Does the Senate care more about the filibuster than the American people? For the answer, compare election outcomes to their results. The election outcome was more than 77 million votes cast for Donald Trump in the presidential election. Voters armed him with Republican majorities in both chambers of Congress.
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For a result, consider one of his top priorities — election integrity and the SAVE America Act. It requires voter photo ID — backed by more than 80 percent of Americans, according to Pew Research Center and Gallup polls — and proof of citizenship to vote, supported by 83 percent of Americans, according to Gallup.
Just before Trump gave a primetime television address on July 18, urging Congress to pass the SAVE America Act, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer asserted that “the SAVE [America] Act is dead on arrival.” But is minority opposition all there is to it? Some assert that’s the case. The Hill reported on June 10 that Senate Majority Leader John Thune said, “It’s a well-known fact around here . . . we don’t have the votes.”
Why This Betrayal Feels Personal
Many Americans are wondering why Republicans in Congress and President Trump cannot get fundamental issues that got them elected passed into law. The answer is that the Republican Senate majority prioritizes keeping the filibuster more than the core issues that drove the election result. For all their tenacity defending the filibuster, test their sincerity by asking yourself if any senator seeking reelection ever campaigned on capitulating on every issue to preserve the filibuster. The filibuster is nothing more than their opposition’s veto power, but look at what the majority tosses aside to preserve it.
Despite the hand-wringing that follows broken promise after broken promise, experience proves they wouldn’t have it any other way. Republican senators blame the opposition, claiming they could not break the filibuster’s threshold. Yet the majority creates this default self-destruct mechanism when, by a simple majority vote under Article I, Section 5, of the Constitution, each newly elected Senate adopts its own rules. The Washington Examiner reported in November of 2025, that 24 senators (45 percent) of the Republican conference have expressed publicly that they do not favor abolishing the filibuster.
Sen. Thune’s attempt to shift responsibility away from the Republican majority and onto the opposition with the common “we don’t have the votes refrain” does not tell you everything about why the SAVE America Act is “dead on arrival.” Many Senate Republicans are content to let it die a slow death — election integrity be damned. They alone are responsible for their refusal to lead without permission from the opposition.
The ‘Nuclear Option’ Lie
The filibuster is neither sacrosanct nor constitutionally required. Quite the contrary, the founders inserted supermajorities into the Constitution in only a handful of extraordinary circumstances: overriding vetoes, treaties, impeachments, constitutional amendments, and expelling members from Congress. Remember that when alarmists describe the conduct of ordinary Senate business as the founders intended as the “nuclear option.”
Some insist the filibuster’s existence is institutionally necessary, citing the importance of tradition and the defense of the minority. But any procedural device that is so powerful that it renders the governing majority impotent on the most vexing, controversial, and significant issues of our day is plainly not defensive but offensive. Issues that drive election results should not have their fate determined by the party not elected to lead.
Others defend it out of fear — insisting that if we eliminate the filibuster, the opposition will do the same when they regain power. Their solution is to cede power over to the minority now so the damage can be minimized when the minority becomes the majority. That is not leadership. It is abject surrender. Senators using this defense telegraph their weakness and unwillingness to attempt anything the opposition disapproves of despite political rhetoric to the contrary that they will “fight for you.”
Underlying this objection is the unsupported notion that today’s political strategists know more about politics, the behavior of political adversaries, and human nature than the founders who designed our Constitution with checks and balances to control it. But the enduring nature of the Constitution itself disproves that fallacy by its stability, resilience, and course correction throughout generations of imperfect leaders and political opportunists.
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The Founders’ Warning
Alexander Hamilton warned against this exact tyranny of the minority in Federalist 22, arguing that requiring supermajorities for ordinary legislation can “subject the sense of the greater number to that of the lesser” and “destroy the energy of government.” He described the inevitable result as “the impracticability of obtaining the concurrence of the necessary number of votes, kept in a state of inaction” unless the majority capitulated to the minority — even through contemptible compromises of the public good. Hamilton’s warning describes the carnage of the filibuster with uncanny precision.
James Madison gave the same caution in Federalist 58, in response to the notion of requiring supermajorities for regular business, saying that “the fundamental principle of free government would be reversed. It would be no longer the majority that would rule: the power would be transferred to the minority.”
The preeminent fear shared among the framers of the Constitution was that of a tyranny of the majority — that pure majority rule was dangerous and could easily lead to an oppressive majority at the expense of basic rights of the minority. It is ironic that today’s filibuster has turned that fear on its head and has established an ongoing tyranny of the minority. Be certain of this, the filibuster is a precision instrument in the hands of a tyrannical minority, and devastating against a weak and fearful majority.
The SAVE America Act is just one example that illustrates how today’s filibuster has neutered the Senate majority when they choose to permit their own defeat over something as rudimentary as requiring American citizenship to vote in American elections. How can we possibly expect such institutionalized weakness to ever muster the fortitude necessary to address such looming issues as maintaining the solvency of Social Security, Medicare, or lowering the national debt?
The truth is that the filibuster has become a convenient scapegoat for a Senate majority’s abhorrent public policy decisions and risk-averse behavior. It also enables them to blame the opposition for positions they hold contrary to their own constituents, but will not admit publicly.
With all the benefits (to both parties) of hiding behind the filibuster, is it any wonder why late-night backroom deals are becoming the norm rather than the exception? If the filibuster is the sacrosanct institutional monument to tradition it is claimed to be, why do senators act in secret, with no one watching? Lawmaking is public business, and darkness has no legitimate place in it.
Long Overdue Accountability
The filibuster rule’s defenders describe eliminating the filibuster as the “nuclear option,” but that view rests on the fundamentally flawed belief that majority rule determination of regular Senate business is the radical construct, while hostage-taking by the minority is not.
In truth, it is the filibuster itself that is the nuclear weapon. It replaces the system the framers designed with one they abhor. It is an institution that disrespects, and in fact, holds in contempt the outcome of our elections. It is time for the filibuster to be vanquished, and the tyranny of the minority overthrown, before we lose the last semblance of majority rule and meaningful representation in our government.
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