Amid President Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s rapid consolidation of power, Democrats in Congress seem down for the count, progressive voters and advocacy groups say, struggling to pick their spots and fight back. But some members of the party are putting the gloves back on.
Rep. Maxwell Frost, D-Fla., was elected to Congress in 2022 and at age 28 remains the chamber’s youngest member. In an interview with Salon, the Gen Z representative argued that the party can do more than sit back and watch until the midterms.
“I think in this moment, America needs not a minority party, but an opposition party to express why what's going on isn’t normal, why it’s wrong and what’s the opposing vision for this country,” he said.
Frost was elected as a co-chair of the Democratic Policy and its Communications Committee last November, joining three other Congressional Democrats in steering the party’s messaging agenda. So far, Frost has pushed a strategy of pivoting from a party in the minority, dedicated to working with the majority, to one that sees itself as a proper opposition.
“It’s kind of a state of mind too. Thinking about, in this moment, where are we gonna be? And I've repeated this over and over again, but it's what's guiding me in this time. We might have fewer seats in Congress, but we make the decision: are we the opposition or are we the minority?” Frost said, noting that parties out of power are more often called the opposition in other countries.
Frost has taken his more confrontational approach to the streets. Indeed, while Musk and his DOGE operatives led a takeover of the Treasury Department and its payment systems that experts said was likely illegal, he led a fight.
Speaking at a demonstration outside the U.S. Treasury Building to a crowd of more than a thousand protesters, Frost promised to pursue congressional oversight before leading colleagues in an attempt to enter the department itself. He and nearly two dozen other Democratic lawmakers were denied entry to the building, sparking uproar online — a moment of potentially galvanizing oppositional theater.
Days later, Frost and a handful of other elected Democrats were once again blocked from the Department of Education building while demanding answers on Trump’s planned dismantling of the congressionally mandated arm of the federal government.
The lawmaker spoke about the unprecedented lockouts and promised Democrats would continue to bring awareness to the GOP’s attacks on the federal government.
“You can walk into any of these buildings,” Frost said, explaining the open-door policies at federal agencies he encountered during his first term in Congress under President Joe Biden. “You’re always allowed entry as long as it’s during business hours. We went during business hours and were not even allowed to be in the building — that’s much different.”
But showing up and giving constituents a glimpse at what Musk and his “goons” are up to is an essential piece of the puzzle for Democratic lawmakers, Frost says.
An opposing vision, he says, should make it clear that Democrats, not billionaires like Elon Musk, are for the working people.
“I know for a matter of fact Donald Trump is not going to lower prices for Americans, that wealth inequality is going to rise under him like it did the last time he was president,” he said. “We need to be there to oppose what he's doing on behalf of our constituents of the American people, but then also express the opposing positive vision for this country so we can put ourselves in the best situation to win back power.”
Frost acknowledged that the GOP has the power to exact a lot of damage on federal institutions. But he said that he doesn’t buy the narrative that Democrats are powerless to fight back.
“There are going to be opportunities to utilize our leverage for the agenda that we believe in or block agendas we don't believe in,” he said.
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Frost also has a theory on Trump’s executive shock-and-awe campaign. The president’s reliance on the executive order and testing of presidential powers, the congressman argued, is proof that Trump’s control is far from absolute.
“We are barreling towards a constitutional crisis and I think, you know, a big part of it has to do with, of course, the president's disregard for our laws and our Constitution,” Frost told Salon. “[But] the way that the president is operating right now also exposes some very blatant weaknesses in his presidency. I mean, he does not have the ability to operate like a strong president.”
House Republicans have a knife's-edge majority in the lower chamber, making the task of carrying out the party’s agenda through the legislative channels a contentious game of whipping votes. Speaker Mike Johnson has already had to enlist Democratic support to bail out a plan to fund the government. For Democrats, Frost said, there is real bargaining power.
“The crux of it is standing true to the reason our voters sent us here, which is to fight for democratic values,” Frost said. “As long as we hold the line, and we’re strong, we’ll be good. I learned a lot about this as an activist and an organizer: you don’t have all the power you want, you gotta use all the power we got.”
It’s an attitude that many voters have begged Democratic leadership in Congress to take. Progressive groups like Indivisible and MoveOn have led pressure campaigns to push Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and others to obstruct more of the GOP’s agenda, while others would prefer to see new voices in charge.
For Frost, getting young voices into leadership isn’t an overnight process, but the work is already in motion.
“I think there are people in the party that are actively looking for young people and young voices,” Frost said. “But there's a difference between saying you wanna see young people and these positions, or, you know, actively working to help them get for those positions and it's a fight.”
Frost knows firsthand how hard running for office can be, especially as a young person. He told Salon that any young person looking to run should take a hard look at their financial situation, recalling how he racked up massive amounts of credit card debt and moonlighted as an Uber driver while campaigning.
“The more young people you have in the body, the more likely you are to see young people represented in leadership,” Frost said. “We have a ton of work to do there.”
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