Washington – Once expected that the first weeks of office of a president was a “honeymoon”, a pleasant, albeit for a short time of the two -party and good feeling.
President Trump's first four weeks were a lightning war, an angry attack on the federal authorities for which he was elected.
Trump and his shock troops, led by Elon Musk, have passed the German bureaucracy and urged Abrupt billions to alcohol expenditure, asked for thousands of civil servants to stop and threatened to “extinguish” entire agencies.
The Democrats in the congress, many of which helped build these agencies, seemed to be surprised – not by Trump's zeal to reduce bureaucracy, but by the speed and boldness of his tactics, many of which appeared illegally.
Before Trump's inauguration, some had seriously offered to work cooperatively with Musk to create a blueprint for the gradual government reform.
Then others politely voted to confirm Trump's cabinet members when the honeymoon became a dystopian nightmare.
And some expressed what sounded like defeats. “What levers do we have?” House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries (DN.Y.) asked. “You control the house, the Senate and the Presidency. It is your government. “
Only in the last week after the voters of the angry hometown flooded their switching boards did the party's congress leaders beat themselves up to put themselves in front of their base.
“You want us to beat Trump and stop this S,” said Chuck Schumer (Dn.Y.) of the Senate Minister to the New York Times. “And we do that.”
Schumer dealt with late Democrats from the Senate to no longer vote for Trump's candidates – a mostly symbolic action, since the Republican majority still confirmed every last one that has come to a vote.
In the house, Jeffries appointed a “Rapid Response Task Force” to counter the Trump jet. In the first week of existence, the Task Force appointed a different task force (for legal disputes) and asked representatives to keep the town halls – answers that did not seem to be quick or combative.
To be fair, Jeffries was in close sense: Democrats have little influence – when it comes to legislation. A minority party cannot adopt a legislative template, cannot prevent a president from acting prematurely, cannot even initiate an examination or hold an official hearing.
But that does not mean that Democrats have no lever at all.
The most effective opposition to Trump's rush comes from prosecutors who gained court judgments that prevent the presidents' freezing on most federal financing and the attempt to abolish citizenship.
The judges usually do not allow the congress members to sue the president. However, the Democrats in Congress can still try to collect public opinion.
Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) Castle protests outside the consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an agency that she designed, and Trump wants to abolish. MP Ro Khanna (D-Fremont) in Silicon Valley tackled Musk on X and told the tech mogul that he has no right to block funds that the congress approved. (Musk replied: “Be not a complaint -.”)
Dozens of democratic representatives, including Khanna, Laura Friedman from Glendale, Ted Lieu von Torrance and Linda T. Sánchez von Whittier, held telephone town meetings to channel the anger of the components of the components of the components in the direction of effective advocacy.
“Calling congress offices is easy,” said Khanna last week. “What we need is more storytelling. … we need real workers' class and the middle class to explain how these illegal actions hurt their families what it means if Trump interrupts the financing of children's cancer research or for the children's school lunch. ”
These concrete examples of difficulties are what could influence public opinion: “Trump has this during the mass shift (during his first term) – the brutal stories about the separation of family offers. We have to tell these stories. “
“This is more effective than politicians standing in front of a building,” he added.
He is right with the opportunity for the Democrats in the middle of the ruins. Surveys have shown that most Americans support Trump's wish to reduce federal expenditure – but most, except for Trump voters, still reject cuts in health and education.
There is also an area in which the Democrats of Congress will soon have a direct influence: the upcoming struggle for government spending.
The current Stopgap measurement of the funding of the federal government runs until March 14th. If the congress does not act beforehand, state closure can occur.
In recent years, the two parties have often developed compromises to adopt the expenditure calculations. But Musk's killing spree seems to have stiffened the opposition of the Democrats.
“This is not the time for approval,” said Khanna. “We will not give up a single democratic vote unless Trump guarantees that he will issue what the congress appropriates.”
Schumer said that the Senate Democrats will still be looking for a cross -party compromise – but that the price “many of the many things that (Trump and Muschus) do” reverse “.
That would be a start, but still just a stop hap. The only way, as the Trump Congress can effectively dismantle the Federal Government, is to recapture control of the House of Representatives or the Senate in the 2026 interim elections. (The Senate appears beyond the range, but the GOP edge in the house is a razor thinner three seats.)
In fact, Khanna and other Democrats hope to start the meantime early in 2026 by convincing the voters to vote democratically to check Trump and Musk.
This is not easy for a party that has just lost a presidential election. In exit surveys during the presidential elections in November for the first time in almost half a century, more voters identified themselves as Republicans than as a Democrat.
It is not surprising that democratic politicians and activists about the lessons of defeat and the dwindling support from Americans of the working class, including Latino and black voters, do not agree: do you need a new message or just another messenger? Should you move towards the middle or further to the left?
Such debates have built the Democrats for decades – and they will usually only be selected their next candidate of the President in more than three years.
Last week, the leaders of the Democrats from their voters recognized in the congress that they are faced with an immediate crisis.
They already knew – or at least they said that they knew that they were in a struggle for the survival of democracy. Now they have finally started to act like this.