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The words do not have to be perfect.

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

We still have time to mess this up!

Anne Laurie is a fucking hero in so many ways. ~ Betty Cracker

There are times when telling just part of the truth is effectively a lie.

People identifying as christian while ignoring christ and his teachings is a strange thing indeed.

There are some who say that there are too many strawmen arguments on this blog.

I am pretty sure these ‘journalists’ were not always such a bootlicking sycophants.

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

The Supreme Court cannot be allowed to become the ultimate, unaccountable arbiter of everything.

In my day, never was longer.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

You cannot love your country only when you win.

Everything is totally normal and fine!!!

Hey Washington Post, “Democracy Dies in Darkness” was supposed to be a warning, not a mission statement.

This blog will pay for itself.

He wakes up lying, and he lies all day.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

When tyranny becomes law, rebellion becomes duty. ~Thomas Jefferson

The desire to stay informed is directly at odds with the need to not be constantly enraged.

With all due respect and assumptions of good faith, please fuck off into the sun.

Dear media: perhaps we ought to let Donald Trump speak for himself!

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Which Side Are You On?

Which Side Are You On?

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In this image provided by Senate Television, Sen, Cory Booker, D-N.J. speaks on the Senate floor, Tuesday morning, April 1, 2025. (Senate Television via AP)

(ABC News)

A rare public display of Democrat-on-Democrat Senate infighting took place on the chamber floor Tuesday afternoon, with a heated Sen. Cory Booker laying into Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto and Amy Klobuchar as he shared his objection to a package of bipartisan bills meant to support law enforcement and their families.

During a back-and-forth that lasted almost an hour, an animated Booker called his colleagues “complicit” in President Donald Trump’s agenda by passing the police-related legislation at a time when he said the White House is politicizing funding. He said the Department of Justice is currently withholding money from law enforcement agencies across the country, including his state of New Jersey.

“That is complicity with an authoritarian leader who is trashing our Constitution. It’s time for Democrats to have a backbone. It’s time for us to fight. It’s time for us to draw a line. And when it comes to the safety of my state being denied these grants, that’s why I’m standing here,” Booker shouted on the floor.

Booker’s arguments quickly became a direct criticism of the current state of the Democratic Party as it tries to navigate Trump’s second term.

“This is a call, folks. Democratic Party needs a wake-up call,” Booker said. “This, to me, is the problem with Democrats in America right now … We’re willing to be complicit, to Donald Trump, to let this pass through when we have all the leverage,” he added.

Cortez Masto, of Nevada, and Klobuchar, of Minnesota, shot back at Booker’s accusations by insinuating that he was making his position known in public on the floor, despite the fact that they said he didn’t show up for Judiciary Committee markups on the bills and that he also voted to pass the bills out of committee.

“These bills passed unanimously out of the Judiciary Committee weeks ago. And my colleague from New Jersey — have respect for him — he’s on the committee, he voted to pass these bills. He had an opportunity at that time to present this amendment, this is the first time we’re ever hearing about it,” Cortez Masto said.

“This is ridiculous. This is an attempt to kill all of these bills. I don’t know why. I don’t know why, because, at the end of the day, all of these bills are about bipartisan support,” she added.

“One of the things I don’t understand here, is that we have committees for a reason and we have hearings for a reason, and you can’t do one thing on Police Week and not show up and not object and let these bills go through and then say another a few weeks later in a big speech on the floor,” she said.

Booker had tried to add an amendment to the package which would “provide resources to law enforcement agencies with this important provision that safeguards these grants from politicization.”

Cortez Masto called it a “poison pill.”

“I agree — President Trump’s impoundment of funding, it is a serious concern. But tacking on a poison pill language to these bills won’t guarantee any additional funding makes it to New Jersey, Nevada or any other state. Instead, what it will do … it will keep critical bills from passing in the first place,” Cortez Masto said.

