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Indivisibles,

This is the first monthly newsletter since we welcomed Lila Sara Levin to
the world at the end of March! As always, you won’t see fundraising in
this newsletter, but hopefully you’ll get some useful insights into what
the hell is happening in Washington right now. I got a lot of responses to
my last newsletter, and with all the developments in the last week on the
MAGA Default Crisis, now’s the time for an update on what we’re hearing
from our partners on Capitol Hill and the White House, intel on messaging,
and the strategy to get out of this mess. Most importantly of course,
you’ve got to make it to the end to see the new baby photos. 

Quick review of how we got here

If you’ve been ignoring the whole MAGA Default Crisis thing this year,
don’t feel bad -- lots of folks have been. If you feel like you’ve got a
good sense of how we got here, skip to the next section. If you need a
refresher, I’ll make it fast-ish:

The stakes: Earlier this year, the Federal Reserve announced the country
would default on its debt unless congress acted soon, with a deadline
around June. The cost of failing to act would be a massive global economic
catastrophe according to nonpartisan economic experts (e.g. [ [link removed] ]see this
recent report from Moody’s).

The Democratic position: Biden and the Democrats said, “we shouldn’t go
into default.” This is the normal, sane position that Congress has always
taken throughout all of American history.

The Republican position: First McCarthy and the GOP said, “we’ll drive the
country into default unless you slash Social Security and Medicare." Then,
thanks to strategic work by Indivisibles and others in key places and some
epic trolling from President Biden during the State of the Union, they
panicked and back-tracked. Then they shifted to, “we’ll drive the country
into default unless you make a lot of unspecified-yet-huge budget cuts
that we ourselves can’t agree on yet.” Regardless of your political
ideology, this is incredibly irresponsible.

Three updates in the last two weeks: For a couple months, there was
essentially no change. Republicans irresponsibly courted disaster without
even explicitly naming their demands, and Democrats maintained a clear
anti-default position. Then we got three major updates in the last two
weeks:

 1. The GOP spelled out its demands for releasing the hostage. Republicans
finally passed a bill specifying what cuts they want ([ [link removed] ]coverage
here). It includes massive cuts to education, teachers’ jobs,
healthcare for seniors and disabled kids, as well as (of course!) big
tax cuts for their donors. They are just incorrigible. 
 2. We got a June 1st deadline. Earlier this week, the Treasury Department
announced an updated deadline after which the U.S. will officially
default on its debt: June 1st ([ [link removed] ]see here). This deadline may get
moved back a bit -- it’s always a moving target -- but this new
estimate lit a fire under Congress to at least try to move quickly. 
 3. Dems revealed a strategy to force McCarthy to give up the hostage. The
day after we got the new deadline, Dems revealed a cool strategy known
as a “discharge petition” to force McCarthy’s hand ([ [link removed] ]see the scoop
in the New York Times here). [ [link removed] ]The details are boring, but it
essentially allows Dems to force a vote on a clean bill to avoid
default if we get all Democrats and just 5 House Republicans to sign
their name to it (so far, zero have).

Where we stand: At this point, our side is (mostly) aligned that there
should be a clean default prevention bill. Their side is (mostly) aligned
around a lot of cuts or default if they don’t get their way. And we’re
careening toward a June 1st-ish deadline. If we fail to win the fight,
we’ll see a global economic meltdown and immediate and drastic cost
increases for everyday Americans when the US defaults on its debt for the
first time in history. The outcome of this MAGA-made crisis will hinge on
which side's coalition holds stronger as we head into this end game over
the next few weeks. We live in interesting times.

Messaging for this moment

I got a lot of responses to my last newsletter asking for advice on how
best to talk about this issue to disinterested or skeptical audiences
(often friends and family members!). I have good news -- we’ve partnered
with some top-tier pollsters to identify the messages that work the best
for the most number of people. In this section I want to start with what
we’re up against with the GOP messaging strategy, and then I’ll cover how
we should respond.

