Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, the far-right Georgia Republican who has grown increasingly disillusioned with the G.O.P. and President Trump, said on Friday that her own party was at least partly to blame for the government shutdown, and that it had the power to unilaterally reopen the government.
“If Republican Senators wanted to pass the C.R.,” Ms. Greene said on social media, referring to the funding bill, “and reopen the government they could, by using the nuclear option.”
The “nuclear option” that Ms. Greene referred to is a proposal for Senate Republicans to lower the threshold for advancing legislation from 60 votes to a simple majority of 50. Senate Democrats and Republicans have lowered that threshold for specific votes in previous terms, chipping away at longstanding legislative precedent by making it easier to advance judicial nominees.
In her social media post, Ms. Greene called for Senate Republicans to change the rules for all future legislation, asserting that doing so would allow Republicans to pass laws, including additional cuts to federal agencies, that would be more difficult to reverse under a future Democratic administration.
She pointed to a similar move by Senate Republicans just weeks ago to speed approval of Mr. Trump’s government nominees, lowering the existing 60-vote threshold for considering some presidential nominees to a simple majority. It was the latest in the yearslong back-and-forth that has eroded the filibuster, a once-potent Senate tool to protect the rights of the minority and force consensus.
Ms. Greene is not the only Republican to have floated the idea of eliminating the filibuster, and Democrats have also mused at the possibility. Senate Democrats tried in 2022 to eliminate the filibuster for a series of election measures in what would have probably been the death knell of the procedure. But two holdouts in the party — Senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona — would not join them, and the effort collapsed.
But Senate Republicans are unlikely in this moment to take that final step to eliminate the filibuster entirely at the request of Ms. Greene, known more for making bigoted remarks and amplifying QAnon conspiracy theories than opining on parliamentary rules.
“Did you all really vote for a temporary president with temporary policies that can just be switched off with a Democrat election victory?” Ms. Greene said on social media. “You should be demanding Congress do its job that the Constitution requires. Legislate!!!”
Ms. Greene has frequently clashed with Republican leadership, and has in some cases gone as far as to directly criticize Mr. Trump — nominally a fatal taboo in a party that the president has molded in his image and wielded to quash internal dissent. She is one of just three Republicans who have signed onto a petition to force a floor vote on the release of the Epstein files, and has aligned on other issues with Democrats — for example, the war in Gaza.
Chris Cameron is a Times reporter covering Washington, focusing on breaking news and the Trump administration.
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