Sen. Jeff Merkley Unveils 417-Page Bill to Rein In Trump

Let me tell you something. I have four kids, a minivan with 90,000 miles on it, and a group chat that has been on fire for months about what is happening to this country. So when Senator Jeff Merkley stood up and said “authoritarianism isn’t down the street or around the corner, it is here right now,” I didn’t need a political science degree to know he was right. I needed was someone in Washington to finally say it out loud.

And he did. Merkley, a Democrat from Oregon, just dropped the For Our Republic Act, a 417-page, 10-point legislative package aimed at reining in a president who has been operating like the rules don’t apply to him. Because apparently they don’t. Trump fired 17 inspectors general in his first days in office. Seventeen. You try firing one PTA member without a vote and see how that goes. But this president just cleared out the watchdogs and replaced them with his own people, and Congress sat there like a bunch of nodding dashboard bobbleheads.

Here is what Merkley’s bill would actually do, and I read all of it because that is what I do. I do my own research. The For Our Republic Act would protect inspectors general and civil servants from being fired without congressional consent. It would stop the president from clawing back money Congress already appropriated. It would extend bribery and ethics laws to cover the president and vice president, which, honestly, the fact that this is not already the law tells you everything you need to know about who has been writing the rules for the last 250 years.

United States Senate (Public domain) via Wikimedia Commons

It would ban ICE from using facial recognition and other biometric surveillance without a judicial warrant. It would require federal officers to show their badges and identification numbers during enforcement actions. It would restrict the use of unmarked vehicles for arrests. Let me pause on that one. Unmarked vehicles. For arrests. In America. I have told my teenagers what to do if they are pulled over by an unmarked car, and the fact that I now have to give them the same advice about federal agents in their own country makes me want to scream.

The bill also goes after Trump’s Anti-Weaponization Fund, the program set up to compensate January 6 defendants. Your tax dollars. Going to people who stormed the Capitol. I am not making this up. Read it yourself. And it would stop the FCC from yanking broadcast licenses just because a network aired something the president did not like, which is happening right now to ABC stations under Trump’s FCC chairman Brendan Carr.

Merkley held the Senate floor for 22 hours and 37 minutes last October to sound the alarm. That is the third-longest speech in Senate history. I cannot get my kids to sit still for 22 minutes at a dinner table, and this man stood there for nearly a full day talking about how the Constitution is being dismantled in real time.

Shealeah Craighead (Public domain) via Wikimedia Commons

Now here is the part that makes me want to ask for the manager. This bill has almost zero chance of becoming law. Republicans control Congress. Trump has a veto pen. Senator Tammy Duckworth and Senator Richard Blumenthal signed on as cosponsors, and good for them, but three Democrats cannot pass a 417-page bill against a Republican majority that has already decided the president can do whatever he wants.

So what is this really about? Merkley said it himself. He wants a “roadmap” for Democrats to campaign on this fall. And you know what? Fine. Good. At least somebody is writing down the list of things that are broken. But I have been around long enough to know that a roadmap is not a destination, and a press release is not a law.

I have watched this president fire watchdogs, ignore Congress, put his name on buildings and his face on proposals for currency, and treat the Constitution like a suggestion box. I have watched the Supreme Court find “invisible ink” in the Constitution to give him more power, which is Merkley’s phrase and it is perfect. And I have watched Republican senators who spent years lecturing us about fiscal responsibility and limited government suddenly discover that executive power is fine, actually, as long as their guy is the one wielding it.

National Museum of American History (Public domain) via Wikimedia Commons

Every parent I know is exhausted. We are holding it together with school schedules and grocery budgets and screen-time negotiations, and meanwhile the president of the United States is out here acting like a king and half of Congress is holding his coat. Merkley’s bill may not pass. But the next time someone tells you this is all normal, that this is just how politics works, that you are overreacting, remember this: a sitting U.S. senator just wrote 417 pages documenting how your government is being taken apart piece by piece. He would not have done that if there were nothing to worry about.

Read the bill. Then call your senator. And if they are a Republican, ask them why they are okay with all of this. I already know the answer. I just want to hear them say it out loud.