bill they genuinely do not want when knowing it could never clear the filibuster threshold.

This permits them to enjoy the consequence-free benefit of pacifying their constituency while ducking any risk of offending a party leadership that might have been opposed to it.

Isn’t that precisely what’s going on with the status quo?  Too many of these Senators either don’t want an even playing field or don’t want to be culpable for votes that otherwise would be more recognizably impactful.

The other vile trait of the filibuster is that it permits the minority greater power to stop legislation than it grants the majority to pass, and that disenfranchises the electorate who had placed them in office to fulfill their own lawmaking agenda.

When do Republicans stop this self-inflicted wounding?  I emphasize Republicans because, again, the Democrats have already vowed to chuck this thing once they return to the majority, regardless of their now flip-flopping protestations to the contrary since falling into the minority.

Thune needs to be asked very publicly, “Hey Dude, since the Democrats have already promised to jettison that which you’re retaining, why not instead let your constituents enjoy the running start they deserve for having placed you in office?”

To let any minority party have such leverage through the filibuster is to deny the larger block of voters their proportional representative voice.

Why should either party get to enjoy the very prize that it lost at the ballot box?

Upon winning the Senate majority leadership position in November, Thune said, “This Republican team is united behind President Trump’s agenda, and our work starts today.”

Well, that promise cannot be fulfilled if his agenda’s success is contingent upon that which only you can provide but refuse.

READ MORE from Alan Nathan:

Elephant in the Courtroom

Alan Nathan is the host of the longest-running nationally syndicated Centrist radio program in the country, “The Alan Nathan Show,” which is aired on the Main Street Radio Network.