I must confess, I did not have on my Portland Jailblazers Bingo card the Schumer shutdown rapidly approaching the one month mark with no realistic end in sight. It seems extraordinary that such a ridiculous proposition underway in the United States Senate is still being held onto in a death grip by all but three Democrats in the upper chamber.
As for the shutdown’s ramifications, thanks to a $130 million dollar donation to fund the United States military servicemembers last week, the real pain of the shutdown has been relatively minimal. Russ Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, has permanently fired over 4,000 federal employees, and has made public remarks that the number of those RIF’d (reduction in force), will top 10,000 the longer the shutdown lasts.
On Sunday, Los Angeles International Airport, among the busiest airports in the world and considered by many, me included, to be just a half-step above something usually found in a third-world country’s capital, issued a ground stop for a few hours in the morning due to staffing shortages in air traffic control.
#BREAKING: A staffing shortage in Southern California’s airspace triggered a ground stop affecting Los Angeles International Airport flights on Sunday morning, the FAA said. Details: https://t.co/HRtsDX2lex pic.twitter.com/750nfa8Tfo
— KTLA (@KTLA) October 26, 2025
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy appeared on Fox News w/Maria Bartiromo. Air travel is going to get a lot dicier as business picks up, as it always does heading into the holidays.
Sec. Sean Duffy on whether it is safe to fly:
“I need my controllers focused on the airspace, not about the finances at home … If I don’t feel like I have enough controllers, or enough controllers that are focused, we will slow down traffic.”
— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) October 26, 2025
Fred Dalton Thompson, the late Senator from Tennessee, also was a fine actor. In The Hunt For Red October, as the commander of an aircraft carrier, he said these prophetic words.
What have we seen, read, and heard since we visited this subject last week? Ratcheting up of the rhetoric, a dozen different votes to reopen goverment with a clean CR, and a couple chances to offer clean CR’s to pay just military servicemembers, and another one just to pay federal employees. Democrats voted those down, too. And with each passing day, the argument Democrats use in media interviews come with even less reality attached. This leaves only two choices for John Thune and the Senate Republicans – either ride it out until something really bad happens and hope for the best, or do something about it.
The doing something option, making a pinpoint change to the Senate standing rules to reduce the 60-vote threshold for clean continuing resolutions down to 51, (or 50 with the Vice-President breaking the tie). The Parliamentarian will have something to say about that, so the Senate Republicans, or at least 50 of them, would have to vote to override the Parliamentarian, breaking the rule and adopting the new one. Former Missouri Senator Jim Talent and Mark Strand, his former chief of staff, wrote up that option.
Our friend Fred Bauer over at National Review wrote a column acknowledging that a rule change was in the air, and Fred did his best to tamp down the idea as a bad one. There are voices at HotAir that share in that caution and are skeptical of Senate Republicans using that strategy. They’re wrong. Here’s why.
When the Senate Republicans deployed the nuclear option on executive appointments and district court nominations on September 11th, one of the galvanizing reasons Thune was able to get his Republican colleauges on board with this move was because the filibuster was no longer what former Majority Leader Mitch McConnell used to refer to as “a Senate matter.” The Constitution gives wide berth and lattitude to both the House and the Senate to make up their own rules. In the Senate, despite whatever your views on the filibuster happen to be, there’s not a lot of desire to whack away at the legislative filibuster, even though it’s been abused by the Democrats a lot over the last couple decades.
Up to now, the idea of using the nuclear option to weaken the filibuster on legislative matters is a non-starter with Senate Republicans, because they know one day the shoe will be on the other foot, and they don’t want to be powerless to have an impact on whatever legislation is being crafted they view to be bad for the country. As McConnell is fond of saying, the filibuster is a Senate matter. Except in the case of the blockade this year of Donald Trump’s judicial and junior level administrative picks, the filibuster was no longer just a Senate matter. It became a weapon to attack the other two branches of government, something the Senate never designed the filibuster to be.
The entire Republican conference in September, including Rand Paul, recognized that while the filibuster is still an important arrow in every senator’s quiver, using it to hamper the other two branches of government was, and is unacceptable. So they changed the rule.
Nancy Jacobson’s op-ed in the Hill over the weekend strikes a similar tone to Bauer’s piece, but her premise is all wrong. She’s concerned that Senate Republicans are contemplating pulling the trigger on the entire legislative filibuster. No one is calling for that, nor should that be considered.
By changing the rule on a clean CR from 60 to 51, all you’re doing is taking the grandstanding, preening, and hostage-taking away from the minority party. Once the short-term, clean CR is in place, the committees of jurisdiction, in this case involving what to do with expiring Obamacare subsidies, they are Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pension, currently chaired by Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, and Senate Appropriations, chaired by Susan Collins. Both have, can, and will deal with the issue Democrats are attempting to use as negotiating leverage, and they will do so in a bipartisan manner. And if these same Democrats don’t like what comes out of committee and want to vote against them on the floor, the appropriations bills would still need 60 votes to pass. But the government could still continue to operate on continuing resolutions so our military and federal workers wouldn’t be used as pawns and/or props.
The need for Senator Thune and the Senate Republicans to change this rule is exactly consistent with their reasoning for eliminating the 60-vote threshold on nominations. Filibustering is fine for Senate business. But when affects the rest of government and other Constitutional branches, that’s a bridge too far, and rule reform must be implemented. It’s no longer a Senate matter at that point.
