The End of the Filibuster—No, Really
Updated at 2:45 p.m. ET on July 30, 2020.
Through the mid-20th century, southern segregationists relied on the Senate filibuster as their ultimate legislative weapon to block equal rights for Black Americans. Now the renewed struggle over those rights may doom the filibuster itself, perhaps as soon as next year—as former President Barack Obama signaled when he dramatically endorsed ending the filibuster at Representative John Lewis’s funeral today.
With Donald Trump struggling in the polls, Democrats now are eagerly contemplating the possibility that the November presidential election could deliver the party unified control of the White House, the Senate, and the House of Representatives for the first time since 2009. But that excitement is tempered by the recognition that under any scenario, Republicans will almost certainly still control enough Senate seats to block most of the Democrats’ ambitious agenda through sustained filibusters.
That prospect raises alarms among advocates for a broad range of causes, including climate change and immigration reform. But after this spring’s nationwide outpouring of protest following the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, many Democrats believe that if the party wins unified control, issues of racial inequity and civil rights may create the greatest pressure yet to eliminate the filibuster. At Lewis’s funeral in Atlanta, Obama previewed how intense that pressure could grow when he described the filibuster as and flatly declared it
