Jeff Merkley of Oregon gave address to make case that president is ‘violating the law’ through authoritarianism
Oregon’s Jeff Merkley gave a marathon, nearly 23-hour speech on the Senate floor that began on Tuesday and ended late Wednesday, pressing the case that Donald Trump is acting as an authoritarian by prosecuting political enemies and deploying the military into Merkley’s home town of Portland.
The 68-year-old senator began speaking around 6.20pm on Tuesday evening and continued until just after 5pm on Wednesday. Standing continuously on the Senate floor alongside placards that read “authoritarianism is here now!” and “Trump is violating the law”, Merkley paused only to take questions from fellow Democratic senators who joined him in the chamber to make their own points about the president’s conduct.
“I’ve come to the Senate floor tonight to ring the alarm bells. We’re in the most perilous moment, the biggest threat to our republic since the civil war. President Trump is shredding our constitution,” Merkley said as he began his speech.
But… he hasn’t said anything we didn’t already know, and now that he’s done, it’s back to “business as usual.” So what exactly was gained?
So what exactly was gained?
At the very least, we’re talking about what was said and that it happened. The message got to a wider audience than it would have if the statements were just inserted into the record.
Also, on the plus side, this was a senator saying this stuff in public for the entire world to hear, so others may be emboldened to speak these things in other places as established fact as well, instead of continuing to whisper it only behind closed doors.
Not sure why the original question was so heavily downvoted though, unless people thought the answer was painfully obvious. To me, the public record bit is important, but that could have been done elsewhere as well.
When you have no power to enact change, you speak truth to the ones who do.
They will never learn that performative politics is meaningless.
Who have you shot at this week?
Democrats need to instruct people to take direct action against the administration and the rouge DOJ
People are sick of sitting around watching Nazis rise to power, this doesn’t go anywhere until we force change
People: Vote Democrats out of power at all levels of government.
People: “Why won’t the Democrats do anything?”
Democrats: Do literally the only thing they can do given the people voted them out of power.
People: “Empty gesture.”
People suck.
I’ve always wondered how people like you explain the last 30 years of democrat inaction
You don’t know any people like me.
That’s the exact response I expected. Would love to hear an explanation if you thought of one though
nobody is unique. there’s always somebody out there just like you
Yeah but nobody’s more exactly like everyone else than me.
Oh boy! This is fun. So in 2008 the Republicans refused to swear in Al Franken. After 8 months of battling Republicans in court and politically, Franken was sworn in July 2009. This gave Dems 60 votes in the Senate. This is when they past the ACA, Dodd Frank, Job Creation Act which extended unemployment benefits. After the 111th Congress the house flipped back to Republican majority.
More recently. Biden was implementing a new approach to monopoly capitalism with the appointment of Lina Khan to the FTC. We also had Elizabeth Warren start the CFPB prior to that.
I will also say Dems have been much better on renewable energy and electrification infrastructure investment. But that is my field and most of those details come across in small bits and pieces through market news emails.
Yeah except dems also behave this way when they have power.
At a certain point you have to accept you have been duped and start looking at their actions instead of their intentions.
Republicans somehow get way more done and block way more shit when they are supposed to be impotent.
Because they fucking got elected by the fucking stupid American fucking electorate.
There have only been a handful of years when the Republicans haven’t had the elected numbers to block things over the last three Democratic presidents.
Vote for progressives in the primaries if you want things to get better.
If this was “literally the only thing they can do”, then it would be the only thing Republicans have been doing, too.
I’m about done here, but I’ll take the bait this once. Republicans didn’t do shit until we stupidly voted them back into power. Trump was on his way to jail until millions of people who voted for Biden found some dumb ass reason not to vote for Harris. Every horrible thing the Supreme Court has done for the past 10 years would have gone the other way if the “But her emails” crowd had held their noses and voted for the admittedly horrible Hillary in 2016. If 1 percent of Florida Nader fans in 2000 had voted for Gore, we could have had someone who wrote a book about environmental issues instead of someone who got rich exploiting oil and gas. Obama wasn’t perfect of course but he did get healthcare access for millions of people who didn’t have it before and was working on other things that would have made things better until the 2010 “shellacking” swept democrats out of power and neutralized the rest of his presidency, just like what happened to the very flawed but better than republicans Bill Clinton in 1994.
I’m farther left than ANY of the democrats I’ve mentioned and it sucks we have to settle. But the things some people insist don’t matter baffles me. Truly, what would you have Senator Merkely do? Go nuclear and shut down the government to stop benefit cuts? Done. It’s not accomplishing anything either, because trump is a lawless president and the republicans in congress refuse to stop him. He just keeps paying ICE and uses the so called shut down to defund things he doesn’t like. This is possible because we voted republicans back into power.
The problem is always republicans. The only way to stop it is unity. Instead we splinter. Nice.
I’ll happily support Democrats fighting.