Bauer’s primary argument against a rule change is that it opens the door for Democrats in the future to do away with the filibuster entirely, and he points to former Democratic Senators Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin as the only two members keeping Democrats from blowing up the filibuster during the Biden regency.
In 2021 and 2022, Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema took the heat for blocking the nuclear option. That spared those Democratic senators with some institutionalist impulses (such as Delaware Senator Chris Coons) from having to disappoint progressive activists by opposing the nuclear option themselves. In a future Democratic Senate majority, the Manchin–Sinema heat shield would be gone. Maine independent Angus King would probably very much like not to be the deciding vote on nuking the filibuster.
My point exactly. By acting now, Republicans open government, sideline incoherent, obstructionist Democrats, and show the country they are a governing party.
And regardless of the outcome of this current Schumer shutdown, whenever it ends, if and when Democrats do regain control of the Senate, who will be the Democratic voices of reason keeping that party from doing away with the filibuster anyway? Before you say John Fetterman, and that’s certainly one, know that the Democratic Party is going to do everything in their power to replace him as expediently as possible. He has strayed off the fever swamp’s reservation far too many times to be a Democrat in good standing. Schumer won’t be the voice of reason, Dick Durbin is retiring, Gary Peters, Tina Smith, Jeanne Shaheen and Michael Bennet are out, Bennet gearing up for a run to be Colorado’s governor. There are no sane, moderate Democrats left. Crazy is now a feature among Senate Democrats, not a bug. The reason to make the move now is to end the chaos Democrats are causing that Americans don’t like.
By now, Thune and Republican leadership in the Senate have to have considered this rule change option. Undoubtedly, they’re not fond of the idea, nor would I expect them to be. But some things have to be done when the other party is acting so wantonly reckless. There are 53 Republicans, and just a few days ago, the aforementioned John Fetterman said he’d be up to vote with Republicans to change the rule.
Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) called on Republicans to use the so-called “nuclear option” by eliminating the Senate filibuster for spending bills so that the government shutdown can end.https://t.co/mgj6uBBNQ6
— Iowa’s News Now (@iowasnewsnow) October 22, 2025
That makes 54, meaning there are four hall passes that can be issued to squeamish Republicans who saw the logic a month ago on executive and judicial nominations, but can’t bring themselves to holding to the exact same argument when Democrats are holding the country hostage over a clean CR. This rule change shouldn’t be that hard of a call. And speaking of calls, Tuesdays are when the Senate GOP holds their conference lunch, just in case you wanted to know if now might be a time when your voice as a constituent might be influential.
Yes, the Trump administration can and should continue to pare back the size of the federal government, being that the underlying statute governing the administration’s ability to fire people expired nearly a month ago. But there’s too much at stake, and there’s too many people having to pay the price for this shutdown. And that price is too high when this is the kind of argument we’re getting from the Democratic Party.
Sen. Ruben Gallego: “Just last week we introduced a bill to pay all federal workers through the shutdown, and it was not even given a vote. Republicans came down and stopped unanimous consent.” pic.twitter.com/ZcmW2qzNsm
— The Bulwark (@BulwarkOnline) October 26, 2025
Senate Republicans offered a clean CR to pay just the federal employees. Democrats, including Gallego, shot it down. Democrats offered their own version, which was definitely not clean. In addition to paying for federal workers, it reversed cuts in the One Big Beautiful Bill and piled on debt to pay for all the same Democratic pet projects that President Trump and the Republicans have said is a non-starter. Being disingenuous is about the kindest way to describe Gallego’s rhetoric here.
Chris Murphy is still using his ‘No Kings’ talking points in the middle of, *checks notes*, abandoning your position as the Constitutional purse strings and oversight of the federal government and essentially paving the way for Donald Trump to act like a king for this past month and the indefinite future.
I have never in my entire career seen a President so unwilling to even TALK to Democrats about how to solve problems for the American people.
This is the most corrupt President in American history and EVERYONE should be outraged. pic.twitter.com/OzmoCQFAbK
— Senator Patty Murray (@PattyMurray) October 26, 2025
You do know what Barack Obama’s line to Republicans who shut the government in 2013 was, right? “There’s nothing to talk about until you reopen government.” The message has not changed, even though the policies of Obama and Donald Trump couldn’t be further apart.
Murray, being dim of wit, might be one of those senators who honestly doesn’t know any better. Most of the Democrats trying to pin this tail on anything other than the donkey do know better. But they’re more terrified of their political base than to be seen by the rest of the country as utter morons.
You want to talk about a short-term fix for Obamacare as a transition drug off of government intervention into the healthcare market? Fine. We can talk. But only after you reopen government. Until then, there’s nothing to talk about.
And short of Reublicans finally getting to the point where they say, ‘screw the Democrats, it’s time to step up and govern’, about all we can offer, Senator, is a pail of sand and a shovel.
And being that it’s not abundently clear you would know what to do with those two particular implements, and more importantly, where to use them, I’ll leave it to White House Communications Director Steven Cheung to explain it for you in a much more colorfully descriptive way than I’m willing to on this family-friendly HotAir.
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