I blocked a lot of political keywords, so I am genuinely asking because I might be ill informed. What concrete actions have the Democrats taken to block, stop, or reverse Trumps illegal actions?

Again, I am genuinely asking.

  • rahm02@lemmy.ml
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    15 hours ago

    The answer is nothing. The Democratic Party went into shell shock after the elections repudiated over 30 years of established norms. We clearly need something new and fresh, based around class politics. The real villains are the 1% who sit on boards and play both sides. Until we have a political party that stands up for the other 99%, we are fucked. The entire two-party system is rigged against true representation and is instead controlled by special interests. Trump is no better than the neoliberals who helped create him.

    • bad_news@lemmy.billiam.net
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      12 hours ago

      Untrue! They are paying the Jen O’Malley Dillons of the world to make a YouTube channel nobody watches to push neoliberalism, but in SPAAAAACE, which we now call Abundance, and have weird swinger conferences for. #winning

  • mienshao@lemm.ee
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    20 hours ago

    Earnest answer: they have made the argument that they lost the presidency and both houses of Congress, therefore, whatever happens is not on them. They are taking the stance that since they don’t have the legal power, they’re doing their part by raising awareness, going to committee meetings to verbally oppose trump’s regime, and voting against bills when they can. In the Senate, Dems have been almost united in voting against trump’s nominees (looking at you, Fetterman). But they (Dem leadership) have been very straightforward that they don’t have the power. Their strategy is that republicans will fail so hard that the rest of the country will be running back to democrats by the midterms. I’ll let you decide how effective they’ve been.

    To their credit, it’s true that they have almost no legal power. The House votes by simple majority, so there’s next to nothing House Dems can do. In the Senate, Dem Senators can filibuster some bills. It’s super important to remember that a lot of bills, like budget bills or judicial nominations, cannot be filibustered. Add on top of that, republicans are disorganized as hell and have barely submitted any legislation for a vote that could be filibustered even if the Dems wanted to. So there’s really very little Dem Senators can do on the Senate floor.

    So, the answer is, barely nothing because legally, they truly don’t have the power. That all said, they are basically sitting on their hands. There’s SO MUCH they could be doing. For instance, imagine the POWER and HISTORY that Dems could’ve made had they one-by-one stood up and walked out of trump’s state of the union address. Dems could stand on the Capitol step EVERY DAY to protest, demand media attention, and use their platform. They aren’t. They’re letting us burn because most of them are playing politics.

    Good luck to them, you, me, and everybody else…

  • Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world
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    20 hours ago

    I would like an answer for this as well. We’ve seen exactly one filibuster, which wasn’t against any particular piece of legislation or appointee.

    Democrats oppose progressives, not republicans.

    • P00ptart@lemmy.world
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      20 hours ago

      That’s because Republicans aren’t as much of a threat to their office as progressives. Some Dems are sitting in basically lifetime seats and they wouldn’t want that disrupted. The Ds haven’t done anything significant yet at all. And it won’t come from Democrats. It’ll come from the people if it happens at all. And once something big happens by and from the people, that’s when the Ds will step in and take a side. Fucking cowards.

  • ComradeSharkfucker@lemmy.ml
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    19 hours ago

    Honestly if they aren’t jailing republicans at this point it isn’t enough. Iirc there is a few lawsuits and strongly worded letters that will of course accomplish nothing meaningful as usual

  • Bwaz@lemmy.world
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    16 hours ago

    There isn’t a lot more they can do that you or I couldn’t. Because a majority of voters didn’t turn up, or have the moral fabric of pond scum and voted for Republicans for government offices, giving both houses of Congress, the White House, and the Supreme Court over to the American Fascist Party. If you have any useful suggestions about what the party now completely out of federal power should be doing, I’m sure about a third of the country would like to know.

  • oxjox@lemmy.ml
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    20 hours ago

    It’s not the responsibility of a political party to police the actions of an administration. If someone does something you believe to be illegal, you sue them. According to a LLM search, the administration has over 250 cases against them right now. The courts are the ones responsible for judging the actions of the administration and holding it accountable.

