Whole Hog Politics: Filibuster follies to hover around Trump's ‘big, beautiful bill'

The Hill

a day ago

On the menu: Trump approval bounces back; toastmasters; Dems argue over which way out of the wilderness; warning sign for Cuomo; his ship has come in
Dysfunction is both the cause and result of the most dangerous problem in Washington today: an imbalance of power between the branches.
President Trump is intent on mowing down the remaining restrictions on executive power, and a series of cases awaiting the Supreme Court could scythe through many of the few remaining authorities Congress keeps for itself.
This is the result of a decades-long effort by members of both parties to only oppose executive abuses when they come from the other party. Congress hasn't so much been defeated as surrendered, one majority at a time — and Trump is intent on taking all the spoils won by his predecessors' 50-year siege.
Another way in which partisanship has brought us to this incipient defeat of the constitutional order is that the Congress has been rendered all but incompetent by faction. Over that same 50 years of executive pushing, pushing, pushing, the partisan primary system was coming into full force after a halting initial implementation. With a tiny sliver of activist voters holding the same power to deny a candidate an office as a majority of the broad general electorate, the incentives for bipartisanship have all but disappeared in most states and districts.
The idea of Congress working smoothly in a bipartisan way on substantial issues isn't entirely dead, but almost. The policy divisions are often arbitrary — think of the reversals on trade, spending, national security and even the primacy of Congress itself — but party allegiance is constant. Even on matters where there is broad popular agreement among the people, like immigration or abortion, the duopoly forbids constructive action.
With Congress perpetually stuck, frustrated citizens look to the only office elected by the nation as a whole, the presidency. But when presidents act, as they increasingly have this century, outside of the limits of their office, the results tend to be unsatisfying. This slate of overbroad executive actions will be reversed in part by the courts. What remains will be countermanded at the next change in power, the countermander then adding his or her new round of decrees, and on and on. And so it will go until one day, the courts give up and let presidents rule by the strokes of their pens, ultimately bowing to the will of the people who will prefer substantive action from a despot to a permanently dysfunctional republic.
That's what will eventually happen unless Congress gets a hold of itself and starts delivering results on major issues and returns to the fight against executive overreach in a meaningfully bipartisan way.
But the trick is that those two things aren't often complementary.
After months of declaring themselves wholly devoted to the legislative filibuster, indeed after years of having raked Democrats for their enthusiasm for ending it, Senate Republicans dipped their toes in the cool waters of majoritarianism.
Republicans overruled the Senate parliamentarian, who had ruled that a measure repealing a Biden-era regulation allowing California to ban gasoline-powered cars was subject to regular rules and a 60-vote threshold, not the simple majority allowed under the 1996 Congressional Review Act.
That is certainly within the power of the majority. It takes a simple majority to evade the 60-vote threshold. Majorities can even get rid of parliamentarians, replacing them with ones of their choosing. Between 1981 and 2012, there were only two parliamentarians, but not consecutively. When Republicans had the chance, they picked Robert Dove (1981-87 and 1995-2001) while Democrats preferred the ministrations of Alan Frumin (1987-95 and 2001-12). One imagines that the Democratic-picked Elizabeth MacDonough, who has served since then, is feeling the winds of change herself these days.
What happened with the California rule should be thought of as something of a test case for what's coming this summer as Republicans take the plunge on the reconciliation package that landed in the Senate's lap this month after the House produced its version. The secret trick of reconciliation is that Congress gets a chance to add tweaks to the budget — to reconcile it — twice every federal fiscal year.
Harry Reid, also remembered for starting the rollback of the filibuster by excluding some presidential nominations from the rule, was the great innovator of imaginative reconciliation when he found a way to say that the invention of a whole new federal program, ObamaCare, was actually just a little tweak and didn't need to meet the higher standard in 2010.
Now Republicans are ready to take their latest turn with the filibuster hall pass, and the pressure will be on MacDonough to be creative in her thinking about what is legislation and what is reconciliation. She was game in 2017 for the Trump tax cuts, but this package appears to have actions that would typically fall outside the rules. If she doesn't agree with the majority, one suspects that she will get the boot in favor of someone with a more capacious definition of reconciliation.
Similar things have happened before, so that would hardly be the end of the Senate, but it all points in the same direction: Frustrated primary voters put pressure on senators for both action and strict partisanship, which do not work well together. In order to have both in a narrowly divided nation, lower standards are required.
