More Democrats need to be like Sen Brian Schatz [D-HI]. Stand up. Have courage.

To be super explicitly clear: the only thing holding up the jenga tower of leveraged financial instruments and casino marketplaces is the continued buy-in of average workers feeding their futures into this furnace in a never-ending ponzi scheme. The need you to put your savings and retirement plans into their hands so they can keep pretending that stock trading is a viable industry that generates value.

I'd just like to clarify some things about Senator Cory Booker's marathon Senate speech in protest of the present administration and everything they are doing to the American people.

Senator Booker was NOT allowed to sit down, eat, or use the bathroom during his speech. Sitting or leaving the room to use the bathroom would be considered yielding the floor. Eating would have interfered with his speaking and the person who has the floor must continue to speak, except when listening to questions that they will then answer.

He only took occasional sips of water.

The person who previously held the record for longest speech on the Senate floor did have bathroom breaks and also did things like read from the encyclopedia.

Senator Booker did not do that. His speech was to point out the damage that this administration is doing and he stayed on that subject.

Senator Booker's speech did reach many people. It wasn't a silly stunt that was done so that he could take the record for longest speech. He wanted to show the country that democrats will do something to bring attention to the problems we are facing. That democrats are listening to them.

Senator Cory Booker spoke for 25 hours and 4 minutes to "make good trouble."

ETA Thanks for all of the reblogs and notes! I hadn't wanted to dirty this post with the name of the former holder of the record for longest time holding the Senate floor, but there are a lot of questions.

Senator Strom Thurmond, a segregationist and white supremacist, held the previous record of 24 hours and 18 minutes when he filibustered the vote on the Civil Rights Act.

Sen. Thurmond had someone put a bucket just outside of the doorway to the cloakroom so that he could keep one foot on the floor while pissing into this bucket, to hold the floor.

Senator Booker would never disrespect the Senate, nor "bend the rules" in such a way.

Because of this Sen. Thurmond could drink coffee or anything else he wanted, as much as he wanted, to keep himself awake, soothe his throat, and keep his mouth from becoming dry.

Senator Booker limited himself to a few sips at a time from two glasses of water at the podium.

Also, Sen. Thurmond began his speech immediately before a vote was to be taken and his speech was specifically to delay that vote. That is the definition of a "filibuster".

Senator Booker's speech was not designed to delay or prevent any vote. He did not know how long he would be physically able to speak. Therefore, his was a speech, not a filibuster.

ETA2: Strom Thurmond did also temporarily yield the floor to a colleague and took a bathroom break at that time. He also had some rye bread and hamburger to eat.

Source

ETA3: So sorry about all of these but I need to include just one more thing.

This is the transcript of Strom Thurmond's filibuster

He read the voting laws of all 48 states (this was 1957). He read from a book called "The History of the Jury Trial" speaking for quite some time about things like the justice system of the Anglo-Saxons. He read from other books, he read from the Declaration of Independence, he read from the Constitution. He yielded the floor for someone to be sworn in. All kinds of things about his filibuster made Senator Booker's speech a far superior feat, not just because it lasted longer.

NJ Democrat senator Cory Booker takes the floor in protest of Trump/Musk, "saying that he will keep going “'as long as I am physically able'.”

“I rise with the intention of disrupting the normal business of the United States Senate for as long as I am physically able,” Booker said at the outset of his remarks. “I rise tonight because I believe sincerely that our country is in crisis.”

“In just 71 days, the president of the United States has inflicted so much harm on Americans’ safety; financial stability; the core foundations of our democracy. “These are not normal times in America. And they should not be treated as such in the United States Senate.” -source

I am posting this at 2:30am EST. He has been speaking since 7PM EST. This link (at this moment) is to a live stream.

FUCK YEAH, JERSEY!

So very proud of my state at the moment.

Reblogging and adding the livestream link from Senator Booker's YouTube (the other one was glitching) . It is almost 4am. He is still going STRONG. If you are watching and plan to go to sleep, turn the volume down and leave it up so that the "watching" number reflects the involvement of people supporting him.

If he can LITERALLY stand and protest as a single voice, we can keep it playing and symbolically stand with him.

Senator Booker is on Hour 13 and going STRONG

Yeah! That’s what I’m talking about. No business as usual! Slow the Fascists down! He should get some Democrat colleagues to join him so they can periodically cede to each other and spell each other off to keep it up longer!

STILL GOING! If you can open up the livestream to show support.

