Call your Democratic senators now.
We got about 24 hours to do this.
Okay, I'm going to be honest with all of you: If this newsletter hasn't been appearing in your inbox, it is not because of an email glitch. I am just very bad at producing a daily newsletter, it turns out. That doesn't mean it will always be like this; I am learning and growing and improving. But it does mean this is a much shorter version of the post I started to write two weeks ago.
We've talked about how Republicans in Congress don't have the votes to pass their own bill—a "continuing resolution"—to keep the federal government open. To avoid a shutdown, they need votes from Democrats, possibly not in the House at this point, but definitely in the Senate, where 60 votes are needed. We have been talking about this for a while, in fact. We have known that this is where Democrats have leverage to force their Republican colleagues to stop Elon Musk and DOGE's illegal evisceration of federal agencies.
But it looks like, unlike us, Senate Democrats have not known this. Some of them have been making noises that strongly suggest they will vote for the GOP bill. Josh Marshall at TPM has a very good post about it—here's a gift link.
(Sidebar: I don't link to Josh Marshall all the time just because his name is also Josh. I do it because he started blogging about politics 25 years ago and then built his blog into an actual, profitable, independent news outlet that is not beholden to big corporations or wealthy individuals the way most of the mainstream media is. On that note, TPM just started its annual membership drive, and if you have a few bucks to spare, a TPM Prime membership costs only a bit more than a subscription to this newsletter, and will net you a lot more news for your money than you are getting from me. They also have free memberships for college students with .edu email addresses and community-supported memberships for folks who can't afford to pay for one. This is journalism worth supporting, in other words, and I am not affiliated with them in any way, but I would be remiss if I didn't tout them at a time when we desperately need that.)
Anyhoo, the upshot: If you have one or two Democratic senators, CALL THEM. Call them and say you are absolutely opposed to them voting for a Republican continuing resolution bill unless it includes clear language that puts a stop to Musk's unlawful raid on the government and returns the power of the purse to Congress. Flooding them with calls is the best and probably only chance we have. (And by the way, call and do not email. Call their local offices and their D.C. offices. Calls are what get counted.)
The 5 Calls app is a great help in this endeavor: https://5calls.org/
If you have a Republican senator and time on your hands, it can't hurt to call and lambast them too. But we need to do it now. Within "the next 48 hours" is what Josh Marshall says in his post, and that went up yesterday around noon. Good luck, love you, be safe but be courageous, talk to you soon.
(Today's email is not paywalled. Please feel free to forward it or post the link on your socials to get more people calling their senators: https://www.normalnewsletter.net/call-your-democratic-senators-now/)
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