Democrats are the minority party in Washington, DC, in all branches of government. In Carney’s words, we are “the less power.” Not power-less. Sometimes, in the Senate, that means Democrats are needed to pass bills, like the upcoming appropriations bill. The House has no such lever but sometimes their voices are needed because the powerful are divided.
Both of those situations require compromise.
In committee, Republicans compromised a little on the funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security and ICE. And the full body approved it, along with seven Democrats who are being crucified on social media.
Yet as Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) said this week, the threat of a government shutdown — which is the big stick in the Senate Democrats small grab bag — isn’t going to move anyone in this Administration. And thanks to the BBB from last summer, ICE has a massive budget to fall back on even were the government to close its doors again.
So she says to take the small wins — which includes body cams, for example, plus less money than the White House asked for as well as reduced detention budget and capacity — and continue fighting elsewhere.
ICE must be reined in, and unfortunately, neither a CR nor a shutdown would do anything to restrain it, because, thanks to Republicans, ICE is now sitting on a massive slush fund it can tap whether or not we pass a funding bill. My full statement on the DHS funding bill.
— Senator Patty Murray (@murray.senate.gov) 2026-01-20T14:29:04.844Z
At first I thought, “but the Senate can tighten these restrictions!” Then I remembered: the House is on recess. No way to send it back to them for action before January 30.
I agree with her except we cannot wait for November.
Then I turned to Carney’s first point: “the end of a pleasant fiction.”
The fiction too many of us have wanted to believe this century is that our system of government is working. It’s not. From a war based on false pretexts to a Senate refusing to fill a Supreme Court seat. From a determination to thwart every move of the first Black president to the madman in the White House today. (I’ll leave media coverage of the mental acuity of back-to-back presidents for another day.)
“It seems that every day we’re reminded that we live in an era of great power rivalry, that the rules based order is fading, that the strong can do what they can, and the weak must suffer what they must.”
That observation applies here just as much as it applies internationally.
I interned in the Senate when I was in college, when the Ds were in the majority but they had dinner and beer (or whiskey) with their R colleagues. Because they were colleagues. Then in the 1990s, Rep. Newt Gingrich (R-GA) encouraged Rs not to move their families to Washington D.C. where they would rub shoulders with Ds and their families. And maybe become colleagues. Acrimony was the goal.
This Administration breaks laws right, left and center, fracturing the domestic “rules based order.” As a result, a lot of innocent people are suffering. Remember, 3-in-4 people ICE detains have no criminal record. Plus, they drag citizens out of their homes and shoot them in their cars, too.
“We participated in the rituals, and we largely avoided calling out the gaps between rhetoric and reality. This bargain no longer works. Let me be direct. We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition.”
Trump rode into office on the big lie; he repeats it in every public address; and it threatens the foundation of our political system. When too many Republicans, whether in the White House complex or Congress, spout lies repeatedly, we no longer have an agreed upon reality.
Renee Good is a rupture. The siege of Minneapolis-St. Paul is a rupture. Siccing the DOJ on political enemies is a rupture. Attacking the Fed is a rupture. Unilaterally bulldozing the East Wing of the White House is a rupture. Kidnapping Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife is a rupture. Bombing small boats in the Caribbean is a rupture. And, to quote David Brooks, “the unraveling of Trump’s mind” is a rupture.
“Collective investments in resilience are cheaper than everyone building their own fortresses.”
Blue states are demonstrating this by bringing collective lawsuits, successfully. However, it doesn’t feel like our Congressional leaders are doing the same. They are not reading the pulse of the country, which is overwhelmingly supporting Minnesota. Get on message and read the room — affordability is not our most pressing problem at the moment, ICE and authoritarianism is — and be loud.
“Our new approach rests on what Alexander Stubb, the President of Finland, has termed ‘value-based realism’. Or, to put another way, we aim to be both principled and pragmatic – principled in our commitment to fundamental values … and pragmatic [in] recognizing that progress is often incremental, that interests diverge, that not every partner will share all of our values.”
Coalitions will not always agree, even within the party. But the fundamental values of the party should remain central.
I see the wisdom in Sen. Murray’s incremental progress on the budget bill, but I don’t think the country can survive incremental opposition to either authoritarianism or to “the unraveling of Trump’s mind.”
Minnesota is reminding the country: there are more of us than there are of them. How we channel that ‘less power’ in a way that fragments the powerful is the 64-dollar question to which I have no answer other than don’t give up.
ADDED: After Saturday morning’s execution of VA ICU nurse Alex Pretti, 37, I have one mantra: impeachment now. House Ds should draft articles of impeachment and all must sign for discussion when they return. It doesn’t matter if Rs refuse. The Senate cannot pass the DHS bill no matter how logical it might be to pass it. Government must stop.
