Senate GOP's effort to silence Warren backfires
Senate GOP's effort to shut Warren up backfires
Story highlights
- Warren was told she violated Senate rules against impugning another senator
- She was reading a letter by Coretta Scott King from 1986 opposing Jeff Sessions
Washington (CNN)The Senate has silenced Elizabeth Warren.
And
by doing so, majority Republicans just handed the liberal firebrand a
megaphone -- further elevating President Donald Trump's fiercest and
most prominent critic in the Senate and turning her into a Democratic
hero.
"They can shut me up, but they can't change the truth," Warren later told CNN's Don Lemon.
The
rebuke of Warren came as the Massachusetts Democrat read a letter that
Coretta Scott King, the widow of Martin Luther King Jr., had written 30
years ago opposing the nomination of Jeff Sessions for a federal
judgeship.
Sessions -- now an
Alabama senator -- is Trump's nominee for attorney general. Warren
opposes him, and cited King's letter to members of the Senate Judiciary
Committee in 1986. "Mr. Sessions has used 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," King wrote then.
Republicans
cried foul -- charging that Warren violated Senate rules against
impugning another senator. A party-line vote upheld that decision,
turning what could have been an ordinary late-night partisan floor
speech for C-SPAN devotees into a national story.
It
means Warren is now forbidden from participating in the floor debate
over Sessions' nomination ahead of a confirmation vote expected
Wednesday.
"She was warned. She
was given an explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted," Senate Majority
Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, said on the Senate floor.
The
line was an instant classic -- the kind liberals envision being
replayed ad nauseum in TV ads in a future presidential campaign.
And
it couldn't have come at a better time for Warren, who is up for
re-election in 2018. On Tuesday, she announced she hired an aide who is
an expert on national security, a move that could help burnish her
expertise in that area, as well as the publication of a new book, which
will become available in April.
Liberals
had been frustrated with Warren's vote in committee in favor of Ben
Carson, Trump's nominee for secretary of Housing and Urban Development.
No more.
By Tuesday night, the hashtag #LetLizSpeak was trending on Twitter.
Warren took to Twitter herself to attack both Sessions and McConnell.
"I
will not be silent about a nominee for AG who has made derogatory &
racist comments that have no place in our justice system," she wrote.
In
a follow-up tweet, she said: "I will not be silent while the
Republicans rubber stamp an AG who will never stand up to the @POTUS
when he breaks the law."
And then:
"Tonight @SenateMajLdr silenced Mrs King's voice on the Sen floor -
& millions who are afraid & appalled by what's happening in our
country."
Warren went straight from
the Senate floor to a call-in appearance on Rachel Maddow's MSNBC show, a
favorite of progressives. "I've been red-carded on Sen. Sessions. I'm
out of the game of the Senate floor," she told Maddow.
Meanwhile,
the Democratic National Committee blasted out a supportive statement,
with interim chairwoman Donna Brazile saying: "It's a sad day in America
when the words of Martin Luther King Jr.'s widow are not allowed on the
floor of the United States Senate. Let Elizabeth Warren speak."
The
moment became a rallying cry for fellow Democrats. California Sen.
Kamala Harris took to the Senate floor to call the vote to silence
Warren "outrageous."
"I never ever
saw a time when a member of the Senate asked to put into the record a
letter -- especially by a civil rights icon -- and somebody objected,"
said Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont.
The Senate descended into a series of complaints about declining decorum on both sides.
"We
have to treat each other with respect or this place is going to devolve
into a jungle," said seven-term Utah Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch.
Sen. Warren: Overturn Trump's executive order 00:56
Then
Democrats brought out examples of Republicans who had crossed similar
lines and not been shut up the way Warren was forbidden from
participating.
Senate Minority
Leader Chuck Schumer's office highlighted Texas Sen. Ted Cruz's
accusation that McConnell had told a "flat-out lie" about the future of
the Export-Import Bank in 2015.
Warren sat on the Senate floor, though, silently. She had already had her moment.
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