In “Here’s What Senate Democrats Should Be Doing to Fight Trump; Senate rules were explicitly designed to protect the minority. Democrats should exploit them mercilessly to slow Trump and Musk before they destroy the country,” Aaron Regunberg writes at The New Republic: “Democrats have additional tactics they can, and must, start deploying. As groups like Indivisible 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 consentis 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….Democrats in the Senate could use quorum calls 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….as Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has argued, these actions can force the GOP to “fight for every single step” because “the slower they go, the less they can break.”

At The Guardian, read “Here’s how Democrats should fight back against Trump” by Margaret Sullivan, who says: “Some Democrats in a new generation are punching back hard, and in so doing, showing their colleagues how to overcome their reputation for spineless dithering.” Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy “has been relentless in calling out exactly what’s happening and why, especially in the shocking weeks since Trump took office….“We have days to stop the destruction of our democracy,” Murphy raged at a protest Tuesday in front of the US treasury building in Washington. “It’s the people who rule, not the billionaires….“Democrats need to throw every possible wrench into the plans of Trump, Musk and their Republican cultists in Congress,” argued scholar Norm Ornstein in the Contrarian newsletter. “Doing so will also underscore how serious the threat is to our system, thereby forcing media to cover it.” As the Virginia congressman Don Beyer suggested on Greg Sargent’s Daily Blast podcast from the New Republic: “Put those things that used to be routine and make them not routine until Trump stops breaking the law.”….In other words, attack on multiple fronts, including through leveraging the power of Democratic state governments. Most of all, prepare for the midterms elections next year by honing a strong, populist message….And lead with convincing voices that can motivate the public….if the public believes there is no determination to fight back, Trump’s destruction will continue unabated.”

“With just over a month until government funding expires,” Nicholas Wu and Mia McCarthy write at Politico, “Democrats remain divided on whether they should use the threat of a government shutdown as a political cudgel as they try to push back on President Donald Trump and billionaire ally Elon Musk….Key progressives want to use every point of leverage the minority party has at its disposal to push back against the slashing of federal agencies being undertaken by Trump’s budget office and Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency.”….“It is the Republican majority’s responsibility to gather the votes necessary for them to pass their agenda. I do not believe that Democrats should be helping,” said Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.). “Given the Republican majority’s attempts to completely gut the federal government, any concession necessary for the Democratic Party to assist them in passing a CR must be incredibly substantial.”….“These guys are in charge, running around, bragging about a mandate, so they should put on their mandate pants and pass whatever they want to pass but if they want us [to help keep the government open], they have to work with us,” said Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.). This is about give and take — about a compromise. And if they don’t want to do that, then they’re on their own.”….“No House Democrat wants to shut down the government,” Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.) told reporters Tuesday morning. But he added that there’s “very little appetite to help Republicans when we don’t trust that Donald Trump is going to spend the resources that we’ve allocated.”

At Salon, former congressman Tim Roemer shares “After the big loss, what’s next? An open letter to the Democratic Party: We can bring the party together — and win — if we’re willing to address inequality and advocate for radical change,” and writes: “We must improve our connection to and our communications with the middle class and blue-collar voters….We must be aggressive and tenacious once again, in the tradition of historic and inspirational leaders like Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., by advocating for radical change in housing, education, health and labor rights….Defending the overall status quo at a time when the American Dream is slipping away for so many working Americans is politically tone-deaf and dangerously out of touch. Defending the status quo on rental rates and home prices, especially if you want the votes of middle-class people or voters under 40, is insane….We did not convey a message of fresh and viable economic change for working people. …Democrats need to be the working-class voice of frustration and their hammer for change….most Americans desperately want to hear about what we will do to curb rising housing prices, reduce escalating egg prices, keep gas prices low and fix out-of-control college costs. Food, energy, housing and education are core voting issues, especially when you experience them as reducing your choices and chewing up your family budget….Voters want to hear what we will do to protect their current job and create new ones. They want lower prescription drug costs and less Medicare bureaucracy….Rebuilding our economic message is the key to winning. The American Dream remains achievable, but the ladder required to climb up and grab it requires modernizing and repairing. The rungs on that ladder have always been education, jobs, housing and health care. Let’s learn from this past election, fix the mistakes we have made through the past several cycles, and propose a positive economic agenda for reaching the American Dream.”