Booker shot back, “Don’t question my integrity. Don’t question my motives. I’m standing for Jersey. I am standing for my police officers. I’m standing for the Constitution and I’m standing for what’s right. And dear God if you want to come at me that way, you’re going to have to take it up with me!”

I am on Team Booker here.

Different strategies.  Which side of this debate are you guys on in this particular instance?

Reader Interactions

120Comments

  1. 1.

    chemiclord

    If it is true that Booker had an opportunity to raise his concerns in committee, and either chose not to or didn’t attend at all in order to make a performative statement later, I’m less on Team Booker than I would have been… but I still am.​
    We’ve been mocking Republicans who vote to let things out of committee then whine later when they could have said something, after all.​

  2. 2.

    divF

    I’m with Booker. Probably more extreme, in fact, since I would do everything in my power to cause the government to grind to a halt (no more unanimous consent). The administration has made it clear that they will illegally use the mechanics of government to differentially deny funds to the blue states. Therefore, no more funding on a statewise basis to anyone.

    ETA: I don’t give a damn that he didn’t show up for the markups. The fix is in and only red state police forces will get anything out of this. if putting in explicit guarantees to forbid this is seen as a poison pill by the GOP, well, I think that tells you what we are in for.

  3. 3.

    Steve LaBonne

    @divF: I agree with Senator Professor Warren that with Trump claiming the power to do whatever the hell he wants and Republicans offering no resistance, all of this stuff is a sham and Democrats shouldn’t be participating at all.

  5. 5.

    EarthWindFire

    Team Booker all the way. Bipartisan support has meant precisely jack and shit for the last decade. If he’d brought it up in Committee, it’d be down the memory hole by now.

  7. 7.

    Scrounger

    The idea that there even is a “Police Week” in Congress is itself highly bizarre.

  11. 11.

    WaterGirl

    @eclare:

    Bipartisanship is over.  Deal with it and fight.

    Hard to believe there can even be any question about that at this point.  Mind boggling.

  14. 14.

    hitchhiker

    “we have committees for a reason and we have hearings for a reason,”

    He should have asked her what that reason is today. We used to have committees and hearings as a way to bring good legislation into being.

    Now they’re just for show, so what they accomplish is exactly that: a show. Why go on pretending that the hearings he skipped are where the work gets done?

    The work, such as it is, gets done when trump decides where the money goes. She’s irrelevant. The question is why she doesn’t know that yet.

  15. 15.

    eclare

    @WaterGirl:

    Some pundit told Michael Steele on one of his podcast episodes that the American people want bipartisanship.  Michael Steele responded something along the lines of “Americans don’t give a fuck about bipartisanship.”

  17. 17.

    Steve LaBonne

    @Scrounger: Anyone who understands the weirdness of American cop and military fetishism should be unsurprised by our susceptibility to an authoritarian coup. It was only a matter of time.

  19. 19.

    dc

    The Dem senators need to get on the same page on this. Regardless of Booker’s motives, I’m with him and Warren on this strategy. It’s stupid to waste their time trying to carve something sane or useful out of Rebpub Crazy bills only for the inevitable takebacksies down the road. Fuck the fascists.

  20. 20.

    prostratedragon

    I don’t think Booker’s much of one to blow things off, so that was likely a refusal along the lines Warren suggested. Though I haven’t seen his whole remarks, it sounds here like they were largely directed less at the bill as such than at Democrats co-operating in something so purely supportive of the Republican viewpoint. Democrats should not help them pass their bills.

  22. 22.

    Formerly disgruntled in Oregon

    Business as usual is unacceptable in this moment.

    Each Senator and Rep ultimately has to answer to their respective electorates – but that should drive differences in messaging and style, NOT capitulation or voting for harmful legislation.

    There is no longer a reward or upside for those votes in today’s political environment.

  23. 23.

    zhena gogolia

    @WaterGirl: I’m just not interested in criticizing any elected Democrats right now, when they are in an impossible position and the American people gave all the power to the creeps.

  24. 24.

    Archon

    “These guys are trying to take our country over but maybe we can pass some reforms with them”, is not a good political or messaging strategy.