    Trump was elected to do the things he’s doing. There’s no surprises here. Congress is stacked against the Democrats. There really isn’t anything they can legally do until they regain either the Senate or the House.

    The concern should be the legal actions he’s taking; the ones the supreme court ultimately determine are fine. The few that pass that bar are going to be major hurdles to restoring normalcy.

    What the Democrats should be doing is forming a unified party that listens to the concerns of the people and finding someone to voice this movement.

    It really comes down to the people. We always have the choice of who to elect. We seem to be voting for people who are against our own personal interests because our electoral system is a farce. Politicians are lying so often and so blatantly now that, regardless of your affiliation, the truth is often clouded by bias and emotion, if not intentionally buried. About half of Americans now believe our elections are rigged even though the evidence indicates they’re highly secure.

    I mean, if you’re here asking what can be done to fix this shit we’re in right now, the answer is to reform our elections, make them tax payer funded, embrace STAR or Ranked Choice Voting, and pass the bill that prevents elected leaders from holding stocks. Or, I don’t know how you do this but getting people to know the difference between factual unbiased news and fake news and preventing biased opinions from distorting their realities.

      • oxjox@lemmy.ml
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        2 hours ago

        Really? Tell me how a political party can police another party. The only actions congress, in particular, have is impeachment. Impeachment is effectively suing the defendant with no inherit repercussions.

        Give me one example of an illegal action taken by this administration and what the Democrats could legally do to “block, stop, or reverse” it.

        • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.ml
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          1 hour ago

          The Congress has WAY more tools than just impeachment to check illegal executive actions. Impeachment’s the nuclear option, but daily oversight is where real accountability happens. Let’s just take a look at a few tools dems could use.

          Trump admin officials like Wilbur Ross repeatedly ignored subpoenas about the citizenship census question. Dems could’ve jailed officials for contempt ,like the GOP did to Lois Lerner, or sued for enforcement. They folded. Trump’s family separation policy violated asylum laws. Congress controls the purse. They could’ve defunded ICE/CBP’s ability to implement it. Instead, they funded it more. Trump’s emoluments violations (e.g., foreign govs. paying at his hotels). Pass a bill explicitly banning presidential self-enrichment. When Dems did act (e.g., suing over border wall funds), they won which proves that legal avenues exist.

          Claiming “Congress can’t do anything” ignores history. When Bush pushed torture, Congress passed the Detainee Treatment Act. When Obama overreached on immigration, courts blocked him. Weakness is a choice, not a constraint. Even without majority control, minority parties have real power, which dems are not using. They can force subpoena votes, sue in court (like Dems did to block Trump’s border wall funding), leverage Senate filibusters, and rally public pressure. Republicans proved this by stonewalling Obama’s Supreme Court pick for 10 months with only Senate control. The tools exist, and the lack of oversight reflects political opportunism as opposed to institutional impossibility.

        • freagle@lemmygrad.ml
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          17 hours ago

          Congress is stacked against Democrats. There really isn’t anything they can legally do until they regain the Senate or the House

          Except praise ICE, I guess. It doesn’t really matter that Congress is stacked against the Democrats. They’ve shown everyone who they are and what they stand for and it’s not clear in the least that they would behave significantly differently if they were in power. From Biden building the wall to Kamala saying “Do not come”, and all of the messaging of the Ds since they lost and now 75 Ds voting to praise ICE…

          • oxjox@lemmy.ml
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            2 hours ago

            This bill is about denouncing the antisemitic attack in Boulder with a single line at the literal bottom reading,

            expresses gratitude to law enforcement officers, including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel, for protecting the homeland.

            I won’t stop you from holding politicians accountable for every line of every bill they vote for but you’re distorting reality to fit your narrative. There is nothing wrong with supporting this bill and I question why anyone would reject it.