CV NEWS FEED // Rep. Colin Allred, D-TX, the 2024 Democratic nominee for U.S. Senator from Texas, vowed that if elected he would support an initiative to upend the filibuster in order to pass a pro-abortion law codifying the overturned Roe v. Wade decision nationally.
Allred will square off with incumbent Sen. Ted Cruz, R-TX, on the same day as the presidential election. Cruz is favored to win reelection in the Republican-leaning state, with most election handicappers rating the race as “Leans Republican” or “Likely Republican.”
“The filibuster has to change, because it’s broken,” Allred said during a Saturday appearance on “The Bulwark Podcast,” a neoconservative podcast widely considered to be part of the “Never Trump” movement.
The filibuster was historically “used almost exclusively to block civil rights legislation, to block anti-lynching legislation,” the congressman told host Tim Miller, formerly an official in Jeb Bush’s failed 2016 presidential campaign.
Allred said that, since he is “a civil rights lawyer by training,” the filibuster “is personal for me.”
“The current filibuster doesn’t work,” he continued. “We do have to reform it or we have to fix it.”
“And that is also why we will codify Roe v. Wade,” the Democratic Senate candidate emphasized.
In a Tuesday article, The Daily Signal Managing Editor Tyler O’Neil scrutinized Allred’s assessment of the history of the filibuster.
“While opponents of civil rights legislation did use the filibuster, many others have employed the filibuster, as well, to kill countless other bills,” O’Neil explained. “It is no more than a legislative mechanism that can be used for good or bad purposes.”
He added:
Supporters of the current filibuster, such as outgoing Sens. Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz., and Joe Manchin, I-W.Va., argue that the 60-vote threshold prevents radical bills from passing the chamber and contributes to friendliness in the upper body of the legislature.
>> OCTOBER 2023: ALLRED GAVE $1 MILLION OF TAXPAYER MONEY TO GROUP PUSHING LGBTQ ON KIDS <<
During last month’s Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Chicago, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-NY, implied that if Democrats gain a “trifecta” in November, he “would seek to end the filibuster for purposes of passing voting rights and abortion legislation,” Rich Lowry noted in an August 21 New York Post op-ed.
A “trifecta” occurs when a party has control of the presidency and both houses of Congress.
If Schumer and the Senate Democrats are successful in achieving a trifecta, Lowry wrote, it “would be an inflection point in American government.” Lowry continued:
If a nationwide imposition of abortion on demand can pass with 51 votes, why can’t Medicare for All or the Green New Deal? Schumer already says he wants another massive climate bill, and waves away any criticism about the national debt.
This is not the first time Allred has made headlines for taking a left-wing stance on social issues despite running in a conservative-leaning state.
Last October, CatholicVote reported that Allred “secured a $1 million grant of taxpayer money to a far-left LGBTQ group.”
