Slotkin Says Democrats Split on Strategy During Trump’s Second Term

Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) said Democrats remain split over how seriously to treat President Donald Trump’s second term and must adopt a tougher posture on Capitol Hill to counter it.

Speaking at an Axios News Shapers forum in Washington on July 23, the Michigan Democrat said that the party’s real divide is no longer progressive versus moderate but between those who see Trump’s second term as an existential danger and those who view it as merely undesirable. She put herself in the first camp of viewing the president as a threat.

Slotkin, who flipped a Republican-leaning House district in 2018 and narrowly won her Senate seat in 2024 as Trump carried Michigan, urged colleagues to “suck it up, buttercup” and build a coordinated offense.

She said that Democrats in the minority cannot rely on existing Senate rules alone and should be willing to use every procedural and messaging tool available, even if it means withholding votes on must-pass measures.

That warning foreshadows a high-stakes funding battle ahead, when current government spending authority expires on Sept. 30 and a government shutdown will ensue unless a new appropriations package for fiscal year 2026 or another continuing resolution is passed by Congress.

Slotkin reminded the audience she opposed the March omnibus after Republicans inserted many rescissions without, in her view, serious outreach to Democrats. If a shutdown occurs this fall, she said, responsibility will rest squarely on the party that now controls the White House and both chambers of Congress. She said a bipartisan vote requires a genuinely bipartisan conversation.

The former CIA analyst also took aim at Republican efforts to draw new congressional maps mid-decade—moves under discussion in Texas that could add GOP seats before the next census. Calling mid-cycle redistricting an open attempt to “pick their voters,” Slotkin said Democrats should not hesitate to respond in states where they hold power.

“If they’re going to go nuclear in Texas, I’m going to go nuclear in other places,” she said. “I’m not going to fight with one arm tied behind my back. I don’t want to do that. But if they’re proposing to rig the game, we’re going to get in that game and fight.”

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, called the session to address what he described as “constitutional concerns” raised by the Justice Department.

Some Democrats, such as California Gov. Gavin Newsom, have discussed pushing for redistricting in blue states like his own following the redistricting effort in Texas.

Slotkin stressed that the cost of living remains the “existential issue of our time” for many Americans.

“We invented the middle class in Michigan,” she said, recalling an era when an auto-plant worker could afford the car he built, a fishing cabin up north, and a family trip to Disney World. She added that people work hard, keep their heads down, stay out of trouble—but still can’t get ahead.

Slotkin’s economic blueprint mixes ideas likely to unsettle both wings of the party, including a public health-insurance option and zoning changes to spur housing supply. Yet she contends Democrats first have to agree on the core diagnosis before arguing prescriptions.

She said that if Democrats can agree that a shrinking middle class is the central problem, then they “can hash out policy.”

“Democrats know how to argue with each other,” she said.

She also weighed in on foreign-policy debates that have roiled the party since the start of the Israel–Hamas war. Slotkin, whose state contains a large Jewish population and the largest Arab American population of all states, has pushed the administration to speed humanitarian aid into Gaza while condemning settler violence in the West Bank.

She described the conflict as the “most difficult issue” of her professional life, adding that she tries to “call balls and strikes” rather than adopting a permanent camp as some of her colleagues on both sides have done. That stance, she acknowledged, leaves someone in Michigan angry with her “every single day” and thinking she should be saying more or less.

Correction: An earlier version of this article misspelled the name of Sen. Elissa Slotkin. The Epoch Times regrets the error.