The filibuster is expected to go through the night, against fast-tracked nominees by the Trump Administration. Booker’s protest appears to be in response to a recent wave of Republican nominees being fast-tracked through the confirmation process, many of whom are aligned with Trump’s second-term agenda and Elon Musk’s increasingly influential role in federal advisory circles.
25 hours and 5 minutes. Legend.
Not a filibuster. Just a good effort.
It’s about damn time. Where are the rest of them?
It’s a solo filibuster, but Schumer has been asking questions to give Booker a break. This is the first time a filibuster has been applicable this term. Congress hasn’t been passing legislation. All of the damage has been done by executive order.
Edit: Murphy, Kim, and Gillibrand have also joined in with lengthy multi-part questions to support Booker.
Book tour, talk show appearance, book tour, etc.
They are hiding up Biden’s crusty ass, where they belong. Fuck democrats.
Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage! Rage! Against the dying of the light!
on fire right now! nice.
It’s technically not a filibuster. It’s a marathon protest speech.
Some more info here:
https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2025/03/31/congress/cory-booker-talk-a-thon-00262482
That’s what the original filibuster is.
The filibuster blocks a specific law, appointment, etc
They were doing appointments according to C-Span.
I guess it is in a traditional sense, but they are very infrequent these days due to the senates rules and their collective lazyness.
IIRC the current version of the filibuster is a combination of two rules (procedural rules of the senate, not laws).
- Votes on bills cant be done while a senator is talking.
- You cant force them to give up their speaking time (which is how ever long they want it to be) unless 60 members of the senate vote to get them to stop.
Back in the day, you actually had to be talking the entire time, but in the senate’s lazyness they changed the rules to streamline the entire process. Someone to just say they are going to filibuster something and they have the vote, to see if the matter gets dropped or not. I think its a squares vs rectangles sorta thing, a filibuster is done with the intent to kill a bill by not allowing the voting process to go forward, this appears to be doing the same before they brought anything to vote on. The outcome is still the same, the senate does nothing.
A little nitpick on how we got to the modern silent filibuster, because I think the history is important and demonstrates how creating rules that might seem well-intentioned at the time end up having disastrous effects when you don’t think about the long-term impacts.
Literally everything about the evolution of the filibuster was the result of unintended consequences. When the Senate was first created, they included a rule which was common among legislatures in Colonial American and England called the “previous question” rule. There were no rules on how long debate could take place, but, at any time (including in the middle of a speaker’s turn) anyone could call for the immediate consideration of the previous question. If that got a majority support (50%+1), debate was immediately stopped and the issue was put to an immediate vote. The word ‘filibuster’ didn’t exist at the time, but this was very similar to our modern cloture motion, which is used to end filibusters, except the previous question only required a simple majority of those present, where was cloture requires 3/5 of all members (including those not present). The previous question was a lower bar to clear than cloture is.
However, in the early days of the Senate it was a very collegial institution. All the Senators, even those opposed to each other on policy, were all friendly with each other. As such, after the first 15ish years, they had never had the need to use the previous question rule. Whenever a Senator was taking too long during debate, someone would gently tell them to wrap it up and they would. They relied more on the collegial atmosphere and friendships than the actual rules. In 1805, then-VP Aaron Burr (of murdering Hamilton and trying to steal half of North America to turn himself into a monarch fame) wanted to reform Senate rules. Mostly, he was trying to eliminate unnecessary rules to streamline the Senate. One of the rules he got rid of was the previous question. The intention was just to get rid of a rule that had never been used, but this effectively meant that there was no longer any institutional way to end debate if a Senator decided to just keep talking.
This didn’t have much of an impact for about a century. There were occasional filibusters here and there, but they were very limited and extremely rare. The top issue that got filibusters was anything related to slavery and (after the Civil War) civil rights. Senators from slave states (or former slave states), would filibuster any legislation they saw as a threat to slavery and white supremacy. In general, these filibusters ended because the Senators who introduced whatever piece of legislation would withdraw their legislation and offer to water it down in exchange for an end to the filibuster. In this way, over the 19th century the predominate use of the filibuster was to prevent or slow reforms that would weaken white supremacy.
