filibuster

The Republican Senate majority, meanwhile, has to contend with the filibuster, so Democrats could, in theory, force a shutdown all by themselves.

His Capitol Hill allies also tried in 2017 to repeal the tax code’s constraint on churches’ political activity but failed to attract the 60 Senate votes needed to overcome a filibuster.

In 2021, Democrats in Congress attempted to pass a bill banning partisan gerrymandering, but the bill died in the Senate due to a Republican filibuster and Democratic opposition to work around or abolish the filibuster.

At Reid’s behest, the Senate narrowly voted to change its rules and disallow the filibustering of presidential nominees.

And throughout the decades before the Civil War, there were numerous “filibusters”: expeditions by private, freebooting U.S. citizens to take over portions of Central America, Mexico, Cuba and even Canada.