Democrats Have to Stop Making Political Decisions with an Eye Towards 2026
I’ve been out of pocket as events moved towards today’s cloture vote on the dogshit continuing resolution Republicans have written. It’s not yet clear whether seven Democrats (in addition to John Fetterman) will join Chuck Schumer — who has said he’ll vote for cloture — in helping Republicans pass it, or whether a Democrat will buy some time.
It’s clear that Schumer’s excuse only emphasizes that there are no good options. He says if there’s a shutdown, Republicans will only reopen those parts of government they want. In the face of the shuttering of USAID and dismantlement of Department of Education, that seems like a futile worry.
Among the best arguments I’ve seen against a shutdown, laid out but dropped here by Josh Marshall, is that a shutdown would provide Trump a way to halt legal proceedings by deeming those lawyers non-essential.
I was told yesterday that a major driver for Dems was the fear that a shutdown would slow down or stop the various court cases against DOGE. Honestly, that sounded so stupid to me that I was skeptical. But this afternoon I heard it from other key directions. I don’t know if it’s the biggest driver but just on the basis of what I heard I get a sense that it’s a major one. That seems so wrongheaded, so lawyer-brained, that when I got the final piece of the puzzle in front of me and realized this was a real thing, it was hard for me to even process.
Schumer described it this way in his speech yesterday:
Justice, and the courts, extremely troubling, I believe. A shutdown could stall Federal court cases, one of the best redoubts against Trump’s lawlessness, and could require a furlough of critical staff at the courts, denying victims and defendants alike their day in court, dragging out appeals and clogging the justice system for months and even years.
I don’t think this is lawyer-brained at all. Trump could simply call the lawyers engaged in these suits non-essential, stalling legal challenges in their current status, and then finding new test cases to establish a precedent while judges were stymied.
In both Phoenix, where a reduction in force affected all the people running the courthouse, and in the Perkins Coie lawsuit, where a hearing the other day reviewed all the Executive Branch personnel, from Marshals to GSA, who keep the courthouse running, the Executive’s ability to limit the Judiciary via manipulation of facilities and staff has already become a live issue. Here’s how Beryl Howell described the way in which Trump’s attempt to exclude Perkins Coie from federal buildings could be enforced via Executive branch personnel.
THE COURT: I just want to make sure because we, in the judiciary — we’re the third branch. We are not the executive branch. We are not subject to this guidance. But our landlord, and all of the federal courthouses around the country is GSA —
MR. BUTSWINKAS: GSA.
THE COURT: — General Services Administration. And the people who do the security at our front doors, all across the country in federal courthouses, are DOJ-component employees from the U.S. Marshals Service or court security officers. So they are all executive branch employees.
Meanwhile the court cases are making progress. Just this week, we’ve had two judges order reinstatement of all the people fired, grant FOIA status to DOGE, and grant discovery to Democratic Attorneys General (plus in one of the two reinstatement cases, Judge Alsup ordered a deposition from an OPM person involved in the firing). As of this week, DOGE now has to answer for its actions in the courts.
Imagine, for example, if a shutdown made it easier for DHS to keep Mahmoud Khalil in Louisiana for the duration of a shutdown, even if they simply said moving him back to SDNY (or New Jersey) is not a priority. There are other cases where the government is being ordered to pay back payments; a shutdown would make such recourse unavailable to anyone who has not yet sued. In the financial clawback cases (where EPA and FEMA seized funds already awarded), a shutdown would give the FBI time to try to frame the case against plaintiffs they’re pursuing, while the plaintiffs get no protection in the meantime. A key flaw was revealed in the lawsuit against Perkins Coie in the hearing the other day (which I’ll return to); if given the time, I would expect Trump to try the same trick against another law firm, fixing that flaw, in an attempt to eliminate any anti-Trump legal teams in the country.
So the concern that a shutdown would eliminate one of two sources of power is real.
I’m agnostic about whether a shutdown brings more advantage than risks.
One thing I am absolutely certain of, however, is that Democrats on both sides of this debate are framing it in terms of 2026. Those justifiably furious at Chuck Schumer are thinking in terms of primaries against any Senator who supports cloture. They’re demanding a filibuster so that elected Democrats, as Democrats, be seen wielding some power, so the party doesn’t look feckless to potential voters. Those afraid of a shutdown are discussing electoral consequences in 2026. Polls are measuring who would be blamed in the polls.
This mindset has plagued both sides of Democratic debates for two months, with disastrous consequences.
Democracy will be preserved or lost in the next three months. And democracy will be won or lost via a nonpartisan political fight over whether enough Americans want to preserve their way of life to fight back, in a coalition that includes far more than Democrats. You win this fight by treating Trump and Elon as the villain, not by making any one Democrat a hero (or worse still, squandering week after week targeting Democratic leaders while letting Elon go ignored).
And Democrats, on both sides of this fight, are not fighting that fight. I’ve seen none of the most powerful voices — not AOC, not Bernie, not Jasmine Crockett, not Tim Walz, not Pete Buttigieg — put out a video talking about the fight over impoundment, about the stakes of having elected representatives of both parties fight for funding for their own constituents.
Democrats who want a shutdown have done none of the messaging to those already hurt by Trump’s power grab work to make it a short term political win, to explain the tie between right wing capitulation to Trump and services shutting down. Instead, they’ve been fighting among themselves, mobilizing politically active Democrats.
I get the anger with Schumer — though I do think his concerns about the courts need to be taken very seriously.
But until Democrats stop thinking in terms of their own leadership in Congress but instead think exclusively about winning the political fight with people being hurt, not as Democrats, but as people opposed to fascism, they’re going to be looking for power in the wrong places.
