Republican leaders reject ending the Senate filibuster despite Trump’s call to nuke it

By Annie Grayer, Sarah Ferris, CNN

(CNN) — The top two Republicans in Congress are showing no interest in taking the unprecedented step of ending the legislative filibuster, just hours after President Donald Trump made a fresh demand for the Senate to do so to end the government shutdown.

In perhaps the clearest possible signal to the White House that Senate Majority Leader John Thune would not change Senate rules to end the already 31-day stalemate, a spokesman said the Republican leader remained unmoved.

“Leader Thune’s position on the importance of the legislative filibuster is unchanged,” Thune spokesperson Ryan Wrasse told CNN, reiterating the long-time view of Thune and many others in Senate leadership.

Even House Speaker Mike Johnson — who rarely breaks with Trump in public — offered a cautious warning about keeping the filibuster intact.

“The filibuster has traditionally been used as a very important safeguard,” Johnson said, noting that his own opinion is “not relevant” given it is a Senate-only issue. But the GOP speaker warned that Democrats would use the move to pass extreme measures the next time they control the upper chamber.

“They would pack the Supreme Court, they would make Puerto Rico and DC states. They would ban firearms. They would do all sorts of things that would be very harmful to the country,” Johnson said, stressing that Trump’s late-night Truth Social post on the filibuster was an “expression of the president’s anger at this situation.”

The rare split between congressional Republicans and the White House comes as the Washington stalemate and the pains of the shutdown around the country have deepened in recent days. But the GOP leaders’ swift move to quash Trump’s suggestion on the filibuster is a reflection of a clear political reality on Capitol Hill: There is little support for such a move within the Senate GOP conference.

The filibuster rule is unique to the Senate, and it gives the minority the power to block a bill from coming up for a vote as long as at least 41 senators oppose it. Since one party rarely wins more than 60 seats, proponents have argued that the filibuster encourages compromise and makes it more difficult to enact massive partisan reforms.

Taking the so-called nuclear option would require near-unanimity, since Thune and Senate GOP leaders could only lose three votes from their own party to do so if all Democrats oppose the move. And the number of GOP senators currently opposed stands far higher than that, with at least a dozen Republicans on the record against it.

Still, deploying the “nuclear option” would not entirely end the Senate’s filibuster. Instead, it would eliminate the 60-vote threshold to end debate, instead requiring 51 votes.

One of those lawmakers, freshman Sen. John Curtis of Utah, made clear Friday morning that he remained opposed despite Trump’s urging.

“The filibuster forces us to find common ground in the Senate. Power changes hands, but principles shouldn’t. I’m a firm no on eliminating it,” Curtis wrote on X.

Several GOP senators have echoed that sentiment in a sign that Trump could face a steep battle with his own party to push through any rules change.

GOP Sen. Roger Marshall called the idea a “non-starter” earlier this month, saying that “a republic protects the rights of the minority. Otherwise you just take a poll and you switch the direction the ship is going. So that filibuster helps protect the minority, and I think it’s served our country well.”

Also earlier in the month, Thune himself ruled out changing the Senate rules to end the shutdown, calling the filibuster “something that’s been a bulwark against a lot of really bad things happening with the country.” At the time, Thune said he’d gotten no pressure from the White House to end it.

His team’s Friday statement reaffirming the leader’s opposition had some Senate Republicans breathing a sigh of relief, according to one GOP senate staffer.

“Definitely gives us cover,” the GOP aide told CNN. “No one in the conference seriously wants to nuke the filibuster except maybe two.”

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CNN’s Manu Raju and Ellis Kim contributed to this report.