As time went on, the use of the filibuster increased in frequency. The general way it would work was that a bill would be introduced. A group of Senators from the minority opposing it would organize to filibuster. Rather than just 1 person holding the floor, they’d swap out using a rule that allows the speaker to temporarily cede the floor for a question, but they’d get the floor back when the question ended. But their allied Senator who was ostensibly just asking a question would then spend hours asking that question, which gave the filibuster leader time to take a break. When they were ready to continue, the question would end and the floor would go back to the original speaker. In the meantime, the allies of the filibustering Senators would meet with the sponsors of the legislation to get them to water down their bill in whatever way that made it acceptable. Once that agreement was made, they’d end the filibuster and move on. It’s important to note that the filibuster at this time was not seen as a tool to kill legislation, but rather to force a concession.
The culminated in 1917 when Woodrow Wilson was trying to get a law passed that would allow the Navy to arm merchant ships during WW1. A group of anti-war Senators filibustered and got this provision removed. This enraged Wilson and he insisted the Senate adopt a cloture rule which would allow 2/3 of the Senators present in the chamber to vote to immediately end debate and bring the issue to a vote (this would later be changed to 3/5 of all members, regardless if they were present in the chamber). The existence of this rule dramatically changed how the filibuster was used. Rather than being a tool to force a concession, it now became something that could actually kill legislation. The supporters now had to arrange to have a 2/3 majority in the chamber when the cloture vote was pulled in order to pass the legislation. This shifted power from the majority to the minority. The minority just had to ensure they controlled 1/3+1 of the chamber at any given time to prevent cloture. Rather than the impetus being on the minority to actually continue the filibuster and negotiate a concession, it was now on the majority to produce a super-majority. The intention was to create a rule that prevented Senate business from being ground to a halt, but the effect was just the opposite. It gave more power to the minority than the majority.
This directly led to an increase in the frequency of use of the filibuster. Over the next half-century the filibuster was primarily used to prevent any Civil Rights Legislation from reforming the Jim Crow South. Since there was now a real possibility that a filibuster could actually kill a bill, there was no longer any reason for the filibustering party to negotiate concessions with the majority. They just sat back and continued their filibusters until the majority either got sick of it and pulled the bill or managed to produce a super-majority (which has always been damn near impossible in the Senate, only 2 cloture votes were ever successful between 1917-1964). This culminated in 1964 with a filibuster against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (which, when it eventually passed, effectively ended Jim Crow). A group of segregationist Senators from the South organized to filibuster for over 2 months. Whenever the Senate was in session over those 2 months, the segregationists held the floor and mostly spewed racists screeds about the evils of integration and other white supremacist nonsense. Eventually the pro-Civil Rights caucus managed to get a few people who were just sick of the unending filibuster and passed a cloture motion. However, this was a huge embarrassment for the Senate and they knew they needed to change the rules.
The problem, as they saw it, was that only a single issue was allowed before the Senate at a time. When a bill or nomination vote, etc was put forth, that issue had to be fully resolved before they could move onto the next thing. Either it had to get a vote up or down, or the sponsor had to pull it (meaning the issue was dead). During this time, no other Senate business can happen. No other issues can be debated or voted upon. Committees can’t meet. Nothing else can happen. So when the segregationists filibustered the Civil Rights Act for 2 months, literally NO other Senate business was able to happen. This was an extremely high profile bill (it had originally be proposed, filibustered, and pulled the previous year while JFK was president, then reintroduce in 1964 after LBJ took office and was promoted as JFK’s legacy), so it couldn’t just be pulled to mollify the filibusterers. And this was an election year where 2/3 of the Senate was going back to their home state to ask for another term and had to justify the fact they sat on their asses doing nothing for 2 months while segregationists were allowed to spew white supremacy on the Senate floor.
