How to Use filibuster in a Sentence

filibuster

1 of 2 noun
Definition of filibusternext
Synonyms for filibusternext
  • They engaged in a filibuster that lasted for over a week.
  • In 2010, the bill passed in the House but failed to overcome a filibuster in the Senate.
    — Joanna Slater, Washington Post, 24 Mar. 2023
  • The bill needs 60 Senate votes to overcome a filibuster.
    — Riley Rogerson, Anchorage Daily News, 23 July 2022
  • Democrats need to pick up 10 GOP votes to overcome a legislative filibuster to even get to a vote on the House bill.
    — Leada Gore | Lgore@al.com, al, 21 July 2022
  • That was enough to avert a filibuster and should clear its way for final passage.
    — Staff Writer follow, Los Angeles Times, 16 Nov. 2022
  • There is still the perennial problem of the filibuster.
    — Matt Ford, The New Republic, 19 Oct. 2022
  • Because of the Senate's filibuster rules, 60 votes are needed to get the act through Congress.
    — Amy Nakamura, USA TODAY, 20 July 2022
  • The Senate avoided a filibuster and the passage of any amendments to get the bill across the finish line before the weekend.
    — Alexandra Hutzler, ABC News, 1 June 2023
  • But that doesn’t seem likely, given that Democrats don’t have 60 votes to break the Senate filibuster.
    — Joe Garofoli, San Francisco Chronicle, 11 Aug. 2022
  • So that means the Senate can’t vote to break the second filibuster until Sunday.
    — Chad Pergram, Fox News, 8 Feb. 2024
  • Both measures failed to overcome a filibuster in the state Senates.
    — Tori Otten, The New Republic, 28 Apr. 2023
  • The effort fell short of overcoming the Senate filibuster standard with a vote of 51-47.
    — Sarah Elbeshbishi, USA TODAY, 27 Apr. 2023
  • But the speech during the filibuster must be connected to the bill the legislature is trying to pass.
    — Misty Severi, Washington Examiner, 11 May 2023
  • This legislation would have to pass the filibuster then, the Senate and the president's desk.
    — Nikolas Lanum, Fox News, 5 Apr. 2023
  • Now the Senate needs to do its job, pass the bill, and stop using the irrelevant filibuster rule as a reason to avoid the issue.
    — Tara Kavaler, The Arizona Republic, 29 Sep. 2022
  • But Republicans won the House and Democrats do not have the votes to eliminate the Senate filibuster to pass the measure.
    — W. James Antle Iii, Washington Examiner, 19 Jan. 2023
  • Try to change inconvenient ancient rules: seek to pack the court, end the filibuster, junk the Electoral College, and bring in two more states.
    — Victor Davis Hanson, Arkansas Online, 5 Dec. 2022
  • In the Senate, each bill needs support from at least 60 members in a process that could require as many as 30 hours of debate to dodge a filibuster.
    — Jacob Bogage, Washington Post, 9 Jan. 2024
  • That still left the measure well short of the 10 Republicans needed to overcome a filibuster to block it.
    — Ronald J. Hansen, The Arizona Republic, 2 Aug. 2022
  • Ten Republicans will need to support the bill in order to stave off a filibuster.
    — Allison Hope, CNN, 21 July 2022
  • Manchin also refused to blow up the filibuster earlier this year to pass the White House's rewrite of the nation's voting laws.
    — Haris Alic, Fox News, 25 July 2022
  • Why, why did Republicans go a step further and get rid of the filibuster for Supreme Court justices as well?
    — Nbc Universal, NBC News, 28 May 2023
  • The measure needs 60 votes to overcome the filibuster, meaning at least 10 Republicans will have to vote for it.
    — Grayson Quay, The Week, 20 July 2022
  • Schumer needs at least 10 Republicans to join the 50 members of the Democratic caucus and avoid a filibuster of a vote.
    — Gabe Ferris, ABC News, 20 July 2022
  • The legislation advanced to the U.S. Senate but does not have enough support to survive in case of a filibuster.
    — Tom Krisher, arkansasonline.com, 25 Jan. 2024
  • After three attempts, the senators' filibuster failed to block the bill from passing.
    — Nadine El-Bawab, ABC News, 24 May 2023
  • The vote came after a four-and-a-half hour filibuster that ended when the Senate approved a petition for cloture, or to end the debate.
    — Mike Cason | McAson@al.com, al, 24 May 2023
  • Those ideas are shaky ones and worthy of rebuttal, but here’s a note to Garvey: Neither the filibuster nor the size of the court is even mentioned in the Constitution.
    — Jim Newton, The Mercury News, 15 Feb. 2024
  • The bill would likely need support from at least 60 senators to dodge a filibuster and make it to President Biden’s desk.
    — Erin B. Logan, Los Angeles Times, 17 Aug. 2023
  • The tradition of the filibuster does not explicitly appear in the Constitution, which left it up to the chambers of Congress to determine their rules.
    — The Editors, National Review, 6 Mar. 2024
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filibuster

