Good afternoon, everybody. My name is Eric Foster, and I am a co-founder of The Future – Today & Tomorrow Super PAC.
I want to offer some guidance to our pro-democracy friends in Congress and in state legislative bodies who are dealing with recalcitrant MAGA officials appearing before them in hearings. This problem is especially visible in Congress, where hearing after hearing follows the same script: a MAGA-aligned official comes before a committee, speaks one way to Democratic, Independent, and non-MAGA Republican members, and another way to the cheerleaders of the MAGA regime. The result is not serious oversight, but political theater, deflection, and propaganda.
The larger question is this: what can legislators do differently if they actually want to get useful information out of these hearings and use the moment to educate the broader public? Too often, members approach these hearings as though they are dealing with a normal administration or a conventional political disagreement. They are not. That old approach is not working, and it is time to adjust.
The Predictable Script of a MAGA Hearing
Every time we watch one of these hearings, we already know how the rodeo is going to go.
The MAGA party currently controls the House and the Senate, so the committee chair typically opens by portraying the Biden administration, or prior Democratic administrations more broadly, as the source of every problem imaginable. The chair then presents the Trump regime as the answer to everything and frames the appointee or witness as the ideal person to execute the MAGA agenda.
After that, the Democratic ranking member usually responds by saying, in essence, that what was just said is false, that the real issues are different, and that the committee hopes to have a substantive conversation that leads to useful answers. That is where the first major mistake occurs. The ranking member is still approaching the hearing as though the witness is there to participate in a normal good-faith exchange. In many of these hearings, that assumption is already dead on arrival.
Why the Current Approach Fails
At The Future – Today & Tomorrow, we believe Democratic and Independent members need to pre-plan and fundamentally change their approach, especially ranking members on committees and subcommittees.
The problem is not simply that MAGA officials refuse to answer questions honestly. The deeper problem is that too many pro-democracy members still structure their questioning as if these witnesses are there to help solve problems in their districts, assist states fairly, or provide honest testimony for the public record. In reality, many of these witnesses arrive prepared to do the opposite. They come to deflect, demonize, distort, and attack. They are there to protect a political project, not to help legislators gather facts in the ordinary way.
Because of that, members need a different theory of the hearing. The purpose should not be to pretend that a cooperative hearing is possible when it is not. The purpose should be to expose the strategy, define the stakes, and organize questioning in a way that creates useful material for public understanding.
The Ranking Member Must Reframe the Hearing
The ranking member should begin by leveling settting for the public. That means clearly explaining who is testifying, what the chair has said, and what is actually happening in reality. The ranking member should not drift into generic objections or mild institutional frustration. The opening should be direct, disciplined, and structured around three core themes.
First, the ranking member should make clear that the witness is there to mislead, deflect, and attack. Members should not assume that the witness intends to provide honest answers simply because the hearing is taking place under the formal rules of Congress. The public should hear, at the outset, that the witness’s testimony must be understood in that light.
Second, the ranking member should directly challenge the false narratives already introduced by the chair. If the committee chair has spent the opening statement rewriting history, blaming prior administrations for everything, or framing basic democratic governance as corruption, those claims should be answered immediately and explicitly. They cannot be allowed to stand as the uncontested opening frame for the hearing.
Third, the ranking member should explain why the witness and the chair are advancing those falsehoods. That explanation should be tied to the real-world consequences of the policies and politics at issue. Whether the subject is voting rights, criminal justice, clean energy, contracting, civil rights enforcement, immigration, or economic access, the public needs to understand that these lies are not random. They serve a larger purpose: preserving power, denying opportunity, and undermining the rights and security of people outside the MAGA coalition.
Make the Hearing Committee-Specific
That broader framework then has to be translated into committee-specific language.
If the hearing is before Judiciary or Oversight, the opening should explain how claims about “weaponization” are often used to delegitimize lawful oversight, constitutional processes, grand jury activity, and accountability mechanisms. If the hearing is before an environmental or energy committee, members should directly rebut falsehoods about clean energy, jobs, public health, and household affordability. If the hearing is before a small business, commerce, or contracting-related committee, members should explain how efforts to eliminate programs addressing historic barriers are really about preserving unequal access to contracts, capital, and opportunity.
The key is to connect the lies to the material interests of ordinary people. Members should make clear that these policies are not abstract ideological disputes. They affect affordability, employment, public health, representation, and whether people can build a stable life. When officials lie about who deserves support, who counts, or which communities matter, they are not merely insulting their opponents. They are helping justify policies that take money, opportunity, and security away from the people those officials do not value.
Organize Questioning Into Thematic Blocks
Once the ranking member has laid out the pillars of the hearing, the rest of the committee should not proceed with random, disconnected questioning. Members should be organized in advance into coordinated thematic blocks.
If there are twenty-four members on one side of the committee, they should be divided into four groups of six, with each group assigned to a specific subject area. Those subject areas should be chosen strategically based on the witness, the committee’s jurisdiction, and the hearing’s public value. One group might focus on law enforcement abuse and selective accountability. Another might focus on voting rights or democratic exclusion. Another might focus on economic harms, contracting, and access to opportunity. A fourth might focus on public lies, media strategy, and the specific harms to communities targeted by the administration.