So, just like Burr did when he eliminated the previous question rule, and just like Wilson did when he insisted on the cloture rule, Senate leadership created a rule aimed at solving the immediate problem without looking at what the long-term implications were. They created the multi-track legislative process we have today. Under this system, the Senate Majority Leader could take whatever issue was before the Senate now and “temporarily” table it so they could move on to another issue. Whereas previously an issue had to be either pulled or voted upon before the Senate could move on, now they could just leave it in limbo. The issue wasn’t pulled, but it also wouldn’t get a vote. The Majority Leader could then go back to it whenever they wanted. The idea was that if a filibuster started, they could switch tracks to something else. If/when they went back to that filibustered issue, the filibustering Senator would get the floor back and could continue, but if they couldn’t come up with the votes for cloture (which were now expanded to 3/5 of the entire Senate, which made cloture even more difficult than it was before) they could just move on to something else without wasting the Senate’s time.
Again, though, this shifted the entire dynamic of how the filibuster was actually used. The new rules went into place in 1972. The use of the filibuster (just like after cloture was first created in 1917) began to increase, and the speed of increase went up over time. At first, through the 80s and early 90s, a Senator would actually have to start their filibuster before the issue would be put on the back burner and the Senate move on to another issue. By the early 2000s, though, all a Senator had to do was tell the Majority leader they intended to filibuster if the issue came to the floor and the Majority leader would just automatically table it, never even allowing for debate.
This is where we are now with the filibuster. Pretty much every single bill that doesn’t enjoy broad bipartisan support gets a silent filibuster as a matter of course. This means that basically all legislation coming out of the Senate requires 60 votes to pass. That means that the minority gets to set the agenda since it’s easier to come up with 41 votes against something than 60 votes for something. This contributes to and feeds off of the hyper polarization in our politics. A minority party knows that if they can just keep all their members in line, they can easily block pretty much anything the majority wants to do unless it gets enough national attention that blocking it would garner negative press on the minority party. But even that is heavily mitigated by the existence of stuff like Fox News and media echochambers (of which, the Right is WAY better at creating and controlling).
It’s also important to recognize that the silent filibuster is a big part of how we got to the point in our politics where Congress is so incredibly dysfunctional that Trump can actually just ignore and bypass Congress as much as he wants. All the shit he’s done since taking office this time has been done without Congress. In a previous era, that might have drawn a lot more criticism, even from his own party. But the existence of the silent filibuster and 60 vote threshold to pass legislation has created the conditions where we’re all used to Congress not doing anything at all. People want action, and they’re used to Congress not being able to do anything, so Trump doing it through Executive Order seems like a relief to them. And the same thing, although to a much less authoritarian degree, happened under Biden, Obama, and W Bush, too. Remember Biden trying to cancel student loans through EO? Remember Obama creating DACA by EO or telling the DEA to not enforce cannabis prohibition in states where cannabis is legal? That’s all stuff Congress is supposed to be doing but can’t because of the silent filibuster and 60 vote threshold.
Since the late 90s, any speaking filibuster in the Senate, like we’re seeing Booker do now, is purely political theater. It’s done to attract national attention and news coverage, not to actually block or prevent legislation. Which is fine, so long as we all understand the purpose. Political theater is important to actually getting stuff done sometimes because it can drive mass action or sentiment.
My overall point here, though, is that everything about this history of the filibuster and how it works today was the result of short-term thinking to solve an immediate problem without consideration of the long-term consequences.
Greatly appreciate the writeup! Thanks!
Thank you, you are a gentleman and a scholar.
getting a Mitch COnnell to stand for 15 minutes would have already made a difference.
Inconsequential, the easiest type of protest. Kabuki by the Senator from the pharmaceutical industry.
