☕️ ZOMBIE RULES☙ Tuesday, December 23, 2025 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠

Senator pushes C&C fix to the silent filibuster; DHS triples self-deport bounties; Trump recalls Biden ambassadors; bossless Dem “jobs”; FDA okays new diet pill; Jesus returns to DC; and more.

Good morning, C&C, it’s Tuesday! It is Christmas Eve eve, with one day left to go before the jolliest holiday on the national calendar, which —despite progressives’ best efforts— still celebrates the virgin birth of the god-man, Jesus Christ. In today’s roundup: US Senator begins lobbying the public to support the C&C fix to the silent filibuster— could it actually happen?; DHS triples self-deportation bounty, and media yawns; Trump recalls 30 Biden ambassadors from overseas to local stations and media howls in fury; Democrats have created utopian jobs without bosses; FDA green lights diet pill, opening up billions in pharma profits and also saving some grateful Americans not inconsiderable inconvenience and cost; and Jesus is back in the Nation’s capital, as Trump takeover of the Kennedy Performing Arts Center drives liberals to drink raw eggnog.

🌍 WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY 🌍

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We’re breaking through! Whether someone in Mike Lee’s office was influenced by C&C or we just helped the idea percolate through the collective consciousness, at least one U.S. Senator has begun loudly and publicly calling for the same proposed solution to what we’ve called the “silent filibuster,” which Mr. Lee more colorfully calls the “zombie filibuster.” The Deseret News ran a hit piece on the story, headlined, “Mike Lee wants to change how the Senate filibuster works.”

The so-called “filibuster” is not a law or even a rule. It is a tactic. The word came into modern English from an old Dutch word about pirates that meant “free booty.” (It does not refer to something you find backstage at a rap concert, get your mind out of the gutter.) Rather, the term refers to lawless plundering on the high seas. Think parrots, eye patches, peg legs, that sort of thing.

In general usage, ‘filibuster’ refers to commandeering parliamentary debate by refusing to stop arguing until everyone else hoists the white flag in surrender, to stop the pain and achieve blessed silence. In the U.S. Senate, filibustering specifically refers to the tactic of taking advantage of a rule of collegiality that lets Senators finish speaking— without any time limits. Before fifty years ago, the rule resulted in the occasional darkly humorous episode wherein our wise elected representatives hijacked debate with tactics like reading every entry in the New York City phone book, causing the original Greeks who invented parliamentary democracy to spin in their graves like tops.

‘Filibustering’ is found nowhere in the Senate rulebook. Instead, the operative rule is called ‘a cloture vote.’ (The word ‘cloture’ derives, unsurprisingly, from a French word for ‘closing.’) The cloture vote allows the Senate to end debate and override a filibuster. But it takes 60 votes, which only becomes possible when enough members of the minority party become so tired of sitting around hearing someone read phone book entries or the collected works of William Shakespeare that they cross the aisle and agree to stop the madness.

That system worked fine, although irritating in spots. But in 1972, an enterprising Democrat Majority leader, Mike Mansfield (D-Montana), changed the rules. Under the Mansfield amendment, Senators could just threaten to filibuster, and the bill at issue would be ‘parked’ as though it were being actively filibustered, and a cloture vote of 60 Senators would be required to ‘close debate.’ Meanwhile, the Senate business of personal enrichment could continue within sane office hours, and nobody would have to mindlessly sit around listening to pure nonsense and jibber-jabber.

In other words, since 1972, Senators were not required to actually take the podium and talk for hours, which, even for blowhards in the Senate, required a certain amount of effort. No, now they can silently filibuster, without even being there, without uttering a syllable of debate, and without the Senate building even being open. Just by saying so.

CLIP: Washington Post’s 2021 video explainer on the ugly history of the filibuster: How one small rule change in 1806 started it all (5:26).

I hardly need to tell you it is much easier to threaten to filibuster a bill than actually do it. (It’s worth adding that phone-book-reading is not actually debate, and if Senators don’t want to hear 7 million phone numbers, they can change the rules whenever they want.)

Democrats have used the silent filibuster to effortlessly freeze nearly all lawmaking in the Senate. Only a handful of bill types, like budget-based ‘continuing resolutions,’ are exempt. As long as the Senators keep the Democrats’ 1972 cloture amendment, Trump’s agenda will be relegated to a passing phenomenon, a neat collection of nifty executive orders waiting to be broomed the very next time a Democrat infests the White House.

