Guest post by David De La Paz, Esq.
Senate Republicans have the votes for the Save America Act but refuse to lead. This isn’t leadership — it’s surrender. Read the indictment of a majority that refuses to use its power.
Does the Senate care more about the filibuster than the American people?
The answer is clear when election outcomes are compared to their results. The election outcome was over 77 million votes cast for Donald Trump in the presidential election. Voters armed him with Republican majorities in both chambers of Congress. For a result, consider one of his top priorities – election integrity.
Case in Point: The Save America Act — 80% Support Still Isn’t Enough
The Save America Act requires voter photo ID — backed by 80 percent of Americans, according to Pew Research Center and Gallup polls— and proof of citizenship to vote, supported by 83 percent of Americans, according to Gallup.
On July 16, Trump gave a primetime television address urging Congress to pass the Save America Act. Predictably, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer announced the Save America Act “is dead on arrival in the Senate.”
The Hill reported on June 10, that Thune said, “It’s a well-known fact around here, . . . we don’t have the votes.” But is minority opposition all there is to it?
The reality is that even with widespread support across the political spectrum, the will of the people is simply no match for the high bar set by the filibuster rule.
Indictment: Surrendering Majority Rule
Are you wondering why Republicans in Congress and President Trump cannot get even the fundamental issues that got them elected passed into law? The answer is because the Republican Senate majority prioritizes keeping the filibuster more than the core issues that drove the election result. For all their tenacity defending the filibuster, test their sincerity by asking yourself if any senator seeking re-election ever campaigned on capitulating on every issue to preserve the filibuster. The filibuster is nothing more than their opposition’s veto power, but look at what the majority tosses aside to preserve it.
Despite the hand wringing that follows broken promise after broken promise, experience proves they wouldn’t have it any other way. Republican senators blame the opposition claiming they cannot break the filibuster’s 60-vote threshold. Yet, the majority creates this default self-destruct mechanism when, by a simple majority vote under Article I, Section 5, of the Constitution, each newly elected Senate adopts its own rules. The Washington Examiner reported in November of 2025, that twenty-four senators (45% of the Republican conference) have expressed publicly they do not favor abolishing the filibuster.
Senator Thune’s attempt to shift responsibility away from the Republican majority and onto the opposition with the common “we don’t have the votes” refrain, doesn’t fully explain why the Save America Act is “dead on arrival.” Many Senate Republicans are content to let it die a slow death – election integrity be damned. The responsibility for the majority’s inability to break the filibuster on any issue does not lie with the opposition; it resides with those in the majority who refuse to lead without permission from the opposition. The time has long passed to hold obstinate Republicans fearful of leading, unless hamstrung by the minority, to account.
The filibuster is neither sacrosanct nor constitutionally required. Quite the contrary, the Founders inserted supermajorities into the Constitution only in extraordinary circumstances: overriding vetoes, treaties, House and Senate impeachments, constitutional amendments, and expelling members from Congress. Remember that when alarmists describe the conduct of ordinary senate business as the Founders intended as the “nuclear option.”
This is supposed to be a nation ruled by consent of the governed through those we elect. They are to be politically accountable to the people. But the filibuster has rendered all of that a nullity. It is as undemocratic as it is destructive to our republican form of government.
The Defense and Rebuttal
Some insist the filibuster’s existence is institutionally necessary, citing the importance of tradition and the defense of the minority. But any procedural device that is so powerful that it renders the governing majority impotent on the most vexing, controversial and significant issues of our day, is plainly not defensive but offensive. Issues that drive election results should not have their fate determined by the party not elected to lead.
Others insist that if we eliminate the filibuster, the opposition will do the same when they regain power. Their solution is to cede power over to the minority now so the damage can be minimized when the minority becomes the majority. It is an objection based on fear. That is not leadership. It is abject surrender. Senators using this defense telegraph their weakness and unwillingness to attempt anything the opposition disapproves of despite their hollow political rhetoric to the contrary that they will “fight for you.”
