Silencing of Elizabeth Warren throws U.S. Senate into turmoil

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. reacts to being rebuked by the Senate leadership and accused of impugning a fellow senator, Attorney General-designate, Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., Wednesday, Feb. 8, 2017, on Capitol Hill in Washington Warren was barred from saying anything more on the Senate floor about Sessions after she quoted from an old letter from Martin Luther King Jr.'s widow about Sessions. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Washington ? The turbulent national debate over race, gender and free speech consumed the normally staid Senate on Wednesday after the GOP majority voted to silence Sen. Elizabeth Warren, abruptly elevating her celebrity status at a moment when liberals are hungry for a leader to take on Donald Trump.

The highly unusual rebuke of the Massachusetts Democrat came as the Senate weighed President Trump’s nominee for attorney general, GOP Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, who seemed headed toward a nearly party-line confirmation Wednesday evening. It also gave frustrated Democrats a rallying cry weeks into a presidency that is dividing the country like few before.

“I certainly hope that this anti-free-speech attitude is not traveling down Pennsylvania Avenue to our great chamber,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York warned darkly as Democrats jumped at an opening to link the GOP’s conduct to that of Trump himself. “This is not what America is about — silencing speech, especially in this chamber.”

Republicans argued they were just trying to enforce necessary rules of decorum in a Senate that is a last bulwark of civil debate in an angry nation.

“I hope that maybe we’ve all been chastened a little bit,” chided the No. 2 Senate Republican, John Cornyn of Texas. “We’re at a pretty challenging time in our nation’s history when many people who were surprised and disappointed at the last election are unwilling to accept the results. … I only hope that after the passage of some time they will return to their senses.”

But the debate immediately took on overtones of race and gender. Warren was rebuked as she was reading a letter by Martin Luther King Jr’s widow, Coretta Scott King, opposing Sessions’ ultimately unsuccessful nomination to a federal judgeship in 1986. Subsequently several male Democratic senators stood up and read from the same letter but without drawing objections, leading Democratic activists to proclaim that Senate Republicans were interested only in silencing a woman.

The moment inspired a Twitter hashtag, #LetLizSpeak, and clips from C-SPAN2 went viral. “By silencing Elizabeth Warren, the GOP gave women around the world a rallying cry,” fellow Democratic Sen. Kamala Harris of California said over Twitter.

During the debate on whether to make Jeff Sessions the next Attorney General, I tried to read a letter from Coretta Scott King on the floor of the Senate. The letter, from 30 years ago, urged the Senate to reject the nomination of Jeff Sessions to a federal judgeship. The Republicans took away my right to read this letter on the floor – so I'm right outside, reading it now.

Posted by U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren on Tuesday, February 7, 2017

Warren was chastised under a little-used Senate regulation, Rule 19, which bars any senator from impugning the motives of any other or imputing “any conduct or motive unworthy or becoming of a senator.” The Senate historian’s office could not immediately say when the rule was last invoked, but Democrats accused Republicans of selectively enforcing it. They noted the GOP did not apply it when, for example, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas accused Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of lying in relation to a dispute over the Export-Import Bank two years ago.

This time, Warren drew a warning from the presiding officer as she quoted Tuesday evening from a letter written by the late Sen. Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts that referred to Sessions as “a disgrace.” She continued with her speech, and began quoting from Coretta Scott King’s letter and an accompanying statement that accused Sessions, a federal prosecutor at the time, of using the power of his office to “chill the free exercise of the vote by black citizens.”

Democrats are portraying Sessions as a threat to civil rights, voting rights and immigration; Republicans have defended Trump’s choice to be the top law enforcement officer as a man of integrity who will be an independent voice in the new administration.

McConnell stood and invoked Rule 19, saying that Warren has “impugned the motives and conduct of our colleague from Alabama” in quoting the words from Mrs. King.

Warren, meanwhile, seen as a possible presidential candidate in 2020 along with a handful of other Senate colleagues, was given an even bigger platform to assail Sessions, the GOP and Trump. By midafternoon Wednesday she had raised more than $286,000 for her re-election campaign from more than 10,500 MoveOn members alone, the liberal group said.

