Trump has long viewed the filibuster as an obstacle to his legislative priorities.
As you may have noticed, President Donald Trump has embarked on a renewed quest to nuke the filibuster — the Senate’s 60-vote threshold for passing legislation. There are early signs that the White House will continue this crusade well into next year.
“If we had the filibuster terminated, this would never happen again, and don’t forget we have another date coming up in the not-too-distant future,” Trump said when he signed the government funding bill earlier this week. “So, I say terminate the filibuster because, by the way, the Democrats will do it immediately if they ever assumed office, which hopefully they won’t.”
The GOP’s 2026 Senate aspirants are paying close attention.
In a Friday piece in NOTUS, political reporter Reese Gorman observes that opposition to the upper chamber’s old rule is becoming a new litmus test of sorts among MAGA-aligned candidates in many Senate primaries this cycle. He reports:
There currently aren’t enough Republicans in the Senate who support the nuclear option, but that could change in 2026. A NOTUS survey of Republican Senate candidates across the country found that, in most cases, there is at least openness to abolishing the filibuster — if not outright support to do so.
NOTUS reached out to and examined the public statements of Republican candidates in Kentucky, Georgia, Michigan, New Hampshire and North Carolina. Only two candidates hadn’t said anything about the filibuster and did not respond to a request for comment: Kentucky Rep. Andy Barr and former Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron.
Three candidates expressed support for eliminating the filibuster: Nate Morris of Kentucky, Rep. Buddy Carter of Georgia and Michael Whatley of North Carolina.
Only three 2026 Senate candidates NOTUS contacted said they were staunchly opposed to any such effort: Mike Rogers of Michigan, and Scott Brown and John E. Sununu of New Hampshire.
Trump has long viewed the filibuster as an obstacle to his legislative priorities. So, it should come as no surprise that his new second-term pressure campaign on Senate Republicans is now bleeding into 2026 primary contests.
Remember: Most Republican senators are staunchly opposed to reforming the filibuster. That includes Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R., S.D.), who notably got Democrats to cave on the shutdown deal without invoking the Trump-preferred nuclear option.
In an interview with National Review late last month, Thune explained why most members of his caucus believe that getting rid of the old rule would empower a future Democratic-controlled Washington to federalize elections, pack the Supreme Court, and enact “abortion on demand.” He also acknowledged that debates surrounding the filibuster are an “ongoing conversation” with Trump.
“I think [Trump] — like a lot of people — views it as sort of one of those creatures of Senate history that doesn’t fit the modern times,” Thune told NR, notably one day before the president publicly urged Senate Republicans to scrap the filibuster over Democrats’ refusal to pass a stopgap funding bill. “But I do think that most of our members — and there aren’t more than probably a handful who would vote to get rid of it — believe that it does.”
Read more on how Thune and other members of Senate GOP leadership are navigating this dynamic here.