Senate Republican Chicanery

Bold action is needed to reassure Democratic voters that their party’s leaders are fighting back against thuggery

You don’t have to be very old to remember when Senate Republicans used mass obstruction to block or deter Biden nominees for courts and executive posts. That included using every delay tactic on individual nominees (remember, the rules changes did not eliminate filibusters, but simply cut the cloture threshold for confirmation from 60 to 50, with all the other impediments intact). And it included blanket holds, something Tommy Tuberville did for nine months for all military promotions, endangering national security; Josh Hawley did for Department of Justice nominees; and others did as well.

I was not alone in suggesting that some rules be changed to ease the roadblocks, including allowing en bloc confirmations, maybe ten or twenty at a time. Along with broader filibuster reform, to take the burden from the majority and put it on the minority, by switching the numbers from 60 required to end debate to 41 required to continue it. But the pushback we Senate reformers got, including from the likes of Krysten Sinema and Joe Manchin, was that keeping the rules would mean that Republicans would keep them as well, and give Democrats the same tools when in the minority as the GOP had employed against Biden, and before that, Obama.

I viewed that thesis with derision. Obviously, the people against rules changes either had no idea about Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans, or were consciously distorting reality. I said and wrote many times that if Republicans had the presidency, House and Senate, they would blow up the rules in a nanosecond, if it suited their aims. Adherence to norms, a reverence for institutional integrity, were concepts long obliterated by Mitch and his cohorts. Holding to the norms and rules hindered Biden and the majority’s policy goals—a price that was never going to be negated by Trump and his cult adhering to the norms and rules.

John Thune, like Mitch McConnell, talked a good game at the start of his tenure about keeping the Senate’s rules and traditions. Of course, that was nonsense. Thune early on abandoned any sense of Senate institutional integrity or independence, making sure Senate Republicans were loyal to the Trump cult, and was only going to wait a bit to blow up rules that damaged the goals of the cult. Despite the clear lack of qualifications and lies delivered by a slew of Trump nominees at the cabinet and subcabinet level, from RFK Jr to Kash Patel to Tulsi Gabbard, and by cringeworthy nominees for key Appeals Court judgeships like Emil Bove, Thune made sure that nearly all were confirmed. That included ignoring norms and rules about quorums in committees and confirmation hearings when jamming through some of the worst nominees, like Pete Hegseth. The remaining speed bumps in Senate rules, including the filibuster itself, will be targets before long.

When the last deadline approached about spending bills, and a shutdown possibility loomed, Thune gave a middle finger to Chuck Schumer and Senate Democrats, faced down Schumer after shutting Democrats out of the spending package, and prevailed when Schumer and his party blinked, enabling a radical partisan spending plan to prevail. Then, when Donald Trump went further, eviscerating public broadcasting and other vital funding with rescissions, Thune made sure that his party would ignore the fact that the programs had been bipartisan and agreed to by both House and Senate, and let Trump prevail. And in response to Trump’s utterly illegal and unconstitutional “pocket rescission” of vital foreign assistance? Crickets from Thune and his cult colleagues.

Now, as the next spending deadline looms at the end of the month, Thune has broken his word and blown up the rules again, allowing en bloc confirmations not for ten or twenty people, but for a hundred or more at a time, all chosen because they’ve professed total loyalty to Dear Leader. The policy positions in the executive will be larded even more with incompetent and dangerous individuals, destroying a professional government and endangering public safety and national security. And ultimately, the federal courts will be filled with radical and lawless judges, more appropriate for Russian courts than our own.

So, should Schumer and Democrats take any promise from Thune at face value? Of course not. Even if the Senate Appropriations Committee acts in a traditional fashion, crafting spending bills through bipartisan give-and-take, Democrats voting for them to keep the government open after the new fiscal year begins on October 1, another set of bait and switch actions are a certainty.

As the march to nihilism and autocracy picked up speed in March, I wrote to support Senate Democrats using their power to block a destructive spending deal, even if it meant the government would shut down. But to do so required a sustained and focused message, making clear that this was only because Trump, Thune, and their allies refused to compromise or take any action to protect important programs. Schumer and his colleagues opted not to do so. Now, surely they can see that capitulation will gain nothing and lose a great deal.

It is already late in the game. But every day, in every venue, using every platform, every Senate—and House—Democrat needs to explain over and over what is required to avoid a shutdown. Start with Jen Rubin’s five conditions: banning/reversing rescissions; restoring Medicaid; curtailing DHS overreach and illegality; implementing Russia sanctions; and setting up basic ethics requirements for all three branches. Add one more: making sure the subsidies for the Affordable Care Act are not eliminated , throwing a huge number of Americans off medical insurance at a time when health protections are disappearing under RFK, Jr.

Make clear that without acceptance of these reasonable conditions, Republicans are undermining the country and its well-being, and making a mockery of the normal process of governance. If Democrats cannot get that message across in the next three weeks, accept a one-month continuing resolution to keep the government open, and use that time to emphasize the message that if the government shuts down, it is because Trump, Thune, and their allies are pushing dangerous and destructive policies—not because Democrats are intransigent.

Are there costs to a shutdown? Of course. Trump will abuse it to further his goal of blowing up our entire government, from food safety to health safety to protecting the country from foreign or domestic terrorism, and to find ways to punish blue states more than red states. But if Schumer and Democrats blink again, and let Thune prevail, the Republicans will know that they can keep doing this with no consequences. And as the march to authoritarianism accelerates, taking a tough stand will signal to more voters the imminent danger we face.

Many who voted for Trump did so because they were fine with blowing up government, because they were unaware of what government does to protect and support them. Maybe a shutdown will make it more clear how much we miss when vital government services disappear for a time, and not only show the value of government but the damage the Trump nihilists are perpetrating, without any consideration for the livelihoods of everyday Americans. Bold action is needed to reassure Democratic voters that their party’s leaders are fighting back against such thuggery.

We are in deeply dangerous and ominous times. We need more fortitude from our leaders in opposition, more willingness to take risks. The time for toughness, guts and determination is now.