California Governor Gavin Newsom attacked the Senate filibuster Thursday, calling it a “tyranny of the minority” and expressing support for reforming or eliminating it.
In an interview with The Hill, Newsom, who was visiting the Capitol Thursday as part of a multi-day trip to the Washington, D.C, said that the filibuster needed to be reformed or eliminated in order to break through the “dysfunction” and give the government the momentum it needs to affect change. Newsom, however, stopped short of calling for packing the Supreme Court to advance the Democratic Party’s agenda.
“No, because my kids are going to live with a Supreme Court that’s larger than Congress,” Newsom said of court-packing. Bills to expand the size of the Supreme Court were introduced in both the House of Representatives and Senate in April 2021, and Democrats have continually called for both ending the filibuster and expanding the Supreme Court. Most recently, Democratic Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey repeated calls to expand the Court in June, in reaction to the Court’s decision in West Virginia v. EPA. Newsom predicted that efforts to expand the number of Justices from 9 to 13 would backfire, saying that Republicans would retaliate by expanding the Court again the next time they hold power.
Newsom was not so shy about calling to reform the Filibuster. “Filibuster’s a whole different thing,” he told The Hill. “There’s a prospect there.” “This is hardly novel, this is hardly revolutionary or revelatory,” he said, noting that the Senate had previously eliminated the filibuster for procedures like budget reconciliation, as well as appointments of Executive Branch nominees and federal judges.
Newsom also slammed the 60-vote threshold for making it harder to get legislation through the upper chamber, therefore making the government less effective.“Fundamentally this notion of the tyranny of the minority … at a certain point, this dysfunction cannot last,” Newsom said. “At a certain point this thing called government is just ineffective, inefficient and incapable of adjusting to the needs of the American people without having some forcing effect to actually get something done,” he added.
Newsom’s comments at the Capitol came right after Republican Oklahoma Senator James Lankford blocked a unanimous consent request to advance a bill protecting abortion patients who travel out-of-state to seek an abortion. Newsom’s home state of California is in the midst of efforts to enshrine abortion and contraception into the state constitution, and Newsom himself is making efforts to woo back companies that left his state by promising them access to abortion.
Newsom’s stop at Capitol Hill is the latest in a multi-day trip to the nation’s Capital, a trip that has prompted increased speculation in the mainstream media about a possible 2024 presidential run. Newsom has already begun a media campaign targeting conservatives: in June, he joined former President Trump’s Truth Social platform in an effort to “[call] out Republican lies,” and bought more than $100,000 in cable news ad space attacking Republicans in Florida. Newsom also attempted to co-opt conservative messaging for his own purposes in announcing California’s annual budget, claiming that the budget “[shows] the nation what a true pro-life agenda looks like.”