The state of Oregon's Democratic senator, Jeff Merkley, has entered the 16-hour milestone of a marathon speech on the Senate chamber, stating that President Trump is acting as an autocratic leader, including by deploying the military into his hometown of Portland.
The senator, aged 68, began speaking around 6.20pm on Tuesday and continued with minimal breaks into the early hours of Wednesday. Standing on the Senate floor alongside placards that displayed “authoritarianism is here now!” and “the President is breaking legal norms”, the senator has only stopped to take questions from other Democratic lawmakers.
“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,” the Oregon senator said as he began his speech.
Merkley spoke a day after an appellate court had permitted the chief executive to deploy the state guard into the Oregon city over the objections of city officials, who say there is no merit to the president’s claim that the city is a “battlefield”. The president has also directed a comparable dispatch of troops into Chicago, where government officers are carrying out an aggressive crackdown focusing on people they believe to be illegal migrants. The nation's highest court is poised to consider a legal challenge to this action.
Deployments and Political Retaliation
The senator touched on those deployments to cities that are overwhelmingly Democratic, as well as additional examples where the president is perceived as striking back at his political enemies, including the charges a specially appointed federal prosecutor has brought against the New York state attorney general, Attorney General James, and former FBI director James Comey.
“Equal justice under law – that’s the vision here in America. Not biased unfairness, which is what the president is pursuing by wielding state authority and targeting individuals that he does not like or perceives to be political opponents,” the senator said.
“That’s what you read about in authoritarian governments far away, and you go, that would never happen in the United States of America, but it is happening right here, right now.”
Historical Context and Precedents
The senator's address is the second occurrence this year in which a Democratic senator has conducted a lengthy floor speech to condemn Trump’s policies. About two months after the presidential inauguration, Cory Booker of New Jersey addressed the chamber for over 25 hours, establishing a new milestone for the lengthiest address ever by a single senator.
The Oregon senator has responded to queries from a handful of Democratic colleagues, including Dick Durbin of Illinois, Andy Kim of New Jersey, and Senator Booker, who warned: “We are witnessing an era that if we do not ring the alarm bells, increasing numbers of citizens will be harmed by a president who is acting more like an autocrat than a democratically elected executive.”
Government Shutdown Context
Merkley’s speech come on the 22nd day of the federal funding lapse that started at the beginning of October, when both political parties failed to agree on a bill to extend funding beyond the September deadline.
The Senate has held 11 unsuccessful votes on a Republican-backed bill to prolong appropriations through 21 November, which Democrats have blocked because it lacks healthcare funding that they are insisting on, as well as curbs on Trump’s use of rescissions to slash funding approved by Congress.
The Senate’s Republican leaders were scheduled to conduct a twelfth ballot on the legislation on Wednesday.
