Republican senators on Tuesday voted to silence a Democratic colleague for impugning a peer, Senator Jeff Sessions, by condemning his nomination for attorney general while reading a letter from Coretta Scott King.
Senator Elizabeth Warren had been holding forth on the Senate floor on the eve of Sessions’ expected confirmation vote, reciting a 1986 letter from King that criticized Sessions’ record on civil rights.
Sensing a stirring beside her a short while later, Warren stopped herself and scanned the chamber.
Across the room, the majority leader, Senator Mitch McConnell, had stepped forward with an objection, setting off a confrontation in the Capitol and silencing a colleague procedurally in the throes of a contentious debate over US President Donald Trump’s Cabinet nominee.
“The senator has impugned the motives and conduct of our colleague from Alabama, as warned by the chair,” McConnell began, alluding to King’s letter, which accused Sessions of using “the awesome power of his office to chill the pre-exercise of the vote by black citizens.”
King was the widow of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.
McConnell called the Senate to order under what is known as Rule XIX, which prohibits senators from ascribing “to another senator or to other senators any conduct or motive unworthy or unbecoming a senator.”
When McConnell concluded, Warren said she was “surprised that the words of Coretta Scott King are not suitable for debate in the United States Senate.”
She asked to continue her remarks and McConnell objected.
“Objection is heard,” said Republican Senator Steve Daines, who was presiding in the chamber. “The senator will take her seat.”
In a party-line vote, senators upheld Daines’ decision, forcing Warren into silence, at least on the Senate floor, until the showdown over Sessions’ nomination is complete. He was expected to be confirmed yesterday.
Warren hit back on Twitter. She posted to her 1.74 million followers: “Tonight @SenateMajLdr silenced Mrs King’s voice on the Sen floor - & millions who are afraid & appalled by what’s happening in our country.”
Others on Twitter were posting with the hashtag #LetLizSpeak.
Late on Tuesday night, Warren read the letter on Facebook Live. Less than an hour after it was posted, the video had received more than 1.1 million views.
Democrats argued that McConnell was enforcing the rule selectively, citing examples of Republicans appearing to test the boundaries of Rule XIX.
In one instance from 2015, Republican Senator Ted Cruz accused McConnell of lying “over and over and over again.”
Republicans accused Warren of violating the rule repeatedly, saying she had been warned before McConnell’s objection.
Senator John Cornyn suggested that Warren had been rebuked over “a quotation from [former] senator Ted Kennedy that called the nominee a disgrace to the Justice Department.”
In other developments, Warren is raking in millions in campaign donations as she looks ahead to a re-election bid next year.
According to an Associated Press review of Warren’s latest campaign finance reports, the Massachusetts Democrat took in a hefty US$5.9 million in campaign contributions from January 2015 through the end of last year.
Contributions to Warren spiked in the final three months of last year, when she took in more than US$1 million.
Nearly all of Warren’s contributions came from individual supporters, with just US$34,000 from political action committees and other groups.
Warren ended last year with US$4.8 million left in her campaign account. She began the two-year period with just over US$1.6 million in cash on hand.
She sent out a fundraising e-mail to supporters last week saying that deep-pocketed conservative groups were already running ads against her.
“I will never stop fighting against a right-wing system hell-bent on stripping the rights of working people and tilting the law to favor big business and billionaires like Donald Trump,” Warren said in the e-mail.
Additional reporting by the Guardian and AP
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