Highlights of Sen. Jeff Merkley's 22 hrs + on the floor: Ariella Elm's Daily Dems Doing the Work, Making Noise Day 169

[pat_k]

https://ariellaelm.substack.com/p/daily-dems-doing-the-work-making-57a

Daily Dems Doing the Work, Making Noise and Fighting Back Day 169
Jeff Merkley makes me so proud to be a Democrat today

Last night, at 6:23pm in DC, Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley took the Senate floor. And he held it for 22 hours and 39 minutes, but it wasn’t about that. He wasn’t trying to break a record, even though he did (Longest speech by an Oregonian and third longest in Senate history), he was making sure as much of Trump’s corruption, destruction and fascism was on record.

... (clips)

He ended with:

So let’s all work together, in every possible way, to ring the alarm bells, because, it is a fact, that if we do not ring the alarm bells, well, the longer you are in an authoritarian state, it becomes more and more entrenched. So, we have to fight it in every possible way.

He continues:

We have to recognize that the next election is absolutely critical if we’re gonna save our Republic, because, the strategy of an authoritarian is to rig the elections, and the more time they have, the more entrenched it becomes.

And already, here is Trump trying to do a national voter registration file that can be more easily manipulated for the elections next year. Here is President Trump trying to do massive gerrymandering in a whole bunch of states, in order to offset the balance between Democrats and Republicans that are fairly represented in the House of Representatives. Here is President Trump saying he’ll do everything possible to stop the use of vote by mail across the country because, we know why, because vote by mail has such integrity.

It can’t be manipulated on election day like the precincts can. In precincts, you can move their location, you can put them where they’re no parking, you can understaff them, the machines can break down. You can send intimidators. You can proceed to put out fake information about their location, you can put out information that the election was last week, when it’s really this coming Tuesday. You can’t do that with vote by mail.

And, when we have the majority, we must pass the For the People, Freedom to Vote bill and lockdown the integrity of our elections, so we will not worry, for a generation, about people having a fair voice in our government by and for the people.

It’s not flashy, but that’s not his style. It just facts that we need to use to move forward and save Democracy.

So thank you Senator Merkley, and to your incredible staff for putting this together and making sure that not a second of Trump’s destruction can happen in the dark.
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