Party leaders dominate today’s Senate because rank-and-file senators increasingly defer to them - not because the chamber’s rules require it. Senators accepted less influence over legislation in exchange for a more predictable schedule, fewer difficult votes, and less responsibility for making the Senate work.

How majority leaders use the amendment tree to close the Senate floor to amendments—and how a simple rule change could reopen the process.

Nuclear option needed to force the Blunt-Lankford resolution through the Senate over Democrats’ objections