[MUSIC]

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. We've been talking about local backlash against dropping the corruption charges against Mayor Eric Adams. Now we turn to a national angle on that. Seven lawyers have resigned from the U.S. Attorney's Office here in New York over this case. It may be the most significant pushback against the Trump administration so far outside of all the lawsuits, but those are just one group of government employees. There were also a lot of people out on the streets yesterday. There are more protests scheduled for today, others for later this month, so a protest movement, nascent at this point, does seem to be taking shape. There are also the lawmakers, the elected members of Congress and others who, at least from the perspective of some members of the Democratic base, aren't doing enough. Here are comedians Roy Wood Jr, Amber Ruffin, and Michael Black on last Saturday's CNN program, Have I Got News For You. Roy Wood Jr. speaks first.

[Playing a clip from CNN's Have I Got News For You]

Roy Wood Jr: How are the Democrats fighting back?

Michael Black: Amber had it right before, they're not doing anything. Is that right?

Amber Ruffin: Is it? Say it's not, Roy.

[laughter]

Roy Wood Jr: They're doing something.

Amber Ruffin: Oh, okay. Great, it's going to be effective. Everybody put your feet up, this is going to be great.

[laughter]

Amber Ruffin: Hey, but what are they doing?

Brian Lehrer: Here's Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer.

[Playing a recording of Senator Chuck Schumer]

Senator Chuck Schumer: We will win. We will win. We will win.

Speaker 2: I feel better already.

[laughter]

Brian Lehrer: All right. Listeners, if you voted blue in the last election, how do you think your elected officials are doing? And if you're involved in any of the protests, if you were out there on Monday, give us a call and tell us what exactly out of all the things that are going on you were protesting. It was President's Day. I know there was a theme of "Not my President's Day," that had something to do with Elon Musk, but what beyond that, what were you protesting out there, and what do you think the movement is shaping up to be and whether it can be effective? Give us a call. As well as commenting on your Democratic Party elected officials, joining me now is Edward-Isaac Dovere, CNN senior reporter covering Democratic politics and campaigns across the country, and the author of Battle for the Soul: Inside the Democrats' Campaigns to Defeat Trump. Hey, Edward-Isaac, welcome back to WNYC.

Edward-Isaac Dovere: Hi, Brian. It's great to be back.

Brian Lehrer: First, is the resignation of these officials from city government and from the U.S. Attorney's Office a watershed moment of any kind, as you see it as a national political reporter, for highlighting the beginning of resistance, if that's the right word, against Trump?

Edward-Isaac Dovere: Brian, are you there?

Brian Lehrer: Were you able to hear the question?

Edward-Isaac Dovere: Sorry, can you say it one more time? I'm sorry, I had a little audio problem there.

Brian Lehrer: I'm just curious if you think the resignation of the city officials and the seven lawyers in the U.S. Attorney's Office represent any kind of watershed moment in terms of mounting a resistance to Trump in a meaningful way.

Edward-Isaac Dovere: Watershed is maybe too early to tell. We don't know, but what it has done is really very early in this presidency told us very clearly where the Justice Department is when it comes to these political prosecutions under Trump. It's not a surprise. We've known since Donald Trump was in office the first time around that he sees the Justice Department functioning, he believes, sort of like his own private lawyer. He's talked about that a lot in the past. He also has made it clear that he believes that charges that are against anybody that he favors, including himself, are unfair. Whereas he likes to have charges, or investigations, indictments about people who are his political opponents.

What's going on now with this is yet another way of reaffirming to people who were questioning what kind of presidency this was going to be, how serious was Trump going to be about it, that this is what it is, this is how he approaches things. And given the kinds of people who resigned from the U.S. Attorney's Office, these were not Democrats, these were not institutionalists. Danielle Sassoon was the interim U.S. attorney that his administration had put in place, a former clerk for Antonin Scalia, certainly not some kind of lefty rabble-rouser. She and these other people who have resigned are making it very clear that this is not anything related to the standard rule of law, but instead thinking about--

As Emil Bove, the Justice Department official who's been leading the charge here for the the efforts to dismiss the charges against Eric Adams has himself made clear that this is about looking for people who are allied with Donald Trump and able to help carry out his political agenda. That is significant within the Eric Adams situation, but it also is being paid attention to by U.S. attorneys and Justice officials all across the country who are thinking about what these next 3 years and 11 months are going to be like, and what decisions they have to make about prosecuting or not prosecuting, or what they look into and how they look into it. It really is a signal that has been seen and heard very clearly by lawyers across the country.