Update: Someone on Bluesky defending AOC, arguing that this appearance from her on CNN amounted to the explanation about impoundment I said is missing. It’s a great appearance, and makes the anti-CR case superbly. But I don’t think it gets through the jargon about how government is funded or why. Plus, it’s not viral!
Point taken. I’m trying to think of the R congressperson (House or Senate) that would risk funding for the Fed operations in their districts via Trump licking vs partnering with D’s on Article II equivalentcy.
Coming up empty.
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Do you understand that you’re describing extortion? That the people in every district are already dealing with losses thanks to DOGE and now their representatives are being extorted on top of it?\
That’s what Congress needs to tell their constituents: they have to vote NO on cloture, NO on the CR, or they’ll be giving into extortion which won’t stop the ongoing destruction of government.
Bless you, Rayne (and Marcy)!!
Call it what it is–extortion.
Don’t negotiate with terrorists (or mobsters).
Yes. Rayne.
I also can’t tell which way to vote, but this piece nails the battle framework. Even if a senator ends up voting to prevent a shutdown, they could well use the filibuster to make sure everyone knows to nail Musk and the grifter heavily first. Then continue with a media burst. And then?…
The damage to the legal cases could well be what weighs the strongest in the decision.
Relying on the Court’s decisions to save the Republic is a fool’s decision. Hamilton covered it in Federalist 78. The Judicial is the weakest of the branches. It can pass judgement, but has no actual means of enforcing its decisions, and relies on the Executive to enforce, which requires the Executive to be WILLING to enforce. Catch 22
Masha Gessen covered this in her ‘Surviving Autocracy’.
“Your institutions will not save you”
The Judicial Branch *started* as a very weak branch. SCOTUS justices were riding circuits assigned to them by Congress as late as the 1890s. They became much, much more powerful in the 20th century.
But the lack of enforcement power is the Achilles’ heel, which Hamilton recognized. As of this moment, I cannot find a single judicial order that the Trump administration has fully complied with.
And, the admin has stated, repeatedly, that Judges cannot dictate to the Executive because the Executive is supreme.
It can be argued that it is a ‘toddler argument’ (“You can’t make me”), but it appears to be successful. And, the Judicial branch becomes just another soap opera, appearing on the tube. The way it’s working, whether the Court remains open, or not, is immaterial to the plot of the Executive.
This is really a superb explanation of the issues. It helps me see that perhaps the best way forward is to keep things going as they are and hope the courts can save us. But, how and who can make the government hire back those probationary workers who were illegally fired? I have insufficient knowledge and even less faith that those workers will be back to work any time soon.
Thanks for this. Linking it on Bluesky.
It sounds to me that if Schumer’s analysis is correct that a shutdown will give Trump and Musk all the power they need to do whatever they want without having to deal with the legal issues in court. If that is the case, there should be some R senators voting to shut down the government in support of Trump and company.
Suppose you are a GOP governor in a red state.
Do you really want Trump (and Musk) extorting you? Because if you want money from the feds, you’ll have to grovel. Do you really want your GOP senator voting with Trump?
Suppose you are a Dem governor in a blue state.
Do you really think that a man as vindictive and vengeful as Trump is ever going to release federal monies to your state — court rulings, or no court rulings? (And yet your citizens are still required to pay federal taxes.)
Waiting for 2026 is dangerously foolish.
Already:
— many of the GOP House members won by <2% and can pull it off again,
— Elon, who owns/controls Twitter, spent $250,000,000 to nudge the US presidential election to Trump, and is now spending money in a WI supreme court election: wealth concentration controls political resources, and it's an interactive process that compounds,
— the federal government will be barely recognizable in 18 months at the rate of destruction that we are seeing,
— the legal system necessary to enforce private property rights (land, contracts, transactions) that underlies capitalism will be shredded,
— oligarchs will have snapped up a lot of American assets on the cheap [think post-1990 asset-stripping in Russia] and the nation will have been striped for parts.
As someone who misread Musk's purchase of Twitter, who misread his $250+ million 'investment' in Trump's campaign, and who misread a lot of things, I can sympathize with Schumer's failure of imagination.
But the stakes are so high, that the old, "We'll have another chance to take Congress back in 2 years" is delusional. For all the talk about Europe in the 1930s, IMVHO there has not been enough discussion of Russia during the rise of its mafia state, with centralized control under an autocrat. A mafia state where people's assets end up on someone else's books in a land awash in 'second floor window cancer'. Now layer on crypto to this situation, and assume you'll fall out of a fourth-story window if you ever try to 'follow the money'.
FWIW, there has been some good reporting on the fact that Musk, Thiel, Sacks are all originally from South Africa during apartheid. They assume that vast inequality is the natural order of things and – surprise! – controlling mineral wealth/currency is a thread in their shared histories. They are all deeply interested in crypto and payment systems. What about all this are the members of the Senate — GOP as well as Dem — missing?
We Americans are generally so ignorant of apartheid Russia, as well as the Rise of the Oligarchs that we suffering a catastrophic failure of imagination. Schumer is Exhibit A.
Read this and tell us what you think.
https://open.substack.com/pub/wakeuptopolitics/p/how-a-shutdown-could-empower-trump?
It’s optimistic in the extreme that legitimate dem election wins in 26 and 28 would be allowed to stand. This time around trump has full fledged sycophants to do all he couldn’t do to overturn the 20 election.
Great Comment, RoTL. The South African connection and the crypto focus is significant. Thanks for pointing to it.
Replying to PhoenixWoman: Thanks for that link. Well worth the time.
IMVHO, Trump, Vance, and the GOP listen to the markets far more than they listen to the courts.
I agree wholeheartedly that there has been a failure of imagination on the part of the Dems (and much of the nation).
