Congress

Filibuster fight comes full circle as GOP faces internal pressure on elections bill

Published

5 months ago

February 11, 2026

Senate Republicans are facing a full-circle moment on the filibuster.

Four years ago, the GOP stood united against a failed attempt by Democrats to sidestep the chamber’s 60-vote supermajority requirement and pass a voting-rights bill demanded by their party base. Now — with their own trifecta and their own elections bill at issue — Republicans are under pressure to do much the same.

The shoe-on-the-other-foot moment is being fueled by a cadre of hard-right senators arguing forcefully for tactics once embraced by Senate progressives. Many Democrats, meanwhile, are keeping silent and watching as the GOP undergoes similar internal turmoil to what they had experienced in the majority.

Only a few, like Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), have acknowledged the irony of the moment — noting in a statement Tuesday that the push for the GOP elections bill looks a lot like what Democrats had previously attempted.

“Once again, I do not support these efforts,” she said in a statement. “Ensuring public trust in our elections is at the core of our democracy, but federal overreach is not how we achieve this.”

But the dial on the intraparty pressure cooker is set to ratchet up Wednesday, when House Republicans are expected to pass the SAVE America Act and send it to the Senate. Backed by an Elon Musk-driven public pressure campaign, the conservative hard-liners are working overtime to bend their GOP colleagues toward allowing a “talking filibuster” — a strategy they believe will ultimately allow the Senate to act on a simple-majority basis.

Much as Democrats said their voting-rights legislation dealt with existential issues of democracy that necessitated an exception to the filibuster, GOP Sen. Mike Lee of Utah and his allies argue SAVE America is essential to securing elections — including the upcoming midterms — from a purported surge of noncitizen voting.

The bill would mandate voters present proof of citizenship, such as a passport or birth certificate, to register and would require photo ID to vote in every state, among other changes, and has garnered strong backing from President Donald Trump. The push to make Democrats hold the floor indefinitely if they want to block it has picked up support from many of Trump’s GOP allies in the Senate.

“I’m a fan of the talking filibuster … especially as Democrats have proven more and more obstructionist,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) said.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said forcing a talking filibuster is “exactly what we should do” and that he’s “making the case vigorously” for it.

But many other Senate Republicans are wary of any step that further waters down the 60-vote margin after both parties have already diluted it over the past decade. Once a majority makes an exception for one bill, Republicans argue it will effectively mark the beginning of the end for the legislative filibuster — something many of them see as a bulwark against big-government Democratic policies, not an obstacle to GOP priorities.

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said he was not eager to rejoin a battle that has resulted in party-line confirmations of presidential nominees after a series of partisan escalations involving the so-called “nuclear option.”

Tillis said he did not see a substantial difference between those sorts of rules changes and instead by trying to force Democrats into a talking filibuster, which GOP proponents suggest would not require going nuclear. Both, he said, have the “same fundamental message.”

Lee has been urging his legion of X followers to reach out to his GOP colleagues, seeking to build public pressure on them to support the voting bill even if it means throwing them into a filibuster fight they don’t want.

He also gave a presentation on his talking filibuster proposal during a closed-door GOP lunch Tuesday, and the topic is expected to come up again Wednesday when Senate Republicans hold a private retreat on Capitol Hill.

Meanwhile, a band of ultraconservatives in the House, led by Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.), is trying to focus pressure on Senate Majority Leader John Thune. Luna told reporters last week that she had received “assurances” that the Senate would allow a talking filibuster for the voting bill — something Thune denied.

The multifront push has sparked frustration among Senate Republicans, according to two people granted anonymity to speak candidly, who warned that trying to put words in Thune and other GOP senators’ mouths was only undermining her cause.

A GOP senator who granted anonymity to disclose private discussions said that while Lee gave a good presentation during Tuesday’s lunch, “a lot of people in the room are sick of Mike Lee fundraising off of it.”

“It’s a political spectacle,” the senator added. “It’s never going to happen. It doesn’t work.”

Republican senators have raised concerns that pursuing a talking filibuster strategy would require either eating up potentially weeks of floor time with no guarantee of success or pursuing strategies that would require procedural votes that would essentially require 50 GOP lawmakers to sidestep recent Senate precedent — a hurdle they wouldn’t be able to clear.

A spokesperson for Lee did not respond to a request for comment.

