Jeff Merkley of Oregon gave address to make case that president is ‘violating the law’ through authoritarianism
Oregon’s Jeff Merkley gave a marathon, nearly 23-hour speech on the Senate floor that began on Tuesday and ended late Wednesday, pressing the case that Donald Trump is acting as an authoritarian by prosecuting political enemies and deploying the military into Merkley’s home town of Portland.
The 68-year-old senator began speaking around 6.20pm on Tuesday evening and continued until just after 5pm on Wednesday. Standing continuously on the Senate floor alongside placards that read “authoritarianism is here now!” and “Trump is violating the law”, Merkley paused only to take questions from fellow Democratic senators who joined him in the chamber to make their own points about the president’s conduct.
“I’ve come to the Senate floor tonight to ring the alarm bells. We’re in the most perilous moment, the biggest threat to our republic since the civil war. President Trump is shredding our constitution,” Merkley said as he began his speech.
ok
They will never learn that performative politics is meaningless.
So then all modern politics are meaningless?
Who have you shot at this week?
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I’ve always wondered how people like you explain the last 30 years of democrat inaction
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That’s the exact response I expected. Would love to hear an explanation if you thought of one though
nobody is unique. there’s always somebody out there just like you
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This one has me scratching my head haha
Oh boy! This is fun. So in 2008 the Republicans refused to swear in Al Franken. After 8 months of battling Republicans in court and politically, Franken was sworn in July 2009. This gave Dems 60 votes in the Senate. This is when they past the ACA, Dodd Frank, Job Creation Act which extended unemployment benefits. After the 111th Congress the house flipped back to Republican majority.
More recently. Biden was implementing a new approach to monopoly capitalism with the appointment of Lina Khan to the FTC. We also had Elizabeth Warren start the CFPB prior to that.
I will also say Dems have been much better on renewable energy and electrification infrastructure investment. But that is my field and most of those details come across in small bits and pieces through market news emails.
These all sound great in theory but when you underfund these programs and leave them half implemented, hoping to get re-elected or “hoping” have the next guy gets around to it, functionally all they do is appease liberals who don’t pay attention and nothing else.
You know where democrats actually take action? Anything the republicans ask for. Obama left the supreme court stacked “against” them and gave corporations full control of American society (ok this is one is mostly because they helped him get elected, not because republicans asked for it, but it still ended up favoring the reds), Biden gave ICE 3.4 billion dollars just in case the next guy needed it, and the list goes on and on. Every single thing Donald Trump is happy to take the blame for was carefully set up by Democrats
If this was “literally the only thing they can do”, then it would be the only thing Republicans have been doing, too.
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I’ll happily support Democrats fighting.
I don’t believe they have the courage.
They haven’t shown courage in decades
Exactly my point. They need to be replaced.
Republicans successfully prevented Biden from accomplishing a single one of his campaign promises.
Where is the stonewalling from the Democrats that should have stopped the BBB and all the appointments of loyalists? A ton of dems even approved those appointments!
There’s no unity to be had with people who’s actions show them being complicit in the fascism. Controlled opposition is a very real tactic.
Yeah except dems also behave this way when they have power.
At a certain point you have to accept you have been duped and start looking at their actions instead of their intentions.
Republicans somehow get way more done and block way more shit when they are supposed to be impotent.
Because they fucking got elected by the fucking stupid American fucking electorate.
There have only been a handful of years when the Republicans haven’t had the elected numbers to block things over the last three Democratic presidents.
Vote for progressives in the primaries if you want things to get better.
We aren’t going to vote our way out of this unfortunately.
Whining excuses.
Middle aged Korean politicians were literally scaling walls and grabbing the guns out of cops’ hands a few months ago.
Have some fucking self-respect and stop making excuses for cowards.
But… he hasn’t said anything we didn’t already know, and now that he’s done, it’s back to “business as usual.” So what exactly was gained?
So what exactly was gained?
At the very least, we’re talking about what was said and that it happened. The message got to a wider audience than it would have if the statements were just inserted into the record.
Also, on the plus side, this was a senator saying this stuff in public for the entire world to hear, so others may be emboldened to speak these things in other places as established fact as well, instead of continuing to whisper it only behind closed doors.