EW’s view about the next 3 months seems both ominous and apt. Queensbury Rules won’t suffice. If that analysis proves true, I’m happy to give Schumer his due.
I wish Schumer would explain more about how where we will be with Musk/Trump/Doge will be any different, because I really don’t see that it would be worse. I truly hope NY rids us of Schumer in 2028 (I wish it could be sooner). The argument that the courts will be clogged by a shutdown really doesn’t do much for me, but IANAL, so maybe I’m wrong.
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Here’s why :
https://open.substack.com/pub/wakeuptopolitics/p/how-a-shutdown-could-empower-trump?
I was at first all for a shutdown, but this gave me pause. Especially the part about the MPSB being shut down. (The courts are self-funding enough to keep going for two to three weeks, but Trump and Musk would happily keep the government shut down until then.)
I think the sequestering permitted by the CR enables the evisceration of the justice department/courts that Schumer fears. Am I wrong?
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Shutting down the government lets Musk and Trump shift their efforts into overdrive.
Not only does it shut down the courts, it shuts down the MSPB.
Plus, Trump gets to decide what stays open and what stays closed in a shutdown. There’s also not much keeping him from deciding not to reopen the parts of the government he doesn’t like once the shutdown officially ends.
https://open.substack.com/pub/wakeuptopolitics/p/how-a-shutdown-could-empower-trump?
Why do you think that isn’t happening *now*?
Please elaborate because I have friends who work for the federal government who have been terrorized for weeks now and are watching each other get picked off. They want a shut down if it will slow if not stop this terror, because nothing else so far has worked.
What Dem leadership in Congress is doing right now, from all appearances, is fighting a rear guard action, i.e., a largely ad hoc battle plan that is designed to minimize losses while executing delay tactics against a rapidly advancing enemy — during a retreat.
The trouble is, we’re not even two months’ into this (so far nominally non violent) war for the survival of the American Experiment. Whether they know it or not, Dem leadership is telegraphing “retreat” to the nation and the world, likely the worst messaging possible.
Currently the top 6 stories on the Daily Kos rec list consist of 4 stories about Schumer’s capitulation, three of them dismissively derogatory of him (“Cowards,” “Schumer Has Pushed Me Out,” and “Schumer Folds.” This is a site that normally discourages the dissing of Dem leadership.
The other two stories in the top 6 there are a takedown of Musk’s Holocaust denialism and Tesla’s downfall (a story that reflects the Dem counter-attack-mindset), and a YouTube video of Rep Don Larson ripping the GOP a new one, in a stand-and-fight speech in a House Ways and Means Committee hearing.
It’s worth a watch, all 5.5 minutes of it, if you haven’t seen it already:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/3/13/2309899/-THIS
Imho, Dailykos has been useless for a while. They had a top post last night with wholly speculative and at times conspiratorial claims about deposits by SSA. The poster had no idea that the unexpected check deposits by SSA were due to The Social Security Fairness Act. That post got an insane number of Recommends. Smh
I agree wholeheartedly. And that diary was beyond idiotic; why they didn’t take it down after the first comment noted the idiocy of it defies imagination. In fact, why the site admins didn’t take it down for promoting a baseless CT is also mind blowing.
I blog there rarely now, but I do see it as a bellweather, because of its footprint mostly, and because a good number of activists still read it. Markos still makes cogent arguments, and some of his writers are ok, but yeah, the rec list is sometimes a quaking quagmire. The anti-Schumer lineup today, though was startling and a vivid example of how the fight going forward is really up to us.
There are reliable posters over there. But the “recent post” list requires knowing who they are. Sumner, Dworkin, Addis, Walton, A few others – the rest are not good, and some are just on hobby horses, like the guy last weekend wanting a metric clock and calendar..
Bruce
Thanks for coming and embodying the problem I describe in the post. You are defining this in terms of legislative leadership, not the country.
With all due respect, Marcy, here’s your closer for this post above:
“But until Democrats stop thinking in terms of their own leadership in Congress but instead think exclusively about winning the political fight with people being hurt, not as Democrats, but as people opposed to fascism, they’re going to be looking for power in the wrong places.”
My first comment dissing Schumer’s “rear-guard” behavior was meant, exactly, to encourage us to stop thinking of Dem “leadership” as our leaders in this fight. They have failed us, and will likely continue to do so. Myself, I’m not calling my Congressional members and donating to legal and other causes, and showing up at demonstrations because Dem “leaders” have prompted me; to the contrary, I’m doing those things because of the urgency of the moment, and for my children and grandkids — and because *local* leaders have reached out to me and I’ve responded.
My second comment just above yours describes how the most interactive Dem blogsite has dramatically turned on Schumer — another symptom of the upending of the leadership/rank and file relationship that is fully underway right now and that you are advocating for. I end that comment with an example of a non-leadership Dem Congressman (he is a subcommittee ranking member but no longer a Caucus leader) who’s taken the fight directly to them, as someone for the rest of us (and hopefully including Party leaders) to emulate.
As the title to your post points out, the two-year Congressional cycle is moot right now, so there’s no point in waiting for leadership to pull us out of this fire, it has to be done by us. I have been accused of being thick in the head more often than I’d like to admit, but I don’t see how emphasizing how feckless and counterproductive Democratic Leadership has been, and then following that with an example of someone who has done a good job of turning those tables, detracts from your message.
Regarding your update and the messaging around the chronic CR-crippling of our legislative branch that is the backstory here, it needs to be pointed out that CRs are a GOP tactic that began in earnest when Gingrich took the Speakership, and is, in essence, the Legislature stupidly and chronically shooting itself in the foot. Now, largely in response to Trump and Vought threatening anti-Constitutional impoundments, Schumer et al have surrendered that ground entirely, making that argument moot till this time next year, supposedly, which is what AOC in that video was decrying. In the meantime, demonstrations and LTEs and boycotts and support of legal advocacy- and humanitarian-orgs is all we’ve got, right?
