1. United States
2. Vt.
3. Letter

Once again, I’m deeply disappointed in the way that Congressional Democrats are responding to the many important crises of the moment. Leadership, in particular, continues to seem weak, inept, and frankly out of touch with what their constituents need and expect from them. Recently, the Trump Administration raided a factory in Georgia and detained hundreds of legal immigrants from South Korea who were leveraging their expertise and their country’s money in order to generate thousands of jobs here in the U.S. That single ICE action delays the factory itself, not to mention hundreds of billions of dollars in additional investment. With the exception of a brief comment by Sen. Warnock, the Dems have not deigned to comment on this perfect example of how Trump is wrecking the economy, betraying our allies, and bungling all manner of government duties. Folks, this is a political slam dunk! It’s also morally righteous to speak out against this. I understand that Congresspeople are busy and can’t respond to *everything*, but I do expect a forceful reaction to *some things*. Another top-of-mind example: The race to rebrand Charlie Kirk as a champion of good-faith political discourse, and to punish anyone with contrary opinions. Yesterday’s cancellation of Jimmy Kimmel for his comments about MAGA’s hypocrisy and ill intent around Kirk’s death is as clear an example of government censorship as we’re like to see. Where’s the outrage? Why should prominent Democrats pretend that Kirk was someone he very publicly was not? This is someone who wanted me wiped from society because of my sexual orientation, and who lied relentlessly in order to promote his preferred white nationalist ideology. Can we not call a spade a spade? We can be horrified by the manner of his death at the same time as we’re horrified by the way he lived his life. Finally, I see that Congressional Democrats are demanding concessions on, of all things, extending certain health care benefits in order to support the next government funding bill. Folks, what are we doing here? This fight sets you up for failure either way: the Republicans don’t cave and you look ineffective, or they do cave and you provide them political cover to protect them from their own bad policy decisions. It also badly misses the moment, since there’s nothing holding Republicans’ feet to the fire about honoring the budget agreement and following the rule of law. Are we just not concerned that Trump will pocket rescission his way through the agreement like he did last time? With only a few notable exceptions — Bernie, AOC, Raskin, … — Congressional Democrats have not inspired confidence in their voters, they’ve barely put up a fight, and they’ve not drawn a contrast between themselves and the egregiously bad governance of Republicans. How are we supposed to vote for you? Why should we expect that our democracy is going to survive the next couple years, when we’re watching it fall apart in front of our very eyes??