Protectors of the People
Fighting Republicans is often a necessary but never a sufficient condition in fulfilling our primary obligation as representatives: protecting the people from forces that oppress and exploit them.
If you’ve participated at all in the American political process, you have assuredly voted for a candidate who promised to “fight for you.” For decades, both Democratic and Republican candidates have gone out of their way to convince us that we are the ones they are fighting for, yet all the while, the material, social, and psychological conditions of the average American have deteriorated.
If they are fighting for us and our lives are getting worse, it begs the question: who are these politicians fighting on our behalf? The short answer is mainly just each other. Increasingly acrimonious partisan squabbling has been a fixture of 21st-century American politics. Given the deterioration of life in both the red heartland and blue coastal cities, it is easy to cynically dismiss this fighting between Republicans and Democrats as nothing more than political theater, like the kayfabe of studio wrestling, staged conflict created mainly to capture the frenzied attention and campaign donations of each side’s most rabid fans.
Is the idea that our representatives are “fighting for us” all just a facade? Even those who dismiss the conflict between Democrats and Republicans as a mere spectacle of a duopolist political system must admit that over the past few weeks, the fighting between the parties has taken a very dark turn, away from mere rhetoric toward the imminent threat of very real physical violence. On November 20th, six Democratic lawmakers with military backgrounds (Michigan Senators Elissa Slotkin and Mark Kelly, as well as Representatives Chris Deluzio, Maggie Goodlander, Chrissy Houlahan, and Jason Crow) addressed a video to America’s troops affirming their right and duty to refuse illegal orders. President Donald Trump promptly took to Truth Social to respond to the video claiming the Democratic lawmakers’ behavior amounted to “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR,” punishable by DEATH.”
Even after nearly a decade of hearing the phrase “this is not normal” to describe Trump’s conduct, the overt threat of physical violence against Democratic lawmakers marks a new low point in dangerous abnormality for a President who has become an unhinged 79-year-old poster child for the necessity of the 25th Amendment as a mechanism to remove the deranged from office. The sinister energy of Trump’s psychotic meltdown hit particularly close to home for us in Western Pennsylvania, as his rage was directed at our Congressman, Chris Deluzio. As a local elected official, I have met and worked with Congressman Deluzio on numerous occasions. When my Township needed to fix a dangerously crumbling railroad tunnel, Congressman Deluzio jumped at the chance to help protect our community by directly contacting the CEO of Canadian National Railway, motivating the company to make long-neglected repairs. Even on smaller matters, Chris has always been responsive. This spring, Chris and his kids lent our local Democratic Committee a hand in helping clean up trash from our local park. Congressman Deluzio is a down-to-earth, sincere, and dedicated public servant who our community is lucky to have representing us in Congress.
Most sane Americans are repulsed by hearing the President threaten death and violence to his political enemies. But that disgust reaches another level when threats of violence are directed at a person who you’ve seen cleaning out Cheerios from his kids’ car seats to make room for staffers helping document a crumbling railroad tunnel on a winding country road. Chris Deluzio showed up to help protect our community from corporate greed and neglect. It is only right that I speak out to help support Congressman Deluzio, whose offices have faced multiple bomb threats since Trump’s tantrum, almost surely the work of sick MAGA fanatics eager to take the satisfaction of the President’s bloodlust into their own hands, even as the White House makes efforts to walk back the obviously malicious intent of the Truth Social posts.
The surreal experience of seeing someone you know be threatened with death by the President of the United States conjured up thoughts I had during my own re-election campaign about the complex relationship between fighting for the people and protecting the people. Whether in campaign literature or during doorstep conversations, I rarely use the word “fighting” to describe my political efforts. This is maybe a bit odd, since few other elected officials in my area have gotten into as heated arguments as I have with my Republican colleagues on the Board of Supervisors. From fiercely defending my constituents’ right to circulate petitions in the Township to warning the other Supervisors of the need to recuse themselves in situations that bear even the whiff of conflict of interest, my impassioned outbursts come as close to “fighting” as we get around here in local politics. But fighting Republicans is not an end in itself to be celebrated. It is an unpleasant means of protecting the rights of the people against the corporate interests that too often dupe the Board majority. Protection, not fighting, is the heart of my political project. This is not a paternalistic one-way relationship where the representative protects the people, but rather a collective effort to inspire us to protect each other as a community. I protect the citizens. The citizens protect me. The citizens protect each other. And in so doing, we name the enemies of the people who threaten our well-being, from Ryan Homes to Range Resources, and when possible, name the individuals who represent these faceless entities that view our community as nothing more than a site for profit extraction. Serving as a public official has taught me that our job as representatives is to act as Protectors of the People. Fighting for our constituents is sometimes necessary, but always secondary to our primary duty of protecting them.
