‘Guaranteed death’: Another GOP senator comes out swinging against Trump’s demands

Another GOP senator has said he won’t give in to a looming demand by President Donald Trump in a defiant op-ed.

In a Thursday piece for The Wall Street Journal, Sen. John Curtis (R-UT) made it clear, “I won’t change the filibuster,” a position that he made the headline of his op-ed.

“Under no circumstance will I support any effort to end or alter the filibuster, as any party that does so wouldn’t be guaranteed survival,” Curtis wrote. “Their agenda would be guaranteed death come the next majority.”

The op-ed lands Curtis in a growing camp of Republicans publicly resisting Trump’s push to terminate the filibuster if that’s what it takes to force through his stalled SAVE America Act, a controversial voting bill.

Curtis defended the filibuster, writing that it “protects independence” and “gives individual senators the ability to stop or slow a bill—a significant amount of influence for one person.”

He added that the filibuster protects the minority, which “isn’t just a party. It can be any senator, on any issue, at any time, whose view doesn’t align with the majority.” He noted this kind of resistance “happens more often than people might think” and that the filibuster makes it so a senator who disagrees with party leadership “can’t easily be overruled and pushed aside.”

Trump never comes up by name, but plenty of Republicans have gone after his demand. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) went after the same demand in a Wall Street Journal op-ed of her own. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) has also said he won’t gut the filibuster to secure 60 votes for Trump’s SAVE America Act.