Democrats Poised To Fund Trump's Dirty Tricks
They're gaming out responses to Trump's election-subversion schemes, but they seemingly won't withhold their votes for a budget that funds those schemes.
Did you know that the House of Representatives has already passed temporary legislation to fund the government past September, so that there is not another shutdown before midterm elections?
Did you know that six Democrats voted for it1?
Did you know that if Democrats had achieved unanimity—every member present, all voting no—the measure would have failed? At the very least, Republicans would have had to twist arms or haul non-voting members back to Washington to clear the budget strictly along party lines?
My sense is almost nobody in America has any idea that this happened, let alone that there’s a funding deadline of any kind this year.
They don’t know this because there’s no indication of any controversy. Without controversy, it’s just minutiae of interest to political insiders.
Chuck Schumer spoke recently with MSNOW’s Ali Vitali about the war-game exercises he’s convened in order to anticipate and prepare responses to actions Donald Trump might take to subvert the midterms.
“We have to prepare for it,” Schumer said on Wednesday. “What these so-called tabletop exercises teach us is when you’re prepared in advance, you can stop a lot of bad, bad things from happening. A lot of the stealing that [President Donald Trump] will do, but if you just wait for them to do it and then try to react that day? Not good.”
“You have to show that you can both stop Trump and try to have government move forward,” he added. “You have to. If every time Trump did one of these things we just froze, he’d win.”
It’s admittedly difficult to parse, but the implication seems to be that the Democratic approach to securing the election will be what you might call aggressive-reactive. That’s better than passive-reactive, where Democrats get caught with their pants down as the election unfolds and Trump begins deploying schemes. But the tabletop exercises seemingly do not include proactive steps Democrats could take to prevent Trump from even trying.
In a recent court filing, the Trump administration admitted under penalty of perjury that it had canceled hundreds of Energy Department grants based solely on whether they’d been awarded to states with two Democratic senators, and that voted for Kamala Harris in the 2024 election.
Trump’s energy secretary, Chris Wright, has lied about these cancelations repeatedly, including under oath.
Schumer hasn’t commented officially. Neither has Senator Kirsten Gillibrand. The two Democrats represent New York, which voted for Kamala Harris.
The top Democrat with jurisdiction over annual government spending is Patty Murray, who represents the blue state of Washington. She called it “an astounding admission that the President and his team corruptly abused their power to kill good jobs and punish hard-working families because of their political views.” But she also implied there can be no consequences without help from Trump’s accomplices in the GOP: “[I]t’s high time Republicans join us to hold this Administration accountable for the President’s failure to look out for all Americans.”
Murray’s implication is incorrect. It’s incorrect as to the specific issue of the Energy Department grant cancelations, and it’s incorrect in general.
More to the point, it doesn’t take some parliamentary chess whiz to see the stronger set of moves on the gameboard. It would just take leaders willing to do what their own voters have been shrieking at them to do for well over a year now: stand up for themselves, and protect their constituents.