As a Navy man, Chris Deluzio often implores, “Don’t give up the ship,” a rallying cry to not back down in the face of opposition. No one would doubt that Chris Deluzio and the rest of the so-called “Seditious Six” are fighting Donald Trump. It’s a sad commentary on these dark times when quoting the Uniform Code of Military Justice amounts to a “seditious” act of fighting the President. Yet it remains to be seen whether fighting Trump on this issue will do more to protect the American people from his overreach of power than it will endanger the members of Congress who made the video. The danger to Congressman Deluzio and his colleagues is heightened by the video’s the lack of specificity about which orders were potentially illegal (like I don’t know…maybe the alcoholic Secretary of War ordering “kill everybody” when alerted that survivors were clinging to the wreckage of a civilian fishing vessels blown up for supposedly smuggling drugs in the Caribbean) and the lack of recourse for rank and file troops who may be unsure whether their orders are legal. The video may be a brilliant tactical move in baiting Trump and his bumbling goons, Kash Patel and Pete Hegseth, to open investigations into Congressional Democrats whose moral fiber and service to country far outshine anyone working for this despicable administration. But with tensions rising and the “Seditious Six” rhetoric intensifying, only time will tell whether the Democratic leadership has the right long-term strategy to protect the six Democrats (let alone the American people at large) from political violence and civil disorder.
To come out victorious in this standoff with Donald Trump, Congressional Democrats must position themselves as not just fighters against MAGA Republicans but true Protectors of the People. Fighting Donald Trump is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for Democrats to rescue this country in 2026 and 2028. If anything, Donald Trump has proven to be too compelling a villain over the past decade, distracting the Democrats from the broader forces of greed, corruption, and deception that Trump reinforces and represents. Democrats’ hyperfixation on fighting Trump has done little to impede the MAGA movement, as evidenced by the failed Biden/Harris campaign of 2024 that cast Trump as a singular supervillain while leaving all the other billionaire parasites ruining this country off the hook. By focusing too much on fighting just the opposing party, Democrats have handed the Republicans the advantage of being able to lure voters with promises of protection from enemies that exist outside the DC Beltway. Republicans offer protection from threats that are often imaginary or overblown: e.g., migrant “terrorist” gangs, Radical Marxists, transgirls playing high school sports, DEI professors, etc. To truly discredit this protection peddled by Republicans as fraudulent, Democrats must do more than merely fight Donald Trump and the GOP. Democrats must become aggressively vocal Protectors of the People against those enemies who have inflicted the most harm on the average American: e.g. healthcare lobbyists who trap us in a system that is twice as expensive and significantly less effective than in other developed countries, the unholy alliance between Fossil Fuels and Big Tech that has cynically used AI as a taxpayer-funded lifeline to profitability for industries that have inflicted incalcuable harm on the planet and our collective psyche, the Big Banks that get preferential rates to borrow from the Federal Reserve only to turn around and crush our nation’s poorest residents with brutal overdraft fees and high interest loans, and the private equity vampires who saddle viable enterprises with crushing debt only to extract dividends for themselves while leaving companies hollowed out and their workers unemployed.
My hope that Congressman Deluzio will emerge safe and strong from this needless “Seditious Six” scandal rests in the fact that he has been a proven Protector of the People for my community. His efforts to restore the crumbling Little Deer Creek tunnel protected our community from the negligent disregard of Canadian National Railway. In joining Bernie Sanders on the Fighting Oligarchy tour, Deluzio demonstrated that he understands something many centrist Democrats fail to comprehend: that the enemies of the people extend beyond just Trump and the MAGA Republicans and include the entire Billionaire Class. During his speech at the Fighting Oligarchy rally, Deluzio showed that he understood the need to name the enemies of the people, “We ought to make hard work pay off, but we gotta take on the villains. We know who they are. It doesn’t matter if you call them oligarchs, robber barons, or corporate jagoffs — I gotta bring a little Pittsburgh here — we know who they are. I know which damn side I’m on. Are you with me?”
As a proud constituent of Chris Deluzio, and can wholeheartedly say, yes, I am with him, not only in his coming fight against Donald Trump but also in the struggle to protect the people’s interests against those who have created and perpetuated this predatory economy. In fighting forces beyond just Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans, Congressman Deluzio has established himself not just as our representative but as a legitimate Protector of the People. With Congressman Deluzio’s very life threatened, it is now time for the people of Western Pennsylvania to return the favor and protect him from the morally depraved regime hellbent on doing him harm.
Great piece, Jon. Not to make everything about electoral politics, but I wish I knew why people like Deluzio don't run for higher office. It does feel like folks such as him usually stay put in the House, which is a loss to all of us.