Not sure why the original question was so heavily downvoted though, unless people thought the answer was painfully obvious. To me, the public record bit is important, but that could have been done elsewhere as well.
When you have no power to enact change, you speak truth to the ones who do.
If you made that up, props to ya. Bad ass statement there.
But most of this speech was to empty room. Nothing requires his opponents to listen to even be in the room to hear him.
Ah, did you think that the republicans would hear his speech and say “oh boy I didn’t realize we were enabling a pedo tyrant” and then move on?
If that’s your only measure of success, this would not do it.
Ask that to the person I’m replying to. They’re the one saying speaking to the people in power is what you do if you don’t have power. Which again, this did not do.
He is a senator talking to other senators. And it isn’t like any of the republicans are going to change their mind based off what some rando from Oregon said. And it also isn’t like the news media is going to at all play any of that.
I want to say I like the sentiment and I think I do… if only from a “if we have to suffer, so will you”. But this is about as effective for change as a bunch of Democrats bopping their head to the soundtrack from Hamilton in solidarity.
Hell, if anything it adds fuel to the “Democrats are holding the government hostage” narrative because… they kinda were. It isn’t like the senate is going to vote on an amended bill any time soon but they actively can’t while this kind of stuff is going on.
So he should have just sat down and shut up?
That doesn’t address the question. The senator could have done nothing, instead he he protested on the floor. Perhaps it was just performative and won’t change anything, but it was at least something. Would it have been better to do nothing?
Much like with being “apolitical”, doing nothing IS something.
Like I said. The actual act seems to have had no purpose to begin with other than MAYBE trolling or making photo ops. Anyone who would actually be paying attention to cspan or Rupar already knows we have an authoritarian government and anyone who doesn’t isn’t going to hear about this. And the audience was the US Senate republicans who ARE the problem.
In terms of impact? This wasn’t that dissimilar from MTG screaming shit from the back row while Biden spoke or boebert giving a thumbs down to the cameras. It doesn’t change minds and is just campaigning to your base. Which… I don’t know Oregon’s political tendencies off the top of my head so maybe that was the point. But it’s not going to change anything and is sure as hell not “speaking to power” or whatever that person wanted to pretend it was.
Now let’s look at repercussions. Because every action has a reaction. We have a government that shut down and a rapist actively destroying the White House during said shut down. We have a Senate that refuses to even consider an amended budget (in large part because there is zero chance the House will do so since it would involve triggering the Epstein files…). And what did we give the republicans in return?
Democrats hold Senate hostage and waste time ranting about their trump derangement syndrome when we should be working together to re-open the government and get our cleanly shaved white men in the military paid!
And a complicit news media will just say “So you are denying that Senator Merkley spent 23 hours complaining about president trump during a shutdown?”.
To be clear: my inner troll still thinks this is funny and it can’t be THAT much worse than what is going on (see: complicit news media).
But before you and anyone else ever start to say “something is better than nothing, no matter how ineffective and arguably detrimental to our efforts”, let me leave you with
Was THAT at all a good idea? Are you going to defend fucking THAT?
I think we’ll just have to disagree on this one. I don’t think this was trolling and I don’t think this is anything like MTG and Boebert. The speech has brought media attention to this that has reached people that otherwise didn’t know it was happening. His message wasn’t something juvenile like those examples you mentioned but rather something serious. It probably won’t change the minds of anyone in powers, but even if it reaches a few people and moves them a little closer to changing their mind, then it was better than nothing. I don’t believe a second that it’s going to have the adverse effect of turning anyone off that already was never going to be swayed.
I didn’t know that this was happening until this morning when it was half way done. I found out through various articles. I’m sure I’m not the only person that saw that, and I can guarantee that others saw the headline that a Democrat gave a 23 hour speech and found something positive in that. Imo, that’s better than a headline that says no Democrats argued against the current regime. There was no musical number or childish gestures, but a legitimate speech. The delivery of the message is important and this was delivered professionally.
I would be elated if any of my reps did even the bare minimum to try and represent me.
Senators aren’t “randos”. Each state has two.
And those two account for 2% of the voting power in that room. And, to my knowledge, Merkley isn’t even a particular notable Democrat. With the Democrats making up 45% of the voting power in that room (with a couple DINOs like fetterman who dilute that even farther)
No it isn’t. The government is shut down.
