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Indivisibles,

It’s the final day of the Biden presidency and the last day of relative
peace before all hell breaks loose. As we brace for impact, I think the
most helpful thing I can do is try to demystify how national politics is
working in this new reality, and identify concrete steps we can take to
influence things. 

With that in mind, and in the spirit of experimentation, I’m going to try
a new format for this newsletter: I’ll start with a big lesson from the
news this week, and then I’ll follow with a few skimmable nuggets on
heroes, capitulators, news sources, action items, and discussion. [ [link removed] ]Tell
me how you like it.

News of the Week: A Tale of Two Strategies.

In the last week, we’ve seen two different strategies from Dems responding
to MAGA’s divide and conquer strategies: one focused on immigrants and one
focused on trans kids. In one, Dems fractured and capitulated, and in the
other, they unified and fought back. This pair of case studies is
instructive enough that it’s worth telling the full story to extract some
lessons. Let’s dig in.

A case study in capitulation: The anti-immigrant bill is called the Laken
Riley Act, named for the horrific murder of a nursing student. But the
bill was never supposed to become law. A MAGA member introduced the
legislation in 2024 as what’s known as a “messaging bill.” A messaging
bill isn’t about making law; it’s about sending a message. And the message
he and his fellow MAGAs wanted to send with this bill was, “Joe Biden and
Kamala Harris suck and don’t care about immigration”. [ [link removed] ]Read it yourself
if you’d like. 

The substance of the bill is cruel, unworkable, and likely
unconstitutional. It would force the government to imprison immigrants
indefinitely if they are simply accused (not convicted) of a crime. It
threatens Dreamers and other legal immigrants. And it gives MAGA state
officials effective veto power over federal immigration decisions. This
isn’t some non-controversial, commonsense “tough on crime” legislation.
It’s an awful, dysfunctional, unconstitutional mess.

Now, unworkable policy isn’t really an issue for a messaging bill like
this normally, because normally messaging bills don’t get anywhere close
to becoming actual policy. Members of Congress introduce hundreds of
messaging bills like this every year. They introduce the bill, issue a
little press release, get a little attention, raise a little money, and
then move on -- the bill doesn’t go anywhere because it was never intended
to. Such was the destiny of this bill. 

But then Dems lost the White House. Fearful that they are vulnerable on
immigration, 48 House Dems voted for the newly introduced bill in the
House earlier this month. A couple of key Dem Senators -- John Fetterman
and Ruben Gallego -- announced their support. Senate Republicans smelled
blood in the water. They fast-tracked the legislation. This week, only 10
Senate Dems broke with Republicans on whether to allow the legislation to
move forward, clearing the way for a vote on amendments. 

Democrats who voted to open debate on the bill claimed they were just
interested in having good faith negotiations on the bill and improving it.
What actually happened is Republicans rejected all Democratic amendments,
and in fact, included Republican amendments that made the bill even worse.
10 Democrats voted for it anyway. Now the bill will get a final vote in
the Senate and then head back to the House, where Republicans simply need
a majority to send Trump a legislative “win” in his first week.

A case study in contagious courage: This is a shorter, happier story.
House Dems confronted another divide-and-conquer bill with the Orwellian
name, “Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act.” Don’t judge a bill by
its title. Instead of doing anything to make schools actually safer --
like preventing gun violence -- this bill targets trans kids for singling
out and bullying. It would harm all women and girls in schools by
potentially requiring kids to submit to humiliating genital inspections
just to play sports with their friends. 

Bad stuff, right? And given that Republicans ran so many anti-trans ads in
the campaign, you’d think Democrats might be skittish and capitulate here
too, right?

They didn’t. The Dems unified around their own messaging, rebranding the
bill “the Child Predator Empowerment Act.” They lambasted Republicans for
targeting children. And in almost lock-step, Dems voted against the
legislation. While the bill passed the House with Republican votes, it did
not build momentum. No Senate Democrats came out trumpeting support.
Republican Senate leadership shows no signs of fast-tracking this bill.
And as a result, the bill does not have a clear path to becoming law. 

I was talking with some Democratic House Members this week, and they
reported how energized the caucus felt after unifying against the bill --
eager to find more opportunities to fight back like that. Because -- once
again! -- courage is contagious.

Lessons learned: A delay is a win, and we can build on that kind of win.
As we look to the fights to come, we should internalize the lessons from
these early skirmishes. GOP leadership is going to want to move fast. They
want to steamroll Democrats to get as much done as they can, as fast as
possible. It’s a smart strategy when you’re pushing a deeply unpopular
agenda. If they take their time and slow-walk unpopular legislation,
public opposition will build, and it will be harder to pass anything. In
short, the MAGAs want to move fast; we want to go slow. 

