WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.379 Welcome to the Deep Dive. Today we are looking 00:00:03.379 --> 00:00:07.719 at the ultimate legislative nuclear button, cloture. 00:00:07.820 --> 00:00:10.679 Right. The filibuster breaker. Exactly. You probably 00:00:10.679 --> 00:00:12.859 know it as the tool that stops politicians from, 00:00:12.919 --> 00:00:15.939 you know, talking a bill to death. But the raw 00:00:15.939 --> 00:00:19.219 mechanics of how this rule is actually used to 00:00:19.219 --> 00:00:22.280 force a vote and sometimes completely silence 00:00:22.280 --> 00:00:25.179 a minority is honestly, it's a global blood sport. 00:00:25.339 --> 00:00:27.850 Oh, absolutely. If you follow politics, you already 00:00:27.850 --> 00:00:29.629 know parliamentary procedure is high stakes. 00:00:29.969 --> 00:00:32.229 But today we're taking a stack of notes from 00:00:32.229 --> 00:00:34.969 a massive Wikipedia article on this single rule 00:00:34.969 --> 00:00:38.570 to see how a supposedly dry, arcane mechanism 00:00:38.570 --> 00:00:41.420 has literally shaped global history. Because 00:00:41.420 --> 00:00:43.399 it is the hidden operating system of democracy. 00:00:43.719 --> 00:00:45.619 I mean, we all tend to focus on the charismatic 00:00:45.619 --> 00:00:47.799 politicians, the big speeches, the campaigns. 00:00:47.920 --> 00:00:49.740 Sure. But when you strip all of that away, these 00:00:49.740 --> 00:00:52.439 procedural rules are what actually dictate whether 00:00:52.439 --> 00:00:55.619 a bill becomes the law of the land or just dies 00:00:55.619 --> 00:00:57.679 completely unnoticed on the floor. OK, let's 00:00:57.679 --> 00:00:59.320 unpack this. What exactly are we talking about 00:00:59.320 --> 00:01:01.039 when we say closure? Depending on where you are 00:01:01.039 --> 00:01:03.600 in the world, it might be called closure or even 00:01:03.600 --> 00:01:05.620 more dramatically, the guillotine. Yeah, that 00:01:05.620 --> 00:01:07.319 one paints a picture. It really does. The root 00:01:07.319 --> 00:01:10.640 of the word is actually French. Clocher literally 00:01:10.640 --> 00:01:13.260 translates to the act of terminating something. 00:01:13.859 --> 00:01:16.400 But to really understand why human beings had 00:01:16.400 --> 00:01:19.219 to invent a rule to force politicians to just 00:01:19.219 --> 00:01:21.659 stop talking, we have to cross the Atlantic. 00:01:22.000 --> 00:01:24.780 The modern political origin story of this takes 00:01:24.780 --> 00:01:28.180 us to the UK, specifically to a truly unbelievable 00:01:28.180 --> 00:01:32.120 scene in 1881. This is a perfect example of what 00:01:32.120 --> 00:01:35.560 happens when the noble theory of unlimited free 00:01:35.560 --> 00:01:39.060 speech just crashes headfirst into the reality 00:01:39.060 --> 00:01:41.280 of a government that actually needs to function. 00:01:41.439 --> 00:01:43.540 Right. Because for centuries, the UK parliament 00:01:43.540 --> 00:01:46.579 didn't have a formal way to force a vote. The 00:01:46.579 --> 00:01:48.299 assumption was just that gentlemen would debate 00:01:48.299 --> 00:01:50.120 until they were finished. Very polite. Exactly. 00:01:50.260 --> 00:01:52.079 And then they would vote. But then comes January 00:01:52.079 --> 00:01:55.659 1881. You have the second ministry of Prime Minister 00:01:55.659 --> 00:01:58.719 William York Gladstone. He's trying to move the 00:01:58.719 --> 00:02:00.299 first reading, which is essentially just the 00:02:00.299 --> 00:02:02.760 initial formal introduction of a highly controversial 00:02:02.760 --> 00:02:05.280 piece of legislation called the Protection of 00:02:05.280 --> 00:02:07.280 Person and Property Bill. And this was a harsh 00:02:07.280 --> 00:02:09.860 response to the Irish agrarian disturbances known 00:02:09.860 --> 00:02:12.879 as the Land War. Yeah. And the Irish Parliamentary 00:02:12.879 --> 00:02:15.939 Party, led by Charles Stuart Parnell, decides 00:02:15.939 --> 00:02:18.759 they are not going to play by those gentlemanly 00:02:18.759 --> 00:02:21.620 unwritten rules. They're going to use the most 00:02:21.620 --> 00:02:24.379 extreme obstructionism possible. They're going 00:02:24.379 --> 00:02:27.520 to filibuster this bill into oblivion. What's 00:02:27.520 --> 00:02:29.800 fascinating here is the sheer physical endurance 00:02:29.800 --> 00:02:32.400 involved in this protest. They weren't just delaying 00:02:32.400 --> 00:02:34.960 the vote for an afternoon or making a few long 00:02:34.960 --> 00:02:38.280 speeches. They kept the debate going for a 22 00:02:38.280 --> 00:02:41.740 -hour continuous sitting. Just brutal. And then, 00:02:41.759 --> 00:02:45.020 following a brief reset, they went into a staggering 00:02:45.020 --> 00:02:48.960 41 -hour continuous sitting. 