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If you have to spend six long paragraphs explaining what you wrote to someone with a doctorate in comparative lit., perhaps her understanding of what you meant is not the problem.
And with all due respect, you realize that, as traditionally used, “with all due respect,” means with none at all. Right?
Depends on who’s using it, apparently.
Not really. If one intends a meaning other than the ordinary, one needs to name it. Otherwise, a reader is entitled to assume words have their ordinary meaning.
tl;dr
You’re really wordy. Edit is your friend.
@eoh 2:46 pm March 14
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/with%20%28all%29%20%28due%29%20respect
Honestly earl, I would never diss Marcy, and I have never understood that phrase to mean anything other than how that Webster entry defines it.
I don’t see it as “Democrats who want a shutdown.” AOC made it clear in interviews that Johnson could bring his members back quickly if he wanted to avoid a shutdown.
Shumer screwed that possibility up by publicly blinking on Thursday. So now the CR passage will be played by the media as a major win for Trump after Chuck’s far left Senate tried to stab him in the back to shut down the government. And anyone who thinks that Trump won’t brag about how he got Schumer to stop “being a Palestinian”, hasn’t been paying attention.
I predict that after the CR passes: the markets will rebound significantly. Then he’ll be free to proceed with tax cuts and gutting spending, Trump will back off enough on tariffs to get the markets advancing more. Then Trump will be able to get the Wall Street friendly tax reform he wants by sweetening the pot with no taxes on overtime, tips, or Social Security. Which is a sly way of making certain groups of workers and seniors responsible for exploding the debt. And big business will thank Trump by lowering prices just enough for him to campaign for MAGA candidates in 2026 on how he saved the economy.
Remind me to check back in six months
Beryl Howell should be prepared to hold court outside the courthouse.
From Marcy:
I have a hunch Howell would then send an engraved invitation to Pam Bondi, saying in essence “The case before me alleging governmental misconduct is as serious as it gets, and is 100% essential to the nation that it be adjudicated and adjudicated now. I will be hearing the case at [date, time], and I expect you personally or another DOJ attorney to be present to represent the government. If no one appears on behalf of the government, you can expect a ruling against the government on all points at issue to be delivered from the bench immediately.”
This assumes, of course, that Pam Bondi is deemed an “essential” employee.
Yes, I would hope so.
I would like to think the Judiciary would get creative in its attempts to maintain its authority/credibility as a co-equal branch of government. Getting stymied by the GSA/lack of security etc. would seem an acceptance of 2nd tier status.
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Solved! thx for putting up with a little Friday morning ineptitude…
Maga brownshirts will show up to obstruct and they know they won’t suffer consequences.
I think this is one of the best pieces I’ve seen on the current situation. I have long had the sense that we are fighting the wrong battle and you’ve laid out the argument as clearly as one could wish.
To a broader issue: the way in which the executive can interfere with the operations of the judiciary is one of the many outcomes of the very very large executive we have built in the post war period. While not in any way being a small government libertarian, it is certainly the case that if so much power is centralized in one branch of government, it is far far too easy for that branch to take over the whole government, and that appears to be what is happening.
But these powers in the trump executive were audaciously grabbed in “peacetime”. These powers were not granted in the Constitution or even normatively used in a national crisis. Isn’t the underlying problem trump’s criminal unconstitutionality: a president must not do what this president has chosen to allow people [appointed & confirmed or unknown/unofficial] in his executive branch to do. Which decision makes this point most immediately clear to the American people?
As an aside, public Medicare checks should be released imminently. A Musk induced delay or shutdown delay will be important factors in public appreciation of the crisis. NTM, the IRS deadline looms.
Marcy is right, the Dems need to make clear actions now and explain them clearly … not lament while baby stepping into 2026. If for no other reason than we know our elections can be perverted.
The executive branch support for the courts underscores the importance of not permitting impoundment by the executive, and shows the danger inherent in the extreme view of executive authority.
100% agreed. Unfortunately, we are in one of those life situations where you don’t know you need a certain guardrail in place (Judiciary owns and runs its facilities and staff), until there’s something going down the track too fast.
OTOH, Congress could stop a lot of what Trump is doing. That’s a guardrail that is already in place.
The Founders were concerned with runaway royal—executive—power, though they didn’t know what form it would take; they had after all had a bellyful of it from George III. But they did not forsee—who could?—the needs of a 21st century state. What we now ask the Federal government to do, they probably would have seen as the responsibilities of the individual states, which have never been willing to take on the social insurance programs that are so important in the 21st-century. In general terms, I see an ideal constitutional reform as one which extends checks and balances on the Presidency and the executive generally and also reforms that make change more possible; part of the reason we are stuck in this mess is that we have been unable to adapt our governmental forms to a changing world.
(and I need to write more about this more formally.)
Give an example of a responsibility of an individual state the federal government took on.
“Democracy will be preserved or lost in the next three months.”
Governments don’t fall, they are pushed. This isn’t about one lawsuit or shuttered agency, the dislocation of one set of employees or the firing of many more. It’s not Musk’s goons taking over or destroying this agency or that. It’s not Trump threatening virtually every ally and the DoD discarding the laws of war. All that matters, incredibly so. Their pattern matters more.
As a metaphor, the joint chiefs betting on the Preakness or the discovery of ECOMCON are oddities, as is that a Senator knows things he shouldn’t about the President holding an alert at a secret base with no press. Where they lead, and the scale of the ambitions behind them, matter more.
