So, in the alternative, the SG argues that even if the Court holds that I'm right that "the regular forces" means the standing military, the courts nevertheless must presume Trump has already determined that the military would be "unable" to ensure law execution ... [4]

And no troops waiting for a paycheck—and no schemes where a billionaire steps in to pay troops directly (one of the most bonkers policy proposals in all of American history, whose major problems have been obvious for literally thousands of years).

Unsurprisingly, didn't happen. Now Jan 31 it can't.

Yes, fair enough.

I've gotten some results (i.e. replies, occasionally a correction) from journalists, but I have my own small platform in that I'm a professor who is viewed as an expert on some things.

There are MANY ways to accomplish these goals; bugging journalists is just one of many.

Senators stuck in the DC/media matrix can and should hear it constantly from *other candidates* that they're doing it wrong. Other candidates are among the people with megaphones.

(Perhaps it gets a little extra bite when the candidate is your own daughter.)

This is the kind of question everyone with a megaphone needs to hear about 7 million times more often than they do now.

Not just the Senators themselves. The people who could ask the Senators this question and the people those people read and hear from and so on and so on...

Schumer's a coward. Shaheen & co. soiled themselves. Yes, yes to all of it. But why don't Murkowski, Tillis, & company even get asked questions? Why do we have zero expectation of them? Journalists don't even bother trying. We have accepted Murc's Law as a constitutional provision. It's maddening.

This is exactly our world, and it makes it the weird obligation of Dem partisans to inform their representatives about reality.

Trump and many Senate Democrats seem to me to share the problem that they live in an extremely mediated bubble, impervious to what is happening.

The difference is that Trump at least understands this (he has no pretensions of caring about reality), and so he bullies the media accordingly.

The good news is: this process is working. @ezraklein.bsky.social has one of the larger megaphones in the business and he definitely is part of the way there.

But the column still reflects media assumptions that Trump—TRUMP!—is an implacable force as opposed to an utter follower, easily influenced.

So yes—@runforsomething.net, support primary challengers, and campaign.

ALSO work to change the media diet that our confused leaders—some of whom we are stuck with well past January 2029—consume.

It's exhausting, it's an unfair burden, etc., but it's where we are.

That possibility is consistent with what I'm saying here. They know they need D partisans to turn out, and they think, incorrectly, that those D partisans out of touch (since the partisans' assumptions are so different from the reasonable things they hear every day). But they do want their votes.

Possibly what they learned was they listened to Politico/Axios/Fox/X/the networks for a few weeks and realized that "when will the Democrats cave" was the only question people were asking, ergo they'd better cave, because no one else was going to be an adult and do it.

So it’s just hard to explain this as a strategic decision at all. Instead it looks like what they learned was their own unwillingness to see people harmed by the shutdown and their own lack of leadership, not anything about strategy

To be concrete about this: we need a D trifecta willing to enact major changes in January 2029 if we want to preserve this democracy.

Some of the Senators who will need to vote for a filibuster carveout for that are _not facing election_ before then.

So their assumptions need to change.