  27. 27.

    RaflW

    I don’t know about this particular issue. But as a Minnesotan, I’m often frustrated by Amy Klobuchar. Sometimes she’ll say things that seem to show that she understands the stakes.

    But too often she reverts to the mean, which is bipartisanship with people who hate us. People who would stab her if they could get a clean shot with no witnesses.

  34. 34.

    WaterGirl

    @RaflW:

    People who would stab her if they could get a clean shot with no witnesses.

    No lie told, as rikyrah would say.

  36. 36.

    WaterGirl

    @zhena gogolia:

    Yeah, that works for me in peewee sports.

    Just my opinion, but these senators are in some cases all that stands between us and the enemy.   If some of our senators are not recognizing the times we are in, then their best isn’t good enough.

  37. 37.

    Danielx

    Fuck bipartisanship with a rusty farm implement, and the same for those in favor of it.

    So yeah, Team Booker.

    After all, it was Grover Norquist hisself who called bipartisanship date rape IIRC.

  39. 39.

    HopefullyNotcassandra

    Senator Booker’s

    I see the other point.  Nonetheless, this president treats the law like it isn’t there and his own executive orders like those surpass our constitution.  Our Supreme Court is fine with that, too.  What can a Senator do?  Refuse to appropriate funds, that is what a Senator can do.    

  40. 40.

    Bill Arnold

    I am on Team Booker as well. The rescissions and impoundments mean that bipartisan efforts will not be honored by the GOP.
    Democrats should loudly entirely reject all bipartisan efforts.
    Scorched earth.
    MAGA are not patriots; they are enemies of the USA; real American patriots should vigorously pursue purging them from the Federal Government.
    Etc.

  41. 41.

    Josie

    I have always liked Cory Booker, starting when he was out shoveling snow from the front of people’s houses as mayor of Newark. I would tend to support any efforts he makes to handle the situation.

  43. 43.

    Formerly disgruntled in Oregon

    I think that there is so much “bad faith” criticism of Democrats, that it is hard for many of us to engage in any criticism of Democrats. That’s not a healthy situation, but it is what it is.

    I get it. I’ve been there.

    But we need to be able to engage in good faith criticism of our leaders. They’re not perfect, and we can’t solve problems by ignoring them.

  45. 45.

    Jackie

    The goldening of the White House continues.

    The White House will undergo a $200 million extensive renovation of its East Wing, President Donald Trump’s latest construction project of the executive mansion.
    Construction will begin in September on an approximately 90,000 square foot White House state ballroom with a 650-person seating capacity, press secretary Karoline Leavitt announced Thursday. Trump and other “patriot donors” will pay for the $200 million-dollar renovation, according to the White House website.

    politico.com/news/2025/07/31/trump-renovation-ballroom-white-house-00487004

    The architectural drawings of the ballroom shown in the link looks like sunglasses will be required…

  46. 46.

    geg6

    Booker v Cortez Masto and Klobuchar?

    Hahahahaha.  Booker.  Of course.

    I don’t want to see bipartisan anything during this administration.  Nothing.  Nada.  Ever.

  48. 48.

    Formerly disgruntled in Oregon

    @Bill Arnold:

    The rescissions and impoundments mean that bipartisan efforts will not be honored by the GOP.
    Democrats should loudly entirely reject all bipartisan efforts.

    When agreements are no longer honored, only a sucker keeps making them.

    Republicans have lost all credibility as deal makers. They no longer honor their commitments.

  51. 51.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    Time to trot out the Gilliard Doctrine for the umpteenth time:

    I want conservatives to read this site and come away steaming. I don’t want them to think they will like a word I will say here. I don’t want them to think I will consider their opinions or viewpoints. I want them to think: boy he doesn’t like conservatives and really, really doesn’t care what we say.

    I’m tired of people acting like these people can be reasoned with or talked to. They don’t want to talk, they want to drive us away into a corner and ridicule our ideas.