Only a bare majority —51 votes— is needed to return to the pre-1972 cloture rule. And that is probably all it would take to get the Senate moving. They needn’t actually end the filibuster — only the silent filibuster. And that is exactly what Senator Lee is advocating for, except he calls it the zombie filibuster. “You enforce the rules by requiring them to debate,” Lee said. “If we enforce the cloture rule, we could end cloture abuse. And we could end this perpetual tail-chasing model even when Republicans control the Senate and the House and the White House, as we currently do.”

The trouble is that Senators are human beings, and human beings are lazy. Nobody wants to listen to Bernie Sanders babble for 20 hours straight. Not even his own mother. Even ten minutes of Sanders is a painful ordeal. That’s the demonic wisdom of the silent filibuster— it appeals to Senators’ human laziness and their natural desire to avoid dirty jobs.

But this is what they signed up for. End the silent filibuster. Let’s get this party started.

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Yesterday, CBS ran an encouraging story headlined, “DHS increases offer for undocumented migrants to $3,000 if they voluntarily leave by end of 2025.”

CLIP: DHS announces tripled self-deportation bonus (0:53).

Through the end of the year, illegal aliens who self-deport using the CBP Home App can receive a $3,000 exit bonus per person— triple the current bonus. But wait, there’s more! Illegals will also get free airfare back to their home countries, and DHS will waive civil fines and penalties tied to remaining here illegally. Those who self-deport will remain eligible for future consideration for legal immigration, and will not need to engage in foot races with ICE agents.

It’s not clear how many have so far clicked the “Deport Now” button in their app. Given what we now know about widespread welfare abuse, it’s probably still much more lucrative for illegals to stay here than take $1,000 to leave. Maybe $3K per person will be more attractive.

Hopefully, DHS will steadily increase the departure bonus until a significant number of illegals start signing up. It’s win-win.

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Yesterday, the New York Times ran a story headlined, “Trump Administration Orders Nearly 30 U.S. Ambassadors to Leave Their Posts.” The Times had no idea why Trump did it, but even without any inkling, still found the reassignments intolerably cruel. Oh, it had some idea: “They are all foreign service officers who had been appointed to their positions by the Biden administration.”

If you ever needed evidence of how Democrats view government jobs as entitlements and prized personal possessions, instead of work opportunities, look no further than this New York Times story.

The ‘scoop’ was delivered by the unimpeachable source of the diplomats’ union, and its spokesbabe, Nikki Gamer, if that is her real name. (If it is, Ms. Gamer clearly has the wrong job.) Ms. Gamer loosed her joystick and told the Times that around 30 Biden-appointed diplomats had been summarily recalled to DC “with no more than a phone call.” Ms. Gamer said that, after diligently searching the archives, the union “can say definitively that such a mass recall has never happened since the founding of the Foreign Service as we know it.”

Take a deep breath. They aren’t fired. The ambassadors were just recalled to the states, albeit quickly (within the next few weeks). Still, that’s enough to produce progressive hysteria these days. Whatever Trump does is terrible.

Out here in the real world, we plebeians work “at will,” which means we can be fired or reassigned for any reason or no reason at all (apart from race, sex, age, or disability). Our bosses can order us to report to any office they need or want, and if we don’t like it, we can quit and find a new job. But Democrats seem to have built themselves a neat little utopia —tenured federal jobs without bosses— and they don’t like it when anybody messes with the formula.

Well, I like it. I think elite federal workers should work under the same rules as the rest of us. And I love what this ‘mass recall’ suggests about Trump’s 2026 plans, which once again, he’s keeping under his Santa hat and not previewing to the corrupt media.

What a difference an Administration without leaks makes.

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Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal ran a story headlined, “Pill Version of Wegovy Is Approved for Use in the U.S.” The FDA has approved the first GLP-1 fat pill. It goes on sale next month. It’s like Operation Warp Speed for those of us with prosperous waistlines.

You already know about the new GLP-1 drugs, originally developed as diabetes treatments, but which also unexpectedly caused people to lose their appetite. Say goodbye, apparently, to the days when experts howled that “starving yourself” was even worse than being fat. Now they have actual starvation pills, available in this case for $149 a month, or the price of a moderate dinner out with drinks and dessert, which you will have skipped anyway since you aren’t hungry.

