MOMocrats

Donald Trump declared April 2 his “liberation day,” when he chose to announce how extensive across-the-board tariffs would be to the world.

But it’s Democrats and other anti-MAGA people who are felt liberated on Wednesday, thanks to this week’s events:

1. Cory Booker’s history-making speech on the Senate floor, which demonstrated some of the leadership and fight that people have been clamoring for…

2. Justice Susan Crawford’s landslide victory over a candidate backed by Elon Musk in the nation’s most expensive state Supreme Court election ever. Are we feeling “liberated” today?

3. There have been twice as many anti-autocracy protests across the country than there were at this point during Trump's first term. And over 400,000 people have indicated they will be attending the nationwide Hands Off events this weekend.

MOMocrats Karoli, Aliza Worthington, and Donna Schwartz Mills discuss.

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Political news moves at the speed of light these days - so the fact that Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg’s account of that Signal chat is still dominating the discussion is an indication of exactly how damaging it is. 

And the fact that - as of this writing - none of those involved have resigned is yet another reminder of this Administration’s willful incompetence and disregard for the safety of the American people.

MOMocrats Karoli, Aliza Worthington, and Donna Schwartz Mills spent a lively hour discussing the most outrageous security breach in the nation’s history - as well as the organized opposition that is finally stirring among the leaders of the Democrats.

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Yes, last week's vote on the Continuing Resolution feels like it was a decade ago - but we will be living with the fallout from it for the next six months. At least. And the anger over how the vote went down is fueling the grassroots at Democratic town halls as well as the ones in red districts.

MOMocrat Karoli says that at the very least, we need to continue speaking out to pressure Congress to "do better. So Chuck Schumer has an option. If we’re all yelling at him, he can do better. And then we won’t want new leadership, right? But if he doesn’t do better, then we need somebody who will." Aliza Worthington and Donna Schwartz Mills join in on the discussion.

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As MOMocrats Aliza Worthington and Donna Schwartz Mills recorded this week's MOMochat podcast, Chuck Schumer announced that the Republicans did not have the votes to pass the continuing resolution that would keep the government funded. It appeared that all the phone calls and emails from the activist base had struck a nerve, and that the Senate Democrats were hanging tight against a bad bill that would officially give up the legislature's power of the purse.

After they recorded the episode, some journalists reported that Schumer's announcement was a form of "kabuki theater," produced because some Democrats fear being blamed if a shutdown occurs. Since then, several Senators have announced that they will not support the CR... and several others have not made their decision public. The vote is on Friday.

Donna and Aliza also talked about the plummeting stock market, the disturbing First Amendment violations against Mahmoud Khalil,  and the spectacle of the President of the United States selling cars from the White House lawn.

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The winner of this week's "Not a State of the Union" address was Representative Al Green, who reminded us all of what it means to get into Good Trouble. [Note that since this episode was recorded, the House voted to censure Rep. Green for a lesser disruption than the ones created by Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene during the Biden speeches. And ten Democrats voted for censure along with the Republicans. 🤬]

Runners-up were those who did not bother to watch the 100-minute cavalcade of hate and lies. MOMocrats Karoli, Aliza Worthington, and Donna Schwartz Mills discuss the Democrats' participation in this ritual while our very democracy is being destroyed by the President and his cronies.

Also: how some of our Democratic leaders may want to think twice about sending out fundraising messages following a speech when we are not seeing much in the way of leadership from them. (Whatever they may be doing behind the scenes is appreciated, but we need to SEE and HEAR them FIGHT BACK.)

The MOMocrats talked about the humiliating spectacle (for the United States) staged by Trump and Vance when they met with in the Oval Office last week, and reported back on what they saw at last weekend's local Tesla Takedown protest.

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The MOMocrats have been very busy doing lots of busy things this week - most of which involved cursing PINO (President in Name Only) and his boss, Elon Musk. And the entire authoritarian transformation that the Republicans are inflicting on the nation.

Karoli, Aliza Worthington, and Donna Schwartz Mills welcome special guest Fran Langum of The Professional Left podcast.

