Durbin says Senate still ‘suffering’ from killing filibuster

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., recalled in an exit interview with The Washington Sun how he and the late Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid had discussed their 2013 decision to make the first party-line move to break Senate filibuster limits and that the chamber has felt the consequences since.

“You’ll regret this, and you may regret this a lot sooner than you think,” then-Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said on the Senate floor in November 2013 as Democrats moved to change the rules, The Hill reported.

Reid, then the majority leader, was frustrated that three of President Barack Obama’s judicial nominees had stalled and said that he felt like he had to eliminate the filibuster. The change, decided by a vote of 52-48, allowed a simple majority to end debate on nominations other than those to the Supreme Court. Democrats said at the time that Republicans had broken a pledge at the start of the year not to filibuster Obama’s nominees except in “extraordinary circumstances.”

Durbin told the Sun in an Oct. 21 interview that shortly before Reid died, the two spoke about the decision. Durbin said Reid had been warned there would be retribution. “It all occurred and we’re still suffering from that,” Durbin said. 

Joshua Mercer, vice president of advocacy at CatholicVote, observed to Zeale News that Durbin supported pro-life legislation when he was first elected to Congress. 

“But Durbin wasn’t a leader, he was a follower. So, when the Democratic Party embraced abortion on demand, Dick Durbin became 100% pro-abortion,” Mercer said. “And that abortion advocacy involved Democrats torching all constitutional and Senate norms, including corrupting the judicial nomination process. Now that his Senate career is fading into the sunset, Dick Durbin is having regrets about these controversial tactics that tarnished our federal judiciary.”

Durbin, who first ran for the U.S. House in 1982, was master of ceremonies at a Springfield Right to Life Committee event that January, according to a Daily Signal column by Terence Jeffrey. Jeffrey said Durbin wrote in a 1989 letter that he believed Roe v. Wade “should be overturned.” 

Durbin said in a 2005 “Meet the Press” interview that he changed his view during his first term. He has said he personally opposes abortion but supports others’ right to choose, and after the Supreme Court overturned Roe, he pledged to work to protect abortion access in law. 

The representative from Illinois has been in the headlines for his abortion stance recently as well. In 2025, Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich offered Durbin a lifetime achievement award for his immigration advocacy, sparking criticism from bishops over the lawmaker’s abortion stance. Durbin eventually withdrew his acceptance. 

Republicans extended the change to Supreme Court nominees in 2017. In August 2019, as Democrats, including Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., voiced support for ending the legislative filibuster, McConnell recalled his 2013 warning to Reid in a New York Times op-ed defending the 60-vote threshold, National Review reported.

Durbin, 81, is retiring in early January after 44 years in Congress, including 22 years as the Senate’s No. 2 Democrat. He has served on the Judiciary Committee for three decades. Durbin said that if he chaired the committee and President Donald Trump nominated a justice, he would hold a hearing and vote the nominee down instead of blocking the nomination as McConnell did with Merrick Garland in 2016.