Rick Klein and Shushannah Walshe: “The Senate has been close to the brink before. But what makes this march toward the nuclear option different is that it’s eerily quiet in the provinces of bipartisanship. It’s not that efforts to save the Senate from itself are failing. It’s that they never even began. So it is that Senate rules and precedents take another step toward obliteration – not with excitement, on either side of the aisle, but with resignation.”

“The ‘nuclear’ metaphor may never have been apt. This was a slope more slippery than steep. And it’s hard to stop sliding when both sides are using both hands to point fingers.”

“The Senate barreled toward an institution-rattling confrontation on Thursday over the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch, with Democrats preparing to filibuster the selection and Republicans vowing to change longstanding rules to bypass the blockade,” the New York Times reports.

“Deploying the nuclear option would fundamentally alter the way the Senate operates — a sign of the body’s creeping rancor in recent years after decades of at least relative bipartisanship on Supreme Court matters. Both parties have likewise warned of sweeping effects on the future of the court, predicting that the shift will lead to the elevation of more ideologically extreme judges if only a majority is required for confirmation.”

“Republicans are discussing making an additional change to the Senate’s rules to more quickly confirm President Trump’s nominees,” The Hill reports.

“The change is separate from an expected vote Thursday that would prevent Democrats from using a filibuster to block Trump’s nominee to the Supreme Court, Neil Gorsuch.”

“The additional change under consideration would affect hundreds of Trump nominations. The floated change would reduce debate time after a nominee clears an initial procedural hurdle from 30 hours to eight hours, greatly reducing the amount of time the Senate would need to confirm Trump nominees.”

“Senate Republicans are preparing to abolish the final vestige of power that the minority has to block presidential nominations, worrying many senators in both parties that the final and biggest domino — the power to filibuster legislation — will be next,” the New York Times reports.

“In recent years, as partisanship has escalated, the Senate has required a 60-vote majority for almost any controversial legislation to overcome a filibuster. Gone, for the most part, are bipartisan quorums that used to pass large and complex laws with simple majorities.”

“But as both parties have moved to do what was once unthinkable — eliminating the filibuster for judicial and cabinet nominees, known as the nuclear option — senators are now forced to consider if the final step could be in the offing, one that would fundamentally alter the character of the Senate and make it indistinguishable from the House in a crucial way.”

USA Today: “It is a complicated process that only a parliamentarian could love, the subject of two detailed 2013 reports by the non-partisan Congressional Research Service, which helps members of Congress understand congressional procedures.”

“The Senate is careening toward a historic change to its filibuster rules that takes it one step closer to a version of the majority-rule House of Representatives,” Politico reports.

“But no one seems to care enough to save the Senate from itself.”

“Unlike past institutional crises, there’s no bipartisan ‘gang’ stepping up to force a truce between the warring armies led by Mitch McConnell and Chuck Schumer. Acrimony between the two parties has become so routine that invoking the so-called nuclear option to get Neil Gorsuch confirmed to the Supreme Court is almost a ho-hum affair, assumed to be a done deal.”