Three weeks into office, President Trump has issued a slew of controversial executive orders, fired officials across government agencies, and started to dismantle significant chunks of the federal bureaucracy, which he derides as the “deep state.” A number of these actions—such as his executive order attempting to end birthright citizenship and his dismissal of government employees with civil-service protections—are being challenged in court, and will likely be found illegal. But while these issues work their way through the judicial process, Democrats have come under fire for not speaking out more forcefully against Trump’s policies. A number of Democratic governors recently pushed Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to put up more opposition to the President’s actions.
I recently spoke by phone with Brian Schatz, a Democratic senator from Hawaii. Several days ago, Schatz said he would put a “blanket hold” on Trump’s State Department nominees until the Administration ends its effort to shutter the United States Agency for International Development, which Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency is attempting to effectively destroy. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed whether Democrats are doing enough to oppose Trump, in which ways the Trump Administration may be breaking the law, and which issues Trump is most vulnerable on.
What do you think the Democratic Party has done well in response to the Trump Administration so far? What has it done less well?
I think, like a lot of people, we got off to a slow start. A lot of people were holding out a sliver of hope that Trump One wouldn’t be the road map for Trump Two. But now we understand that this President is engaging in multiple unlawful acts at the same time, in order to try to scare people into thinking that the laws don’t apply to him. And whether it was the rejection of the birthright-citizenship executive order, or the public backlash to the federal-funding freeze, and then the reversal of the freeze in court, we have been reminded that we may be out of power, but we are not powerless. This President, like every other President, is still constrained by federal law and the Constitution. And every political party is constrained by that which is unpopular.
I’m not here to suggest that people shouldn’t be alarmed. I think they should be alarmed, but I also think that one of Trump’s great advantages is that he’s a very effective bluffer. And most of this stuff is going to cause a ton of damage, but will eventually be found to be illegal. There’s a real difference between understanding that this is a deadly serious situation and catastrophizing by saying, “We’re cooked.” We are not cooked. The roots of democracy are still strong. It depends on not just members of the legislative branch fighting back but there being a mass movement to back us up.
You said that there was some initial hope that Trump One wouldn’t be the road map for Trump Two. I think most people were assuming that Trump Two would be worse than Trump One, just given the people he has around him. Are you saying that there were people in your caucus who thought that maybe things would just be normal when January 20th arrived?
No. I think—no. But I think there was a recognition that, at the beginning of any Administration, the public wishes a new President the best. And they understand that a President’s success, generally speaking, represents the country’s success. And so a lot of our voters would at least —that’s why Presidents are usually at the apex of their popularity upon Inauguration.
We weren’t naïve about what he was up to. We spent four years freaking out about all the stuff he said he was going to do. And it was not unreasonable at that point to wait and see what he was going to do versus what he was just yammering about. Now we have to sort out which executive orders will cause immediate harm to people and which ones can be fought in court, and then respond accordingly.
Various people in the Democratic caucuses within the House and the Senate have said some version of “We can’t respond with full panic to every single thing Trump does. You have to pick and choose.” I know everyone’s got different political incentives, but how are you figuring out what to make a big deal about versus what you may oppose but not freak out over?
I focus on preventing immediate harm. When the Medicaid portal was shut down, when the Head Start money was shut down, when construction money for highways was shut down, that was relatively straightforward because it was both immediately harmful and illegal. [The White House claimed the Medicaid portal was unavailable owing to a technical outage.] And then I’m also focussed on maintaining our American system of checks and balances. That’s different from me making that my primary talking point. But I did swear an oath to the Constitution, and I’m not going to let some pundit dictate whether or not I exercise my obligations as a member of the Article I branch. I’m not suggesting we put it into a television ad—
Wait, what are you talking about with “some pundit”? Who are you referring to?
Oh, David Axelrod, James Carville. I mean, those guys have not been in the trenches legislatively or electorally in a full generation. And there’s a cottage industry out there of Democratic strategists. But in order to be a Democratic strategist, you actually have to do politics currently and not just podcast about it.
You are referring to them criticizing what you’ve done around U.S.A.I.D. by saying foreign aid is not good territory for Democrats to fight for?
Yeah. And you think I don’t know that foreign aid is not as popular as Medicaid? Of course I know that. But there are going to be mass deaths from malaria and H.I.V./AIDS and other preventable diseases and conditions because of what the United States is doing. So do I have to be thoughtful and sometimes clever about how we go about communicating that? Yes. Am I going to wait for a more popular program? No, because what they are doing here is ignoring a federal law.
Which federal law are you talking about?
The Foreign Assistance Act, and then, of course, every appropriations bill that funds the State Department and foreign-ops budget. They’re ignoring multiple federal laws. And I’m just—excuse me for being quaint about this—but I’m not going to just gloss over that and wait until they touch the Affordable Care Act. That’s the kind of pundit-brain, poll-tested bullshit that got us into this mess. We are constantly being told that something isn’t polling well enough yet. And one of the things that Republicans do well is not allow their pollsters to tell them everything. They invent whole stories and then the polling follows. And that’s why we’re focussing so much on Russell Vought [Trump’s nominee to run the Office of Management and Budget]. He’s clearly not a household name, but we should make him a household name because he is the person who believes that the O.M.B. director, of all positions, should be essentially the king’s hand, that he should be exercising Presidential authority regardless of laws and rules and the Constitution. We’re going to spend thirty hours on the floor talking about how dangerous of a vision that is for the United States. [On Wednesday night, Democratic senators held the floor for an all-night session that ended Thursday morning.]
