(Headline USA) For the past four years, Democrats shrugged off the fact that President Joe Biden seemed to be perpetually unavailable for media interviews or any other sort of public access apart from heavily scripted scenarios.
But with their party having been fully displaced from the seat of power, left-wing activists were suddenly seething over the non-response to a coordinated campaign—including prewritten scripts—to harass GOP lawmakers.
RFK Jr.'s nomination is now off to the full Senate. A vote to confirm him is expected within the coming days or next week. Call your Senators to #StopRFK now! Check out a script here 👇https://t.co/cQy45IgoQG
— EverWonderWhy (@LastKnownPoint) February 5, 2025
Callers were getting busy signals and voicemail inboxes are full at many U.S. Senate offices amid efforts to complain about President Donald Trump’s Cabinet picks, executive orders and moves to dismantle various federal programs.
A memo distributed to Senate staff on Tuesday said there was a higher number of calls than usual and that some callers were having trouble getting through.
“The Senate is experiencing an unusually high volume of inbound calls. External callers may receive a temporary busy signal when phoning a Senate office,” according to the memo obtained by the Associated Press.
One popular post circulating in the left-wing echo chamber urged opponents of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency to call their lawmakers six times a day, every day — two calls each to their two senators and two to their House member. “You should NOT be bothering with online petitions or emailing,” it said.
FOR THOSE OF YOU LOOKING TO TURN YOUR despair INTO ACTION, here's some advice from a high-level staffer for a Senator.
There are two things that we should be doing all the time right now. You should NOT be bothering with online petitions or emailing.
1) The best thing you can do…— WokeInTheMiddle (@CMARIE83583147) February 5, 2025
The post urged use of a smartphone app that would make the task of making multiple calls per day easier.
Caitlin Christman, an institutional support contractor in Wisconsin furloughed last week from the U.S. Agency for International Development, said it took her four attempts over five days to successfully leave a message for her Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisc., after dealing with an overloaded voicemail box, grainy recorded greetings and a busy signal.
“I wanted to express my concern with dismantling USAID without any sort of review, and to relay my experience with its work, which I believe has been in our country’s best interest,” she claimed, noting that she expects to be fired later this week.
Meryl Neiman of Ohio Progressive Action Leaders and others within her network sought to draw attention to the fact that they were having trouble reaching both her state’s senators—Republicans Bernie Moreno and Jon Husted—by phone or in person at their field offices.
Both senators are close with Trump’s vice president, JD Vance, and were with him as recently as Monday, during a tour of the 2023 derailment site in East Palestine.
Moreno’s spokesperson, Reagan McCarthy, said helping Ohioans in need is his top priority.
“While the Senate has been dealing with an exceptionally high volume of calls, our office is committed to responding to each and every Ohioan in need of assistance and working through all requests as quickly as possible,” she said in a statement.
In sharp contrast with Trump’s first term, when the businessman and political neophyte was caught flatfooted by seditious conspiracies designed to undermine his agenda—and question his legitimacy—Trump entered into his current term with a clear course of action, which he has pursued unrelentingly in his first three weeks.
Democrats have, by and large, struggled to come up with a response this time around to what some have termed a “shock and awe” method of government reform, overwhelming media critics with a deluge of breaking-news stories that prevented them from carping on any one thing.
A coordinated left-wing protest Wednesday was aimed at lashing out against Trump and Project 2025—the set of policy blueprints that Democrats used as a boogeyman during the leadup to last year’s election.
However, the failure to unify around a specific objection left it appearing to be little more than another leftist venting session, all too familiar following the 2020 race riots in which leftists seemed to demonstrate little self-awareness over the contradictory and hypocritical nature of their complaints.
Those frustrated by Trump’s actions shared similar stories with the AP of being unable to reach their lawmakers. They seemed to be experiencing particular barriers to connecting with the Senate offices of Trump’s fellow Republicans, who may be more inundated than Democrats because Republicans hold the chamber’s majority and are more likely to have the president’s ear.
Lawmakers were frustrated, too, as they seek to maintain operations amid the interference efforts. Senate voicemail boxes only hold about 1,000 messages before becoming full and needing to be catalogued and emptied.
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press
