NPR Removes Trump's Name from Filibuster Discussion

NPR has removed President Trump's name from a discussion about the potential abolition of the filibuster, changing the article to focus on the procedural quirk's impact on Senate legislation. The rewritten text no longer mentions Trump's desire to 'do away with the filibuster in order to pass the Save America Act,' instead focusing on the growing pressure on Senate Majority Leader John Thune to scrap the filibuster. This change likely reflects a shift in focus from the personal ambitions of a specific president to the broader implications of the filibuster on bipartisan legislating in the Senate. The edit matters to readers as it provides a more nuanced understanding of the filibuster's role in Congressional politics and the potential consequences of its abolition.

Related Changes

The filibuster has long forced senators to compromise. Can it survive 2026? +1632 -1191
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+ Eric McDaniel The Dome of the U.S.
− Fresh Air Wild Card with Rachel Martin It's Been a Minute Planet Money Get NPR+ More Podcasts & Shows Search Newsletters NPR Shop Tiny Desk New Music Friday All Songs Considered Music Features Live Sessions The Best Music of 2025 About NPR Diversity Support Careers Press Ethics The filibuster has long forced senators to compromise.
+ Capitol on April 2, 2026.
− Can it survive 2026?
+ Andrew Harnik/Getty Images hide caption Pressure is building on Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., to scrap the filibuster in order to pass President Trump's voting regulation agenda, known as the SAVE America Act. The filibuster is a longstanding procedural quirk of the Senate that can be used to block legislation by establishing a de facto 60-vote threshold to pass most bills.
− President Trump wants to do away with the filibuster in order to pass the Save America Act.
+ Because it is exceedingly uncommon in the modern Congress for a single party to have 60 Senators, the filibuster forces some amount of bipartisan legislating. Consider the current fight over the conduct of federal immigration officers. After agents killed two American citizens in Minnesota this winter, Democrats — who are the minority party in the Senate — have refused to advance funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and parts of Customs and Border Protection until reforms are made to their practices.
− But many Senate Republicans are reluctant, wary of what it would mean if they were to lose their majority.
+ Democrats have asked for things like enhanced training, body-worn cameras and a prohibition on face masks. Because of the filibuster, Republicans could not advance that funding on their own, so the Department of Homeland Security — the parent agency of ICE and CBP — has been shut down since Feb.
− Politics The filibuster has long forced senators to compromise.
+ 14.
− Can it survive 2026?
+ That led to employees of other, unrelated parts of DHS, including the Transportation Security Administration, to go weeks without pay. The Immigration Debate How a $75 billion windfall from Congress has insulated ICE Late last month, because of the filibuster, Democrats were able to extract a concession from Senate Republicans: the body unanimously advanced funding for all of DHS except for the agencies at the heart of the immigration fight.
− April 14, 20263:57 PM ET Heard on All Things Considered Eric McDaniel The filibuster has long forced senators to compromise.
+ In the House, where there is no filibuster and legislation is passed with a simple majority vote, Republicans were able to act more or less on their own to pass a bill funding all of DHS. Because the two chambers of Congress didn't agree on an approach, DHS remains shut down.
− Can it survive 2026?
+ Republicans are now trying to circumvent Democrats and fund CBP and ICE using a tool known as budget reconciliation. The filibuster, in theory, wouldn't be that hard to get rid of — because it is a product of the Senate's own rules, it could be done with a party-line vote. But in Washington, the next election is always just around the corner.
− Listen &middot; 3:51 3:51 Transcript Toggle more options Download Embed Embed "> <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/nx-s1-5771526/nx-s1-9729987" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player"> Transcript President Trump wants to do away with the filibuster in order to pass the Save America Act.
+ What feels like a firm grip on power can, and often does, quickly slip away on election night.
− But many Senate Republicans are reluctant, wary of what it would mean if they were to lose their majority.
+ So, even when legislators are feeling high-and-mighty, they're mindful of what life will be like in the minority. So while some Republicans may not want to negotiate with Democrats, others inside the GOP are aware that they may want that leverage the next time they're in the minority. Elections A Republican plan to overhaul voting is back.
− Sponsor Message AILSA CHANG, HOST: The Senate filibuster.
+ Here's what's new in the bill But President Trump is eager to pass a voter ID and proof-of-citizenship bill called the SAVE America Act.
− At first, it meant a long speech that a lawmaker could use to obstruct a vote.
+ The bill, which has already passed the House, has not come up for a vote in the Senate — because it won't attract enough Democratic votes to advance to the president's desk for a signature. So, the president is pushing Thune to end the filibuster and pass it on a party-line vote.
− But today, senators can filibuster a bill without even needing to speak.
