[[link removed]]

HERE’S WHAT SENATE DEMOCRATS SHOULD BE DOING TO FIGHT TRUMP  
[[link removed]]


 

Aaron Regunberg
February 7, 2025
The New Republic
[[link removed]]


*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

_ Senate rules were explicitly designed to protect the minority.
Democrats should exploit them mercilessly to slow Trump and Musk
before they destroy the country. _

Brian Schatz denounces Trump and Musk dismantling of USAid on the
Senate floor, screen grab

 

On December 3, South Korea’s right-wing President Yoon Suk Yeol
declared martial law and ordered troops to block the opposition party
from gaining entrance to the National Assembly. But the opposition
didn’t blink. They formed human chains and broke through the
barricades. In one iconic confrontation, a lawmaker grappled with a
soldier, grabbing hold of his rifle. Ultimately, lawmakers succeeded
in gaining entrance to the Parliament and voting down the
president’s declaration.

It was an inspiring example of what real, vigorous opposition to
tyranny can look like—and one that did not paint our own opposition
party here in the United States in a very flattering light. While
President Trump has not yet declared martial law, we are beyond a
doubt in a severe crisis: Elon Musk has seized control of the payment
apparatus of the U.S. Treasury—the fundamental vascular system of
our federal government. Recent reporting
[[link removed]] confirmed
that Musk’s 25-year-old henchman, Marko Elez, had direct “read and
write” access to the code of the Bureau of the Fiscal Service’s
payment systems.

This means that a corrupt and entirely unaccountable billionaire is
close to having the power to choose what government bills to pay and
what not to pay. I’m talking about Elon Musk being able to delete
the file that controls your Social Security payments or the payments
to your kid’s Head Start program; to unilaterally shut down an
agency’s funding or cut off all benefits to blue states. It’s an
unimaginably dangerous situation. And unfortunately, Democrats have
been a lot slower in their response to this crisis than their
counterparts in South Korea were.

Part of me understands this reaction. I certainly had a lot of trouble
shaking off my malaise and getting back into action mode following the
election in November. I mean, we already did the #resistance eight
years ago, and, God, was it exhausting. How could we possibly find the
energy to do it all again? What’s more, it wasn’t clear to me what
actions we should be taking—after all, Trump’s return to power
seemed self-evident proof that the resistance failed.

But now that we’re back in the throes of a fascist takeover, it’s
clear that massive noncompliance with that takeover is a hell of a lot
better than despondent resignation. That’s what the resistance
actually accomplished, back in 2016 and 2017: It forced the Democratic
Party to start acting like an actual opposition party.

We need to bring back that energy, and fast. The good news is,
Democratic leaders—under pressure from their constituents, who are
demonstrating and calling in to their representatives’ offices
in record numbers
[[link removed]]—have
begun to intensify their opposition. Their recent all-night stand
against Project 2025 architect Russell Vought, Trump’s pick to head
the Office of Management and Budget, was a great step. And their
increasingly focused messaging on Elon Musk seems to be working, with
his approval rating taking a significant dive
[[link removed]]—more evidence
that actually engaging in adversarial politics works; that publicizing
and opposing the bad things the administration is doing, rather than
preemptively rolling over and giving in, can shift public opinion.

But given the truly unprecedented threat from Musk’s ongoing
takeover of the Treasury, these measures aren’t enough. Democrats
have additional tactics they can, and must, start deploying. As groups
like Indivisible
[[link removed]] have
been highlighting, the U.S. Senate is an institution designed to
protect the rights of the minority party. That means Democratic
senators have an arsenal of procedural tools they should be
weaponizing to disrupt and delay Republicans’ agenda in protest of
Musk’s infiltration of our federal payment systems.

Perhaps the most significant tool Democratic senators could use to
throw sand in the gears is the denial of unanimous consent. Unanimous
consent
[[link removed]] is
the framework by which the Senate operates. Technically, all of the
basic day-to-day functions of the Senate—from scheduling votes to
moving bills forward—require time-consuming procedural steps like
roll-call votes and debates. But senators agree, or unanimously
consent, to skip over these processes. If Democrats deny unanimous
consent, they can grind Senate business to a crawl.

Relatedly, Democratic senators could place a blanket hold on all
nominees moving forward until the crisis at Treasury is resolved.
Senator Brian Schatz has already announced
[[link removed]] he
is putting a hold on all State Department nominations to protest the
flagrantly illegal demolition of USAID. The rest of the caucus should
be joining this action and extending it to all of Trump’s nominees.

Finally, Democrats in the Senate could use quorum calls
[[link removed]] to disrupt
the flow of GOP business. Officially, according to Senate rules,
business can’t be conducted without a majority of senators present
on the Senate floor. Most of the time, nobody asks for a quorum, as
there are rarely a majority of senators on the floor. But any senator
can request a quorum check at any time, making the clerk do a full
roll call of all the senators. If fewer than 51 respond, Senate
business stops until there’s a majority.

To be clear, these aren’t tactics to use for everyday,
run-of-the-mill disputes, and none of them are actual solutions—the
majority can still overcome these strategies eventually. But as
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has argued
[[link removed]], these actions can force
the GOP to “fight for every single step” because “the slower
they go, the less they can break.” This slower pace also gives the
opposition more time to demonstrate Musk’s depravity to the public.

When you’re in a five-alarm fire, you use every possible tool at
your disposal to slow it down. We’ve done our grieving and
spiraling. Now we’ve got to shake the numbness off. Comic-book
supervillains are threatening everything we hold dear, and they want
us to think we’re powerless to stop them. But we’re not. It’s
time for Democratic leaders to start acting like it.

_Aaron Regunberg is a progressive organizer. X
[[link removed]]_

_The New Republic [[link removed]] was founded in 1914 to
bring liberalism into the modern era. The founders understood that the
challenges facing a nation transformed by the Industrial Revolution
and mass immigration required bold new thinking._

_Today’s New Republic is wrestling with the same fundamental
questions: how to build a more inclusive and democratic civil society,
and how to fight for a fairer political economy in an age of rampaging
inequality. We also face challenges that belong entirely to this age,
from the climate crisis to Republicans hell-bent on subverting
democratic governance._

_We’re determined to continue building on our founding mission._

_Sign up [[link removed]] for a TNR
newsletter on politics, climate, culture and more._

* U.S. Senate
[[link removed]]
* Democratic Party
[[link removed]]
* Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
[[link removed]]
* AOC
[[link removed]]
* Donald Trump
[[link removed]]
* Elon Musk
[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

 

 

 

INTERPRET THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT

 

 

Submit via web
[[link removed]]

Submit via email
Frequently asked questions
[[link removed]]
Manage subscription
[[link removed]]
Visit xxxxxx.org
[[link removed]]

Twitter [[link removed]]

Facebook [[link removed]]

 




[link removed]

To unsubscribe, click the following link:
[link removed]