

He was missing a few hundred billion dollars. With that, they’d have overlooked his hate just like they do with Musk
He was missing a few hundred billion dollars. With that, they’d have overlooked his hate just like they do with Musk
Given the much more aggressive action by Senate Democrats over the past day, where they’ve kept debate going overnight to draw out Vought’s confirmation as long as possible, I’d say they’re listening
We can accomplish a lot actually.
They’re still responsive to people showing that they’re organized enough to upset their hold on power.
We can show people that they’re not alone; courage is contagious.
It’s an entry point for getting steadily more aggressive forms of action.
I think it’s more like chestnut blight, where people took a localized pathogen, and moved it around the world, and it then discovered lots of trees with no immunity
I’m not fond of that aphorism — it’s pretty common to ban hate speech, and it’s typically used in response to that.
I hope you’re figuring out how to visit their local offices and talk to staff about how horrified you are by their behavior. A ton of people are doing this all over the country.
What’s going on now is that people are showing up at the offices of Senators asking that they stop it. A big crowd at Schumer’s Peekskill office right now.
You can find other similar events being planned on mobilize.us if you search. Many have branding that looks like this:
And are using this common runbook
No licensing rules for software engineers in the US. Can just up and declare yourself one.
You and I are paying attention at a level of detail that almost no Americans do. It would merely take an ordinary level of ignorance to be unaware of this.
A lot of them are developing a bit of one, he was just the first to respond like this to constituent pressure.
At this point, I don’t know that it’s Musk, vs just an extraordinary volume of constituents calling in and overwhelming things.
I don’t think that’s representative of what they’re saying as a group
If it’s like mine, their main DC phone numbers is perpetually saturated, and the voicemail is full. You need to be looking up district offices and calling those, or better yet, showing up in-person with a bunch of other people
Edit: Per Senator Markey, there are now technical problems with the Senate phone system:
We are aware that phones are experiencing technical issues across the U.S. Senate system. Please bear with us as we work to quickly address the issue and get our phones back online.
Makes showing up in-person at district offices incredibly important.
It is, but this is the first of the Democratic Senators to actually start doing it, probably in response to constituent pressure.
There are unfortunately still a lot of Americans who have no idea what Project 2025 is.
The critical problem right now is that either all, or almost all the Republicans in Congress favor what he is doing, and they hold a majority in both houses.
It’s going to take incredible pressure from constituents and campaign donors to change that. That’s going to mean calling, or better yet, showing up in person with as many people as you can bring.
The DNC has very limited power compared with elected officials; they fundraise, support campaigns, set rules for primaries, and set rules for the convention delegates to agree on a party platform. They have no votes in Congress.
What can pass in Congress is determined by the last marginal vote needed to hit either a 50-vote or 60-vote threshold, so it tends to be determined by what’s ok with the most right-wing Democrat. Which is why you see the kind of policies we’ve seen.
In the current situation, the main power of the DNC is the ability to make noise. And they need to be doing that as much as possible.
It’s more that they weren’t prepared for this kind of intensity, and don’t have a great pre-planned message for coup against congress and the constitution by the executive.
The typical DNC member is a union official or party activist, and comes into this with limited savings.
Yeah, I think Wired and Talking Points Memo did the original reporting on his access, with Wired getting his name, and Talking Points Memo getting many other details.