Skip to content
RollCall logo

Video

What’s the Nuclear Option? Dismantling This Senate Jargon

By David Hawkings
Posted April 17, 2018 at 2:24pm

By David Hawkings and Thomas McKinless

[jwp-video n=”1″]

President Donald Trump has repeatedly called for the Senate to drop a third nuclear bomb on the chamber’s procedure — completely eliminating the filibuster and allowing all legislation to pass with just a simple majority. Senate leaders have already gotten rid of the filibuster on executive and Supreme Court nominees, so why has the chamber avoided this final nuke on legislation? Senior editor David Hawkings explains.

Recent Stories

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., conducts a news conference after the Senate luncheons in the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday, September 15, 2026. Sens. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., left, Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., and Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso, R-Wyo., also appear. (Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call)

Senate plots its final week before elections with potential data center electricity vote

Sen. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, talks with reporters in the Capitol on Aug. 5. (Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call)

Vote on Chinese car imports bill sought as Xi meets with Trump

Independent candidate Dan Osborn of Nebraska attends a news conference outside the Capitol on Thursday.

Who would this independent caucus with? ‘Everybody’

Senate Majority Leader John Thune talks with reporters at the Capitol on Thursday. He’s been getting a version of this question a lot: Will you run for leader again?

‘The assumption is yes,’ Thune says of another leadership run

Newly installed fences surround the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington on Sept. 16. President Donald Trump threatened on Sept. 15 to keep the Kennedy Center closed for good after a judge ruled his name cannot be added onto the famed arts institution's facade.

Appropriators push to protect Kennedy Center from demolition

Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., left, and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., hold a joint news conference in the Capitol on Jan. 8.

Schumer, Jeffries sue to block federal agents at polls in November