Mere hours after the killing of Charlie Kirk, President Donald Trump blamed the “radical left” and signaled a crackdown was coming — even though the killer’s identity and motives were, at the time, unknown.
In an Oval Office statement last week, Trump said his administration would “find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity and to other political violence, including the organizations that fund it and support it.”
What exactly he might mean, and what it will look like in practice, remains to be seen. But several prominent right-wing commentators called for taking action against progressive donors and nonprofit groups that they asserted (with zero evidence) were somehow responsible for the killing. Others called for action against the Democratic Party itself.
It’s a dangerous moment, similar to those many other countries — including the United States — have faced in the past. An awful act of violence like Kirk’s killing can become the justification for a government campaign of repression against political opponents who had nothing to do with that killing.
One dark way situations like this often play out is that, as outrage is peaking, the ruling party passes “emergency laws” stripping civil liberties protections or giving the government new legal powers to go after its perceived internal enemies.
But, in the US right now, there’s a huge obstacle to something like that: the Senate filibuster.
The filibuster — a procedural maneuver with which a bill that lacks the support of 60 senators can be blocked — means Trump and the GOP’s 53-seat Senate majority can’t pass whatever they want into law. Either they have to abide by the complex and restrictive budget reconciliation process (which is exempt from the filibuster), or else they need to win over some Senate Democrats.
So, as long as the Senate filibuster sticks around, any repression campaign from Trump would have to rely on existing law or executive authority — or get Democratic votes.
Which is why it’s ironic that, in the days before the shooting, Democrats were in the midst of psyching themselves up for a confrontation that could very plausibly lead to the filibuster’s demise.
For years, the filibuster has been a punching bag for progressives, who blame it for restricting what Democratic presidents can do. Many would be happy to see it go, even now.
And yet, Trump’s attempt to centralize power — and this talk about taking action against progressive donors and groups — shows why the filibuster is actually quite valuable in times of authoritarian threat. If it goes, that’s one fewer guardrail still holding Trump back.
Before Kirk’s killing, the hottest topic among Democrats was whether the party’s senators should filibuster to block a new funding bill — and force a federal government shutdown until their demands are met.
Back in March, the last government funding expiration date, Senate Democrats decided not to force a shutdown via filibuster, and the party’s base was apoplectic. Now, the new deadline of September 30 is approaching, and Democrats are debating what they should do this time.
The loudest voices calling for a shutdown fight are motivated by deep concern over Trump’s authoritarianism and a belief that Democrats need to do more to fight back against it. Demanding new restrictions on Trump’s authoritarian moves — and forcing a government shutdown if those demands aren’t met — is one way to do that, my former colleague Ezra Klein argues.
It’s important, though, to try to think a few steps ahead about how a shutdown fight will play out.
Currently, Senate Republicans do not want to eliminate the filibuster. They’re happy to keep it around (it’s a convenient excuse for telling Trump that no, they can’t do this or that). But, if Senate Democrats use the filibuster in a way they feel is completely unacceptable — like, say, shutting down the government indefinitely if demands they consider unrealistic aren’t met — and if they feel sufficient heat from the right, they will change their minds.
Klein argues that Senate Democrats providing their votes to a status quo government funding bill would be “complicity.”
But, if you’re highly concerned about the authoritarian threat posed by Trump, why would you stoke a confrontation that could well end in one of the last major constraints on his power being removed?
Trump’s appointees have displayed enormous imagination in how they’ve weaponized federal powers to threaten and coerce various societal actors. But they could do much, much more if they had greater authority to rewrite laws.
The filibuster effectively constricts the horizon of the possible. Trump’s retribution agenda is so centered on executive branch powers for that reason. If, all of a sudden, the filibuster went away, and it became possible for Trump to pass whatever new laws he wanted — so long as he bullied enough GOP swing votes into going along — the horizon of the possible would change.
At a time when so many guardrails holding Trump back are bending and breaking, it seems quite dangerous for Democrats to risk gambling away one of the biggest ones remaining.
