Sources:
EXPLAINER: How Senate Democrats Can Delay & Defy Trump’s Agenda with Procedural Hardball, Indivisible, https://indivisible.org/resource/explainer-how-senate-democrats-can-delay-defy-trumps-agenda-procedural-hardball
Indivisible: A Practical Guide To Democracy On The Brink, Indivisible, https://indivisible.org/resource/guide
We Choose To Fight: US Senate In-State Office Visit Toolkit, Indivisible, https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Cru6DBkH5gadq3S-mVhiSU72mC2ZeDHXG93jeiemFH0/edit?tab=t.0
David Corn, It’s a War. Do Democrats Get That?, Mother Jones, Feb. 4, 2025, https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/02/elon-musk-donald-trump-doge-treasury-opm-usaid-democrats-opposition/
Reid J. Epstein, In Tense Call, Governors Push Schumer to Fight Harder Against Trump, The New York Times, Jan. 29, 2025, https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/29/us/politics/chuck-schumer-trump-agenda-cabinet.html
Hakeem Jeffries 10-Step Plan: https://x.com/AndrewSolender/status/1886453844764234124/photo/1
Sahil Kapur, Frank Thorp V and Abigail Williams, Democratic Sen. Brian Schatz puts a hold on Trump’s State Department nominees, NBC News, Feb. 3, 2025, https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/democratic-sen-brian-schatz-puts-hold-trumps-state-department-nominees-rcna190470
Kate Riga, Senate Republicans Shrug As Unelected Musk Seizes Their Power, Talking Points Memo, Feb. 4, 2025, https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/senate-republicans-musk-trump
Steve Benen, Democratic leaders launch a very different kind of ‘stop the steal’ effort, MaddowBlog, Feb. 4, 2025, https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/democratic-leaders-launch-different-kind-stop-steal-effort-rcna190691
LEADER JEFFRIES: “RAIDING THE GOVERNMENT, ATTEMPTING TO STEAL TAXPAYER MONEY. THAT’S WHAT THE SITUATION AT THE TREASURY DEPARTMENT IS ALL ABOUT”, Hakeem Jeffirees Press Release, Feb. 4, 2025, https://jeffries.house.gov/2025/02/04/leader-jeffries-raiding-the-government-attempting-to-steal-taxpayer-money-thats-what-the-situation-at-the-treasury-department-is-all-about/
Michael Macagnone, Democratic plans to oppose Trump would need outside help, Roll Call, Feb. 4, 2025, https://rollcall.com/2025/02/04/democratic-plans-to-oppose-trump-would-need-outside-help/
Lalee Ibssa, Isabelle Murray, Democrats threaten to obstruct Trump’s agenda over Musk’s DOGE efforts, Feb. 4, 2025, https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/democrats-threaten-obstruct-trumps-agenda-musks-doge-efforts/story?id=118458867
Adriana Gomez Licon, What is the Laken Riley Act? A look at the first bill Trump just signed, Jan. 29, 2025, https://apnews.com/article/what-is-laken-riley-act-trump-immigration-2667d626139ddf5a16d1533516eab18f
Transcript:
Trump and his cronies, including unelected deluded low iq ugly socially awkward loser dork billionaire Elon Musk, are stripping people of their rights, placing people in camps, invading our privacy, and gutting the federal government. And to those of you in my comments section saying personal attacks and name calling undermine my arguments, no they f***ing don’t. No they don’t. I can bully Elon Musk AND create sound legal arguments at the same time, f***ing watch me. And yes I’m gonna be saying swears a lot in this episode cuz I’m mad, the uncensored version is available on my Patreon linked below.
And in response to this tyranny, this all out war on democracy, on the very foundations of our country, of the rule of law and of the constitution, our lawmakers are [checks notes] sending strongly worded letters. Tweeting. Holding press conferences. I don’t know about you but it feels like, um, not enough. Today we’re going to talk about what the Democrats are and aren’t doing, what they should be doing, and what to do about all of it! Let’s get into it. First, a very big palate cleanser.