The GOP messaging strategy: McCarthy and the GOP are attempting a slick
messaging move right now. The actual question right now is whether the US
pays its debts. Period. End of story. But the GOP knows they’ll lose the
debate if that’s the question, because a vanishingly small minority of
Americans want the US to refuse to pay its debts. So instead, the GOP
messaging strategy is to try to make this fight about future spending,
with such a long list of demanded cuts that it’s hard to focus the public
on the unpopularity of any single proposal. 

This is a smart strategy because a debate about future spending is, well,
debatable. I’m not going to agree with McCarthy on his proposed cuts (and
in fact most Americans don’t -- see our messaging below), but reasonable
people can disagree on the right level and type of spending that should be
in the US budget. By introducing and passing a bill in the House that
makes a ton of cuts, they shift to an argument about whether or not
government spending should be cut. That is far more favorable ground for
them than whether or not we should implode the economy by defaulting on
our debt. It’s an intentional and effective messaging strategy.

Our messaging strategy: This debate is playing out in public, and to win
that, we have to come with the best messaging to rebut the bogus GOP
claims and defeat their strategy. Let me make two notes before I get to
our specific messaging guidance:

* We focus on the target audience. I am not the target audience for our
messaging and neither are you. You and I both follow politics closely
and have a firm opinion about Kevin McCarthy and the GOP. I love that
about us. But we are not persuadable, and that means we are not the
target audience. Importantly, your most bitterly pro-MAGA relative or
neighbor is also not the target audience. We’re not going to convince
Cousin Bob on this -- we can still love him, but we’re not winning his
support here. We have to use the most convincing message for the
largest number of people in order to win over the public to our side.
* We use data, not hunches. Everybody’s got an opinion on messaging. I
have several. But I am not a pollster and Indivisible is not a
messaging shop. Not only that, but because I am not the target
audience (see #1), my hunches very well may be off. So Indivisible’s
role here is to work with the data nerds who are experts, and then we
translate their polling and messaging data into actionable information
for Indivisibles to use around the country. 

Everything I am going to tell you in this section is not my opinion --
it’s taken directly from the private polling memos of our national
partners who we are working hand-in-glove on this fight. Specifically,
these recommendations come from an in-depth poll of a representative
sample of Americans that we received a couple days ago. Hopefully that
gives you confidence in these top takeaways:

* Always keep the focus on what’s at stake: defaulting on the debt. The
technical mechanism for preventing a default is “raising the debt
ceiling,” but if we just ask people whether or not they want to raise
the debt ceiling, we lose the debate. People generally don’t know what
that means, and it sounds vaguely bad -- like you’re agreeing to
wasteful spending. But if we instead frame the issue as a choice
between raising the debt ceiling or defaulting on the national debt,
we win the debate handily. So always remember: This is about default
on the debt. We don’t want to; the other side is threatening to.
* Slashing funding for teachers and schools, and cutting Medicaid for
disabled kids and seniors. Of everything in the GOP bill, the two
least popular things are cuts to education and healthcare. The GOP
bill eliminates 108,000 teachers’ jobs, taking away educational
support for 32 million kids in the country. It would also put
healthcare of 21 million people in jeopardy by slashing Medicaid,
including seniors in nursing homes and children with disabilities.
These should be our leading arguments against this proposal -- we
should repeat, repeat, repeat until they become as well known as the
earlier attempt to cut Social Security and Medicare.

We try to keep it simple, and those are the biggest takeaways. If you
really want additional talking points, there are some others that scored
high for us. The bill hikes heating bill costs for seniors and families,
sticking them with a 20% higher heating bill next winter. It also directly
produces more hungry children and families, cutting food assistance for
400,000 people.

Maybe some of these land better with you than others. Maybe none of them
strike you as the most persuasive. What I can tell you is this: As of this
week, and with the most current and comprehensive data we have available
to us, these are the most convincing messages for this fight.

