Democrats rallied around Elizabeth Warren on Wednesday after the Massachusetts senator was silenced for reading from a 30-year-old letter written by the widow of Martin Luther King criticizing attorney general nominee Jeff Sessions’ civil rights record.
Senate Republicans voted to rebuke Warren after she read from a letter that Coretta Scott King wrote that criticized the civil rights record of Sessions, Trump’s nominee for attorney general and an Alabama Republican, during the lawmaker’s attempted confirmation for a federal judgeship 30 years ago. The 1986 letter said that Sen. Sessions, who was then U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Alabama, had used the “the awesome power of his office to chill the free exercise of the vote by black citizens in the district he now seeks to serve as a federal judge.”
Still, Sessions is expected to be confirmed Wednesday evening when the Republican-led Senate takes a final vote on his nomination. Democrats this week have spoken out forcefully against Trump’s nominees, even though they lack the votes to derail even the most contentious picks. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos needed Vice President Mike Pence to cast a tie-breaking vote in her favor on Tuesday, marking the first ever time a vice president’s ballot was needed to confirm a cabinet nominee.
“Democrats have the minority in the House, the minority in the Senate, but that does not make us the minority party,” Warren said Wednesday in an interview on MSNBC. “We are the party of opposition, and that is our job. But our tools are very limited, we don’t have the capacity to stop Jeff Sessions if all the Republicans lock arms.”
The rare move to silence a senator for impugning a fellow member of Congress sparked a #LetLizSpeak social media campaign late Tuesday and prompted a number of Democrats to defend the liberal firebrand and heavily speculated about 2020 presidential candidate.
Democratic Sens. Tom Udall, Sherrod Brown and Bernie Sanders all took to the Senate floor reading the King letter Wednesday morning without GOP objection. Aides to Republican leadership say Warren was not punished for simply reading the letter, but for ignoring warnings about being silenced and delivering a disparaging speech that went beyond simply reading King’s words.
Sanders called it “unconscionable and outrageous” that Warren was cut from the debate and called on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to apologize. The marathon debate on the confirmation of Sen. Sessions, which stretched overnight and was ongoing Wednesday, came to a temporary halt Tuesday night when McConnell objected to a speech that the Massachusetts Democrat was giving.
McConnell and other Republicans said Warren violated Senate rules. The rule, No. 19, says senators cannot “directly or indirectly, by any form of words impute to another Senator or to other Senators any conduct or motive unworthy or unbecoming a Senator.”
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The Senate voted along partisan lines, 49-43, to admonish Warren, effectively barring her from speaking during the remaining debate on Sessions.
“The senator has impugned the motives and conduct of our colleague from Alabama, as warned by the chair,” McConnell said on the floor.
“She has been warned multiple times (not just today),” McConnell spokesman Don Stewart told NBC News. “And after additional warning today, she was found in violation of the rule. She appealed the ruling and lost.”
Democrats stood to defend Warren, a darling of the left, creating a hashtag on Twitter: #LetLizSpeak.
“I’ve been red-carded on Senator Sessions. I’m out of the game on Senator Sessions,” Warren said Tuesday night in an interview on MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show.”
Abandoning the sports analogies, Warren then urged all Americans to read Scott’s letter for themselves.
“It is eloquent, and it reminds us of a time in history that we would like to think is far behind us but reminds us that it is not,” she said.
Warren also took to twitter, saying that McConnell was in reality silencing King.
Sen. Kamala Harris, D-California, meanwhile, posted the full letter and excerpts after Warren was sanctioned.
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York objected to the ruling, calling it “selective enforcement” and citing previous apparent violations by Republicans that went unpunished.
At times in the past, Schumer said in a statement released by his office, Republican senators have accused their colleagues of telling “a flat-out lie,” of “stirring up global hysteria to score political points” and of engaging in “bitter, vulgar, incoherent ramblings.”
That last one came from Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Arkansas, who last may denounced Schumer’s predecessor, former Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, for what he called “cancerous leadership” designed to “protect his own sad, sorry legacy.”
But Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, insisted that Warren’s actions had no place in the Senate.
“Even if what she said was true, it wasn’t the right thing to do,” Hatch said. “I’ve been appalled at the way Democrats have treated Jeff Sessions.”
“Democrats have the minority in the House, the minority in the Senate, but that does not make us the minority party,” Warren said Wednesday in an interview on MSNBC. “We are the party of opposition, and that is our job.”
