WASHINGTON—The Senate voted 97-1 Thursday to abolish the filibuster and replace it with a mandatory group project, ending a centuries-old tradition of extended speeches and ushering in a new era of one senator quietly doing everything.

Under the new Rule XXII-B, any contested bill must now be presented to the full chamber as a ten-slide deck, assembled by a group of five senators who will each be credited equally. In practice, four of them will “totally get to it this weekend,” according to the text of the rule, which was drafted by what sources described as “mostly one guy.”

“The filibuster was theater,” said Majority Leader Dale Hornbuckle-Pryce, who has not opened the shared document. “This is just reality. Frankly, I’m surprised we didn’t think of it sooner.”

Sen. Margaret Oyelaran-Voss (D-Ore.), the lone senator who completed the project’s slides, bibliography, and a color-coded appendix, stood at the lectern for the first presentation Thursday afternoon with her jaw visibly clenched. Asked whether she had any comment on the new system, she held up one finger, inhaled through her nose for eleven seconds, and walked out.

Her colleagues were more forthcoming. Sen. Brett Lunderfelt (R-Neb.), who was assigned the “Conclusion” slide, said he had “really been meaning to get on that” and had “a lot of ideas, honestly,” most of which he described as “vibes.” At press time, his slide contained a single clip-art image of a handshake.

Experts say the reform could permanently change how Congress operates. “What we’re seeing is a transition from a performance-based legislative model to an accountability-adjacent one,” said Dr. Priya Venkataraghavan, senior fellow in Collaborative Procrastination Studies at the Brookings-Adjacent Institute for Deadline Behavior. “Historically, a senator could read a cookbook aloud for fifteen hours to delay a vote. Now he has to say, ‘I’m just waiting on Karen’s part,’ and then everyone looks at Karen.”

The Senate parliamentarian confirmed that the new rule includes a grace period allowing senators to “touch base” in the cloakroom before the presentation, a process that historically has consisted of three minutes of discussion followed by an hour on who has a car.

Critics have raised concerns. Sen. Tom Aldecott (I-Vt.) warned that the system could erode trust in government by “rewarding the one senator who cares too much.” Supporters countered that she is “being kind of intense about it” and had sent “like, a lot of emails.”

Under the rule, all five group members receive the same grade from a bipartisan panel of three retired substitute teachers. Early polling shows 81 percent of Americans believe this is unfair, and 100 percent of Americans believe they already know which senator did the work.

The first bill to be processed under the new system, a modest infrastructure measure, passed on a voice vote after Oyelaran-Voss delivered the entire presentation herself, including the sections assigned to Lunderfelt, whom she referred to only as “my partner.”

Asked whether the Senate would consider letting members choose their own groups, Hornbuckle-Pryce said that would be “a nightmare” and that the chamber would continue to assign them alphabetically.