Lindsey Graham’s death leaves the U.S. Senate at a crossroads

With Lindsey Graham gone, the U.S. Senate must decide whether to serve the Constitution or the President, writes Thom Hartmann.

US ATTORNEY and former Senator Lindsey Graham died Saturday, July 11 71 years old and President Donald Trump He couldn’t even wait for the body to arrive at the funeral home before using the death as political advantage.

Trump at least appealed to his “dear friend” three times in 24 hours Demanding that the Senate pass stalled voter suppression legislation and killing the filibuster to do so. It’s a truly grotesque spectacle, but it’s also enlightening.

For a decade, Graham has provided a specific answer to Trump’s central question: What good is a senator? His response after 2016 was that a senator exists to manage, flatter, and serve the president. Unfortunately, he wasn’t an outlier as senators lined up one after another (as we saw this week). Blanche trials). His death eliminates the most visible practitioner of this slavery, but five tests will tell us whether this is truly the new normal or whether the past year and a half has been an outlier.

The first of these is banditry. Trump demands termination of contract and Graham’s “come aboard” He was talking about this before he died (no one actually believed it). The 60-vote threshold is the final structural feature that forces any president to negotiate with the Senate under the control of his own party, rather than dictating to it.

The second is the compromise workaround. Graham presided Budget CommitteeHe’s the gatekeeper to the party-line process the White House wants to use to add the voter suppression bill to Pentagon funding. that gavel expected to pass To the senator Ron Johnson While Johnson’s House launches a third compromise effort. If the new committee chairman expands the budget rules enough to carry it, reconciliation ceases to be a budget tool and becomes a new and possibly permanent path to counter any semblance of Senate independence.

Third is the staff. Graham’s death is already narrowing slim Republican majority as does a controversial attorney general nomination and delayed spending bills coming to the table this week. Recommendation and consent of the Judiciary Committee, under Graham’s supervision. placed a Supreme Court justice Eight days before the 2020 Election. Future fights will tell us whether he is dead or not.

The fourth is combat power, which is a real matter of life and death. When is the USA? Participated in Israel’s attacks on Iran This February, the Senate never debated a mandate, and Graham was the loudest voice insisting there was no need to bother. Now Trump openly threaten Seize the Strait of Hormuz if diplomacy fails.

Ukraine hangs in the same balance: Graham was Kiev’s fiercest Republican champion. stand next to President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy the day before he died, but there is no successor in sight as Trump continues to support the Russian President Vladimir Putin By refusing to send weapons to Ukraine. Whether the two-party Ukraine bloc survives will reveal whether an independent senate foreign policy still exists.

Fifth is the voters. South Carolina holds a special election this fall. Four Republicans – susan collins, Mitch McConnell, Lisa Murkowski And Thom Tillis — have so far refused to yield to Trump on voting rights, and now each of them will be worked on with every weapon or gift Trump can use. Whether they hold, and whether voters reward or punish backbone, will shape the Senate for a generation.

The framers designed the Senate to check the power of presidents; they trusted that senators would protect the prerogatives of their institution from pure self-interest, if nothing more noble. Graham abandoned the principled stances of his time and spent a decade proving them wrong. John McCainHe is a citizen of and has instead adopted complete obedience to Trump’s every whim.

This week, the Republican senators who praised him will decide whether his career is an aberration or a template for their individual futures. They can preserve the filibuster, restart fact-checking, restore combat power, and stand with Ukraine. Or they could end up turning the world’s largest gathering of deliberators into a pathetic cheering section overseeing the dissolution of the world’s oldest democracy.

Americans should be searching their senators’ phone lines this week to make it clear what kind of Senate they expect, and this time Lindsey Graham won’t be there to decide for them.

Thom Hartmann is a four-time Project Censored Award winner, a New York Times bestselling author of more than 30 books, and America’s number one progressive talk radio host for over a decade.

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