In Context: Senate Nuclear Chain Reaction

Unable to come to bipartisan agreement and consensus on significant issues, under Majority Leader Schumer the Senate is considering a path it has never before taken: eliminating minority rights on blocking legislation and “as President Biden argued decades ago, the filibuster is about more than what gets blocked. It shapes almost everything the Senate actually does pass. It gives all kinds of citizens and all kinds of States a meaningful voice in nearly everything.”

Two Senators in the majority restated their longstanding positions last week on the filibuster after the President's speech. Majority Leader Schumer appears poised to put Senators on the Record this week anyway. It's one thing to publicly state your position. It's another to cast a vote accordingly. This current storm has not yet fully passed.

In the last two decades as this rule change has been considered, it has been referred to as the “nuclear option” and the subsequent fallout as “nuclear winter.” The analogy is fitting for several reasons.