Hakeem Jeffries comes out swinging
All too often, the complaint from day to day on social media is “What are the Democrats doing?” to put it mildly. It’s usually that “they’re not doing enough!” in some way or other – or they’re not doing x – with x being the magic bullet solution that’s somehow going to fix all of our problems right now. It’s no accident that you’re seeing all of this either, with right-wing algorithms promoting this type of rhetoric to feed a doom cycle. It’s easy to take for granted that Republicans are always going to be awful (because they are) and not give them any agency – that they’re capable of deciding to act or not on their own, while blaming Democrats for not doing enough to push back against it.
It’s self-reinforced behavior that always helps the Republicans get off the hook. Your job should instead be to focus on and amplify the Democrats’ own messaging, which has actually been quite effective over the last week. Hakeem Jeffries just landed a solid reminder today, as House Republicans waffle on their support of tariffs: “MAGA Republicans have a temporary majority in the House.” There’s a non-zero chance that they could be out of power even before 2027, but he’s making it clear that they have the chance to renounce the latest insane trade war from Donald Trump before it’s too late.
This is how you talk when you wield power – and when you know your opposition has factions that are beginning to splinter apart. Republicans may act shamelessly, but they’re beholden to their voters as well – and the more you put pressure on them, the more likely they are to break. Let’s turn up the pressure on MAGA Republicans to break away with probably the most inane peacetime tax hike in American history and then vote them out of office in 2026.
James Sullivan is the assistant editor of Brain World Magazine and an advocate of science-based policy making