The Role Pro-Democracy Media Must Play Now
A new media ecosystem can help Democrats learn to fight
Last night, ten Democratic U.S. Senators joined with their Republican colleagues to pass a MAGA-backed continuing resolution that will empower Trump and Musk’s unchecked and unconstitutional takeover of our government. Among other things, the bill those Democrats supported will give the Trump administration a blank check to slash federal programs and kill critical funding for things like children’s cancer research and Social Security. In voting to advance the bill, they averted a temporary government shutdown - and gave up the small but consequential leverage they had to demand Republicans come to the negotiating table, and demonstrate to their base that they will fight for their constituents and not capitulate to corruption.
While it is true that government shutdowns are terrible for the country, and cause enormous pain to thousands of government employees who will likely be furloughed or fired (though many spoke out publicly begging Democrats to shut down the government regardless), Trump and Musk had already been moving at warp speed to fire thousands of federal employees, freeze billions of congressionally-approved federal funds, and dismantle entire federal agencies. Those services that exist to protect our environment, access to education, and basic rights and freedoms were already on the MAGA chopping block, without any legal mandate or justification, and without Democrats doing pretty much anything to stop them. In short, the Trump-Musk regime has already shut down our government as we know it!
As rightfully outraged Americans were scrambling yesterday to understand how Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and nine of his colleagues could cave so quickly and confidently in the face of a literal hostile government takeover, Trump took to Twitter to praise Chuck for his “courage,” telling us all we really needed to know. Then, just hours after Schumer-appeasing Democrats handed Trump and Musk the legal, BIPARTISAN permission to keep dismantling our government, Trump immediately signed an executive order to dismantle seven more federal agencies.
Yesterday’s vote provided Democrats in Washington the biggest opportunity yet to throw sand in the gears of this fast-moving coup before it’s too late, and while many of them did hold the line and speak out in protest of Schumer’s political gift to Trump, it was too little too late.
So what could and should Democrats and deeply distressed and frustrated Americans have done differently to prevent yesterday from happening, and where do we go from here to build an actual opposition movement to the most corrupt administration in our nation’s history?
I don’t have all of the answers but as the publisher of a progressive media network that exists solely to keep under-reached Americans informed and engaged in our democracy, I have been thinking a lot about the role we, and other pro-democracy media outlets, creators, and organizers can and must play in the days and weeks to come.
When opportunities like the one Senate Democrats had yesterday to stop the government in protest of a bill they overwhelmingly oppose have been presented to Republicans in the past, Republicans would very often act in total unity. This allegiance to their party line was a result of many things, but one reason we cannot ignore is the daily influence of a powerful right-wing media ecosystem that does not just carry the GOP’s water for them, but holds them accountable. From the front pages of Breitbart to the Facebook feeds of millions to the primetime slot on FOX News, conservative media personalities shame Republicans into staying in line all of the time. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read these types of headlines over the past decade:
The likes of Dan Bongino, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Jesse Watters … the list goes on and on .. threaten to torch GOP members and rally their base against them at the first sign of weakness. And it often works, because the media outlets these right-wing personalities are platformed on have immense audience reach and power, built over decades and billions of dollars in investment by their own conservative billionaires.
Without exception, that type of political media ecosystem does not exist on the Left. As a result, Democratic lawmakers spend their time scrolling through dying social media platforms like X for the hot takes of a few legacy journalists. “X poll says we’ll get blamed for a shut down.” “Y journalist is already blaming us if it happens.” And worse, most of their political calculations and decisions are informed directly by deeply out of touch, elite DC consultants and donors, who they need to appease to keep raising the money they need to keep their power.
In these moments, Congressional Democrats hope that the legacy media will just call balls and strikes, blaming Republicans for the chaos. Instead, the DC press corps tends to both-sides these types of debates: one article this week literally featured sections titled “What Republicans say is in the bill” and “What Democrats say is in the bill.” Instead of, I don’t know, actually writing out what is in the actual bill.
Until a robust media ecosystem exists on the Left that will both hold Republicans accountable to the Americans they claim to represent AND make Democrats feel as much if not more heat than their own media consultants and donors, these types of disappointing flashpoints will continue to occur.
At COURIER, my team has been building this kind of media infrastructure for over five years now- with pennies to the dollar of the investment those aforementioned consultants get paid to run advertising programs that neither build trust with voters, nor often even win us elections- and we’re still growing fast. Our job is to lead with our values- values that our audience of progressive and independent Americans across this country share, report what’s happening in the news, educate our audiences on how these moments will impact their lives, and tell them clearly who’s fighting for their interests, and who is selling them out. We’re proud to be part of a new ecosystem that explicitly does *not* always carry water for Democrats no matter what, but instead holds them accountable to represent the genuine outrage our millions of followers and subscribers who share their values feel right now. Now that Democrats have effectively zero power to legislate, and have voted to grant Trump and Musk permission to destroy our democracy, the only job they, and all of us who care about this country have is to enlist more and more Americans in this fight.
Something that always gives me hope, no matter how hopeless I can feel, is that courage is just as contagious as complacency, and the way we spread courage is to hold the ones without it accountable, and to lift up the ones who do. So we need to urgently build an opposition movement that has actual teeth, with leaders who see clearly the stakes of this moment and have the courage to rise to it, and to tell the stories of the American people who stand to lose the most in the months and years to come. That is how we see our job and our responsibility at COURIER, but we cannot do it without more like-minded folks supporting our newsrooms.
WIth your help, we can tell more of these stories, reach more and more Americans with our coverage, and become the megaphone we need to hold anyone who stands in the way of protecting our democracy and taking power back into the hands of the people accountable to those of us they were elected to serve.
Let’s all find the courage to be the ones we’re waiting for.
- Tara