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This week, in a video message to his 800,000-plus Facebook followers, Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) promised to keep resisting the Trump administration, in solidarity with the people in the streets.

Dont let this stuff become normal so were just becoming numb to it, Booker said. We have got to stay in the trenches and keep fighting.

Below that video and below an image of Booker testifying against Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) this month the senator was deluged with people asking for more.

You are my senator, said Eileen Mary Kenny. I voted for you enthusiastically. Id like you and the Democrats to be MUCH tougher on this administration. Please block these terrible Cabinet nominees. Obstruct in every way you can.

Im not overwhelmed, I am pissed! said Alice Carney. YOU, Cory, need to obstruct everything they are doing.

Senator you need to truly represent our state, said Brenda Santos. Please do not vote for ANY Cabinet picks.

Nearly every Democrat has been hearing the same this week; the partys embrace of mass protests has happened in tandem with votes to approve the first batch of President Trumps Cabinet picks, from CIA Director Mike Pompeo to all-but-certain HUD Secretary Ben Carson. On Twitter and other social media, Democrats are excoriated for the votes; there are fitful suggestions of primary challenges for senators who go off the reservation. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), who, like Booker, is considered a potential presidential candidate, won praise for opposing every nominee; she then voted for Nikki Haley to become ambassador to the United Nations.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), one of the lefts most popular figures, attempted to quell protests about her vote for Carson with a Facebook post. With palpable frustration okay, lets talk about Ben Carson Warren said that she and every Democrat was faced not with choices between opposition and appeasement, but bad and worse.

In his written responses to me, he made good, detailed promises, on everything from protecting anti-homelessness programs to enforcing fair housing laws, Warren wrote. Promises that if theyre honored would help a lot of working families. Can we count on Dr. Carson to keep those promises? I dont know. People are right to be skeptical; I am. But a man who makes written promises gives us a toehold on accountability. If President Trump goes to his second choice, I dont think we will get another HUD nominee who will even make these promises much less follow through on them.

The wild-swinging criticism of Democrats has not focused on a particular way to slow down nominees. The Democrats have fewer tools available to them than any opposition party in history, thanks to their 2013 reform of filibuster rules that allowed blocked nominees like the CFPBs Richard Cordray and former secretary oflabor Tom Perez to be confirmed.

The filibuster does apply to Supreme Court nominees, meaning that, without a change to current rules, Republicans will need eight Democrats to vote for cloture on whomever Trump nominates next week. Several Democratic senators are on record characterizing the open seat as stolen, because Republicans refused to hold hearings on former president Barack Obamas nominee, Merrick Garland.

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Senators Warren and Booker try to answer Democratic anger at votes for Trump nominees - Washington Post

Wall Street Journal

Connecticut Democrats Push for $15 Hourly Minimum Wage Wall Street Journal Democratic lawmakers in Connecticut are pushing to raise the state's hourly minimum wage to $15, but they face a tougher fight to get it through as the state Senate is now evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans. The state's minimum wage, ...

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Connecticut Democrats Push for $15 Hourly Minimum Wage - Wall Street Journal

Patch.com

Democrats Face Backlash After Approving Ben Carson For Cabinet Role Patch.com Senate Democrats continue to face a backlash from their base after the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs unanimously approved Ben Carson to serve as secretary of housing and urban development. On Tuesday night, the 11 ... Any Democrat Who Votes for Jeff Sessions Should Be Excommunicated from the PartyEsquire.com all 22 news articles »

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Democrats Face Backlash After Approving Ben Carson For Cabinet Role - Patch.com

President Donald Trump's pugnacious and divisive inaugural address confirmed that there are going to be many, many things to fear over the next four years. But hisfiredoglake via Foter.com choice of Betsy DeVos for secretary of education is not one of them.

Despite what you may have heard from hyperventilating liberals, DeVos is among Trump's more sober Cabinet choices. She never joined his cheerleading squad like Housing and Urban Development nominee Ben Carson. And she was certainly not part of his inner circle hatching plans to court white voters by demonizing immigrants and minorities, like Jeff Sessions, Trump's pick for attorney general. In fact, she declared relatively early that Trump did not "represent the Republican Party" and never retracted that statement.

Yet Democrats are treating her nomination like the ultimate scandal simply because she is an ardent proponent of school choice. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass) seemingly avoided even shaking her hand. But if Democrats can't do business with DeVos, then is there any intellectual opponent with whom they can?

Now, to be sure, DeVos did not distinguish herself during her confirmation hearing with her knowledge of the finer points of education policy (she didn't seem to know about the debate between proficiency and growth metrics to measure student performance, for one thing). She was often tongue-tied and crumbled under questioning. But that's at least partly because Democratic senators came turbo-charged to play gotcha.

DeVos' final confirmation vote has been delayed to Jan. 31 pending a full ethics review. However, it is highly unlikely that she won't get confirmed given that she needs only a simple majority in the Senate. So Democrats should have used this occasion to understand and engage her views honestly. Instead they decided to grandstand.

Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) demanded to know if she had advocated conversion therapy for gays. She hasn't so what was the point of this question except to portray her as a religious zealot hell-bent on bringing her "overtly Christian agenda to Washington" as per a 20-page screed by Politico and besmirch her passion for school choice as a ploy to turn over schools to Christian churches? Evidently, it did not occur to Sen. Franken that her voucher plan would empower secular, Muslim, and Buddhist parents really, parents of every religious persuasion just as much as Christian ones.

Likewise, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) all but accused DeVos of buying her way to the secretary's position. "Do you think that if you were not a multi-billionaire, if your family had not made hundreds of millions of dollars in contributions, that you would be sitting here today?," he asked as if her advocacy of school choice was just a ruse to buy political influence rather than the other way around.

Not to be outdone, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) asked her if guns should be allowed in schools never mind that a gun ban within 1,000 feet of a school has existed since 1996 and yet couldn't prevent the Newton massacre in his state. It was a pointless question given that an education secretary can't unilaterally overturn the ban and isn't responsible for enforcing it. DeVos' answer that the matter is probably best left to local schools able to make individualized assessment of threat levels was essentially correct, even if her grizzly bear example was somewhat clumsy. But why did Murphy feel the need to ask this question at all? No doubt to indulge his own anti-gun hobbyhorse! But, hey, DeVos is the ideologue.

And then there was Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), who demanded that DeVos pledge that she wouldn't "cut a penny from public education" or use her perch at the department to privatize public schools. DeVos assured her that she would support all great schools, including public ones which implied that failing ones may be shut down. This, too, was a perfectly sensible response that should be cheered by anyone interested in children instead of teachers' unions. But not Murray, who also wasn't placated by DeVos' guarantee that she wouldn't force states to adopt voucher programs either through federal regulations or legislation. Instead, DeVos said, states should get to decide whether they want to embrace private school choice. Murray's response? A pout: "I take that as not be willing to commit to not privatizing public schools or cutting money from education."

What was most galling about the confirmation charade was the conceit of Murray and her gang that their positions are based on hard evidence and science while DeVos' are simply a reflection of her ideological fanaticism. But the fact of the matter is that there are two education paradigms in this country the old one that favors public accountability via the political process and the new one that favors parental accountability via the market process. Democrats are wedded to the first one for ideological reasons despite its 200-year history of failing poor kids and simply won't give the second a chance. That's why they also declared war on DeVos for shielding Detroit's charter schools from being taken over by politicians. Incidentally, these charters, while far from perfect, have shown much better results than comparable public schools, as three independent studies, including by Stanford's CREDO, have shown.

If the DeVos confirmation hearing exposed anything at all, it is that the Democratic Party is now the Dogmatic Party. And that will not position it to fight the genuine threats to vulnerable minorities that the Trump presidency will almost certainly bring.

This column originally appearead in The Week

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Democrats' Crusade Against Betsy DeVos Only Discredits Them - Reason (blog)

The Trump administration is circulating a memo ordering federal employees not to communicate with Congress, a demand that Democrats are calling an illegal gag order.

The Trump administration has issued restrictions at multiple agencies on employee communications, including, in some instances, communications with Congress, Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., wrote in a letter Wednesday to new White House counsel Donald F. McGahn II. These directives appear to violate a host of federal laws.

Cummings letter cited a memo -- dated Jan. 20 -- circulating at the Department of Health and Human Services from Acting Secretary Norris Cochran the acting secretary that tells agency division heads that no correspondence to public officials (e.g., members of Congress, governors) ... unless specifically authorized by me or my designee, shall be sent between now and Feb. 3.

Within the last two days, Cochran, in a follow-up message to staff that was provided to ABC News by an agency spokesperson, sought to clarify his earlier memo, telling employees the memorandum should not be interpreted or implemented in any way that would preclude or in any way interfere with our HHS staff addressing their concerns to their elected representatives in person or in writing.

He said that the language in his memo was simply intended to coordinate the Departments policy positions with the appropriate policy staff on agency business.

Staffers at the Environmental Protection Agency earlier in the week told The Los Angeles Times that their new bosses ordered a media blackout, quoting one directive as telling them, Only send out critical messages, as messages can be shared broadly and end up in the press.

Cummings accused the administration of imposing a widespread ban on agency communication.

White House aides did not immediately respond to request for comment about alleged efforts to block employees from communicating with Congress, broadly, or about the latest in a series of letters from Cummings about the way they are handling the transition. The Associated Press reported that White House press secretary Sean Spicer said no directives to silence communication from agencies came from the White House.

A call and an email to HHS requesting comment was not immediately returned.

Cummings, the senior Democrat on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, refers to a memo circulating in the federal health agency that appears aimed at halting any effort to finish work on regulations that began during the prior administration. It is in that context that the acting agency head prohibited employees from talking with Congress.

Cummings and co-signer Rep. Frank Pallone Jr., D-N.J., cite a series of laws meant to protect open communication between federal employees and members of Congress, including one that ties agency funding to the free flow of information.

That provision, Cummings wrote, specifically prohibits agencies from issuing any order that threatens to prohibit or prevent any other officer or employee of the federal government from having any direct oral or written communication or contact with any member, committee or subcommittee of the Congress in connection with any matter.

Editor's Note: This story has been updated to include additional information.

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New Trump Agency Memo Gags Staff Communications, Democrats Say - ABC News