Our only chance of going slow is by unifying Dems. The good news is that
when they do that, they feel good about it and want to do more of it.
Courage is contagious and self-replicating. Our job is to help Democrats
find that courage, and then show up to have their backs when they do find
it. 

If you think this is persuasive, consider calling your House Dem and
thanking them -- and telling them you hope to see more of this in the
future. 

With that in mind, let’s hand out some awards:

Courage Caucus Award of the Week: Representative Maxwell Frost.

Frost, the youngest member of the House, brilliantly messaged against the
anti-trans kids bill and helped unify the Dem caucus against it in the
House. If you’re a constituent, here’s his office number to say thanks:
(202) 225-2176. If you’re not a constituent, you can [ [link removed] ]give him some love
on Bluesky here.

[ [link removed] ]Rep. Frost speaking on the House floor with a poster that reads 'The
GOP Child Predator Empowerment Act'

Capitulation Caucus Award of the Week: Senator Chris Coons.

Chris Coons has been an elected official for a quarter century, but he’s
not a flashy guy. If you’ve heard of Coons in the past decade or two, it’s
probably because you read a quote from him praising a Republican or
explaining why Democrats can’t pass legislation. True to form, Coons was
in the [ [link removed] ]news this week praising Senator Katie Britt, the GOP manager of
the anti-immigrant Laken Riley bill. The reason for the praise? She
allowed a vote on an amendment he offered to the bill. The kicker? She and
every Republican voted against amendment, killing it. 

Coons isn’t the worst Democrat in the Senate. Still, I chose him this week
because he exemplifies a pernicious and damning characteristic of some
congressional Dems: prioritizing process over policy. He’s also up for
reelection next year.

If you’re a constituent, here’s his office number if you want to tell him
to get with the program: (202) 224-5042.

News Source of the Week:

Staunch never-Trumper Jen Rubin of the formerly great Washington Post left
the paper this week to form a new media operation, [ [link removed] ]the Contrarian. I’ve
already read some good articles over there -- it’s well worth a
subscription. On a related note, last week, I surveyed Indivisible members
for their favorite pro-democracy news sources and got a ton of
recommendations. I’ve gathered all of those in [ [link removed] ]this Google Doc if
you’re looking for recommendations from the movement.

Indivisible Group of the Week:

Howard County Indivisible (Maryland). I brought our 4yo and 2yo to Howard
County Indivisible for their new member meeting. I watched the kids while
Leah spoke to the group of more than 120, about a third of whom were new
members. Howard County Indivisible is organizing to push their Members of
Congress, but they’re also organizing locally to fight back against
[ [link removed] ]Stephen Miller’s threats against pro-immigrant counties. I found the
[ [link removed] ]group’s charter to be downright inspiring and worthy of replication if
your own Indivisible group is looking for ideas.

Also: Shout out to Indivisible Fairfax for having me at their event in
person last week, and Indivisible Evanston for having me at their virtual
strategy session with around 200 folks! If your Indivisible local or
statewide group would like me or Leah to drop by your member event, let
your organizer know -- we love doing it! 

National Action Item of the Week:

If you’ve got a Dem House member (who isn’t Rep. Cuellar or Rep.
Gonzalez), call them and thank them for voting against the anti-trans kid
bill (H.R. 28)! If they voted against the anti-immigrant bill as well,
thank them for that too! 

Better yet, think about putting together a quick District Office visit
next week to thank House Dems for their courage and urge them to keep it
up when MAGA’s Laken Riley bill heads to a House vote next week. [ [link removed] ]Our
team put together a few quick and dirty ideas to get you started.

Discussion of the Week:

If you missed this past Thursday’s Q&A session with me and Leah, [ [link removed] ]you
can find a recording here. And you can join me and Leah for another
“Bracing for Impact” Q&A discussion this Thursday! We’ll debrief the first
few days of the second Trump term and spend most of the time answering
your questions about strategy, tactics, messaging, and organizing.
[ [link removed] ]Register here.

Request for Money for the Week:

Grassroots dollars fuel grassroots action. In just the last week,
Indivisible has driven tens of thousands of calls and emails to Congress
on the Laken Riley bill and launched the [ [link removed] ]NixTheNoms.org campaign
against Trump’s worst nominees. [ [link removed] ]If you want Indivisible to support
more of this, please consider investing in the movement. We need you and
we need your support to make it happen.

That’s it for this cold and dreary Sunday. In other news, I hear it will
be positively freezing on the National Mall tomorrow. Shame.

In solidarity,
Ezra 

Ezra Levin

[15]Indivisible Co-Executive Director

Pronouns: He/him

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