Progressive Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) announced Wednesday that there are currently enough votes in the Senate to suspend the filibuster to codify Roe v. Wade and abortion rights if Democrats win control of the House and keep the Senate and White House.
“We will suspend the filibuster. We have the votes for that on Roe v. Wade,” Warren said on ABC’s “The View.”
She said if Democrats control the White House and both chambers of Congress in 2025, “the first vote Democrats will take in the Senate, the first substantive vote, will be to make Roe v. Wade law of the land again in America.”
Your answer is both condescending and unhelpful, so I’ll explain in case any one is interested.
The filibuster isn’t a part of the constitution or any laws governing the way the senate works. It’s, instead, included in a group of rules that each Senate votes on at the beginning of each two-year term. Any rules surrounding the filibuster can change, including if and when they’re allowed to be used, the number of votes to end one, and if one even needs to deliberate in order to maintain a filibuster. For example, in 2017, Senate Republicans suspended the filibuster for Supreme Court nominations. And there is currently no need to speak in order to keep a filibuster going, it just requires the lack of votes to end the “filibuster”
In this case, suspending the filibuster would mean including some rule that carves out the vote on Roe v Wade codification, or that the filibuster can be suspended for pending legislation on a simple majority vote.
So the rule suspending the filibuster would be written into the bill that isn’t passed yet? I feel like I’m not quite getting it … I’m confused about how the suspension works.
Basically, the senate doesn’t just vote on bills. It can also vote on how it handles the day-to-day procedures inside the senate. Warren is saying they would change the rules that make the filibuster a thing in order to get abortion protection passed.
Here’s a good explanation