In Case of Emergency, Break Glass. Literally.

Jamaal Bowman Was Right.

US Air Force Serviceman Aaron Bushnell, of blessed memory

The term 'five-alarm fire' has returned to our lexicon for terrifying reasons. While Southern California still bears the scars of recent wildfires, our nation's capital faces a different kind of inferno: the systematic dismantling of democratic institutions by Donald Trump and Elon Musk. Compounding these causes for alarm is the growing recognition that most congressional Democrats have either no desire or no ability to quash the flames.

Consider the scene at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). After Musk and his team of lost boys besieged USAID, physically and electronically locking out government employees and commandeering control of a congressionally-established independent agency, Democratic lawmakers staged what amounted to a photo op outside the building. They spoke forcefully about constitutional crisis, about the unprecedented nature of this private seizure of federal power. Then, denied entry to the building, they simply went home.

If possession is nine tenths of the law, why didn't Democratic lawmakers break down the doors and force their way into the building? In their oversight capacity, they have far more right to be there than Elon’s goons. If this really is a constitutional crisis, they should act like it. They should break in and literally stop the steal.

Yet this pattern of performative resistance followed by acquiescence has become Democrats' standard response as federal agencies fall one by one: Treasury, Commerce, the Office of Personnel Management, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. (By the time you read this the list will have almost surely grown.) Each capture represents an unprecedented violation of constitutional authority – actions that would be impeachable offenses if attempted by a president, let alone a private citizen. Yet the Democratic response remains confined to press conferences and toothless promises of future legislation. This is not how you fight a fire. This is not how you defend democracy.

Why didn't Democratic lawmakers break down the doors and force their way into the building? If this really is a constitutional crisis, they should act like it. They should break in and literally stop the steal.

In case of emergency, break glass—and in case of fire, pull the alarm. When Representative Jamaal Bowman did exactly that in the Cannon Office Building during a heated legislative battle in September 2023, it sparked more outrage than the emergency it was meant to address. Democrats were desperately trying to delay a vote on legislation Republicans had rammed through too quickly for anyone to read. Perhaps Bowman's alarm pull was tactical—buying precious minutes for Democrats to actually digest the proposal they were being forced to vote on.

Or perhaps, as he explained, it was simpler than that: rushing to make a floor vote, he encountered an unexpectedly locked door (unusual for a weekend session) and pulled what he thought would trigger a brief door alarm. I'm inclined to believe Bowman, a former school principal who later proved his moral courage by refusing to deny the genocide in Gaza even when that principled stance cost him his seat.

But Bowman's true motivation is beside the point. What matters is that this single instance of Democratic disruption—this one small act of procedural fuckery—drew more pearl-clutching outrage than years of normalized Republican tactics. Their playbook has become debilitatingly routine: 11th hour votes on secretly written legislation, political violence (and not just on January 6—remember the weeks of threats that cowed officials from voting to impeach Trump), systematic voter intimidation, naked appeals to racism and antisemitism, and stochastic terrorism. The media treats it all as business as usual. And Democrats, with rare exceptions like Bowman, never fight back.

A primary rapture is precisely what is now needed to shake the Democratic establishment from its feckless complicity while America burns.

The asymmetry in American politics has reached absurd levels. Republicans deploy every dirty trick in the book – from the proto-January 6 riot that ratfucked the Florida 2000 recount, to stealing Obama's Supreme Court seat, to the current corporate hostile takeover of federal agencies. Meanwhile, Democrats remain imprisoned by their fealty to "norms" and "civility" and that most elite of concepts: congressional comity. (A word so pretentious it only exists to describe the unbreakable friendships between the most corrupt and powerful people in our country.)

This devotion to norms might be admirable if we weren't watching democracy burn in real time. Back in 2012, analysts Norm Ornstein and Thomas Mann tried to sound the alarm. After decades of studiously neutral observation, they finally broke character and wrote that the GOP had become "an insurgent outlier – ideologically extreme; contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regime; scornful of compromise; unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.”

If that was true in 2012, what the hell do we call whatever fresh horror this is? Private corporations are physically seizing federal agencies. Democratic institutions are falling like dominoes. And what's the opposition party's leadership doing? This past weekend, instead of throwing a wrench into the gears of the totalitarian Trump/Musk machine Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries was greasing those very gears at an AIPAC fundraiser: “In a bipartisan way,” he crowed, “we can’t take our foot off the gas pedal until Iran is brought to its knees.”

Until Iran is brought to its knees?! It would be bad enough if the Democratic leader was deepening American support for Israel’s unhinged regional savagery under the best of circumstances. To continue doing so in our moment of profound national emergency is plain unforgivable. As journalist Ally Maynard put it, “the Democrats were more energized and organized against campus protests than the current authoritarian takeover.” Jeffries should be removed from leadership and from office, replaced by someone with a conscience and a connection to the reality we are now in. Someone like Jamaal Bowman.

There is precedent for replacing failed leadership: just ask Eric Cantor. On June 10, 2014 Tea Partier Dave Brat captured the GOP nomination from then House Majority Leader Cantor, shocking Washington and heralding the party’s descent into total extremism now on display. This kind of primary rapture is precisely what is now needed to shake the Democratic establishment from its feckless complicity while America burns.

The time has come for real resistance. I want to see lawsuits a hundred times as frivolous and numerous as those Trump lodges to gum up the works. Filibusters. Invective and insults. Rouse the people with passionate rallies. Clog up the streets, shut down Congress. We need the kind of crisis-level creative problem solving not seen since Apollo 13. And as essential as it is to get creative and put everything on the table, to fight Trump and Musk at every turn, it's equally important for Americans and our allies to see a fierce opposition standing up and fighting back with everything they've got. The free world needs reassurances that our liberties are being defended, even if some of the efforts fall short.

In case of emergency, break glass. In case of fire, pull the alarm. When your house is burning, you don't wait for the proper permits. Use privileged resolutions to introduce impeachment votes on Trump and every single member of his cabinet. Deny quorum. And when all else fails, pull fire alarms. Break glass. The building is already on fire – it's time to start acting like it.

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