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So let’s get a lay of the land here, because as I keep saying the point is to overwhelm us to the point of not caring, so we need a big picture moment to understand where we are. Trump passed a ton of executive orders right away after his inauguration. I went over all of them in a previous episode. They then started an avalanche of administrative actions that agencies under Trump within the executive branch are making in order to carry out his executive orders and proclamations. Those are things like the order to expand expedited removals of illegal immigrants, the closure of USAID, the creation of DOGE with loser Elon Musk at its helm despite the fact that he’s not appointed or elected and is just acting in his individual private civilian capacity and acting illegally to gut as many federal programs as possible. Lots of lawsuits are coming down the pipe to stop DOGE, to challenge the end to birth right citizenship, and more. So that accounts for two of the three branches of government. Trump and his loyalists in government agencies are shutting s*** down, freezing spending, and gutting agencies of their institutional knowledge and personnel within the executive branch. Lawsuits are being filed by state AGs, private citizens, non profit orgs, and more and judges are using their injunction power to stop various of Trump’s orders from going into effect until these lawsuits play out. While it is incredibly tedious and slow, it is that injunction power that is standing in the way of a lot of these things from playing out, so the judicial branch is doing its part in the checks and balances scheme to step in where it can as Trump continues to overreach. That leaves one branch. One sad little useless limp d*** branch that doesn’t seem to be doing much of anything in its checks and balances powers to counteract the actual insanity unfolding in the executive branch. And that is the legislative branch, where our legislators, the ones we elected to represent us, the ones who are supposed to be the essential part of the democratic workings of our government, where they sit around with their thumbs shoved up their a**es doing jack s*** to stop any of this, all while lamenting welp we just don’t have a majority oopsies sorry guess there’s nothing we can do!! Or playing lip service to our outrage through strongly worded letters to Marco Rubio or some s***. The classic trope I’ve talked about before: Republicans openly violate the laws and the constitution and Democrats say “hey!!! But! But you can’t do that!!”
So here’s a basic rundown of what Congress has done since Trump was inaugurated. The senate has confirmed 13 Trump appointees and passed the Laken Riley Act, the first official law Trump has signed. Laken Riley was passed with bipartisan support and allows for the complete suspension of due process rights for undocumented immigrants accused of crimes. Not just violent crimes but also petty theft. Reminder that we give due process to everyone in this country, in theory, meaning notice and an opportunity to be heard by a judge, the right not to be held indefinitely without a trial, we give that to everyone including those accused of even the most heinous of crimes in this country. But the Laken Riley Act, combined with Trump’s executive orders declaring an emergency at the border and pausing all immigration including of refugees and asylum seekers, and the resulting agency actions like the expansion of expedited removal, all provides for a blanket suspension of due process rights for immigrants of all kinds, including those seeking and using legal means to be here. The elimination of due process rights is a key ingredient in fascist takeover because it allows for human rights abuses to go unchecked and tends to be directed at vulnerable minorities because people already hate them so it’s easy to turn a blind eye, whether they’re Jews in 1930s Germany or Mexicans in 2020s America. ANd the Laken Riley Act passed with bipartisan support, 12 democratic senators and 46 democrats in the house voted in favor, along with every Republican in both houses. Here’s that list of Democrats who voted in favor, if you are their constituent you should be the most annoying person on the planet for them right now, get to work.
The House for its park has introduced a ton of bills, many of which are symbolic and will not even make it to the floor for a vote, 25 of which have passed and gone to the Senate, and that’s about it. Though Senate and House minority leaders Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries introduced bicameral legislation this week to try to challenge DOGE and Elon Musk by preventing unlawful access to the Treasury department’s payment system, which DOGE operatives took over last week, as we talked about in my episode on Monday. They called their new bill, wait for it, The Stop The Steal Bill. They were VERY proud of themselves when they announced the name, and received some chuckles from the audience. And that’s when it hit me, oh yeah, part of the reason why Democrats aren’t getting s*** done is that legislators are a buncha f***in nerds in suits, and many of them are old as dirt. Of course they don’t know how to talk to the American people or create a cool, engaging social media campaign and are terrified of youngsters coming in and using unconventional tactics to get s*** done. Also they’re probably sleepy because most of them should be in retirement homes at this point. Theoretically they would hire PR people to make up for being big giant dorks but I don’t think they’d know relatable, cool messaging if it hit them across the f***in face. And Republican law makers are also f***ing dweebs but so are their constituents so it works. I think I’ve solved the problem, guys, everyone can go home. The literal only reason we thought Kamala was cool was because of some sweet fancam edits on TikTok. She certainly didn’t convince us on her own after literal decades in public office. It took some lefty weirdos getting control of her TikTok account to win any of us over. Did it get her elected? No. Obviously the entire messaging problem on the left that has alienated a huge swath of the working class and other groups that would historically fall under the Democratic umbrella cannot be solved by a slick TikTok campaign. But as it is these Democratic lawmakers are speaking to literally no one except for a few policy wonks and some boomers. A couple of younger Representatives have come down the pipe and actually feel inspiring and know how to speak like humans, AOC, Jasmine Crockett, Katie Porter, but name me a single cool Democratic senator that can speak like a human and makes you excited about politics. I’ll f***in’ wait. They got f***in’ Cory Booker on the social media game. Literally, Chuck Schumer confirmed according to Mother Jones that Corey Booker is in charge of the Senate Democrat’s social media. With the New York Times reporting, and I quote, “Last week, Mr. Booker delivered a PowerPoint presentation to fellow Democrats about how to deliver their message online. In the slides, which were obtained by The New York Times, Mr. Booker offered his colleagues guidance on how often to post on each platform. Instagram: once or twice a day. Facebook: once a day. LinkedIn: three to five times a week. X: two to five times a day. TikTok: one to four times a day.” Like their social media strategy is about how often to post, this is s*** you learn in like a poorly made intro to social media management for dummies course. Corey Booker is a dork, guys!! We have NOTHING to work with.
