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.
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.
25 hours and 5 minutes. Legend.
Holy shit, is he still freaking going? 🤣
Not a filibuster. Just a good effort.
Love that rep
Fash won’t save us from fash. Also there’s no filibuster.
You’re not an ally
Booker isn’t even stopping any vote. It might be better than absolutely nothing but this man is not going to save the people like this. He’s a Zionist, not progressive, in other countries would be a firmly right-wing politician.
I dunno if you’ve missed literally everything in the last 3 months, but I would kill to get back to “firmly right-wing”. You know what calling Democrats ‘zionists’ gets you? It gets you Donald Trump as President. How many times will you throw out good (or even just better) because it’s not perfect?
This. I’ve been learning about how to think like a dissident, and in this movement, there can be no purity testing. You’re either against Trump and his agenda, or you’re not. The purity testing can come after the clear and present danger that is Trump and his agenda has been dealt with, and not a second before. Until then, we are all in this together.
its what we have at the moment.
social organization and resistance in america is almost never around a simple, single fulcrum - look at the multipronged approach of the right for the past 40 uears.
I have been watching last night and all day today and there is just enough progressivism on display from a diverse group of dems to open cracks and widen fissures for more expansive ideas.
every opening is an opportunity to attack the problem (both party and public) from both the inside and the outside. and while the dems try to get some momentum, keep connecting locally with likeminded people willing to stir shit up - whatever that may mean to you.
edit: words
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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/
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.
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
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.
Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage! Rage! Against the dying of the light!
on fire right now! nice.
Very interesting, I hope he succeeds
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.
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
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.
Book tour, talk show appearance, book tour, etc.
They are hiding up Biden’s crusty ass, where they belong. Fuck democrats.
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.
Can’t presidential appointees be filibustered?
I thought Democrats weren’t allowed to DO Anything? Chuck Schumer is going to be SO ANGRY at this!
Schumer is there asking Booker questions to give him a break. This is the first time the filibuster has been applicable this term, but the Democrats have been working. They’re confirming Biden’s pending judicial appointments whenever Republican attendance is low, they voted down every cabinet nomination, and are the ones taking the cases to the courts.
