"When Resistance is Just Rhetoric"

When one party controls everything and the other has no strategy, Trump doesn’t need to break the system; he just keeps using it to win.

At some point, we have to stop pretending this is normal.

Late Saturday night, in the marble halls of the U.S. Senate, a 1,000-plus-page tax and spending bill advanced by a 51-49 vote; rammed forward not in defiance of President Trump, but in service of him. And once again, despite all the noise, all the outrage, all the lofty press conferences where Democratic leaders stand behind branded podiums and swear they’ll stop him; he wins. Again.

Let me be clear: I’ve been in the room when Trump’s power plays come together. I’ve seen how he moves; how he nudges, how he threatens, how he flatters, and how he folds opponents into his agenda without them even realizing they’ve been played. And this bill? It has Trump’s fingerprints all over it, even if his name isn’t on the cover. This is not a Republican bill. It’s a Trump bill; with the compliant GOP as the delivery mechanism and a disorganized Democratic Party standing on the sidelines, wringing their hands and blaming the scoreboard.

Senators like Ron Johnson flipping their votes at the eleventh hour? Vice President J.D. Vance loitering in the Capitol, waiting for the tie-breaking moment that never came? That’s not democracy in action. That’s a performance; choreographed chaos meant to give the illusion of tension while the outcome was never in doubt.

The bill itself is a political chimera. It extends Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, throws in an additional $4 trillion in reductions, and sprinkles in just enough “relief” for working Americans to justify it all. Tip deductions and overtime write-offs sound nice; until you realize they’re temporary and capped. Meanwhile, wealthy Americans keep raking in permanent perks. The bill includes an expansion of the standard deduction and generous senior tax breaks; but don’t let the frosting distract from the cake: this is trickle-down economics, reheated and served under a new name.

But here’s what should terrify anyone still paying attention: this is what happens when a Republican president controls both chambers of Congress. Not just the House. Not just the Senate. All of it. There are no guardrails. There’s no balancing act. There’s only one agenda; and no meaningful opposition. Democrats keep screaming about the dangers of authoritarianism, but they’ve yet to admit the structural problem right in front of them: they have no power, because they’ve built no relationships that allow them to wield any.

More telling than what’s in the bill is how little resistance it actually faced. Democrats demanded a full reading of the bill; fine. They’ve got 10 hours of debate; fuckin’ spectacular! But where’s the strategy? Where’s the outreach? Where’s the real, operational effort to peel off even a handful of Senate Republicans with common sense or conscience? Where’s the cross-aisle groundwork that should’ve started years ago? Nowhere.

Because Democrats aren’t building anything. They’re just reacting.

And while they wait for parliamentary miracles or long-shot defectors like Thomas Massie, Warren Davidson or Rand Paul to save them, Trump is already planning how to use this as his next victory lap. They’re handing him his talking points on a silver platter; and he doesn’t even have to ask for the knife and fork.

Take Medicaid. Under this bill, “able-bodied adults” must work 80 hours a month to qualify. There are carve-outs, sure; but this is a rollback with teeth. It’s a quiet dismantling of the safety net, set to kick in by 2028. It’s not flashy. It won’t lead the nightly news. But it will devastate people’s lives. And the Democrats? They’ll call it cruel. They’ll post a strongly worded tweet. But when it came time to block it, they blinked. Again.

SNAP. Student loans. AI regulations. SALT deductions. Each a policy battlefield, each surrendered one by one. Meanwhile, the $5 trillion debt ceiling increase; something even hardline Republicans once feared, is just slid right in. Somehow, Trump gets to look like a fiscal hawk while maxing out America’s credit card like he’s furnishing another hotel lobby in Trumpian gold.

And here’s what keeps me up at night: Democrats keep acting like they’re still players in the game. They say things like, “We’re going to hold the line. We’re going to protect working families. We’re going to stop Trump.” But when? After the next bill? After the midterms? After another floor speech that no one watches or gives two shits about?

If this were just one bill, you could chalk it up to bad timing. But it’s not. It’s a pattern. Trump wants something; tax cuts, wall money, immigration restrictions, deregulation, and eventually, he gets it. Maybe not in one bill. Maybe not all at once. But always in spirit. Always in the direction he sets. Because Trump knows how to use power. And his enemies only know how to describe it.

And that’s what makes it so dangerous. This isn’t just about Trump. This is about what happens when one party consolidates executive and legislative control while the other forgets how to function in opposition. It’s about what happens when Democrats become too insular, too reactive, too obsessed with sounding right instead of being effective. They treat relationships like liabilities, when they’re the only thing that could stop what’s coming.

So yes, this bill is about taxes and spending. But it’s also a warning. It’s about a man who continues to rewrite the rules of governance simply because no one is willing; or able, to outplay him. It’s about a political movement that acts with urgency and aggression while its opposition clings to process and moral victories.

Trump didn’t win because he broke the system. He won because he controls it; and the people who were supposed to stop him don’t know how.

And unless that changes in the midterms, we’re all going to pay the price.

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