House leaders led by Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-South Carolina) are launching a campaign to urge the Senate and President Joe Biden to support carving out an exception to the filibuster rule in order to pass legislation protecting voting rights and other measures related to the Constitution.
As Republicans in state legislatures are slowly chipping away at voting rights across the country, many Democrats and progressives have grown frustrated that the Senate filibuster and its 60-vote rule to advance legislation has been holding up nearly the entirety of the Democratic agenda.
The For the People Act, the first bill filed this session in the House and the Senate, is one of the top priorities for the party, and Democrats are desperately searching for any avenue to get filibuster holdouts on board to pass the legislation. The latest push spearheaded by Clyburn, notably, wouldn’t get rid of the filibuster completely, but would be able to help Democrats on this one issue.
Sources familiar with the matter told The Guardian that Clyburn’s effort is backed by the rest of House leadership, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California). Several Democratic senators, most vocally Senators Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Arizona), are still adamantly against abolishing the filibuster. This version of filibuster reform, then, is considered by leadership to be the only way to advance the issue.
Clyburn was chosen to lead the effort, sources said, because of his close personal relationship with the president. Indeed, Politico reports that Clyburn is targeting Biden and various other people in the White House like Vice President Kamala Harris with his push.
If they don’t make a rule-changing push to pass voting rights, “Democrats can kiss the majority goodbye,” Clyburn told Politico. He also said that the president should call Manchin to urge him to support the filibuster reform proposal.
Biden hasn’t come out in support of filibuster abolition, much to the chagrin of progressives and Democrats who are eager to pass vital measures on climate, labor, and more. In March, he said he was in favor of filibuster reform, but Press Secretary Jen Psaki indicated on Monday that Biden wouldn’t be weighing in on Clyburn’s proposal.
The holdout over reforming or getting rid of the filibuster has been a subject of increasing frustration for Democratic and progressive lawmakers, who warn of dire consequences if they aren’t able to pass their agenda.
The president is set to speak on voting rights on Tuesday as part of the White House’s push to promote the subject. He is expected to tie Republicans’ sweeping efforts to suppress voting to Donald Trump’s “Big Lie” about nonexistent election fraud. Biden will also make “the moral case” for supporting voting rights, Psaki said Monday, and emphasize the importance of combating Republican proposals like allowing partisan efforts more control over election results.
But without filibuster reform, as many political commentators have pointed out time and again, it will be impossible for Democrats to implement sweeping voting rights legislation. After all, it’s not just Republican lawmakers at the state level who are opposing voting access; the alarming ideology has engulfed the entire party, top to bottom.
Meanwhile, Democratic state representatives have grown increasingly desperate for help from Washington in blocking state-level voter suppression legislation.
In a bold move, Texas Democrats have fled the state to block Republicans’ voter suppression measure there. They’ve headed to D.C., instead, to plead with Democrats there to pass legislation like the For the People Act to block the GOP’s sweeping and alarming voting restrictions measures once and for all.
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
Over 80 percent of Truthout‘s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and the remaining 20 percent comes from a handful of social justice-oriented foundations. Over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors, many of whom give because they want to help us keep Truthout barrier-free for everyone.
You can help by giving today. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger gift, Truthout only works with your support.