Do Democratic Leaders Think this is Resistance? (#115)
In this edition: Democratic leaders need to stop acting like a loyal opposition and start actually resisting the Trump regime. That means embracing conflict, not defending a broken system, and ceasing to help confirm Trump’s nominees. (Seriously!) Also, how to support Minneapolis and how the Insurrection Act actually works.
Here we go. I’m glad you’re here.
“It might be helpful for you to know that you are not alone. And that in the long, twilight struggle which lies ahead of us, there is the possibility of hope.” “The Long Twilight Struggle.” Babylon 5, created and written by J. Michael Straczynski, Season 2, Episode 20, 1995.
Leading Off
Do our Democratic elected leaders think they are resisting? Are they so wrapped up in the norms of pre-2016 political life that they still are unable to understand why people are so dissatisfied with their leadership?
After all that has happened with the Trump regime’s occupation and terrorization of Minneapolis, Senate Democratic leaders last week distributed talking points that don’t mention ICE or Minneapolis.
No, seriously. Not a mention of what is the most covered—and most morally important—story at the time.
Just got this forwarded. Here are the talking points Schumer's team just emailed out to their allies TODAY - this afternoon. The words "Minnesota" or "ICE" don't appear anywhere here.
— Murshed Zaheed (@murshedz.bsky.social) 2026-01-15T20:52:38.313Z
I realize Democrats want to focus on health care and affordability. I also want them to do so! But we can walk and chew gum at the same time. We can even use our water bottle on this political journey.
It should not be difficult to include the Trump regime’s illegal actions in a story about the failure to fix the affordability problem.
Meanwhile, we also get to experience our Democratic leaders announce their preemptive surrender on the budget debate.
Asked if he's willing to shut down the government over ICE funding, Senator Cory Booker replies: "We had the longest government shutdown, and Democrats could not hold together to sustain that kind of pressure."
— Ken Klippenstein (@kenklippenstein.bsky.social) 2026-01-14T02:55:37.641Z
“Democrats could not hold together to sustain that kind of pressure.” What an inspiring message to share. In public! On television!
It isn’t that Senator Booker (D-NJ) is wrong. It’s just an odd fact to admit. And a really weird way to rally supporters to the cause.
Too many of our Democratic leaders continue to act like it is 1993 and Newt Gingrich hasn’t started destroying our nation’s political norms. They are inadvertently assisting the Trump regime by reinforcing the norms of a system that no longer exists.
Issue #1
- Today’s Democrats and the Problem with a Loyal Opposition: And Why Confusing It with Resistance Is Fatal (Tad Stoermer, Link to Article)
- Zero Chucks Left to Give (Laura Egan, The Bulwark, Link to Article)
- With Democratic support, Senate confirms Trump’s tenth Louisiana district court judge (Patrick McNeil, Nomination Notes, Link to Article)
- Jeffries Won’t Whip Vote Against ICE Funding (David Dayen, The American Prospect, Link to Article)
Resistance historian Tad Stoermer writes about how Democratic leaders are failing to understand the difference between how a loyal opposition and a resistance against an authoritarian regime must respond to events.
A loyal opposition is not the same thing as resistance. They look similar from a distance. Both involve being against whoever’s in power. Both involve showing up, making noise, registering displeasure. But they operate on completely different assumptions about the world, and confusing them has consequences.
A loyal opposition accepts the legitimacy of the system it works within. More than accepts - it reinforces it. Every time a loyal opposition plays by the rules, it signals that the rules are legitimate. Every time it treats its opponents as normal political adversaries, it confirms that normal politics is still happening. Every time it channels energy into approved outlets - vote, donate, call your representative, wait for the next election - it tells everyone watching that those outlets still work. That the system, whatever its flaws, is basically sound.
This dynamic explains so much about the gap between our Democratic elected leaders and people like me who are scared the Trump regime may succeed in its ongoing attempt at authoritarian capture.
The fundraising emails and texts Democrats send signal that we are in the midst of a democratic emergency. But their actions continue to fall short of their rhetoric.
The day after one of her constituents was murdered by an ICE agent, Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN)—and six other members of the Democratic caucus—joined Republicans to vote to confirm a Trump-nominated judicial nominee who would not say whether Trump lost the 2020 election or answer questions related to the January 6, 2021, insurrection.
Senators Durbin, Hassan, Kaine, King, Klobuchar, Shaheen, and Welch voted to confirm a man to a lifetime judicial appointment days after the president who nominated him invaded a foreign country without even giving notice to Congress and the day after federal agents killed a person in the U.S.
— Chris Geidner (@chrisgeidner.bsky.social) 2026-01-08T21:41:24.287Z
The day after ICE killed Renee Nicole Good.
Wouldn’t this have been a great time for Democrats to signal, with one voice, that things are not normal by opposing a lifetime judicial appointment?
Instead, Democrats continue to act like everything is normal, if perhaps a bit weird.