Brian Lehrer: Here are some texts that are coming in. A listener writes, "Chuck Schumer and Jerry Nadler, who's my representative, must both retire. They're operating by the rules of a completely different era and have no ability to adapt to this new era. It's time." Another listener writes, "I've been becoming increasingly disenchanted with the Democratic Party since before the election. They're at best ineffective in many instances, and they've even adopted the same pandemic denialism that Trump explicitly endorsed." So, Edward-Isaac, I don't know what the pandemic denialism part of that is, but on the many comments that we're starting to get on the phones and on the texts from disgruntled members, disaffected members of the Democratic Party base, how much are you seeing that as a national political reporter across the country?

Edward-Isaac Dovere: It's a definite tension that's there, and I wrote something over the weekend that got into this, that there is this divide among the Democratic elected leaders, particularly in Washington, of how much to say that they can rely on the usual methods of government and what worked for them during the first Trump term, thinking about what the legislative pitfalls are going to be, court challenges, protests, all those sorts of things, versus those who say this is a different situation and this is an emergency situation, and it needs to be treated in a very different way, to use their own wrecking balls essentially to the government process. It really comes down to questions of how much panic people have about what's going on, and also how much they think that Trump will be successful in moving forward here.

I do think that what they're all grappling with is trying to understand how much month-one of the Trump presidency-- which Monday marked the first month, we're now into the second month-- so is month-one the beginning of what the next 47 months of a Trump presidency will be, or is it-- in some way, was there more action in month one? Was that just the ramping up? Is month one going to seem like the basics as they get into more extensive stuff? And it's all splitting the tactical and strategic decisions that are being made by Democrats, the ones who are in positions of power, whether it's in Washington or elsewhere around the country.

Brian Lehrer: Olivia in Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Hello, Olivia.

Olivia: Hi, Brian, longtime listener. I've called in a few times. The point I wanted to make is that, with regards to how Democrats are responding to this, both in action and with words, is that Democrats have this tendency to try and focus-group everything they say before they're willing to say it. And A, it slows down our reaction time like crazy. And B, we end up with these sort of like middle-of-the-road positions where-- Like, yes, they poll the best, but that's because they offend the fewest people, and it's often not sort of the forceful direction that we need to go in. We need to be, to my mind, sort of everywhere all at once, communicating on all sorts of different channels, and not waiting for the perfect thing to say, like someone like AOC right now who is just out there responding, sort of almost live tweeting, live blogging what's going on. And I think we need to stop focusing on like, what's the right message to have, and instead, just be out there communicating. Like, let people see us doing something so that you don't feel like there's no one out there who's speaking for you.

Brian Lehrer: Olivia, thank you very much. Now, we're going to bring in Christopher Fasano in addition to Edward-Isaac Dovere from CNN. Christopher Fasano, former attorney at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and an organizing committee member of the NTEU 335. He lost his job as part of the purge at the CFPB, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and as I just said, he's also an organizer. Christopher, welcome to WNYC.

Christopher Fasano: Hi, Brian. Thanks for having me.

Brian Lehrer: Just to introduce yourself to our listeners a little bit, can you tell us about your role at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and how it was eliminated?

Christopher Fasano: Yes. I was an enforcement attorney at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, I was a member of our union, and last week, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau laid off about 175 employees out of a total workforce of about 1,750. So I was laid off last Tuesday. The firing was illegal, and the first thing that we did, all of us who were laid off on Tuesday, was to take to the streets the very next day. In less than 12 hours, we organized a protest outside of Federal Plaza, we had a picket line. We're returning to Federal Plaza today at noon to picket Elon Musk and his takeover at the federal government, and we were going to be following that up with a rally at Foley Square at 5:30.

Brian Lehrer: What do you think a rally like this could accomplish, or a protest like this?

Christopher Fasano: Well, what we're looking to do is bring out federal workers, bring out union members across the country. This day of protest is happening here in New York City and cities all throughout the country. There'll be protests in DC, in San Francisco, and elsewhere. And what we want to do is make clear that an unelected billionaire, Elon Musk, is taking over our government and firing federal workers in order to dismantle public goods and services that every American relies on. We want to make sure that people are in the streets protesting this, that we continue to turn out for rallies and pickets and protest to name what is happening, and that is a theft of the highest order of these goods and services, in order to build this grassroots movement so that we can hold politicians in check, and also the courts too, so that they know public opinion is against this theft by Elon Musk.

Brian Lehrer: What do you see as the ideal role and how close they are to fulfilling it of Democratic Party politicians? Like, with respect to their participation at rallies like you're holding in front of your agency, as well as USAID, is there a sense that unions and activist groups are benefiting from their presence? Or like the previous caller who you probably heard just before we brought you on was saying, are Democratic politicians almost diluting the message by being too cautious?

