the funniest thing about this is, republicans could indeed "abolish the filibuster" and unilaterally end the shutdown by themselves. so why arent they?

well, they would need all republican votes on board to do it. and they dont have that. thom tillis, lisa murkowski, susan collins, rand paul and mitch mcconnell have been voting with democrats to end trump's tariffs and it seems like they will also vote against abolishing the filibuster.

(the filibuster rule basically means you need 60 votes to do anything in the senate rather than 50. now funnily you could abolish this rule with only 50 votes...and there are 53 republicans in the senate. but those five above refusing to do this means they only have 48 votes.)

the senate has now adjourned for the next few weeks, meaning food stamps are in fact going to run out most likely. that's pretty insane. these 5 republicans are basically telling trump they will bring the country to a standstill if he doesnt climb down off his cloud whine, drop his stupid tariffs and negotiate to reopen the government.

in other words, this is much bigger news than it looks like.