Maybe you aren’t the audience. There’s a lot of people who actively try to avoid anything their brain identifies as politics.
Honestly, these peons just don’t have the refined palate it takes to enjoy such riviting antics.
I thought the rebuff was marvelous, it really showed that orange fiend putting Americans in camps what for!
He needs a TDS vaccination…
Wow, nice!
68 years old and 23 hours, wow!
Setting new records on the length of time they can talk rather than accomplishing anything useful.
What do you expect him to actually do? Gumming up the works is pretty much the only option right now.
He did gain some attention though. Which is useful.
These sort of antics always seemed pretty stupid. Why not just have a set limit for any one speaker
23 hours and nobody heard it.
Without wanting to being a dick, and believing that is an astonishing achievement for a politician, especially of his age, i think that is a nice gesture,
but if the Democrats wont call people on the Streets, nothing will change. SPD did the same tactic against Nazis back in 1930s and you know the results. Ofc they cant do that because that will be as betraying the corp interests.
Yeah, democrats need to call for a general strike.
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Everyone stops working. That’s it. That’s the whole story.
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Democrats need to instruct people to take direct action against the administration and the rouge DOJ
People are sick of sitting around watching Nazis rise to power, this doesn’t go anywhere until we force change
The people need to be confident that they can stand up to rogue and criminal federal officials, knowing that state and local officials will have their back. The public need to know that critical shortfalls in health care and education and emergency services are going to be backfilled by state and local governments while the shutdown persists.
What I’m seeing now is a bunch of city/state chuds working hand-in-glove with the Feds, while mayors and governors just throw up their hands and insist they can’t act. Merkley’s filibuster is fine on its face, but this isn’t a fight any given Senator is in a position to win.
If Trump is pulling the plug on the CDC, we should see every blue state in the country stepping in to hire up all those officials that got let go and continuing the work regionally. If Trump is letting crypto-bros run rampant over the money supply, we should see state AGs hounding down Silicon Valley scammers and prosecuting crooks and criminals under local prohibitions on fraud, embezzlement, and corruption. If Trump’s ICE agents are breaking into people’s homes without a fucking warrant, the local Sheriffs and State Troopers need to find and arrest those agents and prosecute them for their crimes.
I don’t see any of this. I see Dems making speeches and blustering, but backing down as soon as a Fed shows up with a mask and a gun to do highway robbery. If that’s how the country is going to operate going forward, the very concept of law and order is dead and we’re consigning ourselves to military dictatorship.
Some of that is already happening: https://www.chicagotribune.com/2025/10/23/federal-immigration-agents-deploy-tear-gas-discount-mall-little-village/
But I agree that state and local leaders need to do much, much more. I think part of the problem is that we, the people, need to be pushing our “leaders” to do these things, but we’re largely not, instead waiting around for someone to save us. But we need to start resisting and acting ourselves, and seeing that will hopefully embolden our “leaders” to act.
That’s my senator! I think I would have passed out after an hour.
Feel kinda dumb for not knowing already, but do they get to take a piss break during this?
No, Booker said he fasted for days and stopped drinking water 24 hours before his speech to not leave the floor. Strom Thurmond famously had a bucket placed close enough to keep one foot in the room while he relieved himself.
Modern day, these are all recorded right? Thinking a pee face compilation (hard to believe no diapers) would be a great addition to 2025.
Go full LBJ and just whip it out mid speech in full view. I doubt cspan would be quick to censor.
That man was insane, but sometimes I fantasize about that high pressure shower he supposedly has installed.
LBJ was a specific style of batshit that comes from not giving an iota of a fuck about social cues and I aspire to such capabilities.
They have condom catheters for urine bags. Anyone know if those are “against the rule”?
The article I read said that Booker, Andy Kim, and a few other Dems would occasionally ask him “extended questions” to give him a break. Dunno if he’s allowed to leave the floor or not, but I imagine the “extended questions” are just them doing nonsense filibuster bullshit for a few mins
Wouldnt it simply be easier to have a catheter put in? Idk how he even talked that long without substantial water consumption lol
Don’t think so.
Assert dominance, drink all the water you want and piss yourself. Keep the floor for weeks.
Grand gesture!