41 hours. I mean, 00:02:48.979 --> 00:02:51.280 just picture the reality of that room, the absolute 00:02:51.280 --> 00:02:53.360 exhaustion of the members of parliament, the 00:02:53.360 --> 00:02:55.259 clerks desperately trying to keep the records, 00:02:55.360 --> 00:02:58.319 the smell of the chamber. The sheer physical 00:02:58.319 --> 00:03:00.819 toll on the Speaker of the Commons, Henry Brand, 00:03:01.039 --> 00:03:04.219 who had to just sit there and preside over this 00:03:04.219 --> 00:03:07.060 endless marathon. And that physical toll is exactly 00:03:07.060 --> 00:03:09.460 what broke the system. Finally, in the early 00:03:09.460 --> 00:03:12.060 hours of February 2nd. Speaker Brand essentially 00:03:12.060 --> 00:03:15.900 snaps. He'd had enough. He takes completely unprecedented 00:03:15.900 --> 00:03:19.460 action. When the next Irish parliamentary party 00:03:19.460 --> 00:03:23.219 MP stands up to speak, the speaker simply refuses 00:03:23.219 --> 00:03:26.699 to recognize him. Wow. He just unilaterally cuts 00:03:26.699 --> 00:03:29.360 them off, declares the debate over, and forces 00:03:29.360 --> 00:03:31.680 the motion to be put to a vote, which of course 00:03:31.680 --> 00:03:34.840 passes. Hold on. So one single guy, the speaker, 00:03:35.080 --> 00:03:38.449 just decides to break the rules. to make the 00:03:38.449 --> 00:03:41.349 parliament function. Doesn't that give one person 00:03:41.349 --> 00:03:44.030 dictatorial power over the entire legislative 00:03:44.030 --> 00:03:46.189 body? That was exactly the argument the Irish 00:03:46.189 --> 00:03:49.030 MPs made. They were furious. They objected immediately, 00:03:49.289 --> 00:03:51.889 arguing that this was a massive tyrannical abuse 00:03:51.889 --> 00:03:54.810 of their rights as elected members. I bet. But 00:03:54.810 --> 00:03:56.629 the government's response wasn't to apologize 00:03:56.629 --> 00:03:58.569 or reprimand the speaker. Their response was 00:03:58.569 --> 00:04:01.050 to formalize what he just did. The very next 00:04:01.050 --> 00:04:03.150 day, Prime Minister Gladstone moved an amendment 00:04:03.150 --> 00:04:05.689 to the standing orders to create a formal written 00:04:05.689 --> 00:04:08.250 process for declaring urgency and ending debate. 00:04:08.509 --> 00:04:10.689 He actually noted that this was a subject of 00:04:10.689 --> 00:04:13.639 the extremist gravity. They knew they were fundamentally 00:04:13.639 --> 00:04:16.879 altering the nature of Parliament. And by 1887, 00:04:17.000 --> 00:04:19.480 under the Salisbury ministry, that emergency 00:04:19.480 --> 00:04:22.459 rule was further amended to look a lot like the 00:04:22.459 --> 00:04:25.100 system the UK uses today. That's right. But I 00:04:25.100 --> 00:04:27.500 know the modern UK system is incredibly nuanced. 00:04:28.040 --> 00:04:30.240 How does it actually work if a majority wants 00:04:30.240 --> 00:04:32.579 to shut down a debate today? In the House of 00:04:32.579 --> 00:04:35.279 Commons today, ending debate is not just a matter 00:04:35.279 --> 00:04:37.420 of having one more vote than the other side. 00:04:37.699 --> 00:04:40.660 A closure motion does require a simple majority, 00:04:40.920 --> 00:04:44.560 but you also must have a minimum of 100 MPs voting 00:04:44.560 --> 00:04:47.300 in favor of it. And here is the real safety valve. 00:04:47.800 --> 00:04:50.279 The Speaker of the House of Commons retains the 00:04:50.279 --> 00:04:53.560 power to deny the closure motion entirely. Wait, 00:04:53.639 --> 00:04:56.699 so even if 300 MPs want to end the debate, the 00:04:56.699 --> 00:04:59.660 Speaker can just say no? Precisely. If the speaker 00:04:59.660 --> 00:05:02.019 feels like the issue hasn't been debated sufficiently, 00:05:02.319 --> 00:05:05.100 or if they look at the situation and decide the 00:05:05.100 --> 00:05:07.120 majority is just trying to trample the rights 00:05:07.120 --> 00:05:09.420 of the minority to be heard, the speaker will 00:05:09.420 --> 00:05:12.420 deny the motion. The debate continues. That's 00:05:12.420 --> 00:05:14.980 a huge amount of trust placed in one role. It 00:05:14.980 --> 00:05:17.800 is a massive amount of discretionary power vested 00:05:17.800 --> 00:05:20.779 in one person to protect the democratic process. 