These groups should question in a cadence that allows their exchanges to build on one another rather than scatter in every direction. The point is to create a coherent record on each topic. Done correctly, each block of questioning becomes a clean narrative segment that can later be turned into public-facing educational material, commentary, and analysis.
Stop Asking Questions That Assume Good Faith
One of the biggest mistakes members make in these hearings is asking normal district-service or problem-solving questions of witnesses who have no intention of helping. If the administration is hostile to your state, your district, your city, or the people you represent, then it is a mistake to proceed as though you are dealing with a conventional policy disagreement that can be resolved through ordinary oversight.
That approach may have made sense under previous Republican administrations such as George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush, Reagan, Ford, or even Nixon. It does not fit the reality of a MAGA regime that often treats blue states, Democratic districts, and non-MAGA constituencies as enemies rather than constituents. In that environment, members should stop wasting time on questions that presume reciprocity, fairness, or a desire to solve problems together.
Instead, members should ask questions that expose motives, contradictions, harms, and real consequences. The goal is not to perform normalcy. The goal is to document the abnormal reality clearly and repeatedly.
Respond to Lies Immediately
There is another major change that must happen in real time during hearings.
When a MAGA member finishes speaking, the next non-MAGA member cannot simply ignore what was said and pivot into a fresh line of questioning. In the first thirty seconds, that member should directly answer the lies that were just told. If a prior speaker has lied about Democratic voters, Democratic communities, past administrations, witnesses, or the basic facts of the hearing, that must be challenged immediately and clearly.
Why does this matter? Because those lies will not remain confined to the room. They will be replayed, clipped, circulated, and amplified through friendly media and propaganda channels. If there is no immediate response on the record, then the public only hears the original lie. Every pro-democracy member needs to understand that rebuttal is not optional. It is part of the hearing strategy.
That rebuttal does not need to consume the entire time. But it does need to be direct. A lie should be called a lie. A false accusation should be labeled false. Members cannot afford to let the hearing move forward as though the previous speaker’s statements were normal contributions to a good-faith exchange.
Stay on the Point When the Door Opens
Members also need more discipline once they begin questioning.
If a member’s first question opens a door on something important, they should not rush on to the second and third questions simply because those were on the original note card. Stay on the point. Press it. Drive it as far as it will go. If the exchange reveals a contradiction, exposes a motive, or forces the witness into an uncomfortable position, that is the moment to keep pushing.
Too often members abandon productive openings because they are trying to cover too much ground in too little time. But the most effective hearings are not the ones where every question gets asked. They are the ones where a small number of important truths get pinned down and made visible.
Work With Any Non-MAGA Republican Willing to Participate
There is also room for coalition where it exists.
If a non-MAGA Republican is willing to join in a serious effort to expose bad-faith testimony and defend the institution, that member should be brought into the planning. They should be given a lane of questioning tailored to their position and credibility. That does not mean pretending that all differences disappear. It means recognizing that, in a constitutional republic, there may still be people across party lines who understand that institutional collapse and authoritarian governance are not acceptable.
Any serious pro-democracy hearing strategy should make room for those voices when they are genuinely available.
The Same Logic Applies to the Media
This approach should not be limited to Congress. Traditional non-MAGA media should absorb the same lesson when interviewing Donald Trump or MAGA-related officials in press gaggles and public appearances.
Journalists can no longer operate as though they are standing outside the story when MAGA officials are constantly trying to turn them into part of it. The style of journalism that may have been sufficient in the 1990s or early 2000s does not fit the current moment. Reporters have to push back in real time. They have to call lies lies to people’s faces. And when officials claim that the press agrees with them or shares their assumptions, journalists need to answer plainly and make their disagreement unmistakable.
Neutrality does not require passivity in the face of deception. It requires fidelity to the truth.
Conclusion
The old hearing model is not working. Too many pro-democracy legislators continue to approach MAGA witnesses as though these are ordinary disagreements inside a functioning democratic system. They are not. These hearings are structured arenas of propaganda, deflection, and attack. If members want to get more value out of them, they need a different strategy.
That strategy begins with reframing the hearing, naming the bad faith directly, organizing members into coordinated thematic blocks, rebutting lies immediately, and staying on critical points when they emerge. It also requires abandoning the fantasy that hostile witnesses are there to help blue states, Democratic districts, or non-MAGA communities in any sincere way. They are not. Members must question accordingly.
If pro-democracy legislators and media figures adopt a more disciplined, coordinated, and reality-based approach, they can do far more than survive these hearings. They can turn them into opportunities to educate the public, expose the real agenda at work, and cut through the noise with clarity.
My name is Eric Foster, co-founder of The Future – Today & Tomorrow Super PAC. Thank you, have a blessed day, and see you on the other side.
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About The Future - Today & Tomorrow
The Future - Today & Tomorrow is a Super PAC dedicated to the advancement and protection of civil liberties across the United States. We strive for a future where democracy is unassailable, and every citizen’s right to vote is sacrosanct. Our mission is to ensure that technology serves to enhance, not inhibit, the democratic process, fostering a society where everyone has the freedom to choose their leaders without fear or interference. For more information about The Future - Today & Tomorrow, please visit https://www.futurepac.today/