And because much of the high profile work is being done by the Senate because of their role in confirming presidential appointments, a lot of the focus and ire is on the Senate. So while House members definitely play a role in counteracting the Horrors coming from the executive branch, it is the Senate where a lot of the work is to be done. And no, I’m not talking about introducing silly fun cool tongue in cheek legislation like the Stop the Steal Act. We all know that bill is dead in the water, it’s being done for show and so that our legislators can point to something and say SEE, we ARE fighting back. Meanwhile we’re all out here getting f***ing INHILITATED by breaking news story after breaking news story of some new horrific thing Trump and his cronies are doing while our lawmakers chuckle at sassy names for bills no one will read or pass. GET A GRIP!!!
I think there’s a time and a place for introducing snarky legislation, this is not one of them. This is not business as usual. This is not a simple welp we’ll get em again in two years!!! Yes the midterms will be important but we need to actually have a functioning f***ing government to hold elections in the first place. Trump is causing damage at breakneck speed that will cause YEARS of chaos and rebuilding. This is mission critical, all hands on deck s*** and our legislators are sitting on their hands shrugging their shoulders despite the fact that Trump is following the Project 2025 playbook word for word, line by line. The playbook they’ve had access to for a year and a half and yet they did apparently nothing to prepare for. I made an episode ringing alarm bells about Project 2025 in SEPTEMBER 2023. WHY are they just now starting to realize that huh this is pretty bad!!
Literally just think week they’re starting to get the memo, with house minority leader Hakeem Jeffries sending out a “10 point plan” to counter the hostile takeover of government we’re seeing. And even that is pretty weak. One of the ten points is the “stop the steal” act I just talked about. They also include calls to increase efforts to communicate with the American people about how awful everything is, with zero concrete advice on how to do so. The only real tangible plan they have at this point is to challenge the appropriations process that they’ll go through in March. Remember how the government almost shut down and they kicked the can down the road to keep it open? They kicked the can to March. And because appropriations bills require a larger majority to pass, Democrats will actually have some sway in that process, especially because there are some Republicans that just straight up will never vote in favor of an appropriations bill because they believe the government shouldn’t spend any money at all. Until March I guess the plan is “tell people things are bad.”
Even democratic governors hopped on a call with Chuck Schumer, according to reporting for the New York Times, literally begging him to get the Senators to do SOMETHING to stop the onslaught, suggesting better media and messaging strategies, and lamenting that they, the Democratic Governors, are bearing the brunt of angry calls from constituents while also being the ones heading up a lot of the legal battles as well. And Chuckie Schumer was like well I can’t FORCE anyone to do ANYTHING!! And Corey Booker is doing a great job with the social media!!!!!! Pathetic.
Okay so that’s the lay of the land: executive branch: f***ing s*** up; judicial branch: the one string holding back the worst of the onslaught; legislative branch: dog s***. The good news, is that at least in theory the legislative branch is the one most responsive to the people, that’s us. And as much as the monied interests do control our elected officials, the one thing they fear even more than losing money is losing elections. If you understand that their main and all-consuming goal, the thing they think about with every vote and every public move they make, is re-election, you can start to understand how to leverage that, as someone who votes on whether or not they get re-elected. But we can’t apply pressure if we don’t know what to pressure them to do, so what COULD Democrats, especially in the Senate be doing??
Well, we know it’s not passing legislation–their minority status and partisan gridlock makes that nearly impossible. Gumming up the appropriations process in March is also something they should definitely be planning for. They absolutely should be hiring better social media managers and talking more publicly about how awful things are. But the real way for Democrats to fight back, to get down and dirty, and make the day to day passing of bills and Republican tom f***ery slower and more painful, is by wielding the bureaucratic, mundane, day to day processes of Senate sessions. What the organization Indivisible calls “Procedural Hardball.” A lot of this is from their explainer on how Democrats can play hardball, linked in the sources in the description.
