Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) is calling on voters to elect just two more lawmakers to join Senate Democrats this fall, in order to secure enough votes for filibuster reform or abolition with the goal of enshrining federal abortion protections into law.
In an interview with ABC on Sunday, Warren said that while there are number of actions that lawmakers can take right now to expand and protect abortion access, one of the widest-reaching actions that voters can take is to elect lawmakers to overcome conservative Senators Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia) and Kyrsten Sinema’s (D-Arizona) opposition to filibuster reform in the Senate.
The Senate needs just “two more senators on the Democratic side, two senators who are willing to protect access to abortion and get rid of the filibuster so that we can pass it,” Warren said. “And yes, John Fetterman, I’m looking at you in Pennsylvania. Mandela Barnes, I’m looking at you in Wisconsin.”
“We bring them in, then we’ve got the votes, and we can protect every woman no matter where she lives,” she said. (Trans people also benefit from abortion access and are arguably at even greater risk than cis women are due to the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade overturn.)
Fetterman and Barnes, top Democrats in their races to flip two Senate seats blue this fall, have both stated that they support ending the use of the filibuster. Both candidates also support codifying federal abortion rights into law in order to combat the far right’s attacks and bans on the procedure.
Manchin and Sinema are the only two lawmakers in the Senate Democratic caucus who are outspoken in their opposition to filibuster reform, while Manchin is the only Senate Democrat to vote with Republicans last month to shoot down his party’s bill to protect abortion rights on the federal level.
Other lawmakers, like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont), have called for filibuster abolition to expand and protect abortion access. President Joe Biden, however, has declined to support filibuster abolition for abortion rights and has come out against Supreme Court expansion, frustrating Democrats and progressives.
Aside from moves like impeaching the Supreme Court’s far right justices and replacing them with Democrats to undo the Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson decision; expanding the Supreme Court for the same reason; or somehow nullifying laws in states that have already banned abortion since Friday, passing pro-abortion legislation is one of the only options that Democrats have left to protect abortion rights federally, as Roe did.
Until the election, Warren says that President Joe Biden could use his executive power to expand abortion access, taking moves like opening reproductive health clinics on federal land, declaring a public health emergency over abortion bans and opening up federal funds for people seeking abortions in states they don’t reside in. Biden has taken some limited steps to protect abortion access, but hasn’t mobilized the all-of-government response that some lawmakers are calling for.
In an op-ed written with Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minnesota) published over the weekend, Warren and Smith also called on readers to donate to abortion funds.
Warren harshly criticized the far right extremists who sit on the Supreme Court on Sunday, calling for an expansion of the Supreme Court to combat the far right’s undue, well-financed influence on the Court.
“This Court has lost legitimacy,” Warren said. “They have burned whatever legitimacy they may still have had after their gun decision, after their voting decision, after their union decision — they just took the last of it and set a torch to it with the Roe v. Wade decision.”
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
Over 80 percent of Truthout‘s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and the remaining 20 percent comes from a handful of social justice-oriented foundations. Over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors, many of whom give because they want to help us keep Truthout barrier-free for everyone.
You can help by giving today. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger gift, Truthout only works with your support.