In a trial of 205 plump people, those taking Novo Nordisk’s pill for 64 weeks lost an average of 16.6% of their body weight. Portland readers, that’s an average drop from 135 lovable pounds to a trim 112 for the ladies. For men, imagine an average reduction from 225 to 185— territory where you can haul your old college jeans back out of the top of the closet. So.

The pill’s low price and easy pill-based consumption are considered better than the competitive products. Zepbound, for instance, will set you back over $1,000 a month, and you must inject it directly into your eyeball. (Okay, I exaggerated. You can inject it into your fat rolls, but still. It’s needles.) The new class of GLP-1 pills —of which Wegovy is the first to be approved— are daily poppers to take along with your vitamins and supplements.

The velocity of fat-loss products reaching the market in such a short time is frankly astonishing. More pills are coming. “Eli Lilly also plans to introduce a new weight-loss pill,” the Journal reported, “potentially within weeks.” Also astonishing is the velocity with which terms like “body positivity” and “plus-sized models” have disappeared without a trace from the media’s lexicon.

So gay

Another concept imitating the Invisible Man lately is that of willpower. Experts have assured us the reason we are all topping the scales is our own fault: our lack of willpower to resist constantly eating. But it also takes plenty of willpower to inject yourself with drugs and tolerate side effects like nausea, projectile jungle tummy, and skipped office birthday cake. So which is it, morons? The ‘health experts’ would rather not have that conversation at all. Just take the pill and shut up! Science!

In truth, and all joking aside, GLP-1s are life changers for some people whose quality of life has been absolutely wrecked by what I believe are environmental causes beyond their control. While I often jest about diet drugs, I do not in the least slight decisions made by free adults willing to accept the risks of these new medicines to achieve life-altering improvements in the number of airline seats they must reserve. Not to mention their improved cardiovascular health, mental health, and all the other known downstream benefits that, to one extent or another, help offset the unknown risks.

The real answer, of course, will be figuring out what changed in the 1970s when we all suddenly began swelling up like overinflated roly-poly bop bags. Maybe the GLP-1s can tide us over till MAHA’s detectives can identify the culprit.

Either way, this is also an affordability story. Not only is $149 a month affordable for almost everyone, but as large numbers of people on GLP-1s eat less, food prices will necessarily drop along with the lower demand.

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Nothing has annoyed the DC elite more than Trump’s project to rebrand the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Yesterday, local Washington affiliate NBC-4 ran a decidedly non-jolly story headlined, “Protest held against renaming Kennedy Center after Trump in DC.”

Lawsuits are already underway to stop President Trump from adding his name to the iconic arts venue. But the signage was already installed before they even knew it was coming:

What they hate even more than Trump’s name being affixed to the historic building is the change in the Center’s programming. The Center’s new president, Rick Grenell, announced at the beginning of the month that Jesus would be front and center for the December programming. A live nativity has been installed there ever since, which is literally the worst thing the libs can imagine, apart from the gas station clerk rudely wishing them “Merry Christmas.”

For decades, Democrats have enjoyed the Kennedy Center’s relentlessly woke, secular holiday programming, which is focused more on sexual diversity than the reason for the season. That has now ended, with progressives gritting their teeth and aiming to wait out the Trump term till they can get back to the type of entertainment they love most: transgender midgets in cross-dressing elf costumes. But with Trump applying his name right to the building, he’s telling them the changes are here to stay, an very unmerry insult added to their terrible injuries.

By the way, the “protest” mentioned in the article’s headline was only around 100 people, and it was organized by a disgruntled ex-employee, Mallory Miller, who was fired in August. One suspects the small group was all former Kennedy Center staff and their close relatives. They need to move on.

The bottom line: Christmas is back. It is even back in the Nation’s capital, which is looking less and less godless all the time. It’s a true holiday miracle.

Have a terrific Tuesday! Then sleigh back here tomorrow for the Christmas Eve roundup, the last C&C before the celebration of our Savior’s birth. See you then!

Don’t race off! We cannot do it alone. Consider joining up with C&C to help move the nation’s needle and change minds. I could sure use your help getting the truth out and spreading optimism and hope, if you can: ☕ Learn How to Get Involved 🦠

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