The day to day functions of the Senate include huge amounts of standard protocols, business as usual rules and procedures that provide a veritable treasure trove of opportunities for Democrats to take actions that will provoke time consuming, incredibly boring procedural actions that will eat up valuable floor time and make the process of getting anything done absolute hell for Republicans. Republicans are trying to get federal employees to quit by making their jobs a living hell, Democrats can do the same to Republicans on the floor of the Senate.
Specifically, there are three tactics laid out in the Indivisible explainer that Senators could take. Number one is simple, blanket opposition. Every nominee, every resolution, every yes/no vote, that furthers Trump’s agenda, it’s a no. Even if the nominee is a “reasonable Republican” they are still being put in place as a Trump loyalist, it’s a no. Democrats have been voting yes on certain nominees and there needs to be consensus among the entire Democratic caucus that it’s a no vote, every single time.
Taking this a step further, there are ways for Democrats, in their individual committee roles, to muck up the process further. Democratic Senator Brian Schatz of Hawaii is doing just that. He’s on the Foreign Relations Committee, and in response to the shuttering of USAID, he has placed a blanket hold on all of Trump’s state department nominees. Marco Rubio has already been confirmed as secretary of state, but every official below him, from his deputy to major ambassadorships, have not yet been confirmed. By placing a blanket hold, Schatz isn’t completely blocking the confirmation process, but it requires Republicans to jump through a number of additional procedural hoops and waste valuable floor time to get any new person confirmed. It slows down the process. That valuable additional time gives all of us a chance to breathe and a chance to respond and react to each new thing instead of it being a constant onslaught. Blanket opposition, combined with tactics like blanket holds, will show a united front within the Democratic caucus and will help to slow Republican actions, even if they can’t stop them completely.
Next tactic is weaponizing quorum calls. Technically, according to the constitution, the Senate cannot conduct business unless there is a quorum present, meaning a majority, meaning 51 senators. However, in reality there is hardly ever a quorum actually present, but typical Senate decorum, the friendly thing to do, is for Senators to not ask if a quorum is present before conducting official business. Because if it is officially established that a quorum is not present, the work of the Senate grinds to a halt. They can’t do anything and they have to either adjourn or the sergeant at arms has to literally call senators back to the senate floor and forcibly retrieve them. What’s fun is that any Senator can call for a quorum check at any time. Calling for a quorum check forces the clerk to do a roll call of all 100 Senators out loud. If the roll call is finished and a quorum is not met, the Senate cannot proceed. So Democratic senators can call for quorum checks, forcing Republicans to prove they have a quorum any time they try to do any thing. They can also stage a walkout, assuming there are also some Republicans not present, which usually some aren’t, meaning that there would not be a quorum present if all Democrats leave the Senate floor. But even if technically there is a quorum present, they can call for a check at any time to gum up the process. This will be incredibly boring. It will make Republicans jobs hell. It’ll be so annoying. It’ll go against decorum and protocol. That’s the point.
And the final tactic is blocking unanimous consent. Unanimous consent is used to skip over procedural requirements involved in things like setting dates, moving things on the schedule, pretty much nothing can happen in the Senate unless there are no objections. Senators request unanimous consent for things to happen and usually there’s no objection and things move forward swiftly. I imagine you can see where this is going. Senators can object to anything. Any procedural step, any request, any thing a Republican senator wants to do no matter how small cannot move forward if a single Democrat objects. It will eventually if the objection is frivolous of course, but when a Senator objects, it starts down a rabbit hole of further procedural hoops that must be jumped through, including roll call votes, debates, and delays. Democrats can take it a step further by using their entire allotted 30 minute debate time whenever it’s available. It means zero fast track confirmations. It means, again, making Republican’s jobs as hard as possible, as boring as possible, as tedious as possible. It’s making their day to day work nearly impossible. Not completely impossible, they still have a majority, they’ll still get things done. But the pace would be dramatically decreased. We always complain about how it feels like the Congress can’t get anything done, might as well make that fact work in our favor.
