3d ago

'What leverage do we have?' Democrats face pressure to fight the Trump agenda

www.npr.org /2025/02/14/nx-s1-5293166/democrats-congress-trump

"I'm trying to figure out what leverage we actually have," House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., said at a press briefing this month. "What leverage do we have? Republicans have repeatedly lectured America — they control the House, the Senate and the presidency. It's their government."

I'm going to go a bit out on a limb here and say that you should be out there, constantly emphasising that 'it's their government', day in, and day out, on every news channel that will have you, including left-wing stalwarts like TYT and more centrist rags like MSNBC, and pair that with "this is what you voted for when you voted third party or stayed home, to say nothing of directly voting for this mess," and "Vote Democrat between now and 2026 and we'll hold this administration accountable, " and "We will use every tool in our toolbox to slow this down, including every parliamentary trick we can find to gum up the works in both the House and Senate, as well as the simplest act of voting NO on everything that comes out of this administration. The GQP has enough votes to do this on their own, so we're not helping them, one bit. We don't help people that think of us as baby-eating, baby-fucking Satan worshippers, and we especially don't help the dismantling of the US system of government!"

But that's just me. And yes, I'd totally be calling them the 'GQP' and calling out their bullshit opinions of people on my side of the political aisle. Enough going high. It's time to call them out for what they are. Idiots with a hefty dose of asshattery on the side.

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We've seen the GOP weaponize the filibuster at every available opportunity; the fact that the dems are letting anything pass without doing the same is irritating to me. The time to respect decorum is long past, but they don't seem to have gotten the memo on that.
- Have the Republicans proposed any bills yet that the Dems could filibuster? ~~Confirmation votes for Trump's nominees are not subject to the filibuster and require only a majority vote.~~
  
  Nominations are subject to the filibuster, unless articles like this one stating that a vote was needed to break a filibuster on Kristi Noem's nomination are all incorrect?

This is just hilarious, when dems control all 3 branches, they can't do anything cause the minority repubs block them constantly....yet when the repubs control all 3, dems magically have no power.

"I'm trying to figure out what leverage we actually have," House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., said at a press briefing this month.
It is wild to see him just stand up there and admit he's got no ideas for how to deal with this situation that he's known was coming since November (and should have known was coming since the convention over the summer). Like, even if he believes there's literally nothing he can do, just straight up admitting he's useless and implicitly telling everyone to look somewhere else for resistance is an awful way to rally out supporters and keep people engaged, which is exactly what we need to be doing right now.
We've got more important things to tell people right now about things Congress and the White House are going to be attempting soon, but eventually we also really need to be connecting with Jeffries' voters and making sure they understand that this blank check for Republicans is what they voted for when they supported him in primary votes and helping them understand that the country really can't afford this kind of lazy incompetence right now.
- And if this was his non-plan, why did he run for minority leader? Was his plan really just to ride out the next two years doing nothing and wait until a majority fell into his lap?
  Democracy is crumbling around us while a fascist steals power and destroys the federal government and the minority leader is basically a non-entity.

There are also the courts
https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/06/supreme-court-strikes-down-chevron-curtailing-power-of-federal-agencies/
This decisions stated agencies like fcc cannot make their own rules, they have to be written in law.
The agency musk is in charge of only has a mandate to make our government websites work.
We should be hearing about new lawsuits every hour.

They could always try something, and if it doesn't work, try something else. Sitting around waiting for the ideal solution is just making it harder.

In one breath, they'll say that they have no leverage while they're sending out fundraising emails to send money so we can fight.

You have us, jam the people standing with you in there like a crowbar and let's pry these motherfuckers out there.

Translation: we can't get the billionaires back on our side, they've gone all in with the new regime.

...and pair that with "this is what you voted for when you voted third party or stayed home, to say nothing of directly voting for this mess,"
Lol, if that's the approach the Dems are going to go with, I hope you loooove the current Republican regime. Attempting to shame people into voting for you is not likely to win much support.

Did they change how the filibuster works? Used to be as simple as an email, but I guess only Democrats (when in the majority) are dumb enough to agree to that.

Budget, March 14th.
- Fun fact: March 14 is the 53rd day of this Trump administration.
  IYKYK

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