[1]U.S. Senator Chris Murphy

Yesterday, The New York Times wrote a piece about how Senator Murphy is leading in this moment. He understands the stakes and urgency of this constitutional crisis, and he is not holding back.

It’s a good and important article, so we wanted to make sure you got the chance to read it.

-Team Murphy

Chris Murphy Emerges as a Clear Voice for Democrats Countering Trump
By Annie Karni

As Senator Chris Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, sat seething in his office last month watching President Trump blame diversity requirements at the Federal Aviation Administration for the deadly plane crash over the Potomac River, members of his staff warned him against publicly venting his rage.

The midair collision had happened less than 12 hours earlier, they reminded him; bodies were still in the water and families were still being notified about the deaths of loved ones. Perhaps it would be more befitting of a U.S. senator to be respectful of the tragedy and all of its unknowns, rather than seize the political moment and respond?

Mr. Murphy had no time for that.

“Everybody in this country should be outraged that Donald Trump is standing up on that podium and lying to you — deliberately lying to you,” he said in an impassioned video he recorded and posted within 30 minutes of Mr. Trump’s news conference. “Every single senator and member of Congress should call him out for how disgraceful it was.”

Many did, but none managed to do so quite as quickly or concisely as Mr. Murphy, 51, who has seemed to be everywhere, all at once, since Inauguration Day, staging a loud and constant resistance to Mr. Trump at a time when Democrats are struggling to figure out how to respond to him.

Mr. Murphy, a career politician who rose to national prominence as a gun safety advocate after the 2012 Sandy Hook elementary school shooting in Newtown, Conn., has emerged in the opening weeks of Mr. Trump’s second term as one of the most effective Democratic communicators pushing back against a president unbound.

In two-minute videos on social media, which he records from his office on Capitol Hill; an almost constant stream of posts on X; passionate floor speeches; and essays he writes on his Substack, Mr. Murphy is attempting to explain in digestible sound bites that what is happening in Washington is very simple: It’s a billionaire takeover of American democracy.

[…] He is also seizing a political opportunity to position himself as a future national leader for Democrats who find themselves deep in the wilderness as they seek a strategy for simultaneously rebuilding their party and resisting Mr. Trump.

“It’s an overwhelming moment,” Mr. Murphy said in an interview on Wednesday in his office on Capitol Hill. “Our political brand is fundamentally broken, the rule of law is disintegrating and a lot of people still don’t know what Trump’s actual agenda is.”

[…] “My 16-year-old son for the first time, he said to me, ‘What’s going on? My friends are seeing your stuff,’” Mr. Murphy said. “I’m showing up on a 16-year-old’s TikTok feed.”

That is one of his current metrics of success.

“People are trying to understand this moment,” he said. “They’re looking for people who can explain it in terms that are pretty simple. I want to create explanations and content that get sent to people that are not reading and thinking about politics every day, but know something is screwy and want to understand it.”

[…] For a decade, the issue of gun violence has defined Mr. Murphy’s career; the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School took place a month after he won his Senate seat, having served in the House since 2007. For years, he has been haranguing his colleagues to go out and run on the issue of gun safety, because he thinks it is a winning electoral issue that politicians are scared to touch.

After the pandemic, he dove into the issue of loneliness, calling it an epidemic and “one of the most important political issues of our time.”

But for now, those issues are all on the back burner.

“Nothing matters other than the question of whether or not we let the billionaires destroy our democracy,” he said. “There’s a ticking time bomb inside our body politic right now. It’s very possible this thing could be completely rigged by the summer or fall of this year.”

So Mr. Murphy has decided to set his hair on fire to get people to pay attention. He is on YouTube, doing interviews with Mr. Minaj and political influencers like Brian Tyler Cohen, Mehdi Hassan and Jack Cocchiarella. He is on Substack, talking to Anand Giridharadas. He is on TikTok talking to Aaron Parnas. And he is wherever you get your podcasts, talking to Jon Favreau.

[…] Mr. Schumer, who has come in for criticism from some progressive activists for failing to effectively respond to Mr. Trump, has been encouraging him to keep going.

“Chris Murphy’s frustration and anger at what Trump is doing is genuine and he has a unique, strong, and incredibly valuable way of pushing back,” he said.

[…] His party’s devastating 2024 losses, coupled with Mr. Trump’s blatant abuses of his authority, have made Mr. Murphy rethink a conventional approach to politics. These days, he has been meeting with his Senate colleagues to persuade them that this is not a time to play by any old political rules.

“They do not deserve the benefit of the doubt,” he has told other Democrats of Mr. Trump and Republicans. “They are deliberately hiding what they are doing so that responsible, thoughtful, fact-based people will say nothing.”

When Elon Musk made a straight-armed gesture on Inauguration Day that drew comparisons to a Nazi salute, Mr. Murphy was not among those wringing his hands about misinterpreting it.

“It was absolutely a ‘Heil’ — a Hitler salute,” he said. “Their pattern of lying allows us to assume the worst.”

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👋An important request before you click away…

Chris Murphy is at the forefront of Democrats’ efforts to fight back against Donald Trump and Elon Musk. He’s trying to model the kind of leadership you deserve from your elected officials in this moment and inspire his colleagues to join him.

It’s a tough fight that requires his full attention. Small-dollar donations ensure he can give 100% of his time to this effort. Anything you can give makes a difference.

Please consider making a donation to support Senator Murphy’s leadership and work in the Senate. Our movement is powered by people. We don’t take a dime from PACs or corporations — because Chris refuses to be beholden to corrupt interests and billionaires who profit off the status quo at our expense.

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