Republicans have been privately circulating op-eds detailing the procedural headaches they could invite upon themselves if they backed Lee’s idea. And they’ve warned that opening up the floor to unlimited amendments could set the stage for Democrats to hijack any bill and turn it into a health care bill or tariff bill or any other proposal they could get a majority to support.

Many GOP senators aside from Tillis, who is retiring, are starting to speak out against the idea — including Sen. John Curtis of Utah, who said that “for those concerned in the House, I also oppose skirting around the filibuster.”

Sen. Kevin Cramer of North Dakota predicted that it wouldn’t go anywhere and summed up his own position as “not interested.”

One Democrat who has closely studied the issue, Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon, said he relished the idea of a “talking filibuster.” During the Biden-era debates over voting legislation, he put forward a proposal of his own — albeit with rules changes that would ultimately allow debate to end.

“If they’re operating within the existing rules and looking to have an extended debate where they maintain a quorum and go day and night … I say thumbs up,” Merkley said.

Thune has vowed to put the SAVE America Act up for a Senate vote at some point after it comes over from the House, and he said he was open to discussions about getting it passed. But he reiterated Tuesday that changing the 60-vote filibuster through a party-line vote is an idea “that doesn’t have a future.”

Asked later if he knew how a “talking filibuster” could work without a prolonged floor battle — something the South Dakota Republican warned could derail other GOP priorities — Thune started laughing.

“No, I don’t,” Thune said. “It takes you back over 100 years. So, unlimited debate and unlimited amendments. … Nobody knows.”

Calen Razor and Leo Shane III contributed to this report.

Congress

Online safety coalition urges House to reject KIDS Act compromise

Published

22 minutes ago

June 26, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

A coalition of children’s safety advocates is urging House leaders to reject a bipartisan compromise on online safety, arguing it weakens protections for minors and lets tech companies avoid accountability.

In a letter first shared with Blue Light News, the groups urged Speaker Mike Johnson, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, House Energy and Commerce Chair Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.) and ranking member Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) to oppose the bipartisan package — known as the KIDS Act — ahead of a potential House vote as soon as next week.

Led by Design It For Us, ParentsTogether, the National Center on Sexual Exploitation and the Young People’s Alliance and signed by 90 other organizations, the coalition said the deal struck by Energy and Commerce lawmakers fails to address its chief concern: the omission of a “duty of care” provision that would require tech companies to mitigate harms they know their products cause to young users.

“The Committee rejected our concerns and opted to negotiate a version that let Big Tech off the hook and rush this legislation to the House floor,” they wrote.

The warning comes after the groups previously raised similar concerns when the committee approved a version of the KIDS Act along party lines in March.

The Senate’s version of the Kids Online Safety Act — an expected component of Sen. Marsha Blackburn’s ongoing negotiations over online safety regulations — includes the “duty of care” language. Some House members have raised concerns that it could incentivize social media platforms to overzealously censor content to avoid litigation.

“It pains us that, given how hard we have fought for a strong federal solution to online child protection and for a strong bill to move to the House floor, the KIDS Act is the bill the House is championing,” they wrote, urging lawmakers to oppose the bill.

Parents RISE, a coalition of parents who have experienced child loss or mental health difficulties due to tech platforms, sent a second letter to the same parties laying out similar qualms. “We did not create Social Media Victims Remembrance Day so that our children’s names could be used as cover for a bill that protects the very companies that harmed them,” they wrote.

Tech industry group NetChoice has come out against the KIDS Act over censorship concerns.

Spokespeople for Johnson, Jeffries, Guthrie and Pallone did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Congress

Leon Black tells House Oversight he had no knowledge of Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes

Published

37 minutes ago

June 26, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Leon Black told the House Oversight Committee on Friday that he had no knowledge of Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes during the years he paid the convicted sex offender tens of millions of dollars, according to a copy of the billionaire investor’s prepared remarks.

“I don’t understand why people — including members of this committee — would accept baseless speculation about me without regard to the facts and spin such ugly and vicious narratives that are demonstrably false,” Black said in his opening statement, obtained by Blue Light News.

Lawmakers, however, filed into Black’s scheduled transcribed interview Friday morning already suspicious of their witness. House Oversight Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) told reporters he believed Black’s testimony had “the potential to be the most groundbreaking” of anything the panel has heard so far in its long-running Epstein investigation.

Comer also said the committee had reason to believe that Black had signed nondisclosure agreements with some of Epstein’s victims.

