Pushback 20

Andrea Dooley

20 Feb 2025 — 3 min read

According to Chop Wood, Carry Water, Senate Democrats have a plan to step up and slow down the Senate Republican budget bill. As I said yesterday, slow is good, and I applaud their efforts. But political action is going to need to be much louder than just floor speeches in the Senate. We need to see creative actions. Pregnant women in T-shirts that say CITIZEN ⬇️ getting arrested en masse in addition to birthright citizenship lawsuits. Transmen occupying the women's bathroom near Nancy Mace's office AND transgender civil rights lawsuits. Banners and arrests on the Congress floor during the State of the Union AND filibuster. We need one hundred Larry Kramers to bloom.

The topics are in alphabetical order. This is a crowd-sourced effort, so if you come across a news item or call to action that you think we should include, please complete this form. Thank you to everyone who has contributed so far. Some links will require subscriptions.

If you like what we are doing, please forward this to someone else. If you received this from someone else, please subscribe!

Action Items

Indivisible is asking voters who are represented by these representatives and senators to call them and tell them to oppose the SAVE Act. The following is from their email.

The SAVE Act is an attempt at mass disenfranchisement disguised as an election integrity bill. It would require every voter to show proof of citizenship bearing their current name when registering to vote – which might not seem like a big deal, unless you spend two seconds thinking about the ramifications."

If you are represented by Shomari Figures, Josh Harder, Jared Moskowitz, April McClain Delaney, Kristen McDonald Rivet, Jared Golden, Donald Davis, Tom Suozzi, John Mannion, Susie Lee, Marcy Kaptur, Vicente Gonzalez, Henry Cuellar or Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, please call today and urge them to vote no. And then share the page with friends in your district!

Use our handy call tool and script to call your representative >>
And/or, use our email tool to email your representative >>

So, if you are represented by one of those twelve senators – Catherine Cortez Masto, John Fetterman, Ruben Gallego, Maggie Hassan, Mark Kelly, John Ossoff, Gary Peters, Jacky Rosen, Jeanne Shaheen, Elissa Slotkin, Mark Warner, or Raphael Warnock – please call them today and urge them to vote no. And then urge friends in your state to call as well!

Use our handy call tool and script to call your senator(s) >>
And/or, use our email tool to email your senator(s) >>

On Feb. 19, Plaintiffs (non-profit legal services for refugees) filed an emergency motion to stay removal of individual plaintiff non-citizens who are currently detained by the Defendants and could be imminently deported under the [Trump] proclamation. On Feb. 20, Judge Moss issued an administrative stay in the case until 12 pm on Feb. 24 to allow the government time to gather information to respond, and time for expedited briefing. The court further ordered the Defendants to respond to Plaintiffs’ emergency motion for a stay of removal by Feb. 21.
The NY MTA has filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration for their actions to end congestion pricing.
The State of Colorado has joined the lawsuit against the ban on gender-affirming care for patients 19 and younger and the plaintiffs have moved for a preliminary injunction. (For the non-lawyers, a TRO is the emergency request to stop an action, a PI is an intermediate step to stop an action, and Permanent Injunction is what is sounds like it is)
On Feb. 19, Plaintiffs filed an emergency motion for contempt seeking to enforce the Feb. 13 TRO against Defendants (stop work order and funding freeze on USAID and State Dept) and hold them in civil contempt. Plaintiffs allege that Defendants’ purported compliance with the TRO “strains credulity” and that Defendants have continued to suspend funding and enforce stop-work orders in violation of the court’s orders.
On Feb. 19, the Ninth Circuit issued an order denying the government’s emergency motion to stay the district court’s injunction (on birthright citizenship ban) and leaving the existing briefing schedule unchanged.