Use it now. Before you lose it.
“Repetition is really important. And so is repetition” is a message to take to heart. You will be seeing more of it here in coming months. Like this example from Friday:
A commentator the other day said that there are only two guardrails left against Musk-Trump’s predations, meaning Congress and the courts. He was wrong. There is a third: Americans in the streets.
Former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance offers some analysis on the status of the many of court cases filed to slow Musk-Trump’s rolling coup. It’s just that right now what we have are a series of temporary restraining orders (TROs) Musk-Trump will resist, ignore, and surely appeal, as is Trump’s wont.
“There are limits to how much the courts can or will do, even at the TRO stage,” Vance cautions before confirming what I wrote on Friday:
That’s not to say I don’t have confidence in the courts, because I do, and I think some progress will be made there, although as we know far too well, it may be very slow. But the courts aren’t the calvary. We are. We have to be in this fight for ourselves. We can’t get complacent. These early victories are important, but they are not ballgame. Just because it doesn’t feel like we’re in the middle of a constitutional crisis—Trump isn’t dramatically crossing out broad swaths of the Constitution with his sharpie marker in a made-for-television moment—doesn’t mean we aren’t there.
“Ultimately, we’re the check on power run amuck,” she writes and offers some direction a lot of us need right now:
If you need some ideas for getting started, the good folks at Choose Democracy have some advice. They suggest getting started with a local group and figuring out where there are weak links in MAGA support you can pressure. They suggest devoting yourself to a longterm project you can support. Other groups are organizing a variety of public protests and blackouts. Different ways of speaking up will work for different people. Pick yours. Make sure your voice counts. Start exercising your democracy muscles!
Vance suggests something obvious that made me rethink what I’m doing .She wrote Alabama Senator Katie Britt (R, of the infamous SOTU response) to ask that she not vote for RFK Jr. Britt did anyway, of course, but sent back a form letter.
I’ve been contacting my North Carolina senators Thom Tillis and Tedd Budd regularly. Tillis by e-fax and Budd by web form (he doesn’t have a fax no.). But on Budd’s web form there are check boxes.
I’ve been checking No, because I know I’ll get a stupid form letter like Vance did. But you know what? I’m checking Yes from now on. Make his staff deal with sending that form letter. Add to their workload. It’s a little thing, but it’s measurable.
Make calls instead, if that works for you and your schedule (and if you can get through). This from Feb. 7:
Senators’ phone systems have been overloaded, lawmakers said, with some voters unable to get through to leave a message. The outpouring of complaints and confusion has put pressure on lawmakers to find out more about Musk’s project, heightening tensions between the billionaire tech mogul and the government.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said the Senate’s phones were receiving 1,600 calls each minute, compared with the usual 40 calls per minute. Many of the calls she’s been receiving are from people concerned about U.S. DOGE Service employees having broad access to government systems and sensitive information. The callers are asking whether their information is compromised and about why there isn’t more transparency about what is happening, she said.
In March 2017, Republicans pulled a bill to repeal the Affordable Care Act under their own American Health Care Act. The phones lit up then too. Grassroots groups got their act together before congressional Democrats could, The Washington Post reported. Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) told the Post:
“I thought this repeal bill would sail through,” he said. “It was the president’s number one priority. And what was incredible about this process was the phone calls — we had 1,959 phone calls in opposition to the American Health Care Act. We had 30 for it.”
[…]
Democrats watched as a roiling, well-organized “resistance” bombarded Republicans with calls and filled their town hall meetings with skeptics. The Indivisible coalition, founded after the 2016 election by former congressional aides who knew how to lobby their old bosses, was the newest and flashiest. But it was joined by MoveOn, which reported 40,000 calls to congressional offices from its members; by Planned Parenthood, directly under the AHCA’s gun; by the Democratic National Committee, fresh off a divisive leadership race; and by the AARP, which branded the bill as an “age tax” before Democrats had come up with a counterattack.
Few MOCs have physical fax machines today. So the days when you could slam an office with paper are largely over, but here’s how I got sold on “fax jamming“:
On March 21, 2010, the House was preparing to vote on the Affordable Care Act passed by the Senate. The vote would be close. A 2008 Obama campaign veteran I know was planning to blast his large email list and encourage people to phone Heath Shuler’s office in support of passage. But it was Sunday. No one would answer and his voicemail in Washington was already full. It would be pointless to ask people to waste their time on a call without even a chance to leave a message.
[…]
We drafted a sample letter in support of the ACA and emailed it to my friend’s list. We suggested if people replied giving their assent, plus adding their name, address, phone number, and perhaps a customized message of their own, we would gladly fax it to the congressman on their behalf.
Minutes later, Paul shouted, “Oh my God, I just got 15 emails!” And they kept coming, some with notes, others without, for hours. Paul bundled them into sets of five, one letter per page, and created a PDF I sent electronically through my fax machine to Shuler’s Washington, D.C. office. If that line was busy, we sent to his district office. A veteran union organizer friend calls this tactic fax jamming.
We sent 600 individual faxes.
We broke the congressman’s fax machine, a staffer told me, and added something lame about Democrats killing trees. Shuler voted against the ACA anyway, but people who would not have gotten through had their voices heard. The staff never forgot having to physically deal with 600 pieces of paper.
Ah, the good old days. But free e-faxes work too, and 24/7/365. Keep them one page, short and to the point. (Here’s a site I use that urges you to “Fax your congressperson, senator, or governor” for free.)
You have power. Vance knows it too.
We have to find ways to do this because if all MAGA hears are self-congratulatory voices proclaiming their success, it’s a lot easier for them to kowtow to Trump’s every demand. It becomes more difficult—because these folks are politicians who are dedicated to staying in power whatever the cost—if they’re getting pounded by thousands of voices of sanity about their obligations as elected representatives. Let’s make them understand that we are here, we are engaged, and we are not going away. It would have only taken a few senators getting cold feet about Kennedy to make a difference. It’s worth pulling out all the stops and contacting your senators with the vote on Kash Patel looming ahead this week.
Get to work.