    I’m not writing to make conservatives happy. I want them to hate my opinions.

    I’m not interested in debating them.

    I want to stop them.

    As true today as it was when he wrote that in January 2005.

  54. 54.

    Eyeroller

    @prostratedragon: It is really irritating to me that every President. gets to remodel the White House as extensively as he (always he) wants.  It’s treated like his personal residence and not an important historical property of the United States government. I don’t care if the money allegedly comes from “donors.”

    I suppose a future President can remodel an unused ballroom and restore the Rose Garden but why is Trump being allowed to do all this damage in the first place.

    Hardly the worst thing going on but just another one of those travesties that grates on me.

  55. 55.

    gene108

    I disagree with Cortez Masto and Klobuchar in that the only thing that’s important is defeating Republicans. There is nothing else that matters.

    All bipartisanship and the good government reforms after Watergate are meaningless. Voters no longer care about good government. They no longer believe it’s possible. Every Democratic attempt this century at good government has been rebuked by voters.

    Everything must be for partisan advantage.

    Nothing will change until one side loses the presidency for almost 20 years in a row. Republicans changed after Democrats controlled the presidency from 1933 to 1953. Democrats changed after Republicans controlled the presidency for 20 out of 24 years from 1969 to 1993.

  56. 56.

    Redshift

    I’m with Warren and a Booker, and I’m calling my reps about it. It’s even more salient in the House, those of us with Democratic reps should get a jump on the fall session and start calling their offices regularly about not supplying the votes to help Johnson keep the government open

    They’ve proven they’re impossible to make deals with because they’ll let Trump undo anything he wants, so there is literally nothing to be gained by participating.

  57. 57.

    Whimsical Pickles

    @eclare: When people say that, do they ask people what they mean by bipartisanship? I think people who say they want bipartisanship think it means that they want Democrats and Republicans to agree with whatever it is they think is common sense and act accordingly.

  58. 58.

    Dan B

    As a minority I feel like I’m only a couple steps from Joe Kent rounding me up as a terrorist pedophile.  How could my reps not get it?  They’re in very privileged positions but team GOP / Trump would love to lock them out of power and then lock them up.

  59. 59.

    Jackie

    Looks like some Must Watch TV/YouTube tonight – between Colbert and:

    Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, promised to reveal to the public a “full breakdown of my follow the money investigation on Epstein so far” tonight at 9 p.m. ET on YouTube.

    Said Wyden: “Last year, the Biden administration allowed our investigators to look at portions of the file. We did that at the Treasury building. Here is what it says.”

    Wyden’s such a tease! ;-)

  60. 60.

    Jackie

    @Eyeroller:

    I suppose a future President can remodel an unused ballroom and restore the Rose Garden but why is Trump being allowed to do all this damage in the first place.

    He actually seems to think he’s never leaving…

  63. 63.

    bbleh

    Having just replied to yet another party fundraising plea, this time with Chuck Schumer’s (!) name on it, with an (amazingly enough) curse-free response that describes Senate Dems (“with VERY few exceptions”) as “craven featherbedding time-servers,” ima say that puts me on Team Booker.

    And OMG, “we have committees for a reason.”  Seriously?  What, is all this extraneous floor debate cutting into your dialing-for-dollars time?  Might this offend comity? Thank heaven nothing so disorderly happened, say, during the falsehood-soaked hearings and approval of Emil Bove to a lifetime Federal judgeship!  That might really have made some Republicans mad!

    I was REALLY hoping the Kamchatka quake was Cthulu arising at last, and that he would drown DC with the Chesapeake in his rage, but no …

  64. 64.

    Steve LaBonne

    @eclare: Most of which is due to Democratic voters rightly frustrated by the Klobuchars and Cortez Mastos of the party. I am as frustrated as anyone by bad-faith sniping at Democrats for stuff they are powerless to do anything about. But that doesn’t extend to legitimate criticisms of which there are plenty.

  69. 69.