2 of 2 verb
  • But Democrats in the Senate would filibuster to block it.
    — The Economist, 31 Aug. 2017
  • That’s why my own support for the right to filibuster, like Biden’s, has weakened.
    — Clarence Page, chicagotribune.com, 26 Mar. 2021
  • On Wednesday night, the Senate voted 28-10 to pass the ban, but the Democrats promised to filibuster the final vote.
    — refinery29.com, 7 May 2018
  • Democrats vowed to block his appointment, though a change to the rules means that Supreme Court picks can no longer be filibustered.
    — The Economist, 12 July 2018
  • Senators raise their hand to filibuster and go back to their states to raise more money.
    — Fortune, 18 Jan. 2022
  • The right to filibuster is a simple rule that could be changed in minutes by a majority vote of the Senate.
    — San Diego Union-Tribune, 13 Jan. 2022
  • Most bills can be filibustered in the Senate and require a 60-vote threshold.
    — Kate Davidson, WSJ, 18 July 2017
  • But in the real world, oration is to filibuster as essay writing is to texting.
    — Gail Collins New York Times, Star Tribune, 11 Mar. 2021
  • Manchin has expressed support to do away with one of the opportunities to filibuster a bill, but not all of them.
    — Jennifer Haberkorn Staff Writer, Los Angeles Times, 12 Jan. 2022
  • Democrats, it must be noted, did not filibuster and the hike of the artificial limit cleared with a 52-48 margin.
    — Philip Elliott, Time, 7 Oct. 2021
  • But Senate Democrats can — and will — filibuster wall funding.
    — Eric Levitz, Daily Intelligencer, 24 Aug. 2017
  • Democrats lacked the votes to filibuster, and their grilling of Gorsuch wasn’t so much an indictment of his credentials as a spasm against the skulduggery that got him there.
    — Simon Van Zuylen-Wood, Daily Intelligencer, 28 May 2018
  • The GOP can’t filibuster such a budget bill—a fact Democrats are counting on to pass their multi-trillion-dollar tax and spending binge.
    — The Editorial Board, WSJ, 5 Oct. 2021
  • Its rules, written for a two-party system, allow one deputy to filibuster a law.
    — The Economist, 1 Feb. 2018
  • Pro-Brexit peers in the Lords are threatening to try to stop it by filibustering until time runs out.
    — Danica Kirka, BostonGlobe.com, 4 Sep. 2019
  • Had the motion to end debate failed, then opponents could have attempted to filibuster the bill to death.
    — Pamela Wood, baltimoresun.com, 19 June 2018
  • The other $131 billion of the spending-cap increase is meant to bribe Senate Democrats not to filibuster the new defense spending.
    — Brian Riedl, National Review, 9 Feb. 2018
  • The relatively large size of the group suggests the deal can survive attempts from far-right and far-left senators to filibuster it.
    — Ledyard King, USA TODAY, 24 June 2021
  • Dyer introduced the bill at each subsequent session, and in 1922, the bill passed the House only to be filibustered in the Senate.
    — P.r. Lockhart, Vox, 21 Dec. 2018
  • If Republicans filibuster the Asian hate crimes bill, Democrats would likely use it to build their case.
    — Jennifer Haberkorn, Los Angeles Times, 13 Apr. 2021
  • Nick Saban has used a bully pulpit, filibustered and knows the power of polls.
    — Rainer Sabin, AL.com, 6 Jan. 2018
  • Other Democrats have called for a carve-out to filibuster rules specifically for voting rights bills.
    — Grace Segers, CBS News, 18 Mar. 2021
  • Democrats only have 50 votes – not enough to stop debate and force a vote if Republicans decide to filibuster.
    — Mabinty Quarshie, USA TODAY, 27 Jan. 2021
  • Without a change to filibuster rules, Republicans could block 2 voting rights bills in the Senate.
    — Matthew Brown, USA TODAY, 11 Jan. 2022
  • But even if all 53 Republicans in the chamber vote in favor of the bill, Democrats have vowed to filibuster the measure, leaving it unlikely to pass.
    — Christal Hayes, USA TODAY, 11 Sep. 2020
  • The women filibustered, taking the gifts to the podium on the Senate floor to declare themselves even more firmly in resistance.
    — Kate Zernike, New York Times, 7 May 2023
  • This prompted lawmakers to filibuster even more, since all a senator had to do then was make his or her intent to block a bill known to leadership.
    — Libby Cathey, ABC News, 11 Jan. 2022
  • In all, just 35 Senate Republicans were able to filibuster the bill.
    — Andrew Solender, Forbes, 2 June 2021
  • The filibustering, formally one of the Dodgers’ allotted five mound visits for the game, proved effective.
    — Jorge Castillo, Los Angeles Times, 5 Apr. 2023
  • There’s crude humor, filibustering, and wildly off-base red herrings.
    — Kory Grow, Rolling Stone, 7 June 2023

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'filibuster.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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