SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
democrats
'This Is a Start': Senate Democrats Hold Floor Overnight to Protest Vought Nomination
Democrats "should be blowing past McConnell-level obstruction in a way that makes it look like business as usual," said one commentator.
Feb 06, 2025
Democrats took turns speaking on the floor of the U.S. Senate into the early hours of Thursday morning in a show of opposition to President Donald Trump's pick to lead the White House budget office and the new administration's lawless broadside against key federal agencies—an assault led by unelected billionaire Elon Musk.
Facing growing pressure to use every tool available to obstruct an administration that they have characterized as authoritarian, Democratic senators are expected to take up all 30 hours of debate on Russell Vought, a right-wing extremist and Project 2025 architect who is poised to take charge of the Office of Management and Budget.
Unless Democrats give in and grant unanimous consent (UC) to end debate—as they've done with other Trump nominees in recent days—a vote on Vought's confirmation won't take place until Thursday evening. As of this writing, the Democratic speeches are still going.
"Americans voted each of us into office to fight for them," Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said after speaking on the Senate floor for an hour late Wednesday. "They do not expect us to roll over and play dead."
Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) used his floor speech to spotlight what he described as Vought's plan to "gut programs for working families" and "give massive tax giveaways to billionaires."
Watch @SenJeffMerkley lay out Project 2025 Architect and OMB Director nominee Russell Vought’s three-step plan to:
Gut programs for working families
Borrow trillions and run up debt
Give massive tax giveaways to billionaires pic.twitter.com/2oasfZJvfv
— Senate Democrats (@SenateDems) February 5, 2025
For experts and activists who have been urging the minority party to put up a fight in the face of Trump and Musk's destructive rampage through the federal government, the marathon protest against Vought's nomination was a positive sign—but not at all sufficient.
"This is a start but, to be clear, still nowhere close to maximum obstruction," Andy Craig, an election policy fellow at the Rainey Center, wrote on social media. "No UC, on anything. No unrecorded votes, on anything. No waiving rules, on anything. Fight even on adjournments. Quorum calls every time you can. Make every dilatory motion in the books and new ones you just made up."
"If you're not miserable every day with long hours and tedious constant votes, you're not making them miserable, either," Craig added. "Make them miserable."
While Democrats don't have the votes in the Senate to tank Trump nominees, they can severely derail the chamber's day-to-day functions in many ways. The progressive advocacy group Indivisible lists a number of them:
- Deny a quorum to completely freeze Senate business. If Republicans don't have 51 votes on the floor, Democrats can walk out, preventing the Senate from doing anything at all.
- Force Republicans to waste time by making them repeatedly prove they have a quorum instead of passing harmful legislation or confirming extremist judges.
- Make governing a miserable experience for Republicans by keeping them tied up in procedural delays instead of letting them cruise through their agenda.
- Any senator can object to a unanimous consent request, forcing Republicans to take the slowest and most painful route to pass anything.
- Blocking UC forces roll-call votes, debates, and delays on even the most basic motions, eating up hours (or days) of floor time.
- It kills fast-track confirmations. Many of Trump's judicial nominees sailed through last time because Democrats didn't force votes on each one. This time? Make them work for it.
"The easy way to think about this is when you're going and talking to your Democratic senator, you say 'Hey, imagine you are Mitch McConnell in the minority, and then do what that asshole would do,'" Indivisible co-executive director Ezra Levin said at a rally earlier this week.
But Craig argued late Wednesday that Democrats "should be blowing past McConnell-level obstruction in a way that makes it look like business as usual," including by breaking Senate rules.
"Mitch didn't do even 1% of what could be done by a minority determined to keep the Senate grinding in circles getting absolutely nothing done," Craig wrote.
Keep ReadingShow Less
'President Musk' Trends After Trump's Top Oligarch Torpedoes Federal Spending Deal
"Welcome to the Elon Musk presidency," wrote Democratic Rep. Robert Garcia.
Dec 19, 2024
Congress is careening toward a government shutdown after U.S. President-elect Trump, egged on by billionaire Elon Musk—who helped bankroll Trump's reelection campaign and is slated to help oversee cuts to government spending and regulation in the new administration—torpedoed a federal spending bill that would have kept the government open for the next few months.
The episode has drawn sharp rebuke from Democrats, and caused a number to muse whether it's Musk who's really in charge.
"The U.S. Congress this week came to an agreement to fund our government. Elon Musk, who became $200 BILLION richer since Trump was elected, objected. Are Republicans beholden to the American people? Or President Musk? This is oligarchy at work," wrote Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in a social media post late Wednesday.
During a Wednesday night appearance on MSNBC, Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) called Musk "basically a shadow president."
These sorts of remarks continued Thursday, with Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) writing: "Welcome to the Elon Musk presidency, where Donald Trump is now clearly the vice president. They want a government shutdown that would hurt millions of Americans. It’s totally insane," wrote Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.)
Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich echoed this sentiment in an opinion piece for Common Dreams published Thursday, writing: "If this isn't oligarchy, I don't know what is. You may not get access to services you depend on just before the holidays because an unelected billionaire shadow president wanted it that way."
[Related: If Musk Blocking a Key Spending Bill Isn’t Oligarchy, I Don’t Know What Is ]
Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance threw cold water on the spending bill Wednesday afternoon with a joint statement, arguing that the bill included "DEMOCRATIC GIVEAWAYS." The directive from Trump came after Musk spent much of Wednesday airing his opposition to the spending package on the platform X, which he owns. In total, Musk shot off over 150 posts demanding the members of the GOP back away from the spending bill, according to The New York Times.