And that's the funny thing about power in a government of separated powers.
Presidential power is straightforward: Presidents want more of it and seek to destroy obstacles to its swift and easy exercise. Congress, though, derives its power through complexity. The Senate has more power because of the 60-vote threshold because it must be catered to and heeded in order to build a large enough coalition. The easier it is to get legislation through Congress, the less power Congress has.
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NUTRITIONAL INFORMATION
Trump Job Performance
Average Approval: 45.2 percent
Average Disapproval: 53 percent
Net Score: -7.8 points
Change from last week: +1.6 points
Change from last month: +5 points
[Average includes: Ipsos/Reuters: 42 percent approve – 52 percent disapprove; Quantus Insights: 48 percent approve – 48 percent disapprove; Marquette: 46 percent approve – 54 percent disapprove; Gallup: 43 percent approve – 53 percent disapprove; Harvard-Harris: 47 percent approve – 58 percent disapprove]
Few Americans choose to directly engage with artificial intelligence (AI), but most interact with some form of the technology when browsing the web.
Percent of respondents who ____ in March 2025
US adults:
[Pew Research, 2025]
ON THE SIDE: TOASTER TRANCES
Poet Nora Claire Miller on the surprising history of the screensaver. Paris Review: 'The world's first screen saver was not like a dream at all. It was a blank screen. It was called SCRNSAVE. … SCRNSAVE was a big deal engineering-wise but it never caught on with most computer users. … Before long, software developers figured out how to convince people to adopt screensavers: aesthetics. The screen savers had to make people want to look back at the screens they had just looked away from. … In 1989, a software company called Berkeley Systems launched a program called After Dark. Instead of just going blank, After Dark screensavers showed animations: flying toasters, or falling rain, or overlapping curved lines in neon gradients. The new screen savers took the world by storm. But in terms of preventing burn-in, flying toasters were no better than a blank screen. Their purpose was pleasure.'
PRIME CUTS
Democrats can't count on a repeat of 2018 in the second Trump midterm: The Washington Post: 'With Democrats already picking up some momentum in early midterm polling, they could be poised for another strong performance in 2026. But even with Trump back in the White House, the circumstances will be different this time, presenting new challenges for both parties. … With all that's changed, how likely is it that the national environment will be as blue as it was in 2018? … An energized base and a Republican electorate that is structurally less likely to turn out are two key advantages Democrats hold heading into the 2026 election cycle. We saw a preview of this dynamic in the 2022 midterms, when President Joe Biden's low approval ratings translated into only relatively modest gains for Republicans. But not all news is rosy for Democrats. In the upcoming 2026 cycle, there will be fewer districts in play than in their previous midterm as the out-party. In 2016, 23 Republicans won seats carried by Hillary Clinton and 12 Democrats won seats carried by Trump — a total of 35 crossover districts going into 2018. But the landscape is very different now as polarization and gerrymandering continue to thin the herd of competitive races.'
Putting the Dems' deficit with male voters in perspective: The Liberal Patriot: 'Thinking that these young men can be swayed back to Democrats by developing more politically left-leaning media outfits for guys misunderstands the situation. As Daniel Cox has previously outlined, young men haven't necessarily become more ideologically conservative, but many are politically disaffected and uninterested in traditional party politics. In fact, they often to have dour views of both parties. Cox's polling found that many were drawn to Trump's irreverence and find his shtick 'entertaining.' And though they may not agree with Trump on all policy matters, they were much likelier to believe he was looking out for men more than Harris. Essentially, though young men often actually agree with the Democrats on the issues, many still don't view the party favorably. These men have deeper concerns, including that they don't think Democrats are prioritizing their interests.'
Policing the language police: The Washington Post: 'Maybe it's using the word 'oligarchs' instead of rich people. Or referring to 'people experiencing food insecurity' rather than Americans going hungry. Or 'equity' in place of 'equality,' or 'justice-involved populations' instead of prisoners. … The latest debate is, in part, also a proxy for the bigger battle over what the Democrats' identity should be in the aftermath of November's devastating losses — especially as the party searches for ways to reverse its overwhelming rejection by rural and White working-class voters. … 'Some words are just too Ivy League-tested terms,' said Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Arizona). 'I'm going to piss some people off by saying this, but 'social equity' — why do we say that? Why don't we say, 'We want you to have an even chance'?' … Other Democrats and progressives strongly disagree, saying the party's problems can hardly be traced to a few terms that, they say, are used by activists far more than by actual Democratic politicians.'
