High-profile Democrats have spent the last week trading blame over the party’s election failures. But with Republicans projected to narrowly maintain control of the House of Representatives, ushering in a Republican trifecta, progressives warn that Democrats can’t afford to get caught up in litigating the results of the election.
During this lame-duck period, the party instead needs to deploy the full force of its coalition to preempt some of the harm that Donald Trump promises to unleash on marginalized communities.
“I worry that many of my colleagues and Democrats are going to spend more time trying to analyze or to blame people or trying to unpack the shock of this loss,” said Illinois Rep. Delia Ramirez, a Chicago progressive who overwhelmingly defeated her Republican opponent last Tuesday. “I’m happy to have conversations of processing and evaluating the outcome of the election. We should have that. But that, to me, in this moment, is secondary to the work that needs to be done through administrative action, through executive action, and through the Senate and appropriations process to extend the most protections for as many people as we can.”
The Biden administration has said that its priorities include delivering hurricane victims assistance, confirming remaining judicial nominees, and passing the National Defense Authorization Act. “We have 74 days to finish the term, our term. Let’s make every day count,” said President Joe Biden last Thursday. “That’s the responsibility we have to the American people.”
For progressive members of Congress, however, there is more to be done. Outgoing Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., has urged the White House to lean into its executive powers and draft a series of executive orders to protect government officials from Trump’s promised multi-agency staffing purge. On the congressional side, Jayapal has also reportedly pushed lawmakers to focus on funding for the Inflation Reduction Act, the CHIPS Act, and the bipartisan infrastructure law before Trump resumes office. “A lot of things can be undone, but it can take longer to undo them and it will force a priority from them on what they want to focus on,” Jayapal told Axios.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., is reportedly positioning himself as the face of the anti-Trump movement, though neither he nor Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., have spoken at length about their plans for the lame duck. Schumer, who has scheduled two judiciary votes for next week, also responded to Trump’s election by urging bipartisanship and not going to “the extreme.”
Looking ahead to next year, GOP control over Congress means that Trump will have nearly unchecked power upon his return to office in January. The president-elect will also benefit from a conservative majority in the Supreme Court and an increasingly conservative lower court system. With Democrats’ ability to legislate on a national level severely hamstrung, progressives say there are other ways to fight back: holding Trump and his appointee’s feet to the fire in committee hearings; strengthening constituent services; working in coalitions to block legislation; and using their pulpit to shine a light on the administration’s right-wing agenda, particularly when it comes to immigration.
Rep. Summer Lee, D-Pa., the first Black woman to represent Pennsylvania in Congress, said she and her allies are prepared to face the next four years. “My people survived 400 years of actual bondage, so laying down at the first sign of a Republican trifecta isn’t our style, and it’s not the most challenging thing that America has faced and survived,” Lee told The Intercept. “I draw hope from that. I draw wisdom from the movements of the past. I draw encouragement from the successes of the past that we’ve had in the most depressing and oppressing situations.”
The work doesn’t fundamentally change once Trump enters office, said Lee, who handily won reelection in a Pennsylvania district that includes Alleghany County and parts of Westmoreland County, which went for Kamala Harris and Trump respectively. “The things that I care about, that I work on, representing my district and marginalized populations, that doesn’t change whether it’s Trump or Biden or whoever it may be,” she said. “We have an obligation to do our best to make this system work for the most and largest amount of people, to do our best to change the material conditions of people who, for so long, feel like that is just not how government has worked for them, and that’s true under Trump, and it’s true under Democratic control.”
The best strategy for Democrats under a Trump administration will be to bide their time and strike when the opportunity presents itself, said Linda Fowler, a government professor at Dartmouth University. “It’s time to kind of keep your powder dry, I think, if you’re a progressive, and look for openings where you can, but you can’t really control what those openings are going to be and when they’re going to occur,” she said.
One of the ways Democrats managed to have an impact during the last Trump administration was by seizing on high-profile committee hearings to grill administration officials. “Democrats did a really good job of derailing some of the wackier hearings that the Republicans scheduled by asking hard questions, by refusing to let conspiracy theories and nonsense go unchallenged, and they really were excellent,” said Fowler.
In 2019, for example, Rep. Ilhan Omar D-Minn., grilled Trump’s special envoy for Venezuela, Elliot Abrams, over his involvement in the Iran–Contra affair. “Mr. Abrams, in 1991 you pleaded guilty to two counts of withholding information from Congress regarding the Iran–Contra affair,” said Omar during a House Committee on Foreign Affairs hearing that went viral. “I fail to understand why members of this committee or the American people should find any testimony you give today to be truthful.”