00:05:21.240 --> 00:05:23.980 That is a wild contrast to how the House of Lords 00:05:23.980 --> 00:05:26.980 handles it. In the Lords, the Lord Speaker has 00:05:26.980 --> 00:05:30.879 absolutely no equivalent power to deny a closure 00:05:30.879 --> 00:05:34.680 motion. None whatsoever. If a member of the Lords 00:05:34.680 --> 00:05:37.220 moves for closure, the Lord Speaker is simply 00:05:37.220 --> 00:05:40.360 required to read a formal statement. They basically 00:05:40.360 --> 00:05:43.000 announce that moving this motion is a most exceptional 00:05:43.000 --> 00:05:45.779 procedure. And then they ask the member if they 00:05:45.779 --> 00:05:48.240 are absolutely sure they want to persist. Just 00:05:48.240 --> 00:05:50.579 to vibe check. Yeah, pretty much. And if the 00:05:50.579 --> 00:05:52.560 member says yes, the motion is put to a vote 00:05:52.560 --> 00:05:55.100 immediately with zero debate. The Lord Speaker 00:05:55.100 --> 00:05:57.860 cannot stop it. It's essentially a verbal warning 00:05:57.860 --> 00:05:59.920 label. Are you sure you want to press the nuclear 00:05:59.920 --> 00:06:02.160 button? And we should clarify the terminology 00:06:02.160 --> 00:06:04.860 here for you listening, because the UK has a 00:06:04.860 --> 00:06:07.199 few different flavors of this. Specific to legislation, 00:06:07.399 --> 00:06:09.560 there's a procedure called an allocation of time 00:06:09.560 --> 00:06:12.839 motion. Informally and rather aggressively, they 00:06:12.839 --> 00:06:15.100 call this a guillotine motion. How did the guillotine 00:06:15.100 --> 00:06:17.680 work? A guillotine motion limits the amount of 00:06:17.680 --> 00:06:19.740 time that can be spent on a particular stage 00:06:19.740 --> 00:06:22.740 of a bill. So they might agree we will debate 00:06:22.740 --> 00:06:26.540 this section for exactly three hours. When that 00:06:26.540 --> 00:06:29.889 clock runs out. The guillotine literally drops 00:06:29.889 --> 00:06:33.550 on the debate. Everything ceases. Brutal. A single 00:06:33.550 --> 00:06:36.170 vote is taken immediately. And if they are at 00:06:36.170 --> 00:06:38.810 the committee or report stage of a bill, that 00:06:38.810 --> 00:06:41.810 single vote accepts all the remaining undebated 00:06:41.810 --> 00:06:44.540 sections and government amendments. all at once 00:06:44.540 --> 00:06:46.560 you don't even get to discuss the later parts 00:06:46.560 --> 00:06:49.019 of the bill it just gets chopped and passed exactly 00:06:49.019 --> 00:06:52.160 though it is worth noting that the classic brutal 00:06:52.160 --> 00:06:54.740 guillotine motion has largely been replaced in 00:06:54.740 --> 00:06:57.079 the commons by something called a program motion 00:06:57.079 --> 00:07:00.199 a program motion right this is where the amount 00:07:00.199 --> 00:07:02.779 of time for each stage of a bill is agreed upon 00:07:02.779 --> 00:07:05.560 in advance usually after the bill's second reading 00:07:05.560 --> 00:07:07.420 which is the main debate on the bill's general 00:07:07.420 --> 00:07:10.279 principles it's a bit more civilized and predictable 00:07:10.279 --> 00:07:13.600 and crucially neither guillotines nor program 00:07:13.600 --> 00:07:15.680 motions are permitted in the House of Lords. 00:07:15.839 --> 00:07:18.199 Oh, really? Yeah. The Lords simply do not allow 00:07:18.199 --> 00:07:20.040 those kinds of strict time restrictions on their 00:07:20.040 --> 00:07:22.339 debates. Here's where it gets really interesting. 00:07:22.519 --> 00:07:24.959 Because while the UK gave us the modern origin 00:07:24.959 --> 00:07:27.399 story, the United States Senate is where the 00:07:27.399 --> 00:07:30.519 word cloture became a household term. The U .S. 00:07:30.579 --> 00:07:32.939 Senate is globally famous for the filibuster, 00:07:33.040 --> 00:07:35.779 the ability of a senator to stand up and talk 00:07:35.779 --> 00:07:38.800 a bill to death. But cloture wasn't actually 00:07:38.800 --> 00:07:40.720 in the original rulebook of the U .S. Senate, 00:07:40.800 --> 00:07:43.870 was it? It wasn't. For over a century, the United 00:07:43.870 --> 00:07:46.649 States Senate operated with no mechanism to cut 00:07:46.649 --> 00:07:48.889 off debate. The assumption was absolute free 00:07:48.889 --> 00:07:51.430 speech. That finally changed during World War 00:07:51.430 --> 00:07:54.250 I. Right. In March of 1917, President Woodrow 00:07:54.250 --> 00:07:56.569 Wilson was desperately trying to pass a bill 00:07:56.569 --> 00:07:59.050 to arm merchant vessels because of unrestricted, 00:07:59.050 --> 00:08:01.970 deadly German submarine warfare. But a group 00:08:01.970 --> 00:08:05.209 of just 12 anti -war senators, led by Republicans 00:08:05.209 --> 00:08:07.730 Henry Cabot Lodge and Charles Curtis, managed 00:08:07.730 --> 00:08:10.129 to completely kill the bill through a filibuster. 