A Republican lawmaker introduced a resolution in the House this week calling for the Senate to abolish the filibuster so President Donald Trump’s MAGA agenda can pass more easily — but a quote from American founding father Thomas Jefferson in the resolution appears to be either misattribution or outright fabrication.
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Rep. Michael Cloud (R-TX) announced his resolution on X, proclaiming, “The Senate’s artificial and self-imposed 60-vote barrier is counter to the Founders’ intent. The Constitution is precise in prescribing the occasions for a supermajority vote. Passing legislation is NOT one of them. Our system was designed to ensure the minority always has a voice — not a veto.”
However, British parliamentary procedure enthusiast Kacper Surdy, who goes by the name @ringwiss on X, couldn’t help but notice a strange passage in Cloud’s resolution.
“Thomas Jefferson, in his Manual of Parliamentary Practice, written for the Senate and long influential in both chambers, emphasized that the purpose of parliamentary procedure was to facilitate the orderly expression of the majority’s will while protecting the minority’s right to be heard, not to arm a minority with the power to permanently prevent the majority from acting,” said the resolution. “Jefferson wrote that ‘the object of rules of order’ is to allow ‘the will of the assembly’ to prevail, and that procedural dilatory motions were to be guarded against as corruptions of the legislative process.”
“I don’t know where this quote is from, but it’s certainly not in Jefferson’s Manual,” wrote Surdy, noting that the “whole paragraph” seems “sketchy” and looks like it might have been AI-generated.
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The closest thing in the actual historical record to the quote Cloud attributes to Jefferson appears to be from Henry Martyn Robert, the 19th-century author of Robert’s Rules of Order, who wrote, “The object of Rules of Order is to assist an assembly to accomplish the work for which it was designed, in the best possible manner. To do this it is necessary to restrain the individual somewhat, as the right of the individual in any community, to do what he pleases, is incompatible with the interests of the whole.”
The original quote from Robert does not specify how majority rule should work.
The filibuster, once a rarely-used tool, has now become a near-constant requirement for 60 votes to pass any legislation. It has constantly frustrated both parties in recent years.
Trump has demanded Republicans do away with the filibuster to pass bills like the SAVE America Act, which would sharply curtail voting rights around the country, but for now a majority of the Senate GOP refuses, fearful it would empower Democrats when they next have a majority.
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