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WASHINGTON: Republican leaders in the US Senate on Friday swiftly rejected President Donald Trump's call to scrap the filibuster rule and reopen the government.

Back from a week abroad, Trump threw himself into the shutdown debate, pushing his Republican Party to get rid of the Senate rule that requires 60 votes to overcome objections and gives the minority Democrats a check on GOP power.

In the chamber that’s currently split, 53-47, Democrats have had enough votes to keep the government closed while they demand an extension of health care subsidies. Neither party has seriously wanted to nuke the rule.
“THE CHOICE IS CLEAR — INITIATE THE ‘NUCLEAR OPTION,’ GET RID OF THE FILIBUSTER,” Trump said in a late night social media post Thursday.
Trump’s sudden decision to assert himself into the shutdown now in its 31st day — with his highly charged demand to end the filibuster — is certain to set the Senate on edge. It could spur senators toward their own compromise or send the chamber spiraling toward a new sense of crisis. Or, it might be ignored.
Republican leaders responded quickly, and unequivocally, setting themselves at odds with Trump, a president few have dared to publicly counter.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune has repeatedly said he is not considering changing the rules to end the shutdown, arguing that it is vital to the institution of the Senate and has allowed them to halt Democratic policies when they are in the minority.
The leader’s “position on the importance of the legislative filibuster is unchanged,” Thune spokesman Ryan Wrasse said Friday.
A spokeswoman for Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso, the No. 2 Republican, said his position opposing a filibuster change also remains unchanged. And former GOP leader Mitch McConnell, who firmly opposed Trump’s filibuster pleas in his first term, remains in the Senate.
House Speaker Mike Johnson also defended the filibuster Friday, while conceding “it’s not my call,” from his chamber across the Capitol.
“The safeguard in the Senate has always been the filibuster,” Johnson said, adding that Trump’s comments are “the president’s anger at the situation.”

Broad GOP support for filibuster
Even if Thune wanted to change the filibuster, he would not currently have the votes to do so in the divided Senate.
“The filibuster forces us to find common ground in the Senate,” Republican Sen. John Curtis of Utah posted on X Friday morning, responding to Trump’s comments and echoing the sentiments of many of his Senate Republican colleagues. “Power changes hands, but principles shouldn’t. I’m a firm no on eliminating it.”
Debate has swirled around the legislative filibuster for years. Many Democrats pushed to eliminate it when they had full power in Washington, as the Republicans do now, four years ago. But ultimately, enough Democratic senators opposed the move, predicting such an action would come back to haunt them.
Little progress on shutdown
Trump’s demand comes as he has declined to engage with Democratic leaders on ways to end the shutdown, on track to become the longest in history.
He said in his post that he gave a “great deal” of thought to his choice on his flight home from Asia and that one question that kept coming up during his trip was why “powerful Republicans allow” the Democrats to shut down parts of the government.
But later Friday, he did not mention the filibuster again as he spoke to reporters departing Washington and arriving in Florida for a weekend at his Mar-a-Lago home.
While quiet talks are underway, particularly among bipartisan senators, Trump has not been seriously involved. Democrats refuse to vote to reopen the government until Republicans negotiate an extension to the health care subsidies. The Republicans say they won’t negotiate until the government is reopened.
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said on CNN that Trump needs to start negotiating with Democrats, arguing the president has spent more time with global leaders than dealing with the shutdown back home.
From coast to coast, fallout from the dysfunction of the shuttered federal government is hitting home. SNAP food aid is scheduled to shut off. Flights are being delayed. Workers are going without paychecks.
And Americans are getting a first glimpse of the skyrocketing health care insurance costs that are at the center of the stalemate.
“People are stressing,” said Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, as food options in her state grow scarce.
“We are well past time to have this behind us.”
Money for military, but not food aid
The White House has moved money around to ensure the military is paid, but refuses to tap funds for food aid. In fact, Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” signed into law this summer, delivered the most substantial cut ever to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as SNAP, projected to result in some 2.4 million people off the program.
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said Friday the agency cannot release contingency funds to keep SNAP running, but two judges ruled nearly simultaneously Friday that the administration must continue to fund the food aid program. How quickly that might happen remains to be seen, as further consultation with the courts is expected on Monday.
Trump, in a social media post, said administration lawyers will be asking the courts “to clarify how we can legally fund SNAP as soon as possible.”
“If we are given the appropriate legal direction by the Court, it will BE MY HONOR to provide the funding,” Trump said.
“We are holding food over the heads of poor people so that we can take away their health care,” said Rev. Ryan Stoess during a prayer with religious leaders earlier this week at the US Capitol.
“God help us,” he said, “when the cruelty is the point.”
Deadlines shift to next week
The House remains closed under Johnson with no plans to resume the session, and senators left for the weekend and are due back Monday.
The next inflection point comes after Tuesday’s off-year elections — the New York City mayor’s race, as well as elections in Virginia and New Jersey that will determine those states’ governors. Many expect that once those winners and losers are declared, and the Democrats and Republicans assess their political standing with the voters, they might be ready to hunker down for a deal.
If the shutdown continues into next week, it could surpass the 35-day lapse that ended in 2019, during Trump’s first term, over his demands to build the US-Mexico border wall.
 

PARIS: A French court on Friday sentenced four Bulgarians to between two and four years in prison for desecrating a Jewish memorial with red handprints last year, in what prosecutors think may have been foreign interference linked to Russia.
The Paris Criminal Court handed down two-year sentences to Georgi Filipov and Kiril Milushev, described as the perpetrators, and four and three years respectively to Nikolay Ivanov and Mircho Angelov, considered the operation’s “masterminds.” Angelov is still at large.
All four were also banned from entering French territory for life.
The trial was the first of its kind in France, one of a series of similar cases suspected of having been orchestrated by a foreign power with the aim to destabilize.
The four defendants were not tried for acting on behalf of a foreign power: that aggravating circumstance was only added to France’s criminal code after the incident took place.
However, in their judgment, the judges said foreign interference was “indisputable” and aimed to “stir up public opinion, exploit existing divisions and further fragment French society.”

-’Russian intelligence’-

The vandalism was staged during heightened tensions in France over the war between Israel and Palestinian militant group Hamas that broke out in October 2023.
The wall daubed with red handprints by the perpetrators lists 3,900 people honored for protecting Jews during the Nazi occupation of France in World War II.
Several other red handprints were found in nearby areas of central Paris.
The prosecutor’s office said a security agent had caught two people placing stencils on the memorial.
Investigators identified them with security footage, then discovered that three had caught a bus to Belgium the next morning, then a flight to Bulgaria.
The defendants present were quick to blame their absent accomplice, calling Angelov the “leader,” denying any ideological motivation.
Defendant Georgi Filipov swore he did not realize he was tagging the Wall of the Righteous.
During the trial, he also rejected accusations that his recruitment was related to his apparent neo-Nazi affiliations, including having a swastika tattoo and appearing in social media posts giving Nazi salutes.
He said he’d left that behind — “I’ve made bad choices in the past.”
The Paris prosecutor’s office said the red handprint incident, possibly “orchestrated by Russian intelligence services,” was one of nine such suspected acts of foreign interference.
Other suspicious incidents include Stars of David stencilled in the Paris region in October 2023; coffins bearing the words “French soldiers of Ukraine” left at the foot of the Eiffel Tower in June last year; and in just this September, pigs’ heads left in front of mosques in the Paris region.
Viginum, the French authority monitoring foreign interference online, said the red hand incident had been exploited by “actors linked to Russia” on X.