But this is no Seven Days in May. It’s not fiction. This time, the President, not the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, is planning and implementing the coup, in plain sight, the way Trump commits most of his crimes. He has the backing of patrons and control of Congress, which would reinstate witch burning, if asked. The prime mover, though, is Elon Musk. He’s directing the usurpation and presumably intends to become its main beneficiary.
I sure did things in the wrong order this morning. 1st I fired off an angry coffee and full moon fueled email to Chuck Schumer, then I read Emptywheel, all before 5:30 Pacific. As usual Emptywheel is the best info on the web. Courts are the most effective pushback at the moment. Agree the window for democracy does not extend to mid-terms. Mea culpa. No time to waste fighting Dems, even fossilized ones.
Damn straight, sister! This dogshit budget/manifesto isn’t really a continuing resolution – it is a blueprint for funding Trump’s apocalyptic vision. After I hit Post Comment, I am calling both of my Senators and urge and cajole them to vote NO!
Great idea!
I wrote Markey and Warren yesterday advocating for the shutdown.
Schumer is all over the board and terrible in the message department.
Love to see someone with some balls there instead.
“Democrats on both sides of this debate are framing it in terms of 2026”
Have to respectfully disagree. Looking at public statements of senators (Welch, van Hollen, Schiff, …) who have said they will vote against cloture, they point out the effects of budget cuts (IRA, PACT Act, D.C. government) and nullifying Congress’ power of the purse and ability to cancel tariffs are live issues which will have immediate consequences. Good policy makes for good politics, but this is about short term survival.
I think you’re either misunderstanding or deliberately misconstruing those of us who want Dems to fight. I have not heard a single person argue that they need to BE SEEN wielding power for 2026, as you put it. It’s that we have to stop fascism, and the way to do that is not by kicking the can six months down the road. This is the only leverage we have unless we’re prepared to cause the U.S. to default on its debt. We need to use it, not for electoral purposes but to save the Republic.
“or deliberately misconstruing”
Uh, you’re brand new here so I’ll cut you a little slack, but Marcy isn’t doing that whatsoever. Spend more time familiarizing yourself with her work and this site before making a massive swag like that. Even “misunderstanding” is a stretch.
I’ve heard dozens of people make that argument. Repeatedly.
Two observations. First rule of holes. We need to do a lot of things to save the Republic. The Senate’s votes on cloture and the budget are only among them.
I’m not sure how a shutdown averts fascism.
I think the realities of the moment mean the Dems have two bad choices and they need to pick one. Personally, I think a shutdown hurts more than it helps. If anything, avoiding a shutdown means the Republicans own ALL of their choices and, theoretically, it should free up Dems to amplify anger/frustration at the situation we find ourselves.
The Dems need to make sure that if they do vote for the budget, that everyone knows there was no other choice. The Republicans want to steer the boat over the waterfall and the Dems have managed to deploy an anchor. But the ship is still heading for the waterfall and not only that, the Republicans are dismantling the ship they’re on.
I agree, and I was originally in favor of a shutdown.
What are the main reasons for a shutdown? To get a CR that forces out DOGE, and to stop the impoundments. But that’s already happening anyway, thanks to various court rulings. (In one case, the Trump people paid up rather than face a lawsuit they knew they would lose https://www.ned.org/ned-welcomes-state-departments-initial-steps-towards-restoring-funding/)
And the speed of adjudication is being increased by judges’ growing awareness of what they are facing. Alsup in particular is just this side of deputizing people to haul Ezell into court, should Bondi refuse to allow US Marshals to do it.
The Democratic Party needs someone to step up and take control of the messaging. It can’t be Schumer. AOC needs to step forward and have her Joan of Arc moment.
How would that look any different than now?
And, frankly, I don’t think AOC’s messaging is what it needs to be, in part bc she has a day job to which her messaging is (effectively) focused.
Tim Walz is reportedly going to Iowa this weekend to hold a town hall. Thats big. AOC needs to take up the messaging fight on impoundment more. Esoteric arguments about cloture are only going to alienate people further from the Ds at a time when they should be picking up easy messaging wins.
I love listening to Gov Walz speak, but I was very disappointed hearing him offer himself as a blame bucket for the election loss. If that’s what his message will be, I prefer he stay home and let Newsome and Fetterman do that job.
Newsom and Fetterman might get blame, but they’re not accepting any.
When did Newsom get elected to the Senate? 0_o
What messaging would be effective? The gap that I’m seeing is a lack of public awareness of the concept of “administrative coup”. Musk, Vance and others are not just haphazardly playing out moves from a standard authoritarian playbook, but are aligned with a techno-autocracy movement with an actual 5-step plan for replacing democracy (go to a site called thenerdreich dot com and search “reboot”). This movement has been organizing and proselytizing out in the open and there is an extensive evidence trail followed by anti-fascist analysts like Robert Evans (he did a 2-hour podcast series on Curtis Yarvin last year). The plan calls for a CEO dictator with a symbolic president, gutting the administrative state, bringing academia to heel, etc, that is, the plan calls for the stuff that is actually happening right now.
Those of us who don’t spend our lives gaming miss a lot of these dynamics.
Neither Democrats nor the rest of the country has truly realized what it means to call someone fascist. That is, too many people, especially Republicans but many Democrats as well, treat it as a synonym to asshole, rather than any of its ideological meanings.
At the same time, Democrats act as if they can reverse the damage done with a simple majority or without the nuclear option. As long as SCOTUS isn’t blue, however, most changes will be permanent, and if you get rid off the filibuster, then politics will become worse anyway.
Thus I think, unless you expect they’ll manage to complete an actual fascist coup, some accelerationist strategy is not a worse choice. The really important trials take forever anyway, the personnel is going to be sized down eventually, and if a shutdown is so useful to Republicans, they’re shameless enough to trigger it themselves.