Speaking nonstop for 6 hours without using the bathroom, drinking water, sitting down, leaning on a podium, or even placing your hand on a solid surface isn’t my idea of easy.
He’s doing most of those things. This is still impressive.
People don’t seem to understand that they don’t have much actual power until a few Republicans decide to stand up for their country.
Here I thought running a jackhammer or hauling roofing shingles up a ladder was hard. Silly me!
Also this:
In a statement to the media after the vote, Booker’s office said he supports the importation of prescription drugs but that “any plan to allow the importation of prescription medications should also include consumer protections that ensure foreign drugs meet American safety standards. I opposed an amendment put forward last night that didn’t meet this test.”
This argument is the same one offered by the pharmaceutical industry.
Fuuuuuuck Cory Booker
““Tonight I rise with the intention of getting in some good trouble — I rise with the intention of disrupting the normal business of the United States Senate for as long as I am physically able,” he said.”
Lmaooo the most dem shit ever. Overnight protest stream like he’s on twitch.
Unless you and dipshit above are rogue Republicans, we are so fucked as a nation
Yeah him not blocking any legislation and doing performative stunts is exactly what we need
Nah those fucking paddles or whatever at the fake of the union were the easiest type of protest.
Would have been nice if he did this during the CR vote or any one of the atrocious trump appointees. This is isn’t stopping any senate business.
A shutdown from a failed budget would have expedited Project 2025. The President determines who operates during a shutdown, and who returns afterwards. DOGE would keep cutting, ICE would keep deporting, and Trump would keep writing executive orders. When it ended, Trump could refuse to return any hired government employees as his discretion.
Edit: Downvote if you want, but this is important information. The CR was a temporary resolution. There will be another budget vote in September, and they’ll have to decide if a large-scale reduction in workforce is worth the leverage over the budget.
https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/don-t-use-shutdown-plans-to-slash-the-federal-workforce
This is stupid lie that Schumer was peddling.
Trump could have vetoed the budget and forced a shutdown. If he got more power that way don’t you think he would have?
Stop acting like the ten Democrats that didn’t get the memo were somehow justified in messing up the nation.
I do think the blame would have more easily been shifted onto the dems dontya think? Not to mention he wants a shutdown to enact marshal law or whatever
Came here to say this. They’re effectively dismantling the government anyway. This is in no way changing the trajectory. In fact government employees who would be impacted by the shutdown and the dismantling were pleading with Schumer to shut it down. Not only that but Trump and Republicans would have owned the shut down because it is on their watch that it would have happened. Additionally, everything they’re doing including doge is wildly unpopular so it would have shown the American people that democrats oppose it. But now Democrats just look like they’re abetting this dismantling of the federal government and they look spineless, weak, and rudderless. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
Also. Lmao. They fucking ended up voting in another Trump nominee.
https://bsky.app/profile/vickyacab.bsky.social/post/3lls5tia67c2a
This was a publicity stunt. Don’t donate a single fucking dollar to these wolves in sheep’s clothing until they actually fucking do something worth a cent.
Here’s the video of these gutless fucking cowards. This kneeling in Dashiki type shit. And it’s brutal how many people are on here posting like they’re so proud of their senator.
https://bsky.app/profile/katz.theracket.news/post/3llsgxmq7gs2q
That’s what his assistant told me when I demanded an explanation for his dissent. Now I need to confirm if that’s true. I’m going to flip out when I call later if they fucking lied to me!Edit: It appears to be true. A lack of funding would justify large scale reduction in force in accordance with Trump’s Executive Order 14210. I’m still going to ask for details when I call later.
https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/don-t-use-shutdown-plans-to-slash-the-federal-workforce
Again, if it were so true and advanced Trump’s goals, why didn’t he veto the CR? Why did he push republicans to vote for it? Why was the Federal Workers Union opposed to it passing?