+ He ramped up the pressure at the end of last month with several posts like this on Truth Social: Mar.
− President Trump wants to end the practice in order to pass his proof of citizenship voting bill.
+ 22: “I don’t think we should make any deal with the Crazy, Country Destroying, Radical Left Democrats unless, and until, they Vote with Republicans to pass ‘THE SAVE AMERICA ACT.’ […] let Leader Thune clearly identify those few ‘Republicans’ that are Voting against AMERICA.
− Here he is stumping for it in Memphis last month. (SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING) PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: If you could get rid of the filibuster, it would be great.
+ They will never be elected again!
− It would be great.
+ In other words, lump everything together as one, and VOTE!!!
− Get rid of the filibuster and get it all done. CHANG: Is his pressure campaign enough?
+ Kill the Filibuster, and stay in D.C.
− Here's NPR congressional reporter Eric McDaniel. ERIC MCDANIEL, BYLINE: You'd think there's nothing more perilous in politics than the flip-flop.
+ for Easter, if necessary.
− But it seems like every modern Senate leader has been on all sides of the filibuster.
+ MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!
− When you're in the minority, it's a vital tool to preserve your rights and build consensus.
+ President DJT” This pressure is not new. Democrats, under then Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., weighed eliminating the filibuster to pass voting reform legislation of their own during the Biden administration. And activists of both parties, who don't see compromise as realistic in the sharply divided American political landscape, have long hoped to see it finally done away with.
− (SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING) CHUCK SCHUMER: Without the 60-vote threshold for legislation, the Senate becomes a majoritarian institution like the House, much more subject to the winds of short-term electoral change. MCDANIEL: That was Democratic Minority Leader Chuck Schumer in 2017, when Republicans killed the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees.
+ Gréta Bedekovics, the head of the Democracy team at the progressive Center for American Progress, notes that the filibuster has long been used as a tool to block civil rights legislation — segregationist Sen.
− And here's Schumer in 2022, a majority leader trying to sidestep the tool in order to pass his party's own voting rights bill.
+ Strom Thurmond of South Carolina spoke for more than 24 hours in an effort to block the Civil Rights Act of 1957 — and sees it as a way for minority viewpoints to block policies supported by a majority of Americans.
− (SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING) SCHUMER: But the Senate was never envisioned to allow an absolute minority party veto.
+ Performing for the benefit of newsmen, Sen.
− Never.
+ Strom Thurmond, D-S.C., demonstrates his oratory, minutes after he emerged from the Senate chamber where he spoke a record-breaking 24-hours, 18 minutes, against the 1957 Civil Rights Act.
− In fact, the founders expressly rejected the inclusion of a supermajority requirement for the Senate. MCDANIEL: Mitch McConnell championed the filibuster as a tool that forces compromise when Democrats weakened it in 2013.
+ William J.
− Then McConnell weakened it himself a few years later after he became the Senate's majority leader.
+ Smith/AP hide caption In an April 2024 report, Bedekovics wrote that because senators from less populous states represent the views of fewer Americans — Wyoming residents, for example, have more than 65 times the Senate voting power of Californians — senators from "the 21 least populous states — representing only 11 percent of the country's population and only 7 percent of the country's Black population — can abuse the filibuster to prevent almost any legislation from being passed by Congress." Sen.
− Now Republicans are contending with Democratic opposition to the SAVE America Act, which would require folks to show proof of citizenship before voting.
+ Mike Lee, R-Utah, has been the chamber's most vocal proponent of a return to the so-called talking filibuster, which would require senators who want to halt legislation to actually stand up on the floor of the chamber and speak for hours to block debate.
− Some of them want to do away with the silent filibuster and go back to making legislators talk until they can't anymore in order to force a bill to clear the filibuster's 60-vote threshold.
+ It fell out of fashion in the 1970s.
− Here's Utah's Mike Lee on "The Charlie Kirk Show" last year.
+ Lee and others have argued that it would be harder for the minority party to block legislation if they are forced to literally speak for hours in opposition on the Senate floor.
− (SOUNDBITE OF PODCAST, "THE CHARLIE KIRK SHOW") MIKE LEE: You enforce the rules by requiring them to debate.
+ The talking filibuster, "if fully utilized and given the time it needs to work, could help us pass the SAVE America Act," Lee wrote on X last month.
− And then the minute they stop debating - if they've exhausted either themselves physically or their right to speak - that moment, you can call the vote.
+ "But the benefits wouldn't end there, as they could help us avoid not only the kind of shutdown hell we're now experiencing, but also rein in our debt and deficit—at least while Republicans are in charge." A return to the talking filibuster would be the latest change to a measure that has evolved considerably over time — until the 1970s, two-thirds of Senators were needed to overcome a filibuster instead of three-fifths.