The bipartisan spending package unveiled by House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) on Tuesday would have funded the government at current levels through March 14, and also provided some $100 billion for disaster relief as well as $10 billion in economic relief for farmers.
In their statement denouncing the bill, Vance and Trump also called for an increase to the debt ceiling—adding the fraught issue of national debt, which currently stands at more than $36 trillion, into the debate. Trump also called for getting rid of the debt ceiling entirely, according to Thursday reporting from NBC News.
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said this of the debt ceiling demand: "Ha! Trump wants to lift the debt ceiling for one reason and one reason only—so he can borrow shitloads of money to afford his new giant tax break for billionaires and corporations. In other words, saddle regular Americans with mountains more debt so the rich can get richer."
Keep ReadingShow Less
73% of Young US Voters Eager to Support Candidates With Bold Climate Agenda
Over three-quarters in a new survey endorsed the idea that the "future is frightening" and 62.9% agreed that "humanity is doomed."
Oct 18, 2024
More than half of young people in the U.S. are "very or extremely worried" about the climate crisis and an even larger percentage are motivated to do something about it, including at the ballot box.
The data came from a poll published on Thursday in The Lancet Planetary Health, which found that concerns about the climate crisis were impacting young people's decisions about their personal and public lives, with 52.3% saying they were "hesitant to have children" and 72.8% planning to vote for candidates who back ambitious climate policies.
"Climate change is causing widespread distress among U.S. youth and affecting their beliefs and plans for the future," the study authors concluded. "These effects may intensify, across the political spectrum, as exposure to climate-related severe weather events increases."
"There was no state sample where the endorsement of climate anxiety came in less than 75%."
The study was based on an online survey conducted between July 20 and November 7 of 2023. In what authors believe to be the largest of its kind to date, the survey considered 15,793 answers from young people aged 16 to 25 in all 50 states and Washington, D.C.
The vast majority of respondents, 85%, were at least moderately worried about climate change, while 57.9% were very worried. Nearly two-thirds reported feeling anxious, powerless, afraid, sad, and angry about the climate crisis, while 51.2% felt despair. A smaller but significant number said that climate change was impacting their mental health and that worries about climate change were having a negative impact on their daily lives, at 42.8% and 38.3% respectively. Over three-quarters endorsed the statement, "The future is frightening," and 62.9% agreed that "humanity is doomed."
Many respondents anticipated the crisis to alter the trajectory of their lives, with 69.4% expecting it to impact where they would live, 66% expecting it to menace their health, 63.5% saying it would impact their future plans overall, and 65.5% saying it would outright make their lives worse.
However, many planned to take proactive steps to address climate change. In addition to voting, 68.2% said they would decrease their or their family's contribution to climate change, 67.4% said they would work for more sustainable employers, and 61.4% said they would join or back climate advocacy groups.
The climate crisis also shaped the respondents' thoughts and opinions, with 89.4% blaming corporations and industry for the emergency, 86% blaming the U.S. government, and 85.5% blaming other wealthy nations. Similar percentages put the onus on corporations, the U.S., and other wealthy governments to fix the problem. A full 71.9% of respondents agreed with the statement, "I don't want to participate in a social and economic system that harms the planet."
The survey results were consisted with past polls of young people. An earlier global poll, also published in The Lancet, found that 75% of U.S. respondents were moderately worried about the climate crisis and 46% were very worried. However, one thing that stood out in the most recent survey was how consistent the results were across state and party affiliation.
"One of the most striking findings of the survey was that this was across the political spectrum," lead author Eric Lewandowski, a clinical psychologist and associate professor at New York University's Grossman School of Medicine, toldThe Guardian. "There was no state sample where the endorsement of climate anxiety came in less than 75%."
In past surveys on U.S. climate attitudes, whether someone is a Republican, Democrat, or Independent has had a strong influence on how concerned they are about climate and whether or not they think the government should act on it.
However, the study authors noted, "Compared with these past reports, greater proportions of Republicans in this survey endorsed negative emotions and thoughts about climate change and the response of the U.S. government, and plans to vote for political candidates who support aggressive climate policies."
For example, while 92.6% and 86.5% of Democrats and Independents respectively said they were at least moderately worried about climate change, 73.5% of Republicans also said they were. While 83% of Democrats and 76.1% of Independents wanted the U.S. government to carry out a "plan to prevent the worst impacts of climate change," 69.1% of Republicans also did. And 62.3% of Republicans surveyed said they would vote based on a candidate's climate ambition, compared with 85.5% of Democrats and 74.5% of Independents.
Another factor that influenced respondent's climate feelings was whether or not they had experienced an extreme weather event, and this effect was not impacted by party affiliation.
"Despite baseline differences by political party, as respondents across the political spectrum perceived the impact of a greater array of severe weather events in their area, their distress related to climate change and their desire and plans for action increased," the study authors wrote.
Coming weeks after the devastation of Hurricanes Helene and Milton, the survey indicates that young people's mental health and well-being will consider to suffer as the climate crisis intensifies. This can be offset somewhat by giving these young people a chance to discuss and act on climate in their communities, schools, workplaces, and government. However, as with all climate impacts, the distress of young Americans has one overarching solution: rapidly phasing out fossil fuels to reduce emissions.
"These findings reinforce a theme identified in other research that climate change-related distress will continue to increase while climate change remains insufficiently addressed," the study authors concluded. "Accordingly, the response to address this distress must be for industries, governments, and policymakers to act at the necessary scale."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular