Opinion: Does Harris want to end the filibuster? I asked her campaign.

The filibuster, a parliamentary practice in the U.S. Senate allowing members in the minority to block the will of the majority, has been around in one form or another since long before you were born.
Will it outlive us all? There’s a solid chance of that, given the power of inertia in our federal government, even in these times of heightened partisanship. But will it also be whittled down, chip by chip, into something smaller and less powerful? That’s already happening.
Vice President Kamala Harris reignited the long-running debate about the filibuster Tuesday during a radio interview in Wisconsin when she proposed abolishing the practice, which requires 60 of the Senate’s 100 members to agree to end debate so a particular piece of legislation can come up for a vote.
Harris narrowly tailored her position to abortion rights, proposing to reset as federal law the protections for abortion that existed under Roe v. Wade until the U.S. Supreme Court overturned that five-decades-old precedent two years ago.
Abortion is a powerful motivator for voters in November’s election because the Republican nominee, former President Donald Trump, has bragged about appointing three of the Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe. So Harris is upping the ante in that debate, which helps keep it churning in the national conversation.
But Harris has been fluid on the filibuster, offering support to protect it when she wasn’t trying to kill it.
Harris didn’t offer much detail during her radio interview about how she would use the filibuster to restore the rights lost when Roe was overturned. Her campaign later told me her intentions for the filibuster were “specific” to abortion rights and not a more expansive interest in abolishing the practice.
That sort of drive-by electioneering – Hey, here’s my plan as president, I’ll fill in the details later – has become a rhetorical crutch for both Harris and Trump in this election.
The filibuster is backed by centrists and conservatives in the Senate. Democrats hold a slim majority in that chamber, but the electoral map shows strong signs that the Republicans could regain control in November.
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U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton, a right-wing Republican from Arkansas, knocked Harris on Tuesday with a social media post that said, “She’ll say anything to get elected.”
He brought receipts, attaching an April 2017 bipartisan letter signed by 61 members of the Senate – 32 Democrats, 28 Republicans and one independent – calling to protect the filibuster.
Harris, then a rookie senator from California, signed that letter, which asked Senate leadership “to preserve existing rules, practices, and traditions” on when to debate and when to vote.
Republicans at that time controlled the Senate. The filibuster always looks more attractive to the political party not in control.
Harris, during her first run for president in 2019, proposed eliminating the filibuster to enact a package of environmental protections known as the Green New Deal. Now her campaign won’t say if that is still her position.
There is a history of carve-outs in the filibuster. Democrats have not exactly enjoyed how that played out.
In theory, to filibuster means a senator keeps speaking in opposition to legislation to prevent the vote, which by the mid-1800s became known as “talking a bill to death.” The Senate in 1917 required a two-thirds majority vote to end a filibuster. That was changed in 1975 to a three-fifths majority – 60 votes. Now, senators only have to threaten to keep talking to trigger a filibuster.
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In 2013, Democrats frustrated that then-President Barack Obama’s appointments were stymied in the Senate by Republicans in the minority used a carve-out now known as the “nuclear option” to exempt executive branch and judicial nominations below the level of the Supreme Court.
Republicans, in the majority in 2017, expanded that to include Supreme Court nominations.
That allowed Neil Gorsuch to come up for a confirmation vote that year after Trump nominated him for the Supreme Court. Gorsuch was one of the three Trump nominees who then overturned Roe.
The rules of the Senate are whatever at least 51 senators vote to support. Daniel Weiner, director of The Brennan Center For Justice’s Elections & Government Program, told me the filibuster has been “modified dozens of times” over the years.
“It’s important to remember that the filibuster has never been a static set of rules,” Weiner said. “It is always evolved and changed. So a new round of changes would not be anything particularly radical.”
But Justin Buchler, a political science professor at Case Western Reserve University, said it would be “monumentally stupid” for Democrats to kill the filibuster now because of how Republicans would use that against them later.
He argued that Republicans forced the Democrats into using the “nuclear option” in 2013 so they could expand it four years later while their political opponents took the blame. That’s how it played out in public.
No party has held the White House for three consecutive terms since the elections of 1980, 1984 and 1988. So if Harris wins this year, Republicans stand a strong chance of taking back the presidency in 2028 and maybe control of Congress with it. If the filibuster is abolished, any gains Democrats make from now to 2028 could be reversed as soon as the Republicans regain control.
“You cannot create a weapon and then expect that it will never be turned on you,” Buchler said.
If Harris is just playing politics here, talking up the end of the filibuster to amplify her messaging about abortion rights, she could be playing a dangerous game. Buchler said she would face “tremendous pressure from the activist base” to act on her promises if the Democrats control the House and Senate next year.
Trump has enjoyed the pushback Harris received from some moderates who say she should leave the filibuster be.
But Trump, in his one term, harped and whined about the filibuster whenever it impeded his ambitions. He wanted it as dead as Harris now says she wants it.
For now, abolishing the filibuster sounds like campaign chatter to further rile up the Democratic base about abortion. If Harris wins in November, we’ll find out if that was just bluster or if she’s willing to risk killing the filibuster, which Republicans would later gleefully exploit while letting her take the blame.
Follow USA TODAY elections columnist Chris Brennan on X, formerly known as Twitter: @ByChrisBrennan