Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) spoke with reporters this week, saying he supported Republicans using the “nuclear option” to override the Senate filibuster to pass a bill to end the government shutdown.Fetterman stated the funds for the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as SNAP, are running dry and people “need to eat” as the shutdown heads into its 21st day.
“There are no winners here. It’s not getting better every day here. People are going to start to get really hungry, and I’ve been fully, fully committed to fund SNAP, open up the government,” he went on to say, before pointing out that U.S. Capitol Police officers aren’t getting paid during the shutdown.
“This is just bad political theater. Open it up,” he told reporters.
Fetterman was then asked whether he supported the GOP “nuking” the filibuster to let a House-approved funding measure pass the Senate with a simple majority. He replied with a firm yes.
“We ran on that. We ran on killing the filibuster, and now we love it. Carve it out so we can move on. I support it because it makes it more difficult to shut the government down in the future, and that’s where it’s entirely appropriate,” he explained. “I don’t want to hear any Democrat clutching their pearls about the filibuster. We all ran on it.”
Of course, not everyone agrees with Fetterman, who in recent years has proven himself to be far more moderate than most members of his party. Ed Kilgore of New York Magazine believes the Pennsylvania senator’s case for the “nuclear option” is faulty:
The filibuster isn’t an all-or-nothing proposition, and not all carve-outs are alike. Over the years, Congress has carved out a series of exceptions to the right to filibuster Senate votes, notably executive- and judicial-branch confirmations and congressional budget measures (e.g., the huge “budget reconciliation” bills like this year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act). This year, Senate Republicans also implicitly carved out certain budget scoring rules to make it easier to disguise the deficit-swelling nature of the OBBBA. So the question is not, as Fetterman appears to suggest, whether to have filibuster carve-outs: It’s what the carve-out is for and whom it benefits.
Kilgore then says that what Democrats actually ran on was to “exempt voting-rights measures from the filibuster following a series of state voter-suppression measures sponsored by Republican-controlled states and defended by Senate Republicans.”
He concludes that it’s not hypocritical for Democrats to want to end the filibuster for one item while not wanting to do so for another.
A crying girl at the gas station was surrounded by bikers, prompting everyone to call 911
The Gas Station Panic That Wasn’t Chaos at the Pump
At a crowded gas station, panic erupted when a barefoot teenage girl ran toward a group of bikers, crying for help. Bystanders misread the scene. Many assumed the bikers were threatening her. Phones came out, and 911 calls flooded in within moments.
The girl looked no older than fifteen. She trembled in torn clothing, her sobs fueling the misunderstanding. The station attendant, convinced he was witnessing a kidnapping, frantically described a “biker gang” taking a young girl to emergency operators.
A Circle of Protection
Outside, the bikers closed ranks around her. To onlookers, the formation looked intimidating. In reality, it was a shield. They weren’t trapping her—they were keeping her safe from whatever she had just fled.
The Missing Piece
A witness in a nearby truck saw what others missed. Minutes earlier, a black sedan had screeched to a halt. The girl had stumbled out, terrified, before the car sped away. Her torn dress and haunted eyes revealed she was running from danger, not toward it.
By the time she reached the bikers, they acted instinctively. They surrounded her not with threat, but with protection.
Lessons in Appearances
What looked like a kidnapping was actually an act of compassion. Strangers, misjudged because of their image, stepped in at the exact moment she needed safety. The scene reminds us: appearances can deceive. Sometimes, the people we fear most are the ones standing between danger and those who cannot defend themselves.