00:08:10.310 --> 00:08:13.230 And Wilson was not happy. Wilson was furious. 00:08:13.569 --> 00:08:15.990 He urged the Senate to adopt a rule to allow 00:08:15.990 --> 00:08:18.509 for cloture, and they did, passing it by a massive 00:08:18.509 --> 00:08:22.170 vote of 76 to 3. And they successfully used it 00:08:22.170 --> 00:08:24.569 for the first time just a couple of years later, 00:08:24.629 --> 00:08:28.430 in November 1919, to end a filibuster on the 00:08:28.430 --> 00:08:31.209 Treaty of Versailles. But getting cloture wasn't 00:08:31.209 --> 00:08:33.529 a simple majority back then. The math of the 00:08:33.529 --> 00:08:36.389 U .S. Senate is the whole ballgame. Originally, 00:08:36.610 --> 00:08:39.250 the rule required a supermajority of two -thirds 00:08:39.250 --> 00:08:42.120 of all senators present and voting. Right. And 00:08:42.120 --> 00:08:44.860 that wording is critical. Present and voting 00:08:44.860 --> 00:08:47.960 creates a shifting dynamic threshold. Think of 00:08:47.960 --> 00:08:51.080 it like a classroom. OK. If all 100 senators 00:08:51.080 --> 00:08:53.799 were present in the room, you needed 67 votes 00:08:53.799 --> 00:08:56.659 to end debate. But if 20 senators were out sick 00:08:56.659 --> 00:08:59.120 or just refused to show up, the total number 00:08:59.120 --> 00:09:01.639 of kids in the classroom is only 80. Two -thirds 00:09:01.639 --> 00:09:04.940 of 80 is just 54. So absences actually lowered 00:09:04.940 --> 00:09:06.940 the bar and made it easier for the majority to 00:09:06.940 --> 00:09:09.360 win. Exactly. But even with that shifting threshold, 00:09:09.580 --> 00:09:12.419 it proved incredibly difficult to achieve. Between 00:09:12.419 --> 00:09:16.240 1927 and 1962, the Senate tried to invoke cloture 00:09:16.240 --> 00:09:19.000 11 different times, and it failed every single 00:09:19.000 --> 00:09:21.919 time. And the historical context from our source 00:09:21.919 --> 00:09:24.340 material is vital to understand why this matters. 00:09:25.080 --> 00:09:27.720 During this specific era, Southern Democratic 00:09:27.720 --> 00:09:30.740 senators heavily utilized the filibuster to block 00:09:30.740 --> 00:09:33.600 civil rights legislation. The supermajority requirement 00:09:33.600 --> 00:09:37.240 meant that a highly coordinated, dedicated minority 00:09:37.240 --> 00:09:40.500 could continuously halt major civil rights progress 00:09:40.500 --> 00:09:43.519 for decades. Because it was so incredibly hard 00:09:43.519 --> 00:09:46.919 to overcome, the math eventually changed. In 00:09:46.919 --> 00:09:50.539 1975, the Democratic Senate majority pushed through 00:09:50.539 --> 00:09:53.259 a massive rule change. They had just gained seats 00:09:53.259 --> 00:09:56.059 in the 74 elections, giving them a total of 62 00:09:56.059 --> 00:09:59.039 votes when counting an independent who caucused 00:09:59.039 --> 00:10:01.149 with them. They lowered the threshold from two 00:10:01.149 --> 00:10:03.830 thirds of those present and voting to three fifths 00:10:03.830 --> 00:10:06.409 of all senators duly chosen and sworn. Can you 00:10:06.409 --> 00:10:08.850 translate that for us? Absolutely. That phrase 00:10:08.850 --> 00:10:11.429 duly chosen and sworn completely changes the 00:10:11.429 --> 00:10:13.409 game. It changes the math from whoever happens 00:10:13.409 --> 00:10:15.210 to be sitting in the classroom to the total enrollment 00:10:15.210 --> 00:10:17.610 of the school. It means you need three fifths 00:10:17.610 --> 00:10:20.409 of the entire 100 seat Senate, regardless of 00:10:20.409 --> 00:10:22.669 who is sick, who is traveling or who is abstaining. 00:10:22.889 --> 00:10:25.450 It locked the magic number at a hard 60 votes. 00:10:25.549 --> 00:10:28.919 That is exactly why. Today, whenever you read 00:10:28.919 --> 00:10:31.779 the news, you constantly hear that a bill needs 00:10:31.779 --> 00:10:34.379 60 votes to pass the U .S. Senate. The bill itself 00:10:34.379 --> 00:10:36.740 technically only needs a simple majority of 51 00:10:36.740 --> 00:10:39.659 to pass, but you need 60 votes to invoke cloture 00:10:39.659 --> 00:10:41.799 to end the debate so you can actually take that 00:10:41.799 --> 00:10:44.960 final 51 vote passage vote. Exactly. And the 00:10:44.960 --> 00:10:46.799 modern mechanics of how they actually execute 00:10:46.799 --> 00:10:49.879 this are like a highly choreographed, painfully 00:10:49.879 --> 00:10:52.000 slow dance. Walk us through