Frustrated Democrats Urge Leaders to Show More Fight Against Trump

One month after President Trump was sworn in for a second term, Democratic despair and denial are giving way to an angry message from party activists and voters to their leaders.

Do something.

Across the country, anti-Trump protests and fiery town halls are flickering back to life. In polling, Democratic voters are venting disapproval at congressional Democrats. And in interviews this week with voters, activists and elected officials, many said Democrats were failing to curb Mr. Trump or offer a meaningful countermessage.

In an interview, Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, a Democrat, said that neither party was “effectively serving as a check on the executive branch,” and offered a striking rebuke of his side of the aisle.

“They are failing to address the real concerns that people have,” he said when asked on Thursday about congressional Democrats’ response to the early weeks of the new Trump administration.

Mr. Shapiro, who has filed a lawsuit over the Trump administration’s freeze of federal funding for Pennsylvania projects, added, “They’re failing to do what is their fundamental responsibility constitutionally — to be a check.”

The dawning reality of Republican control of the Capitol, punctuated by Mr. Trump’s eagerness to smash longstanding boundaries and enact retribution on his perceived enemies, has heightened Democrats’ sense of shock and outrage — and, increasingly, their frustration with their own leaders.

None of Mr. Trump’s nominees have been rejected by the Republican-controlled Senate, which early Friday also approved a G.O.P. budget plan that would increase spending on border security and the military.

A poll this week from Quinnipiac University found that more Democratic voters disapproved of the job that congressional Democrats were doing than approved of it. And in a new CNN poll, 73 percent of Democrats surveyed said congressional Democrats were doing too little to oppose Mr. Trump.

“We need really strong voices of moral outrage, and I would like to see that. I am not seeing that,” said Theresa Reid, who leads the Democratic Party in liberal Washtenaw County, Mich. “Any top elected, any top Democrat. They don’t have to be elected, necessarily. You know, anybody. Any national leader would be really great.”

Ms. Reid added: “It’s risky. But my God. Don’t obey in advance. Don’t give up in advance.”

Ezra Levin, a leader of the liberal group Indivisible, which has organized anti-Trump protests, said he constantly heard the question, “‘Why aren’t Democrats fighting back with everything they’ve got?’”

For Jessica Ruiz, 36, a Philadelphia Democrat, her disappointment in the party runs so deep that it even clouded her joy over the Eagles’ Super Bowl victory.

“We’re able to get together and go out on the streets and celebrate a football team,” she said. “But we’re not able to come together and raise our voices to our city officials, state officials and government in the same manner.”

Some Democrats urge patience, betting that the country’s mood toward Mr. Trump will sour. For now, they face the obvious hurdle of life in the congressional minority, alongside the possibility of retaliation against those who criticize Mr. Trump or his powerful ally Elon Musk.

“I really don’t know what they can do,” said Karen Taylor, 56, a Democrat from Mesa, Ariz. “My only hope is that people will see and get out and vote the next time.”

Democratic lawmakers are also divided, with some eager to battle Mr. Trump and Republicans on every front and others urging a far more selective approach.

Representative Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington, a Democrat who represents a district that Mr. Trump won, warned against overreacting to “whatever is coming down the Twitter feed.”

“Our job is to build a national consensus about how we are going to address the very real problems we’re facing,” she said, “and not alienate the voters who are going to determine the balance of power, the real legislative authority moving forward.”

A major test of the Democratic posture toward Republicans is unfolding over a spending confrontation. In the meantime, as Democrats strain to keep up with Mr. Trump’s rapid moves, they have held news conferences; taken to social media; tried to force Republicans to take damaging votes; and, in some cases, organized protests as they seek to cast Mr. Trump as advancing billionaires’ interests at the expense of the working class.

Representative Greg Casar, a Texas Democrat who leads the Congressional Progressive Caucus, sees a chance to expand the party’s appeal with a broad spectrum of voters who are uneasy with giving the ultrawealthy — like Mr. Musk — more power.

“It’s not just progressive voters that are upset,” he said. But, he added, “for us to encourage people to step up and fight, and put in their hours after and before work to stand up to Trump, they also need to see their elected officials coming together, treating this as the emergency that it is.”

In an interview, Ken Martin, the new chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said he shared the base’s combative attitude. He even embraced the word “resist,” which has fallen out of favor with exhausted Democrats.

“We have to stand up and resist with every fiber of our being,” he said. “If we’re not doing that, and doing that strenuously, how in the hell are people going to believe that if they put us back in power, we would fight for them?”

Beyond Washington, governors — the chief executives of their states — tend to have more leeway, and some are pushing back more assertively.

“We don’t have kings in America, and I don’t intend to bend the knee,” Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois, a Democrat, said in a speech this week. “When the five-alarm fire starts to burn, every good person better be ready to man a post with a bucket of water if you want to stop it from raging out of control.”

But for Democratic governors, too, countering Mr. Trump is not a simple proposition. Some recall their dealings with him during his first term, when certain governors believed that federal aid was conditioned on flattery.

“Governors are worried their states are going to get crushed, and trying to figure out the right balance between condemning Trump and staying on his good side,” said former Representative Tom Malinowski of New Jersey, a Democrat who has encouraged more forceful pushback to Mr. Trump. “Inevitably, they are going to offend him, and inevitably, he is going to try to crush them.”

Gov. Ned Lamont of Connecticut suggested that he was trying to head off that possibility for his state by taking as many meetings as he could with Trump administration officials and Republican governors at the National Governors Association gathering this week in Washington.

“I’m trying to keep my head down, so it’s not like Whac-a-Mole and I’m the mole,” he said.

Gov. Janet Mills of Maine briefly played the role of the mole on Friday during a White House meeting where Mr. Trump attacked her stance defending the rights of transgender people. “Enjoy your life after governor,” he said. “I don’t think you’ll be in elected politics.”

In a statement, a group of Democratic governors denounced Mr. Trump’s conduct, saying he had engaged in “ugly personal attacks and threats” and pushed “unfounded conspiracy theories.”

Still, several Democratic governors plan to attend a White House dinner hosted by Mr. Trump on Saturday night. In the past, the event has led to governors’ confronting presidents of both parties.

In Kansas City, Mo., Mayor Quinton Lucas, a Democrat, said that many voters had grown inured to Mr. Trump’s outlandish statements.

Breaking through, he said, requires showing Americans how decisions in Washington are affecting their neighbors, rather than simply pledging to “fight.”

He referred to the cutting of a grant for a beloved urban farming initiative in Kansas City.

“I can spend all day saying, ‘Oh, these norms are broken, and the department of this or that or the other is different,’” he said. “When we talked about that garden, that garden run by a Black woman at the core of our city who was helping make sure that mothers have food, people are like, ‘That’s screwed up.’”

J. David Goodman contributed reporting from Houston.