Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a sharp critic of President Donald Trump, was just legally told by the United States Senate to sit down and shut up.
Despite reports of falling polls numbers, Warren has been leading the nonstop anti-Trump attack for months — and it has left some exasperated conservative critics asking, “Could someone please make her be quiet?”
Tuesday, Senate conservatives did just that — and it has left their Democratic rivals fuming.
Republicans legally silenced Warren for repeatedly attacking colleague and Attorney General-designate Jeff Sessions after being warned numerous times, a violation of Senate rules.
Warren, whose name has been prominent in speculation about the 2020 presidential race, was given a rare legal rebuke Tuesday night for impugning a fellow senator and she was barred from saying anything more on the Senate floor about the Alabama senator.
The Senate has been working around the clock since Monday as Democrats challenge every single one of Trump’s nominees, although Democrats lack the votes to actually derail the picks. Despite the rebuke of Warren, other Senate Democrats continued the attack Wednesday morning.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4Jd5VTrN44
A vote on Sessions is expected Wednesday evening.
Warren produced a three-decade-old letter in which Mrs. King wrote that Sessions, as an acting federal prosecutor in Alabama, used his power to “chill the free exercise of the vote by black citizens.”
In the 1986 letter, Martin Luther King Jr.’s widow said Sessions’ actions as a federal prosecutor were “reprehensible” and that he used his office “in a shabby attempt to intimidate and frighten elderly black voters.”
“Mr. Sessions has used the awesome power of his office to chill the free exercise of the vote by black citizens in the district he now seeks to serve as a federal judge,” Mrs. King wrote.
Mrs. King died in 2006.
Quoting King put Warren in violation of a Senate rule for “impugning the motives” of Sessions.
Kentucky Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell invoked Senate Rule 19, which says “a senator in debate, who, in the opinion of the presiding officer, refers offensively to any state of the union, or who impugns the motives or integrity of any senator, or reflects on other senators, may be called to order under Rule XIX.”
The Senate voted 49-43 along party lines to sustain the decision to rebuke Warren.
Warren was originally warned after reading from a statement by the late Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy that labeled Sessions a disgrace.
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The Associated Press contributed to this article