Time for a filibuster carve-out for terrorism

With America’s public safety threatened, a limited Senate filibuster “carve-out” must be considered. Changes have been made to the filibuster in the past; none of their justifications rose to today’s level of protecting Americans from terrorist attack. Such an alteration would be a sadly necessary change to Senate rules, while still preserving the filibuster.

Hardly hypothetical, such attacks have undoubtedly already occurred recently.

One occurred in Austin, Texas, on March 1, when a man wearing a “Property of Allah” hoodie and a T-shirt with the Iranian flag shot and killed three people and wounded 13 more.

Another occurred in New York City on March 7, when two ISIS supporters attempted to detonate explosive devices outside the mayor’s residence; both assailants stated to police officers that they were ISIS supporters; one handwrote another statement.

A third occurred at Virginia’s Old Dominion University on March 12, when a man who had served eight years in prison for attempting to aid ISIS entered an ROTC facility, shouted “Allahu Akbar,” killed an instructor, and wounded two others.

The fourth happened in Michigan on March 12, when a man, whose brother was a Hezbollah terrorist commander, drove a vehicle laden with explosives into a synagogue; the synagogue also housed a childcare center and school. The FBI called it a “targeted act of violence against the Jewish community.”

There is no doubt that some – if not all four – of these were terrorist attacks. If others have been thwarted and gone unreported, we may never know. However, it is very likely others have been. The same applies to how many more could occur. What is known is that an encrypted message, believed to be intended to activate Iranian sleeper cells, was intercepted shortly after the U.S. and Israeli airstrikes killed Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, on Feb. 28.

Terrorism is hardly an idle threat when it comes to Iran. Terrorism is what that nation has committed under its ruling theocracy for the last 47 years. It has been designated a state sponsor of terrorism by the U.S. State Department since 1984 and is widely acknowledged to be the world’s top state sponsor of terrorism. Iran’s terrorist proxies include Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, as well as many militias; over 40 times in the last half century, Iran has targeted Americans, with the overwhelming majority of instances resulting in American deaths.

Currently, Iran’s entire response in its current conflict with the U.S. and Israel is one of terrorism: indiscriminate missile and drone attacks on its regional neighbors, in addition to its attacks on Israel and U.S. facilities.

A triggering event should hardly be needed regarding U.S. security in any case. After all, there was none for Sept.11, 2001.

Of course, “9/11” calls to mind airport security, which is what al-Qaeda terrorists (another Iran-backed group) evaded to perpetuate America’s most deadly terrorist attack. That attack was the reason for TSA’s creation just two months later, and DHS was established a year later. Currently, Democrats’ use of the Senate’s filibuster to shutdown TSA and other DHS operations began on Feb. 14, now approaching two months as well.

Democrats’ reasons for shutting TSA and DHS are linked to ICE. While Democrats’ demands on ICE are many, their overall desire is to make ICE’s job of deporting those in the country illegally more difficult and dangerous. Their blocking of TSA and DHS funding has already caused personnel to miss paychecks and travelers to experience long delays.

The multiple attacks in the U.S., Iran’s long history of using terrorism, and its current indiscriminate attacks on neighboring Middle East countries raise the TSA and DHS shutdowns to another level.

Multiple times Democrats have refused to lift their filibuster; there is little choice but consider reducing to a simple majority the number of votes needed to end a filibuster when it threatens America’s safety and military preparedness.

The filibuster is not contained in the Constitution; it is simply a product of Senate tradition. The threshold for ending one, known as “invoking cloture,” has been lowered in the past: to a two-thirds vote of all senators in 1917 (there was no way to stop one before then); from 67 to 60 votes (from two-thirds of senators to three-fifths in 1975); to a simple majority for presidential nominations and lower court judges (2013); and for Supreme Court appointments (2017). None of the justifications for these cloture changes measures up to today’s public safety threat from terrorism.

It is time for Senate Republicans to at least announce that they are going to move forward on limiting the filibuster in cases such as those currently presented by terrorism. If Democrats are still unwilling to relent and simply fund TSA and DHS – agencies designed to be America’s primary protection against terrorism during a conflict with terrorism’s preeminent sponsor – Republicans must act to limit the filibuster in such cases, or at least in this case.

And they should do so before more Americans are endangered or killed.