Gotta Put Politics Back in Your Life

Something is frustrating about trying to find moments of joy and relief this summer like a normal person, while it seems like our country and the world around us are falling apart. I try not to dwell too much on whether WE are doing enough to push back against the quickly expanding imperial Trump regime. I know we are all attending rallies, protests, contacting members of Congress, and voting in local elections as ways to stand up against Trumpisim. 

At this time, the people and the courts seem to be the only institutions able to put checks on Donald Trump. We the people rally, organize, and make our collective voices heard about his decisions. We write and call members of Congress to urge them to do the job they have always had:  put presidential power in check. Sometimes Trump’s team will do a complete one-eighty after realizing their decision isn’t as popular as they thought.   

 

 

There are amazing advocates and lawyers out there putting together legal cases against decision after decision of Trump 2.0. They are making headway on some things and getting us wins. Nearly 300 court cases are being waged against Trump's actions at all levels in the courts. 

Where are Congress and some of our state governments? They either have their heads in the sand or are helping locally to bring Trump’s power into focus for their benefit. It has been especially disappointing to see Congress give up, for the most part, on its responsibilities as a check on this abuse of power. 

What is more disappointing than inaction is to see Trump succeed in dividing us. His executive orders blocking local communities of funds unless they sign and comply with orders disavowing DEI policies and programs tears us to our core. Our community leaders are in a pickle (hey, we're deep in baseball season here). On one hand, they can say ‘FU and your executive orders,’ which would likely lead to prolonged legal battles and loss of funds for vulnerable community members, or they can ‘wink-wink’ comply and hope Trumpers don’t notice they haven’t done anything differently other than change the language that we use. This could still likely lead to prolonged legal battles and the loss of possible funds for our most vulnerable community members. 

There are no winners in either choice, and we need to be directing our anger at those in Congress and Donald Trump, not our friends in local government, trying to protect funding for the most vulnerable in their communities. Is it not a progressive value to make sure the most vulnerable are not harmed by the loss of federal funds? Yes, it's important to have our values down on paper for the world to see, but if a value is just on paper and it isn’t something we practice in our living or governing, then what good is having anything on paper? I know some people sometimes need to have a finger pointed down at the paper to remind them of why we are here, but perhaps in this moment, we need to trust local government to live by our values, when that piece of paper is being used to attack our vulnerable communities 

I know there are some people out there who believe this storm is never going to pass. As Trump sinks further and further with voters and even his own base, he’s become even more unhinged, asking states to engage in highly partisan mid-decade redistricting (add yet another thing to the long list of reforms needed after Trump is gone). He’s underwater on every major issue he campaigned on. The Jeffrey Epstein issue has totally ruined his standing with many of his own supporters. It has forced Congress to shut down. He’s growing desperate, and we are, and the midterms are around the corner. Like all storms, this one will pass, but the cleanup will be costly.

Many have said that even when the cleanup happens, there can not be a ‘back to the status quo’  or ‘way it was’ mentality. How we choose to rebuild after this storm will matter. How will we create the Department of Education that meets the needs of the next generation of students, teachers, schools, and communities? How will we build back the USAID that builds stronger ties across the globe and lifts those struggling up from their present condition? What will become of ICE and the money that has been funneled into it instead of helping our immigrant communities? How will we rebuild to avoid the creation of another MAGA movement? These are not easy questions to ask, nor do they have easy answers, but if we are to rebuild, we will have to confront them. 

Democrats running in 2026 need their version of a Contract for America. Policies that Democrats can run on and that have universal appeal in response to Trump’s lack of action on meeting this moment for all Americans. 

Democratic candidates for Congress and Senate, we are going to be putting a lot of weight on your shoulders over the next year because you are the ones we are going to be sending into this storm first, so you can help find us all safe passage. Until then, the rest of us have a job to do. Stay focused on taking care of our most vulnerable community members, use the courts to push back on anything that they try to push on us.

As my hero Paul Wellstone once said, 

“Leadership is not a weather vane, leadership is not just looking at the polls, leadership is certainly not appealing to fears and frustrations of people, leadership is inspiring people to be their own best selves…we can’t win with a sit on the fence politics, we can’t win except with conviction, we can’t win unless we connect politics to peoples lives…” 

If one good thing has come from all that has happened in the last several months, I hope it has been that people who had no idea politics was connected to their lives or had gotten to a place in life where they didn’t feel the need to be involved in politics at some point went ‘oh shit, I am in politics, like it or not.’