    TurnItOffAndOnAgain

    @WaterGirl:

    Cortez Masto, of Nevada, and Klobuchar, of Minnesota, shot back at Booker’s accusations by insinuating that he was making his position known in public on the floor, despite the fact that they said he didn’t show up for Judiciary Committee markups on the bills and that he also voted to pass the bills out of committee.

  71. 71.

    Eyeroller

    @eclare: ​I partly blame the media, because they are barely reporting on what Democrats are trying to do to fight. But misreading the room so badly probably is a major part of the bad polling. Cortez-Masto is from a purple state that went for Trump, and I am sure the consultants have said that “bipartisanship” appeals to swing voters. That is probably true, but right now it’s likely alienating more Democrats and D-leaning Independents (important in Nevada) than it is winning over swing voters and unengaged voters.

  74. 74.

    Bill Arnold

    @Baud:

    D.C. Court of Appeals Board on Professional Responsibility recommends Jeffrey Clark be DISBARRED over his conduct in the aftermath of the 2020 election

    I’d prefer that he spend the rest of his life (may it be long and miserable!) in prison, but it’s a start.

  77. 77.

    Archon

    Mitch McConnell showed us the way. Don’t give the other side even a veneer of bipartisan legitimacy. If that was the correct political strategy against Obama it damn sure is the strategy against a threat like Trump.

  78. 78.

    HopefullyNotcassandra

    @TurnItOffAndOnAgain: Say Senator Booker showed up as required by Senators Klobuchar and Cortez-Masto

    That changes absolutely nothing about this president’s impoundments or the GOP’s acceptance of their own diminishment

    If you see something I have missed, please say so.

  79. 79.

    Scout211

    I like to see some fight from our politicians but I don’t enjoy seeing them fighting with each other.  

  81. 81.

    Melancholy Jaques

    @zhena gogolia:

    I’m just not interested in criticizing any elected Democrats right now, when they are in an impossible position and the American people gave all the power to the creeps.

    We have to criticize the ones who are living in a fantasy world or are not really against what Trump is doing or who are otherwise not determined to do all that is necessary to stop the madness or they will continue enabling that asshole and the rest of the white supremacy party.

    Who are the Democrats? What do they stand for?

    These questions need clear answers.

  83. 83.

    TurnItOffAndOnAgain

    @WaterGirl:

    WaterGirl, that was my answer to YOUR question.

    No snark; you did know that the blue links in comments (like @WaterGirl:) can be clicked to take you back to the comment it’s responding to, right? If you’re confused you can just follow the trail backwards.

    This isn’t the first time you’ve had trouble with this.

  84. 84.

    WaterGirl

    @TurnItOffAndOnAgain: Pretty sure i know how that functions, given that I put that very thing in the specs for the site. :-)

    i was jumping back and forth between several different things, sorry if that makes you think I’m slow or stupid. (Hint: I’m not.)

  85. 85.

    WaterGirl

    @Scout211: I don’t enjoy seeing them fight either.  But this feels to me like a really important thing – so I don’t mind that they are duking it out.

    I’d like to think that could open some eyes, but I don’t know that it will.  The previous world we lived in is gone, and the sooner all of our elected Democrats figure that out, the better off we will be.

  86. 86.

    TurnItOffAndOnAgain

    @WaterGirl:

    Pretty sure i know how that functions, given that I put that very thing in the specs for the site. :-)

    Pretty sure everyone whose made a kid has lost track of them at least once.

    i was jumping back and forth between several different things, sorry if that makes you think I’m slow or stupid. (Hint: I’m not.)

    I was not thinking that at all. Don’t put words in my mouth, please.

  87. 87.

    Mr. Bemused Senior

    [Which side are you on?]

    How can this even be a question any longer? Trump and the Republicans have shown over and over they cannot be trusted, they have no respect for the law or the Constitution, they care only for themselves.

    Any Democrat in office who doesn’t resist should resign.

  88. 88.

