• dontgooglefinderscult@lemmings.world
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    9 days ago

    It’s a procedural rule, yes it can be put back in place if Republicans want to, they don’t, but it can be. This is because it has no law associated with it, no bill to pass, it’s something the Senate made up to stall civil rights and especially keep brown senators in the 1800s from doing anything the extreme white minority didn’t want.

    It’s not a ‘nuclear option,’ it’s a return to how the country was designed to function and did function for more than a century.

    • Sonori@beehaw.org
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      9 days ago

      It was created in its current form by the formal adoption of senate rule 22 in 1917, which would explicitly take a two thirds majority to edit or remove and if not removed would leave the filibuster on the books. It’s also worth noting that filibusters were incredibly rare in the 1800s, especially pre civil war, with its use to stall civil rights legislation mainly being a 1940s and later thing.

      The procedure to go around rule 22 by rasing a point of order in contradiction to established precedent is commonly called the ‘nuclear option’ by everyone from the media to reformists discussing it, and is recognized as the only likely way short of the two thirds majority needed to amend rule 22 to get around the senate filibuster. I think the name is more than a little grandiose, but it is the commonly accepted name for the procedure.