America's Democratic Party is having a rough time.
Ever since losing control of the White House and Congress to Republicans in last November's elections, Democrats have had almost no say in US politics as President Donald Trump moves at breakneck speed to reshape the country's priorities and federal government.
He has slashed the federal workforce, pulled the US out of international agreements and declared economic war on allies through an aggressive tariffs policy, as well as cut support for Ukraine as it battles Russia's invasion. He has also sent troops to several US cities and clamped down on free speech for pro-Palestine voices.
Because they control no branch of government, the Democrats have been unable to exert much influence over any of this, though they are using the continuing shutdown as a rare opportunity to try to apply some pressure.
Mr Trump thinks his Democratic opponents have a leadership problem.
“They have a party that's out of control,” he said on Tuesday, blaming Democrats for the current government shutdown. “They're a party that has no leadership. They have no policy.”
These are relatively soft insults for Mr Trump when it comes to Democrats. He has previously described figures on other side of the aisle as “low IQ”, “stupid” and “incompetent”.
But is the Democratic Party leaderless? While no one person has risen to the top, several voices have emerged among Democrats as they work to present a foil to the Trump administration – and different figures are going about it in different ways.
The governors
Democratic governors have become major voices of dissent after Republicans took control of both houses of Congress.
“The governors … are really coming out and saying, 'Hey, we don't have the numbers in Congress to make much of a legislative kind of fight, but we do have some power in the states and what goes on here, to resist what's happening with the Trump administration',” Alyssa Batchelor-Causey, founder and chief executive of Hill and State Strategies, told The National.
Governor Gavin Newsom of California, for example – nicknamed “Newscum” by Mr Trump – has grown to greater renown in recent weeks when he began to post on social media in the same style as Mr Trump.
“I, GAVIN C. NEWSOM (THE MOST SUCCESSFUL GOVERNOR IN AMERICAN HISTORY), HEREBY DEMAND THAT CANADA GIFT ME 'A BIG BEAUTIFUL PLANE' I GET TO KEEP AFTER I LEAVE OFFICE (IF I LEAVE),” he said in one recent post, mocking the bombastic, all-capitals style used by Mr Trump on social media, and attacking the President for accepting a plane from Qatar.
Also like Mr Trump, Mr Newsom pulls no punches, calling Mr Trump a “bumbling idiot” and accusing him of having dementia, among other insults. Those insults reached a fever pitch after Mr Trump sent National Guard troops to Los Angeles to quell protests against immigration raids.
Illinois Governor JB Pritzker has also come out strongly against the President amid Mr Trump's threats to send the National Guard to Chicago to quell crime.
“The President of the United States is threatening to go to war with an American city. This is not a joke. This is not normal,” Mr Pritzker said in a post on X last week. “Donald Trump isn't a strongman, he's a scared man. Illinois won’t be intimidated by a wannabe dictator.”
Figures like the governors are comfortable choices for opposition figures – they're experienced politicians, already in positions of power, and importantly, they are older, white men.
The new guard
But the future of the party may not lie with powerful white men.
“I look at people with very low IQs, like [Representative Jasmine] Crockett. This woman, Crockett, I never met her, but she's a low-IQ individual,” Mr Trump said this week. “I look at AOC [Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] talking about how, if they [Republican legislators] want to negotiate [about the shutdown], they can come to my office. She's not in that position to do that.”
Ms Ocasio-Cortez and Ms Crockett are frequent Democratic targets of Mr Trump's ire.
Ms Ocasio-Cortez, a waitress-turned-politician, uses her working-class background and sharp wit to excoriate Republican opponents for being out of touch with the common man.
Her recent exhortation to her millions of followers on social media was to “laugh” at the “jokes” and “clowns” of the Republican administration.
And Ms Crockett's no-nonsense, often profanity-laced exchanges in Congress with Republicans and Trump administration officials have lent themselves strongly to viral social media clips.
“If you are struggling to make sure that you can pay your bills, if you are struggling to find a job,” she said on MSNBC this week, “it is the old white nepo baby in the White House that is causing all the destruction, pain and problems that you are enduring.”
Outside of Congress, New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani – who Mr Trump has called a “100 per cent communist lunatic” that is in the country illegally – is not laughing. Like Mr Pritzker, Mr Mamdani has called Mr Trump a threat.
“What is angering to me is not what Donald Trump does, because we've come to expect that from him, but it's the idea that we have to accept that as the law, the idea that we have to accept that as normal,” he said.
He was responding to Mr Trump saying he would withhold federal funding from New York if Mr Mamdani is elected in November. “We have to fight that.”
Ms Batchelor-Causey says that Democrats are using a multifaceted strategy to confront their Republican opponents, with some choosing to laugh and others to raise the alarm.
“We do have to take and be serious about what this Trump administration is doing. What they're doing is serious,” she said. “But these people are also unserious in their personalities and what they're doing.”
But Ms Batchelor-Causey added that the political conversation, particularly amid the US government shut down, has moved away from what it should be focused on.
“I think that that's what we need to be talking about right now, is the fact that we need to get back to the kitchen table issues and talking about what actually matters to everyday Americans and what they're doing,” she said, “as well as continuing to point out the ways in which this administration is acting beyond the spirit of the Constitution, the spirit of the law.”
