State Sen. Arthur Orr (R-Decatur) has a grim prediction for Democrats about the final seven days of the 2025 legislative session.
After invoking cloture — the most powerful tool in a legislative supermajority’s toolkit — on their entire calendar of six bills yesterday, Alabama Senate Republicans might have to finish this year’s business by themselves.
State Sen. Rodger Smitherman (D-Birmingham) told lawmakers from the floor yesterday to expect a permanent filibuster from Democrats: “Be ready to do your cloture and that’s the way it is,” he said.
According to Orr, that is exactly what they intend to do.
“We knew this day was going to come, and it came, quite frankly, a day sooner,” Orr said on WVNN’s “The Dale Jackson Show” Friday morning. “We were thinking next week, but there was a bill filed that triggered one of the Democrats, the leading Democrats, and there was going to be filibuster day, and that was that. We knew what we had to do.”
“We’ve got more bills to pass that are going to be controversial… We are probably looking at cloturing every bill. Today, I would say every bill henceforth will be a cloture vote — every motion, concurrence, all these different items of business that we have to tend to. Which means lots of legislation is going to die, but I think we’ll just gut it out day after day after day for the remainder of the session.”
One of Smitherman’s significant concerns centered on a bill filed yesterday by State Sens. Jabo Waggoner (R-Vestavia Hills) and Dan Roberts (R-Mountain Brook) proposing changes to the Birmingham Water Works Board.
When lawmakers return next week, time will be on the clock for the House to pass a final education trust fund budget, and the Senate to pass a general fund budget, with the possibility of conference committees as needed.
Orr said that he and Senate colleagues are reviewing and “looking at some changes” to the package of tax cut proposals passed by the Alabama House exactly one month ago. Those bills have not yet been brought for a vote in their respective Senate committees.
Even once the budget makes it to the floor for a vote, Orr expects that too will be passed through cloture.
“They don’t want to speak, they just want to block, and if that’s the intent — they just want to block and kill the legislation that’s being put forth — then fortunately the people of Alabama have given us a supermajority enough to have the cloture votes, and we’ll use the tools that we’re given as the supermajority, and sit them down,” Orr said.
Lt. Gov. Will Ainsworth, who presides over the Senate, is already leaning into the strategy.
After adjournment on Thursday, Ainsworth posted a photo of the gavel he used to respond to shouts and interruptions by Senate Minority Leader Bobby Singleton (D-Greensboro) on social media with the caption, “Some days you swing this so hard that it cracks.”
Some days you swing this so hard that it cracks. Today was one of those days. #conservativeday pic.twitter.com/OTqfYnOhz9
— Will Ainsworth (@willainsworthAL) April 18, 2025
Grayson Everett is the editor in chief of Yellowhammer News. You can follow him on X @Grayson270.