Christopher Fasano: Well, I think we are disappointed with the initial response when it appeared that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was going to be shuttered by Musk and that he was going to lay off federal workers and prevent us from protecting consumers. We were reaching out to Democratic elected officials asking for their support, and I do think in that circumstance, they should have been reaching out to us and asking how they could support us. There's a little bit of a shock and awe tactic, and with Elon Musk, it's what he did at Twitter-- it's move fast and break things, so there is a sense in which they want to overwhelm the federal workers. But we have since rallied, we are continuing to rally, and I think they can do more to join us in the streets to join these protests and encourage others to come out to form these linkages between federal workers, other unionists, and show that the American public, every American, benefits from these goods and services that Elon Musk is trying to take away.

Brian Lehrer: Let me play two contrasting clips from Democratic Party politicians from the New York/New Jersey area. One of them happens to be the minority leader of the House of Representatives, Hakeem Jeffries, speaking earlier this month, seeming to try to figure out what his most effective role could be.

Hakeem Jeffries: I'm trying to figure out what leverage we actually have. What leverage do we have? They control the House, the Senate, and the Presidency. It's their government. What leverage do we have?

Brian Lehrer: In contrast to that, one way Democrats, including Jefferies for sure, are looking for leverage has to do with the March 14th budget deal deadline. Here's the newly elected U.S. senator from New Jersey, Andy Kim, on Meet the Press last week on the prospect of a government shutdown if the Republicans don't change some of their Elon-Musk-related ways.

Senator Andy Kim: Yes. Look, if we have to take steps to be able to hold them accountable, we'll use the leverage that we have to force it. I cannot support efforts that will continue this lawlessness that we're seeing when it comes to this administration's actions. For us to be able to support government funding in that way, only for them to turn it around to dismantle the government, that is not something that should be allowed.

Brian Lehrer: Senator Andy Kim. Edward-Isaac Dovere, let me go back to you. Does that represent some kind of range of things that the Democratic Party elected officials at the national level are looking to do or scratching their heads about whether it would be effective or backfire to do?

Edward-Isaac Dovere: In some way. I think it's important to contextualize what Hakeem Jeffries was saying at that moment. I was sitting in the room at the press conference he had in Washington when he was saying that. He was actually sort of being sarcastic responding to a reporter who was saying, "Why don't Democrats do more to make a budget deal with Republicans?" So he was saying, "I don't understand what leverage I have to make a budget deal." They're actually both talking about the same issue of what Democrats are going to do with this budget deadline that's coming in the middle of March and the prospect of a shutdown.

That said, this is getting at the kind of divide that is there, not just about Democrats overall figuring out what to do as I was talking about, but what to do with this budget deadline. I spoke with Cory Booker, the other senator from New Jersey, who feels very differently it seems, from Andy Kim, about this question. When I was talking to him last week, he said to me, "We cannot shut the government down. We can't be talking about shutdowns." And it's not just Booker who feels that way. There are a lot of, particularly in the Senate, people who've been in the Senate for longer certainly feel this way. Andy Kim, of course, just a couple of weeks into his time as being a senator.

In the House of Representatives, there's also this question of, are the Democrats going to be willing to shut the government down for-- it could be a day, it could be a week, it could be longer than that. We just don't know what it would be. Or will they act in a similar way to what happened in December when there was a budget deadline then? There were some concessions made that were not enormous concessions, but concessions to what Democrats wanted that encouraged most of the Democrats to support the budget bill in a way that made up for the Republican defections-- those House Freedom Caucus people, the people who say that basically they won't vote for any increase in budget spending, and made the majority there so that there was not a shutdown. That's how things looked in December.

Things look differently now as we look into this for March, in part because of all the political situation changes that have happened, and in part also because the majority that the Republicans have in the House is even smaller than it was in December now that the results of the November election have kicked in. And so we will see what this looks like, but there is-- Fundamentally, Democrats tend to be a party of keeping government going, of supporting government. It is much more in the DNA of Republicans to shut down the government when they don't like things. We're going to see how that plays out now that we are coming up against it again with this March 14th deadline.

