Jeff Merkley of Oregon gives address to make case that president is ‘violating the law’ through authoritarianism

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.

    • SupahRevs@lemmy.world
      134·
      11 hours ago

      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.

      • Arcane2077@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        1·
        2 hours ago

        These all sound great in theory but when you underfund these programs and leave them half implemented, hoping to get re-elected or “hoping” have the next guy gets around to it, functionally all they do is appease liberals who don’t pay attention and nothing else.

        You know where democrats actually take action? Anything the republicans ask for. Obama left the supreme court stacked “against” them and gave corporations full control of American society (ok this is one is mostly because they helped him get elected, not because republicans asked for it, but it still ended up favoring the reds), Biden gave ICE 3.4 billion dollars just in case the next guy needed it, and the list goes on and on. Every single thing Donald Trump is happy to take the blame for was carefully set up by Democrats