I don’t believe they have the courage.
Republicans successfully prevented Biden from accomplishing a single one of his campaign promises.
Where is the stonewalling from the Democrats that should have stopped the BBB and all the appointments of loyalists? A ton of dems even approved those appointments!
There’s no unity to be had with people who’s actions show them being complicit in the fascism. Controlled opposition is a very real tactic.
Feel kinda dumb for not knowing already, but do they get to take a piss break during this?
No, Booker said he fasted for days and stopped drinking water 24 hours before his speech to not leave the floor. Strom Thurmond famously had a bucket placed close enough to keep one foot in the room while he relieved himself.
It wasn’t even a filibuster?
He just started talking at 6pm, and kept talking for almost a day?
What was the point?
https://gov.mtopgroup.com/art1/floor-senate
There wasn’t even anything scheduled to happen today…
This performative “raising awareness” isn’t helping, especially if you schedule everything with the fascists before hand
Edit:
Can any of the trained seals who clap whenever asked at least tell me what the point of starting at 6pm and doing like 14-16 hours when no one was even there?
Someone on the Democratic side stands up and does something within their power to go against the Republican party, and you’re criticizing them for not doing it during session?
This is something. It’s not a game changer, but it’s better than nothing.
Why are you upset that this took place? It’s a positive thing. Are you upset that the no kings protest took place while there wasn’t something more significant happening at the same time as well?
Edit:
Never mind, no idea why I’m still seeing these
Without even knowing what he spoke about yet, which I don’t, I can respect the conviction of a person who uses their platform to speak when they have rare access to that platform and there’s plenty to talk about.
Plenty of us are going on marathon posting sessions on social media and it’s to a much smaller audience. I have to empathize a little bit with anybody who feels exhausted or overwhelmed by the absurdity of everything but then gets up to speak for a whole damn day on one of the largest stages in the world
Even if the room is empty the audience is global. It may be grandstanding, but that’s part of the job. Getting attention to things you care about is part of the job. People put you there to bring attention to things that they hope that you care about.
If government’s going to work at all people have to give a shit about it and whatever this dude was talking about it’s clear he gives a shit about it.
Plenty of us are going on marathon posting sessions on social media
I didn’t think of that either…
People acknowledgeing how little this did, have to acknowledge they’re also not really “fighting the power” themselves.
Good point.
Dude. We’re not elected policians. You really need to have a higher standard for your representatives than people posting on Twitter.
It really was not a good point AT ALL. I swear liberals are so use to not expecting any material change from their party that all they do is hold them to the same standard as a social media poster. That’s actually pathetic.
You really need to have a higher standard for your representatives than people posting on Twitter.
I am…
I’m saying if those people admit the politicians aren’t doing anything productive, then it obviously means funny signs won’t do anything, even if you have a frog costume…
Some will show up and do things only because they feel the support is out there to act and be seen.
I might make different efforts were I them, but they are at least paddling in the same direction I want to go. I just don’t have the energy to resent how they choose to spend their outrage.
If your house is burning down, your kids and dog are trapped inside…
You barely make it out alive, but you know your family is in there…
Firefighters show up, a wave of relief washes over…
Then they sit down and pray to Jesus that someone comes to put out the fire.
If you got upset the people paid to put out fires aren’t using the equipment or putting any real effort into saving your family who are actively burning to death, and you yell at the firefighters:
Why won’t you fucking do anything?
How would you react to someone telling you the firefighters are doing all they can?
“The record”. Posterity. It makes the entire thing part of the History of Government. Otherwise, it’s just external reports and heresay. This paves the road for official acts like secession. Think of it like HR filing a formal disciplinary action. Until they do, the paper trail isn’t there. “See? We warned you.”
As I see it. I’m no politics wonk.
“The record”. Posterity
But there are official means to do that type of stuff.
This was not that…
I don’t even know if a transcript will be kept, especially since the first 12+ hours was overnight
As I see it. I’m no politics wonk.
I think this is the real explanation…
People just don’t know what can be done, so they get excited for stupid meaningless shit. And don’t demand for productive things instead.
Just clapping for bread and circus like it’s 1788
These sort of antics always seemed pretty stupid. Why not just have a set limit for any one speaker
68 years old and 23 hours, wow!
ok
23 hours and nobody heard it.
That’s my senator! I think I would have passed out after an hour.
Without wanting to being a dick, and believing that is an astonishing achievement for a politician, especially of his age, i think that is a nice gesture,
but if the Democrats wont call people on the Streets, nothing will change. SPD did the same tactic against Nazis back in 1930s and you know the results. Ofc they cant do that because that will be as betraying the corp interests.
Yeah, democrats need to call for a general strike.
Setting new records on the length of time they can talk rather than accomplishing anything useful.
He did gain some attention though. Which is useful.
What do you expect him to actually do? Gumming up the works is pretty much the only option right now.
