The majority Republicans in the officially non-partisan Nebraska Legislature adopted new rules on Tuesday intended to make it easier to break an ongoing filibuster aimed at stopping a bill banning gender-affirming treatments for minors.
The new rules reduce how often senators can ask to pause debate, send a bill back to a committee. or indefinitely postpone discussion from an unlimited number of times to just once on each type of motion per day, per round of debate.
Rules Committee Chairman Steve Erdman of Bayard, who spent much of yesterday’s debate complaining about how many bills have been bottled up, said he thinks it’s a fair rule change so there can be full and fair debate on the bills as presented.
Omaha Senator Machaela Cavanaugh has filibustered every bill reaching the floor for over 3 weeks and was joined in that effort last week by Megan Hunt, also of Omaha.
After the rule change was passed, they said they would continue to find ways to slow down the lawmaking process, regardless of what tools the majority limits, and they made good on the threat by day’s end.
They and Danielle Conrad of Lincoln each filed 742 motions on the bills that have come out of committee, taking up each of the three slots senators have under the new rules to file priority motions. They promised to do so on every bill that reaches the floor.
Hunt said “We are blowing up this session. The session is over, and it’s on your terms (because) hating trans kids is more important to you than the rest of this session – human rights are hanging by a thread.”
Senator Edrman’s process of simultaneously suspending and changing the rules drew criticism from several senators that the existing rules required the Rules Committee to hold a public hearing as well as for separate votes to suspend the rules and change them.
Erdman said the changes were close enough to ones discussed at an earlier hearing, so another one wasn’t needed, adding that as committee chairman he would know if his procedure violated the existing rules.
Great! Go Erdman! Keep it honest.
It’s a shame that the two women from Omaha can stop state govenment from occurring because they cannot get there way because they think that their twisted way of thinking should be imposed on the citizens of Nebraska.
Buncha hypocrites. Like they don’t use it all the time. I guess it’s ok when they do it but when the opposition does it suddenly become a problem.
The GOP can’t win anything without cheating. Looking forward to the day when the old Republicans age out and Gen Z makes the whole party a thing of the past.
It is apparent that you haven’t been paying attention to why they are acting so brave. If you think forcing parents to ‘your’ point of view isn’t twisted then pray tell, what is? It isn’t any of YOUR business what treatment trans youth should get or did I miss your medical degree and those of some of the other senators? The bill is nasty – prevents kids from getting any help they need. NO, they don’t mutilate or do surgery on youth (other than circumcision) that changes the body image.