Sen. Jeff Merkley on Trump: 'He Has Chosen a Very, Very Dark Path'
July 5, 2018 11:53AM ET
Sen. Jeff Merkley on Trump: ‘He Has Chosen a Very, Very Dark Path’
The Oregon senator sounds off on family separation, the Supreme Court and what the Democrats are planning for 2018 and beyond
By Tessa Stuart
Jeff Merkley keeps a low profile. The junior senator from Oregon may not have made a whole lot of headlines during his first decade in Congress, but he has quietly assembled a sterling progressive record, staking out early positions on issues that are rapidly gaining traction with the Democratic base. In 2016, Merkley was the only senator to endorse his colleague Bernie Sanders for president. Last year, he introduced a bill to transition to 100 percent renewable energy in the next several decades, similar to the plan that rising star Alexandria Ocasio Cortez campaigned on. Last month, Merkley was the first member of Congress to show up at a detention center near the U.S.-Mexican border and demand to see immigrant kids who were being separated from their parents under the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance policy.” The visit represented a dramatic shift in public awareness around the issue, and prompted a swift, powerful backlash that paved the way for Trump’s executive order to bring the practice to an end. Merkley spoke to Rolling Stone about his decision to go to the border, his fears about the climate crisis, the upcoming Supreme Court vacancy and his 2020 ambitions.
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President Trump has said Congress could fix this situation by passing immigration legislation. Are you at all optimistic Congress might do that?
No, I am not optimistic. You have a president who wants to use the suffering of children for political leverage, and that is completely unacceptable. This was a problem created directly by administrative policy. All of the suffering is a direct result of Donald Trump’s action. He can end it in a moment. He can restore the case management programs that he eliminated. There’s an inspector general’s report that says 100 percent of those in that case management program showed up for their hearing. A hundred percent! And he ended the program.
He has chosen a very, very dark path. America is saying, “No way.” And we’re going to keep fighting and keep applying the pressure. The president started this. He needs to end it.
Yes. We’re seeing 5-4 decisions. They would be 4-4 decisions – you might even say they are 4-4 decisions plus one illegitimate Supreme Court justice in a stolen seat. That seat was stolen specifically to keep Citizens United in place, the ability to have billionaires spend hundreds of millions of dollars to control congress. The Koch Brother cartel succeeded in winning control in 2014 through the use of Citizens United and they’ve run the Senate since.
I’m very much focused on 2018 and [winning back] a majority in the Senate, which is a difficult thing to achieve, but there is a narrow path to it. Think about how 51 seats could stop the packing of the courts. Fifty-one seats could stop the next Betsy DeVos, who wants to undo public education. Fifty-one seats could stop the next Scott Pruitt, who is a human wrecking ball striking down every effort to have clean air and clean water. Fifty-one seats could stop the next Mick Mulvaney, who wants to unleash every predatory force in financial issues from payday loans to mortgages. That’s the focus for this year. I am exploring the possibility of 2020, but my primary focus is on 2018.
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https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/merkley-trump-dark-path-695954/
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