Update from Sarah Jane, September 14, 2018: So McConnell announced that hearings on Kavanaugh will happen Thursday, September 20. Both of them. The full floor vote will follow the Judiciary Committee vote almost directly.
We also got word that Senator Dianne Feinstein passed a complaint about Kavanaugh to the FBI. Because the individual involved asked for confidentiality, there’s not much we can know for sure about the complaint itself. While her Democratic colleagues on the Judiciary Committee urged her to give it to the FBI, the agency is apparently not going to investigate, and has handed it to the White House for inclusion in Kavanaugh’s file.
The larger point: The door is not closed yet. Please call and keep calling, no matter if your Senators are pro-Kavanaugh, anti-Kavanaugh, or undecided (but especially if they’re undecided, and especially if they’re members of the Judiciary Committee). Keep calling and leaving voicemail messages through the weekend, too.
Keep urging friends and family to call, too. That goes double if they live in red states, and triple if they live in Alaska or Maine.
Late on September 9, @Celeste_Pewter tweeted a link to a Guardian article in which Vice President Mike Pence acknowledged he might be needed to break a potential tie in Senate voting on Kavanaugh’s nomination. If that happens, it would be the first time in history that a Vice President casts a tie-breaking vote on a SCOTUS nominee.
Link is here:
Celeste Pewter retweeted the link with this message:
I know all of this feels inevitable, but it’s NOT. The fact that Pence is saying this, shows wavering amongst the GOP. Which is significant considering the GOP have the majority. So let’s call and fight. (And no, I don’t think he’d say it as a fake-out)
Now is not the time to let up. Call. Keep calling daily until the point is moot.
Boost your Democratic Senators for bringing the fight, and pressure your Republican Senators into voting no.
Once you’ve made your calls, encourage friends and family to call their Senators, too. It’s extra-important that you ask those in red states to call and oppose the SCOTUS nomination.
Recruiting others to the cause is key. We need a ton of people calling their Senators 24/7, making it damn clear that Kavanaugh is a NO. Refer to @Celeste_Pewter’s calling script below and forward it with abandon.
Update from Sarah Jane, September 4, 2018: This post originally appeared on July 16, 2018. With the Kavanaugh hearings starting today I am making an exception to my hiatus to offer updated info on how you can #StopKavanaugh.
This is another situation we have to treat like the fight to save Obamacare. We need to mobilize massive, massive, MASSIVE pressure. You need to call your Senators every day on this, and you need to recruit friends and family to call their Senators every day. For serious.
Our friend @Celeste_Pewter has been diligently beating the drum on the Kavanaugh issue, stressing the importance of fighting back and giving options for how to do it. We at OTYCD are reproducing her September 3, 2018 string of tweets on the topic. Scroll down to learn how to support her and her work.
All: Tomorrow [September 4] is going to be tense day for all of us. Remember: NONE of you are alone. If you need a pep talk or cat pictures, ping me. Also remember: we’re all frustrated and angry with how the hearings are proceeding, but let’s focus on what we CAN do at the moment.
Our part in this can be broken down into a few steps: 1. Calling any senators we have on judiciary, and demand they question vigorously. 2. Telling our Senators to vote no. 3. Pushing for state-level protections, a la MA’s Nasty Women Act. 4. Getting 5 others to do 1-3.
If you can do a little more and are in driving distance of D.C. – consider joining the protests. Let the Senate know we’re watching. To paraphrase @benwikler, the more eyes, the better [The link goes to a Facebook page called Show Up to Stop Kavanaugh!, an event that starts at 6 pm in Washington, D.C. Also, follow @benwikler for updates on the protest]:
https://www.facebook.com/events/251262148834237/
If you’re able to watch a live stream, the Kavanaugh hearing’s live stream is here:
If you’re looking to write postcards – and I know several of you write thoughtful, eloquent messages every week, @getloudnowusa has provided excellent templates here:
https://getloudnow.squarespace.com/gln/blockbrett
And I feel like I’ve linked this a million times, but: 1. Scripts:
3. @ThisEastonLife‘s handy sheet to phone numbers for those on Judiciary [This leads to a screen shot that we can’t reproduce, but you can find it at the @ThisEastonLife Twitter home page]
4. My Kavanaugh Medium guide, but with specific focus on state-level protections [Including this as a clickable link because weird technical issues won’t allow reproduction of the URL]
Tomorrow’s going to be tough. Everything you might feel tomorrow. = 100% valid. Just remember: keep focusing on what you CAN control. And if we each do those four simple steps? Imagine 4 x 1000 or 2000. That’s a lot of collective power. Let’s get to work. Ask w/ questions.
P.S. 1. For those of you who are looking for this thread in text form, I’m formatting the TinyLetter now. 2. Don’t forget to hashtag any tweets about SCOTUS-related calls with #ICalledMyReps – @icalledmyreps will boost. Let’s share who’s picking up, staffers to ask for, etc.
Original post follows.
Call your senators and demand that they vote NO on Brett Kavanaugh, Team Trump’s nominee for the Supreme Court of the United States.
First, an apology from Sarah Jane: I meant to write and queue this earlier, closer to when the nominee was named. Life and work deadlines got in the way. I can only apologize and repeat the fact that OTYCD is a part-time endeavor. Thanks for your patience.
Anyway. We know who the nominee is now, and his judicial record is as noxious as you’d expect, given that he passed muster with The Federalist Society.
We need to push back.
The fight will be hard, but not impossible. And the fight will definitely be impossible if we don’t bother to fight at all.
Your Senators need to hear from you, and you need to be firm and clear. (And polite.)
So! Call your two Senators and tell them you want them to oppose Kavanaugh’s SCOTUS nomination. Then call friends and family across the country and ask them to do the same. And keep calling as new developments emerge about Kavanaugh and his views. (We at OTYCD expect to devote future posts to this issue.)
Remember: Loud, fierce, sustained protests against Trumpcare and Trumpcare 2.0 made them fail. It was the folks who called, texted, left voicemails, and showed up to protest who made the difference. If we can make loud, fierce, sustained protests against Kavanaugh, we could sink his nomination.
Check the link below to see if either of your Senators are on the chamber’s Judiciary Committee. If they are, it is extra-important that you call. Bonus points if you do this on behalf of friends and family and update them on their own Senators.
https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/about/members
Before you call, you should check the social media feeds of your Senators and see if they’ve issued a statement on Kavanaugh.
If they’ve already agreed to vote no, thank them for that.
If they’ve already agreed to vote yes, urge them to change their vote.
Celeste Pewter (@Celeste_pewter) got there first with great scripts on this topic. The trio you see below are a) a script supporting the McConnell rule, updated to reflect the name of the SCOTUS nominee; b) a simple ‘No on Kavanaugh’ script; and c) talking points you can use to expand on the main scripts.
Please scroll down to learn how you can support Celeste Pewter’s work.
Subscribe to her peerless newsletter, It’s Time to Fight:
http://itstimetofight.weebly.com
Subscribe to One Thing You Can Do by clicking the button on the upper right of the
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