Senate leadership doesn't budge on filibuster

WASHINGTON — Senate Republican leadership is not budging against pressure to use a so-called talking filibuster to pass the party’s voter identification legislation, despite President Donald Trump’s adding weight to that dogpile this week.

“We don’t have the votes either to proceed to get on a talking filibuster, nor to sustain one if we got on it,” said Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., on Tuesday afternoon. “But that’s just a function of math and there isn’t anything I can do about that.”

However, Thune is planning to hold some type of vote on the legislation as soon as next week, though the details aren’t yet clear.

Senate Republicans face a growing call to try to push a voter ID bill named the SAVE America Act through the Senate via a simple-majority vote using a talking filibuster — essentially, forcing Democrats to occupy the floor and talk nonstop, until one side or the other backs down. The measure currently lacks the 60 votes that would otherwise be needed to end debate.

But Thune and others have repeatedly stressed both inside the Senate Republican Conference and to the online MAGA-world: The math just ain’t mathing.

That calculus continues to be complicated further by demands and pressure from the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.

“We’ve conveyed that to him,” Thune said of Trump about the Senate’s current problem securing enough votes to pass the measure. “But we will continue to make that argument, because I think it’s important that everybody understand this really is about the votes. It’s about the math.”

A White House threat

The president has threatened to not sign bills other than one that would fund the Department of Homeland Security until the election bill passes, saying the voter ID measure “supersedes everything else.” But he’s also further complicated the bill’s potential to pass by adding changes he wants to see in the legislation.

The bill passed the House last month and would require Americans to prove their citizenship when registering to vote and present photo identification when casting a ballot.

But the president has now demanded the bill go further and include bans on all mail-in ballots, gender-affirming surgeries for minors and transgender athletes participating in women’s sports.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt at a Tuesday press briefing said Trump “wants all options on the table, and he wants to sign it to move as quickly as possible through whatever means necessary.”

She called his vision of a broader SAVE America Act “country-saving legislation.”

Trump’s threat of not signing legislation hasn’t caused a fire-alarm on Capitol Hill, yet.

Speaker Mike Johnson, during a livestreamed discussion from the House Republican’s retreat in Florida, said Trump’s vow would not mean the end of legislating this year, noting that legislation can become law without Trump’s signature after 10 days.

“But I understand what he’s trying to emphasize, the importance of this priority to, not just to him, but to the American people and to all of us,” he said. “But I think he wants to send a signal to the Senate in particular that he’s very serious about this and I think the signal’s been received.”

Talking filibuster

Senate leadership — despite supporting the policy in the voter ID bill — has been pessimistic about a talking filibuster in the Senate, warning of a monthslong suck of precious floor time and rippling implications from changing the fabric of the chamber’s procedure. It’s also not clear what a talking filibuster would look like in the 21st century, and how long Democrats would occupy the floor.

But “Make America Great Again” advocates outside Capitol Hill and influencers, as well as a group of House members and senators, have continued to push Thune via social media.

Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., posted to X that “Our U.S. Senate needs to nuke the filibuster and get on with it.”

Others, like billionaire Elon Musk, have become more active in the online campaign in recent days, even sharing a list of senators supposedly not in support of the talking filibuster for constituents to contact. That list was created by former Rep. Mark Meadows, who served as Trump’s chief of staff during his first term.

On Monday, Thune blamed the “paid influencer ecosystem” for pushing the narrative.

Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, who has been leading the charge for a talking filibuster in the Senate, posted in response to Thune, “I regret that some in Washington tonight are dismissing all those who feel this way and have weighed in as somehow ‘paid influencers’ or the product of paid influencers.”

Thune said of the MAGA base on Tuesday: “I think you have a lot of optimists out there, and I appreciate that, and a lot of passion and energy behind getting an outcome here, but getting an outcome would require Democrat votes.”

Meanwhile, Thune plans to hold a vote in relation to the bill, telling reporters a vote could happen on the floor as early as next week.

“We’re going to vote on this, we’re going to put it out, and we’ll give the Democrats the opportunity to cast their vote on whether or not they think noncitizens ought to vote in American elections,” said Thune.

It’s unclear what that vote could look like, procedurally, next week. Thune said it was “a hard question to answer. …it depends a little bit on how we do it. [I don’t] think we’re ready to nail that down just yet, but we made a lot of headway.”

“I’m the one who has to be a clear-eyed realist about what we can achieve here,” he said.