President Donald Trump’s pedal-to-the-metal start to his second term is challenging a pledge by some Democratic lawmakers to work with his administration when possible. With his freezing of federal grants and loans; firing of federal government employees; issuing of 1,500 pardons related to the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot; and other early moves, the hard-charging president has flooded the zone and put Democrats on their heels. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who caucuses with Democrats, on Tuesday called Trump's grant-freezing directive "a dangerous move towards authoritarianism and ... blatantly unconstitutional." But without majority status in either chamber, Democrats have few options on their own to stop Trump’s most contentious edicts. Since Trump defeated Kamala Harris in November, Democrats have opted against expressing outrage at his every utterance and action. Some spent the months before he was sworn in last week at the Capitol pledging to work with the Republican president on certain policy issues. But from the opening minute of his second inaugural address, Trump has pushed the surreal bipartisan mood to a breaking point. He spoke of “the scales of justice” being “rebalanced” during his second term after Democrats spent four years railing against what they called his illegal conduct. And he declared that “the vicious, violent, and unfair weaponization of the Justice Department and our government will end” — Democrats contend that claim is fiction. Jim Manley, a Democratic strategist, said on social media Tuesday that “the question now is whether dems go after trump with his latest unconstitutional plan to pause spending,” before citing an NBC News story headline: “Democrats' playbook for Trump 2.0: Tune out the noise and focus on economic issues.” To that end, the Democratic National Committee said in a Monday statement that "Trump promised to lower costs for Americans, but instead, he’s more focused on rescinding policies to lower the costs of prescription drugs, attacking critical programs like Medicaid and Social Security, releasing violent criminals, weaponizing natural disaster relief, and laying the groundwork for another tax handout to billionaires." The freeze on some federal grants and loans is a "temporary pause," White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, said Tuesday, contending that programs that directly aid individuals — including Medicare, Social Security and social welfare programs— were excluded. She told reporters that Trump was not trying to prove to Congress he has the authority to not spend funds that lawmakers had allocated for specific programs and purposes. Massachusetts Rep. Jim McGovern predicted on Jan. 20 while walking to the inauguration ceremony that his fellow Democrats would soon begin speaking out on all things Trump. That indeed has been the case over the past eight days. “This OMB memo is unprecedented and dangerous. It will cause chaos,” Pennsylvania Rep. Brendan F. Boyle said on social media, referring to a White House Office of Management and Budget memo ordering the freeze on most federal grants. Senate Foreign Relations member Christopher S. Murphy blasted Trump’s order to pause all federal aid and halt all work on such programs around the globe as initiatives are reviewed, calling the move “dumb and murderous.” “First, this isn't a funding pause. It's a STOP WORK ORDER to almost all aid. Unprecedented,” the Connecticut Democrat wrote on social media. “So today we just stopped feeding babies and housing refugees and mediating conflicts all around the world. Aid orgs are laying off staff and many programs will not restart.” Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, who recently signaled he could work with Trump on potentially renaming the Gulf of Mexico, has also steadily ramped up his criticism of his fellow native New Yorker. Schumer on Tuesday called on Trump to immediately rescind his federal aid freeze, saying Congress “must act” if the president refuses. “The blast radius of this terrible decision is virtually limitless,” Schumer said at a news conference, adding that Democrats would pursue “all available options” to halt the move. A day earlier, he said on social media that Trump “owes American families some answers about what he is going to do about the high price of eggs that’s being exacerbated by Bird Flu." During a Saturday Senate session, Schumer criticized Trump’s remarks about possibly overhauling or terminating the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Getting rid of FEMA would be “dangerous,” the minority leader said on the floor. “History is clear, that when it comes to disaster response, there [are] some things only the federal government is equipped to do.” He also took umbrage with Trump’s decision to fire at least 12 inspectors general late Friday night. The following day, Schumer called the move a “chilling purge” and questioned whether it could violate a federal law that requires a president to notify Congress of such firings in advance. The terminations, he added, represented a “glaring sign that it's a golden age for abuse in government, and even corruption." 'React meaningfully' But Murphy highlighted a strategic and messaging problem for Democrats, writing on social media that “Trump is trying to oversaturate us with nonstop chaos so we can’t react meaningfully to any one thing.” Steve Bannon, a former Trump campaign and White House strategist, often refers to the president’s habit of making multiple bold moves at once as a conscious effort to “flood the zone with s---.” Democrats have, so far, struggled to keep up with Trump’s break-neck pace. For instance, Senate Democratic leadership initially called the Tuesday news conference to object to the president’s Jan. 6-related pardons — eight days after Trump had signed the pardon order. But they had to change their plan after Monday night’s federal funding freeze order. The news conference instead became about what Washington Sen. Patty Murray called a “brazen and illegal move” by Trump. Still, some Democrats — including longtime vocal critics of Trump — have appeared hopeful that some across-the-aisle cooperation was still possible. “Here’s something President Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and I agree on: the federal government throws away trillions of dollars on wasteful spending. I have spent years trying to squeeze government waste out of our budget, and I’m ready to work with Musk to make government more efficient and save taxpayers money,” Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren wrote in an op-ed published Tuesday by Fox News. “But here’s the thing: we need to focus in the right place. Instead of cutting help for people who rely on Medicare, Social Security and the VA, let’s focus on the billionaires and billionaire corporations who are feasting off the American taxpayer,” she wrote, proposing a list of federal cuts she contended would save $2 trillion. Still, Democrats have yet to settle on a strategy for combating the second Trump administration. Manley called Warren’s outreach to Trump and Musk a "bad move," saying on social media that there was a time "when i could have supported moves like this, now however is not one of these times." Trump, meanwhile, at a House GOP retreat Monday evening in Florida, compared himself with mobster Al Capone, saying the gangster "was not investigated as much as your president was investigated." Earlier in the day, his Truth Social account posted an image of the president wearing a Capone-style fedora with a sign reading "FAFO" — short for “F--- Around and Find Out.” Victor Feldman contributed to this report.