that. How does a 00:10:52.000 --> 00:10:54.860 senator actually trigger this today? First, you 00:10:54.860 --> 00:10:58.259 need a minimum of 16 senators to sign a formal 00:10:58.259 --> 00:11:00.840 cloture motion. It is a literal piece of paper 00:11:00.840 --> 00:11:03.779 that states, we, the undersigned senators, do 00:11:03.779 --> 00:11:05.940 hereby move to bring to a close debate on the 00:11:05.940 --> 00:11:08.299 measure. They file that piece of paper, and then 00:11:08.299 --> 00:11:10.740 they wait. The motion has to undergo what is 00:11:10.740 --> 00:11:13.220 called a ripening process. Ripening, like an 00:11:13.220 --> 00:11:16.330 avocado. Sort of. The Senate rules mandate a 00:11:16.330 --> 00:11:18.909 cooling off period. The motion ripens one hour 00:11:18.909 --> 00:11:20.730 after the Senate convenes on the second calendar 00:11:20.730 --> 00:11:23.549 day of session following the filing. So if a 00:11:23.549 --> 00:11:25.490 group of senators files the motion on Monday 00:11:25.490 --> 00:11:28.549 afternoon, they are not actually voting on whether 00:11:28.549 --> 00:11:31.350 to end the debate until Wednesday morning. It 00:11:31.350 --> 00:11:33.450 forces everyone to take a breath. And if they 00:11:33.450 --> 00:11:35.769 do hold the vote on Wednesday and they actually 00:11:35.769 --> 00:11:38.710 hit that magic 60 vote threshold, does the bill 00:11:38.710 --> 00:11:41.620 just pass right then and there? Not at all. Hitting 00:11:41.620 --> 00:11:44.659 60 votes just triggers the final countdown. It 00:11:44.659 --> 00:11:47.860 initiates a strict 30 -hour maximum time limit 00:11:47.860 --> 00:11:50.820 of post -closure debate. During those final 30 00:11:50.820 --> 00:11:54.200 hours, the rules get incredibly tight. No single 00:11:54.200 --> 00:11:56.500 senator may speak for more than one hour. You 00:11:56.500 --> 00:11:58.220 can't propose more than two amendments until 00:11:58.220 --> 00:12:00.340 everyone else has had a turn. And I imagine they 00:12:00.340 --> 00:12:01.860 restrict the kind of amendments you can offer, 00:12:01.940 --> 00:12:05.840 too. Very strictly. Every amendment offered during 00:12:05.840 --> 00:12:08.509 those 30 hours has to be germane. which is a 00:12:08.509 --> 00:12:10.809 parliamentary term meaning it must be strictly 00:12:10.809 --> 00:12:13.049 relevant to the actual text of the bill. You 00:12:13.049 --> 00:12:15.090 can't attach a random amendment about highway 00:12:15.090 --> 00:12:17.870 funding to a health care bill just to waste time. 00:12:18.029 --> 00:12:20.590 Furthermore, no dilatory motions are allowed. 00:12:20.929 --> 00:12:24.110 Dilatory motions meaning bad faith motions designed 00:12:24.110 --> 00:12:27.179 purely to waste time and stall the clock. Correct. 00:12:27.340 --> 00:12:30.460 No endless requests for roll calls or quorum 00:12:30.460 --> 00:12:33.419 checks just to burn hours. The system imposes 00:12:33.419 --> 00:12:35.779 extreme order on a body that famously prides 00:12:35.779 --> 00:12:38.700 itself on unlimited debate. Once that 30 -hour 00:12:38.700 --> 00:12:41.000 clock hits zero, the presiding officer cuts off 00:12:41.000 --> 00:12:43.460 anyone who is speaking and forces the final vote. 00:12:43.679 --> 00:12:46.620 Which brings us to the modern era. Because, as 00:12:46.620 --> 00:12:49.100 we have seen in recent years, that 60 -vote threshold 00:12:49.100 --> 00:12:51.700 has become a massive point of contention, leading 00:12:51.700 --> 00:12:53.539 to what is dramatically known as the nuclear 00:12:53.539 --> 00:12:55.960 option. Now, before we dive into this next part, 00:12:56.179 --> 00:12:58.860 I need to explicitly pause and give a quick disclaimer 00:12:58.860 --> 00:13:01.259 to you, the listener. We are about to cover some 00:13:01.259 --> 00:13:03.480 highly politically charged historical events 00:13:03.480 --> 00:13:05.419 from our source material regarding the U .S. 00:13:05.440 --> 00:13:08.100 Senate. I want to emphasize that neither of us 00:13:08.100 --> 00:13:10.720 is taking a side here. We are not endorsing a 00:13:10.720 --> 00:13:12.899 viewpoint, and we are not making a political 00:13:12.899 --> 00:13:14.919 statement about who was right, who was wrong, 00:13:15.039 --> 00:13:18.299 or who started it. Our mission is simply to report 00:13:18.299 --> 00:13:21.419 the factual chronological timeline of how these 00:13:21.419 --> 00:13:23.700 procedural rules changed over the last decade, 00:13:23.840 --> 00:13:26.519 exactly as outlined in the Wikipedia sources. 