In a fiery interview released Wednesday night on the “Pod Force One” podcast, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt issued an unprecedented public ultimatum to Senate Republicans: eliminate the legislative filibuster immediately or risk derailing President Donald Trump’s entire second-term agenda and handing Democrats a landslide victory in the 2026 midterms.
Speaking just hours before the government shutdown entered its 31st day, the 28-year-old press secretary tore into GOP senators for what she called “cowardly obstruction” of the president’s mandate, declaring the 60-vote threshold “an outdated, worthless relic that Democrats will torch the second they get power anyway.”
Leavitt warned that without the so-called nuclear option, critical America First priorities (nationwide voter ID laws, an immediate end to universal mail-in ballots, full funding for mass deportation operations, permanent extension of the 2017 tax cuts, and sweeping energy deregulation) will die in the Senate, turning Trump’s promised “golden age” into a “disastrous failure.”
She bluntly told skeptical Republican senators to “get off their butts” and remember that the American people did not vote for gridlock; they voted for results, adding that history will judge any holdout who preserves the filibuster over delivering on election integrity and border security as “traitors to the MAGA movement.”
The explosive remarks instantly detonated inside the Capitol, deepening an already bitter rift inside the Senate GOP conference. Majority Leader John Thune, long a defender of Senate tradition, fired back Thursday morning that “the votes simply do not exist” to nuke the filibuster and accused the White House of “dangerous bullying” that ignores the long-term consequences of turning the Senate into a carbon copy of the House.
Sources close to Thune say at least 13 Republican senators, including institutionalists like Chuck Grassley, Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins, and Thom Tillis, remain immovable, insisting the filibuster is the last remaining brake on total partisan warfare.
Even Trump loyalists like Josh Hawley stopped short of full endorsement, with Hawley telling reporters he’s “tired of kids going hungry because of some archaic rule” but refusing to commit until the White House presents a concrete plan to end the shutdown first.
Behind closed doors, aides describe frantic whipping operations, with Trump himself reportedly phoning wavering senators from Air Force One Wednesday night and posting a blistering all-caps Truth Social message at 2:14 a.m.: “WEAK REPUBLICANS WANT TO KEEP THE FILIBUSTER SO DEMS CAN PACK THE COURT AND MAKE DC A STATE – ABOLISH IT NOW OR LOSE EVERYTHING!!!”
Leavitt doubled down at Thursday’s press briefing, mocking senators who fear Democratic retaliation as “living in a fantasy land,” pointing out that 49 Democrats voted in 2021 to kill the filibuster for voting rights legislation and only Manchin and Sinema (both now gone) stopped them.
“The Democrats are laughing at us,” she charged. “They know exactly what they’ll do the day they take back the Senate – court-packing, gun confiscation, amnesty for 20 million illegals – and our side is protecting the very weapon they’ll use against us.”
She revealed the president is seriously considering forcing the issue via a rare “constitutional option” on January 3, the first day of the new Congress, when Vice President JD Vance could rule from the chair that the filibuster no longer applies to legislation, a maneuver that would need just 51 votes to sustain.
As of Thursday afternoon, markets were rattled, with the Dow dropping over 400 points on renewed shutdown fears, and furloughed federal workers staged angry protests outside the Capitol chanting “End the filibuster, end the shutdown!” Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries gleefully trolled Republicans on the House floor, promising that if the GOP nukes the rule, Democrats will “use every day of minority status in this term to remind voters who broke the Senate.”
With no funding deal in sight and Trump’s approval among his own base reportedly slipping over the prolonged crisis, Leavitt’s unprecedented broadside has turned the filibuster fight into the defining battle of the early second Trump term – a high-stakes gamble that could either unleash the most sweeping conservative overhaul in modern history or shatter Republican unity and hand Democrats the narrative heading into 2026. Senate GOP leadership has scheduled an emergency conference meeting for Friday morning; insiders say the fate of the filibuster – and perhaps Trump’s legacy – will be decided in the next 72 hours.