You edited up above that “it’s temporary”. No, it isn’t. It wasn’t a clean CR and it vested a lot more power into the administration to make budget decisions. A shutdown would have been temporary, but it also would have caused a massive shock to the stock market (which is almost certainly the real reason Schumer and crew voted for it).
Why are you calling the propaganda office to get answers? Do you think Schumer’s staffers are going to tell you anything other than “This was the absolute most perfect and most bestest thing Schumer could have done!”. It’s literally their jobs to justify Schumers actions.
This bill supercharged and codified the DOGE actions. Now, instead of having any sort of leverage to stop the Trump admin and Elon from their actions. Instead of strong arming the republicans to actually compromise on SOMETHING in the budget bill. Schumer and crew have given them everything they asked for and they walked away with smiles on their faces. Literally. Republican senators were shocked and delighted it went through.
All but 1 house democrat voted against this. All but 10 senate democrats voted against this. The vast majority of democrats in congress understood that this was a really dumb bill to let through. Stop listening to Schumer propaganda and just think about this. Schumer, as the senate majority leader, went against the will of his party.
You don’t understand what a CR is if you think it’s permanent. A continuing resolution is stopgap funding when a budget reconciliation fails to be passed.
Read the link I provided. It explains how Trump’s existing executive order grants him the ability to refuse return on non-essential employees under three conditions. A lack of funding is one of them.
As for why he didn’t veto, I honestly don’t know. It’s a good question. Maybe he’s trying to win his indiscriminate termination hearings in appeal first? He’ll have another chance in September, since the CR is temporary.
You don’t understand what a CR is if you think it’s permanent. A continuing resolution is stopgap funding when a budget reconciliation fails to be passed.
You don’t understand how Congress works. A CR isn’t used when Budget Reconciliation isn’t passed. It’s used when spending bills don’t pass.
The "normal’ (or what’s supposed to be normal) process for funding the government is that the Congress passes a Budget, which is a set of funding guidelines, but doesn’t actually allocate money. That budget is then used by various committees to write appropriations bills, which is what actually allows the government to spend money. Those spending bills are typically supposed to only cover 1 year, with new appropriations given every year.
Except Congress has been a dysfunctional mess for decades. They rarely actually pass Budget or appropriations bills. That’s why we’re always under these shutdown threats, because Congress doesn’t work as it’s supposed to. So when they come down to crunch time and can’t pass spending bills, they pass a Continuing Resolution (CR). A CR is an appropriations bill, but instead of using a recent budget as a guideline, the CR just says “continue funding the government at the exact levels it was with these minor adjustments” (usually cutting funding by 2-5% and/or increasing in specific areas, like disaster relief if there was just a hurricane or something).
A CR, just like a normal appropriations bill, funds only to a set level. They don’t have a time limit in that they say “funding will stop on X date”, but they know how fast the government spends money, so they can predict that $XXX will last YYY days. In that way, they can say “fund $XXX worth” knowing that will expire on a certain date. CRs are just as “permanent” as any appropriations bill
A Budget Reconciliation is a completely different thing. It’s a process that allows the Senate to adjust existing spending bills while bypassing the 60 vote threshold for cloture required by the filibuster rules. When the Congress writes a spending bill, they include language within it to say, “this portion of the budget can later be adjusted through reconciliation”. The intention is to strip out particularly contentious parts of the larger bill to allow the larger bill to pass while letting Congress then address the stickier issue on its own. So, for example, you don’t have to hold up funding national parks just because you can’t decide how much to spend on a new military drone program, for example.
However, since Reconciliation allows the majority party to bypass the filibuster, it’s use is primarily to pass legislation that the majority knows they can’t do through normal legislation (due to the 60 vote threshold the filibuster puts on everything). There are certain rules which I can get into if you want that limit what types of things can be done through reconciliation and how often. But your framing in your comment above about how CRs are supposedly temporary until a Reconciliation Bill is passed is just flat out wrong.
