We Will Replace You plans to fund and recruit primary opponents to Democrats it views as too soft on Trump.
A new progressive Political Action Committee plans to recruit and fund primary opponents to Democratic members of Congress that it feels are not aggressive enough in fighting President Donald Trump.
WeWillReplaceYou.org was formed by a group of progressive activists with backgrounds in the Bernie Sanders campaign, the environmental movement, the Black Lives Matter movement, and the DREAMer movement of young undocumented immigrants.
It's a project of #AllofUs, a new millennial progressive organization that has protested Democratic members of the Senate, urging them to draw a harder line against Trump's cabinet nominees and policy agenda.
While many liberals, including filmmaker Michael Moore, have issued nominal threats of left-wing challenges to Democratic lawmakers, WeWillReplaceYou.org appears to be the first organized effort to explicitly turn those threats into a reality. That will likely put it on a collision course with Democratic efforts to protect incumbents.
"Other groups are probably expecting to primary Democrats, but we think that it's important to make the threat clear now because so many Democrats are not fighting Trump forcefully enough and we need to communicate that we're serious," Claire Sandberg, a former Sanders staffer and one of the group's founders, told NBC News. "Our message to Democrats is pretty straightforward: Fight Trump or we'll find someone who will."
The objective is not necessarily to replace Democratic incumbents, but to pressure them, Sandberg said, adding that the group is holding off on releasing any targets at the moment.
"We want to leave the door open for Democrats to improve and be stronger in their opposition to Trump," said Sandberg. "We're only a few weeks into the Trump administration. Our goal is not primary every single Democratic member of Congress. It's to push Democrats who are there to do better."
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