The Democratic Party, which has been complicit and largely silent over the fascist rampage by President Donald Trump against democratic rights, social programs and federal workers, has suddenly found its voice this week. Senators and representatives howled and shook their fists, not over the savagery of the Trump administration, but because Trump’s top national security aides were insufficiently careful in the preparation of the bombing of Yemen—an act of mass murder that the Democrats enthusiastically support.
The leak of a Signal chat thread discussing the US bombing of Houthi-controlled targets in Yemen—forces opposed to Saudi Arabia and Israel—has become the central topic of “debate” in official Washington. Media pundits have spoken of little else. Hours of televised hearings before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday and the House Intelligence Committee on Wednesday featured Democrats grilling top Trump administration officials over the security breach, which was triggered by the accidental inclusion of Atlantic Editor Jeffrey Goldberg on the thread.
Goldberg detailed his participation in the thread in a major article published by the magazine Monday. After top officials denied his claims that classified military operations were discussed, he released the full transcript of the chat Tuesday night. The document confirmed his account and revealed—unsurprisingly—that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt and others had shamelessly lied about the incident.
As the WSWS noted yesterday:
The accidental inclusion of Goldberg in the war plans provoked outrage from the Democratic Party and the media—not over the criminal war of aggression or the war crimes being planned, but because the discussion took place outside secure military channels.
The two days of congressional intelligence committee hearings are long-scheduled events, held every year, in which the top military-intelligence officials give their assessments of the main global threats to the interests of the American ruling elite. As usual, these consist of an open session in the morning, held before television cameras with much political posturing, and a closed session in the afternoon for franker discussion of the crimes being committed by US imperialism around the world.
During both the Senate and House hearings, Democrats generally endorsed the list of “threats”—China, Russia, Iran and North Korea, in that order. Mark Warner, the ranking Democrat on the Senate panel, pointed out that Biden administration officials had presented the same list a year ago. He criticized Trump for reversing US policy on Ukraine and Russia—the primary area of divergence between the two capitalist parties—before shifting focus to the security breach on the eve of the Yemen bombing.
This set the tone for other Democratic senators, who demanded the resignation of Hegseth and Walz and called for an independent investigation into how Goldberg was included on the call—now under review by the Trump White House. Several senators contrasted the “sloppiness” of the Signal chat with the supposed professionalism of communications protocols at the Pentagon, the CIA and the broader “intelligence community.”
Not a single Democrat questioned the legality or morality of the military operation, in which dozens of innocent Yemeni civilians were massacred and several Houthi leaders targeted for assassination—both crimes under international law.
At the House hearing the following day, after Goldberg had released the full transcript of the Yemen discussion, the Democrats’ outrage went up a notch. Ranking Democrat Jim Himes—a former Goldman Sachs banker and leader of the right-wing New Democrat faction—opened by branding Trump’s policy as: “We are now on Team Kremlin.”
Himes pointed to chief Mideast negotiator Steve Witkoff’s participation in the Signal chat while visiting Moscow and demanded to know what kind of phone he had used. Himes referenced the “140 stars” at CIA headquarters—marking agents killed in the line of duty—and claimed that “many of them died because of poor judgment by reporters or leaders.”
The most flag-waving statement came from Colorado Democrat Jason Crow, one of the growing number of “CIA Democrats” recruited directly into Congress from the military-intelligence apparatus. Crow, a former special forces commander in Afghanistan, exemplifies the integration of the Democratic Party with the national security state.
Crow concluded a long interrogation of the panel of Trump aides as follows:
I was deployed three times in combat in service to this nation. I learned in my time in service that responsibility is core to leadership. ... It is completely outrageous to me, completely outrageous that administration officials come before us today with impunity, no acceptance of responsibility. ... It is outrageous, and it is a leadership failure, and that is why Secretary Hegseth who undoubtedly transmitted classified information via this chain must resign immediately. There can be no fixes. There can be no corrections until there is accountability, and I am calling on the administration to move forward with accountability.
What does this “moving forward” consist of? The main criticism of Trump by the congressional Democrats is that he is weakening the global position of American imperialism by abandoning its main allies and client states, particularly Ukraine and NATO, as well as antagonizing these allies through provocations like the proposed acquisition of Greenland and annexation of Canada.
On US policy in the Middle East, the Democrats are fully aligned, having poured tens of billions into supporting Israel’s genocide in Gaza—now expanding into the West Bank, Lebanon and even Yemen. It was the Biden administration that launched the crackdown on pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses, a campaign Trump has now fused with his anti-immigrant offensive to create a repressive atmosphere more sweeping than the McCarthyite witch hunts of the 1950s.
In a significant exchange during the House Intelligence Committee hearing, fascistic Republican Representative Claudia Tenney of New York asked FBI Director Kash Patel whether the agency was monitoring and compiling lists of individuals involved in so-called “pro-Hamas” protests on college campuses. Patel confirmed that the FBI was doing so. Not a single Democrat raised the issue or voiced any objection.
When the Trump administration kidnaps college students for their opposition to the Gaza genocide, planning to deport them for exercising their right of free speech, the Democratic Party is silent.
When Trump unleashes his billionaire co-president for domestic policy Elon Musk on federal workers, firing tens of thousands, smearing them as unqualified, lazy bureaucrats, the Democrats wring their hands. They hold rallies with union officials who are equally committed to doing nothing, at which both pledge to support lawsuits that will ultimately be heard by a Supreme Court packed with a far-right super-majority.
When Trump and his fascist allies move to destroy vital social programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and food stamps—on which hundreds of millions of people depend—the Democrats say they are powerless to stop it. Then, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer delivers the critical vote to keep the Trump-Musk government funded for another six months.
But when given the opportunity to attack Trump from the right, the Democrats jump at the chance. They deplore the incompetence of those Trump has appointed to fill the top positions in the US national-security apparatus and demand that the full power of the US machinery of war, spying and provocation be unleashed.
This is a demonstration of the class character of the Democratic Party. It is one of the two parties of the American financial oligarchy, unalterably committed to the defense of the ruling class at home and abroad. The defense of the jobs, living standards and democratic rights of working people, in America and worldwide, depends on the political mobilization of the opposite social force, the international working class, on the basis of a revolutionary socialist program.