00:13:27.059 --> 00:13:29.860 Precisely. We are observing the raw mechanics 00:13:29.860 --> 00:13:32.519 of the institution under pressure. So let's look 00:13:32.519 --> 00:13:34.840 at the precedent set in 2013 under Democratic 00:13:34.840 --> 00:13:37.799 Majority Leader Harry Reid. The context at the 00:13:37.799 --> 00:13:39.860 time was that many of President Barack Obama's 00:13:39.860 --> 00:13:41.980 nominees were being filibustered by the Republican 00:13:41.980 --> 00:13:45.480 minority. Specifically, Republicans were refusing 00:13:45.480 --> 00:13:47.759 to confirm nominees to the highly influential 00:13:47.759 --> 00:13:50.759 D .C. Circuit Court of Appeals. So on November 00:13:50.759 --> 00:13:55.460 21st, 2013, Harry Reid makes a major move. He 00:13:55.460 --> 00:13:58.190 raises a parliamentary point of order. He essentially 00:13:58.190 --> 00:14:00.710 states that the threshold for invoking cloture 00:14:00.710 --> 00:14:03.490 on executive and judicial nominations, excluding 00:14:03.490 --> 00:14:05.750 the Supreme Court, should be a simple majority 00:14:05.750 --> 00:14:10.169 of 51, not the traditional 60 votes. Right. Now, 00:14:10.230 --> 00:14:12.169 the presiding officer of the Senate looks at 00:14:12.169 --> 00:14:14.090 the physical rulebook, sees that the written 00:14:14.090 --> 00:14:18.230 rule still clearly says 60 and overrules Reid's 00:14:18.230 --> 00:14:21.309 point of order. But then Reid appeals to the 00:14:21.309 --> 00:14:23.549 full Senate to vote on whether to sustain the 00:14:23.549 --> 00:14:25.330 chair's ruling. And this is the turning point. 00:14:25.679 --> 00:14:29.139 By a vote of 48 to 52, the Senate voted to overturn 00:14:29.139 --> 00:14:31.480 the ruling of the chair. Wait, so they didn't 00:14:31.480 --> 00:14:33.200 actually rewrite the official rulebook. They 00:14:33.200 --> 00:14:35.820 just had a majority vote to ignore the referee's 00:14:35.820 --> 00:14:37.820 interpretation of the rulebook. Exactly. They 00:14:37.820 --> 00:14:40.120 established a new parliamentary precedent rather 00:14:40.120 --> 00:14:43.000 than a formal rule rewrite. All the Republicans, 00:14:43.139 --> 00:14:45.500 along with three Democrats, voted to sustain 00:14:45.500 --> 00:14:48.860 the chair's ruling, but they were outvoted. Just 00:14:48.860 --> 00:14:51.080 like that, the threshold for those lower court 00:14:51.080 --> 00:14:53.379 and executive nominees was lowered to a simple 00:14:53.379 --> 00:14:56.690 majority. Then. Fast forward to April 6, 2017. 00:14:57.370 --> 00:14:59.649 The balance of power has completely flipped. 00:14:59.870 --> 00:15:02.110 Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is 00:15:02.110 --> 00:15:04.649 now in charge, and he's dealing with a filibuster 00:15:04.649 --> 00:15:07.190 by Democrats of President Donald Trump's Supreme 00:15:07.190 --> 00:15:10.070 Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch. And McConnell uses 00:15:10.070 --> 00:15:12.970 the exact same procedural playbook. He raises 00:15:12.970 --> 00:15:15.289 a point of order that the 2013 precedent should 00:15:15.289 --> 00:15:18.129 now be expanded to also apply to Supreme Court 00:15:18.129 --> 00:15:21.350 nominations. The presiding officer, reading the 00:15:21.350 --> 00:15:24.450 rules, overrules him. McConnell appeals the ruling 00:15:24.450 --> 00:15:26.929 to the floor. And the result is a mirror image. 00:15:27.190 --> 00:15:30.690 By a vote of 48 to 52, with all Democrats voting 00:15:30.690 --> 00:15:33.309 to sustain the chair, the Senate overturns the 00:15:33.309 --> 00:15:35.970 ruling once again. The simple majority rule was 00:15:35.970 --> 00:15:37.990 officially expanded to include the highest court 00:15:37.990 --> 00:15:40.159 in the land. If we connect this to the bigger 00:15:40.159 --> 00:15:42.840 picture, what you are seeing in both 2013 and 00:15:42.840 --> 00:15:46.320 2017 is a classic procedural arms race. These 00:15:46.320 --> 00:15:48.279 are legislative bodies where the rules that were 00:15:48.279 --> 00:15:50.840 originally designed to foster slow debate and 00:15:50.840 --> 00:15:53.419 require broad consensus are continually being 00:15:53.419 --> 00:15:56.360 adapted or bypassed entirely to break partisan 00:15:56.360 --> 00:15:59.139 gridlock. The sheer political pressure to deliver 00:15:59.139 --> 00:16:01.720 results simply overwhelm the century old tradition 00:16:01.720 --> 00:16:04.200 of the supermajority. So what does this all mean 00:16:04.200 --> 00:16:06.940 for the rest of the world? How do other nations 00:16:06.940 --> 00:16:09.720 handle a filibuster? Is everyone playing this 00:16:09.720 --> 