PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) — For a second weekend in a row, protestors are calling on Rhode Island Senators Jack Reed and Sheldon Whitehouse to take every action possible in the U.S. Senate to halt the confirmation of President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee.
Sunday afternoon’s rally started at Burnside Park and from there demonstrators marched to the federal courthouse where the senators’ Providence offices are located.
“Everything we hold dear, every value and right is on the line,” former state representative Aaron Regunberg said.
Signs were propped against the courthouse outlining steps to halt the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett. This includes speaking at length, objecting to routine consent agreements, motions to adjourn, and recess.
In a joint statement released last weekend, the senators said they “will work uphill and seize the moral high ground to advance equality and opportunity for all. We will continue marching down the trail she and others have blazed to achieve enduring progress. We will seek and demand justice. We will stick to our principles and do what is right. And together, we will prevail.”
At Sunday’s rally, Regunberg pushed more than a dozen specific procedural strategies that could be used to fight the confirmation.
“We are here to keep pushing them and supporting them to say is they will do so by any means necessary. We need folks to be taking every potential option including the fifteen we are sharing today,” he said.
Patricia Ricci and Nancy Green both attended last Sunday’s protest and have written letters to Senators Reed and Whitehouse.
“What’s even more heinous is people are voting in the United States right now and for them to appoint a new justice and vote on a new justice during an election process in inapprehensible,” Ricci said.
“I think this time requires extraordinary courage, very far out of what normal politicians feel is affective. I think it’s going to require maybe politicians to risk their careers because I think the stakes are that high,” Green said.
Senate Republicans will move forward with Barrett’s nomination with confirmation with confirmation hearings in the Judiciary Committee on October 12.