You don’t understand what a CR is if you think it’s permanent. A continuing resolution is stopgap funding when a budget reconciliation fails to be passed.
A CR is just a title applied to a bill. This wasn’t a CR, it was named a CR. Just calling something a “CR” means nothing. If this were actually a CR the dems in the house and most of the senate dems would not have opposed it.
As for Trump’s executive orders, those are just decrees that can be legally challenged. Much like Trump decreeing “The 14th amendment no longer counts” just saying it doesn’t make it so.
Again, Even if we take the veto out of the equation, have you thought about why the Federal Workers union was opposed to this “CR”? Why would the union for the workers that would have been most impacted by a shutdown oppose a simple stopgap CR?
https://www.yahoo.com/news/federal-employees-union-tells-congress-132950031.html
False. You need to learn the difference between a continuing resolution and a budget reconciliation bill.
https://www.pgpf.org/article/what-is-a-continuing-resolution/
Stop believing anything Schumer says. He is pro whoever supports the most genocide against Palestinians. Democrats have supported it for a while, but Trump definitely wins that comparison by a landslide.
Trump does NOT want a government shutdown. He can’t do much without a budget, and it will piss off voters. If he really wanted to shut it all down, he could have refused to sign the budget and forced a shutdown anyway.
So your argument is that it’s actually the best decision to just rubber stamp everything the fascists do because trying to oppose it might end up worse? And that if we just rubber stamp everything now, they’ll be nicer and not try to make an even worse budget/CR in September?
That’s some Neville Chamberlain-level appeasement bullshit right there. "pea
What do you mean “rubber stamp everything?” Sensationalism is very unhelpful to people who prefer to pay attention to the actions of our government.
The dilemma with passing this budget is choosing between giving temporary funding to the corrupt administration, or shutting down non-essential departments allowing Trump to terminate any and all non-essential government employees.
I’m all for criticism of poor choices, but this was a lose/lose. Neither option was good for the nation.
By rubber stamping, in this specific instance, I mean Schumer allowing the CR to pass without extracting any concessions. When the most powerful Democrat in the country, and the only one with power to prevent the CR from passing, just lets it happen, it sends the message that this is business as normal and nothing people need to be overly concerned with.
I agree that a shutdown would have also been bad. But it also would have send the message that Democrats aren’t going to be collaborationists. It would have said, “this is a shit sandwich, but it’s yours and I want no part of it.” Instead, Schumer took a big bite out of that shit sandwich and said, “Democrats and Republicans are in this together.”
You said it was a lose/lose? Sure, no argument on that. But let them take the political loss rather than giving the fascists cover, FFS.
There was no leverage to extract concessions from the minority without inducing a shutdown. I just wish they all openly discussed this and voted together. People are more upset by the appearance of dissent than the choice made given the available options.
If you can’t extract concessions, then you let them take the loss alone. Instead, Vichy Schumer just agreed to sign the Democrats on as collaborators.
What loss alone? Again, be specific. The alternative was a shutdown.
Fwiw I’m with you on this.
A great write up on the situation: https://open.substack.com/pub/joshbarro/p/it-is-not-chuck-schumers-job-to-satisfy?r=2ws72
Thanks! That was a well written breakdown for sure. The irony is I really dislike Schumer. Everyone else dropped out of the primary, so he was mo only option. I’m even less fond of defending a moderate standpoint, but I’ll advocate for fact over opinion, and this was simply not the leverage people make it out to be.
I hear you. I feel the anger and the frustration too. It feels like acquiescing. We want to fight every battle so much that we see a battle in places where there is none, where instead we have to be pragmatic.
It was still a self-inflicted wound for him to reverse his vote late. It made it FEEL like they were acquiescing.
Exactly right. He should have been more compelling with his peers over the dangers of a shutdown. The dissent just gave people the impression of weakness.
Very interesting, I hope he succeeds
Holy shit, is he still freaking going? 🤣
Cory Booker is doing a great job with his protest speech. I started watching while he was talking about social security, and I’m so glad someone is talking about our fears in congress.
