The Senate remains in session during the final days of 2021, but the agenda is limited to clearing some of President Biden’s nominees for federal office. That’s because two of the Democratic majority’s signature initiatives — the social spending bill known as Build Back Better and a pair of election reform bills — remain at the mercy of the filibuster.
While Biden, Sen. Joe Manchin and others may continue negotiations on the details of BBB, there isn’t much to discuss on the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. Except, of course, whether there’s a way to break through the GOP-erected barriers.
With two moderate Democrats continuing to voice opposition to eliminating or changing the filibuster rules, there doesn’t appear to be an obvious path forward in the 50-50 Senate. But some proponents of the two voting rights bills believe West Virginia’s Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona have left the door open to rules alterations.
“The read that I’ve seen in some outlets like Politico about Sinema and Manchin is the wrong one,” said Damon Effingham, director of federal reform for RepresentUs. “If you look at the things they are saying and especially what Manchin is doing, they are interested in having a functional Senate.”
Effingham argues that Manchin’s identification of hyperpartisanship as a cause of dysfunction in the Senate is evidence he is open to changes, as long as they aren’t too drastic.
“What I think is the read here is they don’t want to take a hasty action that has a pendulum impact on federal policy,” said Effingham. After all, many have noted, drastic changes now for voting rights bills could pave the way for looser rules on future policy votes.
Manchin perhaps signaled his willingness to change the filibuster when he met with an expert on Senate rules Thursday night.
https://twitter.com/JakeSherman/status/1471855688108421127
And Sinema’s spokesman appeared to leave the door open earlier this week.
“If there are proposals to make the Senate work better for everyday Americans without risking repeated radical reversals in federal policy, Senator Sinema is eager to hear such ideas and — as always — is willing to engage in good-faith discussions with her colleagues," John LaBombard told Politico.
Stephen Spaulding, senior counsel for public policy and government affairs at Common Cause, echoed Effingham’s take.
“Conversations are really underway to find a way forward that restores the Senate as a place where senators come together, debate issues of the day and actually pass them, not bury them,” said Spaulding. “I think there is a desire — not just among Senate Democrats, among Republicans as well. The Senate is not working as well as it has in the past.”
Spaulding identified a number of previous efforts around altering the filibuster while preserving a significant portion of the rule, ideas that may be considered again.
One idea, which Manchin has indicated he could support, would limit the types of votes on which a filibuster could be deployed. For example, filibusters are commonly used when the Senate votes on a “motion to proceed,” which brings a bill to the chamber floor for consideration. By banning filibusters on those votes, legislation would at least be ensured time for debate before senators can engage in a filibuster on the vote to pass the bill.
Another idea, and one that President Biden has supported, is restoring the “talking filibuster.” Under current rules, a senator can merely announce a filibuster without actually going through the painstaking work of talking a bill to death. (“Think “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.”) Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon has proposed such a change to the rules in the past.
And a third option mentioned by Spaulidng would be an agreement under which both parties are guaranteed the opportunity to introduce a certain number of amendments.
“It’s not ‘abolish the filibuster or nothing,’” he said. “It’s a matter of restoring the Senate.”
Other proponents of the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis bill have argued that the Senate should create a “carveout” for voting rights legislation, or have pointed to recent maneuvering that allowed the chamber to increase the debt ceiling with a simple majority vote. But those options do not appear to be under serious discussion.
The John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act would restore some voting rights protections that have been struck down by the Supreme Court. Previous iterations of the Voting Rights Act were passed with bipartisan support, but Lisa Murkowski of Alaska is the only Republican senator who has said she would vote for VRAA. That still leaves Democrats nine votes short of breaking a filibuster.
And the Freedom to Vote Act, a sweeping bill that sets federal standards for elections, does not have any Republican backing in the Senate. It replaced the For the People Act after Manchin negotiated changes that he hoped would bring on GOP support.
image of U.S. President Donald Trump is displayed on a digital billboard in Times Square in New York on April 8, 2026.
Trump is stuck between two realities. Neither serves the American people
Normally, I worry that events may overtake a column. But not so with the Iran war.
I don’t worry about running afoul of a headline or Truth Social post from the president because what is said about the situation is no longer very relevant to the reality.
On April 8, Nick Catoggio, my Dispatch colleague, dubbed an earlier stoppage with Iran “Schrödinger’s ceasefire.” This was a reference to the famous thought experiment by the physicist Erwin Schrödinger, who was trying to explain the weirdness of “superpositionality” in quantum physics. A cat in a box is both dead and alive at the same time until you open the box. Schrödinger meant to illustrate the absurdity of the idea that particles aren’t any one thing, but a “cloud of probabilities.”
The Trump administration is stuck in a word cloud of probabilities of his own making. The war is over. The war is on. The war isn’t a war. We have a deal, but we don’t have a deal, but we’re about to have a deal. We destroyed Iran’s military. No, we left it intact. We want regime change. No we don’t. We already accomplished it. We “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program a year ago. We had to go to war in February to prevent nuclear war. The Strait of Hormuz is open, closed, or something in-between. No deal without “unconditional surrender.” Let’s make a deal!
This everything-all-at-once vibe can be disorienting, particularly since most Americans didn’t have a war with Iran on their bingo cards until the shooting had already started. President Trump didn’t prepare the country or consult with Congress beforehand because he thought it would all be a smashing success in a matter of weeks.
The miscalculation that started it all: killing Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and much of Iran’s senior leadership, on the first day of the war. To “the great proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand,” Trump announced on Feb. 28. “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations.”
I support regime change in Iran and shed no tears for Khamenei or his goons. But when you start a war by killing the regime’s top leaders, it’s not unreasonable for the remaining ones to conclude that you really intend regime change.
Khamenei was a murderous fanatic, but he was a fairly cautious one. He liked to threaten closing the Strait of Hormuz or attacking our regional allies, but he was reluctant to actually do it, fearing it would invite a regime change war. The mullahs and IRGC goons believed, not unreasonably, that if they lost their grip on power, they’d be lynched by the Iranian people they’ve brutalized for decades.
By starting with a regime change war, Trump removed any reason for the regime not to go for broke. When you have nothing to lose — particularly when you are a millenarian religious fanatic — a Persian Alamo strategy makes a lot of sense.
So Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz and attacked its neighbors.
But it turns out this wasn’t the Alamo. In the contest of wills, Trump blinked. The Iranian regime’s tolerance for punishment proved — so far — to be greater than Trump’s and that of our gulf allies. Militarily we could finish the job, but that would require ground troops and much greater economic turmoil. In a conflict Trump launched unilaterally without the prior support of Congress, NATO or the American people, Trump doesn’t have the political capital for that.
But that’s only half the problem. Trump wants the war over, but he doesn’t want to pay — militarily, economically, politically — what that would cost. So he wants to make a deal that ends it. But there is no deal available that wouldn’t come at an equally undesirable cost. Any deal that looks like what President Obama struck with the Iranians would be too embarrassing to bear. But the Iranians are convinced that they can get just such a deal, and they’re willing to drag things out as long as it takes.
The result: Trump’s in a box of his own making. He thinks he can talk his way out by simply asserting a reality that doesn’t exist. When the financial markets get nervous, he announces a breakthrough that is, at best, a possibility. When the Iranians agree to a deal that looks similar to one Obama might negotiate, Trump goes back to his threats.
It can’t go on forever. But I’m sure it’ll last until long after this column is forgotten.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.