WASHINGTON — Furious Democrats filled Republican town halls across America last week to protest President Donald Trump’s power grab in Washington.
But in recent days, the activists behind those protests have turned their anger toward elected officials in their own party, who they believe are not fighting the Republican president and billionaire adviser Elon Musk with the urgency, aggression or creativity that the moment deserves.
“Are we in a constitutional crisis or not?” said Ezra Levin, co-founder of the anti-Trump resistance group Indivisible, which encouraged progressives to attend town halls and protest outside Tesla dealerships.
Of Democratic leaders, he added, “There’s zero tactical or innovative leadership.”
Indeed, as Trump moves to consolidate control in Washington with little regard for precedent or judges ruling against him, the nation’s most powerful Democrats are offering mixed messages while struggling to break from the rules and norms that have long governed U.S. politics.
Key Democratic governors have spoken out with varying levels of concern, but they have also promised to work with the Trump administration to ensure resources flow to their states.
House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York has taken heat for spending part of last week’s congressional recess promoting a children’s book he wrote about democracy. Asked about activists’ frustration, he pointed to his party’s united opposition to the GOP budget bill and to the more than 100 lawsuits brought against the president.
“We have to continue to push back aggressively in every way possible in defense of the American people,” Jeffries insisted, acknowledging voters’ “concern, fear, shock and anxiety.”
Republicans have control of the House and Senate. Some Democrats think they are nearing the limit of what they can do to stop Trump, and so the party should stand back.
Veteran Democratic strategist James Carville said as much out loud earlier in the week in a New York Times opinion piece in which he encouraged his party to embrace a “strategic retreat” to let Trump and his Republican allies take the blame for the chaos they create.
“It’s time for Democrats to embark on the most daring political maneuver in the history of our party: roll over and play dead,” Carville wrote.
The piece infuriated Democratic activists. But some officials in Washington quietly welcomed Carville’s call for Democrats to get out of Trump’s way.
“The Carville point was that there’s got to be an opportunity for people to start experiencing and coming to their own conclusion,” said Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vt.
“What’s easier said than done on Carville is that people are freaked out and they do want us to do something and we want to do something,” Welch added. “That’s the dilemma.”
In Trump’s first month in office, he and Musk have moved with extraordinary speed to cut tens of thousands of jobs from the federal workforce. The president is trying to eliminate entire agencies established by federal law. He has signed dozens of executive orders and begun to exact retribution against perceived political enemies across the government, firing independent inspectors general, federal prosecutors and FBI agents involved with his previous prosecutions.
Trump and his allies have lashed out against judges and threatened to defy court rulings.
So far, neither Jeffries nor Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York has been willing to employ perhaps the most dramatic tool at their disposal to stop Trump: their vote — and the ability to withhold their vote in protest — even if it means shutting down the government.
There are some Democrats who want their party to pursue a shutdown on March 14 when current funding expires. But historically, shutdowns have been a Republican strategy only. Democrats generally see themselves as the political grown-ups in the room.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said Democrats “need to be more imaginative and ingenious and aggressive in our tactics.”
“But that should not mean that we depart from basic values,” he said in an interview. “Court orders should be obeyed. We have to respect the rule of law. But we also have to be more nimble and agile in the tactics and tools we use, and be exhaustive in every legal means of fighting back.”
Democratic governors — and 2028 presidential prospects — have spoken out with varying levels of concern.
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer dined at the White House with Trump last week as part of the National Governors Association annual meeting. Afterward, she told Michigan media that she continues to look for “common ground” with the president.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who this past week announced a new podcast featuring Trump’s “Make America Great Again” allies, has softened his stance on Trump in an effort to ensure the Republican administration doesn’t block disaster funding for the state’s devastating wildfires.
Whitmer and Newsom have also been sharply critical of Trump throughout their careers. At the same time, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker used his recent State of the State address to liken Trump’s power grabs to the conditions that preceded the Holocaust.
“It took the Nazis one month, three weeks, two days, eight hours and 40 minutes to dismantle a constitutional republic,” Pritzker charged. “All I’m saying is when the five-alarm fire starts to burn, every good person better be ready to man a post with a bucket of water if you want to stop it from raging out of control.”
Maine Sen. Angus King, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, took to the Senate floor last week to call on his colleagues to “wake up.” In a subsequent interview, King described what he called Trump’s “assault on the Constitution — the most serious in the history of the country.”
The senator said Democrats cannot simply assume that the courts will rein in Trump. But he also acknowledged that they had relatively few tools to push back as the minority party in both chambers of Congress.
“We’re in uncharted territory. There’s no playbook for this,” King said. “Everybody’s trying to figure out what’s effective.”
The Democratic base is not in a patient mood.
Lori Goldman, who leads the Michigan-based activist group known as Fems for Dems, was enraged when asked for her assessment of Democratic leaders.
“We need all hands on deck, and we’re not getting it,” she said. “There’s no room or time or space to act like we’re in normal times.”
Klein, of Indivisible, is growing increasingly pessimistic that Democratic leaders in Congress are listening even after his group took credit for town halls that shaped the debate on Capitol Hill.
“I was hopeful that they were coming over to our side to lead the opposition, and in the absence of that, I think you’re going to just see distance between them and their own constituents grow and grow and grow,” he said. “And that doesn’t have positive consequences.”
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Peoples reported from New York. Associated Press writer Leah Askarinam contributed to this report.