A Brief History of the Senate Rule That Silenced Elizabeth Warren

Rule XIX—the suddenly infamous Senate edict that Republicans invoked Tuesday night to silence Elizabeth Warren—began 115 years ago with a fistfight in the Capitol.

In February 1902, the Senate was debating a treaty to annex the Philippines when Senator Benjamin “Pitchfork Ben” Tillman became infuriated that his fellow South Carolina Democrat and onetime close friend, John McLaurin, had switched his position to join Republicans in supporting the accord. McLaurin, Tillman raged, had succumbed to “improper influences”; Republicans had showered him with perks and privileges, Tillman charged, and he had caved in return.

A former South Carolina governor whose for being a white supremacist who advocated until his death the lynching of black people who tried to vote. Back then, he was known for his outspokenness and his “less than courteous” manner of debating in the Senate. Alerted to Pitchfork Ben’s comments, an incensed McLaurin “dashed into the Senate chamber and denounced Tillman's statement as ‘a willful, malicious, and deliberate lie,’” . Tillman responded by physically attacking McLaurin “with a series of stinging blows,” the historians wrote, and efforts to separate the brawling Southerners “resulted in misdirected punches landing on other members.”