How this is going to play out and what we can do

If all we need is 5 House Republicans to side with sanity, why isn’t this
a done deal? Well, because there are not yet 5 House Republicans willing
to side with sanity. Currently, right-wingers, big business, and
conservative groups are backing McCarthy’s hostage taking, [ [link removed] ]as the
Washington Post reported this week.

Our allies are asking for help. We have been meeting all week with our
allies in the Senate, House, and White House. They have a clear message:
They need help from the grassroots. They need local pressure on the
Republicans to fracture their coalition; they want local support for Dems
who are under attack by a massive rightwing propaganda operation. We have
shared with them the excellent targeted actions from Indivisible groups in
just the last week:

* [ [link removed] ]In Scottsdale, AZ -- Indivisible Arizona partnered with Honest AZ
and Vets Forward to rally outside of GOP Representative David
Schweikert's and push him to stop siding with Kevin McCarthy and
Marjorie Taylor Greene and release the hostage.
* [ [link removed] ]In New Hartford, NY -- Indivisible Mohawk Valley first shamed GOP
Representative Brandon Williams into holding a town hall, and then
protested outside and inside that town hall, accurately accusing the
Congressman of siding with Kevin McCarthy over veterans in his own
district.  

Indivisible is out there in front because we’ve been preparing for this
for months -- long before it was in the headlines! Our congressional and
White House partners love this. They’re asking for more of it this month
-- whatever the movement can produce. They think it’s they key to breaking
through the logjam. And it’s why they are watching closely to see what
comes of our week of action later this month, May 19-26th. If you want to
be part of that push, [ [link removed] ]find a way to get involved here. If that makes
you nervous and you need more info, check out [ [link removed] ]our new toolkit here --
all the background and additional messaging support you could ask for.

Keep the conversation going

One of my main questions when I write a newsletter is, “how useful was
that, and how could I make it more useful?” My goal isn’t just to educate;
it’s to drive real world action -- everything from encouraging folks to
start conversations to leading a local event during the national week of
action. And I’m trying to improve. So my one-click survey question this
week is this:  

Reflecting on this monthly newsletter, which of these changes or additions
would you most appreciate for your own real-world use of this?

[ [link removed] ]Short video version

[ [link removed] ]Audio version/podcast

[ [link removed] ]Short version with takeaways

[ [link removed] ]Virtual discussion space

[ [link removed] ]Sharable social media versions

[ [link removed] ]More baby photos

[ [link removed] ]Something else!

Just one click will give me some helpful information, but if you’ve got a
minute to provide more input, each of the links above will automatically
take you to a form to share more thoughts. It can take me the full month,
but I do always read all the responses before I write the next newsletter!
That’s how I decided to focus on messaging in this newsletter, so I very
much appreciate any thoughts you have here!

Until next time

I’ll bet that we’re going to go through a few more twists and turns before
this is all over. But there are more of us than there are of them. Their
coalition is weak. The public does not support their positions and will
not reward their brinksmanship and hostage-taking. We have the moral high
ground and the strategic upper hand. And we are better organized. If we do
the work to assert our power, we will win. So let’s go win.

In solidarity,
Ezra 

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PS: Indivisible fam, you made it through a long one this time! I’ll double
up on the pics this time. Let me present you our IndivisiBaby #2 -- Lila
Sara Levin! She and momma Leah are doing great. I don’t want to jinx it,
but at 6 weeks old, Lila slept 6.5 consecutive hours last night (!).
Fingers crossed. Writing this now, I’m suddenly and intensely feeling the
passage of time. We started including pictures of Zeke into these
newsletters when he was born because we were just so smitten with him and
wanted to share our joy with the movement that has given so much joy to
us. Two and half years later Zeke’s a comparatively huge little boy,
doting on his tiny little sister Lila. Time flies, but we’re trying to
savor these moments.

[18]Close up photo of Lila

 [19]Photo of Zeke and Lila together

[20]Photo of Ezra holding Lila

[21]Photo of Leah holding Lila

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