    Rusty

    I’m a big fan of Billy Braggs’ version of Which Side Are You On, with its very sharp guitar and his voice.  The Republicans are not negotiating in good faith when post agreement they can undo the concessions made to Democrats.   Better to not agree at all, let them own everything.

  89. 89.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @TurnItOffAndOnAgain:  You did post it with no context.  A simple “This is what I thought should have been in bold” would have made everything more clear.

    Who pissed in everyone’s cornflakes this morning?

  92. 92.

    TurnItOffAndOnAgain

    @Omnes Omnibus:  @chemiclord pointed out the bit about the Judiciary Committee. I linked to them and responded that I thought that part should’ve been bolded too. When @WaterGirl: asked which part, I: quoted that specific part of the article to her.

    I’m not trying to be mean here; I honestly didn’t think it was that hard to parse.

  95. 95.

    TurnItOffAndOnAgain

    @Omnes Omnibus: Everyone has their preferences. I don’t mind it myself.

    @HopefullyNotcassandra:

    Say Senator Booker showed up as required by Senators Klobuchar and Cortez-Masto

    That changes absolutely nothing about this president’s impoundments or the GOP’s acceptance of their own diminishment

    If you see something I have missed, please say so.

    I think it’s worth noting this information points to Booker doing a bit of theater, here. Which isn’t even necessarily a bad thing. But could Booker have objected to this earlier?

    This is especially important to get straight if there’s a danger of pitting Democrats against each other with stories like this.

  96. 96.

    Geminid

    I hadn’t noticed this Senate story, but Jaime DuPree is a veteran Capitol Hill reporter and it’s his job to notice stuff like this. Dupree posted a CSPAN clip of Majority Leader John Thune whining:

        While Senate Republicans have made excellent progress on confirming nominations, we could be a lot further along if Democrats hadn’t so far decided to slow walk every single civilian nomination….

    Dupree observed:

       GOP Senators are using the qualifier “civilian” a lot this week when talking about nominations. (That’s a nod to Sen. Tommy Tuberville who blocked hundreds of military nominations in the Senate back in 2023).

    Dupree noted earlier:

       If the Senate stayed in session 24/7 until Labor Day, they probably wouldn’t finish the 140+ Trump nominations on the calender. That’s how much you can slow the process in the Senate. Each one gets a cloture vote, 2 hours of debate, and a final vote.

    This raises the question: why don’t Senate Republicans drop these rules? Maybe some institutionalists in Thune’s caucus want to keep things as they are. Senators can be weird that way.

  98. 98.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @TurnItOffAndOnAgain: I am vehemently against threaded comments.  I just know that sometimes not having them can lead to confusion and when it does I try not to be shitty about it.  And with that I should probably walk away from Balloon Juice for the evening.

  101. 101.

    WTFGhost

    Young people today will have to swear to their grandchildren, “we were there and these things happened. Your right to life itself retracted in the face of a coward’s fear, your right to be left-the-hell-alone was gonesville, if you looked like your parents spoke Spanish or Portuguese… and people proclaimed VICTORY when this moron made things a lot more expensive for Americans, while encouraging the offshoring of manufacturing.”

    I’m not saying Booker was the perfect man of the moment, but, it is true, Democrats have to say, right out loud, “this is fascism, and we will not participate.” We have to figure out how to say that, without being savaged for “hating Trump-lovers,” but, it needs to be said. There’s no point in helping to pass spending bills if there’s no promise Trump won’t impound it, and the Republicans with smirk and giggle like schoolgirls while he does.

    Just remember, while it’s like being one of the good guys in Nazi Germany, a lot of good people died, senselessly, in Nazi Germany for this same reason: because Nazi Germany was nothing like Sane Germany, and MAGA-America is not like Sane America.

  104. 104.

    Archon

    Part of being a Democrat and saying we are against authoritarians means we don’t work with or accommodate authoritarians.  I know a lot of Democrats are demoralized and conflicted because it feels like, “we are against fascism” didn’t win against “egg prices are too high”. Now that we get to see clearly what an authoritarian takeover would look like I say if “we are against fascism” isn’t a good enough argument then we don’t deserve our Republic and it’s destruction was inevitable.

