A week into Republican U.S. President Donald Trump’s second term in the White House, high-profile advocates with close ties to the Democratic Party expressed frustration at congressional Democrats’ response to the slew of unconstitutional, xenophobic, and bigoted executive actions already unleashed by Trump.
“Democrats in Congress: WHAT IS THE PLAN?” Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action, demanded to know on Monday.
Watts cited Trump’s purge of at least 12 inspectors general at federal agencies on Friday—an action that was met with outrage from Democratic lawmakers including Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), but little in the way of specific action from party leaders.
“There’s no sit-in? No filibuster? No direction to voters? And in fact, some of you are actually voting for Trump’s agenda?” asked Watts, an apparent reference to Democrats such as Sens. John Fetterman (D-Pa.), Tim Kaine (D-Va.), and Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), who voted in favor of some of the president’s Cabinet nominees and the anti-immigration Laken Riley Act, the first bill to be sent to Trump’s desk, last week.
Watts suggested in a series of posts on the social media platform X that she has typically been aligned with the Democratic establishment, calling herself a “loyal ‘normie Dem.'”
Leah Greenberg, a former Democratic congressional staffer who co-founded the grassroots advocacy group Indivisible, said the group’s members across the country are sharing the same “exact sentiment” as Watts.
In addition to Trump’s mass firing of officials tasked with overseeing federal agencies, the president in the week pardoned more than 1,500 people who were convicted or charged in the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021; launched an immigration enforcement crackdown in Chicago; and issued an executive order revoking birthright citizenship—an action that was swiftly blocked by a federal judge who said the order with “blatantly unconstitutional.”
As Common Dreamsreported last week, Democrats’ refusal to aggressively stand against the GOP, which now controls both chambers of Congress as well as the White House, has frustrated progressive lawmakers including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.).
Last week she told Jon Stewart on his podcast, “The Weekly Show,” that the entire Democratic Party must differentiate itself from the GOP by becoming unapologetic “brawlers for the working class”—but suggested that with many Democrats taking donations from corporate lobbyists and the ultrarich and trading stocks in numerous industries, it’s the party must make major changes to remake itself as one that fights for working people, many of whom swung to the right in the November elections.
Watts highlighted Ocasio-Cortez’s speech on the House floor last week when she opposed the Laken Riley Act—a bill that would require immigration officers to detain undocumented immigrants who are accused of theft, including shoplifting, and allow state attorneys general to file legal challenges to detain specific immigrants—as “the energy we need.”
In her speech, the congresswoman pointed to members of Congress who take donations from the private prison companies that will inevitably be “flooded with money” as the federal government looks to detain undocumented immigrants swept up in raids.
The Laken Riley Act passed in the House with the support of 46 Democrats who joined the GOP, and in the Senate with 12 Democrats joining the Republicans.
As the bill headed to Trump’s desk, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) on Sunday garnered scorn by wrapping up the president’s first week in office with a message one critic likened to “thoughts and prayers.”
“This is what the Democrats have after a week of historic racism, homophobia, illegality, and fascism by the Trump regime,” said civil rights attorney Scott Hechinger. “Here’s the leader of the opposition party just leaving it to God.”
Watts, Greenberg, and Ezra Levin, who also co-founded Indivisible, called on voters to put pressure on their representatives to act as a true opposition party and, as Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memowrote last week, “focus in on making [Republicans’] unpopular actions as painful as possible” for the GOP.
As an example, Marshall warned that Democrats are attempting to “court” Republicans who could vote against Trump’s nominees by tempering their criticism of the potential Cabinet members.
“Far from courting potential defectors, they should be attacking them,” Marshall wrote. “The criticisms of the bad nominees should be as intense as possible and all focused on the support of these senators. No one does you a favor in these settings for being nice: Senators defect when they think they may pay a price at the ballot box. That is the only way to have messaging that takes the initiative and stays on the attack. If things get too hot and the senator pulls their support, great. If not, that just lays the groundwork for beating that senator in the next election.”
“The job of the opposition is quite literally to oppose,” he added. “Get to it.”
Greenberg emphasized Monday that calling Democratic lawmakers and demanding that they stop “cowering in terror from Trump” will make a difference.
“It would be really cool if we had a party of principled and authentic leaders capable of acting like an opposition party without us constantly yelling at them,” said Greenberg. “We do not have that right now! So we need to keep yelling at them!”
Levin reported that, contrary to claims by the corporate media, voters across the country are eager to fight the Trump agenda, and to demand that Democratic lawmakers join them.
“At the Chicago Indivisible meeting I joined yesterday, they filled the theater and an overflow room,” said Levin. “In North Carolina where Leah Greenberg was yesterday, it was standing room only. We’ve had ~250 *new* Indivisible groups form since the election, and leaders report surging membership.”
Republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).