How do I support this
tell your friends. get them on the stream - especially right now. great back and forth conversation happening.
i went ahead and called my own senator to be like “why aren’t YOU doing this”
perfect! push!
update, the one of my two senators that i contacted did in fact speak
from a state with two republican senators, thank you!
had to go to my local post office today and had a great convo with the person behind the desk - they were watching booker on their lunchbreak and we had an awesome moment of connection over this. I reminded them that there was still so much love out here just waiting to be organized.
watching. serious thanks for the heads up.
No problem! I keep seeing comments that the Democrats just hold signs, which tells me no one watches C-SPAN anymore. Lol
They voted and spoke out against every last cabinet nominee, forced a 15-day vote against Trump’s emergency executive order, confirm Biden’s pending judge appointments when Johnson and Cruz are absent, and are bringing most of the cases to the courts to challenge Trump.
As a whole, they’re doing everything they can from the minority. We will still need to primary out the deadwood centrists in favor of progressives that will actually drive change once in power, otherwise we’ll just set up another stagnant term.
They voted and spoke out against every last cabinet nominee
You mean Rubio being confirmed unanimously with no abstentions was a trick of the light? If you’re gonna lie, at least make it less obvious 🙄
are bringing most of the cases to the courts to challenge Trump.
Courts which the fascists ignore, like fascists tend to do.
As a whole, they’re doing everything they can from the minority
Again: if you’re gonna lie, at least make it less obvious.
We will still need to primary out the deadwood centrists in favor of progressives that will actually drive change once in power
Finally got to the real meat of the issue. Now if you would just realize that the deadwood centrists (actually center right to right wing) are actually almost all of them, including the entire leadership, maybe you wouldn’t be out here caping for them…
I didn’t watch Rubio’s confirmation hearing, so thanks for the correction.
He’s ignoring injunctions, not rulings. He can only be held in contempt of court until the cases have been ruled.
I’m not lying, but I may be uninformed. What I else could they be doing from the minority? I’ll add it to the list when I call and message my Representative and Senator.
We get ~20% turnout in congressional primaries, yet people call for term limits. Either stump and vote for better representation or accept that these people are at least trying to stop the nation from burning down. Apathy or actionless criticism will get us nowhere.
you are against term limits?
Not at all. My point is we have a chance to replace these people every two or four years in the primaries, but only ~20% of us actually vote in them.
You mean Rubio being confirmed unanimously
useless hope that he would be somewhat sane. an admitted massive fail.
Courts which the fascists ignore, like fascists tend to do.
righteous indignation over ignored court orders can burn white hot in the public - its part of a legitimate process.
Now if you would just realize that the deadwood centrists (actually center right to right wing) are actually almost all of them
well, yes. there is enough upheaval happening in this moment to force something. something will shift. what comes next (and how it comes) will almost certainly be different than what we have seen previously.
Is this just a gimmick, or is it actually useful? Seems like starting a filibuster at this time of day won’t mean much unless republicans were planning on voting this late.
both. as he said its “good trouble”. unlikely to change course, but really useful to show other dems that a backbone is useful and people will support you.
also good info being passed out to anyone that will listen.
It’s useful because it draws attention to then egregious violations of the rule of law by Trump and Elon. It also blocks the Senate from passing anything that would be part of Trump’s agenda.
Love that rep
It’s not really a filibuster. He’s protesting, but he’s not stopping any legislation. I kind of wish he had saved his energy for when we actually needed dems to filibuster something.
That would require the Republicans in Congress to actually pass legislation. All they’ve done is repeal the CFPB overdraft rule with a simple majority and pass the CR, neither of which can be filibustered.
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I’m reading articles now that say this technically isn’t a filibuster, but a protest speech. C-SPAN called it a filibuster, so I assumed it was one. I guess we’ll see when it’s over.
