{"id":40758,"date":"2025-11-06T12:55:12","date_gmt":"2025-11-06T12:55:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/40758\/"},"modified":"2025-11-06T12:55:12","modified_gmt":"2025-11-06T12:55:12","slug":"after-republican-election-losses-trump-pushes-lawmakers-to-end-shutdown-filibuster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/40758\/","title":{"rendered":"After Republican election losses, Trump pushes lawmakers to end shutdown, filibuster"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

WASHINGTON\u00a0\u2014\u00a0As the federal shutdown has dragged on to become the longest in American history, President Trump has shown little interest in talks to reopen the government. But Republican losses on election day<\/a> could change that.<\/p>\n

Trump told Republican senators at the White House on Wednesday that he believed the government shutdown \u201cwas a big factor\u201d in the party\u2019s poor showing against the Democrats in key races.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe must get the government back open soon, and really immediately,\u201d Trump said, adding that he would speak privately with the senators to discuss what he would like to do next.<\/p>\n

The president\u2019s remarks are a departure from what has largely been an apathetic response from him about reopening the government. With Congress at a stalemate for more than a month, Trump\u2019s attention has mostly been elsewhere.<\/p>\n

He spent most of last week in Asia attempting to broker trade deals<\/a>. Before that, much of his focus was on reaching a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas<\/a> and building a $300-million White House ballroom.<\/a> <\/p>\n

To date, Trump\u2019s main attempt to reopen the federal government has been calling on Republican leaders to terminate the filibuster, a long-running Senate rule that requires 60 votes in the chamber to pass most legislation. Trump wants to scrap the rule \u2014 the so-called nuclear option \u2014 to allow Republicans in control of the chamber to push through legislation with a simple-majority vote.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you don\u2019t terminate the filibuster, you\u2019ll be in bad shape,\u201d Trump told the GOP senators and warned that with the rule in place, the party would be viewed as \u201cdo-nothing Republicans\u201d and get \u201ckilled\u201d in next year\u2019s midterm elections.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s push to end the shutdown comes as voters are increasingly disapproving of his economic agenda, according to recent polls<\/a>. The trend was reinforced Tuesday as voters cast ballots with economic concerns as their main motivation, an AP poll showed.<\/a> Despite those indicators, Trump told a crowd at the American Business Forum in Miami on Wednesday that he thinks \u201cwe have the greatest economy right now.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Trump has not acknowledged fault in his economic agenda, he has began to express concern that the ongoing shutdown may be hurting Republicans. Those concerns have led him to push Republicans to eliminate the filibuster, a move that has put members of his party in a tough spot.<\/p>\n

Senate Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota has resisted the pressure, calling the filibuster an \u201cimportant tool\u201d that keeps the party in control of the chamber in check. <\/p>\n

The 60-vote threshold allowed Republicans to block a \u201cwhole host of terrible Democrat policies\u201d when they were in the minority last year, Thune said in an interview<\/a> Monday with Fox News Radio\u2019s \u201cGuy Benson Show.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI shudder to think how much worse it would\u2019ve been without the legislative filibuster,\u201d he said. \u201cThe truth is that if we were to do their dirty work for them, and that is essentially what we would be doing, we would own all the crap they are going to do if and when they get the chance to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sen. John Curtis (R-Utah) said last week he is a \u201cfirm no on eliminating it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe filibuster forces us to find common ground in the Senate. Power changes hands, but principles shouldn\u2019t,\u201d Curtis said in a social media post<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As the government shutdown stretched into its 36th day Wednesday, Trump continued to show no interest in negotiating with Democrats, who are refusing to vote on legislation to reopen the government that does not include a deal on healthcare.<\/p>\n

Budget negotiations deadlocked as Democrats tried to force Republicans to extend federal healthcare tax credits that are set to expire at the end of the year. If those credits expire, millions of Americans are expected to see the cost of their premiums spike.<\/p>\n

With negotiations stalled, Trump said in an interview aired Sunday that he \u201cwon\u2019t be extorted\u201d by their demands to extend the expiring Affordable Care Act subsidies.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, Democratic legislative leaders sent a letter to Trump demanding a bipartisan meeting to \u201cend the GOP shutdown of the federal government and decisively address the Republican healthcare crisis.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDemocrats stand ready to meet with you face to face, anytime and anyplace,\u201d Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, both from New York, wrote in a letter to Trump<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the Democrats\u2019 letter.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe election results ought to send a much needed bolt of lightning to Donald Trump that he should meet with us to end this crisis,\u201d Schumer told the Associated Press.<\/a> <\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s remarks Wednesday signal that he is more interested in a partisan approach to ending the shutdown.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is time for Republicans to do what they have to do and that is to terminate the filibuster,\u201d Trump told GOP senators. \u201cIt\u2019s the only way you can do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

If Republicans don\u2019t do it, Trump argued Senate Democrats will do so the next time they are in a majority. <\/p>\n

Democrats have not signaled any intent to end the filibuster in the future, but Trump has claimed otherwise and argued that it is up to Republicans to \u201cdo it first.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON\u00a0\u2014\u00a0As the federal shutdown has dragged on to become the longest in American history, President Trump has shown…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":40759,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[14632,1751,27697,27696,405,48,52,51,1838,47,50,49,27698,24696,27699,1748,27700,1292,1519,316,2805],"class_list":["post-40758","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-chamber","tag-democrats","tag-economic-concern","tag-filibuster","tag-government","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-letter","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-most-legislation","tag-party","tag-republican-election-loss","tag-republicans","tag-senator","tag-shutdown","tag-trump","tag-wednesday","tag-white-house"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40758","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40758"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40758\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40759"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}