00:16:13.019 high -stakes game of procedural chicken? Let's 00:16:13.019 --> 00:16:15.320 take a tour of some Commonwealth nations, starting 00:16:15.320 --> 00:16:17.539 with Canada. The great example. They adopted 00:16:17.539 --> 00:16:20.440 closure in 1913 under Conservative Prime Minister 00:16:20.440 --> 00:16:23.879 Robert Borden after the opposition kept relentlessly 00:16:23.879 --> 00:16:27.169 delaying a naval aid bill. But the most amazing 00:16:27.169 --> 00:16:29.370 trivia nugget for you listening is that they 00:16:29.370 --> 00:16:32.850 actually used closure in 1964 to force the adoption 00:16:32.850 --> 00:16:35.610 of Canada's iconic red maple leaf flag. That 00:16:35.610 --> 00:16:38.070 flag debate is a perfect example of why these 00:16:38.070 --> 00:16:40.190 rules exist. You are talking about changing a 00:16:40.190 --> 00:16:42.919 core symbol of national identity. For some, the 00:16:42.919 --> 00:16:46.080 old flag represented vital colonial ties. And 00:16:46.080 --> 00:16:48.600 for others, the new maple leaf was the birth 00:16:48.600 --> 00:16:51.720 of modern Canada. Very. It was a deeply emotional, 00:16:52.179 --> 00:16:54.220 highly contentious debate that was never, ever 00:16:54.220 --> 00:16:56.620 going to end naturally. People were too passionate. 00:16:56.820 --> 00:16:59.000 The government realized that without a procedural 00:16:59.000 --> 00:17:01.139 guillotine, the country would just be paralyzed. 00:17:01.600 --> 00:17:04.420 In Canada, they strictly use the term closure. 00:17:04.960 --> 00:17:07.740 They don't say cloture or guillotine. Any minister 00:17:07.740 --> 00:17:10.440 can give oral notice of their intention to call 00:17:10.440 --> 00:17:12.960 for closure at a prior sitting. When the motion 00:17:12.960 --> 00:17:15.799 is finally made, it passes by a simple majority. 00:17:16.200 --> 00:17:18.599 But what I find fascinating is how strict they 00:17:18.599 --> 00:17:21.339 are about the clock once it passes. It is incredibly 00:17:21.339 --> 00:17:24.460 regimented. If the closure motion passes, every 00:17:24.460 --> 00:17:27.680 single member is allotted a maximum of one 20 00:17:27.680 --> 00:17:30.660 -minute period to speak. And there is a hard 00:17:30.660 --> 00:17:33.359 non -negotiable deadline. All voting must happen 00:17:33.359 --> 00:17:36.299 by 8 p .m. that exact same day. I love that. 00:17:36.339 --> 00:17:39.099 A strict 8 p .m. cutoff. We're going home, folks. 00:17:39.160 --> 00:17:41.920 Time to vote. It's so pragmatic. Down in Australia 00:17:41.920 --> 00:17:43.720 and New Zealand, the mechanics are even blunter. 00:17:44.109 --> 00:17:46.470 In Australia, they don't hide behind polite terminology. 00:17:46.730 --> 00:17:48.809 They literally call it the gag or the guillotine. 00:17:49.089 --> 00:17:51.609 A minister can simply declare a bill urgent and 00:17:51.609 --> 00:17:53.730 move a motion to limit debating time. And the 00:17:53.730 --> 00:17:56.289 Australian gag is incredibly sharp. That urgency 00:17:56.289 --> 00:17:58.329 motion cannot be debated. It cannot be amended. 00:17:58.529 --> 00:18:00.589 It must be voted on immediately. New Zealand 00:18:00.589 --> 00:18:02.809 is similar in its speed, but slightly more democratic 00:18:02.809 --> 00:18:05.670 in how it starts. In New Zealand, any member 00:18:05.670 --> 00:18:08.069 of parliament, not just a minister, can move 00:18:08.069 --> 00:18:09.869 a closure motion once they are called to speak. 00:18:10.490 --> 00:18:12.849 If the length of the debate wasn't already fixed 00:18:12.849 --> 00:18:15.569 by their standing orders, the speaker has the 00:18:15.569 --> 00:18:17.750 discretion to put the closure motion to a vote, 00:18:17.849 --> 00:18:20.849 which just requires a simple majority. Very fast, 00:18:21.089 --> 00:18:23.190 very efficient. Which brings us to a genuinely 00:18:23.190 --> 00:18:25.769 wild and controversial example from Hong Kong 00:18:25.769 --> 00:18:29.390 in 2012. The Legislative Council was dealing 00:18:29.390 --> 00:18:32.269 with a massive marathon filibuster on an amendment 00:18:32.269 --> 00:18:35.640 bill. By May, they had been debating this single 00:18:35.640 --> 00:18:38.420 issue for over 33 straight hours. Exhausting. 00:18:38.460 --> 00:18:40.180 It's four in the morning. Everyone is exhausted. 00:18:40.839 --> 00:18:43.539 Finally, a council member named Philip Wong Yuhong 00:18:43.539 --> 00:18:45.980 stands up and basically says, look, other countries 00:18:45.980 --> 00:18:49.039 have this thing called a cloture motion. I suggest 00:18:49.039 --> 00:18:51.500 the president ends this debate right now. And 00:18:51.500 --> 00:18:53.180 the president of the Legislative Council, Singh 00:18:53.180 --> 00:18:56.039 Yaksing, agreed with him. He stated that he wasn't 00:18:56.039 --> 00:18:57.640 going to allow the debate to go on endlessly. 