It’s Time for the Congressional Progressive Caucus to Raise Its Game

It’s Time for the Congressional Progressive Caucus to Raise Its Game

It’s Time for the Congressional Progressive Caucus to Raise Its Game

The CPC must move from being the conscience of the Democratic caucus to being its captain, from defining the alternative to defining the agenda.

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A massive people’s uprising is driving the opposition to President Trump. In Congress, the Congressional Progressive Caucus is an emerging center of that resistance.

This year marks the 25th anniversary of the CPC. Its first and founding director was an independent socialist from Vermont named Bernie Sanders. Now, co-chaired by Representatives Keith Ellison (D-MN) and Raúl M. Grijalva (D-AZ), the CPC is the largest Democratic House caucus, with 73 dues-paying members. Each election in recent years has provided it with dynamic new leaders—Wisconsin’s Mark Pocan, New York’s Yvette Clarke, Pennsylvania’s Matthew Cartwright, and now Washington’s Pramila Jayapal and Mayland’s Jamie B. Raskin.

Last weekend more than 30 of those members joined with activists from across the progressive landscape to share ideas and plot strategy at the annual summit of Progressive Congress. CPC members individually are already mobilizing against Trump. The challenge is whether the CPC can collectively begin to define the forward-looking agenda of the resistance.

Read the full text of Katrina’s column here.

We cannot back down

We now confront a second Trump presidency.

There’s not a moment to lose. We must harness our fears, our grief, and yes, our anger, to resist the dangerous policies Donald Trump will unleash on our country. We rededicate ourselves to our role as journalists and writers of principle and conscience.

Today, we also steel ourselves for the fight ahead. It will demand a fearless spirit, an informed mind, wise analysis, and humane resistance. We face the enactment of Project 2025, a far-right supreme court, political authoritarianism, increasing inequality and record homelessness, a looming climate crisis, and conflicts abroad. The Nation will expose and propose, nurture investigative reporting, and stand together as a community to keep hope and possibility alive. The Nation’s work will continue—as it has in good and not-so-good times—to develop alternative ideas and visions, to deepen our mission of truth-telling and deep reporting, and to further solidarity in a nation divided.

Armed with a remarkable 160 years of bold, independent journalism, our mandate today remains the same as when abolitionists first founded The Nation—to uphold the principles of democracy and freedom, serve as a beacon through the darkest days of resistance, and to envision and struggle for a brighter future.

The day is dark, the forces arrayed are tenacious, but as the late Nation editorial board member Toni Morrison wrote “No! This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.”

I urge you to stand with The Nation and donate today.

Onwards,

Katrina vanden Heuvel
Editorial Director and Publisher, The Nation

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