Michigan Democrats Would Kill the Filibuster if Elected
The Senate is up for grabs in November.
The Republicans who control the Senate won’t kill the filibuster to pass the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE America) Act, to President Trump’s frustration. But if Democrats win the Senate in November, the filibuster’s days could be numbered regardless.
Michigan has one of the most-watched Senate races in America. Republican Mike Rogers will face one of three Democrats: Congresswoman Haley Stevens, state Senator Mallory McMorrow, or Abdul El-Sayed.
Mr. El-Sayed, the polling frontrunner in the August 4 Democratic primary, has made his position clear. The Senate, he said at the Mackinac Policy Conference debate last month, “has become the place where all legislation goes to die, and it allows senators who don’t want to take hard votes to hide behind the filibuster of just one senator, usually in a safe seat, and it keeps us from being able to move forward legislation that we absolutely need.”
“So I believe we have to abolish the filibuster,” he added. “We have to expose senators to democracy again so that they have to answer to their voting public about why they took a particular vote because I know it would change the way that they behave.”
The filibuster refers to the practice of “talking a bill to death.” It goes back to the 1830s and allows senators to use their right to unlimited debate to stall or kill legislation they oppose.
These days, senators don’t even need to actually talk a bill to death, and marathon sessions are rare. A senator raising the specter of a filibuster is enough to slow lawmaking to a crawl.
The threat of the filibuster creates a 60-vote threshold to pass major bills. And critics on the left and right say that is why major bills rarely pass.
Conservative supporters of the SAVE America Act, which would require proof of citizenship to register voters, regularly question Senate Majority Leader John Thune on X about why the bill hasn’t passed.
Ms. Stevens did not match Mr. El-Sayed’s clarity. Within a single breath, the congresswoman said “the filibuster must go,” and the filibuster should have been used to stop the One Big Beautiful Bill from passing. Does she want to end the filibuster or have senators use it more than they do?
NBC News’ Sahil Kapur called it a “bizarre moment.”
“That is not how the filibuster works,” he wrote. “Removing it allows all Senate bills to pass at 51 votes. It would not have allowed Democrats to stop Trump’s tax bill, which was already exempt from the filibuster.”
At the time of the debate, Ms. McMorrow was polling near the top of the three-candidate field. These days she’s at the bottom. Just last week, CNN asked her if she should withdraw from the race.
Ms. McMorrow supports ending the filibuster.
Senator Gary Peters, a Democrat, is not running for reelection in the state, which Mr. Trump won narrowly in 2024.
The filibuster might be safe in the hands of a Republican Senate majority. But Democrats are talking openly about ending the days of “talking a bill to death” should they win the body in November.
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