Rachel Maddow

Thank you very much for being here.

I want to ask you about this planned event tomorrow, but I want to ask you to open the aperture a little bit and talk to me about where you think we are right now, almost exactly one year since Trump was inaugurated for his second term, in terms of who is standing up against Trump, how people are standing up against him, and what the protest movement in particular...

against him is accomplishing, what the status of it is.

What's your view?

Ezra, I started off the show tonight talking in part about what's going on in Congress, where we do actually see some signs of life.

The War Powers Resolution against what Trump did in Venezuela in the Senate, the discharge petition in the House on health insurance premiums, on the Affordable Care Act, even an effort that didn't work, but an effort mounted, a serious effort mounted, to overturn two Trump vetoes.

We are expecting more from Congress, including in its funding bills.

We are seeing them act to, for example, completely counteract Trump's demanded cuts to science, including basic science and the National Science Foundation and these things.

And I can feel—I can feel through the ether—

People responding to that by dismissing it and saying, oh, Congress doesn't matter, the legislative branch of government doesn't do anything, they're only a source of outrage or disappointment, there's no reason to look to them for anything.

But if we are standing up our democracy, if we are trying to backstop our democracy, part of it is Congress asserting itself.

I feel like what you are talking about, Tamar, from Senator Murphy and Congressman Frost,

bringing them to CBP headquarters, talking about defunding Homeland Security, what we are seeing, the sort of little sparks of life in Congress, is actually, to me, quite central to the process of defending small-D democracy and making sure that our constitutional republic survives.

I wonder if you have the same sense of American cynicism about that right now, but also its possibility.

Ezra Levin, the co-founder of Indivisible.

Ezra, thank you very much for your time tonight.

Good luck.

Speak to you soon.

We'll be right back.

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