Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) on Sunday night called on her fellow Democratic lawmakers to utilize every procedural weapon in their arsenal to keep Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) from ramming through a Supreme Court judicial appointment by President Donald Trump in wake of liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death.
“It’s extraordinary important that we understand the stakes of this vacancy,” Ocasio-Cortez said during a press briefing with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY). “Our reproductive rights are on the line. Our labor rights are on the line. Our right to healthcare is on the line. Labor and union protections are on the line. Our climate is on the line.”
The New York Democrat pushed her colleagues to invoke “every procedural tool available to us” to “ensure that we buy ourselves the time necessary” to fend off McConnell.
“We must commit to allowing and to considering and to utilizing every single procedural tool available to us to buy that time,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “We all need to be more courageous and we all must act in unprecedented ways to make sure that our rights are stabilized.”
“And to Mitch McConnell, we need to tell him that he is playing with fire,” she added.
The GOP Senate leader vowed to fill Ginsburg’s seat shortly after her passing on Friday in a whiplash-inducing reversal from his refusal to allow a confirmation hearing in 2016 for former President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland. McConnell argued at the time that SCOTUS appointments ought to wait until after the elections during an election year.
Watch Ocasio-Cortez below:
AOC calls on fellow Dems to use "every procedural tool available to us" to keep McConnell from filling RBG's seat: “We all need to be more courageous and we all must act in unprecedented ways to make sure that our rights are stabilized." pic.twitter.com/QQ9zEFU1Kn
— TPM Livewire (@TPMLiveWire) September 21, 2020
