Another Republican senator defies Trump on the SAVE America Act
U.S. Senator John Curtis (R-UT) is ceremonially sworn into office by Vice President Kamala Harris during a re-enactment in the Old Senate Chamber on the first day of the 119th Congress at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, U.S., January 3, 2025. REUTERS/Jon Cherry
Senator John Curtis (R-UT) publicly rejected President Donald Trump's push to eliminate the Senate filibuster.
In a Wall Street Journal op-ed published Thursday, Curtis declared, "Under no circumstance will I support any effort to end or alter the filibuster."
"Their agenda would be guaranteed death come the next majority."
Utah's senator warned, any party eliminating the filibuster "wouldn't be guaranteed survival" and their "agenda would be guaranteed death come the next majority."
He defended the filibuster as protecting individual senator independence and minority rights across parties and issues, preventing senators from being "easily overruled and pushed aside" by leadership.
Curtis joins a growing Republican faction resisting Trump's demand to remove the filibuster to pass his SAVE America Act, a controversial voting bill.
Senators Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) have similarly refused to gut the filibuster to reach the 60-vote threshold Trump requires for his election overhaul legislation.