WASHINGTON — Democrats have spent all-nighters on the Senate floor railing against President Trump’s nominees. They’ve protested at government agencies to highlight his slash-and-burn approach. They’ve opposed his actions in court, in some cases temporarily blocking his policies.
But not only has it done little to slow Trump’s momentum, the largely symbolic response has also failed to appease the one constituency they cannot afford to lose: their own voters.
With complete Republican control of Washington, Democrats have been mostly powerless to stop Trump from pushing through a suite of executive actions and getting his nominees confirmed. Meanwhile, left-leaning constituents have been overwhelming congressional phone lines, beseeching their lawmakers at town halls, and engaging with activist groups to send a clear message to their Democratic representatives: Fight even harder.
“It’s almost like, no matter what they’re doing, it wouldn’t be enough,” said Alicia Fessenden, 45, a Boston-based teacher and potter who has been regularly calling her lawmakers and encouraging others to do the same. “If Trump is behaving in ways that are outside the norm, I think they need to be responding in ways that are outside the norm.”
It’s amounting to a rock-and-a-hard-place conundrum for elected Democrats, stymied by a lack of options to counter the pace of Trump’s slashing of federal agencies and struggling to wield their one potential source of leverage — public opinion — amid skepticism from their base of supporters.
One measure of this dissatisfaction: A poll released Wednesday by Quinnipiac University showed congressional Democrats are underwater with their own voters, with 49 percent of Democrats disapproving of their lawmakers, to 40 percent supportive.
Internally, lawmakers are grappling with those very issues. The House and Senate Democratic leaders have established task forces to explore litigation and communication tactics.
So far, any resistance to Trump has been most effective in the courts, where judges have put a halt to ending birthright citizenship, freezing federal grants, and barring medical care for transgender youth, among other issues.
Much of that success was the result of months of planning by outside left-leaning groups in advance of Trump’s inauguration, using as a road map the conservative Project 2025 agenda and his public statements to plan legal strategies if those policies come to fruition.
Even with the planning, the avalanche of Trump’s actions has forced opponents to scramble for reinforcements. Democracy Forward, a legal advocacy organization born during the first Trump administration, created “Democracy 2025,” a rapid response team of advocacy and activist groups that can quickly challenge Trump policies in court. But the team has already needed to hire many more lawyers.
Still, the group’s president, Skye Perryman, believes the preparation allowed Democracy 2025 to better keep pace than during the first Trump administration, in both filing lawsuits and raising money.
“There’s a reason you don’t see lawyers running in airports to provide legal assistance to people, and it’s because the legal response is a lot more organized this time,” Perryman said, referring to the hectic response to the sudden ban on travel from Muslim countries during Trump’s first week in office in 2017. “We’ve always known this is going to be a hard fight. It’s going to be an even harder fight than we anticipated, and that’s why we’re scaling up to meet the moment.”
Democratic lawmakers aren’t able to challenge Trump in court themselves. But they have filed legal briefs in support of those suits and say they are collecting stories from constituents to help back up the lawyers. But their legal tools are limited.
Democratic lawmakers say they share the dismay and apprehension of concerned constituents and agree it’s essential to fight back with verve. But they are also trying to make clear the realities of life in the minority.
“These were given to me by the Dalai Lama when I visited him in India in May,” Worcester Representative Jim McGovern said as he pointed to a strand of Tibetan prayer beads wrapped several times around his wrist. “They’re supposed to help me deal with my fears and my anxieties and my concerns; they’re not working.”
But while McGovern agreed “pressure needs to be kept on everybody,” he noted they need at least three Republicans to join Democrats to win a vote in the House.
“Are there more things we can do? Yes. Will we do more things? Yes,” McGovern said. “But the notion that somehow we’re not fighting back, it’s just not accurate.”
Democratic voters who want more from their party say they understand the limitations, but still aren’t satisfied. Recent town halls by New England lawmakers including Lori Trahan and Richard Neal of Massachusetts and Gabe Amo from Rhode Island were dominated by questions about stopping Trump and his right-hand man, billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, according to recordings and accounts reviewed by the Globe. Amo said his tele-town hall had 15,000 people dialed in.
Brandeis graduate student Catherine Rosch, 30, is a McGovern constituent in Worcester who said she calls his office, and those of the two Massachusetts senators, every morning at around 9 to weigh in on upcoming votes or to simply encourage them to be more active. She says she’s generally pleased with the three of them, but feels party leadership is not showing the same level of urgency as they are and wants to keep the pressure on.
Rosch wants Democrats to use more procedural tactics, monopolize floor time in the House and Senate, and take more of their objections to the street, such as additional protests outside government buildings or even committing acts of civil disobedience (although she acknowledged a lawmaker can’t vote from jail).
And, for her, compromises are off the table.
“I think you’ve just got to stand for something. A lot of people feel the Democrats don’t really stand for something, they’re just kind of there,” Rosch said. “Be a little more radical than just being, like, ‘Oh we hope we can find negotiation.’ ”
Rosch’s views echo some of what activist groups have encouraged in their followers, although she said she’s mostly developed her talking points herself. Indivisible, a progressive grass-roots organizing group, is encouraging its members to ask their lawmakers to refuse to vote with Republicans on anything until they agree to put guardrails on Trump, and to use more procedural tactics to gum up the works.
“That is not business as usual, and so we need you to act like it,” said Leah Greenberg, an Indivisible executive director. “If you are a person who believes Democratic messaging, you’re probably pretty confused right now, because what you heard heading into the election was, ‘Donald Trump is a fascist, he’s a threat to democracy,’ and then a lot of folks switched to, ‘We’ll work with him.’ ”
Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy said he understands that each of his colleagues has their own calculations. But he has decided to vote against every Trump nominee if they support what Murphy calls Trump’s “corrupt and unconstitutional agenda,” and has made late-night speeches opposing them. Even if it doesn’t stop the nominees, he said, it sends a message.
“It’s an important signal to people outside that this is a five-alarm fire, not a one-alarm fire,” Murphy said. “We have tried to do exceptional things, but yes, we’re going to have to adapt our tactics if the crisis continues to deepen.”
Tal Kopan can be reached at tal.kopan@globe.com. Follow her @talkopan.