When leaders don't lead

When voters complain about Democrats—sometimes more than they do about the Republicans running the federal government and a lot of states as well—they’re often met with suggestions that Democrats can’t do much, because they don’t have any meaningful legislative power right now. “What do you want them to do?” is a common response to criticism.

The general answer I’ve seen given to that question is that people want the Democrats to act like an opposition party. And actions outside the halls of electoral power are possible. On Friday, I wrote in Degenerate Art about some Democrats who have been acting like an opposition party. I mentioned New Jersey Senator Andy Kim and Florida Congressman Maxwell Frost as examples of leadership on the ground from officials in office. The former met with families inside Delaney Hall detention facility and was teargassed trying to protect the crowd of demonstrators as he emerged. The latter has gone repeatedly to the Everglades concentration camp (called “Alligator Alcatraz” by the White House) to assess changing conditions of confinement there.

But today, I’m going to do the opposite of that praise session—I’m going to address recent actions by political leaders that show a real failure to meet the moment. Are there Republican officials who are far, worse, and doing worse things to the American people? Yes, the cowardice and corruption of Republican leaders is in almost every case, worse than that of any individual elected Democratic official right now.

But Democrats need to own their actions regardless. This matters not only in the everyday sense of politicians who should be mindful of their political power and how they use it, but also in the larger historical sense. Typically in concentration camp societies, legislatures and governors have been sidelined by authoritarian governments that manage to disempower or corrupt the opposition.

Are Democratic electeds also doing some good things for constituents night now? Sure, yes—sometimes! And we can praise them for those things. But simultaneously, many Democratic politicians seem to see themselves as referees. They’re doing as much or more to counter the democracy-minded voters who elected them as they are to push back against an administration that’s actively dismantling freedom itself. Others are embracing criminality or corruption, doing the work of the White House to further destroy the country. Today I’ll give you some examples and explain why all this is a serious problem.

I won’t pretend that elected officials don’t have a challenge. They have to actually meet with their opponents and debate or vote on bills of shared interest—actually conduct the everyday business of government—while also trying to make a difference outside the halls of power where they don’t currently have much control. But in my opinion, the fact that they spend time with elected Republicans as peers conducting business actually means they have a greater obligation to show themselves as the opposition there and especially in other settings as often as they can.

Schumer disgraces himself

Senate Minority leader Chuck Schumer has come in for the lion’s share of criticism for years, because of the sense that he may be beholden to his high office and more interested in the trappings of power than in helping his constituents. There’s no doubt that he has multiple roles to play, which complicates the situation. But he earned the condemnation he received this week after walking in the Israel Day parade in New York City on Sunday.

Attending the parade meant appearing with far-right Israeli political figures, including finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, a man who has threatened to evict the residents of a Palestinian Bedouin village in the West Bank if the International Criminal Court issues an arrest warrant for him (it’s been rumored that the court would soon do so). As Haaretz has noted, Smotrich has also called for genocide.

Along with Schumer, New York Governor Kathy Hochul and New York State Attorney General Tish James also attended the parade. Remember, this wasn’t an official delegation negotiating Israeli policy or addressing the war in Iran or recent atrocities in the West Bank or Gaza. A man promoting a genocide—who might soon be wanted for it, in fact—was accompanied by the leader of the Democrats in the United States Senate, for no higher moral purpose than a photo opportunity.

Spanberger disappoints

In my home state, Governor Abigail Spanberger has been quietly doing something worse than morally compromised photo opportunities. She’s been using her office to limit the ability of representatives in her state—members of her own party—to take action. In just a few months as governor, Spanberger has vetoed some 40 bills passed by members of her own party, members elected last November by the people to take action. Rather than trying to shape action after signing the bills as a goodwill measure, supporting the power of her party to make change, she has insisted on getting amendments up front and vetoing legislation if she doesn’t get her way.

