This may sound extreme, but to save our democracy, the filibuster needs to go.
Here’s why:
If 41 senators agree to block a bill, they can—even if the other 59 senators support it. That means that majority rule no longer exists in the United States Senate.
If the Founding Fathers knew about this, we don’t think they would be happy. They *literally* enshrined majority rule in the Constitution.
The fact that the Senate needs a “supermajority” (60 votes) to even bring anything up for a vote means that Congress can’t get much done.
That gives the courts and the president more power.
Just look at what the filibuster has done to limit the number of bills passing Congress:
Some people say that the filibuster helps the Senate compromise and rise above partisanship.
As we have all seen, that’s the opposite of what is happening today.
Some people are worried about getting rid of the filibuster because it sounds old, like something that could never be changed.
That’s a myth.
The filibuster was invented during Reconstruction to serve the interests of white supremacists and has for decades been used to disenfranchise Black Americans.
Today, the filibuster could be used to block critical democracy reforms like the For the People Act and DC statehood.
The insurrection and Trump’s election lies made it very obvious that our democracy is in peril unless we pass these safeguards.
Read CREW’s full report on the filibuster here. Then call your senators and ask them to kill the filibuster, pass the For the People Act and grant DC statehood.
NEWS: Mike Pompeo violated federal ethics rules when he and his wife, Susan, asked State Department employees to carry out tasks for their personal benefit more than 100 times politico.com/news/2021/04/1…
Today, Fox announced that Lara Trump was joining the network as a paid contributor, as she decides whether she wants to run for Senate.
Never mind that the day before the insurrection, she went on Fox to spread election fraud lies… nytimes.com/2021/03/29/bus…
But Lara Trump is not the first Trump employee to get hired by Fox. In Kayleigh McEnany’s case, they were in talks before she had even left the White House. citizensforethics.org/reports-invest…
Apparently Mike Pompeo doesn't like the most ambitious ethics reform in a generation. Any ideas why?
Maybe it’s because he attracted scrutiny for using taxpayer funds to travel frequently home to Kansas, apparently while deciding whether or not to run for office. citizensforethics.org/reports-invest…
Or maybe it’s because he doesn’t like oversight, as we all saw when he asked Donald Trump to fire the inspector general who was investigating him for misuse of office and for fast tracking arms sales to Saudi Arabia. cnn.com/2020/05/18/pol…
Ten big reasons for the Senate to do whatever it takes to pass the For the People Act:
1. If presidential candidates disclosed their tax returns, the American people wouldn't have to wonder what interests the president could be beholden to or whether they paid their fair share citizensforethics.org/news/analysis/…
2. If presidents and vice presidents were forced to divest from their assets before taking the oath of office, the president couldn’t rake in $1.6 billion and we wouldn’t have to sue them for violating the Constitution citizensforethics.org/reports-invest…
If Don Jr wants to talk about shocking use of taxpayer money, lets talk about it.
There was Don Jr's endangered sheep hunt in Mongolia, which taxpayers more than $75k for his Secret Service protection citizensforethics.org/reports-invest…
The countless business trips that the Trump sons took to Trump properties, also subsidized by taxpayers, to the tune of hundreds of thousands dollars citizensforethics.org/reports-invest…
Last week, we won a victory that might just be the key to understanding what exactly Jared Kushner was up to in the White House for four years…
In a reversal of policy after CREW sued the Trump admin, Jared handed over his WhatsApp messages to the National Archives before leaving the White House.
Jared ran a “shadow” task force during the first months of the pandemic using private email accounts.
We’d love to know who he communicated with about covid response, especially after a report that he spiked national testing for political gain. vanityfair.com/news/2020/07/h…