When did Dems last use the filibuster to block a Republican bill or nomination?

[Orrex]

At the federal level, I mean?

Repubs use it but clearly don’t need it to block the Dem agenda, while Dems claim to need it but don’t use it with much success, so why do our esteemed legislators protect this quaint procedural quirk at the expense of substantive legislative gains?

[Wounded Bear]

1. Reid used it to block some Bush appointees. That's why McConnell nuked the fillibuster for SCJs..nt

[Drunken Irishman]

2. Obama and Reid nuked it for judges because Republicans were doing that.

That gave McConnell cover to do it for Gorsuch when the Democrats filibustered his nomination.

I say cover in the loose sense as Obama and Reid still kept that option for the Super Court but McConnell used their eliminating it in 2013 for lower court openings as justification.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/senate-poised-to-limit-filibusters-in-party-line-vote-that-would-alter-centuries-of-precedent/2013/11/21/d065cfe8-52b6-11e3-9fe0-fd2ca728e67c_story.html

[Drunken Irishman]

3. Under Trump, there wasn't a lot of opportunity to use it...

Since they didn't really advance much major legislation outside reconciliation.

Trump got his tax cut through reconciliation and attempted to overturn the ACA through it too but couldn't wrangle enough Republican votes in the end.

Other than that, Trump was pretty ineffective legislative wise as he didn't see a significant amount of bills passed.

Where the damage was done came from his filling vacancies in the courts. But Democrats could not force 60 votes on that since Reid and Obama nuked the filibuster for judicial (non-Supreme Court) nominees in 2013.

[onenote]

4. The Republicans controlled the Senate from 1/15 to 1/21. Cloture votes failed 100 times.

Cloture votes were defeated by Democrats as follows:
114th Congress (2015-2016): 63 times
115th Congress (2017-2019: 9 times
116th Congress (2019-2021): 28 times

https://www.senate.gov/legislative/cloture/clotureCounts.htm

Keep in mind that cloture was subsequently achieved in some of these instances (particularly presidential nominations). Also keep in mind that many bills never are brought up for a cloture vote if the leadership knows it will fail.

[MichMan]

5. The filibuster doesn't actually need to be officially used to be effective

A lot of proposed legislation never goes anywhere because you know there aren't 60 votes to begin with

[PoliticAverse]

6. Exactly. McConnell can count and like Pelosi doesn't like to bring up bills he knows will fail. n/t