"Right now what our job is is to just be fighting like as hard as we can," says Karoli. "And that’s why I’ve been hard on Democrats but I just would like to say  - just to kind of go on a different tangent for a second, I would like to thank all of the Democrats in the House of Representatives who walked over rocks to be there for this budget vote. Even though they knew they were going to lose the vote. Because they’re in the minority. They knew that if he could pull his Republicans together they’d lose - they still came."

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The MOMocrats are very excited that America now has a Gulf, and are looking forward to the acquisition of Red, White, and Blueland. We also note that the new Chairman of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts can teach us all a thing or two about ... being performative.

Like in that Oval Office press event that was dominated by Elon Musk and his four-year-old son, "Lil X."

“I feel like he’s totally checked out,” says Aliza Worthington of the president. 

Aliza, Karoli, and Donna Schwartz Mills discuss the blitzkrieg of actions, Federal department invasions, terrible appointments and -- just plain silliness contained in the firehose of crap we've all been subjected to over the last three weeks. And they have a few words for the unnamed Democrats that Axios quoted as being "pissed" at the wave of pushback they are getting from the grassroots.

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Remember how frustrated the MOMocrats were last week at weak response Democratic legislators were mounting against the Musk-Trump blitzkrieg of chaos and lawlessness? 

Karoli, Aliza, and Donna were not alone. The nation was paying attention as the DOGE cybervandals invaded department after department in Washington, accessing citizens' private data. Calls from concerned citizens to their representatives turned into organized pressure campaigns and our leaders seemed to find their voice. Democratic members of Congress were turned away from the DOGE-commandeered offices of USAID on Monday. On Tuesday, they were joined by thousands of citizens in front of the Treasury. On Wednesday, on organic protest movement demonstrated at the capitols of all 50 states, while groups from Indivisible showed up in person at their Senators' offices. And yesterday, Senate Democrats announced that they would use the procedural tools at their disposal to slow down the steady confirmations of terrible Trump cabinet nominees.

The MOMocrats talk about this change, plus tariffs, "Gazalago," Marco Rubio's MAGA turn, and more. 

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The Right has been squawking about reducing the size of the Federal government for decades ("I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.") 

For the last 11 days, President Musk and his elderly companion have been attempting to do just that, Twitter style. Grandpa gets the headlines for abruptly freezing all discretionary Federal spending and illegally firing Inspector Generals and other officials who are tasked with making government run smoothly (and rooting out corruption). And just to torture the country a little more, these moves keep occurring in the middle of the night.

The problem is: the Federal government is not a business. It cannot be run like one, and we certainly shouldn't be using Xitter as a model. Radically reducing the government workforce can have deadly consequences.

We're not saying that inducing the head of the FAA to resign on January 20, withholding funds, and harassing the rest of the workforce is the reason for Wednesday's deadly midair collision at National Airport -- but it can't have helped. 

MOMocrats Karoli, Aliza Worthington, and Donna Schwartz Mills try to tackle a little of this week's chaos, which included Washington's newest reality show,  "Are You Incompetent Enough to Be In Trump's Cabinet?"  And a discussion on whether the loyal opposition is putting up enough of a fight (they started to show some life this week - but is it enough?)

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Behold our new era of chaos and revenge! MOMocrats Aliza and Donna welcome Red Painter from CrooksAndLiars.com to chat about the first few days. And while the blizzard of new executive orders and terrible appointments and policies are worthy of discussion, the nation got its first big taste of pushback this week at a national prayer ceremony, when Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde attempted to remind the new/old president that the people he scapegoats are human beings. That went over about as well as you'd expect. 

The MOMocrats got to just a fraction of the topics on this week's outline (which stretched to 3 single-spaced pages). Among the ones they did touch upon were immigration and ICE raids, the elimination of civil rights standards that have been in place for 60 years, the end of a global era that has lasted 80 years, the new "Gulf of America," and the price of eggs - which continues to rise since Inauguration Day. 

MOMocrats MOMochat is part of the Demcast family of podcasts.

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