BREAKING: In a shocking moment, Senate DEMs storm out of a hearing to protest the GOP ramming through Emil Bove

[In It to Win It]

Link to tweet

[Lovie777]

1. Don't they need 60 votes?.....................

[In It to Win It]

2. No

[W_HAMILTON]

3. This looks like a committee vote -- not the full vote in the Senate.

From what Booker said, it sounds like Republicans are breaking the rules (again) to rush through a nominee simply to bypass regular procedure and to speed up the process of confirming him in the full Senate.

[surfered]

5. Senate rules...

The increasing ideological polarization of the two major political parties in the 21st century raised the stakes for judicial nominations in the Senate, and not just for nominees to the Supreme Court. The pace of confirmation of judges slowed, and lower court nominations for the first time were subjected to filibusters by the minority party, which required a three-fifths majority, or 60 votes, to invoke cloture to end debate. As more and more judicial nominees were left unconfirmed at the end of each session, party leaders threatened to establish new precedents to allow for nominations to go forward by simple majority vote.

In 2013 Senate Democrats used their majority power to trigger the so-called nuclear option, a procedural move that reduced the threshold for ending debate on lower court judicial nominees to a simple majority. After Republicans regained the majority in 2015, the Judiciary Committee took no action to consider President Barack Obama's March 2016 nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court. In January 2017, President Donald Trump nominated Neil Gorsuch to fill the vacancy, and Senate Republicans deployed the nuclear option to lower the cloture threshold for Supreme Court nominees to a simple majority, leading to confirmation by slim margins of Gorsuch and subsequent nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

[W_HAMILTON]

7. This has nothing to do with that.

Again, this is a committee vote -- not the full vote in the Senate.

Looking more into it, yes, I was correct: the issue at hand is that Republicans cut short the normal debate in the committee and forced through his nomination there.

[surfered]

11. I was replying to a comment asking if it would take 60 votes

And your answer had not yet posted when I started posted mine.

But no worries 😁

[Kid Berwyn]

4. Wondered about that, too.

But it seems that's only required when Democrats in the majority want to confirm nominees or pass legislation.

Tommy Tuberville screwed the Pentagon promotions for more than a year before a dedicated Marine general awaiting relief had a heart attack while working two full time jobs.

[tritsofme]

8. Senate Democrats confirmed more judges under Biden than Trump got in his first term.

This narrative just isn’t true.

[Kid Berwyn]

10. Big deal. Trump the traitor is getting his way in Court and Congress.

And the court that counts most is stacked against us. So, when did the Democrats filibuster, let alone block, Kavanaugh? Barrett? Gorsuch? Those came after the 51-vote rule replaced the 60-vote threshold for federal judgeships or was that for supreme court nominations? Doesn't really matter now. Along with chief just us Roberts, Thomas and Alito, the new just-uses have sped the cancellation of the Constitution to install and immunize King Trump.

Still, I'm glad to see Corey Booker lead the walk-out. Might have gotten the good guys a minute's air time.

[tritsofme]

13. Uh, Democrats did filibuster Gorsuch, and then McConnell used the nuclear option.

Pretty silly to criticize Democrats for something they were powerless to stop.

[Kid Berwyn]

14. Right. Might as well just get out of the way.

“Perpetually Powerless” may be OK for you, but not for me.

Tell ya something else: I’ll resist in every way I can.

[tritsofme]

18. Just as Republicans were powerless to stop Biden and Democrats from confirming a record number of judges.

The only way to have power is to win elections.

[Kid Berwyn]

19. No, the only way is to uphold the Constitution of the United States.

The law respects the rights of all, equally. Worked great for 248 years.

The Situation today, thanks largely to the influence of money on all three branches of government:

One set of rules for We the People, and another set of rules for the Rulers.

[Polybius]

15. No

Harry Reid changed the rules when Obama was President.

[Igel]

16. It's a committee hearing. Reid didn't touch their rules, I don't think. n/t

[Uncle Joe]

6. Apparently, they're not better than that, but this kind of democratic disrespect is consistent with their cowardice

in abandoning their own town halls so as to avoid listening to their constituents' concerns or anger.

They Republicans in Congress aren't for the people, just the oligarchs; and *rump is their spokesperson.

Thanks for the thread In It to Win It

[LetMyPeopleVote]

9. Maddow Blog-Republicans shrug off laundry list of scandals, advance Emil Bove's judicial nomination

Bove is arguably the single-most controversial circuit court nominee in modern American history. Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee didn’t care.

By some measures, Emil Bove, a former Trump defense attorney, is one of the most controversial circuit court nominees in modern American history, opposed by several dozen former judges and 900+ former DOJ lawyers.

Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee didn’t care.

— Steve Benen (@stevebenen.com) 2025-07-17T15:09:18.340Z

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/emil-bove-trump-judge-nomination-senate-republicans-rcna218833

That didn’t happen. NBC News reported:

A spokesperson for Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley says that Bove’s nomination had been reported out of committee to the full Senate, even though Democrats on the committee walked out in protest of the lack of debate and the refusal to hold a vote on whether to hold a hearing with a whistleblower before they voted.

Shortly before the vote, the panel's Democratic members walked out of the hearing room in protest, with Democratic Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey describing the process as "insane."
https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:h7qtoo7nxqxarrsijohjhbw4/post/3lu6bvfc3oc2c

Link to tweet

In fact, after the committee's Republicans voted in support of Bove, members of the Democratic minority, led by Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, suggested the issue of whether Bove was actually reported out was still an open question and may be referred to the Senate parliamentarian because, as Democrats argued, Republicans broke procedural rules.......

Just as importantly, if not more so, Erez Reuveni, a 15-year veteran Justice Department prosecutor, recently came forward as a whistleblower to tell senators that Bove repeatedly endorsed ignoring court orders and deliberately misleading judges. In a case involving the Alien Enemies Act and the administration’s alleged violation of a court order regarding deportation flights, Reuveni also described a meeting during which Bove “stated that DOJ would need to consider telling the courts ‘f--- you’ and ignore any such court order.”.....

Bove’s nomination now advances to the Senate floor for confirmation. To defeat him, four GOP senators would have to break ranks with the party, which seems unlikely. Watch this space.

trump is looking to appoint Bove to the SCOTUS when either Alito or Thomas retires

[Igel]

17. I'd like to read the Senate quorum rules someday.

Not today.

Roberts--which is what the Congress started with long ago--is funny and unless you know that set of rules, committees run other those rules seem capricious.

If you know you're going to lose a vote but want to keep the option open to revisit it later, you have somebody vote in the majority. Because under Roberts rules, the losing side can't opt to have a second chance--only the winning side. Seems insane, when a (D) or (R) votes to kill a (D) or (R) bill (respectively) that would fail without their vote they're condemned--sometimes it's just tactics. We seen that in Congress, so that rule must still be around. (I don't know of Sturgis admits of that.)

Quorum calls are another thing. You need a quorum to start to conduct business (with some weirdness that doesn't matter because ultimately it all goes back to the committee, which can do what it wants). But if you lose quorum, you know--it doesn't matter. The chair doesn't have to recognize that quorum's broken. But quorum calls are points of order and must be heard--it includes things like "open the window" and every member has the right to raise points of order. If the committee I was running way back when lost quorum we just kept on going. If a person was there that knew they'd be on the losing side--either because allies left so they wouldn't be a majority or supermajority, or simply because he knew they'd have lost with everybody there but wants to stall for time--a quorum call would be asked for the second the last member required for quorum left the room. Now, if all those opposed to a measure walked out and nobody was left to ask for a count of members for re-establishing quorum, I was fine with that. The only time that this hamstrung us was when the bylaws or charter required that for a motion for a specific topic required a majority of the membership. For some things--we had 23 members one year, I was ex-officio chair without vote--if we had 11 members present things like the budget couldn't be voted on. But if we wanted to do a number of things--appoint people to positions, put something on a ballot, allocate amounts from the approved budget for specific categories, hell, without a quorum count we could have gone down to 1 person. (That never happened, but we were down to 5 or 6 a few times.)

Don't know Senate committee rules. I'll be interested in whether the parliamentarian rules with respect to the rules or "what's right"--and if the idiot media will actually bother to say why her ruling is what it is.

[Passages]

12. Ramming through a piece of human garbage, much like themselves.

Why hundreds of lawyers are banding together against Emil Bove’s judicial nomination
The nominee for a lifetime federal judgeship has demonstrated a total disregard for the high ethical standards to which most federal prosecutors hold themselves.

July 17, 2025, 6:00 AM EDT
By Mimi Rocah, former district attorney of Westchester County, New York

Well over 300 federal, Article III judges across the country are former federal prosecutors. They have been nominated by Democratic and Republican presidents in larger numbers than any other group of lawyers. And yet I cannot recall such fierce and widespread opposition to a former prosecutor’s nomination — not just from a range of ideological backgrounds, not just from the legal community generally, but from more than 900 former Justice Department attorneys and former judges — until the nomination of Emil Bove.
https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/emil-bove-trump-federal-judge-nomination-senate-letter-rcna219169