She’s shut down the attempt to end a tax exemption for data centers and legislators’ plans to use that money for other priorities. She’s pushed back on the collective bargaining rights of public workers. These are just two examples of the bills she’s torpedoed that will have long-term effects on democracy in a broader context while also affecting the quality of life for everyday Virginians.

Using some foggy notion of centrism does two things: it treats the current political setting as normal. It also prevents the rise of meaningful, multistate opposition to the Trump administration outside the halls of Congress, where Democrats are severely limited in what they can accomplish.

Spanberger needs to lead. But instead, she’s actually putting the brakes on her own party’s attempt to set policy and offer Virginians a different vision of what the state can be. It’s a misplaced kind of centrism that actually impedes leadership, because it kneecaps those who are trying to oppose the dismantling of democracy. And it won’t help her with gaining the support of those on the right, as she might be hoping, if she aspires to any higher office than the one she now holds. The right wing disinformation machine has already tarred her as an extremist.

Jared Polis betrays Colorado

In a more direct example of harm, Colorado governor Jared Polis actually collaborated with the Trump administration in dismantling accountability for trying to overthrow the government.

Polis has previously drawn criticism for actions that went against Democratic principles, including a recent veto of a bill that would make it easier for Colorado unions to organize. But on Monday, as a result of a decision Polis had announced earlier, Colorado election clerk Tina Peters was released from prison after serving only a quarter of her sentence. Peters had been convicted for attempting to influence a public servant and conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation, among other charges.

Peters launched her post-prison media tour by making a series of unrepentant statements. She spoke with authoritarian, racist, xenophobe Steve Bannon, claiming that U.S. elections are rigged by Democrats and that telling the truth about 2020 election conspiracies was why she was sent to prison.

To the credit of Colorado’s democratic party, leadership formally censured Polis for commuting Peters’ sentence and even imposed punishment. But there can be no undoing this particular harm.

Mikie Sherrill falls down

Last week, I wrote about Delaney Hall, a detention facility in Newark run by the private contractor GEO group. Conditions inside are so horrific that detainees are holding a hunger strike. Protesters are trying to support those inside by showing up and maintaining a presence outside Delaney Hall, which they’ve already been doing for a long time.

As I wrote last week, New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill had demanded access to the facility and called for it to be closed down. But recent days have seen the New Jersey State Police deployed on multiple nights against demonstrators. There are multiple reports—and even video—of projectiles striking demonstrators and of beatings. The Trump administration has praised the state police response as an operation in support of ICE and DHS’s agenda.

If elected officials don’t understand that every crisis in the country right now is—on some level—a matter of police-state power applied by corrupt authorities against vulnerable and selectively targeted communities, those officials are failing to understand their jobs. Abetting these gross abuses of power is disastrous.

Preemptively using state police to do the exact same job so that federal authorities won’t come in to take action instead is the worst kind of collaboration—one that spares the Trump administration the risk of exposure to public disapproval, while tarnishing the good faith the governor had built through prior words and deeds.

Don’t abandon allies

Monday, Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote about the presence of the New Jersey State Police outside Delaney Hall. He asked an important question: “Is the New Jersey governor at war with the rogue agency that sends masked goon squads into city streets to grab day laborers or Uber drivers and warehouses them in squalid gulags, and that murdered two citizens on the streets of Minneapolis when they tried to protest? Or is she partnering with them?”

I discovered Will’s piece halfway through writing this one. But I’m not surprised that he beat me to the punch with a similar perspective. There’s a kind of compartmentalization in which Democratic politicians don’t understand the degree to which they’re part of a larger fight against authoritarianism. And they don’t seem to realize that this fight connects directly to their state or district while also giving them a role far beyond their immediate responsibilities and their limited official role.

Free speech is being boxed in on every front. To actively limit it yourself in an attempt to appear neutral or to appease the right’s hunger to punish those standing up for immigrants and other communities is to disempower everyone who is working against the harm the White House is imposing right now. It sullies the collaborating politicos as well, which harms the prospects for democracy for everyone going forward.

