Constituents Are Starting To Push Back
Yesterday, Jamie Raskin reminded his followers of an oft-repeated Trump boast first made on August 9, 2024: “When I win, I will immediately bring prices down, starting on Day One.” Raskin didn’t leave it for people to come to their own conclusions: “Day One,” he wrote, “has come and gone and, despite all of Trump’s bogus promises and cheap spectacle TV ads, the price of eggs is higher than it has ever been in American history. But the price of Trump’s real specialty— Eggs Benedict— is even higher. His betrayal and deceit are costing the American people untold billions in corruption and threatening the future of constitutional democracy. Trump spent his first month in office completely betraying the American people and forcing us to eat his repulsive Eggs Benedict. He...”
Pardoned more than 1,500 J6 insurrectionists, including 170 violent attackers of the police, including members of extremist gangs like the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and Three Percenters who smashed our police officers with steel pipes, hockey sticks, baseball bats, Trump flags and American flags as they stormed the Capitol to block the peaceful transfer of power in 2021 and try to overthrow our election;
Rolled back directives by Biden-Harris to lower prescription drug costs for millions of Americans,
Illegally sacked 17 corruption-fighting Inspector Generals, who saved us more than $91 billion last year in fraud and waste, and then empowered and unleashed billionaire government contractor Elon Musk and his midnight crew of juvenile computer hackers to ravage numerous federal agencies and departments and illegally fire thousands of excellent federal workers en masse;
Unlawfully seized the private financial and personal data of 300 million Americans in the Department of Treasury computer system;
Halted thousands of infrastructure, transportation and energy projects authorized, funded and appropriated by Congress under the Inflation Reduction Act;
Attacked the constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship, threatening to turn millions of citizens into undocumented immigrants, scapegoating the immigrant population and organizing mass deportations which would plunge us into an economic depression;
Executed an outrageous “anti-DEI” purge to erode protections for all federal workers;
Promoted massive tax cuts for the wealthy Silicon Valley elite and deep budget cuts for most Americans who depend on Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.
Trump has spent each day advancing authoritarian and unconstitutional policies while completely abandoning the actual campaign promises that got him elected.
Most people can’t afford to buy eggs anymore, but MAGA serves us Eggs Benedict everyday, an all-you-can-eat buffet of betrayal, lies and deceit.
We’re fighting back in court, in Congress, in the streets— and we’re winning skirmishes and battles every day against these monarchical coup-plotters. But we have to start getting ready now for 2026, the nationwide political showdown that will allow House Democrats to cut this reign of terror in half.
Let’s act with solidarity, vision and strategic nimbleness to defeat MAGA authoritarianism and techno-fascism in our time.
Meanwhile, some of Raskin’s Republican colleagues are getting a tough time from their constituents. Yesterday, Robert Jimison reported from a Saturday Pete Sessions Trinity town hall in Texas’ beet red 17th congressional district, where the PVI is R+14 and where Trump beat Kamala 64% to 35%. Sessions did even better (66.3%) against his Democratic opponent. But Sessions was confronted by angry constituents complaining about Musk, Trump and Congress. “In Trinity,” wrote Jimison, “and in congressional districts around the country over the past week, Republican lawmakers returning home for their first congressional recess since Trump was sworn in faced similar confrontations with their constituents. In Georgia, Representative Rich McCormick struggled to respond as constituents shouted, jeered and booed at his response to questions about Musk’s access to government data. In Wisconsin, Representative Scott Fitzgerald was asked to defend the administration’s budget proposals as voters demanded to know whether cuts to essential services were coming.”
Sessions spoke at length about his support for [Social Security], but said he could not promise it would be insulated from the blunt cuts Republicans in Washington are seeking across the government. Instead, he said he supported a comprehensive audit of the program that could result in some cuts.
“I’m not going to tell you I will never touch Social Security,” Sessions said, parting ways with Trump, who campaigned saying he never would. “What I will tell you is that I believe we’re going to do for the first time in years a top-to-bottom review of that. And I will come back, and I will do a town-hall meeting in your county and place myself before you and let you know about the options. But I don’t know what they’re proposing right now.”
It was a nod to the uncertainty surrounding the Republican budget plan, even as House leaders hope to hold a vote on it within days. Already, the level of cuts they are contemplating to Medicaid has drawn resistance from some GOP lawmakers whose constituents depend heavily on the program, raising questions about whether they will have the votes to pass their blueprint at all.
…With their already narrow majority in the House, GOP lawmakers are in a fragile position. A voter backlash could sweep out some of their most vulnerable members in midterm elections next year. But the pushback in recent days has come not only in highly competitive districts but also in deeply Republican ones, suggesting a broader problem for the party.
And there is little sign that Trump is letting up. On Saturday. Trump said in a social media post that Musk “is doing a great job, but I would like to see him be more aggressive.” Musk responded by sending government employees emails that he said were “requesting to understand what they got done last week. Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.”
Hours later, during a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference, Trump signaled that he was only just beginning to enact his agenda.
“I have not yet begun to fight, and neither have you,” Trump told a crowd of his supporters at the annual gathering outside in Washington.
Such remarks offer little cover for Republicans like Sessions facing tough questions from voters who are beginning to chafe at the changes Trump is pursuing.
So why aren’t the Democrats getting ready to sweep MAGA Republicans like Sessions out of office? Remember when I mentioned above that Sessions’ district has a PVI of R+14? Districts like that don’t flip— even if Republicans vote to kill Social Security and Medicare. The districts are gerrymandered to elect Republicans. Democrats sometimes win R+2, R+3 or R+4 districts… but almost never districts that go much higher— not never, but almost never. Right now there are just half a dozen Democrats— GOP-light Democrats— in red districts— ME-02 (Jared Golden, R+6), KS-03 (Shanice Davids, R+1), MI-08 (Kristen Rivet, R+1), OH-09 (Marcy Kaptur, R+3), OH-13 (Emilia Sykes, R+1) and WA-03 (Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, R+5).
Yesterday, Nick Corasaniti and Michael Wines pegged that as part of a phenomenon: The Death of Competition In Americans Elections. They wrote that “After decades of gerrymandering and political polarization, a vast majority of members of Congress and state legislatures did not face competitive general elections last year. Instead, they were effectively elected through low-turnout or otherwise meaningless primary contests. Vanishingly few voters cast a ballot in those races, according to a New York Times analysis of more than 9,000 congressional and state legislative primary elections held last year. On average, just 57,000 people voted for politicians in U.S. House primaries who went on to win the general election— a small fraction of the more than 700,000 Americans each of those winners now represents. Increasingly, members of Congress are not even facing primary challenges. About a third of the current members of the House ran unopposed in their primary. All but 12 of those districts were ‘safe’ seats, meaning 124 House members essentially faced no challenge to their election.”
And it’s getting worse. “This reality has helped Trump expand his ranks of loyal lawmakers in Congress and crush nearly all dissent in his party. In recent months, he and his allies have repeatedly wielded the threat of primary challenges to keep Republican lawmakers toeing the Trump line on issues like federal funding and the president’s cabinet nominations. But the fear of a primary challenge can also twist local politics, where state power brokers and well-funded interest groups can push lawmakers to take broadly unpopular positions.”
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