Republicans break with Trump on calls to nuke filibuster

WASHINGTON (CN) — House Speaker Mike Johnson on Monday distanced himself from President Donald Trump’s demand that Senate Republicans override the filibuster to end the government shutdown.

And while he stressed that his opinion on Senate matters was “irrelevant” as the House’s top lawmaker, Johnson’s comments demonstrate that there’s little appetite among Republicans to take such drastic and potentially long-lasting measures to break a month of political deadlock.

Trump on Sunday night called on Republicans to “terminate” the filibuster entirely. In an all-caps tirade on his social media platform Truth Social, the president said ending the longstanding tradition would ensure the GOP’s “commonsense policies” get approved without resistance from Democrats.

“THE DEMOCRATS WILL DO IT IMMEDIATELY, AS SOON AS THEY GET THE CHANCE,” Trump wrote. “OUR DOING IT WILL NOT GIVE THEM THE CHANCE.”

The filibuster — in this case, the legislative filibuster — refers to an age-old Senate practice that requires 60 votes on a procedural ballot before bills can be considered for final passage. Long criticized as an obstructionist tool by both Democrats and Republicans, lawmakers have in some cases chosen to temporarily override the filibuster to pass some measures by simple majority vote.

Most recently, Senate Majority Leader John Thune invoked the so-called “nuclear option” to force votes on packages of Trump administration executive nominees subject to a Democratic blockade.

But Republicans have been reticent to go nuclear in the Senate to pass a short-term budget bill at the center of the monthlong government shutdown. And speaking to reporters Monday, Johnson said he knew that his colleagues in the upper chamber viewed the filibuster as an important tradition and framed it as a check on a future Democratic majority.

“It holds us back from the Democrats’ worst impulses,” said the House speaker. “What would the Democrats do if they had no filibuster impediment, no speed bump at all?”

Johnson said that while he thought his opinion on the filibuster was “irrelevant” as a House lawmaker, he had spoken with Trump and explained his opinion on the parliamentary tradition. “As much as I have wanted to blow up the filibuster sometimes as a House member … I hear my Senate Republican colleagues, some of the most conservative people in Congress, who say it’s an important safeguard,” he explained.

But the top House Republican did not appear to completely shut the door on nuking the filibuster, saying that the president was “very passionate” about the government shutdown. He positioned the president’s demands to do away with the filibuster as a reflection of “the anger that we feel, the real desperation” about the effects of the ongoing shutdown.

“Any hindrance to that is something that everybody’s looking at very carefully,” he said.

Thune, as the Senate’s top Republican, has long pledged support for the filibuster. He said last month that he thought the mechanism has “protected this country” and that it was an important feature of the upper chamber’s procedure.

Trump’s fury at the filibuster comes as the government shutdown, which began last month, is just days away from becoming the longest federal appropriations lapse in U.S. history. The shutdown’s most dire effects are only just coming into focus — funds for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, lapsed over the weekend, potentially leaving more than 40 million Americans without vital food aid.

A federal judge over the weekend ordered the U.S. Department of Agriculture to distribute contingency funding to SNAP recipients, despite claims by the agency and Republicans that it could not use backup cash to keep the program afloat. Trump, however, said Friday that White House lawyers don’t think the government has “the legal authority” to use the backup fund for SNAP and has asked the court to clarify.

Johnson told reporters on Monday that using contingency funding for the food aid program was “more complicated” than the court order suggested, claiming that the backup account with more than $5 billion actually had less money than was needed to fund SNAP for a month.

“The president’s not appealing the decision,” said the House speaker. “He wants SNAP to be done, but he doesn’t see the mechanism to do it.”

Meanwhile, Democrats and Republicans seem no closer this week to solving the political impasse which caused the shutdown in the first place. Republicans have remained firm in their stance that Democrats should rally to approve the House-passed budget stopgap currently languishing in the Senate. Democrats have also refused to budge in their demands that the GOP pass a government funding resolution which includes extensions on Affordable Care Act subsidies set to expire at the end of the year.

The longest government shutdown in history lasted 35 days and took place during Trump’s first term in office. Monday marked day 34 of the current shutdown.

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