With the Trump regime invading countries, violently occupying U.S. cities, and aggressively going after Greenland by threatening to invade an allied country, elected Democrats continue to act like a spirited policy debate is all we need right now.
Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), for example, spoke at length with The Bulwark’s Laura Egan about how there appears to be a narrow path toward Democrats taking control of the Senate. When asked about the issues the candidates he has recruited will focus on, Schumer replied with a list that would have been featured in elections before 2016.
You will see in the next months, we’re going to be focusing on five buckets. One is housing, one is the high price of food [and] food monopolies playing a major role there. One is electricity. One is the high cost of childcare. And then, of course, health care.
Those are important issues. But nothing about ICE’s brutality. Nothing about the Trump regime’s ongoing corruption.
Egan had to bring up the situation in Minneapolis. Schumer’s reply had a disconnect between the nature of the problem and a Democratic response focused on process.
What ICE is doing just wrenches your stomach. When you see these pictures, that is not a democracy. ICE is out of control. They are not properly trained, they are not properly supervised. And I think America is looking at this and is very upset. People do not like these ICE agents as roaming police forces. And so our appropriators, the Appropriations Committee, is now working on the Homeland Security bill, and they are trying to come up with a bill. Look, Democrats want some real restrictions on ICE. There’s no question about it.
We are waiting for the Appropriations Committee to provide answers when the Senate comes back from its current recess. Seriously? That’s it? That’s the plan while immigrants are terrorized and U.S. citizens are being detained and murdered? I’m surprised the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee hasn’t tried to focus a fundraising email and text campaign based on this rousing message!
Waiting for the Appropriations Committee to act is about as inside baseball as any political move can be.
Meanwhile, when House Democratic Leader Jeffries faced a question about whether Democrats should vote for the bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security—and ICE—he hedged his bets. As the American Prospect’s David Dayen explains:
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) announced in a closed-door meeting on Tuesday that he would oppose the bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for the rest of the fiscal year. But the Democratic caucus is not engaged in a formal whip operation to encourage all members to vote against the bill, which is likely to get a vote on Thursday.
So when it comes to a bill to fund a department that is terrorizing U.S. cities, creating a paramilitary force that ignores several parts of the Bill of Rights, housing people it has incarcerated in deplorable and inhuman conditions, and violating judicial orders, Jeffries isn’t willing to whip a vote against. It’s just not that important.
What Schumer and Jeffries are doing screams that everything is normal. The system will fix itself. This is just a small disagreement within the norms of what our nation has experienced.
But it is absolutely not normal. And the reason many people—including this writer—are so upset and frustrated with Democratic leaders like Senator Schumer and Representative Jeffries is that they are providing legitimacy to the illegal and anti-Constitutional actions of the Trump regime.
Stoermer, the resistance historian, explains what actually needs to happen if Democratic elected officials believe the messages in their fundraising emails and texts.
But here’s the interruption point that matters for today: effective resistance eventually confronts a choice. The legal, permitted channels aren’t working. The petitions are ignored. The courts are captured. And at that moment, the movement either escalates - moves beyond the approved channels - or it dies. American political culture reinforces that interruption point relentlessly. Only certain kinds of protest are acceptable. Don’t be too loud. Don’t be too disruptive. Don’t ask for too much. Don’t become radical. Stay loyal.
The Democratic Party is stuck at that interruption point right now. And worse than stuck - they’re pretending they’re not there. They’re acting like if they just message better, or find the right procedural maneuver, or win the next election, the system will self-correct. Everything will go back to normal with them in charge.
It won’t. The system is working as the people who captured it want it to. The courts have been stacked. The administrative state is gutted. Public media is shattered. The regime is invading sovereign nations and announcing it will run them. And the Democrats are responding with kitchen table issues and fundraising emails about prescription drug prices.
That’s not resistance. That’s a loyal opposition doing what loyal oppositions do - reinforcing the legitimacy of a system that is actively being used as a weapon.
It is possible for the Democrats to win the midterm elections with their current strategy. The Trump regime is unpopular, and Americans across the political spectrum do not approve of the ICE violence they are seeing on their televisions and phones.
We also know from history that opposition parties facing an authoritarian takeover tend to fail at offering a robust opposition. There always seem to be leftists to fear or business leaders that believe they can work with the aspiring autocrat.
Since we know this script, I do not want Democrats to become the latest to fail this test.
But Democrats need to create a coalition that will seek to reverse the worst of the Trump regime’s actions and reform our laws and Constitution so that something like what we are experiencing will never happen again.
Why change and reform, though, if the current system is legitimate? Is this an emergency or not?
I believe our nation’s imperfect experiment in democracy is in peril. I do not think it is too much to ask that Democrats stop helping the Trump regime stack the courts, fund a violent paramilitary force, and accept policies that break our Constitutional order.
