Daily Dems Doing the Work, Making Noise and Fighting Back Day 18

Something a little different today....

Every day I give between four and eight fighters in the House, Senate or DNC, so that you know that work is being done, but, over the past few days I’ve heard about three pieces of action that, when discussed together start to paint a pretty powerful and promising picture.

Each action is based around a different term. Keep these terms in mind. They will come up again and again and we move further into this administration. They are “rapid response taskforce,” “round table,” and “probe.”

Rapid Response Taskforce

This term refers to the, well, Rapid Response Taskforce and Litigation Group that House Minority Leader Jeffries announced in a press release three days ago.

Pretty much the only info the press release gives is that it is chaired by Joe Neguse, and co-chaired by the ranking members on oversight (Rep Connoly), judiciary (Rep Raskin), and appropriations (Rep DeLauro).

It’s intentionally vague, and as a result, most people wrote it off almost instantly.

Politico gave a tiny glimpse of what they think it’s about:

House Democrats are ramping up their efforts to respond to [DT’s] sweeping overhaul of the federal government by creating a task force that could lead to lawsuits against the administration.

But today I learned a little bit of what the Senate is hearing about it. It seems to be a group focused on the Executive Orders. Which ones are concerning, which ones can be ignored and speeding up the litigation process. They are going to be tapped into this in a very direct way the rest of Congress is not. I guess the title of the task force kind of spells this out anyway, but given how vague it was, even I kind of wrote it off.

Round Table

The Senate minority party is not allowed to have hearings. But but if you don’t call it a hearing, and it’s not in the hearing room, is it really a hearing? Yesterday, the Democrats on the Foreign Relations Committee held a round table led by Sen Jeanne Shaheen on the national security implications of ending USAID.

This is the first of many, I suspect. And this will be one of our only ways to hear from experts for the foreseeable future, since the majority will never have them anywhere near a hearing.

I would also like to mention that I only know about this because Lawrence O’Donnell covered it on The Last Word. This is from the handoff with Rachel Maddow

Probe

Every day we hear about another handful of letters that the Dems sent to the Admin. And they always include a date that the Admin has to answer their questions by.

Sen Alex Padilla worded his press release about a letter he sent with 15 other Senate Dems differently. He said they “launch a probe.” Which, I think, is the most clarification we’re going to get about these letters.

There is a process, and it does not start with an investigation. First the group of electeds must give the the Admin the time to respond to the inquiry. But if they don’t get a response within the given time, a probe begins.

This letter asking for info into Musk and his freshman 15’s access to the Department of Education, and specifically the financial data was sent three days ago.

Today was the deadline for the Admin to get back to them. Which, I believe, means a probe begins tomorrow.

Finally, we have a new clarity about these letters. Every letter that has been sent to the admin has a date they need an answer by if they do not get an answer by that date, then a probe begins. The press release isn’t super clear on what a probe entails, but, it seems like it’s related to hearings, which of course, we now know means round tables, since the Republicans likely will not be involved.

So I hope seeing these stories all together gives a little more clarity into what our nationally elected Dems are doing. Personally, this feels like a level of oversight that could suggest the start of a shadow cabinet or something akin to it.

Though, I will say, Republicans could join if they actually had any interest in helping or protecting their constituents, which, they clearly don’t.

It is on us to spread these stories. The media, mainstream or not won’t do it, except for Lawrence O’Donnell. That means we need to be on the lookout for our Dem electeds using these three terms, and make sure to help those posts and press releases and videos go viral when we hear them.

Also please remember it has only been three weeks. Things in Congress happen very slowly. Three weeks to line these three things up is incredibly fast for Congress. And I have a feeling we are gonna start seeing more and more of it.

Your voice is your superpower, but only when you use it!

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