Ras Baraka shows up

Even in posts that are mostly criticism, I want to offer counterexamples. So I’ll include praise for the actions that Newark mayor Ras Baraka has taken in the last 24 hours, even as Governor Sherrill has been falling short. Next week, he may be the one who’s falling short, but today, he’s saying what needs to be said and taking constructive action.

Since state health inspectors haven’t been allowed inside Delaney Hall, Newark officials filed a lawsuit to demand access. Mayor Baraka also spoke out today to remind the public that people have been protesting at Delaney Hall for nearly a year, and it’s only the presence and actions of ICE—and more recently the New Jersey State Police—outside the facility that have led to violence.

Baraka is talking about lifting the curfew recently imposed, and replacing the New Jersey State Police with Newark officers instead. (We’ll see if he will and can actually exert control over his police department, and make clear his expectation that protesters should be allowed to protest.)

One issue that the mayor has been emphasizing is that Delaney Hall is privately run and doesn’t sit on federal land. Therefore, those who run it “are subject to state and municipal laws. They cannot be shielded by a contract that they have with Homeland Security, which is what they’re trying to do over and over again.”

Baraka himself offered some criticism of the governor, saying, "Mikie Sherrill was supposed to take action, she's the Governor of New Jersey… She made a decision to involve the State Police - I disagree with the tactics they employed. If you use a sword, you have to expect people to get cut."

Pulling back for a moment to consider all this from 30,000 feet, it’s worth remembering that this sequence of events isn’t just how it’s going today, right now, in the United States. This is happening all over the world. See, for instance, already bad and rapidly deteriorating immigration policies in Europe.

Similar attempts to shut down free speech and expand camps have happened for more than a century. Across the history of authoritarianism, strongmen have counted on bureaucrats and politicians to continue like marionettes in their traditional roles while those with power kill every freedom in society.

This is why legislators are rarely the ones who push back on authoritarianism—and why the recent example of South Korea should be understood as both inspirational and extraordinary. Opposition politicians must be mindful of the fact that their role is in part to preserve the ability to stand meaningfully, dramatically, and publicly against the government, even if it draws fire—in some cases, because it will draw fire.

What can you do?

First, I want to take a minute to praise those who show up day after day and night after night at places like Broadview in Chicago or Delaney Hall—or countless other larger or smaller facilities around the country. That is one path to action, and it’s a powerful one that sets an example and serves as a check on state power in an explicit way.

For those who aren’t ready or able to protest in high-stakes venues for various reasons, supporting those who do by raising the profile of the hunger strikers and conditions in ICE facilities is also critical. We likewise need to expand long-term awareness about the ways conditions in these facilities mimic and even directly replicate conditions in prisons in the United States today.

If you’re a politician struggling with how to address all these threats, it’s never too late to shift gears and embrace your responsibility to lead on matters related to civil rights and ICE detention. Newark’s Ras Baraka was arrested protesting against ICE a year ago, which garnered a lot of attention in a stand against these camps. But he also imposed the mandatory curfew just days ago, before deciding to lift it tonight. Few elected officials have a record of consistently making wise decisions. But it is nevertheless possible for them to do the right thing, now, today.

For those of us who are voters, demanding better from the Republican politicians backing the current authoritarianism and the Democratic politicians who at least nominally oppose it is key. We can pressure politicians into making decisions that support democracy and reflect public unhappiness with the White House’s treatment of immigrants.

In a discussion group with thirty or so high schoolers at a New York Public School last week, I was so impressed by the way several of them have approached fighting for the rights of immigrants on multiple levels. More than half the room had already been out demonstrating. Several had also been doing community organizing with “know your rights” pamphlets. A few had even joined with kids from other schools, going to the state capital at Albany to lobby dozens of legislators.

Their commitment at such a limited age, with less institutional power and fewer resources than almost anyone reading this post, was so moving to me. There’s so much work to do, but there’s also so much we can do. You don’t have to do everything, but you can do something.

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