Issue #2
- The Democratic Case for Winning Ugly (Julie Roginsky, Salty Politics, Link to Article)
Julie Roginsky adds to the conversation about the need for leading Democrats to match their rhetoric with actions. Democrats need to stop hoping the next election or our institutions will save us or that voters will disqualify a political party for rewarding bad behavior.
That is not how politics works. Trump and Republicans since the Gingrich revolution have figured out how to exploit these dynamics. Democratic elected officials need to embrace confrontations and stop adhering to political norms of previous generations.
That means making it harder for the Trump regime to act. Why haven’t groups of Democrats going to Minneapolis the last couple of weeks to show solidarity with the communities there under seige? Why did Democrats agree to this Senate recess, instead of forcing continued debate about what the Trump regime is doing? Where are the statements that Democrats will reverse any actions Trump takes against Greenland or any of our NATO allies? As Roginsky writes:
Another hard truth: voters respond to strength. Not cruelty. Strength. The appearance of confidence, decisiveness, and willingness to fight. When Democrats hedge, caveat, and apologize for asserting reality, they don’t look thoughtful — they look unsure. Republicans exploit that relentlessly.
The answer is not shouting for its own sake. It’s precision with teeth.
Name the behavior. Expose the pattern. Refuse to let lies pass unchallenged in real time. Make bad faith costly. Make obstruction uncomfortable. And yes, make it embarrassing for the obstructor because humiliation is often the only accountability left when institutions are weakened and norms are ignored.
Democrats need to stop worrying about whether being aggressive will turn off voters. What turns voters off is weakness. What turns voters off is watching one side dominate every exchange while the other side offers footnotes and sighs. What turns voters off is the sense that Democrats don’t believe their own arguments strongly enough to defend them forcefully.
The stakes are too high for passivity. Democracy does not survive because one side hopes the other will behave better tomorrow. It survives because people are willing to fight for it today — loudly, visibly, and without apology.
Other Stories I’m Following
- Ways to Support Minnesota’s Immigrant Communities as ICE Activity Escalates (Justine Jones, Mpls.St.Paul Magazine, Link to Article)
Jones is keeping this list of food drives, fundraisers, trainings, restaurant specials, and other resources to support immigrant communities in the twin cities updated regularly. - @mplsmutualaid: Clearinghouse of mutual aid for our neighbors (Link to Linktree)
This Linktree is a clearinghouse of organizations that are providing mutual aid for their neighbors in Minneapolis. You may want to support some of them. You can find organizations providing frontline immigrant support, food relief, neighborhood and church based mutual aid, school-based mutual aid, rent relief, and other various GoFundMe sites supporting the people being targeted by the Trump regime. - "ICE 101" — How Trump changed ICE and CBP into a fascist secret police (Garrett Graff, Doomsday Scenario, Link to Article)
Graff is one of the nation’s leading experts on how the federal law enforcement agencies are supposed to work. In this article, he explains how immigration enforcement should work, how it was changed after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, and how ill trained ICE and CBP agents were even before the most recent recruitment. Graff also explains why we need to care about how the Trump regime is using immigration enforcement right now in Minneapolis:
“On Saturday on Ali Velshi’s MS NOW show, I talked about a regular theme of mine since August: This is what fascism looks like — there is no bright line between democracy and autocracy, it’s a spectrum, and not all of the country will experience that switch at the same moment in the same way. But let’s be clear: There is a US city living under occupation by fascist presidential secret police right now.” - The Insurrection Act, Explained (Joseph Nunn, Elizabeth Goitein, Brennan Center for Justice, Link to Article)
Members of the Trump regime has lied about how the Insurrection Act works and the powers it gives the military to act inside the United States. Trump has wanted to use it since the Black Lives Matter demonstrations in 2020. It is important to know how it actually works. It is not, despite what Trump and Stephen Miller may dream, a blank check for authoritarian power.
Post-Game Comments
Today’s Thought from my Readwise collection:
“We’ve seen this movie before across different contexts and continents. The script is familiar, the plot mostly predictable. But we don’t yet know how it ends – especially in a country with America’s democratic traditions, constitutional safeguards, and decentralized power structures.
And so, when friends ask me “what do we do,” I tell them: Look to those who’ve been there before. Democracy isn’t saved through grand gestures, but through thousands of small acts of courage. Through showing up, speaking up, and refusing to turn away from what is happening before our eyes. Through recognizing that the authoritarian playbook works precisely because each small tactic seems too minor to resist.
We’ve seen this movie before. But we’re not just a passive audience—we’re also actors. And we still have the power to change the ending.”—Natalia Antelava, Coda Story, Sunday Read: How Democracies Die - The Script for a Three-Act Play
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On January 6, 2021, Donald Trump instigated a violent insurrection against the United States government. Here’s a video from the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol that one can review if their memory fades.
People were hurt and police officers died protecting the Capitol. Vice President Pence and other elected officials just barely escaped danger. Our national streak of peaceful transfers of power ended.
It was not, as Trump claims, a “day of love.” And we must resist his efforts to rewrite the history of that dark day.
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