Former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has a far great sense of urgency about what the Supreme Court just did to abortion rights in the U.S. than any of our current leadership, and that’s a big problem, because he’s formerly in leadership. Maybe he can give some lessons to President Joe Biden and current leader Chuck Schumer on how to make the Senate work.

“This past week the Supreme Court failed to block a Texas bill that not only bans abortions after six weeks, but also offers cash prizes to individuals who find and turn in anyone who ‘aids and abets’ an abortion procedure. It essentially turns people into bounty hunters against their neighbors,” Reid writes. “The law is not only restrictive but it is overly cruel and punitive.”

Then he gets to the meat of it: “Many Nevadans I talk to are understandably confused about why our majority isn’t governing to protect women’s rights, or why Roe v. Wade isn’t the law of the land already. And they want to know why we have not passed a whole host of other laws that would further Democratic priorities—the same priorities that won Democrats unified control of the federal government less than a year ago.” Yeah, it’s not just Nevadans who are asking that, and many of us already know the answer: “With the filibuster in place, having a majority in the Senate does not translate into the ability to pass legislation.”

Sign if you agree with Harry Reid: Senate must end the filibuster

Reid shows his former colleagues no mercy, describing the filibuster as a “a tool that empowered an entrenched minority of senators to block anti-lynching, voting rights and other civil rights measures throughout the Jim Crow era.” Now, he writes, the “heirs to their despicable legacy are the Republicans in today’s Senate who view any efforts to expand or protect civil rights with disdain.”

Speaking of Jim Crow and voting rights, here’s President Biden.

This is an “all-out assault on our democracy.” It’s been going on for a while now. And yes, “We need to pass the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act to protect the sacred right to vote.” And yes, Congress needs to send those bills to Biden immediately. But we all know why they haven’t, since half of Congress—the House—already passed them and the other half—the Senate—won’t because of the filibuster.

Tweeting about it is fine. It is also woefully insufficient to making it actually happen. The filibuster has to go. Now. Urgently. It’s what is standing in the way not just of voting rights, but of abortion rights (and expanding the Supreme Court to secure these things), and Biden’s larger economic and social agenda. It’s what is standing in the way of addressing climate change.

As Biden himself just said, “Climate change poses and existential threat.” Meaning that unabated, it will kill everyone. So what possible reason could there be for keeping a Senate rule—not a constitutional obligation, but a rule—that’s primarily been used to oppress huge swaths of society?

Of all the Senate traditions to be revered, this is the least of them.