SUPPORT A PROJECT OF ADVOCACY COMMONS AND DAILY KOS
At 2:30 pm (PT) Monday, January 30, the Senate is scheduled to hold a cloture vote on confirming climate-denying, former Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State. That vote will trigger up to 30 hours of debate on the Senate floor before Senators vote on whether to confirm him.
In addition to being bought and paid for by the oil and gas industry, here is just a sample of why Tillerson is unfit to be our nation’s top ambassador abroad. According to USA Today, he regularly did business with countries under U.S. sanctions for being state sponsors of terror — or even of genocide against their own people:
“ExxonMobil did business with Iran, Syria and Sudan through a European subsidiary while [Tillerson] was a top executive of the oil giant and those countries were under U.S. sanctions as state sponsors of terrorism, Securities and Exchange Commission filings show.”
Democrats do not have the votes to block Tillerson on their own. However, they can expose his corruption during debate in the Senate and can build the narrative of massive resistance to Donald Trump’s agenda by voting against him in historically unprecedented numbers. Since WWII, no Secretary of State nominee has ever received more than 15 “No” votes. We can double that number.
Call your Democratic U.S. senator or senators, urge them not only to oppose Tillerson, but to speak out against him during the Senate debate and use the entire 30 hours of post-cloture debate allotted to them under current U.S. Senate rules. (Even if you don’t know what that means, they will know what that means).