Folks, he's still going - and importantly, he's talking about his own shortcomings, his own failures and the things he wants to do better because he knows he fucked up the last time.

If your disdain for Democrats has been rooted largely in their reluctance to meet the moment, then I heartily encourage you to watch the livestream — other Democratic senators are asking long-winded "questions (which is part of the rules and allows Booker to take the occasional break for a drink of water or to rest his feet or whatnot) and helping however they can.

Booker's going to hit 24 hours at 7 pm and it's worth watching a few minutes, don't you think?

NPR has a really good overview of what and why he's doing. Once a Senator has the floor, they can speak until they cede the floor without being forced to stop, as long as they don't yield the floor. But they have to be standing and speaking that entire time. No bathroom breaks, no food or water, no sitting.

The one time you can take a break (although you can't sit down or leave the room), is when another Senator asks a question, which they're doing. They're telling long anecdotes along with their questions to give him a break in speaking. Sen. Booker holds the floor, but he's not alone. From the article:

It is currently 5pm Eastern Time on Tuesday, April 1st. He began this speech at 7pm yesterday. He has been speaking for 22 hours. He's still standing.

They’re scared because they know that the public is with Luigi.

They’re violating his rights because they need to maintain capitalism.

Keep talking about Luigi.

“The dossier adds that the public ‘may view the ensuing manhunt and subsequent arrest of Mangione as NYPD, and largely policing as a whole, as a tool that is willing to expend massive resources to protect the wealthy, while the average citizen is left to their own means for personal security.’”

with musk and trump gunning for social security, now seems like a good time to remind everyone that social security isn’t like government charity or something. it’s fully paid for. always has been. corporate media loves to parrot the conservative lie that social security is running out of money without ever mentioning why: congress stole the money. they literally robbed from peter to pay paul.

the whole idea of social security was always that you pay into it your whole life, and then when you retire the government gives you that money back. it’s your money. always has been. like sure technically the money being paid by working age people now is going to the people who are retired now. but social security was started in the 30’s, the people who are collecting benefits now paid into it their whole lives. the idea was to be a retirement savings account that the government keeps safe for you because it’s almost impossible for working class people to save for retirement under capitalism.

the problem is that congress looked at all that money just sitting there and decided to use it as a slush fund. and never paid it back. because it’s easier to steal that money than it is to raise taxes for new spending. so yeah, it’s a problem now that there are more old people retiring than there are young people working, but only because congress stole the money it was supposed to be saving for the people now retiring. all those savings could have actually earned money for the people who can’t pay in due to disability etc by being used as a massive investment fund. instead it’s the classic austerity misdirection: sabotage a useful functional government program, then claim that it doesn’t work and is too expensive. and the media never talks about it.

hello all. as you might have heard, right now Turkey is on the brink of slipping into autocracy. as a Turk, i feel it’s my obligation to raise awareness of what we are and have been going through for the past 23 years. i’m not asking for any donations — i only want our voices to be heard.

the details are below the cut.

This is possibly the most insane national security story in the last 50 years. Includes a massive text chain between senior members of the Trump admin gaming out foreign policy and war plans on Signal, and they accidentally added a reporter to the group chat.

Some of the issues:

A lot of leftist accounts are suspiciously quiet on the section 504 lawsuit, proposed medicaid cuts, and the "make America healthy again" executive order.

I know other leftists are not the enemy but if we don't have able bodied allies and general population support, there's no hope of pushing back against these ableist policies. These big accounts ignoring a massive minority at risk is scary. The current admin is the problem but there's no hope of a solution without allyship.

We need visibility. We need allies.

Also if you have seen leftist accounts discussing disability issues, please let me know their handle so others can follow them!

"(*The 504 plan) *That law has turned out to be hugely important in education, offering an even broader definition of students with special needs than the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued the Biden administration in September 2024, saying that it was “abusing executive action” to sidestep the law. Under the Biden administration the Section 504 definition of disability was expanded to recognize that “gender dysphoria . . . may be considered a physical or mental impairment.”

The state was suing, Paxton said, "because HHS has no authority to unilaterally rewrite statutory definitions and classify 'gender dysphoria' as a disability."

The suit spends over 30 pages objecting to the addition of gender dysphoria to the Section 504 definition. It argues against the rule’s understanding of gender dysphoria. It argues against the characterization of Olmstead, a 1999 case that found persons with mental disabilities have the right to live outside of institutions. It argues that the new definition conflicts with the Americans with Disabilities Act. It asserts many negative impacts for each of the states that have joined the suit, including, in many cases, challenges with Medicaid compliance.

