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… the majority leader couldn’t keep offering amendments forever. (I am assuming, perhaps naively, that the Senate wouldn’t be kept in a quorum call for the entirety of postcloture time…)

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ringwiss @ringwiss.bsky.social · 44m

… the majority leader’s amendments to be disposed of before postcloture time expires, and then other senators could offer their own amendments. Because no senator may offer more than two amendments postcloture until every senator has had the opportunity to do likewise…

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ringwiss @ringwiss.bsky.social · 44m

The greatest potential effect of their proposal is that it would ~kill the practice of filling the tree. They propose limiting debate on amendments (they actually say ‘eliminate cloture’ on amendments, but I assume this is what they mean), which would allow…

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ringwiss @ringwiss.bsky.social · 2h

You only need 60 if you structure it as a standing order rather than an amendment to the rules!

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ringwiss @ringwiss.bsky.social · 3h

And for anyone looking for early Christmas present ideas…

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ringwiss @ringwiss.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

I like it. But this only works if senators are actually interested in legislating. They came up with a super-cloture process for bipartisan motions to proceed in 2013. How many times have they used it? Zero.

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ringwiss @ringwiss.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

I don’t have a House equivalent in my repertoire of clips yet, but this will do for now.

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ringwiss @ringwiss.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Correct. The current House entirely ceases to exist at noon on 3 January.

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ringwiss @ringwiss.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

That was in 2015, and since then Poland has not had a functioning constitutional court. Here is the latest ⬇️. In all likelihood it’s going to end with the ‘assistance’ of the police. notesfrompoland.com/2026/09/24/p...

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ringwiss @ringwiss.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

FWIW, we are not the first ones to come up with this idea.

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ringwiss @ringwiss.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Under my suggestion, though, it could still be ‘vice Samuel Alito’, just without the ‘retiring’. But something I’ve wondered for a long time is whether judges *must* be confirmed to specific seats, or whether the Senate could leave it up to the president.

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ringwiss @ringwiss.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

They don’t always include it. 🤷‍♂️

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ringwiss @ringwiss.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Hotter take: He doesn’t even need to announce his retirement.

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ringwiss @ringwiss.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

DC jail? Pfft, the House does it better:

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ringwiss @ringwiss.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

They used to have blankets too.

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ringwiss @ringwiss.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

It comes under ‘and for other purposes’... Just ftr, this is different to the SAVE Act; it doesn't require proof of citizenship.

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ringwiss @ringwiss.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

And for anyone just tuning in: the second half of the bill requires photo ID for federal elections.

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ringwiss @ringwiss.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Apparently Booker was objecting to a UC agreement on amendments until just this afternoon.

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ringwiss @ringwiss.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

4. Amending a bill after an amendment in the nature of a substitute has been agreed to (or, to put it more generally, amending only text that has already been amended) is irregular, but you can do anything by unanimous consent, and of course this is better than blocking amendments entirely.

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ringwiss @ringwiss.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Epstein – still needs two more signatures (and the fact that the House is in a district work period is not an obstacle; there’s no reason members can’t sign during pro-forma sessions). Once it gets 218 signatures:

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ringwiss @ringwiss.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Impeachment – Massie would need to start the process all over again ⬇️. (He would then be able to offer his resolution at a time designated by the speaker within two legislative days, as usual.)

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ringwiss @ringwiss.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

They got rid of the second-and-fourth-Mondays rule in 2019.

congress.gov

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ringwiss @ringwiss.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

??? I guess it’s nice that they remembered, but this really is not how it’s supposed to go. The committee-reported amendment should have been disposed of before Thune offered any floor amendments. If they wanted to tidy things up, it would have been better to do it by unanimous consent.

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ringwiss @ringwiss.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

The Senate’s power to determine the Rules of its Proceedings effectively includes the power to ignore those rules if it wants to. For constitutional problems, there’s the enrolled bill rule:

en.wikipedia.org

Enrolled bill rule - Wikipedia

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ringwiss @ringwiss.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

(When I say ‘Monday’, I mean Senate Monday, i.e. Tuesday.)

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ringwiss @ringwiss.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

But the Senate’s mistakes are very predictable, no time machine needed.

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ringwiss @ringwiss.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

3. As usual, they also forgot that the yeas and nays had already been ordered on this amendment when it was offered last Thursday.

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ringwiss @ringwiss.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Tbc, the motion to recommit has actually fallen (they went straight into dealing with the amendments to the bill just now). It’s just that the chair neglected to say that it had fallen, and this has therefore not been reflected in the Record and on Congress-dot-gov.

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ringwiss @ringwiss.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Invoking cloture on an amendment to the bill (which was done on Monday) has the same effect, because otherwise the motion to recommit would have to be disposed of before the clotured amendment.

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ringwiss @ringwiss.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

As for (2), perhaps the chair was relying on Riddick’s, not realising that it’s incredibly out of date... In the modern practice, motions to recommit are considered to be ‘inconsistent with cloture’.

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ringwiss @ringwiss.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

The Senate has made a real mess of this. 1. They forgot to withdraw the committee-reported amendment and have just ignored it. 2. When cloture was invoked, the chair forgot to rule out of order the pending motion to recommit. (The Record incorrectly lists it as still pending.)

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ringwiss @ringwiss.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

This law caused some issues in the House too.

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Reposted by ringwiss

James Austin @jamesdaustin.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

One of the suprisingly big challenges in British politics is that the role policy wonks think MPs should have (legislators) isnt that the public do (local dignitary/fixer/governor. Delete as needed) And in a democracy the latter wins

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ringwiss @ringwiss.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Fun fact: Long ago, adjournment resolutions sometimes gave the *minority* leaders of the two houses the power to call them back into session.

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ringwiss @ringwiss.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Meanwhile, Congress-dot-gov is still broken.

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ringwiss @ringwiss.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

I like the Senate website’s new design, especially the cool photo.

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ringwiss @ringwiss.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

... but they forgot to deal with the new bill that they had just passed. Both bills (which were identical) had been passed by the two houses, but only the conferenced one was presented to the president. They avoid this problem now by prohibiting amendments entirely. 🙃

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ringwiss @ringwiss.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

... the House also passed the omnibus as a new bill in order to preserve senators’ right to offer amendments to the text that the Senate had not previously considered. The Senate considered and voted on that new bill. It then adopted the conference report on the original bill...

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ringwiss @ringwiss.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

What happened was that an omnibus appropriations bill for that year was inserted in conference into the defen[c]e appropriations bill. Since you can’t offer amendments to a conference report...

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ringwiss @ringwiss.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Sometimes Congress passes a bill but forgets to present it to the president, and then the next Congress has to unpass it.

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ringwiss @ringwiss.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

What I like about the Polish youth parliament is that they conduct business like a real legislature, rather than just having general debates.

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ringwiss @ringwiss.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

(Tbc, I think that is not so much a difference in their political or leadership styles as it is a reflection of the general aversion of newer members and staff to doing anything procedurally interesting.)

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ringwiss @ringwiss.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

I mean, just look at this:

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ringwiss @ringwiss.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

... Jeffries has never done so as the minority leader (he did once as an ordinary member in 2017).

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ringwiss @ringwiss.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

There’s been a lot of misinformed comparison of Pelosi’s and Jeffries’ records on holding the caucus together on rule votes. But one real difference between them is that Pelosi frequently offered questions of privilege (often spurious ones) to make Republicans vote on hot-button issues, while...

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