Often blocking unanimous consent and requiring quorum calls can go hand in hand. Typically, because Senators need time to have informal discussions, negotiations, and take time to figure things out, they will pause work on the floor of the Senate by “suggesting the absence of a quorum”. This requires the clerk to read out all 100 names and take a roll call, and they will usually do it INCREDIBLY slowly on purpose, knowing that it’s just being called for to give senators time to discuss, or until the next Senator wishes to be heard, it’s just part of the business of day to day operations in the Senate, go to senate dot gov and click watch live senate floor proceedings on any given day and you’ll see this in action. A senator will make their statement and then suggest the absence of a quorum when they’re done. That’s normal. The Clerk will start calling names. But then when the next senator stands up and is ready to speak, they will request unanimous consent to end the quorum call. It will be granted, the senator will speak, and then they’ll suggest the absence of a quorum again, and the clerk will once again start very slowly reading off the names. Any time that unanimous consent is requested so a Senator can speak, any Democrat can object, requiring a full roll call vote on whether or not to move forward. So they’d object to the senator asking for an end to the quorum call, triggering a full vote tally on whether or not to end the quorum call, which would require listing off every senator and taking their vote, and then if it’s not unanimous, there could be a debate that follows, it could eventually lead to allowing the quorum call to finish, showing absence of a quorum, grinding senate work to a halt. Like it would be so stupid and so awful and boring. And they can just do that over and over and over any time any Republican asks for anything to be done with unanimous consent.
Again, things will eventually get done, but it will be so much slower, and it will be so painful and so boring. The name of the game is block, delay, obstruct.
The reason Democratic Senators aren’t already doing this is the same reason why you wouldn’t want to do it either. It’s boring as f***. It’s also embarrassing because it goes against decorum and The Way We Do Things. So they’d have to make themselves look a little ridiculous by standing up and objecting to things no one ever objects to and that are actually absurd to be objecting to. That’s the point. Democrats always try to take the high road, to stick to the way things are, the rules and regulations, because they think it makes them seem more legitimate, more credible, because they’re following the rules. That’s not the protocol right now, though. It’s time to play dirty, and this is the best way to do it. The trick is to make sure you’re also communicating WHY you are doing it. So people don’t look and see you gumming up processes and making a mess in the Senate and think wow what is wrong with this person they aren’t doing their job. Democratic messaging has to be we ARE doing our job to protect this country from the complete takeover of fascist rule. This is how we do it without a majority or any power, we are slowing the process down FOR YOU.
Okay, so we’re blocking, we’re delaying, we’re obstructing. But how do WE as individual private citizens, use our voice to push the legislative branch, the one that’s supposed to be answerable to us, to do what we want it to do? Well much like we are asking our Democratic senators to do, we must also be annoying as hell. For the good of the nation.
That means if you have Democratic Senators, keep an eye on what they’re doing and call them and tell them what I just told you. Send them the link to the indivisible explainer I linked in the sources. Tell them you expect them to vote no on everything, push them to delay through playing procedural hard ball. Show up to their state offices, yes your Senator has an office in your state where you can go and make your voice heard. In person visits are the most powerful way to influence them, especially if it’s an in person visit of you and 15 of your friends. Indivisible actually has a toolkit for that very act, I’ll link it in the sources. If they do something you like, support them and cheer them on. If they do something you don’t like, for example my Senator Amy Klobuchar voted yes to confirm Trump’s nominee for Veterans Affairs, going against the lock step anti-Trump no votes that we need in our Democratic coalition, if they do something you don’t like you berate them. You be so f***ing annoying. You call, email, show up, petition, nag them on social media, all the above.
And at the state and local level you also berate your elected officials to make sure they’re fighting against every MAGA move coming from the feds and implementing policies that will counteract the worst of it, like sanctuary policies and others that protect vulnerable communities. In fact, Indivisible has a whole guide with different directives depending on if your elected officials are Democrats or Republicans and what you can do to influence them. I’ll also link that in the sources, this isn’t sponsored by Indivisible they just have so many helpful resources that I really leaned on for this episode.
If the name of the game for Democrats is block, delay, obstruct, the name of the game for all of us, their constituents, is pressure, complain, annoy. For the good of our nation, we must all become the most annoying people on the planet. It’s time for you to rise to the challenge of being annoying as hell.
And you can join me over on my Patreon community where I just launched the Why, America? Co-Learning Lab, a learning community having discussions and making connections, along with a monthly syllabus curated by me. All year we’ll be covering topics under the umbrella theme of “Eat the Rich: Building Solidarity in the New Gilded Age.” February’s topic is all about how to build a movement, even when you’re feeling overwhelmed as hell. This is all hosted over on Patreon, which is linked down below. If you’re interested, please join us. Patreon dot com slash leeja miller.
Thank you to my multi-platinum patrons Sarah Shelby, Art, David, R_H, L’Etranger (Lukus), Joshua Cole, Thomas Johnson, and Tay. Your generosity makes this channel what it is, so thank you!
And if you liked this episode, you’ll like the one from Monday in which I bully Elon Musk.