− MCDANIEL: It's, well, a lot harder in practice.
+ ]Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., speaks to reporters at the U.S.
− Republican senators would have to stay in the Senate chamber to prevent other parliamentary shenanigans.
+ Capitol on April 2, 2026.
− And regardless, Majority Leader John Thune says that he just can't make the numbers work to change or end the filibuster.
+ Thune is facing pressure from President Trump to do away with the filibuster.
− Here he is talking to Fox News in March.
+ Andrew Harnik/Getty Images hide caption In the 2010s, then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., led a change to allow a simple majority of Senators to advance presidential nominees to the executive branch or federal court judges. Later that decade, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. changed the rules again to include the confirmation of Supreme Court Justices at the lower threshold.
− (SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING) JOHN THUNE: We don't have 51 votes for that in the United States Senate.
+ Thune has so far resisted the pressure — in part because he says he doesn't have the votes to scrap the filibuster.
− MCDANIEL: And maybe the math changes under pressure from Trump.
+ "We don't have the votes for it.
− Though, depending on how you're counting, the filibuster's lasted for nearly 200 years, so it's got momentum.
+ And that's, again, it's a simple function of the math in the Senate.
− And the case to keep the filibuster is clear enough.
+ It would take even a talking filibuster.
− If you want laws to pass with more consensus, requiring more than a simple majority in order to pass them is useful.
+ It would take 51 votes.
− But in a Congress that already struggles to pass things, where virtually everything now gets filibustered, could lowering the bar add some life back to the Hill?
+ We don't have 51 votes for that in the United States Senate," Thune told Fox News' Brett Baier last month.
− (SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT) SARAH BINDER: We have this notion that the filibuster's like this principle of unlimited debate to protect minority interests and so forth.
+ The use of the filibuster on almost all legislation is a distinctly modern development.
− But as we discovered, it's really just politics. It's brute-force politics.
+ But the origin of the tool goes back a very long way, to the first ever Senate session.
− MCDANIEL: That's Sarah Binder, a political scientist at George Washington University, talking to NPR's Throughline podcast in 2022.
+ Sen.
− And the question is, does the Senate need to do more to protect the viewpoint of the minority?
+ William Maclay of Pennsylvania wrote in his diary on September 22, 1789 that the "design of the Virginians .
− Filibuster critics point out that every state already gets two senators, regardless of the size.
+ .
− That means if you live in a less populous place, like Wyoming, you effectively get more than 65 times the Senate representation that someone living in California does.
+ .
− For now, it seems like President Trump's hopes of adding proof of citizenship requirements to elections nationwide are dashed.
+ was to talk away the time, so that we could not get the bill passed." The term filibuster came later, in the mid-nineteenth century. Throughline Pirates of the Senate Flexing minority power and consensus building has long been a defining feature of the Senate.
− But if history is any guide on the filibuster, you never have to wait that long for folks to change their mind.
+ Here's then-Minority Leader Sen.
− Eric McDaniel, NPR News, Washington. (SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Copyright &copy; 2026 NPR.
+ McConnell in 2010: “I believe it was Washington, it certainly was one of our founders, who was quoted as saying at the Constitutional Convention, the Senate was going to be like the saucer under the teacup, and the tea was going to slosh out and cool off.
− All rights reserved.
+ And the Senate, he anticipated, would be a place where passions would be reined in, and presumably, progress would be made in the political center.
− Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.
+ And it seems to me, if you look back over the 200-year history of our country, the Senate has certainly forced solutions to the middle.
− Accuracy and availability of NPR transcripts may vary.
+ And most observers would argue that that's been good for the country.” And Schumer in 2005: “Bottom line is very simple: the ideologues in the Senate want to turn what the Founding Fathers called ‘the cooling saucer of democracy’ into the rubber stamp of dictatorship.
− Transcript text may be revised to correct errors or match updates to audio.
+ We will not let them.
− Audio on npr.org may be edited after its original broadcast or publication.
+ They want, because they can’t get their way on every judge, to change the rules in mid-stream, to wash away 200 years of history.
− The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
+ They want to make this country into a banana republic, where if you don’t get your way, you change the rules.
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+ Are we going to let them? It’ll be a doomsday for democracy if we do.” Both men went on to play a role in weakening the filibuster when it suited their needs — and political scientists have cast doubt on the idea that the tool was really part of the framers' vision for the Senate. But it has defined the chamber's process for more than 200 years — and the sense of the Senate has remained in favor of the tool throughout its occasional moments of crisis. Time will tell if that support lasts the year. Sponsor Message Become an NPR sponsor