“This is about Coretta Scott King’s letter. And that’s all this is about,” Warren said after finishing more than an hour’s worth of television interviews in the ornate rotunda of a Senate office building. “And Mitch McConnell didn’t want me to read that letter. He stopped me. And so I went out and read the letter anyway and posted it on a live feed.”

Democrats challenged McConnell’s ruling, but the GOP majority voted to uphold it, barring Warren from speaking on the floor throughout the remainder of the debate over Sessions.

“She was given an explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted,” McConnell said in words that sparked still more liberal outrage and Twitter hashtags. Hillary Clinton referenced McConnell’s comment about Warren persisting, adding in a Tweet: “So must we all.”

In the aftermath Democrats expressed outrage that Warren had been silenced while quoting from the words of a civil rights hero, as a party that’s struggled over the best way to challenge Trump found something all could agree on.

1902 fistfight gave rise to arcane rule that silenced Warren

By Associated Press

A fistfight on the Senate floor involving two Southern “gentlemen” gave rise to Rule 19, the arcane Senate directive that Republicans used more than a century later to silence Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren. GOP lawmakers rebuked Warren Tuesday night for speaking against colleague and Attorney General-nominee Jeff Sessions.

She was silenced for reading the letter that Coretta Scott King wrote three decades ago criticizing the Alabama senator’s record on race. Senators barred Warren from speaking on the Senate floor until Sessions’ confirmation vote.

CONDUCT UNBECOMING

Rule 19 states that senators may not “directly or indirectly, by any form of words impute to another senator or to other senators any conduct or motive unworthy or unbecoming a senator.”

It states that when, in the opinion of the presiding officer, a senator violates that decorum, the presiding officer “shall call him to order and … he shall take his seat.”

RAUCOUS HISTORY

In the Senate, where men are referred to as “gentleman” and women are called “gentle lady,” the rule stems from a notorious 1902 incident in which two South Carolina lawmakers got into a fistfight on the Senate floor. According to the Senate historian’s office, Sen. John McLaurin raced into the Senate chamber and said fellow Democrat Ben Tillman was guilty of “a willful, malicious, and deliberate lie.”

Tillman — a fiery populist who had earned the nickname “Pitchfork Ben” for threatening to bring a pitchfork to prod then-President Grover Cleveland to act on the economy — spun around and punched McLaurin squarely in the jaw. The Senate “exploded in pandemonium as members struggled to separate both members.” The fracas ended, “but not without stinging bruises both to bystanders and to the Senate’s sense of decorum,” according to an account on the historian’s office website.

The Senate censured both men and added to its rules the provision that survives today as part of Rule 19.

SELECTIVE ENFORCEMENT

Enforcement of Rule 19 has been rare, and the historian’s office wasn’t sure when it was last enforced.

Some longtime Capitol observers recalled a 1988 dispute between Sen. John Heinz, R-Pa., and Sen. Phil Gramm, R-Texas. Heinz said Gramm broached Senate protocol with caustic remarks. Gramm withdrew the language in question. There was no official rebuke.

Heinz was also involved in a 1979 dispute with fellow Republican Sen. Lowell Weicker of Connecticut. After heated words, the two men shook hands and no further action was taken.

Democrats cited more recent statements that appeared to violate Rule 19, but in which no action was taken:

–In 2015, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said McConnell “looked me in the eye” and “told every Republican senator … a simple lie.”

— In 2016, Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., lambasted the “cancerous leadership” of then-Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.

FIGHT CONTINUES:

Sen. David Perdue, R-Ga., said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. had engaged in a “tear-jerking performance” that “belongs at the Screen Actors Guild awards” as he opposed President Donald Trump’s travel ban on some Muslim countries. No rebuke followed.

Other Democratic senators read from King’s letter in the Senate chamber Wednesday after Warren was told to sit down. None was punished.