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President Donald Trump has changed his pitch to wary Republicans who are hesitant to undo a decades-old safeguard in the Senate: if they do nothing, he may be the last Republican president.
Trump has long demanded that Republicans nuke the filibuster, which has blocked key parts of his agenda, to pass the SAVE America Act. He has warned that Democrats would eliminate the firewall themselves if they regain power, allowing them to push through their most partisan priorities.
Now, he’s warning that if Republicans don’t pull the trigger, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico will become states and elect only Democrats to Congress, likely foiling the chances of a future Republican president to win the White House.
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“If Senate Republicans don’t TERMINATE THE FILIBUSTER, the Dumocrats will, and I will be, despite how well our Party is doing, the last Republican President,” Trump said on Truth Social.
“The Dumocrats will vote in Puerto Rico (4% Republican Vote), and Washington, D.C. (3% Republican Vote), pick up 4 Senators, 8 Congressmen/women, tremendous numbers of Popular and Electoral College Votes and, importantly, control the Voting Mechanisms and Systems, both Legal and otherwise, throughout the United States,” he continued.
“It will be impossible for Republicans to ever win an Election again. In other words, it will be THE END OF AMERICA! Thank you for your attention to this matter.”
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Voters in Washington, D.C., which carries three electoral votes, can vote in both presidential primaries and in the general election thanks to the 23rd Amendment. Those contests tend to heavily skew in favor of Democratic candidates.
Voters in Puerto Rico can also participate in presidential primaries, but not federal elections. And given that neither is a state, they don’t have true representation in Congress — Puerto Rico and Washington have non-voting delegates in the House, and the district has a shadow senator in the upper chamber.
Democrats have shown a desire to make both states, pushing legislation in 2023 to do so.
Meanwhile, the Senate filibuster is the 60-vote threshold that applies to most bills in the upper chamber, and given the nature of the thin majorities that either party has commanded in recent years, that means legislation typically has to be bipartisan to advance.
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Because of that, some of Trump’s agenda has been stonewalled. Most notably, the SAVE America Act has withered on the vine as Democrats, joined by a handful of Republicans, have continued to block the bill on the floor.
The last time the filibuster was put to the test was when Democrats controlled the Senate in 2022. Schumer, who was majority leader at the time, tried to change the rules for a “talking filibuster” to pass voting rights legislation.
But it’s a pitch that is going nowhere fast with Republicans, who have dug in their heels against terminating the filibuster throughout Trump’s second term.
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Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., has time and again pushed back on the demand, arguing that the GOP doesn’t have the votes to kill the filibuster.
Thune earlier this month told the Ruthless Podcast that at least half of the Senate GOP support keeping the filibuster in place.
“At some point, Democrats may try and steal the car, but we’re not going to hand them the keys,” Thune said.
“We would enable all the crazy stuff they would do, whether it’s adding Puerto Rico and D.C. as states, whether it’s federalizing elections, or packing the Supreme Court,” he continued.
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