Although it may have been slow to start, opposition to Donald Trump’s implementation of the right-wing Project 2025 blueprint for eliminating critical government programs in order to fund major tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans is growing, with dozens of protests in the streets across the country, almost every day.
Long before the Republican-led House approved a continuing budget resolution that cuts $13 billion in domestic spending, later approved by the Senate with help from Democratic Senate Minority leader Chuck Schumer, many voters opposed to the Trump agenda were furious at Democrats for not more aggressively opposing Trump and Elon Musk’s demolition of dozens of federal agencies, the mass firing of government workers, and threats to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.
As Trump opponents gear up for a national day of protest on April 5, Vermont’s Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders and New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, aka AOC, launched a national “Fight Oligarchy” tour that’s drawn tens of thousands of angry voters to rallies opposing Trump, and in support of popular progressive policies like Medicare For All. Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Aaron Regunberg, a contributing editor at The New Republic and senior climate policy counsel at Public Citizen. Here he talks about the need to replace Democratic party leaders such as New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, while applauding the example set by Sanders and AOC for energizing democracy defenders in the face of Trump’s authoritarian administrative coup.
AARON REGUNBERG: We need to take action to direct people’s attention towards this reality of what they are doing, of how they’re hurting people, of how their agenda is destroying lives and programs that regular working people rely on.
And if you are just giving up on every fight like Chuck Schumer just demonstrated, if you’re giving up every opportunity to take a stand, to draw attention, because conflict is what draws attention — one, you’re not going to succeed in bringing down the approval rating because people are not going to be hearing the reality.
And two, I mean, the other piece is we’re dealing with an authoritarian takeover, right? We can’t actually just wait. Even if their strategy in that medium long-term vision were true, which we just described, it’s not. But even if it were, we are losing things now that we can’t gain, right? The budget that Chuck Schumer rolled over and gave Democratic votes to pass, it doesn’t just cut essential services, it also gives crazy additional powers to the Trump administration to continue shredding the rule of law and the Constitution in its executive overreach.
And in so many ways, the Democratic party leadership has not been meeting the moment. I think that is why you see those low approval ratings and anger that we’ve seen.And every poll I see where Democrats are doing badly, the number one issue it seems that our party is failing on is people saying, “I don’t believe that they are going to fight for me.” That is overwhelmingly what the problem is. And Americans want a fighter, right? That is one of the reasons that Trump is where he is, because say what you will about him, people are like, well, he’s going to fight.
And when the Democratic Party keeps rolling over and caving and demonstrating that even when the stakes are this high, we’re not going to put up a fight, how can we expect people to feel confident that we’re going to stand up and fight for them?
And that I think is the core of why what Bernie Sanders is doing right now is so important and so essential, and just he’s laying out the blueprint for what every Democratic leader needs to be doing for the next two and four years if we’re going to have a shot of staving off a total fascist takeover.
SCOTT HARRIS: I guess the question is, many of the Democrats, including Chuck Schumer — who people calling to step down from a leadership position in the Democratic party — they claim, well, we’re in the minority. We don’t have any power. What can we do? That’s the message from Chuck Schumer. So with all these people showing up at these rallies, what’s the vision for the future that is capturing so much support and attention by people across the country that Bernie Sanders and AOC are generating? Where is this headed?
It’s just inconceivable. That is why I think so many across the party are calling on Chuck Schumer to pass the torch to step down. We need new leadership now, who, whether it’s cowardice or incompetence, people who have the ability and the sort of strategic analysis that reflects our current reality to lead our party right now when we do have leverage.
And part of that leverage as you described, is as we’re seeing that nearly a 100,000 people over the last couple weeks coming out and saying, “We are not going to stand for oligarchy.”
And I think the vision that is being laid out in these events and rallies, it’s not a new vision. I don’t think things are complicated. We’ve had this going back to FDR when the Democratic party has been successful. It has been when we have said we’re the party of regular people and we are standing up to the oligarchs, to the billionaires, to the folks that are in so many ways, taking away what we need to live good lives. And there are reasons I think that Democratic elites have not been willing to embrace that basic message of economic populism because it goes against their donors, right? It goes against some of their core constituencies.
But it is time for us to chuck out those core constituencies that have led us to this disaster and get back to our Democratic roots, which is to say, “We’re the party of regular people and we’re going to go up against those elites, which by the way, Donald Trump represents the epitome of, him and his billionaire Cabinet. They say that they are taking on “elites,” and it is utter BS. They are the elites that are destroying our society. But we need to actually have ways of demonstrating that to people and getting that message in front of people.
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