“… but many Democrats as well, treat it as a synonym to asshole, rather than any of its ideological meanings.”
I’ve not seen this AT ALL. You are the first that I have read to assert this.
What I have seen when others write about fascism or that someone is being “fascist” in their use of these terms are in the literal sense: a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation or race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy.
I know Bernie opposes the CR, not sure about how solid Peter Welch is. I wrote him just now — we’ll see…
Republicans are pretty damn smug right now: “I think they’ll cave,” said Cornyn.
One would have to go all the way back to Lyndon Johnson to find an effective Senate Democratic leader-Mike Mansfield-nope, Tom Dashle-nada. Schumer did have to make a choice between two evils on this CR but has not been friendly at all to progressive agenda but then again he, Gillibrand and Jeffries are servants of Wall Street. Who again was it that dumped Al Franken on Roger Stone “evidence”?
Harry Reid was effective, but he was a fighter. Literally. He boxed in his younger days. We so need that energy right now.
I was going to raise Reid too.
Sometimes I feel like Schumer and Durbin are still thinking in pre-2000 terms. There hasn’t been any “collegiality” in the Senate since 2008, when McConnell et al decided to oppose everything Obama wanted, and it became “everything Dems like”.
I respectfully disagree here. You are right that impoundments are the issue, and Hakeem Jeffries and his caucus tried to address them directly. They wanted assurances that the outlays in the CR would be honored codified in the bill. Republicans refused. Senate Dems asked for nothing. They didn’t have a plan. They didn’t think it would pass the House and apparently planned 100% around that. If they’d had a plan, a talking filibuster would garner exactly the type of attention to this issue that we think we need. I don’t think “the President just gets to decide what parts of the government should exist from day to day” is popular. If it turns out to be, we’re doomed anyway.
People are organizing, protesting, calling, withholding donations to the weak. All sorts of things, but these elected officials have this singular moment to exert leverage while gaining much needed attention and they aren’t doing it. All of the caterwauling about why we need the filibuster in case Trump wins and wilds out and yet we are here: Trump won, he’s wilding out, and multiple senators capitulate. Doing something has value. Attention has value. Nobody gets rewarded for being weak.
Actually, Schumer got his reward:/~
https://www.axios.com/2025/03/14/trump-praises-schumer-cr-government-shutdown
My 4th year into working for DOD, I had to work on a contract to privatize my job. My supervisor insisted it was just an exercise. But I knew it was the real deal, yet was unsuccessful in convincing him.
So, when a friend put a good word in for me at a base across the state line, I accepted the lateral transfer despite the time and distance away. One day my former supervisor paid a visit and told me he wished he had listened to me. It was all I could do to keep my cool when he told me an airplane refueling company won the contract, a foot in the door deal.
So, I’m here to say, it would be a terrible blow to democracy to put the Courts in a potential position to suffer loss and/or shut down. There is a serious vulnerability here, because of how RIFs or furloughs work.
The article below is quite informative. If Muks (!!) wants a shutdown, that is not good:
“Elon Musk Has Wanted the Government Shutdown” – 3/11/25
“Sources tell WIRED that Elon Musk has wanted a government shutdown in part because it would potentially make it easier to eliminate the jobs of hundreds of thousands of federal workers.”
…..
“You know none of this is about saving money, right?” says a third Republican familiar with the behind-the-scenes push from Musk. “It’s all about destroying a liberal power base.”
https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-has-wanted-the-government-shut-down/
Meanwhile…
Rule of law is what saved my job in the public library. Even though I lost in court, I still had enough leverage for a settlement. And some of the people I was up against were not so fortunate. So, I say do what we can to preserve the Courts and rule of law.
Rayne, Of course they are spinning it that way. Dems are “weak.” Trump’s exaggerated “thank you” to Schumer works along the same lines. This kind of messaging is going to happen no matter what Democrats do; imagine what crap they’d issue if Schumer had chosen the alternative course.
While I had first been hyped for the obstructionist “shut it down” course, thanks to EW’s post and other commenters here I have come to see this as a much closer call. There are no good options, only less worse ones–and no one can be sure right now which of those will work best going forward.
Adding:
I should also point out that I knew the DOD contract was a done deal because it was costed out as if the library had 4 full-time civil service positions with health benefits and future pensions. In reality it only had 2 civil service positions, plus a rotating sailor on limited duty who got paid from an entirely different budget, wherever they worked. So, it was set-up so a contractor could easily underbid.
Consumer confidence is tanking. The backlash by consumers in the EU, Canada and Mexico has made American products undesirable – even those not impacted by tariffs. Donor class CEOs are squirming about the disintegration of a once robust economy (cowardice over the possibility of retribution is keeping them from speaking out). The impact of trump’s incompetence and poorly thought-out trade war are starting to impact his base, particularly farmers. The courts have pushed back on some of trump’s illegal actions and the losses are mounting. GOP representatives are hearing it from their constituents in feisty townhall meetings. I believe that shutting down the government will probably give trump a place to hide. Don’t give him the opportunity.
GOP messaging is that those townhall have been taken over by PAID democratic operatives. Apparently at some gop determined dem voters do not count and have no right to voice opinions.
Since with the GOP every accusation is a confession, I hope Dems holding town halls are getting some “how to defend yourself against paid Republican sh*t-talkers” training.
Don’t kid yourself.
There are far too many people in and out of the GOP who do not consider Dems to be citizens entitled to vote or hold office and a significant proportion of those don’t consider Dems and those like them to be human whose lives are worth anything.
This, unfortunately, is not hyperbole but clear-eyed observation.
Excellent piece and again the timing of it is impeccable.
Senate Dems should vote no to cloture.
