Green Shoots

The first real signs of fight.

(Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

After a week like this, when the ruling party abandoned critical pretenses of constitutionalism, I’d like to leave you with something cheerier. I also want to practice what I preach and acknowledge the fact that Democrats have, on two important, related issues, moved in a promising direction:

• The government shutdown fight;

• The fight against coercive, right-wing, government censorship.

They are not where I want them to be, and I would not assume they’ve been transformed as a party, but they are in a new place.

Let me elaborate, starting with the latter.

ABC, IT’S EASY AS EINS, ZWEI, DREI

Donald Trump has infringed on free speech in so many ways these past nine months, but the coerced silencing of Jimmy Kimmel was a Rubicon-crossing development, even if it was in some sense incremental.

I say incremental, because Trump has coerced broadcasters before, including ABC. But akin to the difference between bribery and extortion (or implicitness and explicitness) the Kimmel firing left nothing to the imagination. When CBS settled a frivolous lawsuit with Trump (and then terminated Stephen Colbert) everyone honest knew a heavy hand was at work, but it was thinly veiled. Shari Redstone wanted her merger, so she paid Trump the bribe he’d requested. Neither Trump nor his lackeys had to spell out terms to know what he wanted, because everyone involved understood his corrupt ways.

In forcing Kimmel off the air, Trump’s regime articulated its terms openly. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” said the FCC chairman and Trump apparatchik Brendan Carr, threatening Disney, and the broadcast network that once aired Kimmel’s show. Within hours, Kimmel was “suspended indefinitely.”

That crucial intervention removed plausible deniability. Redstone could shame-facedly claim to have been making a business decision uncoerced. If Carr had said nothing, the networks could have fired Kimmel “cancel culture” style, claiming boycotts made retaining him untenable. But Carr said what he said, a bell that can’t be unrung.

To my great relief, Democrats in Congress have responded pretty well. (Yes, you read that right.)

My personal view is that they should introduce a resolution to impeach and remove Carr from office. This administration operates as an American Idol-like competition to commit the greatest impeachable offense, but Carr committed his high crime in an unusually flagrant way. So why not make House Republicans vote on whether the First Amendment should fall to mafia tactics?

Democrats have not done this, and probably will not. But they did align in an effort to subpoena Carr, and will likely be able to secure his sworn testimony before the House oversight committee.

Now remember where they’ve been stuck these past many months. They’ve defaulted to blowing off severe assaults on American civil liberties as “distractions” and “stunts.” They’ve muddled their defenses of the first amendment whenever Trump has violated the rights of immigrants, visa-holders, and critics of Israel. Before Redstone completed her payoff to Trump, she did hear from Democrats about it: specifically, from a grand total of three senators.

Yet after the Kimmel firing, without waiting for permission from a focus group or message tester, the entire House Democratic leadership issued this statement.

Brendan Carr, the so-called Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, has engaged in the corrupt abuse of power. He has disgraced the office he holds by bullying ABC, the employer of Jimmy Kimmel, and forcing the company to bend the knee to the Trump administration. FCC Chair Brendan Carr should resign immediately.

Donald Trump and the Republican Party’s war on the First Amendment is blatantly inconsistent with American values. Media companies, such as the one that suspended Mr. Kimmel, have a lot to explain. The censoring of artists and cancellation of shows is an act of cowardice. It may also be part of a corrupt pay-to-play scheme. House Democrats will make sure the American people learn the truth, even if that requires the relentless unleashing of congressional subpoena power. This will not be forgotten.

Carr will obviously not resign on the basis of a press release, which is why I would like to see Democrats draw out the controversy. Reclaim the free-speech issue from the right in a durable way. Force Republicans to vote on a basic proposition: Should the chairman of the FCC be allowed to punish media companies that don’t follow approved government-speech guidelines?

This is nevertheless a huge improvement—more responsive, more pugnacious. More or less where I wanted them to be immediately prior to this week, when I emphasized the importance of speaking forcefully, with one voice, to change the incentives of complicit actors and the regime itself.

One idea I had early on, as Trump set about unraveling democratic alliances and forging new ones with gangster regimes, was for Democrats to borrow a page from Tom Cotton. In 2015, when the Obama administration was on the cusp of a nuclear disarmament deal with Iran, Cotton got all 46 of his Republican Senate colleagues to sign a letter to the leaders of the Islamic Republic, hoping to subvert the negotiations. They promised (credibly, it turns out) that a future Republican president would simply tear up any agreement.

Two can still play at that game—not just in the realm of diplomacy, but wherever it’s possible to limit damage, or change the incentives of Trump’s counterparties.

The closest today’s Democrats have come was when Elizabeth Warren wrote this letter to Paramount chair Shari Redstone warning her that settling a frivolous lawsuit with Donald Trump in exchange for merger approval might constitute bribery. Only two other senators signed the letter. Redstone and Trump went on to complete their corrupt transaction.

It’s a shame, because if Democrats could maintain a united front, they could make all kinds of people and entities think twice about getting into bed with Trump.

The key now is to maintain or deepen this posture.

WE’LL CR SELVES OUT

Government shutdown developments are a bit more mixed, but one of them is worth commending.

Prior to this week, the intra-party debate over the annual budget was pretty grim. It pitted Democrats who wanted to fold against those who wanted to fight, and so they initially alit upon a compromise: fight, but only to reverse looming GOP health care cuts. Not Trump’s multifarious abuses of power. This approach would have guaranteed defeat—they’d come up empty handed, or they’d “win” by insulating Republicans from the political consequences of their own policies. The only upside would have been to make any shutdown “about” health care, which would make it less scary for irresolute Democrats.

When time came to show their work, though, their opening bid in negotiations did include some measures to pull Trump back a small ways closer to Constitutional order. Their alternative budget:

• Extends the availability of funds that have been improperly frozen by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and would otherwise expire on September 30, including amounts in Trump’s illegal “pocket rescission” and lifesaving NIH research funding.

• Prevents Republicans from unilaterally rescinding or reneging on any bipartisan funding agreements passed by Congress for fiscal year 2026 and beyond. Restores funding for public radio and TV stations Republicans cut.

• Establishes an inspector general for OMB.

• Prohibits the White House from implementing program reductions or eliminations requested in the President’s fiscal year 2026 budget during the continuing resolution.

• Reverses illegal actions by the White House that resulted in $2.9 billion in emergency fiscal year 2025 funding not being spent.

My emphases would be very different. I’d drop all extraneous demands. I’d include many more measures to constrain Trump’s lawbreaking. And I’d make my stand entirely about the folly of cutting a deal with Trump. No votes for a deal he can break, no votes for lawbreaking. Things have gotten so bad that I could make a principled case for Democrats to simply walk away. Provide no votes to fund the government or anything else. If it shuts down, do not open it. Quiet quitting, but for the legislative opposition.

But this is a sign of life. It’s movement in the right direction, and leaves Democrats free to argue that enforceability is their redline. Everything is negotiable, but they will not vote under any circumstances for a budget that Trump will violate and raid for lawbreaking purposes. As above, the key now is to maintain or deepen this posture.