Democrats confront their powerlessness as Trump flexes authority

Amid Democrats’ shock and bickering over how much to respond to President Donald Trump is a deeper question rippling through leaders across the Capitol and across the country: How much should they rely on the same institutional and procedural maneuvers they used during the first Trump term, and how much are they willing to wield their own wrecking balls?

Amid Democrats’ shock and bickering over how much to respond to President Donald Trump is a deeper question rippling through leaders across the Capitol and across the country: How much should they rely on the same institutional and procedural maneuvers they used during the first Trump term, and how much are they willing to wield their own wrecking balls? Democrats remain essentially leaderless, with prospective future presidential candidates largely sitting back and allowing others to be the first ones through the buzzsaw of Trump and his cheerleaders, none eager to be the face of a party just yet. They are disconnected from the Democratic National Committee, where the Obama-era rallying cry of “Yes We Can!” became the watered down facsimile slogan “Yes We Ken!” for Ken Martin, the largely unknown insider who emerged as the winner of the recent chair race that the party’s most prominent figures avoided. Those Democrats left trying to take charge doubt the slower court challenges can keep up with the rapid, precision onslaught mounting each day from presidential appointees and associates of Elon Musk. For whatever judgments do come out in their favor, many believe – though few will yet say so publicly – that Trump may soon just start ignoring what he doesn’t like, and they’ll have no recourse. Trump dismissed this on Tuesday, telling reporters in the Oval Office, “I always abide by the courts,” just days after Vice President JD Vance had tweeted, “Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power” — and days before Trump posted on Saturday, “He who saves his country does not violate any law,” a line nearly matching one that appeared in a 1970 movie about Napoleon. What hopes Democrats have to counter Trump rest for now on the mid-March government budget deadline, the first real inflection point for a party that is not just in the minority in the House and Senate, but facing a Republican majority so in thrall to the president that they cheer him on as he rapidly absorbs powers from Congress, while they’re left holding contrived attempts to visit buildings that Trump and Musk have locked shut while they dismantle operations inside. “I’m not going to stand by and support an effort to dismantle our democracy through the budgeting process,” said Rep. Hank Johnson, a Georgia Democrat, as he left a rally outside the offices of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to protest its overnight shuttering by the White House, where he and two dozen colleagues pledged not to vote for any bill until, as the co-founder of the group Indivisible put it, “this Constitutional crisis is over.”