  105. 105.

    Jackie

    @Miss Bianca:

    $200 million would buy a lot of healthcare funding.

    And feeding children and the elderly. SNAP, free school breakfast, lunch, and Meals on Wheels.

  106. 106.

    piratedan

    the ladies make an excellent point, denying Trump is all well and good, but so is keeping the lights on and if he had wanted to make his position known, he could have said so while it was in committee.

    Myself, I hope that the same passion was evident while all of this additional fuckery was afoot (pick a subject, damn near any subject) for everything else, not just the optics of funding law enforcement.

  108. 108.

    dww4

    @RaflW: I’ll never forget how she came on one of the MSNBC shows Inaugural night glowing about the days events ( she was some sort of chair or something of the planning) and full of bipartisan joy at the days events. If I’m not mistaken Trump had just pardoned the  Jan 6 rioters.

    I remembered thinking at the time how she had truly misread the moment we were in. She obviously had the expectation that Trump  was gonna govern normally.  Republicans have long said that she was a Dem  nominee they would be okay with… back when they were willing to own up to such an eventuality.

  110. 110.

    HopefullyNotcassandra

    @TurnItOffAndOnAgain: yes.  He could have tried and failed earlier

    That effort would have disappeared from view like it never existed I think.  At least, Senator Booker’s argument is heard this way.

    Democrats fighting would be best to avoid.  Yet, it feels like Senators Klobuchar and Cortez-Masto are modeling ostriches here with their approach.

    If it is a “poison pill” to state this president must follow congressional directions, there is no point to Congress.

    It is a bit of a catch 22.

  111. 111.

    grumbles

    I’m with Booker. I’m glad to see him making sense.

    I’d need more context on the missed committee hearings. Might be valid, might be a cheapshot, I don’t know the back story there.

    I’m also generally a bit suspicious of his adversaries here, but that occasionally proves to be ungenerous, so I try to withhold judgement there. Sometimes.

     

    But bottom line for me is, people are going to be hurt no matter what they do. Throwing away legislative leverage now is terrible – the extralegal environment in which the Trump machine operates is likely to only get worse as they learn how to wear down the courts, so legislative power is likely to become less useful past some tipping point. They need to be throwing sand in the gears now.

  112. 112.

    Ramona

    @Omnes Omnibus: I’ve never encountered threaded comments where the comments were numbered (at least the root comment numbered.) Given the choice between numbered comments and threaded comments, I’ll take numbered comments. I just memorize the number of my current comment, backtrack  by clicking on the comment responded to and use “find in page” to get back to the responding comment.

  113. 113.

    Ramona

    @piratedan: While granting that it’s possible they are technically right (I haven’t kept track of Booker’s attendance), I wonder what they mean by his currently proposed amendment being a poison pill because would it not have still been a poison pill had he introduced it during the committee meetings? Also, did the committee meeting when Booker voted the bill out of committee occur before GOP Senators passed Trump’s rescissions?

  115. 115.

    Mr. Bemused Senior

    . .. but so is keeping the lights on …

    Let the Republicans keep the lights on if they can. Have we forgotten the DOGE rampage through the Federal government? The only power the Democrats have now is to withhold their consent.

  118. 118.

    Kayla Rudbek

    @RaflW: yeah, my impression is that she’s cruising on being Amy who everyone read about in the Star Tribune because her dad was mentioning her in his column (I’m a bit younger than her so I remember reading those newspaper stories) and expecting that everyone will like her

  119. 119.

    Matt

    Pure kayfabe; he voted it out of committee, and then guess what else he did:

    Eventually, the Senate did pass, by unanimous consent, the two bills that were part of the package.

    It’s a wake-up call alright: to the fact that we’ve got way too many national Dems who think their job is to pretend-fight and then give up on cue. Booker gets his clip to fundraise with, fascists get more power.

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