Shutting Down Speech by Elizabeth Warren, G.O.P. Amplifies Her Message.

Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, in the Capitol on Wednesday.

WASHINGTON — Republicans seized her microphone. And gave her a megaphone.

Silenced on the Senate floor for condemning a peer, Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, emerged on Wednesday in a coveted role: the avatar of liberal resistance in the age of Trump.

Late on Tuesday, Senate Republicans voted to halt the remarks of Ms. Warren, already a lodestar of the left, after she criticized a colleague, Senator Jeff Sessions, the nominee for attorney general, by reading a letter from Coretta Scott King.

Instantly, the decision — led by Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, who invoked a rarely enforced rule prohibiting senators from impugning the motives and conduct of a peer — amplified Ms. Warren’s message and further inflamed the angry Senate debate over Mr. Sessions’ nomination. He is expected to be confirmed later on Wednesday.


In the meantime, some of her peers from the Democratic caucus, including Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Senator Tom Udall of New Mexico, have read Mrs. King’s letter without facing any objection, prompting some activists to raise charges of sexism.

Ms. Warren’s moment swiftly rekindled the gender-infused politics that animated the presidential election and the women’s march protesting Mr. Trump the day after his inauguration last month. For her supporters it was the latest and most visceral example of a woman silenced by men who do not want to listen.

The subsequent explanation from Mr. McConnell — “She was warned, she was given an explanation, nevertheless, she persisted” — seemed made for a future Warren campaign ad. After an unsuccessful effort to draft her for the 2016 presidential race, she is considered a very early front-runner in 2020, should she choose to run. 

                         

Asked about a letter that Coretta Scott King wrote regarding Jeff Sessions in 1986, the White House press secretary said he “would respectfully disagree with her assessment of Senator Sessions then and now.”

Mr. McConnell’s coda has already been repurposed as a sort of rallying cry. Across social media, Ms. Warren’s allies and supporters posted “#ShePersisted,” calling to mind some Democrats’ embrace of the term “nasty woman” after Mr. Trump deployed it to describe Hillary Clinton during a debate. Appearing with Mrs. Clinton in New Hampshire in October, Ms. Warren reminded Mr. Trump that “nasty women vote.”


Ms. Warren has long displayed an instinct for capitalizing on highly visible fights. After she was barred from speaking on the Senate floor late Tuesday, she began reading the 1986 letter from Mrs. King on Facebook. By Wednesday afternoon, the video had attracted more than seven million views. In the letter, Mrs. King, the widow of Martin Luther King Jr., took aim at Mr. Sessions’ record on civil rights as a United States attorney in Alabama, saying he had used “the awesome power of his office to chill the free exercise of the vote by black citizens.”

On Wednesday morning in a conference room in the Capitol — the rule only prohibits Ms. Warren from speaking about the nomination from the Senate floor — Ms. Warren addressed civil rights leaders, recounting her long night.

“What hit me the hardest was, it is about silence,” she said. “It’s about trying to shut people up. It’s about saying, ‘No, no, no, just go ahead and vote.’”

She went on.

“This is going to be hard,” she said. “We don’t have the tools. There’s going to be a lot that we will lose. But I guarantee, the one thing we will not lose, we will not lose our voices.”

At a time when Democrats are straining to navigate the early presidency of Mr. Trump, weighing the merits of the blanket opposition that many in their base seem to crave, the latest rancor appeared to raise the likelihood of further confrontation in the Senate chamber.

Some left-leaning groups appeared comfortable with that outcome.


“What the public needs to see from Democrats right now is more backbone and more standing on principle,” said Adam Green, a co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee. “Elizabeth Warren continues to be the model for good behavior.”

--------------------------------------