Federal Judges have the power to appoint professionally licensed city, county or state individuals on a temporary basis to fill the minimum number of positions needed to keep the Federal Courts running, except for appointing attorneys representing the Government or plaintiffs, until a crisis (a Government shutdown) is over.
Trump doesn’t want a Government shutdown as he knows a shutdown will hurt his constituents who are dependent on Government services and benefits. And he knows a shutdown will likely cost him control of the House in 2026.
Trump will cave once Senate Democrats vote no on cloture.
And Musk’s days running around like a loose cannon on Trump’s sinking ship are numbered. Trump will throw Musk and his Canadian born mother, Maye Musk, overboard the moment Trump feels he’s losing too many of his voters or when SCOTUS rulings against Musk/DOGE occur.
Do you have a citation for this:
“Federal Judges have the power to appoint professionally licensed city, county or state individuals on a temporary basis to fill the minimum number of positions needed to keep the Federal Courts running”
So the Senate Dems have a “trolley problem”. I don’t envy them. Who will get blamed for a shutdown? I don’t have an answer there, either, but I’d say that Trump’s insatiable need for attention will probably put all of the media focus on him. And he’s currently getting blamed for everything else. My instinct would be to “pull the lever” here. Shutdowns typically don’t last very long, and letting this CR through lets Trump call it a “bipartisan deal” to exercise his “mandate”. I’d vote against cloture, and then keep offering “clean” CRs while the shutdown lasts, but I can see that there’s a good-faith argument from the other side.
As for 2026, though, I don’t see a good political argument for voting for anyone who votes for cloture. “Vote for me, or you’ll end up with a Senate that’s just as bad as the one we already have.”?
I take your point about the courts being disrupted during a shutdown, and also about preparing the ground for a vote against the CR. I think, though, that a shutdown would likely be short and would provide the only point of leverage the Dems have at this point to negotiate the DOGE cuts down. It’s crazy that the Dems (minus Fetterman, a Manchin/Synema mashup) can’t put on a united front.
I’m glad to see some Dems are moving to hold town halls in red districts where the Rs aren’t showing up. The craziness won’t ease off until R reps and senators start to feel the heat from their constituents.
Pelosi is telling Schumer he’s wrong.
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/5195180-pelosi-schumer-government-funding/
To think this is the same Chuck Schumer who took out Al D’Amato.
Indeed time in DC changes the fuel of the fire.
If Schumer gets too few cohorts, where is he left? If he pushes cloture and the thing passes, he still calls shots, and the nation suffers nobody against Trump. Or nobody called “leadership.” As I see it, too few cohorts, and he’s dog meat. Why he is doing this, as he explains it, makes no sense. Litigation, great, that’s why four years passed without Trump facing actual federal charges in a trial. His thinking is flawed. Congressional tools that exist are there to be used.
Cohorts?
I wish I confidently knew the right answer. Either way this goes it is up to us to make sure that the future of our democracy doesn’t rest with this one decision. We need mass protests. We need the people to shut things down. We need the people to stop a tyrant from threatening our friends and allies. When the tyrant says he is going to takeover another country, the people need to call the tyrant a war monger and make clear that when one country attempts to annex another, people die. The Constitution that Republicans are so intent on burning up belongs to us.
Can enough of us bring the pressure that forces Republicans to change course?
This was a really good post (as usual). However, the court argument for not shutting down the government may be a good one but also a tough one to make after the last six months. How to square that with “we can’t rely on the courts to save us” coming out of last year?
I get that the courts are currently shining a light on what Elon is doing, and reinstating some fired workers is not nothing. But people are angry and need to direct it somewhere. I’ll take the risk that some light shining gets slowed down by a shut down for someone taking a stand. In the end we may end up with the same thing anyway. Schumer is probably right but he ends up looking wrong because of how he tried to orchestrate it. Damned if you do, damned if you do.
I don’t see where any fired workers have been reinstated due to a Court order.
Despite 2 rulings yesterday demanding probationary workers be rehired, the admin is set to fire more.
“WASHINGTON, March 14 (Reuters) – President Donald Trump’s administration is expected on Friday to move ahead with a second wave of mass firings and budget cuts across the U.S. government, just one day after two federal judges ordered the reinstatement of thousands of workers.”
Because this was a “lowly” District Court order. Trump appeals every court order that goes against him. So now up to the Circuit Court. Those folks won’t get their jobs back until the Circuit Court rules and/or the Supreme Court either denies to hear the case or accepts hearing the case.
The CR vote no matter which way it goes is the coronation of King Donald. The parade of GOP congress people and special interests going to the white house to kiss the King’s ring to get their impoundments lifted will continue. Anyone else can’t even get DOGE’s phone number.
The House loaded the CR with executive empowerments and who knows what amendments the Senate will pass. I suspect this is not a plan of multi year looting of America but a plan of destruction. The crypto oligarchy is following Soros’s example of shorting the currency. These guys will be bankrupting a number of financial institutions and other companies in short order.
Not sure the Soros reference is necessary or apt.
I agree with Marcy that this is not a multi-year plan of looting. It’s a six-month plan to paralyze traditional govt, undo it, and make America a Fascist state. Any longer time-frame risks allowing the opposition to become effective and derail key elements of the usurpation. It seems to be going according to plan.
Yes, it’s unbelievably fast. The day after they defunded USAID, they cut the agency name off the facade. Letting people know it’s permanent.
I have no certainty which modus operandi is going on. Is it private equity bear raid buy credit fault swaps, derivatives, sell short and destroy all? Is it computer gamer hacker programming AI bots to kill the npcs and reboot? Is it secret executive order Insurrection Act on April 20? Is it deenfranchise voters and leave the GOP permanently in power? Or what?