Brian Lehrer: If you're just joining us, we're talking about pushback against various Trump and Musk administration-- can we call it the Trump and Musk administration policies-- with Edward-Isaac Dovere from CNN and Christopher Fasano, who just lost his job as a lawyer with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and is an organizer of a rally this afternoon in New York. A little pushback on this idea of Democratic Party politicians not doing enough. One listener writes, "I voted Democratic. It disturbs me that blaming the Democratic Party for not doing or messaging enough is at least in part blaming the victim of a massive organized crime against the U.S. by Trump and Musk and all the Republicans who have aided and abetted these crimes, like blaming Ukraine for the Russian invasion." And I think Sonny in Brooklyn may say something like that. Sonny, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Sonny: Hi there, Brian. I'm glad that the last part of this conversation you were just having went into the direction that I spoke to your producer about, which is ultimately, at the end of the day, we'd love to say that Democrats are not doing enough. You know what I mean? That Democrats need to-- which I think is ridiculous. What is it, the optics of a protest? Like, at the end of the day, it's the bottom line of what gets done, and the bottom line is 14 million people didn't come out to vote for Kamala Harris. Whether it was because the Muslims that were upset, they were like, "Okay, we're going to vote for Trump because at least we have--" I don't even know how this came up, 1% of a chance with Gaza, or that you had people with the Goldilocks syndrome, as Michelle Obama had said. Like, "I don't like this particular part, I don't like this particular part--"

So when we as Democrats-- The Democrats are not a group of people like in the ether out there in Washington DC. We are the Democrats, so when we put our elected officials in a position in which the Republicans have now-- and not even just Republicans, Trump, MAGA people have taken over the Senate and the House and the Presidency, my question is, past what they've already done, which is filing multiple lawsuits, what do we expect them to do at this point?

Of course, they're scratching their heads and being clutches, because why? Trump has got the administration legislative in his back pocket. We've seen even what's going on with Adams and Kathy Hochul. What is she supposed to do? Suddenly then she gets removed? I mean, we are seeing a systematic, I'm sorry, dismantling of our democracy, and I feel like we're all in the clouds like, "Oh, what are we going to do? Or what are they going to do?" It's like, as Hakeem said, my hands are tied, what more can we do? So I feel like the responsibility needs to be part of us as people as well, too. Not just blaming our politicians, but like, where were the other 14 million people who now want to sit around upset and like they're shocked? Elon Musk, he's been telling us for months what he was going to do. This is not a shocker.

Brian Lehrer: Sonny, thank you. Christopher Fasano, listening to Sonny, what are you thinking?

Christopher Fasano: You know, I don't think there's any one tactic that the Democrats can employ to stop this assault, they should have everything on the table. I think what we're talking about is a campaign here to build public support against this attack on our government, its goods and services that everyday Americans rely on that's being perpetuated by Elon Musk to enrich himself. We need to build a worker-based movement, that's why we have unions coming out, and we need every American to speak out against this and to build political power so that we can reverse the tide here. I don't think there are easy solutions. I think what we need to do is organize and take all those disaffected Americans who feel real pain. You know, I'm a consumer attorney, and people suffer financially, and so that pain is real, but it's not going to be addressed by enriching billionaires like Elon Musk that is looking to dismantle our federal government and deprive Americans of basic goods and services. This is going to be a project that we're going to have to work on for the weeks and months ahead.

Brian Lehrer: Here's Todd in Manhattan, who attended Monday's Union Square rally, I believe. Todd, you're on WNYC. Thank you for calling in.

Todd: Always a pleasure, Brian. Always a pleasure speaking to you. Yes, it was actually very exciting to be sort of back in the saddle, as it were, with a few thousand other fellow New Yorkers. It was a very cold day, but very warm inside our hearts. A good friend of mine asked me to go, and we went down to Union Square right off the bat on the number one train, there were dozens of other people also equipped with signs. What was interesting was that there did not seem to be any particular organizer.

There was no platform, there was no stage, and yet the central organizing factor was that each of us were there for the same exact reason, and it was very orderly. People were chanting, but people were very respectful. There were all kinds of really cool signs. There was a sign that was a real throwback to the 1970s with a frying pan with scrambled eggs. It said, "This is your brain on Trump," which I thought was very effective for lots of reasons. But the screener asked me what the overall sort of thrust was, and I think it was almost as much anti-Musk as it was anti-Trump. The despair that we're all feeling about the rapid illegal dismantling of the government was kind of compensated by the fact that we were all there together. I think it's really important in the current climate that we don't allow ourselves to fall into despair.

The one thing I want to sort of relate back to a comment that was made earlier on the segment, Brian, is that I was dismayed that there was not one single elected official, either local, state, or federal. Where was Jerry Nadler, whom I know well? Where was Chuck Schumer? Where was AOC? Where were any of the local politicians in the mayor's office? I was actually stunned that there was not one single Democratic elected official there, even as a private individual. It was actually stunning and dismaying.