Then, on page 37, as it reached its third of four counts, the lawsuit switches gears, arguing not for an excision of the new language, but the elimination of Section 504 entirely. The suit argues that Section 504 is “coercive, untethered to the federal interest in disability, and unfairly retroactive” and therefore unconstitutional.

When confronted with protestors, the communications director for the Iowa Attorney General’s office told Michaela Ramm of the Des Moines Register, “The Iowans who were fed lies to show up at our office today in freezing temperatures deserve the truth, and the truth is that no one’s 504 plan is being changed or removed.”

But the language of the lawsuit is clear. The fourth item under “Demand for Relief” says “Declare Section 504, 29 U.S.C. § 794, unconstitutional.”

It’s followed by: “Issue permanent injunctive relief against Defendants enjoining them from enforcing Section 504.”

Everything is at stake.

The Official White House twitter account posted ASMR video of immigrants getting shackled

I need these people quartered.

These people have hollow souls and cannot pretend to be human.

But if this is what they post on twitter-

what atrocities are they trying to distract you from?

This is the jingling keys to take your focus off the real barbarism.

Democrats are literally doing everything they can to stop Trump or throw wrenches into his madness to slow down

Slowing down/blocking as much as possible is key right now, because part of what Trump-Musk and the GOP are doing is moving fast and breaking stuff and hoping that a) momentum will continue to carry them forward and b) people won't react in time to prevent them from being entrenched.

Injunctions, lawsuits, restraining orders, filibusters, protests - these all take time, energy, and resources to focus on and respond to, and that means they can't press ahead as much as they'd like. It means more time to have people realize the consequences and how horrible this is, and more time and opportunity to continue shifting public opinion.

And, because of the overconfidence and inexperience (among other things) of those forces now in power, they're not great at responding and handling these things. The sloppiness and laziness is what helped hobble a lot of things in the first administration, and it's not gone away, for better or worse.

I can't emphasize enough that when a Senator or Congressman sends a letter to a Federal agency demanding answers, the Federal agency has to give them answers.

All federal agencies have an Office of Legislative Affairs specifically to deal with congressional requests, or "Congressionals."

If a member of Congress says "under what law are you doing this??" and you don't have a good answer, you change what you're doing.

The Treasury Department restricted Musk's access to payment systems because of a Congressional letter.

If you want something to ask of your congressman or senator - ask them to write a letter to the agency of your pick demanding answers about the issue of your choice!!

The dems are doing everything they can short of holding a little "bring your gun to work" day event.

Honestly, if they're being called on to confirm Russ Vought, it's not a bad idea.

The dems in congress have to recognize that if he gets the chance to murder every one of them, he's gonna do it.

Btw, this is how conservatives keep getting to claim that trans people are a new thing no one has ever heard, because our history and existences have continually been erased or obscured systematically through out history.

The most famous example was 92 years when the Nazis raided the library of the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, the medical practice where the term transsexual was first coined and the first gender affirming surgery was performed in in 1931.

What did the Nazis do after raiding the library on May 6th, 1933? You may be familiar with these images

It is happening again.

source https://insidemedicine.substack.com/p/breaking-news-cdc-orders-mass-retraction

im gonna be honest it's kind of hard to watch all the shit trump and his admin are pulling without getting even madder at biden for doing jack shit about his campaign promises. student loans, minimum wage, reproductive rights... and i know some picrew icon who voted for the first time last year is already rushing to the reblog button to write a YA protagonist monologue about how those would have been/were blocked by congress/the senate/inclement weather/etc. but the thing is that at this point i literally do not care about "established legal and political processes" and "working within the system", i just want my views enacted into law. which would be childish if it wasn't the exact strategy that has been working unbelievably well for republicans for the last decade!

i want to grab a democrat career politician by the shoulders and scream in their face: do something good for once in your god damn life! fuck "checks and balances", fuck "legal precedent", just keep packing the courts and gerrymandering districts and throwing shit at the wall until something sticks! fucking fight back god dammit! where's your dignity? your rage? your humanity? you're playing checkers against someone eating your pieces while adding their own to the board and you're trying to give an impassioned speech about how "they go low we go high" while they simultaneously piss on you and shoot your dog!

I'm tired of the evil-minded assholes being the only ones cheating to win.

We can shove all the "does the ends justify the means" talk until after we've put away all the shitheads whose ends are fascist and means are fascist.