Friends, Americans, Tumblrs, lend me your ears
I know a lot of us are hoping to observe the Ides in fine style this year, so let's all do our part to give that red dodgeball a mighty kick.
If you have a Democratic Senator or Representative (or both, you lucky devil) call them--or email, fax, messenger pigeon, whatever you've got--and say that you would support a government shutdown, if that's what it takes to put some brakes on Trump's reckless disregard for the Constitution.
If you aren't already doing the 5 calls, you can Find your legislators here.
For those who haven't been following along, the current US federal budget* runs out on March 14, which means that a government shutdown will happen on the 15th unless both chambers can pass either a new budget or at least a new extension.
Usually, when this happens, Democrats are the ones making concessions to a Republican minority in order to keep the government limping along.
But this year, there's been some talk of the Democrats forcing a shutdown--and, according to this Politico article, it's starting to take shape as a serious possibility, largely due to lawmakers feeling the pressure from their constituents.
This is a process where the minority party has a significant amount of leverage--particularly in the Senate, where they need to pass their bill by a 60-vote margin**.
So far, Democratic lawmakers have been leaning heavily on the narrative that, as the minority party, they can't do much more than they're doing. And that does have some truth to it, but this budget process is one where the minority party has a significant amount of leverage.
So let's keep that pressure up, and make sure that they know that we know that they have some cards to play next week.
(*It's actually a temporary extension of the previous budget, but we don't need to get bogged down in the details.)
(**If you don't have a scorecard in front of you, there are 53 Republican Senators.)