Black, a co-founder of Apollo Global Management, did acknowledge in his prepared remarks that he was aware of Epstein’s 2008 sex crime conviction at the time of their association but that “Epstein told me that it was an isolated incident resulting from a fake ID.”

“Five years after his conviction, I gave Epstein a second chance, as did many others,” he continued. “I wish I had not.”

Black also told lawmakers that he knew Epstein for 18 years before he began paying him in 2013 for tax and estate planning. At that time, Black said, he saw Epstein surrounded by some of the world’s most powerful people — among them former President Bill Clinton, tech mogul and philanthropist Bill Gates and then-White House counsel Kathy Ruemmler.

And he appeared to suggest that he saw Epstein as legitimate, in part, because of those who chose to associate with him: “Epstein appeared to me and to many others to have redeemed himself: [H]e served on several prestigious boards, hobnobbed with leading people in academia, the arts, business executives, and numerous world leaders.”

Clinton and Gates have already spoken with Oversight investors about their ties to Epstein; Ruemmler has agreed to sit for an interview with the panel in July.

Black said he ultimately fired Epstein in 2018 “after growing tired of his relentless pursuit of more and more money from me for professional services, his mistruths and misrepresentations … and his failure to repay most of a $30 million demand loan that I had made to him.”

He also acknowledged the allegations of sexual misconduct that have been levied against him in litigation, which he called “demonstrably baseless” and “entirely fabricated.”

In one recent case, the judge found that the law firm that had been representing Black’s accusers and the plaintiff in the case were “engaged in serious, sanctionable misconduct in this case.” However, the lawsuit — brought by a woman who claimed to have been raped by Black when she was 16 — was allowed to proceed.

“There are numerous allegations of real abuse by women — by survivors — against Mr. Black,” Rep. Robert Garcia of California, the top Democrat on the Oversight panel, told reporters Friday morning.

Congress

Capitol agenda: House GOP agenda gets tenuous Trump lifeline

Published

4 hours ago

June 26, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

President Donald Trump handed Speaker Mike Johnson a lifeline Thursday to get Republicans’ agenda back on track next week.

But hard-liners’ festering discontent over Trump’s stalled election bill could jam the chamber again.

For now, members plan to return Monday and press forward on a long list of major legislation before Independence Day recess, including fiscal 2027 funding bills, the annual defense policy bill, a kids online safety bill and negotiations for a third reconciliation measure lawmakers want to stuff with party priorities.

Trump Thursday instructed the band of GOP hard-liners to lift their procedural block of House floor business. Still, some are doubling down in new ways.

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, who engineered this week’s impasse through a blockade of procedural votes, said if leaders want her support to advance legislation next week, they’ll need to attach the SAVE America Act to the defense policy bill.

Senior House Republicans feel joining the bills would kill the must-pass defense legislation that typically wins bipartisan support. And Majority Leader John Thune said Thursday that attaching the two measures would also sink the defense bill in the Senate.

Meanwhile, another hard-liner, Rep. Chip Roy, responded to Trump’s call to lift the House gridlock with a new list of legislative demands for House leaders.

Johnson, for his part, focused on the positive. He told reporters at the Capitol after meeting Trump that he and the president are “on exactly the same page” about stopping “any blockade in the House.”

He also said Congress would be transmitting the housing affordability bill it cleared this week to the White House, after the president abruptly reversed course Wednesday on a signing ceremony for the bill and demanded Senate passage of the controversial election overhaul first.

What else we’re watching:

— HISPANIC CAUCUS BRACES FOR CHAIR’S SUCCESSOR: Hispanic Caucus members are still reeling from Chair Adriano Espaillat’s electoral defeat this week. But they’re warily preparing to welcome his successor — with some conditions. Darializa Avila Chevalier — a Democratic Socialist who ousted Espaillat in New York’s primary Tuesday, said Thursday in a statement she plans to join the CHC when she gets to Congress, which is all but guaranteed in November.

— COMER TO GRILL EPSTEIN-LINKED INVESTOR: Investor Leon Black will speak to House Oversight Friday for an interview Chair James Comer has called “the big one” in his panel’s investigation of the Jeffrey Epstein case. “It’s going to be hard for him to deny the questions we’re going to ask,” Comer told reporters this week.

Meredith Lee Hill, Jordain Carney, Riley Rogerson and Hailey Fuchs contributed to this report.