Republicans did not go all the way to the mat to try to cause a government shutdown this week, but that’s about the best you can say for them—and the media seems to be taking that for granted.

Senate Republicans were the ones who pushed the U.S. to the brink of a possible shutdown when they spent the early days of the week repeatedly blocking a measure to fund the government into December because the same bill would also suspend the debt limit until December 2022. The House had already passed that bill because Democrats can pass things in the House without Republican obstruction.

That set the stage for an emergency vote on Thursday, with Democrats agreeing to a stand-alone continuing resolution to keep the government open—even though Senate Republicans were being absolutely unreasonable hostage-takers to refuse to suspend the debt ceiling to pay debts incurred under Donald Trump, after they voted to suspend it three different times during Trump’s four years in the White House.

Once the emergency had been set up—again, thank you, Republicans!—first, the Senate and then the House voted to keep the government open. And again, Republicans basically got a pass from the media. Just 15 Republican senators and 34 Republican House members voted to keep the government from shutting down within hours.

Those numbers are a statement about how enthusiastically Republicans are rooting for the United States to suffer and fail. But in most traditional media coverage of the vote, they were a shrug.

As reported by CBS News: “The stopgap measure, known as a continuing resolution, passed the Senate in a bipartisan vote of 65 to 35, overcoming the 60-vote threshold needed for approval. It was then swiftly taken up by the House, which cleared the bill with a vote of 254 to 175.”

”The House vote was 254-175. The Senate OK’d the legislation, 65-35, about two hours before House passage,” NPR reported. “House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., had said she expected strong support from both parties. A few dozen Republicans crossed the aisle to vote with Democrats.”

And so on. A majority of Republicans voted against keeping the government from shutting down—and why wouldn’t they, knowing they were going to get a pass like that? Now they’re back to continuing to blockade a debt limit suspension or increase, knowing they’ll get the same benefit from the media.