Their objection arrogantly assumes that they know more about politics, the behavior of political adversaries, and human nature, than the Founders who designed our Constitution with checks and balances to control it. But the enduring nature of the Constitution itself disproves that fallacy by its stability, resilience and course correction throughout generations of imperfect leaders and political opportunists.
Expert Witnesses: Hamilton and Madison
Alexander Hamilton warned against exactly this kind of danger in Federalist 22, arguing that requiring supermajorities for ordinary legislation can “subject the sense of the greater number to that of the lesser number” and “destroy the energy of government.” He described the inevitable result as “the impracticability of obtaining a concurrence of the necessary number of votes, kept in a state of inaction” unless the majority capitulated to the minority — even through contemptible compromises of the public good. Hamilton’s warning describes the tyranny of the filibuster with uncanny precision.
James Madison gave the same caution in Federalist 58, in response to the notion of requiring supermajorities for regular business saying “. . . the fundamental principle of free government would be reversed. It would be no longer the majority that would rule; the power would be transferred to the minority.”
The preeminent fear shared among the framers of the Constitution was that of a tyranny of the majority — that pure majority rule was dangerous and could lead to an oppressive majority at the expense of basic rights of the minority. It is ironic that today’s filibuster has turned that fear on its head and established an ongoing tyranny of the minority. Be certain of this, the filibuster is a precision instrument in the hands of a tyrannical minority, and is devastating against a weak and fearful majority.
Evidence: A Weak and Fearful Majority
The Save America Act is just one illustration of how today’s filibuster has neutered the Senate majority when they choose to permit their own defeat over something as rudimentary as requiring American citizenship to vote in American elections. How can we possibly expect such institutionalized weakness to ever muster the fortitude necessary to address such looming issues as maintaining the solvency of Social Security, Medicare or lowering the national debt?
The truth is that the filibuster has become a convenient patsy for a Senate majority’s abhorrent public policy decisions and risk-averse behavior. It also enables them to blame the opposition for positions they hold contrary to their own constituents but will not admit publicly. Is it any wonder why late-night backroom deals are becoming the norm rather than the exception? If the filibuster is the sacrosanct institutional monument to tradition it is claimed to be, why do senators act in secret, with no one watching? Lawmaking is public business, and darkness has no legitimate place in it.
Victims: The American People
One can wonder about how much lower our national debt and spending levels would be today without the years of omnibus bills, debt-limit deals and government shutdowns required to get the nine more votes the filibuster demands. But the price for the American people was far higher than even the trillions of dollars it may have cost. The price for them has been their voice in government, and their right to be subject to the government the Founders created.
Sadder still, the price was not paid by them alone. Countless Americans died defending the system the Framers built. They knew what they were dying for, and it wasn’t for a Senate procedural device that brings that system to its knees. Yet today, the majority’s fate is in the hands of those whose only interest is their defeat.
Closing Statement: Tyranny Must End
The filibuster rule’s defenders describe eliminating the filibuster as the “nuclear option,” but that view rests on the fundamentally flawed belief that majority rule determination of regular Senate business is the radical construct, while hostage taking by the minority is not. In truth, it is the filibuster itself that is the nuclear weapon. It replaces the system the Framers designed with one they abhor. It is an institution that disrespects, and in fact, holds in contempt the outcome of our elections. It is time for the filibuster to be vanquished, and the tyranny of the minority overthrown, before we lose the last semblance of majority rule and meaningful representation in our government.
The filibuster has become a weaponized procedural device to be used against what the people voted for and turns an electoral victory into a defeat. The people deserve leaders who will actually lead, rather than surrender their power to the minority and coddle a fear of some future loss.
Verdict: Guilty
Any senator who is more committed to the filibuster than to the people who elected them, does not deserve to retain their seat, earn your trust, or expect your vote.
David De La Paz, Esq. is a former felony prosecutor and former senior counsel to several Florida House Speakers, where he advised legislative leadership on constitutional structure, legislative process, and public policy.
The post We the People VS. The Filibuster — An Indictment appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.