Nate Silver: Busting the turnout myth for Democrats: Silver Bulletin: 'Presidential campaigns — and particularly Democratic campaigns — tend to see turnout as their lodestar. … But a new, highly detailed analysis of the 2024 vote from Catalist, an analytics and voter database firm, suggests that turnout was probably a relatively modest part of the problem for Harris last year. … [Catalist analysis] finds that Harris and Tim Walz performed poorly among the exact sort of infrequent voters that Democrats once counted on for higher turnout. … About 56 percent of dropoff voters — people who voted in 2020 but not in 2024 — had voted for Biden in 2020, excluding third-party voters. … That hurt Harris, certainly. But two other shifts also harmed Democrats. First, unusually, a majority of new voters (people who didn't vote in 2020) voted for Trump. Since many new voters are young voters, this reflected a substantial tepidness toward Democrats among the younger ranks of Gen Z. … What's more, Harris also (slightly) lost to Trump among repeat voters, a majority of whom had voted for Biden in 2020.'
SHORT ORDER
Ranked choice voting could help aggressive progressive topple Cuomo in New York mayoral race — WPIX
Crowded Alabama field takes shape in hours after Tuberville Senate retirement — AL.com
Dem front-runner has the lead in Michigan Senate race, but not by much — The Hill
Ken Paxton still riding herd on Cornyn in Texas Senate primary — The Hill
New Jersey's Democratic machine looking rusty in governor race — NBC News
Most Americans disagree with Vance on judicial power — National Journal
Shaheen's daughter makes a play for New Hampshire House seat — The Hill
TABLE TALK
Playing it cool …
'The Government Accountability Office or GAO is a quasi-independent arm of the legislative branch that played a partisan role in the first-term impeachment hoax. They are going to call everything an impoundment because they want to grind our work to manage taxpayer dollars effectively to a halt. These are non-events with no consequence. Rearview mirror stuff.' — White House Budget Director Russell Vought said in response to the Government Accountability Office's ruling against the Department of Transportation's pause on congressional funds for electric vehicles.
MAILBAG
'It's nice to be informed on actual percentages as related to federal spending. Wish we could get people to drown out all the white noise. A pipe dream at best.' — Craig Grzech, Livonia, Mich.
Mr. Grzech,
Pipe dreams are better than no dreams at all!
One of the principal reasons behind our mounting fiscal peril is that it's hard to generate urgency for solving a problem that seems far off in the future. But as the moment of truth arrives, what was once seen as too distant suddenly becomes too overwhelming. We went from 'we'll deal with it later' to 'it's too big to deal with at all.'
I've long thought that the federal debt is for conservatives as climate change is for progressives. The forecast is apocalyptic, but the disaster is always just over the horizon for the people in power at the moment. The proposed remedies are painful, and requiring long-term implementation as they must, may not even survive the next election.
Rational self-interest tells politicians that the smart move is to keep up the game of hot potato in hopes that they won't be the one who gets burned when the time is up. But the consequences are increasing and there's a growing understanding in Washington that the 25-year vacation from fiscal reality is coming to a close.
For all of its chaos and melodrama, the DOGE effort spoke to that understanding. It's not surprising that the first efforts at taming the budget beast would be fanciful and promise painless results. Washington loves a 'win-win' even when the real choices are between 'lose a little' and 'lose a lot.'
All best,
c
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FOR DESSERT
Perils of globalization
BBC: 'A man in Norway woke up to find a huge container ship had run aground and crashed into his front garden. The 443ft-ship missed Johan Helberg's house by metres. … Mr. Helberg was only alerted to the commotion by his panicked neighbour who had watched the ship as it headed straight for shore. … 'The doorbell rang at a time of day when I don't like to open,' Mr. Helberg told television channel TV2. 'I went to the window and was quite astonished to see a big ship. … It's a very bulky new neighbour but it will soon go away,' Mr. Helberg added. … According to reports, the ship had previously run aground in 2023 but got free under its own power.'
OFF THE MENU
Whole Hog Politics is taking a brief recess next week but will return with everything but the squeal on June 13. Please enjoy the start of your summer. See you soon!
Chris Stirewalt is the politics editor for The Hill and NewsNation, the host of 'The Hill Sunday' on NewsNation and The CW, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and the author of books on politics and the media. Aliza Jane Fassett contributed to this report.