Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) doubled down on his support for the Senate filibuster, even as President Trump has pushed the upper chamber to use the so-called nuclear option to forgo it and reopen the government with a simple majority vote.

The top two Republicans in Congress are showing no interest in taking the unprecedented step of ending the legislative filibuster, just hours after President Donald Trump made a fresh demand for the Senate to do so to end the government shutdown.

Speaker Mike Johnson warned against the end of the filibuster, an action President Trump insisted the Senate take get rid of the filibuster so it could pass the government funding bill with a simple majority.

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) in a press conference Friday talked about the downsides of using the “nuclear option” to bypass the Senate’s 60-vote threshold to reopen the government but did not directly disagree with President Trump’s call for the upper chamber to get rid of the filibuster.

Republicans have been trying to use the shutdown to force Democrats to sign on to the trillions being taken out of healthcare to pay for tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires, and now they’re using the 40 million people who rely on food stamps to eat as leverage.

Mike "Jeebus" Johnson squirmed a lil' bit as he tried to oppose Trump's demand to get rid of the filibuster without turning himself into Trump's next target. Via the Daily Beast: The visibly uneasy speaker was pressed at his daily press conference Monday about Trump’s all-caps Truth Social post urging an end to the filibuster.

Taylor recalled a distressed White House situation room meeting in 2017 during Trump’s game of brinksmanship with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, after which top administration officials warned that the U.S. could enter war at any moment due to Trump’s flagrant tweets.