Time to speak out by Ruth Neuwald Falcon

Elizabeth Warren gave a passionate and powerful speech on the Senate floor this afternoon, underscoring the danger of the nomination of Russ Vought for Director of the Office of Management and Budget. Vought is a chief architect of Project 2025. “He is putting the head writer of the plans that you only heard about in nightmares,” she said, “in a key government position.” Near the end, she issues a call to action for all of us:

Trump and his Republican friends hope that we will be demoralized. They hope that we will curl up in a little ball and let them do whatever they want to do… but it is important that we get back up and fight… We will not roll over and play dead.

The number one thing people can do right now is speak out.

I hate making phone calls. I’ve been signing petitions for years but have resisted the call your senator/representative thing. Until today. Today, I called my senator’s offices. I had to try a couple of different numbers before finding a voicemail box that wasn’t full. Tomorrow, I will call my representative. I did a little research and came up with this short script for the senators. I hope I won’t need to keep saying the same thing day after day, but now that I have the form, it should be easier to plug in the specifics.

Hello, my name is _______ and I live in _______. I am calling to tell Senator ______ to do everything s/he can to block all Cabinet confirmations at this time and to loudly demand that Elon Musk be removed from any position of power. As one of the senator’s constituents, it is extremely important that s/he prioritizes these actions immediately. Thank you.

I also want to share with you the letter that Barry Rosenbaum wrote to his senator. Barry is a retired public interest attorney who has clearly honed his communication skills for many years. No one will know if we borrow his words for our own letters or phone scripts.

As you have no doubt also heard from many of your constituents (your phone voicemail box is full),  I am deeply concerned with the takeover of the U.S. Government by the MAGA radicals in ways that are clearly illegal, unconstitutional or both.  We may not be seeing a violent mob on the streets as we did on January 6th 2021, but what is happening now represents a far more serious dismantling of our government.  

It seems to me that at a time such as this, cooperation with these radicals (elected officials who are supportive of the far right or acquiescent in their goals) is unconscionable. It cannot just be business as usual. Deny the Senate Republicans a quorum, block unanimous consent, max out debate time, or delay and disrupt (within permitted Senate procedures). If you do not think this is the way to proceed, you need to be very clear as to why.

So many of us are growing increasingly despondent. You need to provide us with hope that we will prevail so that you can motivate us to act now. You also should provide clear guidance to your constituents as to how we can help stop this madness. While voting in 2026 is clearly important, I fear we do not have the luxury of time. The 2026 elections simply seem way too far away.

Thanks in advance for helping us to survive this and for guiding our country to return to those values reflective of its ideals. Without being overly alarmist, it does appear that our democracy is on the line. We have entrusted you to help us ensure that it survives.

I will keep calling. It wasn’t so terrible.