Brian Lehrer: Todd, thank you very much for your call. Christopher Fasano, I'll go right back to you on this. As somebody who was fired by the administration from the CFPB and now is organizing a rally to push back, are you dismayed at all by the lack of a mass movement? We've been talking about the politicians, but what about the movement? There's so much less in the streets than there was at the beginning of the first Trump administration. How do you understand that, and are you frustrated by that, even as you may be frustrated with some of the elected Democrats?

Christopher Fasano: You know, I'm not frustrated, I'm not dismayed, I'm not in a state of despair. I am angry at what Elon Musk is doing. I'm angry at what he's doing to federal workers who provide these goods and services that people rely on, I'm angry at what he's doing to the American public, and that's what we're building today and we'll be building in the days and weeks ahead. Today will be a mass picket at Federal Plaza at 12:00, there will be a rally at Foley Square at 5:30. Turn up, come out. If you're feeling despair or dismay, or feeling alienated, come out today. I am confident that the American people are against what Elon Musk is doing, this heist to enrich himself, and I am hopeful that we will turn the tide by turning out masses of people.

Brian Lehrer: We're going to end with this-- First, here's another text that came in. A listener writes, "I read terrific ideas every day on Bluesky and in the comments section of The New York Times. And if ordinary citizens can come up with these terrific ideas, it's telling that Schumer, Nadler, and Jeffries cannot come up with any good ideas." Of course, that's the listener's take about-- they're not coming up with good ideas. But related to that, here is a one-minute excerpt from Jon Stewart's conversation with Hakeem Jeffries on the Jon Stewart podcast earlier this week. Jeffries, of course, seen as basically the leader of the Democratic Party right now, but let's listen to the particular question that Jon Stewart asked him and his response.

[Playing an excerpt from the Jon Stewart podcast]

Jon Stewart: Where is The Democrats' Project 2025? Is that underway? Everything you're saying feels right to me, the Democrats have to make this point. Where's the infrastructure to do that, and who are the leaders taking charge of that effort? Because when I listened to-- I believe his name is Ken Martin, is that correct? The new DNC chair.

Hakeem Jeffries: That's right.

Jon Stewart: He kept saying it's a messaging issue, as though-- "No, everything's going right. You just don't realize it yet," as opposed to, "We've gotten away from New Deal values." Does that make sense to you?

Hakeem Jeffries: Well, I think there's a few things going on here. In terms of how we better communicate with the American people, Maya Angelou said it best: People won't remember what you say, they may not even remember what you do, but they will always remember how you make them feel. And I think what we have to do a better job of is making the American people feel that we understand the pain that they've been in economically.

Brian Lehrer: Edward-Isaac Dovere, CNN reporter covering Democratic Party politics and campaigns, where is the Democratic Party's Project 2025? Or is that not how parties fight when they're in the minority? Rather than putting out their own competing ideas and trying to sell the public on those, just trying to say no to the party in power's bad ideas as they see them?

Edward-Isaac Dovere: Well, Project 2025 was a plan for governing, and it is a plan that seems like it is being implemented in a lot of ways by the Trump administration, given how many people associated with it are now key members of the Trump administration. That said, there is a search here that is ongoing with Democrats of how they are going to respond, that is what we've been talking about this whole time. One of the things that has been going on in the question about these protests that are happening is there are conversations that I have heard among activist group leaders and members of Congress of a real fear that if protests happen, that they may cause Donald Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act, as he thought about doing during the protests after George Floyd was killed in 2020. Some people think it may lead him to have a predicate for declaring martial law here.

There are others who say that having these protests could lead to people who are at them being hurt. If there are people who feel encouraged by Trump's pardoning of the January 6th rioters to think they can just go and commit violence themselves, so that activist leaders are wondering, are they putting their own people at risk? Those are questions that people may wave away as not relevant, but that they're even happening speaks to just how much fear and panic there is about what this presidency could become. And maybe for some people, that's even more reason right now to go out and protest and march and do all these things. But that's yet another undercurrent or strand of the thinking that is there from people who are trying to figure out what to do and what in fact they are coming up against when they think about what this Trump presidency is going to be. Again, with a reminder that we are one month and two days into this presidency. There is a lot still taking shape, and certainly a long time to go.

Brian Lehrer: We'll leave it there for today with Edward-Isaac Dovere from CNN, who is also author of the the book Battle for the Soul: Inside the Democrats' Campaigns to Defeat Trump, and Christopher Fasano, former attorney at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, just fired, and organizing committee member of the NTEU 335. Thank you both for coming on.

Christopher Fasano: Thank you so much.

Edward-Isaac Dovere: Thank you.

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