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As President Donald Trump intensifies his calls for Senate Republicans to get rid of the filibuster, Sen. John Cornyn on Wednesday said he is open to “changes” that would allow spending bills to pass the chamber without hitting the 60-vote threshold, marking a significant departure for the senior senator who once vowed to maintain the age-old practice.
Despite his change in tune, Cornyn was unwilling to go as far as his two Republican primary challengers, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and U.S. Rep. Wesley Hunt of Houston, both of whom voiced full-throated support for eliminating the filibuster rule altogether.
The president has crusaded against the legislative maneuver in recent weeks, trying to persuade reluctant GOP senators to scrap it as a resolution to the Senate’s impasse over the government shutdown. Republicans have repeatedly voted for a stopgap funding bill that would temporarily reopen the federal government, and Democrats have rejected it each time, with the GOP several votes short of being able to bypass a filibuster.
Outside of White House nominations and budget reconciliation, whereby parties can pass bills that deal with spending and revenue with only a simple majority, the rule allows a single senator to block legislation that does not have 60 votes of support, giving the minority party — and each member of the chamber — significant power.
Cornyn, who pledged to maintain the filibuster in his bid to be Senate leader last year, said that Senate Republicans do not currently have the votes to overhaul the rule. But if the shutdown persists, he said, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-New York, would “force the issue” and push more Republicans to consider a carveout for spending bills — an idea that Cornyn himself suggested he would entertain.
“The part that, to me, cries out for change, is the fact that we haven’t been able to do regular appropriations for awhile,” Cornyn said. “And now with the Schumer shutdown, having a willful minority being able to shut down the government any time they want to, obviously we can’t tolerate that. So I think that calls for some changes, and I think appropriations, including CRs [stopgap “continuing resolutions”], may be a good candidate for that.”
Cornyn’s newfound openness to chipping away at the filibuster comes after he chastised Democrats for exploring an end to the rule during the Biden era. At the time, Cornyn called it a “slippery slope” and said that support for the move was tantamount to a “vote to blow up the Senate.”
Meanwhile, Cornyn’s opponents pledged that they would vote to eliminate the filibuster if elected to the Senate.
In a post on X, Paxton said he expected Democrats would upend the filibuster once they take back the Senate, and so Republicans should not squander their opportunity in the majority.
“President Trump is absolutely right that it’s time to end the filibuster,” Paxton said. “With control of the White House, Senate, and House, we must seize this moment for America First victories. Democrats are going to end it the moment they’re back to pack the courts, add D.C. as a state, and erode our freedoms. We should not unilaterally disarm.”
Doing so, Paxton added, would mean Republicans could open the government “without any concessions.” Democrats have been demanding an extension of expiring Affordable Care Act tax credits in exchange for voting to restore federal funding.
Hunt also said he would “support eliminating the filibuster,” echoing Paxton’s argument that it would allow the GOP to both reopen the government and codify many of Trump’s executive orders.
“We won the White House, held the House majority, and won the Senate because of President Trump’s bold, decisive leadership and his vision for America’s future,” Hunt said in a statement. “The voters delivered a mandate. They did not elect us to manage the status quo — they elected us to transform it. Yet nearly one year into President Trump’s second term, the United States Senate is still moving at a glacial pace.”
Trump’s interest in eliminating the filibuster could factor into Texas’ GOP primary, both for voters and for the president himself. Trump has yet to weigh in on the race, and all three candidates have vied for his endorsement.
In the wake of Tuesday’s off-year elections, which saw Democrats win and overperform their 2024 margins in races around the country, Trump was unequivocal in his advocacy — which he had previously stated — to end the filibuster. He blamed the shutdown for Republicans’ poor electoral performance and warned that Democrats would be more likely to win the 2026 midterms if the filibuster stays in place.
“It’s time for Republicans to do what they have to do, and that’s terminate the filibuster,” Trump said at a breakfast with Republican senators Wednesday morning. “It’s the only way you can do it. And if you don’t terminate the filibuster, you’ll be in bad shape. We won’t pass any legislation.”
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-South Dakota, however, has consistently said that Republicans do not have the votes to overhaul the filibuster and vowed to keep it intact as majority leader.
On the Democratic side, former Rep. Colin Allred supported abolishing the filibuster to pass voting rights legislation during his 2024 Senate bid. In the anti-corruption plan he laid out for his current Senate run, Allred called for filibuster reform to end the silent filibuster, meaning senators would need to speak for hours on end to hold up legislation. State Rep. James Talarico, D-Austin, said in a statement that he also supports “eliminating the current filibuster rules but retaining a talking filibuster to ensure the minority’s voice is heard.”
“People elect a Congress, a House and a Senate to accomplish what they said they were going to accomplish,” Talarico said. “Legislators should be able to do just that and then people should be able to evaluate it and make a judgment in the next election. The current filibuster rules disrupt that feedback loop in the democratic process.”