What to do? Do it personally and keep it focused?
Like Dr. Wheeler and some commenters, I am agnostic about which of the bad available choices is better for the Senate Democrats to make. My frustration is that none of the NO voters, nor any of the media, explicit acknowledge the obvious. IF it is true that a filibuster and shutdown cannot stop the fascist juggernaut, then we are already “there.” If they believe that Trump’s gang has already effectuated the switch to an autocracy, then they should say so (loudly) and lead accordingly.
Now that the Senate has invoked cloture, the CR will happen. Next for your consideration, the administration will double-down on looting and destroying our country in the form of a reduction – in – force (RIF) of the Federal Government. Per instructions, my organization (DoD) sent – in its RIF list yesterday. The top rumor is that the RIFs will happen quasi legally, with only those whose positions are “emergency essential” safe from the blade. That is, those folks who keep things going during snowstorms, floods, or 9/11. I estimate that at no more than 25% of Federal employees. The administration willfully misreads emergency essential as all the government that we need, else all others would be essential too. Ahh, but not so. Emergency essential employees handled 9/11 in the first few hours, but were later augmented by all sorts of folks, gradually returning the government to a “normal” operating rhythm. Those remaining after the RIF might be doing their jobs plus those others now absent besides them. That is an intentional recipe for failure and life-taking.
Good luck w/ the RIF and hang in there – and reach out for help please, especially for anyone including yourself in the “life taking” group.
Every institution in science and medicine that I personally know people in is cutting staff and cutting services as funding abruptly plummets or see saws or maybe is fine but the people associated with it are ordered not to speak to anyone. The “we keep emergency services it’s fine” mantra is more smokescreen BS. It isn’t lies or truth, it’s just distraction / BS / nonsense. They are not downsizing the government to deal with bloat and excess cost, they are not even leaving emergency services untouched (let’s assume we agree that functioning hospitals count as emergency services), they are dismantling American society, health care, and technical ability and clearing the way for an Apartheid style Gilded Age.
Rayne, you asked “Give an example of a responsibility of an individual state the federal government took on.” No reply link on your post, so I’m writing here.
The problem is with things that the founders never dreamed would, even could, be done at all; the provision of health care is the obvious example, since it’s such a huge one. Health care could be handled at state level—Canada does it at the provincial level—but the state governments are far too miserly to take it on. The wealthier states could certainly fund their higher education systems, and so on. Other programs could also be handled at state level, possibly by multi-state consortia, but there one gets into the same problems that led the founders to write the Constitution in the first place; the states have trouble agreeing on anything, especially anything that involves spending money. Still, there are some areas where the states do form consortia; the Uniform Law Commission exists to write such things as the Uniform Commercial Code.
There are obvious advantages to centralizing the many activities the federal government took on in a single place, but they are enormously vulnerable to attacks on the central government and that’s what we’re facing now. Add to that that we have had awful presidents before and I think we should’ve been more careful about what was centralized in the federal government. We need to remember the founders principles of decentralization and checks and balances. They have been vastly abused, but they are also some protection against the kind of depredations we are seeing now.
Bah. The founders also tolerated slavery under states’ rights; what they could and couldn’t dream of shouldn’t be the standard.
There’s no reason why a human in state A should receive less health care in state B save for the lack of providers or varying levels of licensing because states regulate practitioners. Example A: Medicare — something the founders couldn’t dream of, but then we’re talking about people who would have thought treating illnesses with an extract from citrus mold was witchcraft, and they certainly couldn’t dream of Example B: a federal entity which would have regulated its safe development, manufacturing, and sales.
The federal government, with the passing of the Militia Act of 1903, effectively took control of what had been state militias. While the state continued to have some responsibilities for what was, from then on, the National Guard, further laws passed, specifically the Selective Draft Law in 1916, decreased the state responsibilities, and established the Guard as Federal force and a part of the United States Army, but which still allows the states to exert some control. An Act in 1933 established that enlistment at state-level in the National Guard was an enlistment into the United States Army, and if called to activation for Federal service, removed all state control.
This was ultimately proven when Reagan activated a Minnesota National Guard unit for service in El Salvador. The state governor objected and the case went to court, culminating in the ruling Pepisch vs DOD.
The giving up of State’s power over its Militias wasn’t entirely voluntary.
If shutting down the government would give Trump all that power, couldn’t he just veto the CR?
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What about splitting the GOP? Isn’t that another thread worth pursuing?
Ukraine is one fault line. Social security and medicare, too.
Just keep hammering.
Splitting the GOP. That is our best weapon. SS. Ukraine. Medicare. People who care about us not turning into an autocracy, Russia, have got to protest, rally, call elected, write letters to the editor, hold town meetings, build community and send in Jamie Raskins DOGE privacy act requests. Flood the zone.
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Thanks for this analysis. Still steamed that Schumer (and a few others) walked into the trap of “it will be so much pain!” when it’s already unrelenting pain. Also the trap of engaging with the BS words around the continuation bill – it’s all BS to keep people flailing around, not an actual argument one can productively engage with.
Here in NC we are ahead of this curve, having been ordered to scrub DEI over a year ago, plus still contending w/ the state supreme court election. The BS in that is “illegal votes” – which if invalidated would invalidate… all the other elections? No? Also they weren’t invalid before? But we don’t even know if that recount would change the election outcome because we’re not gonna re-count them actually – wait what? What?! Oh, also agents of those deciding the outrageously bogus sounding legal challenges are donating to the R’s fund for the legal challenges. The NC dems and independents have not given up – watch them re: how to not get stuck in the BS of it all.
https://apnews.com/article/north-carolina-election-supreme-court-appeals-53a99250dd7911f3506ba2ea3252a7da