00:18:58.140 --> 00:19:00.640 But here's the massive catch, the thing that 00:19:00.640 --> 00:19:03.960 caused absolute chaos. Clocher was not defined 00:19:03.960 --> 00:19:06.259 anywhere in the rules or precedents of the Hong 00:19:06.259 --> 00:19:08.960 Kong Legislative Council. The concept simply 00:19:08.960 --> 00:19:11.579 did not exist in their rulebook. So how did he 00:19:11.579 --> 00:19:13.799 actually do it? If it's not in the rules, how 00:19:13.799 --> 00:19:15.960 do you enforce it? He used a catch -all loophole. 00:19:16.349 --> 00:19:19.009 He invoked Standing Order 92, which basically 00:19:19.009 --> 00:19:21.450 says that if a specific matter isn't provided 00:19:21.450 --> 00:19:23.910 for in their own rules, the president can be 00:19:23.910 --> 00:19:25.910 guided by the practice and procedure of other 00:19:25.910 --> 00:19:28.450 legislatures. So he looked at places like the 00:19:28.450 --> 00:19:31.069 U .K. and Canada and he invoked cloture. But 00:19:31.069 --> 00:19:33.730 he did it without holding a cloture vote. He 00:19:33.730 --> 00:19:36.049 just unilaterally ended the debate. Wait, he 00:19:36.049 --> 00:19:38.049 didn't even make the council vote to gag themselves. 00:19:38.410 --> 00:19:40.789 Exactly. And that caused an immediate uproar. 00:19:41.230 --> 00:19:43.970 Another member, Leung Kwok -hung, stood up and 00:19:43.970 --> 00:19:46.009 rightly pointed out that a cloture without a 00:19:46.009 --> 00:19:48.650 vote was entirely unheard of anywhere else in 00:19:48.650 --> 00:19:51.470 the democratic world. Even in the strictest, 00:19:51.490 --> 00:19:53.430 bluntest systems we've discussed today, like 00:19:53.430 --> 00:19:56.230 Australia's gag rule, the legislature still has 00:19:56.230 --> 00:19:58.269 to vote as a majority to silence the debate. 00:19:58.650 --> 00:20:00.730 The president just declaring it over based on 00:20:00.730 --> 00:20:03.529 a vague catch -all rule was highly questionable. 00:20:03.690 --> 00:20:06.210 I can imagine. Yet despite the outrage, Sanyok 00:20:06.210 --> 00:20:08.750 Singh invoked that exact same power again the 00:20:08.750 --> 00:20:12.990 very next year in 2013 to halt debate on an appropriation 00:20:12.990 --> 00:20:16.170 bill. It's incredible. From the 41 -hour sweaty, 00:20:16.349 --> 00:20:19.509 exhausted standoff in Ireland in 1881 to the 00:20:19.509 --> 00:20:22.089 shifting math of the modern U .S. Senate to a 00:20:22.089 --> 00:20:25.880 4 a .m. unilateral shutdown in Hong Kong. We 00:20:25.880 --> 00:20:28.079 have covered a lot of ground today. And for you 00:20:28.079 --> 00:20:30.359 listening, whether you are managing a team, sitting 00:20:30.359 --> 00:20:32.039 on a local board, or just watching the news, 00:20:32.200 --> 00:20:34.099 this is why understanding procedure matters. 00:20:34.380 --> 00:20:36.720 We spend so much time as citizens arguing about 00:20:36.720 --> 00:20:39.339 the issues themselves, but the actual outcomes, 00:20:39.599 --> 00:20:41.579 the laws that end up governing our daily lives 00:20:41.579 --> 00:20:44.220 are heavily dictated by these hidden rules. The 00:20:44.220 --> 00:20:46.720 operating system of the legislature is just as 00:20:46.720 --> 00:20:49.119 powerful as the people running it. This raises 00:20:49.119 --> 00:20:52.039 an important question, a paradox really, something 00:20:52.039 --> 00:20:54.059 for you to think about long after this deep dive 00:20:54.059 --> 00:20:57.039 ends. If the entire foundational purpose of a 00:20:57.039 --> 00:20:59.380 deliberative assembly, a parliament, a senate, 00:20:59.480 --> 00:21:02.160 is to debate ideas freely and ensure the minority 00:21:02.160 --> 00:21:04.980 has a voice against the majority, at what point 00:21:04.980 --> 00:21:07.180 does the mechanism meant to save democracy from 00:21:07.180 --> 00:21:09.680 gridlock actually silence the very debate it 00:21:09.680 --> 00:21:12.400 was built to protect? Where exactly is the line 00:21:12.400 --> 00:21:14.720 between an essential tool for legislative progress 00:21:14.720 --> 00:21:18.019 and a weapon used to crush the opposition? That 00:21:18.019 --> 00:21:20.200 is the perfect thought to leave you with. Thank 00:21:20.200 --> 00:21:22.359 you for joining us on this deep dive into cloture. 00:21:22.559 --> 00:21:23.539 We'll catch you next time.